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Bill Gates, Hero

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Re: Bill Gates, Hero

#41

Post by potatolicious »

Gibbon wrote: post #37
jakarta wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"And what did he do with these fabulous once-in-a-lifetime gifts?" He used those gifts to amass wealth which he is now in the process of mostly giving away. It goes back to Warren Buffett who claimed that he won the ovarian lottery, being born at the right time with the right circumstances which enabled him to become extremely wealthy. As a result, Buffett advocates giving away 99% of his fortune in recognition of th…

Most of the wealthy I know are not against charity or giving away their wealth.. they are against an inefficient government deciding on how that should be accomplished.

Surely you're not talking to the same wealthy that I've been.

What do you think will be the repsonse to, say, a 50% tax rate on the wealthy that they are able to distribute as they see fit (with strict controls such that it doesn't end up back in their own hands, or their family's)?

Yeah, good luck with that.

I see the "but government is inefficient" argument a lot - it would have some merit, if there's even the slightest hint of evidence that the rich would pay the tax even if the government were the most well-greased machine in the world. As it is it sounds like a lame scapegoat for wanting to keep all of your wealth.

Re: Bill Gates, Hero

#42

Post by gaius »

pohl wrote: post #28
stackthat wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Get over yourselves , have you used *nix systems in 90s as desktops? If you not you can't compare Windows's quality with something else. OSX wasn't even properly exist.

"NEXTSTEP is probably the most respected piece of software on the planet." -- Byte Magazine, October 1992 I used it during that decade on an x86 desktop, on a SPARC laptop made by Tadpole, and on an HP PA-RISC "gecko" workstation. It was awesome.

I have a Next Color Turbo at home, it's an awesome machine.

And so it should be for what it cost back in the day. Windows PCs made computing affordable for Jo(e) Consumer, there's no getting away from that.

Re: Bill Gates, Hero

#43

Post by m3mb3r »

>> Why do you think Silicon Valley has never quite come around on this guy?

There are two separate aspects here, professional and personal.

Silicon Valley judges people based on their professional acumen and practices. And Gates did not please everybody in this department.

And the other aspect, yes, people in tech do admire his humanitarian efforts.

It's just that mixing two aspects of a personality and trying to come up with an overall score does not work.

Re: Bill Gates, Hero

#44

Post by jakarta »

gaius wrote: post #39
jakarta wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"And what did he do with these fabulous once-in-a-lifetime gifts?" He used those gifts to amass wealth which he is now in the process of mostly giving away. It goes back to Warren Buffett who claimed that he won the ovarian lottery, being born at the right time with the right circumstances which enabled him to become extremely wealthy. As a result, Buffett advocates giving away 99% of his fortune in recognition of th…

Famously Warren Buffett's secretary pays more tax than he does...

Exactly, which he says is stupid. That's why Buffett and Gates have been pushing so hard to get other billionaires to pledge to donate as much as them. Larry Ellison is one of the more recent tech execs to take the pledge.

Re: Bill Gates, Hero

#45

Post by Locke1689 »

edkennedy wrote: post #4

I think he's villanized because of his main product, Windows. It suffers from the same plight Bill himself suffers as mentioned in the article. Awkwardness.

At the same time I think we need to remember the motto of Microsoft up until a couple years ago: "a computer in every home." Without Microsoft I'm not sure that would have been done so effectively or quickly and I'm positive that the tech world which we build in now is a direct result of that fact. The reason Microsoft changed their motto is because they actually succeeded, which is simply amazing.

Re: Bill Gates, Hero

#46

Post by jacoblyles »

jakarta wrote: post #34
edw519 wrote: post #13

Why do you think Silicon Valley has never quite come around on this guy? Because of the trail of dead bodies and lost opportunities left in his wake. Let's not forget, Bill Gates was handed a 0th birthday gift of $1 million from his grandfather, the keys to his private middle school computer (the same one Stanford had), and a free ticket to do business with IBM because his mother already knew its chairman. Sure he wa…

"And what did he do with these fabulous once-in-a-lifetime gifts?" He used those gifts to amass wealth which he is now in the process of mostly giving away. It goes back to Warren Buffett who claimed that he won the ovarian lottery, being born at the right time with the right circumstances which enabled him to become extremely wealthy. As a result, Buffett advocates giving away 99% of his fortune in recognition of th…

I'm kinda miffed that people measure the good that the ultra-wealthy do for society only through the taxes they pay and neglect the great value they have provided people through the market place. As if the volume of taxation and government spending a man generates were the only ways to measure a man's worth.

Re: Bill Gates, Hero

#48

Post by mattmaroon »

edw519 wrote: post #13

Why do you think Silicon Valley has never quite come around on this guy? Because of the trail of dead bodies and lost opportunities left in his wake. Let's not forget, Bill Gates was handed a 0th birthday gift of $1 million from his grandfather, the keys to his private middle school computer (the same one Stanford had), and a free ticket to do business with IBM because his mother already knew its chairman. Sure he wa…

Your argument is silly all the way through. He's got an IQ of 160, which means he actually is considerably smarter than most of the rest of us.

He was born into money, but so are hundreds of thousands of people in our country. Most accomplish little of value. Much more common in his situation would be a career in investment banking, sucking money out of the middle class's retirements.

It's ludicrous to say that he's destroyed lives. He's perhaps run competitors out of business, but I'd be willing to bet that most of the actual people involved didn't end up in a gutter as a result. Netscape is the most often cited victim of his allegedly brutal business acumen, and Marc Andreesen seems to be doing alright for himself.

It's totally impossible to say what was to the detriment (or benefit) of the industry. To do so, you'd have to compare this universe to another which was identical to this other than Bill Gates having not existed. All we can say for sure is that Bill was consequential enough that the alternate universe would look much different, certainly better in some ways, just as surely worse in others, but on the balance who knows? You could just as well predict what the weather will be 100 years from now as you could what the world would have been like without Bill Gates.

I don't think pointing out his philanthropic endeavors amounts to worship. And I suspect things would not be better for Hackers at all, but again, I cannot see into alternate universes. He's simply become a scapegoat for all of the frustrations of people who are more comfortable with computers than they are with the businesses that drive a society that can create such a thing.

Re: Bill Gates, Hero

#50

Post by pchristensen »

edw519 wrote: post #13

Why do you think Silicon Valley has never quite come around on this guy? Because of the trail of dead bodies and lost opportunities left in his wake. Let's not forget, Bill Gates was handed a 0th birthday gift of $1 million from his grandfather, the keys to his private middle school computer (the same one Stanford had), and a free ticket to do business with IBM because his mother already knew its chairman. Sure he wa…

"forgetting all the lives destroyed"

Lets say it's the year 2100. 100 million children have a chance at life because they were vaccinated with Gates Foundation money. 1 billion are wealthier because of a better education provided by Gates Foundation programs. The environment is cleaner because populations used that health and education to lift themselves out of poverty.

Are 20 years of frustrated tech entrepreneurs an unreasonable price to pay for that?

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