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Bill Gates, Hero

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Re: Bill Gates, Hero

#81

Post by rbanffy »

garrettgillas wrote: post #58
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…

Is it better to be a bully in business and do great things with the wealth or to be graceful in business and squander a fortune? I really don't know but my initial reaction says the former.

False dichotomy alert!

You can be a graceful businessman and still make a profit, further a healthy market and win on it through a superior product instead of doing so through shady backroom deals that border the criminal.

Re: Bill Gates, Hero

#82

Post by rbanffy »

gaius wrote: post #38
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…

Oh please! Michael Phelps was born with his flipper-like feet, does that make him any less of an Olympian? Genetic advantage, financial advantage, it's all the same. Gates did what he set out to do, a computer on every desktop and in every home. The economies of scale he made possible are why you can buy a PC for what, $300 now? He took computing out of the hands of the "high priests" and gave it to the masses. Would…

> Genetic advantage, financial advantage, it's all the same

In Bill Gates' case, it's more or less giving a machine gun to a young John Dillinger than having a genetic mutation that made him a superior businessman.

Lack of empathy or remorse are not genetic traits, are they?

Re: Bill Gates, Hero

#83

Post by tzs »

cwb wrote: post #51

How come no one talks about the loss of innovation Microsoft have incurred on the world? What if Windows were NeXT or Unix? What if Bill Gates had tried really hard to create the best tools possible, rather than the most profitable software? What if the world had run on Unix in the two decades since Tim Berners-Lee used a NeXT machine to create the web? Might we have had a 1% increase in annual productivity (mainly f…

Why are you blaming Microsoft for what IBM did? Microsoft's plan was for the world to run on Unix, with Microsoft selling Unix software--they wanted to be a tools and language company, and were tired of having every different manufacturer have its own operating system. Gates tried to get IBM to pick a processor for the IBM PC that would support Unix, but they weren't interested.

Your hypothetical 1% productivity increase has to be balanced against the productivity loss of dealing with a bunch of different Unix variants on a bunch of different processors. The dominance of Windows surely delayed innovation in operating systems, but arguably spurred innovation in applications.

Re: Bill Gates, Hero

#84

Post by kenjackson »

rbanffy wrote: post #78
kenjackson wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And we should be really clear. Most of those "lives destroyed" were destroyed in fair play. There are scant few developers in the world who can really argue that Gates hurt them, much less destroyed their lives. And I think people also conveniently discount the paid software market that Gates helped create. Gates really pushed hard on the notion of standalone software that is purchased. I also think people forget how…

> Most of those "lives destroyed" were destroyed in fair play. Are we talking about Microsoft as in "Comes vs. Microsoft"? > Gates really pushed hard on the notion of standalone software that is purchased He was not the first and didn't push particularly hard. The first "serious" computer I had was an Apple II (the first one was a Sinclair ZX-81 clone) and a lot of the software I ran on it was acquired well after the…

Yes, that Microsoft. The totality of damage in the Comes case, IMO, is very isolated. And a lot of what they was pushed against MS was tough talk, but not in itself illegal (but a lot was illegal too... I'm not letting them off the hook for that, but I'm not blindly jumping on them for everything).

Your recollection of the history of software is different than mine. I recall Microsoft being one of the biggest pushers of COTS software. At the time I was starting in software development, and there was certainly this notion that money was NOT to be made writing software for sale at the store. Those were for toys. It was services provided through companies like IBM. MS, along with a few other companies, showed that real money can be made writing software only.

Re: Bill Gates, Hero

#85

Post by MaysonL »

rbanffy wrote: post #68
edw519 wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I cannot see into alternate universes You don't have to see into alternate universes. You just have to be old enough to have already lived in one. The one before Microsoft. I suspect that alot of the Bill Gates/Microsoft love/hate splits along age lines. If you're under 40, you're not old enough to have experienced the glorious pre-Microsoft days. We worked on all kinds of cool stuff, IBM mainframes (the good and the…

> Young hackers today take great pride removing Windows from their laptops I am an old hacker and I always feel better when I remove Windows from a laptop.

I am an old hacker, and proud to admit that I have never owned a Microsoft product.

Re: Bill Gates, Hero

#86

Post by rbanffy »

Keyframe wrote: post #11
DrJokepu wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How? I mean, could you elaborate that idea please? I don't see how Mr. Jobs being unpopular in some circles would imply that Mr. Gates became popular.

Bill Gates = { it celebrity, celebrity, rich, geek god, arch rivalry 'Mac vs PC', extreme public philanthropy, ...} Steve Jobs = { it celebrity, celebrity, rich, geek god, arch rivalry 'Mac vs PC', ...} Intersection = Bill Gates ∩ Steve Jobs = { it celebrity, celebrity, rich, geek god, arch rivalry 'Mac vs PC' } Difference = { extreme public philanthropy } So this difference goes hand in hand with arch rivalry 'Mac v…

For some extremely narrow definitions of "geek god", that is...

Re: Bill Gates, Hero

#87

Post by rbanffy »

MaysonL wrote: post #85
rbanffy wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Young hackers today take great pride removing Windows from their laptops I am an old hacker and I always feel better when I remove Windows from a laptop.

I am an old hacker, and proud to admit that I have never owned a Microsoft product.

Their keyboards and mice are excellent. My Z-80 SoftCard II probably still works.

Re: Bill Gates, Hero

#88

Post by nailer »

stackthat wrote: post #21
lotharbot wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As much as this seems like snark, it's a fair observation. Bill Gates is often seen as a villain because of the late 1990s behavior of Microsoft and the quality of some of their flagship products (Windows and IE). It can be hard to separate perceptions of Bill Gates the man/philanthropist from Bill Gates the businessman. Perceptions of Bill Gates are colored by BSoD's, IE's non-compliance to standards, Frontpage crea…

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.

Yeah, they were as bad compared to Windows as Windows was compared to GEM on Atari and Amiga, or MacOS 10 years earlier.

Re: Bill Gates, Hero

#89

Post by Kilimanjaro »

So, Dick Cheney decides to give away all the billions he made (wars, corruption, oil cartels) and discovers the cure for cancer and super vaccines for all children of the world. Good.

It is ok to rape half of the world for the good of the rest.

That makes you an instant hero.

Re: Bill Gates, Hero

#90

Post by hltan »

edw519 wrote: post #62
mattmaroon wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I cannot see into alternate universes You don't have to see into alternate universes. You just have to be old enough to have already lived in one. The one before Microsoft. I suspect that alot of the Bill Gates/Microsoft love/hate splits along age lines. If you're under 40, you're not old enough to have experienced the glorious pre-Microsoft days. We worked on all kinds of cool stuff, IBM mainframes (the good and the…

HA! Not 40, but am damn close to it. I remember those days. We had a billion different types of media. I still have CP/M disk I can't read. And nobody really knew how to run anything. Like the dinosaurs, it was a time of mainframes. Then everyone can do it, welcome to the PC world. And (oh my goodness) standardization. Oh wait, it's mainframe time again? Cloud what? You mean I can bring out my bell-bottoms again? for the nth time... I'm glad someone was a dick, because just image all the different ways we can do things today! Scary.
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