Bill Gates is the ultimate example of what's explained in the book 'Outliers' by Malcolm Gladwell. Success is usually a combination of hard work & luck.
Bill Gates, Hero
131–140 of 239 posts
Re: Bill Gates, Hero
#132Earlier 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.
I am a young(ish) hacker, and I'm proud not to engage in religious nonsense like this at all. Windows, Linux, OSX, who cares? Get on with the coding already.
Re: Bill Gates, Hero
#133Earlier quoted context omitted.
Famously Warren Buffett's secretary pays more tax than he does...
Not more in taxes but more as a percentage of total earnings. The tax bracket was higher for the secretary whereas for Buffett it was around 18% (iirc).
The capital gains/dividend tax breaks basically benefit the rich. Cap gains/dividend taxes should be on a marginal basis just like ordinary income.
Re: Bill Gates, Hero
#134Earlier quoted context omitted.
...but this part above strikes me as petty... Sorry if it came across that way; that was not my intent. Everyone's starting point is relative. No one ever gave me the gifts that Bill Gates got. But then again, I've had gifts that 99% of everyone who ever lived couldn't imagine. With those gifts comes responsibility. Whenever I have an opportunity to use my gifts to do good things, I think of how proud those who made…
I completely agree. Paris Hilton was also given a lot of freebies early in life...looked how that one turned out. Early advantages don't always produce exceptional results, often times it can lead to the exact opposite.
Seems to have turned out pretty well. She's famous for no other reason.
Re: Bill Gates, Hero
#135Earlier quoted context omitted.
From your comments its clear that you're zealously anti-capitalist and, as a result, anti-Microsoft, so you're simply not applying logic. Bill Gates did his legal duty. When you run a corporation you have a fiduciary responsibility to it. He would be doing something immoral if he didn't do what was best for Microsoft. The theory behind free market capitalism is that enough companies doing the same will average out to…
> The theory behind free market capitalism is that enough companies doing the same will average out to the best results. You left out the part about how this only works if (a) the market is actually “free” and “competitive” (what this means is a complicated topic beyond the scope of this text box), and (b) the interests of the company and the interests of the broader society are aligned. (Which is why we have all sor…
Free market capitalism is supposed to be about innovation and competition. You have to weigh the good with the bad. Has Microsoft probably had an advantage that pushed others out of business - yes, but I'm sure they also inspired programmers to create new products that they could then sell to Microsoft/Google type companies. It's hard to say if large companies create or destroy innovation and competition. There will always be positives and negatives.
Re: Bill Gates, Hero
#136Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
It certainly wouldn't be fully mainstream. Really? I think that's discounting the booming home PC market that existed before Microsoft got involved and giving a lot of credit to someone for an achievement that wasn't fully there. All Gates did was ensure that his company's software was on every computer.
You're discounting the network effect of compatibility. I don't even mean "network" as in networking, but in the ability to save a Word document or whatever on a floppy on virtually any PC and load it back on another. This was long, long before every device could render a web page (and you could take for granted that it would have a TCP/IP connection!)
There was huge real value in creating "the standard", not least because it enabled some truly phenomenal economies of scale. I mean, the 386 had the hardware for protected memory, virtual memory and preemptive multitasking. Or you could pay 10x as much for a contemporary SPARC or MIPS processor.
In 1994 I was at college and we were doing some numerical stuff, metal fatigue IIRC. You could run your code on a SPARC 5 or drop into DOS on a crappy PC and give 100% of the CPU to your code. Guess which was actually quicker...
Re: Bill Gates, Hero
#137I 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.
Sure, he's villainized because he aggressively forced his company's software on the world regardless of the poor quality and the negative effect it has had on essentially everyone. They bloodthirstily copied competing software to the pixel and bludgeoned innovators to death with it. I can't even calculate how much the simply poor ideas and execution of DOS/Windows has cost the computing world and everyone as a result.
If you go back to 1988, and compare a DOS machine to say, an Amiga - how could anyone say that Microsoft did the world good by ensuring that the primitive, clunky, non-user friendly junk that was DOS beat out the relatively amazing competition?
So, Gates shoved this awful crap on us to make himself rich, regardless of the consequences. I can't respect a software company that has never appeared to be concerned with or even understand software quality.
Re: Bill Gates, Hero
#138Earlier quoted context omitted.
...but this part above strikes me as petty... Sorry if it came across that way; that was not my intent. Everyone's starting point is relative. No one ever gave me the gifts that Bill Gates got. But then again, I've had gifts that 99% of everyone who ever lived couldn't imagine. With those gifts comes responsibility. Whenever I have an opportunity to use my gifts to do good things, I think of how proud those who made…
I completely agree. Paris Hilton was also given a lot of freebies early in life...looked how that one turned out. Early advantages don't always produce exceptional results, often times it can lead to the exact opposite.
Paris Hilton did a clever job turning what she was given (which didn't include talent or beauty), multiplying it manifold, and making a crapload of money out of it. From a purely economic point of view, she did much better than the vast majority of people born into her class.
Re: Bill Gates, Hero
#139Why 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…
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 was smart and he worked hard, but he was no smarter and worked no harder than many of the rest of us.
With all due respect, this is such a bitter, jealous and peasant-like rant that's not even worth your status as the best HN commenter.
No matter what Gates' starting position was, his success was nothing than a lot of hard work, several good decisions and some luck.
He got a million bucks and a computer? Well he could have spent it on whores and only played games. His mother knew the chairman of IBM? Instead of using this connection he could have absolutely squandered or missed it.
But he made good use of it.
Shame on you and all your upvoters.
Re: Bill Gates, Hero
#140Earlier 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.
Yes, I used an Amiga as a desktop from 88-93 and it was so far beyond DOS/Windows 3.11 and the junk that came before, any comparison is shameful. Amiga OS was very, very close to unix in how the system worked from a user's perspective.
You should probably 'get over yourself' (I really hate that phrase, so I figured I'd throw that in there).