221–230 of 239 posts
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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.
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> And because he didn't always play nice with competitors you and the other holier-and-smarter-than-thou HN commenters want to call his incredible accomplishments "easy." Now that's a straw man. I never said it was easy to build Microsoft from its humble beginnings in Albuquerque into whatever it is now. I said it's easy to decide you'll try to start a company (Microsoft was his second attempt) when you know that you…
Saying it's easy to give when you have Gates' deep pockets negates the effort that it took to fill those pockets. Of all the crimes in the world to call Bill Gates a criminal is to have completely lost the plot. I don't particularly like Microsoft technology either, so I've spent my career (which has been far from boring) working on other technology stacks, and have always had plenty of opportunity to do so. Yet desp…
I was never involved in anti-competitive practices. I probably had more girlfriends and went to better parties. Girls considered me hot.
> Which companies have you bootstrapped?
None. I am not a billionaire.
> Which charities have you founded?
I regularly donate to several local charities.
> Or are you just a bitter salaryman complaining from the cheap seats on the sidelines?
The chair I am using now is cheap, but seems well built. While I could be called a salaryman for the past couple years, I cannot be described as bitter.
And, more interestingly, how does comparing me to Gates reduces in any measure the harm he has done? Are you attempting an ad hominem after the straw man and the false dichotomy failed to prove your point?
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> He would be doing something immoral if he didn't do what was best for Microsoft Look how loved the company is today. Was what he did really the best he could have done for Microsoft? Wouldn't a kinder, gentler Microsoft, one that helped a healthy market thrive, be better? Would the smaller slice of a larger pie be larger than Microsoft's current pie? > they get a job in finance doing nothing of benefit to society I…
Really? What's the most popular OS, again?
On Tramiel thing, Commodore built some very popular personal computers that were incredibly capable for their prices. Many of us (I am not among them) got introduced to personal computers with Commodore boxes. He later moved on to Atari and brought some of the cheapest 32-bit home computers one could buy, years before 386s could be called home computers.
Attributing to Gates what others did does not help further your argument.
Microsoft's success in Redmond doesn't fit with the Silicon Valley narrative that ties creativity to geography.
In other words Microsoft's success challenges the value of Silicon Valley's terroir. It goes against the brand.
That's not to say that geography doesn't play a role - it's hard to imagine a Microsoft based out of Bentonville.
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 a…
We don't know that avoiding 20 years of "frustrated tech entrepreneurs" means that this just got missed. Who knows what was loss by Gates' destructive policies. Maybe tech would be so much more advanced by now that 6 billion would be wealthier.
We can't know such things. All we can know is what actually happened. Things turned out ok, just as they always do, but that doesn't mean it was the best possible outcome and it certainly doesn't excuse what Gates did.
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I can't believe this is getting upvotes. Destroyed lives? Please. Get some perspective. And check your history. The guy bootstrapped Microsoft using nothing but sweat equity -- no investment, no inheritance -- working for years in very meager circumstances in New Mexico before getting some traction and moving to Washington. In short he lived the dream that many of us aspire to, and has probably helped his fellow man…
Indeed, Gates has likely helped create more billionaires and millionaires than anyone currently living. Think of the ecosystem surrounding Microsoft: all of the hardware companies, peripherals, software, training, education and jobs that would not exist were it not for "a pc on every desktop." Not to mention the millions of people using Windows to run their businesses. I might add also that Gates billions are not sit…
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Really? What's the most popular OS, again?
Windows, but why is it relevant to this discussion? Windows appeared well after personal computers became popular. In fact, it only became relevant when business computers invaded the space previously dominated by home computers. Its dominance started in the 90's after 3.0 was launched. On Tramiel thing, Commodore built some very popular personal computers that were incredibly capable for their prices. Many of us (I…
Yet how one may deny that Gates brought the PC to the masses with knowledge of the above are beyond me. Maybe a comparison with GEOS is in line..
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Saying it's easy to give when you have Gates' deep pockets negates the effort that it took to fill those pockets. Of all the crimes in the world to call Bill Gates a criminal is to have completely lost the plot. I don't particularly like Microsoft technology either, so I've spent my career (which has been far from boring) working on other technology stacks, and have always had plenty of opportunity to do so. Yet desp…
> How does your track record measure up to Gates'? I was never involved in anti-competitive practices. I probably had more girlfriends and went to better parties. Girls considered me hot. > Which companies have you bootstrapped? None. I am not a billionaire. > Which charities have you founded? I regularly donate to several local charities. > Or are you just a bitter salaryman complaining from the cheap seats on the s…
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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 b…
I was able to save a wordstar document on any CP/M (including CP/M 86) machine and transfer it to any other, including my Apple II running CP/M through a coprocessor. Most other word processors of the time could exchange files in one format or another. I never had any problems with it. And you shouldn't be using a SPARC 5 on 1994 anyway.
Whereas in the Windows era you were likely to fnd machines running the same applications everywhere, even at home.
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/me points to Linux. Granted, it's not quite 20 years.
I would point to Ataris, Amigas, Transputers, RISC workstations, Lisp Machines, Xerox Star, Connection Machines, supercomputers, ... Not to mention the software that would be developed today if we weren't stuck with glorified 8080s running 60's OSs (Linux is Unix and NT is VMS)...