Revisiting the spectacular failure that was the Bill Gates deposition • Hacker News Board

Re: Revisiting the spectacular failure that was the Bill Gates deposition

#61

Post by tus88 » Sat, Sep 12, 2020, 9:53 PM UTC

Gunax wrote: post #56

I don't agree with the article at all. I think it's equating two very different anti-trust cases. Apple maintains control of what its users can install on their own devices--Microsoft never did that. Just offering a free software should not be considered anti-trust. For one, browsers have been unfairly singled out. Why not ban MS Paint or notepad too? How about solitaire? Now if Microsoft had restricted users from in…

> Apple maintains control of what its users can install on their own devices--Microsoft never did that.

Well apart from the OS installed on the device you are buying from an OEM.

Re: Revisiting the spectacular failure that was the Bill Gates deposition

#62

Post by bawolff » Sat, Sep 12, 2020, 9:58 PM UTC

tingol wrote: post #40

voxl wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That twitter thread reeks of bias, I couldn't finish or take it seriously at all. If you want to convince me of something don't go around painting people as evil capitalist masterminds...

Do you have counter arguments to what was said in the thread or are you just projecting your own bias? It is pretty well known what kind of shitty things MS did to get where it is, if someone sprinkles insults on top of it on twitter does not make it less true.

"Shattered" the law is pretty questionable. MS (Feel like i should write M$ for /. nostalgia) had some underhanded bussiness tactics, no doubt (some of which probably werent even illegal, just scummy), but im not sure shattered the law is a reasonable description. That's something i would reserve more for organized crime. Microsoft never extorted people, planted listening devices, hired hitman, etc. The rabbit hole of crime goes down very far, microsoft did not stoop anywhere near that far.

Re: Revisiting the spectacular failure that was the Bill Gates deposition

#63

Post by freeone3000 » Sat, Sep 12, 2020, 9:59 PM UTC

tus88 wrote: post #61

Gunax wrote: post #56

I don't agree with the article at all. I think it's equating two very different anti-trust cases. Apple maintains control of what its users can install on their own devices--Microsoft never did that. Just offering a free software should not be considered anti-trust. For one, browsers have been unfairly singled out. Why not ban MS Paint or notepad too? How about solitaire? Now if Microsoft had restricted users from in…

> Apple maintains control of what its users can install on their own devices--Microsoft never did that. Well apart from the OS installed on the device you are buying from an OEM.

Between secureboot disabling, mokutil, and Microsoft signing Ubuntu and Red Hat kernels directly, I think it's pretty clear there's no desire for lock-in and that it's actually a security feature.

Re: Revisiting the spectacular failure that was the Bill Gates deposition

#64

Post by bawolff » Sat, Sep 12, 2020, 10:03 PM UTC

dependenttypes wrote: post #42

dontbeabill wrote: post #32

Gates claims now (and then) the Government will stifle innovation, yet when innovation came in the form of Java, the first thing Gates did (as proven by evidence) was to seek a way to destroy it. (because he was a man-child annoyed because he didn’t invent it, and couldn’t find a way to compete honestly). So he did what big bully’s do, he crushed Sun and got all his big boy friends to help. What a inspiration.

Java was never a form of innovation.

Java was very innovative at the time, with byte code and JIT, a more clear OO design relative to C++, embeddable safetly sandboxed web apps, memory safety in a "professional" language, cross platform binaries (in a non scripting language) etc.

The mid 90's was a long time ago. What was exciting then is not exciting now.

Re: Revisiting the spectacular failure that was the Bill Gates deposition

#65

Post by quelsolaar » Sat, Sep 12, 2020, 10:19 PM UTC

bananamerica wrote: post #30

quelsolaar wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was so disappointed with that documentary. 3 hours, with\ bill, and no real questions about the antitrust stuff, or about Microsoft stance on Linux and open source, His relationship with Apple and Steve jobs, His relationship with Paul Allen and Steve Balmer, the birth of X-Box, the war against Lotus123, and Word Perfect, the original deal with IBM, and the failed tablets, WinFS, Microsoft Bob, and loads of other t…

That was really not the focus of the doc. As the title implies, they wanted to take a peek in the interesting ideas going on in his mind right now.

I was hoping we we would find more "Inside bill's brain", then just toilets.

Re: Revisiting the spectacular failure that was the Bill Gates deposition

#66

Post by tus88 » Sat, Sep 12, 2020, 10:20 PM UTC

freeone3000 wrote: post #63

tus88 wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Apple maintains control of what its users can install on their own devices--Microsoft never did that. Well apart from the OS installed on the device you are buying from an OEM.

Between secureboot disabling, mokutil, and Microsoft signing Ubuntu and Red Hat kernels directly, I think it's pretty clear there's no desire for lock-in and that it's actually a security feature.

I'm talking about the 90s.

Re: Revisiting the spectacular failure that was the Bill Gates deposition

#67

Post by robotresearcher » Sat, Sep 12, 2020, 10:22 PM UTC

Gunax wrote: post #56

I don't agree with the article at all. I think it's equating two very different anti-trust cases. Apple maintains control of what its users can install on their own devices--Microsoft never did that. Just offering a free software should not be considered anti-trust. For one, browsers have been unfairly singled out. Why not ban MS Paint or notepad too? How about solitaire? Now if Microsoft had restricted users from in…

> It doesn't matter if Gates was kind or rude

The legal system is made of people, and people are exquisitely sensitive to social stuff. It's just not expedient to ignore that.

Re: Revisiting the spectacular failure that was the Bill Gates deposition

#68

Post by dependenttypes » Sat, Sep 12, 2020, 10:29 PM UTC

bawolff wrote: post #64

dependenttypes wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Java was never a form of innovation.

Java was very innovative at the time, with byte code and JIT, a more clear OO design relative to C++, embeddable safetly sandboxed web apps, memory safety in a "professional" language, cross platform binaries (in a non scripting language) etc. The mid 90's was a long time ago. What was exciting then is not exciting now.

Everything that you mentioned was already available at the time in other languages. This is not innovation.

Re: Revisiting the spectacular failure that was the Bill Gates deposition

#69

Post by dundarious » Sat, Sep 12, 2020, 10:33 PM UTC

icelancer wrote: post #37

This was written by someone who has no idea what a deposition is about, or is intentionally misrepresenting it. The USG's depositions were PR stunts, filmed on purpose to make Gates look bad. If you've ever been deposed (and I have), then you know that Gates' approach was close to optimal when dealing with lawyers. Bill's biggest mistake was having a terrible attitude and bad posture when answering questions. He made…

I've watched almost 2 hours of the deposition videos now, and I think Gates went far beyond trying to seek extreme clarity. The diversion in part 4 about document stamps is a case in point.

It is an adversarial process, so you must not rely on the usual expectation that colleagues will take the charitable interpretation of your words, but Gates being unable to even possibly understand what his own emails mean, is evasive to the point of raising suspicion.

Re: Revisiting the spectacular failure that was the Bill Gates deposition

#70

Post by AnthonyMouse » Sat, Sep 12, 2020, 10:34 PM UTC

Gunax wrote: post #56

I don't agree with the article at all. I think it's equating two very different anti-trust cases. Apple maintains control of what its users can install on their own devices--Microsoft never did that. Just offering a free software should not be considered anti-trust. For one, browsers have been unfairly singled out. Why not ban MS Paint or notepad too? How about solitaire? Now if Microsoft had restricted users from in…

> For one, browsers have been unfairly singled out. Why not ban MS Paint or notepad too? How about solitaire?

There was a reason it was browsers.

At the time there was rather a lot of software written against the Win32 API and nothing else. It was a moat. You needed that software, so you needed Windows. The web threatened to bridge the moat -- if people write web applications for Netscape, and Netscape runs on not only Windows but Mac and Solaris and everything else, no more moat.

So the strategy with Internet Explorer was to make it the dominant browser on Windows (which was 90% of desktops), and then add all kinds of IE-specific features and get web developers to use them, so their web pages only worked in IE. Then the user gets a dependency on a web page with an Active X control that runs on Wintel but not Mac/PowerPC or Solaris/SPARC, so they have to use Windows. And they have to use IE, which enables more web developers to target IE instead of open standards.

The problem wasn't that it was free. The problem was that it was free and non-standard and the non-standard bits were tied to Windows.