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Revisiting the spectacular failure that was the Bill Gates deposition

arstechnica.com

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

#81

Post by clooless »

listenallyall wrote: post #80
AnthonyMouse wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 on…

That's a pretty poor argument for govt intervention. Why? Because all of that Windows-only stuff existed, and the market ultimately rejected it. ActiveX controls? Yeah I remember those. Same with Java applets, Flash, Silverlight. The government didn't need to get involved in getting rid of any of these.

It's easy to say that now in hindsight. Wasn't that clear back then.

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

#82

Post by ImprobableTruth »

DavidSJ wrote: post #77

Q: Okay. Let me ask you to look at Trial Exhibit 560. This is a message from you to Mr. Ballmer and Mr. Chase with a copy to Mr. Maritz and some other people also given copies dated August 15, 1997 at 4:07 p.m. on the subject of IBM and Netscape; correct? A: Uh-huh Q: BY MR. BOIES: And you type in here Importance: High." A: No. Q: No? A: No, I didn't type that. Q: Who typed in "High"? A: A computer. Q: A computer. Wh…

Eh, I think I can understand where he's coming from. There's a difference between choosing "high" from a drop down and manually typing out "Importance: High". The former is kinda throwaway, while the latter is more serious. He's definitely super awkward about it though.

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

#83

Post by smt88 »

dependenttypes wrote: post #68
bawolff wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

What is the single language that had all these features?

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

#84

Post by jjeaff »

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…

If you want to see a more recent example of how to handle a deposition, search the Marcus Limonis depositions on youtube. In my opinion he is an even better textbook case of how to handle a deposition.

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

#85

Post by gilrain »

angrais wrote: post #73
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…

Could you please expand on WHY posture/tone/etc are important? W

Could you explain how it is possible not to understand that posture, tone, etc are important?

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

#86

Post by listenallyall »

clooless wrote: post #81
listenallyall wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a pretty poor argument for govt intervention. Why? Because all of that Windows-only stuff existed, and the market ultimately rejected it. ActiveX controls? Yeah I remember those. Same with Java applets, Flash, Silverlight. The government didn't need to get involved in getting rid of any of these.

It's easy to say that now in hindsight. Wasn't that clear back then.

Of course. But it strengthens the argument. The govt's job is not to guess what might happen or how the market will react to new technology. It should only intervene as a last resort, when there is absolutely no market-based solution possible. It wasn't like the AT&T antitrust suit, where the defendant had existed, mostly unchanged, for 50 or so years.

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

#87

Post by xdavidliu »

quelsolaar wrote: post #65
bananamerica wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

or standing on-stage with a literal jar of shit [1]

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M9nRsJinHhM

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

#88

Post by freshbob »

grogenaut wrote: post #57
pwned1 wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you haven’t been deposed this will look weird. But depositions are about “gotcha” moments, so your job as the person being deposed is to play the game and only answer questions with minimal information and force the attorney asking questions to really work for it. It’s about being purely logical. If they ask you what two plus two is, respond vaguely and ask for clarification. “Are you asking about numbers? Or obje…

Having been deposed once the other lawyer spent 12 minutes asking me questions around a thing. The crux of the matter was if I had been verbally informed of what a line item was or if it was illegal to charge for said line item. This line item was unmarked on my receipt but marked on a different customers receipt as an illegal item to charge for. Lawyer tried constantly to get me to answer a question that would set t…

There was a reason it was the dining room. The guy wanted to make you feel comfortable, forget all about the deposition and just have a chat... so he can nail you to the cross with your own words.

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

#89

Post by mturmon »

quelsolaar wrote: post #65
bananamerica wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

But to mock toilets in the way you have just done is to miss the point.

Billg is such a nerd problem solver (and I mean this in the most positive way) that he’s capable of investing and marshaling huge engineering focus on this outcast subject, just because he sees it as the crux of the actual problem.

He’s not thinking about Linux any more, he has moved on, there’s something more important to him, and that’s why he was willing to help make this particular documentary, right?

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

#90

Post by 8note »

Sebb767 wrote: post #17

> [...] Microsoft was now comfortable supporting the Davids of the tech industry. This is a 29 year old company with a four-digit number of employees worth 17.3 Billion USD. Fortnite alone seems to have been a quite solid share of the App Store's gaming revenue. This is not a "David". Sure, Apple, Google and Microsoft are worth one to two orders of magnitude more. But this is like seeing a small person fighting a big…

Wasn't David a king?

Goliath would have only been up to like double David's size anyways, so orders of magnitude sounds bigger than the David/Goliath difference.

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