> In the final version of Windows 3.1, the code was disabled, but you could easily enable it by changing 1 byte
Why would a user do that, and why should I be mad if they did?
AARD Code, or how Bill Gates finished off the competition
11–20 of 101 posts
Re: AARD Code, or how Bill Gates finished off the competition
#12[flagged]
>"FDA emergency use aka unapproved" vaccines
Isn't FDA emergency use still an approval?
Re: AARD Code, or how Bill Gates finished off the competition
#13Re: AARD Code, or how Bill Gates finished off the competition
#14[flagged]
"Billy" has donated over $50 billion (that's with a "b") dollars to charity, a good chunk of that to health care both at home and abroad. If that isn't putting your money where your mouth is, I don't know what is. https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/factcheck/2020/06/11/fac...
"donated" to his Melinda and gates foundation to get out of paying taxes and buy influence all over the world. He does it every single year, he simply and legally can claim zero profit by doing so. He's continuing to screw US citizens by not paying taxes at all and buys influence using the profits.
He simply got smarter than the shenanigans he did in 90's when almost got buried. Stop worshiping him, he's still evil to the core.
Re: AARD Code, or how Bill Gates finished off the competition
#15The other one: "DOS ain't done until Lotus won't run". See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10432608
https://web.archive.org/web/20190908064425/http://www.proudl... It was an old pre-Windows joke saying, maybe appealing because it didn't seem totally outside the realm of possibility, given other things people saw and heard from MS. Later variations on the theme came with early Windows, when MS's own application programs were said to get special development support and also undocumented APIs they could use. Supposedl…
I mean.. I don't think typical large corporations are mellow.
Microsoft has over $100 billion in cash reserves and their OS near monopoly in many computing areas. It's going to take quite a lot of internal heroism to prevent them from using their position as an advantage. Maybe. But probably nothing will stop it.
Look at gaming. Recently got a Windows laptop. When I initially set it up it asked if I wanted Xbox Game Pass with a ton of games for $10 per month. Who can pass that up? Now they have a deal with EA. I am not a big gamer. Now it seems silly for me to buy more stuff on Steam when I haven't touched most of the stuff on Game Pass.
The basic concept seems obvious to me. Anytime you have a private corporation controlling a platform, it's not going to be fair. See also Google, Amazon, etc.
But thankfully we are making progress on decentralized platforms.
Re: AARD Code, or how Bill Gates finished off the competition
#16[flagged]
"Billy" has donated over $50 billion (that's with a "b") dollars to charity, a good chunk of that to health care both at home and abroad. If that isn't putting your money where your mouth is, I don't know what is. https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/factcheck/2020/06/11/fac...
Call me crazy, but donating some portion of his illegal gains is not super impressive to me.
Re: AARD Code, or how Bill Gates finished off the competition
#17[flagged]
"Billy" has donated over $50 billion (that's with a "b") dollars to charity, a good chunk of that to health care both at home and abroad. If that isn't putting your money where your mouth is, I don't know what is. https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/factcheck/2020/06/11/fac...
If a man steals a pizza from his neighbor, and then gives 3/4 of it as a tax-deductible "gift" to his favorite causes, shall we call him a hero?
Re: AARD Code, or how Bill Gates finished off the competition
#18Earlier quoted context omitted.
"Billy" has donated over $50 billion (that's with a "b") dollars to charity, a good chunk of that to health care both at home and abroad. If that isn't putting your money where your mouth is, I don't know what is. https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/factcheck/2020/06/11/fac...
"donated" to his Melinda and gates foundation to get out of paying taxes and buy influence all over the world. He does it every single year, he simply and legally can claim zero profit by doing so. He's continuing to screw US citizens by not paying taxes at all and buys influence using the profits. He simply got smarter than the shenanigans he did in 90's when almost got buried. Stop worshiping him, he's still evil t…
> Stop worshiping him, he's still evil to the core.
Its not that simple. The Bill and Melinda Gates foundation does amazing, mostly unsexy charity work the world over. Governmental aid organizations rarely want to fund boring infrastructure work like building roads in poor countries, or (before the pandemic) overfunding the world's vaccine manufacturing capability. Nobody wants to fund things like that because it doesn't sound sexy to voters or at charity fundraising events. The B&M Gates foundation does this stuff - and they have for years. Through their principled giving they've improved the lives of millions of people. And selfishly, there would be fewer doses of covid vaccines today without them.
Did they make that money through shady business practices at Microsoft? Yes. Are they using the charity to get out of paying US taxes? Yes. Is the money doing good in the world? Also yes.
The world today would look different without Bill Gates. Microsoft strangled tech innovation for decades, but their charity work has had a massively positive impact on people's lives. Bill Gates also deserves credit for that.
Re: AARD Code, or how Bill Gates finished off the competition
#19[deleted]
Re: AARD Code, or how Bill Gates finished off the competition
#20Earlier quoted context omitted.
"Billy" has donated over $50 billion (that's with a "b") dollars to charity, a good chunk of that to health care both at home and abroad. If that isn't putting your money where your mouth is, I don't know what is. https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/factcheck/2020/06/11/fac...
If a man steals a pizza from his neighbor, and then gives 3/4 of it as a tax-deductible "gift" to his favorite causes, shall we call him a hero?
The problem with that metaphor is it implies 100% of microsoft's profits only exist because of theft. Their software added legitimate value to people's lives. It still does - Outlook & the office suite are still world class at what they do. DirectX pushed the stagnant OpenGL to innovate. Visual studio is fantastic (miles better than current XCode). C# is a worthy successor to Java. VS Code is excellent too. And so is the XBox. And I'm glad windows exists as a counterpoint to the hardware lock-in in the macos ecosystem, and to keep Apple honest.
Microsoft's customers weren't all robbed of their money. And on the other side, Bill Gates has committed to giving away all his money before he dies.
Its like, a man steals one pizza from his neighbor and makes 10 more. He eats one then he gives the rest to the homeless. Should we call him a hero? No - that theft wasn't ok! Is he a villain? No - he made pizzas and gave them away. Villains don't do that.
What is he? He's a man. He exists somewhere in the ethically murky middle. As Solzhenitsyn said, "The line between good and evil passes through every human heart." History will remember him for a lot of things - some good, some bad. Saint and sinner both. Like the rest of us.