> 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
21–30 of 101 posts
Re: AARD Code, or how Bill Gates finished off the competition
#22Gary Kildall RIP.
Re: AARD Code, or how Bill Gates finished off the competition
#23Re: AARD Code, or how Bill Gates finished off the competition
#24Bill Gates is succesful, kind and generous. He never finished college, he reads books and writes about them on a blog. He is that rare combination of super smart and benevolent at the time. Trustworthy. Just read his best friend Paul Allen's book. He has given away increments of the fortune that he earned through honest, legal business practices. DOJ dropped their case against Microsoft because Microsoft was innocent…
Re: AARD Code, or how Bill Gates finished off the competition
#25The persistent rumors about billg ripping BASIC from a DECUS distribution seem to have finally died down.
Re: AARD Code, or how Bill Gates finished off the competition
#26Bill Gates is succesful, kind and generous. He never finished college, he reads books and writes about them on a blog. He is that rare combination of super smart and benevolent at the time. Trustworthy. Just read his best friend Paul Allen's book. He has given away increments of the fortune that he earned through honest, legal business practices. DOJ dropped their case against Microsoft because Microsoft was innocent…
Re: AARD Code, or how Bill Gates finished off the competition
#27Bill Gates is succesful, kind and generous. He never finished college, he reads books and writes about them on a blog. He is that rare combination of super smart and benevolent at the time. Trustworthy. Just read his best friend Paul Allen's book. He has given away increments of the fortune that he earned through honest, legal business practices. DOJ dropped their case against Microsoft because Microsoft was innocent…
Most billionaires are also philantropists because they donate sizable amounts of money to different causes. This helps them maintain a favorable public image. It is also a social activity that helps you build relationships with other wealthy people.
Bill Gates does have a bona fide foundation that works on important problems and his approach to solving those problems seems reasonably effective. He is an avid reader and reads hundreds of books per year. He is an interesting person, I enjoy his talks, etc...
But Microsoft is a different story. Behind every Microsoft key product there's some deceiving business deal.
- MS-DOS: Misleading deal involving 86-DOS from Seattle Computer Products
- Windows: Misleading deal involving developing software for the Apple Macintosh
- Windows NT: Misleading deal involving a collaboration with IBM to develop OS/2
- SQL Server: Misleading deal involving a collaboration with Sybase to develop Sybase SQL Server
And the list goes on and on and on.
In addition to the AARD code many other things happened. Linux was called cancer, there were fear/uncertainty/doubt campaigns against OpenGL, against Linux, against many open source projects. Open source communities got pissed off, developers got pissed off, and that started slowly hurting Microsoft. So now they have decided to co-exist with open source.
Re: AARD Code, or how Bill Gates finished off the competition
#28Bill Gates is succesful, kind and generous. He never finished college, he reads books and writes about them on a blog. He is that rare combination of super smart and benevolent at the time. Trustworthy. Just read his best friend Paul Allen's book. He has given away increments of the fortune that he earned through honest, legal business practices. DOJ dropped their case against Microsoft because Microsoft was innocent…
What happens when you make a lot of money? Then you have a lot of taxes. There are various ways of paying those taxes. One of such ways is by making tax deductible charitable donations. Another one of such ways is doing tax deductible research & development. Most billionaires are also philantropists because they donate sizable amounts of money to different causes. This helps them maintain a favorable public image. It…
Re: AARD Code, or how Bill Gates finished off the competition
#29Bill Gates is succesful, kind and generous. He never finished college, he reads books and writes about them on a blog. He is that rare combination of super smart and benevolent at the time. Trustworthy. Just read his best friend Paul Allen's book. He has given away increments of the fortune that he earned through honest, legal business practices. DOJ dropped their case against Microsoft because Microsoft was innocent…
What happens when you make a lot of money? Then you have a lot of taxes. There are various ways of paying those taxes. One of such ways is by making tax deductible charitable donations. Another one of such ways is doing tax deductible research & development. Most billionaires are also philantropists because they donate sizable amounts of money to different causes. This helps them maintain a favorable public image. It…
Re: AARD Code, or how Bill Gates finished off the competition
#30Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
OK, now I know you're kidding.