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Ask yourself: what would Bill Gates do?

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Re: Ask yourself: what would Bill Gates do?

#11

Bill Gates also shipped the office assistant, windows ME was done mostly under his command and got the attention of the DOJ anaconda on microsoft. And I would recommend against doing this things. All great people have a track record of good and bad decisions. And you cannot take only the ones you like. Also I had this pretending to be done project once ... one year later we were still struggling, the customer was los…

You're also forgetting WinFS. WinFS was apparently his baby during the development of Windows Vista (aka Longhorn), but was one of the things cut when shedding cruft. I can't find a reference to it, but I recall hearing that there were grumblings from the rank-and-file about 'making a pig fly' (not exactly, but something similar) with regards to Gates' focus/drive on WinFS.

Re: Ask yourself: what would Bill Gates do?

#12
post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> bearing him a personal grudge for the actions of the company he ran isn't unreasonable Isn't it a bit of a contradiction? He ran a company that engaged in actions that harmed society. Doesn't he deserve some credit?

How did Microsoft harm society?

Monopoly abuse and other anticompetitive actions that ultimately inflated prices. Why do you think the DoJ got involved?

Re: Ask yourself: what would Bill Gates do?

#13
post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Being somewhat more divorced from MS and his charity effort have helped his public image a lot over the last few years but I'm sure we can still remember the days of the slashdot borg icon etc.

People stereotype people. For instance I am just fine with Gates but sort of don't much like Jobs(don't hate though, or maybe I do). I love my Mac and hate Windows(though MS is credited with many others to put computer in the hands of many people). I can't stand anything written/said by GrubIgler but that doesn't make them &&&& and morons. They have a huge following, they must be good. This is how it works. I am sure…

  | They have a huge following, they must be good.
Good at what is the question. Not levelling anything at them specifically, but there are plenty of people with large followings that are basically 'good' at getting large followings and making money off of them (e.g. tele-vangelists).

Re: Ask yourself: what would Bill Gates do?

#14
post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> bearing him a personal grudge for the actions of the company he ran isn't unreasonable Isn't it a bit of a contradiction? He ran a company that engaged in actions that harmed society. Doesn't he deserve some credit?

How did Microsoft harm society?

What's happening right now (ChromeOS, cloud computing, etc) is basically what Microsoft feared back in the day. They feared that the browser would become the operating system, which is why they engaged in anti-competitive behaviour in the browser space. It could be argued that they delayed this by acting to quash it for their own benefit.

(I realize that there are plenty of nuanced arguments to be had here.)

Re: Ask yourself: what would Bill Gates do?

#15
post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> bearing him a personal grudge for the actions of the company he ran isn't unreasonable Isn't it a bit of a contradiction? He ran a company that engaged in actions that harmed society. Doesn't he deserve some credit?

How did Microsoft harm society?

By commoditizing PCs by licensing to Compaq and setting off a pricing war among OEMs leading to lower prices and massive uptake of PCs.

By releasing a free browser when Netscape used to charge people for access to the World Wide Web (however when Google does the same thing with Android using their search profits and killing RIM/Nokia by dumping a free product, it's a good thing). And by releasing a better browser than Netscape during the 4.0 era.

Or something, I don't know. Linus says it best though: http://www.osnews.com/story/21887/Linus_Microsoft_Hatred_is_...

I've usually find it unproductive to argue facts with people with such an affliction.

Re: Ask yourself: what would Bill Gates do?

#16
post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How did Microsoft harm society?

Monopoly abuse and other anticompetitive actions that ultimately inflated prices. Why do you think the DoJ got involved?

The DOJ "got involved" because Microsoft didn't want to play the lobbying game, so the government decided to teach them a lesson. http://washingtonexaminer.com/carney-how-hatch-forced-micros...

Re: Ask yourself: what would Bill Gates do?

#17
Even fearing downvoting I must say these articles, most of them I've been reading in the past month from that site are just plainly wrong assumptions. This article for example try to argues that you can be like BG and try to sell something without actually having it. I say BG had the OS in that time, he just didn't bought it but he knew the SO was right away to be bought (and cheap).

Re: Ask yourself: what would Bill Gates do?

#18
post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How did Microsoft harm society?

What's happening right now (ChromeOS, cloud computing, etc) is basically what Microsoft feared back in the day. They feared that the browser would become the operating system, which is why they engaged in anti-competitive behaviour in the browser space. It could be argued that they delayed this by acting to quash it for their own benefit. (I realize that there are plenty of nuanced arguments to be had here.)

And how companies like Google might have acted?

Re: Ask yourself: what would Bill Gates do?

#19
post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How did Microsoft harm society?

Monopoly abuse and other anticompetitive actions that ultimately inflated prices. Why do you think the DoJ got involved?

An abusive monopoly? Microsoft never had a monopoly, much less an abusive monopoly. If they had, there's a very long list of products and companies that did survive Microsoft that would not have.

They had market power, not a government granted right to a market (aka a monopoly). There's no historical evidence to suggest Microsoft was unbeatable. Rather, there's a lot of evidence to suggest very few companies tried to compete with Windows once it achieved scale. Neither Sun nor Oracle ever launched a full fledged Windows competitor in the consumer space, neither did AOL or Netscape. And Apple lost due to its own mistakes, more than admitted by Jobs after the fact; ditto IBM.

And if you want to talk market power. Microsoft beat Apple, who was ten times its size. And they beat IBM, which was 100+ times its size. How? The same way Android has beaten iOS in smart phones when it comes to market share: distribution across the widest selection of hardware vendors.

Re inflating prices. Actually Microsoft lowered prices substantially.

You should look up how much productivity software cost before Microsoft created Office, and how much easier it was to buy and sell their software. They undercut everybody at the time. Microsoft also was instrumental in vastly bringing down the cost of personal computing by leveraging a standard across consistent hardware. They also made it extremely easy to distribute software, courtesy of a standard, bringing down the cost for software by providing economies of scale. Meanwhile, competing platforms were far more expensive (including Apple's solutions). Also, Microsoft has always charged half or less for Windows than what Intel does for its good consumer processors.

The DOJ got involved because competitors who either screwed up and failed to compete (eg Netscape), or were simply scared (Sun), complained.

Wired's The Truth The Whole Truth article about the case more than spells out how much of a witch hunt it was.

The DOJ tries to control any wildly successful company with market power. For the government, it's all about power over the economy and bringing companies to heel. Anti-trust has little to do with monopolies (if it did, Verizon and AT&T would be broken up).

Re: Ask yourself: what would Bill Gates do?

#20
post #13
post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People stereotype people. For instance I am just fine with Gates but sort of don't much like Jobs(don't hate though, or maybe I do). I love my Mac and hate Windows(though MS is credited with many others to put computer in the hands of many people). I can't stand anything written/said by GrubIgler but that doesn't make them &&&& and morons. They have a huge following, they must be good. This is how it works. I am sure…

| They have a huge following, they must be good. Good at what is the question. Not levelling anything at them specifically, but there are plenty of people with large followings that are basically 'good' at getting large followings and making money off of them (e.g. tele-vangelists).

>>Good at what is the question.

Good at whatever the people following them liked in them or found worth the attention. It can be anything - good voice, other skills or just the looks. Anything. It depends on the person following what good was in the guy he/she follows.

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