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Bill Gates: AMA on Reddit
101–110 of 120 posts
Re: Bill Gates: AMA on Reddit
#102I am curious what Bill Gates (or anyone who doesn't necessarily have an immediate profit making venture to promote i.e an actor) hopes to achieve with an AMA? I can't imagine they are very much fun after the first dozen questions. Promoting philanthropy to a wider audience? Bringing the spotlight on a specific cause? Its awesome that someone as busy and important as Bill Gates is willing to take the time to do this w…
On the other hand, he also does his own dishes
Re: Bill Gates: AMA on Reddit
#103Earlier quoted context omitted.
In my opinion it's the other way around. Because they're successful, they're busy, they're proven with the tongue, they have to be succinct and direct.
I'd rather think it's a personality trait. Even someone who's not busy, or successful, can come across as direct and succinct.
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Re: Bill Gates: AMA on Reddit
#104I like Bill Gates. He seems like a kind, genuine guy who cares about people and doesn't mind making fun of himself. Big contrast from Bezos, Jobs, Ballmer.
He kinda reminds me of Woz in that way. Except Woz was never seen as evil, and Bill had an evil image for a while there in the 90s and early 2000s.
That's overly generous. Gates didn't just have an evil image for a while, he was evil for a while. It happens to the best of us.
Re: Bill Gates: AMA on Reddit
#105Timely, given all the bad Microsoft press yesterday stemming from Paul Thurrott's public disapproval of Windows.
I hadn't read that, thanks for pointing it up. Was it discussed here on HN?
Found the original link:
http://winsupersite.com/windows-8/what-heck-happening-window...
I don't think Bill timed it on purpose :) and it won't change most people's perception of the latest Windows (I hate it too, and respect Bill Gates a lot).
Re: Bill Gates: AMA on Reddit
#106What a strange format. I'm not a regular Reddit visitor so maybe I just don't "get it" but it seems like the top level questions for Gates are pretty intelligent, all questions I'd like to ask him (well, almost all--I don't get the condom one), and the responses to those questions are mostly snide, petty, and stupid.
I'm a frequent Redditor, and while I find the IAMA subreddits one of the most interesting ones, I'm pretty disappointed by how softball questions they were. Reddit is a great opportunity to be more direct and poignant (always in an educated and intelligent manner). For the people that don't know, the general "consensus" on reddit is that Bill Gates is awesome and Steve Jobs sucked, of course it's oversimplified but y…
"Microsoft's actions in the past over aggressive maybe hindering the progress of open source and stuff like that"
Take your pick from:
1) Why do you think Bill Gates cares about open source given that he made his fortune from closed source software?
2) Sure it hindered the progress of open source, that was the whole point, open source was a potentially significant competitor to the corporation Bill Gates was running and he'd have been negligent in his role as CEO if he'd not looked to undermine and damage it at any opportunity.
You may not like those positions or agree with them but it would be somewhat odd to think that they weren't relatively close to what Bill Gates was thinking at the time and still thinks.
Neither of those would be what he'd say of course, he'd almost certainly point out that MS do embrace FOSS far more these days and also that while Windows may have been closed, by becoming a defacto standard for desktop computing it did an enormous amount for standardisation (in a practical, that is what people are actually using, rather than an open standards sense) and spreading computing to the masses.
Ultimately it might be an interesting subject, but it's not one you can expect to get an honest answer on. Even if he weren't involved in MS day to day and a major shareholder still, he's very unlikely to perform an about turn that says "I was basically wrong about my entire career".
Re: Bill Gates: AMA on Reddit
#107You can tell it's him by the succinct and direct responses. It's a trait that's consistent across the most successful people I know.
Indeed.
Re: Bill Gates: AMA on Reddit
#108I am curious what Bill Gates (or anyone who doesn't necessarily have an immediate profit making venture to promote i.e an actor) hopes to achieve with an AMA? I can't imagine they are very much fun after the first dozen questions. Promoting philanthropy to a wider audience? Bringing the spotlight on a specific cause? Its awesome that someone as busy and important as Bill Gates is willing to take the time to do this w…
On the other hand, he also does his own dishes
Seriously? That seems incredibly wasteful, not to mention boring. No way I'd be doing that if I had a fraction of his wealth.
Re: Bill Gates: AMA on Reddit
#109I am curious what Bill Gates (or anyone who doesn't necessarily have an immediate profit making venture to promote i.e an actor) hopes to achieve with an AMA? I can't imagine they are very much fun after the first dozen questions. Promoting philanthropy to a wider audience? Bringing the spotlight on a specific cause? Its awesome that someone as busy and important as Bill Gates is willing to take the time to do this w…
If Reddit existed in the early 20th century, Andrew Carnegie would have done an AMA.
Gates has, among some geeks, a really nasty reputation. It's, in fact, so bad I am not sure we can even trust the philanthropist. For me, it's just too easy to imagine him as being a supervillain. ;-)
Everyone has a dark side. His darkest side got fed and exposed while at Microsoft and he has been paying for it ever since.
Re: Bill Gates: AMA on Reddit
#110Does anyone know if someone has asked him about the infamous 640K quote?