251–260 of 704 posts
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> We seem to have decided, collectively, that we'd rather have more problems. ... because a faction of the rich decided they wanted the poors to believe government can't do anything useful, and launched an ongoing decades-long propaganda campaign to that effect.
I think that's an incredibly simplistic and naive view of why large public projects gobble up colossal sums of money and don't have much to show for it.
Say what you want, but I respect this a lot. Sure as hell beats giving it all to your kids.
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I think he is both. Maybe you need to do some evil before you can do some good, because the general evil does whatever necessary to win in competition, and that is challenging. He would have never got the money he has if he didn't do that.
This is assuming that huge wealth inequality is a given and all we can do is pray for a rare oligarch to give some of that money back to those in need. Edit: I think it's great that he is doing this, but I don't think it's a good system. Giving money is so hard at scale that you need to set up a corporation just to figure out how to do it, and either it's so hard that they can barely shave away at the amount they hav…
One of the great tragedies of the world is that while he is arguably the philanthropist with the highest positive impact in human history, a significant part of the population seems to still think he is the literal Antichrist.
This statement is so 90s and so BOFH-centered that it is irrelevant to a level of stupidity. Gates has done a lot to prove he's not a cold-hearted mf and compared to all the bros in their prime at the moment, dude, just think of Elon or Larry Ellison, well our man Billy is really very much a bright persona.
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Well, it's not as if the public sector is solving many problems these days. We seem to have decided, collectively, that we'd rather have more problems. At least that's what we've been voting for.
> We seem to have decided, collectively, that we'd rather have more problems. ... because a faction of the rich decided they wanted the poors to believe government can't do anything useful, and launched an ongoing decades-long propaganda campaign to that effect.
https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/Abundance/Ezra-Klein/...
>The Gates Foundation’s mission remains rooted in the idea that where you are born should not determine your opportunities. Arguably he's already done so much for billions of people. Had typing on computers not became the main way businesses communicate , anyone with bad, handwriting would be stuck in menial work. When I was growing up in the 90s my hand writing was so bad it was assumed I would never amount to anyth…
Pretty much everything you named is simply first-to-the-market horror-show from design perspective. Javascript? Check. Android? Check. Windows? Again, capturing market via transitioning from DOS. They did focus on many important things like having exceptional backwards compatibility (transitioning from DOS, etc), and kernel team does a decent job usually, but none of this is necessarily attributable to Gates and it's…
On the handwriting thing, I see a general decline in my children's handwriting because they spend so much time typing. That bothers me personally, since I appreciate good handwriting, and I would think it spills over into other fine-motor skills tasks.
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A group of people engaging in topics they are passionate about in their private time is what a state is. Perhaps what you are trying to say is that you only want to help out your friends?
Yeah, no. A government is not "a group of people engaging in topics they are passionate about." A government is an entity with authority to tell you what you have to do, and if you don't do it, eventually people with guns will show up at your door and take you to jail.
If it is authoritarian, perhaps, but even that is still a matter of a group of people. Most seem to believe that government should be democratic. You may not find yourself in a democratic state, but that would only continue to contribute to what makes the day funny. Perhaps you didn't read the entire thread and are posting this without understanding the full context under which it is taking place?
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My guess would be, actually a very small number of people think he’s the antichrist. Why would anyone other than someone with decades of operating system passion even care who this guy is? They know he’s a rich guy. Big deal. I’d guess most people just live their lives and don’t care about Microsoft monopoly or FOSS or anything. The same can probably be said for his altruism—most people probably have no idea.
The antivax movement has been demonising the medical side of his foundation for decades at this point - I'd wager the folks who weren't born in the 90s are more likely to have heard about that than about the genesis of Windows
>The Gates Foundation’s mission remains rooted in the idea that where you are born should not determine your opportunities. Arguably he's already done so much for billions of people. Had typing on computers not became the main way businesses communicate , anyone with bad, handwriting would be stuck in menial work. When I was growing up in the 90s my hand writing was so bad it was assumed I would never amount to anyth…
I'm curious where you grew up? I am high school class of 1992. I skipped third grade, where a lot of penmanship is taught. We had a computer lab in Junior High (so late 1980s), I had a PC Clone at home that we bought in 1985. I'd turn in writing assignments printed on my epson dot matrix printer. To my knowledge, my appalling handwriting was never considered by anyone.