Bill Gates, Hero • Hacker News Board

Re: Bill Gates, Hero

#61

Post by muhfuhkuh » Wed, Sep 15, 2010, 5:52 PM UTC

Gibbon wrote: post #37

jakarta wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"And what did he do with these fabulous once-in-a-lifetime gifts?" He used those gifts to amass wealth which he is now in the process of mostly giving away. It goes back to Warren Buffett who claimed that he won the ovarian lottery, being born at the right time with the right circumstances which enabled him to become extremely wealthy. As a result, Buffett advocates giving away 99% of his fortune in recognition of th…

Most of the wealthy I know are not against charity or giving away their wealth.. they are against an inefficient government deciding on how that should be accomplished.

Show me a company that is willing to feed and take care of _every single_ poor, elderly, and infirm person without the need for tax-exempt status, without the need for spiritual conversion or religious dogma, and without the "overhead" of paying executives millions of dollars for "administrative" purposes, and I'll urge Congress to redirect ALL of my tax dollars toward that company.

Oh, and btw, this company also has to defend our shores, find cures for disease (or at least fund them) and manage distribution to those affected, assess and remediate damage on massive scales when emergencies strike, set standards and regulations of measurement and safety so that industries can interoperate and first-responders can (for example) plug their water hoses into a hydrant and it actually fit, etc.

It's not just a couple rich charitable dudes that can handle all that. Sorry if I don't worship them as much as anti-tax crusaders do.

Re: Bill Gates, Hero

#62

Post by edw519 » Wed, Sep 15, 2010, 5:55 PM UTC

mattmaroon wrote: post #48

edw519 wrote: post #13

Why do you think Silicon Valley has never quite come around on this guy? Because of the trail of dead bodies and lost opportunities left in his wake. Let's not forget, Bill Gates was handed a 0th birthday gift of $1 million from his grandfather, the keys to his private middle school computer (the same one Stanford had), and a free ticket to do business with IBM because his mother already knew its chairman. Sure he wa…

Your argument is silly all the way through. He's got an IQ of 160, which means he actually is considerably smarter than most of the rest of us. He was born into money, but so are hundreds of thousands of people in our country. Most accomplish little of value. Much more common in his situation would be a career in investment banking, sucking money out of the middle class's retirements. It's ludicrous to say that he's…

I cannot see into alternate universes

You don't have to see into alternate universes. You just have to be old enough to have already lived in one. The one before Microsoft.

I suspect that alot of the Bill Gates/Microsoft love/hate splits along age lines. If you're under 40, you're not old enough to have experienced the glorious pre-Microsoft days. We worked on all kinds of cool stuff, IBM mainframes (the good and the bad), the mini-computers (VAX, PDP, etc.), the Bell Labs stuff (Unix!), and all kinds of other wonderful proprietary systems: OS2, CPM, & Pick.

Then all of a sudden, our customers started abandoning all this great technology for Microsoft. Why? Because it was better? No, because it was shoved down their throats. Because when it couldn't win by technical merits, it won other ways, with back room deals, legal technicalities, and old fashioned bullying.

Young hackers today take great pride removing Windows from their laptops and replacing it with Linux. What they may not realize is that this technology is not new; it was around 40 years ago. They just didn't have to suffer through the 20 year Microsoft technology drought like some of us did.

I understand that industries consolidate and that many great products and technologies die. But they should die in the marketplace, not in the courtroom or the lobbyists' offices.

If Kobe Bryant beats your team with great talent, hard work, and superior play, you'd congratulate him. But you'd be awfully pissed if he never dribbled but never got whistled because his lawyers already made arrangements in Commission Stern's offices before the game. This was standard operating procedure for Microsoft for years.

We'd still be suffering if it wasn't for the internet. I suppose if I was under 30, I'd just think it was always open and hopeful like it is now. But for a long time it wasn't. And to answer OP's original question, a lot of people in Silicon Valley were in that alternate universe you missed and they don't forget.

Re: Bill Gates, Hero

#63

Post by kenjackson » Wed, Sep 15, 2010, 6:00 PM UTC

pchristensen wrote: post #50

edw519 wrote: post #13

Why do you think Silicon Valley has never quite come around on this guy? Because of the trail of dead bodies and lost opportunities left in his wake. Let's not forget, Bill Gates was handed a 0th birthday gift of $1 million from his grandfather, the keys to his private middle school computer (the same one Stanford had), and a free ticket to do business with IBM because his mother already knew its chairman. Sure he wa…

"forgetting all the lives destroyed" Lets say it's the year 2100. 100 million children have a chance at life because they were vaccinated with Gates Foundation money. 1 billion are wealthier because of a better education provided by Gates Foundation programs. The environment is cleaner because populations used that health and education to lift themselves out of poverty. Are 20 years of frustrated tech entrepreneurs a…

And we should be really clear. Most of those "lives destroyed" were destroyed in fair play. There are scant few developers in the world who can really argue that Gates hurt them, much less destroyed their lives.

And I think people also conveniently discount the paid software market that Gates helped create. Gates really pushed hard on the notion of standalone software that is purchased. I also think people forget how screwed up the software industry was in the early 80s. This was a time where MS wasn't dominant, yet software was in a pretty horrible state. In terms of both quality and market.

In fact, I'd be willing to bet, that even if you set aside all of his philanthropic work, he's added more net value to the lives of developers than he has taken.

Re: Bill Gates, Hero

#64

Post by rbanffy » Wed, Sep 15, 2010, 6:06 PM UTC

lionhearted wrote: post #31

edw519 wrote: post #13

Why do you think Silicon Valley has never quite come around on this guy? Because of the trail of dead bodies and lost opportunities left in his wake. Let's not forget, Bill Gates was handed a 0th birthday gift of $1 million from his grandfather, the keys to his private middle school computer (the same one Stanford had), and a free ticket to do business with IBM because his mother already knew its chairman. Sure he wa…

> Let's not forget, Bill Gates was handed a 0th birthday gift of $1 million from his grandfather, the keys to his private middle school computer (the same one Stanford had), and a free ticket to do business with IBM because his mother already knew its chairman. The rest of your post is very insightful, but this part above strikes me as petty - I was low born myself, was given almost nothing except birth in the USA in…

I think his point is that Gates was given some very generous gifts and, with them, "he fucked anyone who got in his way", "usually to the detriment of the industry".

Re: Bill Gates, Hero

#65

Post by mattmaroon » Wed, Sep 15, 2010, 6:07 PM UTC

edw519 wrote: post #62

mattmaroon wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your argument is silly all the way through. He's got an IQ of 160, which means he actually is considerably smarter than most of the rest of us. He was born into money, but so are hundreds of thousands of people in our country. Most accomplish little of value. Much more common in his situation would be a career in investment banking, sucking money out of the middle class's retirements. It's ludicrous to say that he's…

I cannot see into alternate universes You don't have to see into alternate universes. You just have to be old enough to have already lived in one. The one before Microsoft. I suspect that alot of the Bill Gates/Microsoft love/hate splits along age lines. If you're under 40, you're not old enough to have experienced the glorious pre-Microsoft days. We worked on all kinds of cool stuff, IBM mainframes (the good and the…

That's funny, my friend (who was a very early MSFT employee) tells a different story. There were a bunch of different competing technologies. Writing a program for all of them meant writing it over and over, so nobody did this. The market was small and fragmented, and nobody really believed you could get huge as a software company. Bill's parents wanted him to finish his schooling instead of dropping out to start Microsoft as a result.

Businesses were confounded because some of the software they wanted ran only on one stack, some ran on another. Consumer adoption was nonexistent because switching from one OS to another required learning everything all over again. You couldn't simply go to Best Buy, get some software or hardware, and assume it would work. Hardware fragmentation kept sales down, which in turn kept pricing high, which in turn kept sales down, etc.

Either way, none of that "good old days" stuff is really the point when analyzing whether or not the world would be better off without Bill. The industry progressed, as it would have without Microsoft. We know it would have evolved, we just don't know exactly how. It seems virtually impossible to me that it wouldn't have ended in one OS on most people's desks, but I am willing to admit I may be wrong. If it weren't for Bill, we may all have been running IBM's OS for the last 20 years instead. Or maybe we weren't buying them at all, because they cost too much and were too fragmented. Would either of those universes really be better? Nobody could possibly know.

Microsoft's standard operating procedure was part of the game. You may not like it, but IP suits and lobbying are as much a part of big business as dribbling is basketball. That was the case long before Bill Gates arrived and will be so long after he's dead. You're hating the player instead of the game.

Re: Bill Gates, Hero

#66

Post by edw519 » Wed, Sep 15, 2010, 6:07 PM UTC

lionhearted wrote: post #31

edw519 wrote: post #13

Why do you think Silicon Valley has never quite come around on this guy? Because of the trail of dead bodies and lost opportunities left in his wake. Let's not forget, Bill Gates was handed a 0th birthday gift of $1 million from his grandfather, the keys to his private middle school computer (the same one Stanford had), and a free ticket to do business with IBM because his mother already knew its chairman. Sure he wa…

> Let's not forget, Bill Gates was handed a 0th birthday gift of $1 million from his grandfather, the keys to his private middle school computer (the same one Stanford had), and a free ticket to do business with IBM because his mother already knew its chairman. The rest of your post is very insightful, but this part above strikes me as petty - I was low born myself, was given almost nothing except birth in the USA in…

...but this part above strikes me as petty...

Sorry if it came across that way; that was not my intent.

Everyone's starting point is relative. No one ever gave me the gifts that Bill Gates got. But then again, I've had gifts that 99% of everyone who ever lived couldn't imagine.

With those gifts comes responsibility. Whenever I have an opportunity to use my gifts to do good things, I think of how proud those who made sacrifices for me would be. I imagine many people here on hn feel the same way.

Bill Gates never used his tremendous gifts for the greater good, only for the good of Microsoft. He never cared how big the pie got, only how close Microsoft's share of that pie approached 100%.

The point of the paragraph wasn't to be petty or jealous; it was just to point out how the one with perhaps the biggest gifts of all didn't choose to share them like the rest of us would. Sorry if I implied anything else.

Re: Bill Gates, Hero

#67

Post by jacoblyles » Wed, Sep 15, 2010, 6:09 PM UTC

potatolicious wrote: post #59

jacoblyles wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm kinda miffed that people measure the good that the ultra-wealthy do for society only through the taxes they pay and neglect the great value they have provided people through the market place. As if the volume of taxation and government spending a man generates were the only ways to measure a man's worth.

There are two fundamental differences: - Taxation and philanthropy do not represent (usually) a direct benefit to the payer. For better or for worse, we as a society look more highly upon selfless gestures than selfish ones. Philanthropy is the voluntary form of selfless giving, taxation is the involuntary one. - Philanthropy and taxation have an intent to benefit others. Creating market-based value is often merely a…

I would argue that a great portion of the total wealth of society created over the course of history has been "unintentional", using this terminology. If we don't understand and appreciate this then it will be to our detriment.

Re: Bill Gates, Hero

#68

Post by rbanffy » Wed, Sep 15, 2010, 6:09 PM UTC

edw519 wrote: post #62

mattmaroon wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your argument is silly all the way through. He's got an IQ of 160, which means he actually is considerably smarter than most of the rest of us. He was born into money, but so are hundreds of thousands of people in our country. Most accomplish little of value. Much more common in his situation would be a career in investment banking, sucking money out of the middle class's retirements. It's ludicrous to say that he's…

I cannot see into alternate universes You don't have to see into alternate universes. You just have to be old enough to have already lived in one. The one before Microsoft. I suspect that alot of the Bill Gates/Microsoft love/hate splits along age lines. If you're under 40, you're not old enough to have experienced the glorious pre-Microsoft days. We worked on all kinds of cool stuff, IBM mainframes (the good and the…

> Young hackers today take great pride removing Windows from their laptops

I am an old hacker and I always feel better when I remove Windows from a laptop.

Re: Bill Gates, Hero

#69

Post by kenjackson » Wed, Sep 15, 2010, 6:13 PM UTC

siglesias wrote: post #33

qq66 wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Jobs' wealth is lower than Gates because Apple raised more money than Microsoft did early on, and because he sold all his stock when he left Apple and is now compensated in stock options rather than in founders' stock.

He sold his stock in protest over being fired--again, for principle, not money. With $46B cash and short term holdings in the bank, I'm sure shareholders wouldn't bat much of an eye if Jobs compensated himself with a little bit more than $1/year, as Ellison and many other tech execs do. Jobs doesn't take that cash. The last point I'm going to make is that it's probably immaterial to the argument the exact cause of th…

Selling your stock over being fired is not a principled stand. At least not in the conventional way of thinking about it.

Plus he has on occassion been labelled the highest paying CEO in the world, due to his stock options. http://www.forbes.com/lists/2007/12/lead_07ceos_Steven-P-Job...

And in any case, most CEOs don't make a HUGE salary. Jobs would probably get paid $750k. The fact that he doesn't make this money is (a) hardly a dent in his wallet and (b) doesn't really make any effect on wealth allocation.

Re: Bill Gates, Hero

#70

Post by sdurkin » Wed, Sep 15, 2010, 6:14 PM UTC

lionhearted wrote: post #31

edw519 wrote: post #13

Why do you think Silicon Valley has never quite come around on this guy? Because of the trail of dead bodies and lost opportunities left in his wake. Let's not forget, Bill Gates was handed a 0th birthday gift of $1 million from his grandfather, the keys to his private middle school computer (the same one Stanford had), and a free ticket to do business with IBM because his mother already knew its chairman. Sure he wa…

> Let's not forget, Bill Gates was handed a 0th birthday gift of $1 million from his grandfather, the keys to his private middle school computer (the same one Stanford had), and a free ticket to do business with IBM because his mother already knew its chairman. The rest of your post is very insightful, but this part above strikes me as petty - I was low born myself, was given almost nothing except birth in the USA in…

To whom much has been given, much will be expected in return, with great suit comes great responsibility, etc.