12 ms·
If you put aside the "M$ was evil and he is just atoning" arguments, Gates is a huge inspiration, at least for me. This guy finds problems that he's passionate
by dharmon 10y ago
If you put aside the "M$ was evil and he is just atoning" arguments, Gates is a huge inspiration, at least for me.
This guy finds problems that he's passionate about and attacks them with such ferocity that it is truly awe inspiring.
I'm mildly embarrassed to admit it, but he was my childhood hero through the 90's. Even later when everyone thought Jobs was the bee's knees, I wanted to be as effective as Gates.
- amelius 10y agoAlso worth mentioning is that, over the years, Microsoft has published an impressive amount of research, whereas (e.g.) Apple has always been disappointingly closed.
- ignoramous 10y agoI think Apple revolutionized HCI with the Mac and then with the iPod and now with iOS. They continue to push the bar in industrial design. They're contributing in different ways. I'd not belittle their achievements. Design principles that Apple has long been following are the norm today. Every tech company has done their part. I don't like this constant bickering, I wish people were more accepting and just saw the positive side of things more often.
- agumonkey 10y agoWith the ironic effect that I and a friend were often disappointed by the lack of innovation in MS products (that changed a bit recently).
- prodigal_erik 10y agoIf we put aside that the money isn't his, he kneecapped better products with such ferocity that a generation later our industry is still struggling to make up for the lost progress.
- philliphaydon 10y agoThe FDA, CDC, American Government, and Patent System, have all crippled progress far more than Bill Gates or Microsoft ever did.
- jacquesm 10y agoSCO
- jack9 10y agoThat's debatable.
- erikpukinskis 10y agoHow is that germain? THREAD OF CONVERSATION: Bill Gates is a murderer! PHILLIP HAYDRON: Jeffrey Dahmer has murdered far more than he ever did!
- mcguire 10y agoThat he is not literally Hitler is a pretty damning complement. (CDC? Really?)
- tingol 10y agoTu quoque?
- WalterBright 10y ago> lost progress Actually, MS-DOS was the first more or less standardized platform across diverse computers, which enabled software developers to develop for a market several orders of magnitude larger than what had existed before. The result was an explosion of software being developed. I don't see how this retarded progress.
- prodigal_erik 10y agoBoth CP/M and MS-DOS enabled portable code that runs on various hardware, but devs wrote software that required PC-compatible hardware anyway because sometimes it was a lot faster to bypass the OS. MS got market share by being cheaper, and once the network effect was in their favor they kept it by threatening OEMs who dared sell anything else to willing customers.
- JoeAltmaier 10y agoCP/M and MS-DOS weren't really an 'operating system' in the sense that they didn't mediate application access to system resources. They didn't let two apps share even fundamental devices like the clock, timer interrupts, networks, serial ports and on and on. In fact they didn't support multiple apps much at all. I would call both of them 'monitors' or something. Operating System is way to ambitious a name for what they did.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- bcook 10y agoEven if Microsoft was evil, Gates is still an inspiration to me.
- peteretep 10y agoBecause Microsoft was evil, Gates is an inspiration to me.
- ooooo00000 10y agoWhy?
- nurb 10y agoI think it means that he is an inspiration for money drove minds.
- sametmax 10y agoBecause my aunt stopped beating his child after 15 years and started to work in a dog shelter, she is an inspiration to me ? Err... no.
- forgetsusername 10y ago>Because my aunt stopped beating his child It's beyond ridiculous to compare anything that Gates did to physical violence. He had a few vicious, harmful business tactics. His overall benefit to society, especially if you include his philanthropic work, is likely beyond what most people here will ever achieve.
- cbd1984 10y agoI'm of the opinion that Gates hasn't really changed, just found a more socially-acceptable way to use his fundamental personality.
- atdt 10y agoThis qualifies as goodness in my books. No one is free of egoism and selfishness. People are good if they subordinate their egoism and selfishness to a higher principle of care for others, and seek satisfaction of their baser impulses through actions that are socially constructive and beneficial.
- chongli 10y agoIt's hard to guess what motivated the grandparent's comment but if I had to guess, it has something to do with the cultural aversion to public philanthropy which traces back to Matthew 6:3 But when thou doest alms, let not thy left hand know what thy right hand doeth: As an atheist who was raised Catholic, many of the teachings of Jesus still make sense to me from a moral standpoint. This one does not. Keeping your charitable efforts quiet seems like a bad thing to do if you want to get others involved so that you might actually make a difference some day.
- thaumasiotes 10y agoWell, the point of the teaching is to allow other people, not the person doing alms, to know that money for philanthropy is coming out of the rich guy's "charity" budget rather than his "public relations" budget. This is misguided, but it's not hard to understand where the idea came from.
- specialist 10y agoPresbyterian here. We were taught you can't buy your way into Heaven. Yes, donate to charity. But don't publicly congratulate yourself. I've worked to overcome my WASP reluctance to talk about money. As a geek, we should be comparing salaries. As an activist, to be effective you need resources, which is a nice proxy for buy-in, so you learn how to ask for money.
- sametmax 10y agoAnd that's a big problem: you are willing to ignore 30 years of bad behavior because now he changed is marketting strategy. Even if he is doing good now (debatable, but for the sake of argument let's say he is), it's a good forget the past. As a society, we need to remember, and we need to stand against it, not praise a bad guy as soon as he start not acting bad. If (and it's a big if), he is doing good right now, it's just normal. It's what he was supposed to be doing from the begining. There is nothing special here, except somebody less misbehaving. It's like when a pop star stops coke. He/she get praises. What the heck ? Most people just don't do coke. You stop ? Good for you. Now let me read actual news.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- mblode 10y agoBill Gates reminds me a lot of John D. Rockefeller. He had earned $260 billion (adjusted for inflation) through standard oil and is said to be a ruthless business man. However, in the second half of his life, he turned to philanthropy and created a contrastingly positive image in the public's eye. I'm not sure the depth of their similarities but this is what it seems like to me on a surface level.
- tunap 10y agoMobsters, thieves & politicians tend to do "good" after getting caught for malfeasance, too. WG didn't get "caught", he(MS) gamed the system, incorporated others' work & ruined most competitors. Now he gets to live with his conscience. Extend. Embrace. Extinguish. Atone.
- WalterBright 10y agoIf you read "In Search of Stupidity" by Chapman, you'll see that most of his competitors ruined themselves all by themselves. It's not easy to run a successful business. My own, Zortech, would have been far more successful if I'd had half a brain instead of only a quarter of one.