4 ms·
Honestly, it feels a bit weird to be ranting pro-Gates -- I spent most of my high school years despising him because of Windows (I did tech support for 4 years)
by derwiki 16y ago
Honestly, it feels a bit weird to be ranting pro-Gates -- I spent most of my high school years despising him because of Windows (I did tech support for 4 years). I agree with you that while Gates did advance computing, if he hadn't, someone else would have -- and possibly do it better. Or do it worse.
The "hours wasted" argument doesn't hold a lot of traction for me. As anecdotal evidence, I believe I saw a statistic that "House" is watched by over 300 million people globally -- that's 300m * 42 minutes _per week_. (Clay Shirky has a great article about mankind's surplus hours and how they're wasted in television).
- celoyd 16y agoI love that article; I just re-read it, and maybe it’s what made me put my point in terms of hours. And I as I said, those particular hours were probably not hiding a miracle, just more of whatever people would have done anyway. But it’s still a lot to waste. At least people choose to watch House. It’s not actively sabotaging other shows and then shipping with glaring, time-wasting bugs.