4 ms·

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 int

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 destroyed lives. He's perhaps run competitors out of business, but I'd be willing to bet that most of the actual people involved didn't end up in a gutter as a result. Netscape is the most often cited victim of his allegedly brutal business acumen, and Marc Andreesen seems to be doing alright for himself. It's totally impossible to say what was to the detriment (or benefit) of the industry. To do so, you'd have to compare this universe to another which was identical to this other than Bill Gates having not existed. All we can say for sure is that Bill was consequential enough that the alternate universe would look much different, certainly better in some ways, just as surely worse in others, but on the balance who knows? You could just as well predict what the weather will be 100 years from now as you could what the world would have been like without Bill Gates. I don't think pointing out his philanthropic endeavors amounts to worship. And I suspect things would not be better for Hackers at all, but again, I cannot see into alternate universes. He's simply become a scapegoat for all of the frustrations of people who are more comfortable with computers than they are with the businesses that drive a society that can create such a thing.

edw519 16y ago
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.
- mattmaroon 16y ago
  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.
  - rbanffy 16y ago
    > Writing a program for all of them meant writing it over and over Not quite correct. Companies ported programs, even assembly-language programs, to different processors all the time. Visicalc ran on z-80s, 6502s (on Apples, Ataris and Commodores) and 8086s. the hard part is to write it the first time. Porting then is more or less straightforward. OSs were so minimalistic at that time they didn't create any significant difference. > Businesses were confounded because some of the software they wanted ran only on one stack, some ran on another Most business software for microcomputers in the high 70's and very low 80's ran on CP/M. Even the first DOS blockbusters were straight ports of CP/M titles. CP/M (I am talking about CP/M 80) machines were all based on 8080-like processors, but, besides the common processor, had very different hardware - disks from one computer often could not be read on another. Transferring through serial ports usually solved this. The market that was more fragmented was the home computer market. There Apple IIs, Ataris, TRS-80s and Commodores competed with one another. Choosing a home computer could be confusing at that time. The higher end of the spectrum had mainframes, just as incompatible with each other as they are now (I think Unisys still makes them and they are incompatible with IBMs), minis that ran proprietary OSs or UNIX-based OSs. There were a couple high-end multiuser "supermicros" that ran Unix-like OSs. I have used Cromix for some time. Most of the software was not easily portable at that time because it was written in hand-tuned assembly language. I remember how revolutionary Unix seemed for being written in C and, thus, being portable across different architectures. Faster computers and HLLs (can't believe I am calling C a HLL...) eased the pain of porting. My bet? Were it not for Gates, today we would have a diverse computing environment, with different OSs and processors, with cross-platform software being used in combination with open formats (like GIF was intended to be) to exchange data between non-portable (or non-ported) programs. There would be large software companies but hardware makers would compete with far more latitude than they can now and those software companies would do their best to use the tricks those hardware makers would bring. > You may not like it, but IP suits and lobbying are as much a part of big business as dribbling is basketball You're right. I don't like it. I think software companies should gain market through technical merits that benefit their users, not backstabbing each other.
deleted 16y ago
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edw519 16y ago

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.

mattmaroon 16y ago
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.
- rbanffy 16y ago
  > Writing a program for all of them meant writing it over and over Not quite correct. Companies ported programs, even assembly-language programs, to different processors all the time. Visicalc ran on z-80s, 6502s (on Apples, Ataris and Commodores) and 8086s. the hard part is to write it the first time. Porting then is more or less straightforward. OSs were so minimalistic at that time they didn't create any significant difference. > Businesses were confounded because some of the software they wanted ran only on one stack, some ran on another Most business software for microcomputers in the high 70's and very low 80's ran on CP/M. Even the first DOS blockbusters were straight ports of CP/M titles. CP/M (I am talking about CP/M 80) machines were all based on 8080-like processors, but, besides the common processor, had very different hardware - disks from one computer often could not be read on another. Transferring through serial ports usually solved this. The market that was more fragmented was the home computer market. There Apple IIs, Ataris, TRS-80s and Commodores competed with one another. Choosing a home computer could be confusing at that time. The higher end of the spectrum had mainframes, just as incompatible with each other as they are now (I think Unisys still makes them and they are incompatible with IBMs), minis that ran proprietary OSs or UNIX-based OSs. There were a couple high-end multiuser "supermicros" that ran Unix-like OSs. I have used Cromix for some time. Most of the software was not easily portable at that time because it was written in hand-tuned assembly language. I remember how revolutionary Unix seemed for being written in C and, thus, being portable across different architectures. Faster computers and HLLs (can't believe I am calling C a HLL...) eased the pain of porting. My bet? Were it not for Gates, today we would have a diverse computing environment, with different OSs and processors, with cross-platform software being used in combination with open formats (like GIF was intended to be) to exchange data between non-portable (or non-ported) programs. There would be large software companies but hardware makers would compete with far more latitude than they can now and those software companies would do their best to use the tricks those hardware makers would bring. > You may not like it, but IP suits and lobbying are as much a part of big business as dribbling is basketball You're right. I don't like it. I think software companies should gain market through technical merits that benefit their users, not backstabbing each other.

deleted 16y ago

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