> "If Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie had done the same nobody would give a damn. Bill Gates could probably easily get away with stuff like this too." This is whe

> "If Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie had done the same nobody would give a damn. Bill Gates could probably easily get away with stuff like this too." This is where we disagree. The core of the story is someone wealthy doing something against the public good in a particularly flamboyant way. The backlash would be the same regardless of who they are. It's the sheer flamboyance that's the core of the story. Larry Ellison had similar coverage when it came to being incredibly loud and obnoxious - and he's as close to a traditional industrialist as the software industry gets. > "but I really don't feel like starting a long historic discussion here.." Pardon me for saying so, but you've made some big claims and controversial statements, and your response to any refutation has been "well, I don't want to start a discussion here..." - so what do you want to do, besides drop a big, bombastic claim and walk out? [edit] I'd also like to point out that whenever stories about the shenanigans of Silicon Valley appear, there is frequently the argument made that everyone else is just jealous, or that they are sore losers. This argument has a bad smell to it (in the code smell sense of the word). I've also felt, recently at least, that this community has a nascent persecution complex, like everyone else is out to get us - usually because they're jealous, or they're luddites, or they're just evil in a laughably generic way. This particular trend I find highly annoying.