7 ms·

I find this somewhat offensive for Bill Gates. Is this considered satire? Or just poor taste? Of course, this fails to take into account the damn hard work, r

I find this somewhat offensive for Bill Gates. Is this considered satire? Or just poor taste? Of course, this fails to take into account the damn hard work, risks, and clever strategies used in growing Microsoft. Let's not forget that Steve Jobs came from a much more modest background and was a great competitor to Bill Gates and Microsoft. It wasn't all about having the background of a trust fund to fall back on. I fear that people will take this article to heart without realising that it wasn't Bill Gates background that allowed him to succeed, but it was his instinct and drive.

tomh 13y ago
Also, keep in mind that this article was written in October of 1998. Pre-Gates Foundation, Pre-Windows Vista even. Most of us don't have the same view of Bill Gates (or Microsoft itself) now that we once did.
- michas 13y ago
  After Gates Foundation I despise Bill and Melinda even more: http://www.activistpost.com/2012/07/melinda-gates-family-planning-means.html http://www.activistpost.com/2012/07/melinda-gates-family-pla...
  - gambiting 13y ago
    Reading posts like yours and the article you posted make me sick. Sick because of all the bs that is in there,but it only takes a few seconds to look at other articles posted there to see that it is written by a complete nut-job, and it appeals to the same audience, which you can see after reading the comments.
    - pessimizer 13y ago
      Instead of ad hominem, you could have told me why the article made you sick. Now you've forced me to read it. Edit: And I will not forgive. For anyone else: "Speaking with CNN, [Melinda] Gates gave her diatribe on how she justifies her position as part of the global Elite who are actively seeking to depopulate the planet by 90%; starting in the third world nations." In order to appreciate this article, you'll have to accept that there is a global Elite with a capital 'E' actively seeking to depopulate the planet by 90% as one of many premises.
      - mavhc 13y ago
        And that contraception reduces population
  - enko 13y ago
    That website was so obnoxiously ignorant I at first thought it was a parody, but if so, it is profoundly unfunny. It embeds a video called Why is money being spent on contraception when people are starving?. It features a chubby man on a couch (username SPUCProLife) sincerely arguing that very point, seemingly unaware of the irony anyone with an IQ over 70 could readily perceive. With his bad hair, misaligned glasses and tragic fashion sense, he reminds me of Dwight from The Office, except rather less amusing as he draws straight-faced comparisons between contraception and the nazi Eugenics program. As Obi-wan would say, michas, you should go home and rethink your life. This trash - for idiots, by idiots - has no place here.
    - rev_null 13y ago
      They also run some interesting ads on that site: http://activistpost.net/teslasecret/ http://activistpost.net/teslasecret/
    - kamaal 13y ago
      >>Why is money being spent on contraception when people are starving? As some one staying in a Developing nation(India), I can absolutely attest to the fact that excess population is root of all problems. Poor people have kids when they can't afford to raise them, give them education, health care or even as simple a necessity like food. The net result is poverty, which worsens with every kid they have. If you look at it closely, many a times its due to total ignorance about contraceptive methods. So educating the poor, especially in third world nations is actually a very nice way of tackling poverty. I would have great respect for people who are involved in spreading information and educating poor people about such methods.
    - judk 13y ago
      HN, Next time you want to call something ad hominem, see if it meets this bar.
mathattack 13y ago
I don't think it's satire, I think it's a hack job. A lot of people were born into a similar situation as Gates. Very few achieved what he did. This was written in the time of Microsoft invincibility, where everyone was afraid that Microsoft would enter their market with a free offering. Now it's the opposite - Mircosoft's stock has been flat since then, and they're the ones more concerned about cheaper competitors. It takes a little of the hating edge off of Gates.
- hackerboos 13y ago
  >A lot of people were born into a similar situation as Gates. Very few achieved what he did. The question is: Could Gates have achieved what he did had he not been born into a similar situation?
  - hingisundhorsa 13y ago
    Yes, a person with drive might achieve that. That said, it'd probably be massively less likely. Out of the 100 million kids in India born into poverty, probably 1 in a 100 would make it to a blue collar job, 1 in 10k to a white collar job, 1 in 100k to a professional, 1 in 1M to be a millionaire, and 1 in 100M to be a billionaire. I'm fudging the data but would I be massively wrong?
  - marcamillion 13y ago
    He wouldn't be Gates if he was born into another situation. So the person born in the current Gates' situation would prolly have achieved what Gates did - given that Gates is who he is because he won the ovarian lottery.
    - bsullivan01 13y ago
      So the person born in the current Gates' situation would prolly have achieved what Gates did - given that Gates is who he is because he won the ovarian lottery. If he had a twin brother he's be, say Larry Ellison or Warren Buffet? No doubt knowing that daddy is there for you if you fail and that Harvard will take you back is a huge relief and fall back strategy but Gates did make some amazingly good decisions. Some forty years later his company is worth close to $300 Billion and makes over $20 Billion in profit, year after year.
Tmmrn 13y ago
> the damn hard work, risks, and clever strategies used in growing Microsoft. Why are these only positive adjectives? You could have included unethical, anticompetitive and illegal just as well. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_litigation http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_litigation http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Microsoft_litigation http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Microsoft_litigation http://www.groklaw.net/staticpages/index.php?page=2005010107100653 http://www.groklaw.net/staticpages/index.php?page=2005010107... Sure, it was "clever" and "risky" and it probably was a lot of "hard work"...
- progn 13y ago
  > included unethical, anticompetitive and illegal Oh, like Uber and AirBnb?
  - icebraining 13y ago
    I don't see how is Uber unethical or anticompetitive. Refusing to play by the rules created by the taxi lobbies is not anticompetitive.
  - enko 13y ago
    A little too much snark for my taste but this is fundamentally a good point. The same people who would rail against MS's rule-bending are very likely to be the same ones cheering on regulatory disobedience in startups, and frankly the latter's is often far more unambiguous. Good food for thought there, thanks.
    - e40 13y ago
      regulatory disobedience in startups is not the same thing as anti-competitive practices.
    - judk 13y ago
      I don't know. Folks who suffered under MS in the 90s have a sour taste for anticompetitive behavior and criticise Uber/AirBnB. The folks who know BillG as a malaria guy, or who cheered MS back then, are the ones who tolerate the ends by all means.
roel_v 13y ago
The article is untitled as far as I can see, but the first comment was from 1998. Those were very different times. It was considered 'normal' to actually, personally hate Bill Gates and the Microsoft he created, and much of the open source movement in those days was about 'we hate Microsoft, we write open source software to destroy it'. The Slashdot 'borg' icon for Microsoft is only of the few remaining relics reflecting the zeitgeist of then.
- judk 13y ago
  The zeitgeist is around Apple, Facebook, and Google now, since they managed to topple MS. Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.
  - steven2012 13y ago
    Topple MS? How so? MSFT hasn't been toppled, they have just failed to increase their dominance in other areas of contemporary computing. Microsoft still makes $70+B per year in revenues. MSFT is no where near being toppled, except in mindshare, they made record revenues last year. MSFT, AAPL, FB and GOOG are the top in their own separate verticals, and none can make a dent in the other's vertical. Arguably FB and GOOG are competing for ad revenue dollars, but FB is the leader in social networking, and GOOG is the leader in search.
gadders 13y ago
I'm perfectly willing to put the point of view in his article to the test. Please can someone set me up a multi-million dollar trust fund and I'll do my best to become a billionaire.
seiji 13y ago
I find this somewhat offensive for Bill Gates. When somebody is one of the three richest people in the world, is it our job to feel offended (or anything) for them in any context? They've won. They aren't playing the game of life or society any longer. his instinct and drive. His instinct, drive, and his mother's friendship with the CEO of IBM. Nice to have.
Sagat 13y ago
"I fear that people will take this article to heart without realizing that it wasn't Bill Gates background that allowed him to succeed, but it was his instinct and drive." False. Both of things things enormously contributed to his success. There are tons of people with drive who never even got close to his achievements, and tons more with ideal situations who never created anything of value. Gates had an ideal mix of character and good fortune. There's also the sad fact that personality derives a lot from upbringing and genetics, so you could say that the "instinct and drive" Gates had was also a facet of luck. In a way, most of what we are is roughly predetermined. Our character is a throw of the dice. We don't even know if free will exists at all. This is why I tend to laugh at libertarians who believe they owe nothing to anyone. Face it, luck is perhaps 90% of any tremendous success. Just because Gladwell wrote about this doesn't mean it's not true. It's not a reason to diss Gates and his ilk and stay envious and bitter; it just means we should stop basing our self worth on whether we've changed the world or not, and stop adulating important figures or trying to derive lessons from their every move. Plenty of innately great people have failed and plenty of less than adequate people have succeeded immensely.
- mistermann 13y ago
  > Face it, luck is perhaps 90% of any tremendous success. Just because Gladwell wrote about this doesn't mean it's not true. Could you write something to convince us that it is true? (And if not, then why do you seemingly believe it so strongly?)
  - Sagat 13y ago
    Do I really need to? I think you can come to this conclusion on your own. When you are born, there are already a ton a factors which will stay with you (well, mostly) till you die. Your health and innate intelligence will have a huge effect. Your carers and the early environment as well. As a biological creature, you can never be left untouched by your environment. You can never be truly free. In fact, is there anything you can say is the sole result of your own person? That question is impossible to answer because the person you are has been molded by a ton of different experiences, both positive and negative and is not a static object. The whole point of my post is that it's silly to to claim that some people have "deserved" their success or failure, or that you can do anything if you want it bad enough. The very fact that you are able to be deeply driven is the consequence of factors forever beyond your control. I'm not saying you should give up and do nothing, just that we should have a more relaxed, forgiving and objective view of the moral and intrinsic value of individuals.
tluyben2 13y ago
The thing is that most people will exhibit a very different risk profile when they have a (set for life) safety net. You dare to drop out, you dare to have a big mouth, you dare to gamble. Maybe Jobs was just a dare devil by nature (or, more likely, simply saw the world and his life's goals in an entirely different light than most of us). Most people will take some gambles when young but then rapidly revert to 'the norm' because they start worrying about the big, scary future where you need to provide for yourself and others. If that worry is not at all on your mind, you'll make vastly different decisions. And I do believe that matters a lot in business. Some people I know with those funds just got very lazy in their twenties, went on drugs etc and are either dead or doing ok now. But most are very successful in what they do and as it appears never needed the trust fund as they made more on their own. I say they would never made the companies they made without that safety net firmly in place.

tomh 13y ago

Also, keep in mind that this article was written in October of 1998. Pre-Gates Foundation, Pre-Windows Vista even. Most of us don't have the same view of Bill Gates (or Microsoft itself) now that we once did.

michas 13y ago
After Gates Foundation I despise Bill and Melinda even more: http://www.activistpost.com/2012/07/melinda-gates-family-planning-means.html http://www.activistpost.com/2012/07/melinda-gates-family-pla...
- gambiting 13y ago
  Reading posts like yours and the article you posted make me sick. Sick because of all the bs that is in there,but it only takes a few seconds to look at other articles posted there to see that it is written by a complete nut-job, and it appeals to the same audience, which you can see after reading the comments.
  - pessimizer 13y ago
    Instead of ad hominem, you could have told me why the article made you sick. Now you've forced me to read it. Edit: And I will not forgive. For anyone else: "Speaking with CNN, [Melinda] Gates gave her diatribe on how she justifies her position as part of the global Elite who are actively seeking to depopulate the planet by 90%; starting in the third world nations." In order to appreciate this article, you'll have to accept that there is a global Elite with a capital 'E' actively seeking to depopulate the planet by 90% as one of many premises.
    - mavhc 13y ago
      And that contraception reduces population
- enko 13y ago
  That website was so obnoxiously ignorant I at first thought it was a parody, but if so, it is profoundly unfunny. It embeds a video called Why is money being spent on contraception when people are starving?. It features a chubby man on a couch (username SPUCProLife) sincerely arguing that very point, seemingly unaware of the irony anyone with an IQ over 70 could readily perceive. With his bad hair, misaligned glasses and tragic fashion sense, he reminds me of Dwight from The Office, except rather less amusing as he draws straight-faced comparisons between contraception and the nazi Eugenics program. As Obi-wan would say, michas, you should go home and rethink your life. This trash - for idiots, by idiots - has no place here.
  - rev_null 13y ago
    They also run some interesting ads on that site: http://activistpost.net/teslasecret/ http://activistpost.net/teslasecret/
  - kamaal 13y ago
    >>Why is money being spent on contraception when people are starving? As some one staying in a Developing nation(India), I can absolutely attest to the fact that excess population is root of all problems. Poor people have kids when they can't afford to raise them, give them education, health care or even as simple a necessity like food. The net result is poverty, which worsens with every kid they have. If you look at it closely, many a times its due to total ignorance about contraceptive methods. So educating the poor, especially in third world nations is actually a very nice way of tackling poverty. I would have great respect for people who are involved in spreading information and educating poor people about such methods.
  - judk 13y ago
    HN, Next time you want to call something ad hominem, see if it meets this bar.

mathattack 13y ago

I don't think it's satire, I think it's a hack job. A lot of people were born into a similar situation as Gates. Very few achieved what he did. This was written in the time of Microsoft invincibility, where everyone was afraid that Microsoft would enter their market with a free offering. Now it's the opposite - Mircosoft's stock has been flat since then, and they're the ones more concerned about cheaper competitors. It takes a little of the hating edge off of Gates.

hackerboos 13y ago
>A lot of people were born into a similar situation as Gates. Very few achieved what he did. The question is: Could Gates have achieved what he did had he not been born into a similar situation?
- hingisundhorsa 13y ago
  Yes, a person with drive might achieve that. That said, it'd probably be massively less likely. Out of the 100 million kids in India born into poverty, probably 1 in a 100 would make it to a blue collar job, 1 in 10k to a white collar job, 1 in 100k to a professional, 1 in 1M to be a millionaire, and 1 in 100M to be a billionaire. I'm fudging the data but would I be massively wrong?
- marcamillion 13y ago
  He wouldn't be Gates if he was born into another situation. So the person born in the current Gates' situation would prolly have achieved what Gates did - given that Gates is who he is because he won the ovarian lottery.
  - bsullivan01 13y ago
    So the person born in the current Gates' situation would prolly have achieved what Gates did - given that Gates is who he is because he won the ovarian lottery. If he had a twin brother he's be, say Larry Ellison or Warren Buffet? No doubt knowing that daddy is there for you if you fail and that Harvard will take you back is a huge relief and fall back strategy but Gates did make some amazingly good decisions. Some forty years later his company is worth close to $300 Billion and makes over $20 Billion in profit, year after year.

Tmmrn 13y ago

> the damn hard work, risks, and clever strategies used in growing Microsoft. Why are these only positive adjectives? You could have included unethical, anticompetitive and illegal just as well. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_litigation http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_litigation http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Microsoft_litigation http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Microsoft_litigation http://www.groklaw.net/staticpages/index.php?page=2005010107100653 http://www.groklaw.net/staticpages/index.php?page=2005010107... Sure, it was "clever" and "risky" and it probably was a lot of "hard work"...

progn 13y ago
> included unethical, anticompetitive and illegal Oh, like Uber and AirBnb?
- icebraining 13y ago
  I don't see how is Uber unethical or anticompetitive. Refusing to play by the rules created by the taxi lobbies is not anticompetitive.
- enko 13y ago
  A little too much snark for my taste but this is fundamentally a good point. The same people who would rail against MS's rule-bending are very likely to be the same ones cheering on regulatory disobedience in startups, and frankly the latter's is often far more unambiguous. Good food for thought there, thanks.
  - e40 13y ago
    regulatory disobedience in startups is not the same thing as anti-competitive practices.
  - judk 13y ago
    I don't know. Folks who suffered under MS in the 90s have a sour taste for anticompetitive behavior and criticise Uber/AirBnB. The folks who know BillG as a malaria guy, or who cheered MS back then, are the ones who tolerate the ends by all means.

roel_v 13y ago

The article is untitled as far as I can see, but the first comment was from 1998. Those were very different times. It was considered 'normal' to actually, personally hate Bill Gates and the Microsoft he created, and much of the open source movement in those days was about 'we hate Microsoft, we write open source software to destroy it'. The Slashdot 'borg' icon for Microsoft is only of the few remaining relics reflecting the zeitgeist of then.

judk 13y ago
The zeitgeist is around Apple, Facebook, and Google now, since they managed to topple MS. Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.
- steven2012 13y ago
  Topple MS? How so? MSFT hasn't been toppled, they have just failed to increase their dominance in other areas of contemporary computing. Microsoft still makes $70+B per year in revenues. MSFT is no where near being toppled, except in mindshare, they made record revenues last year. MSFT, AAPL, FB and GOOG are the top in their own separate verticals, and none can make a dent in the other's vertical. Arguably FB and GOOG are competing for ad revenue dollars, but FB is the leader in social networking, and GOOG is the leader in search.

gadders 13y ago

I'm perfectly willing to put the point of view in his article to the test. Please can someone set me up a multi-million dollar trust fund and I'll do my best to become a billionaire.

seiji 13y ago

I find this somewhat offensive for Bill Gates. When somebody is one of the three richest people in the world, is it our job to feel offended (or anything) for them in any context? They've won. They aren't playing the game of life or society any longer. his instinct and drive. His instinct, drive, and his mother's friendship with the CEO of IBM. Nice to have.

Sagat 13y ago

"I fear that people will take this article to heart without realizing that it wasn't Bill Gates background that allowed him to succeed, but it was his instinct and drive." False. Both of things things enormously contributed to his success. There are tons of people with drive who never even got close to his achievements, and tons more with ideal situations who never created anything of value. Gates had an ideal mix of character and good fortune. There's also the sad fact that personality derives a lot from upbringing and genetics, so you could say that the "instinct and drive" Gates had was also a facet of luck. In a way, most of what we are is roughly predetermined. Our character is a throw of the dice. We don't even know if free will exists at all. This is why I tend to laugh at libertarians who believe they owe nothing to anyone. Face it, luck is perhaps 90% of any tremendous success. Just because Gladwell wrote about this doesn't mean it's not true. It's not a reason to diss Gates and his ilk and stay envious and bitter; it just means we should stop basing our self worth on whether we've changed the world or not, and stop adulating important figures or trying to derive lessons from their every move. Plenty of innately great people have failed and plenty of less than adequate people have succeeded immensely.

mistermann 13y ago
> Face it, luck is perhaps 90% of any tremendous success. Just because Gladwell wrote about this doesn't mean it's not true. Could you write something to convince us that it is true? (And if not, then why do you seemingly believe it so strongly?)
- Sagat 13y ago
  Do I really need to? I think you can come to this conclusion on your own. When you are born, there are already a ton a factors which will stay with you (well, mostly) till you die. Your health and innate intelligence will have a huge effect. Your carers and the early environment as well. As a biological creature, you can never be left untouched by your environment. You can never be truly free. In fact, is there anything you can say is the sole result of your own person? That question is impossible to answer because the person you are has been molded by a ton of different experiences, both positive and negative and is not a static object. The whole point of my post is that it's silly to to claim that some people have "deserved" their success or failure, or that you can do anything if you want it bad enough. The very fact that you are able to be deeply driven is the consequence of factors forever beyond your control. I'm not saying you should give up and do nothing, just that we should have a more relaxed, forgiving and objective view of the moral and intrinsic value of individuals.

tluyben2 13y ago

The thing is that most people will exhibit a very different risk profile when they have a (set for life) safety net. You dare to drop out, you dare to have a big mouth, you dare to gamble. Maybe Jobs was just a dare devil by nature (or, more likely, simply saw the world and his life's goals in an entirely different light than most of us). Most people will take some gambles when young but then rapidly revert to 'the norm' because they start worrying about the big, scary future where you need to provide for yourself and others. If that worry is not at all on your mind, you'll make vastly different decisions. And I do believe that matters a lot in business. Some people I know with those funds just got very lazy in their twenties, went on drugs etc and are either dead or doing ok now. But most are very successful in what they do and as it appears never needed the trust fund as they made more on their own. I say they would never made the companies they made without that safety net firmly in place.