6 ms·

Hate the man's business practices. Love the man for his philanthropical work. They don't need to cancel out, and you don't need to forgive one to appreciate t

by bmelton 13y ago

Hate the man's business practices. Love the man for his philanthropical work. They don't need to cancel out, and you don't need to forgive one to appreciate the other. Michael Vick was put in prison for dog fighting. I absolutely hate him for that. At the same time, I appreciate his talent on the field as a football player. Orson Scott Card is a rampant homophobe. I absolutely hate him for that. Doesn't affect my opinion of his novels though, not in the least. There's no logic in idolizing or demonizing anyone. Life's a lot better when you get out of casting a pall over everything a person does by some other things that they've done. People like making villains and heroes of people, whether or not they deserve it. We see someone we don't like from afar, and it's easy to assume that they're bad at everything, that they're horrible people, that they're bad parents, that they're likely running around kicking puppies all day long. That's very rarely the truth. With people we're nearer too, it's easier to accept that they have strengths and weaknesses, and I don't know why it's hard to imagine the same thing of famous people, but it is. There's very little to love about Bill Gates, CEO of Microsoft. Similarly, there's very little to hate about Bill Gates of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. Roll with it.

rbanffy 13y ago
> Hate the man's business practices. Love the man for his philanthropical work At the core of this is trust. Bill lost mine at Microsoft's helm - he has shown a borderline sociopath that will stop at nothing and will destroy anyone on his path. To give this much credit to someone with such dark history is appallingly naive.
- bmelton 13y ago
  To give him trust might be naive, but giving him credit for the things he has done is just a recognition of fact. He donated $28,000,000,000 to a philanthropic organization. Refusal to "give him credit" for that is just being petty. He did it. Conversely, he engaged in anti-competitive behavior with Netscape, so he gets the credit for that too. Loving him for the former is every bit as pragmatic as hating him for the latter, but neither act means that is who he is as a person. People are far too complex for that.
- bluekitten 13y ago
  Everytime a big company implements a feature or rolls out something, they affect companies working in that area. You can find similar things about almost any company or person, but for some reason the bad things about Microsoft are always amplified. For example, see how Google squashed Skyhook http://www.theverge.com/2011/05/12/google-android-skyhook-lawsuit-motorola-samsung/ http://www.theverge.com/2011/05/12/google-android-skyhook-la... Aliyun and Acer prevented from launching a phone because of the secret rules of the "Open" Handset Alliance. http://www.zdnet.com/cn/report-google-stops-acer-from-launching-aliyun-phone-in-china-7000004246/ http://www.zdnet.com/cn/report-google-stops-acer-from-launch... Apple and the famed 30% cut of even sales from Apps, an example of how they used someone's OSS code in Safari and then banned them from the app store: http://blog.readability.com/2011/02/an-open-letter-to-apple/ http://blog.readability.com/2011/02/an-open-letter-to-apple/ My point is that someone fed a steady diet of bad stories about one company while barely being exposed to good stories ends up not liking them and everyone knows how many tech sites and journalists and news sites like Slashdot and HN's bias in story selection because of the vocal minority who sometimes appear to be on a crusade of ends justifying the means.
  - rbanffy 13y ago
    It seems you need a history lesson: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stac_Electronics#Microsoft_lawsuit https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stac_Electronics#Microsoft_law...
    - bluekitten 13y ago
      I already knew about that, but not sure what you're implying here. The link says this: >in 1994, a California jury ruled the infringement by Microsoft was not willful, but awarded Stac $120 million in compensatory damages, coming to about $5.50 per copy of MS-DOS 6.0 that had been sold. The jury also agreed with a Microsoft counterclaim that Stac had misappropriated the Microsoft trade secret of a pre-loading feature that was included in Stacker 3.1, and simultaneously awarded Microsoft $13.6 million on the counterclaim. [2] Are you alleging that Microsoft bought the judge and/or jury off? Why would they award such a high amount then? They ruled that the infringement wasn't intentional, and certainly they had way more access to the facts and testimony of the case than you or me. I have to ask, did you even read your own history lesson before teaching it to others? Also, it's funny that no company can even sell the equivalent of DriveSpace these days for Chromebooks, iPads and iPhones. Android phones would probably need the user to get root and/or unlock the bootloader which is a nonstarter for already niche software. Would even be banned from the Mac App Store. Yet people buy them and cheer them on just because they're more anti-MS while pretending to be pro software freedom. A couple of contemporary history lessons for you. Google found guilty of infringing Lycos patents. http://www.fastcompany.com/1844439/meet-vringo-cto-ken-lang-mystery-geek-center-google-patent-fight http://www.fastcompany.com/1844439/meet-vringo-cto-ken-lang-... Similar Apple lawsuit http://www.zdnet.com/virnetx-wins-apple-patent-infringement-case-7000007018/ http://www.zdnet.com/virnetx-wins-apple-patent-infringement-...
- sliverstorm 13y ago
  So what? If he is a sociopath, so what? Are you trying to insinuate he has dark ulterior motives for his charity efforts? If not, why is his personality worth a damn to the discussion?
  - rbanffy 13y ago
    > Are you trying to insinuate he has dark ulterior motives for his charity efforts? Dark ulterior motives? No. Being remembered as a philanthropist rather than a robber-baron is quite enough. Hs is doing good, but he is not doing good for the good of others.
    - sliverstorm 13y ago
      Why the f%ck do you care if he is doing it to be remembered? Since when was the value of charitable works derived from the motive?
      - bluekitten 13y ago
        As usual, Linus shoots straight. http://www.osnews.com/story/21887/Linus_Microsoft_Hatred_is_a_Disease http://www.osnews.com/story/21887/Linus_Microsoft_Hatred_is_...
      - icebraining 13y ago
        The discussion started by matthewmacleod is about the moral character of Bill Gates, not the value of his charitable works. For most people, intentions are important when discussing the former.
    - snowbunny 13y ago
      By that metric, anyone who does any good can be discredited by saying that they did it because it made them feel good.
- Houshalter 13y ago
  Calling him a sociopath is absurd. A sociopath wouldn't care about charity in the slightest. If you think he was doing it for publicity purposes, he wouldn't be putting so much effort into it or avoiding the media at times like was mentioned in the article. You don't have to agree with what he did, but he has certainly shown he is not a bad person and has good intentions.
- anigbrowl 13y ago
  'Dark history'? Aggressive business practices for sure, but it's not like he was dumping toxic chemicals in the water supply or something. How many people were killed as a result of Gates 'sociopathy'? I'm afraid that slowing the popularity of Linux and the open web doesn't strike me as particularly impressive in the Evil Genius stakes.
  - yapcguy 13y ago
    Jimmy Saville, well-known British celebrity with lots of charity work for kids, now known to be a sick child abuser. Lance Armstrong, well-known cyclist with lots of charity work fighting cancer, now known to be a drug cheat. Can Bill Gates wash away his sins? Has he really turned over a new leaf? "The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation's investments in Monsanto and Cargill have come under heavy criticism. Is it time for the foundation to come clean on its visions for agriculture in developing countries?" http://www.theguardian.com/global-development/poverty-matters/2010/sep/29/gates-foundation-gm-monsanto http://www.theguardian.com/global-development/poverty-matter...
    - anigbrowl 13y ago
      /facepalm at how many logical fallacies you have squeezed into one short comment.
    - onebaddude 13y ago
      >Lance Armstrong, well-known cyclist with lots of charity work fighting cancer, now known to be a drug cheat. Are you really equating Lance Armstrong with a guy who likely sexually abused hundreds of children? That's idiotic. You realize that what Armstrong did wasn't a crime, right? Just against some arbitrary rules of some form of sports entertainment (a bicycle race!)? And that the treatments he undertook are perfectly legal in the real world? And that they may have even helped his recovery from cancer, in one way or another? You hate charity. We get it. But I'll take the work of Bill Gates and Lance Armstrong over whatever it is the armchair pundits around the internet are doing, all day.
PavlovsCat 13y ago
It's still a bit like taking with one hand and giving with the other, if you know what I mean? Where the money comes from does matter. So it's not quite as disconnected as the examples you cited, IHMO. Kinda like drug barons who help kids and poor people in their communities; sure it's great for those they help, but it doesn't make you forget the dead bodies they are also responsible for. Not just the companies ripped to pieces, consider all the FUD about open source - haven't heard that stuff in a while, huh? But imagine if that would actually have taken root; and it wasn't for lack of trying, that's for sure. Did Microsoft cost the world more than it gives back? How would the world look if what they wanted, they would have gotten? Hard to tell. I do think Gates is aging well, and getting cooler as he does; but it would help if he at least could say "in hindsight, some Microsoft tactics and claims were kinda low, oh well", instead of going on about how everything is so wonderful and smart and clean, and the past full of hard work and friendly ribbing and nothing else. But to be fair, that seems to be the norm of the industry, and he seems to be less full of it than most. So yeah, good for him, but still let's not confuse him with people who spend all their life doing good, or saints. If I give someone 5$, my generosity is not measured by how poor that person is, but by how much 5$ are for me. That sometimes gets forgotten in all the money porn.
- bmelton 13y ago
  I don't necessarily disagree. The broader point that I was trying to make was that idols shouldn't be idolized, nor should demons be demonized. People may or may not be the sum of their actions, but even if you just mugged somebody an hour ago, you giving that $5 to a poor person is still an act of good. Not quite as benevolent, but still, preferable to having spent that $5 on crack cocaine. Robin Hood he isn't (though I'd argue that people's view of Robin Hood is also very skewed -- he did not steal from the rich and give to the poor, as the nutshell synopsis goes), but nor is he Satan. In real life, we're very few of us saints. In regards to 'credit', it's worth noting (forgive me if you already knew this) that I just learned not too long ago that Mother Teresa, often pedestooled as the archetype of things saintly, was not only not very Saintly, but depending on how you read it, quite the horrid cunt, whose good deeds were mostly a marketing ploy that she used to amass wealth. All totaled though, yes, it'd be fantastic if Bill Gates came out and decried the actions of his 'former self'. But that doesn't mean that his current contributions don't massively benefit society.
ewoodrich 13y ago
< Orson Scott Card is a rampant homophobe. I absolutely hate him for that. Doesn't affect my opinion of his novels though, not in the least. I respect you for that. In addition, I don't personally blame him for his views, but strongly disagree with them. But my love of his books doesn't interfere with my disagreement with his sexual identity views. I feel that if in the '90s the prevailing wasn't the same, that OSC, wouldn't voice the same opinions so cavalierly. I can disagree with someone's politics without disagreeing with their literary ideas, and I don't have any qualms about that. OSC is a fantastic author, with terrible personal opinions and I accept that unconditionally.

by bmelton 13y ago

rbanffy 13y ago

> Hate the man's business practices. Love the man for his philanthropical work At the core of this is trust. Bill lost mine at Microsoft's helm - he has shown a borderline sociopath that will stop at nothing and will destroy anyone on his path. To give this much credit to someone with such dark history is appallingly naive.

bmelton 13y ago
To give him trust might be naive, but giving him credit for the things he has done is just a recognition of fact. He donated $28,000,000,000 to a philanthropic organization. Refusal to "give him credit" for that is just being petty. He did it. Conversely, he engaged in anti-competitive behavior with Netscape, so he gets the credit for that too. Loving him for the former is every bit as pragmatic as hating him for the latter, but neither act means that is who he is as a person. People are far too complex for that.
bluekitten 13y ago
Everytime a big company implements a feature or rolls out something, they affect companies working in that area. You can find similar things about almost any company or person, but for some reason the bad things about Microsoft are always amplified. For example, see how Google squashed Skyhook http://www.theverge.com/2011/05/12/google-android-skyhook-lawsuit-motorola-samsung/ http://www.theverge.com/2011/05/12/google-android-skyhook-la... Aliyun and Acer prevented from launching a phone because of the secret rules of the "Open" Handset Alliance. http://www.zdnet.com/cn/report-google-stops-acer-from-launching-aliyun-phone-in-china-7000004246/ http://www.zdnet.com/cn/report-google-stops-acer-from-launch... Apple and the famed 30% cut of even sales from Apps, an example of how they used someone's OSS code in Safari and then banned them from the app store: http://blog.readability.com/2011/02/an-open-letter-to-apple/ http://blog.readability.com/2011/02/an-open-letter-to-apple/ My point is that someone fed a steady diet of bad stories about one company while barely being exposed to good stories ends up not liking them and everyone knows how many tech sites and journalists and news sites like Slashdot and HN's bias in story selection because of the vocal minority who sometimes appear to be on a crusade of ends justifying the means.
- rbanffy 13y ago
  It seems you need a history lesson: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stac_Electronics#Microsoft_lawsuit https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stac_Electronics#Microsoft_law...
  - bluekitten 13y ago
    I already knew about that, but not sure what you're implying here. The link says this: >in 1994, a California jury ruled the infringement by Microsoft was not willful, but awarded Stac $120 million in compensatory damages, coming to about $5.50 per copy of MS-DOS 6.0 that had been sold. The jury also agreed with a Microsoft counterclaim that Stac had misappropriated the Microsoft trade secret of a pre-loading feature that was included in Stacker 3.1, and simultaneously awarded Microsoft $13.6 million on the counterclaim. [2] Are you alleging that Microsoft bought the judge and/or jury off? Why would they award such a high amount then? They ruled that the infringement wasn't intentional, and certainly they had way more access to the facts and testimony of the case than you or me. I have to ask, did you even read your own history lesson before teaching it to others? Also, it's funny that no company can even sell the equivalent of DriveSpace these days for Chromebooks, iPads and iPhones. Android phones would probably need the user to get root and/or unlock the bootloader which is a nonstarter for already niche software. Would even be banned from the Mac App Store. Yet people buy them and cheer them on just because they're more anti-MS while pretending to be pro software freedom. A couple of contemporary history lessons for you. Google found guilty of infringing Lycos patents. http://www.fastcompany.com/1844439/meet-vringo-cto-ken-lang-mystery-geek-center-google-patent-fight http://www.fastcompany.com/1844439/meet-vringo-cto-ken-lang-... Similar Apple lawsuit http://www.zdnet.com/virnetx-wins-apple-patent-infringement-case-7000007018/ http://www.zdnet.com/virnetx-wins-apple-patent-infringement-...
sliverstorm 13y ago
So what? If he is a sociopath, so what? Are you trying to insinuate he has dark ulterior motives for his charity efforts? If not, why is his personality worth a damn to the discussion?
- rbanffy 13y ago
  > Are you trying to insinuate he has dark ulterior motives for his charity efforts? Dark ulterior motives? No. Being remembered as a philanthropist rather than a robber-baron is quite enough. Hs is doing good, but he is not doing good for the good of others.
  - sliverstorm 13y ago
    Why the f%ck do you care if he is doing it to be remembered? Since when was the value of charitable works derived from the motive?
    - bluekitten 13y ago
      As usual, Linus shoots straight. http://www.osnews.com/story/21887/Linus_Microsoft_Hatred_is_a_Disease http://www.osnews.com/story/21887/Linus_Microsoft_Hatred_is_...
    - icebraining 13y ago
      The discussion started by matthewmacleod is about the moral character of Bill Gates, not the value of his charitable works. For most people, intentions are important when discussing the former.
  - snowbunny 13y ago
    By that metric, anyone who does any good can be discredited by saying that they did it because it made them feel good.
Houshalter 13y ago
Calling him a sociopath is absurd. A sociopath wouldn't care about charity in the slightest. If you think he was doing it for publicity purposes, he wouldn't be putting so much effort into it or avoiding the media at times like was mentioned in the article. You don't have to agree with what he did, but he has certainly shown he is not a bad person and has good intentions.
anigbrowl 13y ago
'Dark history'? Aggressive business practices for sure, but it's not like he was dumping toxic chemicals in the water supply or something. How many people were killed as a result of Gates 'sociopathy'? I'm afraid that slowing the popularity of Linux and the open web doesn't strike me as particularly impressive in the Evil Genius stakes.
- yapcguy 13y ago
  Jimmy Saville, well-known British celebrity with lots of charity work for kids, now known to be a sick child abuser. Lance Armstrong, well-known cyclist with lots of charity work fighting cancer, now known to be a drug cheat. Can Bill Gates wash away his sins? Has he really turned over a new leaf? "The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation's investments in Monsanto and Cargill have come under heavy criticism. Is it time for the foundation to come clean on its visions for agriculture in developing countries?" http://www.theguardian.com/global-development/poverty-matters/2010/sep/29/gates-foundation-gm-monsanto http://www.theguardian.com/global-development/poverty-matter...
  - anigbrowl 13y ago
    /facepalm at how many logical fallacies you have squeezed into one short comment.
  - onebaddude 13y ago
    >Lance Armstrong, well-known cyclist with lots of charity work fighting cancer, now known to be a drug cheat. Are you really equating Lance Armstrong with a guy who likely sexually abused hundreds of children? That's idiotic. You realize that what Armstrong did wasn't a crime, right? Just against some arbitrary rules of some form of sports entertainment (a bicycle race!)? And that the treatments he undertook are perfectly legal in the real world? And that they may have even helped his recovery from cancer, in one way or another? You hate charity. We get it. But I'll take the work of Bill Gates and Lance Armstrong over whatever it is the armchair pundits around the internet are doing, all day.

PavlovsCat 13y ago

It's still a bit like taking with one hand and giving with the other, if you know what I mean? Where the money comes from does matter. So it's not quite as disconnected as the examples you cited, IHMO. Kinda like drug barons who help kids and poor people in their communities; sure it's great for those they help, but it doesn't make you forget the dead bodies they are also responsible for. Not just the companies ripped to pieces, consider all the FUD about open source - haven't heard that stuff in a while, huh? But imagine if that would actually have taken root; and it wasn't for lack of trying, that's for sure. Did Microsoft cost the world more than it gives back? How would the world look if what they wanted, they would have gotten? Hard to tell. I do think Gates is aging well, and getting cooler as he does; but it would help if he at least could say "in hindsight, some Microsoft tactics and claims were kinda low, oh well", instead of going on about how everything is so wonderful and smart and clean, and the past full of hard work and friendly ribbing and nothing else. But to be fair, that seems to be the norm of the industry, and he seems to be less full of it than most. So yeah, good for him, but still let's not confuse him with people who spend all their life doing good, or saints. If I give someone 5$, my generosity is not measured by how poor that person is, but by how much 5$ are for me. That sometimes gets forgotten in all the money porn.

bmelton 13y ago
I don't necessarily disagree. The broader point that I was trying to make was that idols shouldn't be idolized, nor should demons be demonized. People may or may not be the sum of their actions, but even if you just mugged somebody an hour ago, you giving that $5 to a poor person is still an act of good. Not quite as benevolent, but still, preferable to having spent that $5 on crack cocaine. Robin Hood he isn't (though I'd argue that people's view of Robin Hood is also very skewed -- he did not steal from the rich and give to the poor, as the nutshell synopsis goes), but nor is he Satan. In real life, we're very few of us saints. In regards to 'credit', it's worth noting (forgive me if you already knew this) that I just learned not too long ago that Mother Teresa, often pedestooled as the archetype of things saintly, was not only not very Saintly, but depending on how you read it, quite the horrid cunt, whose good deeds were mostly a marketing ploy that she used to amass wealth. All totaled though, yes, it'd be fantastic if Bill Gates came out and decried the actions of his 'former self'. But that doesn't mean that his current contributions don't massively benefit society.

ewoodrich 13y ago

< Orson Scott Card is a rampant homophobe. I absolutely hate him for that. Doesn't affect my opinion of his novels though, not in the least. I respect you for that. In addition, I don't personally blame him for his views, but strongly disagree with them. But my love of his books doesn't interfere with my disagreement with his sexual identity views. I feel that if in the '90s the prevailing wasn't the same, that OSC, wouldn't voice the same opinions so cavalierly. I can disagree with someone's politics without disagreeing with their literary ideas, and I don't have any qualms about that. OSC is a fantastic author, with terrible personal opinions and I accept that unconditionally.