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Bill Gates: Windows Patched Faster than Linux
petard writes "In a very interesting interview published by the Register, Bill Gates made several interesting claims about Longhorn. Many of them have been extensively covered recently, including plans to force users to patch automatically. Surprisingly, everyone seems to have overlooked his statement that Microsoft fixes bugs faster than Linux developers do. 'We've gone from little over 40 hours on average to 24 hours. With Linux, that would be a couple of weeks on average.' Either he's lying or woefully misinformed; their recent performance seems to be more on the order of 3+ months, or over 2000 hours."
It's not like revisionist history is a new concept. In 1981, I could completely see, Bill Gates saying the 640K quote, and have it taken out of context. One of the Watson's (of founding IBM fame, I can't remember if it was Sr, or Jr. I'm guessing Sr), once said that worldwide we'd probably only need 5 computers ever. It's not like he's terrible stupid either.
If you really want to have fun and games, write down a particular fact that you can't remember a specific event ever happening in your childhood. Now, store that piece of paper someplace safe. Now everyday imagine that event happening. Picture in your mind how you would remember it if it happened. Over the course of time, you'll "remember" it as a fact that is just like all of your other memories from childhood. You'll know it's inaccurate, but to your mind you can't tell between a the old true memories, and the newly fabricated memories. It's a simple form of brainwashing. I've specific memories that I know for a fact never happened. I constructed a conversation I never had once for the purpose of trying this out. It's the old adage about a lie repeated often enough becomes true.
I'll willingly admit it's entirely possible Bill never said that, and he surely can't prove he never said it. However, I'll never trust Bill's memory about him not saying it. However, if you tracked down the original references to it and debunk that, now you have something. Somebody has to cite it. It's in the Usenet Archives, or in old papers and trade magazines. Find the originals and debunk them, don't cite Bill saying 15 years later that he didn't say it. That's not debunking.
Here, I'll prove it to you. "I've done some stupid things, and I've done some wrong things, but I was never born. Nobody in the human race would ever say they were born.". Does that "debunk" the fact that I was born or not? I'd say my sitting here, and typing into slashdot is pretty strong evidence I was born at some point in the past.
A number of statistics have been proven to be false, but are cited all the time in the past. If you follow all of the original citations back, you'll find they all start at one single reference. The original person who stated it, either lied, or had something wrong with the way they came to the conclusion. By the time anybody figures that out, it'll be a "fact". I know this happened on stuff reguarding sexual orientation (formely common cited stat that 10% of all men are gay), and I believe it's happened on several other occasions about other commonly cited stats.
Debunking involves getting reasonable close to the source and debunking it. Not asking somebody 20 years later, who has a vested interest in not looking like an idiot, if he said something that's blatantly stupid 20 years ago. Read up on what Bill has said about what he thought of the internet.
I believe it was Cringely who pointed out that Bill always proclaims he was a visionary about the net, and saw ahead of everyone how much that could change the world. Yet when you read his book from that time where he was spouting off about what he thought was the next big things in computers, just as the internet went mainstream he never mentioned it once. Bill's in a position where he can't afford to say, I missed that huge new technology. He's Bill Gate's, he thinks Microsoft single handedly invented the Personal Computer. Just read the end of the article.
Kirby