Slashdot Mirror
The Microsoft Millionaires Come of Age
iseff writes "The NYTimes is running a story about the ways in which Microsoft millionaires are putting their money to use. According to the story, there is somewhere around 10,000 Microsoft made millionaires spending money on various pet projects. For example, former programmer Chris Peters bought the PBA (Professional Bowlers Association), while Stephanie DeVaan founded a political action committee and Rich Tong founded Ignition Partners, a VC firm."
Can't we talk about Google instead?
That is just obscenely absurd for one company.
http://www.google.com/search?q=bill+gates+53+milli on+house
And bill bought all these
fuvoo: watch something
The most admirable way Microsoft is giving back: allowing us all to us the digits 1 and 0 royalty-free: http://www.huumor.com/joke_1118
but that just proves they charge too much for their software. But since these are all guys who own stock I guess that is unrelated to income.
What I don't get is why these people still work. Bill can never "cash out" so he is not really worth that much. If he sold it all the stock would drop big time.
Of course. If I had several million I would not work and live comfortably on some tropical beach for thr rest of my life. Ok I got 10 million, I am out of here, I could give a damn about my company politices or charities. Let me relax the rest of my life drinking in some south pacific beach.
Chris Peters bought the PBA (Professional Bowlers Association), while Stephanie DeVaan founded a political action committee and Rich Tong founded Ignition Partners, a VC firm
Those were the ones that I felt spent their money foolishly. Personally, I planned to make my money really make a difference, so I invested it in RAMBUS's RDRam, SCO's OpenLinux, and those great people at Maui eXtreem that brought us CherryOS, to just name a few. I also have some money in some really rather secret business, but I can tell you this much... apparently a prince somehow somewhere is being locked captive in a sewer ditch, twelve KM outside of Falusia, Iraq, but he managed to get to a terminal somehow, find me, and ask for some assistance. I stand to make millions by helping this individual simply move his money to a safe place. Now that is smart business.
Soon I will be on TV telling Donald Trump, "YOURE FIRED..... NIGGA!"
"When life gives you lemons, don't make lemonade. Make life take the lemons back!" -- Cave Johnson
There is around?
It's time for some of the "special ones" responsible for posting the material to step aside. This is getting more than silly.
It's time to clean house and boot the idiots.
It's not fair to those who submit the stories, only to have some moron with special privileges " edit " (mangle) them to make them grammatically incorrect - mostly, because they don't know what they are doing. I have an authoring background worthy of doing this and I'm certain there are others as well.
It's time to put them out to pasture, but not to stud. We don't need those genes to continue.
For example, former programmer Chris Peters bought the PBA (Professional Bowlers Association)... If you can't beat them... just redefine the value of "splits".
~ Whence do you come, slayer of men, or where are you going, conqueror of space?
"It has also drawn some well-known partners, most recently John Connors, who retired as Microsoft's chief financial officer in March."
It's happening!! *hides in basement and waits for Arnie*
Now I know what I want to be when I grow up. A Microsoft Millionaire!
Thats probably better (but less fun) than my alternative career goal
Starsucks
"If I were a millionaire, I'd probably do the same thing."
And that is the reason the world does exactly what you don't want them to..
I don't understand why you would complain about something that you said you wouldn't do? Thats like complaining that chips are the most disgusting food product ever... And then eat some chips the next day.
Being a millionaire isn't that special when you're in the Seattle area and you can get a run-down shack for about $1 million. On the other hand, you can buy a crapload of lattes.
Tried shopping for a house in New York City? Being a millionaire used to mean you were rich. Now it just means you are middle class with some savings.
2. People spend money.
3. Fascination!
I thought "and Rich Tong founded Ignition Partners" said Tong founded Ignorance Partners at first, that would have been interesting news.
'For we walk by faith, not by sight.' II Corinthians 5:7
...but I was too young to even know what a computer is! I guess one must find himself at the right place at the right time...and in this case..."with the right knowledge." What is the next big thing? I am sure I am of age now.
I didn't say I was all above everyone else and that I'm divine and I'm not selfish and all that junk. I was just making a comment on our society. jeeze.
FTA:
As Mr. Sage put it, "It's like a little bit of Bill Gates came with us when we left."
*holds vomit in*
A current prices a million would buy you, well, about three lattes.
Microsoft gives a crapload of money to different causes though. In fact I think they're number one when it comes to philanthropy. For example, if an employee donates to a charity the company will give twice that.
Especially with the liberal area the Microsoft headquarters is in, it's almost a given that they give tons of money to "disadvantaged" groups.
I'm in no way trying to be disrespectful.
:)
All I am saying is I would like to see people follow their good insincts rather than just shrug it off and go with what society tends to do... Be an individual, stand up for what you believe.
...buying themselves a new soul?
But the way you put it--that's no comment on our society. That's a comment on human nature.
When the issues are political...
For example, your not going to stop the hunger in N. Korea when Kim will explicitly reroute the imporation of the food to his army and away from the civilians. Same goes for regions of Africa as well.
Life is not for the lazy.
how nobody spends their money in ways that could help others. Microsoft alone could solve the world's hunger problems. They could cure all the curable diseases. They could save the 33,000 kids that are dying every day because they're hungry.
Okay, okay, we all know MS doesn't give a flying piece of bird crap about people, no matter who they are. But still, it's really sick to see some of the things on which they spend their money...
Bill Gates has personally spent more on charity than everyone who reads slashdot combined. He spent $28 billion endowing his foundation, and they do a lot of good work in, for example, third world health issues.
Whatever Bill Gates' flaws, and he has a lot, he has been very generous with his money.
That does not do credit to Bill Gates. He already donates lots of money to medical research. IIRC, when he dies he will only leave a (relatively) small fraction of his fortune to his children and donate the rest to charities too.
NY Times Obit, A.D.P
Oh shit! I forgot to click "Post Anonymously"...
Bill Gates has a hobby business on the side, by the way. It consists of buying up the rights to all the best pictures in the world.
You are actually a moron. Microsoft does not have enough money to do any one of the things you stated individually let alone all together. First of all there is already enough food on this planet. Its a matter of distribution. Devising cures for diseases requires hundreds of billions of dollars, something MS doesn't have.
;-)
Lets just admit that we're not all that good at economics and thats why we're not all rich.
Mac OS X and Windows XP working side by side to fight back the night.
Right you are. That is one of the biggest problems facing open source right now.
You get a handful of well-educated people arguing for an idea. Then you get a mob of people who just want to bitch at something... Bill Gates is just their target.
If you want to bitch about something, target on it, make sure it's the truth, and then try to correct it (instead of mindlessly bitching).
Honestly, do you think that MS was able to rise to such a strong position without a lot of help from a lot of entities? You know that IBM did a lot of soul searching about the time that Windows 95 and OS2 were floating around. The American public has to be swayed. Offer a cheaper computer, with Linux, OpenOffice, and so forth... do you really think that the question "is it compatible?" is coming out of the mouth of a person who really fully grasps the ramifications of that statement?
Wake up, the people who want to drive us into a police state certainly aren't smart enough to keep capitalism alive. You're going to need another approach, and spreading lies on a message board won't help.
Mod the parent way the hell up.
The African pipeline system. I think one of the ultimate feats of engineering and humanitarian events would be to supply fresh water to villiages in Africa. The proposed system would be simple: Create desalinzation plants on the coast and then pipe water inland. The cost of such a system would be astronomical, but when you calculate what you earned in human lives bettered and saved then you can see its one of the best buys ever.
God spoke to me.
I apologize, but I honestly don't follow your argument. Could you flesh it out some more?
Have you watched "proper athletes" try and bowl; it's laughable. You might not like the sport, but you don't need to diss it. ESPN ran the "bowling night "tournament with such "professional athletes"
as Brandi Chastain and Terrell Owens and the scores were never higher than 180.
Bill Gates has also donated more money to charity than any one person has...ever.
:-]
Read it. Its not news. It is a liberal "Ra! Ra!", lets all feel good about being liberal story...but news it is not.
Phredd - "I have found people tend to take you far less seriously once you start waving your genitals at them..."
There is a limit though - when you start charging prices that are so high that you're losing a lot of your customers, the profit sinks (even though the profit per customer still rises (ideally), you get a lot less customers, and profits sink.)
You can make it more complicated (competitors influence each other, cost/quality-decisions, non-linear cost relationships, price sensitivity analysises, marketing mumbo-jumbo), but the basic principle still holds - the problem comes in attaining profit maximization.
I have a really elegant proof for Fermat's last theorem. If this sig was only a bit longer...
Jealous is so ugly and nasty. Ayn Rand would call your kind of stupidity "evil", in fact.
I don't really like Bowling, but I don't hate it either. I'm actually pretty ambivalent on it.
But I have to ask, what exactly is your point? You know, Emeril can probably cook way better than most professional athletes. That makes him an athlete too right? I bet I can program better than professional athletes, does that make me a professional athlete? Conversely, do you suspect that bowlers can play a game of football and win against a seasoned team of footballers?
Or were you simply trying to suggest that since they can do something most other people can't do as well, it somehow innately makes them worthy of respect? In a very small, very limited way perhaps. It is not carte blanche. If they want to be egomaniacs and call themselves superheroes, then I would laugh at them regardless of whatever respect they deserve for doing what they do. The original poster apparently has a lower threshhold and laughs at them for calling themselves professional athletes. It has nothing to do with whether they're skilled or not, it's about whether they deserve to be called athletes.
Random and weird software I've written.
Well, maybe it will work better for that purpose than colonialism.
Freedom is not increased by mere diminuation of government. Anarchy is freedom for the strong and slavery for the weak.
And how did the inhabitants of inland Africa survive for the past centuries without special pipelines for water? I am thinking that the current problem the pipe lines try to address is caused by other, root factors.
Microsoft alone could solve the world's hunger problems. They could cure all the curable diseases. They could save the 33,000 kids that are dying every day because they're hungry.
Huh? Are you stupid, or just dilusional? That was the most ridiculous thing I've read in quite some time.
Besides, Gates and Microsoft have donated plenty. Their donations -- both as a percentage of profit and in absolute terms -- dwarf those of most other companies, including those that are many times larger than Microsoft, such as Walmart.
What has that got to do with rent seeking? It seems as though that's just a manner of getting finer grained control of what you charge people (with a few caveats that people are likely to rebel against).
Are you sure that you weren't reading at a threshold too high to see the entire conversation?
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The fascination comes from the fact that no company or organization of any kind, I'd guess, in the history of man, has generated this much wealth, this quickly. Arguibly, Microsoft is one of the most successful companies in history.
"According to the story, there is somewhere around 10,000
You can't fix the subject/predicate to agree on plurality?
--
Internet Explorer (n): Another bug -- that is, a feature that can't be turned off -- in Windows.
The sad truth is that the billion$ earned by microserfs are ours. We're the ones who own the mutual funds that invest in Microsoft. We're the ones who buy MSFT because we believe their Xbox 360 hype. And, until recently, we haven't seen anything in return (in the form of dividends, that is). It's incredible how we buy into the stock market shell game.
For what it's worth, I've used my time and money to start up a new company. I don't want to sit around all day long and do nothing. While I really enjoyed working for Microsoft, I have to realize that that chapter in my life is closed and that there are so many other cool things that can be done.
But these are people with a million in liquefiable assets. If you're a property millionaire (like me) you can only realise that money by refinancing your home (bad idea, interest rates are on the up) or selling (err, where would I live, the median price here is $1.2m ?) The M'soft employees can realise a million dollars in real money, that still makes them very wealthy by most standards.
People die each year because of inadequate access to clean water. The real tragedy is that the technology to make clean drinking water is really cheap and simple. All you really need are some settling pools. It's the incompetence of these people's governments that allows so many to die unnecessarily.
Too busy staying alive... ~ R.A.
Joe Richguy gave a million dollars to Anonymous Charity! He's a good guy! Nevermind he sits on a pile of a hundred million, ninety percent of which he earned by underpaying his employees, or overcharging for his products, or polluting the river and giving everyone cancer (for which he was sued for another, say, $25 million), or having competitors liquidated by hook or by crook, or by paying off senators who then slashed social spending or cut foreign aid or voted for a war to prop up Richguy's failing business model...
Geez, calm down.
There's a big difference between agressive business tactics and polluting rivers. Has Microsoft ever given anyone cancer?
Besides, the GP was not claiming that Bill Gates' donations absolve him of "ethical lapses". He was merely pointing out that he has given a vast amount of money to charity, which is always a good thing, no matter who is doing it.
"A week in the lab saves an hour in the library"
Your way to angry for your own good, you act like Gates/MS has bombed 3rd world countries claiming they have WMD...all he has done that people complain about is release an imperfect OS, nobody is forcing you to buy it you know. I think the amount of money that man has given to charities absolves him from anything he has done. None of his buisness practices really hurt anyone, true some companies go out of buisness but its just that...BUISNESS. When Gates starts murdering inocent people then your little argument will have some weight, until then just shut up and go use Linux.
WTF? 11% invested in SCO? Is this even up to date. I had a feeling Microsoft/Bill might be behind this company to be used as a proxy against OSS
Life is not for the lazy.
I hear this all the time, and it's just not true. It's not "just" distribution; distribution requires transport, oil prices are going up, therefore the cost of getting food to those in need is going up.
Now more than ever it's more difficult to feed everyone, because the cost of transport is at an all-time high.
I feel fantastic, and I'm still alive.
Remember the old bus mouse that Microsoft sold? It was their very first mouse, and it needed a hardware interface on an ISA card. I reverse-engineered that driver, and made my own hardware interface for the S-100 bus which could talk to that mouse. Along the way, I noticed a secret string in the driver that said "Chris Peters rules OK!". That was back in 1984 or thereabouts. I'm glad to see that Chris has done well for himself.
-russ
Don't piss off The Angry Economist
When you borrow money, you are renting money. If you invest the packet in a project that returns more than the interest on the loan, you have turned a profit and wasted nothing.
"Your website is broken in Firefox"
It's not actually broken - it just doesn't render properly. You can still read the words - you're just missing the sidebar with my links.
And, it's not because of some strange conspiracy. I'm just too lazy to fix the CSS so that Firefox knows what to do with it.
I'd like to point out, though, that it renders fine (not perfectly - but fine) in Opera and Safari (and Safari is my favorite browser, so I don't feel any great motivation to go fixing it for anything else).
- Rory [Microsoft Employee] | Free dirt: neopoleon.com
How many other software companies are spending R&D on something like this ?
Thank you. Jesus..my first post and it's this? Anyway - M.
Wow. Jealous is ugly, obvious, and really ridiculous, all at the same time.
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It's all gone Rich Tong! Sorry.
$75,000 under $100,000 - 8,903,894 returns
, ,id=96981,00.html
$100,000 under $200,000 - 8,469,199
$200,000 under $500,000 - 2,018,372
$500,000 under $1,000,000 - 355,617
$1,000,000 under $1,500,000 - 85,479
$1,500,000 under $2,000,000 - 36,492
$2,000,000 under $5,000,000 - 52,157
$5,000,000 under $10,000,000 - 12,266
$10,000,000 or more - 6,836
21% of the tax returns pay roughly 55.9% of the Federal Income Tax, the 6836 at the top, pay 3% of the Federal Income Tax
http://www.irs.gov/taxstats/indtaxstats/article/0
I did a stint as a consultant at Microsoft for a while. I remember being in a meeting with Rich Tong. I was the second one to arrive, Rich was the first. I said hello, sat down. He was booting his laptop. We chatted for a minute. He looked so young, I literally thought he was an intern there to to take notes. The instant the meeting started, it was clear I was quite wrong. Someone later pointed out to me that he was a VP.
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gecko-based browsers far outnumber khtml-based browsers.
Yeah, thats probably a better solution than a super expensive infrastructure. I really didn't put a lot of thought into the whole thing. As you say, I do understand the governments aren't doing all they could.
God spoke to me.
Did anyone read the piece of propaganda? Only the online NY Times site (not in my Sunday NY Times) has the following:
"Julie Bick is a former Microsoft employee and the author of "The Microsoft Edge." (Pocket Books, 1999). The people she interviewed for this article include some friends and former co-workers."
Yeesh. Talk about product placement and corporate tail wagging the dog...
A defense contractor in Antarctica is a bad idea. Get Raytheon OUT of Antarctica.
Sounds like it's just a matter of distribution to me.
If other reasons we do lack, we swear no one will die when we attack
If you believe that Microsoft is a legitimate business earning a fair profit for its products, then his donations to charity are a wonderful example of philanthropy. OTOH if you believe that Microsoft gouges consumers by leveraging its monopoly OS position to stifle competition and keep software prices artificially inflated, then the $25 billion he's donated to charity probably would've done more good if left in the hands of the people who were overchargd. It'd be like a shop charging $5 per bottle of water for firefighters after 9/11, then donating the excess proceeds to charity. Yeah they donated a ton of money, but the firefighters were robbed of money that could've been put to other (better from a market standpoint) uses. A more accurate assessment would be that the firefighters were coerced into unwillingly making a donation to charity. Course we can argue forever about which view is correct; and in truth both views may be partially correct.
Hey, the good news is that if you've got enough money to do the pipeline, you could probably just buy those African governments instead and have enough left over to build local infrastructures :)
A fine is a tax you pay for doing wrong and a tax is a fine you pay for doing all right.
I don't understand why this is a problem. A "company" has goals. They figured out, as a company, how to achieve those goals. The people rewarded are the owners, and sometimes the employees. If the employees didn't get the cash, it'd have just gone to the owners. This should be perceived as a great thing!
The wealth of the company, and their employees is a testiment to the fine job they did, as measured by the votes of their customers, in the form of money spent.
Any comments that this is obscene is pure jealousy.
FTA:
As Mr. Sage put it, "It's like a little bit of Bill Gates came with us when we left."
So that's how they climbed up the corporate ladder. Good advice I suppose, if your boss is into that kind of thing.
"What do you despise? By this are you truly known." --Princess Irulan, Manual of Muad'Dib
/)
wow, great priorities
Sorry, all my money is tied up in real estate, I can't afford the fee for the Economist's premium content to read the entire article.
Microsoft Computer Expert quoted: "Yes, we have platinum year-round passes to all matches by the WWF until 2025, a life-time subscription to Weekly World News, and I send money to a guy in Vegas who's guaranteeing he can net me a 90% return on investment with his Martingale betting method."
When asked what, at a company like Microsoft, qualified him to be a "computer expert", he responded: "I'm the one who doesn't yell into the mouse."
I wonder where Linus Torvalds and Richard Stallman will put their millions of dollars?
Oh wait!
Rather than Linus and Richard taking money out of your and my pockets to become millionaires, they instead worked hard, earned true respect, and gave back to the common community. And they did it all without forming a monopoly, engaging in illegal practices, and lobbying governments to enact repressive laws to bolster their ability to take money out of our pockets.
Who are the real people that are helping both themselves and humanity: the "Microsoft millionaires" or people like RMS and Linus?
But by 2002, she was itching to do more, so she put her wealth to work in support of abortion rights and helped to found a political action committee called Washington Women for Choice.
Although Republicans are usually pro-business, if it becomes common knowledge that Microsoft employees are dumping money into "abortion rights" groups, that could make the current administration's position on antitrust a lot less friendly towards Microsoft.
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
The problem is that all these millionaires made the vast majority of their money, not from free market forces, but from a government imposed monopoly on the distribution of infromation called copyrights.
This is not a natural form of profit, and when it comes to free markets, I suspect that many of them probably have no clue as how to make money any more than Miscosoft has a clue of how to make money outside of it's core office/os monopoly.
MS is literally burning most of their resources on trying to become an entertainment/media company right at a time in history when that part of the industry is predestined to become worthless as society enteres the information age. (Think of the people that were in the plantation business as the industrial revolution started to explode, yeah at first they became extremely rich as the cotton gin made their slaves 1000 times more productive, then they went to satanic hell)
The worst part is, very little of this money will likely go into successfull ventures, but when it hits the fan with the free software movement, a lot will likely go into dirty hardball. (Think SCO, MPAA BSA, RIAA rolled into one magnified by over 10000.)
Poverty, disease, and hunger are not just a matter of not enough money being thrown at the problems; while more money can always help more, it is not even necessarily a lack of money that is always the primary obstacle to development. There are already hundreds of billions of dollars spent on aid, and brilliant people doing their best to make the world a better place. And yes, the world still sucks. But the victories are not always things that are heard of in popular culture. Norman Borlaug sure isn't a billionaire.
English is easier said than done.
Maybe we are good at economics, and maybe we're not, but you're talking to people who freaked out and demanded their money back at the theatre when they found out that Kill Bill had nothing to do with Mr. Gates.
You need to find something more worthy of your anger, like a social concern or something like that. Expending energy in hating corporations never got anyone anything.
Web2.0: I love when people Flickr my cuil and digg my boingboing until my google is reddit and I start to yahoo
Great, everybody wins that way.
Or we could educate people on why living in a desert is really not good.
But what if Bill reads slashdot? Ah-ha! That's your logic gone, mister smarty :-)
Actually, it looks like he hasn't been active for a while.
If that's so, I wonder what would happen if any of their employees donated to the Free Software Foundation just to yank their chain...
Couldn't help but notice the Google Ad infection.
So can't be too much different.
How in the hell is the stinking hippie RMS helping humanity? Envisioning an operating system he couldn't get off the ground and writing an overcomplicated text editor, then living off award money and telling other people that they don't deserve to earn in the software industry? And your definition of not helping is a guy that, in all likelihood, doubled the American economy? Interesting thinking.
I used to work at Microsoft, and I can't believe the press are running stories about this tired crap now. Everyone who joined MS since about mid 98 has seen just about nothing from the options. My buddies and I used to joke about being Microsoft Hundredaires. The stock price is so habitually flat now that the company even stopped bothering to give out options some years ago.
Leaving aside the question of stock, it's a crappy place to work. The management is clueless, the bonuses small, the review system unbeliveably stupid and annoying. I am so glad I quit a couple of years ago and got a better job at a non-evil company.
Unfortunately, the original article has disappeared into the aether, but there's an archive.org copy of what happened to the Original Microsoft 11 here:w ww.abqtrib.com/archives/business00/041200_microsof t.shtml
http://web.archive.org/web/20040202201554/http://
That's not their money, it's ours, jerks!
Just say no to license servers!!
"gecko-based browsers far outnumber khtml-based browsers."
Woo-hoo!
If it isn't MS vs. OSS, then it's OSS vs. OSS, isn't it?
Just not happy unless there's some kind of petty conflict, are you?
- Rory [Microsoft Employee] | Free dirt: neopoleon.com
Sure, a million bucks isn't alot of money these days....especially if the person that gets the moddest sum is from the irresponsible sector of society. In this case, a financially irresponsible person would be someone who's poor and suddenly becomes a millionaire.
;-)
Through my personal observations of people around me, "rags to riches" people end up spending a large portion of their newly found wealth on expensive "toys" and other such material possessions and get in over their heads faster than they can realize.
For example, if one were to get $3million "overnight" they would become extremely overwhelmed and buy things like $750,000 imported sports cars. Sure, they would be able to afford the purchase...but they may not take into account the insurance cost ($180,000/year or more) and maintence...since it's an import, any parts that are needed to make repairs need to be flown from overseas on special order.
Another "fatal flaw" that this sector tends to posess is the need to brag. The more you talk about the amount of money you have, the more you'll become your family's (and friends', and neighbors') personal charity. They end up giving alot of their money away if they're insecure and/or lack will power. In these kinds of cases, more often than not, the "poorly wealthy" person ends up going insane because of constantly being harrassed, or they commit suicide.
I could go on and on with these types of examples, but my whole point here is that a fiscally responsible individual could EASILY live a modestly lavish lifestyle on the bared interest of $1million alone and would never have to work. However, a responsible person wouldn't have to live off their interest...they would have the common sense to hire a reputable accountant and investment broker so that they could continue to grow their capital without ever having to worry about drying out the well.
This is pretty off-topic from the original subject of the article, so I'll stop now before I start typing out another four paragraphs. I just hate it when I see people like this who don't know the value of a dollar....and this has just been my two cents
I apologize if some of it might not make sense, I just took some painkillers so my head is slightly spinning...heh
Nope, I'm certainly not, the post about MS+rent-seeking had been modded down, so I didn't see it... :/
PS. Damn image texts! Are they supposed to stop manual trolls as well as serious posters as scripts???
I have a really elegant proof for Fermat's last theorem. If this sig was only a bit longer...
I hope their tax returns reflect it.
Any comments that this is obscene is pure jealousy.
I am jealous of the money they have. I do not make a lot of money, like a lot of people, and would really love to be at least a little better off. It is not the money itself that is obscene, but the way in which it was made. You state that their richness is a sign of the 'fine job they did'...
I disagree. It may be like that with some consumers, but they have systematically rigged it so they cannot be toppled and you are required to purchase their products with every computer you buy. In a business sense, that is a 'job well done', but if thats what it takes to be rich, I'll pass.
You can't legislate goodness. Let each to his own destiny, by will of his freely made choices.
Gates gives $100 to fight HIV and $421m to fight Linux
Stick Men
Don't forget that money came from charging 4 to 5 times the market value of the products (most vouchers were never cashed so there was in practice no punishment) and from scams like Microsoft Software Assurance.
Beta is broken and the link to classic doesn't work. Stop wasting our time or there won't be anybody left here.
Both the EU and US still have large trade barriers and ridiculous subsidies in place.
Until these are removed, giving poor countries equal access to the world markets that EU member states and NAFTA states enjoy, any aid given is little more than propaganda.
Deleted
You do know linus is a millionaire as well right? I mean, obv not on the scale as BG and as you point out, in a far better manner. AFAIK he lives in a nice house, drives a decent open top car and looks after his kids.. Seems pretty straightforward use of money... no famous charitable stuff, but no investing in giant feet sculptures or whatever it is the MS guys are doing.
Brain(s): 0.0% user, 1.3% system, 0.1% nice, 98.6% idle
Who makes 750k imported car you speak of? And how does that cost 180k in insurance a year? Even the most expensive Ferrari isn't 750k. Also interest on 1 million is only 50,000.00 if based 5% interest. And 50,000.00 a year after deducting taxes isn't going to buy you a EASILY modestly lavish lifestyle in Redmond. Also its hard to tell who is a millionaire in Seattle. I saw Bill Gates once, didn't look like anything different, only reason I paid any attention was because of his Ferrari that was parked out on the street.
So what are you saying? That we should fund charities by the generosity of the rich?
Didn't that used to be the US policy -- let the Red Cross and other charities handle all welfare for the poor? The system was so ineffective (be it for bureaucracy, not enough donations, or whatever) that the people demanded the gov't step in and develop what we now know as our welfare system.
Addressing the needs of the poor via various gov't-mandated welfare systems is a standard worldwide tactic (no matter how much the ruling elites of the US want to dismantle such systems).
But advocating, as you seem to be doing, that we instead address charities by allowing huge corporations to reapeatedly break the law (as Microsoft has done and which has helped make these new millionaires to be millionaires), establish monopolies, and then admire and rely on the generosity of their new millionaire stockholders is an appalling idea.
My point was to contrast the above idea to what free software authors are doing: they are breaking no laws; they are not extracting money from any person; they are contributing to the good of society with software which is worth millions -- they are giving back to the common community simply by their own labor and highly specialized skills (in addition to whatever charitable contributions they might make).
Which is to be desired more?
* A corporate lawbreaker and the people who benefitted by breaking those laws, who then publicly spend some their cash and throwing some money to charity
Or
* Someone who breaks no laws, exploits no people, and who seeks enjoyment by working for the public good by quietly giving the public millions of dollars of a product from their highly specialized labor?
I'm just going to reply to this one quickly since you obviously don't know what you're cooking...there are quite a few cars who's Playboy purchase price of $750+ and in the immediate . Moreover, the monthly interest earned is $105,000/month on $3,000,000 if the interest rate were 3.5%....I do believe that earning more in interest monthly than most people make in 3 years ($105,000)...anyone could live off of that for the rest of their lives because there would never be more interest earned monthly than you could spend. I don't quite know how your american taxes go at income tax time, but in Canada you don't pay tax on lottery winnings and stuff like that....so if you had $3million at 3.5% you'd only have to pay 3.5% of $105,000....which would be $3,675.
Anyways, that's all I gotta say about this...it's still early so my brain hasn't quite switched on yet.
It's grossly unfair for the top n% of taxpayers to pay >n% of total taxes, and even these flat tax proposals going around don't adequately address this grotesque injustice. I suggest that instead of our current "progressive" system or any of these half-assed flat tax rate schemes, we just charge everyone a flat amount.
The ideal solution would be to completely abolish all income/inheritance/capital gains taxes completely, and move to an entirely consumption-based tax model. It shouldn't matter how much you earned or won or inherited, if you don't spend the money. Why not just have a 15% sales tax on everything? Houses, cars, clothing, everything. 15%. Then the super-rich, when they buy their $150,000 Ferraris, will pay 15%, which is a huge pile of tax money, while the low income family buying a used beater car for $2000 will pay practically nothing in tax.
It's a radical shift in mindsets, but the more you think about it, the more sense it makes.
Like woodworking? Build your own picture frames.
So let me get this straight:
I should be envious of people that have lied cheated and stolen their way to the top? And if I'm not, then I'm considered jealous of them?
You are as disturbed as they are.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Well, giving money to charity isn't _always_ a good thing. traditionally, it's just a defense mechanism that the rich use to keep the poor, poor and slightly happy, intear of poor-er, and angry, or trying to become less poor.
That said, BG's charity is one of the best ways of charity, he invests in social development.
About bussiness tactics, well, MS bussiness tactics take money away from poor countries that don't need to buy their products, and do need to invest that money on social stuff, and that does translate in dead people, much more than with polluted rivers.
Of course MS doesn't have as much of the fault as dumb governments that keep funneling money to them, for software without added value over free alternatives.
So you're happy to take over cleaning my families computers of spyware, then?
Fine job, my ass. They got where they were through corruption and criminal activity. It is obscene.
"If Microsoft had not killed dozens of innovative companies and imposed enormous unnecessary costs on businesses,"
1. It was practically a business model in the late 90's to set your company up for purchase by Microsoft. That's hardly "killing".
2. If the costs weren't worth it, then people wouldn't pay.
"Zimbabwe might well be getting a lot more money than it is now, both from private donations as well as from tax revenues."
Of course!
From the Scott McNealy Foundation...
And the Larry Ellison Trust...
(I have my doubts.)
"Of course, given that Microsoft is a convicted monopolist and doing what it is doing"
What exactly *is* it "doing" right now?
People bring up this monopoly thing all the time, but I can't think of a single product we produce for which there isn't competition.
OS: *nix, OS X, Symbian, SkyOS, the list goes on...
Office apps: OpenOffice, Gnome Office, AbiWord, the list goes on...
Browsers: Mozilla, Opera, Safari, the list goes on...
Etc.
"There are thousands of dedicated volunteers, and billions of dollars of donations and government funds flowing into HIV prevention and care."
Oh, OK. Well, somebody should tell Bill that there's enough, then.
There are African countries in which roughly a third of the population is infected with HIV. Doesn't seem to me like there's enough being done, and I'm guessing that every bit helps.
And that's just HIV. Problems that have all but gone away in the states still exist elsewhere. Tuberculosis, for example, is doing a lot of damage.
And Polio - remember that? Probably not if you were born recently in a developed nation, but it's still out there.
And the list goes on...
"But the only thing that you recognize is when Gates writes a big check in his comfy mansion."
Well, I wanted to stay at least remotely on topic.
If you'd like to discuss my donations to Children International and cancer research, then I'm down with that, but it would stray a bit from the whole "Microsoft Millionaires" conversation.
"Your arrogance and thoughtlessness is disgusting."
I can see why you might think that out here, but if we met in "real life", I have little doubt that we'd get along and not find each other to be quite so odd after all. It's tough to communicate everything you'd like over forums, and a lot is left to the imagination.
- Rory [Microsoft Employee] | Free dirt: neopoleon.com
Most expensive car sold in the US is $558,000.
Your post stated interest off of 1 million. And in America you have to pay tax on interest. No savings account is going to give 3.5% interest monthly. If you thinking savings account or a CD, 5% is probably the highest you can go or maybe 6% a year.
Somebody needs to rent and/or read "The Corporation"...
You obviously don't live in a large area because it's common knowledge in cities and other locales of concentrated wealth that there are cars that cost more than $558,000....the Saleen S7 costs $562,700 MSRP, plus tax and depending on what options you want you can end up spending quite a bit of money. That's just one example of an expensive exotic sports car...go to a car auction as well, lots of rare cars in mint condition can sell for over $1.5million.
I live in Microsoft country. Even Bill Gates drives a cheapo 200k Ferrari. I never ever ever seen a car in the Seattle area being driven on a semi regular basis that costs more than 200k US.
You made up some numbers its your burden to prove it.
Sorry but that's the most expensive new car...If you want to buy a McLaren F1 you have to shell out upwards of $1 million if you can find a seller. Its a used car yes, however for a few extra grand you can send it back to the factory and they will change things around to suit you (fit the seat to you, etc)
If you really want to get exotic you could buy something like a Dauer 962, which is pretty much a street legal Porsche 962 race car. I think once you are done with one of them it can easily run between $1-3M. Also the new Bugatti Veyron or whatever its called (looks like ass imho) retails for a cool $1M even.
And that's not even getting into collector cars...vintage Ferraris such as a Testa Rossa (note two words, not the car from the 80s on Miami Vice) start at $5M and go up.
But that's just me spouting off about cars.
If you look at most lottery winners and a few pro sports flash in the pan types, many end up bankrupt within a few years due to the inablity to manage the money and being taken in scams.
McClaren F1 holds its value well and so does other collector cars. So buying a collector car for 750k is not going to cost you 180k in maintenance and insurance. If you pay one million, the market is out there that you can sell it for one million.
Problem is like you said most lottery winners and flash in the pan types end up bankrupt within a few years, but its not because they bought a 750,000 car.
http://www.962lm.com/
Just had to add, they aren't out of business yet, low profile perhaps. Either way, I think we both agree stupidity costs more then their automotive choices.
It was practically a business model in the late 90's to set your company up for purchase by Microsoft. That's hardly "killing".
Sure, buying a company is not killing it. But there are lots of other companies Microsoft has driven out of business, or nearly so, that Microsoft didn't buy. Furthermore, even though the purchase of various companies by Microsoft may have been good for the few investors in those companies, it was usually bad for everybody else.
People bring up this monopoly thing all the time, but I can't think of a single product we produce for which there isn't competition.
Microsoft hasn't been convicted of being a monopoly, it has been convicted of monopolistic business practices. Being a monopoly is not illegal (but may lead to regulation). Monopolistic business practices, on the other hand, are illegal even if the company isn't a monopoly yet (but not usually worth prosecuting until a company gets as large as Microsoft).
Also, the "competition" you list is illusory. The only two competitors with much public visibility in that list, Apple and Sun, are being propped up by Microsoft, probably to make just the argument you are making; commercially and technologically, they are becoming less and less important.
Almost all the other software you list (Linux, OpenOffice, Mozilla, etc.) are the open source leftovers of once proud commercial competitors to Microsoft (you can figure out why Linux is in that list). Making them open source has been a desparate, last-ditch attempt by the rest of the industry to fight Microsoft, since competing on price, quality, and innovation hasn't not been sufficient.
Oh, OK. Well, somebody should tell Bill that there's enough, then.
The issue isn't whether there is "enough", the issue is what the donation says about the man, his character, and his company.
What exactly *is* it "doing" right now?
Filing bogus patents, refusing to comply with court orders, fialing to comply with standards, bundling more functionality into the OS, and apparently still engaging in bundling arrangements with major hardware vendors.
I can see why you might think that out here, but if we met in "real life", I have little doubt that we'd get along and not find each other to be quite so odd after all.
People and companies aren't all good or all bad. Microsoft does some good things as a company and many Microsoft employees are generally nice people. But ethics isn't like a bank account where, if you just do enough good things, it balances the bad things.
Also, people in real life are generally polite, and that means that they have the good sense to avoid controversial discussions at social events. They are also generally pragmatists, which is why they don't cut off people just because they disagree with them on ethics--the world wouldn't work otherwise. That does not mean they approve. And if people can't avoid the topic, they avoid the person in order to avoid controversy, which is probably why you mostly meet people who agree with you. The advantage of a forum like this is that one can actually discuss things frankly.
I do think 25 billion dollars going to health care in the third world is generally a good thing, but doing a good thing doesn't mean that the person doing it is a good person. What Gates is doing follows a long history of controversial figures and persons with ethical or legal problems trying to improve their image through large, publicly visible donations to popular causes. If this was about the act rather than the person, the name of the man wouldn't figure so prominently in everything. Religions and ethicists actually often hold that true charity requires anonymity.
Anyway, thanks for taking the time to respond and have a discussion
[Note: I've decided to adopt your quoting style because I think it's prettier than mine.]
But there are lots of other companies Microsoft has driven out of business, or nearly so, that Microsoft didn't buy.
OK, but isn't that business?
If Burger King were wiped off the map by McDonald's, would you be worried about it?
I realize that it's not a perfect analogy - none are. Operating systems and mainstream applications are a strange thing when it comes to innovation and competition.
On the one hand, it's Very Good to have both innovation and competition in the space. On the other, users don't want to be constantly bombarded with innovation, and they don't want to have to sit around figuring out which OS to use. They just want something, they want to stick with it, and that's that.
Innovation and choice in operating systems are high on the agenda for geeks like us, but my mom has a hard enough time learning one OS - even if there were another she liked better, I doubt she'd take the time to learn it. And then, thanks to more innovation and choice, when the technology behind the OS she's ditched leapfrogs the competition (what she's currently using), what's she supposed to do? Switch again?
Imagine going to the dealership where "innovative" cars are sold. Someone's decided that it would be a great idea to stick the steering wheel in the back seat. Is that something you want to deal with? Probably not. In this case, of course, choice can be good, but imagine as well that it's hot and humid outside, and that this was only the first dealership of ten that you're planning on visiting before you even begin to decide on which car to buy.
Suddenly choice looks like a royal pain in the ass.
In principle, I love choice, and I'm fascinated by innovation. In my daily life, though, I want to spend much more time on what's important to me than what I need to do just to get my work done.
I call this kind of work "metawork", and I hate it.
The result is that you'll find I'm interested in innovation and choice, but also in trying to make life easy for the people who are going to be using this stuff.
It's hard to find the balance.
Furthermore, even though the purchase of various companies by Microsoft may have been good for the few investors in those companies, it was usually bad for everybody else.
This is a sad thought, but, again, that's business, and if you don't want to have to deal with risks like that, then you should be sticking your own neck out to run your own company.
When I signed on with Microsoft, I did so with the full knowledge that they could drop me at any minute for any reason. Whether I think that reason is valid or not is immaterial - I've agreed to it.
Employees do it all the time, all over the place.
When I was self-employed, I didn't have this sort of thing hanging over my head. Then again, though, I worked seven days a week, took a big hit to my pocketbook at tax time, had a hard time getting loans because strong cash flow just isn't enough for the self-employed, I paid for my own health care (which was quite a bit), and did pretty much everything else under the sun.
Somebody at Microsoft is taking that duty on so that I can have a job. I'm thankful for that, and if I ever find myself in disagreement with the conditions, then I'll strike out on my own again.
Microsoft hasn't been convicted of being a monopoly, it has been convicted of monopolistic business practices.
Ahhh... Subtle distinction (for me, anyway).
The only two competitors with much public visibility in that list, Apple and Sun, are being propped up by Microsoft, probably to make just the argument you are making; commercially and technologically, they are becoming less and less important.
Well, if Apple and Sun are "becoming less and less important [technologically]," then why does it even matter? If they're becom
- Rory [Microsoft Employee] | Free dirt: neopoleon.com
OK, but isn't that business?
It often is, but Microsoft is different. When a company has upwards of 50% market share in some kind of infrastructure, the rules change. For example, Microsoft could (and did) wipe out entire companies simply by making a deliberately fabricated announcement at a show that they were "working on something similar and it would be announced soon". That's not business or competition anymore, and it certainly isn't competition on technical merit.
If Burger King were wiped off the map by McDonald's, would you be worried about it?
No, because their products are largely interchangeable. But I am concerned about Burger King wiping independent, higher quality restaurants off the map, which they do. However, that problem hasn't become anywhere nearly as bad as in the computer industry.
Innovation and choice in operating systems are high on the agenda for geeks like us, but my mom has a hard enough time learning one OS - even if there were another she liked better, I doubt she'd take the time to learn it
But that's part of the problem: lack of standardization. There were actually user interface standards being developed, but they became irrelevant once Microsoft had enough market share and decided to go it alone.
Having said that, my mother (an artsy person) doesn't have any problems moving between Windows, Macintosh, and KDE--the three systems have become so similar to each other that she basically doesn't even care much (Macintosh is actually the worst of the bunch). Unfortunately, they have become similar on Microsoft's terms, rather than through innovation by lots of different companies and open standardization of the best ideas. That's why all their interfaces are far from as easy to use as they could be.
Imagine going to the dealership where "innovative" cars are sold. Someone's decided that it would be a great idea to stick the steering wheel in the back seat. Is that something you want to deal with? Probably not. In this case, of course, choice can be good, but imagine as well that it's hot and humid outside, and that this was only the first dealership of ten that you're planning on visiting before you even begin to decide on which car to buy.
But that example undermines your argument that it is important to have a single company designing the user interfaces. There are still dozens of car companies, yet they all manage to produce products with reasonably interchangeable user interfaces. So, instead of standardization because of a near Microsoft monopoly, we could have standardization through de-factor or explicit standards.
But, to continue your example, imagine now that one of the car companies started buying up all the gas stations and only let its own cars fill up at those gas stations. Sure, you can still buy the other cars, but they'll be less and less practical. That's roughly the situation we have with Microsoft. In fact, something fairly analogous happend in the last century, and the government eventually intervened and broke it all up.
Just curious. I've learned tonight that being human isn't like a bank account where, if you just do enough good things, it balances the bad things.
Well, to be more precise, the problem is that you can't make up for a bad deed by doing something completely unrelated that's good. If you cheat somebody, no amount of donations to the World Wildlife Fund will make up for it--you have to apologize, repair the damage you caused, and give indications that you recognize your behavior was wrong.
Gates doesn't admit that he was wrong; he probably still doesn't believe he was doing something wrong. Therefore, I don't have any reason to trust his business ethics any more now than before his $25b donation. His $25b donation illuminates a completely different aspect of his character, but that aspect was never my concern--I never assumed that Gates was any worse in that particular regard than other wealthy people.
Even when much of the money was made illegally?
Actually, you'd be surprised to know that you find more racial hatred travelling round the US than travelling around Africa. And most of the obvious exceptions, such as the Rwandan genocide, were in fact primarily fuelled by the colonialists (e.g. before Belgium's interference in Rwanda, the Hutus and Tutsis lived peacefully together for centuries). And the spillover violence into places like the Congo are actually secondary conflicts caused by the Rwandan genocide.
I know you think you sound smart commenting on Africa, but unfortunately you reveal that you know nothing about the place.