Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Paul Allen the 'Accidental Zillionaire'

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the least-he-could-do-is-buy-us-all-lunch dept.

An anonymous reader writes "The Sydney Morning Herald has an interesting story about Paul Allen, "the accidental zillionaire". Allen is the owner of the world's biggest private yacht and a huge landowner in the Seattle area in addition to his traditional accolades of helping to found Microsoft along with several other companies and foundations."

10 of 164 comments (clear)

  1. Re:What is a zillionaire? by QuantumG · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Gates' father's influence on Microsoft can't be ignored. He taught his son a healthy respect for the law. That is, always stay within the letter of the law but feel free to bend it as much as possible and if you do feel the desire to break it, try to find a good patsy to hide behind. I can remember having a long argument with a coworker about Microsoft not paying any taxes. His opinion was that Microsoft is following the letter of the law and therefore is doing nothing wrong. My opinion was that Microsoft is just sponging off the community by refusing to pay any taxes, even if it means paying more for tax lawyers than they would have to pay in taxes if they weren't so set on not paying taxes. And the fact that they force their employees to accept stock which has absolutely no value so they can avoid taxes, implicating every one of them in their immoral actions is most deplorable.

    --
    How we know is more important than what we know.
  2. Re:His hompage by oztiks · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Doesnt account for the fact the site was written in Dreamweaver and not Frontpage.

    Badly mind you, the footer is full of  's .... nasty

  3. Re:What is a zillionaire? by Gorshkov · · Score: 2, Interesting

    While they might not have known they'd end up being some of the richest people to have ever lived, they had to have known that they were never going to have to worry about money again in their lives.

    Hardly. IBM, when they came out with the original PC, estimated that total sales for the PC would be in the neighbourhood of about 250,000 for the life of the product. Back then, IBM worked on 5-10 year product cycles.

    If anything, at their most optimistic, they probably hoped it would settle their student loans.

  4. Re:Interesting by AndroidCat · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Have you ever read Bill Gates' Open Letter to Hobbyists?

    --
    One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
  5. Re:Maybe it's a financial decision? by ccmay · · Score: 2, Interesting
    I think prenuptials and such are pathetic. If you don't love a woman enough to risk losing some money to her, especially if she's raising your kids, then you just shouldn't get married.

    -ccm

    --
    Too much Law; not enough Order.
  6. Interesting, that the refer to paul as the ... by WindBourne · · Score: 3, Interesting

    accidental. He actually wrote a major portion of the initial code, whereas BG wrote very little of it.
    IIRC, It was IBM that approached them (the movie was incorrect).
    In addition, it took several employees to talk BG into not moving to Unix from Dos (DOS numbers were awesome, where MS xenix was going nowhere).
    Paul went on to develop a number of companies and technologies, but BG stayed with just one.
    In addition, BG's thing has been to work with a monopoly that simply steals from others, while Paul develop new techs.

    Offhand, I would call BG more the accidental, and Paul the brilliant one.

    --
    I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
  7. Re:So he's single? Why is that? by Saint+Stephen · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Paul Allen is indeed a homosexual. As is Charles Simonyi. (Not a joke.) Geez, I thought this had been common knowledge for about a million years.

  8. Altruism by RgrRbbt · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I seem to remember reading that Bill Gates only started his philanthopic spree when his mom confronted him about his vast wealth and insisted he donate much of it to charitable causes. (I hope I'm not getting my facts wrong here.)

    Paul Allen has given a lot of money to medical research, but being ill seems to have been the impetus for that.

    Both men also have their name slapped on many of the non-profit projects to which they donate.

    I'm not saying this makes their contributations any less important. But it does seem to make the spirit of the donations a little less impressive, since the men likely would not have been so generous without such "external" pressures.

    Does anyone agree or am I being too idealistic to hope for true altruism?

  9. Cramer is an idiot, too. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

    Cramer thinks swinging around huge hedge funds is directly applicable to strategies individual (and much poorer) investors can use.

    I asked him a serious question many years ago (1997-98) on a serious investor-type chat why he kept pushing the pharmaceutical stocks in all his articles. All he had to say was "What, are you short on pharmaceuticals?" He then went on to answer questions about his family, etc.

    The guy behaves just like a shady stock broker.

  10. Microsoft vs. Wal-Mart by wk633 · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Let's keep the evil in perspective:

    From: http://www.walmartmovie.com/facts.php/

    A WAL-MART Worker may donate money from their paycheck to the CRITICAL NEED FUND, a program to aid other employees in times of crisis, like a fire or tornado.
    In 2004, WAL-MART Employees gave OVER $5 MILLION to help fellow workers. The Walton Family gave $6,000

    The WALTON FAMILY Has Given LESS THAN 1% of Their Wealth to Charity. Bill Gates has given 58%