Slashdot Mirror
The Softening of a Software Man
theodp writes to tell us that New York Magazine has an interesting editorial stating that no one is afraid of Microsoft anymore. The article argues that Microsoft has noticeably been adrift in the wake of Gates' philanthropy, which some cynics suspect is a Rockefeller-like attempt to 'fumigate his fortune' as he makes a play for the history books. From the article: "Like the robber barons, Bill Gates has moved from trying to take over the world to trying to save it."
Um... Perhaps Bill Gates really ISN'T the antichrist...
Which leaves only Steve Ballmer.
Show this to your friends and family that don't know what a real hacker is
New York Magazine has an interesting editorial stating that no one is afraid of Microsoft anymore. The article argues that Microsoft has noticeably been adrift in the wake of Gates' philanthropy,
Well, it does take a lot of effort and energy to be competing with Bono.
The theory of relativity doesn't work right in Arkansas.
His head is much smaller in person.
I'm by no means a MS fanboy, but.. c'mon already. The man and his family has shown more support for worthwhile causes than I'm sure some small countries have. He just can't catch a break around here, can he?
Rockefeller, who was perhaps the richest man in all history, also used his fortune via nonprofit foundations, not only to enhance his character as publicly perceived (Gates has already done this), but also to mold and shape the American culture, especially the political culture.
In fact, arguably, plutocrat fortunes, as used to fund foundations, might be said to be the primary force used to direct and channel American leftism. Read more about this in Roelof's book _THe MASK OF PLURALISM. Basically, her main thesis is that plutocrats funded the large nonprofit foundations so that they could fund leftists who were not oriented towards economic oriented leftism, but instead towards identity politics. Thus, the white lower middle class was turned away from leftism in general. Well, there is more to it than that, but it was a major factor.
I doubt Gates could ever match the effect that Rockefeller, Scaife, etc had on American political culture. Too many other players in the game now...
eat shiat and bark at the moon
I guess now to stay afloat they're going to have to come up with some good ideas other than selling people antivirus software to patch up their crappy vulnerable OS. That was a good idea, if only for the irony.
I imagine the cynics would comprise mostly of the peanut gallery on this site.
Really, who else do you know other than maladjusted computer geeks really care that much about Bill Gates? What he does with his fortune is almost hardly noticed by the general public, until this year. And very few people would call Gates a robber baron at all.
The fixation with Bill Gates and Microsoft on slashdot is really unhealthy. You people need to get out more.
All men come to realize they reap what they sow. All mean come to realize they too will die, and whatever is said afterward, and how people remember you is all that will remain. Perhaps mortality finally caught up with him, perhaps not. We'll see.
Help me, help you. - Jerry McGuire
I believe he earned the money. I believe the market is actually free. Therefore I am not afraid of MS. I have never been afraid of MS. The market still gets to choose and up till now, it chooses MS, for many reasons fair and unfair. Natural monopolies may seem unfair, but you are still free to steer the market in a better direction. Only the zealots believe that MS is pure evil and that Gates would need to fumigate his fortune. I wonder what excuse the zealots will use to hate the new leader if it doesn't come from your team?
If nature did have a way of weeding out idiots, you'd be in serious trouble!
IBM is not to be feared no more, Microsoft is not to be feared no more, who are we gonna hate and fear now? Google??
You just got troll'd!
Almost nobody knows that John D. MacArthur, who funded the "genius" awards (posthumously), made his money with a life insurance company scam. His unauthorized 1969 biography, "The Stockholder", by William Hoffman, gives the details. MacArthur introduced mail-order life insurance sold through newspaper ads, and his company, Banker's Life, was notorious for refusing to pay claims.
If it worked for them, it should work for Gates. Gates isn't even alleged to have killed anyone.
Yes, exactly, and that was certainly not a new tactic. In fact, the system of checks and balances built into the American constitution was actually imported from England where they implemented it because it tended to divide up the people'e power, and set them against each other, paralyzing the power of the people, thus making it harder for us proles to tax the rich more.
A political scientist named Fresia has a book online that talks about this. It's called _TOWARD AN AMERICAN REVOLUTION_.
Also, one Richard Bissell, an early CIA honcho who helped start the Ford Foundation with CIA and plutocrat money, said the tactic for destroying leftism was to not debate the leftists about their ideas, but instead to divert their energies to activities and interests that would be less harmful (to the rich and megacorporations, one presumes). The primary diversion created by the Ford Foundation and other nonprofits was Identity Politics/Pluralism/Multiculturalism.
Divide and Conquer, same as it ever was....
eat shiat and bark at the moon
Gates has given massive amounts of money to various charities ever since Microsoft became successful. This isn't anything new. Maybe, just maybe, Gates is a genuine philanthropist? Of course, if you already hate the man, which so many here do, you could probably never come to accept that.
Get over it. He doesn't have any alterior motives here. There's no smoke and mirrors. He's just continuing to do what he has done for decades.
hello dear sirs my name is jamesh i are india (bihar) can u guide me install red had linux 9?
this post is not funny. it's informative.
that just making more money was pointless, and there were better, and more fulfilling, things to do with his time. I hope so, with the fortune he has amassed he could truly accomplish some amazing things.
Naaahhhhh!!! What was I thinking?
"To those who are overly cautious, everything is impossible. "
Bill is doing a lot of good with his charitable work and that deserves recognition. But if he steps back guess who's going to be running the show. Steve Ballmer has shown himself to be more ruthless than Bill, more aggressive and much more willing to threaten competitors.
On the other hand Ballmer is also impetuous, and may lead Microsoft back to the law courts.
Will future versions be able to read what he saved? And even if they could will it render the same?
The $20M he gave to a University library buys him naming rights. $20M to Bill Gates is pocket change. How much "hurt" did he feel making that contribution? About as much as a regular guy would feel if he gave a quarter to charity. To Bill, $20M to see your name written over a prestigeous library entrance is cheap.
When he makes big donations in Inda or whatever it is a nice way of buying a good impression and some positive hype when they want to staff up Microsoft India. It is also a nice way of imposing some control. Don't piss off the guy with the dough or he might take his favors elsewhere.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
Bill has amassed his fortune by copying the goods of others (e.g. GUI), by aggressive marketing, by the unnatural rights granted to corporations (IP laws), and by leveraging its initial monopoly which it obtained due to luck.
But now he is being generous. Should he be given credit for that? Maybe the donations should be made in the name of the public from which he has obtained his fortune while giving nothing in return.
it does
it's called not getting laid
The huge nonprofit foundations funded leftists. Now there are ALL SORTS of leftists.
Some sorts of leftists write about stuff like this, "Hey, let's tax the upper class much more so we can pay for universal healthcare, early retirement, and low cost college!"
Other types of leftists write about stuff like this, "Hey, the whites are racists and they oppress the minorities by enslaving them. And men are oppressing women!"
And you have some in between those two types.
Now, you look at supposedly leftist oriented outlets like PBS, NPR and other places where you find leftists who are funded by foundations, and you tell me which type predominates.
Now, if for the last 5 decades, which sort of leftists have the foundations funded: A. the rural white male who hunts deers and writes about how he wants to tax the upper class much more so we can pay for universal healthcare, early retirement, and low cost college, or B. The gay or minority leftists who says the whites are racists and they oppress the minorities by enslaving them. And men are oppressing women.
Which type of leftist gets funded?
Type B! More or less....
ANd what happens to American leftism after type B gets funded 100 times more often than type A?
That is how the plutocrats EVOLVED American leftism so that it suited them, was elite-friendly. THe foundations basically DOMESTICATED American leftism by funding the RIGHT KIND of leftist. And they did it with plutocrat and megacorporation money, and CIA money and know how.
eat shiat and bark at the moon
Remember, it's your money he's giving away. By self-serving use and abuse of the US legal system, he stole hundreds of billions of dollars from people all over the world. He was convicted of this in a US court.
It's great that he's giving some of this money to charity. Personally, I'd rather have the few hundred dollars he's got from me back so that I could choose how to spend it myself. I'd also rather have the businesses he ruined back, and the generation of computer programmers he ruined back, so that the US could be another 15 years ahead techologically.
Excuse me if I don't light any candles for the man.
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Bill Gates has given more to charity than anyone EVER.
I disagree. In the New Testament we read about a poor old widow who gave to the temple a couple of coins, which was what she needed to live. Relatively speaking, she gave much more than any millionaire could give.
On the other hand, if Bill Gates wants to become a good person, WHY DOESN'T HE GIVE US BACK WHAT HE FREAKING STOLE!?
I mean the monopolic practices, forcing us to pay licenses for Windows, etc etc etc.
It's as if a rich man exploited poor men but gave a lot of money to the church. You don't become a good person by stealing and giving a little to the poor. You become a good person by NOT STEALING in the first place.
I have some suggestions:
Why don't we judge companies based on the company's behaviour, and judge individuals based on the individual's behaviour?
Why don't we stop imagining that somehow a multibillion dollar company is still largely a projection of one man's personality?
Why don't we acknowledge that contributing to charity does not absolve anyone of responsibility they may have for wrongs they committed in the past?
Why don't we acknowledge that a person's psyche is not one-dimensional.. that an individual can do good in some contexts and bad in other contexts?
Does that sound reasonable?
-Laxitive
Let's not forget those rape victims, people with cheating spouses, medical professionals who get needle sticks while saving lives, children sold into sexual slavery.
Those people are idiots, too, right, Gravis Zero?
Since I can't tell them apart, I treat all ACs as the same person.
Easy, you sell your characters on ebay.
"Quoting yourself is stupid." -Me
Ok I'll bite.
In terms of evolution maybe the soceities where these things are allowed to happen should not be the ones to survive...
I'm so inspired by Bill's philanthropic spirit, that in future I'm going to use pirated copies of Windows, and give the retail price straight to charity. I'm sure he'll be pleased that I'm saving him the trouble of doing it himself.
Seriously, I think anyone who discounts Microsoft or doesn't fear them at this point, or who says "their star seems to be fading" needs to look around again. For some time now, there have been some saying that Microsoft is becoming increasingly irrelevant, now that we have companies like Google.
.NET slowly but surely keeps gaining more and more momentum. And Apple, though they may currently have the dominant MP3 player, are still slowly getting nipped at their heels by competitors, and it is beginning to look like their dominance may begin to fade at any moment... And the Macintosh continues to face shrinking market share, to the point where there are now more Linux machines than Macintosh machines out there.
But to anyone thinks this way, I warn you: some people once thought Netscape and the World Wide Web might make Microsoft irrelevant. Others once thought Java might make Microsoft irrelevant. Some once thought Apple might dethrone Microsoft. Some once thought the Playstation would kill Microsoft. I am willing to concede that the verdict may not be in on the last two points yet, but the XBox 360 is sure making headway in that market, and the iPod, though still the most popular MP3 player, is clearly by NO means secure in its position at this point, as competing music stores AND players are continually nipping at Apple's heels.
But my point is simply this: In EVERY case but the last two, Microsoft successfully thwarted or killed those technologies, sometimes only after quite a while of making blunders. Though it may have taken a couple years, Internet Explorer ultimately killed Netscape. Java, though still widely used, appears to be stagnating, not growing, as
And to anyone who thinks Firefox is dethroning Internet Explorer, check again: last time I checked, Internet Explorer still has AT LEAST more than 60% market share, even according to some of the most Firefox-dominant survey samples out there, like the audience who visits W3Schools. And for all the talk about ActiveX and its security flaws, that doesn't seem to have put much of a dent in its use--there are STILL quite a lot of applications out there on the web that depend heavily on ActiveX, particularly at places like banks and corporate intranets. It's all very well to say Firefox is right not to support ActiveX because of its insecurities, but for anyone who is stuck with a bank or a corporate intranet that requires ActiveX, there is basically no real alternative to Internet Explorer.
I doubt ANYONE in their right mind could seriously say the Apple, Sun, or Netscape are going to dethrone Microsoft anytime soon. Do *NOT* discount Microsoft. They might be down on this one round, but they are by *NO* means out. Last time I checked, they are STILL the dominant desktop OS, with over 90% market share, and the prospects for a successful Vista launch seem to keep getting better all the time. From the looks of it, Win Vista, whether we like it or not, is very likely to wow many people, and help Microsoft reclaim whatever ground they have lost to Apple, Google, Linux, etc.
I also warn you: Microsoft is clearing planning to move all of their MSN properties into Windows Live. The next version of Hotmail will be called Windows Live Mail, in keeping with this. Their plan is to integrate Windows Live (formerly MSN) heavily with the Windows operating system, and to market it and position it as *THE* web portal, Web 2.0 widget center (upon which other web applications will be built), and THE gateway to the Internet. By integrating Windows Live into Windows and making it platform-dependent, Microsoft still has a trump card here that Google can only DREAM of having.
Do NOT discount Microsoft--they are STILL a force to be reckoned with, they are STILL in a VERY strong position, and they are STILL very dangerous... Do NOT be lulled into a sense of complacency.
At the same time, Gates no longer cuts the profile he once did as a high-tech titan. While he's still respected, he's no longer scary--and the totemic company he built from scratch seems increasingly ordinary, even irrelevant
What the article doesn't go into is why Gates and Microsoft are no longer seen as scary. It's because their products are no longer the only choice. It used to be that for many things, you had to deal with Microsoft, because all the stuff you wanted to do required Windows to run. That meant that you had to agree to whatever terms Microsoft cared to offer, and they could be pretty onerous (and expensive). These days, with the easy availability of open source alternatives and the shift to web-based services, people are no longer compelled to accept lousy deals from Microsoft. If they don't like what Microsoft has to offer, they are free to go with something else. That means that (a) Microsoft has to treat its customers better if it wants to keep selling product, and (b) customers no longer have to live in fear of doing something that would anger the giant in Redmond.
So yes, Gates and Microsoft are no longer as scary as they used to be. But it's more because of the actions of Torvalds, Stallman, Jobs, and Berners-Lee than any change of heart by Gates.
I don't care if it's 90,000 hectares. That lake was not my doing.
You obviously don't understand corporate culture and how a poisoned athmosphere can perpertuate long after the original source has gone.
How can a company behave any differently than its employees? Its NOT a living thing. It is a creation of the legal system and its demise is strictly a feature of the economics of the times. They can merge, meld, divest, split and otherwise morph in ways that human beings can't. (A large corporation can sell off a transportation services division and sometinmes, that even mares sense. Try doing that with your legs.)
Some companies in Europe can date their origin back hundreds of years, longer than any of the individuals working for them. I believe that part of ELF-Aquitaine goes back longer than that.
MSBPodcast.com The opinions expressed here are my own. If you don't like 'em... Think up your own stuff.
He also blows big chunks of money on diseases that mostly affect non-whites.
He spends money helping people who need help. What's it to you, adolf?
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
you can see that they pay out three times less in contributions than what they earn from investments
Thats the whole point of a foundation. you DO NOT give as much as your investments return. You have to account for things like inflation, which is not steady over time and which is actually at a low point right now.
You can say what you want about the Gates foundation but the fact of the matter is that is has done real work - and it is well-managed. It isn't just a billionaire throwing money at the latest fad, it is a self-sustaining foundation aimed at an important problem for our time. Bravo.
-everphilski-
The market is not free. Tax structures encourage exactly the type of spending (and selling) that Microsoft happens to engage in.
The way US taxes work is this: you can make all the money you want, but you have to get rid of it this quarter. If you use it to buy things of value, you pay more taxes. If you fritter it away on worthless services or give it to employees, you pay less taxes. So there are basically two strategies you can take in order to pay the least amount of taxes possible: give away every dime you make, or make sure you never make a profit.
Did you ever wonder why companies hire people when times are good and fire them when times are bad? It's not because they need more employees to help make widgets. The amount of widgets made has more to do with employee productivity and availability of natural resources than the number of warm bodies employed. And the amount of widgets sold and consumed has almost nothing to do with macroeconomics. When the company is making more profit, they need to hire more employees to write off their taxes.
Now, this applies as much for Microsoft as for its customers, businesses. If you run a business and want to hire your worthless nephew, you don't want to give him an actual job to do. You want to pay somebody else to make it look like he's doing a job. So there's Microsoft with their point-and-click busywork crapware. Now everybody's nephew can make 50 grand surfing the internet and writing spell-checked e-mails. And software is worthless. It's not even legal to re-sell. So you don't pay taxes on whatever you give to Microsoft. It's win-win-win. You get a tax write-off, your nephew gets what you would just give him anyways, Microsoft gets billions of dollars, and the government gets to increase taxes on those too stupid to cheat.
Cheap PCs, idiot-proof software, and the fruits of a successful oil war turned the 90s into the high employment, zero productivity fuck-up that we all remember. And it turned Bill Gates into the wealthiest person on the planet.
But this is nothing new. It's been US policy since Henry Ford rolled the first Model A off the assembly line. He figured out that he could give all his profits to his employees, and that they would just turn around and give some of it right back to him to purchase the cars that they made. That's worked pretty well, of course, until those employees stopped needing new Fords to drive. So for nearly a hundred years there was no incentive to use robots instead of humans to increase the quality of American cars. It took a competitor outside the reach of the ridiculous US tax policy to build a better automobile.
Somebody mentioned Donald Trump. He has taken the second strategy. The man spends more time in bankruptcy court than in the penthouse. He owns half of Manhattan, but I'll bet, on paper, he never turns a profit. So, in reality, he probably gives away as much as anyone, but instead of going to his personal charities and foundations, it goes to his customers and employees.
There are all sorts of other consequences to US tax policy, from the byzantine schemes that Enron engaged in, to companies not looking (or investing) past the next quarter, to recent generations having to change jobs (and careers) every few years, to artificially high employment rates, to volatile market shifts and recessions, to the rise of government services and the catastrophic collapse of those services due to generational demographics, to successful start-ups that turn to crap when the profits and investments and accountants and employees start rolling in.
So, in conclusion, if we had a truly free market, 90% of people would be out of work, products would last longer, society would openly (rather than secretly) engage in the type of "gift economy" that out dipshit president ridicules in countries in the Middle East, and there would be less lying and bullshit going on in the US in general. Really, besides full employment, piddly busywork and products that are designed to fail, lies and bullshit and idiots who believe them is all our obtrusive taxes have gotten us.
"I assumed blithely that there were no elves out there in the darkness"
2% may sound like a reasonable ammount to donate to charities but in practice I doubt many people actually donate that much of their non-megasized income. Lets say X makes an average sized $50k a year... 2% of that is what... $1000? (don't trust my math though...) and how many people really donate $1000 a year to charity? I don't mean they SAY they do on their taxes, or they donate an overvalued used computer or something else so that on paper it looks like $1000, but really donate it straight from their bank.
I'm not saying people aren't generous but usually that generosity is coaxed, like Bill paying for naming rights, people donating to PBS for the "free gift" that depends on how much you donate and the like.
I know that's neither here nor there but I just see that everyone is bandying about this 2% like it's pocket change they're used to throwing around and having seen the people that try to claim $1 buy-a-heart/star/shamrock charity donations on their taxes I know it's not as common as some people think.
The next time someone complains about Bill ONLY donating 2%, they should try adding up how much they donate (of course, now I'm going to have a string of posts after this from people saying "no, you're wrong, I personally donate 3% and so thus, EVERYONE must be donating 3%")
Seriously. I've lived in the Pacific Northwest for most of my life. Prior to getting married, the regional in-joke regarding any local charitable project was "Bill Gates declined to participate, because he was afraid it would be confused with actually caring about his home and neighbors" (see any number of 'Almost Live' reruns for verification). But after he got married, this seemed to gradually change.
I, for one, am happy to see the Gates's speading their wealth around. Bill's motivation is more or less irrelevant to me - I'm just glad it's happening.
#DeleteChrome
Bill Gates and the Gates Foundation has given, with inflation accounted for, three times as much money to charity as Rockefeller, who gave the most to charity before Gates.
Remember kids, tin foil doesn't work, so use LeadHat.
And very few people would call Gates a robber baron at all.
The parallels between Gates and the robber barrons of 1880-1920 are pretty obvious. Perhaps it is your healthy non-geek detachment that prevents you from observing it. Gates has profoundly distorted an industry of great promise and gathered tremendous wealth to himself through careful construction of a monopoly. He did so through maniacal competitiveness, and cunning much like Rockefeller, Carnegie, and Ford. Has he affected history? Certainly. Positively? Doubtful. His legacy is DRM and the anti-virus industry. Like the robber barrons, later in life he chooses to disgorge some of that wealth in a very public way in an effort to whitewash his image. He may leave his name on a couple of buildings, but posterity will see him reviled like his predecessors.
an ill wind that blows no good
I actually was around before Microsoft seriously entered the computing market. I remember computers costing $10k (the Apple Lisa). I recall small Unix boxes costing $15k, with the OS adding another couple thousand to that (Sun). I remember dozens of machines with no interoperability (TI 99/4, Atari, TRS 80, Exidy Sorcerer, Apple...)
Microsoft, love it or hate it, established a defacto standard. No one was forced to buy Microsoft products- even counting the "Microsoft Tax", anyone could have easily purchased a Macintosh or a small Unix box. But they didn't, because they were generally over priced and provided little or no advantage for all their extra cost. Every vendor back in the '80s was desperately trying to steal their piece of market share, and the concept of open common standards was effectively non-existent. If anything, Microsoft's dominance encouraged sufficient standardization to make it necessary for company's to actually compete on features and price: if this hadn't happened, I imagine we'd be buying $1200 operating systems for our $8,000 computers today.
I'm truly sick and tired of the people who can't unscrew their heads from their rectums long enough to realize that Microsoft and Bill Gates are no more "evil" than any other company out there. Don't like Microsoft products? Great, use what you want, but shut the hell up about it already.
As far as Gates' generosity being a "new" thing...no, its not. A decade ago, he said he intended to give away 95% of his wealth by the time he retired. This is nothing new. And he sure as heck isn't doing this to impress any of the people here on Slashdot.
How has Microsoft set computing back? The fundamental problem with this argument is that there is NO evidence that there were other more advanced technologies that didn't advance because of Microsoft.
There is plenty of evidence of this. There were far better GUI systems that Windows when it started (anyone who tried to program under Windows 1.0/2.0 as against a more rational system like GEM would have realised this). Even as Windows as developing, it was intended to move to a more stable and secure system (OS/2). Microsoft abandoned that effort, and moved us back to buggy Windows 3.0. There were plenty of ways Microsoft could have given a robust and usable system on the desktop, but they were still shipping (carefully hidden) DOS-based systems (Win95/98) until the late 90s!
Combine this with their proven abuses of monopoly in an attempt to supress competitors, and there is no question Microsoft has held things back.
"Computing as we know it" begins with the IBM PC in 1980, no company was better positioned than IBM to market the PC as an office machine as essential as the typewriter.
Gates understood that perhaps more clearly than anyone, and, as anyone with an old Remington Upright will tell you, it is not a great leap from there to adoption in the home and other markets.
I have to say that I disagree with this, because the "idiots" in Africa that you mention afterwards are the disease's primary victims, and not being able to find out about these things does not make one an idiot.
For the record, do you know if the "unprotected homosexual contact" figure includes "accidental" (protection failing) cases? Because if not, that group is pretty much fully idiot (except for those who were misled by people that they were in a position to sensibly believe that they could trust, which can't be that many), yes.
As usual, the evidence of the ignorant falls somewhat short of being accurate.
You can contract AIDS not just from sharing needles, but from using another junkies' spoon. Too, used needles are all that's available sometimes. Street dealers sell them for convenience sake. They have to ... you can't buy needles in a store. Because that would encourage drug use and frighten churchgoers. There are needle exchanges in major US cities, but they only operate a few hours a week in various locations. Not to mention, many junkies fear they'll be marked by undercover narcs if they pick their rigs up there. It's not that junkies wouldn't use fresh needles if they were available, in fact they're preferable (sharper). They're not, though.
The relatively high percentage of AIDS in the black community is correlated to the relatively high percentage of black men who are incarcerated. One of the great unspokens within the black community is that many men have sex with one another in prison. Before the GNAA chimes in, you should understand many heterosexual men have sex with other men in prison. It's a different world no one can judge unless they've been there. It doesn't help condoms aren't distributed in prison. Homophobia, you understand. Don't want to look gay or anything. Same reason guys don't admit to it, same reason guys don't get tested, same reason guys give it to their girlfriends when they get out. Shame.
As for having unprotected sex being idiotic, if that were true we're all idiots. Well, probably not you. I'll let you in on a little secret, though -- condomless feels better. In the moment, it's pretty easy to convince yourself that you can beat the odds.
Gates siphoned off hundreds of billions of dollars that might have gone to better uses, and dramatically altered the technological landscape in ways that many would consider to be bad. It's certainly not obvious that he's not done a lot of evil--though neither is it clear that he has.
"Not an actor, but he plays one on TV."
It's really hard to tell what was motivating Bill Gates at any one point in time. Most would say that he was motivated by greed, while others might say that he was actually trying to make a difference. One might also say that he knew he couldn't make a difference unless he had the power to do so. In this case, a shitload of money. Don't get me wrong, I'm not defending his previous actions, but how many of us *really* know this man? Given the resources he has, would any of us have turned out differently?
The problem here may fall in line with the old saying: The road to Hell is paved with good intentions.
As people get older, (and many young slashdotters won't understand this yet, but they will - eventually.) how they think, act, and see the world changes. Most of us are so bent on seeing Bill Gates as some kind of extreme demon that we fail to recognize that people are dynamic, and he's no exception. We don't stay the same, things influence us, change our minds, and cause us to act differently all the time. The change is typically gradual, but it does occur in everyone.
Think about how you were 10 years ago - the things you thought about, how you acted. Compare it to how you are now. I'm sure most people will find that they are not the same people.
I can't say if this is exactly what is happening to Gates, but it seems plausable enough to me.
BeauHD. Worst editor since kdawson.
> I actually was around before Microsoft seriously entered the computing market.
Me too! In fact, I was around before MS entered the computing market, period.
> I remember computers costing $10k (the Apple Lisa).
And you can still spend that (or many times that) if you want. And there were computers that only cost a couple of hundred on the market at the same time. As there are now. So whatcherpoint?
> I remember dozens of machines with no interoperability (TI 99/4, Atari, TRS 80, Exidy Sorcerer, Apple...)
Yup, those were the cheap ones. And I was writing cross-platform apps for those machines with supposedly "no interoperability" at the time! And we did it basically the same way it's done today, with compilers to hide CPU differences, and libraries to hide other system differences. Sure, the overheads associated with cross-platform work made it a non-starter for, say, video games, but for business apps and such, it was clearly, even at the time, the wave of the future.
> Microsoft, love it or hate it, established a defacto standard.
No, IBM established a defacto standard. And, in the process, managed to kill of a lot of the existing market for cross-platform support (anyone remember UCSD Pascal or Fig-Forth?), and, arguably, set the industry back by a decade or more. Microsoft just happened to be lucky enough to be in a position where they were able to hijack the standards created by IBM. People didn't go with Microsoft because it was better (or even very good); they went with Microsoft because it was "IBM-PC compatible".
And, in fact, by the time the PC came along, the small business computing market had already pretty much standardized on CP/M, and Digital Research was already looking at porting CP/M to a new generation of sixteen-bit chips. All the indicators, at the time (before MS came along), were pointing clearly in the direction of cheaper, more powerful computers with more standardized interfaces and APIs. What bucket you were hiding under to believe otherwise I can't imagine!
> Every vendor back in the '80s was desperately trying to steal their piece of market share, and the concept of open common standards was effectively non-existent.
Complete, utter hogwash! How many vendors were supporting CP/M at the time? How many were supporting Unix? Dozens, if not hundreds! I call shenanigans! We even bought one of those Apple Lisa's you mentioned around that time, but we didn't buy it to run LisaOS (or whatever it was called)--we bought it to run BSD! Gee, there was already a FREE cross-platform OS even way back then! Kinda makes you go "hmm", doesn't it?
> As far as Gates' generosity being a "new" thing...no, its not.
No, but Gates' personal generosity towards humanity in general has NOTHING WHATSOEVER to do with Microsoft's role as an evil, predatory monopoly! My feelings for BG are completely separate from my feelings for MS, and my feelings for MS are that I haven't used any of their software since '98, and hope to never do so again.
Microsoft still has plenty of venom and clout. It's still a dangerous company to deal with and one that is exerting a damaging influence on our economy and the advancement of our technology in general.
MS still takes every opportunity to attack open source software and open standards in general. Look, for instance, at the incredible attack that MS has launched, via it's pet columnists, at Mr. Quinn in Massecheusetts, who had the temerity to recommend that MA insist that the governement switch to software that used open document format, so that MS couldn't force the state to upgrade by changing file formats. Mr. Quinn has probably saved the MA taxpayers, like myself, untold amounts of money, and in return he's been attacked over and over in the press.
MS is patenting everything it can think of, obvious or not, in an attempt to preempt competition. Even if the patents are eventually overturned, they can be used to threaten software and hardware developers, retarding the advancement of technology in all the areas MS is getting patents in.
I think it's more likely that MS will become increasingly dangerous the more that Bill Gates retreats from management of the company. Ballmer has already shown that he is willing to do almost anything to increase the bottom line, legal or not.
MS still needs to be split up. It is still a monopoly and still defies the courts in the U.S. and Europe by continuing it's monopolistic practices.
-All that is gold does not glitter - Tolkien
www.ra
Dont forget that Africa is becoming the rape caital of the world. It's pretty tough to get your generic rapist to use a condom.
One in three of the 4,000 women questioned by CIET Africa, non-governmental organisation, said they had been raped in the past year.... In a related survey conducted among 1,500 schoolchildren in the Soweto township, a quarter of all the boys interviewed said that 'jackrolling' - a South African term for recreational gang rape - was fun.
Actually one generally does pay for open source software, just not always in the same way.
... then you post the information for all to benefit.
Anyone can sell open source software. Many have business models involving selling and servicing repackaged open source software.
If you aren't paying that way, then you pay by contributing back to the efforts of the developers so that improvements may be made, rather than just leeching off their hard work. If you can code, then you code. If you find bugs, you report them. If you have found innovative ways of using the software or can answer questions posted by other users
You encourage others to do the same because one day you may need the help, such as when you're such a dumbfuck that you don't know how to format a simple word document.
But I suppose the high and mighty Caspian, master of English, is way above all that.
Dumbfuck leech.
George Bush + Linux = "I will not let information get in the way of the fight against Windows"
Gates' "Foundation" is a stock laundering scheme to allow him to control other corporations through the investments of the Foundation and to make him look good to offset his convicted monopolist status.
If you look at the Federal philanthropy rules, the Foundation is required to spend at least 3% of its assets. It barely does. A couple years ago, when the Gates's were donating another $3 billion, it was around 1.18% IIRC and the article I read said they'd have to pump up the issuance to meet Fed regulations.
If you look at those "huge" sums given to charity listed on their Web site, almost everything over one million dollars is usually handed out OVER MULTIPLE YEARS - sometimes over ten years or more - meaning the impact on the Foundation's income is negligible.
Do the math - they have nearly $30 billion in assets, and they hand out maybe a billion a year. Do you think with those assets, they can't get at least ten percent return on their investments?
That's THREE BILLION more bucks under Gates control PER YEAR. And he hands out less than half.
Obviously the people who DO get money from the Foundation are benefiting, and presumably that's a good thing for them - but it's not done because Gates is a fucking philanthropist.
It's a stock-laundering and PR scheme - nothing more. Anybody who believes differently is a moron.
Richard Steven Hack - This sig is TOO GODDAMN SHORT TO DO ANYTHING USEFUL WITH! MORONS!
The problem with ill-gotten gains is that it's a negative-sum game -- for whatever Microsoft gained, everyone else lost incomparably more.
Gates and Microsoft are responsible for poisoning software development, creating a culture of a complete disregard of quality, turning intellectual pursuit into mindless race for features, destruction of countless good projects, technologies and ideas, turning software development industry into a mix of a Microsoft fan club and a slaughterhouse, and nearly complete destruction of all research that is in any way related to computer science. This will take decades to reverse -- likely our grandkids will still suffer from consequences of this.
If Microsoft declared Windows to be free, and refunded all its customers, this damage would be still done -- and it's not like Gates has that much money on hand. So there is absolutely nothing Gates can do to go into the history as something other than a bloodthirsty monopolist, and a man who caused a massive noosphere pollution -- what is worse than John D. Rockefeller who is also the first but at least not the second.
No one but some panderers to the rich consider Rockefeller to be anything but an evil man who caused massive amount of misery, and the same will apply to Gates. How much of their shitty money will be paid for whatever causes, is irrelevant because the damage done is beyond anyone's capabilities to repair it, even if some of that money went into such repair.
Contrary to the popular belief, there indeed is no God.
I had hoped that the situation in Soweto had changed. The news report you link to is seven years old. However, it seems not. Just over a year ago there was a report about boys as young as seven committing gang rapes: The youngest member of this group is just six - barely capable of tying his own shoe laces, yet somehow old enough to have committed the most serious of sexual offences, however impossible that might sound.