Slashdot Mirror
Bill Gates to Step Down from Microsoft
Geoffreyerffoeg writes "According to Microsoft PressPass, Bill Gates will be leaving his role at Microsoft in July 2008. He'll be staying with the company, but is also moving to a more fulltime position with the Gates Foundation. 'Microsoft Corp. today announced that effective July 2008 Bill Gates, chairman, will transition out of a day-to-day role in the company to spend more time on his global health and education work at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. The company announced a two-year transition process to ensure that there is a smooth and orderly transfer of Gates' daily responsibilities, and said that after July 2008 Gates would continue to serve as the company's chairman and an adviser on key development projects.' CTO Ray Ozzie will assume Gates' role of Chief Software Architect, and CTO Craig Mundie will also take on more leadership responsibility."
But his morality is the only morality that company has. At all. This move will make Microsoft into more of a money grubbing, profit-centered, fuck anybody who gets in our way, sociopathic corporation. And they didn't have very far to fall to begin with.
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
You left out 'shapes computing the world over' (on the desktop).
Gates kicks ass. He'd be the perfect role model if it weren't for some of his less savoury feats.
And on the pedestal these words appear:
"My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings:
Look upon my works, ye Mighty, and despair!"
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.
Percy Bysshe Shelley
My other Slashdot ID is much lower.
I picture some zealots crushing his tomb stone. . .
Anticipation of that is why he is going into the "philanthropy biz."
It's SOP for those who know their tombstones deserve crushing. Some of them even go so far as to hide their tombs (See Alexander, Temujin, most of the Pharoahs, etc.).
KFG
Who moderated this guy?
Companies throw out Windows (tm) computers rather than try to remove existing spy-crap on them (NY Times article of April 2006, i believe).
Microsoft itself found 60% of the machines it scanned to be infected with malware.
Non-technical people are almost completely unable to use the damn things because so many software components can break and the OS provides virtually no assistance in correcting errors.
In an interview, Bill himself said that there was no point in fixing program bugs: there's no profit in it. Just generate another crappy version of the code and release it.
As one of the above comments said, the UI for Windows hasn't advanced the art of 26 years ago, and doesn't improve upon UIs from the early days of Xerox Parc.
Bill has made a ridiculous amount of money due to a huge amount of dumb luck (think of the book: "Fooled by Randomness") and by applying dirty corporate techniques to competitors and partners. He gives capitalists a bad name. God help the world if he uses his Microsoft skill set to the management and direction of his charitable foundation.
Those of you calling Gates "evil", "villainous", etc, in order to belittle his philanthropic activities, consider this: ;-)
The companies that Gates "crushed" were rich companies whose execs had become rich themselves.
So Gates took from those rich fat cats (through unethical means, according to the Gates haters), and is now giving to the poor. That makes him a high-tech Robin Hood. And just like the government tried to bring down Robin Hood, they tried to bring down Gates. What say you to that?
-- "I never gave these stories much credence." - HAL 9000
he will have a lot more fun giving away $30 billion than staying at MSFT
I think Gates is doing something no-one else can do. He's redistributing wealth from the first world to the third world and doing what he can to make the world better.
To get his massive wealth he's done things that were dishonest and even illegal (Microsoft never could overturn the illegal monopoly decision).
But - and this is the crux - if he didn't have that wealth he couldn't do the things he can now. The wealth would be distributed throughout many people in North America, where it'd be likely to stay.
Sometimes the ends *do* justify the means.
I find it bizarre to praise Gates - as a computer enthusiast for 25 years now (I'm 35) I've come to see him as a net negative in the industry. We've got a monolithic company, a software monoculture, a history of massive security holes and illegal product tying. I believe the industry has suffered greatly because of Microsoft.
But I still see his charity outweighs any negatives.
"It matters not what you think of MS and how he got his money."
Really? You honestly think it doesn't matter how you get the money as long as you give two percent to charity?
evil is as evil does