Slashdot Mirror
Bill Gates On the Past, Future, and Google
editingwhiz writes "eWEEK reports that Bill Gates told PBS talk show host Charlie Rose and a Stanford University audience at TechNet Wednesday that 'We're at the beginning of something important again' in the development of technology — just as in the 1980s with the advent of the PC. He also discussed the growing Microsoft-Google competition, world health issues, how to give lots of money away to the benefit of mankind, and whether he'll return to Harvard to finish his studies." From the article: "On whether there's another idea today that is as powerful as the idea of the personal computer in the 1970s: 'If I knew medicine like I do computers, I would like to be able to control the [human] immune system, to fight against the onset of disease on a world level ... but I think the idea of the PC still would have topped that.'"
If he knew medicine and could control the immune system in the human body as well as he and his company can control computers, just imagine the biological viruses we'd have faced by now. Every day your heart would stop beating for no reason and they'd have to restart it with CPR, but nobody would think that was odd.
...and manipulated our immune system to be as tough and secure as his systems, the human race would've died out by now.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
From the article: "On whether there's another idea today that is as powerful as the idea of the personal computer in the 1970s: 'If I knew medicine like I do computers, I would like to be able to control the [human] immune system, to fight against the onset of disease on a world level"
Think of what would have happened if he did. Norton sucks enough on a $500 piece of (comparatively) disposable hardware, just think on a one-of-a-kind human body.
"I think an etch-a-sketch with an ethernet port would beat IE7 in web standards compliance."
With the track record his company has had in protecting his OS from viruses, I'm *GLAD* he's not in healthcare. ;)
ART on dA
then maybe windows wouldn't be the best way to transport disease from one machine to another!
Reality is nothing but a collective hunch.
Bill Gates on the Past, Future, and Google
So he's saying Google is the Present?
Damn straight ...
I hear there's rumors on the Slashdots
A cunt you say? Whatever you say about him, he's donated more to charity than you and your children will ever earn combined! I think you're the cunt here.
His job is to say things like this. He's been saying this for over a decade. It's a lot of hot air.
The microsoft windows monopoly is becoming less relevant with each new free web-based software application/service that comes out, be it Google, YouTube, Flickr, Writely, etc. And all of those run fine on Linux.
it's a blue bright blue Saturday hey hey
This is the original article for the dupe posted earlier today.
the movie "Back to School" after reading, "and whether he'll return to Harvard to finish his studies". Replacing Dangerfield with Gates would make for a weird, weird movie.
Monstar L
The reason I have been feeling as sick as a dog all day today is because my immune system is stressed out about what it might have to face in the future.
Anyway, I believe that the next big thing will be an expansion of high speed communication to cover most of the human race. Sure, it's pretty obvious... but as I recall so was the idea that the internet would be a world changing phenomenon in 1994 and I have a file that was originally written on a BBC master in 1987 explaining how the computer would be widespread in business and the home.
Over the next 20 years? Same as the last 20. Continual progress towards more devices that communicate more freely.
Think of the Children; Sleep with your Sister
What if the Hokey Pokey really is what it's all about?
These assholes are scared and they form the Google-Yahoo-MS-Novell-Mozilla alliance. Good! We'll know who to put out of business next!
Ya i can see it now, Windows Vista Alive! Runs on your unused brain! May Suffer From random crashes, and virii
Wulfram II - Free Online Mutiplayer 3D Tank Shooting Gam
Hey, quick, someone check on Charlie. Looks like he has the 'Blue Face of Death' again.
What if the Hokey Pokey really is what it's all about?
Bill doesn't know personal computers any better than the average hospital administrator knows the human immune system. And I'd bet you that when someone does make the next breakthrough in understanding and controlling the human immune system, that someone will not be a hospital administrator. I'd also bet that at least one hospital administrator will believe he did it though.
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Friends don't let friends enable ecmascript.
When you are evaluating bill gates's prognostication ability, do not forget to consider this prediction: in January, Mr Gates predicted that technology would make spam "a thing of the past" within two years.
Yes, that was January 2004.
-- Stop the violins!
"640K ought to be enough for anybody." - Bill Gates, 1981 would become "One kidney should be enough for anybody." - Bill Gates, 2006 And of course, we'd all welcome ou monthly HealthCare Patch Tuesday :P
Don't forget whole cities converted to zombie'ism. Crawling around, slower every day.
"Brains! Brains!"
"Refinance your home. Low rates. Buy herbal viagra!"
"Brains!"
"Teenage sluts want to gamble with you! Brains! Brains!"
"Brains! Protect yourself from zombie attack! Drink Zombie-B-Gone soda today! Guaranteed not to turn you into a zombie! Brains! \/14gra!"
Claiming to be pedantic on Slashdot is asking for trouble
I'd be happier to let an open source group develop medical software with clinic and hospital distributed databases where clinicians could be sure any data submitted to government would be entirely anonymised. I shudder to think of how the NPfIT in the UK will end up. Still, there are other countries to go and work in. IAAD in the UK
I like Apple. They make nice stuff which works most of the time.
When a guy's flat-lining, the most hilarious thing you can do to him is to use the defibulator and the detibulator to remove his leg from the knee down, then attach his feet directly to his femurs. When he revives, he starts walking around like a duck and looking confused. We crazy paramedics just about split a gut laughing every time!
Rich And Stupid is not so bad as Working For Rich And Stupid.
Nobody is going to give this guy's resume a second look, when they see he didn't even finish his degree.
Kids, don't end up like Bill: stay in school!
Am I the only one who got a chill down his spine when he referenced being as knowledgeable about the immune system as he was with computers?
Now I'm not a Microsoft hater and unlike most my first thought wasn't about possible viruses but about DRM.
Can you imagine a world where MS has copyrights to a healthy immune system? Now you can add in the jokes about viruses... oh and now there are new opportunities for monopoly joke as well.
"No doubt one may quote history to support any cause, as the devil quotes scripture." - Learned Hand
Whatever you say about him, he's donated more to charity than you and your children will ever earn combined!
Steal from 100 widows, support 1, collect humanitarian award.
Refuse to steal from widows, get arrested for indigence.
Such it has always been, so it shall always be.
KFG
Microsoft would take threaten to take their toys home - as they did with the EU and Korea... That's the great thing about open source, "it" doesn't (can't) throw chairs about, and generally react stupidly to dumb people.
His wish to be able to cure people and eradicate diseases is noble, but saving every sick person will not save the Earth. In fact, it will make the Earth's population grow way out of control.
So instead of dying from cancer, HIV or bird flu, we'll starve for lack of food and water.
In other words, dying is a necessary evil fact of life. If we can make it happen without pain and suffering, so much the better. But trying to prolongue it forever is foolish.
To Terminate, or not to Terminate, that's the question - SCSIROB
A computer makes it possible to do, in half an hour, tasks which were completely unnecessary to do before.
Blue Skin of Death...
As he said, personal computers are very important for the world as a whole.
The policies of MS, and their way of doing bussiness has an effect everywhere.
Although MS is not the cause of all the bad stuff that is happiening around, they have some responsibilities, here and there, including developing countries.
They use some techniques I don't approve to convince my government to give them money, and I think that money has better places to be spent. The same thing is happening in Africa, for example.
The guy gives back some money, that is right, and he even gives in a sensible way. But the net gain for everybody, because of the existence of MS is not that clear.
Plus, charity is not that great, and it just doesn't work very well.
Charity alone is not something to praise a guy for. Good ethics, and an overall good effect on the community, that would earn my respect. Giving something back is sometimes not enough.
Who says Bill Gates is offtopic with this first post claim?
He nose slashdot like he nose computers!
Get thee glass eyes, and, like a scurvy politician, seem to see things thou dost not.--King Lear
Anyone with Pirate genes will be left out in the cold, and will be comdemned to eventual privation and death. Won't someone please think of the Pirates? We'll never be able to defeat global warming without them.
What if the Hokey Pokey really is what it's all about?
Plus, charity is not that great, and it just doesn't work very well.
Charity alone is not something to praise a guy for.
That's why he has a foundation, and there are strict rules governing the way that the money is given to 3rd parties. It's run like a business - your charity has to produce results for you to get the money, and to keep getting more, you need to keep producing results. Otherwise, he gives his money to another charity which will do a better job.
Pretty smart way of handling it actually - which is why Warren Buffet jumped on board too.
Coming soon - pyrogyra
MS stole the decision of which OS/applications widows get with their PC's? How can you be a philantropist with someone elses money? He did the right thing is all.
"There's nobody getting rich (by) writing software"
"We will never make a 32-bit operating system, but I'll always love IBM."
"There are no significant bugs in our released software that any significant number of users want fixed."
"There are people who don't like capitalism, and people who don't like PCs. But there's no one who likes the PC who doesn't like Microsoft."
"We've done some good work, but all of these products become obsolete so fast....It will be some finite number of years, and I don't know the number -- before our doom comes."
Developers: We can use your help.
Obviously I'm only going from secondary sources here, but the quote - "If I knew medicine like I do computers, I would like to be able to control the [human] immune system, to fight against the onset of disease on a world level ... but I think the idea of the PC still would have topped that." - makes it sound awfully like Bill is claiming the PC. Either that's poor editing or severely delusional. Hell, Microsoft was the *second choice* OS vendor for IBM.
Which makes me wonder, what has Bill invented?
"One day I will be. I'll be the most powerful Jedi ever! I'll even be able to stop people from dying!" - Anakin Skywalker, Attack of the Clones.
Am I the only one who thought that these two quotes are pretty scarily similar?
Prove it.
Anything that comes from Microsoft is now Irrelevant.
They are now behind the times, and are relying on their soon to be obsolete dominance to push things that are already out there: look at Zune and Windows Leopard, I mean Vista...lol.
They should change their names to Copy$oft.
I will give credit to the Xbox, but that wasn't new either it is a copy of unmentioned consoles.
Call me a dummy too then. The metaphor doesn't fit right. Close but no cigar. Close is only good in horseshoes and grenades.
William Henry Gates is an anagram of 'Lying weasel. Tar him!"
Modest doubt is called the beacon of the wise. - William Shakespeare
... and depth charges, nukes, really bad farts ...
"If you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear." - Every fascist, ever
The tricky part is reading between the lines...
From TFA:
[Gates on "powerful ideas"]
Translation: "Y'all better be glad I'm just screwing up your PC."
[Gates on how Live.com competes with Google]
...until we leverage all the content out of Google with IP lawsuits.
[Gates on recent struggles with the EU]
Interesting that there's no specific mention of what was modified to make the European Edition "unnecessary". It's obvious that Vista is still packing Windows Media Player (component in question) Is this IE/Netscape all over again)?
[Gates on the next 10 years]
This is after quoting all the "amazing stuff" that's coming with the Xbox360, Zune and voice recognition. Yes, World, be like the good ol' U.S. of A-holes! Cave-in to an oppression of content not seen since the book burnings of 1938 Germany!
[Gates on the delays of Vista]
Yes, it's later than we planned. But we want it to be right. It reminds me of when we released Windows 95 late that year, taking much longer than we planned.
...and we all know how "right" Windoze95 turned out to be. (...but it's got a killer version of MS-DOS!)
[Gates on the exposure of medical research furthered by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation]
I get a little upset with the media, which will cover a plane crash in India that killed 100 people, but it won't cover the fact that 1,000 times that many died in Africa today from malnutrition or disease.
Of course! That's why Billy has a problem with the media. ...or is it another
reason?
If Gates did turn out to be a doctor, I'm sure he'd be a plastic surgeon. If he can't make you well, he can at least make you look good.
This post © Copyrite Duggeek, all rights reversed.
...Dr. Gates tells his patient "your body is at risk" and recommends his OneCare miracle medicine.
Do not trust this signature.
Isn't he just giving the money he has taken illegally (due to the illegal monopolistic practices his company was convicted of) to charity? Ya, great guy!
So what do we actually care about what he has to say about it? Bill doesn't work for or at MS any more and hasn't really had his head in the company for years. I know because I am a shareholder who is greatly disappointed at their miserable performance.
When I woke up, they had sewed my feet to my knees!
--
"Outlook not so good." That magic 8-ball knows everything! I'll ask about Exchange Server next.
Call me a dummy too then.
Now you're just being silly. You're a hockey puck.
KFG
I'b be willing to bet you that if this article were titled "Linus Torvalds on the Past, Future, and Google" you all would be kissing his ass up one side and down the other. I don't even know why slashdot posts articles on anything related to Microsoft in any way, shape, or form because all everyone does is talk about how shitty Microsoft is and how super great Linux is.
I guess slashdot's website slogan should be changed to "news(with a slant) for nerds. stuff(slanted towards our views not yours) that matters."
And how do you define "results"? and no matter how you define it, you're going to end up with a bunch of organisations that spend a significant amount of money gathering statistics, writing progress reports, auditing, etc, which ends up taking resources away from actually helping people. And of course it will still be very easy to pad the numbers to make it look like you're doing a lot.
It really isn't just as easy as "lets run it like a business and demand results!". You honestly think that in the history of charitable organisations, that idea has never occurred to anyone?
Now don't take this the wrong way I'm not saying that the Gates Foundation is doing anything wrong. But if they are doing things right, its not as simple as "they expect results". Every funding agency in the world demands some kind of positive result for every project they fund. Do you really think anyone just throws money out there and hopes for the best? Everyone expects some kind of measurable progress, just some funding agencies are more efficient (and less corrupt) than others.
The only reason he likes [compares] PC's and the human immune system is due to the control to make lots of $$$. His money donated goes to drug manufacturing companies to 'aid' the world health. Unfortunately drug companies are cartels anyway (like big Microsofts), and seeing as he and his family have an interest in/and investment in major drug manufacturing companies, where else is there to give away money to get it back straight in the front door.
Gates & co do not care less about human welfare or health. Money and control is the only thing on the agenda.
Lets do some sums.
Suppose the UK Health service has 100,000 PC's (I expect a lot, lot more). Suppose half of those run MSOffice. At £200.00 a licence (a conservative estimate on price), that is £10,000,000 straight away - before any patients even get an aspirin. Now use the same calculation on ALL the worlds health services that run MS products. I bet the bill (pun intended) is BILLIONS of £ to MS before anyone patient gets treated.
He really cares doesn't he?
Yes, Google is the company most like Microsoft. Just like Superman is the person most like Bizarro Superman.
I eat a lot of beans. He should be grateful that I didn't just fart in his general direction.
KFG
Sure Bill, got it and thanks for the tip. Now go back to sleep and let reality set in.
LoB
"Anyone who stands out in the middle of a road looks like roadkill to me." --Linus
PCs are a bigger deal than health for 6 billion people?
Everyone else is saying, "Good thing he's not in health, because we'd have all these viruses." I'm wondering how his perspective got so twisted. Which changes people's lives more? Having a PC, or not dying?
Oh, and Slashdot car analogies.
Heck, they don't even have to be close.
"If you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear." - Every fascist, ever
We are sorry to alert you that your ears are not compatible with the current brain you have installed... please call tech support at: 800-555-5555 to get the correct driver.
It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it.
Hi, it looks like you're having a near-death experience. Would you like me to help you with that?
... and then they built the supercollider.
He could know a lot about computers, but computers are amazingly simple compared to living systems.
No matter how great genius he could be, the human immune system is more complex than what any single person could study in his/her lifetime.
Would had he dedicated his life to medicine, he would know far less about the human body than he knows about technology, by several orders of magnitude.
We are Turing O-Machines. The Oracle is out there.
More like Napoleon Dyanmite and Back to School movies combined. ;)
Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
His wife is responsible for his philanthropy. I don't think he was even someone you could consider a philanthropist until he got married. His fortune was his scorecard in the game of life. It was the only way he could show he was better than everyone else.
Don't forget we'd also all be force fed about 200 square meals of spam a day
.... then i don't know who it could be. gates is scared shitless of google, they threaten his office based control of the OS market. do not be fooled, just because gates is a billionare don't think losing his ill gotten monopoly won't bother him, to guys like this it's all about control and power, money is an after thought. besides, gates has as much insight into the future of computing as my grandmother. he is the guy who considered the internet unimportant, and thinks hardware will be free in 10 years time and you'll only pay for the OS. his ipinion means fucking NOTHING
If you mod me down, I will become more powerful than you can imagine....
Also, I shudder at the idea of Gates / Microsoft being responsible for the crashing of the human immune system!
blah, blah, blah...
Get thee glass eyes, and, like a scurvy politician, seem to see things thou dost not.--King Lear
Robin Hood
Comment removed based on user account deletion
...he'd still be trying to find a way to factor prime numbers.
___
It's the end of my comment as I know it and I feel fine.
Obviously he left Harvard before taking the "Removing bugs - 101" class.
No, really !
> Isn't he just giving the money he has taken illegally (due to the illegal
> monopolistic practices his company was convicted of) to charity? Ya, great guy!
Illegal? Sorry, M$ is a US company and over here we follow the Golden Rule: he who has the gold makes the rules.
BTW: I'll tell Bill you'd like him to take all his money back. Even if it looks like an act of charity, this is Microsoft we're talking about so we MUST do the opposite, right? Sheesh. I hate him too, but at least I can recognize the rare instance where he does something right.
No, but if it were about RMS I'd be supporting him because he's been consistently right. Case in point: BitKeeper.
Please, for the good of Humanity, vote Obama.