Slashdot Mirror
History Will Revere Bill Gates and Forget Steve Jobs, Says Author
Hugh Pickens writes "PC Magazine reports that journalist Malcolm Gladwell, author of The Tipping Point and Outliers, has stirred up quite a controversy in tech circles with his off-the-cuff remarks that history will remember Bill Gates fondly while Steve Jobs slips into obscurity. Gladwell likened Gates' charitable work to the German armaments maker Oskar Schindler's famous efforts to save his Jewish workers from the gas chambers during World War II, and added that because of Gates there's a reasonable shot we will cure malaria. 'Gates, sure, is the most ruthless capitalist. And then he decides, he wakes up one morning and he says, "Enough." And he steps down, he takes his money, takes it off the table ... and I think, I firmly believe that 50 years from now, he will be remembered for his charitable work,' said Gladwell. 'And of the great entrepreneurs of this era, people will have forgotten Steve Jobs. Who's Steve Jobs again?' For all his dismissal of Jobs' legacy, however, Gladwell remains utterly fascinated with him. 'He was an extraordinarily brilliant businessman and entrepreneur. He was also a self-promoter on a level that we have rarely seen,' said Gladwell. 'What was brilliant about Apple, he understood from the get-go that the key to success in that marketplace was creating a distinctive and powerful and seductive brand.' Gladwell concludes that the most extraordinary moment in the biography of Jobs is when Jobs is on his deathbed and it's over and he knows it. 'And on, I forget, three, four occasions, he refuses the mask because he is unhappy with its design. That's who he was. Right to the very end, he had a set of standards. If he was going to die, dammit, he's going to die with the right kind of oxygen mask. To him it was like making him send his final emails using Windows.'"
One took his money and looked around to see what needed to be done
Uh no. One decided what needed to be done to take our money, and the other one discovered that many would give it freely in exchange for shiny shit.
The one who decided to take our money is now looking out for his investments. He invests massively in big pharma, then his foundation convinces countries to give big pharma IP protection, then his foundation gives them vaccines. The first time is free. Just wait until the next health crisis, see what fucking happens.
My prediction is that the Gates Foundation will eventually be dissolved on some pretext and its funds will go directly into some already-deep pockets, which might not even be Bill's; but his hard work will have paid off — in the form of his investments in big pharma paying out.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
You mean like CP/M? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CP/M
> He gave us Windows
He didn't give us Windows, he forced windows on us by having an exclusive contract with the PC vendors.
You know who Billy is really more like? He's like the rich guy in that Jodie Foster movie, "Contact" who fesses up before he dies that he didn't receive so generously from people, but instead took so generously from the people. Except, in the movie the bastard admits it. In real life BillyG hasn't. I suspect that if he's going to admit it (which no one should hold their breath waiting) he'll do it on his death bed so he can't be chewed out for the damage he's wreaked on the computing sector.
Can we please stop the shilling for BillyG now?