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Bill Gates Opens Up About Steve Jobs
Nerval's Lobster writes "Former Microsoft CEO Bill Gates displayed a bit of emotion when talking to CBS's 60 Minutes about Steve Jobs. The interview didn't focus entirely on the relationship between the two men, with most of its running time devoted instead to Gates's charitable efforts. But when the conversation shifted to their last meeting before Jobs's death from cancer in 2011, Gates—normally so cerebral—seemed a bit sad. 'When he was sick I got to go down and spend time with him,' Gates said, describing their meeting as 'forward looking.' Jobs spent a portion of their time together showing off designs for his yacht, which he would never see completed—something that Gates defended when the interviewer seemed a little bit incredulous. 'Thinking about your potential mortality isn't very constructive,' he said. Gates also praised Steve Jobs's marketing and design skills: 'He understood, he had an intuitive sense for marketing that was amazing.' In contrast to his subtle—and not so subtle—digs at the iPad over the years, Gates conceded that Apple had 'put the pieces together in a way that succeeded' with regard to tablets. Gates's magnanimity toward his former rival and Apple is a reflection, perhaps, of his current position in life: it's been nearly five years since his last full-time day at Microsoft, and all of his efforts seem focused on his philanthropic endeavors. He simply has no reason to rip a rival limb from limb in the same way he did as Microsoft CEO."
"Death is the great equalizer. In his pale presence they forgot their old squabbles and jealousies..."
Norman Douglas, South Wind
Seems fitting.
Gates's magnanimity toward his former rival and Apple is a reflection, perhaps, of his current position in life:
Yeah, Gates being alive and Jobs being dead, mainly.
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
It's not just a matter of bad form. It's just a matter of something most people would never want to do, Gates included. It's exciting and driving to compete with a rival and to egg that rivalry on. When a respected rival passes -- especially one who was part of this back and forth spurring on for decades through something as amazing as the revolution of computing -- it's a huge personal loss. It's something and someone you miss.
It's not just that. Talking about how everything good at Apple came from the brilliant mind of a now-dead guy actually is a dig at (present-day) Apple. It serves to undermine confidence in Apple's prospects, and feeds the meme of Apple's inevitable post-Jobs decline, without explicitly stating that.
I've long been fascinated by the evolution of Bill Gates. I cut my teeth in this field as an engineer at Netscape, where I watched along with the rest of the industry as Microsoft did what they did to Netscape and all of the following legal proceedings and DoJ activities ensued. While I still respected the story and beginning of Gates (reading everything I could about him, when I was a teenager), I hated Mr. Borg with a passion and everything about Microsoft. It was what drove me to the arms of Linux and, ultimately, Unix (and my career therein).
Then, he decided to move on from just leading a tech and business army and raking in cash to making finding a way to properly use that cash for the betterment of man. We saw a completely different side of him. Perhaps a new side of the guy that game with maturity and wisdom. I gained a completely new respect for him. I still disagree with some of his views, completely disagree with some of his former business practices, am frustrated and dismayed with a lot of Microsoft's current endeavors and decisions . . . but as a man -- I've come to have a lot of admiration for what he's doing. He's a great example for the rest of the world's wealthiest in doing something truly constructive and beneficial with their unimaginable wealth.
Americans love a success story and we love a story of personal redemption. The only thing we love more than hating someone is them turning things around and giving us reasons to be in their corner. This is one of those stories. And, personally, I find his activities a solid reminder in my own personal life to remember how fortunate I am in my career. As a direct result, I make a point of doing what I can to support things like Engineers Without Borders. I bet many other engineers out there have found the same respect and inspiration.
I also find it sad that, for as inspiring as I found Jobs as far as business and design, there is simply no similar compelling feeling in that same way, after his passing.
I understand the cynicism, but I don't see what benefit there is to an uber-billionaire who no longer runs anything except a philanthropic organization where he gives away his own money, to worry about "emulating compassion and humanity for the media".
Ultimately, I don't care, either. Actions speak louder than words. Emulate whatever the fuck you want, as long as you're giving away hundreds of millions of dollars to solve fundamental problems in the world and try to build a structure with which your money will provide the most long-term benefits continued far into the future.
Thinking about your mortality is valuable when you have all the time in the world ahead of you. Thinking about it when it is an immediate certainty is a detriment.
What is so wrong about a yacht? If he was looking at the design for a garden would you still spew such venom? He was designing something he found beautiful. Maybe he was keeping hope alive that he might sail it around the world; imagining the sunrises and the ocean sky. Is that so much different than you and I?
Oh. I got it. He's got money. Therefore he's evil.
If you're scared of your govt then you need to further restrict its powers
Vote 3rd Party in 2016 and beyond
If you look at what Bill Gates has been doing with his time and money since he quit Microsoft, it's hard to make the case that he is lacking compassion and humanity. He is doing more and higher-profile philanthropy than any other billionaire I can think of, and doing a lot more good in the world than an average citizen like me is in a position to.
Which is not to say he's a saint. How he got his money is certainly open to criticism: I certainly disapprove of that.
If you feel {compelled, qualified, entitled} to assess the man's character, please consider all the facts. Myself, I don't really know the guy.
[Sir Garlon] is the marvellest knight that is now living, for he destroyeth many good knights, for he goeth invisible.
Not square enough. Barge?
As long as it doesn't have rounded corners.
They can take my LifeAlert pendant when they pry it from my cold dead fingers.
My step-dad worked in construction his whole life and he loved it. He loved building things. Well after "retiring" he'd putter around in the workshop he had in the garage. Not long before he died he had me helping him build these modular tables and benches he could reposition for doing various things. His health had deteriorated quite a bit by this point and I strongly suspected he would die before getting much if any use from these tables.
To me it seemed kind of pointless and physically it wasn't easy for him. As I suspected, it was only a few months later that he ended up in the hospital because of his ongoing heart problems, suffered a stroke and died.
These tables were monstrous and incomplete. Nobody wanted them, so eventually they were dismantled.
The missing part of the story is that this man survived over 40 years after open heart surgery and was relatively active in spite of several heat attacks and periodic bouts with other debilitating health problems. Part of the reason he managed to do this was that in spite of his often poor health he never stopped living the life he wanted to live. He may very well have known he'd never finish the tables, but he loved the process. It got him up in the morning.
I think lots of people when faced with mortality will spend more time with their families and trying to do the things they wished they had been doing all their lives. Some people were already doing it. That may be the case with Jobs. I'm not saying he wasn't a jerk and that he didn't have regrets. I'm sure he did. But that doesn't change what brought him joy.
I prefer Bill Gates trying and perhaps failing at charity in an attempt to be a decent person to Bill Gates trying and succeeding in being a douchebag.
Actually operating a charity is not as easy as you think it is. It's not just a matter of wrapping up some food and sending it to starving kids in Ethiopia. If that were the case, we'd have solved hunger long ago, as we already make more than enough food for every person on Earth.
By all means, please DO NOT link us to http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=50146679n .
May not work on an iPad or Windows 8 tablet.
Wearing pants should always be optional.
Many years ago, I once spent a Saturday trying to make the Catalan solids out of wood, using cheap tilt vises, a homemade rotary table, and a poor man's milling machine (an end mill in a cheap drill press that couldn't hold it steady). Didn't get very far-- the tools simply didn't have the precision needed to do a good job. Even though we economized too much on the tools, they were still ridiculously expensive. Why did I try that way? I was following my father's vision of how such a thing should be done, and machinery was what he grew up with. Another Saturday, I used a different approach of making a paper model and filling the interior with epoxy. This worked much better but still had problems. For one, epoxy has a shelf life. It will not harden properly if it is too old, and this was. Another is that epoxy generates heat when it is curing, and this was a large enough mass to become almost too hot to touch. I don't know if an even larger mass could get hot enough to cause real problems such as fires and melting, but it was something to keep in mind. Then my father wanted to employ number punches to number the sides, as if hardened epoxy was just as malleable as metal. To satisfy him, I tried it, and of course the epoxy shattered. Today, those shapes would be a trivial job for a 3D printer.
The point? If I had spent those Saturdays playing computer games, no one would have thought anything of it. But when I mentioned this use of a Saturday, I got a lot of strange looks, and a few queries about why I had "wasted" my time so. My brother warned his fiancee, who dislikes nerds, that I was likely to show off those polyhedrons. It was almost as if I had contracted a contagious disease, the way people acted about the whole thing. Nice when your own brother inoculates his circle against your weirdness, so that they all know to keep their distance and not give you any opportunities to bore the hell out of them and show off how nerdy you really are.
You don't know what specifically Jobs and Gates were discussing about yachts. If it was ways of fitting the ship for cleanup of oil spills, plastics, or other pollution, or for some sort of science like ocean or hydrothermal vent research, or as a test bed for Internet communication over vast expanses of empty ocean (think how that could benefit the Pirate Bay), I would not call that a waste of time. And even if it was none of that, it likely was something of some use. I hardly think Jobs and Gates would have discussed the sort of crass, trashy thing a moronic joker like Donald Trump would do, such as solid gold plumbing fixtures which serves no good purpose, as it is only to inspire jealousy by rubbing in how incredibly filthy rich the owner is, and that only works on fellow fools.
Intellectual Property is a monopolistic, selfish, and defective concept. It is "tyranny over the mind of man"
Gates had stated through his entire career at Microsoft that he would give most of his fortune to charity and he does appear to be doing that,
I do not wish to speak ill of the dead but Jobs was not renowned for any charitable works and certainly made little mention of them.
Windows 10 is great - I used it to download Linux.