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Bill Gates & his 12 Steps
It takes a certain amount of shamelessness to be a monomaniac billionaire dwarf. But even by Bill Gates' standards, excerpts from his new book Business - The Speed of Thought, gracing this week's Time magazine, set new records for gall.
Bill Gates, you may remember, hasn't had a good year. Business Week described one competitor, open source operating system Linux, as Microsoft's "Vietnam." 3Com has snatched the bulk of the handheld computer market right out from under Microsoft's nose. Apple's new open source operating system OSX is on the way. Sony is coming after Microsoft with new operating systems that run personal computing and consumer electronics. And then there's the trial, so far at least, powerful reinforcement of the notion that just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they're not out to get you.
When Gates appeared as a witness in the Microsoft trial he was shockingly arrogant, and - to put it as generously as possible - forgetful. Meanwhile, complaints about MS software bugs have hit record levels on MS bug websites, and IBM's middleware software is taking off. A number of state attorneys general are licking their chops over expected settlements in the Microsoft anti-trust trial, which the company's leading execs are skewered weekly and reminded what they wrote in e-mails months and years earlier. Beyond that, Microsoft's insanely hyped new media properties - the online magazine Slate, MSN.com, and local Sidewalk entertainment and information sities - are all still struggling, all still losing vast sums of money.
Is Bill Gates chastened? Humbled? Don't be silly. He's written yet another vapid tome, the banal sequel to the much-hyped "The Road Ahead," his first best-seller, which accomplished something few authors could have achieved - making the future of the Internet so boring as to be unreadable. By and large, the press treated that book as if it were the Koran, personally delivered by the Prophet himself. Again, the mainstream media are slobbering over their favorite Millenial visionary. In this sequel, does Gates have a single word to about the many challenges facing his company, and his multiple mis-steps of l998? For that matter, does Time ask him? Don't be foolish. In his new book, gushes Time in its cover story, "Microsoft's chairman says that only managers who master the digital universe will gain competitive advantage."
Duh. This is how Gates made billions?
"To function in the digital age," writes Gates the author, "we have developed a new digital infrastructure. The successful companies of the next decade will be those that use digital tools, he continues. And to make "digital information flow an intrinsic part of your company," he offers a number of key steps.
If you're planning on reading this book and getting rich off of computers, go gamble on some e-stock instead, or play your local lottery. You'll do better. Gates' "Steps" are true yawners, either so obvious as to be useless, or full of the kind of incomprehensible cyber-jabberwocky news organizations like Time drool over. Like "Insist that communication flow through e-mail"; "Study Sales Data Online to Share Insights Easily"; and "Use Digital Communication To Redefine the Boundaries." (My personal favorite is: "Transform Every Business Process Into Just-In-Time Delivery." Everybody must realize, Gates cautions, that "if you don't meet customer demands quickly enough, without sacrificing quality, a competitor will.) Talk about vision.
And those are the best and most provocative ideas. It's hard to know which is dumber, Gates "steps" or Time's incomprehensible decision to air them on its cover.
Clearly, the Gates comeback is underway, the manipulable media ready for one more go at presenting this remarkably unremarkable man as a millenial wizard, and for the second, or is it the third, time? Modern media has no memory when it comes to fawning over the rich and powerful, and falling for hype is sure no vice in that business.
Imagine what Gates's true steps might be if we didn't live in so hype-heavy and world and if journalism told the truth. They might go something like this:
l. Destroy Competitors.
2. Discourage competition.
3. Be arrogant and evasive, even under oath and before a federal judge (this isn't really a new idea).
4. Build a digital castle for hundreds of millions of dollars and stuff it with Leonardo DaVinci's sketchpads, Napoleon's trinkets and other memorabilia. Make it so awe-inspiring that visiting journalists are dazzled and cowed forget to ask any tough questions, and continue to bally hoo even your dubious accomplishments.
5. Refuse to answer questions, anyway, except in carefully selected and protected environments - book excerpts, pre-arranged and carefully screened interviews.
6. Create unnecessary software and hype it beyond all reason, forcing hundreds of thousands of helpless and unknowing people to spend millions or even billions of dollars unnecessarily. Then charge them extra for "incident" help when they call up trying to get help they deserve for the products they bought.
7. Seek to dominate an entire culture.
8. Amass tens of billions of dollars, even though you could give ever poor kid in America his or her own computer without evening touching your capital. Give some money to charity, but require most of the recipients - libraries, for instance -- to buy more of your products to use the free stuff they get.
9. Be obnoxious, surly and arrogant.
10. Be sure to make friends with important people in media and have them over to your house. jonkatz@slashdot.org
Go here.
how many times a day does someone on /. have to post the same anti-ms dribble over and over again.
/.-ers would never ever believe it.
heaven forbid that it turn out that MSFT actually did something good...
Testimony in the MS-DOJ trial said that MS uses paper accounting. Gates book says electronic accounting.
AP story in USA Today
Bill Gates is trying to make the point that he and Microsoft are here to improve life with digital innovation. If the government would just leave Microsoft alone, they could continue to innovate. The people complaining are whining failed competitors who want to bring Microsoft down.
The government shouldn't be in the business of designing software. If the government keeps beating up on Microsoft, it could ruin the economy. Where would we get our software from if we didn't have Microsoft?
(Man I love writing this drivel!)
Just a thought..
if the road ahead was a best-seller then why is borders selling it for $2.98? i could've sworn best-sellers maintained their value...
"The point of opening one's mind, as in opening one's mouth, is to close it again on something solid" -- G.K. Chesterton
Let's bash The Bill some more.
If you want to rule the kingdom, keep the subjects in dark - Chanakya, A Minister of a ancient Empire.
They're trying to smash capitalism by secular humanist Woman Lawyers representing the United Nations!
Get it right!
:)
I can see how one might get the impression that Katz just did an anti-Gates article to score some points with the /. folks.
But I honestly don't think so. I've read most of the stuff here that he has ever posted, and an anti-Gates attitude fits right in with the content of the majority of his previous posts. Katz has always rooted against the powerful corporations and corporate bigwigs that have all gotten fabulously wealthy by ripping people off in the computer industry (and other industry's, consider for example his comments about mp3's and the record industry.) He has also written quite a bit about the politics of freedom behind the Linux OS, and how he supports it, and how it is the opposite of capitalist money-making philosophies on software and computing (of which Bill Gates might be considered the epitome.)
So it certainly wouldn't have been a stretch, based entirely on his previous posts, to assume that Katz was anti-Gates. Probably surprising he has held out against attacking Gates for so long, considering how much Gates has done to foster the current culture within the computer industry of making as much money as possible by selling software before it's ready, by selling mediocre/substandard software, by over-charging, by deceiving consumers (eg "software is inherently complex, so therefore it is normal for software to crash so much"), creating "hooks" and "integrations" to require more from peoples' wallets, and also generally lowering people's expectations of the computer industry.
There has to be more involved to Bill than luck,
after all, if more luck than skill was involved, what about CP/M, and all the others that fell by the wayside. Don't discount bill just because there was luck involved...
Stock values have NO relationship to Bill Gates' personal fortunes, or even that of the company.
Umm... since BG owns 20% of MSFT, the price VERY MUCH reflects his own net worth. That's why this year he's the richest man on the planet, and last year he wasn't... Additionally, the P/E and cap. cost of a stock are generally VERY good measures of the health of ANY company. MSFT's P/E AND cap. cost (the largest in the world) reflect the great earnings. How little do you really know about investing???
So long as there's a POSSIBILITY of dividends, investers will buy the stocks. From there, it's simple maths:
The word is math... and Microsoft hasn't issued a dividend since it went public almost 15 YEARS ago. Not once. Never.
You buy stocks, the price goes up. You sell stocks, the price goes down. More stocks bought than sold, the price rises by more than it falls.
You're a regular E.F. Hutton, aren't you?!?! I can make a generalization too... If a stock has crappy earnings, but they announce a presence on the Internet, the price goes up (vapor) - because fools buy into it, but if a crappy company announces crappy earnings, people sell. That's why MSFT has the largest cap. cost in the world - because they traditionally return MASSIVE revenue each quarter...
You also have to consider that tech stocks are largely regarded as hyper-inflated, anyway. For the reason given above - people buying promises, not goods. Actually, that, in itself is a good indicator - other tech stocks more than doubled in the year - I believe Amazon.com did very nicely for itself.
COMPLETELY different ballgame!!! Amazon is in the red, and will be for 2+ years! So is almost every other Internet Co. MSFT, on the other hand, is very much in the black. To blindly throw Microsoft (which has performed VERY well over a VERY long period of time) in with sucker-bet "Internet/tech" stocks which are performing well because they are "the thing" this week is laughable.
Don't quit your day job, mr. financial advisor...
I used to come here for some interesting articles about Linux & open source code and the occasional random but interesting link. Lately, this site has denegrated to a collection of stupid article followed by thousands of argumentative posts that add no value (not all, just most).
The worst thing that happened to this site is that it has become a waste of my time.
I have already gotten a peek at tomorrrow's Slashdot:
- Linux rules, everything else sucks. And don't tell me different.
Now and again I read about Microsoft's "Bob"? Who is or was Bob?
Really, I have no idea. I've used some MS products, but never run acrosss this Bob fellow.
There was "Clippy" the paperclip but I have now removed all MS Office products from my computer.
Where does Bob reside?
I have run across a "Bob" associated with the "Get Slack" cult, as in "Get Bob in your life" in Slackware circles. Same Bob, or his evil twin?
Needing clues
... for a large EMP to turn Billy Boy's "digital castle" into a multi-million dollar chunk of sand. hehehe
.......
It's nice to see that Gates has decided to go back to college too and finally take that intro Econ class he always meant to. Maybe next quarter they will get around to talking about the inefficiency of "monopolies". I only he doesn't start claiming to be the father of modern Econonmics, as well as the Internet, GUI's,
they called my town "unfashionable".
bastards!
This is an insight? This sort of cross-marketing has been going on for years, decades even.
I just got spam-mail in my mailbox for Sidewalk.
I certainly don't remember giving my email address away to anything Microsoftian, and if I had I would have made sure to check any "do not send me crapmail" checkboxes. Not sure how they got it.
"Visit MSN Sidewalk: Win prizes & shop for deals!" (never mind the fact that Sidewalk isn't available for where i live could have been deduced from my domain)
The Sidewalk service has also been used by Microsoft for data-mining purposes. If you want to know more about this specifically I have a doc on my homepage at http://www.geocities.com/SoHo/Lofts/2018/ams.html
Don't respond to this. It is obviously a troll bait.
Yeah, but where's the fun in regurgitating the same old lame attacks? Let's be creative. Let's analyze Bill's trial testimony for signs of alien reprogramming. Let's find connections between Biblical prophecies of Armageddon and the Win32 API. Now that would really be fun.
Well, I'm off to Segfault.org.
Hitler...created volkwagon, does that make everything ok?
From the article:
Create unnecessary software and hype it beyond all reason, forcing hundreds of thousands of helpless and unknowing people to spend millions or even billions of dollars unnecessarily. Then charge them extra for "incident" help when they call up trying to get help they deserve for the products they bought.
If Microsoft's stance in court is that they don't discourage competition, then here's a potentially lucrative business idea that would really, really annoy them, because it would deprive Microsoft of revenue.
Start up a business whose line of bustiness is supporting Microsoft software, and charge a lot less than Microsoft for support calls. If it is a user requesting assistance, you make a bit of money. If it is a software bug, pass the bug on to Microsoft only if they will not charge you for reporting it. If they insist on charging, don't tell them. It's not YOUR buggy software that you're supporting. Heck, if your business gets big enough, you could even start charging Microsoft a "finder's fee" for every bug....
"Maths" is common usage outside of the good ole USA
Microsoft is in the black because a large part of its wage bill, stock options, doesn't go through the profit and loss account even though it costs shareholders. The total adds up to something like $60bn, more than the company has made so far. If you don't believe me, ask Warren Buffet. That suggests that either MSFT has been paying its staff too much or that if the rise in its share price slows, its wage bills will soar. There is also a tremendous amount of money being spent on strategic projects beyond Windows/Office/Visual Studio that has produced very unimpressive performance. Even so it is the prospects for these businesses where MSFT is second guessing consumers that much of the valuation hinges upon. The worrying thing is that even experienced fund managers don't get the options problem thinking that employee benefits somehow have a free pass that says that Black-Scholes doesn't apply to them.
As to BG's wealth, it is what he could sell 20 per cent of MSFT for. I bet that's a bit lower than just the current price times the number of shares.
Ahh... The winds of change.
Did Gates really write that? If he did, it's sufficient proof of insincerity. If he did, he probably also wrote "Be sure to edit the video-taped demos - the other guys lawyers will never notice."
Please. If Gates had such a bad year, why did MS stock more than double in that time?
Hmmm...look at the so-called Internet companies. The "blue chip" stocks in this category trade for 100-500 times earnings. The vast majority of these companies, however, have never turned a profit and most certainly never will (companies which produce nothing of value frequently have this problem). Yet in many cases capitalizations are in millions or billions, and stock price appreciation has been substantial. Microsoft, which actually does earn a profit, should be disappointed if their stock merely doubles in value each year in the idiotic tech stocks market.
I get so sick of the Nazis being used as some sort of trump card for weak arguments.
Please, making buggy software & being a jerk are not on the same level as mass murder. Implying that they are downplays the horrors of the holocaust & is socially irresponsible at best.
And just for the record, the Volkswagon was a government sponsored automobile during the Nazi regime. I believe the factory was in southern Germany. Due to the war effort, that factory never produced one single car.
_But_, the government took orders for them, people made payments towards cars they didn't have & never got them while the Nazis were in power.
That's called being a consultant. How do you think people make money from various forms of *nix?
MSFT only makes a profit if you exclude the easily quantifiable cost of its stock options. They've run to about $60bn dollars so far, easily more than the company has ever made. Also banking on profits from MSN or Windows Everywhere is just as blue sky as Yahoo! say.
just think if bill did sell MSDOS to IBM... what would we be using now?? IBM probably would have put it on a shelf.. and we would all be using Macs... and then.. we would complain how apple stole their ideas from Xerox.. and how huge, monopolistic, and corrupt they are..
people are funny... arent they?
I would just like to say, that I got The Road Ahead for 90% off, and I read about 10 pages before it put me to sleep. What a boring piece of trash.
I thought Amazon was loosing gobs of money. Profit?
The Road Ahead didn't even have anything about the Internet in it (until they revised it for a later printing). The fact is that Microsoft and Bill Gates were caught totally offguard by the emergence of the Internet. In 1996 they were running around like chickens with their head cut off.
They are also being caught offguard by the emergence of open-source movement.
In the area of programming languages, you would think that MS could come up with a decent programming language to replace C and C++, and get it past critical mass, but...
... someone else would've.
Believe it or not, at the time Bill was purchasing and reselling DOS from Seattle Technologies, there were PLENTY of people (including at IBM) who realised how absolutely HUGE the home computer was going to become. Many people and corporations at the time all smelt massive truckloads of money. This was not something that Bill alone realised (despite the impression that he might give in interviews and in his books with his "visionary" "we seemed like the only ones who realised this could become like a really big thing" comments.) A (relatively) large number of people wanted in on this.
If Bill hadn't been the right-place-right-time lucky guy who got in there, SOMEONE ELSE WOULD'VE DONE IT, and SOMEONE ELSE WOULD'VE MADE OS'S THAT DUMMIES COULD USE. This is, was, and always has been a process that was driven not by Bill Gates's vision or whatever, but by the market itself.
Perhaps if it had been someone else, the industry would have looked quite different today. Perhaps we'd have even bigger/worse monopolies than we have right now (history has taught us that this sort of thing is quite normal for emerging markets.) But perhaps whoever had done it would have had additional ideals, such as believing strongly in the quality of software, and perhaps believing that one should not as standard practice release a beta version of your software as the "final version".
But make no mistake, Bill was certainly NOT the only one who realised back then that making computers easy to use would be extremely profitable. This FUD notion that "we would all be using Unix now and only techies would have computers if Bill hadn't existed" is crud. The market has to a large extent dictated the general direction it has moved in.
"I will start by recalling some facts. When Bill started his dos thing,
there no people's computers."
This is total crap. Cheap personal computers
existed way before DOS. In fact, many of them
were even cheaper than today's PCs. Just to
name a few: Commodore VIC-20 and 64, TRS-80,
Sinclair ZX80 and ZX81, a few computers from
Amstrad (CPC 464 and 664, if I recall correctly), and of course the Apple II.
M$ even wrote software for some of them, including a BASIC interpreter. There was also a whole series of cheap computers that followed the so called MSX standard (essentially, a Z80 processor + the M$ basic interpreter)
At first I thought I was the only one, but every time I see his face on TV, I think, how can a guy with $50 billion be so boring. He is living proof that no amount of money will turn a crashing bore into an interesting, vital person. The same with his books; his vision of the future seems to amount to more, faster, brighter and expensive playtoys, but taking great care not to propose anything remotely innovative or revolutionary or actually useful.
Mr. Bill appears to be trying to be the Forrest Gump of high tech. Could this explain his puzzling popularity? Even so, how can his supporters get past the fact that this guy is boring, boring, boring?
But a word of caution to Jon Katz; remember the saying "Never argue with an idiot, the casual bystander will not be able to tell which is which". I see a number of posts who seem to fit this bystander role, posting to defend their hero, Mr. Bill.
Well, I have to admit that, according to the legends that I've heard, luck had quite a bit to do with it.
According to the legend that I heard, IBM was ready to go with DRI's CP/M, but DRI was not appropriately awed by IBM and insisted on dictating terms. Bill's Dad had connections, somehow, with IBM and got the deal for Bill. Bill then went out and bought QDOS, repackaged it, and sold it to IBM. That's how Microsoft initially got all it's money.
If DRI had been a little more humble or if Bill's Dad didn't have connections, Microsoft would be a small software company writing applications for Macintosh.
Luck.
About the only business acumen I can ascribe to Gates, at least in those early days, is buying QDOS instead of developing it himself.
I do believe that TrueType was invented by Apple and then licensed to M$. DOS was also purchased by Big Bill, and then modified, not invented by him. I wouldn't call either one of those innovations. Silly.
"anything that's in the middle of the road looks like roadkill to me"
A few weeks ago, I installed IE 4.5 for the Mac. It used to create a folder called "Microsoft Internet Applications" for IE 4.01 and OE.
The name of the new folder? "Microsoft Internet 4.5"
Maybe Microsoft didn't invent the Internet, but they just recently upgraded it to version 4.5! I hope the new version has more porn...
(While the above story is true, the final paragraph is meant as a joke. Please don't assume that I believe that Microsoft somehow "upgraded" the Internet. I do know better. I'm just trying to be humorous. Please don't shoot me.)
Microsofts goal for their next consumer version of windows will include bob wether you like it or not with voice recognition. Its typical microsoft strategy if a competitor outcompetes you or you can't sell a product, then bundle it with windows or office. The paper clip will be everywhere from boot up where it will tell you which serverices are loading to just spying on you doing anything with the desktop. I heard the paper clip will ask you to uninstall microsoft products that aren't registered or will yell at you and threaten you if you do use non registered ms products. All the windoze NT power users who be fleeing to linux from microsoft like the plague when this hapens. I read this a year and a half ago in pc magazine or NT magazine. Its been too long too remember which one. Microsoft still thinks windows 95 is too hard and way too technical for average people. The wierd thing is that they plan to reimplement bob in NT. NT of all operating systems. It will be difficult to hide all the complexities. Also Bill gates announced that voice recognition will come as an add on to windows 2000.
So many brats whining about the writing. Sheesh, if you don't like him don't read the fsckin articles eh? Your sophomoric attitudes are incredibly lame.
It's already been done! And it's probably one of the reasons why Microsoft can get away with such atrocious service to customers. An example is Compuserve. Just join up and go to their Windows 95 Setup Forum, or Windows Users Forum. The are also forums for the other Windows'. If you want to do an experiment, just try to go to Microsoft's web page for Windows support and download Service Pack #1. First, try to even find it. Or call Microsoft's support line, wait on hold and just try to get any useful advice. Now repeat on the Windows 95 Setup Forum. Everything you need is laid out logically for easy download. If you have a question or problem, post a request and you will get an answer back from a knowledgable sys op in a short time.
Microsoft's user support is so bad as to be beyond belief. I can't think of any way they can be getting away with this except by the above. Compuserve is not the only third party support for the common man, ever notice all the books on how to use that "intuitive operating system" in your local book store?
Get your facts straight. Bill nor ms ever written any of these projects. Does wordstar sound fimiliar? ms bought it and it became word. ms powerpoint wab by viso I think. Ms did write excell AND THATS IT! EVEN DOS WAS BOUGHT BY BILLS FATHER FOR 40,000. He just buys and buys and throws the all mighty buch around. The only reason he even became successfull is because of a deal with IBM who standardized the pc revolution and through IBM, ms made millions and used the money to buy one thing after another and use ilegal and exclusive contracts to sell its products. Linux is the only os thats sold on technology and not contracts. Ms make the worst products in the world to have to use these contracts and have their employees post on slashdot to sell their products. At least we don't have to give away things to be successfull.
Talk about pandering to you audience! Now I'm left with the choice of flaming Katz, and being seen as a Gates apologist, or flaming Gates, and being seen as a Katz apologist! I'll take the lesser of the two evils, thank you...
Actually, Katz may have found his forte here. This article was at least amusing, even interesting. And the only thing I can find to truly disagree with is the use of the word "forcing" in step six. Objectively, Gates never forced anyone to buy his bad software. Perhaps "tricking" would have been a better choice of words. Certainly Micro$oft marketing has implied that the software was more stable, more useful, more secure, and contained far fewer bugs than it actually does. But they never put a gun to anyones head and made them buy it.
Yes, Time does themselves a diservice by pandering to a man who had been thouroughly discredited in the press lately. It sort of makes you wonder -- is the cover of one of the nations foremost weekly journals really for sale? Does Gates have so much money, he can buy time? Any way we can get an idea of what Time's revenues from M$ ads is?
M$ code would be really expensive to support, so I don't know if that's such a great business. However, I am totally in support of bustiness.
Whenever a big-shot CEO writes a book about his success, it is well worth considering shorting his stock. They are at the apex of their parabola.
I say this on the non-scientific basis of having read several "how I did it" success books. In each case, the company discussed subsequently plateaud or even shrunk.
Forget Linux and Apple for a moment. I read somewhere that 50% of US households now have a computer. We are halfway up the S curve. I think Microsoft will lose its qualification as a growth company.
Of course, there is the world market, but much of that is still Third World, where $90 is big bucks.
Is Microsoft still worth 50x trailing earnings??
Also, back then, IBM, ironically was being accused by all their competitors of anti-trust behaviour!
One of their complaints against IBM was that their mainframe OS software was bundled in the price of the computer, thus cutting out all the third party OS's. IBM wasn't going to make that mistake with their PC, so they farmed out their PC OS.
Guess who benefitted?
Wow, finally a JonKatz post that's almost Segfaultworthy. Congrats. I guess I just don't want politically-laced news, unless it's obscenely destructive.
Bob is great. It's the only program on my dad's computer that I use when I go visit him. The geography quiz rocks! (I'm 29 BTW).
Nice generalization.
I live on my own, well into my 20s, and money is of little concern to me. I don't have rich parents, or some trust fund someplace. Some of us adults really don't care about money. There's a lot more in this world to be interested then in how much green strips of cotton you have.
Gates may be able to buy "Time" but can he buy "Life"?(giggle)
That's an easy one. Everyone(at least high tech investors) is following the "Greater Fool Theory of Investing". This simply states that even if you buy an overpriced stock, when you need the cash, you will be able to find an even greater fool to sell it to.
Recently this theory has been renamed "Momentum Investing". Remember, momentum investing also works in reverse so all the overpriced stocks like Microsoft and all the Internet stocks had better take care.
This is me again, the guy who stated facts.
This is not in defense of Bill, but just stating that as the first answer came at the right place and right time, and that IBM APPLE were there too!
THEY sucked, and now they make us believe (IBM) they will be helping quality by promoting Linux.
I don't believe that crap. Bill did screw people, but IBM APPLE et al. would have done the same!
Linux is special, because it's GNU. All of the other so called victims of Bill are just wimpy losers who would have done the same if they had done it right!
Ah, yes, you are right. His mother and Bill Akers from IBM were both on the board of directors of the United Way. When Bill Akers' skunkworks PC project suddenly comes to the conclusion that they have no software, he says to himself, "Hey, doesn't Mary's son have some sort of microcomputer software thing going on? Maybe I should talk to him!" Of course he unwittingly hands Bill the keys to the castle and it just goes downhill from there.
Read "Fire In The Valley" for more.
Is anyone else bothered by the use of "@", ".com", or smileys outside of their proper context? The title of the book: "Business @ the speed of thought" seems like just so much Madison-Avenue-pseudo-internet-savvy-cleverness, kind of like seeing "www.kleenex.com" on the bottom of a newspaper ad.
Just bugs me, don't quite know why.
Oh christ...the Nazi argument rears it's head again. Did you know that there is absolutely no way a topic can be intelligently debated once some airhead throws in the Nazi reference and comparisons to Hitler?
I declare this thread dead!
P.S. Since when does being the leader of a country when something is invented ipso facto make that leader the creator? Hmm..in that case...Gerald Ford invented UNIX!!
This thread is officially over!!!
Maybe by this time next year Bill Gates will have another 12 steps- the 12 steps of Monopolists Anonymous.
Reads like Gnome's 12 Steps to Desktop Dominance.
You left out one, though:
13. Always make your products difficult to uninstall, and require successful uninstalls to induce breakage of apps which rely on different versions of libraries required for your installation which are not backwards compatible.
Therefore, once installed, a customer's entire system becomes dependent on the libraries you use, so that many apps must be recomplied against your versions to work at all. Once having gone that far, a customer dare not uninstall your product for fear that his entire system might be left in ruins.
>> P.S. Since when does being the leader of a country when something is invented ipso facto make that leader the creator? Hmm..in that case...Gerald Ford invented UNIX!!
that can't be right. that would mean LBJ (or someone around then) invented the internet, not Al Gore...
>What Mr. Gates wants to do with his money is his business. Nobody has to right to tell him what to do with it.
Wrong. We, through elected officials, raise and lower taxes. To some extent, the people of Washington, as well as the USA, determine where a portion of his money goes. If some of the lawsuits he is battling are lost, he may have to pay fines for his illegal activities. So, you are somewhat correct, but the criminal can be forced to pay his debt to society. This is a subtlety many people miss.
Money is just a tool.
Actually, that would be Richard Nixon. And if that's so, then Tricky Dick is the father of the internet!
" There are not enough bugs or problems with Unix to make money doing what the above poster describes. "
Ha ha ha...
I think you mean that there aren't enough unix installations to make money doing it...
Please, as if you possibly believe that unix is as easy to use as windows...if that were the case why are people working on Gnome and KDE????
Steve Jobs has a 12-Step Program, too!
1. Destroy Competitors
2. Discourage Competition
3. Be arrogant and evasive
4. [Live well and] bally hoo even your dubious accomplishments (well, 1 out of 2)
5. Refuse to answer questions, except in carefully selected and protected environments
6. Create unnecessary software and hype it beyond all reason (well, spend 3 years hyping a long-overdue OS upgrade that still isn't available)
7. Seek to dominate an entire culture (of graphic designers and people who don't want an OS that actually does anything)
8. Amass tons of money but don't give anything to schools for free, and require recipients of your charity to buy more of your products (since your products are incompatible with most other hardware on the market, they'll have to buy your pricey "upgrades")
9. Be obnoxious, surly, and arrogant (they're neck and neck on this one)
10. See #4.
11. There is no 11.
12. There is no 12, either.
Programming Windows is a nightmare. Thank God for cgi and java and javascript! And for that system stuff, gimme cc and frankly that means Unix!! Microsoft's tools are a proprietary jungle designed to paint developers into a corner. Forget that. I'm tired of Bill's embrace and conquer philosophy. I'd rather have access to multiple vendors for my applications; just like I have for my peripherals. Bill's Monopoly may have made sense in the the shrink-wrap era; but in the world of net downloads, it's a dinosaur.
He and Ferdinand Porsche founded Volkswagen.
Sprechen zie deutsche?
I'm pretty sure QDOS was a menu-based shell for MS-DOS developed by Gazelle (the same people who brought you OpTune), and was never acquired by Bill Gates or Microsoft.
Yeah, but now just about everything I read is propaganda. One way or another, even on Slashdot.
/.. Maybe he got mad at Microsoft. But that article turned me off. Reports on Slashdot should stay on topic and cover open source news, and leave flamewars to usenet or maybe posters.
You can read marketing spiels and FUD or angry consumer/idealistic vitriol.
Slashdot is overrun with flames. In this article, Katz is fanning them. This creates a lot of hot air, and no light. I preferred Kats's book review, which had a bunch of interesting ideas about approaches to future media communication.
Maybe Katz wanted to feel more wanted by
(Explain||Inform)&&!Rant
Read that list again, and think this time.
Oh man, Katz actually having the gonads to call someone else's writing "stupefyingly boring." LOL!!! John, don't you ever bother to read the replies to your posts? Please, I beg you, can't we have one more 8,000-word article about you trying (and failing, of course) to format a floppy disk? Get some perspective, you pathetic hack.
Cheers,
ZicoKnows@hotmail.com
You're explaining the joke, but you don't QUITE recognize the humor.
:)
It's sarcasm... irony... the person who listed all those "innovations" was well aware of the reality.
Why are most people around here so eager to be the one to shout out "you're wrong and I noticed" that they don't stop to consider the possibility that not everyone in the universe is an idiot? I know the answer. It's because most people around here are so arrogant that they think they're on top of everything and need to clue everyone else in.
I'm no different... it's just that I really AM cluing everyone else in.
I should curb my arrogance and continue to just sit back and continue to laugh at the stupidity of all these arrogant people who misunderstand every sarcastic post on slashdot... or better yet, laugh at the idea that maybe just SECONDS after they hit the "Submit" button, they smacked their foreheads and said "OH!!! I get it! He was JOKING!"
The nice thing about laughing about them getting it a moment too late is that I can still go to sleep at night, instead of staying up worrying that there are people who NEVER got it.
Oh shit. Is this mindlink still hooked up? I guess that means all of this got sent to slashdot. Good thing you have to think the name of a button before the mindlink presses it! Otherwise I might have accidentally hit
heh, you people, all you do is bitch and complain, well I think I'll bitch and complain a little bit too. YOU PEOPLE SUCK! If its not name calling, its outright insults. Comments on /. used to be somewhat worthwhile reading, but now I think everyone posts just to be flame bait. FUCKING FLAME AWAY LAMERS! I don't giva damn cuz I ain't ever gonna read peoples comments again. Front page is enuff for me.
/., fuckoff as well, its Rob's site and he can do with it what he damn well pleases.
And for you people who don't like Jon Katz, fuckoff. Your not paying his bills are you? You say Rob shouldn't allow him on
I'm not anonymous coward, I'm Deimos_
deimos@kfa.cx
I'm with you on the "style" part. "If it's groovy enough for Steve Jobs, it's groovy enough for America." Monochrome-only displays? Diskless PCs targetted at Ma & Pa Kettle? Listen, Toy Story made a zillion dollars; if you're so smart, why aren't you as rich as Steve Jobs, huh?
Why do people post this dismissive "go 'way son, ya bother me" anti-college bullshit? Do you have senioritis yourself, and are you projecting? And the whole "Mommy and Daddy" thing is BEAT, it's PLAYED. At least have the decency to call people Nazis and default the argument fair and square
Why do people post this dismissive "go 'way son, ya bother me" anti-college bullshit? Do you have senioritis yourself, and are you projecting? And the whole "Mommy and Daddy" thing is BEAT, it's PLAYED. At least have the decency to call people Nazis and default the argument fair and square.
It seems that when certain /. luminaries (ie. Sengan or RMS) write predictable anti-MS ramblings, they're cheered and lauded as fearless revolutionaries. When Jon Katz posts a similar article, he gets flamed to high heaven.
I thought his comments were pretty reasonable tho.
Brian Blackwell (blackers@netscape.net)
I was reading another article on /. earlier today about a book being written on the net in one day...could this be the result ?
Check it out
Nah, he's still sore 'cos he didn't get invited to the big bash at Bill's house just before the federal government's Internet Summit last year :-)
i don't discount bill because of luck. i just fon't like that the computer industry was set back twenty years by programming the worlds largest virus. each year it grows and consumes more computers bogging the world down...........
Well, the interface for Windows 3 came largely from OS/2 1.x, for which IBM can take most of the credit. (blame?)
When it was revamped with Win 95, they did a lot of borrowing from OS/2 2.x, as anyone using OS/2 around that time could attest.
Win NT W A S OS/2 - MS was working on the next version when they had the 'split' with IBM. They just took the OS/2 v2 they had under development, slapped a Windows interface on it, and kept on going.
I think 'Bob' was a Microsoft original though...
I mean, stuff like this may seem obvious to any computerlitterate person, but you might be surprised to know, how many people in upper management have no clue at how email can be used for anything useful at all. :) (Yes, part of my point is, management is stupidity itself).
My point is, if you tell them, they ain't gonna care, but if someone that rich says so, they tend to listen
Bottom line - some people need help, but they pay our checks.
"Insist that communication flow through e-mail"
I gather you haven't spent a lot of time in
dysfunctional "high"-"tech" offices. But they're
absolutely chock-full of epsilon semi-morons
who insist on typing memos, printing them out,
putting them in those abhorrent intra-office
yellow envelopes, and leaving them to rot in
physical mailboxes. And then getting all pissy
when whatever it was they memoized gets ignored.
If Gates manages to convince even a handful of
these people to get with the program, it will
have been worth it.
Of course, the corrallary to what he is saying
is "make sure the email is encoded in some
proprietary MS format so your recipients will
eventually break down and buy our software to
read it."
For that, and the way he goes about ensuring that
it may well happen, he deserves a good solid
kneecapping. Or two. Or three.
I think the subject says it all - but still I have to add: Shake that snake!
W S B
Unfortunatly MS has come up with Visual Basic and IT-arseholes, oops managers, all over the world are flocking to it like flies to a big, juicy turd. No, I wouldn't refer to a VB-programmer as a software developer - rather they are users. VB is a crutch for people who can't grasp the concept of software development.
Bill S B
...which is, of course, hire a ghost writer since Gates himself likely doesn't have the skills to do it himself. Wasn't the Road Ahead written by a ghost writer?
..wouldn't be the first time Gates claimed authorship of someone else's work..
Name ONE 'good' thing that Microsoft has done. Just ONE.
And why can't we have some vitriol? The Microsoft-loving crowd at ZDNET and around the 'net have posted enough brain-dead vitriol about the Linux community. I think Katz is right-on. It's time the world realized that Bill Gates is nothing but a paranoid megalomainiac FRAUD.
> Money is just a tool.
I want an upgrade.
Read again, he DID write Volkswagen with E.
Resistance was futile.
The correct spelling for 'speag' is speak you arrogant hypocrite. Why don't you go back to doing somthing you know about...say manufacturing large gas ovens, or working on genocide....
>Name ONE 'good' thing that Microsoft has done. Just ONE.
;)
*DirectX
*Office 97
*Ages of Empire
Yes, they have bugs, but that doesn't mean they are useless. Kernel 2.2 has some serious bugs too let me tell you, it crashed on me again yesterday and I'm moving back to the old kernel now. I have done lots of productive work with Office (Access sucks though) and DirectX has made game developing simpler and therefore has given me lots of fun.
>And why can't we have some vitriol?
Because people who flame instead of argue rationally are childish and stupid and don't help their cause one bit. And I don't like it when Linux/Open Source people (people who I consider is on "my" side) look childish and stupid.
Don't give ZD a hard time. They are always sending links to news about LINUX in their morning mail that I get. They are also offering lots of LINUX training.
Not that I'll ever need any training they offer, but it does make it easier for LINUX to catch on.
I liked Jon Katz' article. Made some good points.
Enjoyed some of the good things others had to say about it. Didn't enjoy what some of the critics had to say about it.
There's an old saying that goes something like this - No one ever put up a statue of a critic.
Maybe some of you critics can write the correct quote and argue about it for a day or two.
Anyway, from what I've heard elsewhere, Bill Gates knows he's one lucky person. He was in the right place at the right time and that's the main reason he's where he is today, and he know it no matter what he says to journalists.
If you remember seeing The Triumph of the Nerds on PBS you'll remember that MS tried to sell the rights to DOS to IBM and IBM said no. Big mistake on both sides but MS got lucky.
When IBM had the idea for MS to write OS/2 for them MS offered IBM Windows! IBM said no, again. Another big mistake on both sides but MS got lucky again.
If they had made a movie a few years ago about MS and IBM they could have called it Dumb and Dumber.
Bill Gates, from a business standpoint, has been more lucky than smart.
Bill Gates, from a technical standpoint, has been more lucky than smart. His software is mediocre but he markets well.
I think Bill's luck is running out.
I did say Volkswagen. That was the whole point of my goddamn post. That some reject misspelled Volkswagen (SEE, third time I've spelled it right) as "Volkswagon", the American bastardized spelling...
Go fsck yourself.
And the car ran like something that is commonly found inside a toilet, setting the tone for FoundOnRoadDead products for the next 35 years.
BTW, who was the chief engineer "responsible" for the Edsel? Why, it was Mr. Chrysler himself, Lee Iacocca.
The fact that Gates' writing is vapid is not central to the article; it simply is pointed out to show how inaccurate the fawning media are in their read of the material.
Visual Basic - more apps have been written in VB than any other language (ref: DevX). It brought programming to the masses.
And yes, I still use it. Wish to God there was something as good under Linux.
Clevo
I mean, you are sounding of as if what Katz says is in any way based on fact?
/. is some idiotic 9-11 year old script kiddie.
Have you even read the article in "Time" magazine?
I have. If you had bothered to read it for yourself ( instead of taking Katz's lame third hand version for fact ), then you would know that Katz's posting is pure flame bait. The article in "Time" about "bills 12 lame assumtions" was purely to give him enough rope to hang him with you *cretin*!
After letting him shoot his mouth of, "Time" magazine then went on to demolish his Billness as an arrogant, conceited egotist with no sense of reality. The overall position of the article is anything but flattering to his Billness, in fact, it is highly critical.
But that's the problem, isn't it Stoge. Critical thinking has never been one of your strong points. You would rather go with the heard ( or stand against them, which is pretty much the same thing... ) than think for yourself.
Rather than follow your own sense of judgement, you would rather follow fashion ( read : pseudo-intellectual fascisism ).
With one breath, you condemn M$, with the next you claim that the attitudes of idiots like Katz ( who you obviously despise ) are somehow important.
*Ugh!*. Grow up Stoge! Learn to think for yourself! Not everybody here on
If I was to use your "logic", then I would send Bill gates a bomb in the mail. Judge the open source movement by it's best, not it's worst ( and yes, Katz *is* one of it's worst, as I'm sure you have begun to realise ). Don't walk away from Linux because of idiots like Katz ( or for that matter, idiots like me ).
If Linux works for you, *then* *use* *it*! Otherwise, go somewhere else.
A "sick bastard and a troll" I may be, but I'm just keeping the faith, bro.
Great article. I'm really glad you also mentioned the Mac OS X open source as a threat to MS. That made me happy. dillrod
"also theyll plug the computer rite into yur skull and their'll be a ups symbol branded on you when you first install windows 2000 and itll use the P///'s ID number to tell Bill Gates personally what you are doing every sekind of the day!!1"
*sigh*
Bob is dead. Microsoft does not officially support Bob anymore. It was a failed attempt at dumbing down an already dumbed-down OS, and I daresay they have better things to do than animate more lovable characters such as Scuzz The Rat.
BTW, who was the chief engineer "responsible" for the Edsel? Why, it was Mr. Chrysler himself, Lee Iacocca.
... of the story. This is Paul Harvey... good day!"
"And now you know the rest
Iacocca designed the Mustang. Not sure if your Edsel anecdote is correct as well, but even so, it shows a good person can learn from his design mistakes and go on to better things.
Face it: the REAL reason you anti-Microsoft types hate Gates so much is because he's a SUCCESS. He's worked harder and longer at his job then any of you losers and has been rewarded by the marketplace with billions, fair and square, and you can't stand it! You think eveything should be free and open source and that capitalism is somehow morally wrong--well, GROW UP, the lot of you!! In the free market--which helped our side win the Cold War, by Almighty God!--excellance and hard work is rewarded and socialist whining such as the crap I see here all too often on this site is kicked to the curb. Microsoft is huge because they make good products for a good price, just like all other successful corporations (General Moters, Boeing, General Electric, etc JUST TO NAME A FEW). Oh, name some, you ask? O.K.: Office 98, Direct X, Ages of Empire, Excel, Word, and yes, Win98! It's better and more user friendly then that KLUDGE you call Linux, which may be O.K. for servers, but is in no way ready to take on the desktop. Good products at a good price: THAT'S THE WAY THE FREE MARKET WORKS, and all the lies of idiots like Katz and the Marxist Clinton Administration's "Justice" department won't change that. It worked for John D. Rockefeller and it worked for Bill Gates and it'll work for whoever comes down the road tomorrow. DEAL WITH IT. And read some Ayn Rand, you might learn something.
Raise a child and care for a family without money and see how important it becomes. All things in perspective. If you have enough money to get by for just yourself then no money is not that important. However, when you have other people who are your responsibility: husband, wife, children... you become all to aware of just how important having money, enough money, is and how difficult that can be to achieve.
Additionally, if you have enough money for yourself and your family without concerns of the moment, then no money probably has little meaning. I'd like to state that I find money very important and I want a lot of it... just so I can devote less time to 'job' and more time to family and creativity.
When you are comfortable, money has little significance, until then it is quite significant especially if you are responsible for the lives of others.
Having a bad hair day?
What in the heck have you been smoking?
Oh, ok.. I wont
I'm glad Bill Gates is in a 12 step program.
I am so sick of reading Katz insipid writing.
You are a 2nd tier writer with less-than-novel
ideas about technology culture. Leave slashdot
alone!!!!
"Microsoft is huge because they make good products for a good price, just like all other successful corporations."
No they don't. They make mediocre products and charge exhorbitant prices. That's why so many of their customers are looking for an alternative to MS products. That's part of the reason why the Federales are after them. That's the sin of being a monopoly.
Brace yourself and your self-righteous attitude, but the actions of MS is one of the reasons for the success of LINUX.
"Oh, name some, you ask? O.K.: Office 98, Direct X, Ages of Empire, Excel, Word, and yes, Win98!"
Ah! Word. That bloated, buggy piece of stuff that runs like a hog on qualludes. It has so many features that I never will use.
I noticed you didn't mention NT. That operating system that can't protect itself from application programs like it should. That OS that I have to boot 5 times some days to keep it running.
"It's better and more user friendly then that KLUDGE you call Linux, which may be O.K. for servers, but is in no way ready to take on the desktop."
Well some people like to read books and some people are only smart enough to look at the pictures and point.
"Good products at a good price: THAT'S THE WAY THE FREE MARKET WORKS,"
So, are working on earning your first or second billion dollars?
And I'm so sick of hearing guys like you whining on and on about Jon Katz' writing.
He's good at writing. He does lack some knowledge about some of his topics but I'm willing to bet you don't know everything about ANY of the topics you write about.
If you are only going to whine, why don't you just stop reading his writings? Why don't YOU "Leave slashdot alone!!!!"?
Verily I am *stunned* by the intellectual prowess of your argument! With opponets like you, Mirosoft's future should be assured.
No they don't. They make mediocre products and charge exhorbitant prices. That's why so many of their customers are looking for an alternative to MS products. That's part of the reason why the Federales are after them. That's the sin of being a monopoly.
The only sin Microsoft has comitted is the sin of success. The sin of striving for excellence in a world where the mediocre rules the day and trying to be the best is frowned upon as "unfair."
Ah! Word. That bloated, buggy piece of stuff that runs like a hog on qualludes. It has so many features that I never will use.
But that doesn't mean others will never use them! It's designed to appeal to a wide range of users; that's part of the reason for it's popularity.
I noticed you didn't mention NT. That operating system that can't protect itself from application programs like it should. That OS that I have to boot 5 times some days to keep it running.
O.K. Ya got me there--NT has problems. But that just means that MS must strive to make it better (Win2000)or be superseded by it's competition. That's the whole idea of Capitalism--not having the Fed's step in and rescue competitors from their own incompetance.
Well some people like to read books and some people are only smart enough to look at the pictures and point.
Now, now: "user friendly" doesn't necessarily mean "dumbed down." Look at the Mac and it's renewed popularity! Not everybody want's to lean all the arcana of programming just to make their system work, they just want to be able to plug it in and go. Especially those with deadlines.
So, are working on earning your first or second billion dollars?
Heh, heh--first, actually.
Ah, you don't know what you're talking about... he has a lot of good points to make, and not only are they true but they're funny too. Besides... you don't HAVE to read it, you can skip over things you don't like. Or is that beyond your petty little brain?
PS I'm NOT an anonymous coward; if you want to reply to something I say, then send it to me direct- my address is nitehorse@hotmail.com. If you have anything useful to say, that is.
Please. This was WAY before there were such bletcherous beasts as "licence agreements". Gates invented the baggage we all have to deal with today, and yes, he should be crucified for it. However, everybody has become so accustomed to getting the finger that behaviour like his has become not only acceptable, but applauded.
What a world.
I think you are on to something here. Stating the obvious to managers can be a total waste of time. Having an outside authority state the obvious to managers can be very helpful.
:-)
War story begins here.[
Back in the old days before we had PC's and before we had a terminal on every programmer's desk we had 'terminal rooms'. You did a lot of work with a pad of paper and a pencil before you ever typed anything in. Then you put your name and phone number on a list in the terminal room. As each person finished with their terminal work they called the next person on the list.
I worked for a telephone company headquartered in St. Louis which shall remain anonymous but its initials are SWBT.
We technical people told SWBT management for years that we needed terminals on the desks of the programmers. No results!
One day the managers decided to have IBM come in and do a study on how to improve productivity. One suggestion from IBM was to put a terminal on the desk of every programmer. (Well duh!) So SWBT management started putting terminals on the desks of all the (non-programming) managers. (???) Then eventually the programmers got terminals.
]War story ends here.
Maybe Bill Gates' book will cause any incredibly, slow managers to start doing what so obviously should be done.
Other than that, it sounds like his book is a total waste of time to anyone with more brains than Homer Simpson.
It's more believable than your comment.
If you are only going to whine, why don't you just stop reading his writings? Why don't YOU "Leave slashdot alone!!!!"?
WHY?!! BECAUSE IT MAKES MY DICK HARD, THAT'S WHY!!!!!! AND SO DOES THIS:
FIRST!!
POOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOT!!!!!!!!!
FIRST!!
POOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOT!!!!!!!!!
FIRST!!
POOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOT!!!!!!!!!
FIRST!!
POOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOT!!!!!!!!!
FIRST!!
POOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOT!!!!!!!!!
FIRST!!
POOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOT!!!!!!!!!
FIRST!!
POOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOT!!!!!!!!!
FIRST!!
POOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOT!!!!!!!!!
FIRST!!
POOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOT!!!!!!!!!
FIRST!!
POOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOT!!!!!!!!!
AND THAT'S WHAT YA GIT, ROB, FER TRYIN TA CENSOR ME!!!!!!!!!!!!
FIRST!!
POOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOT!!!!!!!!!
FIRST!!
POOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOT!!!!!!!!!
FIRST!!
POOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOT!!!!!!!!!
FIRST!!
POOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOT!!!!!!!!!
FIRST!!
POOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOT!!!!!!!!!
that's Adam Smith's concept of "laizze fare" (maybe misspelled) french for "leave alone" unfortunately the real world doesnt alway functions according to economic theories ... Capialism mean that the means of capital (land, labor, etc.) are owned by private ownership that is all, that fact is that we have laws in this country to protect us from the kind of ILLEGAL actions that microsoft has engaged in, the reason for these law can be traced directly to railroad and oil barons of the 19th centurn ... who when left alone did nothing to provide a fair and competitive market, cuz that is what the issue is really in the DOJ case , microsoft leveraged its windows OS against Netscape's web browser by integrating it into the browser. Your argument might be that it is technical innovation, but since intent is a crucial component in determining guilt those microsoft internal emails appear to be crushing as they give the appearance that MS had the intent needed to prove their actions in regard to Netscape as a violation of anti-trust laws (which are there to protect the consumer), this is only part of the case against microsoft ... so i guess my point is when you say "The only sin Microsoft has comitted is the sin of success." that just isnt true as they have tried to eliminate my choices as a consumer, and that pisses me off, but maybe you like having a choices made for you ... to each his own
1) you don't actually need to read it, do you?
2) come to think of it, this may become ms' most
valuable protection scheme in (near) future:
they do so much wrong, nobody is ever going to believe them actually achieving that, and getting away with it. it this cleverness or just an happy accident?
I will start by recalling some facts. When Bill started his dos thing, there no people's computers. IBM et al. had huge nifty machines that cost a lot. Bill even tried to sell DOS (some say begged) to IBM, but the answer was to snob the whole PC thing. Apple didn't do any better. Sure they had cool stuff. But they were and still are worse than any Microsoft monopoly. Heck, they do it all from software to hardware, to peripherals. If they had had their way. You wouldn't be able to buy a mouse that's made by someone else.
SO to state the facts, Bill was at the right moment at the right place. Does he deserve anything for this ? I think, maybe yes. After all, he went on with the PC idea, made it or made his company go the win3.x and then the jump to win95.
Of course Windows is not stable, of course the whole thing is probably the crapiest thing to ever exist on the surface of the globe! BUT, no one else was there, to promote cheap PC's, to build software so that average Joe's and Janes get to press and then click some buttons.
Apart from Linux, there isn't and never was anyone who tried to make something that normal users would afford. Like it or not, it's because of DOS, then Windows that we (normal people) could afford to buy computers.
Yes, I think he deserves that money, and I don't think IBM or Apple are to be thought of as poor innocent souls. Both have showed they could be worse than Microsoft. They just never could really do it as Bill did.
However, now is the time for people not only to use computers in a dumb way. It is the time where more and more people are trying to go further while using their machine, and they discover that even though Windows was and still is the best choice for average user with no idea, the OS just doesn't cut it when it comes to true use.
And they at Linux, as I did and discover an alternative than shares with windows the fact that normal people can get it. I can't buy SCO Unix. I can't buy Sun sparc, or even SGI machine.
My choice goes to PCS, and I definitly ditch Apple. They are the worst, but without the cash or the power!
And for a good affordable, BUT STABLE PC, I have one choice: LINUX
So this is Linux's time, Bill won't lose any money though. Good for him, he was there!
Or to any of the responses to this :-)
----
Open mind, insert foot.
Mr P wrote:
:-)
Let's see his innovations:...the Internet
That's just not true! Everyone knows that Al Gore made the internet personally.
----
Open mind, insert foot.
This
----
Open mind, insert foot.
Bill Gates new book is published by Warner Books, which is owned by Time-Warner which is also (you guessed it) the publisher of Time magazine. Can you say "conflict of interest"? This one even made the Drudge Report...
Isn't all of this simply a way to create increased dependence on Microsoft computers?
Well, I paid $1300 for an Apple //c, 128kb RAM, 12" full-color monitor, in 1984. At the time that was pretty much top-of-the-line. Nowadays all you can get for $1300 is last year's technology.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
Posted by !ErrorBookmarkNotDefined:
A bit less overt venom. More wry wit.
Be sure to sprinkle in some techno facts.
You almost nailed that niche.
Next, you could sell them Toyotas.
Sure beats stringing article to Field and Stream, eh?
-----------------------------
Computers are useless. They can only give answers.
Posted by OGL:
When will you people grow up?
Flames are for babies.
-W.W.
Posted by stodge:
True. It's easy to get caught on the anti-MS bandwagon (its so easy!), but then it's also easy to get caught on the Linux hype bandwagon. You can't win either way!
I'm one of these people who is pissed off with MS, their software and their practices. But I'm not the kind of person that Jon was addressing; the religious zealot. Yes I could just ignore his postings, but I thought this one might actually be witty and not just ranting and raving.
I know all good causes and movements need a loud voice to carry the message to the world. But with postings like this we're posting the wrong message.
Please just calm this hysteria. Be sensible, be mature, be intelligent. The more it occurs the more I'm tempted I am to walk away from Linux.
Posted by CyberPete:
/.
About Bill:
I got "The Road Ahead" as a Christmas present a while back from some relatives that thought it was "computery" enough to interest me. I read it, and now it servers a very important place in my life....it's helping to hold up one end of my battered old orange couch!
About Katz:
He could say ANYTHING on slashdot and over half of you would piss and moan! Makes me wish Rob could come up with a "filter all bitching" option for
Posted by stodge:
Hahaha. You mean "Insist that communication flow through e-mail, but make sure you delete the dodgy ones that might come back to haunt you in court"??
Posted by Pushkin:
That the thoughts of a man who totaly denies his insantiy, is several times more interesting than a tyrant who denies his tyranny. Or somthing like that... At least all sales of Mr. K's book will go to the families of his victims (according to USA Today)
Posted by Hackin Bey:
give the people the least possible technology at the highest possible price. thats it...look at most technology-related empires (microsoft, tci...) and you will see this formula at work - this is why steve jobs will never win, he's obssessed with product quality and style.
Posted by The Mongolian Barbecue:
/. this should permenantly silence you. I haven't read such a well written literate satire of gates in quite a while. This is the kind of stuff we need as opposed to the l33t hax0rs saying MS sux. I haven't laughed so hard in quite a while.
To anyone who railed about Jon having no place at
Posted by The Mongolian Barbecue:
that was taken word for word from some article in ZDNet. At least be original
Posted by The Mongolian Barbecue:
This wasn't really an anti-MS thing, as much as an anti-Bill thing. And come on. This is no mindless bandwagon. How can you tell me that there is merit in Bill Gates' shameless self-promoting tripe?
Posted by wri guy:
:)
... doesn't run through Redmond.
Btw, last year the local Borders had scores
of copies of TRA stacked on the floor like
cordwood, selling for $2.95. Is that how it
managed to become a "best seller"? I wouldn't
take a copy free if they were giving them away.
Execs ought to be reading Guy Kawasaki's standby,
_The Macintosh Way_, instead of anything by BG.
Posted by AnnoyingMouseCoward:
A "sick bastard and a troll" I may be, but never an AC. It looks like things are highly "alpha" right now. This is just to let you know It's me.
P.S: this is the 5th time that I have tried to make this posting under my nick! What the hell is happening around here? Every time I try to post, It comes out as "Annonymous Coward" instead of "AnnoyingMouseCoward". Has Rob converted to NT or what?
The teriffically horrific attempt to make Microsoft's point-and-drool OS even more point-and-drool. MS Bob was supposed to be a sort-of helping hand to new users of Windows 95; your digital friend to this brand new world of incompatibility and crashes. Or something like that.
It ended up being even more annoying than that paperclip from Microsoft Orofice..er..Office and bombed despite the fact that it was widely touted as being next generation stuff--at least, it was here in Bill's home town. Of course, at the time, Bob required top of the line, super expensive hardware to even run properly. Come to think of it, Microsoft Office is similar in that respect. At least you can shut the more annoying ``features'' off though...
Bull. What he said was that Bill's money was obtained through luck, not that money in general is obtained through luck.
You'd make a good politician with your talent for twisting words. I hope you're proud.
Don't label something "offtopic" unless you know the topic well enough to tell what's on topic.
The front grille of an Edsel rather resembled a toilet seat.
Ooh, a sarcasm detector. Oh, that's a real useful invention.
"Big Gates, you may remember, hasn't had a good year."
Hmm, looking at Microsoft's stock price, he's probably increased his net worth since January by more than the combined lifetime earnings of everyone who has read this article. I wish I could have that sort of bad year...
Ooh, a sarcasm detector. Oh, that's a real useful invention.
Yeah, I agree with a lot of the Katz tirade. I also agree about the Billy Bashing and the attitude comment, but if you`re a Billionaire dwarf you gotta take it as it comes.
'Nuff Sed
You hear the dry click, too late you realize there is a gun in this house that you tried to rob!...
#941
Who's becoming "closed-minded?" I think it was an accurate analysis of something that had me puzzled as well. I saw this magazine in a bookstore yesterday and wondered why anyone would listen to the guy. Yes, I realize he has more money than anyone else in the country, but that didn't come through his savvy business sense. A review of the events that got him to where he is today shows that there was at least as much luck as skill involved. Now the media goes and ignores all the trouble his vaunted business sense has gotten him into and publishes a puff piece on him. Are they even the slightest bit critical? Nope. Do they even question anything he says? Nope. Why not? That's all I want to know.
I agree that maybe the "pseudo-steps" at the end were going a bit far, but that's the kind of reaction that irresponsible media produces sometimes. I can't defend Jon for crossing the line either, but I can see why he did.
I'd rather not be written off as another jealous Bill-hater. Money is not that important to me and I don't let it color my perceptions of people. It's not the fact that he has money that makes me not like him. It's just him. His attitude. His business practices. His lies. His arrogance. Tell me what there is to like about him. I can't think of anything.
It's not enough to bash in heads, you've got to bash in minds. - Captain Hammer
I'm not saying that money has no importance. I work full-time to support myself and pay my way through college. I understand the importance of money very well. I just don't make it the goal of my life or assign the kind of importance to it that would make me jealous of Bill Gates' money. I only said this because I hate being accused of being jealous off Bill's money anytime I say something critical of him. Some people can't seem to see past the money issue.
It's not enough to bash in heads, you've got to bash in minds. - Captain Hammer
Microsoft's C compiler was bought from the company that produced Lattice C. IE was NOT purchased - it was SUPPOSED to be licensed, but M$ stabbed poor Spyglass in the back by then releasing the licensed browser for free, nearly killing off Spyglass entirely. TrueType was licensed from Apple, not bought. And BTW, their socket API borrows heavily from the Berkeley Sockets API (check the copyright info on the WinSock DLLs).
Sam: "That was needlessly cryptic."
Max: "I'd be peeing my pants if I wore any!"
... he's crying all the way to the bank. And will be for some time to come.
http://cgi.pathfinder.com/time/reports/gatesbook/s oft1.html
Isn't all of this simply a way to create increased dependence on Microsoft computers?
Well, yes, of course. That's the marketing goal of any company. What I meant was that these goals are applicable to any computing organization -- especially Free Software.
Insist communication flow thru email
Study sales data online to share insights easily
Shift "knowledge workers" into high-level thinking (ie, freely distribute company data)
Use digital tools to create virtual teams
Convert every paper process to a digital process
Use digital tools to eliminate single-task jobs
Create a digital feedback loop (ie, re-evaluate your processes frequently)
Use digital systems to route customer complaints immediately
Use digital communication to redefine the boundaries (ie, re-examine what your business does, what it can do, and what it should do)
Transform every business process to "just-in-time delivery" (ie, keep low inventory/overhead; speedy delivery)
Use digital delivery to eliminate the middle man
Use digital tools to help customers solve problems for themselves Admittedly, none of these are brilliant breakthroughs (it's all stuff various tech visionaries have been saying for years). However, behind the corporate double-speak, there's still a solid plan for 21th-century business. Ironically, notice that the Open Source community follows every one probably better than any corporation. When was the last time Alan's diary contained the entry "spent all day in a meeting with Linus" or Miguel wasted half a forest on yet another "GNOME is almost finished" memo? Don't be so quick to dismiss ideas just because they came from mouth of the Devil of Redmond.
11. Choose your grandparents wisely. (i.e., be born into wealth)
12. Lie, Lie, Lie! (Most people then become so used to the lies that they stop even trying to question them, and the 2nd, 3rd and 4th lie divert attention from the 1st)
I don't know a company that wouldn't pick Microsoft if their price for the same merchandise was 10 times higher than a reseller. The Microsoft nametag is alive and well in business.
Is There A Chapter Missing, Bill? BY CHRIS TAYLOR
--
W.A.S.T.E.
W.A.S.T.E.
I get so sick of people who just don't understand what an analogy is. Making a comparison between two things and saying they have one particular aspect in common is not the same as saying that they are "on the same level". In fact, the two things compared on an analogy are usually *not* "on the same level", but instead one has the aspect being compared to an unusually high degree, so as to emphasize that aspect in the other.
Some interesting thoughts.
That is all I have to say about that.
-Derek
...and it might do pretty well - I'd recommend selling it at Spencer's, it would fit in well there. They simply expand that area where they sell all the toys ...
I need a web hosting service - any ISP's out there that do good hosting with mod_perl, pop3 email, free subdomains and a good price. Contact me at msergeant@ndirect.co.uk if you've got what I need.
Oh yeah, and Bill Gates sucks. He doesn't have an original thought in his head. The Road Ahead was full of crap that had already been invented like system wide scripting (Amiga's ARexx for example), object programming and other such stuff.
Matt.
Matt. Want XML + Apache + Stylesheets? Get AxKit.
Why? Because people want to buy it. So what? The price of Microsoft stock indicates one thing: the price of Microsoft stock. That's all.
Example one: Amazon.com, whose market cap is billions, and whose profit is miniscule.
Example two: Dell recently released an earnings report with double-digit growth, and their stock FELL.
I could go on, but why?
So long as there's a POSSIBILITY of dividends, investers will buy the stocks. From there, it's simple maths:
You buy stocks, the price goes up. You sell stocks, the price goes down. More stocks bought than sold, the price rises by more than it falls.
You also have to consider that tech stocks are largely regarded as hyper-inflated, anyway. For the reason given above - people buying promises, not goods. Actually, that, in itself is a good indicator - other tech stocks more than doubled in the year - I believe Amazon.com did very nicely for itself.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
I think that's very unfair to Gates. (No, I don't work for MS and no, I don't worship the ground he walks on.)
Most people, and almost all businesses, in the mid-seventies thought that microcomputers were toys, a complete waste of space. But Gates made the company motto 'A PC on every desk and every home all running MS software' (I paraphrase). It seems obvious now, but it wasn't then.
Secondly, whether or not the hackers were improving the software, they *were* in breach of the licence agreement. If they didn't agree with those conditions they should not have used the software.
Gates *has* been very lucky, but I don't think MS would be as successful as they are if that was his only skill.
As has already been established, one skill he *doesn't* have is writing. Read 'Being Digital' or 'Release 2.1' instead. They're definately worth looking at.
I agree with soren. I've read the excerpts and the articles which follow. I don't think we should be bashing what it says just because it comes from a person that a lot of /.'ers don't like. I for one don't really care whether MS is a monopoly, or if Bill has more money than the GNP of my country. I also don't care if Bill is just repeating what he's read elsewhere. Bill want's a computer on every desk and in every home running MS software. Most of the /.'ers want Linux to achieve total world domination. The two goals are in opposition. But I bet Bill is paying attention to what the open source community is doing and saying We should pay attention to him as well
my blog: good times, man, good times
"Yeah. I mean, Microsoft has done great things for
computers! They make software which is of high
quality and which increase work efficiency. A
multi-billion dollar corporation has nothing but
our best interests at heart. Anyone who doesn't
agree with them is obviously spreading propaganda
and should, therefore, be ignored."
Quick...Which one is the REAL propaganda?
Gates published his book to draw some attention towards himself and away from his company's woes. Time Magazine published excerpts from it so that people would raise a fuss and other people would buy a copy of Time to see what all the fuss is about. Both of them want your attention; you're giving it to them in spades.
As Mae West said, "I don't care what you say about me, as long as you spell my name right." It's the same concept as when a web site such as CNet publishes a story titled something like "Does Linux Suck?" because they *know* it's going to draw the attention of the exact group of people they want to advertise at.
The greatest danger in this is that Joe Sixpack may read his copy of Time and think that Unca Bill is really a pretty nice guy, and then he sees all of these SlashDotters foaming at the mouth and he decides to keep away from whatever they're selling.
Everyone knows Bill Gates only has four steps to success:
1) Lie.
2) Cheat.
3) Steal.
4) Repeat as necessary.
That about sums it up, don't you think? By the way, some people are talking about how M$ has done good things. Frankly, I'd like to see one good thing MS has done which a) was actually good and b) was actually done by M$. I can't think of any off the top of my head.
slashdot has been changing, and will continue to change.... I think Rob has been doing everything in his power to keep the news fresh, varied, and occasionally very damn funny.
Katz has his place.... I for one would think he would be more at home @ LinuxWorld or someother Linux-oriented webzine. They seem to revel in bashing MS more than anyone else.
Slashdot is my homepage, and for good reason. It has all the news that's fit to print and then some. It has a nice mix of linux, hardware, software, open source, and everything else. Sometimes MS-rants are more obvious, at other times its the Star Wars info. Live and learn, use the spanking-new customizable Slashdot feature.. (should we call it CustomDot?)
can't we all just get along?
Just if Katz has wrote something you like it doesn't mean that he is trying to get some points from you... If he did you would be all considering him a slashdot hero by now..
;)
Anyway Katz did a good job writing a hint sheet of what to say about Mr. Gates' new masterpiece.
Personally I find Microsoft a great challenge, and that motivates me and the people who work with and for me to be smarter and to work harder at finding a niche where we can beat them. Who knows? We may even win. We try not to waste any time on whining about Big Bad Bill. That energy is better employed on other things.
Finally, I have a problem with point 8 in the essay. Why is it that so many people feel so free to give other people's money or things away?
What Mr. Gates wants to do with his money is his business. Nobody has to right to tell him what to do with it.
Eugene
http://eugeneciurana.com | http://ciurana.eu
Interesting, how anti-trust laws penalize those who are successful. Is success in the scale of Microsoft's a crime?
Gravity is my enemy and my friend. -- E. Sakumoto
Eugene
http://eugeneciurana.com | http://ciurana.eu
Troll heaven on Slashdot!!!!!! ;)
===
Old Fart!!! Of tha SENIOR DADS!!!!!
===
Old Fart!!! Of tha SENIOR DADS!!!!!
http://surf.to/seniordads/
Please. If Gates had such a bad year, why did MS stock more than double in that time?
The most rabid believers in American Exceptionalism are the exact same people whose policies are destroying it.
Insist that you put your screed on a web page instead of an x-hundred-page book. Your audience will get your ideas faster and cheaper, plus you can delete the stupid/embarassing parts later.
-----
Bob was a front-end to Windows 3.1.
Imagine a children's game interface pitched to adults.
It was incredibly insulting and required more resources than most novice users had. (As well as hoping that their video card was set to something more than 16 colors.) If they needed it, they could not install it. If they could install it, they did not need it.
True Story about MS Bob:
There is a program locally called "Town Hall". They have an audience and guests and try to stir up what passes for controversy in this town.
They had a show on computers. One of the guests was a marketing flack from Microsoft promoting MS Bob.
At one point the MS flack said (and I am *not* making this up) "The reason the name 'Bob' was chosen was because it was a sexually ambivelent name". I immediatly asked in a very loud voice "How many drag queens do you know named Bob?". They whole audience broke up laughing. Not to anyone's surprise, they deleted my comment from the program.
To make it even more fun, the local station delayed airing the show for a couple of months due to a flood or storm or something of the sort. By that time, the local software stores were remaindering Bob at discount prices. (The local Egghead Software claimed that they only sold four.)
You would think that someone responsible for such a fiasco would be fired or worse? Nope.
The manager responsible for Microsoft Bob is now Mrs. Bill Gates.
Shows how much attention Bill pays to quality...
"Trademarks are the heraldry of the new feudalism."
Fortunately, I don't think that's a scenario we have to worry about :-)
fish and pipes
IMHO it's only question of time for M$ to cease to exist. but mr. gates alredy have a lot of money so he can start another "successful business". god save us (or whoever :) or better: save ourselves from such "visionaries"!
hany
Or is this an attempt to cop an attitude (which would be an essential attribute of any god in Slashdot's pantheon)?
Not that I disagree particularly, I'm just a little bemused by the tone.
This may get you a few points in the popularity contests around here, certainly.
Charlie
How many trees must sacrifice their lives so that this "innovative genius" can spew forth his "vision" for us? Trees help clean our environment. Bill helps pollute it. Please, stop the carnage!
not a tree hugger...
pete
Godwin's law is for lazy-brains who can't think for themselves.
Repetition in America.
Wrong. The word is maths.
I didn't think there was "religious fervor" in this article. It's actually pretty close to the truth and anyone who can't see it must be totally ignoring what's going on!!!
MS has gotten away with developing mediocre software for *years* and it's finally coming around to bite them.
Truthfully, it doesn't matter to me what happens to MS, I haven't used *any* of their products in well over 3 years and don't intend to go back *ever*. I know I'm a minority, but I stick with stuff that I like, stuff that works.
MS holds no place in my life and I try to convince others of the same thing.
Cheers,
Hawkeye...
"...The smart and lazy ones I make my commanders." - Erwin Rommel
Posting comments to /. about the evils of Microsoft doesn't help anything.
:-)
Yes, but it is fun.
That's called being a consultant. How do you think people make money from various forms of *nix?
:-)
1) Setup and support servers for businesses that don't want to have there own IT department.
2) Develop and deploy custom *nix applications.
3) Replace crappy MS installations with *nix.
There are not enough bugs or problems with Unix to make money doing what the above poster describes.
Don
Just because it's unpopular doesn't mean it's bad... perhaps the opposite is true. Sidewalk (SF at least) ROCKS! I hate to say anything good about MS, but I have rarely been disappointed in Sidewalk. Just thought I'd mention that.
"The biggest problem with communication is the illusion that it has taken place."
Ok, I don't understand this anymore. Before, when there was a Katz article the flamers would come out in full force, telling Katz what an idiot he was and that he shouldn't be on Slashdot. The popular reply to this was that the flamers shouldn't be reading his articles if they found them so terrible. Of course, with his articles right there on the front of Slashdot, I guess they just couldn't resist the desire to click on the link and read the latest from Katz so they could have more ammo in their neverending fight to inform him of what an idiot he is. But.. now we have preferences. If you all hate Katz so much (and there seem to be quite a few who do), then just filter out his articles. Voila, you no longer have to read his articles, and we no longer have to read comments peppered with "Katz sucks" and other such insightful statements.
-mike kania
My local Waldenbooks had numerous copies of "The Road Ahead" in their Bargain Books section for the unheard of price of $1.00. I bet they won't order as many copies of Gates' new book as they did last time!
Not even Newt Gingrich's book went that cheap!
Every great revolution needs revolutionary writers. Incessant slamming of Katz's work by the slavering slashdotters is discouraging other writers from joining the cause, sending them back to Time to write pieces worshipping the Demon Gates.
I went down to the local eatery this afternoon for lunch, saw the top 2 inches of Time, pulled it out and staggering back in shock and disbelief. We NEED someone like Katz to answer back on behalf of all of us. No, I take that back - I can't speak for everyone. I need him to answer back on behalf of ME.
Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more, Or close the wall up with our American dead!
(Man I love writing this drivel!)
It's sometimes hard to classify the occasional pro-Microsoft comments that appear around here. I see four categories:
- Astro-turf (as in, fake "grass-roots" support, i.e., MS people trying to make it look like MS has more supporters than it does)
- Flame-bait (possibly some from MS, trying to provoke us so they can show how immature the responses are, but probably mostly just for fun)
- Honest Microsoft support (I guess it's conceivable that someone would actually believe this stuff. Takes all kinds.)
- Sarcasm (He doesn't mean it, and he doesn't expect anyone to be fooled -- he's making fun of anyone who would say these things seriously)
However, in this case, it's not too hard to guess which category we're in -- he acknowledged it right at the bottom as "drivel". He was being sarcastic. He wasn't even trawling. You just jumped into the boat and impaled yourself on a hook.David Gould
David Gould
main(i){putchar(340056100>>(i-1)*5&31|!!(i<6)<< 6)&&main(++i);}
I just got AOLs 4.0 version of "the internet and more!" So which is newer? how many internets are there? man, this computer thing is real complicated. Thank god i will have my computers off so that the y2k virus that is spreading doesn't infect my computer and makes it come alive and crash my windows, or does it crash your car? Man, i am can't wait to finish this time machine that i am working on in my basement, with it i can go back in time and buy a ton of MS stock, and be real rich! i can make it go up to a few hours into the future, but i can't make it go backwards. Oh well, maybe when i upgrade the OS on the built-in computer system in it from windows95 to windows 2000, i can get it to work correctly.
Its spelt "L-I-N-U-X", but pronunced as "Free Beer"
Different Bob's. Bob of the Slack is JR Bob Dobbs, the symbolic diety of the Church of the Subgenious. I'd tell you what they believe in, but I'd get it wrong and have a hundred screaming fanatic threatening to burn my house down.
MS Bob was a poor attempt at a bad idea. The idea was to have a cute little guy follow you around on your computer and provide help when you need it. Kinda like that jumping paper clip in Word. People heralded it as an (probably the only) example of Microsoft innovation. No one liked it or bought it and it's fallen into the annals of history next to the Edsel.
The Edsel was a car that didn't sell.
Citizens Against Plate Tectonics
>Visual Basic - more apps have been written in VB
>than any other language (ref: DevX). It brought
>programming to the masses.
Eh?
You must surely mean HyperCard, right? Programming to the masses indeed.
- Darchmare
- Axis Mutatis, http://www.axismutatis.net
- Jeff
>TrueType
TrueType? Ever hear of Apple?
By the way, Office and Windows are hardly innovations. Innovating is doing something that has never been done before, or doing it in a way that has never been done before.
- Darchmare
- Axis Mutatis, http://www.axismutatis.net
- Jeff
This is the first Jon Katz article I really liked and had no problems with.
He presents the media the way it is, and it shows how the entire power structure is so bent on money they will sacrifice every ideal to get there.
I'm glad Open Source is getting some recognition, because the ideals it is based on are intrinisically more sound than something based on the whims of a corporation that wants to own everything that is the computer industry.
Hitler? Nazis? Guess thread is dead.
...sense of life than they do about Bill Gates. According to you, money is obtained through "luck" -- either you have it or you don't, right? So money is not that important to you, as it's just a crapshoot as to who has it and who doesn't.
I guess the terms "earning money" and "making money" mean the same to you as "stealing from someone else" or "winning the lottery." Maybe if you understood the meaning money a little better (or had to _earn_ it yourself), you would have more respect for it.
Are you out of college yet? Do you live with your parents? Have you had to earn your own money to survive? Maybe money would be more "important" to you if you did.
shane
Never thought I had it in me. Yes, AC, I do agree that there are more important things in life than money (getting laid, for just one instance). And perhaps I was doing a bit of Hasty G (a "nice" Hasty G, tho :-) on the poor guy. But this is an opinion I hear time and time again re: Bill Gates.
I have read one of his biographies (_Gates_) and, yes, I am aware that:
1.) He was born into a wealthy and well-respected Seattle family.
2.) He went to an exclusive prep school (Lakeside), and later to an exclusive university (Harvard).
3.) He is fairly smart (800 on math SAT, upper 700's on verbal, 800 on three Achievement tests)
Which of these three does he truly "deserve"? If you agree with John Rawls, you would say none of them. If you agree with me, you will say he deserves all of them. His father (Bill Gates II) has the right to spend his money any way he wishes, including his son's education. And he is just as deserving of his IQ as you are of yours.
shane
The book by Gates is an apt example of this statement.
Who else could have made such statements with this many bug's in their products. Definitely not the ones who deliver good products !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
12 Steps. Sounds like something to do with Alcoholics Anonymous. I know... Microsoftics Anonymous!
The first step: Admission.
"Hi, my name is John Doe, and I'm a Microsoft user."
"Hi John!"
--
Program Intellivision!
I wonder if the same folks who have been defending Katz during the flame wars are going to stick up for Gates <smirk>
If you don't like Gates, don't read the book. That's the logic you folks use, right?
But it was intersting, right?
Waaahhhh.
1. Never buy what can be safely copied or stolen.
2. Never waste money on research. You can save money by letting others innovate for you.
3. Never compete on the basis of quality. FUD and customer lock-in are cheaper and easier.
4. Never allow your products to become compatible. If others manage to adopt your standards, change them. This will ensure customer lock-in.
5. Never wait until your product is stable before releasing it. By releasing early, you save money on development, while ensuring extra cash for the "upgrade" (e.g. Windows 98).
6. Never provide full backward compatibilty with your own products. Provide just enough to claim compatibility, while ensuring that your customers will eventually be forced to pay you for the upgrade.
7. Ignore your competitor's protocols. If a competitor's protocol looks like it will succeed, embrace and extend that protocol until you destroy it or control it.
8. Never lie about your competitor's products--unless you can get away with it.
10. If a competitor's product runs on your platform, never use a false error message to discredit it. Use an incomprehensible message, and allow the user's doubts to do your work for you.
11. Never publish a complete spec for your platform. Always leave enough undocumented to ensure that your competitor's products can be made incompatible on the next release.
12. Never provide your customers with complete documentation for your products. Complete documentation leads to customers being in control of their systems, and the resulting confidence will interfere with your ability to control their decisions.
People will still be people, regardless of what operating system they use. They will still make stupid generalizations, and propeganda will still take the same form.
1^2=1; (-1)^2=1; 1^2=(-1)^2; 1=-1; 1=0.
So there.
Nhaa!
-==-
Business @the Speed of Drool
diva Pasty Drone NewsTrolls, Inc.
there was an ap called QDos from Gazelle. it was just a (great) file manager for dos. but thats not the QDOS spoken of here. QDOS was the original DOS that is now owned by Caldera and renamed OpenDOS
Oops, maybe it was DrDOS that was OpenDOS and is now once again DrDOS (heh)
Anyways still two diferant QDOSs
Jeez - this is so funny - it's just like the old :))
Monty Python movie "Life of Brian" where the Israel zealots were having an underground meeting and John Cleese shouts, "Name one thing that the Romans have ever done for us!" and one by one people get up and say, Roads, the Aquaduct, currency, sanitation, military security, etc
The Holy Sandal!
try { do() || do_not(); } catch (JediException err) { yoda(err); }
I know.
Go figure.
----------
mphall@cstone.nospam.net
----------
mphall@cstone.nospam.net
"A horse laugh is worth a thousand syllogisms"
It's OK, but sometimes it horribly out-of-date sometimes. They closed down a club in my area and they kept listing it as a "hip" place to go.
ZOMG I WOULD LOVE TO KNOW ABOUT YOUR FEELINGS ON MACINTOSH VERSUS WINDOWS, VI VERSUS EMACS, AND HOW YOU'RE NOT A DORK
See above. Got tired of wading through the variations on the theme of all the possible things that can be wrong with an essay, a person, a philosophy, a life, and figured you might appreciate hearing from somebody who enjoys your work.
Rob
stodge wrote: Um, use Linux if you find it useful. If you're hanging around vitriolic Linux users, find some less vitriolic Linux users.
Personally, I enjoyed the essay. I guess it's a bit irritating that having a few billion dollars means you can keep trying to reinvent yourself as a historic figure till you get it right.... Must be nice.
On the whole, I'm just glad I don't have to use the guy's products. They're okay, but they crash a lot. And he keeps trying to tie people into proprietary standards, a strategy that will make lots of money through other people's misfortune, so I guess that irritates me too.
I guess if you make a lot of money, you are likely to get a lot of people annoyed at you, particularly if you're not that picky in how you go about it. Such is life.
Katz... you got so worked up you forgot to read the article immediately following the "12 obvious, technobabble fluff filled steps".
:)
:) But seriously, get it and read it. Or find it online, if it's posted.)
"Is There a Chapter Missing,Bill?" by Chris Taylor was a pretty good read. He brings up the point that no mention of any of the anti-trust trial are made. And the Gates reflected in the book and excerpt is very different from the Gates seen in the trial, and pretty much tears him and his book into little tiny pieces from there. Fun read, and I was very happy to see it accompany the main article.
My favorite quote from the excerpt:
"The old saying 'Knowledge is Power' sometimes makes people hoard knowledge. They believe that knowledge hoarding makes them indispensable. Power comes not from knowledge kept but from knowledge shared."
This looks like something to be thrown right back at him!
From the article:
"If there was ever was a time for Microsoft employees to slap their boss with a reality check, this is it."
Go get the magazine and give it a read. Lots of ammo, and a good article by Chris Taylor.
(And maybe that plug will keep me out of trouble for posting direct quotes.
Please allow me to retract the part about "go get the magazine to read the other article". I just read the Drudge Report, and other posts on that little tidbit of information.
Plugging your own company's book as news to generate publicity is a bit sick. Not the first time it's happened, but still.
Don't buy it. Even if the other article is good.
I'm allowed to change my mind, right?
Bill does have talent. I will be the first to admit he has business skills.
But as far as being a visionary, however, he is not.
This sig is false.
I like this sarcastic side of you. Previously, I have refrained from commenting on your posts, but perhaps sarcasm is a quality (or flaw?) you should cultivate a bit more in your writing.
------------------------------
Mr. Katz, although you dwell on Bill Gates many shortcomings, you forget that he is the richest man on the planet. I could not quite discern if this piece was written out of jealousy or hatred for climbing to the top of the mountain without morals. which? I am not exactly his biggest fan, but anyone who can amass such great wealth and put it to use, if only for himself (which he hasn't done, B.G. is already the most contributing philanthropist in history) gets my vote of confidence.
*****chris lindsay ICQ # 6628472 Great spirits have always encountered violent opposition from mediocre minds. - Alb
From the description (no, I don't want to use up any of my precious brain cells checking this), it sounds like the book is possibly dull and pointless enough that perhaps it was written by some new Secret Microsoft Technology(tm) that writes books for people....
Hmmmm..."IntelliActiveDirectCrapX". Works for me.
(With Al Gore as co-author?)
Hacker Public Radio is our Friend
He spoke at Mips once, and he was anything but boring. He was a great speaker, and really had people excited. It wore off after a while, but I can see how his employees, continually exposed to his hype, could get wrapped up in it all.
"Its just a flesh wound!"
I don't understand what this has to do with Microsoft, but...
Hitler has something to do with the _idea_ of the Volkswagon Beetle. He comissioned Porsche to dsesign a cheap "people's" car - which became available as the KdF Wagon (Strength through Joy Car). VW, despite a wartime history of using slave labor, came back as a postwar business with western blessings. The Beetle built until 1970 was essentially the 1930's car without fundamental changes.
Which proves:
*the Nazi regime temporarily benefited some Germans during the first years of their rule
*advertising can sell a terrible car
*nothing whatsoever related to the over-priced products of bland old Microsoft. MS has never sent thugs to kick in any Mac-users teeth (despite what Mac user web sites might claim!), taken over any goverments, attacked ethnic groups, etc.
http://www.vcnet.com/bms/departme nts/catalog.html
This doens't include the Windows-OS/2 forked/concurrent development IIRC.
C'mon now... Every schoolkid knows that Al Gore invented the Internet!
Rich
Here's the whole report (remember, matt.htm isn't static!) XXXXX DRUDGE REPORT XXXXX 03/16/99 21:02:58 ET XXXXX BUSINESS @ THE SPEED OF BOUGHT TIME magazine [March 22, 1999] features Bill Gates on its cover this week. The world's richest man gives the world 12 steps for the world's businesses to survive in a new digital world -- a sneak peek from his forthcoming book, BUSINESS @ THE SPEED OF THOUGHT. But in all of the excitement, TIME editors fail to point out that the book's publisher, WARNER BOOKS, is owned by the same parent company, TIME WARNER, that owns TIME magazine! Corporate synergy turned sinergy? Nowhere in the editorial copy of the nation's most trusted news weekly is the reader informed that this week's cover story is an active promotion for a company product, the Bill Gates book, set to be released next week. "This is not news, this is an infocommerical!" declared a senior editor for a competing weekly. Have TIME editors thrown journalistic integrity out the window by shamelessly hyping a TIME WARNER product for sales? "We do books all of the time, like Tom Wolfe's book last year," a TIME magazine editor explained. "We report news. Bill Gates is news. Drudge, if you had a book, we would consider writing about it." Case closed. Flattery will get you everywhere. The Gates book looks impressive and is a very important literary work that deserves every cover! _________________________________________________ Reports are moved when circumstances warrant (c)DRUDGE REPORT 1999 Not for reproduction without permission of the author
Zonker Harris "There is not, nor ought there be, any food more exalted on the face of god's grey earth, than that
Let's see his innovations:
...
DOS, Windows, Word/Excel/PowerPoint/Office, TrueType, the Internet, the Sidewalk, SoftImage, AVI,
Screwed over all us dumb f&*ks while amassing Billions. While Commodore, Apple and the gang shoot themselves in the foot. The reason Bill Gates got the IBM DOS account was that his mother sat on the IBM board of directors and knew all the IBM executives. He's a momma boy, a rich boy, who knows there's a class war going on in the world and the rich are winning. So F%$k us all for Linux, open source, the gift economy, the U. S. Constitution, the French Revolution, fighting WWII and turning the VW bug into a peace symbol. Why was Bill Gates ever told about the Internet in the first place!!!!!! Bill Gates has never been a geek unless every boy with pimples on his a$$ is a geek. My next computer purchase is going to be a real computer with a real OS. That means so long Wintel. It's been hell knowing ya. I feel better now :)
an enigma wrapped around a paradox driven by a paradigm shift
Here's a link to an amusing little site (albeit biased) about how Bill made his fortune. Enjoy!
Chris
At least I won't run out and buy that book now . Seriously, while I don't disagree with anything Katz said, isn't this a bit of preaching to the choir? I myself have gotten tired of all the vitriol directed towards Microsoft; instead of complaining about them, let's go write our own freed software. Posting comments to /. about the evils of Microsoft doesn't help anything. Writing freed software does.
--jon. Postel is dead. May we all mourn his, and our, loss.
On a completely unrelated note, has anyone besides me noticed how articles that are not from anonymous cowards instantly get a Score of 1?
--jon. Postel is dead. May we all mourn his, and our, loss.
Well, vhosts.net will probably satisfy you. (Those of you have been reading /. for at least three weeks will understand why I'm saying this.)
--jon. Postel is dead. May we all mourn his, and our, loss.
Welll.... If you count the M$ tax that was for so long imposed on OEM's and their customers, people really were forced to by M$ products (remember Windows refund day?).
GNOME is devel pal...
you got warned when you downloaded it.
"Computers will never truly be free until the last windows user is strangled with the entrails of the last mac user."
Well, at least Jon's article saved me the little bit of effort I might have made to open the newest piece of craq from Bill Gates. I just saw his grinning mug on the cover of Time at the news stand and I was wondering what WAS up with that.
Now we know: Bill Gates has written a book-length version of the vapid "how to run your business" columns that PC Week and InfoWorld specialize in.
The Road Ahead, Part II: We don't need to go there with him.
--------
Bill Gates Is My Evil Twin.
I agree, sidewalk.com rocks. I haven't found anything that does everything for me that this site does. Maybe it's a good thing MS runs it...anyone else might have shut it down by now.
Just my favorite variation of that Mony Python bit...
Trying to score goodie points on /. Ah well to each his own..
A lack of planning on your part does not constitute an emergency on my part.
hint: Unless the company in question issue new stock the number of shares sold will always equal exactly the number bought for the simple reason that every share bougth is sold by someone else
Katz seems to be making sense here, even if he offers no great insight. Its been common knowlege to real computer users/controllers that Bill Gates has no vision. Its been stated the one original thing MS did was Bob -- a total failure. And now MS faces lots of competition thats sooo much better that people beyond computer geeks are giving non-MS stuff a chance.
Sounds like its time for Bill Gates an MS to step aside. Being a good business person can only get someone so far, and Bill Gates reached that limit.
"Luncheon meats make the sawdust in your stomach explode."
if the road ahead was a best-seller then why is borders selling it for $2.98? i could've sworn best-sellers maintained their value....
They probably did it the same way that the Church of Scientology made Dianetics and other L. Ron Hubbard books "best sellers". Buy your own book to get it onto the bestseller lists. Its a tried and true method to "prime the pump". Pressure the big book chains into large advance orders, which you book and advertise as sales. Creative accounting seems to be a Microsoft tradition.
DOS, Windows, Word/Excel/PowerPoint/Office, TrueType, the Internet, the Sidewalk, SoftImage, AVI,
Not a single innovative product in that bunch.
Microsoft is free to start innovating any time they want, but they never have in their 20+ year history.
The first PC that I had experience with was the Radio Shack line (Mod I, II, III). I also did a lot of programming on an IBM PC. If I remember correctly-- and I am sure that I do:)--, those PC's had a DOS. There was a DOS before MS. The reason that computers were so expensive was not because Gates saved us from ourselves with his version of DOS, but the fact that the technology was very much in it's infancy.
I bought myself an Amiga 2000 in 1987. I remember reading articles in publications like Dr. Dobbs, stating that MS was revolutionizing the computer world with something called "Windows." Well, that my me wonder what I was using. I mean, I was doing the point-and-click thing way before MS Windows appeared on the market. I also had a computer that was awesome for multimedia. Unfortunately, Commodore dropped the ball and the Amiga went to the wayside. I would like to point out, though, that this happened in the US well before it occured elsewhere. In Germany, everyone had an Amiga, the PC with windows anything was usually found in an office somewhere. If Commodore had done a better job, they could have maintained a really nice market share, since they had a computer that was way ahead of any MS based PC.
Come on guys. I agree that the text above is not as anti-MS as it is anti-Bill. I wonder, how many of you believe such things like freedom of speech, free buisness opportunity and things like that. If Bill has enough money to write ( or make somebody else write for him ) a book and publish it and have all the media sing glory and make advertizements and actually have a few people buy the damn thing, WHY THE HELL NOT! The guy (B.G.) is just trying to have some fun with his billions! If I had billions I would probably write a book too! After all it is a big-fish-eats-small-fish world out there and everybody is supposed to take as big a bite as he/she can get. One can blame MS for making ugly and buggy products, but one should congratulate BG for actually being able to make billions of dollars by selling ugly and buggy products :^) I mean is he a marketing genious or what? Oh, yeah right, an offensive marketing strategies, false advertizement, possible bribery etc. etc. etc. Well, as I said before, it is a rough owrld out there, and if it wasn't MS it would be somebody else. BTW all those big companies supporting linux? All of them are ex-giants who got tired of being second ( 3rd 4th etc. ) in the food chain. IBM? A monster. Compaq? A monster now-a-days, although them being a HW manufacturer I don't see why they are so eager. Corel? Guess what. Lotus? Oh! don't touch that 1-2-3 and Excel? ccMail and MSMail? Lotus suit vs. MS Office? you get the idea. If we think that doing good things ( like writing working software ) for free is good, lets just do it and not gripe about somebody else making a lot o money from bad software. After all free software does ( partially! ) means "no money". Where would we be now if Linus would just sit and think "He made so much money from that ugly system and I can write a really good system and nobody is gonna pay me for it!" instead of coding Linux kernel? Get a life, as people around here like to say, except by getting a life they usually mean go get drunk or laid or drugged or have fun some other esoteric way. I think that fixing a bug is much more about "life" than sitting and griping about Billies Billions. If you do not know which bug to fix, I would suggest downloading WINE and fixing that. It has so many FixMe markers that everybody can have one :)
:)
See you all. For those of you who want to say "F.ck you!!!" to me for pro-MS posting see my signature
Everybody Lies. But it doesn't matter since nobody listens.
MS Office, Word in particular, IMHO, is THE best document editor around. I know, i know, someone will scream EMACS or Tex at me. I don't even wanna go there.
Everybody Lies. But it doesn't matter since nobody listens.
So I've seen posts mentioning he bought QDOS and repackaged it to DOS, and bought WordStar->Word, and Visio->PowerPoint, TrueType was licensed from Apple or something, the Internet he did legitimately add to his OS, even if it was around for ages before, though he did buy SpyGlass's browser-> IE, and bought SoftImage before selling it again, and he did buy the entire program library that is now DirectX(After 6 revisions, he's finally getting it right)..
Don't know how true it is that he bought Word, PowerPoint, or TrueType. He did write Windows atop Dos, I believe, but borrowed much from then cutting edge Macs(And still does, actually)...
Anyone think of something he developed and wrote with his own company? I guess Win2k will be his third, after Win3.1 and Win98; WinNT was based off of OS/2 from IBM. Is Xenix M$ original?
AS
-AS
*Pikachu*
Nice essay Katz...just that you forgot about the lets put a ton of bugs into the software so that users in a vain attempt to be bug free buy the next version that has no major changes just bug fixes....also you neglected to mention the Y2K issues involved.
Winkey
How did I get here?
What about those who open their mouth to drink, speak, breathe?
http://cgi.pathfinder.com/time/magazine/articles/0 ,3266,21502,00.html
I saw the article on a newstand yesterday and thought "Oh, he's going to tell us how to cheat, lie and steal your way to the top." Then I glanced through it and thought "What a bunch of crap. Why doesn't he tell us how he REALLY killed off his competitors."
In a world that is Free and Open, who needs Windows and Gates?
Hello, my name is John Katz, and I'm jealous, arrogant and poor. Oops, did I get it right.
The problem with you critics is that until you'll be as successful as Billy, you haven't got a leg to stand on. He might be arrogant, a liar, his armpits might smell, his house might be too big, his nob too small, but HE GOT THERE, and you are still struggling to make ends meet. You might not be happy with the way Microsoft is run or what it represents, but it is still the biggest success story in the history of capitalism, and you are the biggest success story in the history of litterary timewasting. Amen.
Volkswagen ist written with E, not O.
And the correct phrase for "do You speag german" is:
"Sprechen Sie deutsch?", not
"Sprechen zie deutsche"
Post what you know about, not stupid blah blah.
... so they can block morons like Katz. Jesus, this sh*t gets boring fast!
Corndog
Don't respond to what?
--
Okay, I got Linux installed. So where's the free beer everyone keeps talking about??
You need to learn a little history. Bill Gates was the first one to realize you could make money by sending hobbiests cease-and-desist-big-foot letters in the Altair days. What was their crime? Hacking at "Bill's" (actually its looking more and more like Paul Allen's actual WORK) BASIC interpreter and giving away modifications and the source for (gasp) free.
This shows that Paul Allen and Gates both had a FINE grasp of OSS principals before any of you were warezing apple ][ proggies via 300 baud acoustic couplers.
Too bad Gates followed the $$$ rather than code quality.
The next step was to blatantly rip off other people's work (done in good faith, all in their free time) and then SELL it.
The rest, as they say is history.
Well done Bill!
Bill's only actual claim to being "in the right place at the right time" is that he had millions of suckers (like you) willing to buy into his Make Money Fast scheme, and at the same time, willing to believe that what he did was for the good of computing. Please.
Bank robbers' success is probably more dependant on timing than Gates'.
Criminy. The anti-microsoft propaganda is so formulaic these days. It is utterly amazing how "open-minded" people can become so "closed-minded" in such a short space of time. "Beware when the learned man becomes dogmatic." -Nietzche
Most PHBs do.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
Somehow, after that little DOJ thing, I doubt that communication via e-mail is very popular with MS management right now.
Maybe he's just recommending it in hopes that his competition will suffer over it in court, too.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
How dare BillG try to steal the credit from Al Gore! :)
--
Do I look like I speak for my employer?
The internet? What drugs have you been smoking?
. . . the Triumph of the Bill ???
But T.R.A. had an especially good quote, which I can't recall verbatim, but went along the lines of
"One of the biggest accomplishments in modern mathematics would be finding a way to factor large prime numbers."
Huh. Well, yeah, I guess it would be...
(I think they edited this in the 2nd printing of the book, though.)
I get the impression that Katz felt like he was 'expected' to write an article slashing Gates book, or else the free source community would kick down his dor and drag him to his death.
Stop trying to be a hero Katz, and write about something more constructive.
As I recall, Bob was a big smiley face, no doubt violating the trademark/patent/whatever of whoever owns the 'Have a Nice Day' logo. If the product had taken off, perhaps they could have sued. Still, this means Bob has less of a resemblance the Mighty & All Powerful Bob Dobbs, and more to 'Bendy' from Archie McPhee. So, those of you interested in test-driving Bob can probably buy a Bendy and save a good deal of money.
-- 'As it all washes away you know -- as it all is one, no one is alone.' -Cosmic Disorder
1 INSIST THAT COMMUNICATION FLOW THROUGH E-MAIL
So that when you go to court evidence against you may be presented in a practical manner
2 STUDY SALES DATA ONLINE TO SHARE INSIGHTS EASILY
Share also the number of your ethernet card with "market study" folk here at MS headquarters
3 SHIFT KNOWLEDGE WORKERS INTO HIGH-LEVEL THINKING
Excuse me - you mean people actually have to think? Revolutionary stuff for most business
Ad nauseum
realkiwi
I liked it :)
Very well done, my favorite JonKatz article to date!
Don't throw your computer out the window, throw the Windows out of your computer!
Sorry son, being an MS employee, i can say we wouldn't write something like that. Hell, even if they did pay me to sit around on slashdot all day espousing MS bullshit, i still couldn't say something like that with a straight face.
Maybe you noticed he wrote "Man i love writing this drivel", implying that he was being sarcastic.
Or did you just want to cry troll because you need better free time management?
Microsoft tried to speak for me, so i quit (Toldya i would)
Of course. It's possible to *lose* paper, after all. As Billy G and company have found out, one stray e-mail can follow you to your grave (or at least into court).
Pretend there is some witty statement here.
Ummm...
Apple II's certainly were NOT cheaper than PCs are today!
Where the hell did you think of this?
Sorry, Adolf -- Ferdinand Porsche created the Volkswagen; you just got the German people to pay for it.
I think that a good way to deal with the most recent Gates public warbling is to simply ignore it. If he does it for attention, then he should get as little as possible.
-S
This sounds more like Bill G's '12 Steps to Microsoft Co-dependency' than anything that would actually be useful to a business manager. From the book: "Email is the killer app of the future". Are these the words of a visionary, or of a crafty billionaire eager to sell more copies of MS Exchange Server and BackOffice? And the mass media will spoon-feed this out-dated crap to the ignorant public, many of whom believe Bill Gates and Microsoft are responsible for the personal computer, the GUI, and the internet (which, as we all know, is synonymous with the web). Excuse me while I vomit.
We want endless gardens of data, where the bits can flower, flourish and reproduce. -- Andy Mueller-Maguhn
Sorry to butt in here with something fairly irrelevant to the conversation, but you did it first (nyah nyah :P). Isn't "math" short for "mathematics"? Isn't it "mathematics" instead of "mathematic" because it's plural, what with there being many different branches of study in mathematics. So, is it unreasonable to make an abbreviated form of the word "mathematics" plural?
It seems to me that saying "maths" is actually more correct than saying "math". By the way, I'm fully aware that many, many people say "math", but that doesn't neccessarily make it right. Wide usage does make it acceptable to use, and will probably eventually probably push out other forms of the word as acceptable, but no need for that right now hmmm? It's kind of like the term "hacker". The way things are going, it will eventually be officially incorrect to call yourself a hacker if you don't maliciously break computer security as a hobby. At the moment, it's just de facto incorrect among most of the population to use hacker the way I prefer to use it.
I think it is pretty important to point out here that Bill Gates has always been rich. He's always had money. His family has been well of for years before Microsoft. I remember reading that, when he was born, his grandfather set up a million dollar trust fund for him. He attended a prestigious prep school, then Harvard. Many of his classmates, who were also rich by no effort of their own, have ended up in very important and lucrative positions. Sure, they probably had talent as well as money, but they wouldn't have gotten to where they are now on just the talent. So, I would have to say that people like Bill Gates were lucky to be born rich.
She was on some sort of board with someone important at IBM. I think it might have been the chairman. Anyway, Bill had connections with IBM through his wealthy family for sure.
For one thing, Slashdot isn't really a Linux site. It covers other things. Sure Linux stories have a good representation here, but there's lots of other stuff. You can just edit out what you're not interested in. You can do this in your head, or you can use Slashdot's new features, and the site will (hopefully) do it for you.
I remember reading somewhere that the Edsel didn't sell because the front grille resembled part of the female anatomy. Of course, that might just be one of those myths that builds up in an industry.
Why does Katz think he needs to `interpret' (even through a sort of fulminating parody) an article in Time? His message seems to be `well, Gates is out of touch.' The terse comment I wish he'd have written would be something like this:
`Bill Gates is out of touch, along with many journalists. His latest collection of doodles and matchbook covers, `Business at the X of Y', received a fawning, if woozy, reception by Time magazine, not coincidentally the publishers of the book. Time holds up a distorted mirror to the Gates scribbles, sees a Jackson Pollock drawing, and pronounces it great - unaware that the drawing is hanging upside down.'
It wasn't just a "children's game" it was exactly like "Sticky Bear Learns to Read".
There for a while if you bought a "home" system from gw2k it came pre-loaded with Bob. During the hype, I even saw Steven Spillberg do an interview wearing a Bob hat. (I read that the name "Bob" was chosen because it was a friendly name, and it made your computer "fun".) Of course, Ziff-Davis (via "PC World") (M$'s propaganda-arm) hereld it as wonderful piece of software that everyone should have.
Instead of the normal windows and other standard GUI stuff, you had rooms. And of course they looked rooms of a house. You could had the kitchen, the dining room, the living room, the office, and some others. Then by clicking on the background, you launched applications. (i.e. clicking on the radio in the kitchen launched `character map`, or something else equally non-sequir)
Since a big house can be scary, you had what would later become an microsoft Assistant. You could chose between a dog, or cat, or "caffine-addicted" dinosaur (I think the dinosaur was/is available in Office) Of course each assistant had it's own different personality, and offered such knowlegeable suggestions on par with "Turning on you computer is the first step twords being productive" or "Double clicking is a great way to start a program".
I need to track down a copy of Bob.
No Al Gore is.3 90.html?wnpg=all
http://w ww.wired.com/news/print_version/politics/story/18
--
Bun-Bun Rules!
90% of day read
10% of
Our lecturer for our compilers course was a member of the team who worked on the first version of the MS C++ compiler. I decided to ask him about it, mentioning what I read about MS purchasing Lattice C.
He told me that at the time, Micros~1 purchased "a whole bunch" of compilers, including Lattice C. Most of them, he said, were not used at all. A little bit of code was taken from here and there, but he said almost all of the code for the Visual C++ compiler (version 1) was written in-house, from scratch.
The interesting part in that is about MS purchasing "a whole bunch" of compilers. Typical. I suspect that every time they release any new product, they first purchase dozens of companies that would have been competitors for that product. Nice to have such deep pockets.
On a side note, I seem to remember hearing that Visual Basic was actually originally purchased, not written by MS.
I couldn't quite put my finger on why it bugs me .. your post helps a bit .. it's just the whole "I'm Bill Gates and I'm so tech-savvy unlike everyone else and thats why I'm the richest person on the planet and you aren't" attitude it conveys.
Yeah I know, "me too" posts suck.
"He presents the media the way it is, and it shows how the entire power structure is so bent on money they will sacrifice every ideal to get there"
This happens to be a good summary of the main idea of many of Katz' previous postings. (For example, it sums up extremely well his opinions about the recording industry and mp3's.)
So I don't see how this is "preaching to the choir" just because it is specifically about Bill Gates. The ideals JK presents here are not new, they're identical to so many of Katz previous postings, yet those got flamed to the ground. And suddenly he is accused of playing to his audience, even though this article fits right in with everything he has written before. I'm surprised he laid off of Gates for so long, considering.
This rates quite high on the troll-o-meter.
.. hmmm .. here, again, anyone with any technical knowledge does not consider MS products excellence. This may be another indicator that this troll is lacking in technical knowledge, or is simply a reasonably skilled troll.
What gives it away, really, is mainly the first line, which amounts to Standard-Lame-Argument #2548b, "all you people who diss Bill Gates, you are just jealous of all his money", and/or #2548a, which is the same except ".. just jealous because he is successful and you're not."
There are a number of easily-discredited lies in this troll, but on the surface they are not that easy to spot, which pushes the troll-rating a bit higher. For example, the claim of Microsoft actually "creating good products" (the "for a good price" should have been avoided, since it's complete bogusness makes it an obvious troll-indicator.) Most of the "good products" mentioned were purchased by Microsoft, showing not the value of creating good products, but the value of having deep pockets. (DirectX, Ages of Empires, Excel)
The association of "DirectX" and "good product" might seem like a dead giveaway that this is a troll. Anyone who knows anything about the DirectX API will be able to tell you it is one of the most poorly designed API's on the planet, and had anyone other than MS tried to push DirectX, they would have been laughed into the ground and told in no uncertain terms to take their crap API and shove it somewhere. However, it is feasible that the poster has no technical knowledge, thus this may not be a total giveaway based on those grounds.
The presumption that EVERYONE sees things through the eyes of an ultra-capitalist like Ayn Rand is a subtle point here. It skips past the obvious truth that NOT everyone is just interested in making money, that in fact the majority of Linux developers have greater more selfless ideals (technical excellence, and source-code freedom.) The argument amounts to a "how long have you been beating your wife" style argument, thus doesn't score many points.
The consumer-damaging Ayn Rand notion that overpricing by holding a monopoly is somehow a GOOD thing is an obvious crock, but we "won't go there".
"excellence and hard work is rewarded"
Overall, this is a quality troll post, when compared to the "average" troll post. But it loses enough points to only give it a "7" on my troll-o-meter (which rates from 0 to 10.)
Being a user of many different platforms, I'd like to think that I have a pretty open mind about the good and bad points of most of the more popular ones. Let me just say a few things regarding the mud you guys are flinging around here, because I truly tire of it (not that a damn thing I say will change a thing, but I get to vent some).
First of all, it's like you guys don't realize that everyone has their own valid opinion and the first thing that is done when someone expresses theirs is insta-flame. First, one needs to admit that everybody's reality is their own and if they love Win95/98 or Linux, well why are you trying to tell them they are stupid for not thinking like you?
Let me show you what I mean. I owned an Apple IIe when I was a young buck, and I loved it. I later got a Commodore 64 and I loved programming that thing too. Later I moved on to an Amiga, and that thing rocked, in my opinion. I got a job programming Win3.1 applications about 6 years ago, and there were things I liked about Win3.1 at the time (believe it or not). I got a Macintosh for my home music studio, and there are some really neat things that OS does. Upgrading the PC to Win95 was really exciting for me, because it's all in the name of advancing technology. I now develop under Win NT 4.0, because it's a lot more stable. And recently (finally) I installed Linux on my home machine and am trying to learn how that works. I am really impressed!
I would never sit here and preach that one OS is better than another. Because that's simply not true. I will say that each OS has its advantages over the others. I will say they all have great things about them, and bad things as well. The only reason I can see for being a fanatic of one in particular is because your life is empty and you feel you need a cause. Because if you were truly open minded, you'd come to the realization that all OS's available have some great things about them. I consider myself a user of technology, not a mindless fanatic. I think it's GREAT that all this diversity exists. It makes for great innovation and advances, and that's all I'm concerned with.
I make my money on a PC. But that doesn't mean that it's my favorite platform to tinker with.
Do you see what I'm trying to get at people? The only truth about all these OS's is that they all have good parts, and they all have bad parts depending on the person using it and what they want/need to accomplish.
I believe the original article was about Bill Gates and the author's opinion of him and his new book. It didn't take long at all before the responses went off into totally unrelated topics (flames).
Why don't we all talk a little more like adults and follow a more intellectual flow of conversation? Sometimes these threads reinforce my theory that, for the most part, the people who post to these groups are socially retarded. That's not a flame, just a conclusion you force me to come to time and again through observation of your interactions one with another.
if the road ahead was a best-seller then why is borders selling it for $2.98? i could've sworn best-sellers maintained their value...
Keyword here is "was". The Road Ahead was a best-seller. I daresay you'll see it on the Times list four years after the fact.
(and Borders can sell it for whatever they damn well want.)
John, think about it for a sec. Gates' new book wasn't aimed at the elite of the tech world. It was aimed at the idiot executives that couldn't figure out the difference between a mouse and their rectum. They'll read this book, written by a _very_ successful businessman (who also happens to be head of a successful tech company), and say "Hey, we need email!", and the techies that work for them will breathe a sigh of relief and say "finally". We may read the article and say "duh, what else is new?", but these execs will think its a revelation. If it brings a few more companies into the future, then I'm all for it.
Believe it or not, some companies are stuck in the past, using paper for everything. If they get told that its a good idea to move into computers by the richest man in the world, they might jump into the mix (and the resident techies at their organization might just steer them towards Linux or some other alternative).
Just my $0.02
Aric Guite
One thing's for sure: The Road Ahead has got to be the worst book I've read in quite a while. Gathering popular knowledge and other people's ideas about the Net's evolution and future, slapping it all together and labeling it as vision, perhaps hoping that Gates' reputation will keep people from realizing what it's all about and disregarding the book as what it is: hype.
...why the (admittedly smaller) article that followed the one about the book wasn't mentioned. Using quotes from Gates' own book as evidence, Time called out the signs that MSFT could be dying - and that Gates himself has become a public oxymoron.
hmm...
"It takes a certain amount of shamelessness to be a monomaniac billionaire dwarf."... On the other hand, it takes a certain amount of shamelessness, arrogance, and lack of insight to write an article with less insight than a microsoft ad in an attempt to satisfy one's own self-importance.
Bill Gates may be an arrogant, visionless, competetive bastard, but he has accomplished what he wants if his goal in life is to become incredibly wealthy and get attention from a great deal of people. This article has a tone of jealousy... does Katz secretly envy Bill for getting the attention he would like?
Perhaps a vapid account of Bill Gates' shortcomings is almost as bad as a vapid account of his successes?
I am *not* an Atomic Playboy, but I *am* a cheese-eating surrender-monkey!
Have you actually read the article in Time? Yes, it includes 4 pages containing print directly copied from the book. But in the last pages of the article, it reports how 'Bill the billionaire' should try listening more to 'Bill the author'. Apparently when the government first presented its case to MS back in 95 Bill refused to even look at the report. It certainly wasn't propoganda, and the smirking picture of Bill made the hair on my Mothers back stand on end.
try to make ends meet, you're a slave to money, then you die
I'd like to express an opinion which may be in the minority. All posts would hold significantly more interest if they did not degenerate into flames.