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Jeremy Paxman, BBC, Interview with Bill Gates
craggyisland writes "One of BBC's top interviewers, Jeremy Paxman, has done an interview with Bill Gates where he "admits his company Microsoft will one day be replaced." Read the article on BBC News Online " The interview will air Oct. 17, but the conversations seems to have ranged from pornography, the DOJ case (of course), and the charities he's involved with.
People get angry at Bill for the rather nasty tactics his company uses...like, say, cancelling Compaq's license to sell Windows because they were trying to remove the Internet Explorer icon from the desktop. Or pulling some Soviet Revisionism on that Linux Netshow Player which disappeared off the face of the microsoft.com planet. Or removing critical Knowledge Base entries regarding Samba compatibility.
Check out any of the Halloween papers. Is he a geek? Yup. There's a definite sense of betrayal and violent tendancies, though, that's accumulated through years of abuses against the industry as a whole.
The company's behavior gets projected on him, which may or may not be fair.
Yours Truly,
Dan Kaminsky
DoxPara Research
http://www.doxpara.com
The article says that the interview will run on BBC Two on Sunday at 8pm (UK Slashdotters take note).
I get BBC World. Anyone have any idea whether it will be on there?
Always keep a sapphire in your mind
>"The thing we're involved with has democratised >communications and anyone can publish on the >internet."
:P
>Ah, yes. MS taking credit for the internet.
Bill Gates and Al Gore, pioneering the worlds future!
heh..
And don't call me Shirley!
I suppose the truly groundbreaking thing here is his writing it on University machines then still managing to sell it, thus saving him development costs ;) Oh, and getting Paul Allen to go all the way down south to sell it while he sat in Seattle playing Poker, then give Paul a minority share.
Incidentally, didn't he get someone else to code BASIC anyway? So what DID he do exactly, then?
He's a fair businessman, sure, but I can't see much evidence of his coding abilities.
Greg
(Inside a nuclear plant)
Aaaarrrggh! Run! The canary has mutated!
Two things: 1) Standard Oil was in todays market terms bigger than MS. 2) Rockefeller actually ended up RICHER and I mean way RICHER after the break up. Bill is more likely to be quivering in anticipation of the killing he'll make.
I don't see it happening with anything short of a programming miracle. Computers operate solely on logic. It'd take a hell of a lot of work to get anything resembling a real "personality" running on a box that only processes 1s and 0s.
Take a look at Eliezer S. Yudkowsky's remarks about the Singularity as well as Ray Kurweil's "The Age Of Spiritual Machines". Both give detailed, smart looks at the coming revolutions in computing, including AI and the "computer personalities" discussed here.
The Good Reverend
Word may be difficult or annoying to use in some instances, but this is a lot different than saying it is trying to influence what you are trying to say, rather than how you are trying to say it. The language or the tools may make it moer difficult or more easy to get your message across, but unless they are specifically filtering your content they don't control your thoughts, despite what you may think.
The most notorious evidence being what happened to Encarta's entry on "Bill Gates." Prior to Microsoft's acquisition of the encyclopedia product, that entry mentioned Gates as being famous for business practices that many considered ruthless and his apparent need to win at any cost. In the first version after the Microsoft acquisition, all that was removed, replaced with mention of how famous Gates was for his donations to charity.
What we do is create tools like a word processor that lets people express their ideas
and we're not at all involved in how they choose to use it.
-B.Gates
Oh yes? The problem with that is that many people probably can't read it. See?
That's fascism.
Use an editor.
PS. Microsoft didn't invent word processors
.ds MS "The Big Joke
Of course I don't. I think my ironic tone doesn't translate into ASCII all that well...
I don't understand why everone is 'Gay-basing' Gates and windows. Windows is only second (after apple) in user friendly environments. Everyone in here need to undersant that most people don't work in DOS or Linux or Unix where everything is almost command base. If you need something to happen in linux, you either have read some sort of news group for information or write some sort of script. While it may be customizable for those who can do it, it's frustrating for the other 90 percent of the population. That is why Windows will always rule and linux will always be FREE. Linux doesn't even know whether it should be a windows application or a DOS type application. When Linux is in windows mode, it almost looks like a cross between microsoft windows and apple interface but yet it doesn't want to be known as a windows application. Does everyone hate MS that much that they don't want to copy a good idea. Bottom line --- linux is as confusing to navigate as this website (speaking for the average people). Some people keep crying about how MS is not original or play unfairly. Hey, life sucks and it's business as usual. If all the other applications or business were so great in the first place, MS wouldn't have a chance. Others may talk about how windows crashes so much compared to linux which some say (i highly doubt) never ever crashes ever since they first installed. Even if MS Window crashes often, these are just life little annoyances. I much rather deal with the intuitive nature of windows than with linux. Atleast with windows, I can start an application by clicking on something. While in linux, I would probably have to type in some dumb command or run some script I don't understand. Oh yea, My netscape doesn't crash in MS windows! My personal opinion: Linux may be favored in the nerd techie arena, but out here in the real world, people use windows. MS Windows will always crash and people will pay 100 for it because it's more convenient. Linux will always be free. Let me ask all you linux fans -- If you had to buy linux for 100 dollars and MS window was free, which one would you favor? Not Linux. A free thing is always a good thing b/c it's free. People tend to criticize things that they have paid for. Lay off windows people.
Rand's a better novelist than a philosopher...which isn't saying her novels are that good, either.
Only if you believe that the first computer was the IBM PC.
Everyone was charging for software for a long time before that. A former boss was part of a team that wrote their own OS for an IBM 370 (or was a 360,... can't remember now) because IBM's was way too expensive. DEC certainly charged for their PDP-11 OSs.
``Free'' software was certainly available. Some of it even came from vendors (the DEC contributions to the DECUS library come to mind) but I would say that the vast majority of it did not come from the systems vendors.
CUR ALLOC 20195.....5804M
So are we going to get also scrollbars that see in advance which part of those _damned_ fixed width dialog windows the user wants to see? Scrollbars are elevators, after all :-)
At least, it would be useful. But no, I wouldn't like scrollbars going on strike and feel depressed because they only go up and down (or left and right).
What nasty questions can you ask? What is really going to irk Bill? To be honest, I don't think he really has any area that would bother him in the same way as a politician . . i.e., "So Bill, I'm told linux could destroy Windows and take your company down with it. What do you think about that?" Bill spouts some marketdroid rubbish, etc., but the truth would be "Well, I've made my millions, so I don't really care anymore". You can't crack someone like that, he's footloose and fancy-free.
"Elmo knows where you live!" - The Simpsons
Please, these are valid observations, and probably echo those of most /. readers. Maybe moderation needs to add "improperly classified" to the list of options, in addition to "over/underrated" so that moderators can change the classification of the posts content without changing the post's score.
Sometimes Paxman does wimp out.. he's better at scaring politicians. We'll see what he does on Sunday then.
There was a good Jon Snow interview with Billy-Boy a few months back. Snow did a pretty nice job of making Bill out to be the devil. Let's see how well Paxman does it.
OK, point, but I still wanted to see him squirm.
"So Bill, I understand that you're a soulless marketer who has abandoned his inner geek and given in to sheer greed. How has this affected your view of emerging technologies?"
Or Something.
-- IANAEG - I am not an elder god.
Mainly because he operate his business with cuthroat, vicious tactics and has no compunctions about lying, slandering and misleading. Or at least his organization doesnt.
Not to mention that MS's software has been directly responsible for wasting millions of hours in what otherwise could have been useful time - Windows DOES NOT WORK RIGHT and neither do scores of thier applications. Have you noticed this? I sure did. I installed linux 2 days ago after my Win98 system developed a habit of suddenly rebooting everytime I opened my CD drive.
If I owned 20% of a company like that, I would be ashamed of myself for not fixing IT!!! THEY SUCK!!!
thats why.
I wanted to add, I am free to use any catsup I please - if 90% of all french fries were incompatible with any condiment other than Heinz Brand, i would be pissed. Or maybe just use green chile sauce.
Juln
Why hasn't he earned it? FUCK YOU PEOPLE! the guy worked hard to get where he was, he did sit at home infront of his computer reading slashdot making fun of one guy becuase they don't think his OS is leet.
Isn't this just MicroSoft Bob with voice instead of text bubbles? Will it sell this time? Can we disable these little buddies (I can't figure out how to disable the clip in Word. I've been told it can't be done).
Speaking of buddies, my wife runs a program that has a talking parrot that read webpages out lout while she does stuff and tells her about other webpages that she may be interested in based on what pages she's been to (it also has some "my portal" type service). I wonder if Bill is thinking of buying the technology from them or just crushing them.
Wishing I could remember the name of that program
-no broken link
The comment you have remind me stupid date trader that post idiotic comment on yahoo board. You call donating money to minority racist. Personally , I am not too high on Bill Gate, but you are just so low. Next time do some significant yourself before critizing others.
-------------------------------------------------
Was that hefty pullout truly editorial, or was it an advertising section clearly funded by Microsoft?
I thought that pullout was the advertisement that made the paper free, and surely is no different from, say, any newspaper selling a pullout section of coupons from the local market.
I have no doubt that Murdoch shapes and pollutes the minds of his readers, but his readers are self-selected - the people who buy the paper are the people who agree with his basic viewpoint. Those who don't can always buy the Guardian. In that context, I think Murdoch's role is relatively benign.
The real problem with Microsoft is that it's making a concerted effort to be the world's only software company. I don't see Murdoch as even coming close to that. Within the Murdochian universe, you will always be able to buy a competitor's paper.
D
----
Sure, nearly all the other channels are worthless shit, but that's what happens when you get large numbers of channels, due to split advertising revenues.
I can't wait to see this, expecially the part where Paxman asks him if he's "serious" about selectable computer personalities.
Personally, I don't see Gates getting too far on University Challenge...
-- Colin McEwan
I wonder if Gates shook back and forth violently :)
:)
during the interview like he did in the DOJ taped
interview?
The richest man in the world, also appearently
the most nervous person in the world.. Odd.
Factoring this in, how can you tell whether he's genuinely interested in helping improve people's lives.. or his own bottom line? Given Mr. Gates' previous history, I tend to take the most pessimistic view possible in this matter.. to the detriment of my karma score it would seem. :) Without all the financial data, neither of us can claim that we're right.
--
MS, yes they make software, they claim that they don't control the content.. But thats false..
MS creates the 'presses' that print the newspapers. Tell me that's not a position of power? All they have to do to anyone is to withhold their presses, to not sell them, or to put in backdoors.
"Someone who owns a newspaper can pick up the phone to editor and say 'run headlines I like'."
And someone who is the biggest advertiser in a magazine can cancel all his advertising, to punish them for printing negative things about his products.
Microsoft has actually done this. Is there freedom of the (trade) press when someone has a monopoly? No.
He adds: "Someone who owns a newspaper can pick up the phone to editor and say 'run headlines I like'. What we do is create tools like a word processor that lets people express their ideas"
Yeah. Bill doesn't ring me up and tell me to replace MHz with Mhz. Word goes ahead and does it for him.
[Billy]claims never to have heard a Bill Gates joke.
No! Really? "Say, Bill, I heard a good one the other day."
Fifteen minutes later your dog's head is in your bed and someone's installed W98 on all your machines.
Windows may be blue out of the box, but there are ways to make it much more happy. At least the part of it you see most...
/. is like a steer's horns, a point here, a point there and a lot of bull in between.
-
Dog's head, I believe...
If you're referring to The Godfather, it was a horse's head.
Microsoft Charity, n.: 1. To devour whole, to succumb to, to be assimilated into a larger collective by subversive means. 2. A foundation in Redmond, WA. Example: "My college has been given some MS Charity and now the Registration office is just a sign that says'This is Where You Will Go Today'!" See Also: Windoze, Bill Gates, FOAD.
--
no, He helped to port Basic to the Altair. He hasn't written a line of code since the Eighties though...
(BTW, remember the windows "clock" app? Apparently he wrote the original version.)
Steve Ballmer is evil
This article has inspired me to new artistic heights...
the big software man
he's scary rich and truly
thinks he earned it all
(and yes, tounge firmly in cheek on that "artistic heights" thing)
Freakho
You could spend the next week in a hotel or something and hope that it comes on the b****y awful BBC World?
jsm
Bill Gates is often described as being in his own world. Finally we have proof:
...outlines his vision of the technological future and claims never to have heard a Bill Gates joke.
Now, really. You don't have to go far to hear a Bill Gates joke. He must REALLY be isolated on his little perch with his VPs around him.
~afniv
"Man könnte froh sein, wenn die Luft so rein wäre wie das Bier"
~afniv
"Man könnte froh sein, wenn die Luft so rein wäre wie das Bier"
Richard von Weizs
Yes, yes, your old pal the DougMan has in fact secured the currently-unreleased transcript of the Bill Gates interview conducted by our good friend Mr. Paxman. And it seems likely to THIS secret agent that some of this interview will never see the light of day...so to whet everyone's appetite, here is what will probably be a lost snippet from the interview, never meant to see the light of day... (lights please)...
Paxman: Have you ever clubbed a baby seal?
Gates: Microsoft is innovating in many ways.
Paxman: Have you ever clubbed a baby seal?
Gates: Microsoft is an innovator in baby seal technology.
Paxman: Have you ever clubbed a baby seal?
Gates: Microsoft has made the lives of many baby seals easier with its technological innovations.
Paxman: Have you ever clubbed a baby seal?
Gates: (long pause, no answer)
Paxman: Have you ever clubbed a baby seal?
Gates: Windows 2000 will enable baby seals everywhere to enjoy the benefits of Active Directory technology.
Paxman: Have you ever clubbed a baby seal?
Gates: In the future, baby seals will be able to talk to their PCs , and the PCs will talk back.
Paxman: Have you ever clubbed a baby seal?
Gates: Eventually, all baby seals will be replaced.
Paxman: Have you ever clubbed a baby seal?
Gates: (nervous twitch, long pause)
Paxman: Have you ever clubbed a baby seal?
Gates: (violent shaking, Gates, falls to the floor and suffers a grand mal seizure. After being tended to by medics he gets back up and sits down.)
Paxman: I'll take that as a yes. Have you ever kidnapped babies and sold them on eBay?
There it is folks, a world exclusive. Don't share this with anyone!
Whats up with this LINUS guy? He takes a well know OS (UNIX) and ruins it to make his little OS.
To bad Linus and the linux comunity can't be orignial, always trying to copy from windows. If you don't beleive me, go look at past posts, where people are saying "we need to fix linux so it installs more like windows", "we need a word97 clone for linux", "we need a decent browser for linux"
BOOO to LINUS! down with him, BEOS.. no those people are inovators.
"He acknowledges that someone may be working on the type of ground-breaking innovation he came up with in the 1970s to revolutionise the industry."
Well, that's the first lie, so I stopped reading.
Everyone knows Microsoft is big for one reason only: Gary Kildall Digital Research failed to win the IBM contract, and Bill Gates got it using QDOS, a product he didn't write. So, the story ended there for me. No innovation, only dumb luck.
So, I don't know what the rest of it is about, but his charities I do know about sound like a raw deal.
1) Giving all his wealth to medical research within his lifetime. Well, that seems stupid to me. What will happen is the government will just cut funding in a similar amount, just like they do with the schools and the lottery. And it's one thing to promise a gift, but another to follow through. How many people are going to die of the diseases this fund is supposed to attack while Billy Borg lives another 50 years? And when I read this guy's usual funding language, a lot of it is NOT IN CASH, but MICROSOFT PRODUCTS AND SERVICES. Scam, Scam.
2) The college fund. Something like billions of dollars to a find to help women and minorities get into engineering and the sciences. Sounds racist and sexist to me. My nephews will never see a dime, because they have penises. My nieces might qualify because they have vaginas. Nice logic there, Bill. And that's FOREVER! The fund will always provide grants exclusively to poor, non-white-males.
Another lame article about a lame company with a lame CEO.
That's going to be my revolutionary groundbreaking contribution to a "world without Microsoft". ... or maybe I'll just port BASIC to the Cray.
Anonymous Kevin
Why is the interview boring? Because that's who Gates is: boring. Don't believe me? Read one of his books. Now, if the National Enquirer could only arrange for him to be caught in a hotel room with a bimbo....
the BBC may wait to put up the good stuff until the interview has been aired..
No one can understand the truth until he drinks of coffee's frothy goodness.
--Sheikh Abd-Al-Kadir, 1587
I got the impression that the BBC Online "article" is basically just a teaser for the broadcast interview on Sunday ... as written it's a very general and woolly overview.
Hopefully Paxo will be on form when we get to see the real thing. :-)
I think the Murdoch angle is interesting. Murdoch thinks Gates wants to take over the world. Gates says he doesn't want to take over the world, but then he says how they have changed the world. Murdoch like anyone infringing on his turf, and I think this statement proves Murdoch's point to a degree. I think Gates trys to do whats good for the society and make money at the same time. He is just a real smart guy with the resources in the right place at the right time. Too bad his thinking about what would be good for society is so different from the rest of us. He would not turn down the title of King of the world if the nations declared their loyalty. Hehe theres a Y2K nightmare for yah.
I'll bet you get flamed by this by all the leftists here who cant STAND it when someone points out how excluding groups is racist, no matter which group is being excluded.
Of course, you deserve it since you are one yourself.
Let's not forget that many people thought that 4K basic was impossible...
"Well, good luck finding a judge that doesn't run a bestiality site."
I've made some significant donations (for me, anyway) to VA Research and ASL Workstations. I am very much a Linux enthusiast. I'm saving tons of money, and getting excellent quality software.
But I am a recent convert. Why? Because Linux, at least in the backwaters I happen to frequent, wasn't even on radar until recently.
Yes, I'll admit it, I've spent a lot of my life running DOS, Windows, Windows 95, NT, etc. Why? Because for the money I had (then as now, now much), it did the job.
What else was there? Macs? Cost too much. FreeBSD? Some other *nix? Running on what and doing what?
Microsoft made a product people wanted, and in the market segment they targeted (the bottom of the pyramid), they had little real competition. And that market segment was enormous. And they got enormously rich.
And who was in the "glass house" then?
So now Linux is in the same space. I'm glad. I really am. But the comments I'm reading here annoy me in exactly the way that Microsoft does. A lot of arrogant testosterone-laden chest thumping. I'm even reading that Microsoft Word, by virtue of its design, is distorting people's thoughts as they are put into words. Someone's been smoking some fatties, that's for sure.
I'm really not trying to incite a flame war, but even Linus himself admits that Linux has to make better progress on the desktop. Maybe other people interpret this differently, but the desktop to me is, well, let's see: word processing, spreadsheets, CADD (give me a real CADD package in Linux, please!!!), and so on. Who's the competition here? Who's on top?
Sure, you can do most anything you'd like w/ Linux. You can. My mom can't. And I bet yours can't either. Do you care? I do.
Have some humility.
Linux will be big and important. So grow up. Don't repeat the past.
--Lawrence Lessig for Congress!
Because it is a troll, evidenced by that last Windows 98 comment which has no basis in reality.
I hear there's some good fishing over at microsoft.com...
hmm, you say that like they haven't claimed that....
Jeff
Operating the computer by speaking to it is also likely in the near future, and the computer will answer back. "One of the things you will be able to select is the personality," Gates tells his interviewer. "You're not serious?," Mr Paxman asks, "I'm totally serious," Gates replies.
Paxman only plays hardball with certain politicians, depending on the BBC's bias at the time. I've seen him turn into a complete big girls blouse when interviewing certain Cabinet ministers.
I'd love to see Bill interviewed by a total animal like Clive Anderson (anybody remember him completely taking apart Jeffery Archer a while back?), or a terrier like Raj Persaud. But how much of the interview do you think the Micro$lop spin doctors will leave on the cutting floor, even if Paxman does have a workout on Barking Billy?
And I'll bet this is never mentioned in any interview, but it's a great link.
Strong data typing is for those with weak minds.
Oh, be fair. The BSOD is just a cheap rip-off of the Amiga's Guru Meditation Number.
I think it might have been to charge a fee per computer for the privilege to include MS-DOS preinstalled so that users can use the computer after unpacking it and pulling out hairs learning DOS.
~afniv
"Man könnte froh sein, wenn die Luft so rein wäre wie das Bier"
~afniv
"Man könnte froh sein, wenn die Luft so rein wäre wie das Bier"
Richard von Weizs
As a side note, I had the opportunity to see Bill Gates speak when he came to Indiana University, and I have to confess that he is a compelling speaker. He can seriously turn on the charm when he wants to. Whatever you think of Microsoft or Gates himself, it's sure to be interesting viewing; tune in if you possibly can.
Everyone seems to slam Bill gates but at the end of the day, hes a capitalist in a capitalist system, playing by that systems rules and winning. If you want an alternative system then fine, but dont knock bill for being too good at the game. Microsoft fights dirty, just like all small young eager companies do, they just get the hunger beaten out of them when they get older. If you had a chum running a little software company who fought just as eagerly for his company as Bill did, yet only tunred over $50k youd think he was an underground geek hero. The fact that this particular geek won big time shouldnt change that.
I applaud Bill gates, hes one of the only hugely rich guys who is one of us (hes a coder just like most of us geeks).
And BTW, I have 2 windows machines at home that never NEVER crash, despite one being used as a development environment. I may get flamed for this, but Windows98 is as stable as any other operating system ive seen...
Cliffski
DRM-free indie games for the PC and Mac: Positech Games
But to their credit, if you take the time working through all the options you can usually turn all that stuff off and create a pretty decent text editor.
First off, CHILL with the all caps, and 2nd, read your history. He took every idea (and this isn't something we /.ers made up) he ever had from people who didn't see their value and basically gave them to him. His one skill is foresight, which is deserving of some respect, surely, but there are lots of people who have had geater foresight than he and never received, and occaisionally never even asked for, rewards. Add to that that he takes credit for just about every innovation in computing exept for the transistor and you may begin to see where this dislike came from. 'Kay?
Freakho
To kill Clippie once and for all: find the directory called 'Actors' under Program Files/Microsoft Office/Office. Rename the directory to 'BadActors' or some such. All the little hellions reside there, and that will clobber them permanently and reversibly.
"..no say in how they choose to use it." Is billga~1 admitting they don't review or test their UI's whatsoever?
Hey, I wonder if we could get Channel 4 to persuade him to do an interview with Mark Thomas? ;-)
-- Colin McEwan
And I'll bet this is never mentioned in any interview, but it's a great link.
Actually the anti-IE page works pretty good in IE....Hey, stop formatting my hard drive!
Okay, I should love federal criminals who never get convicted.
Mind if I come over and rape your wife or kids sometime? It's only a felony.
If it bothers you, go partake in the pastimes you mentioned above. Let it go.
Actually, he went for a plane flight instead of talking to them. He couldn't decide.
CP/M was first choice.
So, DR lost and MS won.
Deal with it, the success of MS is luck and criminal activity -- Borland, Stacker Novell. Settled out of court, so no conviction.
I did not call donating money to minorities "racist".
You should learn to read.
What I said was, it is racist to deny poor white people the MS college fund while giving it to poor minorities.
That is racism. Bill Gates is a racist (and sexist) against poor white males.
I think it is a waste when a person without money can't go to college, regardless of their minority status.
You think reverse discrimination is good. You are a racist.
I never made a single racist statement.
You should learn to read.
> Ah, yes. MS taking credit for the internet.
Al Gore will be upset.
-joe-
The Interview seems pretty sterile, some have commented on bill's comments re: the downfall of microsoft, not sure if this has been mentioned, but i read one of his NY Times editorials over 2 years ago stating that fact, nothing new here, move along.... /.'ers pick on minor sentence and flame away, seemingly oblivioius to the prostitution of linux. When Corel violated the GPL, people were tripping over themselves trying to explain that away, and how those of us in the industry should be understanding..heh, yeah....Now corel's president is brought up on charges in canada.
As usual the
Is it just me or is Robert Young just as repulsive as bill? The main difference is ryoung is sluttin' himself out in an industry that bill was instrumental in building...
Slime is a flameproof substance
linux zealot? i just installed linux for the first time 2 days ago.
Juln
On the day Windows 95 was launched, MS payed News International (owned by one Rupert Murdoch, and my current employer) to sponsor The Times, one of the UK's most respected papers, for a day -- basically the paper was free for that one day. Coincidentally, The Times chose to run a hefty pullout section that day about Windows 95, in which it claimed Bill Gates was globally accepted as being the most brilliant programmer of his generation. Still think MS doesn't have influence over the mainstream press? This one incident appalled and disgusted me, but it did make me realise just how much money talks... Oh, and by the way, I won't deny that Murdoch shapes and pollutes the minds of his readers. He blatantly does, but then again, the sort of people that read The Sun don't have much of a mind to start with :-)
"The invisible and the non-existent look very much alike." -- Delos B. McKown
I'm kinda curious--when was the last time a major media outlet criticized(or at least reported negatively) about a parent company? MSNBC has delivered significant praise to Linux, and I believe has at least truthfully reported on the DoJ lawsuit. I wonder how often this could be said about the media world.
This is just my perception, but could be true. When MSNBC first came on air, they also seemed to be a mouthpeice for MS. Which is exactly what everyone expected. At an amazingly fast pace they seemed to have changed their policies, talking in the matter of days. So most likly they figured out that they could never been taken as a serious news source as long as they where influenced by ownership and advertisers. They seem to be following this new policy rather well, and I have alot of repect for them, and glad they realized they wouldn't last following the old model.
You mean like the usual Microsoft/Windows bashing we see on /. on any given day? "Know the facts before you distort them" - Ernest Hemmingway bh
"... how can this be with your companies' track record of pressuring small, innovative companies to either not compete or be absorbed into M$? Your currently on trial just for the behavior of leveraging a near monopoly in one area, and the vast profits derived from that monopoly, to effectively squelch anyone who could conceviably challange that monopoly? So far the pattern has been M$ finds themselves behind in some area, such as Internetworking, which was barely mentioned in your book "The Road Ahead", and then scrambles to catch up and take over. Companies such as Netscape and AOL's Instant Messaging come to mind as OTHER people's innovations re-appropriated by leveraging your desktop monopoly, and creating the misleading impression amongst non-computer industry customers that there were somehow M$ creations. By the way, Bill - how come our accounts payable PC suddenly can't read email due to a registry error? Do you think the time and costs spent by customers cleaning up M$ 'bit rot' unfairly contributes to the profits of your company, especially considering that your products are 'closed-proprietary' making them even more difficult to troubleshoot and repair?"
....
I could go on and on
Chuck
try { do() || do_not(); } catch (JediException err) { yoda(err); }
I should be getting a tv decoder card tomorrow. If so the vid should be up by monday moring gmt (have to wait till I get into work to upload it) Will post later with further details per location.
Hasn't anyone ever been looking upon what Microsoft has been doing ever since it started as a company?
Juln hit it on the dot: they don't create new and wonderful things! They steal ideas!
As Juln said, DOS was bought for a steal. It was never created by Microsoft.
The interent? Back four years ago, Microsoft NEVER REGUARDED the internet as a growing innovation! In fact, they were focusing on the technology of CD-ROM drives! It wasn't until three years ago that they reguarded the internet as a valuable commodity in the growing computer world! What did they do then? They put out a browser and drilled it into their operating system so that everyone in the world who used Windows used the Windows browser (doesn't sound like innovation to me...rather, shrewd business practices)!
Even Windows itself was just a program stolen from Apple (which in fact, stole it from Xerox, but that's beside the point)! The point is, Microsoft doesn't create, it seeks, finds, and conquers.
Oh, and one other thing...
"What we do is create tools like a word processor that lets people express their ideas and we're not at all involved in how they choose to use it."
That'll go right next to my "640K of memory aught to be enough for everybody." quote!
It's phonetics. Slur a well known Redmond company's name and you get.... /. h4X0r dudes had a penchant for transliteration and wordplay...
Micro$lop!!!
Descriptive IMHO, as well...
And I thought all you 37337
Read ESR's definition on hackers, it's lurking somewhere at Tuxedo
Strong data typing is for those with weak minds.
GAWD. You'd think one of the script kiddies who visits /. would remember that that was what started Microsoft.
(...) hes a coder just like most of us geeks (...)
Is he really a coder ? What program has he wrote ? (wrote, not buy; and he, not other microsoft workers)
(my first post on slashdot)
I was there and still have the Altair - it was an aweful machine, and MITS had lots of problems keeping up with demand. Two things: 4K BASIC for the altair cost $150! That's almost 4 cents a byte! No wonder all us hardware hackers just pirated copies so we could play 'startrek'. Also, when MITS was tanking, Pertec bought them out under the mistaken impression that they were also buying the MITS Basic software - wrongo! It's been a career of backstab, slash & burn ever since.
Boy, it must be nice to have lawers and bankers in the immediate family - you could screw up anybody you want. Both MITS and pertec made the mistake of trusting the boy genie-ass enfant-terrible.
Chuck
try { do() || do_not(); } catch (JediException err) { yoda(err); }
>Honestly, I think that's how they keep the >company together. "Where do you want to go >today...because we're going to be the one's to >take you there; we're not letting you out." Can't agree with this more. In my opinion, M$ shares somewhat the same point of view like that only left so-called communism government in the eastern Asian -- they believe that their belief is the people's belief, and hell, they are gonna take all people toward their utopia no matter what costs!
First off, your generalizing. I don't believe many people actually and TRULY hate.. to the point where they'd track him down and destroy his existance.
Now, I am not envious of him. Concerning *general* business, I am quite happy that the computer industry has blossomed. However, I think that Microsoft has been especially cruel.
It's a fairly well known fact that ms paid off editors, columnist, and users to write starbright columns and letters during the OS/2 - Windows wars. Infact, I have read some columns (deep in the back of computerworld and pc-week) that hint extremly strongly at this. Some people have even publically regretted this.
Secondly, his company is trying to do everything!! They want to write ALL software.. if they could. Actually, they want to write all the software that makes the most money. And they've done a damn good job. They'll leave the scraps on the floor.. literally.
As from an open source position... well, he don't have no source. MS s/w is generally bad (exception being Office). MS intentionally tries to subvert every standards process.. (recent PATENTING of the W3C CSS is an example. This was an open committee.) and 2/3 of every standard they produce is hodge-podge. (Samba, Direct3D.. exception is dhcp).
Ohh yeah..
"Remember his work with the Altair? Man! that's more grassroots than LINUX every was!" I doubt the Altair had over 10,000 users at any one time. No, my friend, linux is bigger than all of us! l8r
I said no... but I missed and it came out yes.
Microsoft was probably (im not 100% sure) the first software company. Up to then, commercial software had only (?) been produced by hardware companies, as a component of their hardware.
Commercial software for microcomputers (again not 100% sure). Before the Apple II, microsoft already made commercial software for microcomputers. I would not be surprised if they were one of the first.
Microsoft had the vision not to sell DOS to IBM, but to license it, specifically reserving the right to license it to other harware vendors as well. This allowed them to fully profit from the IBM clone.
DOS being readily available for IBM clones built by anyone, certainly played a part in the popularity of the PC. Again, not the technical merits of DOS, but the way it was marketed was responible for this.
So, although microsoft is not known for cutting edge technological innovation, they sure have shaped/pioneered the business of marketing software. Although most slashdot readers will liken this sort of innovation to the novel design of the guillotine.
-----
They'll almost certainly do a QT or realplayer movie of the interview--but it won't go on the website until Sun/Mon, for obvious reasons. bbc.co.uk, if you didn't know already. Steve
..especially since subtlety rarely even registers as a blip on my mental radar unless I'm talking to someone in person (or even on the phone), since I usually rely on my empathic nature to communicate with others effectively. ;)
~ Kish
This won't get read, but anyway -
remember last year when Microsoft came out with its light-based mouse? Anyone notice its just because Sun's patent on it expired shortly before...
OFTC: By the community, for the community
It was not one of Paxman's probing inquisitions. I think the comment about Paxman not having the technical background to probe beyond the initial question is right. For example, there was a question about people having to upgrade when Microsoft release a new version, Gates responded by saying that Microsoft have to make the new version much better so that people choose to upgrade, users can carry on using the old version if they want to. Paxman did not raise the issue of compatibility that forces everyone in a group that exchanges documents to upgrade when one does. This may have been Paxman's lack of background information, or it may have been considered too difficult for the audience, but is was a missed opportunity to probe in a place where users are affected.
The other problem, of course, is that, unlike a politician, Gates does not need to convince the public to vote for him. The kind of searching interview Paxman inflicts on politicians would not really make any difference to anything. Making Gates uncomfortable for a few minutes would not magically break up Microsoft or force them to publish their internal APIs or file formats, or give people some other products they could buy instead.
On the whole, I think the interview was a waste of time.
According to this:
"Operating the computer by speaking to it is also likely in the near future, and the computer will answer back. "One of the things you will be able to select is the personality," Gates tells his interviewer"
This explains Marvin... they installed a MS personality.. but they must have combined with Linux cause otherwise Marvin wouldn't have been ab le to move more thatn 2 feet without rebooting himself.
This was first thing I thought of when the idea of choosing your computer's personality came up. I'll bet that when these personalities come out, they'll be so lame that no one will use them.
Does this
Lets see... he bought DOS from someone else, had the
personal computer market handed to him on a platter through his mother
sitting on a bank board with the then-chairman of IBM, and has since
then been one of the biggest thieves of intellectual property in the
industry.
Well, Gates didn't lie: these moves *did* revolutionise the industry...
OK, and what is MSNBC again? I'm not saying he manipulates headlines, but to claim it's not like a newspaper... is like claiming Microsoft doesn't have a monopoly.
-----
Free P2P Backup, Windows & Linux
since I'm often forced to work under windows I found that it helped that I installed gvim as my standard editor...
No one can understand the truth until he drinks of coffee's frothy goodness.
--Sheikh Abd-Al-Kadir, 1587
I don't want to be seen as a Bill Gates fan, or a supporter of Microsoft (I use their products because I must), but they have been pretty innovative. In the 70s Micorsoft developed what was arguably the first piece of commercial software for a home computer- "Basic" for the MITS Altair 80. That must be regarded as innovative. It's just a shame that things have gone down-hill a bit from there.
Enthusiasm denies understanding.
Quit complaining - in the UK there are five channels to choose from and five channels only. You dont realise hat choice you have....
~Pev
That's not going to happen. If you've read anything about his personal life, you'd know that his parents raised him with a sense of ethics.
People with ethics are boring for sleazemongers.
Did you know that there are decent honest people in Hollywood involved in the entertainment industry? They're the ones not in the tabloids. You have to look to find them, and even then you have to duck a bunch of nihilists who will try to drag them down if they can discover you admire them. Because "there is no good or bad, morality is relative" etc. etc.
Of the 12 channels, I only watch 4. So if you have five "good" channels, that's probably better than me :)
This is all relative, I said only 12, because everyone else that I know around here has 32 or more. When I was in Ireland, there was only 4 channels that I could get, but I liked all 4, and I thought it was actually better than what I got in the States.
Steven Rostedt
Steven Rostedt
-- Nevermind
I really didn't see any tough questions in the article. Maybe if they had Mike Wallace show up unexpectedly with a camera crew, we would get some answers. You know, some good old fashioned journalism questions like, "When did you stop buying companies and squashing them?" Honestly, I have no problems with Bill G the man, but his business practices leave much to be desired. I do see Microsoft as being replaced in the future, I doubt that Linux will do it alone however. We may see a division along the lines of a Mac-like OS on the desktop, with Linux running the backroom operations. Secondly, the general purpose computer may also go away entirely, replaced by small devices that communicate with each other but do one or two things really well. Example, my TV does an excellent job of being a TV, its a lousy web display. In that light I think Bill is right, MS is not long for this world.
I still fail to see how anyone could make Gates squirm :( I really think the only thing that could make him squirm would be his own paranoia; everything else is pretty much inconsequential in his world I'm sure. He can always rely on his Harry Enfield-esque retorts (if you don't know Harry Enfield, he's basically a British comedian, his defining moment was in the eighties at the height of the Thatcher/Regan era, when his top character was called 'Loadsamoney' and went around proclaiming the fact that he did indeed have loadsamoney.)
"Elmo knows where you live!" - The Simpsons
I've never heard of a company called Micro$lop.
Are they the ones responsible for that new Linux distribution? The one that's slightly less of a hack job?
Unlike Bill Gates, I don't see Linus constantly harping about how innovative he is, though.
Bill Gates walks into a bar... "Ow!" It was an iron bar.
Oh come on. They did bring GUI based OS to milions of people. Apple tried but essentialy failed, MS did not. You have to give that to them.
It might be not perfect but nothing else comes even close to uusability of NT workstation ( from the GUI point of view , of course)
Dan: > There's an interesting psychology at Microsoft; it deserves further research. I agree with most of Dan's observations; I think the a feature of their corporate culture is geekdom. I work for a big corp whose core business is not computers. Ten years ago, the top executives of the company inflicted Stephen Covey's bull from the top down, and none of us worker bees knew what hit us. Two years ago, they tried the same thing with The Fifth Discipline nonsense. It was dead on arrival, because in the meantime, we all had Altavista. We could see it coming from miles away, and had the information ready to shoot it down. Microsoft is not omnipotent. They cannot change the laws of physics. They cannot alter the democratic prejudices of a hundred thousand geeks.
The Ayn Rand Institute is a firm believer that the excercise of anti-trust law in the DoJ trial against Microsoft is immoral, and that "Bill Gates, no less than the poorest citizen, has the rights to his property and his pursuit of happiness."
Economist Richard Salsman (whom, I assume, represents the Institute), will be explaining the Institute's position with regard to Microsoft in a talk entitled "The Lynching of Microsoft" at Carnegie Mellon University (in Pittsburgh, PA) on October 21st at 8:00 PM in Wean Hall 7500.
You should never take life too seriously - You'll never get out of it alive.
It's correct that Microsoft are (despite all other indications) quite a liberal company.
;o))
Problem is that they believe so strongly that their set of views are the right ones that they turn into evangelists and cannot see past their own dogma.
If they could do this then the company would be far more revolutionary than any of the gnu stuff . (Not saying the products would be
Matt
"Sleep Well. And Dream of Large Women".
Most basics in home computers were made bt MS, and had some code of BG (in that time, MS was a really small company)
This reads like a MS press release. I know Paxman is usually a fairly hard-hitting, real question-asking reporter, not some panty-waist wimp. Why is it that there is no useful information in the article?
The article makes it sound almost scripted.
Computers can only simulate determinism. ~Hermetic.
Come to www.freeos.com - Your best source for Free Operating Systems
Prakash
FreeOS.com - The resource center for free operating systems.
> He acknowledges that someone may be working on
> the type of ground-breaking innovation he came
> up with in the 1970s to revolutionise the
> industry.
Ground-breaking innovation? Isn't this the guy who *bought* the initial version of Disk Operating System from some guy in Seattle, fancied it up, and sold it to IBM for their PC?
Maybe "innovation" in business practices (ahem) but certainly not in computer technology!
He acknowledges that someone may be working opn the type of ground-breaking innovation he came up with in the late 70's to revolutionize the industry
Does anyone know what that was? I dont seem to recall anything of the sort happening. Lets see... he bought DOS from someone else, had the personal computer market handed to him on a platter through his mother sitting on a bank board with the then-chairman of IBM, and has since then been one of the biggest thieves of intellectual property in the industry.
"The thing we're involved with has democratised communications and anyone can publish on the internet."
Ah, yes. MS taking credit for the internet.
Operating the computer by speaking to it is also likely in the near future, and the computer will answer back. "One of the things you will be able to select is the personality," Gates tells his interviewer
I would love to see them try this, but would hate to try to use it! Anyone else seen the chillingly horrible talking parrot for outlook? And you thought the winking paper clip was abominable.
Just had to respond to some of that.
Juln
please PLEASE, someone record (and convert to realvideo or whatever you chose) the Gates interview...we dont get it here in the States, and i would LOVE to see Gates get slammed on TV ^_^
"There is no spoon" - Neo, The Matrix
Never in all of its, I hate to say, fabulous history has Microsoft ever been at risk. It is now from many angles. Linux is slowly eating up the server market, waiting for the right moment to move to the desktop for the average user. The DOJ is thinking about busting up the biggest corporation in history. Bill is quivering and I like it, can't wait for the interview.
"Share your knowledge. It's a way to achieve immortality." -- Dalai Lama
Are they going to give credit to those who asked the questions? I only have 12 channels, and I don't think that I get BBC, is there a way to get a transcript?
:-)
My favorite part:
Internet Links
Microsoft
The BBC is not responsible for
the content of external internet
sites.
I wouldn't want to be responsible for that either.
Steven Rostedt
Steven Rostedt
-- Nevermind
It seems he confessed that Microsoft will be destroyed eventually. What he's not telling us is that he's bringing down every company around him with him. This could have drastic consequences (i.e. will we one day wake up and find no software companies?)
A ruling by the DOJ might change that though...
US businesses that currently accept chip and PIN/signature
WHAT IS IT? I've been asking this for years, and I keep hearing about his wonderful innovations, and have yet to hear ONE!!!!!
Stupid sexy Flanders.
Hey! You may have just revealed the source of all the BSODs!
Freakho
What you want are WonkaScrollBars they go upways and downways and frontways and backways and sideways and slantways.
And if you click the widget labelled "up and out", they'll make the window contents burst through the top of your monitor :-)
-Stephen
He says the next big technological leap will be to use the television and telephone to access the internet! Hey Bill, call it "WebTV"! You'll make billions!
I don't understand something. Why does a very intelligent and well thought out post like Cliffski's get a 0 score and rated as Troll?? Now you want to talk about constructive criticism gone bad?? AC
My friend can do all basic window operations on his macintosh by speaking into the microphone. But I'm sure when M$ pulls it off, it will be a "revolution."
grep -ri 'should work'
"Mr. Gates, there is a widespread perception among users that your company knowingly releases buggy software, followed by not only service packs, but 'upgrades' that have been labelled primarily as bug-fix collections by some -- but they keep using it, partly due to its sheer ubiquity. Do you have pride in your products? If so, then how can your company do this?"
Only the dead have seen the end of war.
Does anyone know what that was? I dont seem to recall anything of the sort happening. Lets see... he bought DOS from someone else, had the personal computer market handed to him on a platter through his mother sitting on a bank board with the then-chairman of IBM, and has since then been one of the biggest thieves of intellectual property in the industry.
-SNIP-
Ah, imagine.
Imagine there's no Microsoft - It's easy if you try. No hell below us, and above us only sky. ...Imagine all the people living life in peace....
And just think, even today somebody and his friend might be running a little computer company in his garage, and that person's mother might sit on a bank board with the chairman of a big company (one big enough to face charges under antitrust laws), and that chairman might be looking for something that the guy in the garage overshadowing his partner in the small computer company knows where to find and can resell as his own ground-breaking innovation to the big company to revolutionize the computer industry and replace the largest computer company on the planet - in fact, replace every company.
Yeah, that could happen (more than once, even).
If it did though, I suppose it would probably happen to a non-American student who rather than dropping out of college, finished his degree and was eventually awarded an honorary doctorate. But after all, what are the odds that the "someone [who] may be working on the type of ground-breaking innovation [that Bill Gates] came up with in the 1970s to revolutionise the industry" can't be tossed enough cash to surrender his technology and all intellectual rights thereto to a larger company so that it can be "integrated" into the larger company's products? All this is just hypothetical, of course: "someone may be working on [a] ground-breaking innovation [, as unlikely as that may be]..."
You see? It's all just way too unlikely. Never happen.
Penguinista!
You will be un-assimilated. Resistance is just plain stupid.
Does anyone know if this is referred to internally as the Blue Screen of Death by MS employees? Maybe unofficially?
Just wondering.
::: jane
The most interesting thing I remember about MS's corporate culture is how, even when a member of the press got a manager to go "off the record", "in the clear", etc., they still spouted the company line.
Even when the statements were profoundly ludicrous, they'd still believe whatever came from up top, because to work for the company is to subscribe to an entire worldview.
(Sidenote: It's different in the Valley, where you can jump from between a hundred major tech jobs. Up there, it's MS or Bust. That has an isolationist effect, and (among other things) is one of the reasons why MS's turnover rate isn't ridiculously high. SAP also chooses to run a major development house in the middle of Bumfuck Germany for this same psychoisolationist effect.)
Where was I...ah yes. Microsoft employee's slavish devotion to the company line--remember when Ballmer slammed MS stock as overrated? Recall how all the stockholders were furious? Ballmer had to do what he did--he had to inform the flock that it was OK and acceptable not to have infinite faith in the value of their stock; that diversifying one's portfolio was an acceptable maneuver. That way, instead of all the MS employees being wiped out if/when there's a crash, at least some will have heeded the New Allowable Thought and gotten some financial advice.
If you think about it, I mean really, you know that's why he said what he did.
Yours Truly,
Dan Kaminsky
DoxPara Research
http://www.doxpara.com
Gates claims that his business is "not like owning a newspaper". He adds: "Someone who owns a paper can pick up the phone to the editor and say 'run headlines I like'.
"What we do is create tools like a word processor that lets people express their ideas and we're not at all involved in how they choose to use it.
Hmm, but Gates/M$ is in the content business in a big way. What about sidewalk.com, slate, MSNBC and countless other venues owned, directly or indirectly, by BG/M$ which can be used to shape the media. Heck, M$/sidwalk.com even purchased the most widely read local alternative weekly in my area (Minneapolis/StPaul) and effectively put the alternative-to-the-alternative weekly out of business. I can't go to any vaguely interesting restaurant in my area without seeing a plaque on the wall stating the restaurant is sidewalk.com endorsed. This troubles me.
Not to stray too far from the topic, but this also reminds me of another example of corporate media manipulation in my area. There used to be a kid's radio station called Radio Ahhs that, in my opinion, was quite educational and was more along the lines of public television in it's feel. A couple of years ago Disney came to town and started a competing station, Radio Disney, which was able to use it's marketing/monetary might to squish the financially tenuous Radio Ahhs. Radio Disney now spews mostly, if not all, Disney-produced content and Disney-related commercials. Disney now owns more than half of the popular FM stations here, as well.
I'd be willing to bet that when asked similar questions by the BBC interviewer, Michael Eisner would say something like "We're not in the newspaper business, our company makes theme parks and animated movies."
He did not need to revolutionize the industry, since he created it. Bill Gates and Paul Allen wrote the BASIC for MITS Altair, the first popular home computer that was sold as a kit. And this was done without an actual working example of the Altair-they have done the implementation on a 8008 simulator they have written on a mainframe machine.
I am not particularly a fan of Microsoft software, but let's give credit where it's due. Altair BASIC was the first piece of software that allowed computer hobbyists write programs easily, using a high level language. I don't think anyone on Slashdot will be stupid enough to claim that writing a BASIC interpreter using a primitive assembly language WITHOUT using a real example of the target processor or a native host system is an easy thing to do. After BASIC, business just took off.
Microsoft is behind most popular BASIC implementations of the era. The fact that Kemenyi and Kurtz(creators of BASIC) were not pleased with MS BASIC is irrelevant IMHO, there was very little standardization at that time. And frankly, they did not bother to leave their ivory tower and write a BASIC implementation that run on popular computers at a reasonable price, so I don't think they have a right to complain. Only after watching thousands of people get rich had they the courage to go out and start a company around BASIC, and it was way too late then.
I am as fervent a Linux enthusiast as most people around here, but I really believe the MS and Gates-bashing here is excessive. He may be a marketing and management guy now; but he has impressive accomplishments nevertheless, and deserves to be named among the geniuses in this industry; for starting the personal computer software business, and vision.
If you have a chance to read this post before it is moderated down to -7, I would really like to see a discussion on this.
Zigbee Central: A Zigbee weblog
He adds: "Someone who owns a newspaper can pick up the phone to the editor and say 'run headlines I like'.
He owns the newspapers and buys editorials if he buys full page ads.
He owns grass roots campains and "independent" funded studies if he pays for them.
What we do is create tools like a word processor that lets people express their ideas and we're not at all involved in how they choose to use it.
And define the lock-in protocol of the word processors that are loosely defined and full of undocumented features? No, his company would NEVER go that low, would it?
My understanding has always been that Gates' first and foremost innovation was that he was the first, or perhaps one of the first, to charge for software. Before Gates, the idea of free software wasn't all that extraordinary.
-- 'As it all washes away you know -- as it all is one, no one is alone.' -Cosmic Disorder
Everyone was painting Paxman as some kind of bulldog of a journalist. Anyone know if he asked any "tough" questions?
The closest I saw was the comment about never having heard any Bill Gates jokes.
"Bill gates walks into a bar..."
-- IANAEG - I am not an elder god.
Remember, his ground breaking innovation was from the 70's, so DOS doesn't even count (regardless of how you look at it). It must be BASIC he was referring to. Yes, truly "ground breaking innovation" to port a language.
Stupid sexy Flanders.
Honestly, Microsoft gets more like the Sirius Cybernetics Corporation every day ...
-- Arm yourself when the Frog God smiles.
Bill is afraid at this moment......
... yeah, maybe that his company might only grow at a rate of 35% a year, as oposed to 48%.
First, I am a big fan of linux and I use it wherever possible (I can't in my college's labs which are mostly windows), I am NOT a Microsoft groupie.
Having that out of the way, I would like to say that this community is being very uncivil toward Bill Gates. From what he has said in past interviews, and through his actions in the past, I think that he is just like us. Remember his work with the Altair? Man! that's more grassroots than LINUX every was!
Why are we so harsh on Bill then? I think it has to do with the fact that we are jealous. He has made billions from something that he didn't really have much of a part in creating (namely DOS/ Windows). However, the actions of his company are not solely based on his wims, and MS is like any other business in the world. To use one of Robert Young's analogies, no one is whining about the near monopoly of heinz in ketchup and steak sauce.
Think about, if we cut Bill Gates some slack in our discussion, we may see that he really is a "neat" person. Just think about how damaging it must be to his self esteem to have people in the same industry that he has a passion for hating him!
-Bob the fury eyed penguin
What bothered me most about outtakes from that interview appearing in the article was the following quote from Mr. Gates:
This is bunk. Any software, and especially Microsoft's, has a keen influence on "how" it is used. I would go so far to say that even posts on /. carry a certain weight from the /. software, though not as much baggage as something like Word. The capabilities and the automation of software influence greatly what you can say just as the language you write in. The earlier comment about MHz vs. Mhz is a small example; I would submit that Word's set of templates, rules about documents, and "autocorrection" lends its influence to the output greatly.
I am at least glad to hear he said "The thing we're involved with has democratised..." instead of "We have democratised...". Although the Internet probably would have had a slightly different face without the influence of Microsoft and Internet Explorer, it would certainly still be democratized! I hate to sound crochety, but I feel it was much better before Windows had TCP/IP capability :-)
Gates claims that his business is "not like owning a newspaper".
He adds: "Someone who owns a newspaper can pick up the phone to the editor and say 'run headlines I like'.
"What we do is create tools like a word processor that lets people express their ideas and we're not at all involved in how they choose to use it.
He's right, to some degree.
Outside of the computer press(this includes computer sections of mainstream press), MS exerts almost zero influence.
With the exception of a few rather ridiculous and amateurish attempts at influencing public opinion through falsified Letters To The Editor(as well as the recent exposing of a sponsored advertisement so a good number of economists could publically agree with Microsoft's position in court), MS doesn't haven't nearly the kind of overarching mindshare gravitational suction that seems to permeate most other extremely large corporations.
It's a dichotomy worth studying--outside of self-defense or self-aggrandization within the rather limited context of computer technologies, Microsoft(unlike Sun, apparently) is actually surprisingly freedom minded. They do bundle MP3 encoding and decoding code, they're slapping Priceline down where they belong, and in general seem to have a general slant towards getting as much functionality as possible to the user.
That they use totalitarian and underhanded tactics in their quest to spread computating freedom is...interesting. They want people to be free, but damnit, they're going to be the one's to do it, whatever the cost.
Honestly, I think that's how they keep the company together. "Where do you want to go today...because we're going to be the one's to take you there; we're not letting you out." The coders take pride in the freedom, the suits take pride in the fact that they're preventing the Evil Outsiders from perverting the mission.
In that context, Gates' comments make perfect sense. He feels Murdoch works to pollute and shape the minds of his readers. Should the Murdoch's of the world release the software, he thinks, he'll use it to shape people's minds.
I'm kinda curious--when was the last time a major media outlet criticized(or at least reported negatively) about a parent company? MSNBC has delivered significant praise to Linux, and I believe has at least truthfully reported on the DoJ lawsuit. I wonder how often this could be said about the media world.
There's an interesting psychology at Microsoft; it deserves further research.
Yours Truly,
Dan Kaminsky
DoxPara Research
http://www.doxpara.com
This personality stuff... It's about hiding the Blue Screen Of Death.
Instead it'll say "I don't want to play today..." or "Sod off you wally", or for engineers, "I don't feel well those 13 pints and MS Office have F****d me over"
Deleted
Sorry, but there's more to personality than just the interface. The OS itself has a personality. MS Windows is like an overeducated pseudo-intellectual. It's arrogant -- it's absolutely sure that it knows better than I do what I want to do. It's obscure and secretive -- master of the BS -- often, it takes me forever to find the option or information I want, because it's hidden behind thick curtains of false user-friendliness. It's often clueless -- "No drivers are required or have been loaded for this device. To update the driver files for this device, click Update Driver" -- "Please insert the floppy disk labeled 'Windows NT Workstation CD-ROM' into drive F: and then click OK.' -- etc. And it's not trustworthy -- there's no knowing when it'll let you down.
Linux, on the other hand, is like an extremely intelligent friend, although he has difficulty tolerating incompetence. It accomodates itself to my wishes -- instead of telling me what I want to do, it provides nearly innumerable ways to do it, and lets me pick one -- and if there isn't a way to do it, I can often figure out a way to do it. It's open and honest -- instead of hiding its complexity, it flaunts it, and lets me dig, poke, and prod as deep as I want to (or as deep as I can handle). It doesn't tolerate incompetence very well, though -- it demands that I take responsibility for the twiddling and poking that I do. And it's reliable -- I can count on it to do what it promises.
It doesn't matter whether the computer talks through voice or text, the personality comes from inside. I'd much rather have a computer that is honest, open, and challenges me to do better than one that is secretive, arrogant, and untrustworthy.
I plan to sound a little smarter than my usually crude, dumb, and useless commentary on this one. Where can I see this in the USA with normal cable provider, if at all? I really wanna see it!
linuxnewbie.com
Well, somehow I feel as though benefitting from, buying, and/or stealing the work of others and passing it off as your own (specifically, an idea, product, service that you originally came up with ) is hardly all that innovative, even if the medium was relatively new at the time. I'm sure that has gone on for quite some time, even before well-documented history first began.
The point being made wasn't that these things didn't revolutionize the industry. The point being made was that nothing Bill Gates did was particularly innovative, unless, of course, you think being an asshole is a "brave, new concept".
~ Kish
Paul Allen deserves 80% credit for Altair BASIC, so you might want to say "THEY did not need to revolutionize the industry, since THEY created it" instead of giving Gates the sole credit for creating the industry. Like you said, "lets give credit where it's due." Seems that Allen's work was Gates' first taste of calling another's work his own- and he must have liked it. Microsoft, being a model of it's maker, has also given itself "innovation" credit for many things that other companies thought of first. Why doesn't Microsoft give credit where it's due?
Dogs head i believe, but Win98 in fifteen minutes? Maybe if he put it in special gates mode
Here's a quote from Bill Gates that was run through Babelfish many times. The Madonna article has inspired me.
.sig this pop I as Watch
"What we I give is created tools like to word processor that lets people express their ideas and we' king not at all involved in how they choose to use it."
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stack. the off
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from the article:
"The next stage technologically is
accessing the Internet through the
television and the telephone, says Mr Gates."
did anybody at MS tell him he bought
WebTV?
I keep hearing about his wonderful innovations, and have yet to hear ONE
That's not fair. Microsoft has had lots of innovations, for example:
MS has also been very innovative in taking the usage of FUD to new heights, for example their recent ``Linux Myths'' page.
I don't see it happening with anything short of a programming miracle. Computers operate solely on logic. It'd take a hell of a lot of work to get anything resembling a real "personality" running on a box that only processes 1s and 0s.
Besides, if most of the computers running Microsoft software could really think on their own, they'd probably commit suicide.
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