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Is Bill Gates an absolute legend?

Rabelais

I've been reading a book about Bill Gates. I've come to the conclusion that he is one of the most important human beings who has ever lived. A liberal, a capitalist, an innovator and a humanitarian.

He created a company that has had an enormous influence on how we communicate and interact with the world about us. He was involved in the development of products that fundamentally changed how companies and individuals work and live. Computing for the masses.

He became the wealthiest man of the planet by doing so. Selling software that people wanted to buy. And then he decided he was going to give it all away. Some people seem to have real problems with what he did. Riles up the anti-establishment crowd.

I find him truly inspirational. Does anyone agree?

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Arawn

mr_edge_to_you wrote: »

Jobs was definitely a visionary but I just hate the Apple brand buy-in.

so ahead of the times was jobs......

http://jerkmag.files.wordpress.com/2012/06/microsoft-surface-meme-tablet-pc-history-ipad-stole-idea-apple-2002-2010-2012.jpg?w=614&h=387

Frank Lee Midere

KyussBishop wrote: »

Not as bad as many others out there, but heavily invested in some massive oil industry organizations that are not shy of putting-out/supporting global-warming-denying propaganda:
http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Bill_%26_Melinda_Gates_Foundation

In among that, there's the whole history of Microsoft and their various massive fines for anti-competitive practices.

It's pretty easy for any guy with ~$75 billion in his pocket, to throw a few bob into charitable causes, to engage in a bit of 'reputational laundering' to make himself look good.

You don't judge these guys based on how much money they have (which is what this really is - anyone can do what Gates does, if you hand them $75 billion, so this is really just worshipping his wealth), or even that they put a portion of it into good causes; you judge them, by looking at how they gained the money (Microsoft has a pretty long anti-competitive history), and the negative aspects of that and what they do with it.

When someone gains this much power/money in society, generally that doesn't happen by playing by the same rules/ethics as the rest of society, so you judge these people skeptically/critically, not sycophantically.

He's giving pretty much giving all of it away.

Frank Lee Midere

Arawn wrote: »

so ahead of the times was jobs......

http://jerkmag.files.wordpress.com/2012/06/microsoft-surface-meme-tablet-pc-history-ipad-stole-idea-apple-2002-2010-2012.jpg?w=614&h=387

Oh everybody knew that MS had a tablet when the iPad was released. It ran XP, had a start button and you used a stylus.

Frank Lee Midere

kjl wrote: »

They rip off their developers too, 30% fee to host my app and $99 to publish it, oh thank you might Apple and they are thieves too, every innovation in the iOS software is stolen from the jailbreak community.

Windows is reliable, stable and easy to use. Ok it's taken a while to get to Windows 7, but the first 10 versions of osx were absolute pants. It's still a stupidly annoying operating system to use.

Steve jobs was also petty, he had grip with adobe so bang, no flash on iPhone and made it his personal goal to get it wiped from all web content.

Bill Gates's only crime is that he paid $50 to own the rights to an operating system and licensed it to IBM, I even think he cut the guy who wrote it something when he got bigger but he also gave up nearly his entire fortune to save lives. He makes a great product, looks after developers and is the definition of philanthropic.

Jobs and Gates aren't in the same league.

From the MS dev agreement.

b. Store Fees. You will pay Microsoft a Store Fee for each of your apps that Microsoft makes available through the Windows Store. Microsoft may deduct and retain the store fees you owe Microsoft from any amounts it receives from customers for those apps. You will also pay any store fees that Microsoft does not deduct, within five (5) days after you receive a written request. The Store Fee is the percentage of Net Receipts that is retained by Microsoft as a fee for making your app available through the Windows Store. That percentage is 30%, unless and until your app takes in total Net Receipts of USD$25,000, after which time the percentage is 20% for that app. Net Receipts are the total amount collected from customers in connection with the download of your app through the Windows Store, minus any (i) sales, use or VAT/GST taxes collected from customers for remittance by Microsoft; (ii) amounts refunded to customers; and (i

Dyr

Mickey H wrote: »

There, FYP Bambi.

ME plumbed depths that vista could not even contemplate

GrumPy

Rabelais wrote: »

I've been reading a book about Bill Gates.

Just online, or in like - a book?
Care to name the book?

Spring Onion

123balltv wrote: »

I respect Bill Gates I despise Bono

Tall Poppy Syndrome

camel jockey

Yes, he is. Much more so than Steve Jobs.

LostBoy101

I agree Gates has changed the way we do communicate in business and real world. However I tried explaining to my friend that iPhones are the most overated piece of IT ever but no he doesn't listen :rolleyes: fair play Jobs you brainwashed a lot of stupid people.

camel jockey

LostBoy101 wrote: »

I agree Gates has changed the way we do communicate in business and real world. However I tried explaining to my friend that iPhones are the most overated piece of IT ever but no he doesn't listen :rolleyes: fair play Jobs you brainwashed a lot of stupid people.

A lot of people forget that the iPod wasn't the first portable mp3 player by a long shot.

MRnotlob606

jooobs

the_syco

I respect Lynn Garrison more than I respect Bill Gates.

LostBoy101

camel jockey wrote: »

A lot of people forget that the iPod wasn't the first portable mp3 player by a long shot.

Yep they believe it because they listen to Apple's advertisement and think it's god's gift.

jimeryan22

Pretty sure ole bill's a eugenicist not very nice people

Frank Lee Midere

camel jockey wrote: »

A lot of people forget that the iPod wasn't the first portable mp3 player by a long shot.

A lot of people apparantly forget that windows 95 was ten years late.

Frank Lee Midere

LostBoy101 wrote: »

Yep they believe it because they listen to Apple's advertisement and think it's god's gift.

If only they had marketed the Zune!

kingtiger

Stainless_Steel wrote: »

Jobs was a real visionary.

snigger, keep telling yourself that one

Jobs invented nothing, he was a shrewd business man that rode on the coat tales of Wozniak and in later years John Ives

Visionary me hole

camel jockey

Frank Lee Midere wrote: »

A lot of people apparantly forget that windows 95 was ten years late.

Maybe you got a Windows 95 computer in 2005, the rest of us didn't...

Tails142

He can jump over an office chair from standing, so props to the man!

Frank Lee Midere

While I think that Gates is a better man than Jobs in terms of philanthropy the amount of Windows revisionism on here is amazing. MS invented little or nothing, not even DOS. None of the great inventions mentioned so far: Excel, Word, Outlook, Internet Explorer et al. were original nor were they best in class when released. MS used its monopoly to destroy its competition.

Frank Lee Midere

camel jockey wrote: »

Maybe you got a Windows 95 computer in 2005, the rest of us didn't...

No I think you should read that again.

Frank Lee Midere

When did "Geeks" start to like Windows anyway? Geekery used to be all about unixen.

professore

Gates beats the hell out of Jobs. Anyone who gives away their fortune to try to improve the planet deserves respect.

As for their business days, they are/were both extremely successful businessmen - you can't be that without stepping on a few toes.

That's why I respected Michael O'Leary do much - he was honest about it until recently.

TeddyTedson

WikiHow wrote: »

And Tony Fenton too.

Take that back! The man sounds like chocolate! Always in good form too

Go Tony Fenton!

bnt

Frank Lee Midere wrote: »

While I think that Gates is a better man than Jobs in terms of philanthropy the amount of Windows revisionism on here is amazing. MS invented little or nothing, not even DOS. None of the great inventions mentioned so far: Excel, Word, Outlook, Internet Explorer et al. were original nor were they best in class when released. MS used its monopoly to destroy its competition.

Where you see a problem, I don't. Apple suffered from "Not Invented Here" syndrome for years - but then realised that they couldn't do it all, so they based OS X on NeXTSTEP (from Jobs' NEXT project when he wasn't at Apple), which was itself based on BSD UNIX and the Mach Kernel (from Carnegie Mellon University). The suggestion that Apple is an all-original innovator would be revsionism, too, if anyone thought that.

The story behind DOS is instructive: in a rush to offer an OS for the new IBM PC, he arranged to buy an existing OS from another company in Seattle, and he and his team spent a few weeks tweaking it before showing it to IBM. He managed to talk IBM in to licensing it, rather than buying it - predicting (correctly) that IBM wouldn't always have a monopoly on PCs - which meant that when Compaq built their own PC, MS-DOS was ready to go on it.

With Windows NT (the basis of all their OSs since Windows 2000), they once again got outside help, by hiring one of the designers of VMS (Dave Cutler) to lead the project. That kind of pragmatism is what made Microsoft the juggernaut it became, in my opinion.

camel jockey

Frank Lee Midere wrote: »

No I think you should read that again.

What are you wittering on about?

murpho999

camel jockey wrote: »

A lot of people forget that the iPod wasn't the first portable mp3 player by a long shot.

Ford wasn't the first car either but the Model T was a huge success.

Hear this all the time about Apple and it's a stupid criticism.

Apple were the first to bring out an MP3 with a slick design and option of legal downloadable music. It's the whole package.

camel jockey

murpho999 wrote: »

Ford wasn't the first car either but the Model T was a huge success.

Hear this all the time about Apple and it's a stupid criticism.

Apple were the first to bring out an MP3 with a slick design and option of legal downloadable music. It's the whole package.

It's valid criticism if you aren't an Apple fanboy.

kingtiger

"I pay maniacal attention to where an idea comes from, and I even keep notebooks filled with my ideas. so it hurts when (Steve Jobs) takes credit for one of my designs" - Jonathan Ives

"Picasso had a saying Good artists copy. Great artists steal. And we have always been shameless about stealing ideas" - Steve jobs

iPod concept stolen from Kane Kramer who invented a similar device in 1979, but to date Apple haven't given him a cent

iTunes - purchased Soundjam and just bolted on the iTunes name

camel jockey

kingtiger wrote: »

"I pay maniacal attention to where an idea comes from, and I even keep notebooks filled with my ideas. so it hurts when (Steve Jobs) takes credit for one of my designs" - Jonathan Ives

"Picasso had a saying Good artists copy. Great artists steal. And we have always been shameless about stealing ideas" - Steve jobs

iPod concept stolen from Kane Kramer who invented a similar device in 1979, but to date Apple haven't given him a cent

iTunes - purchased Soundjam and just bolted on the iTunes name

Thieving b***ard.