Comment by johansch | Hacker News Reader

Comment by johansch | Hacker News Reader

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How old are you? Let me just guess; not old enough to have experienced living/working in tech while Bill was doing his thing.

Did you ever pause to consider how much humanity would have progressed without him stopping so much progress in the first place?

(I deleted a section on the malaria stuff; I misread your comment slightly at first.)

I never liked Bill Gates when I was a power user in the nineties and early 2000s but it really is amazing that one could offset his contribution to disease eradication and his philanthropy generally with some aggravation about his business’ tactics and nebulous what-ifs about what might have happened if he had not been on the scene or had behaved differently. (Moore’s Law would did it’s thing anyway, whether he was there or not, and even with him there, Microsoft’s stranglehold on the desktop market relented anyway.) Do you really think the annoyance of a free browser warrants indicting his post-business career?

>Microsoft’s stranglehold on the desktop market relented anyway

Hardly. Market share is still roughly 85% Windows, 15% Mac, and fuck-all % Linux, which is reflected in the level of support provided for applications, games, hardware etc. Even disregarding compatibility, MacOS is not a straightforward alternative as it only runs on Apple hardware, which is very expensive and only offers a narrow range of opinionated designs.

You're very naive if you think that Microsoft's market abuses was limited to web browsers.

This is way too non-inclusive, but at least it's something:

https://www.pcmag.com/feature/302767/9-companies-microsoft-d...

In the 80s Microsoft under Bill Gates was extremely fierce. Silicon Valley software companies lived in constant fear.

There was a bunch of well-documented market abuse using the control of the OS (MS-DOS).

Further reading:

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/41611.Hard_Drive

Just noting that this comment first only talked about the browser bundling antitrust thing, and then, after I commented, completely morphed into something else.

I’m not really sure what you are referring to because I have not edited any of my comments, but this one probably closely resembles another one I made further up and therefore might give you the impression that there had been some ’morphing’ involved.

Hello, I have also lost karma points on this subject. I also feel that Microsoft had a very negative effect on the progress of computer science during many years but it is very difficult to convince other generations. There were many positive and negative effects. To grasp the global effect, you need to have lived all the progress of the previous years before Microsoft and you need to have followed all the commercials fights to eradicate concurrence (dr dos, stacker, borland c++, ...).

Two hours later. Wow, you weren't wrong about the down-voting.

The lack of a sense of history here is disturbing. I thought HN was better than this.

Hi.

It does illustrate the power of the combination of time and lots of money. You can literally alter truths.

The main thing I remember from the era of Gates Is Literally Satan was the browser wars, and how awful it was that Internet Explorer was both free and tightly integrated into the operating system.

#cough# Safari on Apple devices

#cough# Chrome on Android and ChromeOS devices

Dishonest comparison is dishonest. I'm pretty confident it's actually possible to uninstall Safari, and that macOS will continue to work.

Besides, the integration with the operating system isn't the problem. It's the integration with the only operating system. It isn't monopoly abuse if you don't have a monopoly.

That was at very end of the Gates era.

If not Bill then Bob. At least he's doing some good in the world with that cash instead of hoarding it for him and his family. If it weren't for him, how long would have malaria persisted?

I think his primary motivation is so simple.. he wants people to like him.

Many, many people disliked him after his predatory business days. This is the perfect way to a) keep doing interesting work, b) getting people to like him again, c) get some personal karma.

I can quite easily see the appeal of this.

Also; I'm a big fan of his current work. I loved how my country (Sweden) matched a very large billg foundation program funding the other year; I think he's way better equipped with handling that money than my government's idealistic but fumbling people.

I just think we shouldn't forget his past just because he's turned into modern day santa. We should learn from history...

I’m not American but I wish he would decide that the situation there warrants ’philantropy’ and would this casually pour a billion or so into getting himself the Democratic nomination and the presidential election just for the sake of ousting Trump I’m a Battle Of The Billionaires (alleged, in Trump’s case).

> I think his primary motivation is so simple.. he wants people to like him.

Yeah, you definitely have something against him, don't you?

I don't really care what his motives are, I just look at the results of his contributions and there is no doubt in my mind he will be remembered as someone who was instrumental in saving millions of lives and advancing our civilization.

> Many, many people disliked him after his predatory business days.

I profoundly disliked him as well back in the days, especially since I was a hard code Amiga fan.

As opposed to you, I have changed my opinion based on additional data.

> Yeah, you definitely have something against him, don't you?

Well, yeah.

I think we'd be at least 5 years further into the future in terms of software than we currently are, possible 10, unless he hadn't abused the markets so gravely.

> How old are you? Let me just guess; not old enough to have experienced living/working in tech while Bill was doing his thing

Please no ad hominem attacks, focus on what I said, not how old I am.

But if it matters to you, I wrote my first lines of code in 1979 on an Apple ][ and I've lived through the exact same times you did.

I find little point in speculating on what could have happened that didn't, I focus on reality and what people have actually achieved in their life time.

It wasn't an attack (heck, wtf, I was just asking your age, maybe stop over-dramatizing?); I was trying to find out if you had some sort of personal experience or was just parroting the newer reddit hivemind.

What you did is the text book definition of an ad hominem attack: undermining someone's argument by attacking their character instead of addressing what they said.

Today I learned: Asking someone their age is equivalent to doing an ad hominem attack.

> How old are you?

Is fine.

> How old are you? Let me just guess; not old enough to have experienced living/working in tech while Bill was doing his thing

Is an ad hominem attack.

How about this for an attack? What is your current connection to the Microsoft ecosystem?

None besides occasionally using a Windows laptop.

I know you're struggling to find hidden reasons that could lead someone to not despise Bill Gates, but you're wasting your time.

The man is saving millions of lives with his fortune, just deal with it and the reality that he might not be as evil as you want him to be.

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