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Comment by hiram112 | Hacker News Reader

Gates is worshipped by most millennials, including the techies.

For those of us who've been around for a while - as your reference to Slashdot points out - this can be surprising considering just how hated he was a decade or two ago when Microsoft was in a much different position than they are now.

I still have a negative opinion of him, and feel his business practices were extremely negative to the world.

But I will give credit to his ability to white-wash his image via numerous PR campaigns (Reddit AMAs, lots of other blatant social manipulation in the media). He and his marketing team have played the long game, and have been brilliant.

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The thing is, it seems pretty clear-cut to me that the good that Gates has done with his foundation has far exceeded any bad that was done through MS business practices. It's hard for me to take seriously the idea that things like aggressively stifling competing software is the same or larger magnitude as helping millions of people in the developing world with basic things like nutrition, sanitation, and disease prevention. Gates is worshipped because he's currently making a very serious, very earnest, very large positive impact on the developing world, and I have no shame in supporting him.

> far exceeded any bad that was done

Mnh. How many billions of hours were lost to crappy software?

Which might have been supplied by better sources, if not for sharp operator practices.

(Spilled milk, anyways. But let's not say it was without cost.)

> it seems pretty clear-cut to me

Yes it would. That's the whole point of Public Relations, you, as part of the public, now relate differently to something than you ordinarily would.

> It's hard for me to take seriously the idea that things like aggressively stifling competing software

Well, that is because you are a terrorist, and your ideas are a cancer on society.

The above is basically a post-2000 translation of Microsoft's 90's "stifling competing software" tactics for software development they could not squash outright.

> helping [..] people in the developing world with basic things like nutrition, sanitation, and disease prevention.

By taking away education, self-determination, local opportunities? Yes, not quite as dramatic as people dying, but equally important for long term stable development.

> and I have no shame

No, you have a different frame of reference. I'd say one that lacks a complete historical record.

> the good that Gates has done with his foundation has far exceeded any bad that was done through MS business practices

Do you realize that the money $billionaire using were taken away from $company customers? Those money were not created out of thin air by $company. They would have been used in many other ways by the customers - including making the world a better place.

The only value $company really creates is in the products and the company behavior - everything else is just transferring money.

Now, transferring money from large masses to socially beneficial organizations it's done by taxation through a democratic process or by voluntary contribution.

Individuals having the power to grab your money and decide how to spend it, like kings in a feudal society, can easily do more harm than good.

Microsoft did some shitty things. But really, the main thing people worry about was bundling a browser with the OS for free 20 years ago. Take a look at some of the shit companies are getting away with these days without a quarter of the hate.

You think spending billions of his own money every single year is about cleaning up his image over the anti-trust case? Give me a break.

One could reasonably argue that some of "his" wealth was obtained illegally.

So what he's really doing os disposing of money that rightfully belongs to others.

That's only generous in a very perverse sensenof the word.

That's for courts to argue. He's not a criminal avoiding justice; anyone can sue it at any time for perceived wrongdoings. So far, the courts have been involved a few times in the past, and Microsoft paid the price determined by them.

(Personally, I don't care about that either. In my eyes, all the good Gates has done to this day already far outweighs any shady business practices Microsoft has been engaged in the past.)

Yeah, it's funny in retrospect. What the "FANGS" get away with on a daily basis today would have resulted in Microsoft being declared satan's step child back in the day, how things change.

> Microsoft did some shitty things. But really, the main thing people worry about was bundling a browser with the OS for free 20 years ago.

That's not the thing people worry about, it's the thing Microsoft got convicted for. Stifling competing operating systems is still far worse in my opinion. Although it's true that the legacy of Internet Explorer still haunts the web development industry.

Still, credit where it's due: I really appreciate how he's been using his wealth to fight disease ever since he left Microsoft.

While homeless, I wrote a tongue in cheek piece about me fantasizing about becoming a provider of affordable housing. I concluded no one would sing my praises for that. Instead, I would be labeled a slumlord.

You can't accomplish anything in this life without being hated for it.

> You can't accomplish anything in this life without being hated for it.

Yup. In case of accomplishing good for other people, that's sometimes called "the Copenhagen Interpretation of Ethics", per the article already linked elsewhere in this thread.

https://blog.jaibot.com/the-copenhagen-interpretation-of-eth...

Thank you for that.

I may need to pin that somewhere and just start writing a lot more ranty posts about women's issues and just accept that the entire goddamned world will accuse me of blaming the victim for trying to inject a half ounce of female empowerment into some lame, ignored personal blog with nearly zero traffic. Because, clearly, I am the single most evil person ever for thinking women can do something about women's issues other than whining about how men have all the power, so they need to just fix their shit, wah.

As a person from a 3rd world country. I'm grateful for Gates and Microsoft, as without them we wouldn't have cheap computing and I and many others wouldn't have the chance to work in this technology business. Look when the hardware companies take control over software, like IBM or Apple, the price of the hardware become really that it becomes a barrier to entry for poor people.

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