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Comment by paulgb | Hacker News Reader

Stories like this make me wonder what a younger Steve Jobs would think of today's Apple.

The company's 1984 ad now seems a bit ironic.

What's the line from Dark Knight? Every hero either dies young, or lives long enough to become the villain. The older I get, the more I see that pattern replicated.

I guess that makes Bill Gates the exception to the rule.

How? He was certainly decried as a villain by many.

All the people who benefit from his philanthropy?

charity to third world countries doesn't decrease net suffering. when you save a starving man and he has 5 children, all of whom lead miserable lives are you ahead or behind?

charity is about signaling your fitness to others. (like everything else)

You're being downvoted because, by your logic, genocide can decrease net suffering. I'm not sure if that's incorrect, but I'm sure that no one likes hearing that.

I think there comes a point where you have to stop using quantitative measures of happiness or suffering and just commend anyone who makes a genuine effort to do something for what they think is right.

charity is about signaling your fitness to others

While this is undoubtedly a factor, it fails to be a complete explanation, given that much charity is anonymous, and anonymous charity has no obvious utility for signaling. It would also imply that those who are happily married would tend to be significantly less charitable, which AFAIK is not true.

you're making the mistake of thinking that we're fitness maximizers rather than adaptation executers. We don't stop engaging in fitness related activities just because they dont have any utility in our current situation.

Not everyone in the third world is starving. If you give out medicine and a poor person survives and has children, who also survive and live relatively normal lives, then I view that as a net gain. It's a mistake to simplify charity to 'giving starving people food.' Gates does a lot of work in healthcare, financial assistance, disaster relief, and even charity work here in the US. Most of the beneficiaries of these efforts may be impoverished, but that does not mean that they can't lead fulfilling lives.

A number of Gates foundation efforts are toward decreasing the misery of those children. I've also been impressed by the large number of micro-grants given to researchers for far out ideas. That kind of charity takes a page out of the positive Black Swan theory -- if you play a lot of small bets in a field where some random finding has a huge impact, you're maximizing your upside. Your comment makes it sound like the Gates foundation is just setting up food kitchens.

Gosh, I hope that you're trolling. Otherwise, that's a very lonely and unhappy way to view the world. It's also an incredible misinterpretation of modern philanthropy.

Charitable organizations like the Gates foundation aren't interested in quick "band-aid" fixes, for exactly the problem you raised. They're interested in long-term sustainable programs that don't just help today, but also improve life for future generations.

A good example is malaria eradication. The Gates foundation has targeted malaria for complete destruction on a global scale. This means assisting current victims, yes. However, if they meet their goal even partially, the lives of future generations will be improved. Permanently.

A good anecdote about Bill Gates is when Douglas Adams went to solicit funds for a Mountain Gorilla conservation program. Gates asked how much it would cost. Adams started giving him estimates for the first year, and then Gates cut him off. He said, "No. How much to solve the Mountain Gorilla problem. Forever."

That's the current attitude. If it doesn't work past the current generation, it's probably not worth doing. We've acknowledged that, and have moved on.

the amount of funds being devoted to actual philanthropy vs the kind of band aid charity I'm talking about is like david and goliath. charity is a huge industry.

That's a great anecdote. I did a Google search to get more info on that meeting but couldn't find anything. How did you come by it?

You're separating Gates from his company. Microsoft started off as a fresh and exciting company, and it's gotten a bit stinky. So his case is valid.

All companies, given enough time, become stinky. Google already has a malodourous air about it. That Gates built one that still exists, that was formed 34 years ago in the tech space, deserves some measure of respect.

Google was on my mind when I wrote this. They've already lost it.

Microsoft isn't necessarily worthy of contempt, but I don't respect what they do now. They've lost it. Apple hasn't, at least not yet.

That's exactly what they are saying. The original point was that you either die a hero or live long enough to become the villain. Someone ventured Gates as a possible exception, but if you look solely at Gates the businessman, he follows the rule too. I'm not sure who you're disagreeing with here.

Let's not forget about Bill Gates' famous 1976 letter to the Homebrew Computer Club http://www.digibarn.com/collections/newsletters/homebrew/V2_...

I thought the punchline rather was that he sometimes was considered a villain when he was young(er) and maybe less so now.

precisely - sometimes garbage just rises to the top. Started out as a villain, became more of a villain, does the world "a solid" by redistributing some of the wealth he essentially bled from it! In the words of alan partidge circa knowing me knowing you: "What a nice man".

Apple seems to have drifted away from it's carefully trod line of empowering and protecting users into the realm of protecting users from themselves.

I tend to think that Apple signed some of it's soul away when making media deals and situations like this may be a part of those legal agreements.

Not to troll but I think Microsoft started focusing on it's business to business dealings more than on it's users at one point and eventually became what it did.

Unfortunately this is a common pattern for successful corporations. I wonder if it is driven purely by fear (of lawsuit?) or by the types of executives you get when you reach a certain size.

Apple's followed an unusual path because their current tyrannies are much different from typical tech tyrannies. This decision doesn't help them as a company, and it doesn't hedge any corporate maneuver of theirs. It seems absolutely ridiculous and stupid. It implies that the procedure they're using is fucked up on some level.

While that's outrageous and really pisses me off, it also gives me hope that Apple will find a way to fix this problem without damaging the idealism of their company regarding their products. This isn't stagnation of thought. It's outright insanity. Perhaps it's curable.

I'm not at all surprised by this kind of controlling behaviour from Apple. That's how they've always been.

I don't think what you and others are implying is the case at all, I think it's pretty clear that the app store is being mismanaged and that the approval process is severely broken, but I don't think Apple is imposing it's oppressive will upon the masses. If that were the case, I think they would be more consistent.

I guess the real question is, did the other ebook readers currently in the App Store that allow access to the same material slip through the cracks, or was this a case of an over zealous App Store employee making a mistake?

I've been thinking this since before this case. It's not just the isolated cases that make me think it, but also:

- The NDA that lasted way too long and frustrated a lot of people working on articles, books, or projects they wanted to open-source.

- The fact that these app store rejection stories have been happening for a long time now and Apple has apparently done little to address them.

- The fact that there is evidently no good appeal process.

- That small developers get shafted while big developers get there apps in. Why was the Kindle accepted and Eucalyptus not? Maybe it was that Kindle got sent to a lenient reviewer and Eucalyptus to a strict one, but the fact that Amazon is a large company and Eucalyptus appears to have a single developer seems more likely.

"(...) but the fact that Amazon is a large company and Eucalyptus appears to have a single developer seems more likely."

I think that's nonsense. There are a lot of small-shop ebook readers on the iPhone, Stanza and eReader are two that come to mind, but there are many more.

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