That's SIR Gates to You Motherfucker!

[Teranfirbt]

[quote="RadicalDreamer";p="460664"]Not too fond of his business practices, either. :/

Then again, that's capitalism for ya. At least the bad part of it. [/quote]
What's wrong with his business practices? It's capitalism how it's supposed to work...

[StruckingFuggle]

Which isn't necessarily a good thing, TFB.

[mikehendo]

[quote="Killer-Rabbit";p="460377"]

Gates, the world's wealthiest man, will receive the award from the Queen at Buckingham Palace.

I knew he was high on the list but I thought there were some oil guys above him, did he pass them (or they fall below him)?[/quote]
The IKEA guy passed him a while ago..

[Vektor T. Gecko]

Abuse of monopolies is actually pretty much the opposite of how capitalism is supposed to work. The fundamentals of capitalist society are rooted on competition in a given market spurring innovation and competitive prices, which results in an overall net gain for the country and consumer. If you're the only game in town*, this doesnt hold true.

*There are other operating systems available, however, they're predominantly used in the server industry. Like it or not, MS rules the desktop, and desktops outnumber servers by... a lot. Things like owning the de-facto (unpublished) standard document format don't hurt either.

As for Gates, nothing wrong with him. He's not a bad person, he's just very, very aggressive in business, and it's worked out for him.

[Rileyrat]

He was a shark swimming among guppies when he started promoting Windows. He's a lil geeky guy that seen the goal and went for it harder and faster than anyone. Thats how he got his bad rep.

[Nekra]

He's Rich, too rich, so people are jealous.

[edge]

Roger that. I think he takes a lot of heat (weather he hears about it or not) because of the problems with Windows. I can't count how many times I've heard someone say something like "Man, windows sucks, Bill Gates is an idiot!).

It's quite the contrary. Gates is extremely intelligent. Look at how much money he's got! He's got to be doing something right, huh? I think a lot of people believe that Gates actually programms windows. Quite frankly, I doubt he has a hand in the code at all these days.

Over all, I think this one song sums it up pretty good:

Do you think if Bill Gates got laid in high school there'd be a Microsoft?
Ofcourse not. It takes a lot of time stuffed in your own locker with your underwear wedged up your ass before you say "I'm gonna take over the world of computers! You'll see! I'll show them!

But in all seriousness, I bet he's quite the pimp these days

[Calus]

I doubt it wife would like that.

[StruckingFuggle]

I think a lot of people believe that Gates actually programms windows. Quite frankly, I doubt he has a hand in the code at all these days.

But he certanly had and most likely still HAS (immense?) influence in Microsoft.

If he said, "we should lower our profit margins a bit to fix all these problems, and make a better product, instead of going for the most cost-efficiency", they might have gotten / get fixed - or people, too many people, would probably think he's crazy and nothing would change.

I dunno.

[Blaze]

Wrongo. Bill Gates is still part of every Windows programming team.

[Deacon]

Part of the problem is that people seem to blame anything that ever goes wrong with/in their computer on Windows and ofte by extension Bill Gates himself. Honestly, much of the time people have problems, those problems are due not to Windows itself, but in the applications, hardware, and drivers. Computers are complex things. Linux fanboys, for instance, accept that Linux isn't perfect and that Linux applications are often imperfect as well. But they hold Windows to a whole different set of standards: Windows and everything that runs within Windows--even the hardware on which Windows runs--must be perfect. Extreme, yes, but even when it's not quite that severe, there's still a double-standard in place.

If he said, "we should lower our profit margins a bit to fix all these problems, and make a better product, instead of going for the most cost-efficiency", they might have gotten / get fixed

Heh. Have you ever worked for a software company? Your vague reference to "all these problems" leaves a lot to be desired, and you seem to think it'd be a simple thing to "fix all these problems" as though they're just too lazy to do so or are refusing to do so out of spite or something. In an economy of supply and demand, you do what makes the most business sense with limited resources. That usually means meeting market demands with market priorities in mind. For instance, if the market demands ease of use and and an extremely broad series of features over security, then you're going to try to find out what most people find easy to use and what some of those features are and give that development your first priority. If the market requires you to put out the most secure OS possible, ease of use and features be damned, then you're going to get something totally different. What's great is that when the entire fucking world is your market, it gets a little crazy, since everyone has their own idea of what's important, where the product should go, what should be extended, what should be pulled back, etc. What you might think is bad I might think is good.

Sure, I'd love to see an OS that reads my mind and responds instantly to my whims, is 100% impervious to malware (which is always a fun thing to tackle--what is malware and what is software doing what you want it to do?), requires nothing more than a calculator watch to run, feeds me breakfast in bed, and "takes care of" my enemies. But seriously, some people need to get a grip.

[BtEO]

[quote="RadicalDreamer";p="460664"]Not too fond of his business practices, either. :/

Then again, that's capitalism for ya. At least the bad part of it. [/quote]Personally, I always blamed Ballmer more for their worst sins.

[Spongiform]

Didn't Gates steal a lot of ideas (like Prodos and the idea of a desktop environment) from Apple back in the 80's and early 90's?

Disclaimer: I don't really know anything about this, my dad's engineer friends mention it a lot.

[billf]

I don't think he stole them, I think he bought them or Apple traded them to him or something, and shortly after doing so is when Windows took off.

I remember someplace reading "Bad decision by Apple" and that was one of the top.

[UrzaPlanezwalker]

not quite stolen from apple.

the entire interface, as well as the idea for a mouse and a few other things was actually stolen by apple, then later stolen from them by windows. Apple stole it from xerox back when they still were programming for IBM. Xerox called IBM, said they had somethign they wanted to show them. They came, never signed a non-dosclosure agreement or whatever it is that keeps them from stealing it. Funny thing is, at first xerox wanted them to sign it, but the higher ups int he company said "Nah, it's IBM, we can trust them" and well, here we are today. So yes, apple did have it first, but they cant really do anything about it because they stole it too.