Comments on: It’s Alright, Jack

By: Bleepless

Bleepless — Fri, 25 Jan 2008 19:25:23 +0000

Another little irony about Gates’s call for a kinder anything is that Microsoft is a very unpleasant place to work. The dominant characteristic of its workplace ethos is nastiness. Everybody is negative and sarcastic to anyone who can’t fire them, and backstabbing is the norm.
If Gates does not know about this, he is unqualified to make such a statement. The same goes if he is aware but does not care.

By: MikeO

MikeO — Fri, 25 Jan 2008 16:37:12 +0000

Piling onto NortonPete’s comment: Microsoft’s rise under Gates was based on rent-seeking rather than innovation. Rather than improving the merits of its products to garner market share, Microsoft puts all its energy into preventing competition from accessing the market through coerced one-sided contract agreements, contracts entered under bad faith, predatory practices such as vaporware announcements, and threats to hardware vendors to withhold bulk license pricing if they offer consumers any non-Microsoft options.

This is a terrible blindspot for free-marketers who see government regulation as the only threat to free markets. The parts usually ignored about rent-seeking among private companies are:

1. The rent-seeker cannot collect its “rent” without the backing of government power

2. The for-profit rent-seeker is more efficient than the merely for-graft corrupt politician of the free-marketer’s regulation nightmares, and the rent-seeker is better at distorting the market in its own favor.

We can never know whether the state of the art is behind or ahead because of how Microsoft and Gates distorted the computer software market. I have worked in the computer field (everything from infrastructure/sysadmin, systems programming, networking, and data management through application software development) since 1990, and I can make a good case that Microsoft and their products have been an enormous net drag on the industry.

A rent-seeker trying to pull-up the ladder behind him is no more news than was the scorpion’s stinging the frog in midstream.

By: NortonPete

NortonPete — Fri, 25 Jan 2008 13:39:32 +0000

Guilt is the source of Bill Gates philanthropy. It is probably the source of many philanthropists. Bill Gates did not develop anything in his garage and his is really not that good a programmer. Bill Gate stole, yes stole components of DOS from various people he hung around with during his first year in college. He dropped out of college and cobbled together this awful crude operating system. At the time there was at least 2 other OSs that were better CP/M one of them. IBM picked Gate’s MS-DOS as a second choice when they were unable to reach their first choice. MS-DOS is based on QDOS. The rest is history.
Bill Gates bears a guilt that will shadow him a lifetime.

By: Reader

Reader — Fri, 25 Jan 2008 13:34:08 +0000

I think that where Gates is coming from has some value for discussion. He did not come up with it on his own, it’s tied very firmly to the work of Yunus and others. A lot of people are poo-pooing this discussion because of Gates’ attempt to draw attention to the ideas (and to some degree, his focus on the possibility of his own industry being a solution, which I don’t necessarily support). We should have this discussion, and without allowing the irony of someone like Gates promoting it. It would be unfortunate for a really great idea to be lost because of public opinion about the promoter.

By: David Moelling

David Moelling — Fri, 25 Jan 2008 12:54:39 +0000

Very common problem with guys who’ve made theirs or retired. There are always a few Generals who discover pacifism and business men who discover socialism. I think it happens to those who for their active working lives spent almost all their time at work. There they were supported by co-workers, rivals, competitors in keeping a focus on reality. When retired or semi retired, they now are besiged by preachers, cocktail party socialites and hanger on. Since they didn’t develop an immunity to this earlier they are fair game. Its also a problem that they really didn’t see the developing world while working (or poorer parts of the west). I work in the power industry and see lots of Nowhereistan type places in Africa, Latin America and the Middle east. The solutions to their poverty are always less corruption, more freedom and free enterprise. Their cultures stand in the way, not the west or a lack of resources.