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Comment by Beltiras | Hacker News Reader

Funny. We had a chat in the office this morning about Gates. Original comment was about how his philanthropic work made him so worthy of enjoying the fruits of his labors. My take on it was that the permanent damage he inflicted on computing was justified by how he is spending the proceeds. It was not a well received comment then, no different from whenever I get to make it (and I fully expect this thread to be no different).

You rock Bill. Rock on.

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When I look at the field when commercial microcomputing started, it's hard to complain too much about any "permanent damage" Gates' might or might not have made. He was the one who survived, and he was smart, but remember software companies at the time were completely taken over by some of the biggest assholes in modern history. On that topic, "In Search of Stupidity" is a book which is very revealing of the times, and of much worse characters. I completely recommend it for anyone who likes to think Microsoft is especially evil.

Agreed. It's also easy to forget that Gates was able to do it all because he was so drastically undercutting the very expensive status-quo.

Had he not insisted on keeping so much control, it might have been even longer before computing was available to the general masses.

People change with time. Not always for the better, but in this case, whatever was Bill's reasoning in the times of early Microsoft, he has his heart in the right place now. He also has the means and the smarts to bring a lot of good impact from that now.

He is responsible for delaying the web for years. Unforgivable, IMHO. And never mind destroying great companies by monopolistic tactics.

Meh, he also put a computer on every desktop.

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