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Comment by scholia | Hacker News Reader

Fact is that Steve Jobs, Larry Ellison, Eric Schmidt and others also screwed people, and in some cases, probably more than Gates. None of them has done remotely as much to make up for it.

Indeed, while you are getting your panties in a twist about things you think happened in the 1990s, Gates has saved millions of lives.

Have you considered worrying less about a few capitalists being "ruined" (while living in the world's richest society and consuming a huge proportion of the world's resources) and worrying more about the millions suffering from war, starvation, disease and various other afflictions?

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> Fact is that Steve Jobs, Larry Ellison, Eric Schmidt and others also screwed people, and in some cases, probably more than Gates.

I don't recall any of them being being brought up on anti-trust charges and losing.

And no amount of saving lives wipes away those you ruined.

Apple hit with U.S. injunction in e-books antitrust case http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/09/06/us-apple-ebooks-id...

Being found to have a monopoly (by a judge who explicitly excluded Macs and Linux machines) meant Microsoft was held to much higher standards. Other companies can and do behave far worse and get away with it.

You want to compare the effects of these lives "ruined" (whose exactly?) with the Chinese workers making your products committing suicide?

I made no such comparison and any such comparison is a red herring. Bill the businessman was ruthless and unethical and destroyed many a business via illegal means. Bill the philanthropist is a great man who's doing great things that I very much support. One does not negate the other. I can despise Bill the businessman and look up to Bill the philanthropist at the same time.

First, you're overstating things wildly. Unless you come up with some names (people and companies) I shall continue to believe that you're blowing smoke.

Second, Gates wasn't uniquely bad, and he had plenty of equally ruthless rivals including Jobs, Ellison and Noorda. He was, as mentioned, held to much higher standards.

Third, it still shows a profound lack of humanity to think that what was mostly antitrust-theatre has anything like the same importance as real life and death issues in the wider world.

> I shall continue to believe that you're blowing smoke.

Well fuck off then, we're done. I'm not going to waste my time reiterating Microsoft's crimes to someone's who apparently blind to them and continues to throw out red herrings.

You've already made it obvious you don't actually know anything about Microsoft's crimes. Which, sadly, I do.

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