Just noting that this comment first only talked about the browser bundling antitrust thing, and then, after I commented, completely morphed into something else.
3,294 karma · joined March 2, 2012
It does illustrate the power of the combination of time and lots of money. You can literally alter truths.
(Is this an attack? I can't tell any longer.)
Well, yeah.
I think we'd be at least 5 years further into the future in terms of software than we currently are, possible 10, unless he hadn't abused the markets so gravely.
This is way too non-inclusive, but at least it's something:
https://www.pcmag.com/feature/302767/9-companies-microsoft-d...
In the 80s Microsoft under Bill Gates was extremely fierce. Silicon Valley software companies lived in constant fear.
There was a bunch of well-documented market abuse using the control of the OS (MS-DOS).
Further reading:
Many, many people disliked him after his predatory business days. This is the perfect way to a) keep doing interesting work, b) getting people to like him again, c) get some personal karma.
I can quite easily see the appeal of this.
Also; I'm a big fan of his current work. I loved how my country (Sweden) matched a very large billg foundation program funding the other year; I think he's way better equipped with handling that money than my government's idealistic but fumbling people.
I just think we shouldn't forget his past just because he's turned into modern day santa. We should learn from history...
Did you ever pause to consider how much humanity would have progressed without him stopping so much progress in the first place?
(I deleted a section on the malaria stuff; I misread your comment slightly at first.)
Sort of related:
It's a bit distressing, in away, how hard it is to access information from before like year 2007. Most of it is locked up in government reference libraries and you generally have to bonafide "researcher" to even access physical copies of publications. Oh, and it's not allowed to make copies of the material.
Thanks a lot, Disney.
He has since gotten way, way better PR handling though. Just look at the way Reddit absolutely adores him nowadays (he's done lots of very carefully managed AMAs). Heck, even on HN there's enough young people who have no idea how much this one individual repressed computing progress over 1-2 decades through market abuse.
Here's one example of many of how the pro billg PR is done:
https://www.reddit.com/r/secretsanta/comments/5iphpa/i_won_s...
https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/qkvzb5/the-time-n...
"A 100-foot length of 1-inch diameter hose is charged with water. How many gallons of water are in that length of hose?"
Ugh.
It's getting outdated though. In Sweden there's talk about a nation-wide LTE network specifically for first responders. Cheaper and better, I presume.
"How to skip converting to APFS when installing macOS High Sierra":
http://osxdaily.com/2017/10/17/how-skip-apfs-macos-high-sier...
VPN time I guess...
(Location: Sweden)
(Wow, that was downvoted almost instantly.)