i admire the hell out of Gates. He made a butt-load of money legitimately and he;s giving oodles of it to charity
Originally posted by: HamburgerBoy
Originally posted by: RGN
No, Windows isn't getting any better. The Mac is getting stronger by the moment.
Unless you're artsy, nothing comes even close to Windows 2000.
except the security holes that allow anything to come close to it?
Because he has the opportuny to do something so great with Microsoft and Windows and instead has turned it into a giant, stagnant, often unethical coorporation.
I look forward to watching Steve Jobs rip him to shreds in the next few years.
HamburgerBoy
Lifer
- Apr 12, 2004
- 27,111
- 318
- 126
Originally posted by: RGN
except the security holes that allow anything to come close to it?
Eh? I've never gotten my computer h4x0red or anything, ever. Maybe if you download everything you find and do it all on your Administrator account you'll have troubles, but otherwise viruses and such aren't an issue.
BG has not just created wealth for himself, but also lots of other folks. He is definitely a contributor to society. Besides, were it not for his products, most of you would not be posting here anyway.
Because of the history of his company's business practices. Here are just some of the stuff that Billy pulled over consumers and competitors alike.
Quotes from Answer.com.
"In the 1990s, Microsoft adopted exclusionary licensing under which PC manufacturers were required to pay for an MS-DOS license even when the system shipped with an alternative operating system."
Charges were filed by the Justice dept which put an end to this practice.
"It also used allegedly predatory tactics to price its competitors out of the market, and competitors claimed that Microsoft erected technical barriers to make it appear that competing products did not work on its operating system.(http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/bu...crosoft/stories/1993/launch082193.htm).
An investigation by the United States Department of Justice on August 21, 1993 resulted in an opinion stating that this behavior was illegal; in a consent decree issued on July 15, 1994, Microsoft agreed to a deal in which, among other things, it would not "tie" other Microsoft products into its operating system.
After bundling the Internet Explorer web browser into its Windows operating system in the late 1990s and acquiring a dominant share in the web browser market, an antitrust case was brought against Microsoft. In a controversial ruling by judge Thomas Penfield Jackson, the company was convicted for violating its earlier consent decree and abusing its monopoly in the desktop operating systems market.
In 2003?2004, the European Commission investigated the bundling of media player software into Windows, a practice which rivals complained was destroying the market for their own products. Negotiations between Microsoft and the Commission broke down in March 2004, and the company was subsequently handed down a record fine of ?497 million ($613 million) for its breaches of EU competition law.
In March 2004, during a consumer class-action lawsuit in Minnesota, internal documents subpoenaed from Microsoft revealed that the company had violated nondisclosure agreements seven years earlier in obtaining business plans from Go Corporation, using them to develop and announce a competing product named PenWindows, and convincing Intel to reduce its investment in Go. After Go was purchased by AT&T and Go's tablet-based computing efforts were shelved, PenWindows development was dropped.
In July 2004, Japan's Fair Trade Commission warned Microsoft to remove a provision from its licensing contracts whereby PC makers would not be allowed to file patent infringement suits if future versions of Windows add features similar to their own technology.
In May 2004, a class-action lawsuit accused Microsoft of overcharging customers in the state of California. The company settled the case for $1.1 billion USD.
SpyGlass software which licensed its browser to Microsoft in return for a percentage of each sale; Microsoft turned the browser into Internet Explorer and bundled it with Windows; Spyglass sued for deception.
I could add a lot more but the above paints the picture. I could factor in Netscape, Stac, Sun etc and you could see what else MS has tried to do to stifle innovation in order to instantiate its own technology instead of a better one.
Quotes from Answer.com.
"In the 1990s, Microsoft adopted exclusionary licensing under which PC manufacturers were required to pay for an MS-DOS license even when the system shipped with an alternative operating system."
Charges were filed by the Justice dept which put an end to this practice.
"It also used allegedly predatory tactics to price its competitors out of the market, and competitors claimed that Microsoft erected technical barriers to make it appear that competing products did not work on its operating system.(http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/bu...crosoft/stories/1993/launch082193.htm).
An investigation by the United States Department of Justice on August 21, 1993 resulted in an opinion stating that this behavior was illegal; in a consent decree issued on July 15, 1994, Microsoft agreed to a deal in which, among other things, it would not "tie" other Microsoft products into its operating system.
After bundling the Internet Explorer web browser into its Windows operating system in the late 1990s and acquiring a dominant share in the web browser market, an antitrust case was brought against Microsoft. In a controversial ruling by judge Thomas Penfield Jackson, the company was convicted for violating its earlier consent decree and abusing its monopoly in the desktop operating systems market.
In 2003?2004, the European Commission investigated the bundling of media player software into Windows, a practice which rivals complained was destroying the market for their own products. Negotiations between Microsoft and the Commission broke down in March 2004, and the company was subsequently handed down a record fine of ?497 million ($613 million) for its breaches of EU competition law.
In March 2004, during a consumer class-action lawsuit in Minnesota, internal documents subpoenaed from Microsoft revealed that the company had violated nondisclosure agreements seven years earlier in obtaining business plans from Go Corporation, using them to develop and announce a competing product named PenWindows, and convincing Intel to reduce its investment in Go. After Go was purchased by AT&T and Go's tablet-based computing efforts were shelved, PenWindows development was dropped.
In July 2004, Japan's Fair Trade Commission warned Microsoft to remove a provision from its licensing contracts whereby PC makers would not be allowed to file patent infringement suits if future versions of Windows add features similar to their own technology.
In May 2004, a class-action lawsuit accused Microsoft of overcharging customers in the state of California. The company settled the case for $1.1 billion USD.
SpyGlass software which licensed its browser to Microsoft in return for a percentage of each sale; Microsoft turned the browser into Internet Explorer and bundled it with Windows; Spyglass sued for deception.
I could add a lot more but the above paints the picture. I could factor in Netscape, Stac, Sun etc and you could see what else MS has tried to do to stifle innovation in order to instantiate its own technology instead of a better one.
Percentage wise (that is to say as a percentage of his income) he gives relitavely little to charity, really.
Really, I bet you give a greater portion of your income to charity without even realizing it.
You donating 1 cent is like Bill Gates giving 20 million dollars.
Hes also actually a really good guy who gives a lot of money to charity. I've never bashed Gates and I never will.
He was a lowly nerd who had an idea and made it a reality and now is worth billions. Isn't that the American Dream?
It's really not even that that bugs me.
It's that it all seems so selfish. Microsoft is in a position to really change the world. Instead they are trying to rule it like a corrupt dictator.
Have you ever heard of that show Trading Spouses or whatever?
I want to see a show called "trading CEO's"
Let Bill Gates run Apple for a month and Steve Jobs run Microsoft for a month.
Obviously they hate eachothers guts and would run eachothers companies into the ground.
But this is a game we are playing and if they tried to run the companies to the best of their abilities $10 says Steve Jobs will change the world and Bill Gates would run Apple to the ground within a year. I mean a month.
Philanthropy
Main article: Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation
With his wife, Gates founded the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, a charitable organization. The foundation's grants have provided funds for college scholarships for under-represented minorities, AIDS prevention, diseases prevalent in the Third World, and other causes. In 2000, the Gates Foundation endowed the University of Cambridge with $210 million for the Gates Cambridge Scholarships. The Foundation has also pledged over $7 billion to its various causes, including $1 billion to the United Negro College Fund; and as of 2005, had an estimated endowment of $29.0 billion. He has spent about one third of his lifetime income on charity, although some question his intentions. Journalist Greg Palast suggests that the Gates Foundation is used to make tactical donations to hide media sensitive humanitarian side effects of treaties, such as the Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS), which Gates has supported. TRIPS requires countries to agree to respect drug and other patents, therefore preventing the local manufature of pharmaceuticals such as AIDS drugs in Africa. [5]
I beleive for the last 3-4 years he's given 11billion annually to charitable organizations, including the Bill and Melinda Gates fund. He is worth ~50-60 billion, so he gives approximately 20% of his wealth annually to charity. That is quite a bit more than I give. How about you, do you give more than 20% of your money a year to charity?
You guys are making me feel old.
Do some research into how he built his company in the old days, and you'll discover why many of us who dealt with him back then hate him and everything about him.
Do some research into how he built his company in the old days, and you'll discover why many of us who dealt with him back then hate him and everything about him.
I don't bash Bill Gates the person, I bash the business practices of Microsoft the company, which has been convicted of abusing its monopoly power to crush competitors and stifle innovation.
Some of the effects of these practices are lack of choice, stagnation in areas where MS has crushed competitors, and paying the "Windows Tax" on every major-brand PC sold in America (except some Wal-Mart "Lindows" budget boxes).
Some of the effects of these practices are lack of choice, stagnation in areas where MS has crushed competitors, and paying the "Windows Tax" on every major-brand PC sold in America (except some Wal-Mart "Lindows" budget boxes).
MrChad
Lifer
- Aug 22, 2001
- 13,507
- 3
- 81
Microsoft has certainly leveraged their OS market share to gain a foothold in other software markets, but other companies have used the "Microsoft monopoly" as an excuse for their own inadequacies.
There was once a time when the business world relied on WordPerfect and Lotus 1-2-3. Microsoft Office got progressively better and eventually eclipsed those products. Now it's the de facto standard.
IE didn't achieve true market dominance until version 5. Look at what Netscape had to offer at that time. Netscape 4? 6? Both were garbage.
Real Networks sued Microsoft rather than admit that it's own software was buggy, installed software and had become generally a nuisance to its consumer base.
Other companies have taken on Microsoft's "unfair" advantage and done well. Look at Apple and iTunes. Looks at AOL and their instant messenger. Sometimes the best product DOES win out.
Microsoft did win this one almost fairly, though they did illegally bundle/tie Office and Windows by dicounting Windows to vendors that shipped Office with a certain percentage of their systems.
MS hooked IE into Windows (introducing literally hundreds of security flaws) to justify that it was "part of the operating system" and "could not be removed."
MS forced developers to install IE in order to use Visual Studio documentation. They forced companies to ship IE with products if they wanted to legally use the latest version of the common controls (Windows components that existed before IE). They switched their help file system to IE-based to justify requiring IE installs with products like MS Money.
MS made IE free, and promised to keep it free forever (though they've considered breaking this a couple of times) to "cut off Netscape's oxygen" and deny Netscape the revenue from browser sales to put into product development. That is also why they made IIS free unlike pretty much ever other MS server application (why not bundle SQL Server free, hmmmm MS?).
Finally, after crushing Netscape, MS let IE stagnate for years.
Real is a somewhat similar story, MS offered players and encoders "free" (subsidized by the Windows tax on each PC sold) to destroy the market for paid applications and cut off a funding source for Real.
You're right. The best product DOES win out. MS has always tried to pass its own technologies down our throat such as wma. How? By reducing the sound quality of mp3's in their own product (media player). How far would that go. Apple did take the cake.
Real Networks sued Microsoft for actually FORCING users to take Media Player for audio instead of other products which violated the former agreement that they had signed with the Justice Dept. MS had consented that it would behave fairly with competitors and not 'tie' in their own products into the OS to shut other similar technologies out.
Netscape was by leaps and bounds a lot better product when compared to I.E. But when you're a small company against a Goliath and are forced to give your product away, how much development can you do on it?? MS had allocated millions of dollars just for I.E development for driving other competition out (Netscape). Fast forward to today, and now MS itself is being criticized for lack of development on this product for the last couple of years. Talk about stifling innovation for your own selfish need!
They actually spent around a billion dollars to crush Netscape, since thin-client web apps were seen as a long-term threat to the Windows monopoly.
In my list above, I forgot to include that MS contracts for selling Windows blocked PC vendors from placing a Netscape icon on the desktop of machines that they shipped. MS had no interest in a fair fight or having the best product win. It was victory at any cost, using any dirty trick they could think of.
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