I recommend the Behind the Bastards episode on him. He had a ton of opportunities available to him normal people don’t, including ones that aren’t strictly financial. For instance, he was allowed to ignore most of his other subjects in high school to concentrate on computer stuff. As a person who had similar interests in computers and sometimes not an interest in some other classes, that’s a huge advantage.
While I didn’t have too hard a time in school (only needed 2 classes to pass my final year), being able to concentrate on just computers(which were my electives) would have been far less stressful and would have allowed more concentration. That’s just one of many intangible benefits.
I also learned how to program at 13 in my free time
I didn’t ignore any subjects in school. In fact, I actually did well in high school…
But I’m sure people will try to look at my life and try to make thousands of different excuses to explain that, especially if I founded Microsoft. But it was just because I enjoyed programming and worked hard too.(Like I spent days copying coffee from a basic book for a game)
The guy whose mom was on the board for IBM and who convinced them to invest into her sons’ garage company?
Being born to wealthy and powerful parents really does wonders for your ability to become filthy rich, does it not?
Nope. He was successful because of nepotism, a bit of luck, and being born into a position where he could apply what he was good at. Being a “hard worker” will only get you sick.
Well. You’re making the claim, let’s see the receipts. They pay their workers well, I haven’t heard any evidence they get treated like slaves like bezos
I knew I’d get downvoted but Lemmy people, but I’ve heard no evidence otherwise.
Bill got rich because of windows 95, and it was a really good product.
He made a lot of his riches before the Internet and before IE
Also, I did try early Debian back in those days, and Linux simply was unusable for consumers back then.
Oh my, if you want to look back at those days with rose colored glasses be my guest. But to anyone that lived those days, your comment is a basket full of straw mans.
I don’t have superior knowledge, but it’s probably useful to recognize the way I see that company is very different than yours and other people.
I don’t think we can agree, and my goal is not to convince you, but remind that there’s people like me who think Microsoft represents so many bad things that I can write a book about it.
To illustrate, I’m sure 20 years from now recall will be as divisive as windows 7,10 or how they were completely opposed to open source and now act like that never happened.
If you disagree with someone enough to feel it’s necessary to say so, it’s generally advisable to explain exactly what you disagree with and provide reasoning for your stance. Otherwise, you’re just making noise. A truly informed person has no trouble coming up with a few examples to back up their claims. It’s quite patronizing to imply that you have some insight I don’t, and then not even bother to share it - especially when following it up with, ‘I don’t think we can agree,’ after putting zero effort into reaching an understanding.
So don’t speak on behalf of me please, or make assumptions
Explain your answer.
To literally anyone at that time, Windows 95 was a game changer. It brought many things including proper plug and play, and less screwing with autoexec.bat
The competition was Apple. Apple started going bankrupt because of this. Bill was a coder from 13 years old. They weren’t a monopoly until much later.
He was going to be successful regardless. His initial fortune was from Windows 95 which sold 7 million copies in 5 weeks
Explain yourself? Do you pay my bills and I didn’t notice? Fuck off.
Just conversation starters :
Win95, 98 and 2000 are embarrassingly unstable, even if you think it’s a world wonder that got someone to be ultra rich.
Oh by the way all of this was based on DOS, which was not made but bought by Microsoft. Pretty sure it wasn’t from a savings account for flipping burgers.
Internet explorer had such bullying and monopolistic practices that it lost a lawsuit.
Microsoft willingly went out of their way to bully and kill other OS competitors that were getting a good foothold on getting adopted. Was that Novell? So long ago, and they got killed almost at the same time as they were invented.
Ie wasn’t even a factor until years later. There was no compelling reason to use anything other than ie until Firefox (to end users, Netscape and Mozilla was comparable to ie). It had no impact on the initial success of Windows. Netware failed because it was crap compared to windows 95 too. Their competitors simply didn’t compare to windows 95. That’s not bullying. They were too busy competing with windows 3.1
Windows 95 wasn’t that unstable either. Maybe you had bad ram in your system or bad drivers . Sure the NT kernel was better, but Windows 95 was perfectly usable and was used. It did crash. But it wasn’t a regular thing. You’re acting like it happened daily.
Osx was only released in 2001 and macos required Apple hardware Windows 95 succeeded because it actually worked and had broad hardware support
You keep talking about IE, but Windows was successful before most people had the Internet. Internet explorer only became anti monopoly consideration because Windows had already managed to be
Also, how do you expect people to respond when you disrespect them and make assumptions about their experience and age to try to add credibility to your argument at their expense? If you don’t know how old I am, don’t assume I’m young. I’m not . And fyi, one of my projects was mentioned in Linux format 20 years ago, so don’t assume I wasn’t heavy into Linux either
It’s not always the case.
Bill Gates I feel earned his money.
But, I agree, the others definitely exploited people
I recommend the Behind the Bastards episode on him. He had a ton of opportunities available to him normal people don’t, including ones that aren’t strictly financial. For instance, he was allowed to ignore most of his other subjects in high school to concentrate on computer stuff. As a person who had similar interests in computers and sometimes not an interest in some other classes, that’s a huge advantage.
While I didn’t have too hard a time in school (only needed 2 classes to pass my final year), being able to concentrate on just computers(which were my electives) would have been far less stressful and would have allowed more concentration. That’s just one of many intangible benefits.
I also learned how to program at 13 in my free time
I didn’t ignore any subjects in school. In fact, I actually did well in high school…
But I’m sure people will try to look at my life and try to make thousands of different excuses to explain that, especially if I founded Microsoft. But it was just because I enjoyed programming and worked hard too.(Like I spent days copying coffee from a basic book for a game)
The guy whose mom was on the board for IBM and who convinced them to invest into her sons’ garage company? Being born to wealthy and powerful parents really does wonders for your ability to become filthy rich, does it not?
The guy started learning to program when he was 13 and had already written a lot of software and done a lot before Ms dos
I tried to look up the IBM claim but couldn’t find anything.
But, what has that got to do with exploitation?
Or are you trying to argue he exploited IBM…
It’s right on her Wiki under “career”
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Maxwell_Gates
Nepotism is a hell of a drug
He didn’t write DOS, he bought it.
I never said he wrote dos. They bought it from cpm if I recall
I said he was a developer well before Ms dos
He was a hard worker from the beginning. That’s why he was successful
Nope. He was successful because of nepotism, a bit of luck, and being born into a position where he could apply what he was good at. Being a “hard worker” will only get you sick.
You don’t think Microsoft has exploited anyone??
Well. You’re making the claim, let’s see the receipts. They pay their workers well, I haven’t heard any evidence they get treated like slaves like bezos
I knew I’d get downvoted but Lemmy people, but I’ve heard no evidence otherwise.
Bill got rich because of windows 95, and it was a really good product.
He made a lot of his riches before the Internet and before IE
Also, I did try early Debian back in those days, and Linux simply was unusable for consumers back then.
Oh my, if you want to look back at those days with rose colored glasses be my guest. But to anyone that lived those days, your comment is a basket full of straw mans.
I never understand comments like this, where people act as if they know better but make no effort to actually demonstrate their superior knowledge.
It almost seems like you’re less interested in changing minds and more in fishing for upvotes from the ‘Microsoft bad’ crowd.
I don’t have superior knowledge, but it’s probably useful to recognize the way I see that company is very different than yours and other people.
I don’t think we can agree, and my goal is not to convince you, but remind that there’s people like me who think Microsoft represents so many bad things that I can write a book about it.
To illustrate, I’m sure 20 years from now recall will be as divisive as windows 7,10 or how they were completely opposed to open source and now act like that never happened.
If you disagree with someone enough to feel it’s necessary to say so, it’s generally advisable to explain exactly what you disagree with and provide reasoning for your stance. Otherwise, you’re just making noise. A truly informed person has no trouble coming up with a few examples to back up their claims. It’s quite patronizing to imply that you have some insight I don’t, and then not even bother to share it - especially when following it up with, ‘I don’t think we can agree,’ after putting zero effort into reaching an understanding.
Our first family computer was a 8086.
So don’t speak on behalf of me please, or make assumptions
Explain your answer.
To literally anyone at that time, Windows 95 was a game changer. It brought many things including proper plug and play, and less screwing with autoexec.bat
The competition was Apple. Apple started going bankrupt because of this. Bill was a coder from 13 years old. They weren’t a monopoly until much later.
He was going to be successful regardless. His initial fortune was from Windows 95 which sold 7 million copies in 5 weeks
Explain yourself? Do you pay my bills and I didn’t notice? Fuck off.
Just conversation starters :
Win95, 98 and 2000 are embarrassingly unstable, even if you think it’s a world wonder that got someone to be ultra rich.
Oh by the way all of this was based on DOS, which was not made but bought by Microsoft. Pretty sure it wasn’t from a savings account for flipping burgers.
Internet explorer had such bullying and monopolistic practices that it lost a lawsuit.
Microsoft willingly went out of their way to bully and kill other OS competitors that were getting a good foothold on getting adopted. Was that Novell? So long ago, and they got killed almost at the same time as they were invented.
Ie wasn’t even a factor until years later. There was no compelling reason to use anything other than ie until Firefox (to end users, Netscape and Mozilla was comparable to ie). It had no impact on the initial success of Windows. Netware failed because it was crap compared to windows 95 too. Their competitors simply didn’t compare to windows 95. That’s not bullying. They were too busy competing with windows 3.1
Windows 95 wasn’t that unstable either. Maybe you had bad ram in your system or bad drivers . Sure the NT kernel was better, but Windows 95 was perfectly usable and was used. It did crash. But it wasn’t a regular thing. You’re acting like it happened daily.
Osx was only released in 2001 and macos required Apple hardware Windows 95 succeeded because it actually worked and had broad hardware support
You keep talking about IE, but Windows was successful before most people had the Internet. Internet explorer only became anti monopoly consideration because Windows had already managed to be
Also, how do you expect people to respond when you disrespect them and make assumptions about their experience and age to try to add credibility to your argument at their expense? If you don’t know how old I am, don’t assume I’m young. I’m not . And fyi, one of my projects was mentioned in Linux format 20 years ago, so don’t assume I wasn’t heavy into Linux either
You just can’t accumulate that much wealth from nothing without being charismatic, smart and a leader . Like Alexander the Great
But even the best of them have caused thousands of crushed lives and careers in a long trail. Ruthless is a mild word to describe