Yes, but Jobs is a design genius who changed the world and Windows is horrible and Gates is a bad person

/never actually used windows
//actually have, just making fun of Apple-fanatics
///obviously

natmar_76: Yes, but Jobs is a design genius who changed the world and Windows is horrible and Gates is a bad person

"Doing LSD was one of the two or three most important things I have done in my life." He was hardly alone among computer scientists in his appreciation of hallucinogenics and their capacity to liberate human thought from the prison of the mind. Jobs even let drop that Microsoft's Bill Gates would "be a broader guy if he had dropped acid once."

simplicimus: Gates foundation didn't start till after he married Melinda. I wonder how that conversation went.
"bill, you have enough money to last us 10,000 years. Why not do something useful?"

Meanwhile, the philanthropic legacy of Steve Jobs was that he was a notorious skinflint. This sad little article is probably the best "defense" anyone can concoct for the simple fact that Steve Jobs couldn't give a rat's rectum about you - just your money. That "defense?" Steve Jobs created jobs, acted as a foil to Microsoft, and founded Pixar. The word, "charity," doesn't really apply anywhere in that article, because he made Scrooge look like a spendthrift.

Bill Gates did a hell of a lot more than that, using that article's criteria - and managed to provide immense philanthropic value to the world in the process. The man understands the idea of paying it forward, unlike Jobs.

Screw Steve Jobs. Trust me, the world has been much better because of Microsoft, not Apple.

simplicimus: coco ebert: Kind of getting off topic here, but if we had a more just economic system, we wouldn't need so much aid from gazillionaires who happen to take pity on us and have a charitable impulse.

If Microsoft software were made in the U.S. instead of China, we might have good jobs which leads to economic prosperity which then leads to better school systems that don't need Gates' charity.

Hardware is made in china, software in India. The really innovative software is made in Israel.

As a vendor working at Microsoft on a software product being developed by teams in Redmond, Washington D.C., and Beijing, I'm getting a kick out of that. It's wrong, but funny.

In many cases, software is developed all over the world, in a distributed manner, in concert. Hardware may be produced, in part, in countries that are willing to exploit their people as cheap labor, but it's developed all over the world.

Thank you. Come again.

Pushing the computer from a hobbyist realm into one of everyday home use while pioneering pretty much every way you currently interact with user interfaces to get things done both have had a much larger impact on humanity in the long term than saving a bunch of extremely poor people in third world agricultural communities.

/humans, they are worth less than you think
//controversial

simplicimus: Yep, XEROX PARC did a lot for us.

Parc did not mainstream their ideas, they could have but they didn't. Apple did. See: Henry Ford not inventing the car, Netscape not inventing html/http, etc. It is often not the inventor, but those who bring the invention to the masses that are responsible for the impact of the invention.

Uncle Wiggly: Computers are all about reducing the distance between the idea and the world.

Computers are about computing, nothing more and nothing less. What you do with computers is up to you. There are great many things that they can do and they can do so in a great many ways, but that is all that they are. They are electronic mechanisms that process data.

zedster: There is no doubt that Gates was not overly charitable until he met his wife but, since then he has owned it and made it his own crusade. Just watch his TED speeches, you get the feeling the man really cares about what he is talking about.

One of his TED speeches (new window)

I honestly don't know what a "TED" speech is, but I did hear him speak at the international Rotary convention just a few months ago in New Orleans (I'm not a Rotarian, but was a guest...and it was a fantastic group of people).

While I'd stop short of calling the speech "moving," it's clear this man has a genuine passion for his causes and beliefs. I've never been one to really give a sh*t about my tech products' figurehead's belief system, but I left feeling very respectful of Bill Gates. Whatever wrong that man has done in his life, his influence, money, and social vision has made up for it.

Cue the haters citing business war practices. Well, that's fine, and many of your cryie into the night about how Gates [was] evil are possibly and in some cases demonstrably true. But that's not the later Bill Gates I've read about and saw. The proof is in the pudding - Gates is an alright guy.

Darth_Lukecash: The Nobel prize was created because Alfred Nobel read his obituary. The Newspaper mixed him up with his brother, and in it, he was called the merchant of death. Now Nobel and his family were in the mining business and just wanted to create a stable explosive. His work was co-opted by the military. After seeing how he was going to be remembered-he started the peace prize. I think something similar had happened to him.

The problem with Gates was and always has been his business practices. He stole, bullied and generally ran competition out of the market. I think he realized, on some level, that he needed to do more with his life. To show that he was more than just a computer guy and a business shark. Maybe his wife and kids influenced him.

So whatever the reason he had a change of heart, a religious experience or that he always intended to do this-god on him.

Sonofa...I never knew that! Very cool post, and thanks for sharing it. I read the wiki and checked (only two) of the links. Interesting.

Steve Jobs is still dead??

It involved needle exchanges, safe-sex counseling, condom distribution and other interventions to reach vulnerable groups, including truck drivers, injecting drug users, men who have sex with other men, and prostitutes, along with their clients and partners.


Wow, maybe we should try that HERE. The government says we're just supposed to stop AIDS with prayer or some kind of magic beads or something, I forget.

Someone elses money. Never judge how they spend it. Just because someone is admired doesn't mean they are being nominated for sainthood.

dickfreckle:

I honestly don't know what a "TED" speech is, .

Basically lectures given by various people on various subjects which are recorded and put online. They're quite fascinating.

Now I personally wouldn't call Bill Gates a good man, however he's a poker player and that's not a game you play to draw or loose at. The same drive that made Microsoft the obnoxious beast of a company it once was (and possibly still is) is the same drive that'd make him brilliant at humanitarian efforts.

Whilst I dislike Microsoft due to those previous business shennanigans I do give the man credit for being that driven and think what he's upto these days is a brilliant use of his wealth; it's earned him far more kudos than being the CEO of MS ever did in my book.

I hope Gates cures cancer now that Jobs is dead.

Bobblehead_Dave: Steve Jobs is still dead??

Yes they haven't bestowed sainthood on him yet. Though he is still worshiped in the
halls of Wall St. bastion of the almighty American greed barons.

sparkeyjames: Bobblehead_Dave: Steve Jobs is still dead??

Yes they haven't bestowed sainthood on him yet. Though he is still worshiped in the
halls of Wall St. bastion of the almighty American greed barons.

The worst Jobs ever did was bully a few competitors and run a few factories with substandard, but not third world working conditions.

Compared to most billionaires, he is a saint.

natmar_76: Yes, but Jobs is a design genius who changed the world and Windows is horrible and Gates is a bad person

/never actually used windows
//actually have, just making fun of Apple-fanatics
///obviously

i really don't get this. Jobs didn't come up with anything that no one thought of before. Heck, I thought about all of that stuff before it was out but I didn't have funds to actually produce anything. So Steve had the financial backing to produce some really cool stuff. And it is cool. But genius? Not so much.

dickfreckle: I honestly don't know what a "TED" speech is

Start watching them. The TEDtalks website and Hulu have made available lots and continues to. Plenty of them are quite thought- and discussion-provoking. The musical pieces performed are excellent as well. My favorites are the ones by Ken Robinson though his style of storied editorial belies his expertise.

Vangor: dickfreckle: I honestly don't know what a "TED" speech is

Start watching them. The TEDtalks website and Hulu have made available lots and continues to. Plenty of them are quite thought- and discussion-provoking. The musical pieces performed are excellent as well. My favorites are the ones by Ken Robinson though his style of storied editorial belies his expertise.

One of my favorites was Tony Robbins calling out Al Gore for farking up his own campaign against GWB.

Jeffro619: i really don't get this. Jobs didn't come up with anything that no one thought of before. Heck, I thought about all of that stuff before it was out but I didn't have funds to actually produce anything. So Steve had the financial backing to produce some really cool stuff. And it is cool. But genius? Not so much.

stfu, you can probably only barely manage to produce a stool every day, let alone an OS

Bill saved me from cp/m, tired of all the pipping and unpipping, town to town, up and down the dial...

Melinda has been great for the guy

The power of marketing.
Peoples opinions are very vulnerable to a good sales pitch.

/Works for politicians and gizmos, why not legacies?

And he did it all while simultaneously outsourcing tons of middle-class jobs to the third world.

Oh I forgot this is the fark alternative universe where IT is booming and we don't need those jobs.

If you've tried an iPhone and tried an android, you'll wonder wtf people see in iPhones. So inept in the most basic of tasks like opening background processes when I want to click a link within an app without leaving that app and having to reopen it anew...mind boggling how iPhone is even popular these days.

nosepicker - if im reading that right - youre saying the iphone closes the app session each time you move to another app?

nosepicker: If you've tried an iPhone and tried an android, you'll wonder wtf people see in iPhones. So inept in the most basic of tasks like opening background processes when I want to click a link within an app without leaving that app and having to reopen it anew...mind boggling how iPhone is even popular these days.

I love that people are all a titter about that siri bullshiat too. Android has had voice command for quite some time.

There is no country that is more hopeless than one that looks up to widget makers. No wonder we are in a death spiral. And what's even funnier is that the widgets these two yuppies turned out were garbage.