[Gllug] Bill Gates To Leave Microsoft

[Richard Jones]

On Fri, Jun 16, 2006 at 10:48:07PM +0100, Mike Brodbelt wrote:
> [...] However, the monoculture forced upon
> us has created economies of scale that have probably offset the costs.
> Just look at the price of SPARC CPUs compared to x86, and then consider
> what a fast chip might cost if there were 20 vendors, each with a
> different architecture, and a 5% market share. I'm not sure that
> hardware would actually be cheaper.

The real breakthrough came with the IBM PC.  It was a huge business
mistake for IBM to make such an easily cloneable computer, but a great
boon for the rest of the world that we got cheap commodity hardware.
Now if you recall there were several application-compatible operating
systems available for the IBM PC, based roughly on CP/M with some
extensions.  They all managed either to kill themselves through stupid
marketing (hello, CP/M-86) or got nobbled by Microsoft's illegal
tactics (DR-DOS).  In any case the hardware would still have been a
commodity, with likely interoperable operating systems running on top.

> > It's nice that he's giving some of it to charity, but just remember
> > that for him to have that money, PCs cost hundreds of pounds more than
> > they should do[*], and whole economies ship literally billions of
> > pounds each year to a site in the north west of the USA.
> 
> There's a good possibility that the work done by the Gates foundation
> will save the lives of thousands in developing countries, and it may
> also contribute towards a cure for malaria and other diseases, many of
> which have received little attention for a long time due to the
> demographic they affect.

As I said - great!

But is this better than the alternative?  Imagine it this way: Let's
say that Microsoft didn't happen, and instead we've got cheap
commodity PCs (hardware AND software).  Now somehow the US govt has
persuaded everyone that it would be a good idea to collect, worldwide,
a tax of say 100 pounds a year from every PC.  After collecting this
tax in an investment account for 20 years, it wasn't really doing
anything with it, but it did build a big "automated house" for the
President by Lake Washington[1], buy lots of fast cars for the
Senators, and hire a Hawaiian island when the Secretary of Defense
wanted to get married.  Eventually the US govt is shamed[2] into
giving about a third of the money to charity.  It'll still keep the
other two thirds, for now, in the bank account.  Probably give it to
charity in the future, might not.

Would that be a plan you'd support?

> I think that whatever one may think of Bill Gates and Microsoft,
> it's difficult to refute that he's doing real good with the
> foundation these days. [...]

I think the particularly scary thing is that Bill Gates has actually
succeeded in coming over as some great historical person.  Read the
comments here and weep:

http://newsforums.bbc.co.uk/nol/thread.jspa?sortBy=2&threadID=2207&edition=1&ttl=20060617074446&#paginator

  <quote>
  Bill is the reason why the computing world is not dominated by fashing
  cursors on an ominous black screen. He brought the PC to life, and
  saved us from the "mainframe-mentality" of many computer hardware and
  software manufacturers of his time. Sir, on behalf of the world; Thank
  You.
  </quote>

I for one am glad Gates invented the GUI!  Where would we
be without him?

Rich.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_Gates'_house
[2] http://reason.com/9706/ed.rick.shtml

-- 
Richard Jones, CTO Merjis Ltd.
Merjis - web marketing and technology - http://merjis.com
Team Notepad - intranets and extranets for business - http://team-notepad.com
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