The movie is a hilarious comedy, with a lot of truth to it.

kevinw, It is one thing to be p----d off and leave
others to their fate, believing that they deserve it,
and quite another to go over to the enemy and ac-
tively participate in their evil. However, another
character from Atlas Shrugged has just occurred to me--the conductor on the doomed
train at Winston Tunnel, who, not wanting "to be
a martyr for the sake of allowing people to in-
dulge in their own irresponsible evil", actively
gives the signal to the engineer to proceed, and walks off the train. I can't condone his ac-
tion in that case. He certainly had a right to walk off the train; but I condemn his actively
giving that signal.--(Ayn Rand appears to think that they all deserved their fate, but then the conductor doesn't really know that, not having talked with all the guilty people. And then, there were some children aboard).

Jan by fighting for your own rights, you are fighting for the rights of future generations whether they are your children or not.

Thanks jbrenner, I will check it out.

Maybe he is going to start his own little socialist utopia where he and all his socialist buddies can go and live happily ever after, ever striving to reduce their carbon footprints until they are all completely carbon neutral.

I believe you are correct in saying the roots of the two systems are the same. I've used both and am now using Libre exclusively. I believe Libre Office is the "next gen" Open Office and will be the most supported into the future. Someone correct me on this if I'm wrong.

A good reference would be the movie entitled "The Pirates of Silicon Valley" from 1999.

Gates' bridge partner, Warren Buffett, has stated that he will leave the bulk of his estate to the Gates Foundation. This is incredibly dangerous to the United States should this foundation turn its billions towards Soros-like projects devoted to ultra-liberal political causes. Yeah, this would violate the law, wink wink, but the IRS only attacks conservative organizations, at least under the current POTUS.

Curious attitude from someone that made his jack from capitalism. As an aside, Libre Office seems to be more compatible with MS Office than Open Office in fivedollargold's opinion. In fact, he heard that the same guy was the main developer of both.( Libre Office & Open Office)

I tend to agree. Don't know him personally, of course, but I do think you're right - he's not the intellectual type. Buying a good chunk of Africa, as he is currently doing, maybe a good indication of how sick he is of Amerika.

OK, "savior" is a bit much but if the self destruction must come then the sooner the better. Did Gates go Galt? I doubt he has the philosophical base to do it intentionally as we might but he appears to have gone into court a businessman and come out a crony with a chip on his shoulder.

Lets don't forget that shoddy product once held approximately 90% share of it's market. A market that grew so rapidly because of the goal of the creator of that shoddy product to place his product in every household in the country by making it cheap enough for anybody to own. A shoddy product that I own at least 10 examples of because they just work most of the time and I can keep up with keeping them running. OK, not Vista, and 8 was no better. 10 is not promising.

Why the hell do I keep ending up defending the guy and Microsoft?

Linux - every time that I've tried it, I had some programs that wouldn't run on it natively. But I use Open Office simply because it is better (in my opinion).

You're raising a possibility that Gates has "gone Galt." No one here can say. From that point of view, Obama can be regarded as Amerika's savior - if the sooner the country self-destructs, the sooner it can start working on a re-birth.

BTW, as to "conspiracy" to cut into Apple's market - I wasn't present in the boardroom discussions, but obviously this is the result. I simply find it hard to believe that the thought hadn't occurred to Gates and his lawyers.

Nobody said anything about "poor Bill". What he's doing now is doing more damage to the country than if he had just shrugged, which is my point from the beginning. Maybe that's what he intends. But you (and others) have condemned him on the basis of what amounts to better marketing than the other guy. Of the 3 or 4 articles I looked up, none of them made any clear case that he did anything illegal. Except for anti-trust laws, which are immoral. To use anti-trust laws to accuse him of breaking the law is misleading. He marketed better and won. Maybe he didn't have the best system but that is beside the point. It was done legally, and from the "evidence", morally. And no lawsuit over dr-dos was brought until dr-dos was bought much later by Caldera or someone so the lawsuit wasn't around for 10 (vague info) years and would appear to have started after the explorer suit. I also didn't say there was anything wrong with Microsoft and Apple competing and giving computers and software to schools is just good marketing. The conspiracy theory comment comes from your implication that Gates somehow intentionally set up and used the outcome of a destructive anti-trust lawsuit to cut into Apple's market.

In all this there was no proof that Gates ever used the government teat to advance his business (other than his father being a successful attorney, which must mean he was sucking on the government tit) until after a very destructive anti-trust lawsuit after which he became one of the biggest cronies in existence. I have also never said that Gates was any kind of a good guy before but in the absence of real proof I could still suggest that Bill Gates has "gone Galt" in a big, bad, very destructive way.

I'm not sure how I ended up being the one defending the guy but you're going to have to come up with better proof of his early cronyism or other evil tendencies than some anti-trust suits to convince me.

As for Linux and Open Office, I'm going to have to look into it more because this windows 10 virus is starting to piss me off. I'm just not sure I have it in me to change everything over (only 10 computers, I think) and learn a whole new system and run the programs I have to have. I can keep Windows 7 working but I don't know how much longer I'll have that choice.

Bill Gates: $76 billion, and NO SENSE

Happily, I have no children, so I am spared the burden of the welfare of future generations. On the other hand, I am hoping for a LONG life. The requires a innovative and high-tech environment - and hopefully, one that will be psychologically comfortable for me to live in.

I suspect that, flipping coins aside, it will either be a slow process or a black swan.

Jan

You're bringing up several topics. First, no one is throwing poor Bill or MS under the bus; more like the other way around... Also, I am not a proponent of anti-trust suits; however, in what I presented above, please tell me what you find "misleading and/or incorrect"? As to the "conspiracy theory" - there's no conspiracy theory - what is so unusual, unnatural or wrong with MS and Apple competing? Don't see a need for a "conspiracy theory" here at all. As to why Apple was donating large numbers of Macs and software to schools, I hope that no one here is naive enough to attribute it to community service. DR DOS case is well documented and easily looked up. Some years ago, it would pop up on any search engine except those run by MS... (no conspiracy here - just facts).

As to switching to/from MS products - I was not making any such cases. If I were to make that case, however, I would point out that Open Office is easier to use, more logical and free. Also, it is my belief (unsubstantiated) that MS willingly exchanges more data with the government than many other companies are willing to do.

As to who Bill Gates was prior to his riches? I don't know, but I should point out that the stories that he started his company from a garage are not true. His father was a successful attorney, fairly rich and no doubt sucking on the government tit. It was his father's law firm that enabled the early successes, such as squeezing companies for high fees when any illegal copies of MS product were found or alleged to exist, while MS knew where the distribution of the illegal products occurred, but didn't care - they preferred to follow the product into companies and then squeeze them. Of course, as to "vicious attack on him and his company," I don't know if someone in the government had good intentions or not, but as anything that the government does, the result was not so good...

Any way, at the stage that Gates and MS are currently, socialism is the best business decision for them - their product is not that great and having a monopoly protected by the government is definitely a god's gift.

O.A. [& TexOwl]
Bill Gates was in the right place at the right time to pay a starving computer genius for the rights to what became eventually became Windows.
No ideas necessary.
You know that computer guy as CyberWizard.
ww

My concern is that my grandson is about to turn three. I really want him to grow up to be a free man in a free country.

I flip a coin. Even days, I hope that we can slowly change society. Odd days: I hope that things collapse soon - before our infrastructure investment is used up.

Jan

Or in violence. I don't know which is worse.

This is along the lines of what I was asking. I would not have compared him to a Hank Rearden but I could definitely understand him being so pissed off after being dragged through antitrust lawsuits for his company being too successful that he would go all out, completely overboard, playing the game better than anybody ever has and taking the system for all he could get. And do it because the people who put him through it or stood by while it happened deserved it in his mind.

This article from the New York Slimes appears to be prior to the final judgment but many of the comments by the writers and the judges involved show just how totally f%&*#'d up the antitrust system is.
http://www.nytimes.com/2000/04/04/bus...

Marginalizing socialists into Academia has been a major, and ignored, problem. It means that the time required to rectify this is going to be measured in generations.

Jan

Alas, you are correct. Einstein had a degree of introspection that Gates lacks, I think - which does not keep Einstein from being fallible, just that he was more aware of his limitations.

I am an admirer of Bill Gates, but I am totally opposed to what he does in the 'second and third person parts of speech'. When he says "I am doing such-and-so." he is fine; when he says, "You need to do this." he is not.

As you observe, this is true for a large portion of humanity.

Jan