Why isn't Bill Gates in prison? Seriously. How do you get away with knowingly selling an inferior product to the public (Vista), doing seemingly next to nothing to really fix the problems, discontinuing a product (XP) that a lot of people preferred to the new product, and then announcing that you'll be releasing a newer product (currently code-named Windows 7) within a year, but before you've even straightened out the problems with the current product? WHY ISN'T HE IN PRISON???
Why keep coming out with new operating systems? Why not just develope one that works, then keep improving and expanding it?
I bet I know why. Money. You don't get that rich just from selling the public something that works like it's supposed to, and then continually improving it. You've got to have an angle – something that guarantees not just profits, but obscene profits. Sell your soul to the Devil profits.
"Oh, but Bill Gates is a great philanthropist."
Says who? He's worth $50,000,000,000 (that's 50 BILLION DOLLARS). He could, literally, give away 90% of his fortune to charity and he'd still be worth 5 BILLION DOLLARS!!! Think about how insane that is.
Funny thing about billionaires: you really have to watch them, when they start talking about giving big chunks of their money away. Remember the big deal made out of Ted Turner giving a billion dollars to the U.N., back in the '90s? Everybody oohed and ahhed about how generous ol' Ted was (and he soaked up the accolades). But it turned out that it was a total of a billion dollars, to be paid out over 10 years (in other words, he didn't just write out a check for $1,000,000,000). And then, when the economy slowed down (around the turn of the millennium), he set out to renegotiate the terms to 15 years.
You'll occasionally hear someone recite the old platitude that "a man should spend the first half of his life acquiring as much wealth as he can, and the second half giving it all away" – as if the second half's charity will make up for the first half's greed. The problem, however, is that both are driven by self-centered motives: greed is obviously self-centered – but charity which is done to try to compensate for previous sins is also self-centered, because you're still doing it for your own benefit. (Such charity would still be better than greed – because you're, at least, giving rather than taking – but your motivation is still self-centered.)
Bill Gates has got more money than some countries. And, yet, he nickles and dimes his customers for every bit of help they need when trying to figure out what's wrong with a product that he knew was screwed-up when he released it in the first place. How is that even legal?? (Ooh, let me guess: Lawyers. With $60,000,000,000 he's probably got a legal 'dream team' that makes O.J.'s look like the Three Stooges.)
Why keep coming out with new operating systems? Why not just develope one that works, then keep improving and expanding it?
I bet I know why. Money. You don't get that rich just from selling the public something that works like it's supposed to, and then continually improving it. You've got to have an angle – something that guarantees not just profits, but obscene profits. Sell your soul to the Devil profits.
"Oh, but Bill Gates is a great philanthropist."
Says who? He's worth $50,000,000,000 (that's 50 BILLION DOLLARS). He could, literally, give away 90% of his fortune to charity and he'd still be worth 5 BILLION DOLLARS!!! Think about how insane that is.
Funny thing about billionaires: you really have to watch them, when they start talking about giving big chunks of their money away. Remember the big deal made out of Ted Turner giving a billion dollars to the U.N., back in the '90s? Everybody oohed and ahhed about how generous ol' Ted was (and he soaked up the accolades). But it turned out that it was a total of a billion dollars, to be paid out over 10 years (in other words, he didn't just write out a check for $1,000,000,000). And then, when the economy slowed down (around the turn of the millennium), he set out to renegotiate the terms to 15 years.
You'll occasionally hear someone recite the old platitude that "a man should spend the first half of his life acquiring as much wealth as he can, and the second half giving it all away" – as if the second half's charity will make up for the first half's greed. The problem, however, is that both are driven by self-centered motives: greed is obviously self-centered – but charity which is done to try to compensate for previous sins is also self-centered, because you're still doing it for your own benefit. (Such charity would still be better than greed – because you're, at least, giving rather than taking – but your motivation is still self-centered.)
Bill Gates has got more money than some countries. And, yet, he nickles and dimes his customers for every bit of help they need when trying to figure out what's wrong with a product that he knew was screwed-up when he released it in the first place. How is that even legal?? (Ooh, let me guess: Lawyers. With $60,000,000,000 he's probably got a legal 'dream team' that makes O.J.'s look like the Three Stooges.)
