Which do you find more annoying?

[goober]

That obnoxiuos little twerp from Dell, or Bill gates laugh?

Saw Bill on PBS the other day talking about Longhorn, the man sounds like he swallowed Kermit the frog when he laughs!

[Budfred]

The twirp from Dell is an actor playing a role and, as such, doesn't bother me at all. Some of Dell's policies do bother me however.

Bill Gates' laugh is one of the last things that would occur to me to be bothered by. His monopolistic business practices really bug me however.

[ZURKE]

Right on, Budfred.
Oh the greed.

[Mark Miller]

Actually the kid from Dell really did bother me. It reminded me of my son when he was a teenager, and for all of us who have kids you know exactly what i mean. Thank goodness he's in his 20's with a family, I didn't think I would survive.
Bill not so much, he's a wimp, but a very smart wimp.
Mark:D :D :D

[Pianorak]

Originally posted by Budfred
Some of Dell's policies do bother me however.



What absolutely infuriates me about Dell is their current pricing policy. Here in the UK they recently advertised "free shipping" - but then you find they no longer include a modem or speakers, or increase the price of memory, or - or - or, the list is endless. The dishonesty of it all! I've got a Dell desktop and I like their products, but am very tempted to shop elsewhere next time I am in the market for a PC. :mad:

[BonedAgain]

Originally posted by Mark Miller

Bill not so much, he's a wimp, but a very smart wimp.
Mark:D :D :D

I don't know if he's so much smart as he is devious & lucky. He started his company by stealing half the software he needed to make his 1st big deal with IBM, and his character hasn't improved since. What really bothers me though is a society that seems utterly incapable of prosecuting the crimes of such billionaire miscreants.

BA

[Mark Miller]

Bill is devious and lucky, but believe me to be able to keep all that money and consistently be able to beat the competition he is absolutely not stupid.
Mark

[Ian58]

he is absolutely not stupid.
It`s hard to be stupid with that many lawyers. :cool:

[pentachris]

What absolutely infuriates me about Dell is their current pricing policy. Here in the UK they recently advertised "free shipping"...

Reminds me of Robert Heinlen's acronym "tanstaafl."

There Ain't No Such Thing As A Free Lunch.

[Budfred]

Bill Gates is not stupid. He is also probably not brilliant. He is probably above average in intelligence, but not in the top 5%. This is not the same as being stupid, but it does reflect the reality that most of the people who work for him and from whom he stole ideas and products are probably much brighter than he is. He is ruthless, opportunistic and lucky. These are characteristics that are probably true of most billionaires. Extremely bright people are rarely focused enough to become wealthy.

[BonedAgain]

Originally posted by Mark Miller
Bill is devious and lucky, but believe me to be able to keep all that money and consistently be able to beat the competition he is absolutely not stupid.
Mark

I don't think anyone is saying he's stupid, but there are plenty of humans in the population no less intelligent than he, and indeed many a good deal brighter, who despite all due diligence do not become billionaires or anything approaching it. The fact of the matter is that much of his ability to beat the competition and the financial success this has produced is the result of an unfair playing field. The profit margin on the windows operating systems has typically been in the neighborhood of 80%. Contrast this to that of most items in a truly competitive market, where the figure is closer to 20% or less. Under these circumstances the man would have to be a moron NOT to make money.

BA

[Mark Miller]

Hi Boned
I think that alot of people probably agree with how you feel about Ms and Bill.
he and Ms did not start off as the company that they are today. They did not control 95% of the market. Actually the companies that screwed up where apple and ibm [especially ibm]
I have seen it with many other companies [gm] if you don't make what people can use, somehow or way you will get knocked off.
Ms will not be here forever, things change, but Bill and co have contributed to pc's and thats just a fact.
Anyway this is getting way of topic and I am a big MS fan anyway. Sooooo have a great day!
Madc :D :D

[Budfred]

In the early days before Bill and MS had such a powerful monopoly, they used vaporware and publicity to prevent other options from rising to the surface. I still remember an OS that was more graphical than Windows, used less memory, and had considerably more functionality that was squashed by Bill's promises that the next Windoze was going to be so much bigger and better that it would overshadow anything else out there. This other company didn't have the resources to promote itself and wait for the computing public to catch up, so it went under. I believe Windoze XP has finally caught up to what that OS could do.

Bill is good at manipulating the media and he got lucky with getting some powerful resources and connections early on, but he has done a tremendous amount to stifle healthy competition and the computing world has suffered from this, possibly more than it has gained from the focus on a single OS.

[TheSkippyKing]

Extremely bright people are rarely focused enough to become wealthy I KNEW I was missin' something !...focus,focus:p
The Dell twerp was amusing, puttin' one over on the "old folk". Dell knew that was out of gas, so now we have our up & coming young techies whom everybody can sympathize with or feel superior to.

Billy MicroFlaccid...don't care much about his laugh, but he can do it all the way to the bank:D
(an' he's been CLEVER enough to do it many,many times)

[classicsoftware]

Alot of you people are really JEALOUS of Bill Gates. Get a life....

He was smarter than Steve Jobs. Jobs had a better product but thought the money was in the hardware and Gates had the vision to see the money was in the OS.

As for DOS, IBM refused to sign a non-disclosure agreement so they passed on buying what became MS DOS. Bill & crew swooped in and the rest as they say is history.

As for monopoly. The reason people use IE over netscape is IE is better. The reason WordPerfect lost out to MS WOrd was Word was better. The people in Utah failed to see that Windows was the future. If you ever tried to use WordPerfect for Windows Version 6.0, you will know what I mean. Why is it they can't seem to beat the little mouse Intuit? Quicken is better...........

I don't want to defent Bill & co because some of the things they do are low down and dirty.

Give the Devil his due. This whole enterprise we call PC-Guides wpuld not have come to be w/o Mr. Gates......

By the way, who said Bill Gates had to be fair. In a capitalistic system his job is to make as much money for his shareholders. There are a whole lot of millionaires in the seattle area.....

[Budfred]

classicsoftware,

Well thank you so much for letting me know how terribly jealous I am and how much I need to get a life. I am amazed that you have the ability to determine that based on my comments regarding Bill Gates alone...

Just because you believe these things to be true doesn't mean that they are. I expressed my opinion about the topic, you are expressing your opinion about what I feel and how I live my life. You apparently feel justified in doing this, but I find it to be offensive and unnecessary in expressing your disagreement. While I do not perceive myself to be jealous of Mr. Gates, I do perceive that I have a life and I continue to believe he and his company are crooks. And yes, he has made a lot of money for a limited group of people while taking advantage of much larger groups of people.

[BonedAgain]

Originally posted by classicsoftware
Alot of you people are really JEALOUS of Bill Gates. Get a life....

Nonsense. The number of individuals who have amassed great fortunes yet led by all accounts miserable lives, many dying by their own hand or through alcohol & drugs, is legion. While the 2 are certainly not mutually exclusive, the tired aphorism "Money doesn't buy happiness" is clearly true. You hear this “jealousy” line or reasoning frequently anytime anyone questions the role of wealth in this society. “Must be envy”, as though there could be no other reason for questioning these things.

I disagree completely that their would be no PC Guide, essentially no Internet as we are using it, today without M$. As for which browser is superior, I have both IE & Mozilla (which is Netscape based) on my machine & I use Mozilla almost exclusively, and I know that many pc users much more knowledgeable than I am do the same.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to get back to my “Life”.

BA

[classicsoftware]

What I'm saying is IE would never had become the dominant browser and MS Word would noy have become the standard word processor if the competition did not fall down on the job. Netscape 3.X was better than IE 3&4 but Netscape did get better and IE did. The same with Word and WordPerfect.

As far as envy, I think there is some in relation to Gates. The main reason Gates is rich and MS is powerfull is Gates had the vision that Apple and IBM did not.

[Budfred]

I understand what you are saying about competition and I disagree. MS played dirty with the browser wars and they played dirty with the office suites. You can believe whatever you want, just as I can, that doesn't make either of us right.

Also, I am sure there are some who envy Gates, but that is not my objection to his behavior or policies. I wouldn't mind having his money of course, but I don't have the ethical poverty required to acquire it.

[kenz]

I think the internet would have been here even if Bill had not been so commercially successful with MS. I believe the early internet was set up as a link between US universities to transmit papers and research. I also think that it started on unix - which is still the backbone today.

I agree with those that say that every time someone had an idea - Bill either bought it, stole it or smashed it. The new licencing system is the best thing M$ could have done - this coupled with security issues is causing many companies (and countries) to make the jump to Linux and Open Office. Whilst these products do not have quite the ease of install and operation/features as the latest M$ products, with a bigger user base, these things will come.

Our last 20 windows pc's and that awful NT server (reboot once a week) will soon go and the linux will do the job as they sit quietly running next to our Sun servers running robust Solaris.

I am sure no-one wants to see Toyota as the only vehicle manufacturer in the world, and I do hope that we will continue to be able to pick our beer from a wide selection - it would be hell if we could only have Bud or Bud.

Now I wait for all the Bud fans to retaliate !!!!

[BonedAgain]

Originally posted by kenz
I do hope that we will continue to be able to pick our beer from a wide selection - it would be hell if we could only have Bud or Bud.

Now I wait for all the Bud fans to retaliate !!!!

Kenz-Personally, I prefer the Belgian Trappist style ales, like Chimay or Orval, or Hennepin from the Ommegang brewery in upstate NY. If you like good beer & haven't tried a Belgian style ale, you're missing something fine. But don't EVEN get me STARTED on something REALLY important like the plague of bad beer! Like, WHY IS IT, you go to a really nice restaurant & they have a wine list the size of a phone book (don't get me wrong, I like wine too) but when you ask about beer, it's inevitably the same swill; "Bud, Bud lite, Miller, Miller Lite, and for the truly adventurous an imported beer, Corona Lite... " I told you , don't get me STARTED!!! :D

The 1st work on what became the internet was done in the early '60's at MIT. About a decade later Arpanet came along with e-mail, 1972 , if memory serves. Gates would have been 17 (I looked it up ;) )

BA

[mjc]

Beer monopoly would not last, world-wide revolution would be seconds away...:D

[classicsoftware]

Mr, Kenz you made my argument for me. You switched to Linnux because it is a better product.

Why is Star Office not ahead of MS office? It's free anyone can download it? It's not better. The better product will always win.

As far as the internet. It was dirt, nada, nothing until there was a browser. The browser was the killer app for the internet. Just like Visicalc was the killer app for the PC.

[jabarnutcase]

Just a little observation here...I got kind of a kick out of the original topic, which I have been following for a while.Which do you find more annoying?

HeHe- Apparently, people are most annoyed with any differences of opinion about Bill Gates. :D
With the exception of the possibility of a Beer monopoly- (God forbid), this entire thread is about Uncle Bill! (The Dell dude got lost early in the thread)

Ahhh, what the heck, I might as well tell you I kind of admire the guy and happen to agree M$ makes some of the best software around...I really don't have a major problem with him. I continue to use and enjoy his software. He may not be the smartest guy in the world, but he's the richest! (I for one am jealous...I would LOVE all that money.) :p

As far as the beer....Any brand will do in a pinch.

Now how's that for an annoying post! :D

(Edit) Geesh, my second edit. (One of my annoying habits) :p
I must agree with something Classicsoftware said.
I personally use Quicken and not M$ Money. The reason? I like it a lot better.
"Show me the software"

OK....Carry on folks. :cool:

[Budfred]

The software with the best advertising and ability to distribute wins. Quality of the software only has to be adequate to win. Look at the debate about AVG. One of the only things the participants in the debate seem to agree on is that Norton and McAfee make some of the least effective and most bloated software, but they also have the largest chunk of the market. A really innovative upstart has a chance of making it if one of the bigs, like MS, don't copy it and give it away first. Nowadays, that is rare indeed....

[Mark Miller]

As alway Jab, I'm with you
Evil empire rules
Have a nice day!!!
Mark:D :D :D

[TheSkippyKing]

As far as the beer....Any brand will do in a pinch I'll have what Billy boy's drinkin';)

[macb]

Since I am employed selling systems which rely on Windows I find it hard to get annoyed with Bill Gates. I also use it myself obviously and in both cases I have had very little problems and much success with the whole situation.

What's the beef anyway? Buying a Windows CDROM is probably one of the best $100 I ever spent considering how much I can do with it.

[Budfred]

Some of us (me for one) don't like monopolies. I don't like that M$ has driven a number of innovative companies out of business by unfair competitive techniques. I don't like that they use monopolistic power to stifle innovation and artificially inflate prices. I don't like that they (and many other companies) sell me buggy software. I don't like that they are trying to make it harder and harder for me to control my own PC and they want to set things up so that I pay a substantial part of my monthly income to rent services from them instead of ever actually owning the products I pay for. I don't like any number of aspects of their business practices and unstable software....

There are many here who think M$ is great, so you are welcome to enjoy their company, but there are also those here who find their business practices offensive and irritating.

[gracious]

Well I would like to know who has the time and money to keep upgrading and upgrading...when will it end? I am still using win98se, haven't jumped on the XP wagon yet, but I am sure that eventually I will be forced to due to the fact that they are going to make win98se obsolete and might have already. Bill Gates is like Madonna, he is just good at reinventing and making you buy into the "latest and greatest", that it is better than ever until the next one comes along...that is what is annoying to me. I would like to live life without having to worry about my puter, at least for a couple of months. I would like to know how much of his mula does he give back to the community, charities...

[Steve]

I would like to know how much of his mula does he give back to the community, charities...

I doubt that anyone really knows but here are some examples.

Last year he gave $100 million to fight AIDS in India. LINK (http://www.hivandhepatitis.com/recent/developing/111302g.html)

He gave $37 million to fight hepatitis in China. LINK (http://www.ananova.com/news/story/sm_599554.html?menu=)

He's giving $1 BILLION to help minority students go to college. LINK (http://www.techtv.com/news/story/0,24195,2335874,00.html)

The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has an endowment of around $24 BILLION. That make Bill the largest private charitable giver in the world. A year or so ago, Bill said that he goal was to ultimately give away his entire fortune.

[jabarnutcase]

Steve......I like your post. :)

Uncle Bill.........I've been trying to tell these people that deep down inside you are a pretty nice guy! :p

(Sorry, they just won't listen....But at least we know) ;)

[Budfred]

A lot of robber barons became philanthropists after they had made so much money that they would never need to worry about making money again...

[Eutychus]

Budfred, don't forget the ones who late in life finally began to worry about their "legacy" (historical reputation).

[Steve]

I'm with you, Jabar. :D

I wonder if there's a fan club!! :eek: :p

[Mark Miller]

I am a Bill fan also. FYI He is the biggest philanthropist in the country by far
Eutycus- He is only 47 years old, I'm older than that. Ya gotta make it before you give it away. He also supports not doing away with the death tax as both he and he and his father believe in giving back to the USA.
He is running an evil empire but cheap and an ingrate he isn't.
Mark:D

[jabarnutcase]

If there isn't a fan club, we'll start one! :D ;)

[TheSkippyKing]

If there isn't a fan club, we'll start one! OK ! I'll join as long as membership includes FREE UPGRADES to all future MicroFlaccid "improvements".........an' maybe a BBQ or two in Billy's backyard.:p

[LadyGrey]

Well, what a diverse set of opinions we have here! I, on one hand am like Budfred, I hate to see anyone or anything totally controlled by another. I would like to see more OS's on the market. I have myself been thinking very hard about trying out Linnux but I'm afraid of it. Don't think I have the smarts to understand it yet. I will not and never will, unless forced too, jump on the XP wagon. All XP is and I'm firmly convinced of this, is a bells and whistle version of Win 2000, which I run by the way and have never had a problem with it. As for who is most annoying, not either one I guess. I have never seen Bill Gates, he just doesn't interest me, but the Dell Dude we got a devil of a kick out of. I swear we laughed like crazy at him. What a dweeb!! I do have kids, both boys, and I swear he did some of the same things that my kids did when they were little. That's just us, we also get one dickens of a kick out of the old tape "Bill Cosby, Himself". If you've never watched it and you have kids, or even if you don't, it will have you laughing till you cry. Take care all, LG;)