Talk:Bill Gates

Controversial Paragraph

I removed this:

Still, and in spite of all the criticism that is so frequently levied against him, it is important to remember that Gates has been instrumental in creating an important new industry, bringing compelling new technologies to the mass marketplace, and making computers available to millions of people. To put the matter in perspective, it is fruitful-- and revealing -- to compare Gates to certain executives of Enron, who ran Enron as if the company -- and all of its employees and stockholders -- were little more than pawns to be used for their personal enrichment. To be sure, Gates has made plenty of money for himself. But he has also made plenty of money for his employees and stockholders, and made significant contributions to the U.S. and world economies.

As it is riddled with errors. Taking them one by one:

it is important to remember that Gates has been instrumental in creating an important new industry. The industry came along without Gates help; there were many, many people who played significant parts. The primary contribution Gates made was to Microsoft BASIC - an important but hardly vital thing - where he was only one of three.
bringing compelling new technologies to the mass marketplace Complete nonsense. Pleae name three "compelling new technologies" that Gates was responsible for. Hell - please name one.
and making computers available to millions of people. An even sillier statement. Far from "making computers available to millions", Gates and Microsoft have been a major restricting factor. You make computers "available to the masses" by making them affordable, and the decrease in the cost of computer ownership over the last twenty years or so is entirely due to the massive improvements made to computer hardware: the cost of software, in particular operating software, has not dropped. In real terms (i.e., after adjusting for inflation/deflation) it now costs around 12 times as much to buy operating software as it did immediately prior to Microsoft finally establishing their OS monopoly in 1995 to '96. Hardware, in the same period, has gone from 66MHz to 2000MHz (CPUs), from 0.2 or 0.5GB to 40 and 80GB (hard drives), from 14" interlaced to 17 and 19" flat screen non-interlaced (screens), from 4MB at 33MHz to 256MB at 333MHz (RAM) - and costs less than half of what it did. By stifiling competition and innovation in the software indistry and by causing the flight of venture capital from the industry, Gates has held back the progress of computing (on the software side) by an unknown but large amount: somewhere between five and ten years is a reasonable estimate. By increasing the cost of operating software by an order of magnitude (as compared to free market prices), Gates has raised the financial bar to computing, and kept millions of people out, not "made computers available to millions".
he has also made plenty of money for his employees and stockholders This is undoubtedly correct. One might question if those same employees and stockholders might not have made similar anmounts of money elsewhere, doing more productive work in lean, mean freemarket companies. My assessment is that no, they would not have done: few businesses are as profitable as a monopoly.
made significant contributions to the U.S. and world economies. And here we have the greatest absurdity of all. The net result of the software monopoly on the US economy is (as monopolies almost always are) negative. It simply transfers wealth from more productive activities into the less-productive monopoly activity. Monopolies are almost never as efficient as free market competitors (because they become lazy, because they siphon off surplus funds for unproductive activity, and above all because they must devote a large part of their revenue to the task of preserving the monopoly rather than to doing something economically useful). Then there are the flow-on effects, which are far, far greater in aggregate. Because monopolies produce goods of a lower standard than are produced by multiple competitors in the dog-eat-dog world of a free market, the productivity of businesses that depend on those goods is in turn reduced. Because the quality of software produced by a monopoly is lower than that produced by a free market, businesses waste more time and create fewer results. (And because of the monopoly pricing, their ability to retain profits for investment in new plant is also reduced, of course.) As for the world economy, the points just made remain valid, but in this case, the benefits mentioned in point #4 do not apply.

Tannin 07:18 Feb 12, 2003 (UTC)

Well.... having written most of the above, I must say that I am in sympathy with the rebuttal. It's just that I wish that the rebuttal could be made part of the article! I was trying to tell the other side of the story; you've competently supplied the opposing viewpoint (which which, to be honest, I fully agree). Why not synthesize these views and add it to the article? jeez, I'm repeating myself.... pfaff de pfaffenblog

So, basically a NPOV edit? ;)

jareed 00:08 Aug 26, 2003 (EDT)

Well, as an example of bringing compelling new technologies to the mass marketplace, I name Internet Explorer. No, Microsoft did not invent the "web browser." Heck, I think Gates even wrote off the Internet early on. After they decided to exploit the web, they started bundling IE with their OS'es. Most people used IE because it was right there on the desktop and they probably wouldn't have gone to the trouble of figuring out how to download Netscape or used the Internet if the software to use it weren't so accessible. Yes, pushing their browser and making it free was anti-competetive (since everyone used MS OS's). Yes, once everyone started using the Internet with IE, it was very unlikely they would change to another browser (actually, to many people IE is the Internet!). But, by doing so, they opened up the Internet to a lot of people who otherwise wouldn't have known how to even attempt to use it. —Frecklefoot 13:54, 26 Aug 2003 (UTC)

Hmmm... An interesting argument, Frecklefoot. But, now that you cause me to cast my mind back to 94 or 95, it ain't so. In fact, if I recall correctly, Windows was the last major operating system to include webb access as a standard feature. OS/2 certainly had IBM Web Explorer and various assorted other accesory products long before IE 1.0 came out, Apple were in bed with Netscape, and in any case, most new omputers came bundled with internet access products courtesy of the OEM. Ours certainly did (Netscape and ... er .. Eudora, I think it was, plus Trumpet Winsock) and we were only going along with the indistry-wide trend. Nope: nice try, and an interesting thought, but we can't give Mr Gates credit for that one. Tannin 14:10, 26 Aug 2003 (UTC)

Mugshot Caption

Why was my caption of mr Gates mugshot reverted as vandalism? Is it not true that this very picture is the one taken by Albuquerque, NM Police Department 13. dec 1977 after mr Gates was arrested? One can even see the string around the neck holding the nametag, and I do have a copy of the whole picture. Is it not NOPV to say that he was once (or twice, if I recall correctly) arrested? Gorm 06:03, 30 Oct 2003 (UTC)

I may have been the one who reverted the caption. I reverted it because it looked like vandalism. The photo just looks like a photo of Gates as a teen (or young 20-something)—especially since he's smiling. But now that you mention it, I do see that string. If it is indeed a mugshot, mention the circumstances of the arrest in the article, preferably right next to the photo to give it some context. To just have a photo and claiming it's a mugshot doesn't help at all. It needs some context. Cheers! :^) —Frecklefoot 16:27, 30 Oct 2003 (UTC)

So I provided content. It is not intended as a personal attack. I even put the references down low in the article, so that most readers would not see it. I agree that the caption of the picture is a bit verbose, maybe only a reference to the sub page in the main aricle is sufficient.

About the sub page, I would even say that it is more comprehensive than most single articles on the net about it. See: Bill Gates/Criminal record.

...much too comprehensive... --FvdP

I also think it adds a bit of huomor to Wikipedia, and all articles should not be glorifying everyone.

The sub page was much too comprehensive. Had you intended a personal attack at Bill Gates, you would not have done otherwise. Not everyone is supposed to understand your article as humour ! Specially as there was(is?) no humour in it. And phrases like "the reason for arrest in unclear" let the reader think that maybe B.G. was arrested for something much worse than not respecting road rules. Not to speak of the subarticle title itself. --FvdP

By the way, I didn't upload the corresponding images because I thought it would not be appropriate... Gorm 08:34, 1 Nov 2003 (UTC)

I didn't revert your latest addition, but it looks like you didn't add the arrest record next to the photo, which would have helped (you could've also moved the photo to the text that refers to it).

AFAIK, Wikipedia doesn't support subpages anymore (well, the s/w supports them, but I think it is against the recommended style). This is just an observation I've made where several sub-topics of articles are made into top-level articles, not subpages of the main article. So, if you get the green light on this, make it a top-level article with something like Bill Gates Arrest Record. Personally, I'm not against mentioning his arrest record, though being arrested doesn't make him a "crminal." Stating it as such may be why your additions were removed.

What does everyone else think? Is mentioning Gates' arrests okay? It wouldn't be slander and I think it adds some interest to the article. —Frecklefoot 16:24, 3 Nov 2003 (UTC)

A mention in a very short paragraph, OK. More than that (and specially a whole article, or even subarticle) borders on slander IMO. --FvdP

Any objections to changing the caption to something like Gates as a teen, image from a minor traffic violation, linking that to a summary of the incident and the two other minor incidents he's been involved in? That seems to be not unduly prominent but useful background information for the image. JamesDay 00:41, 5 Nov 2003 (UTC)

As long as the information is true and verifiable, it should be part of this article and not stowed away somewhere else.—Eloquence 06:03, Dec 7, 2003 (UTC)

Daniel, faces of people are how they are normally recognized - you can expect to find one or more of them in all biographies eventually. They are useful parts of this type of article. A small number (or more if showing things like cosmetic surgery) are helpful and good. Jamesday 16:17, 13 Dec 2003 (UTC)