This just struck me today cause corporate hierarchies have been on my mind recently, .. in Microsoft the Business guy, Senor Ballmer answers to the geek, Mister Gates. How many companies do you know in which this scenario is the case? It makes them kind of respect worthy, IMO. What does everyone think?

lol ROTFLMFAO lol @ microsoft == good

stop lolling, i want a serious discussion about this.

and why didnt you reply to the email i sent you ages ago?

It got lost in ~2000 spam messages.

Microsoft is like any other big business: indulging in unethical, maybe even illegal, tactics to get to the top. How can you believe that sort of behaviour deserves respect?

bill gates is the president of a software company.
i dont think he is an engineer ?
he runs his business the same way my president runs our business.
i guess i can respect that they are rich but i dont aspire to be rich.
sorry if this is preachy.
________________

if it was something like woz telling steve jobs what to do then i would respect them.

This is a bit controversial but actually I tink it does

...You see... we ( and I think most of LQ members ) agree that M$ is a wrong doer... and it should be respected by the negative examples it gives with its everyday practises... they are a clear evidence of everything that should be whacked and ruthlessly destroyed...

They should be respected as "The Enemy", NEVER UNDERESTIMATED, and ruthlessly anihillated, for what "they" want is not compatible with the principles of Ethics, Equity, and Lawful behaviour in Corporations and Institutions, the cancer that they represent contaminates the weak of character, thru corruption... they buy what they wish to dominate... including wills and consciences, if they are weak...

Yu do not destroy Human Weakness with a Katana, neither with Thermonuclear Blast... it is part of our condition that we fight against evaery day... doing what is right, or at least what we believe to be right.

Yet they have a place in Earh ...

Has everyone ever realised that Evil is necessary to show what is not Evil, by contrast... ?

They should exist as a corporation, although LIMITED and CONTROLLED to the very tiny detail of their process by everyone else, if possible...

If not... destroy the cancer, or it will destroy its host....

Yet they exist as an example that may be constructive... let's respect this at least...

BRGDS

Alex

There is a fundamental flaw in your logic. Ballmer doesn't answer to Gates, since Gates retired over a year ago. Not to mention that Gates isn't much of a geek. He missed the rise and importance of the Internet and his predictions about the future are frequently laughable. Remember the "640K RAM is enough for anyone"?

Microsoft has always been about the money and have ruthlessly (and occasionally illegally) crushed any company in their path. They've never been an innovative company and probably the only reason they haven't croaked is the hugely lucrative Windows and Office market. Outside of those two markets, they aren't particularly competitive.

With M$ it's about the money, not about the software. Which is why half the software (actually, a lot more than half) that they churn out is full bugs, shit to use, bloated and treats you like you're retarded. And then when there is a problem you're expected to just live with it.

He wrote a BASIC compiler when he was 19. That too, on AFAIK, soemthing called an ALTAIR, I have no idea what it was, it's before my time, but AFAIK, it's a "hobby computer" without even a keyboard.

It's *tough* writing ANY compiler, let alone a BASIC one, which, IMO is harder than a C one, and that too on an ancient piece of hardware.

He's got respect from me (*I* haven't written a compiler and I'm almost double the age HE was when he wrote it).


This DOESN'T mean I forgive his company for all the wrong they've done, and buggy stuff they put out which we had to suffer through for years.

But, it just makes them a *little* better, in my book, because of all this.

Get yourself another email acct then. ANyway, I was just asking you whether you had any formal training in computers, because I wanted you to work on my OS with me. It's hard to find Asm enthusiasts,so when I find one, I want to hold on to him/her, do you get me?

Just reply on this thread, and we'll find some way of communicating (I don't want to post my email address here on a public site). (sorry everyone else, just bear with us please )

ASM is...well...intresting.
Nope.
But i learned to use when i was 5.

Gates is not a geek. If geeks are putting software on FTP sites, they try to make it work first. They don't make any money because they do Linux. I am not condemning Gates, but he cares more about money than geeky stuff. MS wanted Internet Explorer released and put on the CD really quickly in order to steal a march on Netscape. They didn't care much about if IE actually worked.

That's business, not geek thinking.

I do not condemn B Gates, but he is no geek.

^ you have a point.
Usually true geeks do not ~that~ much money.

Bill Gates _was_ a good, perhaps even great programmer. (I would expect he's not familiar with current policies). However, IIRC from a young age he was as interested in business as he was in computers, reading Forbes and stuff. Gates is also generous with his wealth - IIRC rather more so than, for example, most members of the Walton family (who own much of WalMart).

Oh the other hand, Gates made it public knowledge that his dream was computers everywhere, running his software.

Microsoft is, of course, more than just Bill Gates. Currently, my view is they make rather good (if expensive) office software, a mediocre operating system with serious security flaws, a decent games console...what else does MS sell?

To be honest, I feel Windows needs one thing more than anything else. A package manager and repos. It would at a stroke deal with all the 'bundling' criticisms - MS need ship the OS only with the package manager. People are getting more familiar with the concept owing to the iPhone's 'App Store'. MS already have some of the technology, with msi. And it would make the life of myself and other sysadmins a lot easier - currently, installing software on Windows and keeping it up-to-date is a nightmare. Installing software by downloading and running a stand-alone installation program ought to have been left behind ages ago.

Of course, knowing the EU they'd then say MS were being monopolistic for including their own package manager, or setting it to their own repos. Competition law is supposed to make things better for the consumer, but the EU cases tend to make Windows worse.