> > I think it stinks what happened to Microsoft, and whats going to become of Verison. Bill Gates pushed the computing world where it is today, and the only way for the government to show their thanks is to hack him to pieces.
>
> Thanks for what? Crippling every desktop PC in the country by, via a monopoly achieved through illicit business practices, denying home users the viable option of purchasing an operating system that works?


To add to that:

1) way back when the computing world was new, he found out that Xerox was making something original (ha! That's a joke? Get it? ah, nevermind) - - that being a graphical user interface. Bill got a look at it and liked it. He liked it so much that he got a couple of henchmen . .er. . employees to swipe the code for it, and integrated it into the OS he was working on. This became windows and because Bill was willing to release it to the public before all the bugs were ironed out and Xerox was not, Bill beat Xerox to the market and the rest as they say is history.

2) Because Windows was now the only GUI on the market (Xerox gave up when they realized they'd been beaten to the punch), and because people do not generally like TUI's (textual user interfaces), Bill now had a product that was pretty much guaranteed to storm the computer marketplace.

3) Now that Windows was on most of the computers, other software designers were pretty much forced into making software that was designed to run on Windows. This in and of itself is not a bad thing. in fact, Microsoft having a monopoly on OS's isn't a bad thing either- - - if they didn't and there were multiple OS's out there, all popular, then software would be much more expensive because the designers would have to write several versions to be compatible with everything. Having a universal standard isn't a bad thing at all. However, what Billy did with it is:

4) Bill, realizing that all the software was being written for his operating system, figured out that he was in a pretty good spot. The fact that he got there unethically by stealing his operating system didn't faze him. Bill recognized that he had a situation that could make him rich beyond anyone's wildest dreams - - -He could exploit the fact that the world was now dependent on his software by forcing computer manufacturers to include windows on their systems - - and send him a lot of money to do it -- - the computer manufacturers were stuck by circumstances - - -their customers demanded Windows and wouldn't buy their computers without it, so now they had to send the money to Bill.

5) Now Bill figured out a new way to ensure profits - - Integrate IE with Windows. If this plan worked, most people would be using IE. Now Bill can charge a boatload of money to anyone who wants to develop stuff for IE. Bill can also kill Netscape. He accomplished the latter but the government saw what he was doing and stepped in before he could quite get the former done.


In short, Bill has used his OS monopoly to muscle and unfairly influence all areas of the computer industry. He's using it to make an allout effort to permanently eliminate any and all competition to Microsoft. Once the competition has gone, he's free to charge us whatever he wants for his products, and if we want viable computers we'll have to pay it. This is in violation of US antitrust laws and he must be stopped.

I really don't think the government would have stepped in if Bill had the only OS on the block because as I said before, having one standard is a good thing in the technology industry (anyone remember the 56k Kflex/v.90 standard mess of a few years ago?). It was Bill's flagrant misuse of the monopoly that caused them to react.





> And besides, he worked his butt off to get where he was today, and isn't a greedy man. He gives away millions each year.
>
> Millions? The guy is worth many BILLIONS of dollars. Bill Gates giving a million dollars away in a year would be like me giving like five bucks away in a year. A million dollars is about the same percentage of Bill Gates' net worth as five bucks is of mine. The difference is that I need the five dollars more than Bill Gates needs his million. So while I think it's a very good thing that Bill Gates gives money to charitable causes, he's not any more worthy of praise for it.

I did the math back when he was only worth 40 billion (it's between 80 and 100 now). Back then, he had enough money to buy a supersized extra value meal from McDonalds for every man, woman, and child on the planet. a million bucks is chump change.