Why does this myth keep getting pushed - by tech people no less? Bill Gates emphatically denied ever saying it and no one has ever come forward with a scrap of evidence he actually said it.
I don't think the (most charitable use of the) quote depends on whether Bill Gates specifically said it. The point is, variously:
- To emphasize that the definition of "a lot of [computational resource X]" changes over time.
- That people previously had to do a lot of similar computational tasks with a lot less (which this article is making use of).
With that said, I agree that he shouldn't be asserted as the author of the quote like it's a fact, but that just means you should quote it as "attributed to Bill Gates".
It is an urban legend. I used QEMM for my Dos to get access to the rest of the PC memory by loading things in high or extended memory it freed up more memory on the bottom 640K conventional memory.
Guess: it was perpetuated because lots of tech people hated him and what he did to the industry and to computing progress in general.
He has since gotten way, way better PR handling though. Just look at the way Reddit absolutely adores him nowadays (he's done lots of very carefully managed AMAs). Heck, even on HN there's enough young people who have no idea how much this one individual repressed computing progress over 1-2 decades through market abuse.
Here's one example of many of how the pro billg PR is done:
Another guess: He actually said it and a few people heard it, but when he said it was before everything in the universe was constantly being recorded, photographed, and pushed to the internet, so there's not necessarily a record of it.
Back then, you could just deny something happened, and often get away with it because you weren't being surveilled 24 hours a day.
It's like when someone very knowledgeable about a subject posts information on Wikipedia. Even if they were there first hand; even if they were personally involved with the event; even if they wrote magazine articles about it and did radio interviews about it, and it was covered by television — if it happened before 2000, it'll get erased from Wikipedia by someone on the other side of the planet because there's not a web link or an ancient library book to cite for "proof."
It's a bit distressing, in away, how hard it is to access information from before like year 2007. Most of it is locked up in government reference libraries and you generally have to bonafide "researcher" to even access physical copies of publications. Oh, and it's not allowed to make copies of the material.
I’m a child of the eighties, I grew up in the nineties, I remember waiting in line for my boxed copy of Windows 95 one August night in 1995, I remember ruling at Microsoft’s antitrust case (as related in WIRED), I remember how Slashdot featured an icon of Bill Gates with Borg add-one, but... I absolutely love the guy now and wish he would run for President (I am not American, just terrified).
You seem to have a pretty prominent chip on your shoulder regarding Bill Gates.
Gates has donated billions of dollars of his fortune to charity and he's largely credited for having eradicated malaria through these efforts in multiple countries.
It's hard to find a good reason to dislike someone like that.
I think most people are angry he put a lot of businesses out of business by bundling IE with Windows to put Netscape and other companies out of business that did web browsers.
Microsoft made their own version of Java that almost killed Sun. I think it was J++ and later J# and then Microsoft made C# to replace it.
The original DOS was CP/M that Seattle Software and Microsoft made their DOS do CP/M API calls and a program to convert CP/M programs to DOS. At the time this was not illegal, ECT. Microsoft did Basic, Fortran, Cobol without getting a license for them for 8 bit Pcs.
Those are just a few examples, mostly unethical but not criminal in 1970s and 1980s. By 1999 the DOJ investigated Microsoft.
Also Apple fans claim Microsoft ripped off the Macintosh with Windows and tried to put Apple out of business.
To people like Gates there are good and bad things, and people only know the good things and ignore the bad things because Microsoft built their own industry, ect.
I never liked Bill Gates when I was a power user in the nineties and early 2000s but it really is amazing that one could offset his contribution to disease eradication and his philanthropy generally with some aggravation about his business’ tactics and nebulous what-ifs about what might have happened if he had not been on the scene or had behaved differently. (Moore’s Law would did it’s thing anyway, whether he was there or not, and even with him there, Microsoft’s stranglehold on the desktop market relented anyway.) Do you really think the annoyance of a free browser warrants indicting his post-business career?
>Microsoft’s stranglehold on the desktop market relented anyway
Hardly. Market share is still roughly 85% Windows, 15% Mac, and fuck-all % Linux, which is reflected in the level of support provided for applications, games, hardware etc. Even disregarding compatibility, MacOS is not a straightforward alternative as it only runs on Apple hardware, which is very expensive and only offers a narrow range of opinionated designs.
Just noting that this comment first only talked about the browser bundling antitrust thing, and then, after I commented, completely morphed into something else.
Hello, I have also lost karma points on this subject. I also feel that Microsoft had a very negative effect on the progress of computer science during many years but it is very difficult to convince other generations. There were many positive and negative effects. To grasp the global effect, you need to have lived all the progress of the previous years before Microsoft and you need to have followed all the commercials fights to eradicate concurrence (dr dos, stacker, borland c++, ...).
The main thing I remember from the era of Gates Is Literally Satan was the browser wars, and how awful it was that Internet Explorer was both free and tightly integrated into the operating system.
Dishonest comparison is dishonest. I'm pretty confident it's actually possible to uninstall Safari, and that macOS will continue to work.
Besides, the integration with the operating system isn't the problem. It's the integration with the only operating system. It isn't monopoly abuse if you don't have a monopoly.
If not Bill then Bob. At least he's doing some good in the world with that cash instead of hoarding it for him and his family. If it weren't for him, how long would have malaria persisted?
I think his primary motivation is so simple.. he wants people to like him.
Many, many people disliked him after his predatory business days. This is the perfect way to a) keep doing interesting work, b) getting people to like him again, c) get some personal karma.
I can quite easily see the appeal of this.
Also; I'm a big fan of his current work. I loved how my country (Sweden) matched a very large billg foundation program funding the other year; I think he's way better equipped with handling that money than my government's idealistic but fumbling people.
I just think we shouldn't forget his past just because he's turned into modern day santa. We should learn from history...
> How old are you? Let me just guess; not old enough to have experienced living/working in tech while Bill was doing his thing
Please no ad hominem attacks, focus on what I said, not how old I am.
But if it matters to you, I wrote my first lines of code in 1979 on an Apple ][ and I've lived through the exact same times you did.
I find little point in speculating on what could have happened that didn't, I focus on reality and what people have actually achieved in their life time.
It wasn't an attack (heck, wtf, I was just asking your age, maybe stop over-dramatizing?); I was trying to find out if you had some sort of personal experience or was just parroting the newer reddit hivemind.