'Inside Bill's Brain: Decoding Bill Gates' Premieres on Netflix (king5.com) 49
hcs_$reboot shared this report about Inside Bill's Brain: Decoding Bill Gates, a new three-part documentary that debuted Friday on Netflix from Academy Award-winning director Davis Guggenheim:
The Microsoft co-founder and billionaire philanthropist is asked what his worst fear is. It's not family tragedy or personal pain. "I don't want my brain to stop working," he responds... A portrait emerges of a visionary who gnaws on his eyeglasses' arms, downs Cokes and is relentlessly optimistic that technology can solve social ills. He is also someone who reads manically -- he'll scrutinize the Minnesota state budget for fun -- and who is a wicked opponent at cards...
While the series is largely sympathetic toward its subject, Guggenheim nevertheless presses Gates on everything from the federal antitrust case against Microsoft in the 1990s to his relationship with his mother. In a phone interview, Gates acknowledged that he balanced the camera's intrusion with the chance to tell the world -- and recruit help -- about his efforts to help the planet and the poor... Each episode in the series introduces three huge global issues the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation has tackled recently -- safe sanitation technology, polio eradication and nuclear power -- and then switches back in time to see how Gates solved other complex issues in his life as a younger man. "The series doesn't do a traditional cradle-to-grave portrait of him. He wasn't interested in that. I wasn't interested in that," said the filmmaker. Instead, he wanted to find out the source of his relentless optimism and his push to do all these great things.... Gates himself said he appreciated Guggenheim serving as a reality check for many of the seemingly intractable public health issues that his foundation has tackled. "I'm not that objective. It was interesting, through Davis' eyes, to have him say, 'Are you sure?' Well, I'm not sure," said Gates. "So I thought that was good. It made me step back."
At one point, Gates admits to eating Tang straight out of the jar.
While the series is largely sympathetic toward its subject, Guggenheim nevertheless presses Gates on everything from the federal antitrust case against Microsoft in the 1990s to his relationship with his mother. In a phone interview, Gates acknowledged that he balanced the camera's intrusion with the chance to tell the world -- and recruit help -- about his efforts to help the planet and the poor... Each episode in the series introduces three huge global issues the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation has tackled recently -- safe sanitation technology, polio eradication and nuclear power -- and then switches back in time to see how Gates solved other complex issues in his life as a younger man. "The series doesn't do a traditional cradle-to-grave portrait of him. He wasn't interested in that. I wasn't interested in that," said the filmmaker. Instead, he wanted to find out the source of his relentless optimism and his push to do all these great things.... Gates himself said he appreciated Guggenheim serving as a reality check for many of the seemingly intractable public health issues that his foundation has tackled. "I'm not that objective. It was interesting, through Davis' eyes, to have him say, 'Are you sure?' Well, I'm not sure," said Gates. "So I thought that was good. It made me step back."
At one point, Gates admits to eating Tang straight out of the jar.
Oh... (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2, Funny)
you're about as funny as a stage 4 anal cancer diagnosis
So not only have I taken over your ass, but I'm all up inside you too? Thanks for the praise kind stranger!
Push to do great things (Score:5, Insightful)
Answer: Money
Lots of money.
"Blood money", from monopolistic business practices in the 1980's and '90s.
Once he was #1 richest person in the world, and his field of industry had moved on to other things, his business path seemed pointless.
But he had once thing left: a really bad reputation: of being a difficult person, having an abrasive personality, and being the most hated person in computing.
He set out to change the public perception of himself. Warren Buffet showed him how to become a philanthropist. He had the genius myth (partly created by Microsoft itself), that he could build on.
And he succeeded.
(And I expect a lot of flak in comments from people who do not know history)
Re:Push to do great things (Score:4, Interesting)
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Most people simply are not shocked by the truth, he's an American Capitalist, their goal is to destroy their competitors and form micro or macro monopolies to vacuum up all the money ... as Einstein said ... it's anarchy! Sadly you can either try take your piece of the pie or die out on the streets fighting the system.
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"Blood money", from monopolistic business practices in the 1980's and '90s.
The term "blood money" being quotes to make the hyperbole explicit? Computing was a fragmented mess of different incompatible hardware and software systems, unifying that was in general a positive thing and, given Apple's position on locked-down hardware and software with preferential treatment given to their own software applications via private APIs in product tying I would say Microsoft's behaviour was pretty tame compared to what we see today.
Fragment (Score:4, Interesting)
Computing was a fragmented mess of different incompatible hardware and software systems,
MSX was already a previous somewhat successful multi-vendor attempt at unifying hardware architectures.
CP/M was the precedent example of a single vendor managing to become defacto standard software.
Microsoft's own BASIC implementation was some kind of vague defacto software standard accross the fragmented mess of hardware, so it wasn't as much fragment as you imply (if you only like to limit yourself to some text input/output interface - given that graphics back then mostly were about poking low-level hardware dirtectly and few outside of MSX had any common compatibility).
unifying that was in general a positive thing
and Microsoft didn't have much to do with the unification of the hardware.
IBM kind-of-not-taking-PC-extremely-seriously was the reason both hardware and software became standard.
IBM had everything to do with that unification. More precisely, the fact that IBM was very late at the micro-computer party (they were concentrating on big iron up to this point) and thus they rushed their IBM PC as fast as they could, meaning that it was entirely made out of common low-cost of-the-shelfs parts, save for the content of the ROM chips.
This in turn means that any other company could built a compatible PC clone simply by fetching the same low-cost common parts from the same metaphorical shelves.
(Compare this with, e.g., the Amiga which had a bunch of custom audio and video chips. No way to build an Amiga clone without licensing their chipset)
Microsoft was simply sourced by IBM to provide some CP/M like-ish OS. Microsoft's achievement basically boils down to managing to buy and rename the 86-DOS from Tim Paterson (a CP/M clone ported to intel CPUs) and manage to get a *very special* licensing deal from IBM (because again IBM weren't considering the PC that much seriously) where Microsoft could still retain the right to sell that software to any other intel CPU-based company.
The PC became mainstream because:
- nothing special was in the hardware, other company besides IBM could built it too, and did in practice.
- the OS (PC-DOS) wasn't exclusive, you could go buy MS-DOS from microsoft and run your software as if on a genuine PC-DOS.
given Apple's position on locked-down hardware and software with preferential treatment given to their own software applications via private APIs in product tying I would say Microsoft's behaviour was pretty tame compared to what we see today.
There is some kind of monopolistic behaviour going on in Apple's walled garden.
But on the other hand, Microsoft has done much worse (leveraging your monopoly to completely block and prevent potential competitor from even entering the market, and then buying them out once they become bankrupt so they stop being competitors. Often not even seriously developing the actual tech)
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A fascinating insight into his character... (Score:5, Insightful)
Watched all three parts last night. There was far more to this than the typical "how did he get to where he is now" documentaries:
Insights into his relationship with Paul Allen and not reconciling their differences. Seeing Melinda laugh out loud when asked "what it's like inside Bill's mind?"! How his mother prompted him to meet Warren Buffet.
His voracious appetite for diving deep into subject matter is astounding. I knew he was well read, but it looks like he devours 2–10 books a week depending on travel/commitments (with strong retention). He doesn't just fund the foundation's research/engineering - he seems to have a firm grasp on the whole field of energy, vaccination and sanitation, often reading some of the **driest** textbooks and technical papers to gain a complete picture of an issue and all the surrounding issues.
He came across as far more human than I imagined for the uber-geek the press always labelled him as.
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Being well read doesn't give one a conscience.
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And being well read doesn't NOT give one a conscience.
Career Criminal (Score:1, Flamebait)
The USDoJ found that Microsoft had abused an effective monopoly position in a way that had set computing back a decade. Gates ran off with that money and put it into a tax dodge from which he continues to profit, both materially and in terms of reputation.
But rather than ranting on, let me just leave this here. [commondreams.org] (I would have submitted it as a story days ago, but I can no longer write in my journal or submit stories here because this site is so broken.)
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And Bill still profits handsomely from that monopoly. It’s called a Microsoft tax because almost every business still has to buy an office licence to exchange documents or maintain compatibility with legacy documents.
Even a patent expires after 20 years. The governments of the world should have forced MS to open source their file formats.
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The governments of the world should have forced MS to open source their file formats.
I haven't had trouble opening MS office documents with Google Docs/Sheets, so I assumed the docx and xlsx formats are still open file formats.
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It’s called a Microsoft tax because almost every business still has to buy an office licence to exchange documents or maintain compatibility with legacy documents.
No they haven't, that's why they're called "legacy" documents: You're not dealing with them often at all and the common criticism of MS Office is that it isn't even compatible with itself anyway so the "legacy documents" excuse is even more lame. There has been ample opportunity to switch away from MS Office if there was any desire to.
Revisionist history? (Score:2, Insightful)
Or will there be any mention that literally every single idea MS ever had, was taken from somebody else, or "acquired"? And not in a nice way.
And I checked.
DOS, Windows, Excel, Word, Powerpoint, Outlook, Internet Explorer, DDE/OLE, ActiveDirectory, you name it.
What they also did not invent but made somthing that people think is normal and acceptable: To "sell" software. Instead of actual software programming *work*. So one could steal, err, rake in money, uncoupled from actually working in return for that m
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Or will there be any mention that literally every single idea MS ever had, was taken from somebody else, or "acquired"? And not in a nice way.
And I checked.
DOS, Windows, Excel, Word, Powerpoint, Outlook, Internet Explorer, DDE/OLE, ActiveDirectory, you name it.
What they also did not invent but made somthing that people think is normal and acceptable: To "sell" software. Instead of actual software programming *work*. So one could steal, err, rake in money, uncoupled from actually working in return for that money that *we* actually had to work for.
If that is in there, it will be acceptable.
I recall someone giving me a bit of Microsoft trivia, the only original Microsoft product was Microsoft Basic. Everything since that was a product the company acquired from somewhere else.
Re: Revisionist history? (Score:2)
Nah, BASIC was developed at Dartmouth in the 60s, about ten years before Microsoft wrote their version for the Altair. There's plenty of stuff that MS has written internally, rather than bought, but it's harder to find original ideas that they've had -- especially good ones.
Inside Bill's Brain: Decoding Bill Gates (Score:2, Troll)
I think I can summarize what's inside Bill Gates' brain in only two words: zero, one.
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WTF troll? Are Slashdot readers that ignorant these days? I really need to explain that "Zero and one" are binary and all information can be encoded with these two values? And we're talking about Bill Gates here, who was the head of Microsoft? You know, a software company?
Morans, I tell you. Morans everywhere.
Not sure why I'm still paying for Netflix (Score:2)
obvious puff piece is obvious (Score:1)
I really don't want to watch a lucky retard billionaire get fellated by some gay filmmaker who worships the most incompetent and undeserving billionaire in history. Did he think of putting radio on the internet? All he did was copy Apple at every step and badly. If Apple had had an open OS instead of one locked to hardware it would have been no contest.
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I really don't want to watch a lucky retard billionaire get fellated by some gay filmmaker who worships the most incompetent and undeserving billionaire in history. Did he think of putting radio on the internet? All he did was copy Apple at every step and badly. If Apple had had an open OS instead of one locked to hardware it would have been no contest.
I remember when Apple experimented with separating the OS from the hardware and it nearly ended the company.
Microsoft got very lucky in many ways, made some very wise decisions in others, and made some quite underhanded (if not illegal) deals to get where they are. The probability was quite small for Apple to repeat this successfully to compete with Microsoft on the territory they largely created.
You might believe that Apple had a superior OS at the time but that would not be enough to remove Microsoft fro
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But there used to be. Years and years ago there was a great tutorial on how you could put the MacOS on a PC portable. The reason for this was because the portable was half the price of Apple's cheapest model. The reason this worked was that most of the internal hardware of the PC was the same as that years Mac Mini. The only downside was there were Bluetooth issues. (So no external mouse or other accessories.)
If I remember correctly, the least expensive Apple notebook was like $1200 while the PC was $500 +
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What made Microsoft successful was they fucked anyone who dared compete with them so they could own their market.
There's nothing to decode here (Score:1, Insightful)
I really hate how folks act like Bill Gates, who had a multi-million dollar trust fund in the 70s and well connected parents somehow worked his way up from nothing. It's like when I found out more than half of movie stars are Hollywood Royalty [duckduckgo.com]. These folks aren't the scrappy bootstrappers they pretend to be.
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(him mom was on the board of directors at IBM)
Nope. Close, but nope. "In 1980, she discussed her son's company with John Opel, a fellow committee member and the chairman of International Business Machines Corporation (IBM). Opel, by some accounts, mentioned Mrs. Gates to other IBM executives. A few weeks later, IBM took a chance by hiring Microsoft, then a small software firm, to develop an operating system for its first personal computer." https://web.archive.org/web/20... [archive.org]
Re: (Score:2)
... IBM took a chance by hiring Microsoft, then a small software firm, to develop an operating system for its first personal computer."
After they approached Digital Research and were rebuffed. By all accounts IBM was desperate.
After recommending to IBM that they go to Digital Research, Bill then had no qualms about "stealing" 86-DOS from Tim Paterson. It kinda makes you wonder why Bill would first recommend going to DR, but then did not recommend Tim Paterson when DR didn't pan out.
Except maybe that he knew he couldn't steal CPM/86 from DR and he could steal 86-DOS from Paterson.
And since this is 2019 (Score:2)
What I don't get.. (Score:3)
What I don't get is how someone so smart eats so poorly. There's pretty much a constant flow of Diet Coke going into this man, one shot shows him pulling a can from a mini-fridge packed with them..has he not read any books on nutrition?
Whose understanding is likely to be better (Score:2)
There's pretty much a constant flow of Diet Coke going into this man
He knows more about nutrition than you'll ever be able to learn, so maybe he knows something you do not.
That said, I drink almost all water... I'm just saying I'm not ruling out Diet Coke being some kind of miracle life-prolonging elixir being kept on the hush.
Or, maybe being forced to drink nothing but Diet Coke was part of the anti-trust settlement from the government.
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What I don't get is how someone so smart eats so poorly. There's pretty much a constant flow of Diet Coke going into this man, one shot shows him pulling a can from a mini-fridge packed with them..has he not read any books on nutrition?
People like to enjoy their lives. Even if you ate perfectly you will still get old and die, people take calculated risks. AKA you eat less healthy and you might knock 10 years off your live, but you lived the life you wanted instead of walking on proverbial eggshells your entire life.
Remember you only live once, you don't get any do-overs. So people vote for enjoyable yet shorter lives, or less enjoyable yet longer lives.
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What's the line on Aspartame these days? Once upon I time I heard that it's a bladder irritant, so I switched to using Saccharin in my coffee and don't drink diet soda. Occasionally I will treat myself to a Mexican Coke here, or a Coke outside the US made with cane sugar. Maybe some day Coca Cola here will wake up but I'm not holding my breath.
When I go to Canada I look for diet soft drinks made with Sod
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There's pretty much a constant flow of Diet Coke going into this man, one shot shows him pulling a can from a mini-fridge packed with them.
Really?? He just gained 100 brownie points from me, then.
I'm poor though, so I buy DC in bulk (2L bottles, one+ a day.) There's a Coke bottling plant down the way from me that I'm planning a Mission Impossible raid on -- they'll never notice ONE MORE outward bound pipeline in their systems.
Skip it. (Score:2, Offtopic)
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The letter to hobbyists and the accompanying Wikipedia article was eye opening for me. It explained why Microsoft made the licensing deals it did after the Altair deal. i.e. Why can't you buy a PC without the Windows tax? ... Because the very first major commercial product produced by Microsoft was subject to rampant piracy.
It reframed the mindset for me. ... Then again, Microsoft pays for my groceries so my opinion is inherently invalid.
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Sorry to have to say you that, Bill, but (Score:2)
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"I don't want my brain to stop working," (Score:2)
''
Uh... I'd say that this might indicate that it may already be happening. (IMHO, This is not the same as squirting whipped cream or Hershey's chocolate sauce into one's mouth.)
lets analyze what the bible says (Score:1)
It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to enter the kingdom of God.
What can we conclude then? The writers of bible were very smart and knew exactly how people tick (manipulation worked very succesfuly for centuries didn't it?) knew full well how the peasants felt about