Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[Alexhans]

Will we trust the first release?  Or wait for a good SP 1 or 2?

XP SP 2 rules!

[sneakey pete]

B) why has he got such ridiculous amounts if money anyway, if he makes so much he can afford to massively reduce the price of any windows OS.

Yeah, i mean, fuck the investors that gave you the money to make money in the first place, why on earth should their investment actually grow

[strich]

So I installed Windows 7 RTM as my only OS over the weekend. Fuckin rocks. If your already running Vista then you have no reason not to make the move. It is better in every way.

If your're still on XP, then you're missing out IMO - Windows 7 is incredibly stable for its maturity. The only reason not to make the move IMO is if you're running ancient games on a daily basis that won't run in Vista/Seven. Even then, go buy a $100 P.O.S PC box to run those.

[umiman]

Men of War doesn't run on Windows 7. Maybe if a patch comes out for it, then I'll switch and use my lappie for oldschool gaming.

[Jreengus]

Microsoft is evil, everything they ever do will always be crap by definition independently of it's actual merits and utility.
Information wants to be free!

Bill gates donated over $30 (I think it's over $40 but I'm not sure. So I went with the statistic that I know is correct.) billion dollars to charity. That's right. Over 30,000,000,000 US dollars to charity. You could buy 50,083,472.5 PS3 at launch day for that kind of money.

How is that in any way evil?

A) When you have as much money as he has that is meaningless, it's the equivalent of you giving a penny to charity because it impacts your lifestyle in no real way.
B) why has he got such ridiculous amounts if money anyway, if he makes so much he can afford to massively reduce the price of any windows OS.
A + B = Him using other peoples money to make himself look good.

 Lowering the price of goods because he already has money despite Demand? You know how Capitalism works, right?

 Also:
 Gates has a current Net Worth of around 40 billion.
 He has donated at least 28 billion to charity.
 More than half your net worth ain't pennies.

I'm not saying it's the equivalent of you giving a penny because it makes up less than 1% of your money I'm saying its the equivalent of you giving a penny because it doesn't affect you. He can give 28 billion to charity because he has 28 billion that is doing absolutely nothing if he has 40 billion and gives away 28 billion he still has 12 billion and a massive income.

Charitable donations should be judged not by amount of money donated or by the percentage of someone's wealth donated but rather by the impact such a donation has on someone lifestyle and in this case its jack squat so the donation shows nothing about him personally other than the fact that he's very rich.

[JoshuaFH]

I'm sorry Thatguyyouknow, but this logic of yours seems magnificently flawed. Charities are not a venue to throw money into to make oneself look better, and that not giving enough percentage-wise makes someone morally reprehensible, even though they may be used this way; They're set up explicitly to help other people, and 28 BILLION dollars is going to help ALOT of people, and I'm sure that many MANY families are going to be very grateful to Mr. Gates for a very long time, so atleast be appreciative that he's helping others.

[Jreengus]

I'm not trying to say what he did didn't help people just that it's stupid to act like he's some kind of saint for it. He just had a massive pile of cash not doing anything so he gave it away.

I'm editing this post rather than replying as an ill defined compromise between my urge to reply and my urge not to further de-rail the thread. I'd like to point out that even if I've come across that way I'm not some kind of rabid anti Microsoft protester. I don't think that Microsoft is the source of all evil. (Yet, give it another couple of years =p) And secondly I'd like to say that what I'm trying to get at is basically the same as the bible story or whatever that I just remembered where there's the rich noble who donates one of his many gold coins to the church the merchant who donates on of his many silver coins and the poor beggar who gives her last copper coin and that's worth more to god than yada yada yada. Anyhow I stand by the point that when judging a person if looking at charitable donations you should always take into account how much the donation cost them. So with Bill gates the fact that he donated so much is a null point, not because it's in any way not a good deed, yes it helped lots and lots of people but at the same time it cost him nothing so it can't really be seen as a reflection on his character just on his wealth.


Anyhow if anyone really has an overwhelming desire to continue this discussion I suggest we take it PMs and allow the thread to return to discussion of Windows 7.

[umiman]

Who cares. He gave enough money to buy several countries to HELP people. It doesn't matter what his motives are. An evil bastard could give 10 trillion dollars to feed children to adjust his image to look better to the public, but the end result is he gave a crapload of money to feed children.

[Alexhans]

hear, hear...

and we are supposed to discuss Windows 7... not Bill Gates...

saying something like MS is evil is just stupid... it's a company that sells a product... let's check out the product.  Forget about silly prejudice.

[Cthulhu]

Are you saying that the value of charity is determined by how much it hurts the giver, rather than how much it helps the receiver?

[G-Flex]

That's not true, but how much credit I give to the giver IS determined by that.

I don't really consider a guy a saint if he gives a million dollars to charity and his net worth is ten thousand times that, because it was an easy decision to make on his part and is good for PR; it doesn't necessarily make him a better person. Not that I'm saying this applies to Bill Gates specifically.

[Leafsnail]

He's leaving virtually all of his fortune to various charities in his will.  It will have an enormous impact.

Anyway, the money he receives personally is a small fraction of the income Microsoft gets.  Even if he stopped taking his salary (much of his income is from shares anyway), the impact on the cost of Microsoft computers would be pretty small.

[G-Flex]

It does seem like Bill Gates is earnest about charity, and I respect him for that. I mean, it's one thing throwing a small portion of your money at people, but he seems to actually do work organizing that stuff.

[Alexhans]

Wasn't this topic about Windows 7???

Why are we discussing charity?

Get... Back... On... Topic...