Step aside, Hef, Warren Beatty, Jack Nicholson, Wilt Chamberlain and DeCaprio. The new king of the party dudes is in da house!
It brings to mind the Beverly Hillbillies, when Jethro set his career sights on “Famous International Playboy.”
But then again, I guess a hundred billion dollars could even get Clint Howard some decent trim.
I appreciate Gates attempt at philanthropy, but he’s the textbook example of how individuals obtaining monumental wealth do so more from chance an the mistakes of others, or the legal environment at the time, rather than meritocracy, talent, and true value to others.
It took IBM to be stupid enough to not understand the value of software with the IBM PC to begin with to not lock down the deal, but originally they were going to Gary Kildall for CP/M for the OS. They couldn’t make a deal, so Gates knew Allen, who bought a disk operating system that became MS-DOS that ripped off CP/M anyway – but patent laws were the wild west then and not the lockdown corporocracy system that Microsoft benefits from today – so nothing came of it.
Kildall ended up becoming and alcoholic and said of Gates: “He is divisive. He is manipulative. He is a user. He has taken much from me and the industry.” In an appendix he called DOS “plain and simple theft” because its first 26 system calls worked the same as CP/M’s.
He benefited the same was from Office software and flubs of VisiCalc and other software not utilizing the wild west patent system as its used today, to build an empire. And in the 90s he utilized that work to ’embrace, extend, and extinguish’ competition.
He was really great at manipulating the system for his own company’s gain during this time, in an era when it was able to be done, unlike today if any startup tried to benefit – companies like Apple, Microsoft, and Amazon would crush them in the legal system or steal their ideas and then squash them.
Textbook example of how the ‘free market’ benefits those who manipulate rather than innovate.
The truth of the matter is that 75% of success is the luck of being in the right place at the right time. Clearly Gates was, but also credit where credit is due for recognizing the opportunity and being able to capitalize on it.
As a society we tend to idolize the founders of successful companies and develop hagiographies surrounding their roles in their success. While certainly important, their contributions aren’t the *only* ones, and the truth of the matter is that they wouldn’t be the successes that they aren’t without talented people around them. Gates wasn’t solely responsible for Microsoft’s suckers just as Jobs wasn’t for Apple, Musk isn’t for Tesla / SpaceX, and Bezos isn’t for Amazon.
The fact that, at least in his earlier years, Gates was largely amoral and unethical when it came to business and competition is another subject altogether. His actions unquestionably stifled innovation in the computer industry for at least a decade.
Great job, NY Post — you’ve uncovered at 24 year old “biography.” Truly an example of top-flight journalism.
Amazing how in the intervening 24 years Gates has somehow managed to keep the multitudes involved in these supposed parties silent.
*Please* don’t link to the NY Post; they’re one step above the National Enquirer. Maybe.
You’ll notice that I tagged this as nonsense and WTF, so I didn’t expect anyone to take it to heart. I only linked to it because it was a good framework to make fun of the premise (and to ridicule Bill, of course, as the good lord intended).
Gotcha — sorry, didn’t notice.
Micro, soft.
Good one!
Not mentioned in this article (but in others) are allegations that some of his partying included Jeffrey Epstein, which was a contributing factor to his upcoming divorce.
The WSJ ran the Epstein storyline…
Jeffrey Epstein was like the Zelig of the rich and famous. He went everywhere, knew everyone, appeared in photos with everyone. (And this is just my speculation, but I think that pretty much everyone knew about his evil monkeyshines, although some of his high-powered buddies seem to have gone well beyond guilty knowledge.)
Yeah, it’s almost impossible to believe that among the idle hob-nob set, no one had at least second-hand knowledge of what Epstein was doing.
If the NY Post says it, it must be true!
Bill’s a dude. Near as I can tell, a dude whose life has not familiarized him very much with limits.