Linus's message...
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| Author | Content |
|---|---|
| JaseP Aug 25, 2011 1:51 PM EDT |
How much of Linus's message turned out to be wrong??? Not big... Nope. Not portable,... Nope. Not professional,... nope. 386(486) clones,... nope (much, much, more). Support only AT hard drives,... nope. There's a lot of irony in that post. It kinda reminds me of Bill Gates's comment that nobody would ever need more than 640Kb of memory... |
| patrokov Aug 28, 2011 3:03 PM EDT |
The big difference of course is that Linus was describing his immediate vision for his hobby, while Bill Gates was defending a technical limitation of his commercial product. |
| ComputerBob Aug 30, 2011 10:26 AM EDT |
Quoting:The big difference of course is that Linus was describing his immediate vision for his hobby, while Bill Gates was defending a technical limitation of his commercial product.There's another big difference: Gates never said that. http://www.wired.com/politics/law/news/1997/01/1484 |
| patrokov Aug 30, 2011 5:41 PM EDT |
Then again, maybe he did and just doesn't remember it. It's not like he's never been caught in a lie before. http://imranontech.com/2007/02/20/did-bill-gates-say-the-640... |
| ComputerBob Aug 30, 2011 9:03 PM EDT |
Quoting:Then again, maybe he did and just doesn't remember it. It's not like he's never been caught in a lie before...The burden of proof is on the one who is doing the quoting, to prove that the person that they are quoting actually said what the quoter claims that they said. Do you -- or does anyone -- have proof that Gates ever said that quote? If not, then that it's just another baseless (though popular) urban legend that doesn't deserve to be propagated by fair-minded people of integrity. |
| gus3 Aug 30, 2011 10:40 PM EDT |
Besides, there are far more asinine quotes of his on record. Find his speech at the Windows 95 release for a whole treasure trove of things he said that are ignorant, arrogant, and frankly insulting to a swath of M$'s own employees. (That swath had already accomplished at DEC, things that BillG was up there saying nobody had ever done before.) |
| lcafiero Aug 30, 2011 10:52 PM EDT |
First things first: I am not saying that Bill Gates did or didn't say it, nor (God forbid) am I defending him. But I seem to remember a quote I read while working as a stringer for a paper in the early '90s where Gates was very verbose about explaining the layers (I think that's what he called them) for one of the Windows systems and said that the 640K was the base and 384K was for everything else, and I'm inclined to think that the quote that he might/might not have said stems from that. I wish I could find the exact quote, but I remember thinking at the time, "Dang, no one is going to understand this." But I'm with gus3 on the fact that Gates has said dumber things. My only regret is that he didn't come out on stage and dance like a monkey during one of the Microsoft annual meetings. |
| JaseP Aug 31, 2011 10:28 AM EDT |
Quoting: If not, then that it's just another baseless (though popular) urban legend that doesn't deserve to be propagated by fair-minded people of integrity. Because we wouldn't want to indict the reputation of such a good, and honest, person as Bill Gates,... I remember my father telling me about the quote in the late 1980s or early 1990s... Gates may have said it out of the side of his face, and in defence of IBMs design decision that he was forced to work with (or around),... and didn't mean what he said one bit... but I am convinced that he said it. |
| tuxchick Aug 31, 2011 11:01 AM EDT |
Larry, you must remember how manky Gates was back in the early days. He smelled bad, fidgeted, and rocked back and forth like he had some kind of disorder. It took a lot of work with a lot of handlers to make him halfway presentable. But even back in those days, when Microsoft was making a big splash as a force in tech, the tech press were slobbering groupies who hung on his every word. To me he always sounded like the simple-minded Chance in "Being There", and just like Chance inexplicably regarded as a savant. I guess all you have to do is make that first billion and then everyone believes you're both brilliant and a fine human being. |
| jdixon Aug 31, 2011 12:06 PM EDT |
> I guess all you have to do is make that first billion and then everyone believes you're both brilliant and a fine human being. Shoot. Now you tell me. Why can't people share these things when you're young? |
| patrokov Aug 31, 2011 6:00 PM EDT |
Not to be pedantic, but what evidence would satisfy this burden of proof? And why did it take to long for Gates to deny this particular quote? |
| ComputerBob Sep 01, 2011 7:47 AM EDT |
Quoting:Because we wouldn't want to indict the reputation of such a good, and honest, person as Bill Gates,... Whether someone is honest or not has absolutely no bearing on whether we should "quote" them as saying things that they never said. Quoting:I remember my father telling me about the quote in the late 1980s or early 1990s... By that time, I had already been using personal computers for more than a decade, and I remember hearing people *joke* about it back then, too. So what? Did you ever see any proof that he said it? A videotape? An audio tape? Collaborating notes from multiple reporters who were there when he said it? A news story from back then that quotes it? Don't you think that if it were true, then *someone* would be able to substantiate it? An *old* urban legend is still an urban legend, unless someone proves that it's true. Again, the burden of proof is on the quoter. Without proof, it's still just an urban legend, no matter how much you *want* it to be true. Quoting:Gates may have said it out of the side of his face... Sure, and YOU *may* have said it. Anybody *may* have said it. But if you're going to quote a particular person as having said it, then the burden of proof is on you to substantiate your claim. Quoting:... but I am convinced that he said it. Go ahead and believe it, despite a few decades of absolutely no supporting evidence, But your personal belief doesn't make it true, and if you present it to fair-minded people as a fact, without any supporting evidence; then your credibility will suffer the same way it would if you forwarded any other email hoax to all of your friends and coworkers. By the way, did you know that the popular 1994 song, "The Macarena" was named after the machine in sweatshops that folds shirts? That's where the Macarena's dance moves originated -- from imitating the motions of the macarena folding machine. Actually, that's an urban legend that I made up, back in 1994. But it's 17 years old now, so it must be true. |
| BernardSwiss Sep 01, 2011 7:43 PM EDT |
I don't know whether Bill Gates ever actually uttered that specific phrase. On the other hand, actions often speak louder than words... |
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