The end of an era....Hooray!

Bill Gates is leaving Microsoft. Good. I have never claimed to be a Microsoft fan boy. I am a Mac user and have been for many years. When i got my first iMac, Netscape was my browser of choice, even when I had to wait 15 - 3- minutes to download it on dial up. So when Microsoft was found a monopoly for the actions that they took against Netscape and others, it ws vindication. But as we know just because something is wrong does not mean that people will remove themselves from it (too many examples to name one). This week in Extreme Tech there is an article about Bill Gates retirement and what it really is and what his legacy should be.

Gates is simply following in the footsteps of the robber‐barons that came before him and he's taking his ill‐gotten wealth and trying to buy himself respectability and a better legacy than greed and bad products. Andrew Carnegie, JP Morgan, William Randolph Hearst, Andrew Mellon, and others are who Gates is using as his role models.
These men all accumulated truly vast concentrations of wealth through ruthless suppression of competitors and other shady business tactics. And many of them later tried to buy respectability through charitable foundations and giving.
Bill Gates doesn't want to be remembered for what he truly is: A robber baron and convicted monopolist. So he's deploying his ill‐gotten billions as he prepares to buy‐off as many people as possible to create an alternative view of himself in history.
He hopes that future generations will hear his name and think "wow, what a great guy he helped so many people with his money." Gates prays that they will forget the employees who worked for companies like Netscape who lost their jobs and he hopes that the pain and hell that he has put ordinary computer users through for so long with Windows will also be forgotten.
The Gates fanboy types will probably be horrifically offended at the truth of all this but then the truth hurts sometimes. It's something they'll have to work at getting over.
Those of us who see Bill Gates for what he is will have to—sometimes quite ruthlessly—correct those who either have been bought off outright or who weren't around when Gates and his minions were running wild and destroying their competitors through shady business practices.
So if you see a fawning article about how Bill Gates is going to save the third world or eliminate this disease or that disease...remember that it's all PR designed to get you to think differently about him. You're being played by a master spin‐meister who wants you to see him as a "caring" and "kind" person with deeply philanthropic tendencies.
Don't fall for it.

So I for one am not sad to see Bill Gates retire. I think that if you are the richest man in the world and you are billions ahead of those around you, it is not hard to see how you got there. Not to say that wealthy people are bad, but there is a reason that NOW Mr. Gates is being nice to everyone. Too bad he can't take windows with him! "Don't let the door hit you where the good Lord split you!"

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