Truth and Bill Gates

Dan Gilmor, former tech columnist for the San Jose Mercury News, now doing something re: grassroot journalism has a scathing blog about BillG's interview w/ CNet called "Truth and Bill Gates". Some of the interesting segments:

Dan Gilmor wrote:

He claims, for example, that Internet Explorer is the best browser. Insulting people's intelligence is par for the course for Gates, but this one is beyond laughable.

Dan Gilmor wrote:

More serious, and ugly, is Gates' attack on people who want to restore a modicum of balance to today's grossly tilted system of intellectual property. He snidely dismisses "some new modern-day sort of communists who want to get rid of the incentive for musicians and moviemakers and software makers under various guises. They don't think that those incentives should exist."

The purity of this lie is remarkable.

Dan Gilmor wrote:

The larger truth -- a principle for which Gates so frequently demonstrates such contempt -- is that the vast, vast majority of people who find fault with today's system still want to reward creators for their work, financially and otherwise. But we also want a system that balances the rights of creators with the rights and needs of the larger society.

Check out his blog.

discussed on this C9 thread:

What would you like to see Microsoft do differently this year?   


but i hadnt seen this yet
thanks


* i knew this would be bad.. 

Dan is pandering to the Valley slackers, where is the journalism in his post? 

 

I’m using Firefox now, but I like IE better.

 

Bush and his buddies are the worst bullies on the block.

 

People are free to make their own music and movies and distribute them on the Web, but if you want Brittany Spears you will have to pay all the people who made her desirable image.  

 

I didn't click through and read the article (shame on me), but the quotes are interesting.  Not a single one of the quotes shows Bill Gates to be a liar, as Dan is attempting to do.

IE is the better browser?  Not a lie.  Many, many people will disagree (myself included), but that doesn't make the statement a lie.  The statement is subjective and can't really be a lie.  It's a statement of opinion, not fact.  That Bill's opinion is that IE is the better browser, and that he thinks other's would agree, is not shocking, much less something anyone should be twisting into "Billy G. is an evil liar!"

The communist remark is extremely unfortunate on soooo many levels.  Probably the dumbest thing Mr. Gates has ever said.  But, once again, there's nothing in the statement that may be twisted into proving he lied.  It's another opinion, and once you restate it in a more PC manner, there's going to be a lot of people who will agree with this particular opinion.  I have no problems with OpenSource on it's own, but there are an awful lot of the OS community members who've twisted things to mean OS/free good, Proprietary/pay bad.  And by good/bad I mean for all of society all of the time.

The final point doesn't seem to be making the case that Mr. Gate's is a liar, or if it is, it's also missed the mark.  So I'll leave it alone.

wkempf wrote:

I didn't click through and read the article (shame on me), but the quotes are interesting.  Not a single one of the quotes shows Bill Gates to be a liar, as Dan is attempting to do.

BillGates on news.com.com wrote:

So no big problem; it's not that people have stopped using IE, it's just we've got lots of good ideas that can match and move ahead.

That's a lie right there.

Dan Gillmor wrote:

He claims, for example, that Internet Explorer is the best browser. Insulting people's intelligence is par for the course for Gates, but this one is beyond laughable.

If you actually do RTFA,

Bill Gates wrote:

We need to keep IE the best. We need to innovate in IE, do more add-ons, do improvements. We have some very exciting plans there. Some percentage of users are going to try Firefox and IE side by side, and use the one that's best.

So no big problem; it's not that people have stopped using IE, it's just we've got lots of good ideas that can match and move ahead."

You can interpret that as you wish.

I read it as Bill saying IE needs innovation and improvements to match and move ahead of Firefox.

Rossj wrote:

BillGates on news.com.com wrote: So no big problem; it's not that people have stopped using IE, it's just we've got lots of good ideas that can match and move ahead.

That's a lie right there.

Well, that's nowt more than a deliberate quote-taken-out-of-context.  Its almost as if you desperately want to be insulted, lied to or called a Communist (hmmmm, Boris Johnson might have been on to something... )

I don't know why people bother with that washed-up hack, Gillmor.  Actually, reading his article, the only person insulting people's intelligence is Dan.  He really thinks that people can't understand that the guy from Microsoft will be biased towards the Microsoft product and we will all zombie-like say "OK, you must be telling the truth" and it requries the plucky journalist, Danny, to save us from having our own opinion either way.

And what is grassroots journalism, anyway?  Being demoted to doing the Farming section of a newspaper?

Cider wrote:

Well, that's nowt more than a deliberate quote-taken-out-of-context.

And what out of the surrounding context do you think makes it sounds any less like arrogance? Regardless of the fact it is not true.

Cider wrote:

  Its almost as if you desperately want to be insulted, lied to or called a Communist (hmmmm, Boris Johnson might have been on to something... )

If I were even from Liverpool.  I don't want to be insulted by Microsoft, but that doesn't stop them trying.

I've been told I am a 'sort of' communist, a thief and that a license I *used* to hold dear was cancerous. All by people high in the chain of command at Microsoft - no other vendor has made public comments like that - why should Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer get away with it?

Rossj wrote:

wkempf wrote: I didn't click through and read the article (shame on me), but the quotes are interesting.  Not a single one of the quotes shows Bill Gates to be a liar, as Dan is attempting to do.

BillGates on news.com.com wrote: So no big problem; it's not that people have stopped using IE, it's just we've got lots of good ideas that can match and move ahead.

That's a lie right there.

I think I can safely say that he probably meant that he doesn't think everyone has stopped using IE.  Of course he can't believe that nobody has or will stop using IE.  But you can continue to think it's a lie if it makes you feel warm and fuzzy inside.

nlinus wrote:

I think I can safely say that he probably meant that he doesn't think everyone has stopped using IE.  Of course he can't believe that nobody has or will stop using IE.  But you can continue to think it's a lie if it makes you feel warm and fuzzy inside.

My point was there were lies there regardless of the scale of the lie, mis-representation if you like.

If doesn't make me feel warm and fuzzy at all, I am an ardent Microsoft supporter when they do things right, I just think they need to take more care about what is said when they put high profile people in front of journalists.

BruceMorgan wrote:

Bill Gates wrote: We need to keep IE the best. We need to innovate in IE, do more add-ons, do improvements. We have some very exciting plans there. Some percentage of users are going to try Firefox and IE side by side, and use the one that's best. So no big problem; it's not that people have stopped using IE, it's just we've got lots of good ideas that can match and move ahead."

I read it as Bill saying IE needs innovation and improvements to match and move ahead of Firefox.

Well, when you say "match", I hope you don't mean slavishly copy all the features of Firefox.

I also note he said "add-ons".  They haven't really been done to the core of IE before, have they, so is this an indication that there will be a pre-Longhorn IE addon with all the new features?

I've said it before, but a treeview version of "tabbed browsing" would be great (as seen in that paid-for IE add-on).  I also reckon you should buy Home Page Reader from IBM which is, as far as I can tell, just works like an add-on for IE and integrate it into the core IE product.  Accessibility is still not regarded high enough by browser makers or web page designers.  Maybe having a default standard with HPR in IE would allow great steps forward to happen there.

Cider wrote:

They haven't really been done to the core of IE before, have they ...

Sure, the "core of IE" has been done with the same add-on technology exposed to 3rd parties.

Favorites and History are Explorer bars, same technology as 3rd party explorer bars.BR>
Autosearch from the address bar uses IURLSearchHook, documented since it was implemented.  In fact, that's a weakness of the current implementation. The GUID for the default SHDOCVW implementation is right there and easily stomped by malware.

Cider wrote:

... so is this an indication that there will be a pre-Longhorn IE addon with all the new features?

Gary Schare's interview on BetaNews said talked about the same stuff.  But, as always, we're not going to make empty promises so the lip is zipped right now.