Bill Gates is intelligent and educated. If he knows evil is wrong, why is he?

[brewnog]

Come on--a few cents a bolt, a couple seconds for a machine to fasten it.

Yup. Maybe a cent for a bolt, 2 seconds to fasten. Maybe 50, 500, 50,000 bolts per products. Maybe $25 million for a dedicated bolt do-er-up-er machine. Maybe 4 of these machines at every station...

I don't know numbers, but I'll try and find you a coherent example. Anyway, the point is, seemingly small differences in the design can make massive cost savings for the manufacturer, which can mostly go un-noticed by the customer.

If most companies follow the strategy of producing to sell again when the product breaks, then you wouldn't not buy again from the same manufacturer just because your product wears out earlier than the company could have made it to. The product would be wearing out at a time you've come to accept as normal.

Well you might, it depends on individual customers, the product in question, and the particular circumstances. But this is the thing, all products have a designed life-span, and there are always products which fail prematurely because a manufacturer can't cover all bases. Is this 'evil' in its purest form? I don't think so.

 

[lockecole]

redirecting the discussion

Users of this board are discussing whether Bill Gates is evil or not, but I created this thread to know the reason by which a part of the much more intelligent and educated people than ourselves choose to do evil. Please, stay on-topic.

 

[JamesU]

I know people, must I bring this story up?
(use some imagination)

http://www.code7r.org/inquiz/0602/images/ss15.jpg

http://home.comcast.net/~deadsenator/burt.gif
http://homepage.univie.ac.at/horst.prillinger/evil-empire/bill3.jpg

 

[Pengwuino]

Users of this board are discussing whether Bill Gates is evil or not, but I created this thread to know the reason by which a part of the much more intelligent and educated people than ourselves choose to do evil. Please, stay on-topic.

You should have thought up a better title then.

Come to think of it, this question is very vague and rather dumb (dont know what else to say). Almost every human on Earth knows that evil things are wrong yet we still do it. It is unfair and useless to separate the intelligent from the non-intelligent. The smallest of children know that evil is wrong. We all do "wrong" things for roughly the same reason no matter what our education or intelligence is. Money, women, pleasure, etc. Its "evil" to pay a woman for sex... but people from every background and education do it. Its something people want and people basically all see the same recourse for our actions yet everyone does it.

I REALLY doubt anyone around here can say theyve never done something evil or wanted to do something evil.

Also, as far as the off-topiced debate is concerned... is anyone sure that linux doesn't have the same problems? Is it possible that if the same # of people that use windows switched to linux, that we'd see the same # of problems popping up in linux? Think if a major linux distro had to integrate everything miccrosoft has had to integrate! Is it possible that all the foul gestures towards microsoft would be replaced with gestures towards Sisu (or whatever that one big distro is).

 

[Kazza_765]

Perhaps people only become rich and powerful because they are evil. Reminds me of something Frank Herbert wrote along the lines of, Does power corrupt, or does power attract the corruptable?

 

[FredGarvin]

Users of this board are discussing whether Bill Gates is evil or not, but I created this thread to know the reason by which a part of the much more intelligent and educated people than ourselves choose to do evil. Please, stay on-topic.

You didn't ask that. You asked why he is evil even though he knows he is. The point now being you have to back up your contention that he is "evil."

 

[FredGarvin]

Come on--a few cents a bolt, a couple seconds for a machine to fasten it.

It is maddening, but true. I HATE doing test designs for production environments. The smallest detail that one would think is not anywhere near being a factor then becomes a huge argument point. It does, indeed get down to the level of worrying about a single bolt or clamp or movement.

If most companies follow the strategy of producing to sell again when the product breaks, then you wouldn't not buy again from the same manufacturer just because your product wears out earlier than the company could have made it to. The product would be wearing out at a time you've come to accept as normal.

I agree with you 100% on that one. From my experience, the production side of a company, the design/development side and the warantee/field service side rarely talk to each other. You have the same product and 3 different ideals on what to do with it.

- The design/development want the best that can't usually be obtained.

- The production side will strive to ne end to cheapen it to the point of it falling apart but it's easy to make and they can get more out the door.

- The warantee folks yell at everyone because they have to listen to the customers complaining.

When I worked for a certain big 3 automaker with a blue elliptical shaped logo, we used to juke that the "quality is job 1" should read "quantity is job 1" because that is the DEFINITELY mentality.

 

[russ_watters]

You didn't ask that. You asked why he is evil even though he knows he is. The point now being you have to back up your contention that he is "evil."

Not only that, but also that 'he knows it'. Two separate claims and a pretty steep burden of proof before we can even begin to answer the question.

Personally, I think Gates honestly believes MS is the greatest thing since sliced bread and as a result takes an ends-justifies-the-means approach to business. And while that often leads to unsrcupulous, inethical, even illegal actions, its a big stretch to call him evil.

 

[faust9]

While is dislike MS products with a passion, I'd be hard pressed to use the term 'evil' when describing Bill Gates. I guess the Bill and Melinda Gates foundation is bankrolled by some other guy named Bill Gates with Billions of dollars to give to the world's poor.

 

[Gaijin]

lockecole, still hasn't said why bill gates is evil...


and please don't say it has something to do with trying to take over the world or bad software :P

 

[danAlwyn]

All I have to say is that on my scale of one to Genocide, Bill Gates doesn't even ping my evil detector. When he slaughters a couple hundred innocent villagers somewhere using his Microsoft DeathRay application, then he might be eligible for the "evil" label.

Edit: An interesting question might actually be about the second part of the statement:

If he knows evil is wrong...

This will get into a moral debate with no end, but why would he know that evil is wrong? These are not measurable variables after all.

 

[Pengwuino]

All I have to say is that on my scale of one to Genocide, Bill Gates doesn't even ping my evil detector. When he slaughters a couple hundred innocent villagers somewhere using his Microsoft DeathRay application, then he might be eligible for the "evil" label.

Who said he hasnt already... you REALLY think kosovo wasnt the work of Microsoft Word?

 

[Learning Curve]

Sometimes evil is in the eye of the beholder.

I'm sure a lot of Muslims see big ol' US of A as one big corporate killing machine with Bush behind the controls, while we watch on tv and see the taliban and renegades as evil. Both sides think they're right and not evil.

Look at the third Star Wars where some were trying to save the republic (Sith) and others destroying it (Jedi's). Both sides believed they were doing good.

I'm sure Hitler in his own mind believed he was right and would be seen as a savior for years to come in his own opinion.

 

[JamesU]

why does everyone hate windows? people in this forum constantly say that windows sucks, but give no reason.

lol i went to this website where people contribute their "computer stupidities".QUOTE]
link please

 

[Archon]

I agree that Bill Gates isn't "evil" by most standards. Perhaps a bit unscrupulous, but one more or less has to be this way in order to succeed to that extent.

By the way, while evil is relative, the "wrongness" of evil is not. That is, if you perceive something as evil, then to you, it is wrong by definition. I find it unlikely that Bill Gates is consciously doing evil things of any (significant) sort. In his mind, he is probably doing something he thinks is to the benefit of humanity, and thus not evil. Whether someone else thinks what he's doing is evil is another matter entirely, however.

 

[Pengwuino]

why does everyone hate windows? people in this forum constantly say that windows sucks, but give no reason.

Its rather slow and takes up a loooooooot of memory and has a lot of bugs and security holes in it.

lol i went to this website where people contribute their "computer stupidities".

link please

http://rinkworks.com/stupid/

Hilarious!

 

[JamesU]

I love windoes, I don't fund it slow, and I find very little bugs. I tried a mac and I just found it inconvenient

 

[JamesU]

some of my favorites:
I was working on my computer one day, and one of my friends came up to me. He said, in a tone that suggested he thought my computer was inferior to his, "Is your computer DIGITAL?"

Well, I had one event happen to me, where one lady had just bought a Apple IIc and complained that she was having problems with her monitor, so we told her to bring her monitor in, and we'd check it out. So she brings her monitor in, and we plug it in, and it works without a flaw. We tell her that the monitor isn't the problem, and to bring her CPU in. She stares at us blankly, and asks, "What's the CPU?" Joe explains that it's the piece of equipment that all your devices plug into. So about twenty minutes later, she returns and walks in carrying the surge supressor. When we explained to her the item that we needed her to bring in, she replied, "Oh you mean the keyboard!" (On Apple IIc's, the CPU box and keyboard are part of the same unit.) And to make this all the more interesting, she was a gradeschool computer class instructor.