Bill Gates Opens Up About Steve Jobs 294
Nerval's Lobster writes "Former Microsoft CEO Bill Gates displayed a bit of emotion when talking to CBS's 60 Minutes about Steve Jobs. The interview didn't focus entirely on the relationship between the two men, with most of its running time devoted instead to Gates's charitable efforts. But when the conversation shifted to their last meeting before Jobs's death from cancer in 2011, Gates—normally so cerebral—seemed a bit sad. 'When he was sick I got to go down and spend time with him,' Gates said, describing their meeting as 'forward looking.' Jobs spent a portion of their time together showing off designs for his yacht, which he would never see completed—something that Gates defended when the interviewer seemed a little bit incredulous. 'Thinking about your potential mortality isn't very constructive,' he said. Gates also praised Steve Jobs's marketing and design skills: 'He understood, he had an intuitive sense for marketing that was amazing.' In contrast to his subtle—and not so subtle—digs at the iPad over the years, Gates conceded that Apple had 'put the pieces together in a way that succeeded' with regard to tablets. Gates's magnanimity toward his former rival and Apple is a reflection, perhaps, of his current position in life: it's been nearly five years since his last full-time day at Microsoft, and all of his efforts seem focused on his philanthropic endeavors. He simply has no reason to rip a rival limb from limb in the same way he did as Microsoft CEO."
must... protect.... god... (Score:5, Funny)
insert Steve Jobs supreme being statement here
*phew* day saved.
Sent from my AT&T iPad
Re:must... protect.... god... (Score:5, Interesting)
"Death is the great equalizer. In his pale presence they forgot their old squabbles and jealousies..."
Norman Douglas, South Wind
Seems fitting.
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Re:must... protect.... god... (Score:5, Interesting)
My Humble prediction: By the end of this century, Bill Gates will be remembered as a Nobel Prize winning humanitarian while Steve Jobs will be relegated to the dustbin of douchebags
That might be true. But for many of us that might live until 3/4 of this century We will continue to write how much they respect one another. That should be enough to keep Steve's reputation as a tech genius and Bill as a prodigy turn hard-driving tech executive turn philanthropist. You can probably equate Bill and Steve's relationship to John Adams and Thomas Jefferson. Plenty of people after them will be intrigued by their personal relationship with one another.
Re:must... protect.... god... (Score:4, Insightful)
Bill Gates will be remembered as a Nobel Prize winning humanitarian
JD Rockefeller Sr. is still reviled because of his merciless monopolism, despite granting his fortune to charity.
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Re:must... protect.... god... (Score:5, Funny)
SMITE HIM WITH LUMIAS!
I've got to change my default font, I first read that as "SMITE HIM WITH LLAMAS!" which was of course incorrect... a slightly amusing visual but incorrect none the less.
Re:must... protect.... god... (Score:5, Funny)
I've got to change my default font, I first read that as "SMITE HIM WITH LLAMAS!" which was of course incorrect...
I would pay good money to see someone smited (smitten?) with llamas.
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According to http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/smitten?s=t [reference.com], you're ok with smitten. However you should probably be a bit more specific about which definition you mean. One would be rather amusing to see, the other sort of disgusting in a beastial sort of way
And, I'm not sure the llamas would appreciate either
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There you go.
Sometimes I miss the forest for the trees...
Re:must... protect.... god... (Score:4, Funny)
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Did someone ask you to care? The fact that rather than skip over it, you took time to point out how much you don't care says something about you though.
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The fact that rather than skip over it, you took time to point out how much you don't care says something about you though.
I hope you're aware of the irony of you saying that. Why didn't you just skip over my post?
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I'm not the one trying to make a song and dance over "I don't care".
So no, there is no irony. Just your hatred of a dead man.
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Just your hatred of a dead man.
Where did I say I hated anyone?
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Even though Bill and Steve were fierce competitors, they were sort of two halves of a whole. The "yin" and "yang", so to say. When you've known somebody for that long and had such an intense common interest, animosity tends to get lost if something truly bad happens to the other.
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And Bill Gates is probably the last famous person I would say had a polished public image. He's always struck me as being a pretty real person, as far as famous people go.
Coming soon! (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Coming soon! (Score:5, Funny)
Not square enough. Barge?
Re:Coming soon! (Score:5, Funny)
Not square enough. Barge?
As long as it doesn't have rounded corners.
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Gonna just squirt on down to Cabo on my Yune.
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Apple iBoat (because Yacht is too specific)
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They already have one
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Octopus_(yacht)
Paul Allen actually has a second one that is almost 100m long as well. He's a fan of big yachts.
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Competition is often complex. (Score:5, Insightful)
We hear and see stories about bitter company rivals. However at the same time they are also partners.
For the most part it is business it isn't personal.
In areas where they are competing in the same spot, they will be quite bitter rivals, however if a different product supports the other company they will be best friends.
Microsoft Fought OS's while partnered in Office.
Re:Competition is often complex. (Score:5, Insightful)
You see the same thing among lawyers... they may be bitter rivals in court, but then go out for drinks and have a few laughs afterwards. You have to figure two people in direct competition will probably have more in common with each other than with another random person. Just because they are professional rivals doesn't mean they can't have a great personal relationship.
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kind of like athletes?
chances are these people went to school together or have friends in common and see each other at holidays or common functions
i've known officers in the army who trained each other in west point and ended up in the same unit or assuming command of a unit from a former upper classman
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Hardly the same thing. Athletes often have friends on rival teams, but officers aren't usually pals with their counterparts in enemy armies.
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Umm.... I'm not so sure about that. Especially in civil wars, high ranking officers are often friends with each other.
US Grant and Robert E. Lee is the classic example, but there are numerous others.
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Many officers knew each other before the war but Grant was a nobody before the war. Lee had been important before the war (He had an almost perfect record at West Point). They had met once in Mexico but Lee didn't remember the meeting. It was rumored that Lee was offered command of the entire army in the North but declined when Virginia went with the South. But there were many moments were former friends and even families would be on opposite sides. This led to some very hard feelings especially in areas wh
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More like Grant and Longstreet, who were cousins-in-law.
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Actually, years back, we used to have this type of thing with our lawmakers in Washington, DC.
I think it was Tip O'Neal and Reagan, that
Re:Competition is often complex. (Score:4, Interesting)
No, Obama didn't start the fire, so to speak...
But I believe he and his administration have pushed it as far as they possibly can, and have become one of the main polarizing factors we have in govt and society today.
When he was running, there was quite a lot of talk of him bringing people together, reaching across aisles, being a govt. of openness, etc.
That just goes against what his real ideology is IMHO.
I see him and the current administration as being more devicive (sp?) than any other previous administration going back like to Nixon.
Is there anything, major and specific, that the Republicans have compromised on that you can use to blame Obama for? I'm an (I) but as far as I can tell, we have a 1980's style Republican in the office of the President. Elections have been such that the rest of the Republican's have just moved so far to the right that old style Republican's now make up the core of the Democratic party and the old Left is now (still) sitting in Occupy Wall Street camps, being mostly ignored by the media.
Did the Republicans agree to raise income taxes on the top 2% yet? How about giving parity to labor and capital int he tax rates - I see labor taxed at ~35% and capital at under 15% after deductions are taken into account. Is Social Security Tax now paid on dividends? No, of course not, that would increase equity in the US and reduce the horrible shift in the US Gini index.
So, please enlighten us all, what is a major sacrifice the Republican party has made in efforts to be bi-partisan? It's not real control, defense cuts, coal or oil subsidies. I don't recall them even voting to increase taxes so the damn FDA can have a meat inspector visit a plant every year, much less the chemical ones like West Texas. What mega-multi-billion dollar program they ran in favor of are they willing to cut?
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We hear and see stories about bitter company rivals.
You'd be surprised. Very often, two companies that you'd think compete are actually aiming at subtly different customers and can achieve more by working together.
Re:Competition is often complex. (Score:5, Insightful)
I understand the cynicism, but I don't see what benefit there is to an uber-billionaire who no longer runs anything except a philanthropic organization where he gives away his own money, to worry about "emulating compassion and humanity for the media".
Ultimately, I don't care, either. Actions speak louder than words. Emulate whatever the fuck you want, as long as you're giving away hundreds of millions of dollars to solve fundamental problems in the world and try to build a structure with which your money will provide the most long-term benefits continued far into the future.
Re:Competition is often complex. (Score:5, Insightful)
I prefer Bill Gates trying and perhaps failing at charity in an attempt to be a decent person to Bill Gates trying and succeeding in being a douchebag.
Actually operating a charity is not as easy as you think it is. It's not just a matter of wrapping up some food and sending it to starving kids in Ethiopia. If that were the case, we'd have solved hunger long ago, as we already make more than enough food for every person on Earth.
Re:Competition is often complex. (Score:4, Interesting)
I prefer Bill Gates trying and perhaps failing at charity in an attempt to be a decent person to Bill Gates trying and succeeding in being a douchebag.
Actually operating a charity is not as easy as you think it is. It's not just a matter of wrapping up some food and sending it to starving kids in Ethiopia. If that were the case, we'd have solved hunger long ago, as we already make more than enough food for every person on Earth.
The issue isn't Bill Gates "trying and perhaps failing at charity". The problem is that an enormous amount of the work done by his foundation is actually harmful, not beneficial.
Why has the Gates Foundation invested hundreds of millions of dollars in oil companies in Africa (who are among the biggest polluters and whose pollution is causing substantial harm to the local people)? Why has the foundation invested in dozens of the worst polluting companies in the U.S. and Canada? Why has the foundation invested enormous amounts of money in big pharma companies who are actively fighting against making inexpensive medications available to developing nations?
Why? Because that's how Bill Gates and all his billionaire friends make money, now and in the future. Less than 20% of Gates' wealth comes from Microsoft stock.
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The issue is actually easy.
Corporations are in it to make more money. They will try to do choices that will maximize their money. However Charities have a lot of addenda across them. Some of them are actually just like the corporation and are in it for the money, they will spend 70 cents for every dollar so they can keep 30 cents for every dollar. They are others who will say feed the children, so they can convince them to join their cult or religion.
Re:Competition is often complex. (Score:5, Insightful)
Considering that he has more money than anyone could spend in ten lifetimes, Gates' philanthropy is like you buying a hamburger for a homeless man. I'm just not impressed. I'm far more impressed with the hungry man who shares half that hamburger with another homeless man.
You do realise that no-one is doing anything to try and impress you. Your attempts to judge the worthiness of other people's charity is not only unseemly, it's irrelevant.
Re:Competition is often complex. (Score:5, Insightful)
If you look at what Bill Gates has been doing with his time and money [gatesfoundation.org] since he quit Microsoft, it's hard to make the case that he is lacking compassion and humanity. He is doing more and higher-profile philanthropy than any other billionaire I can think of, and doing a lot more good in the world than an average citizen like me is in a position to.
Which is not to say he's a saint. How he got his money is certainly open to criticism: I certainly disapprove of that.
If you feel {compelled, qualified, entitled} to assess the man's character, please consider all the facts. Myself, I don't really know the guy.
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and doing a lot more good in the world than an average citizen like me is in a position to.
That's true on an absolute scale, but not on a relative one.
Bill Gates is only giving away money he doesn't need. He could burn 90% of his fortune today and it wouldn't make a dent to his style of living.
A lot of average citizen are giving away money for good causes that they could very well use themselves, and that does make a difference to them.
While Bill's money is more in absolute terms and has more effect and he can reach places you couldn't, it is very likely that you are making the bigger sacrifice.
Re:Competition is often complex. (Score:5, Insightful)
That might be true, if he actually had heirs. Mr. Gates has already stated that he is not leaving anything to his kids, and he has enough money to last him until he dies, so it kind of makes your argument kind of silly.
MSBill donates to himself. (Score:2)
.
Did y
Re:Competition is often complex. (Score:5, Insightful)
Great fortunes are curses onto the kids.
Gates knows that. He doesn't want his kids/grandkids turning out like a Hilton, Getty, Rockefeller or Kennedy.
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Well, killing them off is certainly ONE way to help eradicate hunger in those areas.....
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I have always suspected that Bill G. believed he was doing the public a favor by strong arming them into a common platform. Paternalistic or Sociopath?
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That's not actually true. He was "saving" us from a world dominated by overpriced IBM time-sharing systems, and Sun, SGI, workstations. The world of the vertically-integrated systems.
There was no such thing as "personal computers" - and commodity hardware didn't really exist until the IBM PC and Apple I came on the market. As Microsoft was an independent software company, Bill Gates' "vision" was that by de-coupling the software from the hardware, he was providing a solution to the high-priced systems th
Re:Competition is often complex. (Score:5, Insightful)
Gates had stated through his entire career at Microsoft that he would give most of his fortune to charity and he does appear to be doing that,
I do not wish to speak ill of the dead but Jobs was not renowned for any charitable works and certainly made little mention of them.
Re:Competition is often complex. (Score:4, Informative)
In 2012, Gates ended up 7 billion dollars *richer* [businessinsider.com] after "giving away" billions --- to the "charity" that re-invests in the companies that Gates holds the rest of his fortune in. Pretty convenient to "accidentally" make 7 billion dollars in a year, while trying to "give away" your wealth. Almost as if the Gates Foundation was actually a wildly successful tax-sheltered front for advancing the extremely profitable interests that Gates is heavily invested in, that, after a few years of initial start-up investment, is now paying back ridiculously high dividends.
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No, the $7B gain was *including* "donating" $36B to his "charity" --- Bill G's investments (in companies that benefit from his "philanthropic" advocacy for global corporatism) returned him $36+7 billion dollars (read the linked article). When you publicly say you're working towards "giving away all your money to charity," but your net worth is *growing* faster than you can give away, and your "charity" organization is linked to all sorts of shady moneygrubbing interests --- there's room for quite a bit of s
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Gates knows quite well that emulating compassion and humanity for the media is a savvy move;
To what end? There's the flaw in the logic of your cynicism. When you're one of the richest people in the world, and you've retired young. You do whatever makes you happy, without needing to care less about the media or anyone else thinks.
So why do an interview? I haven't seen this one, but they are generally to push some charitable enterprise.
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That bitterness is making you twisted.
It's perfectly possible to have hated Gates for what he did with Microsoft without having to twist the world so his charity isn't really a charity but an organ of evil.
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I do judge Gate's philanthropic works on their own merits, independent of Microsoft. That's why, when I see the Gates Foundation name showing up as the major donor for all sorts of things that *I already think are twisted evil* before I knew Gates was involved, I get pretty cynical. I don't like the push for poorer countries to sign on to international "intellectual property" treaties to prevent them from mass-producing life-saving medications without generating profit for Western pharmaceutical oligopolies
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Like that, only that you'd have been happier to so thoroughly destroy him that he could never play chess again, and take every cent that he had, and leave him homeless to die starving on the street. The only reason you don't is that you're not *that* much better a player than him --- so until then, you act friendly and drink beer together.
Thinking about your mortality... (Score:3, Insightful)
Thinking about your mortality is possibly the MOST constructive thing you can do, at least as far as not being an a-hole is concerned.
Re:Thinking about your mortality... (Score:5, Insightful)
Thinking about your mortality is valuable when you have all the time in the world ahead of you. Thinking about it when it is an immediate certainty is a detriment.
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A man that spends time thinking about mortality doesn't do shloads of LSD, go on some whack-a-nut "frutarian" diet, and put off tumor removal surgery for months.
Many things can be said about Jobs, but rational concern for his own health was not one of them.
Not very surprising. (Score:5, Funny)
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1st rule in business (Score:5, Insightful)
You never talk bad (in public) about a rival who is dead. It's poor form.
Had Jobs still been alive, things would be different.
Re:1st rule in business (Score:5, Insightful)
It's not just a matter of bad form. It's just a matter of something most people would never want to do, Gates included. It's exciting and driving to compete with a rival and to egg that rivalry on. When a respected rival passes -- especially one who was part of this back and forth spurring on for decades through something as amazing as the revolution of computing -- it's a huge personal loss. It's something and someone you miss.
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Despite the business rivalry Gates and Jobs seemed to get along well in public, at least when the cameras were rolling. I've seen interviews with them on stage together and they seemed respectful of each other.
Most people don't want to speak ill of the deceased, even if they were rivals. Of course Richard Stallman is an exception. He was badmouthing Jobs before the man's corpse was cold. RMS has zero class, he could learn a thing or two from Gates.
Re:1st rule in business (Score:5, Insightful)
RMS is stone-cold focused. Not saying that makes him very comfortable to be around, but you always know he's being sincere.
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Re:1st rule in business (Score:5, Insightful)
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That's because talking smack is only a part of the game. It's not personal. To keep talking smack once the competition is takes things from professional to personal, which is indeed bad form.
These types of people only stop competing with each other at death, so the smack talk will continue until somebody dies.
Note this doesn't mean Bill Gates is no longer competing with Apple. It's just that he's aiming in Tim Cook's direction now.
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Except that wasn't the case here.
http://allthingsd.com/video/?video_id=60C4F9FA-9AD5-4D04-8BB6-015AEBB1C052 [allthingsd.com]
Gates's current position in life... (Score:5, Funny)
Gates's magnanimity toward his former rival and Apple is a reflection, perhaps, of his current position in life:
Yeah, Gates being alive and Jobs being dead, mainly.
Both are assholes (Score:4, Interesting)
Yes, it's a shame a vindictive billionaire, who disavowed his daughter for nearly 20 years, didn't get to see his yacht finished before he died.
Bill Gates is a fascinating turn-around story. (Score:5, Insightful)
I've long been fascinated by the evolution of Bill Gates. I cut my teeth in this field as an engineer at Netscape, where I watched along with the rest of the industry as Microsoft did what they did to Netscape and all of the following legal proceedings and DoJ activities ensued. While I still respected the story and beginning of Gates (reading everything I could about him, when I was a teenager), I hated Mr. Borg with a passion and everything about Microsoft. It was what drove me to the arms of Linux and, ultimately, Unix (and my career therein).
Then, he decided to move on from just leading a tech and business army and raking in cash to making finding a way to properly use that cash for the betterment of man. We saw a completely different side of him. Perhaps a new side of the guy that game with maturity and wisdom. I gained a completely new respect for him. I still disagree with some of his views, completely disagree with some of his former business practices, am frustrated and dismayed with a lot of Microsoft's current endeavors and decisions . . . but as a man -- I've come to have a lot of admiration for what he's doing. He's a great example for the rest of the world's wealthiest in doing something truly constructive and beneficial with their unimaginable wealth.
Americans love a success story and we love a story of personal redemption. The only thing we love more than hating someone is them turning things around and giving us reasons to be in their corner. This is one of those stories. And, personally, I find his activities a solid reminder in my own personal life to remember how fortunate I am in my career. As a direct result, I make a point of doing what I can to support things like Engineers Without Borders. I bet many other engineers out there have found the same respect and inspiration.
I also find it sad that, for as inspiring as I found Jobs as far as business and design, there is simply no similar compelling feeling in that same way, after his passing.
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Uhm, he actually makes money on his "charities", which in really just funnel funds to MS through the backdoor. All the excusive MS-only licenses he sells to entire third world nations in exchange for healthcare donations are probably not doing them a net favor.
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Well, except for provide roads, school systems, emergency medicine, justice systems, police protection, fire protection, civil defense, national defense, libraries, research subsidies...
Yup, all nothing.
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Some people are just there for the money. Others are all about the game. I think this is especially prevalent in Lawyers and Engineers. You want to win - whatever game it is you're playing. When Gates played computer monopoly, he played to win. Now he's playing save the world.
I'm not sure whether Jobs was just about the money (though I suspect it), whether he felt his defeat early on meant he could never play another game, or if his early death simply meant he never had the option to switch games.
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No, Jobs wasn't about the money either. He was about making the world look the way he wanted it to. It's just that the money was both the means of doing it, and the measure of his success.
While I doubt he was upset with the money, nothing I know about him leads me to believe that it did more than enable him to be as ambitious as he wanted to be. I think he would have been almost as happy as a bum on the street if he's seen that everyone was walking around with one of his products in their pocket and his
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Like you, I've been watching the evolution of Gates from the early days. I started out disliking him and his predatory business practices. In the early days it seemed to me like he stole almost all of the good things that made Microsoft strong (DOS-CPM, Windows-MacOS, MSN-Internet, Zune-iPod, etc). The company used highly unethical means to absorb, overpower, or destroy competitors. It's products seemed nothing more that badly cloned copies of more innovative ideas.
Over time though I have watched him develo
Re:Bill Gates is a fascinating turn-around story. (Score:4, Insightful)
Or, marrying a woman who probably told him "you're a dick, fix it." Won't be the first time a guy was whipped into shape by a good woman.
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Picture of Bill tearing up (Score:4, Funny)
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What did you expect them to discuss? (Score:5, Funny)
Jobs' charity efforts?
Magnanimity... (Score:3)
Gates's magnanimity toward his former rival and Apple is a reflection, perhaps, of his current position in life: it's been nearly five years since his last full-time day at Microsoft, and all of his efforts seem focused on his philanthropic endeavors. He simply has no reason to rip a rival limb from limb in the same way he did as Microsoft CEO.
Well... there's not much of a reason to rip a rival limb from limb when he's already dead. It'd be in pretty poor taste, actually, and I'd expect Gates to avoid badmouthing Jobs if only to avoid looking like an asshole.
Also, their relationship was reportedly far less adversarial than people tended to assume. Most of the people who were supposedly in-the-know claimed that they were friends to some extent, and got along pretty well in spite of disagreeing on a lot of things.
Please don't link to the actual CBS video (Score:5, Interesting)
By all means, please DO NOT link us to http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=50146679n [cbsnews.com].
May not work on an iPad or Windows 8 tablet.
link to interview (Score:2)
http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=50146679n
dude, it was only 10 seconds of the interview (Score:2)
Re:Oh come on Bill (Score:4, Insightful)
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I don't think that's what he meant. It isn't personally constructive. A yacht may seem stupid to you, but it was important to a dying man and gave him something to occupy his time and energy, which is valuable in a time like that. Sure, maybe he could have spent his remaining months in his frail body overseas handing out cash or something, but whatever.
Re:Oh come on Bill (Score:5, Insightful)
Oh. I got it. He's got money. Therefore he's evil.
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Oh. I got it. He's got money. Therefore he's evil
Phew, glad I didn't have to point that out to you.
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Try tallying the carbon footprint and resource consumption of a yacht versus a garden.
Heheheheheh, yeah, I'm sure you're really concerned about those things, even when not pretending to ``be an intellectual'' online social crusader, right?
Also consider how many lives you could save with how much it costs to build a massive yacht.
How many lives could you be saving right now, were you not posting on Slashdot? Zero, because you are a pathetic, autistic, worthless loser who has to play an armchair psychoanalyst and ethic philosopher just to muster enough petty joy to avoid killing yourself.
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I suspect Gates is being magnanimous here. It seems quite likely that Gates was trying to talk with Jobs about the Gates Foundation and to seek his support in his waning days. The fact that Jobs (who had a notoriously anti-charity reputation) only wanted to talk about his damned yacht is telling. If that is true, then Gates is being quite generous to only mention the detail about his yacht, and not the part about Jobs rebuffing his charitable request.
Re:Oh come on Bill (Score:5, Interesting)
To me it seemed kind of pointless and physically it wasn't easy for him. As I suspected, it was only a few months later that he ended up in the hospital because of his ongoing heart problems, suffered a stroke and died.
These tables were monstrous and incomplete. Nobody wanted them, so eventually they were dismantled.
The missing part of the story is that this man survived over 40 years after open heart surgery and was relatively active in spite of several heat attacks and periodic bouts with other debilitating health problems. Part of the reason he managed to do this was that in spite of his often poor health he never stopped living the life he wanted to live. He may very well have known he'd never finish the tables, but he loved the process. It got him up in the morning.
I think lots of people when faced with mortality will spend more time with their families and trying to do the things they wished they had been doing all their lives. Some people were already doing it. That may be the case with Jobs. I'm not saying he wasn't a jerk and that he didn't have regrets. I'm sure he did. But that doesn't change what brought him joy.
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And I'm sorry I have MOD points; but, wont give them to you today. I felt saying, "Thank you," directly to you was more important to me today. You brought a smile, a tear, and some humanity to /. today.
Thank you.
wasting time (Score:5, Interesting)
Many years ago, I once spent a Saturday trying to make the Catalan solids out of wood, using cheap tilt vises, a homemade rotary table, and a poor man's milling machine (an end mill in a cheap drill press that couldn't hold it steady). Didn't get very far-- the tools simply didn't have the precision needed to do a good job. Even though we economized too much on the tools, they were still ridiculously expensive. Why did I try that way? I was following my father's vision of how such a thing should be done, and machinery was what he grew up with. Another Saturday, I used a different approach of making a paper model and filling the interior with epoxy. This worked much better but still had problems. For one, epoxy has a shelf life. It will not harden properly if it is too old, and this was. Another is that epoxy generates heat when it is curing, and this was a large enough mass to become almost too hot to touch. I don't know if an even larger mass could get hot enough to cause real problems such as fires and melting, but it was something to keep in mind. Then my father wanted to employ number punches to number the sides, as if hardened epoxy was just as malleable as metal. To satisfy him, I tried it, and of course the epoxy shattered. Today, those shapes would be a trivial job for a 3D printer.
The point? If I had spent those Saturdays playing computer games, no one would have thought anything of it. But when I mentioned this use of a Saturday, I got a lot of strange looks, and a few queries about why I had "wasted" my time so. My brother warned his fiancee, who dislikes nerds, that I was likely to show off those polyhedrons. It was almost as if I had contracted a contagious disease, the way people acted about the whole thing. Nice when your own brother inoculates his circle against your weirdness, so that they all know to keep their distance and not give you any opportunities to bore the hell out of them and show off how nerdy you really are.
You don't know what specifically Jobs and Gates were discussing about yachts. If it was ways of fitting the ship for cleanup of oil spills, plastics, or other pollution, or for some sort of science like ocean or hydrothermal vent research, or as a test bed for Internet communication over vast expanses of empty ocean (think how that could benefit the Pirate Bay), I would not call that a waste of time. And even if it was none of that, it likely was something of some use. I hardly think Jobs and Gates would have discussed the sort of crass, trashy thing a moronic joker like Donald Trump would do, such as solid gold plumbing fixtures which serves no good purpose, as it is only to inspire jealousy by rubbing in how incredibly filthy rich the owner is, and that only works on fellow fools.
Re:So...no more evil BORG icon (Score:4, Funny)
Re: (Score:2)
And why not? He was on a multi-decade winning streak, I'd be upbeat too.
Re: (Score:2)
Would you let yourself be implanted with a Microsoft device?? I wouldn't, and I am a device-implanted cyborg! So I think that gates-of-borg icon is hilarious for that reason.
"Set your phasers on bluescreen!"