Re: Not "Satanism;" realism.

["Eric M. Bennett" <ericb@pobox.com>]

Stan Johnson wrote:

>You and the other BG, if I'm reading you correctly, have
>been trumpeting the value of intellectual property. I'm simply saying
>that Gates had *much* more than that, and from what I see, only had
>what IP he did have courtesy of other's naivete and other non-nerdish
>factors. He had lots, but IP was not part of it, except as borrowed or
>stolen.

Regardless of how he got the IP, without it IBM would have had no interest
in him regardless of his abilities as a con artist.  And regardless of
Gates' connections at IBM, IBM still went to Kildall first.

>He must surely be the worst possible example to use in arguing the
>value of innovation and creativity, except in the sense of the con
>artist.

True.  But this doesn't do anything to change the argument about the power
of IP in the hands of a small business, regardless of where the IP came
from.

Still, I'll admit that the argument would probably be cleaner if I had used
someone like Steve Wozniak instead.



--
Eric Bennett ( http://www.pobox.com/~ericb/ )
Cornell University, Field of Biochemistry, 377 Olin Chemistry Lab

We have increased our prices over the last 10 years [while]
other component prices have come down and continue to come down.
-Joachim Kempin, Senior Vice President, Microsoft Corp.