RE: Brave New World

[chuck <cswiger@widomaker.com>]

  >acquisition:  his "philanthropy"!  What philanthropy?
  >(Many of us wonder if he will EVER develop
  >a social conscience and make donation for the public
  >good)
  
  It has been done, your just not aware of it. I recall a 10 million donation
  for biotech research to a University was in the news once. Charitable
  contributions made w/ lots of media publicity usually backfire and make
  people think it's being done solely to enhance their image (the pharisees
  making a big show of their giving to the poor). Why don't you (if you have
  the stomach!) look at
  
  http://microsoft.com/BillGates/billgates_l/default.htm
  
  for all kinds of self serving displays of philanthropy like "Gates Supports
  Nelson Mandela Children's fund" - why don't you reasearch a few facts 
  before spewing false characterisations. Get a signed affidavit from the
  Nelson M. Childrens fund stating "MS Never donated anything to us!"
  and then you'll have something. They claim it's a $million contribution.
  
  >There are other examples of history rewritten.
  >I was at a Microsoft Internet Developers'
  >conference where a speaker said that Microsoft was a
  >pioneer of GUI development.  Of course, that is a great
  >exaggeration.  Xerox PARC and Apple were the
  >real pioneers.  Similarly, Microsoft did not pioneer object oriented
  >or C++ programming, though MS speakers sometimes
  >claim this.  AT&T and Stroustrup get the credit there.  And
  >I think Borland had a C++ compiler on the market before
  >Microsoft, though I could be wrong.
  
  Your probably right. MS has rarely, if ever, created anything new - just
  copy or acquire, develop and market.
  An interesting parallel from history is the domination by the RCA corp.
  in the important industry of radio and TV. As a recent public TV program
  pointed out, TV was actually first invented and patented by a private inventor,
  Farnsworth - but darn if RCA didn't do everything to try and buy it up - and
  RCA still made lots of ads saying: "RCA - First in Television".  I have some
  old time radio programs in my collection w/ those ads.