A challenge to Bill Gates (was: Interact)

From: R. D. Davis <rdd_at_smart.net>
Date: Thu Jan 18 23:27:17 2001

On 19 Jan 2001, Iggy Drougge wrote:
> My, I must say he comes off as a quite sociable and genuine person, here, not
> the ruthless executive we've all come to know and hate.

It appears that what we need to do is to find a way to set the record
straight on this, such as for Bill Gates to make an appearance on this
list. Perhaps some of him have, or haven't, misjudged him, but, if
will show up here, perhaps we could withold the flames until we find
out how the _real_ Bill Gates thinks about computers and operating
systems. What I'd like to really know is what he'd like to see an
operating system be like if he could start over again from scratch.
If Mr. Gates was challenged to design the ultimate operating system
that was both easy for computer neophytes to use, yet also hacker
friendly so that people who like to hack hardware and software would
also feel at ease with it, which could support many users at one time,
and also had excellent security, and with a reasonable degree of
backwards compatibility with modems, hard drives and networking, etc.,
what sort of idea would he arrive at? This group, and participants in
it, with all of their knowledge of classic computers, could provide a
wealth of knowledge for helping to design such a system.

Let's challenge Bill Gates to step away from Microsoft, and begin an
effort to create the world's most useful operating system, that is
also the most secure operating system, which could somehow also result
in innovations that protect data in ways which most flavors of UN*X
and Windows-NT fail to do, leading to a world in which data can truly
be transmitted securely, with open-source and no "back doors," where
people don't have to worry about the privacy of medical records, for
example, being, breached due to network problems and the increasing
number of ASPs with ties to large pharmaceutical companies who want
such data for marketing purposes and to sell to other companies. I
realize that Mr. Gates has been involved wiht companies that don't
respect such privacy, but can he change, for _his own benefit_? He
has wealth and power, but still has a lot of disrespect - which, I'm
sure he'd like to turn to true heartfelt respect.

If Bill Gates truly wants to achieve lasting greatness and respect,
and be someone that his descendents will be able to look back on with
much admiration, things which he still has a chance to do, perhaps he
will. Will he accept the challenge? I doubt that he'll ever see this
message; however, should he read it, what will he think? After all,
he is in an excellent position to lead the way in making many
_beneficial_ changes.

RDD

--
Copyright (C) 2001 R. D. Davis The difference between humans & other animals: 
All Rights Reserved            an unnatural belief that we're above Nature & 
rdd_at_perqlogic.com 410-744-4900 her other creatures, using dogma to justify such
http://www.perqlogic.com/rdd   beliefs and to justify much human cruelty.
Received on Thu Jan 18 2001 - 23:27:17 GMT

This archive was generated by hypermail 2.3.0 : Fri Oct 10 2014 - 23:33:47 BST