DarkLordoftheMonkeys

I've said a lot of nasty stuff about Micro$oft, mainly because their business practices are immoral, sleazy, and often downright illegal. However, I'm not blinded by hate; I can appreciate some of the people who work for M$, as people, not as employees. My uncle actually works for them, and I respect him.

I actually like Bill Gates, believe it or not. I don't like the company he started, but I like the person who he is. He is generous with his money; a while back he said that if he ever made a fortune he would give it all away, and he has given a lot of it away. He's also a geek. He is the embodiment of what is good about geekdom, and he has shown that geeks and nerds can succeed, that it's not just jocks, actors, and businessmen. He is a symbol of hope for all of us.

Bill Gates has a love for computers, and can appreciate them as more than just a tool for making money. He cares about innovation, and the advancement of technology, and M$ had a lot of potential with him in charge. The problem was that the company followed the same route that most companies follow. It started out as a bunch of computer geeks, people who were genuinely interested in what they were doing, who were doing it for the pleasure of learning and exploring, and out of a desire to contribute to society. Gradually it was overtaken by business majors, people whose only concern is money, and who probably don't even know what a CPU is.

Steve Ballmer is one of these people, and he is the one I hate most. His vows to "fu¢king kill" anyone who makes an alternative product, and tries to find ways to make them illegal. On top of Ballmer's hit list are Linux and Google. Micro$oft is now claiming that Linux is a copy of Windows (essentially), even though it uses none of the source code and runs on a completely different platform. So far they haven't succeeded in killing off any major competitors for a while, and though their revenue has grown, most of its products have failed to gain a significant market share over competitors. The X-Box, the iPod Zune, and Bing are examples of this.

If people actually cared about people and not just money, the world would be a better place. Instead we have Wal Mart preventing their employees from forming a union (which is illegal), AOL telling their employees to coerce people into staying with them, then firing one of them for doing exactly what they told him to do and acting like it was his fault and not theirs (not illegal, but deceptive and blatently hypocritical), and a couple years ago we had Wall Street banks investing money that didn't exist, without giving a single thought to how much they were hurting the economy, and the people who live in America. Thankfully, Obama is in charge now, and he is doing things to end the corruption.

In essence, geeks like Bill Gates are good. Big businesses are evil and should be illegal.