Bill Gates as Robin Hood

It never ceases to amaze me every time that I read Slashdot how many people hate Microsoft and Bill Gates so much for all the wrong reasons. At this point it's so ridiculous that it seems like a Monty Python skit. Even in my job I see it from time to time regarding audio and video codecs. So many intelligent people from big corporations have been taken in by the mass anti-MS hysteria. How silly, for the record the Windows Media Codec is nearly a SMPTE standard and will be directly licensable from MPEGLA (same as MEPG4/MPEG2). IF you look a little harder, you'll find the source code for the decoder and if you want to license it from Microsoft, you can get it here. We definitely can't say the same about Apple, Real or Sony.

As for Linux, I love it but it's still a pain in the ass and at the end of the day Companies don't save anything unless they have tens of thousands of servers like Google, Akamai or Netapp.

Sure Microsoft steals ideas, crushes and strangles competitors and is ruthless in the market. Who isn't? The other guys (Apple, Redhat, Sony, Dell etc.) all used the exact same tactics but just weren't very good at it. The exception was IBM who were great at it but like Microsoft, got their knuckles rapped by the anti-trust commissions in the 80's. Both IBM and Microsoft got defanged by this process, IBM got eaten alive by Microsoft and Microsoft will likely get eaten alive by Google if they don't move fast. They know that too well in Redmond.

Here's the biggest stinker, as much as you can hate this vicious corporate competitor, Bill Gates has done more for world health and poverty than almost any man alive. Let's see Steve Jobs, Larry Ellison, Donald Trump and the other billionaires do the same.