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Speaker 1: Welcome to Behind the Bastards, the show where the Lakers

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Speaker 1: and the Clippers are the same thing, the exact same thing, Sophie, Sophie,

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Speaker 1: We're we're already going. We're we're running, We're running, Sophie. Alright, alright,

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Speaker 1: I record. Are they still keep that all all of

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Speaker 1: this in? I saw that? Are they still owned by

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Speaker 1: Steve Balmer? They are still the Clippers are still owned

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Speaker 1: by Steve Balmer. There they are down zero. They're they're

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Speaker 1: down two games at zero two in the first round,

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Speaker 1: even though they were picked to win and they lost

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Speaker 1: at home both games. It's funny you bring up Steve Balmer.

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Speaker 1: Oh yeah, we're talking up in Microsoft. This is Behind

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Speaker 1: the Bastards, the show that started forty seven seconds ago.

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Speaker 1: Because I didn't inform anyone when it started, because I

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Speaker 1: wanted to say that the Lakers and the Clippers are

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Speaker 1: the same thing. I wanted to make Sophie angry. Didn't

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Speaker 1: make me angry because variants. It's very insulting to compare

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Speaker 1: how we did it. That's how we did it, the

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Speaker 1: same amount as me. That's how we did it. We're

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Speaker 1: doing it. It's done. Welcome to the same amount of

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Speaker 1: rings as the Clippers. She doesn't have a podcast. I

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Speaker 1: think that they are indistinguishable. But you know who's not

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Speaker 1: indistinguishable all of our other guests and our current guest,

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Speaker 1: Andrew T. Because Andrew T is distinguished, a distinguished man,

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Speaker 1: a distinguished podcast guest. How are you doing, Andrew. I'm

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Speaker 1: more of a distinguished podcast guest than a distinguished man,

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Speaker 1: that is for sure. Thanks for having me, Well you are.

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Speaker 1: You are one of my very favorite guests. We always

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Speaker 1: have such a good time when we talk about terrible things.

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Speaker 1: But because you're like talented in bullshit, you're always like

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Speaker 1: working on TV shows. So Sophie and I had to

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Speaker 1: had to sabotage your career in order to get you

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Speaker 1: back on the podcast. So welcome by appreciate it, Thank you. Sorry,

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Speaker 1: I'm sorry about the car bombs, but I don't know

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Speaker 1: any other way to make a podcast. It is it

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Speaker 1: is uh, it's effective. It's it's a way to be heard.

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Speaker 1: That's what people say about car bombs. Effective. Yeah, Well,

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Speaker 1: Andrew today, our show is uh titled. Our working title

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Speaker 1: is Bill Gates the child Molesting is pedophile in the

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Speaker 1: history of slander. Now, Andrew today, you and I are

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Speaker 1: going to have a debate primarily about whether or not

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Speaker 1: Bill Gates sexually traffic children. Now, my stance on the

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Speaker 1: matter is yes, absolutely, and I know your stance is,

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Speaker 1: and I want to make sure I'm getting this right

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Speaker 1: because you talked about this before we started the show. Yes, absolutely,

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Speaker 1: And if you want to dispute this, please sue me.

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Speaker 1: Bill Gates, you pasty, scum sucking coward. Is that that's

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Speaker 1: how you framed it, right? I feel like I wouldn't say, uh,

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Speaker 1: scum sucking. I guess that doesn't feel like me. But

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Speaker 1: everywhere better? Yeah, pretty close. I was hoping when I

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Speaker 1: when I came on the show that there would be

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Speaker 1: less blood on various hands than a typical episode that

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Speaker 1: I've guessed it on. I guess, I guess not. I mean,

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Speaker 1: in a way, we're still talking about imperialism now normally

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Speaker 1: the imperialism you and I talked about is you know

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Speaker 1: our old buddy King Leopold Um. Yeah, one of the greats,

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Speaker 1: and the and the Brazilian dude John of God, Oh god,

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Speaker 1: that was heroic. Yeah, that was horrible. We don't we

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Speaker 1: don't have to do the greatest Hits episode right now,

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Speaker 1: but yeah, that that ship. Was I just I was

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Speaker 1: actually just remember again it was like, okay, so bad

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Speaker 1: with that list of episodes that we've asked. You were

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Speaker 1: also on the episode about the Andaman Islands, which was

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Speaker 1: just Walt, Yes, yes, yes, so I truly I was like,

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Speaker 1: I I will say in all honestly, before I got here,

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Speaker 1: I was like, is there a chance that I was

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Speaker 1: about to potentially make the argument that, um, like, given

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Speaker 1: like the class of person Bill Gates is, was he

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Speaker 1: even the worst of the like tech billionaires? But I

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Speaker 1: suppose I'm about to be disabused. Yeah, that's a debatable point. Um.

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Speaker 1: You know that we had to leave a lot out

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Speaker 1: of this motherfucker of an episode, which is like one

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Speaker 1: of the things that's kind of when you actually try

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Speaker 1: to list all of the damaging things Bill Gates has done, it's, um,

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Speaker 1: it's an additional like course of study and how toxic

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Speaker 1: billionaires are because you realize, like, my god, they're able

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Speaker 1: to do so much. It's because all they all they

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Speaker 1: need to do is like have a whim and shotgun

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Speaker 1: money out to a team of people to make that

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Speaker 1: whim real, and then they've impacted the lives of millions

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Speaker 1: of folks, and it took them like eleven minutes. Yeah

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Speaker 1: or just a yeah, a thought or a whim or

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Speaker 1: or a tweet or whatever said that that is? That

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Speaker 1: was my my only thought. I was like, this one,

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Speaker 1: this one is the like graded on a curve. I'm

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Speaker 1: curious to actually here where Bill Kates land. Yeah, I'm

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Speaker 1: interested in your thoughts on that, Andrew. So without further ado,

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Speaker 1: let's start the episode Part one. Bill Gates is absolutely

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Speaker 1: a sex offender comma and that is legally actionable slander

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Speaker 1: um which which is the So if he can we

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Speaker 1: go with that as the title? No, we can't. Can

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Speaker 1: we publish that? Unfortunately? Unfortunately, unfortunately, I feel like our

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Speaker 1: overlords would be very unhappy with us. All right, well,

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Speaker 1: and I like having a place to live. Well, well,

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Speaker 1: well let's let's put a pin in that. We'll see, Well,

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Speaker 1: let's put a pin in you having a place to live,

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Speaker 1: because who knows how this EID is gonna go cool?

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Speaker 1: So William Henry Gates the Third was born on October

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Speaker 1: in Seattle, Washington, a town too rad for him to deserve.

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Speaker 1: His father was William H. Gates, Sr. Who used to

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Speaker 1: be a lie but now is not that William Gates, Sr.

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Speaker 1: Was a prominent corporate lawyer and a World War Two veteran.

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Speaker 1: His mother, Mary Maxwell Gates, was a girl boss and

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Speaker 1: served on the board of directors for the First Interstate

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Speaker 1: Bank System and the United Way. His mom's dad had

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Speaker 1: been the president of a national bank. So you know money, right,

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Speaker 1: Like your dad, you're your your your your maternal grandpa

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Speaker 1: is a bank president. Your dad's a wealthy corporate lawyer

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Speaker 1: like you've got You're not just like rich, You've got

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Speaker 1: family money, right. So religion was present, but doesn't seem

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Speaker 1: to have been a huge factor in Bill Gates's childhood

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Speaker 1: or in the Gates family childhood. He had. He had

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Speaker 1: two siblings. The family attended a Protestant Reformed church. Bill's

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Speaker 1: parents hoped he would follow in his father's footsteps and

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Speaker 1: pursue a law degree, but from what I've read, they

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Speaker 1: didn't put a lot of pressure on him to follow

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Speaker 1: a specific path. His family was close. They played a

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Speaker 1: lot of board games together, Sunday dinner was at the

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Speaker 1: same time every week, and they wore matching family pajamas.

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Speaker 1: So like, you know, oh my God, like a very

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Speaker 1: very like this family sends out cards every year on time,

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Speaker 1: like it's one of those kind of families exhausting so

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Speaker 1: much so, he was like a real ass pointdexter growing up.

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Speaker 1: Absolutely his name he has, William M. Henry Gates, the

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Speaker 1: third matching damn like he has. And he didn't go

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Speaker 1: by the very cool nickname Bill Hin, which is what

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Speaker 1: I would have. So Bill Gates Senior admitted in interviews

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Speaker 1: in the twenty one century that when Bill Gates, you know,

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Speaker 1: the one we know, was growing up, he was somewhat

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Speaker 1: emotionally distant as a father. Um, and a number of

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Speaker 1: folks have said this, and it's kind of usually written

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Speaker 1: as like, well, this is just sort of like a

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Speaker 1: sign of the times, right, Like he was a man,

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Speaker 1: He was a child of the of the nineteen twenties.

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Speaker 1: You know, that's kind of how those people are gonna

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Speaker 1: are gonna be h. He worked hard, and he left

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Speaker 1: most of the child rearing up to his wife. He

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Speaker 1: was serious, and he talked to his kids like they

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Speaker 1: were adults. His oldest daughter, Lady recalled, he'd come home

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Speaker 1: and he'd sit in his chair and eat dinner. But

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Speaker 1: there was never any kind of warm, give me a

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Speaker 1: hug kind of thing. Now, Bill's mom had been an

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Speaker 1: athlete and an honor student, and she had extremely high

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Speaker 1: standards for her kids. This was less of a push

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Speaker 1: your kids to follow a specific path thing and more

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Speaker 1: of a you have to work hard and do your

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Speaker 1: best at whatever you choose to do kind of thing. Though.

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Speaker 1: She encouraged her children to try music and sports, even

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Speaker 1: if they were bad at those things, because failure was

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Speaker 1: a good experience to have, and Bill was terrible in music,

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Speaker 1: which same now. The Gates children were expected to dress

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Speaker 1: nicely beyond and beyond time. Because both parents were members

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Speaker 1: of high society, they had to learn to socialize with

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Speaker 1: prominent adults at an early age. Bill followed his mother's guidance.

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Speaker 1: He was a voracious reader from an early age, and

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Speaker 1: he read the World Book Encyclopedia series from beginning to end.

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Speaker 1: So yeah, oh god, what are you reading, Bill? Volume Encyclopedia,

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Speaker 1: entire Encyclopedia. Oh my god, I guess I have to say.

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Speaker 1: If you catch your small child reading the encycloped media

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Speaker 1: from beginning to end, you gotta like, you gotta put

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Speaker 1: some poison in his boot or something. You gotta slow

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Speaker 1: that bright down. You gotta slow that bright down. He's

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Speaker 1: not going anywhere. Good, Yeah, give him, get him on drugs,

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Speaker 1: you know, just give him some autumn, get him to

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Speaker 1: start him start drinking. That does explain, and Carter, Yeah,

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Speaker 1: it doesn't explain in Carter, it's it's it's it's a

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Speaker 1: shame that after the Encyclopedia giving him so much joy

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Speaker 1: as a child, he went on to commit such a

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Speaker 1: crime against encyclopedia kind as in um so, his parents

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Speaker 1: liked that he was a big reader, and they would

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Speaker 1: reward his hugger for knowledge by offering to buy him

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Speaker 1: any book he wanted. It should not be a surprise

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Speaker 1: that he grew up super nerdy and was bullied from

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Speaker 1: an early age for being small and weird and obsessed

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Speaker 1: with books. Um, which you know, say I was. I

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Speaker 1: was the kid who always had like a book underneath

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Speaker 1: the table in like math class. I got a lot

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Speaker 1: of trouble for that. Ship. Yeah, yeah, I I was

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Speaker 1: definitely a little bit of that. But it's also just

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Speaker 1: like that's not just why he was. He just is

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Speaker 1: such an unpleasant tweet. Yeah, I think he was probably

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Speaker 1: a real real dick um just judging by everything that

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Speaker 1: comes later, I guess it wasn't just the books. Um yeah,

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Speaker 1: So obviously getting bullied caused him to withdraw further into

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Speaker 1: his own little world. Uh, and this started to worry

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Speaker 1: his parents. His dad attempted to counter this by making

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Speaker 1: young Bill work as a greeter at their parties and

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Speaker 1: as a waiter at professional functions for his law firms. Again,

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Speaker 1: exhausting family. I mean, a family that has parties that

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Speaker 1: requires a greeter is yeah, yeah, that's wild ship. Holy

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Speaker 1: fuck Again, this whole family could have just just get him,

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Speaker 1: get him to start drinking, you know, yeah, they could

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Speaker 1: have all used a problem. You know. That's that's That's

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Speaker 1: the thing. His family clearly does not have enough problems.

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Speaker 1: They're rich, they're high society. Uh, they need more problems,

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Speaker 1: is what I'm saying. Holy fuck, you know this is

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Speaker 1: good as I feel like this childhood is gonna possibly

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Speaker 1: start going to feel exonerating, it's amazing. I mean, actually,

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Speaker 1: like we'll get to that in a bit, but it

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Speaker 1: is amazing that, Like it really gives you an insight

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Speaker 1: because his dad comes across as very reasonable in interviews,

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Speaker 1: like just an extremely reasonable man. But then you realize, like, Okay,

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Speaker 1: your kid was getting beat up in school, so your

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Speaker 1: solution was to make him be a waiter to rich

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Speaker 1: people because he thought that would help. Okay, so you

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Speaker 1: you you didn't really have everything together either when you

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Speaker 1: were like, it's that's a that's a weird move, what

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Speaker 1: a horrible solution? Yeah, Oh my god, Okay, okay. Now,

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Speaker 1: most interviews will say that by age eleven, when it

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Speaker 1: came to like intellect, Bill was more or less an adult.

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Speaker 1: We're talking about maturity here, but his ability to discuss

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Speaker 1: international affairs and business and like generally he was he

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Speaker 1: was a very smart kid. He was. He was, you know,

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Speaker 1: by the time he was eleven or twelve, not really

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Speaker 1: acting like a kid anymore. His dad, to recalled quote,

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Speaker 1: it was interesting, and I thought it was great. Now

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Speaker 1: I will say to you, his mother did not appreciate it.

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Speaker 1: It bothered h And she was bothered because Bill's intellect

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Speaker 1: made him arrogant and led to clashes with his parents.

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Speaker 1: And I'm gonna quote from the Wall Street Journal here,

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Speaker 1: the son pushed against his mother's instinct to control him,

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Speaker 1: sparking a battle of wills. All those things that she

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Speaker 1: had expected of him, a clean room, being at the

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Speaker 1: dinner table on time, not biting his pencils suddenly turned

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Speaker 1: into a source of a big source of friction. The

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Speaker 1: two fell into explosive arguments. He was nasty, his sister

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Speaker 1: says of her brother. Mr. Gates Senior played the role

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Speaker 1: of peacemaker. He'd sort of break them apart and calm

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Speaker 1: things down, says the eldest sibling. The battles reached a

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Speaker 1: climax at dinner one night, when Bill Gates was around twelve.

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Speaker 1: Over the table, he shouted at his mother and what

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Speaker 1: today he describes as utter total sarcastic, smartass kid rudeness.

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Speaker 1: His father responded by throwing a cold glass of water

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Speaker 1: at his son's face, which his son responded sarcastically, thanks

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Speaker 1: for the shower. Oh god, this doesn't sound fun. What

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Speaker 1: a tool? What an unbelievable tool? Real, young Sheldon vibes up. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: I know, I fucking fuck you child, Bill Gates. I

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Speaker 1: mean again, this is why more children need to drink um.

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Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, slow him down, We gotta slow down. Generation.

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Speaker 1: What is it after Z Z one? I mean, eventually

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Speaker 1: it's going to be simply generation final, Generation final? Thank god?

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Speaker 1: After Z? Is there an after Z? I don't think

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Speaker 1: I don't think it's happened yet. But like what the

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Speaker 1: Bill Gates story informs us of is that somewhere out

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Speaker 1: there is a kid who could become the future Bill

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Speaker 1: Gates if somebody doesn't put a steel reserve in his

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Speaker 1: hand faster, like or some Boone's farm. Kids love Boone's farm.

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Speaker 1: Give him some Booneist farm. When I get rich, I'm

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Speaker 1: going to start a charity that just distributes Boone's farm.

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Speaker 1: Too precocious children. I mean, he just brings sparks back.

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Speaker 1: That's felt like sparks is good for kids. Yeah, that's

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Speaker 1: how it basically got. You know, hey, kids, it's an

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Speaker 1: energy drink, but it'll make it dumber. Now. Um. The

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Speaker 1: throwing water in his son's face story is a story

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Speaker 1: you'll find a lot written in articles about Bill, particularly

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Speaker 1: in the early two thousand's. Now this is the period

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Speaker 1: we're talking about, like how what led to this today?

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Speaker 1: But the early two thousands was when Bill started kind

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Speaker 1: of stepping away from Microsoft and into philanthropy, and so

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Speaker 1: there were suddenly a rush of articles like because he

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Speaker 1: had been I don't people don't really know this. We're

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Speaker 1: gonna be talking about why I think people who weren't

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Speaker 1: you know, super cogent during the nineties. He was like

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Speaker 1: the demon to the devil to a lot of people

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Speaker 1: in the nineties, and then throughout the outs he got

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Speaker 1: really rehabilitated. His image did because he went from like

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Speaker 1: the evil overlord of the mega corporation that was, you know,

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Speaker 1: fucking everything up to like the guy ring malaria. Basically,

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Speaker 1: I guess it is true because because it is a

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Speaker 1: little hard to remember how pervasive Microsoft. Yeah, like right

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Speaker 1: you literally, yeah, unless you are a very unpleasant Bill

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Speaker 1: Gates type, couldn't have a computer without it. Yeah, yeah,

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Speaker 1: it was. It was a different era of technology. And

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Speaker 1: so this, for whatever reason, when this like rush of

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Speaker 1: articles came out kind of burnishing Bill's reputation in the

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Speaker 1: early two thousands, this story wound up on them a lot,

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Speaker 1: and they tended to portray this moment his dad throwing

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Speaker 1: water in his face. It's like a turning point for

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Speaker 1: young Bill Gates where he realized like, oh, I'm being

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Speaker 1: an asshole, and where his parents like when everything kind

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Speaker 1: of like turned around for him and his family. Um,

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Speaker 1: but I've I've run across other articles that were written

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Speaker 1: in a similar time period, and we're less of like

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Speaker 1: shameless plugs, um more. Yeah, And these articles make it

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Speaker 1: clear that his behavioral problems went deeper than that, and

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Speaker 1: there was not as clean a break when they stopped

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Speaker 1: as as Gates and his family like the portray. I

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Speaker 1: found a Washington Post article that noted Bill spent so

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Speaker 1: much time in his room during his adolescence that his

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Speaker 1: mom would buzz him on the house intercom to ask

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Speaker 1: what he would do it was doing, and he would

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Speaker 1: shout back, I'm thinking, have you ever tried thinking? So again?

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Speaker 1: He's he's he's a real he's a real asshole about

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Speaker 1: being smart. Like my mom would have slapped the ship

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Speaker 1: out of me if I'd said, like, not that that's good,

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Speaker 1: but like I would have gotten the ship slept out

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Speaker 1: of for saying yeah, um Now. The fight made it

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Speaker 1: clear to his father and mother that things were getting

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Speaker 1: out of control, so they took him to a therapist.

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Speaker 1: Bill later recalls telling them, I'm telling the the therapist

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Speaker 1: I'm at war with my parents over who is in control.

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Speaker 1: The therapist told his mom and dad that their son

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Speaker 1: was going to eventually win his struggle for independence, so

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Speaker 1: their best bet was to let him have his freedom

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Speaker 1: now and see how he handled it. So that's what

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Speaker 1: they did. They took him out of his old school

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Speaker 1: and they enrolled him in a private school, Lakeside Prep, Uh,

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Speaker 1: And the idea was that this school would give him

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Speaker 1: more freedom and that that would resolve his behavioral problems.

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Speaker 1: I don't know the extent to which he resolved his

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Speaker 1: behavioral issues, because I think he kept being a dick um,

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Speaker 1: but he absolutely loved the school, and it was it's

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Speaker 1: what made him. Going to this specific school is what

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Speaker 1: made him into the man that he became. UM. And

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Speaker 1: it's here I should probably note that of all of

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Speaker 1: the people I've studied in this series, Bill Gates is

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Speaker 1: absolutely the luckiest. I I think he might have the

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Speaker 1: most privileged upbringing I have ever encountered. And that includes

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Speaker 1: like fucking kings, like in terms of like the time

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Speaker 1: he was born, the time he was raised, the resources

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Speaker 1: his family had like not only but it's also like

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Speaker 1: not only did they have money, not only did he

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Speaker 1: grow up in a time when like opportunity was exploding

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Speaker 1: in this country. Um. Not only were his parents upper class,

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Speaker 1: but they were thoughtful and understanding in excess of the

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Speaker 1: norm for his era. They were willing to give him freedoms.

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Speaker 1: That exactly that was very few people are so like,

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Speaker 1: just comprehensively the luckiest man I've ever heard about. Um.

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Speaker 1: He also looked into a good therapist, which people who

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Speaker 1: have tried to find therapists can say is like not

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Speaker 1: a common thing, especially finding a therapist whose answer to

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Speaker 1: behavior problems is going to be you just gotta let

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Speaker 1: your kid do his ship. You know, it's all good, Yeah,

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Speaker 1: it's all good approach. And then he lucked into Lakeside Prep, which,

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Speaker 1: you know, not only was like a lot of rich

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Speaker 1: kids go to fancy schools, Lakeside Prep was not just

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Speaker 1: a fancy school. It was a school with a computer. Now.

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Speaker 1: Bill started there when he was thirteen in nineteen sixty eight,

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Speaker 1: an era for which of people the term computer meant

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Speaker 1: either some ship NASA uses, or like sci fi nonsense.

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Speaker 1: Probably less than one percent of one percent of thirteen

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Speaker 1: year old boys had meaningful access to computers in this

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Speaker 1: time period, and Bill Gates was one of them. That's

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Speaker 1: what I like, just staggeringly fortunate, like at that time.

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Speaker 1: The other it feels like the other possible meaning or

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Speaker 1: access to computer is literally a human being who computes. Yeah, yeah,

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Speaker 1: like a guy with an abacus. Yeah. Um. So the

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Speaker 1: reason that Bill's school had a computer is that when

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Speaker 1: he was in eighth grade, the Mother's Club at Lakeside

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Speaker 1: held a rummage sale and they used the profits from

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Speaker 1: it to buy a Teletype Model thirty three, a SR terminal,

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Speaker 1: and they also rented a block of time on a

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Speaker 1: general electric computer. So Bill gets access to this machine

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Speaker 1: because the Mom's club at his school is forward thinking

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Speaker 1: enough to be like, we should probably get computers. These

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Speaker 1: kids can like that seems like it might be the future. Um.

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Speaker 1: And Bill is immediately obsessed with the machine. He starts programming,

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Speaker 1: he starts creating new like languages and ship um. And

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Speaker 1: he was so good at it. Actually, and this is

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Speaker 1: another ridiculous stroke of luck. He was so good at

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Speaker 1: programming that his school said he no longer had to

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Speaker 1: go to math class so he could spend more time

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Speaker 1: learning computers. It's just like, my god, categorically the luckiest

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Speaker 1: way who ever lived. But also it's like at the

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Speaker 1: time was that even like a thing that made sense, like,

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Speaker 1: I mean, computers were fucking I mean again, I think

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Speaker 1: if you were a smart person and you were someone

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Speaker 1: who could like a forward thinking because like a lot

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Speaker 1: of sci fi writers talking about this, A lot of

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Speaker 1: people new computers were going to be the future. It

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Speaker 1: would still be good to have done a little bit

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Speaker 1: of high school math. I guess, yeah, I mean I

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Speaker 1: assume he was ahead of it. Like they were also

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Speaker 1: like that his kid's good enough at math. He's not good.

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Speaker 1: He doesn't need to. Yeah. Now, when I say there

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Speaker 1: are no self made billionaires, ship like this is why,

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Speaker 1: because there's no way that Bill Gates becomes the multibillionaire

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Speaker 1: he is today if he doesn't have both this and

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Speaker 1: this is like not like leaving out exploitation and stuff.

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Speaker 1: There's no way he becomes a billionaire if he doesn't

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Speaker 1: have the privilege and wild fortunate to have access to

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Speaker 1: this computer. And like a lot of most rich kids

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Speaker 1: didn't have this opportunity, Bill benefited at an early age

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Speaker 1: not just from wealth and social privilege, but from a

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Speaker 1: wonderfully supportive community of moms who had the far sight

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Speaker 1: to buy a computer for their kids to use, and

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Speaker 1: a school that was progressive enough to let him like

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Speaker 1: spend his class time learning to program. And Bill blossomed

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Speaker 1: with all this additional freedom. His dad later recalled that

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Speaker 1: Bill realized, quote, Hey, I don't have to prove my

390
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Speaker 1: position relative to my parents. I just have to figure

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Speaker 1: out what I'm doing relative to the world. And Bill

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Speaker 1: decided the thing he really wanted to do was get

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Speaker 1: good at computers. His first computer program was a tic

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Speaker 1: tac toe game he programmed that let users play against

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Speaker 1: the computer. He was not the only kid obsessed with

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Speaker 1: the computer. Two other boys, Paul Allen and Kent Evans,

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Speaker 1: fell in love with this machine. Um. Paul Allen's one

398
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Speaker 1: of these, the Microsoft founder. Um. He died not too

399
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Speaker 1: long and I think, yeah, man, it is crazy, just

400
00:21:45,720 --> 00:21:50,480
Speaker 1: like you and your buddy from high school becoming billionaires together. Yeah,

401
00:21:50,480 --> 00:21:53,400
Speaker 1: because some moms sell a bunch of junk and buy

402
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Speaker 1: a computer. It's like one of those tic Tac toe things,

403
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Speaker 1: like a bunch of moms in the nineteen sixties hold

404
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Speaker 1: of rummage sale. And then the big Domino is millions

405
00:22:03,920 --> 00:22:10,160
Speaker 1: die of the coronavirus because vaccine access is lockdown. I mean, yeah,

406
00:22:10,200 --> 00:22:12,320
Speaker 1: I went to kind of a hippie high school. So

407
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Speaker 1: the only equivalent to that would be if we had

408
00:22:14,920 --> 00:22:17,520
Speaker 1: been able to be the only humans on earth with

409
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Speaker 1: access to weed. And I guess that would have changed ship.

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Speaker 1: If your school is like, he doesn't have to go

411
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Speaker 1: to math class man. If only they'd given Bill Gates

412
00:22:35,520 --> 00:22:38,920
Speaker 1: weed instead of a computer, he just would have been

413
00:22:38,960 --> 00:22:41,679
Speaker 1: really into Grand Funk Railroad and we could have solved

414
00:22:41,720 --> 00:22:48,280
Speaker 1: avoided a lot of problems. But you know what is

415
00:22:48,320 --> 00:22:53,000
Speaker 1: into Grand Funk Railroad, Andrew m The products and services

416
00:22:53,000 --> 00:22:56,400
Speaker 1: that support this podcast, one of which is Grand Funk Railroad,

417
00:22:56,440 --> 00:23:01,679
Speaker 1: our primary podcast sponsor. They're still alive, right or are

418
00:23:01,720 --> 00:23:08,119
Speaker 1: they dead? I'm gonna google is Grand Funk Railroad dead? Um? No,

419
00:23:08,280 --> 00:23:12,920
Speaker 1: they're still alive. Looks like it to present they were

420
00:23:12,920 --> 00:23:15,760
Speaker 1: disbanded and oh yeah, it seems like it seems like

421
00:23:15,760 --> 00:23:20,800
Speaker 1: they're still going. That's good. That's good. All right, Well, uh,

422
00:23:21,000 --> 00:23:31,119
Speaker 1: listen to Grand Funk Railroad. Here's ads. Ah, we're back.

423
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Speaker 1: We just we just listened to some g f R.

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Speaker 1: I call him g f R Andrew. Um. It's just

425
00:23:36,760 --> 00:23:39,080
Speaker 1: kind of a thing within the g f R community.

426
00:23:39,520 --> 00:23:43,160
Speaker 1: So I don't know why we're talking about Grandfunk Railator today. So, yeah,

427
00:23:43,520 --> 00:23:46,159
Speaker 1: Bill Gates gets real into computers with Paul Allen and

428
00:23:46,200 --> 00:23:49,160
Speaker 1: this other kid, Kent Evans. Now Kent Evans was Gates's

429
00:23:49,240 --> 00:23:52,399
Speaker 1: early best friend. He was a weird kid who carried

430
00:23:52,440 --> 00:23:58,880
Speaker 1: a briefcase filled with business magazine. So I hate this

431
00:23:59,160 --> 00:24:02,840
Speaker 1: high school full of dorks so much. I know I

432
00:24:02,920 --> 00:24:04,920
Speaker 1: was bullied as a kid, but it's making me want

433
00:24:04,920 --> 00:24:08,840
Speaker 1: to go back in time to deliver swirlies. Like, yeah,

434
00:24:09,040 --> 00:24:11,600
Speaker 1: we need like we need, we need time traveling. There's

435
00:24:11,600 --> 00:24:14,360
Speaker 1: a TV pitch time traveling bullies going back to like

436
00:24:14,840 --> 00:24:18,400
Speaker 1: beat up kids who turn into monsters. Let's take care

437
00:24:18,440 --> 00:24:22,879
Speaker 1: of this ship. That's we gotta deal with this. Yeah,

438
00:24:23,080 --> 00:24:25,280
Speaker 1: get some kid who was an incredible bully back in

439
00:24:25,320 --> 00:24:27,800
Speaker 1: the eighties and he retires to like go fly fishing

440
00:24:27,800 --> 00:24:30,040
Speaker 1: in Montana. The government finds him on his farm, like

441
00:24:30,119 --> 00:24:34,600
Speaker 1: you're needed. Yeah, this man can deliver thirteen swirlies in

442
00:24:34,640 --> 00:24:38,359
Speaker 1: the space of seven minutes. No one's ever equal. Bet. Well,

443
00:24:38,400 --> 00:24:40,679
Speaker 1: I guess the show version it would be. You know,

444
00:24:41,119 --> 00:24:43,840
Speaker 1: they need a child to do it, so they assume

445
00:24:43,960 --> 00:24:46,880
Speaker 1: the bullies kid. But the bullies kid is actually very gentle.

446
00:24:47,000 --> 00:24:51,160
Speaker 1: He's a sort of father and son bullying people through ks.

447
00:24:51,240 --> 00:24:53,439
Speaker 1: Got to teach his kid to beat up other kids

448
00:24:55,080 --> 00:24:58,800
Speaker 1: for for the sake of humanity. Oh god, Okay, well

449
00:24:58,960 --> 00:25:01,920
Speaker 1: it's not bad, I know you're listening, green light this ship.

450
00:25:01,920 --> 00:25:04,160
Speaker 1: We're gonna have a script out to you by what Thursday.

451
00:25:04,480 --> 00:25:10,720
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, um, so yeah. Bill Gates is hanging out

452
00:25:10,760 --> 00:25:15,159
Speaker 1: with the briefcase boy, um and Kent pushes Gates. Will

453
00:25:15,440 --> 00:25:17,119
Speaker 1: credits that Kent is the guy who pushed him to

454
00:25:17,119 --> 00:25:19,560
Speaker 1: think big and take risks, and was like like they

455
00:25:19,600 --> 00:25:21,119
Speaker 1: were always talking about what they're going to be, some

456
00:25:21,200 --> 00:25:23,680
Speaker 1: kind of businessman, some kind of politicians like he was.

457
00:25:23,720 --> 00:25:27,439
Speaker 1: He was an ambitious kid. Um And together Gates and

458
00:25:27,480 --> 00:25:30,160
Speaker 1: Alan and another kid named Rick Whaland, who was another

459
00:25:30,200 --> 00:25:35,159
Speaker 1: Microsoft founder, started the Lakeside Programmers Club. Now, despite the

460
00:25:35,240 --> 00:25:37,159
Speaker 1: term club, this was not a hobby for them. The

461
00:25:37,280 --> 00:25:39,680
Speaker 1: goal from the beginning was to find ways to make

462
00:25:39,720 --> 00:25:42,760
Speaker 1: money with computers. I'm gonna quote from the Washington Post here.

463
00:25:43,520 --> 00:25:46,520
Speaker 1: The club operated with minimal supervision. This was by design,

464
00:25:46,600 --> 00:25:49,879
Speaker 1: says Fred Wright, the Lakeside Math chairman who provided that supervision.

465
00:25:50,119 --> 00:25:52,600
Speaker 1: Our philosophy was get a group of smart people together,

466
00:25:52,680 --> 00:25:54,760
Speaker 1: give them tools, and get out of the way. Right

467
00:25:54,840 --> 00:25:57,720
Speaker 1: sets again incredibly lucky that, he says, is the best

468
00:25:57,800 --> 00:26:01,480
Speaker 1: environment to spurre creativity, competition, collaboration. If you want to

469
00:26:01,480 --> 00:26:03,919
Speaker 1: see the roots of Microsoft's culture look no further than

470
00:26:03,960 --> 00:26:07,840
Speaker 1: the Lakeside Programmer Club. Kent's father says the four boys

471
00:26:07,880 --> 00:26:11,040
Speaker 1: spent late night hours at Seattle's computer center Corps c Cubed,

472
00:26:11,160 --> 00:26:13,800
Speaker 1: which offered time on a digital equipment court machine pern

473
00:26:13,840 --> 00:26:17,080
Speaker 1: agreement with Lakeside. When c cubed went out of business

474
00:26:17,119 --> 00:26:20,240
Speaker 1: in nineteen seventy, the Lakeside Programmers Club nearly imploded in

475
00:26:20,240 --> 00:26:22,879
Speaker 1: a civil war. Gates and Evans agreed to buy a

476
00:26:23,000 --> 00:26:25,440
Speaker 1: set of D E C tapes cheap in a bankruptcy

477
00:26:25,440 --> 00:26:28,000
Speaker 1: auction without the knowledge of their partners. They hid the

478
00:26:28,000 --> 00:26:30,120
Speaker 1: tapes in a room at Lakeside, and when Alan learned

479
00:26:30,119 --> 00:26:32,359
Speaker 1: of this, he found and kept them livid. Gates and

480
00:26:32,400 --> 00:26:37,520
Speaker 1: Evans threatened legal action. They were fifteen, So these kids

481
00:26:37,520 --> 00:26:41,600
Speaker 1: are having like like corporate legal spats as like fifteen

482
00:26:41,680 --> 00:26:44,800
Speaker 1: year olds over the secret computing machines they bought and

483
00:26:44,920 --> 00:26:47,040
Speaker 1: hid from each other to keep in leg up on

484
00:26:47,119 --> 00:26:51,800
Speaker 1: their teenage friends. Oh my god, maybe there should have

485
00:26:51,840 --> 00:26:55,440
Speaker 1: been a little more superstition, Like it's one of those

486
00:26:55,440 --> 00:27:00,000
Speaker 1: things you should let kids be kids, you should let

487
00:27:00,040 --> 00:27:04,160
Speaker 1: kids explore. But also someone set said, guys, you think

488
00:27:04,240 --> 00:27:06,960
Speaker 1: you are not you are not a worring series. You

489
00:27:07,000 --> 00:27:10,800
Speaker 1: are not worrying mega corporations. You are children. To share

490
00:27:10,880 --> 00:27:15,639
Speaker 1: the fucking to a normal and stop carrying the briefcase

491
00:27:15,680 --> 00:27:21,240
Speaker 1: around Kent, for the love of God, we hate the briefcase.

492
00:27:21,280 --> 00:27:23,960
Speaker 1: We hate you. Yeah, you're gonna feel bad about that

493
00:27:23,960 --> 00:27:26,240
Speaker 1: in a second. So as their adolescence rolled off, Bill

494
00:27:26,320 --> 00:27:29,520
Speaker 1: and Kent started taking consulting jobs for local companies that

495
00:27:29,560 --> 00:27:31,760
Speaker 1: had computers but no one who knew how to use

496
00:27:31,800 --> 00:27:34,040
Speaker 1: them very well. They would often work in exchange for

497
00:27:34,080 --> 00:27:37,280
Speaker 1: free computing time. In their junior year, a Lakeside teacher

498
00:27:37,359 --> 00:27:40,760
Speaker 1: hired them to automate the school's class scheduling system. They

499
00:27:40,800 --> 00:27:43,800
Speaker 1: did several all nighters to get the program ready. Then

500
00:27:44,000 --> 00:27:46,440
Speaker 1: on Memorial Day of that year, Kent took a break

501
00:27:46,480 --> 00:27:49,560
Speaker 1: to go mountain climbing. Now, he was not an athletic kid,

502
00:27:49,640 --> 00:27:51,119
Speaker 1: but he had become he was, you know, he was

503
00:27:51,160 --> 00:27:53,240
Speaker 1: someone who was prone to like getting obsessed with things,

504
00:27:53,320 --> 00:27:55,960
Speaker 1: and he had decided, he's rather suddenly that he wanted

505
00:27:56,000 --> 00:27:59,160
Speaker 1: to get like good at physical tasks. So he got

506
00:27:59,160 --> 00:28:02,119
Speaker 1: in the mountain climbing um but he wasn't great at it,

507
00:28:02,160 --> 00:28:05,480
Speaker 1: and he slipped and fell to his death on nineteen

508
00:28:05,560 --> 00:28:08,639
Speaker 1: seventy two, so his father later blamed the accident on

509
00:28:08,680 --> 00:28:11,520
Speaker 1: the fact that Kent was too exhausted to pay attention

510
00:28:11,520 --> 00:28:13,520
Speaker 1: on mountain climbing because he'd been coding with Bill Gates

511
00:28:13,560 --> 00:28:17,280
Speaker 1: all night. Um And Gates told the Washington Post, I

512
00:28:17,400 --> 00:28:20,040
Speaker 1: was devastated. Um and He's been very consistent about the

513
00:28:20,080 --> 00:28:22,399
Speaker 1: fact that, like, this was an incredibly traumatic thing his

514
00:28:22,480 --> 00:28:25,040
Speaker 1: best friend dies. Uh. He was actually set to give

515
00:28:25,080 --> 00:28:27,560
Speaker 1: a speech at Kent's funeral, but he couldn't handle doing it.

516
00:28:27,800 --> 00:28:30,119
Speaker 1: It was just too emotional for him. I'm sure this

517
00:28:30,240 --> 00:28:32,360
Speaker 1: is true. His now soon to be ex wife says

518
00:28:32,400 --> 00:28:34,280
Speaker 1: that when she met him, like thirty years later, he

519
00:28:34,359 --> 00:28:36,879
Speaker 1: still talked about Kent all the time. But I have

520
00:28:37,000 --> 00:28:39,200
Speaker 1: to throw in this very odd quote he gave to

521
00:28:39,280 --> 00:28:43,200
Speaker 1: Netflix for a documentary when asked about Kent's death. It

522
00:28:43,280 --> 00:28:46,040
Speaker 1: was so unexpected, so unusual. People didn't know what to

523
00:28:46,080 --> 00:28:49,080
Speaker 1: say to me or do his parents. I sort of thought, hey, Okay,

524
00:28:49,120 --> 00:28:51,000
Speaker 1: now I'm gonna do all these things that we talked about,

525
00:28:51,040 --> 00:28:56,560
Speaker 1: but I'll do it without him. Like that's just a

526
00:28:56,800 --> 00:29:01,200
Speaker 1: weird dude. I think he is, like, because he's really

527
00:29:01,240 --> 00:29:03,600
Speaker 1: consistent about this, being devon and I'm sure it was

528
00:29:03,920 --> 00:29:06,320
Speaker 1: Um that said clearly it was a weird kind of

529
00:29:06,360 --> 00:29:09,840
Speaker 1: friendship because they're engaging in like corporate espionage with their

530
00:29:10,160 --> 00:29:14,360
Speaker 1: other teenage buddies. Like now, with his best friend dead,

531
00:29:14,400 --> 00:29:16,280
Speaker 1: Bill needed a new best friend to stay up all

532
00:29:16,360 --> 00:29:19,080
Speaker 1: night coding with one who wouldn't go mountain climbing. He

533
00:29:19,160 --> 00:29:22,680
Speaker 1: picked Paul Allen. Paul was enrolled at the University of Washington,

534
00:29:22,760 --> 00:29:24,960
Speaker 1: but he would come back to finish the project with

535
00:29:25,000 --> 00:29:27,560
Speaker 1: Gates when he was on break from college. Gates and

536
00:29:27,600 --> 00:29:31,040
Speaker 1: Allen finished coding the program during Gates's senior year while

537
00:29:31,040 --> 00:29:33,800
Speaker 1: he was still seventeen. He and Allen formed a company

538
00:29:33,840 --> 00:29:36,880
Speaker 1: called Trafo Data with with the goal of making traffic

539
00:29:36,920 --> 00:29:39,800
Speaker 1: counting machines. UM. So they they're like they're they're doing

540
00:29:39,800 --> 00:29:42,920
Speaker 1: businesses ship throughout this period Bill's last couple of years

541
00:29:42,960 --> 00:29:46,600
Speaker 1: in high school, but their collaborations weren't all professional. During

542
00:29:46,600 --> 00:29:49,160
Speaker 1: one of his breaks from college, Allen helped Bill Gates

543
00:29:49,200 --> 00:29:52,000
Speaker 1: do something creepy as hell and I'm going to quote

544
00:29:52,040 --> 00:29:54,240
Speaker 1: from a write up in the Cut. When he was

545
00:29:54,240 --> 00:29:56,720
Speaker 1: in high school, he and fellow Microsoft co founder Paul

546
00:29:56,720 --> 00:29:59,440
Speaker 1: Allen would hack into the school scheduling software and signed

547
00:29:59,440 --> 00:30:02,040
Speaker 1: Gates up are all girls classes to up his chances

548
00:30:02,080 --> 00:30:05,240
Speaker 1: of getting a date. Paul did the computer scheduling with me.

549
00:30:05,320 --> 00:30:07,840
Speaker 1: Gates said, Unfortunately for him, he was two years ahead

550
00:30:07,840 --> 00:30:09,360
Speaker 1: of me and he was off to college by then.

551
00:30:09,600 --> 00:30:11,360
Speaker 1: So I was the one who benefited by being able

552
00:30:11,400 --> 00:30:13,080
Speaker 1: to have the nice girls at least sitting near me.

553
00:30:13,280 --> 00:30:15,080
Speaker 1: It wasn't so that I could talk to them or anything,

554
00:30:15,200 --> 00:30:17,560
Speaker 1: but they were there. I think I was particularly inept

555
00:30:17,560 --> 00:30:19,720
Speaker 1: at talking to girls. Are thinking, Okay, do you ask

556
00:30:19,760 --> 00:30:21,880
Speaker 1: them out? Do you not? When I went off to Harvard,

557
00:30:21,960 --> 00:30:23,680
Speaker 1: I was a little more sociable, but I was still

558
00:30:23,680 --> 00:30:30,120
Speaker 1: below average on talking to girls. But okay, that is

559
00:30:30,160 --> 00:30:33,520
Speaker 1: the thing. It's like because I did a little kind

560
00:30:33,520 --> 00:30:36,600
Speaker 1: of fucking computer programming when I was in high school

561
00:30:36,640 --> 00:30:40,720
Speaker 1: and like making like business software, like just make a

562
00:30:40,760 --> 00:30:44,920
Speaker 1: weird quasi pornographic video game, Like that's what you want

563
00:30:44,920 --> 00:30:49,320
Speaker 1: to do? What is happening here? M h. It's it's

564
00:30:49,320 --> 00:30:54,280
Speaker 1: so bizarre because, like I mean, honestly, this is this

565
00:30:54,360 --> 00:30:57,120
Speaker 1: is like some fucking Mark Zuckerberg ship. Right, It's like

566
00:30:57,200 --> 00:31:00,000
Speaker 1: starting Facebook so that you could like spy on girl

567
00:31:00,040 --> 00:31:03,800
Speaker 1: roles and ship. Um, you know, it really is it's

568
00:31:03,840 --> 00:31:06,640
Speaker 1: the same basic idea Bills is from an earlier age.

569
00:31:06,680 --> 00:31:09,560
Speaker 1: He would have done the same thing Zuckerberg did. Um.

570
00:31:09,640 --> 00:31:11,520
Speaker 1: That said, it's also like he's too much of a

571
00:31:11,560 --> 00:31:13,680
Speaker 1: nerd to take advantage of it. He's just sitting in

572
00:31:13,760 --> 00:31:17,440
Speaker 1: class with these girls because he it is. It is

573
00:31:17,480 --> 00:31:20,920
Speaker 1: a very like, you know, child of the sixties, of

574
00:31:20,960 --> 00:31:23,080
Speaker 1: the fifties, I guess kind of what was just like

575
00:31:23,480 --> 00:31:26,400
Speaker 1: once I'm there, I made it. I made it. I'm

576
00:31:26,440 --> 00:31:32,240
Speaker 1: in the room with the girls. Bill, Yeah, yeah, Bill. Um.

577
00:31:32,320 --> 00:31:35,520
Speaker 1: And it's you know, the thing that's funny about it

578
00:31:35,640 --> 00:31:37,120
Speaker 1: is I mean there's a number of things that are

579
00:31:37,160 --> 00:31:45,440
Speaker 1: funny about it, um, but like it's, uh, it's like

580
00:31:45,480 --> 00:31:49,320
Speaker 1: Revenge of the Nerd Ship, you know, like it's it's

581
00:31:49,360 --> 00:31:51,480
Speaker 1: that kind of thing, which, like, if you haven't watched

582
00:31:51,480 --> 00:31:53,920
Speaker 1: Revenge of the Nerds, it's a movie that it's like

583
00:31:53,960 --> 00:31:56,840
Speaker 1: the silly movie about a bunch of nerds, you know, uh,

584
00:31:57,200 --> 00:31:59,880
Speaker 1: being the cool kids, um and getting one over on

585
00:31:59,920 --> 00:32:02,680
Speaker 1: the jocks at a college that nobody thought anything was

586
00:32:02,720 --> 00:32:06,520
Speaker 1: problematic about until I think ten years ago. Everyone realized

587
00:32:06,560 --> 00:32:09,160
Speaker 1: at the same time that the main character literally rapes

588
00:32:09,200 --> 00:32:11,880
Speaker 1: a girl, um, and it's played off as a gag,

589
00:32:12,160 --> 00:32:17,400
Speaker 1: like it's it's pretty bad, pretty pretty grim ass. Yet

590
00:32:17,640 --> 00:32:24,120
Speaker 1: it's just like what it Yeah, and Bill Bill Gates

591
00:32:24,240 --> 00:32:25,960
Speaker 1: is like that, Like now we'll talk about this in

592
00:32:25,960 --> 00:32:28,040
Speaker 1: the second episode. There's all these stories coming out about

593
00:32:28,080 --> 00:32:30,959
Speaker 1: how creepy he is and how like inappropriate a lot

594
00:32:30,960 --> 00:32:33,600
Speaker 1: of his relationships were, and people just like didn't talk

595
00:32:33,640 --> 00:32:35,280
Speaker 1: about it because it was just like, well, he's like

596
00:32:35,320 --> 00:32:38,160
Speaker 1: the who wouldn't want to fuck the billionaire nerd? Like

597
00:32:38,240 --> 00:32:40,720
Speaker 1: that's the thing. The nerds grow up and make money

598
00:32:40,760 --> 00:32:42,400
Speaker 1: and then all the women want them. That's like there's

599
00:32:42,440 --> 00:32:46,560
Speaker 1: like a million movies with that as the plot right now. Um,

600
00:32:46,640 --> 00:32:51,920
Speaker 1: interestingly enough, fucking the Simpsons uh early on uh put

601
00:32:51,960 --> 00:32:54,400
Speaker 1: a lot of time into like with a character clearly

602
00:32:54,440 --> 00:32:59,080
Speaker 1: themed after Bill Gates. Um like subverting that trope, which

603
00:32:59,160 --> 00:33:02,720
Speaker 1: is is good now, As that last quote made clear,

604
00:33:02,800 --> 00:33:06,280
Speaker 1: Bill was accepted into Harvard after after college creeper. Not

605
00:33:06,480 --> 00:33:09,000
Speaker 1: His grades and impressive computing resume made him a shoe in.

606
00:33:09,320 --> 00:33:11,600
Speaker 1: He started college in nineteen seventy three, and he lived

607
00:33:11,600 --> 00:33:13,240
Speaker 1: in a dormhouse that was filled with all of the

608
00:33:13,280 --> 00:33:16,239
Speaker 1: math and science nerds. Because even Harvard had standards, they

609
00:33:16,240 --> 00:33:18,080
Speaker 1: wanted to keep those kids away from the dorms where

610
00:33:18,120 --> 00:33:21,480
Speaker 1: kids were getting laid basically now, During his sophomore year,

611
00:33:21,520 --> 00:33:24,840
Speaker 1: Bill Gates met Steve Balmer, the future CEO of Microsoft

612
00:33:24,920 --> 00:33:28,200
Speaker 1: and presently most famous for allegedly throwing chairs that employees

613
00:33:28,280 --> 00:33:31,840
Speaker 1: during meetings. Uh. I can confirm from my time as

614
00:33:31,840 --> 00:33:34,840
Speaker 1: a tech journalist that he smells like onions. Um. I

615
00:33:34,840 --> 00:33:36,600
Speaker 1: don't know what he smelled like in college, but I

616
00:33:36,600 --> 00:33:38,840
Speaker 1: can confirm that in like two thousand ten, he smells

617
00:33:38,840 --> 00:33:42,360
Speaker 1: like onions. Um. Now, Balmer and Gates were opposites in

618
00:33:42,400 --> 00:33:45,800
Speaker 1: a number of ways. Steve was extremely involved in everything.

619
00:33:46,040 --> 00:33:48,960
Speaker 1: Bill was aggressively uninvolved in anything but his own little

620
00:33:49,000 --> 00:33:52,200
Speaker 1: world of computers. That Washington Post article I quoted from

621
00:33:52,240 --> 00:33:55,240
Speaker 1: includes a few interesting tidbits, like that both got perfect

622
00:33:55,280 --> 00:33:57,200
Speaker 1: scores on their S A T s. And we're obsessed

623
00:33:57,200 --> 00:34:00,240
Speaker 1: with Napoleon. There's probably something meaningful in the act that

624
00:34:00,240 --> 00:34:04,080
Speaker 1: Bill Gates loves Napoleon and Mark Zuckerberg loves Augustus Caesar. Um,

625
00:34:05,920 --> 00:34:10,960
Speaker 1: you know, not a cowinky dink, But all right, I'm

626
00:34:11,000 --> 00:34:13,600
Speaker 1: just saying it should be illegal to have classics education.

627
00:34:13,960 --> 00:34:16,640
Speaker 1: We should, we should, well, especially for for that type

628
00:34:16,680 --> 00:34:20,279
Speaker 1: of white guy. Know the only thing you should learn

629
00:34:20,320 --> 00:34:22,960
Speaker 1: about his genocide. We're throwing all of the statues into

630
00:34:23,040 --> 00:34:28,360
Speaker 1: the sea. Don't tell this kid about Hadrian. Yeah. Now,

631
00:34:28,560 --> 00:34:30,960
Speaker 1: the reports we have from Gates in college make it

632
00:34:30,960 --> 00:34:33,280
Speaker 1: clear that he was, uh, he was. He was gross.

633
00:34:33,520 --> 00:34:36,040
Speaker 1: He didn't use sheets. Instead, he slept directly on his

634
00:34:36,080 --> 00:34:39,680
Speaker 1: doorm mattress because making his bed was too hard. Um.

635
00:34:39,840 --> 00:34:44,440
Speaker 1: Balmer did the same again, All boys in college are gross. Um,

636
00:34:44,680 --> 00:34:47,200
Speaker 1: So I don't know, It's just funny to me. Now.

637
00:34:47,360 --> 00:34:50,680
Speaker 1: Gates's main extracurricular during college was poker, which he was

638
00:34:50,800 --> 00:34:53,680
Speaker 1: terrible at. He lost so much money that he eventually

639
00:34:53,680 --> 00:34:56,440
Speaker 1: gave Steve Balmer his check book for safe keeping, because

640
00:34:56,440 --> 00:34:58,080
Speaker 1: otherwise he was going to lose all of his money

641
00:34:58,280 --> 00:35:01,120
Speaker 1: getting his ass kicked at poker. Now, while all this

642
00:35:01,200 --> 00:35:04,680
Speaker 1: was happening, personal computing was in its infancy. Nineteen seventy

643
00:35:04,680 --> 00:35:06,399
Speaker 1: four marked the release of what a lot of people

644
00:35:06,440 --> 00:35:10,600
Speaker 1: will call the first personal computer, the Altaire eighty eight.

645
00:35:11,200 --> 00:35:13,839
Speaker 1: UM Now Paul Allen, who at this point had graduated

646
00:35:13,840 --> 00:35:16,720
Speaker 1: and gotten a job at the Honeywell Corp, Immediately rushed

647
00:35:16,760 --> 00:35:18,799
Speaker 1: to Bill's dorm with an ad for the for the

648
00:35:18,800 --> 00:35:21,719
Speaker 1: Alta A D eight um he and Gates quickly wrote

649
00:35:21,719 --> 00:35:24,600
Speaker 1: a letter to the computer's manufacturer, m I T S

650
00:35:24,880 --> 00:35:27,600
Speaker 1: asking if they could write software for it. In basic

651
00:35:28,239 --> 00:35:30,080
Speaker 1: m I T S was like, yes, sure, you guys can, Like,

652
00:35:30,120 --> 00:35:31,839
Speaker 1: we'll pay you to write software if you come up

653
00:35:31,840 --> 00:35:33,840
Speaker 1: with software that's good, but you better hurry because a

654
00:35:33,840 --> 00:35:36,160
Speaker 1: shipload of people have actually been making the same offer

655
00:35:36,200 --> 00:35:38,200
Speaker 1: to us. Personal computing is kind of like starting to

656
00:35:38,200 --> 00:35:41,600
Speaker 1: blow up in this period of time. So both men

657
00:35:41,719 --> 00:35:45,040
Speaker 1: basically dropped everything else in their lives to move to Albuquerque,

658
00:35:45,040 --> 00:35:47,640
Speaker 1: where m I T S was headquartered, and write software

659
00:35:47,680 --> 00:35:50,319
Speaker 1: for the first personal computer. Uh. This meant Paul Allen

660
00:35:50,400 --> 00:35:52,880
Speaker 1: quit his job at Honeywell and Gates dropped out of

661
00:35:52,920 --> 00:35:55,680
Speaker 1: Harvard in his junior year in nineteen seventy five to

662
00:35:55,760 --> 00:35:58,680
Speaker 1: move to Albuquerque and start a company. You might have

663
00:35:58,719 --> 00:36:01,080
Speaker 1: expected this to have gone over poorly with his parents,

664
00:36:01,160 --> 00:36:03,080
Speaker 1: but again, Bill seems to have kind of hit the

665
00:36:03,080 --> 00:36:04,759
Speaker 1: mom and dad lottery in a lot of ways. When

666
00:36:04,880 --> 00:36:07,680
Speaker 1: questioned about it decades later, his father said, being a

667
00:36:07,719 --> 00:36:10,080
Speaker 1: college dropout wasn't precisely what my wife and I had

668
00:36:10,160 --> 00:36:12,279
Speaker 1: envisioned for any of our children. But Bill seemed to

669
00:36:12,280 --> 00:36:16,120
Speaker 1: know what he was doing. Um, very supportive family this

670
00:36:16,200 --> 00:36:18,080
Speaker 1: kid has and he didn't know what he was doing.

671
00:36:18,360 --> 00:36:20,160
Speaker 1: You have to give the man credit for that. Alan

672
00:36:20,200 --> 00:36:22,920
Speaker 1: and Gates formed a consulting company to sell software to

673
00:36:23,080 --> 00:36:29,719
Speaker 1: All Tear. They called it micro dash Soft. Can you

674
00:36:29,800 --> 00:36:33,240
Speaker 1: tell where this is going? Everything? He needed a dash

675
00:36:33,280 --> 00:36:37,800
Speaker 1: back in the back in the seventies. Is the napster

676
00:36:37,960 --> 00:36:40,160
Speaker 1: guy going to come and say get rid of the

677
00:36:40,400 --> 00:36:42,239
Speaker 1: get rid of the dash or is that? Is that

678
00:36:42,280 --> 00:36:45,480
Speaker 1: not what's going to happen? No, the napster guy, um

679
00:36:45,719 --> 00:36:51,120
Speaker 1: was had not been born at this point, Thank god. Yeah,

680
00:36:51,280 --> 00:36:54,440
Speaker 1: what's his name? Sean? Sean Parker? That Sean Parker. That

681
00:36:54,480 --> 00:36:59,920
Speaker 1: piece of ship you Sean Parker. Yeah, let's make legal

682
00:37:00,080 --> 00:37:05,319
Speaker 1: actionable claims about Sean Parker now. So uh? Bill and

683
00:37:06,280 --> 00:37:09,000
Speaker 1: Bill and Paul hired friends of theirs to help them

684
00:37:09,000 --> 00:37:12,399
Speaker 1: produce software, including a kid named Monty david Off, who

685
00:37:12,440 --> 00:37:14,680
Speaker 1: they had write a piece of software that would allow

686
00:37:14,719 --> 00:37:18,200
Speaker 1: computers to perform greater ranges of calculations. The three all

687
00:37:18,239 --> 00:37:21,200
Speaker 1: lived together in a two bedroom apartment. David Off slept

688
00:37:21,200 --> 00:37:23,600
Speaker 1: on the living room floor. In two thousand, he told

689
00:37:23,600 --> 00:37:26,239
Speaker 1: The Washington Post that although they were friends, Gates could

690
00:37:26,239 --> 00:37:28,880
Speaker 1: be something of a dick. Quote, there was definitely a

691
00:37:28,920 --> 00:37:31,879
Speaker 1: supervisory dynamic. Bill could get very loud. If he felt

692
00:37:31,880 --> 00:37:34,520
Speaker 1: you weren't getting something, he would say the same thing louder.

693
00:37:34,719 --> 00:37:37,560
Speaker 1: He liked strong interchanges. I preferred not to work in

694
00:37:37,600 --> 00:37:40,799
Speaker 1: that way. Now, this is the period of time a

695
00:37:40,800 --> 00:37:43,439
Speaker 1: lot of Microsoft stories come from, you know, the scrappy

696
00:37:43,520 --> 00:37:46,480
Speaker 1: upstarts on a shoestring bug budget, building a globe spanning

697
00:37:46,480 --> 00:37:50,400
Speaker 1: mega corporation from their living room or their garage or whatever. Um.

698
00:37:50,440 --> 00:37:53,320
Speaker 1: The reality is that Gates was backed from the beginning

699
00:37:53,360 --> 00:37:55,759
Speaker 1: by family money. There was never any like there was.

700
00:37:55,840 --> 00:37:57,719
Speaker 1: There's time when the company wasn't making much money, but

701
00:37:57,760 --> 00:37:59,520
Speaker 1: there was never a period of time when Gates was

702
00:37:59,600 --> 00:38:03,880
Speaker 1: had any financial worries. Yeah, davidoff worked for them for

703
00:38:03,920 --> 00:38:06,600
Speaker 1: two summers, and then they offered him a permanent job,

704
00:38:06,840 --> 00:38:09,000
Speaker 1: but he had to say no because he couldn't afford

705
00:38:09,000 --> 00:38:11,360
Speaker 1: to drop out of Harvard. He told the Post that

706
00:38:11,400 --> 00:38:13,400
Speaker 1: Bill Gates had only been able to drop out of

707
00:38:13,400 --> 00:38:16,560
Speaker 1: Harvard to start his company because his family was rich. Quote.

708
00:38:16,600 --> 00:38:18,800
Speaker 1: The way Bill and I thought about money was very different.

709
00:38:18,880 --> 00:38:21,280
Speaker 1: He would tell all of his friends just call me collect.

710
00:38:21,520 --> 00:38:23,440
Speaker 1: He knew there was he knew he wasn't going to

711
00:38:23,480 --> 00:38:26,600
Speaker 1: have to support himself coming out of college. And the

712
00:38:26,600 --> 00:38:29,200
Speaker 1: fact that Bill never ever in his whole life, worried

713
00:38:29,200 --> 00:38:31,440
Speaker 1: about money in a meaningful way, does not mean he

714
00:38:31,480 --> 00:38:34,560
Speaker 1: wasn't obsessed with it. In fact, his lust for profitability,

715
00:38:34,640 --> 00:38:37,680
Speaker 1: depending on who you ask, had a somewhat disastrous impact

716
00:38:37,680 --> 00:38:41,160
Speaker 1: on the growing computer community. In the early days, computing

717
00:38:41,320 --> 00:38:43,960
Speaker 1: was in fact a community. These were the days when

718
00:38:43,960 --> 00:38:46,760
Speaker 1: any given computer was a d I Y project. Most

719
00:38:46,840 --> 00:38:49,920
Speaker 1: personal computers, like you would have to solder parts of

720
00:38:49,920 --> 00:38:51,759
Speaker 1: it together to like get it working or to add

721
00:38:51,800 --> 00:38:54,400
Speaker 1: things like you're like using fucking tools and shipped to

722
00:38:54,840 --> 00:38:56,959
Speaker 1: like anyone who has a computer is doing this, ship

723
00:38:57,520 --> 00:39:00,920
Speaker 1: um your coding programs on like these weird paper things

724
00:39:01,000 --> 00:39:04,480
Speaker 1: like I couldn't. Yeah, Like it's it's it's so, it's

725
00:39:04,480 --> 00:39:06,160
Speaker 1: it's very much d I Y. It's it's actually not

726
00:39:06,200 --> 00:39:08,959
Speaker 1: all that different from like the three D printed gun

727
00:39:08,960 --> 00:39:12,920
Speaker 1: community is today. Like it's like everything is shared. All

728
00:39:12,960 --> 00:39:15,439
Speaker 1: of these programs are shared. You don't pay money for them.

729
00:39:15,680 --> 00:39:18,080
Speaker 1: Usually you just like oh, or if someone buys it,

730
00:39:18,120 --> 00:39:20,560
Speaker 1: they then just copy it and send it for free

731
00:39:20,560 --> 00:39:22,480
Speaker 1: to their friends. Like that's the way this stuff really

732
00:39:22,520 --> 00:39:26,919
Speaker 1: works um and computer hobbyists had a powerful sense of solidarity.

733
00:39:27,200 --> 00:39:29,520
Speaker 1: In the early days of Microsoft, Gates and Allen were

734
00:39:29,520 --> 00:39:33,239
Speaker 1: selling software to those hobbyists. Only not everyone who used

735
00:39:33,280 --> 00:39:36,279
Speaker 1: Microsoft software actually paid for it. A lot of these

736
00:39:36,280 --> 00:39:38,520
Speaker 1: people were poor, you know, buying a computer was all

737
00:39:38,520 --> 00:39:41,000
Speaker 1: they could afford to do, so they weren't buying the software,

738
00:39:41,200 --> 00:39:43,680
Speaker 1: and there was a brisk open trade and free software

739
00:39:43,840 --> 00:39:46,239
Speaker 1: from each according to their resources, to everyone according to

740
00:39:46,280 --> 00:39:49,879
Speaker 1: their needs. Microsoft programs were very popular with this set.

741
00:39:50,080 --> 00:39:53,279
Speaker 1: One expert later wrote, hobbyists loved it. They loved it

742
00:39:53,320 --> 00:39:55,720
Speaker 1: so much they were willing to send tapes paper tapes

743
00:39:55,760 --> 00:39:59,560
Speaker 1: around to each other for free. Now this was critical

744
00:39:59,640 --> 00:40:03,239
Speaker 1: in mi soft success because it spread adoption of their products,

745
00:40:03,239 --> 00:40:06,120
Speaker 1: but it enraged Bill Gates that people were getting software

746
00:40:06,120 --> 00:40:09,200
Speaker 1: for free. In nineteen seventy six, he pinned an infamous

747
00:40:09,239 --> 00:40:12,520
Speaker 1: open letter to computer hobbyists. He accused them of all

748
00:40:12,600 --> 00:40:15,759
Speaker 1: stealing all of stealing his software, and said that resellers

749
00:40:15,760 --> 00:40:18,680
Speaker 1: who sold computers with his programs already on them were

750
00:40:18,719 --> 00:40:22,600
Speaker 1: basically robbing them. The letter included the line hardware must

751
00:40:22,600 --> 00:40:25,359
Speaker 1: be paid for, but software is something to share. Who

752
00:40:25,400 --> 00:40:27,360
Speaker 1: cares if the people who worked on it, get paid.

753
00:40:27,680 --> 00:40:31,080
Speaker 1: He's being very snotty about this now. Gates complained that

754
00:40:31,160 --> 00:40:33,320
Speaker 1: the time he and Allen spent to create their products

755
00:40:33,320 --> 00:40:36,320
Speaker 1: was worth forty dollars, but that the royalties they received

756
00:40:36,320 --> 00:40:38,799
Speaker 1: based on what they'd actually sold meant they were just

757
00:40:38,920 --> 00:40:42,720
Speaker 1: making about two dollars an hour. This was many will argue,

758
00:40:42,800 --> 00:40:45,440
Speaker 1: a short sighted way of looking at things. The share

759
00:40:45,440 --> 00:40:47,759
Speaker 1: and share like mindset of early software was a major

760
00:40:47,840 --> 00:40:50,840
Speaker 1: driver of innovation. It allowed different ideas about software to

761
00:40:50,880 --> 00:40:53,480
Speaker 1: be merged and tested, and provided early programmers with a

762
00:40:53,520 --> 00:40:56,200
Speaker 1: greater base of knowledge to work from. Many of the

763
00:40:56,200 --> 00:40:59,759
Speaker 1: brilliant minds behind the computer revolution, guys like Steve Wozniak

764
00:41:00,160 --> 00:41:03,279
Speaker 1: benefited hugely from this state of affairs, like and and

765
00:41:03,320 --> 00:41:04,960
Speaker 1: the was as someone who will say, like, yeah, that's

766
00:41:05,040 --> 00:41:07,720
Speaker 1: why we have the computering systems that we have today

767
00:41:07,760 --> 00:41:09,719
Speaker 1: is because in my day we were just able to

768
00:41:09,760 --> 00:41:12,200
Speaker 1: like share everything. It was it's like like a punk

769
00:41:12,239 --> 00:41:14,319
Speaker 1: side of this thing. Like he's a phone freaker. He's

770
00:41:14,360 --> 00:41:16,200
Speaker 1: like doing back in the day you could like make

771
00:41:16,280 --> 00:41:19,160
Speaker 1: certain signals over the phone that would get you free

772
00:41:19,200 --> 00:41:21,040
Speaker 1: phone access and ship like he was all into that,

773
00:41:21,200 --> 00:41:24,239
Speaker 1: Like fucking Steve Wozniak is actually pretty fucking rat. When

774
00:41:24,280 --> 00:41:26,080
Speaker 1: he got super rich off of Apple, he blew all

775
00:41:26,120 --> 00:41:28,160
Speaker 1: of his money holding a bunch of giant concerts and

776
00:41:28,239 --> 00:41:34,080
Speaker 1: stuff like He's fucking cool dude. Actually, um, but Bill

777
00:41:34,160 --> 00:41:37,000
Speaker 1: did not, So Bill, you know a lot of And again,

778
00:41:37,080 --> 00:41:39,240
Speaker 1: Wozniak is one of those guys that you really can't

779
00:41:39,320 --> 00:41:43,560
Speaker 1: argue it was instrumental in the existence of personal computers

780
00:41:43,560 --> 00:41:45,759
Speaker 1: as we know them today. You can argue that about

781
00:41:45,800 --> 00:41:47,960
Speaker 1: Bill Gates. And he did not agree with guys like

782
00:41:48,000 --> 00:41:51,920
Speaker 1: Steve Wozniak about intellectual property. He felt that intellectual property

783
00:41:52,040 --> 00:41:54,920
Speaker 1: rights trumped human progress any day of the week. It

784
00:41:55,000 --> 00:41:57,960
Speaker 1: didn't matter that sharing software was good for computing, because

785
00:41:57,960 --> 00:42:00,880
Speaker 1: it was bad for Microsoft. And so from that moment on,

786
00:42:00,960 --> 00:42:05,520
Speaker 1: Gates dedicated himself to making sure I was kept sacrosanct. Today,

787
00:42:05,600 --> 00:42:08,520
Speaker 1: intellectual property rights and paid software are such pillars of

788
00:42:08,560 --> 00:42:10,160
Speaker 1: the industry that it can be hard to believe this

789
00:42:10,239 --> 00:42:13,400
Speaker 1: wasn't necessarily always going to be the case. One thing

790
00:42:13,440 --> 00:42:16,480
Speaker 1: that made Apple Computer interesting in nineteen seventy six was

791
00:42:16,520 --> 00:42:19,640
Speaker 1: the fact that their operating system, Apple Basic, was free,

792
00:42:19,880 --> 00:42:23,240
Speaker 1: and they openly claimed quote, our philosophy is to provide

793
00:42:23,280 --> 00:42:27,479
Speaker 1: software for our machines at free or minimal cost. Now,

794
00:42:27,560 --> 00:42:31,000
Speaker 1: there was significant fallout within the computing community over this

795
00:42:31,080 --> 00:42:35,400
Speaker 1: open letter. One hobbyist, how Singer, who published an influential newsletter,

796
00:42:35,600 --> 00:42:37,960
Speaker 1: complained that since Bill Gates had developed Basic on a

797
00:42:38,000 --> 00:42:41,239
Speaker 1: Harvard University computer funded by the US government and the

798
00:42:41,280 --> 00:42:43,440
Speaker 1: start of a Microsoft like the first programs they make,

799
00:42:43,440 --> 00:42:46,400
Speaker 1: they make in Harvard before they drop out, the Harvard

800
00:42:46,440 --> 00:42:49,600
Speaker 1: computer they make it on was paid for by DARPA,

801
00:42:49,840 --> 00:42:53,879
Speaker 1: like the Defense Advanced Research Project Agency, um, And so

802
00:42:54,160 --> 00:42:56,600
Speaker 1: how Singer will say, like, well, he should never have

803
00:42:56,680 --> 00:43:00,880
Speaker 1: been able to sell my Windows because place, yeah it

804
00:43:00,960 --> 00:43:03,800
Speaker 1: was it was developed using the taxpayer funds. Which is true.

805
00:43:03,920 --> 00:43:06,560
Speaker 1: This is a very defensible line of argument. Now, I

806
00:43:06,600 --> 00:43:08,799
Speaker 1: mean it doesn't it sounds like Bill Gates is the

807
00:43:08,920 --> 00:43:12,919
Speaker 1: thing the philosophy, philosophy of his that has resonated down

808
00:43:13,160 --> 00:43:18,640
Speaker 1: is tech guys using public you know, neither public research,

809
00:43:18,719 --> 00:43:22,880
Speaker 1: public funded, intellectual property, public whatever, thinking they own it

810
00:43:22,960 --> 00:43:25,799
Speaker 1: and then not letting and then getting mad when you know,

811
00:43:25,880 --> 00:43:29,520
Speaker 1: like like taking taking from the common good and pretending

812
00:43:29,520 --> 00:43:34,399
Speaker 1: they invented it. Yeah, yeah, it's fucking it's fucking rad um.

813
00:43:34,520 --> 00:43:39,120
Speaker 1: But you know what else is rad Andrew hit the

814
00:43:39,160 --> 00:43:44,880
Speaker 1: products and services that support Yeah, yeah, that's right every time. Yeah,

815
00:43:44,920 --> 00:43:54,600
Speaker 1: thank you, thank you. We're back and we're talking about

816
00:43:54,640 --> 00:44:00,520
Speaker 1: non consensual relationships with stuffed animals. Andrew have you. I'm

817
00:44:00,520 --> 00:44:02,439
Speaker 1: going to edit that out right. Been in a non

818
00:44:02,480 --> 00:44:05,400
Speaker 1: consensual relationship with the stuffed animals, Sophie. These are the

819
00:44:05,400 --> 00:44:09,680
Speaker 1: conversations people tune in for. I wider on this podcast.

820
00:44:10,320 --> 00:44:13,320
Speaker 1: You are the one who slandered them. Yeah, because stuffed

821
00:44:13,320 --> 00:44:17,880
Speaker 1: animals can't really consent, can they? Mostly it's all non consensual.

822
00:44:18,120 --> 00:44:22,480
Speaker 1: It's all non consensual. It's really something we should analyze more.

823
00:44:22,640 --> 00:44:26,160
Speaker 1: Pretty fuck up. It's not great, it's not great, but

824
00:44:26,239 --> 00:44:30,080
Speaker 1: you know what is consensual? I cut cut that. I

825
00:44:30,160 --> 00:44:34,960
Speaker 1: cut that entire conversation out of This is all staying end,

826
00:44:35,000 --> 00:44:39,960
Speaker 1: This is all gold notes that it is not well

827
00:44:39,960 --> 00:44:42,160
Speaker 1: according to my edit notes, Chris, you don't have to

828
00:44:42,200 --> 00:44:44,759
Speaker 1: do that. You can you can, you can keep this in.

829
00:44:45,320 --> 00:44:48,680
Speaker 1: You can fight the system. You can't stop the signal, Sophie.

830
00:44:48,680 --> 00:44:51,760
Speaker 1: And the signal is talking about whether or not stuffed

831
00:44:51,800 --> 00:44:56,560
Speaker 1: animals can consent, and the signal I think largely it's

832
00:44:56,560 --> 00:44:59,520
Speaker 1: coming out on no on that one. But it's happening.

833
00:45:00,400 --> 00:45:04,520
Speaker 1: Hit us up and we're back, continued, We've been back.

834
00:45:04,680 --> 00:45:08,560
Speaker 1: So other people who knew Gates and Allen at the

835
00:45:08,600 --> 00:45:11,319
Speaker 1: time reposted his estimate that he and his colleagues had

836
00:45:11,320 --> 00:45:14,080
Speaker 1: put forty dollars into designing their software. Right, that's a

837
00:45:14,080 --> 00:45:15,759
Speaker 1: big part of his argument on this open letters. This

838
00:45:15,760 --> 00:45:17,480
Speaker 1: is how much money it's costs to make this. We

839
00:45:17,520 --> 00:45:18,719
Speaker 1: have to be able to make it back. We can't

840
00:45:18,719 --> 00:45:21,759
Speaker 1: afford to do this. One member of the Homebrew Computer Club,

841
00:45:22,040 --> 00:45:26,560
Speaker 1: Leif Felsenstein, who Lei Felsenstein designed the first mass produced

842
00:45:26,600 --> 00:45:30,080
Speaker 1: personal computer, later said quote, well, we all knew that

843
00:45:30,120 --> 00:45:33,520
Speaker 1: the evaluation of computer time was the ultimate and funny money.

844
00:45:33,760 --> 00:45:35,759
Speaker 1: You never pay that much for the computer time. And

845
00:45:35,760 --> 00:45:37,640
Speaker 1: I think that research will show that they were using

846
00:45:37,680 --> 00:45:40,560
Speaker 1: someone else's computer time. Someone else was paying for that.

847
00:45:40,760 --> 00:45:42,920
Speaker 1: It could have been Honeywell where Paul Allen was working.

848
00:45:42,960 --> 00:45:44,840
Speaker 1: So we all knew this to be a spurious argument.

849
00:45:45,280 --> 00:45:47,439
Speaker 1: So back in this day, you had to like pay

850
00:45:47,480 --> 00:45:50,040
Speaker 1: in a lot of cases for access to a computer. Right.

851
00:45:51,000 --> 00:45:52,880
Speaker 1: And one of the things Bill gets in trouble with

852
00:45:52,920 --> 00:45:54,440
Speaker 1: when he's a kid, like he and his friends get

853
00:45:54,480 --> 00:45:57,080
Speaker 1: kicked out of one of the places because they're hacking

854
00:45:57,120 --> 00:46:00,839
Speaker 1: the system to get free computer time. Um, they're using

855
00:46:00,880 --> 00:46:03,920
Speaker 1: free computer time, and they're almost certainly using Paul Allen's

856
00:46:03,920 --> 00:46:06,560
Speaker 1: companies freak like, they're doing a lot of things they

857
00:46:06,600 --> 00:46:12,440
Speaker 1: would call stealing. But ye, but it's also like the

858
00:46:12,600 --> 00:46:16,960
Speaker 1: pointing out the hypocrisy with those thots never works. Yeah, no,

859
00:46:17,000 --> 00:46:22,680
Speaker 1: not ever. Yeah, And you know Felsenstein again, it's it

860
00:46:22,719 --> 00:46:25,200
Speaker 1: talks about like kind of the the injustices of the world.

861
00:46:25,200 --> 00:46:28,560
Speaker 1: Felsenstein is one of the most influential computing pioneers you

862
00:46:28,600 --> 00:46:31,320
Speaker 1: never heard of. And the reason that Gates is famous

863
00:46:31,320 --> 00:46:33,839
Speaker 1: and Felsenstein isn't has nothing to do with the fact

864
00:46:33,920 --> 00:46:36,520
Speaker 1: that Gates did more to revolutionize the world. It's not

865
00:46:36,560 --> 00:46:39,040
Speaker 1: that he was like that much more influential than Felsenstein.

866
00:46:39,360 --> 00:46:42,799
Speaker 1: It's because Felsenstein was obsessed with pushing the boundaries of computing,

867
00:46:42,960 --> 00:46:45,239
Speaker 1: while Gates was obsessed with pushing the boundaries of how

868
00:46:45,280 --> 00:46:48,799
Speaker 1: much money computing could make. Felsenstein later wrote that the

869
00:46:48,840 --> 00:46:52,520
Speaker 1: open letter quote delineated a rift between the actual industry

870
00:46:52,520 --> 00:46:55,040
Speaker 1: where there's trying to make money and there's where those

871
00:46:55,080 --> 00:46:57,799
Speaker 1: those hobbyists, where we're trying to make things happen. So

872
00:46:57,840 --> 00:47:00,280
Speaker 1: there's this rift that opens that Bill starts, but beqween

873
00:47:00,880 --> 00:47:04,600
Speaker 1: making money and making computers better. Bill is not on

874
00:47:04,640 --> 00:47:08,400
Speaker 1: the making computers better side, right right right as anyone

875
00:47:08,440 --> 00:47:13,640
Speaker 1: who's used microsoftivist, I could tell you, Oh god, I

876
00:47:13,680 --> 00:47:17,080
Speaker 1: mean it's just it's it's the through line of like

877
00:47:17,200 --> 00:47:19,920
Speaker 1: he was a weird businessman since he was a child.

878
00:47:20,239 --> 00:47:26,560
Speaker 1: Is the to me? Yeah, I don't know. Yeah, it's

879
00:47:26,600 --> 00:47:30,279
Speaker 1: like weird again. Could could have given this kid, could

880
00:47:30,320 --> 00:47:32,359
Speaker 1: have like gone back in time and given nine year

881
00:47:32,360 --> 00:47:34,840
Speaker 1: old Bill Gates a blunt and like a King Crimson

882
00:47:34,880 --> 00:47:38,320
Speaker 1: album and Ben like just just get into weird nerds

883
00:47:38,640 --> 00:47:43,160
Speaker 1: any say, away from start worshiping the devil, worship the devil,

884
00:47:43,160 --> 00:47:45,799
Speaker 1: listen to prog rock take about your acid. It'll be

885
00:47:45,880 --> 00:47:49,759
Speaker 1: fine God, or you'll become Steve Jobs. Actually, so yeah,

886
00:47:49,880 --> 00:47:52,279
Speaker 1: you know, it's kind of the same kind of the

887
00:47:52,320 --> 00:47:57,200
Speaker 1: same same journey. Um So, Lee, I'm going to read

888
00:47:57,239 --> 00:47:59,319
Speaker 1: another quote from Lee Felsenstein here where he's just kind

889
00:47:59,320 --> 00:48:04,319
Speaker 1: of explaining why Microsoft gets big and what that has

890
00:48:04,360 --> 00:48:09,080
Speaker 1: to do with this this homebrew computer culture that he hates. Quote,

891
00:48:09,520 --> 00:48:12,400
Speaker 1: the industry needs the hobbyists, and this was illustrated by

892
00:48:12,440 --> 00:48:15,560
Speaker 1: what happened Eventually, when National Semiconductor, which made their own

893
00:48:15,600 --> 00:48:18,880
Speaker 1: microprocessor chips in seventies seven or seventy eight, decided they

894
00:48:18,880 --> 00:48:22,120
Speaker 1: needed a basic an operating system. They asked what's the

895
00:48:22,160 --> 00:48:25,680
Speaker 1: most popular basic, and the answer was Microsoft Basic because

896
00:48:25,680 --> 00:48:28,759
Speaker 1: everybody had copied it and everybody was using it. So

897
00:48:28,800 --> 00:48:32,520
Speaker 1: we made Microsoft the standard basic. National Semiconductor went to

898
00:48:32,600 --> 00:48:35,920
Speaker 1: Microsoft and bought a license. They were in business that way.

899
00:48:35,960 --> 00:48:38,640
Speaker 1: This was the marketing function, and the hobbyists did the

900
00:48:38,680 --> 00:48:41,320
Speaker 1: marketing with a complete antipathy of the company in question.

901
00:48:41,640 --> 00:48:43,359
Speaker 1: There were other basics, and you know, some of them

902
00:48:43,400 --> 00:48:46,080
Speaker 1: might even have been better. Gates's later success was in

903
00:48:46,120 --> 00:48:48,360
Speaker 1: a certain measure because of what we did that he

904
00:48:48,440 --> 00:48:50,840
Speaker 1: said we shouldn't do. We were thieves to do it

905
00:48:50,960 --> 00:48:57,040
Speaker 1: at all. Like that's important? Is Bill is arguing that, like, well,

906
00:48:57,040 --> 00:48:58,760
Speaker 1: we can't be expected to do this for free, otherwise

907
00:48:58,800 --> 00:49:00,759
Speaker 1: you won't have innovation. It's like, well, the fact that

908
00:49:00,800 --> 00:49:03,040
Speaker 1: people were sharing your program for free is why you

909
00:49:03,080 --> 00:49:06,200
Speaker 1: became a billionaire. Because when companies started realizing we need

910
00:49:06,200 --> 00:49:08,880
Speaker 1: to pay for operating systems, what's the most popular one? Oh,

911
00:49:08,920 --> 00:49:11,319
Speaker 1: this one, because everyone's been sharing it for free. Like

912
00:49:12,280 --> 00:49:14,680
Speaker 1: it's the argument about piracy. Right, it's the same thing

913
00:49:14,680 --> 00:49:16,720
Speaker 1: as like, well, if people are able to share movies

914
00:49:16,760 --> 00:49:18,960
Speaker 1: and music and stuff for free, it doesn't hurt the industry,

915
00:49:19,040 --> 00:49:21,600
Speaker 1: will actually bring them more fans who will spend money

916
00:49:21,600 --> 00:49:23,880
Speaker 1: on those things in other ways, which I think was

917
00:49:23,920 --> 00:49:27,799
Speaker 1: borne out by what happened, Like yeah, well, it's also

918
00:49:27,840 --> 00:49:31,400
Speaker 1: the sort of inevitability of it, right, which is like

919
00:49:31,400 --> 00:49:34,200
Speaker 1: like it or not? I mean it also it is

920
00:49:34,239 --> 00:49:37,400
Speaker 1: just a better model for I guess some stuff I

921
00:49:37,400 --> 00:49:40,440
Speaker 1: don't know. I'm sitting here for a lot of things

922
00:49:40,480 --> 00:49:42,239
Speaker 1: for every for a lot of things that are covered

923
00:49:42,280 --> 00:49:46,680
Speaker 1: by intellectual property. Like yeah, you know, my boss, part

924
00:49:46,680 --> 00:49:49,120
Speaker 1: of why I'm putting out my book for free, Um,

925
00:49:49,160 --> 00:49:51,319
Speaker 1: like there will be a print version and stuff. I've

926
00:49:51,320 --> 00:49:52,960
Speaker 1: got a publisher, but it's going to be available for

927
00:49:52,960 --> 00:49:55,600
Speaker 1: free online. Is it something my my boss Jason Pargeon

928
00:49:55,680 --> 00:49:58,800
Speaker 1: did back in the early two thousands, He just published

929
00:49:58,800 --> 00:50:02,360
Speaker 1: his book online for free. It became hugely popular. And

930
00:50:02,360 --> 00:50:05,400
Speaker 1: when you have something for free that you know X

931
00:50:05,480 --> 00:50:09,120
Speaker 1: number of people have consumed anyway, there will be a

932
00:50:09,120 --> 00:50:11,440
Speaker 1: way to monetize it. Jason got made a lot of

933
00:50:11,440 --> 00:50:13,880
Speaker 1: money off of that book eventually, like it's it works

934
00:50:13,880 --> 00:50:16,560
Speaker 1: out and the same thing with Bill Gates. Bill Gates

935
00:50:16,600 --> 00:50:18,560
Speaker 1: made a shipload of money off of people using his

936
00:50:18,560 --> 00:50:22,520
Speaker 1: ship for free. That's kind of how intellectual property actually

937
00:50:22,560 --> 00:50:27,080
Speaker 1: works most of the time. But Bill Gates is a dick.

938
00:50:29,280 --> 00:50:31,840
Speaker 1: So one of the people who spends the most times

939
00:50:31,840 --> 00:50:34,240
Speaker 1: slamming Bill Gates and is the best at it because

940
00:50:34,320 --> 00:50:38,520
Speaker 1: he's right about literally everything, is Corey doctor rowe Um.

941
00:50:38,560 --> 00:50:41,360
Speaker 1: I fucking love Corey. He's He's rad uh And I

942
00:50:41,360 --> 00:50:44,399
Speaker 1: found a really good interview with him on Jacobin where

943
00:50:44,400 --> 00:50:46,400
Speaker 1: he goes into more detail and how Gates went from

944
00:50:46,480 --> 00:50:50,080
Speaker 1: quote another company making al tear software into a giant

945
00:50:50,120 --> 00:50:53,560
Speaker 1: of the industry, and he makes a similar argument to Felsenstein,

946
00:50:53,640 --> 00:50:58,120
Speaker 1: but he highlights Microsoft steel with IBM is more crucial. Quote.

947
00:50:58,640 --> 00:51:01,239
Speaker 1: Gates gets his fortune because IBM had been subject to

948
00:51:01,320 --> 00:51:04,080
Speaker 1: years of anti trust hell. Every year for twelve years,

949
00:51:04,080 --> 00:51:06,960
Speaker 1: IBM out spent the entire Department of Justice Anti Trust

950
00:51:06,960 --> 00:51:10,200
Speaker 1: Division fighting an anti trust claim. Finally, under Reagan they

951
00:51:10,200 --> 00:51:12,640
Speaker 1: were let off the hook. So IBM had spent years

952
00:51:12,640 --> 00:51:14,520
Speaker 1: tied to the bumper of the d o J. And

953
00:51:14,560 --> 00:51:15,880
Speaker 1: one of the things they knew that the d o

954
00:51:15,960 --> 00:51:19,200
Speaker 1: J really hated was monopolizing software by tying it to hardware.

955
00:51:19,440 --> 00:51:21,360
Speaker 1: So they made the pace PC and they made it

956
00:51:21,360 --> 00:51:23,400
Speaker 1: out of commodity apart so that it could be cloned.

957
00:51:23,680 --> 00:51:26,600
Speaker 1: They sat back as Phoenix Computing reverse engineered their ROM

958
00:51:26,600 --> 00:51:29,040
Speaker 1: and started selling it to Dell and Gateway and Compacts

959
00:51:29,080 --> 00:51:31,799
Speaker 1: so that there were compatible machines. And they said, we're

960
00:51:31,800 --> 00:51:33,960
Speaker 1: not going to make the operating system. And they went

961
00:51:34,040 --> 00:51:35,880
Speaker 1: to Bill Gates and Paul Allen and asked them to

962
00:51:35,960 --> 00:51:37,880
Speaker 1: make a d a DOSS that they could use their

963
00:51:37,880 --> 00:51:39,760
Speaker 1: machines so the d o J would leave them alone.

964
00:51:40,239 --> 00:51:42,600
Speaker 1: So that's where Gates his fortune comes from. He was

965
00:51:42,640 --> 00:51:44,960
Speaker 1: in the right place at the right time, and his mindset,

966
00:51:45,040 --> 00:51:48,759
Speaker 1: this idea of cutthroat competition, of no sharing, of no collegiality,

967
00:51:48,800 --> 00:51:51,439
Speaker 1: allowed him to leverage the weakness of IBM's own ip

968
00:51:51,840 --> 00:51:54,440
Speaker 1: its ability to control its critics and competitors and customers,

969
00:51:54,560 --> 00:51:57,839
Speaker 1: and then impose his own And so, in another bit

970
00:51:57,880 --> 00:52:00,320
Speaker 1: of irony, Gates, who spends a chunk of his life

971
00:52:00,360 --> 00:52:02,799
Speaker 1: fighting one of the biggest anti trust cases in history,

972
00:52:02,840 --> 00:52:06,040
Speaker 1: maybe the biggest, also is only able to get started

973
00:52:06,320 --> 00:52:10,160
Speaker 1: because the d o J goes after IBM for monopoly

974
00:52:10,200 --> 00:52:13,319
Speaker 1: ship like because IBM has stopped from making monopoly. That's

975
00:52:13,320 --> 00:52:15,640
Speaker 1: why they don't go in house to make their operating

976
00:52:15,640 --> 00:52:18,359
Speaker 1: system because they're worried about antitrust ship, which is why

977
00:52:18,400 --> 00:52:20,640
Speaker 1: Bill Gates gets rich like all of these things. He

978
00:52:20,680 --> 00:52:28,319
Speaker 1: hates his whole life for the whole reason he has money. Yeah, right,

979
00:52:28,480 --> 00:52:34,400
Speaker 1: it's it's yeah. The hypocrisy of it is like, what

980
00:52:34,480 --> 00:52:37,320
Speaker 1: can you do? I don't know. They're always going to

981
00:52:37,440 --> 00:52:39,879
Speaker 1: think they invented it. Yeah, they're always going to think

982
00:52:39,920 --> 00:52:46,320
Speaker 1: it was all them. Again. This is why we need, uh,

983
00:52:46,480 --> 00:52:49,960
Speaker 1: we need like to to dismantle all of our present

984
00:52:50,000 --> 00:52:53,640
Speaker 1: federal law enforcement agencies and devote their resources to like

985
00:52:54,160 --> 00:52:58,120
Speaker 1: hiring a bunch of middle aged and like early fifties

986
00:52:58,160 --> 00:53:01,800
Speaker 1: sixties women and giveing them tire irons and the ability

987
00:53:01,840 --> 00:53:03,520
Speaker 1: to track people down and hit them in the face

988
00:53:03,560 --> 00:53:06,360
Speaker 1: with tire irons. When they start doing ship, that's clearly

989
00:53:06,360 --> 00:53:08,520
Speaker 1: going to end in a bad place. Like you see

990
00:53:08,520 --> 00:53:11,319
Speaker 1: a fifteen year old suing his partners in the computer club,

991
00:53:11,320 --> 00:53:13,000
Speaker 1: and it's like it's time for the ladies to hit

992
00:53:13,080 --> 00:53:15,279
Speaker 1: him with some irons, you know, like smack them around

993
00:53:15,320 --> 00:53:17,719
Speaker 1: a little bit. Yeah, maybe have may make another one

994
00:53:17,760 --> 00:53:20,160
Speaker 1: of them have a mountain climbing accident. I don't know,

995
00:53:24,520 --> 00:53:32,000
Speaker 1: so hypothetically, just hypothetically, just the old ladies with tire irons. Uh, no, nonsense.

996
00:53:32,080 --> 00:53:34,239
Speaker 1: Division they could have got after the we work guy.

997
00:53:34,320 --> 00:53:36,040
Speaker 1: You know, when he starts talking about being the world's

998
00:53:36,040 --> 00:53:38,480
Speaker 1: first trillionaire, hit him with a fucking iron right in

999
00:53:38,480 --> 00:53:41,960
Speaker 1: the face, like fucking crack that boy's jaw. Just give

1000
00:53:42,000 --> 00:53:46,960
Speaker 1: it him. Take us take a thought. It couldn't be

1001
00:53:47,040 --> 00:53:52,960
Speaker 1: worse than the current system. Yeah, exactly, Yeah, now Microsoft, Okay,

1002
00:53:52,960 --> 00:53:55,439
Speaker 1: So by nineteen eighty Microsoft was enough of a real

1003
00:53:55,480 --> 00:53:57,800
Speaker 1: company that Bill was able to hire his buddy Steve

1004
00:53:57,840 --> 00:54:00,680
Speaker 1: Balmer to do the non techie business man stuff that

1005
00:54:00,719 --> 00:54:04,080
Speaker 1: was necessary in a growing company. Balmer was employee number

1006
00:54:04,080 --> 00:54:09,000
Speaker 1: twenty four. No what, you won't get the reference, but

1007
00:54:09,080 --> 00:54:13,520
Speaker 1: ill continue. Oh okay, it's probably a basketball thing. Sophie

1008
00:54:13,640 --> 00:54:16,120
Speaker 1: loves the Lakers, who are the same as I don't

1009
00:54:16,120 --> 00:54:19,560
Speaker 1: know whatever other team she was mentioning earlier. I don't

1010
00:54:19,560 --> 00:54:22,480
Speaker 1: know any of these things, Sophie. So, but but Steve

1011
00:54:22,480 --> 00:54:25,400
Speaker 1: Balmer does because he owns a golf team or some

1012
00:54:25,480 --> 00:54:30,239
Speaker 1: ship whatever kind of support. So this is not a

1013
00:54:30,280 --> 00:54:32,600
Speaker 1: business nerd podcast where you talk about how companies grow

1014
00:54:32,600 --> 00:54:35,480
Speaker 1: and ship. You can find so much written about like

1015
00:54:36,080 --> 00:54:40,480
Speaker 1: the intricacies of early Microsoft corporate culture and whatnot. Um,

1016
00:54:40,520 --> 00:54:42,560
Speaker 1: and it's all boring as hell. Apple is a lot

1017
00:54:42,560 --> 00:54:48,080
Speaker 1: more fun because Steve Jobs is a freaking lunatic, just

1018
00:54:48,200 --> 00:54:51,400
Speaker 1: like a Philly. He's literally like a filthy vagrant to

1019
00:54:51,520 --> 00:54:55,839
Speaker 1: like forces everybody to smell his rance a ass as

1020
00:54:55,840 --> 00:54:58,880
Speaker 1: he like refuses to shower for weeks and lives in

1021
00:54:58,920 --> 00:55:06,000
Speaker 1: the office. It's such a he's a again. I got

1022
00:55:06,000 --> 00:55:08,960
Speaker 1: my start in journalism in like reporting on the tech industry,

1023
00:55:08,960 --> 00:55:11,200
Speaker 1: and I was legitimately bummed when he died because he

1024
00:55:11,280 --> 00:55:16,840
Speaker 1: was just so fucking entertaining. Um, but also a monster

1025
00:55:16,960 --> 00:55:21,320
Speaker 1: like they all are, except for the walls. Um. Someone's

1026
00:55:21,320 --> 00:55:25,920
Speaker 1: gonna tell me about Steve Wozniak designed Israeli missile to

1027
00:55:26,000 --> 00:55:28,440
Speaker 1: technology or some ship and made me really sad. But

1028
00:55:28,480 --> 00:55:32,120
Speaker 1: I don't know anything about anything bad he's done yet. Um.

1029
00:55:32,200 --> 00:55:34,920
Speaker 1: So there were twists and turns, obviously in the story

1030
00:55:34,960 --> 00:55:37,799
Speaker 1: of Microsoft's growth, but the gist of it is expanded

1031
00:55:37,840 --> 00:55:40,279
Speaker 1: steadily over the eighties and nineteen eight six. It had

1032
00:55:40,320 --> 00:55:41,920
Speaker 1: its I p O, which is the i p O

1033
00:55:42,040 --> 00:55:43,799
Speaker 1: is when it goes public on the stock market. That's

1034
00:55:43,800 --> 00:55:45,400
Speaker 1: when all of the people who found a company get

1035
00:55:45,480 --> 00:55:48,520
Speaker 1: richish shit, Um, and Gates gets I mean he's always

1036
00:55:48,520 --> 00:55:51,839
Speaker 1: been rich, but he gets fuck, he gets fucked everyone money.

1037
00:55:51,880 --> 00:55:54,440
Speaker 1: At this point, from nineteen eight seven on, he was

1038
00:55:54,520 --> 00:55:58,640
Speaker 1: never off the list of wealthiest Americans. Now Gates and Balm,

1039
00:55:58,920 --> 00:56:04,960
Speaker 1: Yeah right, Like that's how long he's been fucking rich now.

1040
00:56:05,080 --> 00:56:08,200
Speaker 1: Gates and Balmer fought constantly. They were as much rivals

1041
00:56:08,200 --> 00:56:11,439
Speaker 1: as they were friends, um and against. Steve Balmer has

1042
00:56:11,760 --> 00:56:15,160
Speaker 1: allegedly throws chairs and employees during meetings when they argue

1043
00:56:15,200 --> 00:56:19,160
Speaker 1: with him, So like Um, the two would get into

1044
00:56:19,200 --> 00:56:22,879
Speaker 1: screaming arguments over just about anything. One friendly chess match

1045
00:56:22,960 --> 00:56:25,360
Speaker 1: between the two ended in Bill Gates throwing a tantrum

1046
00:56:25,360 --> 00:56:28,440
Speaker 1: and tossing the board in pieces off the table. Um.

1047
00:56:28,480 --> 00:56:30,160
Speaker 1: But none of this fighting seems to have harmed the

1048
00:56:30,200 --> 00:56:33,080
Speaker 1: expansion of the company. In the nineteen eighties, Balmber headed

1049
00:56:33,080 --> 00:56:36,680
Speaker 1: the team that developed Windows. By the nineteen nineties, Apple

1050
00:56:36,680 --> 00:56:39,200
Speaker 1: and Microsoft were the biggest names in the computing game.

1051
00:56:39,640 --> 00:56:42,240
Speaker 1: The history of that rivalry is something we could get into,

1052
00:56:42,280 --> 00:56:45,320
Speaker 1: but honestly, both are are helmed by narcissistic assholes. What

1053
00:56:45,360 --> 00:56:48,239
Speaker 1: do you care? Uh. The story of Gates's crapitude has

1054
00:56:48,320 --> 00:56:50,359
Speaker 1: less to do with like shady ship that he did

1055
00:56:51,200 --> 00:56:54,120
Speaker 1: fighting another giant company, and more to do with how

1056
00:56:54,160 --> 00:56:57,239
Speaker 1: he constantly assaulted anyone trying to innovate in a way

1057
00:56:57,280 --> 00:57:01,440
Speaker 1: that might reduce Microsoft profits. Core Doctor describes this as

1058
00:57:01,440 --> 00:57:05,440
Speaker 1: a process of tying quote. He ties the ability to

1059
00:57:05,480 --> 00:57:08,280
Speaker 1: get Windows or DOSS on your machine to an agreement

1060
00:57:08,320 --> 00:57:11,600
Speaker 1: not to pre install rival products. He can sabotage the

1061
00:57:11,640 --> 00:57:14,840
Speaker 1: operating system, which he does for through vertical integration. He

1062
00:57:14,920 --> 00:57:17,360
Speaker 1: sells you an operating system in a suit of applications

1063
00:57:17,400 --> 00:57:18,840
Speaker 1: that run on it, and then if you make a

1064
00:57:18,880 --> 00:57:23,000
Speaker 1: competing application, he can tweak the operating system. Excel, for example,

1065
00:57:23,040 --> 00:57:25,320
Speaker 1: had a long running competitor that was by all accounts

1066
00:57:25,320 --> 00:57:27,920
Speaker 1: better called Lotus one, two, and three. The model of

1067
00:57:28,000 --> 00:57:31,960
Speaker 1: Microsoft was Doss isn't done until Lotus won't won't run,

1068
00:57:32,280 --> 00:57:34,360
Speaker 1: and every new release would just fall apart. So they

1069
00:57:34,400 --> 00:57:37,760
Speaker 1: literally sabotage other products so that they won't work on

1070
00:57:37,840 --> 00:57:44,240
Speaker 1: Microsoft machines. Um Bill and Microsoft also had the ability

1071
00:57:44,280 --> 00:57:47,680
Speaker 1: to strategically snuff out rivals by bundling free versions of

1072
00:57:47,760 --> 00:57:51,400
Speaker 1: rifle products into the operating system. So in Toronto, there

1073
00:57:51,440 --> 00:57:53,880
Speaker 1: was a great software success story called Delrina that made

1074
00:57:53,880 --> 00:57:56,840
Speaker 1: the world's most successful fact software. One day they started

1075
00:57:56,840 --> 00:57:59,280
Speaker 1: including free fact software with Windows, and no one ever

1076
00:57:59,320 --> 00:58:01,440
Speaker 1: bought it. Will be the license again. That was the

1077
00:58:01,560 --> 00:58:03,360
Speaker 1: end of it. But Gates was able to do what

1078
00:58:03,400 --> 00:58:05,800
Speaker 1: everyone who's dreamed of a command economy wanted to do,

1079
00:58:06,080 --> 00:58:09,320
Speaker 1: subordinate the individual priorities of other market actors to his

1080
00:58:09,400 --> 00:58:12,200
Speaker 1: needs to achieve a strategic goal, in this case for

1081
00:58:12,280 --> 00:58:18,520
Speaker 1: his own enrichment. So that's fucking cool. Now, all of

1082
00:58:18,560 --> 00:58:21,760
Speaker 1: this went very smoothly for Gates and for Microsoft until

1083
00:58:21,760 --> 00:58:25,080
Speaker 1: the latter half of the nineteen nineties. Now, throughout the nineties,

1084
00:58:25,080 --> 00:58:27,440
Speaker 1: the Justice Department is kind of on an annual basis,

1085
00:58:27,440 --> 00:58:30,080
Speaker 1: sending out their equivalent of like warning shots, saying like,

1086
00:58:30,120 --> 00:58:33,479
Speaker 1: we're investigating potential anti trust at Microsoft. But nothing really

1087
00:58:33,800 --> 00:58:37,440
Speaker 1: solid materializes until Bill Gates decides to take aim at

1088
00:58:37,440 --> 00:58:42,919
Speaker 1: a plucky little web browser called Netscape Navigator. Yes, now,

1089
00:58:42,960 --> 00:58:45,080
Speaker 1: if you're not as old as us, especially if you

1090
00:58:45,160 --> 00:58:48,000
Speaker 1: came of age after the dominance of social media, browser

1091
00:58:48,040 --> 00:58:50,919
Speaker 1: preference probably doesn't mean a lot to you. Like people

1092
00:58:50,960 --> 00:58:53,440
Speaker 1: can argue about Firefox or Chrome or Safari or I

1093
00:58:53,480 --> 00:58:56,680
Speaker 1: don't know, fucking opera. But unless you're using Microsoft Edge

1094
00:58:56,760 --> 00:58:59,400
Speaker 1: like some sort of goddamn heathen, all browsers are more

1095
00:58:59,480 --> 00:59:02,320
Speaker 1: or less from a usability standpoint, right, people, I'm I'm

1096
00:59:02,320 --> 00:59:05,480
Speaker 1: sure people now Firefox I like fuck you, I don't

1097
00:59:05,480 --> 00:59:10,160
Speaker 1: care how basically like fuck it? Like yeah. But back

1098
00:59:10,200 --> 00:59:13,640
Speaker 1: in the day Netscape. Netscape was the only PC browser

1099
00:59:13,720 --> 00:59:17,160
Speaker 1: that wasn't an unholy nightmare to use, like everything was trash.

1100
00:59:17,240 --> 00:59:20,320
Speaker 1: And then there was Netscape Navigator, this oasis of competent

1101
00:59:20,400 --> 00:59:23,880
Speaker 1: design in a sea of mostly Microsoft Explorer flavored ship

1102
00:59:24,080 --> 00:59:28,280
Speaker 1: like fucking Netscape ruled. Consumers loved it, and that drove

1103
00:59:28,360 --> 00:59:31,920
Speaker 1: Gates crazy. In he had some of his people meet

1104
00:59:31,920 --> 00:59:34,200
Speaker 1: the developers of the browser and offered to invest in

1105
00:59:34,240 --> 00:59:38,000
Speaker 1: the company. Microsoft reps were extremely complimentary at this meeting.

1106
00:59:38,280 --> 00:59:40,800
Speaker 1: The friendly attitude did not last, though, from a write

1107
00:59:40,840 --> 00:59:43,840
Speaker 1: up in a blog dedicated to the book nine the

1108
00:59:43,920 --> 00:59:49,560
Speaker 1: Year the Future Began quote, the pretense of cordiality dissipated

1109
00:59:49,640 --> 00:59:53,640
Speaker 1: on June at a four hour meeting at Netscape headquarters

1110
00:59:53,680 --> 00:59:56,920
Speaker 1: in Mountain View, California, at which representatives of Microsoft delivered

1111
00:59:56,960 --> 01:00:00,000
Speaker 1: what Netscape considered a heavy handed threat divide the market

1112
01:00:00,040 --> 01:00:03,480
Speaker 1: for web browsers or face the prospect of annihilation. According

1113
01:00:03,480 --> 01:00:05,840
Speaker 1: to detailed notes of the meeting made by Mark Anderson,

1114
01:00:06,040 --> 01:00:10,360
Speaker 1: Netscape's co founder, Microsoft's representatives proposed restricting the Netscape Navigator

1115
01:00:10,360 --> 01:00:14,040
Speaker 1: browser to older versions of Microsoft Windows operating systems. That

1116
01:00:14,040 --> 01:00:17,120
Speaker 1: would mean excluding Navigator from Windows ninety five, the upgraded

1117
01:00:17,160 --> 01:00:20,480
Speaker 1: operating system that Microsoft was planning to release. Now at

1118
01:00:20,480 --> 01:00:23,880
Speaker 1: the time, no one was sure if Microsoft was legally

1119
01:00:23,880 --> 01:00:27,600
Speaker 1: allowed to do this. There are laws against being a monopoly.

1120
01:00:27,640 --> 01:00:30,120
Speaker 1: And when you're saying not only do we make operating systems,

1121
01:00:30,120 --> 01:00:32,680
Speaker 1: but we unilaterally will decide which browsers work for them,

1122
01:00:32,880 --> 01:00:35,520
Speaker 1: you're edging across that line. But again, it was new

1123
01:00:35,600 --> 01:00:37,960
Speaker 1: enough that, like there was debate as to whether or

1124
01:00:38,000 --> 01:00:41,520
Speaker 1: not this was this was verboten now. Anderson, at the

1125
01:00:41,560 --> 01:00:43,560
Speaker 1: time was a twenty four year old callo youth like

1126
01:00:43,600 --> 01:00:46,800
Speaker 1: Bill had been back in Albuquerque, and he described Microsoft

1127
01:00:46,800 --> 01:00:50,760
Speaker 1: reps as acting like Don Corleone from The Godfather. I

1128
01:00:50,800 --> 01:00:53,000
Speaker 1: have never been in a meeting with in my thirty

1129
01:00:53,080 --> 01:00:55,440
Speaker 1: five year business career in which a competitor had so

1130
01:00:55,520 --> 01:00:58,640
Speaker 1: blatantly implied that we would either stop competing with it

1131
01:00:58,840 --> 01:01:01,160
Speaker 1: or the competitor would kill us. In all my years

1132
01:01:01,160 --> 01:01:03,760
Speaker 1: in business, I have never heard nor experienced such an

1133
01:01:03,760 --> 01:01:08,240
Speaker 1: explicit proposal to divide markets. Netscape said no, and Microsoft

1134
01:01:08,320 --> 01:01:11,520
Speaker 1: did what they promised. By nineteen nine, they had successfully

1135
01:01:11,600 --> 01:01:15,240
Speaker 1: killed Netscape, which was duly bought and destroyed by a O. L. R.

1136
01:01:15,280 --> 01:01:21,560
Speaker 1: I p pour one out to Miaomi. Now, did you

1137
01:01:21,560 --> 01:01:24,640
Speaker 1: ever use an Netscape Andrew? Oh? Yeah, yeah, I am

1138
01:01:24,680 --> 01:01:28,480
Speaker 1: definitely of that age. I actually, I will say I

1139
01:01:28,600 --> 01:01:31,560
Speaker 1: saw of the like pay attention to ship. I did

1140
01:01:31,560 --> 01:01:36,000
Speaker 1: not exactly realize that it was had been killed. Yeah,

1141
01:01:36,040 --> 01:01:38,600
Speaker 1: that's why it's stopped being a thing. Yeah, I guess

1142
01:01:38,600 --> 01:01:41,640
Speaker 1: I just assumed that's what Firefox because it was all Mozilla.

1143
01:01:41,920 --> 01:01:44,120
Speaker 1: I don't. I mean, the same people I think later

1144
01:01:44,160 --> 01:01:47,400
Speaker 1: wound up being a big part of Firefox. But yeah,

1145
01:01:47,480 --> 01:01:51,920
Speaker 1: Netscape gets murdered. Obviously, good browsers eventually become I mean

1146
01:01:51,960 --> 01:01:54,040
Speaker 1: you can we people will argue about that to this

1147
01:01:54,160 --> 01:01:57,160
Speaker 1: day and like fuck you, I don't care. Um, Netscape

1148
01:01:57,280 --> 01:01:59,840
Speaker 1: and and Chrome or or a Firefox and Chrome at

1149
01:01:59,840 --> 01:02:05,240
Speaker 1: the same go to help. Yes, absolutely, Um, Now Microsoft

1150
01:02:05,640 --> 01:02:09,160
Speaker 1: edges trash but whatever. I don't even know what that is,

1151
01:02:09,920 --> 01:02:13,320
Speaker 1: but it's what they were placed Explorer with. Yeah, that's

1152
01:02:13,320 --> 01:02:16,200
Speaker 1: a hilarious part. It's like this was like a like,

1153
01:02:17,200 --> 01:02:19,480
Speaker 1: you know, a war for the keys of who would

1154
01:02:19,480 --> 01:02:22,800
Speaker 1: control the Internet. And now it's like, what's the difference.

1155
01:02:22,920 --> 01:02:25,440
Speaker 1: There's a new one, and it's like you guys were

1156
01:02:25,480 --> 01:02:28,720
Speaker 1: never never got good at making browsers. Like it clearly

1157
01:02:28,800 --> 01:02:30,680
Speaker 1: wasn't the thing you were interested in. It was just

1158
01:02:30,760 --> 01:02:33,520
Speaker 1: because it wasn't even It wasn't even because it was

1159
01:02:33,560 --> 01:02:35,720
Speaker 1: gonna hurt your ability to make money because they're using

1160
01:02:35,760 --> 01:02:38,200
Speaker 1: the thing on your computers that they're paying for. It

1161
01:02:38,400 --> 01:02:41,440
Speaker 1: was that someone else was making money. Like it didn't

1162
01:02:41,440 --> 01:02:43,600
Speaker 1: even hurt you. You just hate the idea that other

1163
01:02:43,680 --> 01:02:50,000
Speaker 1: people will profit. It's amazing. Um so yeah. Uh. That

1164
01:02:50,160 --> 01:02:54,240
Speaker 1: meeting with Microsoft and Netscape, where Microsoft threatened Netscape, wound

1165
01:02:54,320 --> 01:02:58,400
Speaker 1: up playing a key role in a massive antitrust lawsuit

1166
01:02:58,480 --> 01:03:01,960
Speaker 1: the federal government brought against my Resoft. Twenty state governments

1167
01:03:02,040 --> 01:03:04,640
Speaker 1: joined the lawsuit, which alleged that the company was engaged

1168
01:03:04,680 --> 01:03:08,080
Speaker 1: in a systemic pattern of anti competitive tactics. It's attempt

1169
01:03:08,120 --> 01:03:10,240
Speaker 1: to wipe out all competition in the browser market was

1170
01:03:10,280 --> 01:03:13,840
Speaker 1: just one example of this. The government case against Microsoft

1171
01:03:13,920 --> 01:03:17,120
Speaker 1: was heavily boosted by a memorandum written in nine by

1172
01:03:17,160 --> 01:03:21,200
Speaker 1: Gates himself, titled the Internet Title Wave. It described Netscape

1173
01:03:21,200 --> 01:03:23,560
Speaker 1: as a threat that had to be beaten. The government

1174
01:03:23,600 --> 01:03:26,640
Speaker 1: alleged using this that Microsoft set out to win at

1175
01:03:26,680 --> 01:03:29,720
Speaker 1: any cost. The federal judge who heard the case, Thomas

1176
01:03:29,720 --> 01:03:33,360
Speaker 1: Pinfield Jackson, decided for the government, finding that Microsoft had

1177
01:03:33,400 --> 01:03:36,560
Speaker 1: attempted to monopolize the web browser market. He ordered the

1178
01:03:36,560 --> 01:03:40,920
Speaker 1: company split into Now you're probably aware that this did

1179
01:03:40,960 --> 01:03:44,960
Speaker 1: not happen. Um. Microsoft appealed. They obviously they have all

1180
01:03:45,000 --> 01:03:47,640
Speaker 1: of the money in the world. They appeal, the judge's

1181
01:03:47,640 --> 01:03:50,720
Speaker 1: decision gets overturned. They and the thing they eventually got

1182
01:03:50,760 --> 01:03:52,520
Speaker 1: was just like a slap on the wrist. I'm not

1183
01:03:52,560 --> 01:03:55,040
Speaker 1: going to labor long on why this happened. Microsoft had

1184
01:03:55,120 --> 01:03:58,120
Speaker 1: all the money, all the lawyers, and owned a decent

1185
01:03:58,160 --> 01:04:00,160
Speaker 1: number of the politicians. Of course they want in the

1186
01:04:00,160 --> 01:04:02,800
Speaker 1: long term. Our system is designed for them to win.

1187
01:04:03,640 --> 01:04:06,800
Speaker 1: What's important and what was valuable about the antitrust suit

1188
01:04:06,960 --> 01:04:09,560
Speaker 1: is that it shattered Bill Gates for a while. It

1189
01:04:09,680 --> 01:04:12,720
Speaker 1: was hugely stressful, It made for months of bad pr

1190
01:04:13,080 --> 01:04:15,760
Speaker 1: it led him to have several in office nervous breakdowns,

1191
01:04:15,760 --> 01:04:18,280
Speaker 1: and worst of all, it involved a public deposition that

1192
01:04:18,320 --> 01:04:20,480
Speaker 1: exposed him to the world as exactly the kind of

1193
01:04:20,560 --> 01:04:23,600
Speaker 1: arrogant and angry little man those who had worked closely

1194
01:04:23,640 --> 01:04:26,320
Speaker 1: with him had known since the Albuquerque days. So let's

1195
01:04:26,360 --> 01:04:30,640
Speaker 1: end this episode by talking about that deposition. Microsoft's legal

1196
01:04:30,680 --> 01:04:33,360
Speaker 1: strategy in the first case was to depict the prosecutors

1197
01:04:33,480 --> 01:04:36,320
Speaker 1: as out of touch old fogies who didn't understand technology,

1198
01:04:36,520 --> 01:04:38,240
Speaker 1: and to claim like Microsoft is just acting in the

1199
01:04:38,240 --> 01:04:41,560
Speaker 1: way any reasonable tech company would do. Gates's lawyers and

1200
01:04:41,640 --> 01:04:44,000
Speaker 1: pr Flax wanted him to make hay out of his

1201
01:04:44,080 --> 01:04:46,640
Speaker 1: reputation as a boy genius who dropped out of Harvard

1202
01:04:46,680 --> 01:04:49,640
Speaker 1: to become the world's richest man. Here's how Ours Technica

1203
01:04:49,720 --> 01:04:53,360
Speaker 1: described what came next. By day two, it became clear

1204
01:04:53,400 --> 01:04:56,640
Speaker 1: that the strategy was failing spectacularly. As New Yorker writer

1205
01:04:56,760 --> 01:04:59,280
Speaker 1: Kent Aletta once noted, Gates had never in his life

1206
01:04:59,280 --> 01:05:01,840
Speaker 1: groveled for a job or suffered many of the indignities

1207
01:05:01,840 --> 01:05:04,840
Speaker 1: most of us experience. On a regular basis, He regularly

1208
01:05:04,880 --> 01:05:07,880
Speaker 1: berated reporters for asking what he'd say were stupid questions.

1209
01:05:08,120 --> 01:05:12,040
Speaker 1: Publicly lauded as the yse age consummate businessmen and industry visionary.

1210
01:05:12,280 --> 01:05:15,240
Speaker 1: Gates was accustomed to being treated with obsequious deference from

1211
01:05:15,240 --> 01:05:18,000
Speaker 1: all but a small number of peers. As such, he

1212
01:05:18,080 --> 01:05:22,880
Speaker 1: had little or no experience tolerating, let alone encountering dissent, criticism,

1213
01:05:22,960 --> 01:05:26,440
Speaker 1: or challenges to his authority. The lack of experience played

1214
01:05:26,520 --> 01:05:29,240
Speaker 1: right into the government's hand. Instead of portraying a leader

1215
01:05:29,240 --> 01:05:31,720
Speaker 1: in control of his domain and confident in his case

1216
01:05:31,760 --> 01:05:35,080
Speaker 1: and his company's legal and ethical righteousness, the current courtroom

1217
01:05:35,160 --> 01:05:37,120
Speaker 1: video showed a sight of Gates that had never been

1218
01:05:37,120 --> 01:05:41,320
Speaker 1: on public display before. He was petulant, petty, flustered, and dower.

1219
01:05:41,560 --> 01:05:45,080
Speaker 1: He was ineffectual. He was, in a word, beaten. During

1220
01:05:45,120 --> 01:05:48,040
Speaker 1: three days of intense questioning, Gates often feigned ignorance of

1221
01:05:48,040 --> 01:05:50,920
Speaker 1: his own company's policies and actions. He passed out everyday

1222
01:05:50,960 --> 01:05:53,880
Speaker 1: words or phrases such as concern, support, and piss on.

1223
01:05:54,480 --> 01:05:57,080
Speaker 1: Gates seemed to use the strategy to evade tough questions

1224
01:05:57,120 --> 01:06:00,200
Speaker 1: about whether his company abused its entrenched windows franchise kill

1225
01:06:00,240 --> 01:06:03,480
Speaker 1: off emerging competitors such as Navigator and Java. To the

1226
01:06:03,480 --> 01:06:05,960
Speaker 1: surprise of him and his many attorneys and image handlers,

1227
01:06:06,120 --> 01:06:09,160
Speaker 1: Gates came off as argumentative, petty, and someone badly losing

1228
01:06:09,160 --> 01:06:12,120
Speaker 1: ground to a more formidable rival. What example of this

1229
01:06:12,160 --> 01:06:15,160
Speaker 1: exchange came came in this exchange with David Boys, the

1230
01:06:15,200 --> 01:06:19,040
Speaker 1: private attorney hired by the Justice Department. Boys, what non

1231
01:06:19,080 --> 01:06:23,320
Speaker 1: Microsoft browsers were you concerned about in January of nineteen Gates?

1232
01:06:23,600 --> 01:06:26,880
Speaker 1: I don't know what you mean concerned? Boys. What is

1233
01:06:26,880 --> 01:06:29,960
Speaker 1: it about the word concerned that you don't understand? Gates?

1234
01:06:30,000 --> 01:06:33,040
Speaker 1: I'm not sure what you mean by it? Boys? Is Gates?

1235
01:06:33,080 --> 01:06:35,640
Speaker 1: Is there a document where I use that term? Boys?

1236
01:06:35,720 --> 01:06:37,920
Speaker 1: Is the term concerned a term you're familiar with in

1237
01:06:37,960 --> 01:06:41,320
Speaker 1: the English language? Gates? Yes? Does it have a meaning

1238
01:06:41,360 --> 01:06:48,840
Speaker 1: you're familiar with? Gates? Yes? Fucking piece of shit? He really,

1239
01:06:49,160 --> 01:06:53,040
Speaker 1: that's like the Ben Shapiro school of debate. It's like, yeah,

1240
01:06:53,080 --> 01:06:57,640
Speaker 1: just like, don't address the issue. Yeah, what is it?

1241
01:06:57,920 --> 01:07:01,880
Speaker 1: Harvard Dweebs. Yeah, again, it's like that ours technical writer

1242
01:07:01,960 --> 01:07:06,080
Speaker 1: points out, like he's he's he's never had to grovel

1243
01:07:06,120 --> 01:07:08,400
Speaker 1: for a job, He's never had to deal with in dignities.

1244
01:07:08,920 --> 01:07:11,919
Speaker 1: At one point, Thomas Penfield Jackson, the judge hearing the case,

1245
01:07:12,040 --> 01:07:16,440
Speaker 1: started laughing. Microsoft lawyers argued during a closed door session

1246
01:07:16,480 --> 01:07:18,280
Speaker 1: that the deposition was turning into a side show and

1247
01:07:18,320 --> 01:07:20,760
Speaker 1: government lawyers should be barred from showing any more segments

1248
01:07:20,840 --> 01:07:24,240
Speaker 1: during the trial. The judge denied this motion, saying, if anything,

1249
01:07:24,280 --> 01:07:26,160
Speaker 1: I think your problem is with your witness, not the

1250
01:07:26,200 --> 01:07:29,200
Speaker 1: way in which this testimony is being presented. Basically like there,

1251
01:07:29,240 --> 01:07:31,240
Speaker 1: you can't show this deposition because it makes us look

1252
01:07:31,240 --> 01:07:34,040
Speaker 1: bad and the kids like, that's exactly why we should

1253
01:07:34,040 --> 01:07:41,000
Speaker 1: show it now. Unfortunately for all mankind, Uh, the Microsoft

1254
01:07:41,040 --> 01:07:43,400
Speaker 1: anti trust case was actually kind of even though the

1255
01:07:43,440 --> 01:07:47,880
Speaker 1: government kind of lost, was basically the best case scenario

1256
01:07:47,960 --> 01:07:50,680
Speaker 1: for such a trial in our system. Good didn't win

1257
01:07:50,880 --> 01:07:53,360
Speaker 1: and evil didn't lose, but evil had a horrible time

1258
01:07:53,400 --> 01:07:55,560
Speaker 1: and wound up traumatized enough that it quit its job.

1259
01:07:55,720 --> 01:07:57,960
Speaker 1: So that's like the best case scenario. You're never going

1260
01:07:58,000 --> 01:07:59,720
Speaker 1: to break up the big company because they have all

1261
01:07:59,760 --> 01:08:01,680
Speaker 1: the mon to fight you, but you can make the

1262
01:08:01,760 --> 01:08:06,000
Speaker 1: CEO like not want to do his job anymore. Sort

1263
01:08:06,040 --> 01:08:12,400
Speaker 1: of sort of the Vietcong Yeah lawsuit, Yes, famous famous

1264
01:08:12,520 --> 01:08:20,559
Speaker 1: Viet Cong analogs the US Department of Justice. There's always

1265
01:08:20,560 --> 01:08:25,840
Speaker 1: a bigger fish. That's always a bigger, bigger fish. Yeah,

1266
01:08:26,400 --> 01:08:30,400
Speaker 1: all right, So Andrew, that's the end of part one

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Speaker 1: for the day you wanted? What a story? What a

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Speaker 1: tale you got? You get any pluggables to plug? Oh? Yeah,

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Speaker 1: just uh you know, you know, as this racist. We

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Speaker 1: are independent. Now I don't remember if we said that

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Speaker 1: at the top, but uh yeah, I gotta go to

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Speaker 1: suboptimal pods dot com and you'll see how to subscribe

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01:08:52,240 --> 01:08:56,000
Speaker 1: to you know, premium shows and stuff and whatever. See

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Speaker 1: that's exciting because in part two we are going to

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Speaker 1: have to ask, oh is that racist? A couple of times.

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Speaker 1: Can't wait? Uh hot m