webby found quotes... on bill

mixing up a lot of notions here:

- that Gates is qualified to judge. may be not. IIRC, he's never provided evidence that he ever wrote anything other than a BASIC interpreter (and legend has it that Allen was the primary author). is there any? being a critic of X doesn't entail being good at X; usually, but not systems development. the quality of criticism here derives not from subjective preference (this picture pleases me more than that picture), but acknowledged superiority (i built a better mousetrap, and yours is crap because it doesn't trap mouses). which brings us to...

- that M$ is a demonstrable example of innovation, superior systems development, or creativity. if you go down the list; it was something they stole (DOS), something they built for hire then stole (Windows UI), something they built for hire then ported (Office), something they EEE (IE), something they lucked out on (DOS for IBM, who were clueless; and Lotus 1-2-3 which was made ONLY for DOS and thus made DOS mandatory), something they did that was illegal but didn't get really punished for (the anti-trust stuff, and the continuing punitive contracts with OEMs; do you really think Dell, et al wouldn't offer Linux if they could without penalty?). face it: M$ got where they are not by building better mousetraps, but by trapping folks into buying only M$ mousetraps.