12 Oct
2011
12 Oct
'11
10:10 a.m.
> think most people who have plenty of money (he
must have made
> millions over the life of his company) to cover their needs do not go
> out of their way to get bigger/richer nor do they care to.
On Wed, 12 Oct
2011, Dave McGuire wrote:
Good heavens man. If that were the case, there
wouldn't be protesters
on Wall Street.
I think that his use of the word "most" is extremeley significant -enough
so that it should have at least been capitalized.
Yes, there are more than a few like Gates, who "compete", and wouldn't
stop unless they get ALL of the money. I got that impression over
breakfast with half a dozen people, including him, in an cafe (3rd WCCF)
I never felt a desire to seek him out.
I think that TeoZ is claiming that a lot of people would stop. Frankly, I
don't agree that that is "most". BUT, I could accept it about Gary
Kildall. Certainly, things would have turned out a lot different if IBM
had gone with DR instead of MS, although I do NOT think that DR would have
succeeded in introducing IBM to a "California" lifestyle.
I talked with Gary a few times. He was a helluva nice guy. The one time
that I remember was when I tried [UNSUCCESSFULLY] to convince him to
define additional disk formats. I pointed out that machines were coming
out without 8" drives, and asked him to define "the CP/M standard format
of 5.25"". [no apologies to typesetters]. He said, "the standard format
of CP/M remains 8" SSSD.". I said, "But, . . .". He repeated it. He
was
not going to budge. If he were to have specified such a standard (such as
10 * 256 *35 (Osborne, TRS80 I)), then XenoCopy would never have happened.
I've heard from mutual acquaintances that his latter life was not happy.
How much of that was contemplation of what might have been, and people
obsessing at him about him blowing off IBM?
--
Grumpy Ol' Fred cisin at xenosoft.com