11.16.09
Bill, Nathan, Steve, and Other Con Artists
Summary: People’s assorted perspectives on Nathan Myhrvold, Bill Gates and Steve Jobs
Nathan Myhrvold is of great interest to us because he is the world’s largest patent troll, who was jointly conceived and funded by Bill Gates himself. Gates too is in the same type of business and Glyn Moody reveals that both hide their inner weaknesses. The following item is “[...] putting those Freakonomics chaps (+ IV’s Nathan Myhrvold) in context,” he writes.
Pierrehumbert then does a scarifying dissection of Myhrvold’s nutty arithmetic, which is interesting not just because it shows how a supposedly-clever ex-Microsoft guru can make a complete fool of himself, but also because it shows how Levitt — who, after all, makes the claim that his statistical ingenuity makes him more insightful than the rest of us — can’t do arithmetic either.
At present, people like Gates and Myhrvold are playing God, pretending to be the people who save humanity when it fact they have become patent trolls and parasites with a greased up marketing (PR) machine.
Regarding Steve Jobs, one of our readers wrote to say: “Here is part of the reason that Gates is sucking up to the public regarding Steve Jobs:
Fortune names Steve Jobs its CEO of the decade
Forget Oprah; Jobs is Teens’ Most Admired Entrepreneur
Our reader adds to these references: “Remember before Gates entered politics in 1999? After that he started having marketing firms attack critics and whitewash his image, he was even more reviled than today. No one could put it more politely than a US federal judge: ‘Bill Gates arrogant as Napoleon, says judge’
“Netware gets a mention here,” he adds. █
