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-Signs, Portents, and the Weather-
"China Did A Lot Of Things Right": Bill Gates Defends CCP, Slams America Over Handling Of Coronavirus
2020-04-27
[ZeroHedge] Bill Gates vehemently defended China's initial response to the coronavirus outbreak on Sunday, telling CNN's Fareed Zakaria that the communist country - which silenced whistleblowers and lied about transmissibility - "did a lot of things right."

"How would you respond to the charge that hte Chinese covered this up. They've essentially deceived the rest of the world, and as a result, they should be held in some way responsible for this?" asked Zakaria.

To which Gates responded: "Well, I don't think that's a timely thing because it doesn't affect how we act today. You know, China did a lot of things right. At the beginning, like any country where a virus first shows up, they can look back and say that they missed some things," Gates said, adding "Some countries did respond very quickly and get their testing in place, and they avoided the incredible economic pain - and it's sad that even the US that you would have expected to do this well, did it particularly poorly - but it's not time to talk about that."

Gates then suggested that this is the time "to take the great science we have, the fact that we're in this together, fix testing and treatments and get that vaccine, and minimize the trillions in dollars and many things that you can't even dimensionalize in economic terms that are awful about the situation that we're in.

"That's a distraction," Gates added, regarding placing the blame on China. "I think there's a lot of incorrect and unfair things said."...

We wonder why Bill Gates - one of the largest donors to the World Health Organization - is similarly defending China, which is also one of the WHO's largest contributors.
Posted by:Clem

#62   telling CNN's Fareed Zakaria

That ended my read.
Posted by: Woodrow   2020-04-27 22:01  

#61  I forgot about Gates buying DOS. I think he sold it to IBM before he even owned it, or something dodgy like that. Still the point with the dual founders stands.
Posted by: ruprecht   2020-04-27 21:53  

#60  Woz engineered the Apple I. Since then the only thing he's engineered is a mess on tech writers chins.
Posted by: M. Murcek   2020-04-27 19:02  

#59  Joy has gone underground. He actually was sympathetic to Ted Kaszinski and is waiting for Skynet to initialize.
Posted by: M. Murcek   2020-04-27 19:00  

#58  Only a geek would buy a computer from a geek. Marketers made it happen as a commercial phenomen. And Gates had nothing to do with writing DOS he bought it from Seattle Compter Products. His flash was licensing rather than selling it to IBM.
Posted by: M. Murcek   2020-04-27 18:58  

#57  Although Gates did cowrite DOS I believe he was more of a marketing type that let Paul Allen do the real engineering.

Similar story with Jobs and Woz at Apple and McNealy and Joy at Sun. Seems that you needed a more marketing oriented guy working with a software genius to succeed back then.
Posted by: ruprecht   2020-04-27 18:26  

#56  I'd point out Huawei and Wuhan lab don't open source either.
Posted by: M. Murcek   2020-04-27 15:13  

#55  The opening sourcing part is the foundation of the Linux "religion." nVidia doesn't want to show what their hardware is doing.
Posted by: M. Murcek   2020-04-27 15:10  

#54  If we actually put smart people instead of rich people in charge we might sometimes do better. Don't know how rich Fauci is but he isn't giving me a VDH vibe.
Posted by: M. Murcek   2020-04-27 14:52  

#53  They don't open-source their drivers which annoys a certain class of people, but I'm not a fanatic about that.

Yes, absolutely right. Not my game so I was wrong about that.
Posted by: M. Murcek   2020-04-27 14:49  

#52  Titan at Oak Ridge will be a mix of Intel Xeon CPUs and nVidia GPUs. The compute farm will run Linux but the GUI will be hosted on client terminals, desktop workstations and laptops.
Posted by: M. Murcek   2020-04-27 14:42  

#51  I would love to see our politics and our culture get back to the ideal of a liberally-educated citizen - traditional military & diplomatic & political history especially - who brings significant practical experience of managing people and resources - in the military, a small business, a farm, a clinic or hospital for ex. - far from D.C. or state capitols or the Cool Cities.

Veterans and people like Victor Davis Hanson who bring seasoned judgment, logic, experience and an acute awareness of how little we know for certain.

How much better off we would be if our policies were made by wise generalists like Victor Hanson instead of foolish experts and the Grifters they advise.
Posted by: Lex   2020-04-27 14:42  

#50   nVidia won't bother to make Linux drivers.

Actually, they do. Running one right now. They have done it for years.

They don't open-source their drivers which annoys a certain class of people, but I'm not a fanatic about that.
Posted by: SteveS   2020-04-27 14:36  

#49  nVidia is a huge corporation involved in supercomputing architecture and hardware. I doubt Billy Gates has any say in their boardroom.
Posted by: M. Murcek   2020-04-27 14:35  

#48  You can run Chrome or New Edge as your browser on Android. Same underpinnings. I run it on my Win 10 machines and my Galaxy S8+. Not stuck letting gurgle in my pants while I browse.
Posted by: M. Murcek   2020-04-27 14:34  

#47  Not only rich people fall into the trap they have everything figured out. It's a very human failing.
Posted by: M. Murcek   2020-04-27 14:31  

#46  I don't fault the man's business acumen. Have nothing against the company and its current form and mgmt -- they've done a superb job with the cloud, and I'm looking to expand my holdings at the right moment.

But the man really needs to stay within his sphere. He should not be viewed as a sage regarding policy on education, or healthcare, or anything, really.

He's just a successful businessman, like your Grocery King or the Wizard of Whattaburger or the Ninja Turtles Tycoon.

I hope this crisis kills the Davis Man myth of the Globalist Genius whose success in one narrow little vertical entitles him to hold forth about how the planet should be run.
Posted by: Lex   2020-04-27 14:29  

#45  nVidia won't bother to make Linux drivers. That right there is a business decision that says something.

Gotta wonder if Gates had that written into a contract somewhere along the line. Wouldn't put it past him.

Windows NT was the point where Microsoft software became somewhat more stable and felt a little less like a toy for children.

I suppose if you must have fancy fonts and colors, then Microsoft is the way to go. These days I just want a decent browser and IE ain't it.

I remember one year I was trying to create a Christmas letter for friends and family. Whenever I got to the point where I wanted to add just one more picture, Word would always crash. I finally got fed up and put the whole thing into an HTML file, loaded it into my browser, probably Netscape at the time, and printed it that way. I'd rather use vi to do that than to mess with Word. I guess that's how I feel about the whole issue.

One thing I found when I bought my Samsung Tab A is that it was made in Vietnam. I chose that over a laptop that would run windows for that reason. You can run it with a Bluetooth mouse and keyboard just like a real computer. You can even put vi on it. Too bad the Android operating system, like the early days of Windows, it not ready for prime time.
Posted by: Abu Uluque   2020-04-27 14:26  

#44  So, kiddies, Mr. Gates still owns Microsoft stock, but he has nothing to do with the products they sell / offer as subscription today. What they do offer is developed by some of the serious superstars of the industry. Between the lab and the user the marketing people put their stamp on it. It currently owns 94% of the client market (excluding smartphones and tablets).
Posted by: M. Murcek   2020-04-27 14:22  

#43  Gates even got his attitude about what small computer users need from Ken Olsen at DEC. And of course UNIX was written originally to run on a DEC PDP8. When Dec canceled the follow on to VMS Dave Cutler went to Microsoft and developed Windows NT which is still the underpinnings of Windows 10 and Azure today. It's a small world.
Posted by: M. Murcek   2020-04-27 14:11  

#42  nVidia won't bother to make Linux drivers. That right there is a business decision that says something.
Posted by: M. Murcek   2020-04-27 14:05  

#41  I worked heavily with UNIX in green screen days. Great for what it was designed for. The GUIs on UNIX and Linux have always sucked, hence the lack of software development and adoption. There's a good reason the F-150 doesn't share many design concepts with a Ferrari.
Posted by: M. Murcek   2020-04-27 14:01  

#40  If you need both, put WSL (Windows Subsystem for Linux) on the Win 10 box and have it both ways. Unless you are developing hardware drivers you should be fine.
Posted by: M. Murcek   2020-04-27 13:56  

#39  Ethernet came from PARC too. Metcalfe made a fortune and Xerox doesn't even own the patent.
Posted by: M. Murcek   2020-04-27 13:54  

#38  Especially when his ship doesn't have to turn to line up with current events.
Posted by: swksvolFF   2020-04-27 13:53  

#37  The graphic user interface (GUI) that uses windows, widgets, buttons and text boxes was first developed in Palo Alto by a division of Xerox Corporation known as the Palo Alto Research Center (PARC). At the time, Xerox big wigs were making so much money with their photo copiers that they didn't pay much attention to PARC and never understood the significance of what they had on their hands, kinda like the morons at AT&T who didn't understand UNIX when it was developed at Bell Labs. This is all documented in a fascinating book titled Dealers of Lightening: Xerox PARC and the Dawn of the Computer Age by Michael Hiltzik.

Steve Jobs copied the idea from PARC and Bill Gates copied the idea from Jobs.

Bill Gates is not a visionary. If he was ever a computer programmer, he wasn't a very good one judging by the piss poor software he produced. He copied a good idea and was enough of a businessman to make a fortune with it. The Windows operating system in the early years was nothing more than a kluge sitting atop the DOS operating system that was also a pathetic little kluge especially compared to UNIX. Over the years it has gotten somewhat better but still has glitches. Applications like WORD and EXCEL are OK, I guess. I never had any experience with IBM's OS2 which, for a brief time, was offered as an alternative to Windows so I don't understand how or why IBM failed. Perhaps their big wigs were every bit as lame brained as the guys at Xerox and AT&T.

The real advantage of Windows was that it would run on just about any old Intel or AMD based computer. These boxes were far cheaper than the much more refined hardware produced by the likes of IBM, Hewlett-Packard, Sun Microsystems and even Apple. These days they are all Made in China which I believe goes a long way toward explaining Gates' willingness to kiss Chinese ass.

I'd put LINUX on my desktop but Mrs. Uluque would freak out.

I don't believe Gates has any real appreciation for technology and innovation. He appreciates money and power. I can't fault him for that but when he kisses Chinese ass it makes me despise him.
Posted by: Abu Uluque   2020-04-27 13:44  

#36  As noted above, proles weren't supposed to need >64K memory, color screens, GUIs, hard disks, multitasking, networking, etc. When it became necessary to have these things, MS bought the technology when they didn't have it in house. Gates is still as forward looking as he always was, which is to say not at all. Thank the stars for Cutler and Rusinovich.
Posted by: M. Murcek   2020-04-27 13:43  

#35  I prefer to get my China Strong! news from Lebron James.
Posted by: swksvolFF   2020-04-27 13:16  

#34  China cut off travel between Wuhan and China but not between Wuhan and the world. Bill please explain that away.

Zakaria will never ask him to explain that one.
Posted by: Abu Uluque   2020-04-27 12:50  

#33   my school teacher wife

Does Mrs. Uluque have any thoughts on academically gifted students?
Posted by: trailing wife   2020-04-27 12:49  

#32  Gates is also the guy who didn't get wise to the Internet until long after all the UNIX computers had the TCP/IP stack compiled into their operating systems.

He's a billionaire. He's the boss of one of the largest tech companies in the world. He has access to the information. It's not just that he should know better. He does know better. It's his motives that need to be questioned.
Posted by: Abu Uluque   2020-04-27 12:44  

#31  But then my school teacher wife was yammering at me while I wrote that.
Posted by: Abu Uluque   2020-04-27 12:36  

#30  ^ too lazy and stupid

Now they'll say I'm too lazy and stupid to write proper English.
Posted by: Abu Uluque   2020-04-27 12:35  

#29  Iron Rice bowl first last and always.
Posted by: M. Murcek   2020-04-27 12:32  

#28  WTF did we do to deserve so much grief at the hands of our public educationists? Why did they have to do so much damage to our child?

I don't think it's anything personal, Lex. They're just to lazy and stupid to do right. Also, their unions protect them from any attempts to make them change.
Posted by: Abu Uluque   2020-04-27 12:30  

#27  (b) He still doesn't get it about China.

Oh, I think he gets it perfectly well. His interests are just a little different than some of us, by which I mean he wants to maximize his Chinese profits and he doesn't give a fuck about Americans.
Posted by: Abu Uluque   2020-04-27 12:26  

#26  You know, it's loved in datacenters, sort of like the ROM in your car's ECU. Set it and forget it. On the desktop it's doing about as well as COVID-19 penetration wise.
Posted by: M. Murcek   2020-04-27 10:10  

#25  "Lin(s)ux Losers". Yeah, if you say so.
Posted by: Clem   2020-04-27 10:03  

#24  And the linsux losers will be here before the day is out.
Posted by: M. Murcek   2020-04-27 09:38  

#23  Gates is a coastie who plays the game that's necessary to fit in with the crowd he couldn't accept not being part of. His last original idea was the traf-o-data.
Posted by: M. Murcek   2020-04-27 09:35  

#22  @#20

Oh gods no. Gates is no where near the evil that is Soros. Just describing his political views. Anything that globalizes things and gives governments more power he will be favorable too. And he LOVES the UN.
Posted by: DarthVader   2020-04-27 09:32  

#21  So I have people asking when I'll boycott Microsoft products. Um, no time soon. Gates didn't write DOS, look it up. Gates didn't write Windows. Look it up. If I have to boycott every company that has a stockholder I disagree with, I'll be rubbing two sticks together in the back yard. I utterly disagree with how Gates uses his money but as a capitalist I do respect his right to misuse what he has earned. He's maybe one of the most recent, but definitely in big company.
Posted by: M. Murcek   2020-04-27 09:30  

#20  ^So, Soros out, Gates in?
Posted by: g(r)omgoru PB   2020-04-27 09:06  

#19  Gates is an authoritarian globalist.
Posted by: DarthVader   2020-04-27 08:58  

#18  hey Gates, how's that Chinese penis taste?
Posted by: Bob Grorong1136   2020-04-27 08:51  

#17  China cut off travel between Wuhan and China but not between Wuhan and the world. Bill please explain that away.
Posted by: ruprecht   2020-04-27 08:28  

#16  Gates? This is the guy who said "Nobody would ever need more than 64K of memory."
Posted by: Mercutio   2020-04-27 08:13  

#15  Shocking moment New Jersey teacher tells teenagers to ‘die a long, painful death’ from coronavirus after they ignored stay-at-home orders to play football outside
Posted by: Skidmark   2020-04-27 07:44  

#14   We just want a superior education, of the caliber that our (gifted) kid deserves.

Oboy. Teachers often assume that the parents of a child claimed to be gifted are both wrong and interfering, or that indisputably intellectually gifted children will succeed on their own in a regular classroom without extra teaching effort. If your child tests as the 1% classified as intellectually gifted, you ought legally to be able to demand an individualized education program, as gifted falls under the category of learning disabled/special ed., but what that will get your child in the real world will depend on the laws in your state and the funded offerings in your school district. Most smaller or less well funded schools/school districts have absolutely nothing available, lacking both funding and teachers with a gifted ed. graduate specialty. The National Association for Gifted Children has information here for parents dealing with schools, and here for information and contacts for each state.

When we moved back to the US I was unaware that gifted ed. was a thing, never mind that my children might be other than ordinarily bright. And even though our district provided a wonderful gifted ed program, it was only one period a day— for social studies — with the rest of the day spent in ordinary regular/advanced classes. So we did a lot of enriching at home anyway. If only the Khan academy and university on-line programs had been available when the trailing daughters were young (two decades ago) — there is so much more available for parents of gifted parents now.

And yes, about the absolute vileness that was Common Core. My bright, five year old niece was reduced to daily tears over her homework and had to be held back a year because she was so traumatized by the experience. She is thriving now that the school gave it up, but it was tough for all involved — and her father is a computer science professor.
Posted by: trailing wife   2020-04-27 04:58  

#13  Bill Gates is a globalist. End of. Of course he's defending China.
Posted by: Spike Grineng8188   2020-04-27 03:26  

#12  Our heads have been spinning... Why do they hate us so?

Because you hurt their self-esteem.
Posted by: g(r)omgoru   2020-04-27 03:13  

#11  We were happy w Johns Hopkins CTY but then the educational Shitshow shut down our attempts to go it alone as well (hint: cf. that Harvard Law School witch's vendetta)...

Our heads have been spinning... Why do they hate us so?

We just want a superior education, of the caliber that our (gifted) kid deserves. We're not malicious; we're not political or on some sort of crusade against public education. WTF did we do to deserve so much grief at the hands of our public educationists? Why did they have to do so much damage to our child? ...so sick of this nonsense

/rant
Posted by: Lex   2020-04-27 03:05  

#10  It's never too late, Lex. In Israel something like 15% improve their matriculation certificate AFTER military service.

If you don't mind some practical advice.
Try Khan before you try tutors - good tutors are both expensive and rare (most of them animal trainers who teach your kid to do tricks).
If your kids succeed in learning, teach them to zip it in a classroom - the less their teacher knows, the more easily she (even if XY) offended.
Posted by: g(r)omgoru   2020-04-27 02:58  

#9  ^ yes we learned so .. the hard way.
Hope we didn't learn too late. I guess it could have been worse (sigh)
Posted by: Lex   2020-04-27 02:43  

#8  My kid was taught by me and his mother. And now using Khan. State schools exist for the sole purpose of providing jobs for female teachers who otherwise would be home keepers or sales clerks.
Posted by: g(r)omgoru   2020-04-27 02:40  

#7  your kid obv'y hasn't suffered from the Shitshow that is Common Core math in the US. We lost literally 2 years before we liberated our child.

2 years.

Can't express how sad and angry we are at this travesty. Literally tens of millions are in the same boat as us.,
Posted by: Lex   2020-04-27 02:31  

#6  ^Touche.

But, now that I think of it, common core & Khan academy may serve a common purpose - separating sheep from goats.
Posted by: g(r)omgoru   2020-04-27 02:28  

#5  C) evil fool behind Common Core
Posted by: Lex   2020-04-27 02:21  

#4  Two important facts about China.
(a) It don't minds screwing the rest of the World.
(b) If death rate was 1%, or even 10%, they would never put their important industrial hub of Wuhan on lockdown.

Two important facts about Bill Gates.
(a) He did a lot of good things like Khan Academy, etc...
(b) He still doesn't get it about China.
Posted by: g(r)omgoru   2020-04-27 01:56  

#3  He is already building a vaccine factory...it is all about $$$$
Posted by: crazyhorse   2020-04-27 01:29  

#2  Evil. Stupid. Corrupt.
Posted by: Lex   2020-04-27 00:48  

#1  Secret commie symp outs self.
Posted by: Whiskey Mike   2020-04-27 00:18  

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