Not a perfect individual by any means. I vehemently detest his support of I-1639; just another example of the super wealthy and super powerful trying to keep it for themselves. However his benevolence in other matters, particularly those affecting this region I live in, can't be so easily dismissed out of hand. He did do a lot for the community. Vulcan invested in the area and brought with it good, high-paying jobs. The museum stuff I could care less about, though I get it that many others find solace and importance in those avenues. As for saving the football team from leaving, well I don't care but I have a great many friends and family who do. And for the Microsoft thing; well life would've been less interesting and probably a damn sight more boring if it hadn't been for BSODs and endless Windoze updates.

So he didn't do 'so much' for the area homeless, but then I wouldn't do much for them either.

I've had to deal with way too many of them, and of those what I've found is far too may are the way they are because they CHOOSE to be the way that they are. The vast majority don't give a fuck about improving their station in life, unless 'improvement' means a steady flow of drugs (and some food to keep them alive so they can partake in said drugs). They ARE willing to give lip service about going about improving themselves, but only if it allows them to score an expected handout. At least 5 out 6 of the homeless in the region came from elsewhere outside of WA State, spurred on to come because their 'network' touted that the bleeding hearts of the region were pushovers when it came to generosity and kindness. And for getting that free cellphone and sundry monetary handouts.

I recently had the displeasure of talking to one of area homeless who said exactly that. He and his clan came up from Georgia because they had heard that Northwesterners were kind, helpful and most importantly, willing to give. However he found that among us 'common folk' we were anything but. So off to Seattle proper he was headed, because their city leaders and government do-gooders are supposed to be the REAL pushovers.

I said "Good luck with that", and left it there. I don't think he was sober enough to pick up on the cynicism and sarcasm. Even the government extremists in the big city are getting antsy about the walls that the regular big city citizenry are putting up when it comes to rampant homeless crap that has been allowed to fester by those in power.

So Paul Allen didn't help in the homeless 'cause' beyond pledging a few million for building some permanent housing. Good for him that he didn't, because all that anything else would've done is bring MORE of this shitshow into the area. But crap on him for his hand in trying to trying to make the average joe and josie even weaker and neutered than we already are.

Interesting tribute to Allen written by Bill Gates. Gates certainly isn't a favorite of mine, but the Paul Allen he knew is the one I was acquainted with.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/w...aul-allen-1539862016

aileron

It’s only money and then you die, and then it becomes someone else’s money and they go out and do all of the stuff that is important to them.

quote:

Originally posted by aileron:
Interesting tribute to Allen written by Bill Gates. Gates certainly isn't a favorite of mine, but the Paul Allen he knew is the one I was acquainted with.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/w...aul-allen-1539862016

aileron

Is there a link for the unwashed non Subscribers?

Billionaire Microsoft co-founder and Seattle sports mogul Paul Allen died from septic shock, a condition that can be agonizingly painful, according to a report.

A copy of the death certificate for Allen, 65, obtained by TMZ, indicated that septic shock caused him to die.

Allen died Monday in Seattle, just three weeks after announcing the return of his non-Hodgkins lymphoma, a type of cancer that had been in remission for about a decade.

Septic shock is notoriously agonizing and include symptoms such as “severe muscle pain and general discomfort,” according to Medical News Today.

It’s brought on when chemicals naturally produced by the body to fight an infection back-fire and seep into the bloodstream, leading to severe inflammation. A person’s blood pressure becomes so low during septic shock that it does not respond to fluid replacement.

Allen, who owned the Seattle Seahawks and Portland Trailblazers, co-founded Microsoft in 1975. He was reportedly worth $20 billion when he died. He was never married and had no children.

Tech CEOs mourned his loss on social media.

“Our industry has lost a pioneer and our world has lost a force for good,” Apple CEO Tim Cook Tweeted.

Amazon’s Jeff Bezos lauded Allen for “his passion for invention” and Tweeted that “he was relentless to the end.”

Link

quote:

Originally posted by JALLEN:

quote:

Originally posted by aileron:
Interesting tribute to Allen written by Bill Gates. Gates certainly isn't a favorite of mine, but the Paul Allen he knew is the one I was acquainted with.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/w...aul-allen-1539862016

aileron

Is there a link for the unwashed non Subscribers?

I met Paul Allen when I was in 7th grade, and it changed my life.

I looked up to him right away. He was two years ahead of me in school, really tall, and proved to be a genius with computers. (Later, he also had a very cool beard, the type I could never pull off myself.) We bonded over the teletype that some students’ mothers had bought for the school and had connected to a remote mainframe.

Eventually we were spending just about all our free time messing around with any machine we could get our hands on. At an age when other high school kids were sneaking out of the house to go partying, Paul and I would sneak out at night to go use the computers in a lab at the University of Washington. It sounds geeky, and it was, but it was also a formative experience, and I’m not sure I would have had the courage to do it without Paul. I know it would have been a lot less fun. (“Borrowing” computer time illicitly would become something of a theme for us. Later, when I was a student at Harvard, I got in trouble for letting Paul use the campus computer lab without permission.)

Even in high school, before most people knew what a personal computer was, Paul predicted that chips would get super-powerful and would eventually give rise to a whole new industry. Many people don’t know that Microsoft wasn’t the first project we did together. That was something we called the Traf-O-Data, a machine that would analyze the information gathered by traffic monitors on city streets. We thought it was a great demonstration of the power of these new devices. We got a prototype up and working, and we imagined ourselves selling it all over the country. But no one wanted to buy the machines, and we had to wind it all down.


We decided to start our next, more successful venture in December 1974. Paul and I were both living in the Boston area—he was working, and I was going to college. One day he came and got me, insisting that I rush over to a nearby newsstand with him. When we arrived, he showed me the cover of the January issue of Popular Electronics. It featured a new computer called the Altair 8800, which ran on a powerful new chip. Paul looked at me and said: “This is happening without us!” That moment marked the end of my college career and the beginning of our new company, Microsoft.

In those days, the chips were so limited that you couldn’t do what’s called “native development”—you couldn’t use a machine with that chip in it as you were developing the software for it. That made writing code for those chips pretty challenging. Paul had a great idea: to write some code that would let us emulate those chips on a more powerful computer, then port it over to the machine with the less powerful chip. That breakthrough was important for a lot of Microsoft’s early success, and Paul deserves credit for it.


As the first person I ever partnered with, Paul set a standard that few other people could meet. He had a wide-ranging mind and a special talent for explaining complicated subjects in a simple way. As an adult, he pursued a huge spectrum of interests, including the arts, conservation, and artificial intelligence. He wanted to prevent elephant poaching, promote smart cities, and accelerate brain research.

Because I was lucky enough to know him from such a young age, I saw that before the rest of the world did. Once, when I was a teenager, I got curious about (of all things) gasoline. What did “refining” even mean? I turned to the most knowledgeable person I knew. Paul explained it in a super-clear and interesting way. It was just one of many enlightening conversations we would have over the coming decades.


Paul was cooler than I was. He was really into Jimi Hendrix, and I remember him playing “Are You Experienced?” for me. I wasn’t experienced at much of anything back then, and Paul wanted to share this amazing music with me. That’s the kind of person he was. He loved life and the people around him, and it showed.

His generosity was as wide-ranging as his interests. In our hometown of Seattle, Paul helped fund homeless shelters, brain research, and arts education. He also built the amazing Museum of Pop Culture, which houses some of his huge collection of music, science fiction, and movie memorabilia.

When I think about Paul, I remember a passionate man who held his family and friends dear. I also remember a brilliant technologist and philanthropist who wanted to accomplish great things, and did.

Paul deserved more time in life. He would have made the most of it. I will miss him tremendously.

—Bill Gates co-founded Microsoft along with Paul Allen. He is now co-chairman of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

Thanks. I remember that Altair 8080, lusting after it, and the IMSAI, competitor. A couple of greasy haired hippies snuck down to Albuquerque and used that Altair to test a BASIC interpreter they had written using just the manual, and it ran the first time.

quote:

Originally posted by 1s1k:
Just for my own curiosity. Why would you donate to both political parties. Are you expecting favors back at a later date reguardless of party?

Because contributing money is less about legal bribing than about paying legal extortion, and both sides extort money.