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Microsoft News

What Bill Gates Wishes More People Knew About Paul Allen (paulallen.com) 124

Microsoft's original co-founder Paul Allen was honored posthumously with a lifetime achievement award for philanthropy this week at the Forbes Philanthropy summit.

Bill Gates remembers Allen as "one of the most intellectually curious people I've ever known," adding "I wish more people understood just how wide-ranging his giving was," and shared his remembrances at the ceremony: Later in life, Paul gave to a huge spectrum of issues that seem unrelated at first glance. He wanted to prevent elephant poaching, improve ocean health, and promote smart cities. He funded new housing for the homeless and arts education in the Puget Sound region. In 2014 alone, he supported research into the polio virus and efforts to contain the Ebola outbreak in West Africa -- all while standing up an amazing new institute for studying artificial intelligence.

If you knew him, the logic in Paul's portfolio is easy to see. He gave to the things that he was most interested in, and to the places where he thought he could have the most impact. Even though Paul cared about a lot of different things, he was deeply passionate about each of them.

There's a picture of a young Bill Gates in the eighth grade watching Paul Allen on a teletype terminal. "The only way for us to get computer time was by exploiting a bug in the system."

"We eventually got busted, but that led to our first official partnership between Paul and me: we worked out a deal with the company to use computers for free if we would identify problems. We spent just about all our free time messing around with any machine we could get our hands on." One day -- when Paul and I were both in Boston -- he insisted that I rush over to a nearby newsstand with him. He wanted to show me the cover of the January 1975 issue of Popular Electronics. It featured a new computer called the Altair 8800, which ran on a powerful new chip. I remember him holding up the cover and saying, "This is happening without us!"

Paul always wanted to push the boundaries of science. He did it when we were testing the limits of what a chip could do at Microsoft, and he continues to do it today -- even after he's gone -- through the work of the Allen Institute. When I first heard he was creating an organization to study brain science, I thought, "Of course...."

I wish Paul had gotten to see all of the good his generosity will do. He was one of the most thoughtful, brilliant, and curious people I've ever met....

I will miss him tremendously.

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What Bill Gates Wishes More People Knew About Paul Allen

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  • by Anonymous Coward

    A bunch of ruthless, win at any cost, people having meetings to pat each other on the back. Nice self-serving promotion you got there.

  • by lobiusmoop ( 305328 ) on Sunday June 30, 2019 @12:07PM (#58850362) Homepage

    He's my go-to reference point for Hodgkin Lymphoma... diagnosed at 29 (for me it was 26), caught it at stage 1 (2a) and then got 26 years cancer free (21 and counting) before its return and even then after what they call 'salvage' treatment he manged another 9 years before his immune system finally quit.

    Being a billionaire probably helped too I guess.

  • Empty words (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 30, 2019 @12:09PM (#58850372)

    From a man who tried to devalue the shares owned by Paul Allen while he was ill. Tactic even Steve Ballmer was reluctant to do. When Paul found out Bill sent Steve to apologize. He couldn't even do that himself.

    At this point in his life, Bill's conscience must weight heavily on him just like Andrew Carnegie on his latter years.

  • by ei4anb ( 625481 ) on Sunday June 30, 2019 @12:20PM (#58850420)
    Years go I heard that Paul had a PDP-10 (DEC-10) reachable over the Internet via telnet and would give people an account so I emailed him and asked. He delivered. The machine is now in the Living Computer Museum in Seattle which he founded. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
  • I realize I can filter out ac comments, but I wonder why they are allowed in the first place. I don't recall ever seeing one that would be classified as 'whistle blowing' or otherwise containing useful but risky content.

    • by Kokuyo ( 549451 ) on Sunday June 30, 2019 @12:54PM (#58850574) Journal

      I'm not sure I agree on the purpose of ACs you laid out her.

      I mean who's gonna be a whistleblower on Slashdot of all places?

      But trends come and go and sometimes (even in ye olden days) there wre things you could not say here withour risking the wrong people downmodding you into oblivion.

      The purpose of posting as AC is to say what needs to be said even if it hurts.

      Obviously that gets abused. The question is are we mature enough to live with the downside in order to hold up a principle.

      • by Anonymous Coward

        Actually, I only ever post AC these days. I became weary of "logging in" to say simple things, and I'm truly paranoid of being tracked anymore. Also, I found that having karma made my words seem louder, when they are really no better than most.

        Still my words are heard, even though I don't shout them, and hardly a week goes by that my AC posts don't earn a mod-point or two. It helps me to see when my ideas are actually valuable, and when I'm just full of vinegar. I do treasure the collective wisdom of th

    • I don't recall ever seeing one [AC comment] that would be classified as 'whistle blowing'

      I've made one or two.

  • When rich people give enough so that their net worth isn't in the millions, heck I'd give them the first 10 million, then I'll listen to how giving they are.

    • With money like in Gates and Allen's league, there is not much you can do with the vast majority of it, so they give it to charity. You don't need to admire them for doing that; I would do the same, but not to their charities. Gates for example is richer by $500 every second of every day and it is not practical or meaningful to spend money that fast. He has about $100 billion in the bank and could buy Vatican City and some smaller nations, but they aren't for sale. He has like Brewsters billions.
  • ... and it’s not gonna resonate with many people here. But he also put significant funds into our Pacific Northwest pro sports teams and, unlike some, was an involved owner who actively enjoyed the sports (while intelligently leaving decision-making to the team). If he hadn’t bought the Seahawks, we wouldn’t have had a pro football team in Seattle - or a Super Bowl championship to enjoy.

  • Not in the summary, and I am interested in astronomy and cosmology ... so ...

    Paul Allen gave a lot of cash for SETI, and that is why we have the Allen Telescope Array [wikipedia.org].

    On the other hand, he basically sued the entire web [wired.com] using a patent portfolio in his Interval Research Labs.

  • "Later in life, Paul gave to a huge spectrum of issues that seem unrelated at first glance. He wanted to prevent elephant poaching, improve ocean health, and promote smart cities."

    That's great that he cared about all these things, but what did he accomplish? I may have missed it (only scanned the article), but spreading your resources all over the place doesn't make you wonderful, and most likely doesn't fix any of the issues you care about.

  • It seems one here has mention the Cayman Islands incident: Paul Allen megayacht destroyed most of Caribbean coral reef [seattletimes.com].

    Now I know this was an accident, and Allen wasn't even personally on board, but seriously, why would someone even need a monstrosity like that? Was he so insecure that he needed the biggest yacht to prove to the world how rich he was, or what? I just don't get it. Even without destroying coral reefs it is an environment disaster. Allen's carbon footprint must have been a million time

  • "...The side of Paul Allen I wish more people knew about...." ...is not a complete sentence, or thought.
  • This means nothing except Bill Gates trying to make himself look better, I mean, if he felt this way, why did he force Paul Allen out of M$? "Oh, that was just business" is probably what Bill would say.
  • Allen used to have a webcam that was purportedly pointing at his cube at M$ and he used to offer free accounts on a hobby PDP if one asked nicely.
    The webcam is long gone but even when it was "live" it never showed anyone there but maybe the PDP is still active?

  • I can't believe that 20 years ago or so I, and my peers all thought Bill Gates and Paul Allen were pieces of shit. I realize now so what, they had a monopoly on a closed source operating system and the software that ran on it. These guys weren't bad, but they weren't Marxists like us so they had to be bad, right?

Children begin by loving their parents. After a time they judge them. Rarely, if ever, do they forgive them. - Oscar Wilde

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