Honestly, it feels a bit weird to be ranting pro-Gates -- I spent most of my high school years despising him because of Windows (I did tech support for 4 years). I agree with you that while Gates did advance computing, if he hadn't, someone else would have -- and possibly do it better. Or do it worse.

The "hours wasted" argument doesn't hold a lot of traction for me. As anecdotal evidence, I believe I saw a statistic that "House" is watched by over 300 million people globally -- that's 300m * 42 minutes _per week_. (Clay Shirky has a great article about mankind's surplus hours and how they're wasted in television).