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Re:Bill Gates tries to install Movie Maker by rayiner on Monday January 16, 2023 @01:02AM (#34397354)
I’m quite shocked Bill Gates’ email was so nice. Can you imagine if it had been Linus Torvalds or Steve Jobs? Maybe that explains how it got that way.
Re:Bill Gates tries to install Movie Maker by midoridensha on Monday January 16, 2023 @01:23AM (#34397489)
I'm much more shocked about how poorly-written Bill's email is. He sounds like he's almost illiterate. Any random post here on HN is far better written and more understandable. How did this guy get where he is now?

Anyway, his account sounds like a typical Windows user experience, especially from that time. I guess that shows the power of having a monopoly: users are forced to put up with it, no matter how awful it is.

Re:Bill Gates tries to install Movie Maker by knaik94 on Monday January 16, 2023 @01:32AM (#34397542)
No one reads long emails. I similarly noticed that people don't miss things in my email when I format them like texts or discord messages. He wasn't writing up technical requirements for Moviemaker, he was just sharing his experiences. I also suspect that most people that are as busy as him mainly use their phone to access email. I know 90% of the time I've heard back from, who I consider, busy people, there was a "sent from my iphone" signature in the email footer.
Re:Bill Gates tries to install Movie Maker by yywwbbn on Monday January 16, 2023 @03:28AM (#34398293)
Not sure the phone part was really true in 2003.

Maybe he was using his iPAQ, though

Re:Bill Gates tries to install Movie Maker by exotree on Monday January 16, 2023 @01:36AM (#34397565)
This is pretty par for the course and the quality of writing largely makes sense, especially if you’re sending to an internal team of people you work with somewhat regularly.

He just sent a pretty complex and in-depth walk thru of a terrible experience in probably about 15 or minutes or less (not including the time it took to actually go through this process).

Re:Bill Gates tries to install Movie Maker by pleb_nz on Monday January 16, 2023 @02:15AM (#34397825)
You didn't understand what he was trying to communicate?
Re:Bill Gates tries to install Movie Maker by midoridensha on Monday January 16, 2023 @03:01AM (#34398096)
There were a few places where the text didn't even parse, probably because of missing words.

Normally, when I see writing that bad (like on a discussion forum like this one), I just dismiss the author and skip the comment. A mistake here or there is understandable, but this was too much.

Re:Bill Gates tries to install Movie Maker by adlpz on Monday January 16, 2023 @10:36AM (#34401645)
Well, then today you (I hope) learned that by doing that you may be skipping on the likes of Bill Gates, who is very much a person who can provide really interesting insights in many topics.
Re:Bill Gates tries to install Movie Maker by pleb_nz on Monday January 16, 2023 @01:34PM (#34403913)
For me, what's important is the message not the format, syntax or any errors it contains.

We're humans and we're.not.9erfect.

Re:Bill Gates tries to install Movie Maker by pifm_guy on Tuesday January 17, 2023 @02:21AM (#34409953)
> There were a few places where the text didn't even parse,

I suspect that to be some artifact of the way the email has been stored/archived over the years.

Sorta looks like the email was line wrapped to 100 chars, then line wrapped again to 95, and whatever words fell off a line were deleted.

Re:Bill Gates tries to install Movie Maker by tailspin2019 on Monday January 16, 2023 @08:24AM (#34400360)
Some of the typos and spurious spaces make me wonder if this was originally a printed/scanned/bitmap document (since it comes from court filings) and then was later OCR’d back again for publishing online.

But that said, it’s no more poorly written than some of my emails would be if I’m tapping them out in a state of frustration, as he seems to be!

Re:Bill Gates tries to install Movie Maker by dgellow on Monday January 16, 2023 @08:34AM (#34400449)
I felt like the original email had some embedded screenshots, that are now missing. Switching from the website issue to the file system doesn’t make too much sense as written, but if you had a screenshot of the file explorer in—between the text makes some sense.
Re:Bill Gates tries to install Movie Maker by porcheetoh on Monday January 16, 2023 @06:50PM (#34407185)
I have this heuristic I use to determine whether someone is worth listening to, or whether I should ignore them. Look, it rejects Bill Gates! I’m very smart.

Look, everyone uses heuristics to assess the world. Turns out yours is somewhat broken. Might want to update it.

Re:Bill Gates tries to install Movie Maker by dartharva on Tuesday January 17, 2023 @12:46PM (#34415774)
I'm much more shocked about how poorly-thought midoridensha's comment is. He sounds like he's almost illiterate. Any random discussion here on HN is far better written and more considerate. How did this guy get where he is now?

That's what you sound like. They are discussing technical user experience, not engaging in some Oxford debate. His articulation is good enough for the message to pass through.

Re:Bill Gates tries to install Movie Maker by chrisco255 on Monday January 16, 2023 @03:01AM (#34398102)
I think Bill was a lot more aggressive in early Microsoft days. By this point (email dated 2003), Bill had already stepped down as CEO 3 years prior (2000).
Re:Bill Gates tries to install Movie Maker by thih9 on Monday January 16, 2023 @09:01AM (#34400711)
Is there an example of similar feedback but form Linus Torvalds or Steve Jobs, to compare?
Re:Bill Gates tries to install Movie Maker by sn_master on Monday January 16, 2023 @09:27AM (#34400955)
Re:Bill Gates tries to install Movie Maker by mrkramer on Tuesday January 17, 2023 @07:13PM (#34421431)
Linus is cocky and arrogant, I mean rightfully so but still....