UPDATE: Paul Allen, Microsoft co-founder and billionaire investor, dies at 65

[BumRushDaShow]

Source: Washington Post

They were teenage computer geeks, bespectacled kids from Seattle who taught themselves programming from a Teletype terminal, learned the basics of business from Fortune magazine and dreamed of “a computer in every home and on every desk.”

Paul Allen was the self-described “idea man,” the shy son of librarians. Bill Gates was the business-oriented partner who brought the ideas to life. And in 1975, when Mr. Allen was 22 and Gates was 19, the friends formed a company that became known as Microsoft, and unleashed a personal-computer revolution that made both men fabulously wealthy.

Mr. Allen left the company after only eight years, amid a bout with Hodgkin’s disease and a deteriorating friendship with Gates. But he remained a powerful force in technology and philanthropy for decades, investing his billions in an eclectic array of businesses and charitable efforts while acquiring sports teams, discovering World War II shipwrecks, and backing aerospace ventures that drew on his childhood fascination with ad­ven­ture stories and science fiction.

He was 65 when he died Oct. 15 in Seattle. The cause was complications of non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, according to a statement from his family. Mr. Allen had battled the disease in 2009 and announced earlier this month that his lymphoma had returned.

A complete obituary will be published soon.

Read more: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/technology/wp/2018/10/15/paul-allen-microsoft-co-founder-and-billionaire-investor-dies-at-65-2/?utm_term=.295f1a74e8d6

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Wow.

Original article -

By Washington Post Staff
October 15 at 6:12 PM

Mr. Allen, who in 1975 set up with Bill Gates the company that became known as Microsoft, died Monday from complications of non-Hodgkin's lymphoma in Seattle, according to a statement from his family.

He also used his Microsoft stock as collateral to invest in entities including sports teams, buying the Seattle Seahawks and Portland Trail Blazers.

This is a developing story. It will be updated.

[LisaM]

1. Oh my.

This is shocking.

[joshcryer]

2. Didn't even know he was sick. 2 weeks ago he posted a tweet about his cancer coming back.

Dead two weeks later. That sucks.

[Mrs. Overall]

3. Wow. I had no idea he was ill.

[lapfog_1]

4. yikes.

at least he found the Indianapolis (WWII ship) about a year ago.

I wonder what this means for his investment company that has interests in all manor of projects... like Stratolaunch.

I actually tried to get an introduction to a high up exec there about building a dedicated climate research supercomputer (but aimed at not at understanding climate change, but modeling what geoengineering solutions might do in 10 or 20 years or longer... sort of model it before you try it). I needed $110M to build it and, hopefully, power and cool it without fossil fuel. I only got as far as engaging a few climate scientists in supporting my plan.

We never got an audience. Oh well.

[jpak]

5. Way too young

[Baclava]

6. Dead at 65 with $20 billion in the bank, that sucks

RIP


Like they say, you can't take it with you

[mobeau69]

7. The only thing you can take with you is what you leave behind.

[Mr. Big]

8. Entered etermity with zero assets

How's that working for you now, Allen. All your worldly wealth could have given people jobs, lives, healthcare and enjoyment.

Instead, greed is good.

[TexasBushwhacker]

12. Hold up - He signed The Giving Pledge

Pledging to give away at least half his wealth. He's already given almost $500 Million to various causes, including $100 Million to fight ebola. He never married and has no children, so I guess it will all be going to charity.

[meadowlander]

27. He donated a lot to Seattle school districts as well.

[maxsolomon]

13. He did those things

By creating Vulcan, keeping sports teams in the city, and building a museum. Consider not speaking ill of the dead.

[raccoon]

9. "All your money won't another minute buy." --Kansas, "Dust in the Wind." nt

[AZ8theist]

10. Started a business from essentially nothing...

And created a world wide phenomena and vast wealth .

Unlike Doturd, who was handed $400M on a silver platter and completely wrecked it.

At least Paul Allen will not go down in history as the most vile, most hated, and most treasonous jerk off in history.

RIP, Paul. You left us too soon.

[getagrip_already]

15. not really from nothing....

they had apples/steve jobs ideas to draw from. And a fairly comfortable life to fritter away while working on their dream.

Not taking anything away from them, but the achievement was partially stolen, partially a cheat, and the result a lot of backstabbing and cut throat business deals. Ok, maybe I'll take a little away. They did grease the skids under my career path, so I'll give them that.

But RIP. Not that it matters. You have no soul and no afterlife. He is no more than an old motherboard tossed in a hole in the ground now.

So where do his billions go now? Probably to republican or 10.

[AZ8theist]

16. Well, perhaps not from "nothing" but..

as you say, he did grease the skids for many a career.

My only point was that he actually built something. Unlike Doturd who had EVERYTHING handed to him by someone else.
A fucking parasite.

And from now on, I will include in all my posts my description of Doturd:

"The most vile. most hated, and most treasonous jerk off in human history".

Dispute that.

[getagrip_already]

17. dispute it? I applaud it!

Although I'm not sure I would use the term jerk off. That's a positive. I might say cum stain, or std drip, or something like that though.

Good description though. I like it.

[muriel_volestrangler]

18. Some things they started before Apple

Microsoft founded April 1975; Apple April 1976. The history of personal computing innovation isn't all Apple. And Apple used Xerox PARC ideas, among others.

[getagrip_already]

19. true, but where did windows come from?

Remember the DOS/CPM wars? Apps like word and excel (remember lotus?) or even Citrix?

HW wasn't the battle field. That was just the trucks that got them there.

It was always the SW and the apps, and most of that was stolen.

[muriel_volestrangler]

20. From Xerox PARC

That's the point - loads of them borrowed, imitated, or ripped off others.

[getagrip_already]

22. I was 21 in 1980 and working in that exact field....

My first job out of college was with a tech company. I saw first hand what was going on. IP was being stolen and repackaged at every turn, and MS was among the worst of the worst.

Of course, that's like a mako saying a great white is a killer. Everyone was doing it. Some survived, some didn't.

But the ones who got rich were filthy to the core.

There is no moral center to these asshats. Just guilt. And ego. The ego drives the desire to be loved after death, so they give away trinkets and die richer than the pharaohs. If they had just given that money to a positive cause, they could have died exactly in the same place from a personal possession place, but helped millions of people along the way.

Instead, 20 billion dollars will be split between trumps treasury and relatives who think just like trump. Oh maybe a foundation or two will get a respectable amount of cash, but it will go mostly to administer the wealth rather than use it.

Lesson to the wealthy, the joy should be in using your wealth to help others to the point where you have none at your death, rather than leave it to republicans to buy yachts with.

[tinrobot]

24. Microsoft was first. In fact, I actually used Microsoft's first product.

I had a job programming the Altair 8800 in Tiny Basic around 76/77. I remember seeing the first Apple I in the Byte Shop some time after that. Didn't like it because the keyboard was built into the CPU itself, creating an awkward typing position.

Obviously, Apple's products are better these days, and yes, Apple has been incredibly innovative. But early on, Microsoft/IBM did a LOT to get personal computing into the mainstream, particularly in the business world. You can't discount that.

I would also say that the Apple/Microsoft rivalry pushed both companies forward. Neither would have done as much without the competition. We're better off for it.

[Hermit-The-Prog]

25. microsoft was not first

There was no Microsoft when the Altair 8800 was out.

Microsoft did much to hold back personal computing after IBM handed them the means to throttle it. See Digital Research and Dr. Gary Kildall. E.g., http://www.maxframe.com/DR/Gary/

You can track Microsoft's history via lawsuits:
http://www.groklaw.net/staticpages/index.php?page=2005010107100653

Microsoft remains an illegally obtained and illegally maintained monopoly. Without your tax dollars, it would have faded away after its destruction of Nokia.

Somewhat back on topic, Paul Allen left Microsoft after overhearing Gates and Balmer scheming against him while he was sick (according to Allen's account in his book).

[tinrobot]

26. You might want to read up on Microsoft history.

The company started in 1975 specifically to develop software for the Altair. Microsoft's Altair BASIC interpreter shipped in that same year. I was personally using that product in '76/77 on an Altair 8800b.

Here's a relevant Wiki entry:

Altair BASIC is a discontinued interpreter for the BASIC programming language that ran on the MITS Altair 8800 and subsequent S-100 bus computers. It was Microsoft's first product (as Micro-Soft), distributed by MITS under a contract. Altair BASIC was the start of the Microsoft BASIC product range.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Altair_BASIC

As for all the other stuff - off topic... but nice try!

[Hermit-The-Prog]

30. "nice try"?

What's that all about?

Microsoft was not first.
See http://www.digitalresearch.biz/CPM.HTM

Micro-Soft was created after Gates saw the Popular Electronics magazine that announced the Altair kit. He called MITS and claimed to already have a BASIC interpreter. Paul Allen had to write an 8080 emulator for the PDP-10 to make a BASIC interpreter, after that call.

Allen was neither saint nor demon, but a little of both, as are most of us.

[hunter]

31. The IBM PC and MSDOS were a match made in hell...

... that impeded progress in computing for decades.

To a large extent IBM originally wanted it that way. IBM didn't want the PC to compete with their main business.

The architectures of MSDOS and x86 processors are just plain ugly and unwieldy. Design shortcuts taken in the original PC later became horrible impediments that required increasingly elaborate and unstable workarounds as memory expanded and processor speeds increased.

Alas, Bill Gates' first business venture with Paul Allen was based on a predecessor of x86 microprocessor, the 8008, and this became the spark that ignited the Microsoft horror.

RISC processors and Unix-type operating systems based on actual computer science originating in universities and elite corporate research labs proved to be the way forward.

Today even x86 machines are RISC machines internally. Microsoft Windows versions since NT (originating in OS/2) have been built from the ground up as a fully functional operating system on solid engineering principals. MS Windows up through ME was built on an MSDOS foundation which had become an enormous rats nest by the year 2000.)

At home I never really suffered Microsoft's boot in my face. I went from the Atari 800 and BSD on university computers, to DRDOS and Geoworks, to MS Windows installations booting to the command line and chopped down to the very minimum required to run the latest Opera web browser.

My last Windows machine, the one I signed up to Democratic Underground on, ran a highly modified and truncated Widows 98SE. Soon after I abandoned Windows forever to Linux, which for me was like coming home again to BSD.

I have all the computers I've ever used at home, and most I've used for work, fully emulated on my Linux desktop. Hard drive capacity has increased so rapidly I've never had to throw anything away. One click on my desktop and it's the 'seventies again, including my first home built machine that used a very RISC-like 1802 processor, a processor that was used in many spacecraft and nuclear bomb resistant war machines.

These days I won't touch Microsoft software unless someone is paying me.

Nevertheless, I don't harbor much ill will toward Paul Allen or Bill Gates. They created a product and they sold it. Yeah, they were business sharks, and the product they sold was a wretched monster hacked together by frequently unethical means, but they never forced me as a consumer or small business person to buy their shit. My relationship with Microsoft, as a consumer and small business person, lasting less than a decade, was entirely voluntary.

I can't say the same about the taxes I've paid to support war and useless war machines, my forced participation in the automobile culture, etc..

[AllaN01Bear]

11. thank you mr. allen. rest in peace , silent key.

[WheelWalker]

14. And the Wheel turns.

[Power 2 the People]

21. I was upset that he was donating to Republicans but I wish him and his family peace.

[4now]

23. Seahawks owner Paul Allen gives $100,000 to help Republicans keep control of U.S. House

From last month.
https://upload.democraticunderground.com/100211085363

[DeminPennswoods]

28. If I were the city of Seattle

I would put a claim on the estate for reimbursement of the tax dollars that Allen forced the city to spend to build a new stadium for the Seahawks by threats to move them elsewhere.

[Rural_Progressive]

29. He bought an island up in the San Juans

it had a summer camp for kids. The only island up there that had a protected inlet where the kids could safely swim and paddle around. He only went there a couple of weeks a year at the most but he chased the kids off and closed the camp.

Maybe the estate will let the camp reopen and let the kids enjoy time up there again.

I'm not really a fan of the uber rich, seems like the only way you get to stay one is by being a bit of an asshole.