But if Bill has to choose, he’d rather win the war than win the argument. He doesn’t really care where the ideas come from as long as he’s the one who gets paid for them. The very last time I ever spoke with Bill was in 1999, when he called and invited me to visit Microsoft and debate the future directions of technology with their top technical people. When I declined, he asked me to reconsider, arguing that I would find it interesting “because there are a lot of very smart people at Microsoft.” I told him that was exactly why I didn’t want to go. He had expected me to show up and show off by
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