back to article Silicon Valley granddad and HP boss-killer Tom Perkins dies aged 84

Tom Perkins, seen by many as one of the grandfathers of Silicon Valley, has died at the age of 84 after a prolonged illness. Perkins was born in White Plains, New York, in 1932 and showed an early interest in technology, earning a BS in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from MIT in 1953 and an MBA from Harvard four …

  1. goldcd

    Was never aware of him before (apart from being a name in a VC title)

    but sounds "a character".

    I'll miss him for this.

  2. Florida1920
    Headmaster

    A character all right

    Didn't get along with Fiorina? A+

    Comparing "Occupy" to Nazi pogroms? FFFFFF

    IMO, Hitler and the Nazis stand alone in their brutality and inhumanity. Any attempt to compare any current group or event with him and them tells me the person doing so has no grasp either of history or whatever it is they're attacking.

    Furthermore, amassing great wealth is no sure indicator of moral or intellectual superiority. Ladies and gents, I give you Donald Trump.

    Too bad Perkins had to go out that way.

    1. TDog

      Re: A character all right

      With regard to your IMO,

      Would that include Pol Pot? Or Stalin (Ioseph Djugashvilli) or Timur I Lang, or how many other genocidal lunatics. In fact the Germans have just described the 'massacre of the Armenians' (1915-17) as genocide and they are probably quite good at recognising it.

      But no doubt you can recognise those who 'stand alone in their brutality and inhumanity,' And just for the record I deplore all and any of these.

      1. Florida1920

        Re: A character all right

        Pol Pot and Stalin were just as evil; so was Pinochet, though he had a smaller scope to work with. Thing is, Pol Pot, Stalin, Pinochet, Idi Amin and the rest are not held up for comparison. Hitler and the Nazis are, and too frequently. Comparing anything going on in this country today to that lot is an affront to those who suffered under them. Surely no 1-percenter is at risk of anything coming from Occupy that even approaches the Holocaust. We need to be careful to keep history in perspective. Saying Occupy is akin to Nazi pogroms is essentially suggesting the pogroms were nothing more than a few Nazis doing some street theater.

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: A character all right

      IMO, Hitler and the Nazis stand alone

      Just choked on my afternoon coffee. Hitler and the Nazis are boy-scouts compared to Stalin.

      He terminated one way or another 5 times the bodycount of Hitler (or Pol Pot for that matter) and he _GOT_ _AWAY_ with it to die of supposedly old age and high blood pressure.

      Ever heard of Jewish Soviet Republic? Ever seen a survivor? The central committee of the Bolshevik party on the even of the November 1917th uprising consisted of One Armenian (Ordzhonikidze), One Russian (Bubnov) and FOUR Jews (Kamenev, Zinoviev, Trotski and Dzerjinskij (yes, for those of you wondering - Iron Felix was of Jewish descent). That ratio reflected the ethnic composition of the Russian intelligencia in the days when there was no translation of the Das Kapital in Russian and you had to actually read it to become a party member. Any guesses what the ratio was after Stalin performed "minor cleanup" in the 1930-es? Nope, no guesses - he has successfully hidden all the bodies in the "Hitler Pile" and blamed Hitler for his half of the holocaust (and trust me, he worked quite hard to be a fair partner).

      That does not finish there - The Ukrainians and the collectivisation famine, Crimean Tatars, Chechen, whole nations sent to die. Not even talking about the Polish resistance and what he ordered done to Armia Kraiova. Not even talking about Ukrainians which were shot in the head on hospital beds in Prague after they rebelled, switched to the allied side and fought the SS divisions to avert the execution of Hitler's (by that time long gone) standing order to destroy the city (all of that on 9th-11th of May after the war was formally over). And so on. Day, after day after day. For decades.

      You really have no clue what you are talking about.

      Granted I am probably biased as he ordered 98% of my family terminated with only 3 adults and one child surviving by 1953 (personally by the way - my great grand dad's name is on the first page of his "notebook" with a remark "not now, later"). The other 40+ all the way to 3rd degree cousins, uncles and aunts walked down the corridor. To the wall.

      1. Florida1920

        Re: A character all right

        You really have no clue what you are talking about.

        Okay, there have been a lot of murderous regimes. Please read my second post. What makes Nazi Germany stand alone is that they're the regime most often used in comparison with whatever the current speaker doesn't like -- but can't adequately define and thus he or she falls back on that comparison.

        I certainly meant no disrespect for any other group that suffered under any other brutal regime; accusing me of doing so or not having a clue about human capacity for evil is a pretty weak argument in itself. You could have made your point very well without going ad hominem. Perkins used Nazi pogroms as his example, and that's what I responded to. But thanks for the history lesson.

      2. Tom 7

        Re: A character all right

        While Stalin was a major league twat it seems that Columbus may have caused the biggest genocide of the lot by bringing new diseases to the new world. The continued claim there were only a few million natives in what is now the US while the accepted value for central america at the same time is over 70 million, while possibly 70 million buffalo roamed there has always struck me as being hard to grasp.

    3. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: A character all right

      "IMO, Hitler and the Nazis stand alone in their brutality and inhumanity"

      Here's a chart to help with the comparison. A debatable point is whether one should consider the absolute number of people massacred or the percentage of the existing population.

      http://www.nytimes.com/imagepages/2011/11/06/opinion/06atrocities_timeline.html

      According to the chart

      1. Second World War: 66 Million (but this was not just Hitler)

      2,3. Gengiz Khan tied with Mao Zedong: 40 Million each(in absolute numbers, Gengiz was way ahead as a percentage)

      4. Famines in British India (27 Million)

      Stalin was tied with the Taiping Rebellion for 6th: 20 Million each.

  3. Denarius
    Meh

    sounds like

    common aristocratic attitudes to me. The ancient thug tribal chiefs "gods favour me me" to Divine Right to "unstoppable flow (or whatever phrase de joure) of history", "might makes right" to "inalienable destiny" concepts. Nothing new and all toxic. Usual demonstration of a culture losing the concept of common good and citizen. At least Perkins was honest about it.

  4. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Tom Perkins

    Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers invested in a revolutionary massively parallel processing and fault tolerant computer architecture well before Compaq enabling Jimmy Treybig to launch Tandem Comupters NonStop I. Today HPE owns the NonStop server line and t still powrs some of the most mission critical infrastructure on the planet. Tom Perkins certainly had an eye for Tech companies!

  5. energystar
    Headmaster

    when employee Steve Wozniak offered [-and His offer was declined]...

    "The move was bad news for HP, since two years later the firm turned down the chance to build personal computers when employee Steve Wozniak offered them his designs for what became the Apple I."

    You get to learn at El Reg, that CEO' s#!t happens, everyday :)

  6. johnwerneken

    A GREAT Social Commentator!

    I suppose many people dislike the truth -that they are inferior and do not deserve to be considered citizens - but so what it is still true. God Bless creative successful people who are also honest.

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