from Hacker News

Ross Perot Has Died

by chuckgreenman on 7/9/19, 2:57 PM with 209 comments

• by coupdejarnac on 7/9/19, 8:12 PM

  My dad was a programmer at EDS for a short time before the Iran incident. Dad has a great deal of respect for Perot- Perot was quite the role model and practiced what he preached. He was also very approachable. Dad looks kindly on the times he had short but friendly interactions with Perot on the elevator or wherever around EDS. Dad was slated to join the Iran contract, but he decided being a programmer was not for him(he HATED punchcards). Talking with Dad today, one thing that isn't remembered as well is Perot's support of veterans during the Vietnam War, which was not in vogue then.

• by fdavison on 7/9/19, 4:11 PM

  None of what I've read today on his passing have mentioned this interesting story of the rescue of his employees from Iran during the revolution: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_Wings_of_Eagles

  A mini-series was produced about it starring Burt Lancaster

• by gdubs on 7/9/19, 3:29 PM

  Many remember Perot as the goofy rich guy who ran for president in 92, but what many don’t know is that he funded NeXT computer - Steve Jobs’ post-Apple venture that was later acquired by Apple and transformed computing for the next decade. Interface Builder and the NextStep core libraries were arguably one of the biggest catalysts of the iPhone App ecosystem. In many ways iOS exists because of NeXT. So while it was considered by many to be a failed company, behind the scenes its technology has continued to be influential.

  Perot deserves credit for seeing the magic there, and staking a significant chunk of change on it.

• by jason_slack on 7/9/19, 4:58 PM

  I was in high school when Perot ran for President and I was a huge fan. I remember liking how he wasn’t a politician and therefor looked at the problems our country had from a different point of view.

  This was the first time I had ever watched political debates; because I wanted to hear him speak. He was so different.

  I also was a huge Apple and then Next fan at that time too. I sent him an email asking if he could help me get a Next computer :-)

  His books are good reads if you ever get the chance.

  RIP.

• by sambeau on 7/9/19, 5:47 PM

  The fascinating bromance between Steve Jobs and Ross Perot

  https://www.cake.co/conversations/DwwvjtB/the-fascinating-br...

  is a fun read.

• by drfuchs on 7/9/19, 4:15 PM

  I chanced to be next to him in line for the buffet at the big NeXT unveiling event at SF’s Davies Hall and chatted briefly with him. Nobody seemed to be aware of who / what he was at the time. I wonder how many zillionaire investors are semi-anonymous these days.

• by SubiculumCode on 7/9/19, 5:51 PM

  I believe I was around 18 when I heard of Ross Perot. At the time I had been impressed by the charts and no-nonsense approach, although now I realize I could not have judged their content with any actual knowledge. As I know a lot more about the world now, about debt, fiat currencies, and inflation, etc, and how charts can be constructed to not represent reality but one's agenda, beliefs, or misconceptions, I wonder now the extent to which Ross Perot's charts and message were insightful, or merely propagated myths and value-choices. Were his charts deficit hawk debt clocks and scare tactics, or were there real insights that reflected reality? I do not remember now because I did not understand them then. Anyone on HN have an opinion?

• by WheelsAtLarge on 7/9/19, 10:30 PM

  I remember his run in 92. He got branded as out of touch and cooky by the press with the help of the political parties. It didn't help that he quit the race and gave some strange reason and then jumped back in. He even made light of it by picking Patsy Cline's "Crazy" as his theme song.

  He seemed like a very good man that stuck by his beliefs. Peace be with him.

• by secfirstmd on 7/9/19, 4:06 PM

  If you are looking for a contrast with a typical tech bro modern day CEO leadership I highly recommend the book "On wings of Eagles." It describes Ross Perots efforts to gather a mix of staff and hired guns to go into Iran and break some of his staff out of prison during the Iranian Revolution. They actually succeeded. Partly crazy, partly courageous...only in America!

• by ChowWi on 7/9/19, 4:05 PM

  I always liked the guy. He lived not far from me. Back in the day in an old job I did a service call at his home. Never got to meet him though. He seemed to be a decent, forward thinking gent.

• by OBLIQUE_PILLAR on 7/9/19, 10:37 PM

  Ross Perot advocated for and greatly influenced the eventual passing of draconian drug laws in Texas.

  http://www.issues2000.org/Celeb/Ross_Perot_Drugs.htm

• by clausok on 7/9/19, 6:09 PM

  Here's a navy seal telling a story about Perot helping him figure out what was wrong with his son -- turned out to be an incredibly rare genetic disorder.

  https://youtu.be/snMzYfhXScQ?t=5065

• by viburnum on 7/9/19, 9:32 PM

  IIRC he was the only CEO to end equal benefits to gay and lesbian employees (Perot Systems started when he stepped away and ended it when he came back).

• by melling on 7/9/19, 4:27 PM

  Remember his famous “Giant Sucking Sound” comment?

  https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giant_sucking_sound

• by diafygi on 7/9/19, 4:48 PM

  If you're ever in Dallas, TX, the Perot museum is one of the best children's science museums in the world. Highly recommended for both kids and adults.

• by MaconBacon on 7/9/19, 4:29 PM

  It may not have been preventable, but he was absolutely correct on NAFTA.

• by ChrisArchitect on 7/9/19, 4:44 PM

  The NeXT thing is neat. Also of course he made it into the Simpsons.

  "Go ahead, throw your vote away!"

• by protomyth on 7/9/19, 4:18 PM

  You can call him "goofy", but he was anything but. I got to watch him give a speech in Fargo during the 92 campaign and it was amazing. At the time, I got into the habit of reading each candidates "book" they put out during the election. His was short, to the point, and very specific on what needed fixing. He was a serious man that ran into the establishment and got hammered.

• by FpUser on 7/9/19, 4:52 PM

  I might be naive but I do admire what he did to save his employees held hostage in Iran.

• by systematical on 7/9/19, 4:38 PM

  Country would be in a better place if he had won in 92.

• by RickJWagner on 7/10/19, 1:42 AM

  I like Ross Perot, enough to have voted for him in '92.

  A few favorites:

  - He used his own money to finance rescue missions for EDS employees caught overseas in unfriendly situations.

  - He was sort of a cartoon-ish character,short of stature and with over-sized ears. In one of his presidential debates I remember him making the comment "I'm all ears!", cracking himself up with the rest of us.

  RIP, Mr. Perot

• by meerita on 7/9/19, 8:28 PM

  Today also former ex-president of Argentina, Fernando de la Rúa died. He was the president that was part of an opposition strike and derived into the big crisis in Argentina in 2001.

• by grayed-down on 7/9/19, 5:02 PM

  I liked Ross Perot and he would have been a terrific president but damn him for not at least trying to primary Bush and allowing the Clintons into the White House.

• by travisl12 on 7/9/19, 10:37 PM

  "Can I finish...?"

• by markhahn on 7/10/19, 12:14 AM

  independents were always weird, but at least not stupid dicks like you know who.

• by lucas_membrane on 7/9/19, 9:08 PM

  He did some good things. He was brave enough to recommend that high school athletes (ie football players) in Texas could not play unless they met some minimal standards of participation in academics.

  OTOH, his business career is not atypical. The deal about starting EDS with $1,000 may or may not be true. He was a successful salesperson for IBM. He sold to the insurance companies in Dallas, particularly Southwestern Life, which he talked into buying a huge 70xx (2nd generation) mainframe computer. Supposedly, IBM then had a maximum commission that a salesperson could earn in a year, so he was looking at a large part of a year with no additional income. Coincidentally, Southwestern Life, having acquired an IBM computer very much larger than it could use productively, had around 2 shifts per day that it could easily be persuaded to lease to Perot's $1,000 new company, EDS. How did Perot get customers? He had an associate who was very close to VP-then-president LBJ, and there was this thing called Medicare that LBJ was starting up, and Perot's new little $1,000 company got the contract to process Medicare claims! So, the man who ran against government had been made a huge success by government money.

  The government really was a big friend to Perot. The government of Texas built a highway north out of Ft Worth. Perot built an airport out there, but not near the highway, because that land was too expensive. Then he persuaded the great State of Texas to move the highway to serve his airport. The Treasury department started printing money nearby, flying it to Federal Reserve banks through his airport. And Perot systems, the company he started after he exited EDS, early on obtained a very large contract to automate the US Post Office, with IBM System/38 minicomputers everywhere.

  As an employer, he did some things that are still a little controversial. New tech employees signed contracts, and if they quit too soon thereafter (one or two years, IIRC), they owed EDS $10,000 for training (this was money 40 years ago). EDS also used mandatory overtime, (often six and sometimes 7-day weeks during crunch time), with armed guards at the door monitoring bathroom breaks.

  A couple of things he said during the 1992 campaign were also a bit fishy. David Frost quoted Peter Lesser directly to Perot, “Ross Perot is a good person, and he’d make a great king. But I think he’d be a bad president.” Perot said he had never heard of Peter Lesser, whom he had met and had discussions with, and who had run for both district attorney and mayor of Dallas in the preceding few years. As a CEO who does not know who ran for mayor in the city in which his business is headquartered, he must have been pre-channeling Trump one way or the other, as he likely was with his bogus claim during the campaign about a Black Panther assassination plot against himself broken up by his dog.

• by davidw on 7/9/19, 4:23 PM

  > ran into the establishment

  What he ran into was the inevitable math of a first past the post electoral system.

  You want third parties, you need ranked choice voting or something similar.

  Even if you're fine with the main parties, RCV is probably better in terms of electing who most people want.

  You could argue that Bush senior might have won with it if the Perot voters ranked 1) Perot 2) Bush. Bush junior might have lost had the Nader voters ranked Gore second. Similar question marks hang over the election of Trump with Jill Stein and Gary Johnson and the extremely thin margin of victory in the electoral college.

• by uses on 7/9/19, 4:16 PM

  What a quaint time when the oddball outsider candidate was a mentally stable human being calmly explaining ideas in a way anybody could understand.

• by codesushi42 on 7/9/19, 7:39 PM

  Unfortunately the media establishment discredited Ross Perot by painting him as "nutty" and focusing on his mannerisms, rather than what he was saying. Seeing Bush's and Clinton's smirks during the debates are embarrassing, and did nothing but baselessly discredit the man and his ideas.

  The media did the same to Ron Paul by framing him as a loon and someone to laugh at.

  This same strategy by the mainstream media backfired miserably, and quite hilariously with the unfortunate election of Trump.

• by thrax on 7/10/19, 5:58 AM

  Really glad he's dead. He was just another cheerleader for the unfettered greed and capitalism that is destroying the Earth. Good Riddance!

• by 5555624 on 7/9/19, 6:40 PM

  Perot's Presidential candidacy is a good example of why we need the Electoral College and cannot simply go with the "winner" of the popular vote. Clinton had 370 Electoral College votes, Bush had 168, and Perot had 0. Not only did Clinton win easily, he had a majority of ALL the Electoral College votes.

  In the popular vote, it was 44,909,889 for Clinton, 39,104,545 for Bush, and 19,743,821 for Perot. While Clinton still had the majority, more than half the votes cast for President were not for him -- in other words, the majority of voters did not want Clinton to be elected President.

  Some sort of system which uses "rounds" to narrow the field down to two candidates could work; but, it's hard enough to get people to vote once, much less several times.

• by purplezooey on 7/9/19, 8:51 PM

  Lots of people on here probably don't even remember the presidential bid, or maybe saw it in a textbook. Strange days.

• by mdanger007 on 7/9/19, 3:45 PM

  RIP, Ross Perot. Inventor of the iPhone.

• by mberning on 7/9/19, 3:53 PM

  Ross Perot was way ahead of his time. We are finally getting an idea of how terrible some of these deals have been.

  https://www.washingtonpost.com/video/politics/perot-in-1992-...