Submitted by Bill Gates – for over 30 years now he and his company shaped the technology world, for better or worse, that’s up to you to decide. On June 27th, 2008, Gates will step down to spend more time on his Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, while still taking on an advisory role within the biggest software company of the world. PC World listed ten of the most memorable Bill Gates moments.Personally, I don’t really know how to feel about Bill Gates. On the one hand, I do believe he played a very important role in getting a computer in every home, and without Microsoft, it might have all been either more expensive, or Apple. Of course, you can’t say that for sure, but I wouldn’t want to take the bet. In addition, Gates has spent a lot of money on helping those in need, and while some cynics will say it’s all about spreading Microsoft software, fact remains his foundation is helping those that need it, and that’s a good thing. It would be great if more rich folk started doing that instead of worrying about what clothes they’re wearing.
On the other hand, his company has caused a lot of innovative products to never gain a serious foothold – most notably, for me, the BeOS. While Be, Inc. played a very important role in killing their own products by being utterly incompetent at the management level, Microsoft (and Apple) gave the final nudge by effectively blocking them from the Mac and PC markets.
In interviews, Bill Gates can be quite the charming fellow, with a decent sense of humour, and no lack of self-deprecation, but he can also fall back into endless speeches on how great everything Microsoft makes is, which can be quite frustrating. I’m staying on the fence on this one.
PC World’s list has some interesting gems in it, most notably the massive launch and marketing blitz concerning Windows 95. I’ve never seen so many squealing nerds – I couldn’t sleep for days. The best item in the list, however, concerns his marriage to Melinda.
When you’re the world’s richest man you have to work double-time to hide from the public eye. So when Gates decided to marry former Microsoft product manager Melinda French, he organized the wedding on the tiny Hawaiian island of Lanai, booked every hotel room on the island, and rented every helicopter in the state to frustrate potential paparazzi.
And frustrating paparazzi should be a civil duty.
One: Will this be like Steve Jobs, leave for a while then come back to rescue the rudderless company?
Two: Why after all these years and all that money can Bill still not get a good haircut?
The clippers are powered by Windows.
Edited 2008-06-17 11:53 UTC
I believe he deserves respect for what he has achieved. He used to be an assembly programmer and managed to fit a Basic interpreter for the 8080 in 4kb. He also invented the fat filesystem, a hack still in use nowadays, and was among the pioneers of software copyright violation, both in the giving and the receiving role.
Microsoft software wasn’t always the best, yet he managed to sell better than his rivals; for so long that he became the richest man in the world and the owner of a virtual monopoly.
His less than legal methods were used by other entrepreneurs, yet he was the one to succeed.
fat was not part of the qdos code?
Not true, and if you’ve been a follower of OsNews you saw the news about the Filesystem-Article on Ars where it explains exactly why and when FAT was developed.
But I’m just being picky here
I think one should honour what Mr Gates achieved during his life, and the impact he and his company had on the computer industry as a whole, regardless.
I missed that one but according to Wikipedia:
I also remember an interview with Bill Gates on the matter. It was probably a ripoff from another filesystem but I am pretty sure Bill Gates designed the original FAT12.
”
Microsoft software wasn’t always the best, yet he managed to sell better than his rivals
”
This is where most of us technically literate end users take the biggest issue. Better technology loosing out to better marketing does not benefit the end user like it benefits the share holder.
He has done some great things and the IT world would have been a different place without MS. His corporate monster has also done some real duzies towards the end users.
He was always a strategy and business genious that happened to be good with computers though rather the reverse.
On the up side, if all he does is walk around throwing money at problems; he has enough to make a noticable difference as a philanthropist. If he focuses that strategic mind on philanthropic challenges rather than business challenges; he stand to make a huge difference. It will be interesting to watch what happens after “the departure” (dunt.. dunt.. daa) though and see what the foundation can really do. You have to give credit where due.
I think the problem that we the geekdom will all have is this; we will never truly understand what is going through his mind or what he believes. I’m sure there is a mountain of things he would love to rant about (with the accompanying soap box) but at the same time, he realises that given his position, he can’t afford such a luxury.
If he says something mildly controversial or interesting, not only does the mud get flung on him (by pecious souls who can’t take criticism) but also Microsoft as well. Even if he left Microsoft altogether, he is still viewed by some as the ‘great white father’ of Microsoft regardless of his employment status with the organisation.
Lets just imagine he said that at home he has a computer, he an runs FreeBSD on it (for arguments sake) and in his own time – fiddling around the source code. Could you imagine the rumours that could get started up over that little ditty of information! we’d have idiots on here claim that Windows is being moved to a FreeBSD base, Mac users declare that they were right, and wall street claiming that “Bill has lost faith with Windows” – all from a small sentence.
Its sad that we live in such a society where rumours within a space of a few hyperlinks turn into ‘valuable insider information’. I’d really love to hear what Bill thinks of the current state of the IT world, in his own words, on his own terms. But I don’t think we’ll ever get to hear it.
Edited 2008-06-18 05:40 UTC
I’m only up to milestone 3 reading the deposition transcript.
1. he’d fit in well with most of the forums I’ve seen here and elsewhere as we all tend to argue minute details and symantics.
2. he’s playing games and doing all he can to avoid actually answering questions.
I fear I may need a shower after I get through the rest of these points if I keep reading the linked material along with each milestone.
ha.. no shower needed.. there’s some good funny squishy in there just don’t take too seriously.
My most memorable moments with Bill Gates involved is surely the Windows 98 Crash during the prime demo:
http://youtube.com/watch?v=vzFUcDKC64E
For everything else there is err… Linux.
I love it. Way to put him down a peg.
I expect he will be remembered in the same way as Howard Hughes as the rich benefactor of the HHMI. Far in the future when various diseases have been conquered with the help of funding from these and other medical institutions we will be very glad that he did this rather than give it all away to family as is usually the case in rich empires (Hilton, etc).
By that time Windows, and Bills personal life story will be clouded over as is the life story of HH, not so perfect in their day, even evil sometimes, but remembered for final good work. The difference was that HHMI was initially a tax shelter and turned good only after HH death while Bill genuinely understands the need for the BMGF and is now leading it, so more kudos for that. What these foundations achieve with the money will ultimately be far more enduring.
More along the lines of: HHMI was initially a way for HH to maintain control of everything else despite the wishes of the US Armed Forces – who were going to oust him. In a lucky break (likely planned), it also was a tax shelter for everything HH did, though namely his aircraft company. HH ran HHMI until his death.
It would only really be similar to BMGF if BMGF had control over Microsoft and was a tax shelter for the billions of revenue Microsoft makes. But for that, Microsoft would have to be a private company solely owned by BMGF, I think.
Bill Gates, before his marriage to Melinda and the subsequent forming of the Bill and Melinda Gates foundation, once gave $50,000 a year in charity annually in the form of computers to the Seattle Public Library. When asked in an interview why he wasn’t more charitable, he answered “I just don’t have the time to give charity.” I give all of the credit for the foundation to Melinda, I suspect Bill Gates had little to do with it.
I’ve heard that he will give each of his kids a starter petty cash on which they can build there own fortunes (at the time, 1 million’ish). I have to respect him for not simply handing it all off to his kids in the Old Money tradition.
Besides, if they have any of dad’s strategic mind, they’d do just fine without a starter balance even.
Bill Gates saved Apple :
http://ecoustics-cnet.com.com/MS+to+invest+150+million+in+Apple/210…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WxOp5mBY9IY
Wasn’t that the investment in Apple the MS was obligated to do as a settlment over Windows blatant theft of Apples OS? I seem to remember an investment in Apple as settlement anyhow.
Not that I recall. Microsoft just bought a lot of shares in Apple to save Apple – Apple was more dead than alive at that point. Hadn’t Microsoft saved Apple, Apple would’ve been sold for scrap, or dissolved.
The fun thing is that later on, it would be Apple that more or less saved Microsoft, as Apple served as a lightning rod for accusations of Microsoft being a monopoly – look, we sell Office for Mac, and people can freely buy Macs if they don’t want Windows! There’s choice in the marketplace!
One could say that was just by sheer luck, but knowing Gates, it might not be far-fetched to think that that was his plan all along when he saved Apple.
ha.. computer history beats most fictional stories and it’s all recorded in legal documents. I was just thinking that buying shares in Apple and keeping it afloat also gave them a “see, we’re not the only OS maker” defense. Thanks for the clarification though; everything between the Gate’s letter to the homebrew club and win95 is starting to blur together for me these days.
You are correct sir.
@jabbotts and @jensa
You would be wrong :
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Computer%2C_Inc._v._Microsof…
Apple Inc. v. Microsoft Corporation, 35 F.3d 1435 (9th Cir. 1994) was a copyright infringement lawsuit in which Apple Computer, Inc. (now Apple Inc.) sought to prevent Microsoft Corporation and Hewlett-Packard from using visual graphical user interface (GUI) elements that were similar to those in Apple’s Lisa and Macintosh operating systems. Some critics claimed that Apple was really attempting to gain all intellectual property rights over the desktop metaphor for computer interfaces, and perhaps all GUIs, on personal computers. Apple lost all claims in the lawsuit, except that the court ruled that the trash can icon and file folder icons from Hewlett-Packard’s now-forgotten NewWave windows application were infringing. The lawsuit was filed in 1988 and lasted four years; the decision was affirmed on appeal in 1994, [1] and Apple’s appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court was denied.
Apple had previously agreed to license certain parts of its GUI to Microsoft for use in Windows 1.0. When Microsoft made changes in Windows 2.0, such as overlapping windows and other more Macintosh-like GUI features, Apple filed suit, and then added additional claims to the suit when Microsoft released Windows 3.0.
Apple claimed the “look and feel” of the Macintosh operating system, taken as a whole, was protected by copyright, and that each individual element of the interface (such as the existence of windows on the screen, the fact that they are rectangular, are resizable, overlap, and have title bars) was not as important as all these elements taken together. After long arguments, the judge insisted on an analysis of specific GUI elements that Apple claimed were infringements. Apple came up with a list of 189 GUI elements; the judge decided that 179 of these elements had been licensed to Microsoft in the Windows 1.0 agreement, and most of the remaining 10 elements were not copyrightable—either they were unoriginal to Apple, or they were the only possible way of expressing a particular idea.
In a twist midway through the suit, Xerox filed a lawsuit against Apple, claiming Apple had infringed copyrights Xerox held on its GUIs. Xerox had invested in Apple and had invited the Macintosh design team to view their GUI computers at the PARC research lab; these visits had been very influential on the development of the Macintosh GUI. Xerox’s lawsuit appeared to be a defensive move to ensure that if Apple v. Microsoft established that “look and feel” was copyrightable, then Xerox would be the primary beneficiary, rather than Apple. The Xerox case was dismissed because the three year statute of limitations had passed — Xerox had waited too long to file suit.
Impact
The court based most of its ruling on the original licensing agreement between Apple and Microsoft for Windows 1.0. This made the case more of a contractual matter than one of of copyright law, much against Apple’s intentions. This also meant that the court could avoid a far-reaching “look and feel copyright” precedent ruling.
In 1997, five years after the lawsuit was decided, all lingering infringement questions against Microsoft regarding the Lisa and Macintosh GUI as well as Apple’s “QuickTime piracy” lawsuit against Microsoft were settled in direct negotiations. Apple agreed to make Internet Explorer their default browser, to the detriment of Netscape. Microsoft agreed to continue developing their Office and other software for the Mac for the next five years. Microsoft also purchased $150 million of non-voting Apple stock, helping Apple in its financial struggles at the time. Both parties entered into a patent cross-licensing agreement.[1] [2]
In recent years Apple has resumed threats of litigation in this area. One target has been Stardock, whose CEO Brad Wardell once joked that Apple’s lawyers had him on speed-dial. Apple was not pleased when skins and themes for WindowBlinds, IconPackager and DesktopX, looking similar to their Aqua GUI, were released in mid-2000, that is, over six months before the release of Mac OS X.
I wonder what Apple things of the Auqua themes for KDE.. hehehe..