Bill Gates Entering Retirement

[Black Mage]

I don't know if that has been posted or not, but its been announced that Bill Gates is retiring. So who are we going to blame for Windows problems and its monopoly now?

And with the retirement of Gates, Steve Jobs is going to try and take over the world.

I bet Microsoft stock is going to drop some when it happens but that will probably be about it. Maybe this will be a good chance for Linux to step its presence up....hmmmm

[fatality_uk]

He's been retiring for what seems like 6 months.
Additionally, he hasn't fully retired. He will still work 1-2 days as a non exec chariman.

[chucky chuckaluck]

Maybe this will be a good chance for Linux to step its presence up....hmmmm

i don't know. i see gnu hurd beating us to it.

[eryksun]

I don't know if that has been posted or not, but its been announced that Bill Gates is retiring. So who are we going to blame for Windows problems and its monopoly now?

Blame the two Steves: corporate strategy [monopoly] criticism goes to the CEO, Steve Ballmer (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Ballmer), and Windows architecture [problems] criticism goes to Steven Sinofsky (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steven_Sinofsky), the the VP in charge (http://news.cnet.com/8301-13860_3-9951638-56.html) of Windows.

[LaRoza]

As long as the marketting and legal departments are up, MS can do business as usual.

[Bungo Pony]

I think it's funny that Microsoft is going from this:

http://chuckgallagher.files.wordpress.com/2008/02/bill-gates.jpg



....to this:



http://uk.gizmodo.com/ballmer2.jpg

[MissingLink]

Whatever you say about Bill Gates, I find the man a genius of marketing. He revolutionized the world of computing making it accessible to anyone who wants to use a PC. Now that he's retiring, the world can look forward to a great philantropist. At least, he's trying to make something different.

[eryksun]

I think it's funny that Microsoft is going from this:

Funny, but hardly fair. You've never made a silly face before?

Anyway, it's hardly funny or unexpected that the reins have been passed from one ivy-league privileged man to yet another, or that they were buddies in college. The top tier of capitalism and government in the West is an arena of corruption filled with nepotism, cronies, and back-room deals -- run like a game of Risk by a bunch over-privileged, immature rich fops with fancy educations and cheese for brains that [just barely] know how to parrot buzz words from the mouths of their guru professors in the hallowed halls of academia (the smart ones that have learned to appreciate the taste of rich, pampered butts on their venerable mouths). Ancient Rome was hardly any more corrupt than this depressing lot of so-called modernity, which is not a compliment but rather an observation of how ridiculously slow social evolution is compared to, let's say, the technology that Gates and Ballmer pedal on the voracious monsters known as consumers in polite speech. But that's just this ignorant po' boy's opinion.

[gn2]

Credit where it's due, Bill Gates is a remarkable human being.

His retirement has been discussed here before.

What is not widely known is that he has decided to give away his personal wealth, if you have a project or charity that you think is worthwhile, the world's leading philanthropist will consider your application for funding:

http://www.gatesfoundation.org/default.htm

[LaRoza]

Whatever you say about Bill Gates, I find the man a genius of marketing. He revolutionized the world of computing making it accessible to anyone who wants to use a PC. Now that he's retiring, the world can look forward to a great philantropist. At least, he's trying to make something different.

No he didn't ;)

IBM did. IBM was the one commissioned to make a PC, and they went to the creator of CP/M first for an OS, then because he wasn't in the office, the happened to ask Microsoft (a small company) and they accepted the bid and bought QDOS (Quick and Dirty Operating System) for $50000 and renamed it.

It had nothing to do with Gates, but luck.

[gn2]

No he didn't ;)

IBM did. IBM was the one commissioned to make a PC, and they went to the creator of CP/M first for an OS, then because he wasn't in the office, the happened to ask Microsoft (a small company) and they accepted the bid and bought QDOS (Quick and Dirty Operating System) for $50000 and renamed it.

It had nothing to do with Gates, but luck.

Yes and no.

Yes IBM did source their OS from Bill Gates' fledgling company, yes Bill Gates did make some useful acquisitions, but to quote the man from IBM tasked with sourcing the OS: "I quickly found out that this kid was a better programmer than I was, a better lawyer than we (IBM) had and a better engineer than we (IBM) had"
High praise from someone who knows his stuff.

So no to your statement about it having nothing to do with Gates.
It had everything to do with Gates, he is an oustandingly gifted and well educated man.

Do I approve of all Microsoft's activities or business strategies? Absolutely not, but Bill Gates is bordering on genius.

[KiwiNZ]

I have to disagree LaRoza.

IBM declined Gates ,

IBM actually saw no value in the PC and believed that it would never be in every home.

Gates saw an opportunity and a vision of the future , grabbed it and has been visiting the bank ever since.

[Bungo Pony]

Funny, but hardly fair. You've never made a silly face before?

I make tons of them, but that's not really the point.

Bill Gates made Microsoft successful by looking for opportunities and using them to his advantage. Quite sneaky, but successful.

Steve Ballmer pushes Microsoft by being noisy, loud, and obnoxious.

[LaRoza]

Yes IBM did source their OS from Bill Gates' fledgling company, yes Bill Gates did make some useful acquisitions, but to quote the man from IBM tasked with sourcing the OS: "I quickly found out that this kid was a better programmer than I was, a better lawyer than we (IBM) had and a better engineer than we (IBM) had"
High praise from someone who knows his stuff.


He didn't program the OS, he bought it and licensed it to be used. No matter how gifted he is/was, it didn't lead to his success. IBM came to him because Gary Kildall wasn't in the office that day.


I have to disagree LaRoza.

IBM declined Gates ,



In 1980, IBM decided to enter the personal computer market in response to the success of the Apple II. The first model was the IBM PC, released in August, 1981. Like the Apple II and S-100 systems, it was based on an open, card-based architecture, which allowed third parties to develop for it. It used the Intel 8088 CPU running at 4.77 MHz, containing 29000 transistors. The first model used an audio cassette for external storage, though there was an expensive floppy disk option. The cassette option was never popular and was removed in the PC XT of 1983.[21] The XT added a 10MB hard drive in place of one of the two floppy disks and increased the number of expansion slots from 5 to 8. While the original PC design could accommodate only up to 64k on the main board, the architecture was able to accommodate up to 640KB of RAM, with the rest on cards. Later revisions of the design increased the limit to 256K on the main board.

The IBM PC typically came with PC-DOS, an operating system based upon Gary Kildall's CP/M-80 operating system. In 1980, IBM approached Digital Research, Kildall's company, for a version of CP/M for its upcoming IBM PC. Kildall's wife and business partner, Dorothy McEwen, met with the IBM representatives who were unable to negotiate a standard non-disclosure agreement with her. IBM turned to Bill Gates, who was already providing the ROM BASIC interpreter for the PC. Gates offered to provide 86-DOS, developed by Tim Paterson of Seattle Computer Products. IBM rebranded it as PC-DOS, while Microsoft sold variations and upgrades as MS-DOS.

[gn2]

He didn't program the OS, he bought it and licensed it to be used. No matter how gifted he is/was, it didn't lead to his success. IBM came to him because Gary Kildall wasn't in the office that day.

If you believe that IBM settled on Microsoft on the basis of a few missed phone calls to another company then you're probably living on a different planet from me.

Microsoft won that contract on their merit, not luck. Luck would be if IBM went out the office and picked someone at random out a bus queue to provide their OS.

[LaRoza]

If you believe that IBM settled on Microsoft on the basis of a few missed phone calls to another company then you're probably living on a different planet from me.

Microsoft won that contract on their merit, not luck. Luck would be if IBM went out the office and picked someone at random out a bus queue to provide their OS.

Yes, they didn't choose Microsoft at random, that would be foolish. However, MS wasn't the first pick, and MS didn't actually have an OS and didn't write one.

The technical merits of Microsoft had nothing to do with operating systems.

[eryksun]

He didn't program the OS, he bought it and licensed it to be used. No matter how gifted he is/was, it didn't lead to his success. IBM came to him because Gary Kildall wasn't in the office that day.

In the mid-to-late 70s Microsoft was successful in the 8-bit microcomputer industry with its BASIC system, which even functioned as the OS for a lot of computers, for example: Applesoft BASIC (Apple + Microsoft = Applesoft) ran on all the Apple IIs, and the Commodore 64s (64 for 64KB of RAM, not 64-bit processing), of early 80s fame, used a licensed copy of MS BASIC, as did Tandy's CoCo line and many others.

When Tim Paterson started designing a 16-bit 8086 S-100 micro in 1979-80, he built it around Microsoft Disk BASIC-86 (a 16-bit port to the x86 architecture of Microsoft's popular 8-bit BASIC), which used the FAT (FAT12) file system, partly designed by Bill Gates. But he wanted a real Disk OS (DOS) to manage files, so he wrote his own, 86-DOS, closely copying the commands and functions of Gary Kildall's CP/M (a popular 8-bit OS) and integrating Microsoft's FAT file system. Paterson worked closely with Microsoft (he had previously designed Microsoft's Z-80 Softcard that let Apple II's run Z80 CP/M programs), so it makes sense that they bought 86-DOS from him and eventually hired him.

So, while it can be argued that Paterson ripped off a lot from CP/M, the FAT file system, which I would consider to be the heart of 86-DOS, and later MS-DOS, was an original Microsoft invention.

[LaRoza]

So, while it can be argued that Paterson ripped off a lot from CP/M, the FAT file system, which I would consider to be the heart of 86-DOS, and later MS-DOS, was an original Microsoft invention.

It was as original as IE was ;)

[eryksun]

It was as original as IE was ;)

As far as I know, and bear in mind I started on micros (I've never even seen in person one of the minicomputers and mainframes from the 60s and early 70s), Microsoft's FAT system in Disk BASIC was novel (and it's really not a great system, so I'm not praising Microsoft for FAT12). It's true that Paterson adapted FAT to CP/M in 86-DOS to make it compatible with CP/M File Control Blocks (FCBs) that had a fixed 8.3 filename structure. On the other hand, at the time Microsoft came out with FAT, CP/M didn't support directories. All the files were in 1 'directory' until CP/M version 2.2 added support for 16 'user areas'. AFAIK, MS innovated the use of directories (and later subdirectories) specifically in the realm of microcomputers in the late 70s. I have no idea what was available with minicomputer file systems in the early 70s, e.g. early UNIX systems at Bell Labs. Certainly Gates and Allen got their start hacking on those types of systems. Maybe Gates copied a lot of the ideas for FAT from them, but that's pure speculation.

Basically, what I'm saying, is that unless someone can show me evidence that Gates ripped off all his early work on BASIC and FAT, I'll continue to have respect for Gates the geeky computer nerd of the 1970s.

On the other hand, Gates the businessman from the 1980s onward depresses me a lot. He had the chance to change the rules of 'business as usual' and make Microsoft synonymous with fair play, community involvement, activism, and genuine caring about not only its employees but the world in which they live. Instead he sold out on Wall Street producing yet another company subject to the whims of the investor class (i.e. anything goes as long as it makes us MAD MONEY!). Wall Street is pure evil; almost all the people with the ambition and brains to challenge its world view are almost always too weak to resist its temptations.

[KiwiNZ]

IBM saw and still see's little value in the Home PC market.

It see's the value being in the Corporate sector. It initially saw the PC as a compliment to the main player being the Main Frame. Microsoft and Bill Gates saw it differently.

That is where I say IBM declined Gates.


To a degree IBM is right, there is very little margin in the home PC market. Profit is very difficult to achieve. This is for hardware , software is another story. Although the opportunities for startups in the software sector are few .

[LaRoza]

Basically, what I'm saying, is that unless someone can show me evidence that Gates ripped off all his early work on BASIC and FAT, I'll continue to have respect for Gates the geeky computer nerd of the 1970s.

Yeah, BASIC was ahead of its time at that time.



On the other hand, Gates the businessman from the 1980s onward depresses me a lot. He had the chance to change the rules of 'business as usual' and make Microsoft synonymous with fair play, community involvement, activism, and genuine caring about not only its employees but the world in which they live. Instead he sold out on Wall Street producing yet another company subject to the whims of the investor class (i.e. anything goes as long as it makes us MAD MONEY!). Wall Street is pure evil; almost all the people with the ambition and brains to challenge its world view are almost always too weak to resist its temptations.

Little guys don't start out evil, they need to be bigger. It says nothing of his character if he played nice when they were competing and starting up, everyone does that. It says more what happened when he made it big.

[LaRoza]

IBM saw and still see's little value in the Home PC market.

It see's the value being in the Corporate sector. It initially saw the PC as a compliment to the main player being the Main Frame. Microsoft and Bill Gates saw it differently.

That is where I say IBM declined Gates.


I wasn't talking about that though when you disagreed. My statements were true.

[KIAaze]

What is not widely known is that he has decided to give away his personal wealth, if you have a project or charity that you think is worthwhile, the world's leading philanthropist will consider your application for funding:

http://www.gatesfoundation.org/default.htm

The Free Software Foundation of course!: http://www.fsf.org/
:P

[lancest]

In one of the books I read from an early MS programmer it was stated that later on they came across code written by Bill G - and they actually laughed at it's poor quality. Furthermore the name 'Windows' was the idea of a marketing expert hired away from Neutrogena, not Bill. Microsoft has a history of missing the next 'big thing' so they certainly often aren't visionary. Personally i hate all the Bill Gates worship I hear in the media because it's overblown.

[gn2]

Yes, they didn't choose Microsoft at random, that would be foolish. However, MS wasn't the first pick, and MS didn't actually have an OS and didn't write one.

The technical merits of Microsoft had nothing to do with operating systems.

You don't build a business empire the size of Microsoft by being a dullard.
What Bill Gates and Microsoft have achieved is unparalleled and quite remarkable.

Now as I have said before, I do not approve of all of their business methods and I do not use their Operating Systems any more.

Again, credit where it's due, Bill Gates is a remarkable man, all the more so for giving his wealth away.

[lancest]

Funny, but hardly fair. You've never made a silly face before?

Anyway, it's hardly funny or unexpected that the reins have been passed from one ivy-league privileged man to yet another, or that they were buddies in college. The top tier of capitalism and government in the West is an arena of corruption filled with nepotism, cronies, and back-room deals -- run like a game of Risk by a bunch over-privileged, immature rich fops with fancy educations and cheese for brains that [just barely] know how to parrot buzz words from the mouths of their guru professors in the hallowed halls of academia (the smart ones that have learned to appreciate the taste of rich, pampered butts on their venerable mouths). Ancient Rome was hardly any more corrupt than this depressing lot of so-called modernity, which is not a compliment but rather an observation of how ridiculously slow social evolution is compared to, let's say, the technology that Gates and Ballmer pedal on the voracious monsters known as consumers in polite speech. But that's just this ignorant po' boy's opinion.

I believe at least some of this is true. This is one reason it's often so very hard to be that successful in the west if you aren't second generation wealthy. There are exceptions to this of course. But if timing and luck aren't on your side you won't certainly won't get a shot at commercial success. Look around, plenty of smart people never made a penny so to speak.

[Dragonbite]

Funny, but hardly fair. You've never made a silly face before?

Anyway, it's hardly funny or unexpected that the reins have been passed from one ivy-league privileged man to yet another, or that they were buddies in college. The top tier of capitalism and government in the West is an arena of corruption filled with nepotism, cronies, and back-room deals -- run like a game of Risk by a bunch over-privileged, immature rich fops with fancy educations and cheese for brains that [just barely] know how to parrot buzz words from the mouths of their guru professors in the hallowed halls of academia (the smart ones that have learned to appreciate the taste of rich, pampered butts on their venerable mouths). Ancient Rome was hardly any more corrupt than this depressing lot of so-called modernity, which is not a compliment but rather an observation of how ridiculously slow social evolution is compared to, let's say, the technology that Gates and Ballmer pedal on the voracious monsters known as consumers in polite speech. But that's just this ignorant po' boy's opinion.

The difference between "The top tier of capitalism and government in the West is an arena of corruption filled with nepotism, cronies, and back-room deals" and the non-West is the West doesn't believe it isn't happening here as well.

If you know so well how the system works, then are you successful or just speculating? Obviously if cheese-heads can make it big then somebody with brains can do even better! This is the "land of opportunity" after all!

I know a number of people some may consider wealthy. They are hard working individuals who are smart with their money and are successful on their merit. When they buy a Mercedes, it isn't the flaunt their wealth, it's because of its saftey record, will last longer than a Suzuki and retrain its resale value so when they do decide to sell it they get more for the trade in than a 10 year old Pontiac. Yeah, may cost more money up front but it saves money over the long run while other people have to buy another car every 5-7 years with little trade-in value and end up spending more of their hard-earned dollars.

If success is having lots of money, not being home for family, trying to manage a huge corporation with governments accusing you of monopoly, shareholders demanding more and more money when the industry is moving to open source and new business models, competition is cropping up from small companies, medium companies like Red Hat, and large companies like Google, your latest product is not doing so well, you're old and tired and relinquishing the reins of a company you started from scratch and grew for the past (how many?) years into an industry-influencing powerhouse (in other words, your "baby") and having throves of Linux users spitting on your name then yeah, he's successful.

I make an insignificant fraction but provide for my family. I go home every night and spend with my wife and kids. I am successful, without being second generation rich, or going to an ivy league school. I'm not even in the field I went to school for (directly).

How much do I have to make to be "rich"?

[Sealbhach]

Well, this thread's been hi-jacked....

I hope Bill Gates does less damage with his philantrophy than he did in his career in tech.

Was Bill Gates really responsible for a computer on every desk and in every home? The press keep bringing up this thing about his "vision of the future" and how he was the one who somehow made it happen.

I don't really buy that, I think the hardware vendors made that happen. Any OS would have done for writing appications.


.

[Wobedraggled]

Love or hate the guy, gotta give him credit for building the empire he did. He was and is hard worker and does a lot for the less fortunate. We can't change the past, and I wish him a good future.


He doesn't want to be working when the empire crumbles anyway ;)

[Dragonbite]

Was Bill Gates really responsible for a computer on every desk and in every home? The press keep bringing up this thing about his "vision of the future" and how he was the one who somehow made it happen.

I don't really buy that, I think the hardware vendors made that happen. Any OS would have done for writing appications.


.That's kinda like saying Apple didn't have a hand in making USB as popular as it was because they didn't make or invent USB.

At the time Jobs announced the iMac with the USB port only I had USB ports on my work computer (I remember asking the Help Desk director what hey were for and she said "nothing, yet."

Until the iMac came out with the UBS-only ports there were no printers, scanners, hard drives or cameras (maybe a couple) that used USB. Now it's everywhere!

Marketing! Marketing! Marketing!

[Black Mage]

Can someone verify this rumor for me?

I once heard the Bill Gates sold Windows to the military, and they fixed it and then he bought it back from them.

Is there any validity in that?