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Bill Gates
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microsoft
With Bill Gates gone, Microsoft to stop selling the last operating system he actually liked
Microsoft's Vista apologists no longer have to worry about former chief software architect Bill Gates letting slip an admission that its latest operating system sucks, sending computer makers and users back to Windows XP. As soon as Dell, HP and other major manufacturers sell their current-supply of XP-loaded PCs, no more will come off the shelves as Microsoft ends production of the aging but quite functional operating system today. But instead of moving on to Windows Vista, large corporate clients like General Motors intend to purchase Vista-loaded computers and "downgrade" them to XP. Meanwhile, only 8 percent of all software developers are working on applications for Vista, while 49 percent continue to develop for XP.
exits
Bill Gates third act a story of redemption for the fallen geek hero?
Microsoft co-founder, former CEO and executive chairman Bill Gates should be just about wrapping up his last day as a full-time employee of Microsoft and moving on to head up the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. While I never met the man, he certainly loomed large in my life growing up in Seattle and beyond. While the classic "Tiger Beat" style photo here tried valiantly to make Gates appear a little sexy for the publicity machine surrounding the launch of the original Windows operating system, it failed where Gates succeeded. While Gates was a ruthlessly competitive capitalist who used and abused Microsoft's monopoly position to maim and sometimes kill the competition, he did make being a computer nerd something to aspire to, if not exactly cool. More »
5:00 PM on Fri Jun 27 2008
By Jackson West
3,076 views,
13 comments
Latest by gorichgo!: I grew up with a lot of trust-fund babies who did absolutely nothing with their lives. Having money, in my experience/observation, is a curse to more people than you may realize. Also, I still don't understand why Gates is so more »
Gates gives Yahoo deal the nay-no
The Bill Gates media express rolls on as Gates powers down his infernally unusable computer at Redmond today, but he's leaving as a prophet. In an interview with Tom Brokaw, he notes that any Yahoo deal (which he was never enthusiastic about in the first place) probably won't happen. [CNBC]
quotable
Bill Gates privately declared Windows usability "an absolute mess" in 2003
Five years ago, which is probably about when Microsoft started announcing shipping dates for Vista, Bill Gates wanted to play with Windows Movie Maker. Thanks to the power of Windows XP and Microsoft's online support, it took him over an hour in frustration downloading software, installing it and rebooting and, in the end, still without the software he was looking for. More »
quotable
Bill Gates looks back at the competition Microsoft annihilated
Putting media naysayers in their place, Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates continued his farewell tour by pointing to old press accounts of companies like Ashton Tate and Lotus as worthy competitors into the perspective only the ultimate winner can enjoy. When asked by CNET's Ina Fried about the early presumptions that IBM would eat Microsoft's lunch and how that turned out, Gates used the opportunity to challenge those who would similarly presume that Google will eventually destroy Team Redmond. More »
Bill Gates, Paul Allen reunite with employees from original Albuquerque office
As co-founder and former CEO Bill Gates prepares to soft-retire from Microsoft, he indulged in a feel-good photo op with his former business partner Paul Allen and the remaining staff from Microsoft's startup days when the company was based in Albuquerque, New Mexico. The team's fashion sense rather explicitly demonstrates the transition from innovative upstarts to staid conservatives over the last thirty years. [Newsweek]
microsoft
Bill Gates reveals his tricks for getting chicks
While a young student at Seattle's snootiest private prep school, Lakeside, dweebish Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates was asked to write the computer program that arranged students' class schedules. Having just absorbed the student bodies from a private girl's school, Gates gamed the system to make sure all his classes had nothing but the hotties, even though males outnumbered females 3-1. He may not be the sexiest CEO out there, but points for trying.
google
Street View finally coming to Seattle
The Google Street View car was Spotted in Microsoft Country last week after launching in many smaller markets around the country first. Apparently the drivers, rather than use some fancy, newfangled Internet doohickey, simply burn the data captured by the rooftop camera array onto a CD and mail it back to Mountain View. The fact that Portland, Oregon and Juneau, Alaska were added to the list of Street View cities before Seattle inspired an April Fools article in local publication Naked Loon quoting a fictional Google spokesmonkey as saying the addition of Seattle was "extremely unlikely, save for some kind of highly localized disaster centered somewhere in Redmond." More »
geek love
Bill Gates hasn't always been Steve Ballmer's BFF
After meeting at Harvard, Microsoft chairman Bill Gates and CEO Steve Ballmer have been working together for so long, "they often complete each other's sentences," according to sources cited by the Wall Street Journal in a frontpage feature for Gates's last month working full-time at the Redmond software giant. But it wasn't all smiles and sunshine over the years. After handing over the title of CEO to Ballmer, "In meetings Mr. Gates would interject with sarcasm, undermining Mr. Ballmer in front of other executives." And at one point, Gates even pitched a fit! More »
cleantech
Bill Gates divesting from Pacific Ethanol at a loss
Cascade Investment LLC, the fund managed by Microsoft chairman Bill Gates, has made good on its November promise to exit from its investment in Pacific Ethanol. What's surprising? He's doing it at a loss, converting his preferred shares to common shares worth $8 apiece and selling them for less than $4 apiece. With 1.4 million shares sold in three days, that's a loss of over $5 million. Pocket change for Gates, certainly, but in almost halving his original 20 percent stake it's a strong vote of no confidence in the ethanol business. While Accel Partners Joe Schoendorf has said that "a good way to lose money is to bet against Vinod [Khosla]" who's been bullish on ethanol, I'm going to side with Gates on this one.
developers, developers, developers
Bill Gates last move at Microsoft is to replace Steve Ballmer with robot
Speaking at Microsoft's TechEd conference in Orlando, Florida, Bill Gates said some stuff about Internet Explorer 8, blah blah blah. More importantly, he rolled out the latest version of Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer, a Windows-powered machine that waves its arms and shouts "Developers, developers, developers!" It can even throw eggs in order to fend off ruthless Hungarians when necessary. Presumably it can also throw chairs to fend off larger predators like Google. However, any attempts to buy Yahoo inevitably result in a blue screen of death. We hear Steve Ballmer 2.0's first decision was to hire Lloyd Braun.
facebook platform
Facebook's new profile: "Orwellian"
Welcome to the Silicon Valley hype cycle: One year, and you're over. That seems to be the consensus on Facebook's vaunted platform, whose one-year anniversary went largely unremarked. The company itself didn't blog about it until today, and sources tell us an open-bar party Facebook held in Palo Alto was low-key to the point of despair. It can't have helped that Google was throwing a massive party in San Francisco the same day to close out its conference for developers. How different a scene from a year ago, when the F8 launch event of Facebook Platform won comparisons of the company to Microsoft and of founder Mark Zuckerberg to Bill Gates. More »
5:00 PM on Mon Jun 2 2008
By Owen Thomas
2,853 views,
17 comments
Latest by n/a: I don't understand the hoopla around Facebook. The applications are annoying. The site is annoying, and it really doesn't do much for me. What's even more annoying is Zuck is considered this genius, and lets face it.. more »
carl icahn
FTC gives Carl Icahn permission to acquire more Yahoo stock
The Federal Trade Commission says corporate raider Carl Icahn should feel free to buy more large blocks of Yahoo shares. At last count, Icahn already owned 4.3 percent of Yahoo. Shareholders allied with his view on the Microsoft-Yahoo merger — that it should happen — now control at least 31 percent of the company. Too bad for them it seems less likely every day that Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer — or really, chairman Bill Gates — wants to go back down that road.
cutbacks
Microsoft cuts internal spending
In April, Microsoft CFO Chris Liddell said the company was not feeling the effects of any economic slow down. Now its is, reports Global Equities Research analyst Trip Chowdhry.We know of at least two internal IT projects (one worth $1.3 million and other $2.7 million) that have been canceled halfway through deployment. Contacts tell us every project is now getting reevaluated, and depending on the relevance to the core business, projects are either accelerated, delayed or canceled.Microsoft chairman Bill Gates fought to kill the Microsoft-Yahoo merger. If million-dollar internal projects can't get funding at Microsoft, does anybody doubt the fiscally conservative founder might have worried Microsoft couldn't spare the cash to complete the deal? (Photo by Robert Scoble)
d6 live coverage
Why Rupert Murdoch should defrag Bill Gates -- and the rest of tech
CARLSBAD, CA — The other night, Gizmodo editor Brian Lam and I were talking about what he'd learned about Bill Gates's brain. Our conclusion: Like an overstuffed hard drive, he needs defragging — the utility that rebuilds a drive bit by bit to put it in proper working order. Buried in software wizardry, Gates has lost touch with what people want to do with technology. But why pick on Gates? None of the speakers at the D6 conference, held in this Southern California seaside town, have shown they have much in the way of ideas. More »
11:23 PM on Wed May 28 2008
By Owen Thomas
1,777 views,
12 comments
Latest by angrykeyboarder: You mean to tell me the guy who told the story of that "ominous" visit from the defense department wasn't good? I was blown away by what those "robotic" (for lack of a better term) arms could do. more »
And by "compete," we mean "grind the bones of our enemies into dust" -- did I say that out loud?
"Guys like us avoid monopolies. We like to compete." — Microsoft chairman Bill Gates, whose company remains under antitrust supervision, at the All Things Digital conference Tuesday.
"Guys like us avoid monopolies. We like to compete." — Microsoft chairman Bill Gates, whose company remains under antitrust supervision, at the All Things Digital conference Tuesday.
microsoft
