Bill Gates Experiences Windows - and Hates It!

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Pat Anderson

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This article is really entertaining! It is a leaked 2003 memo from Bill Gates to Jim Allchin - he details his experience trying to download Moviemaker from microsoft.com. Things have not gotten better in the last 5 years. I want to shake him by the shirt collar and say "Bill, you need to get a Mac if you want things to just work!"
 
Pat,

Many years ago I went to a Boston Computer Society meeting and heard this guy with glasses telling us about a new program called Windows. It seemed to be a rip-off of the program that Apple already had.

After the speech I stayed around and listened to him answer questions. I came to the conclusion that he was a nerd, but highly focused. His name was Bill Gates.

At first, I did not like him because his beginning was to take programs that were designed by two Professors from Dartmouth, PC-DOS and PC-BASIC and repackaged them as MS-DOS and MS-BASIC. They started out as freeware because those two professors felt the the world, especially college students, should have free programs to be able to talk with computers. You have to remember that IBM made the internal structure available so programs would be available for their computers (Apple wanted you to buy "their" programs.)

Well, the lead professor became the President of Dartmouth, and Bill Gates struck. The two professors tried to come back with True Basic, which was a program with out numbered lines. It was to late, The rest is History.

This feeling about Gates clouded my feelings about MicroSoft because I felt that he never came out with an original idea, but stoled others work, so I never invested in their stock.

I guess he was smarter than I.

Fred
 
Sure Bill, check thisone out...

I'll still take the PC.
 
My favorite Microsoft experience (other than the blue screen of death) was with an early version of Word.

If you typed in the phrase "I want to kill Bill Gates", the thesaurus would return "SO DO I". Obviously, Bill made a hit with his employees.

Steve
 
Steve,

I've seen many good easter eggs like that over the years. Here is a good one for the Mac OS X users out there (I got this from www.eeggs.com).

Log in to OS X, and open Terminal. (/Applications/Utilities)
If a session is not open already, open one, and type "bill gates" (caps don't matter), and hit Enter or Return.
You will receive a rather humorous response...
"OK? kill gates?"
For some reason if you type "bill" and then any word it also works (not just with "gates")
 
Gary - an urban legend perhaps?



Last login: Mon Jun 23 12:37:14 on console
Welcome to Darwin!
pats-macbook:~ patanderson$ bill gates
-bash: bill: command not found
pats-macbook:~ patanderson$

Same result with "bill gates" in quotes.

Or perhaps, since he retired today, he is simply "not found"!

gljjr":mz0au0wr said:
Steve,

I've seen many good easter eggs like that over the years. Here is a good one for the Mac OS X users out there (I got this from www.eeggs.com).

Log in to OS X, and open Terminal. (/Applications/Utilities)
If a session is not open already, open one, and type "bill gates" (caps don't matter), and hit Enter or Return.
You will receive a rather humorous response...
"OK? kill gates?"
For some reason if you type "bill" and then any word it also works (not just with "gates")
Click to expand...
 
Perhaps Pat. I don't have a Mac so I couldn't test it.

When I was at MS they frowned on putting easter eggs in the code. If you got caught doing it you got fired. No questions asked!
 
Robbi":agokom6t said:
Here is an interesting perspective.

http://gizmodo.com/5020306/things-no-one-gives-microsoft-credit-for-but-should

Robbi
Click to expand...
Yes, an interesting perspective indeed. I disagree with everything in that perspective though with the exception that a common operating system does make development easier. However, the writer's assertion that "Microsoft is basically responsible for the two-button mouse" is complete crap. Most of the interesting concepts for a point and click interface were created at Stanford and first instantiated in commercial form in the Xerox Parc systems of the 80's. Xerox Parc released a two button mouse as part of a point and click windowing interface in 1981.

Apple released it's first OS in 1984 with concepts that to a large extent were copied from Xerox Parc. In an attempt to make computers more accessible to the general public, they simplified the mouse to a one-button device. Microsoft introduced Windows 1.0 (really a DOS add-on and not a separate OS) in 1985. It wasn't until about Windows 3.1 (released in 1992), that Microsoft finally produced a windows system that most people felt was functional.

Microsoft has never been a great innovator. They have been great in business strategy and through the power of being the dominant system they have increased standardization which I would agree has benefited many end users. Unfortunately, too often we end up with standardized crapola.
 
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