Items tagged with Gates
You'd be hard-pressed to find anyone who would suggest that Bill Gates isn't a pretty intelligent guy. But, he's also Microsoft at his core, and that company doesn't exactly "get along" with the likes of Samsung, Apple, and Google. Lately, Gates has taken a particularly harsh tone in regard to Google's Project Loon -- a wild initiative that puts Internet distribution up in the clouds. The goal was to provide Internet to rural and under-served areas via floating balloons, but Gates is suggesting that it simply will not help the poor. According to Gates: "When you're dying of malaria... I'm not sure how [the Loon balloons will] help you. When a kid gets diarrhea, there's no website that relieves...
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Is there such a thing as being too popular? Having too many friends? If you're Bill Gates, we guess the answer is "yes." The famed Microsoft co-founder has recently admitted to giving up Facebook after "too many" people wanted to befriend him. Of course, we find it kind of silly that Mr. Gates expected anything other than an onslaught of friend requests, but we digress. The face of Microsoft recently told an audience in India that he gave Facebook a shot but ended up throwing his hands in the air after "10,000 people" attempted to become one of his online friends. The issue? He had trouble figuring out if he knew the people that were hitting him up for friendship, and he noted that the whole...
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We recently reported on the ongoing struggle to keep XP alive, and Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer’s waffling reactions. But what does co-founder Bill Gates have to say on the subject? Is XP’s continued availability cutting into Vista sales?“Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates says sales of Windows Vista have been "rapid", with more than 140 million copies sold worldwide.”Given the “rapid” sales of Vista, is it possible that we might end up with XP, Vista and Windows 7 all co-existing at different levels? Or will Vista simply end up like another Windows ME?...
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There once was this little company, formed by these two geeks named Paul Allen and Bill Gates ...Bill Gates and Paul Allen create a partnership called Micro-soft. It will grow into one of the largest U.S. corporations and place them among the world's richest people.Gates and Allen had been buddies and fellow Basic programmers at Lakeside School in Seattle. Allen graduated before Gates and enrolled at Washington State University. They built a computer based on an Intel 8008 chip and used it to analyze traffic data for the Washington state highway department, doing business as Traf-O-Data.You have to assume Gary Kildall looks back on the mistake with not getting CP/M-86 onto the IBM PC and wonders...
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It was announced so long ago, in 2006, that many have forgotten. 2008 is the year that Bill Gates steps down from his day-to-day role at Microsoft.The Microsoft co-founder is scheduled to end his day-to-day executive duties at the end of June, but he will remain chairman and he's expected to continue working on selected projects.Microsoft has been preparing for Gates' shift to philanthropy since 2006, when the plan was announced, and it has already installed executives Craig Mundie and Ray Ozzie to fill his roles in the business, working with Microsoft chief executive Steve Ballmer."I don't think the departure will be too disruptive - it's not like it's a complete severing of the relationship,"...
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Perhaps the only person who could have challenged Bill Gates in this poll was Steve Jobs, and he gave it a good run, finishing a strong second. The Computing Technology Industry Association (CompTIA) polled 473 Information Technology (IT) industry professionals about the industry's most influential personalities of the past 25 years.Bill Gates, chairman of Microsoft Corporation, claimed the top spot on the most influential list. Gates, who co-founded Microsoft in 1975, was named by 84 percent of the 473 IT industry professionals who participated in the web-based poll. Steve Jobs, CEO of Apple, which he co-founded in 1976, placed second on the list of most influential IT person of the past 25...
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Bill Gates and Steve Jobs. Those two names are icons in our industry and have been referred to as anything from nearly symbiotic to oil and water. So what happens when the two of them sit down in the same room for a conference? A mutual admiration society is formed: "Both opened their portion of the event by praising each other's work. Jobs quickly centered on Gates' central role in the early computer industry as the first to build a company solely around software, rather than depending on customized hardware. "That was huge," Jobs said. "Bill was really focused on software." Gates returned the favor by centering on Apple's achievements instead of his own, centering on the company's populist...
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While we may not see him playing a character opposite Jack Sparrow any time soon, Mikhail Gorbachev is doing his part to save a Russian teacher accused of piracy, Alexander Ponosov. The teacher, accused of using pirated software at his school, is seen by many Russians as the unfortunate sap who Microsoft has chosen to go after in order to set a precedent when it comes to piracy in the region. Gorbachev asked Bill Gates himself to personally intervene in the case and show mercy to Mr. Ponosov, since he only meant to help his students. In a response Gates said that Microsoft did not initiate the prosecution and that due to the small scale of the event, criminal proceedings would not be necessary....
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Now this is my kind of stuff. Earlier in the week we reported on Apple's new ads attacking Vista and the PC in general. It's Microsoft's turn to throw a few stones, and the company's leader himself has some things to say about Apple's assertions... Are you bugged by the Apple commercial where John Hodgman is the PC, and he has to undergo surgery to get Vista? I've never seen it. I don't think the over 90 percent of the [population] who use Windows PCs think of themselves as dullards, or the kind of klutzes that somebody is trying to say they are. How about the implication that you need surgery to upgrade? Well, certainly we've done a better job letting you upgrade...
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People like to complain about PayPal and other online payment methods. People also like to complain about Bill Gates. But they will build a shrine to the guy if he manages to slash credit card fees by pioneering micropayments on the web. Because he's not gunning just to make PayPal obsolete; he's going for the big dogs, too: MasterCard and Visa. Speaking at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, Bill Gates indicated that Microsoft was looking into finding a way to make so-called micropayments a reality online. And to make it a reality, Gates noted that traditional credit card fees would need to be undercut, and severely. See,...
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Not content with his work at Microsoft, Bill Gates has decided to step away from the day-to-day operations at Microsoft, and devote more time to his charitable foundations. He will still hold a part-time job at Microsoft, but will work full time for the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. "I believe with great wealth comes great responsibility - the responsibility to give back to society and make sure those resources are given back in the best possible way, to those in need," he said. Gates added, "It's not a retirement, it's a reordering of my priorities." ...
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In his MIX06 keynote, Bill Gates promises to update IE as often as every nine to 12 months to keep pace with quickly evolving Web technologies and programming tools. Speaking at Microsoft's MIX06 conference in Las Vegas for Web developers, Gates said Microsoft's Internet Explorer version 7 Web browser, expected later this year, is long overdue, and the company plans more frequent browser updates in the future. Microsoft released a refreshed version of its "beta 2 preview" of Internet Explorer 7 on Monday. The company also put in place a new license that will let developers using a test version of a Microsoft programming tool for Ajax apps to...
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Not being able to decide on a single person to receive the title, Time magazine has named Bill and Melinda Gates, as well as U2's Bono, as their persons of the year. The three of them have spent both time and money raising awareness on diseases such as Malaria and AIDS. Former President Bill Clinton and George H.W. Bush were also given recognition for their work on Tsunami relief efforts....
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