Bill Gates?

Originally posted by MrNECROS
In defense of Bill Gates, people print a lot of rubbish about him but one thing really grinds me up when people say he can't programme and that his success is due to cut throat businessness logic, or that he "stole" DOS etc..
Bill Gates invented the BASIC computer language which is the language that just about every modern programmer learnt as their first programming language on the old Tandy TRS80, Commodore 64 etc...

What ever happened to good 'ol elbow grease? I mean serisously if you guys are looking for people who got rich from "selling" their sould to the devil then look for people, that we have never heard of. Cause I can tell you that there are people who make Bill Gates seem poor.

1. David Icke is about as reliable a source as my potted azalea plant.

2. The "sold his soul" stuff? Come on - you're going to have to do much better than that to convince us that these allegations aren't anything more than good old jealousy and bitterness than someone else has become a financial success.

Then again, perhaps not everyone measures success in terms of how much money is in their bank account.

still waiting on bill gates real name ....
so much for the american dream any one that succeeds sold there soul or they are in the middle of a conspiracy that no one can ever really explain

everyone says that he's the richest man in the world... but he isn't... he's the only rich person to claim the title of the richest man in the world. That is why he lives in the middle of no where with hundreds of armed guards.

who is the richest then

(Medina-with-rather-nice-views-of-Seattle isn't really the middle of nowhere, but we can let that go).

In case you were really, really itching to know....

Play with Bill's house!

And more pics here

Though it has to be wondered...what on earth does one family need with 40,000 square feet of space?!

(as she sits in her teeny little 750 sq ft apartment).

Hmph.

Originally posted by ryan25
who is the richest then

Forbes still listed Gates as El Richest as of 2004, but this article would claim differently.

The Swedish founder of the IKEA furniture chain has passed Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates as the world's richest person, according to reports out of Sweden. Business weekly Veckans Affarer is set to report that Kamprad holds a fortune of 400 billion crowns or $53 billion. This would put him $6 billion ahead of Gates.

i woulda though it would been one of the shieks
guess theres a pile of money in flat packinf furniture

I suppose if you're already in that general "multi billion" arena, what's a few billion between friends?

I can't even fathom that amount of money.

I really can't.

And I've tried. Believe me, I've tried

(seriously: you could keep a few small countries going for years with that kind of money...but as those articles rightly point out, those listed values are only dependent upon current market value...if the bottom were to suddenly drop out of (insert commodity here), the list would probably look much different due to share prices falling, etc etc).

Originally posted by Tinkleflower


Then again, perhaps not everyone measures success in terms of how much money is in their bank account.

Here here!

Originally posted by Tinkleflower
Though it has to be wondered...what on earth does one family need with 40,000 square feet of space?!

(as she sits in her teeny little 750 sq ft apartment).

Hmph.

Probably for the same reason people think they need 200+ million dollar yachts with 86,000 square feet of space which according to the articles I have read is about the size of the average Walmart


Source

Pictures

I think the only reason people do these things is simply because they can, or they feel the need to feed their ego and try to one up the guy with a yacht that only has 80,000 sqft or a 39,000sqft house

[edit on 11-8-2005 by warpboost]

Originally posted by akilles
Well, anyway, Bill basically stole DOS from another company. He 'bought' it from them legally enough, but he then re-sold its rights to IBM, making himself huge bank, and making MS a fundamental part of the PC revolution.

Sorry but that is not true.

Later IBM wanted an operating system to is new x86 computer and wanted it to be CP/M of Digital Research (or Intergallactic Digital Research at the time). The most common story of what went wrong in the negotiations is the one about Gary Kildall (boss of Digital Research) missing the reunion because he was flying around in his plane. But more acceptable was the refuse of Digital to reveal to IBM the CP/M code, or numerous changes to the contract wanted by Gary's wife, Dorothy.

IBM turned to MS (which most proeminent product was, at the time, MS BASIC). MS made a deal, in july 81, with a company named Seattle Computer Produts and buyed all the right on 86-DOS (more or less a 16-bit version of CP/M), or QDOS. The code (around 4000 lines in Assembly) was polished, improved and showed to IBM which accepted and marketed it as PC-DOS 1.0.

Sorry for the long testament even so i've shortened a little.

"CP/M code, or numerous changes to the contract wanted by Gary's wife, Dorothy.

IBM turned to MS (which most proeminent product was, at the time, MS BASIC). MS made a deal, in july 81, with a company named Seattle Computer Produts and buyed all the right on 86-DOS (more or less a 16-bit version of CP/M"

Right. So Bill Gates asked another company, who BASICALLY ripped off DOS, but called it QDOS because they had optimized it, and they sold it to him, and he sold it to IBM.

Point being, would EITHER Seattle Computer Products OR CP/M make a deal with Bill Gates in retrospect? He is a no talent nobody, who was in the right place at the right time,with many invisible friends.

Originally posted by akilles
"CP/M code, or numerous changes to the contract wanted by Gary's wife, Dorothy.

IBM turned to MS (which most proeminent product was, at the time, MS BASIC). MS made a deal, in july 81, with a company named Seattle Computer Produts and buyed all the right on 86-DOS (more or less a 16-bit version of CP/M"

Right. So Bill Gates asked another company, who BASICALLY ripped off DOS, but called it QDOS because they had optimized it, and they sold it to him, and he sold it to IBM.

Point being, would EITHER Seattle Computer Products OR CP/M make a deal with Bill Gates in retrospect? He is a no talent nobody, who was in the right place at the right time,with many invisible friends.

Bill Gates made an agreement in 1980, which cost $25,000, with SCP to use QDOS (at the time named 86-DOS). Then MS hired Tim Patterson to port the QDOS to IBM PC. Mid-81 MS buyed all the rights on QDOS for $50,000. No one ripped off anything because DOS first appearance was SCP QDOS/86-PC.

So to simplify this...

Bill Gates was a savvy young man who managed to finagle a very clever deal for himself.

I'm not seeing how this equates to selling his soul, being the Antichrist, or anything else, really.

Originally posted by akilles
Right. So Bill Gates asked another company, who BASICALLY ripped off DOS, but called it QDOS because they had optimized it, and they sold it to him, and he sold it to IBM.

It is untrue that he sold DOS to IBM. If that had been case IBM would have paid him his money and the deal would have been over. The key to Gates success was that MS only licensed DOS to IBM, but retained the rights to DOS. By retaining the rights to DOS it allowed him to relicense those rights to IBM and others over and over. IBM lacked the vision to see the future of the PC, Gates did not.

.

[edit on 12-8-2005 by df1]

Originally posted by The_Final
Cause I can tell you that there are people who make Bill Gates seem poor.

Could you please provide the name and of the people who could make Bill seem poor.

bill gates had some technical knowledge, but more importantly, he had the stones to tell IBM he had an OS when he did not. Thats called going for the gusto.

Thats why he has the $$$, and thats why he's a success.

Bill Gates invented the BASIC computer language which is the language that just about every modern programmer learnt as their first programming language on the old Tandy TRS80, Commodore 64 etc...

Better check your history.

en.wikipedia.org...

BASIC had been around for more than a decade when Bill and friends developed their version of a port of BASIC to the Altair. Same language different processor. There are plenty of processors you can port software to, just because you port a software language to a certain processor, you claim ownership of it? Anyway, this processor was cheap, and available to the masses, the concept that would launch the PC revolution, and Bill saw that coming. Anyway, others had done it for the Altair as well, some working in universities, and released the source to it. Bill got uptight when early hobbyists people began to share the code around, but they were doing him a favor by building up a standard.

So, even though the code was nothing but an algorithm that should be freely available under patent law, since the idea was developed under government financing at a university, he licensed it and claimed ownership, since apparently the idea of copyright law can be interpreted to cover technological designs, which is essentially what software is. If the design is in print, such as a source code to a binary, and is a unique implementation, i.e. the source code is worded differently but does the same thing, you can copyright it. Go figure. It is a very murky concept in my mind, and kind of hard to justify in many cases. I think that's why people just shared the code around, since they didn't accept it either. Otherwise, I guess what could have happened is that people could have used the free versions, and the point would have been moot. Rather they just 'illegally' traded the proprietary versions, since it made their life easier, and ignored the copyright law, either through rebellion against the rules or what have you, and unwittingly helped build the monopoly. As it all went on with DOS, Windows, and up to today. Big mistake in hindsight.

Now, people are catching on. They realize how complex and powerful the OS software is, and reject control of it by just a few, and the free software community is in full swing, and people have caught on to this swindle. It will ultimately lead to the irrelevance of proprietary OS software, IMO. The smartest people understand that control of something as powerful as that in the hands of a corporation is like putting the nuclear bomb in the hands of AT&T. JMHO, but I imagine I am not far off.

Now if you want to think Bill was part of or became part of a powerful elite that endeavored to control the distribution of OS software through the interpretation and implementation of the IP laws of the USA, then that I could see. So, then look at who had a hand in making those laws stick. If anyone has any evidence of that, then we'd be getting somewhere.

In any case, it is in the best interests of the USA to have the IP controlled by companies within their borders, if they cannot control it within agencies of the government. Releasing it from universities in an open source manner is not conducive to holding power within the USA, and they cannot hire enough people within government agencies to write OS code for computers, so you see what the result was.

That is my opinion of why copyright law is what it is in the USA.

TheMesh

[edit on 12-8-2005 by TheMesh]

OK, so basically, someone SOLD him the rights.

And then he hired someone to do a bit of work on it, meaning, that person gets no credit, recognition, continued payoff, just his original paycheck, and maybe some MS stock if he was lucky.

And then, Gates LICENSES something he BOUGHT?

OK, so now am I missing something? Why didn't Seattle Computer Products license QDos to IBM?

I am sure they were approached, that is how the story goes, isn't it?