Bill's leaving on Friday !

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I see Bill Gates leaves Microsoft on Friday to spend time doing charity work etc. BBC TV are doing a prog on him next Friday pm.

In my book, "the boy's done good". He joins my list of those who changed things for better: eg Winston, Maggie, Henry (Ford), George (Stephenson)

I know in some quarters Bill is about as popular as McDonalds: what do you think?
 
I think he is "allegedly" part of the axis of Evil.... Windows 95 ruined my life many times over.... lol I actually smashed by PC up and threw it down the stairs... (I was younger then)

In the IT world he is not so popular, as he has "allegedly" tried to take over the internet a few times... and by not releasing source code from the the Windows OS he has "allegedly" set the technology world back many years...

Windows is the VHS of OS ... Unix / Linux being "betamax"

Apart from that --- happy retirement Mr Gates
 
I see Bill Gates leaves Microsoft on Friday to spend time doing charity work etc. BBC TV are doing a prog on him next Friday pm.

In my book, "the boy's done good". He joins my list of those who changed things for better: eg Winston, Maggie, Henry (Ford), George (Stephenson)

I know in some quarters Bill is about as popular as McDonalds: what do you think?

In other quarters, Maggie is about as popular as Liberace in a blood donor's.

:)

UTB
 
Bill Gates has changed the world.
People in the UK like to slag off anybody they can. It's a national weakness to deride success and is born of jealousy, though occasionally the slagging has a grain of justification; usually turned into a bloody mountain of resentment and hatred.
There are only two living Englishmen whose funerals I will attend to pay my respects: Paul McCartney and the flawed but magnificent Maggie Thatcher. That's assuming I outlive them :)
Richard
 
I see Bill Gates leaves Microsoft on Friday to spend time doing charity work etc. BBC TV are doing a prog on him next Friday pm.

In my book, "the boy's done good". He joins my list of those who changed things for better: eg Winston, Maggie, Henry (Ford), George (Stephenson)

I know in some quarters Bill is about as popular as McDonalds: what do you think?

:LOL:

I couldn't care less. He's just a big ginger geek...
 
There are only two living Englishmen whose funerals I will attend to pay my respects: Paul McCartney and the flawed but magnificent Maggie Thatcher. That's assuming I outlive them :)
Richard

well we'll both have a drink on her demise. For opposing reasons;)

UTB

PS - I'm with you on Bill though!
 
Put it this way, I am glad he didnt go into the Airplane business... !! imagine releasing a PLane to all your customers.. then have them come back to you to tell you whats wrong with the thing...!!!
 
Put it this way, I am glad he didnt go into the Airplane business... !! imagine releasing a PLane to all your customers.. then have them come back to you to tell you whats wrong with the thing...!!!

Richard Branson is by far my favourite famous tycoon. The guy is a real person, thats the impression i get anyway. He is not afraid to stand up against monopolies, tyranny, etc. etc.

His latest project is a case in point - developing alternative jet fuels using nothing other than plant waste - 100% environmentally friendly :LOL:. And it worked too! Priceless!
 
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I think most products that came from Microsoft were and are pretty flawed, and they've certainly done their share in repeatedly bringing my blood pressure up to dangerous levels, an unhappy set of circumstances that only changed once I finally saw the light and switched over to the far superior Apple products, hehe.

:smart:

That's the one side.

The other side is is that you've simply got to admire and have the highest respect for someone who first of all was one of the very few to identify an excellent idea when he saw it at the time, the absolutely superb idea of an easy to operate computer for most households.

Many have have great ideas, but not quite so many manage to fill em with life, do they.

Gates implemented his vision by building a huge company around his ideas, a company that has created thousands of well paid jobs and, on top of that, generated enormous wealth for not only him but also very many of his colleagues.

It's sort of like Bollywood, you can like the actual films or not, but you've still gotta respect and admire the fact that they've built up the biggest movie industry in the world.

Also, most households now have a computer as per one of his original visions, and that has definitely helped change the world for the better, eg through the pretty much instant availability of pretty much any information / knowledge / research you need, etc.

And, last but not least, Gates is donating not only his money but from now on also his time on his huge Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation (Warren Buffett decided to donate pretty much all of his fortune to them) that is doing lots and lots of good.

So, yup, while his products drove me crazy, I appreciate the role he played in making computers an everyday item, and have the fullest respect for him and what he managed to achieve with his life.
 
Richard Branson is by far my favourite famous tycoon. The guy is a real person, thats the impression i get anyway. He is not afraid to stand up against monopolies, tyranny, etc. etc.

His latest project is a case in point - developing alternative jet fuels using nothing other than plant waste - 100% environmentally friendly :LOL:. And it worked too! Priceless!

Agreed, Richard Branson is in a class by himself, read all his books, absolutely loved them, AND what a phantastic, wild, adventurous life outside of every rule or decorum book he's lived.

He's definitely the one tycoon I'd vote most interesting and fun to go have some drinks with.
 
UTB,

I'll join you for the drinks re Thatcher. Better not invite Richard.

JTrader,

Obviously you're not a customer of Virgin.

BSD,

You keep praising Branson, I'd like to bury him. I think you're trying to provoke me. He's a total bsastard.

Grant.
 
He is not afraid to stand up against monopolies, tyranny, etc. etc.

He is not afraid to move into established markets and fight dirty for a piece of the pie.

His latest project is a case in point - developing alternative jet fuels using nothing other than plant waste - 100% environmentally friendly :LOL:. And it worked too! Priceless!

Recording made from a Virgin Atlantic business development meeting....

CFO: "Dicky, the price of oil is really costing us a fortune. Add to that emmissions, we are really struggling"

RB: "How can we get aeroplane fuel cheaper?"

CFO: "Well, without taking centre stage on the geo-politial front, we can't. It's happening to BA, AA, all the other legacy brands. We need to find an alternative. A cheap alternative"

RB: "So, what is there an abundance of that we can get cheap?"

CFO: "Compost and sh!t"

RB: "Can we make aeroplane fuel out of it?"

CFO: "Yes"

RB: "But... how can we convince our customers that our planes won't fall out of the sky?"

CFO: "Well, we have been struggling with that. Our marketing team has been on it for months, with little success"

RB: "GOT IT! We'll tell all our customers we're really doing it for the environment! We'll get their unwanted compost for cheap, turn it into airline fuel, and put it in our planes. They love all that save the planet stuff, they'll think we're doing it out of the goodness of our hearts. I've got floppy hair for christ' sake, they'll believe me! Then the really clever bit is that we won't reduce the cost of our tickets - we will charge the customer a little bit less than the competition! I'll - ahem!- I mean we'll save a fortune on fuel costs and emmission taxes, but not pass any of that down the line. And we'll look like f*cking saints; make it happen.

CFO: "But what about the safety aspect?"

RB: "Bugger it! Look, we'll make such a hoo-haa about it being environmentally friendly, we can convince the customer that it is flying on those BA fellows' planes that is unsafe, because of all this global warming crap. If we do it well enough, we can make them feel guilty for not flying on our planes! It is their duty! Virgin Environment we'll call it, flying green for the first time, and all they have to do is write me a cheque. If we are really clever, we could probably charge them a premium! Those gullible idiots - our customers - pay us to take their compost, turn it into fuel so we can save squillions on oil, then make them feel like they're doing something for the environment, when it is all really cost cutting! It doesn't matter what the product or service is like, it's the marketing - people still get on my bloody trains, don't they?!

CFO: Brilliant. No wonder you are so filthy, filthy rich!

RB: "Yes, I am - maybe people will think I am clean and rich after this, HAHAHAHAHAHA! Marketing Team?"

Marketing team: (in unison) "Yes?"

RB: You're fired!;)

I too admire Sir Richard Branson, but for the reasons outlined above.
 
Oh, re; Bill Gates;

Whether you like him or loathe him, consider the contribution that Excel has made to the world economy. I doubt there is any business that could run efficiently without it.
 
Oh, re; Bill Gates;

Whether you like him or loathe him, consider the contribution that Excel has made to the world economy. I doubt there is any business that could run efficiently without it.

Hmmm ... MS didn't invent spreadsheets and while Excel may be one of MS better products, it's dominance may be due to various monopoly and anti competetive factors such as closed file formats. MS has a long long history of this sort of thing including refusal to adhere to open standard to the letter. The current goings on in ISO wrt office document standards is just the latest instance of this. In the end it stiffles innovation and competition by putting a very difficult barrier in the way of producing an effective competetive product because of technical difficulties of handling proprietary document formats.

If Excel hadn't dominated the market, it would without doubt have been some other spreadsheet product from other vendors, and there have been plenty. MS contribution to innovation on this front - very little.
 
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Grant, I didn't know you had this thing with Branson, what's that all about then.

You might want to rethink that as he definitely sems to have fun when he isn't earning money:

Richard%20and%20some%20of%20the%20cast.JPG


Ahem.

:D

Craig, I very much agree with you on what you said.

I think Gates / Microsoft didn't actually invent anything much themselves did they, what they were good at was knowing the market, taking ideas / products that already existed, and then being better than anybody else at implementing, ie marketing them.

The way I look at the Gates phenomenon is from two sides:

If I had to back a business I'd always choose the better team over the better idea.

If I have to work with something I'll obviously go with the better product, eg Apple in this case (once I started listening to people far wiser than me who had been pointing out my erroneous, health endangering ways for years to me that is ;-)).

I'll probably never buy anything from MS again, at least not unless they come up with sthg that would truly revolutionise the way that we look at technology in a positive way, but from a purely business / success point of view I do have enormous respect for the team that was better at implementing than their competitors, ie Gates and co.
 
I think Gates / Microsoft didn't actually invent anything much themselves did they, what they were good at was knowing the market, taking ideas / products that already existed, and then being better than anybody else at implementing, ie marketing them.

The way I look at the Gates phenomenon is from two sides:

If I had to back a business I'd always choose the better team over the better idea.

If I have to work with something I'll obviously go with the better product, eg Apple in this case (once I started listening to people far wiser than me who had been pointing out my erroneous, health endangering ways for years to me that is ;-)).

I'll probably never buy anything from MS again, at least not unless they come up with sthg that would truly revolutionise the way that we look at technology in a positive way, but from a purely business / success point of view I do have enormous respect for the team that was better at implementing than their competitors, ie Gates and co.

It's always been the same hasn't it?

eg. VHS / BETA, Windows vs the rest. It's all down to entrepreneurship. Look at invention of the railways - George Stephenson was an innovator & businessman and made a fortune through licencing etc (haven't got the figs for how it scales up to present values but he was rich .....and that's by Victorian standards which dwarf some of today's). Contrast that with Brunel who engineered a proper railway and not something modded from a coalmine (shades of CP/M and DOS there?). But a commercial success? - ask the Board of the Great Western railway :LOL:

Wasn't it the same in the post-war aircraft industry? We gave the world the first (but flawed) jet airliner and the USA developed the concept into a commercial success. Meanwhile the UK carried on building bespoke aircraft for the 2 UK national carriers, only problem was no one else really wanted them (except the Viscount) because they didn't meet their business needs.

Same in the car industry. Same in computing. It always seems such a shame that the UK is such a good innovator but in modern times we lack the Gates's of this world. Thank goodness for the City (even though they appear to have struck a bad patch).

Do you think there might now be a future for Sinclair's C5? ;)
 
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Microsoft to support ODF office document format in Office 2007 and NOT it's own new OOXML format that it steamrollered thru ISO. Will also support PDF.

ODF comes from OpenOffice - free and open source.

IMHO, this is excellent news and a very good thing. It could make ODF format documents as ubiquitous as PDF or even MS word docs over time.

http://www.consortiuminfo.org/standardsblog/article.php?story=20080521092930864

and open office (which by the way is pretty good these days) -

www: OpenOffice.org - The Free and Open Productivity Suite
 
I agree with (The majority of) the good people here: Good on 'im! He put a PC in everyone's house in much the same way that Mr Ford put a car on everyone's driveway. And as for the Gates Foundation - well, they've put hundreds of my friends in jobs doing malaria and TB research. Unfortunately, they also poached my boss and the new f**ker has made me redundant.... :eek:
 
He put a PC in everyone's house in much the same way that Mr Ford put a car on everyone's driveway.

Err.... not really. That would be Apple and IBM, not to mention Intel or Motorola and MOS that produced the microprocessors for the IBM PC and Apple repectively.
 
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Err.... not really. That would be Apple and IBM, not to mention Intel or Motorola and MOS that produced the microprocessors for the IBM PC and Apple repectively.

This just shows you the power of the Microsoft brand... people think that they invented the PC the internet etc etc...

Now if only id thought of it... :confused:
 
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