The meaning of Bill Gates

News Type: Opinion — Seeded on Wed Jul 2, 2008 10:41 AM EDT

Article Source: The Economist

technology, apple, microsoft, windows, vista, pc, bill-gates, personal-computer

WHEN Bill Gates helped to found Microsoft 33 years ago there was a company rule that no employees should work for a boss who wrote worse computer code than they did. Just five years later, with Microsoft choking on its own growth, Mr Gates hired a business manager, Steve Ballmer, who had cut his teeth at Procter & Gamble, which sells soap. The founder had chucked his coding rule out of the window.

In becoming the world's richest man, Mr Gates's unswerving self-belief has repeatedly been punctuated by that sort of pragmatism. But those qualities have never been on such public display as they were this week, when the outstanding businessman of his age stepped back from a life's work.

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{"commentId":2102827,"authorDomain":"Navigator"}

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The technology industry likes to sneer at Microsoft as a follower. And it is true that the company has time and again bought in or imitated the technology of others. That very first PC operating system was based on someone else's code. But Mr Gates's invention was as a businessman. His genius was to understand what he needed and work out how to obtain it, however long it took. In an industry in which visionaries are often sniffy about anyone else's ideas, the readiness to go elsewhere proved a devastating advantage.

And look at what happened when Mr Gates's pragmatism failed him. Within Microsoft, they feared Bill for his relentless intellect, his grasp of detail and his brutal intolerance of anyone whom he thought "dumb". But the legal system doesn't do fear, and in a filmed deposition, when Microsoft was had up for being anti-competitive, the hectoring, irascible Mr Gates, rocking slightly in his chair, came across as spoilt and arrogant. It was a rare public airing of the sense of brainy entitlement that emboldened Mr Gates to get the world to yield to his will.

There is no doubt , he is the czar of PC and when it comes to eyeballs his product gets , what ever we may say, how much we may hate, but the PC is a part of our lives,a commodity with out which we can not live, it rules our lives.....

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1 vote

#1 - Wed Jul 2, 2008 10:44 AM EDT

{"commentId":2108415,"authorDomain":"masternav"}

MasterNav

There are incredible similiarities between Mr. Gates and the giants of the Industrial Age. His personality seems to resonate well with theirs, his acts and accomplishments an echo of theirs, yet standing alone in this age where there were so many in that age.

{"commentId":2108415,"threadId":"304426","contentId":"1632362","authorDomain":"masternav"}

2 votes

#2 - Wed Jul 2, 2008 11:24 PM EDT

{"commentId":2109204,"authorDomain":"Navigator"}

Navigator

I have a lot of respect for him, he moved us twards a change and brought the knowldge revulotion....he has his own place among the giants of Indsutrial age...I have respect for what he did.....and how he changed the world...

{"commentId":2109204,"threadId":"304426","contentId":"1632362","authorDomain":"Navigator"}

1 vote

#3 - Thu Jul 3, 2008 5:13 AM EDT

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The meaning of Bill Gates

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