At 11:21 pm -0400 on 9/9/97, Sean Roach wrote:
Gates? The closest he had to a grand vision is being able to predict the financial gain behind programming computers.
Yes. And I'd call that a "grand vision", even in Tim's use of the phrase. He understood that computer software, and not the computer, especially in a world of microprocessors, was the most important part of the market. It might even be safe to say that BillG is responsible for at least the last 10 years or so of Intel's existance... If you "change with the times", but don't know where you're going, you'll go nowhere at all. Knowing where you're going when you change, (and actually being right :-)) is called "vision". For instance, Bill figured out that he couldn't sell operating systems to people, he had to sell them to computer manufacturers. That's what "vision" gets ya. And I didn't say that technical "vision" was the only kind there is, especially when it comes to making money. :-). My understanding is that for all his apopletic "code reviews", Billzebub couldn't code his way out of a paper bag. His last effort was on the second version of Altair BASIC, and they had to do a ground-up rewrite after he was through with it. After *his* version shipped, of course. :-). Nonetheless, people who didn't share his "vision", like IBM, and DEC, and now Apple, and all the rest of his competition, got their clocks cleaned. Ah, the wonders of pickleball, and dorm room poker, and a grandmother who wouldn't let you have dessert unless you won the sack race. If you can find it, go read "Hard Drive" (no, not *that* one..). An unauthorized biography by a couple Seattle Post-Intelligencer reporters. Written before, of course, Win 3.1 actually took over the world, otherwise they would have been fired. :-). Heck, if they weren't then, they probably are now, anyway. Lot of dirty laundry there. Like the hint that Gates was actually thrown out of Harvard (well, "asked to leave", anyway, and all is certainly forgiven, now, after a $decamillion donation to the Harvard endowment...) because he used their computer resources, including their Zylog(?) chip emulator and PDP-11 BASIC source code to essentially port DEC BASIC to the Altair for resale. (Now what was that, Bill, about people duping *your* paper BASIC tape and *you* losing *your* "investment"?) And how his first software "deal" was sneaking off with someone else's PDP-11(?) operating system tapes and reselling them for a cool $10k at the tender age of 16. Hmmm. Sounds familiar, yes, CPM/QDOS fans? See, boys and girls? All it takes to be the supreme monopolist (okay, not quite a monopolist, but close enough for government work) and the World's Last Industrial Tycoon is a taste for larceny. Okay. And a 1600 SAT score... But it's still very hard to see why they call it "intellectual" property. We might as well legalize software "piracy" and be done with it. Recursive auctions, anyone? Cheers, Bob Hettinga "But, he didn't understand. The point was to *win*." -- Richard Nixon, on his first congressional opponent, who Nixon falsely accused of communism (well, he *was* a pinko, anyway...) ----------------- Robert Hettinga (rah@shipwright.com), Philodox e$, 44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA "... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity, [predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire' The e$ Home Page: http://www.shipwright.com/