Fw: [TriLUG] even more interesting

[al johson]

And another thing: Bill Gates owes everything he has to his MOMA!! It seems
she just happened to be on a board of directors (not IBM) at the same time
as the CEO of IBM. As the story is told, when her son told her that IBM was
looking for a DOS for their new computer, she personally contacted the CEO
of IBM and catching him offguard told him that Bill was her son, and she was
so happy that IBM was working with him (actually they weren't at the time!).
The CEO was taken aback at this and had to find out who Bill Gates was!! To
make matters funnier still,  the first PC DOS and BASIC was actually not
created by Microsoft at all, but purchased from another company. Now you
know why Microsoft can scarcely be called "innovative". As those who
frequented the bulletin boards (BBS's) in those "early days" know, virtually
every so called "improvement" in the Microsoft OS was either stolen or
purchased from other small time operators. I don't believe there is a cell
of originality in anyone working at Microsoft. Remember, Bill Gates is the
product of a family of lawyers (and his company's code shows it :-) There is
a book which tells this story about how IBM literally gave away all their
software patents to Bill Gates, just so they could get DOS and Basic from
him. Things like the cursor, for example. I was told by an executive at IBM
that those who worked on PC software procurement at IBM at the time were
those at the lowest part of the corporate totem pole.
IBM in those days was more interested in selling hardware than they were in
selling software (because the erroneously believed there was more profit to
be made in hardware). If you want to read more, check out books on this
subject at your local library. Just please stop believing the revisionist
history from Redmond!! Incidentally, Gates is said to have cheated the guys
he bought his first software from, and as far as Intel was concerned in the
beginning they were far from from being the leaders in IC processors. Texas
Instruments, for example, made rival processors (for their calculators), as
did a number of other companies. Intel literally came out of nowhere and
somehow because the processor for IBM PC's. It succeeded solely because
businesses (small and large)  felt secure buying the IBM name (not Intel OR
Microsoft's name!). It was a very different time than today, and there was a
lot of competition and a lot of different personal computers, which don't
exist anymore.
----- Original Message -----

Sent: Thursday, November 08, 2001 3:57 PM
Subject: Re: [TriLUG] even more interesting


>
> > Search on GPL.  Very interesting.  M$ takes a degree of credit for
> > opensource and that opensource is good kinda because later it can be
made
> > commercial but GPL is bad....  (stiffles innovation you know)
>
> Okay. I am not a MS endorsee or do I appreciate everything BG has done.
But
> you do have to
> give him credit where credit deserves. Bill has make the average pc
> reasonably priced. Maybe not
> now but back when computers where a large object that no one understood he
> helped simplify usage
> Also, he did help standardize the IT industry to a way. So you do have to
> give him credit for helping
> put a desktop system on a lot of desks.
>
> Matt
>
> P.S. if this was moderated it would probably be noted as Flamebait.
>
>
>
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