# The secret of Bill Gates' success



## NucleusKore (Jun 20, 2008)

Straight from the horses mouth, need I say more.

See for yourself 

*news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/7464074.stm

Abstract:
"As Bill Gates prepares to end his full-time work at Microsoft, he tells the BBC in an interview that it wasn't just what Microsoft did, but what his rivals didn't do that let Microsoft get ahead."


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## Pathik (Jun 20, 2008)

Great read.


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## New (Jun 20, 2008)

Good..Thanks for the link.....


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## bikdel (Jun 20, 2008)

Nice read thanks!
Ah! The retiring notes of the man who changed the world, the man who gave the idea of paid software to this insane world... 
Screw him!! 
But he has been a successful entreprenuer, no doubt at that.


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## iMav (Jun 20, 2008)

bikdel said:


> Screw him!!


 And who are you? What is your worth? What have you given back to society? Which Charity Foundation do you run? How much is your income? Mr. Nothing cursing a visionary  Now, haven't we seen this a thousand times.

At your age he had taken the steps that eventually led to a desktop on every desk. The very PC you're typing from, whether you run Linux makes no difference. It is because of this man that you have what you have. 

Avoid using such statements.


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## narangz (Jun 20, 2008)

He is a visionary! *Salutes Sir Bill Gates*


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## Faun (Jun 20, 2008)

Billy is cute but his staff is not

A good business man IMO, he did whatever was necessary to compete, but i hate competition.


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## narangz (Jun 20, 2008)

^^ Competition is the reason behind better products. 

@NK- Thanks. It was a wonderful read.


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## s18000rpm (Jun 20, 2008)

when will bbc air it here in india?


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## Faun (Jun 20, 2008)

narangz said:


> ^^ Competition is the reason behind better products.
> 
> @NK- Thanks. It was a wonderful read.


competition leads to unfair and mean ways too


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## iMav (Jun 20, 2008)

That's human.


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## mastermunj (Jun 20, 2008)

Nice read mate!!!


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## dheeraj_kumar (Jun 20, 2008)

Good read, thanks for that. People can complain about Microsoft's products, and go the FOSS way, but Bill gates is a genius. He did what he truly believed in, and thats what lead to his success.


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## NucleusKore (Jun 20, 2008)

bikdel said:


> Nice read thanks!
> Ah! The retiring notes of the man who changed the world, the man who gave the idea of paid software to this insane world...
> Screw him!!
> But he has been a successful entreprenuer, no doubt at that.



*I believe in giving credit where credit is due.*
Bill Gates will go down in history as a man who started a company that mass produced and sold an OS that ran on hardware not manufactured by them (IBM compatibles, not like Apple-hardware+software monopoly), and on which 3rd party developers could write applications. Microsoft created a new kind of software/hardware ecosystem altogether. I think for the first time the software advancement was driving the hardware development.
Windows 95 was my first OS and I thoroughly enjoyed it. That I almost exclusively use Linux now is a different issue.
With Windows and the falling prices of hardware computing is now truly accessible to a lot of people. However, I think that they should follow a different pricing strategy for emerging markets.


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## Jayanth.M.P (Jun 21, 2008)

Bill gates is a genius. We can talk all about how microsoft sucks and all that but one has to accept he brought true revolution into the world of software.


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## chandru.in (Jun 21, 2008)

iMav said:


> The very PC you're typing from, whether you run Linux makes no difference. It is because of this man that you have what you have.



Not at all.  There is not a single part of my system which was created for the first time by Microsoft.

GUI - XEROX (later bought by Apple from whom MS copied)
The current PC architecture - IBM
A highly modular software system design - Long before MS was even born (UNIX and even before that.  In fact, MS is still trying to learn good OS deign with so called MinWin).

MS does not deserve credit for anything running on my system currently.


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## iMav (Jun 21, 2008)

^^  there is no help here


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## chandru.in (Jun 21, 2008)

I didn't expect any too.


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## CadCrazy (Jun 22, 2008)

iMav said:


> And who are you? What is your worth? What have you given back to society? Which Charity Foundation do you run? How much is your income? Mr. Nothing cursing a visionary  Now, haven't we seen this a thousand times.
> 
> At your age he had taken the steps that eventually led to a desktop on every desk. The very PC you're typing from, whether you run Linux makes no difference. It is because of this man that you have what you have.
> 
> Avoid using such statements.



And who the hell is this bill gate ?
What is his worth ?
What he has given to socity ? monopoLies, how to snatch money
Charity foundation ? to save tax 
He is great because of his income 
Yes he is visionary (money snatcher)

I have seen this only one time when i purchased my laptop but i can imagine about thousand(or millions) who everyday buy laptops or branded pc.



iMav said:


> It is because of this man that you have what you have.



ROFL. Jago Manan pyare.Kya Mumbai mein hamesha andhera hi rehta hai 



narangz said:


> He is a visionary! *Salutes Sir Bill Gates*



Ruk ja mera Operating System aane de market mein


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## dOm1naTOr (Jun 22, 2008)

gr8 read for sure
billu is a real winner in life.


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## CadCrazy (Jun 22, 2008)

T159 said:


> Billy is cute but his staff is not



kalmuhe sab ke saath muh kala karva liya. Abe tujhe Indian culture ki zara bhi parva nahin


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## bikdel (Jun 22, 2008)

@iMav.. perhaps why i hate forums/emils?sms's so much is that people wont actually get the thing you are trying to express.. 
i was cheerful when i typed my post, now u make me sad!... why? because I myself am using windows as i Dont know all of the windows-alternatives that Linux provides. Though I am using OEM version, It has come in my cost and though Windows Is good.. I had to pay...  started out on windows and I credit it for having helped me so much till date.. 
But neverthelees YOU HAVE TO PAY. yes, they do work, and have to be paid but Linux does the work well enough and you dont have to pay... And windows is not affordable for those who buy the non-OEM one.. 
And unless you buy a non-OEM one for your custom built pcs, those people who flaunt that they use original windows but are buying OEM version, arent doing anything legal/morally correct.
And I have called him a successful entrepreneur because he knew very well that it would sell; software. And that definitely doesnt make him a god for we masses who find it difficult to use the Retail version of up-to-date windows OS, but for other OSs like linux, its pretty much of not-an-issue.

Maybe my post was vague but I had many things to say and maybe I jumbled up the things but the message I wanted to share is there..


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## Faun (Jun 22, 2008)

@cuddcrazy
abe cute hi toh bola hai

India mein toh main hameesha hoon, aisa desh aur kaha  
a world without boundaries is my vision


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## praka123 (Jun 22, 2008)

@chandru and @cadcrazy :very well said. In a world back 30 years,where softwares are not a paid thingy ,where innovations are shared,then comes the bill gates the monster who monopolized the IBM PC platform.he used software patents and what not to kill his rivals esp *FOSS* and *Linux*. 
~~~edited


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## iMav (Jun 22, 2008)

CadCrazy said:


> And who the hell is this bill gate ?
> What is his worth ?
> What he has given to socity ? monopoLies, how to snatch money
> Charity foundation ? to save tax
> ...


How did Microsoft become a "monopoly" ever thought of that? Why did IBM choose Bill's DOS over some crappy FOSS? Why? any answers? FOSS was free, IBM sure could have used FOSS than buying something? Why did they choose it? How did Windows become the most widely used OS? How? Wasn't FOSS there? Couldn't the companies choose a free alternative to a paid 1? I wonder why. The only reason to my mind is, it was frigging better than the crappy alternatives out there. The Linux you trumpet about came where it is because of Windows, Unix had a competitor to match up and catch up with. Windows set benchmarks in what an OS should be. It costs yes, but it set benchmarks, version after version, year after year.

But no you know what, Windows became the world's most widely used and every 9 out of 10 child's first ever used OS just like that.


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## chandru.in (Jun 22, 2008)

iMav said:


> Why did IBM choose Bill's DOS over some crappy FOSS? Why? any answers? FOSS was free, IBM sure could have used FOSS than buying something? Why did they choose it?



It is not Bill's DOS. It is Tim Paterson's DOS.  Microsoft was never capable of innovation even of that small scale.  Also, Linux did not exist back then.  If not IBM would have definitely chosen Linux as even its early design was far better than even Vista (DOS is no where near).  



iMav said:


> The Linux you trumpet about came where it is because of Windows,



It is just what you would like to believe.  If not show me one authentic proof (Not the meaningless patent troll from Ballmer) that Linux owes its existence to Microsoft for so and so reasons.



iMav said:


> Windows set benchmarks in what an OS should be. It costs yes, but it set benchmarks, version after version, year after year.



Well you use terms without knowing their real meaning I guess.  Tell me one universal benchmark (MS's own benchmarks for its own OS does not count.  They are created just for marketing) for OS evaluation which was set due to excellent performance by any version of Windows.



iMav said:


> But no you know what, Windows became the world's most widely used and every 9 out of 10 child's first ever used OS just like that.



This has nothing to make Bill the God, it is called monopoly and yes Bill is a superb monopolist.


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## shantanu (Jun 22, 2008)

peace guys.... go chillzzz .. iMAV : no help here  , 

Chandru : its a very interesting read  enjoy it man ... waise liked it


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## Faun (Jun 22, 2008)

linux is a community effort that took the pace with the increased interconnectivity among members via internet.

back then internet was not that prevalent.


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## iMav (Jun 23, 2008)

I can only imagine what would happen if Ubuntu were to come out in the days of DOS, no net connection found. please connect to internet to download xcopy command features


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## uppalpankaj (Jun 23, 2008)

Bill Gates really revolutionized the software industry...But during that time the competitors were less and it was easier for anyone 2 establish a business...

In today's world, if anyone dares 2 launch an OS, the road ahead will b difficult...Why Windows survived because there was very less competition around and it was very good...The introduction of the concept of GUI in the OS was a great thing which really worked for MS...


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## Pat (Jun 23, 2008)

iMav said:


> I can only imagine what would happen if Ubuntu were to come out in the days of DOS, no net connection found. please connect to internet to download xcopy command features



LMAO! Linux (Unix) always had a better and more feature-rich command set than DOS! Go, get your facts right


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## casanova (Jun 23, 2008)

Great read. yes the competitors were less. Thats the best thing about starting early, being visionary. There's a quote on Sir Gates


> In early 80's a man wanted to sell software on floppies and the world laughed at him. Now this man laughs on the world



So, it was not only vision, but faith on the vision as well that made him so big.


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## iMav (Jun 23, 2008)

Pat said:


> LMAO! Linux (Unix) always had a better and more feature-rich command set than DOS! Go, get your facts right


Still DOS was chosen over it. Still IBM chose to go paid than Free. What does that say about DOS' capabilities? It was frigging better!


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## Pat (Jun 23, 2008)

iMav said:


> Still DOS was chosen over it. Still IBM chose to go paid than Free. What does that say about DOS' capabilities? It was frigging better!



Do you even read the posts that other people make ? *Linux was not available at that time*! Do you understand ya kisi aur bhaasha mein samjhau ?


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## iMav (Jun 23, 2008)

You were the one who tried to act over smart and put Unix in the bracket, if you read your own post you might realize what you conveyed was different from what you wanted to. So first re-read your posts then come back.


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## Pat (Jun 23, 2008)

iMav said:


> You were the one who tried to act over smart and put Unix in the bracket, if you read your own post you might realize what you conveyed was different from what you wanted to. So first re-read your posts then come back.



Hello ? Did I ever mention anything about price ? You were the one who came up with the 'free' and 'paid' thing! And FYI, Unix was NOT free! Makes sense ?


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## chandru.in (Jun 23, 2008)

^^  Have you ever heard of AptOnCD (may be floppy in DOS days)??


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## gxsaurav (Jun 24, 2008)

Linux was CLI only till Win95 came. Today, despite of so many devs Linux feels incomplete & sevearly lacks good management.


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## chandru.in (Jun 24, 2008)

gx_saurav said:


> Linux was CLI only till Win95 came. Today, despite of so many devs Linux feels incomplete & sevearly lacks good management.



1991 was when Linux was first created by a college student.  In such a short time, it has gained such great level of advancement in terms of technology.  DOS to XP is such a huge amount of time and I still find filesystem quirks like not being able to create so and so directories (nul, con, aux, etc).  Can't comment on Vista as my work place has not yet forced it down my throat.  

Good Management?  Oh!  You mean a single point of failure design like registry?  Well I'm happy I don't have such a messy design in my OS.  



uppalpankaj said:


> The introduction of the concept of GUI in the OS was a great thing which really worked for MS...



The concept of GUI and mouse was conceived first by XEROX in their Palo-Alto Research center.  Apple bought the technology from them and later Microsoft copied it.


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## infra_red_dude (Jun 24, 2008)

The secret of Bill Gates' success: Hit the iron when hot! He captured the market when it was ripe and devoid of many choices! Thats a true businessman.. no wonder he is so successful in life today  There is a lot to learn from him...



gx_saurav said:


> Linux was CLI only till Win95 came. Today, despite of so many devs Linux feels incomplete & sevearly lacks good management.


FYI, the earliest WM was I think XWM which existed in 1980s, much before DOS! This WM is still used on GNU/Linux distros today. A couple of WMs seen in the Linux are existent since 1992 or so. The first barebones Linux which came outta Linus' computer may not haf had a GUI but as soon as Linux was adopted as a kernel, it had a GUI during the dayz of Windows 3.0.


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## MetalheadGautham (Jun 24, 2008)

iMav said:


> Still DOS was chosen over it. Still IBM chose to go paid than Free. What does that say about DOS' capabilities? It was frigging better!


dude, you are utterly <edited>.


iMav said:


> You were the one who tried to act over smart and put Unix in the bracket, if you read your own post you might realize what you conveyed was different from what you wanted to. So first re-read your posts then come back.


DOS and Linux *originally had the same damn objective*
give something cheap instead of asking guys to buy unix, which was a rip off.
But Linux came AFTER DOS. It was better, faster, stronger, etc etc, but it took time to come and become stable. Which was around 1994. By then, contracts were ALREADY SIGNED for windows.


gx_saurav said:


> Linux was CLI only till Win95 came. Today, despite of so many devs Linux feels incomplete & sevearly lacks good management.


Ever heard of X Window Managers ?
And incomplete ?
Where are you from ? (yo)Ur(-)anus ?
Linux is the most feature rich operating system I have ever seen in my whole life. Why do you think I shifted to linux ? It was historically because windows lacked most basic features like automatic compiling.


infra_red_dude said:


> The secret of Bill Gates' success: Hit the iron when hot! He captured the market when it was ripe and devoid of many choices! Thats a true businessman.. no wonder he is so successful in life today  There is a lot to learn from him...
> 
> 
> FYI, the earliest WM was I think XWM which existed in 1980s, much before DOS! This WM is still used on GNU/Linux distros today. A couple of WMs seen in the Linux are existent since 1992 or so. The first barebones Linux which came outta Linus' computer may not haf had a GUI but as soon as Linux was adopted as a kernel, it had a GUI during the dayz of Windows 3.0.


+1


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## infra_red_dude (Jun 24, 2008)

iMav said:


> Still DOS was chosen over it. Still IBM chose to go paid than Free. What does that say about DOS' capabilities? It was frigging better!





MetalheadGautham said:


> DOS and Linux *originally had the same damn objective*
> give something cheap instead of asking guys to buy unix, which was a rip off.
> But Linux came AFTER DOS. It was better, faster, stronger, etc etc, but it took time to come and become stable. Which was around 1994. By then, contracts were ALREADY SIGNED for windows.


For your and everyone's information the only reason why DOS was chosen at that time was there was no other alternative. UNIX was primarily a server OS and even if it was chosen the companies' had to pay a shamelessly huge amount as part of royalty (not exactly royalty but can be called so), while that for DOS was very very less. Paying 50k for using UNIX on a 10k computer is foolish even today. In layman's terms IBM infact chose the free OS (DOS) as against a paid one (UNIX)!

If people haf used DOS during the early dayz then they will realize how crappy OS it was. Until DOS 5.0 it was not worth using as a primary OS. But kudos to MS for improving it and bringing it to DOS 6.22. I remember the dayz when I used to do batch programming in DOS 6.0 and how I struggled to do something decent in versions prior to 5.0.



MetalheadGautham said:


> Ever heard of X Window Managers ?


The problem with the whole world out there is the misconception about "Linux" being an OS. It is NOT an OS. Linux is just a kernel while Fedora, openSUSE and Ubuntu are OS' and all 3 are different OS'. Generalization is the biggest mistake people make in GNU/Linux based OS'.


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## Zeeshan Quireshi (Jun 24, 2008)

chandru.in said:


> Good Management?  Oh! * You mean a single point of failure design like registry?*  Well I'm happy I don't have such a messy design in my OS.



That also makes it a Single Point of Backup , Just backup the registry and you're done .

*Every design has it's advantages and pitfalls , it's upto you to decide which one you want .
*

Personally, I Use both Windows and Linux and Have recently Installed OpenSolaris . I find the Vista interface much more polished(it's the small things that make the difference) but the *NIX CLI extremely powerful once you get the hang of it and look at it from the Viewpoint of it's creators .

UNIX was an OS created by programmers for themselves , they never intended to get it into the public . So something that is seemingly obvious to them is totally obscure for us . If we make a sincere effort to understand the UNIX philosophy we will gradually see the story unfold with indisputable clarity and simplicity.

And with Distributions such as Ubuntu there certainly is a start .


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## uppalpankaj (Jun 24, 2008)

On June 27, 08, Bill Gates will step down as MS boss and handover the charge to Steve Ballmer...


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## infra_red_dude (Jun 24, 2008)

uppalpankaj said:


> On June 27, 08, Bill Gates will step down as MS boss and handover the charge to Steve Ballmer...


... after which I'm sure MS will haf a tuff time!!!


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## chandru.in (Jun 24, 2008)

Zeeshan Quireshi said:


> That also makes it a Single Point of Backup , Just backup the registry and you're done .



Not so true in my experience.  I had tried to back up registry (before virus infection) and then restore it once when I had to re-install (a clean install) Windows due to virus.  I thought restoring the registry from backup will bring back my settings (till last back up).  But no it corrupted almost all my major apps (MS Office, Visual Studio, etc).

I had to re-install the OS and re-configure the system by hand.  On Linux copying all .* files in my home directory restores all my settings perfectly well (I use it to setup the system exactly in same way on multiple computers).



infra_red_dude said:


> ... after which I'm sure MS will haf a tuff time!!!



+1

At least Gates knew something about technology from his hacking and cracking rented computer systems in school days.


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## Zeeshan Quireshi (Jun 24, 2008)

chandru.in said:


> Not so true in my experience.  I had tried to back up registry (before virus infection) and then restore it once when I had to re-install (a clean install) Windows due to virus.  I thought restoring the registry from backup will bring back my settings (till last back up).  But no it corrupted almost all my major apps (MS Office, Visual Studio, etc).
> 
> I had to re-install the OS and re-configure the system by hand.  On Linux copying all .* files in my home directory restores all my settings perfectly well (I use it to setup the system exactly in same way on multiple computers).



That requires a bit of knowledge of what to backup and what not .

You wouldn't blindly backup all the configuration files under the '/etc/' directory , now . would you ?


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## Pat (Jun 24, 2008)

Zeeshan Quireshi said:


> That requires a bit of knowledge of what to backup and what not .
> 
> You wouldn't blindly backup all the configuration files under the '/etc/' directory , now . would you ?



But I guess you said registry was a single-point of backup


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## Zeeshan Quireshi (Jun 24, 2008)

Pat said:


> But I guess you said registry was a single-point of backup


I guess i meant every configuration was stored at a 'single point'.


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## dreamcatcher (Jun 24, 2008)

infra_red_dude said:


> ... after which I'm sure MS will haf a tuff time!!!



do you actually think that Gates wont have any stay in the matter from now on??It will still be the same..just the personell up front wll be different.


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## infra_red_dude (Jun 24, 2008)

^^^ You never know.. thats MS!


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## krates (Jun 24, 2008)

Arrey just shut up linux fanboys

windows is also free according to me (who pay's)


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## Zeeshan Quireshi (Jun 24, 2008)

krates said:


> Arrey just shut up linux fanboys
> 
> windows is also open source according to me (who pay's)


OpenSource DOES NOT MEAN FREE(as in money) SOFTWARE .


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## krates (Jun 24, 2008)

*changed to free*

nor even anyone pays for windows nor pays for softwares everything is free ......


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## infra_red_dude (Jun 24, 2008)

krates said:


> *changed to free*
> 
> nor even anyone pays for windows nor pays for softwares everything is free ......


Err.. plz don't generalize things according to your thots


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## dreamcatcher (Jun 24, 2008)

But one really cant deny the fact that MS is still the most sought after company when it comes to PC interfaces...Linux has yet to learn from Windows when comes to being user-friendliness.but i still dream of a Linux-MS merger..  ..aah..life...


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## infra_red_dude (Jun 24, 2008)

dreamcatcher said:


> but i still dream of a Linux-MS merger..  ..aah..life...


Linux-MS??!! That doesn't make sense!


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## dreamcatcher (Jun 24, 2008)

^^^^on 2nd thought..yea its nonsense..


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## chandru.in (Jun 24, 2008)

Zeeshan Quireshi said:


> I guess i meant every configuration was stored at a 'single point'.



Oh so in regitry too I need to search through keys to determine which all I need to back up.  In Linux too I need to search through config files and choose what I need.  So no difference in this case.

But if I decide to backup every single setting I want on Linux, I'll go ahead and backup all /etc files and all .* files in my home directory.  It will never ever break the system if I re-install the same version of say Ubuntu.  But not so with Windows.  I re-installed XP SP2 again and all major apps behaved crazy.

So registry can never be relied upon as a single point of backup.


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## Zeeshan Quireshi (Jun 24, 2008)

chandru.in said:


> But if I decide to backup every single setting I want on Linux, I'll go ahead and backup all /etc files and all .* files in my home directory.  It will never ever break the system if I re-install the same version of say Ubuntu.  But not so with Windows.  I re-installed XP SP2 again and all major apps behaved crazy.



Please do so and then let me know if the apps work perfectly after replacing the /etc directory .

As far as i know a lot of hashes and keys are stored in the /etc folder and they will be different once you reinstall your OS so restoring the whole /etc directory will break some apps too .


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## chandru.in (Jun 24, 2008)

Will try the next time when my Linux box catches a virus and I'm forced to re-install it.  

But I have moved .* files from my home directory to several different systems and never had an issue with it.

Anyway I'm 100% sure apps like openOffice.org or Firefox won't break.  Of course if I replace keys and hashes, I have to use older passwords and SSL certificates.

And again I never said Linux has this super cool single point of backup but you had claimed registry to be one.


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## shantanu (Jun 24, 2008)

anymore offtopic dissc. & the user(s) get 3day ban


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## R2K (Aug 12, 2008)

he is my hero


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