One of the greatest entrepreneurs of all time, Bill Gates, has now retired from his chairs in Microsoft.
Here’s some history:
Since November, 1975, Bill Gates (or rather William Henry Gates II) has been entusiastic in his software development company Microsoft. He was one of the first souls who thought there was a commercial market for computer software which many did not believe.
In 1980 IBM contacted Microsoft and told them that they were interested in a BASIC interpretator for their comming IBM PC. When IBM asked of a operative system, Gates pointed at Digital Reasearch (DRI) which stood for the popular operativ esystem CP/M. IBM contacted DRI but they did never get any real deal and got left without licenses. IBM then contacted Gates again and told them about this and asked for a working OS, which probably is the most important in Microsofts history.
A couple of weeks later Microsoft bought 86-DOS by “Seattle Computer Products” for $50 000, without mentioning that IBM was a potentiall buyer. After some adjustments to PC, Microsoft delivered this to IBM as PC-DOS and got payed as a one-time figure.
Windows
In the early 1980’s Microsoft introduced a new type of graphical user interface (GUI) based on Xeroxs and Apples. The did now release Windows as a addon and alternative to their DOS system to fight with the real graphical OS. Under the early 1990’s Windows had a big lead in the software market for operative systems and the release of Windows 3.0 was a real success. Microsoft sold 10 millions copies the first two years and thats where the real dominance startet.
Paul Allen left Microsoft 1983 becuase of a disease but Gates worked as a MDfor the company until year 2000. The one who got the job then was Steve Ballmer.
Bill Gates is also the richest man on earth, with an estimated fortune of $56.000.000.000. !
Here comes the video (the second one is slightly more funny):
Here comes the funny version!
Both Visual Studio 2008 and Dotnet 3.5 will be available in the markets in a couple of weeks. Evaluations are already available at MSDN.
Among the news in Visual Studio 2008 is increased support for Windows Vista applications, which have been fairly problematic in Visual Studio 2005. Over 250 more news are also available and those includes usage of different version of Dotnet and support for webdevelopment including Ajax functionality.
A highlight in Visual Studio 2008 is the linq (Language Integrated Query). The point with this tool is to reduce the gap between objects and data and the programmers should focus on what to do with the data instead of reaching for it.
Microsoft’s goal with Visual Studio 2008 was to give both amateur programmers and professional programmers a platform for development.
Microsoft loses the appeal against the EU antitrust ruling.
They are now fined $600 million because the implementation of Windows Media Player in the Windows operating systems.
“This is a great day for European businesses and consumers,” said Thomas Vinje, who heads the legal team for the European Committee for Interoperable Systems (ECIS). “This decision opens the prospect for dynamic competition in the software industry. No more user lock-in, no more monopoly pricing,” he said.
Microsoft still have the right to implement Windows Media Player in their operating systems but customers will have the opportunity to not include it.
There’s a very easy-to-use and free (open source) programming notepad available for all programmers.
The latest development version of this program has a feature called “keyword-based text clip insertion”, which is demonstrated in this embedded video:
This notepad-looking software is of great use if you are one of those notepad-maniacs.
For more information, see http://www.pnotepad.org/ and to follow the development phase, look here: http://sourceforge.net/projects/pnotepad/