The Gates legacy

[Donal]

So, the Big Nerd is officially retiring today as head of Microsoft (or M$ if you are so inclined).

I was just wondering how the majority of technophiles feel about him and how they will remember his reign.

Personally, I view it as an over all positive. Sure, in recent years, MS products have been lacking (some were never that great to begin with) and many of his business practices seem to stifle innovation (irony), but the fact that we can get on an internet message board to curse him for these things says a lot too.

He forced big companies like IBM and Intel to get into the home computer market. As innovative and creative as guys like Steve Jobs were, they just didn't have Gates' drive and savvy.

He also had the gumption to chase down what he wanted and make the most of opportunities presented.

Even while I curse out the licensing issues with MS, prepare to put Ubuntu on my computer at home because Vista is driving me insane, and am encouraging my office to switch to more open source applications, I still know that myself and the IT field would not be as well off today without his work.

 

[Complexity]

I think he changed the world for the better. We owe him thanks.

 

[Solus]

Computers might not have been as accessible and popular today without Gates. I remember pre windows days, and although the games did run faster, DOS would be too much trouble to use for everything nowadays.

 

[ddt]

Personally, I don't think there is much we have Bill Gates, or Microsoft in general, to be grateful for. Altair BASIC^WP maybe, but from there on it went downhill .

Upfront I offer my disclaimer: I'm a long-time UNIX fan, and I use Microsoft products only when really really needed.

He forced big companies like IBM and Intel to get into the home computer market. As innovative and creative as guys like Steve Jobs were, they just didn't have Gates' drive and savvy.

There's nothing really to credit Gates with the invention of the PC. IBM had already chosen to go into the small computer market, had picked Intel over Motorola, and almost as an afterthought decided they'd have to deliver an OS with it too. The first version of MS-DOS (86-DOS^WP) was not more than a rewrite of CP/M for the 16-bit 8086 processor. Gates can only be credited with the business savvy that he sold IBM an OS he hadn't even yet purchased from his competitor SCP.

At the time that IBM brought the first PC to the market - with only a text interface - Apple was already working on the Lisa and the Macintosh, the first computers with a graphical interface. It would cost Microsoft nearly ten years to come up with a halfway decent GUI (Windows 3).

The real driver behind the popularity of the PC has of course been the price. That's due to IBM; not for their own prices, but for their decision to design the PC in a modular fashion, which made it possible that other manufacturers produced clones that adhered to the same specs. Compaq is to be credited more with getting the PC in every household than Microsoft is.

Personally, I view it as an over all positive. Sure, in recent years, MS products have been lacking (some were never that great to begin with) and many of his business practices seem to stifle innovation (irony), but the fact that we can get on an internet message board to curse him for these things says a lot too.

The internet is a salient example how Microsoft has not contributed positively to technology. To begin with, Microsoft massively missed the bandwagon of the internet rise in the mid 90s. Windows 95 came without a decent TCP/IP networking stack (see Winsock^WP) and without a browser. The early versions of Internet Explorer were vastly inferior to Netscape and tried to subvert Netscape's advantage by, a.o., posing to webservers as if they were Netscape. Microsoft has perverted every internet standard in sight - HTML, Javascript, CSS - so that to this day web developers who know the standards have to spend extraordinary time to make their pages look and work good in IE as well as in all other browsers. Microsoft has done in this way more to set the internet back (or not having it progress as fast as it could have) than to move it forward.

When you look carefully, Microsoft has never been a technology leader. IE, Word, Excel, even MS-DOS itself were all products that had been developed at other companies and bought by Microsoft. They have been pushed on the public by clever/aggressive marketing and by introducing artificial barriers for the competition. Windows-3 had a check built-in that it would only run on top of MS-DOS, not on competitor DR-DOS. Netscape was pushed out of the market by providing IE for free, and the same is happening with Real and Windows Media Player. .NET is pushed the same way and is fundamentally not different from the Java platform.

He also had the gumption to chase down what he wanted and make the most of opportunities presented.

Yes, Bill Gates/Microsoft certainly took the opportunities presented, but never as a visionary who developed new technology; they always lagged behind and then had to play catch-up with foul means. The headstart given by the contract with IBM over MS-DOS, and the subsequent stranglehold over the PC platform, is basically what has provided them with enough leeway to have that attitude.

Even while I curse out the licensing issues with MS, prepare to put Ubuntu on my computer at home because Vista is driving me insane, and am encouraging my office to switch to more open source applications, I still know that myself and the IT field would not be as well off today without his work.

The IT field definitely looks different today due to Bill Gates' work, but not for the better.

It consists of web developers tearing their hairs out for having to cater their websites to a (dominant) browser which doesn't adhere to the standards; while other web developers (who don't deserve that name) make sites that only are tested in IE and look horrible or don't work in other browsers.

It consists of loads of ignoramuses who, by following "point and click" recipes, got their MCSE and now think they are a system administrator. They don't have the intelligence to get that repetitive tasks can be automated (and when they have, Windows does not provide a decent scripting language for that). They also are raised with the idea that a server must have a graphical user interface too. They've only been fed what's in the book and they haven't learnt the abstraction to look at their systems from a higher level and come with alternative solutions that might better suit their needs - and often, the Windows (administration) GUIs don't offer the ways for alternative solutions.

It consists of a population-at-large that has learnt that computers are not stable and that it's perfectly normal to regularly press Ctrl-Alt-Del and reboot the thing. I don't know if XP, which was quite stable, has been around long enough to make this instinct die out.

It consists of 90% of the email of today being spam, largely being distributed by hacked Windows boxes of individuals with a broadband connection. As a non-Windows user, I thus have to pay the price for Bill Gates' negligence in providing a safe OS. There are cardinal design errors in the Windows services which make it inherently unsafer than UNIX.

It consists of millions of ordinary users struggling with stability issues due to faulty or conflicting drivers, or due to the security compromises that Microsoft has made for better "interoperability" of its products. I bet that, if you factor in the hours spent by nephews, neighbours or friends on nursing Windows installations, the TCO of a Windows box is in the end higher than that of a MacOS box.

 

[Solus]

This should be included.

Bill gates last day

 

[shadron]

I agree a lot with what you say, ddt. I was a system admin back when Unix was a VAX exclusive world, and there is nothing - NOTHING - like using using the K, C or B shell to script a task, even today. However...

I think Bill and Microsoft have two things to be thanked for. The first is marketing. The home computer market wouldn't be at the 1,000,000,000 mark if it weren't for MS's marketing. They made it possible for Joe Sixpack to have and run a PC in his home and connect to the world, and that buying power made all the rest possible, from capital investment in software to cheap USB connectors. Without MS we would not be where we are. Period. It may have not been the best, but it was, as we say, good enough. Apple had it in their capabilities, at one point, to beat MS out, but flubbed it. Even if they'd taken it, computing would be a rich boy's playtoy today still. The other powerhouse in the field that could have done it, IBM, never wanted to be in PCs at all; they were happy with their multi-million dollar mainframes.

The second thing is that MS provided was de facto standards when they were needed. MS didn't necessarily have that intention, they wanted IBMs proprietary standards monopolies, but they developed a model and everyone else slavishly copied it. Again, they weren't always the best choices, but they were good enough. Had MS not had the power to do this, where would we be today? Some would have Atari's, some would have Apples, some would have big blue PCs, whatever they are. Some would be running O/S v20, some DOS 32.3, some Unix v7, some RSX-11ZZ some VMS 64.34 and who knows what else. Everything would have one tenth the selling volume and triple the price.

In short, Microsoft provided leadership in the field when it was needed, to accelerate the field. It made possible the benefits of large scale mass production to be applied to computer and other electronics. When I was in high school, one built flip-flops (an electronic gadget that holds one bit of memory, the basis of nearly all digital electronics) with two new-fangled transistors (new-fangled things; vacuum tubes if you weren't up to the latest) and a handful of other components, and three hours behind a hot soldering iron. Today they are two microscopic dots among billions of others on a chip pressed out 50 at a stroke. Some of that is due to BG and MS, bless their hard-bitten little hearts.

 

[Jimbo07]

When I was in high school, one built flip-flops (an electronic gadget that holds one bit of memory, the basis of nearly all digital electronics) with two new-fangled transistors

I hate statements like this. Back when I went to high school, flip-flops were a type of rubber thong shoe. What the hell kind of high school did I go to?

ETA: Your statement could have merely meant a contemporary sense. Still, I read a cool book titled simply Gates which described his high school and sure-as-shootin' they were using computer time when my province was probably trying to learn how to spell computer time.

ETA: The full title seems to be Gates: How Microsoft's Mogul Reinvented an Industry--and Made Himself the Richest Man in America . I don't know if anyone can get a current copy. Even if you think some of the storytelling favoured Gates, much of the early history is very fascinating and varies only slightly from the way ddt told it (I'm thinking the recounting Kildall being asleep at the switch with IBM).

 

[Gazpacho]

The early versions of Internet Explorer were vastly inferior to Netscape and tried to subvert Netscape's advantage by, a.o., posing to webservers as if they were Netscape.

This strikes me as thoroughly hypocritical, essentially saying that Netscape should have had a completely free hand through its "Netscape-enhanced" marketing to break web sites for users of anything other than Netscape's browser.

Microsoft has perverted every internet standard in sight - HTML, Javascript, CSS - so that to this day web developers who know the standards have to spend extraordinary time to make their pages look and work good in IE as well as in all other browsers.

...while this is just plain historical revisionism by someone who presumably does not remember the controversy Netscape's non-standard tags produced before IE even entered the picture. The whole idea of using HTML to control layout at the pixel level was something Netscape invented, very badly and outside of any standardization process.

 

[a_unique_person]

He certainly knew how to take the work of others and make money out it by creating monopolies.

 

[AgeGap]

Wholly drivers,
Unix was down too long at midnight C(++).
Oh, what became of ME.

Drivers. You knew there was an driver for XP but a click away. I think this is why more people have not jumped to Linux and now Vista.

 

[ShowerComic]

It consists of web developers tearing their hairs out for having to cater their websites to a (dominant) browser which doesn't adhere to the standards; while other web developers (who don't deserve that name) make sites that only are tested in IE and look horrible or don't work in other browsers.

And the CBT/Training world consists of M$ Certified Professionals, and other M$ Branded qualifications, like a BS is Computer science is so much crap, unless you pay M$ for a special course on how to check that radio button in Windows XP to all DHCP.

 

[JonnyFive]

I don't know if XP, which was quite stable, has been around long enough to make this instinct die out.

XP was a crashy, unstable piece of crap with compatibility issues until at least SP1, just like Vista. And 98. And 95.

Okay, that's a lie. 95 was never any good, even patched up.

 

[paiute]

All you need to know about the perspicacity of bg was seen on the cover of his visionary work "The Road Ahead". In the mid 90s it came with a big sticker that proclaimed "Now Revised to Include the Internet!" or some such wording. I remember thinking that on a level playing field such lagging would lead to failure.

 

[Gazpacho]

All you need to know about the perspicacity of bg was seen on the cover of his visionary work "The Road Ahead". In the mid 90s it came with a big sticker that proclaimed "Now Revised to Include the Internet!" or some such wording. I remember thinking that on a level playing field such lagging would lead to failure.

First of all, Microsoft's primary business isn't selling books written by Bill Gates.

Second, Microsoft did fail in terms of losing a huge application space for several years. Are you saying that every company in the industry should immediately go bankrupt whenever a new application is created by someone other than them? That a "level playing field" requires companies to be unable to enter an application space after the fact?

 

[Wudang]

Much as I dislike MS I have to admit that though they dismissed the internet as "irrelevant" as the wisdom at the time was that profit lay with value added dialup services like AOL and MSN (as they then were) they did adapt when they saw the internet develop.

MS is like a collaboration between the Borg and the Ferengi.
Sadly the Ferengi do the coding and the Borg do the marketing.

 

[GreyICE]

MS has done a lot of positive things. They created a user-accessible operating system (Unix was never user friendly. Sorry, I can use it, but it's not friendly. It's certainly not casual user-friendly in the least). They had an open platform for software and were always friendly to software developers in terms of providing tools. They largely drove the PC revolution, which is why they came out on top.

Unix never even attempted to go for the PC market, and Apple's xenophobic operating systems never had a hope.

 

[AgeGap]

Much as I dislike MS I have to admit that though they dismissed the internet as "irrelevant" as the wisdom at the time was that profit lay with value added dialup services like AOL and MSN (as they then were) they did adapt when they saw the internet develop.

MS is like a collaboration between the Borg and the Ferengi.
Sadly the Ferengi do the coding and the Borg do the marketing.

Wow, Wudang. Any nerdier and you would have to have written that in 1337.

 

[Wudang]

OK Greyice but what about IBM's mermaid GUI which IBM killed because of MS. MS tried to block OS/2 when they split with IBM (and would have done if IBM didn't have patents for things like the cursor, which btw they have never made an issue of before). And what the (rule 8) has user friendly to do with operating systems? That to me is the worst thing that MS has done is to confuse the OS with the user experience for the computer illiterati like GreyIce.

 

[GreyICE]

OK Greyice but what about IBM's mermaid GUI which IBM killed because of MS. MS tried to block OS/2 when they split with IBM (and would have done if IBM didn't have patents for things like the cursor, which btw they have never made an issue of before). And what the (rule 8) has user friendly to do with operating systems? That to me is the worst thing that MS has done is to confuse the OS with the user experience for the computer illiterati like GreyIce.

You're calling me computer illiterate? Hilarious.

User friendly has EVERYTHING to do with operating systems, because operating systems need to be used by USERS. If you don't grasp that, then you belong to the elite group of Linux nerds who absolutely cannot understand that command line interface is a thing of the past.

The interface and the operating system tend to be integral components because they absolutely are integrated. Update the operating system without updating the operating system interface, and there will be problems. Because of that, the shell and the system need to be updated at the same time, and therefore must be managed by the same group.

You can't have an operating system upgrade that breaks the interface for the user. Period. It won't be accepted, people won't use it, it'll never take off. So the interface and the operating system are intimately connected.

 

[ddt]

User friendly has EVERYTHING to do with operating systems, because operating systems need to be used by USERS. If you don't grasp that, then you belong to the elite group of Linux nerds who absolutely cannot understand that command line interface is a thing of the past.

Computers also need to be used by power users who do understand the command line. Computers also need to be used by administrators. For such groups, a command line interface is indispensable. A computer needs both. MS Windows has been sorely lacking in the command line interface.

The interface and the operating system tend to be integral components because they absolutely are integrated. Update the operating system without updating the operating system interface, and there will be problems. Because of that, the shell and the system need to be updated at the same time, and therefore must be managed by the same group.

That's why Linux distributions assemble those upgrades and test them before putting them out to the users.

and Apple's xenophobic operating systems never had a hope.

What's xenophobic about Apple? Its GUIs have been much more consistent than those of Microsoft. And OS X offers the best of both worlds: an absolutely slick GUI with the best command line there is .