Bill Gates: the exit interview

[editor]

yea she introduced him to the CEO of IBM...it's in his biography

Does it say that he wouldn't have got the contract any other way? I doubt if IBM hires companies for big contracts just because someone's Mum introduces their son to the CEO.

 

[jæd]

Does it say that he wouldn't have got the contract any other way? I doubt if IBM hires companies for big contracts just because someone's Mum introduces their son to the CEO.

It would mean he would have good contacts in the company... Always handy having your Mum knowing the CEO. And if he's as bright as he supposed to be, I doubt he would let a contact like that go cold

 

[London_Calling]

Does it say that he wouldn't have got the contract any other way? I doubt if IBM hires companies for big contracts just because someone's Mum introduces their son to the CEO.

Or you could just say 'cheers for the information, I didn't know that'.

 

[gnoriac]

many people don't know that he already came from a priviledged background and that if it wasn't for this mum he would have never gotten his contract with IBM

If you're referring to MS-DOS on the PC, there was a story IBM originally wanted CP/M and they sent a couple of reps out to see the guy who owned it but he was out flying that afternoon and his wife didn't like the look of them.

 

[Jonti]

I said he made an "enormous contribution" to the computing world.

You surely aren't seriously challenging that claim?

Robber baron sacrifices the greater good for private profit shock!

I think that's pretty clear from what I said. It's simple enough. The effect of monopolies in general is to slow and obstruct innovation. We could also go into the detail of the predatory tactics he's used both to get a monoploy and to sustain it.

So, yeah, it seems almost certain that if he'd been a regular lawyer like his parents then general computing would be more advanced by now.

 

[untethered]

I thought the browser was someone else's? In his own words, "I just had to take the hypertext idea and connect it to the TCP and DNS ideas and — ta-da! — the World Wide Web"

HTML was derived in part from SGML but it's really a very distant cousin. Sir Tim invented HTTP (oft forgotten, that's what holds it all together), HTML and wrote the first browser and web server, as far as I know.