Valleywag – valleywag.wordpress.com

Birthdate

10/28/55

Microsoft

Founder, Chairman

William (Bill) H. Gates is chairman of Microsoft Corporation, the worldwide leader in software, services and solutions that help people and businesses realize their full potential. Microsoft had revenues of US$51.12 billion for the fiscal year ending June 2007, and employs more than 78,000 people in 105 countries and regions.

On June 15, 2006, Microsoft announced that effective July 2008 Gates will transition out of a day-to-day role in the company to spend more time on his global health and education work at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. After July 2008 Gates will continue to serve as Microsoft’s chairman and an advisor on key development projects. The two-year transition process is to ensure that there is a smooth and orderly transfer of Gates’ daily responsibilities. Effective June 2006, Ray Ozzie has assumed Gates’ previous title as chief software architect and is working side by side with Gates on all technical architecture and product oversight responsibilities at Microsoft. Craig Mundie has assumed the new title of chief research and strategy officer at Microsoft and is working closely with Gates to assume his responsibility for the company’s research and incubation efforts.

Born on Oct. 28, 1955, Gates grew up in Seattle with his two sisters. Their father, William H. Gates II, is a Seattle attorney. Their late mother, Mary Gates, was a schoolteacher, University of Washington regent, and chairwoman of United Way International.

Gates attended public elementary school and the private Lakeside School. There, he discovered his interest in software and began programming computers at age 13.

In 1973, Gates entered Harvard University as a freshman, where he lived down the hall from Steve Ballmer, now Microsoft’s chief executive officer. While at Harvard, Gates developed a version of the programming language BASIC for the first microcomputer – the MITS Altair.

In his junior year, Gates left Harvard to devote his energies to Microsoft, a company he had begun in 1975 with his childhood friend Paul Allen. Guided by a belief that the computer would be a valuable tool on every office desktop and in every home, they began developing software for personal computers. Gates’ foresight and his vision for personal computing have been central to the success of Microsoft and the software industry.

Under Gates’ leadership, Microsoft’s mission has been to continually advance and improve software technology, and to make it easier, more cost-effective and more enjoyable for people to use computers. The company is committed to a long-term view, reflected in its investment of approximately $7.1 billion on research and development in the 2007 fiscal year.

In 1999, Gates wrote Business @ the Speed of Thought, a book that shows how computer technology can solve business problems in fundamentally new ways. The book was published in 25 languages and is available in more than 60 countries. Business @ the Speed of Thought has received wide critical acclaim, and was listed on the best-seller lists of the New York Times, USA Today, the Wall Street Journal and Amazon.com. Gates’ previous book, The Road Ahead, published in 1995, held the No. 1 spot on the New York Times’ bestseller list for seven weeks. Top row: Steve Wood (left), Bob Wallace, Jim Lane. Middle row: Bob O’Rear, Bob Greenberg, Marc McDonald, Gordon Letwin. Bottom row: Bill Gates, Andrea Lewis, Marla Wood, Paul Allen. December 7, 1978. Top row: Steve Wood (left), Bob Wallace, Jim Lane. Middle row: Bob O’Rear, Bob Greenberg, Marc McDonald, Gordon Letwin. Bottom row: Bill Gates, Andrea Lewis, Marla Wood, Paul Allen. December 7, 1978.

Gates has donated the proceeds of both books to non-profit organizations that support the use of technology in education and skills development.

In addition to his love of computers and software, Gates founded Corbis, which is developing one of the world’s largest resources of visual information – a comprehensive digital archive of art and photography from public and private collections around the globe. He is also a member of the board of directors of Berkshire Hathaway Inc., which invests in companies engaged in diverse business activities.

Philanthropy is also important to Gates. He and his wife, Melinda, have endowed a foundation with more than $28.8 billion (as of January 2005) to support philanthropic initiatives in the areas of global health and learning, with the hope that in the 21st century, advances in these critical areas will be available for all people. The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has committed more than $3.6 billion to organizations working in global health; more than $2 billion to improve learning opportunities, including the Gates Library Initiative to bring computers, Internet Access and training to public libraries in low-income communities in the United States and Canada; more than $477 million to community projects in the Pacific Northwest; and more than $488 million to special projects and annual giving campaigns.

Gates was married on Jan. 1, 1994, to Melinda French Gates. They have three children. Gates is an avid reader, and enjoys playing golf and bridge.

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Sometimes, software isn’t so magical. Even for Bill Gates.

For the opening piece in our series on Gates leaving daily life at Microsoft, one goal was to give a clear picture of the Microsoft co-founder’s role inside the company, as a gauge of the impact his departure will have. As part of that, I went back through the internal e-mails turned over in the antitrust suits against the company, looking for new insights into his personality.

Read on past the jump for one of the gems that turned up, showing Gates in the role of chief rabble-rouser. (Original document: PDF, 5 pages.) It shows that even the Microsoft co-founder — who champions the “magic of software” — isn’t immune to the frustrations of everyday computer users. Keep in mind that this was more than five years ago, so it doesn’t necessarily reflect the specific state of things now. At the bottom, see what Gates said when I asked him about the message last week.

—- Original Message —-

From: Bill Gates
Sent: Wednesday, January 15, 2003 10:05 AM
To: Jim Allchin
Cc: Chris Jones (WINDOWS); Bharat Shah (NT); Joe Peterson; Will Poole; Brian Valentine; Anoop Gupta (RESEARCH)
Subject: Windows Usability Systematic degradation flame

I am quite disappointed at how Windows Usability has been going backwards and the program management groups don’t drive usability issues.

Let me give you my experience from yesterday.

I decided to download (Moviemaker) and buy the Digital Plus pack … so I went to Microsoft.com. They have a download place so I went there.

The first 5 times I used the site it timed out while trying to bring up the download page. Then after an 8 second delay I got it to come up.

This site is so slow it is unusable.

It wasn’t in the top 5 so I expanded the other 45.

These 45 names are totally confusing. These names make stuff like: C:\Documents and Settings\billg\My Documents\My Pictures seem clear.

They are not filtered by the system … and so many of the things are strange.

I tried scoping to Media stuff. Still no moviemaker. I typed in movie. Nothing. I typed in movie maker. Nothing.

So I gave up and sent mail to Amir saying – where is this Moviemaker download? Does it exist?

So they told me that using the download page to download something was not something they anticipated.

They told me to go to the main page search button and type movie maker (not moviemaker!).

I tried that. The site was pathetically slow but after 6 seconds of waiting up it came.

I thought for sure now I would see a button to just go do the download.

In fact it is more like a puzzle that you get to solve. It told me to go to Windows Update and do a bunch of incantations.

This struck me as completely odd. Why should I have to go somewhere else and do a scan to download moviemaker?

So I went to Windows update. Windows Update decides I need to download a bunch of controls. (Not) just once but multiple times where I get to see weird dialog boxes.

Doesn’t Windows update know some key to talk to Windows?

Then I did the scan. This took quite some time and I was told it was critical for me to download 17megs of stuff.

This is after I was told we were doing delta patches to things but instead just to get 6 things that are labeled in the SCARIEST possible way I had to download 17meg.

So I did the download. That part was fast. Then it wanted to do an install. This took 6 minutes and the machine was so slow I couldn’t use it for anything else during this time.

What the heck is going on during those 6 minutes? That is crazy. This is after the download was finished.

Then it told me to reboot my machine. Why should I do that? I reboot every night — why should I reboot at that time?

So I did the reboot because it INSISTED on it. Of course that meant completely getting rid of all my Outlook state.

So I got back up and running and went to Windows Update again. I forgot why I was in Windows Update at all since all I wanted was to get Moviemaker.

So I went back to Microsoft.com and looked at the instructions. I have to click on a folder called WindowsXP. Why should I do that? Windows Update knows I am on Windows XP.

What does it mean to have to click on that folder? So I get a bunch of confusing stuff but sure enough one of them is Moviemaker.

So I do the download. The download is fast but the Install takes many minutes. Amazing how slow this thing is.

At some point I get told I need to go get Windows Media Series 9 to download.

So I decide I will go do that. This time I get dialogs saying things like “Open” or “Save”. No guidance in the instructions which to do. I have no clue which to do.

The download is fast and the install takes 7 minutes for this thing.

So now I think I am going to have Moviemaker. I go to my add/remove programs place to make sure it is there.

It is not there.

What is there? The following garbage is there. Microsoft Autoupdate Exclusive test package, Microsoft Autoupdate Reboot test package, Microsoft Autoupdate testpackage1. Microsoft AUtoupdate testpackage2, Microsoft Autoupdate Test package3.

Someone decided to trash the one part of Windows that was usable? The file system is no longer usable. The registry is not usable. This program listing was one sane place but now it is all crapped up.

But that is just the start of the crap. Later I have listed things like Windows XP Hotfix see Q329048 for more information. What is Q329048? Why are these series of patches listed here? Some of the patches just things like Q810655 instead of saying see Q329048 for more information.

What an absolute mess.

Moviemaker is just not there at all.

So I give up on Moviemaker and decide to download the Digital Plus Package.

I get told I need to go enter a bunch of information about myself.

I enter it all in and because it decides I have mistyped something I have to try again. Of course it has cleared out most of what I typed.

I try (typing) the right stuff in 5 times and it just keeps clearing things out for me to type them in again.

So after more than an hour of craziness and making my programs list garbage and being scared and seeing that Microsoft.com is a terrible website I haven’t run Moviemaker and I haven’t got the plus package.

The lack of attention to usability represented by these experiences blows my mind. I thought we had reached a low with Windows Network places or the messages I get when I try to use 802.11. (don’t you just love that root certificate message?)

When I really get to use the stuff I am sure I will have more feedback.

When we were concluding our interview last week, I showed Gates a printout of the e-mail and asked if he ever got Movie Maker to work. Gates noted that Microsoft plans to include Movie Maker as part of Windows Live, so people will get the program when they download that online package. The company isn’t confirming that officially yet, but’s not a complete surprise. See this Wikipedia entry and this related post on LiveSide.net. (Site temporarily down as of Tuesday morning.)

As for the message, Gates smiled and said, “There’s not a day that I don’t send a piece of e-mail … like that piece of e-mail. That’s my job.”

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Judges and jurors who must decide whether sexually explicit material is obscene are asked to use a local yardstick: does the material violate community standards?

That is often a tricky question because there is no simple, concrete way to gauge a community’s tastes and values.

The Internet may be changing that. In a novel approach, the defense in an obscenity trial in Florida plans to use publicly accessible Google search data to try to persuade jurors that their neighbors have broader interests than they might have thought.

In the trial of a pornographic Web site operator, the defense plans to show that residents of Pensacola are more likely to use Google to search for terms like “orgy” than for “apple pie” or “watermelon.” The publicly accessible data is vague in that it does not specify how many people are searching for the terms, just their relative popularity over time. But the defense lawyer, Lawrence Walters, is arguing that the evidence is sufficient to demonstrate that interest in the sexual subjects exceeds that of more mainstream topics — and that by extension, the sexual material distributed by his client is not outside the norm.

It is not clear that the approach will succeed. The Florida state prosecutor in the case, which is scheduled for trial July 1, said the search data may not be relevant because the volume of Internet searches is not necessarily an indication of, or proxy for, a community’s values.

But the tactic is another example of the value of data collected by Internet companies like Google, both from a commercial standpoint and as a window into the thoughts, interests and desires of their users.

“Time and time again you’ll have jurors sitting on a jury panel who will condemn material that they routinely consume in private,” said Mr. Walters, the defense lawyer. Using the Internet data, “we can show how people really think and feel and act in their own homes, which, parenthetically, is where this material was intended to be viewed,” he added.

Mr. Walters last week also served Google with a subpoena seeking more specific search data, including the number of searches for certain sexual topics done by local residents. A Google spokesman said the company was reviewing the subpoena.

Mr. Walters is defending Clinton Raymond McCowen, who is facing charges that he created and distributed obscene material through a Web site based in Florida. The charges include racketeering and prostitution, but Mr. Walters said the prosecution’s case fundamentally relies on proving that the material on the site is obscene.

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Judges and jurors who must decide whether sexually explicit material is obscene are asked to use a local yardstick: does the material violate community standards?

That is often a tricky question because there is no simple, concrete way to gauge a community’s tastes and values.

The Internet may be changing that. In a novel approach, the defense in an obscenity trial in Florida plans to use publicly accessible Google search data to try to persuade jurors that their neighbors have broader interests than they might have thought.

In the trial of a pornographic Web site operator, the defense plans to show that residents of Pensacola are more likely to use Google to search for terms like “orgy” than for “apple pie” or “watermelon.” The publicly accessible data is vague in that it does not specify how many people are searching for the terms, just their relative popularity over time. But the defense lawyer, Lawrence Walters, is arguing that the evidence is sufficient to demonstrate that interest in the sexual subjects exceeds that of more mainstream topics — and that by extension, the sexual material distributed by his client is not outside the norm.

It is not clear that the approach will succeed. The Florida state prosecutor in the case, which is scheduled for trial July 1, said the search data may not be relevant because the volume of Internet searches is not necessarily an indication of, or proxy for, a community’s values.

But the tactic is another example of the value of data collected by Internet companies like Google, both from a commercial standpoint and as a window into the thoughts, interests and desires of their users.

“Time and time again you’ll have jurors sitting on a jury panel who will condemn material that they routinely consume in private,” said Mr. Walters, the defense lawyer. Using the Internet data, “we can show how people really think and feel and act in their own homes, which, parenthetically, is where this material was intended to be viewed,” he added.

Mr. Walters last week also served Google with a subpoena seeking more specific search data, including the number of searches for certain sexual topics done by local residents. A Google spokesman said the company was reviewing the subpoena.

Mr. Walters is defending Clinton Raymond McCowen, who is facing charges that he created and distributed obscene material through a Web site based in Florida. The charges include racketeering and prostitution, but Mr. Walters said the prosecution’s case fundamentally relies on proving that the material on the site is obscene.

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MARTY LEDERHANDLER / AP

Bill Gates shows off Windows software in this 1990 photo. That was also the year Microsoft became the first software company to surpass $1 billion in sales.

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Google has entered the living room, but it’s not clear whether it is just wandering through or whether it will grab some popcorn, plop on the couch and stay for a while.

The company has introduced a new feature to its Google Desktop program that can help get content from the Internet onto televisions. It is called the Google Media Server, and it’s a bit of software meant to run all the time on your home computer. It can send video, audio and photos to any other device on your home network that uses a standard called called Universal Plug and Play — most significantly, Sony’s PlayStation 3 game console. It also works with some televisions made by Hewlett-Packard and a handful of other geeky devices.

There is other media server software out there, but Google adds two tricks: it can also pass video from YouTube and photos stored on Picasa Web Albums from the Internet to the television. (Both services are owned by Google.)

You could make the argument that this is another sign that Google has too many engineers with too little to do. Is the company really serious about telling mass-market consumers that they should run media servers in their homes? And is it willing to devote the resources to make sure it has a product that it can explain and that really works? (Looking at the Google Media Server user forum it looks like there are a fair number of glitches right now. )

Google’s throw-spaghetti-at-the-wall-and-see-what-sticks strategy makes sense in some areas. Google wants to be a big player in video advertising, and it already has the largest Web video site in YouTube. It has an opportunity to make YouTube an important link in the chain that will get video from the Internet to consumer electronic devices.

Since YouTube has more video than any other source, Google can offer a hardware maker a very easy way to add Internet video capability to a television, Blu-Ray player or some other device. Google has already cut such deals with Apple, HP and others. This new software provides a way to get YouTube videos onto other devices that use the UPnP standard.

This could all help Google in a virtuous circle. Video producers will find YouTube an ever more attractive place to distribute their programs because it not only has the broadest reach on the Web but will also have a wider range of devices that it can link to. More content brings more users and more devices. Since Google is adding more advertising on YouTube, that ultimately means more profits.

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Google has entered the living room, but it’s not clear whether it is just wandering through or whether it will grab some popcorn, plop on the couch and stay for a while.

The company has introduced a new feature to its Google Desktop program that can help get content from the Internet onto televisions. It is called the Google Media Server, and it’s a bit of software meant to run all the time on your home computer. It can send video, audio and photos to any other device on your home network that uses a standard called called Universal Plug and Play — most significantly, Sony’s PlayStation 3 game console. It also works with some televisions made by Hewlett-Packard and a handful of other geeky devices.

There is other media server software out there, but Google adds two tricks: it can also pass video from YouTube and photos stored on Picasa Web Albums from the Internet to the television. (Both services are owned by Google.)

You could make the argument that this is another sign that Google has too many engineers with too little to do. Is the company really serious about telling mass-market consumers that they should run media servers in their homes? And is it willing to devote the resources to make sure it has a product that it can explain and that really works? (Looking at the Google Media Server user forum it looks like there are a fair number of glitches right now. )

Google’s throw-spaghetti-at-the-wall-and-see-what-sticks strategy makes sense in some areas. Google wants to be a big player in video advertising, and it already has the largest Web video site in YouTube. It has an opportunity to make YouTube an important link in the chain that will get video from the Internet to consumer electronic devices.

Since YouTube has more video than any other source, Google can offer a hardware maker a very easy way to add Internet video capability to a television, Blu-Ray player or some other device. Google has already cut such deals with Apple, HP and others. This new software provides a way to get YouTube videos onto other devices that use the UPnP standard.

This could all help Google in a virtuous circle. Video producers will find YouTube an ever more attractive place to distribute their programs because it not only has the broadest reach on the Web but will also have a wider range of devices that it can link to. More content brings more users and more devices. Since Google is adding more advertising on YouTube, that ultimately means more profits.

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Courtesy of Universal Pictures
James McAvoy and Angelina Jolie in “Wanted”

“WANTED”
James McAvoy, Angelina Jolie
Directed by Timur Bekmambetov
Rated R
Wide release

“Wanted,” based on the comic-book miniseries by Mark Millar, is every action movie you ever loved, at twice the speed. It should be the most original live-action blockbuster of the summer. Russian director Timur Bekmambetov, who made the imaginative “Night Watch” and “Day Watch” for pennies, expands his talent to fit a Hollywood budget. Not only hasn’t he missed a beat, but he’s added a few.

James McAvoy, an unlikely actor to portray an action hero, plays an unlikely action hero. Put-upon wimp Wesley Gibson introduces us to his so-called life, working as an account manager in a soul-draining cubicle he shares with his best friend, Barry (Chris Pratt), who thinks Wesley doesn’t know he’s sleeping with his girlfriend (Kristen Hager).

Wesley’s life changes—what man’s wouldn’t?—when he encounters Angelina Jolie. Suddenly her character, Fox, is protecting him in a shootout, before whisking him away in that great “How’d they do that?” moment you’ve seen in the trailer, and they’re off on a wild ride that should get “Wanted” nominated for all sorts of technical awards.

Fox recruits Wesley into the Fraternity, a thousand-year-old secret society of assassins headed by Sloan (Morgan Freeman) and headquartered in a functioning textile mill in Chicago. They say they want Wesley to kill Cross (Thomas Kretschmann), the man who killed their top assassin, the father he never knew, from whom he unknowingly inherited skills that include the ability to shoot bullets on a curved path.

Wesley is toughened up with repeated beatings (this should appeal to disciplinarian parents) and rides with Fox atop elevated trains until he’s ready to start killing. The trail involves some globe-hopping and a surprising revelation that turns the story around. Needless to say, there’s more action before it’s resolved.

The plentiful violent action incorporates real stunts and CGI work, both of the highest order. Bullets meeting in midair and being tracked over a course of several miles are just a couple of the elements that will have geeks in heaven. Bekmambetov’s crew uses every trick in (and out of) the book to create visceral excitement.

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