Com-Central.net

It was only a matter of time

www.techspot.com/story17076.html

Well deserved.
Thanks for the great flt sim's Bill

I'll probably have missed something, as far as I know that Honour is only bestowed on persons that have done something exceptional for the betterment of the British Empire..........I fail to discover what he has done for the good of the British Empire, except, maybe for trying to empty all our wallets as fast as possible.

Uhu_Fledermaus wrote:

I'll probably have missed something, as far as I know that Honour is only bestowed on persons that have done something exceptional for the betterment of the British Empire..........I fail to discover what he has done for the good of the British Empire, except, maybe for trying to empty all our wallets as fast as possible.

"(Gates) is one of the most important business leaders of his age. Microsoft technology has transformed business practices and his company has had a profound impact on the British economy." - UK Foreign Secretary Jack Straw.

Seem's like a much greater good for the British Empire...In my humble opinion.

Heck yeah - I think this is great.

And thanks, Snowman......I was about to say the same thing. It's funny how many of his detractors make a living - a pretty good one, when they stick with it long enough - using the very products and tools from a company run by the guy they like to claim to hate. Take those products and tools away and I'd bet the level of griping would rise a fair amount.....

Very occasionally I interview candidates for the position of software engineer - what we used to call programmers back in the day. The ones that make a point of boasting the ever-popular "I hate Bill Gates" attitude have always turned out to have barely-intern level skills at best...just my own observation.

Somewhere along the line knighthood must have lost its true meaning...Isn't Elton John a knight?

The true meaning of Knighthood was lost when we got down off our horses, took off our armour and discarded our swords.

I have some gripes with Bill Gates (CFS3 springing to mind .......... ) but getting whopping fines for having an astute business head is quite frightening!?

Even though I may never agree with anything anybody says, I will fight to the death, for their right to say it

Damn Straight!

My own support is based on the simplistic viewpoint of Bill Gates as "programmer that done good". I don't think this is arguable, with a coding background beginning in 1971 (not bad considering he was 16 at the time) and first notable contribution being a co-developer of Altair BASIC in 1975 (his friend Paul Allen being the other primary team member).

Here's why event is singularly impressive, in my opinion:
For those not familiar, developing a BASIC language interpreter is far different than writing a program in the simple language called "BASIC" (stands for "Beginners All Purpose Instruction Set"). It means creating the under-the-hood guts that allows a computer to recognize and perform the instructions of that language, and this is done at a much "deeper" level in a much more difficult to use (but kinda fun) language, typically Assembly language or "assembler". I'm assuming this was the approach, common at the time. In other words, somebody's gotta do the dirty work and make the building blocks, in order to make life easier for the next guy.

It was even more difficult at the time since the initial work was done on a system that could only simulate what an Altair computer was like, and they really didn't even know if it would work until they demonstrated it to their prospective cient, Altair (who had published a request of a port - or translation if you prefer - of the existing BASIC language interpreter to their newfangled "microcomputer" system)....and their efforts did work, much to Altairs surprise, who say they had previously witnessed failures of such attemps by fifty previous people!

That's pretty much kicking some some serious coding tail for a kid his age, and you know what....it's stood the test of time & improvement.... friggin' "Visual BASIC" is the modern-day product you can buy off the shelf, and as someone on a developers forum stated so succinctly once, where else can you spend $350 and use that product to snag a $100K/yr job?

Point is, he's more than just a manager-CEO type...he immersed hiimself at the technical level at an early age, and saw the need or opportunity to provide tools and utilities to build applications with or on - even if you consider the tools of the time laughable by todays standards.

And...guys I'm sorry if this seems like ranting. Actually its the first time I've really said much on the subject. I've been programming since 1979 from assembler through all kinds of weirdness up to C++, and have learned enough to know I will never ever ever learn it all. But I sure do get tired of young kids out of college saying they "hate Bill Gates" like he got everything handed to him and didn't make opportunities for others.

As for knighthood, hey who knows huh? Only up to the Brits opinions & say as far as that goes, isn't it? Now, if Michael Jackson were up for Knighthood, I think I'd wanna say somethin' about that....like, cripes can't ya pick someone else from over here to use as an example 'Murcan?

Rumor going 'round is that US Citizens can't actually use the title of "Knight" anyway, I have no idea if that's true or not. I think the title "MicroKnight" has been bandied about plenty already today too, can't see anyone having an issue with that, kinda fitting huh!

Anyway....no he's not god either....and yes I like UNIX and it's derivatives too...... and hey yeah CFS3 was a let-down in ways but there's some other winners in the pile too....but...

Scheiss, lets go fly eh?

S!

Wise words Stoopy!

- JG300-Stoopy

Scheiss, lets go fly eh? :):chug:

And I couldnt agree more...

Yeah...thats what counts.....and sorry for the diatribe, S!

- JG300-Stoopy

Yeah...thats what counts.....and sorry for the diatribe, S!

LOL Stoopy, it wasn't that bad...lol AND..yes, flyin is much better...:jump:

You fellas have gotta forgive Stoopy ..... he's been on a coffee binge
back at the pigsty for a few weeks now ...... he does EVERYTHING in
volumes and EXTREMELY fast if I might add .......

My own support is based on the simplistic viewpoint of Bill Gates as "programmer that done good". I don't think this is arguable, with a coding background beginning in 1971 (not bad considering he was 16 at the time) and first notable contribution being a co-developer of Altair BASIC in 1975 (his friend Paul Allen being the other primary team member).

Hate to disagree, but I am the exact same age as Bill Gates and have been programming since about the same time he did. He was in the right place at the right time, but there were any number of hackers that could have accomplished the same thing, given the opportunity and motivation.

While Gates may well be a good programmer, his main skill seems to be recognizing trends in software and systems before anyone else does, and "stealing" the applicable technology and adapting it to the market.

Basic was in the public domain when Gates and Allen ported it to the Altair.
MS-DOS was based on Q-DOS. Gates aquired it for $50K. IBM paid MS$ to develop it into MS-DOS, then GAVE him the rights to it!
Windows GUI technology was "acquired" from XEROX and Apple.

I use the word "stealing" advisedly, since it was all legal, I only mean he fell into a lot of GREAT deals. Skillfull? Maybe, maybe not.

Has Gates been sucessful, sure; is he a superman....I doubt it.

Herr MAINEiac !!!!

Welcome to Com-Central !!

it's good to see ya !!

please pm me with your most recent details


fled

Very good points, MAINEiac! I don't see much disagreement and wouldn't have a problem with any, anyhoo. Nice to meet you, anyway!

Opportunity....there's been plenty, and sure you still have to be in the right place at the right time. I haven't met many succesfull people yet who acknowledge some degree of luck in their careers. Motivation....a requirement for success no matter how you cut it! Sure, there were plenty others who could have ported BASIC over for the Altair - and many had already tried and failed. Doubtless others would have also succeeded, as exactly happened.

Great point about IBM too. But hey, word had it that they approached Digital Research first and got nowhere. And then look at MS's involvement with OS/2 and it's clear IBM sure liked to learn the hard way!

I'm a comparitively young pup that started a handful of years after you and Mr. Gates, but I'll be the first to admit to a lack of initiative and so I can't get behind the seemingly jealous mind set out there, is all. However I wouldn't trade my young years of skipping out of school/work to go surfing & chase tail at the beach for anything, so if another country decides to give him knighthood, well hey, farrr out man!

And we're better virtual dogfighters than him anyway, I'd betcha!