A lot of news on Bill Gates's stepping back. Mary Jo Foley wonders if Microsoft will still be the same after Gates has left, while also compiling a list of his 10 biggest Microsoft flops. Elsewhere, Bill Gates's successor, Craig Mundie, talks to eWeek. In addition, Cnet features an interview with both Mundie as well as Ray Ozzie: "Bill Gates leaves some pretty big shoes to fill. Think of Ray Ozzie as the left shoe and Craig Mundie as the right one."
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Bill Gates is captain of a supertanker, running at full speed, with the current. It takes miles and miles to turn one of those. He hands the helm to someone else, not today, but in two years.
It'll be 2010 before any visible changes show up in Microsoft technology, at the earliest.
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2005-09-13
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There are two occurances of "Gates's" in Thom's paragraph. The first is awkward, but since it's a contraction for "Gates is", it's correct. The second is a possessive, but the correction for that should be "Gates'" not "Gates" -- the apostrophe is needed to indicate possession.
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I suppose I should have been slightly more thorough; I only bothered to read the title and the actual article so I didn't bother checking the actual blurb. However, we digress from the main topic.
When I learned of the changes happening, I was worried that Ballmer would gain more influence and position. However, I am relieved to see that is not the case. I hope that the changes will better Microsoft and the community.
Member since:2005-10-06
"The first is awkward, but since it's a contraction for "Gates is", it's correct. The second is a possessive, but the correction for that should be "Gates'"..."
Actually they're both possessive, stepping back is a gerund (the -ing form of a verb used as a noun). They are also both correct. Lynn Truss's punctuation book, Eats, Shoots and Leaves, citing Fowler's Modern English Usage, tells us an 's is required after modern names ending in S. The only an apostrophe after an S rule is used for the plurals of nouns, not for modern names, at least not as a matter of principal.
This whole area, the possessive apostrophe with modern names ending in S is indicated to be subject to stylistic choices more than absolute rules, so "Bill Gates' company Microsoft" and "Bill Gates's company Microsoft" are both acceptable.
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Eats, Shoots and Leaves, citing Fowler's Modern English Usage, tells us an 's is required after modern names ending in S. The only an apostrophe after an S rule is used for the plurals of nouns, not for modern names, at least not as a matter of principal....
Yes, AFAIK both are correct usage (in UK English anyway) - with an exception for Jesus' which according to Lynn Fowler cannot be Jesus's. (I'm omitting quotes to avoid confusion here.)
BTW it's "principle", not "principal" in this context!
Gosh, I'm picky today 
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Holy shit. Am I the only one to notice the irony of this idiot?
Mary Jo Foley, one of the best known investigative journalists covering the Redmond software juggernaut, is editor of Ziff Davis' Microsoft Watch newsletter and web site. Foley has covered the tech industry for 19 years for a variety of publications, including ZDNet News, eWeek and Baseline. She has kept close tabs on Microsoft strategy, products and technologies for the past 10 years. In the late 1990s, she penned the award-winning "At The Evil Empire" column for ZDNet.
segedunum, a nobody.
Edited 2006-06-17 03:07
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Holy shit. Am I the only one to notice the irony of this idiot?
Blah, blah, blah.....She has kept close tabs on Microsoft strategy, products and technologies for the past 10 years. In the late 1990s, she penned the award-winning "At The Evil Empire" column for ZDNet.
Quoting back some meaningless, supposed, experience isn't going to make you a 'somebody'. All this means what, exactly? She's a nobody journalist who's got into tech and IT and displays a stunning lack of knowledge when compared with us out there who actually use the software that Microsoft produces, are on the receiving end of it and who've dealt with Microsoft and how they operate rather than write articles about it. Now that's a proper definition of irony :-).
Varg Vikernes: Quotes back stuff that isn't his own and is unable to formulate his own replies.
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2006-02-08
* 11 billion or so shares issued over the years
* Stock price in for past five year decline
* Revenue growth declining
* OpenDocument/open format movement spreading
* Plummeting PC hardware prices
* Feature saturation for office software
* Linux
* Open source/commodity software putting downward pressure on Microsoft software/services prices
* Internal staff dissatisfaction/desertion
* Attempts to create new revenue streams like the Xbox failing
* Years of poor engineering choices coming back to haunt them and making it more and more difficult to modernize their operating system
Whoever comes in to replace Gates and Balmer have their work cut out for them.
Member since:2005-07-07
My prediction is that they'll use the XBox(whatever) to prototype an OS that doesn't suck, then give it some backwards compatibility server features, and that'll be what follows Vista. IOW, load-shed the cruft, the way FOSS does on a far more steady basis.
But shall it have mattered? Likely, no. Continuing maturity of GNU/Linux distros will eat Redmond's lunch.
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Lets get some perspective here. Microsoft is not Bill Gates, nor is Bill Gates Microsoft. Microsoft is an enormous organisation that has a great deal of momentum behind it. Even if Bill was hit by a bus tomorrow, Microsoft would go on.
Remember, there is a great deal going on at Microsoft more than what Bill or any other single individual can control. There's too much technology within the organisation for Bill to be the sole captain of the ship.
Also, he's not leaving at all, he's just changing his focus to lesser time consuming roles. Microsoft has some of the brightest minds and exciting pipelines.
In my view, this move has been known for a great deal of time even if, initially, only at a high level for a few years and the organisation has been positioning itself ever since.
Lets face facts, one day Bill wont be here anymore and Microsoft will continue to live and breath.
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ok let me get this straight ...
Gates and *his people* are the technodweebs in MS and Balmer and his croud are the MBA type ... I though MS was bad now but I guess I just have to wait and see how much worst it can get ... IMO Balmer is the worst thing to ever happen to MS. Oh and while interoperability is great the whole MS "we are better than anything *nix can offer" FUD just makes me wonder how long the new vibe would last. And MS used to be great a very long time ago ...
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Ozymandias
by Percy Bysshe Shelley
I met a traveler from an antique land
Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read,
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed,
And on the pedestal these words appear:
"My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings:
Look upon my works, ye Mighty, and despair!"
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.
