Bill Gates - for over 30 years now he and his company shaped the technology world, for better or worse, that's up to you to decide. On June 27th, 2008, Gates will step down to spend more time on his Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, while still taking on an advisory role within the biggest software company of the world. PC World listed ten of the most memorable Bill Gates moments.Personally, I don't really know how to feel about Bill Gates. On the one hand, I do believe he played a very important role in getting a computer in every home, and without Microsoft, it might have all been either more expensive, or Apple. Of course, you can't say that for sure, but I wouldn't want to take the bet. In addition, Gates has spent a lot of money on helping those in need, and while some cynics will say it's all about spreading Microsoft software, fact remains his foundation is helping those that need it, and that's a good thing. It would be great if more rich folk started doing that instead of worrying about what clothes they're wearing.
On the other hand, his company has caused a lot of innovative products to never gain a serious foothold - most notably, for me, the BeOS. While Be, Inc. played a very important role in killing their own products by being utterly incompetent at the management level, Microsoft (and Apple) gave the final nudge by effectively blocking them from the Mac and PC markets.
In interviews, Bill Gates can be quite the charming fellow, with a decent sense of humour, and no lack of self-deprecation, but he can also fall back into endless speeches on how great everything Microsoft makes is, which can be quite frustrating. I'm staying on the fence on this one.
PC World's list has some interesting gems in it, most notably the massive launch and marketing blitz concerning Windows 95. I've never seen so many squealing nerds - I couldn't sleep for days. The best item in the list, however, concerns his marriage to Melinda.
And frustrating paparazzi should be a civil duty.
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Apple's and Samsung's CEOs are meeting tomorrow for patent lawsuit settlement talks, and cross-licensing appears to still be an option. Me, I'm hoping the talks fail utterly. Let this mess play out in the fullest. Let the world see the ridiculousness that is the patent system. Let's see what happens when iPhones and Galaxy devices get banned from the US and US senators suddenly don't get their hands on the latest shiny toy. Let's see how that impacts this mess.
EDE is a desktop environment for UNIX-like operating systems. Main features of EDE are speed and responsiveness, low resource usage and familiar look and feel. Simply put, a desktop should not get in your way. This is the final 2.0 release, a major rework. Summarizing previous alpha and beta releases, 2.0 is now fully FLTK powered (eFLTK is deprecated) and freedesktop.org friendly. Specificaly, this release adds a new notification daemon, replaces the old edewm with the pekwm window manager, fixes a lot of issues and memory leaks, and more. Grab the release and try it. You can also try ede netinstall, a single command that will download and compile EDE for you.
"Google said on Saturday that Chinese authorities have approved its $12.5 billion purchase of Motorola Mobility Holdings, the last regulatory hurdle to a deal that would allow the world's No. 1 Internet search engine to develop its own line of smart phones." The main requirement from the Chinese government? Google needs to keep Android open and free for at least five years. I'm guessing that's the time Baidu needs to properly fork Android.
"Just days after the Mandriva community started its own plans for the next release of the French Linux distribution, its commercial sponsor has formally announced that the community will take the lead on all Mandriva Linux development moving forward. In a blog post on the Mandriva SA site, CEO Jean-Manuel Croset ceded control of the Mandriva Linux distribution back to the community at large." Take 'r 'round the shed and put a bullet 'tween 'r eyes already.
"To me, a personal computer should be small, reliable, convenient to use and inexpensive." You'll want to read this: Steve Wozniak's original description of the Apple ][, published in May 1977 in Byte Magazine.
A long - very long - blog post justifying all the ideas and choices behind Windows 8. We've all been here before, but it's nice to have it all summed up once again for easy reference in case we hit another yes/no debate on Windows 8 and keyboard and mouse. Anywho, the most interesting bit is that Microsoft has updated the theme of the traditional desktop, flattening it to achieve a very nice look."All eyes were on Microsoft's rather important launch of Windows Phone in China earlier this year. Nokia followed up with the Lumia 800c, released on China Telecom. According to Michel van der Bel, COO of Greater China Region at Microsoft, the company has achieved 7% marketshare in the country, overtaking the iPhone (sitting at just 6%)." I'm raising an eyebrow over these figures due to their source, but assuming they're true, we get a good glimpse of how well Windows Phone 7 would handle itself in a market where the competition had less of a head start.
"As April draws to a close we are pleased to share more code for Open webOS. This month's scheduled release includes support for Node.js as well as updates to Enyo and Ares. In addition, we are pleased to announce early delivery of the System Manager Bus (which was originally scheduled for July) and a release of three policy components based on our Platform Portability Layer. We're happy to be ahead of schedule in getting this component of the Open webOS platform into your hands." Can't wait for the day I can run an up-to-date WebOS version on my SII.So, the new HTC phones are facing delays in the US, and they now ship with a slightly modified US-specific Android build which removes data tapping and sports an altered app associations screen to avoid Apple's patents. This is step one. Step two is companies avoiding the litigious and anti-consumer messes that are the US and German markets altogether. Clearly, IP laws are working to the benefit of the consumer and the market as a whole. Great work guys.
