Gates Steps Down As CEO, Ballmer In

migooch was the first of many people to write with news that Bill Gates has stepped down as CEO of Microsoft. Steve Balmer, who replaced him as President, will be CEO. Gates will become "Chief Software Architect", and will remain as Chairman. Update: 01/13 10:27 by E : The official Microsoft press release is here.Alright - Salon's Top 10 reasons Bill Gates stepped down is pretty funny as well. What do you think are the Top 10?

Comments

So.......

[phee]

.....who's springing for the champagne?
"All truth passes through three stages: first, it is ridiculed; next it is violently attacked; finally, it is held to be self-evident."

Re:So.......

[madprof]

Don't be silly. If you're one of those anti-M$ peopel who hates them no matter what they do then you'd be having good reason to be fearful. Ballmer appears a lot more influential as a figurehead. His talks are much mroe animated that Gates' and he can get a crowd worked up. For employees this is important.

Re:So.......

[Uller-RM]

Not me. It doesn't change anything - Gates just puts a memo on Ballmer's desk to sign for legal matters, before he does it anyways. Gates is still for all intents and purposes in charge of the company, since you know Ballmer won't contradict him. (Unless it'll prevent a breakup.)

More likely, this lets Gates be not quite as uberscrewed by the impending breakup (is anyone else moaning?), just partly screwed.

Re:So.......

[Sloppy]

Save the champagne for when these people are in the obituaries; don't waste it on stories about them simply shuffling jobs.

---

Re:So.......

[Lovepump]

Not a particularly pleasant attitude you have there....

Not a big shock

[Sneakums]

Gates often stated that it was his not his intention to run Microsoft forever. Ballmer is easily mean enough and nasty enough to bring Microsoft into the twenty-first century.

Re:Not a big shock

[Saurentine]

Gates often stated that it was his not his intention to run Microsoft forever. Ballmer is easily mean enough and nasty enough to bring Microsoft into the twenty-first century.

I don't mean this as a flame, but over the years, Bill has mellowed from someone who can get things done into "Tweedledee".

Now he's being replaced by Tweedle-You-WILL-get-that-goddamned-module-up-and- running-or-you're-fired-and-I- don't-give-a-shit-if-you-have-to-stay-up-all-f**ki ng-night-to-do-it!-dum.

It's obvious that for the past several years, Ballmer has been the asshole behind the stink that is Microsoft, anyway.

(And by that, I mean he's been the guy to make sure company goals are being pursued as vigorously as possible. Now if we could only convince them that *stability* and *security* are valid company goals along with a unified, friendly, consistent user interface.)

And BTW, I think that almost every successful BIG company has one of these...

Re:Not a big shock

[jeremy f]

I agree with you completly, and think that out of all the exec's at Microsoft, the one most likely to have a Linux or a *BSD box is indeed Gates. Balmer is, and always has been more of the PHB type with a mile-wide mean streak, hell all Gates was was an opportunistic nerd who saw technologies, took the idea, modified, slightly improved or slightly degraded them, and resold them, making trillions upon trillions in the process.

Balmer on the other hand is like the proverbial CEO from hell -- doesn't give a damn about the competition, and will do anything to ensure his dominance.

Re:Not a big shock

[ringrang]

Yes Bill Gates stated that he was not going to be CEO forever in a Seattle Public Televsion show (Buffet and Gates). In fact the impression I received from the show was that he was going soon. This was about a year ago. They are rebroadcasting "Buffett & Gates On Success" Friday, Jan. 15, 1999 at 10 pm on PBS stations nationwide. Check out http://www.intris.org/productions/bg/index.htm This show was first broadcast in May 1998.

M$ Press Release

[The Dev]

Here's the press release from M$ itself:

Click Here

Re:M$ Press Release

[LocalYokel]

Yoo kare perhapps knot 4 muy gramer ur speling, butt lyten up, justa bitt u shood. I no see nuthing rong wif yoosink "things" tha werd, nata gramer fallt. Shood i spel "rumours" and "favourite" fore yoo, ur muy werd ken yoo taik? People make fun of Hemos and his struggle with the English language every now and again - it's a staple of /. comments, just like "been there, done that" and "bitchin' Beowulf..." Your latter statement is fair, but you don't quite catch the point. I don't have any genuine complaints with regional variations in English (although as a U.S. citizen, I do find those silent u's a litte verbose and Frenchlike), as long as they're kept consistent. The last thing we need is for everyone to have a license/licence to spel werds eny way they wont... - moderate as needed -

--

Slashdot: Hire an editor who can spell.

[lorelei]

Guys, It's Ballmer, with two 'l's.

Re:Slashdot: Hire an editor who can spell.

[AndrewHowe]

Uhh, why?

Re:So?

[CaseStudy]

Perhaps Slashdot should change the Microsoft icon to Ballmer of Borg...

Link to the zdnet story

[IRNI]

The link on the post looks screwed. here it is.
http:// www.zdnet.com/zdnn/stories/news/0,4586,2422036,00. html?chkpt=zdnntop

hmmm

[Barbarian]

Well I'd think that after so many years at the helm, BillG would get sick of it. If I had been him, I would have taken the money & run a long time ago.

Okay, so he's still responsible for overseeing Software Development...so I guess this means pretty much business as usual anyways--he just doesn't want to be hassled with all the paperwork, lawyers, etc. that a CEO has to see.

Re:So?

[eel]

It changes lots. How many companys can you be CEO of, how bout president, software archatect? If they are going to be split into baby bills you can damned well be sure that Gates is going to figure out a way that he can run them all. One title per company. Mayby he will become a "consultant" for all of them. Or just smoke filled rooms and the like. But you can bet your bottom $$ that this is in responce to the press lately about the break up.

Does this make him harder to touch?

[v3lut]

Is he trying to put himself into a less-vulnerable position?

Re:Does this make him harder to touch?

[modulus]

Say I'm a poker player. And I've got about a trillion dollars in winnings. Now the government is trying to break up my game. I'm going to try to leave the table ASAP.

I think he's trying to make himself impossible to touch, but I think he'll do it in stages. First he drops his CEOship. A year from now he decides MS doesn't need him anymore and retires to Guatemala or something.

And then, BAM! DoJ slams down on MS. But Billy Boy left the business.

I don't think Bill even cares about the future of MS. I'll bet he's selling off shares as we speak, quietly.

Re:Does this make him harder to touch?

[Passenger Pigeon]

>I'll bet he's selling off shares as we speak, quietly.

Bill Gates does not have the ability to sell off Microsoft stock quietly. As soon as one share hits the market, the barbarians will be at the...well, anyway, by the time the specialists allow ANYBODY to sell Microsoft stock, it'll be worth about as much as pencil shavings. The Stock Market Knows.

Be interesting to see the Richest List in ten years, no?
--llb

Re:Does this make him harder to touch?

[Eccles]

I don't think Bill even cares about the future of MS. I'll bet he's selling off shares as we speak, quietly.

It can't be done. As a company exec, his Microsoft stock transactions are reported to and by the SEC. Gate's last major sales were 7/23/99-7/26/99, when he sold approximately 20 million of his ~1 billion shares.

Getting ready for inevitable break up?

[Greyfox]

What are they up to? Maybe Gates is positioning himself so that if the DOJ breaks up MS, he can jump ship to the most profitable baby-MS, leaving Ballmer holding the bag with a less viable one?

Truly, we live in interesting times.

Re:Getting ready for inevitable break up?

[pyrogerg]

Not so he can jump ship. He can now remain much more influencial over the Baby Bills by hand picking the CEOs of each division. The man has no navel, but he is a brilliant businessman. Also, I think the implications of his new title, Chief Software Architect, may be that he will be able to keep everything more tightly intertwined than the DOJ breakup would otherwise have allowed for.

Or maybe not. My understanding of all that may no be so great.

Re:Getting ready for inevitable break up?

[__aapbgd5977]

What are they up to? Maybe Gates is positioning himself so that if the DOJ breaks up MS, he can jump ship to the most profitable baby-MS, leaving Ballmer holding the bag with a less viable one?

That really has to be the underlying theme. This press conference had almost no lead time, and the annoucement was so suspicious that the AP Wire put it up on the top of the important annoucements. The implication from the resignation is that the negotiations with DOJ over the breakup are not going well.

Of course Gates and Ballmer will trumpet that they have done nothing wrong, and that the breakup would be horribly bad. But this is kinda like bankruptcy planning - if you see doom on the horizon, there is nothing illegal about getting your money put away (in certain ways - other ways are called 'fraud' {g}). I think Bill is just aiming to be sitting in the right chair when the music stops.

Of course, he has been Microsoft CEO for nearly 25 years, and he has a huge image problem. Maybe the conspiracy theory *is* garbage, and he just wants to do something else. That wouldn't be the first time that happened in the software industry.

==
"This is the nineties. You don't just go around punching people. You have to say something cool first."

Re:Getting ready for inevitable break up?

[Anonymous Coward]

Of course, he has been Microsoft CEO for nearly 25 years, and he has a huge image problem.

He really doesn't you know. Most people love the guy - he has huge favorable ratings among the general population.

The fact that you and all your friends dislike him doesn't translate to the larger populace seeing him negatively.

Re:Getting ready for inevitable break up?

[FWMiller]

So cynical are you. And your cynicism fits well with the prevailing winds on this site. I wonder if it occured to anyone that he may actually want to do exactly what he says he wants to do. When you've got that much money already, I doubt that increasing your nestegg is a major driver. Its more about what gets you out of bed in the morning. For Gates, it appears that that has always been building software, for better or worse...

Re:Getting ready for inevitable break up?

[belgin]

Maybe Gates is positioning himself so that if the DOJ breaks up MS, he can jump ship to the most profitable baby-MS, leaving Ballmer holding the bag with a less viable one?

While that is a possibility, I don't think it matters whether Bill is Chairman and CEO, or just Chairman. He'd still get first choice. There is no way that any serious individual thinks he will come out of the DOJ trial crippled in any truly signifigant way. Bill is a very clever fellow and he would end up in the best remaining position no matter what. He could always BUY a smaller compay and start over, if he wanted.

The tongue in cheek answer is that someone gave him a perfectly functioning version of Windows 2000 that will run any software it is supposed to. He has only weeks to break it and make sure that 1) no competing products work and 2) it looks like it is their fault.

Finally we have something more realistic: Gates is a celebrity. He knows that he is one and has a lot of stuff that he has to do as a CEO. He either wants to give the impression, or actually does want to get back into the trenches to some degree and work with the developers. If you acutally talk to some Microsoft developers, many of them will tell you about how he goes through their offices every so often and talks to them, sometimes motivating more than anything else they can think of and sometimes just chewing them out. (I interviewed with MS folks at Redmond before, just for fun.) Bill has to be under an incredible amount of stress from the trial, too. He may want to give up the reins a bit, but doesn't trust anyone else absolutely, so he remains chairman. As Chief Developer, he can pick any project as his pet and work with it, or step back and look at all of them. He has pretty much said: this CEO thing is too defined for me, so I am making up a title, retaining the real power of veto, and doing what I want.

B. Elgin

Re:Getting ready for inevitable break up?

[jbrw]

I don't think the profitability of any potential micro-MS would be Gate's deciding factor in which company he would want to be involved in.

Immediately after the break-up, chances are he's going to own a big chunk of all 3 divisions anyway, so his money is more or less safe. I also imagine, he will have some degree of influence over the individual companies, due to his holdings in the company (ofcourse, I imagine the DOJ could force him to put his eggs in one basket or put other similar constraints on his involvement).

(Also, I read somewhere that after the break up of Standard Oil and AT&T the respective market caps of the offshoot companies was greater than that of the whole, or somesuch. Basically, they were saying it's good to invest in a company just before a forced break up. Anyone got references to this? Or am I talking crap?).

I imagine that the market would react favourably to whichever (if any!) of the companies Gates aligned himself with. Gates being Gates and all.

But from the announcement, it sounds like he's going in to the applications division anyway.

It'll be interesting to see how the market reacts over the next few days. MSFT has been on a bit of a roller coaster for the past week. It's worth pointing out that they're up 2% or so as of writing this, which is good considering they've been falling for a week or so. Have a look at bigcharts.com or your favourite financial news site.

...j

Re:Getting ready for inevitable break up?

[Anonymous Coward]

Big money is not in development, it is in selling the product. So Gates is jumping to the wrong ship, it seems. I think it is one of the last attempts to turn the inevitable break up of the evil empire away from a break up in product groups (OS, office apps, server). That would really hurt the monopoly. "We learn most from our mistakes, so I try to make as much as possible".

Re:Getting ready for inevitable break up?

[jblackman]

Of course, he has been Microsoft CEO for nearly 25 years, and he has a huge image problem.

From what I understand, Bill Gates's purported image problem does not extend to the general public. I recall seeing a recent (post-Findings of Fact) poll that said that something like 66% of Americans see him as the embodiment of the American Dream. Of course polls are fallible, but just beacause he isn't terribly popular among the slashdot crowd doesn't mean that nobody likes him.

Re:Getting ready for inevitable break up?

[Jburkholder]

Seesh, it's sad but true. Outside of the tech-geek-type friends I have, almost everyone else just doesn't get why we shun Microsoft and despise Gates and all he stands for.

Funny how people mesh together things like Microsoft, AOL and the internet - kind of viewing them as a contiguous whole, and Bill is the most recognizable figure in all that. "Steve Case, didn't he play for the Red's in the '70's?"

On another note, like how MS mouthpiece jumps on the TW/AOL merger as further proof that Microsoft is not a monopoly? What?!

Bah

Re:Getting ready for inevitable break up?

[binarybits]

Like how MS mouthpiece jumps on the TW/AOL merger as further proof that Microsoft is not a monopoly? What?!

Well, the theory is that Microsoft is going to be the 600-pound gorrilla that takes over the software industry. That has always been a stretch, but it's now even more ridiculous with AOL suddenly doubling in size and getting revenue streams outside the computer industry. There's no way they are going to back down if MS tries to strong-arm them.

Re:Getting ready for inevitable break up?

[binarybits]

If that is the case why doesn't he do it himself?

Re:Getting ready for inevitable break up?

[jafac]

Heh. If I had that much money, I'd permanently rent out the top floor of Mandalay Bay in Las Vegas, and throw a permanent party, with the finest hookers permanently on staff. Not much would get me out of bed in the morning there. . .

What would YOU do with the rest of your life with $60-plus Billion?

I wish I had a nickel for every time someone said "Information wants to be free".

Re:Getting ready for inevitable break up?

[Manaz]

Gates has said before that he believes that the Internet is Microsoft's future.

Now, with the possibility that M$ will be broken up into 3 parts - OS, Software and Internet, Gates has positioned himself at the head of the section he believes is the way forward anyway.

The other two sections - OS (which is facing increasing competition from Linux, MacOS, BeOS, etc) and software (now facing renewed competition from Sun with StarOffice, amongst others) are both, it would seem, on downward spirals, meanwhile IE usage (which I know isn't the entirety of M$'s Internet business, but is a good indication) is skyrocketting - the website I run has approximately 60% of users using IE5, another 20% using IE4. IIS has crushed Netscape's web server platform, and, if you believe what M$ say, is a serious contender for the www server crown. ASP is widespread, backending into SQL6.5 and SQL7 databases.

Gates has simply positioned himself at the top of the fastest growing section of M$ for the breakup - he's kept M$ alive for 25 years by making "smart" decisions - M$ never rose to the heady heights they've reached because they had the best software - but because Gates made the right decisions for the company's longetivity, and it appears he's doing it again.

You have to remember - if M$ survives, Gates survives. People say he's the richest man in the world, but a LOT of his wealth is tied up in M$ - and if M$ fails, he'll lose a LOT of money.

Re:Getting ready for inevitable break up?

[bhurt]

There is another aspect to this people should consider as a possible motive: it's effect on Windows 2000.

An earlier /. article linked to a study claiming that some large plurality (60+%) of large IS departments were not planning on switching to W2K until 2001 or later, while an excessively large minority (10+%) were not planning to switch at all. Wether these numbers are accurate or not it has to be plain that customer demand for W2K will be soft- especially compared to the roll-out of Windows 95. By putting The Man himself on the project, they may be hoping for a "Steve Jobs effect" for W2K. Especially for the faithfull who still look upon Bill Gates as a technical visionary.

In addition, IIRC the W2K project has already driven two managers into early retirement, and Brad Silverberg (of W95 fame) didn't want to touch it with a 10' cattle prod. One has to wonder if W2K hasn't acquired the stench of being a career killer for those put in charge of it within the halls of Microsoft. Once again, putting The Man in charge could be a (internal) PR boost for W2K.

Re:Getting ready for inevitable break up?

[Pont]

An angry man walks up to Bill Gates and says, "Behind all that money, you're still just a NERD!".

Gates looks at him and says, "You know, if I had a million dollars for every time someone called me a nerd... Oh... nevermind. I do."



If I were Bill Gates, instead of stepping down as CEO of MS, I'd leave completely, buy Apple or Be, and try and crush MicroSoft. You know, just for the hell of it. Of course, BillG selling all his stock at once would seriously hurt MS as it is.

Re:Getting ready for inevitable break up?

[Jburkholder]

>the 600-pound gorrilla that takes over the software industry

Assume you meant 'takes over the internet media industry.'

Sure enough, that's the spin they're trying to put on it. That's not the focus of the anti-trust case though, is it? They'd like you to think that but it is more about their past illegal business practice of leveraging their monopoly position in desktop OS to the detriment of conusmers, competitors and others that is at issue.

This has been said over and over, a monopoly in itself is not illegal, it's the things you do *as* a monopoly that break laws. (INAL)

Re:Getting ready for inevitable break up?

[Alorelith]

I think Bill Gates has been watching the movie Casino a little too much if that is the case...

Re:Getting ready for inevitable break up?

[Cygnus v1]

I think the appointment of Ballmer as CEO was done to attempt to promote investor confidence in Ballmer. If MS is broken up, their shareholders would receive equal amounts in the new "Baby Bills". Since it is likely that Ballmer would be CEO of one of the new companies, this appointment would prevent at least some of the shareholders from cashing out of Ballmer's company and putting money in whichever one Gates ended up running.

Re:Getting ready for inevitable break up?

[Trepalium]

IIS has crushed Netscape's web server platform, and, if you believe what M$ say, is a serious contender for the www server crown.

Not so! Apache is far more popular than IIS is, capturing a good 55% of the httpd server market, leaving IIS at a mere 22% (Netscape is stuck at about 5%). ASP is not nearly as widespread as Microsoft would like you to believe. http://www.netcraft.net has all the stats. Apache has actually had the lead since around 1996, and although usage stats have fluxuated, Apache hasn't lost much ground in the past few months.

Re:Getting ready for inevitable break up?

[Jaime Herazo B.]

You should have seen that the other day. I had no computer in sight (my sister doing some work in there; i really need another computer), and in nickelodeon or discovery kids (so what, i was bored) there was a song dedicated to him!! The "computer man". He vas portraited as a computer head with a video of his face talking inside, with long robotic arms typing at a keyboard and all that. Really ugly.

"Now you can see that evil will triumph, because good is dumb!"

Re:Getting ready for inevitable break up?

[Manaz]

Hence me saying "if you believe what M$ say"

:)

Re:Getting ready for inevitable break up?

[IntlHarvester]

Agreed -- Gates has famously said that they are "betting the company" on Windows 2000, and to some extent they are right ... If W2000 succeeds as they'd like, Microsoft will become as important as IBM or Sun in enterprise computing; if it fails, Microsoft stays in business but becomes just another Novell hanging onto 'departmental' boxes. Having Gates on the sales team can make a huge difference, especially considering that the upgrade costs are stratopheric enough to require executive level approval in most shops.

(On a side note, if anyone should be fired over Win2000, it should be the people who speced out the product long before engineering had begun. Features like ActiveDirectory have been promised RSN for about 5 years. Microsoft's FUD machine got way way out in front of it's engineering ability. The fact that they've delivered a product that appears to meet marketing's fantasy land specifications is pretty amazing. I know quite a few of you slashdotters have opioned that they wouldn't be able to do it. Now the question is, can they sell it?)
--

Re:Getting ready for inevitable break up?

[BinxBolling]

If that is the case why doesn't he do it himself?

Because he's not after money. Look, one thousandth of his net worth would be enough to keep him and his entire family in the lap of luxury for the rest of his life. What he has been after is power, the knowledge that his decisions can have sweeping effects on millions of people.

Here's my take: Bill sees the writing on the wall. He knows MS is going to be split up, and running one of the fragments of MS will be a big step down for him compared to what he's doing now. So he's giving up on that, and instead going back to his first love, one that doesn't require the same sort of power that he has now.

Re:Getting ready for inevitable break up?

[Anonymous Coward]

He either wants to give the impression, or actually does want to get back into the trenches to some degree and work with the developers. If you acutally talk to some Microsoft developers, many of them will tell you about how he goes through their offices every so often and talks to them, sometimes motivating more than anything else they can think of and sometimes just chewing them out

I was a Microsoft intern this past summer, and, in talking to a coworker who had been at MS near seven years (a very long time), said he had only seen/met Bill once. This coworker, at the time, was working in the Windows 95 group, and they were in a meeting. Bill unexpectedly walks in, the folks in the meeting quickly fall silent.

Bill asks, "How long does it take to boot into 95?"
The project manager quotes a time (don't remember exactly, a minute, he said, maybe)
BillG responds, "Fucking speed it up!" and then leaves.

Bill may be a quiet nerd, but if you talk to him, he swears like a saylor. The interns get a chance to go BBQ at his house, and get a chance to talk, as a group, to Bill. I tell you, every other word out of his mouth was a curse. A lot of fun to talk to the guy...

Re:Getting ready for inevitable break up?

[Raindeer]

That really has to be the underlying theme. This press conference had almost no lead time, and the annoucement was so suspicious that the AP Wire put it up on the top of the important annoucements. The implication from the resignation is that the negotiations with DOJ over the breakup are not going well.

Its been done before. The Netherlands changed from an absolute rule monarchy into a constitutional monarchy in one night after King Willem received a letter from his daughter on the riots in Berlin against the monarchy there.

Re:Getting ready for inevitable break up?

[Helge Hafting]

I recall seeing a recent (post-Findings of Fact) poll that said that something like 66% of Americans see him as the embodiment of the American Dream.

That doesn't necessarily mean he's popular. Many people envy the rich and successful. And even without envy there is no reason to like a guy at all just because you want to be like him but can't.

Re:Getting ready for inevitable break up?

[n-baxley]

I think Gates values Balmer too much to leave him holding the bag anywhere. Gates may still be looking out for himself though, if there is a breakup, Bill can run the applications company and Balmer can run the OS company. Gates has stock in both, and they both have good leadership.

Nate

Re:Getting ready for inevitable break up?

[Twon]

Awesome idea! Not that I'm in favor of crushing Microsoft utterly (I develop Windows software part-time), but it would be a great deal of fun to watch.

Of course, not only would it be a real asshole-move for Bill, but it would roughly equate to killing your own child.

Any bets on whether or not he would have the skill and clout to do it, if he chose to?

Re:Getting ready for inevitable break up?

[beagle]

66% of Americans see him [Bill Gates] as the embodiment of the American Dream.

Well, sure. He's the best businessman in history. Unfortunately, it seems he lost his morality along the way to becoming the richest man in the world. I applaud him for being such an incredible businessman, but at the same time I think he should be punished for his (apparently) illegal, immoral actions. See, I'm all for capitalism, as long as the law is observed. This man...er...his company...it seems, didn't observe the law.

Re:Getting ready for inevitable break up?

[wolfywolfy]

He could always BUY a smaller company and start over, if he wanted.

He could always BUY a small African nation and start over, if he wanted, too. Actually he could probably get New Zealand in the bargain .. :)

Gates Steps Down As CEO, Balmer In

[Witch Doctor]

Actually, the article states that Ballmer will keep the title President, in addition to stepping into the CEO's shoes.

Witch Doctor

This is my cubicle. There are many like it, but this one is mine.

Correction

[Frac]

Gates will remain as chairman, and Steve Balmer, who has earlier replaced Gates as president, will continue to be president and CEO.

Re:Correction

[ewe2]

Yes, he's technically been on the sidelines for years. Ballmer has made the real decisions, and Gates has been the "visionary".

Poor guy. i hope he's brushed up on his C++ and Java :)

Sneaky

[extagboy]

Did he step down to "Chief Software Architect" or whatever so he could stay in charge of windows after microsoft gets chopped up?

Re:Sneaky

[ikaros]

I think the reason Gates did this is the following: On some deep level, he's admitted to himself that the breakup of Microsoft is inevitable, and he's positioning himself to be in charge of the Baby Bill that gets applications.

Two reasons for this:

1. The applications playing field is naturally wider than the OS field
2. He knows perfectly well that if forced to compete head to head, Windows can only survive on momentum and market share and is clearly inferior to the alternatives.

Remember, one killer desktop app, and Linux leaps from being currently just a desktop curiosity (let's be honest, that's unfortunately all it is right now, market-wise -- server-side is separate and largely invisible to John Q. Public) to a significant minority or better. Visicalc is what made DOS (and Microsoft, by extension), and all Linux needs is a Visicalc of its own, now that MS is behaving itself for the duration of the trial.

If Gates were to stay with the OS company (or companies) left over after the breakup, he'd be limiting himself to, well, just the OS market. On the applications side, he gets to meddle with the markets for office productivity, games, educational software ... everything but the OS itself, basically.

Hmmm ... when the company's broken up, will IE go to the OS or the application company? Obviously, to hear MS tell the story, it's an 'integral part of the operating system' ... if it goes to the applications company, is there a possibility for further legal action on the basis of perjury? Eeenteresting ... :)

In any case, this is Microsoft -- and Bill -- positioning for the post-breakup world. MS has a long history of ignoring and circumventing paper limits; a breakup is the only way to prevent them from reverting to past behavior.

I for one don't understand why Gates is so resistant to the idea. It was the breakup of Standard Oil that made Rockefeller the first billionaire; in later years, Rockefeller was heard to say that the breakup was the best thing to ever happen to him. A breakup of Microsoft would make Gates wealthy beyond even his dreams.

ikaros, hopping off the soapbox so someone else can use it.

Nice photo

[Saige]

I hope MSNBC keeps that photo up for the story. It looks like Gates is yawning and Steve is on drugs or something... they both look pretty bad...

Hey, does anyone else think Steve looks anything like Drew's brother from The Drew Carey Show? I think it would be funny to see him in a dress, wig, and heels... :)
---

Re:Nice photo

[jbrw]

I'm suprised MSNBC (being partially owned by Microsoft and all) ran that photo - it's not particularly flattering to Ballmer, considering he has a bit of a reputation for being a, erm, loud mouthed bossy boots (or similar).

Here's one for the conspiracy theorists: I wonder if there's anything, post-potential breakup, to stop the Baby-Microsofts from licensing their code/products to external parties, and, if so, if there's something stopping Gates running off to setup another company repackaging/enhancing the existing Microsoft products. Lots of people would blindly follow Gates if he was to go his "seperate" way.

God knows he's got the money to fund a start-up for a year or two.

Ofcourse, he could just be stepping aside so he's got more time to play in his vault-o-cash, ala Scrooge Duck (or whatever Donald's uncle was called).

<g>

...j

Re:Nice photo

[Robert S Gormley]

he's got the money to fund a start-up for a year or two

I think he could afford to pay/run a 1,000 employee company out of his own pocket for the rest of his life without blinking.

Re:Nice photo

[rjreb]

just remember the past

Uhm...correction?

[Coretti]

Steve Balmer, who replaced him as President, will be CEO. Gates will become "Chief Software Architect", and will remain as President.

That should be "and will remain as Chairman", since it doesn't make much sense if he's stepping down from President to STAY as President.

Me, I fear this whole "Chief Software Architect" junk - I don't see what good can come of it.

Bald!

[Aggrazel]

And he's bald and EVIL looking! Perfect for a CEO of microsoft.

BALDIES UNITE! WE'LL HAVE THE WORLD!!!

Re:Bald!

[mdurham]

Coming soon: miniBallmer! ("You complete me.")

Re:Bald!

[TummyX]

Yeah, Torvalds isn't looking too great up top these days either.

Re:Bald!

[Alan]

"miniBallmer! Stop rewriting the Inter-net"

:)

Re:Bald!

[marmoset]

It's funny. My hairline's receding too. Go treat yourself to a Slushy or something.

Re:Bald!

[Alan]

Awwwhh... come on, moderate that one up, it was funny!

While we're correcting...

[GPFCharlie]

Gates position is "Chief Software Architect", not Cheif

Gates will remain as Chairman of the Board, not President

Ballmer is now President and CEO

Is this good or bad?

[Midnight Ryder]

I can't decide - is this a good or bad thing? I mean, Bill G. was never THAT great of a software designer in the first place. Why not just consider retirement instead? What's worse - Bill running the entire company, and other's doing the job of design, or, Balmer running the company, and Bill getting his grubbies on to designing the overall systems concepts?

Plus, didn't he used to say that he could never see anyone above the age of 50 at the helm of MS? I thought Balmer was older than that 'limit'.

Re:Is this good or bad?

[Anonynous Coward]

If Bill Gates retired outright, with no warning, Microsoft stock would sink like a rock, hurting his own fortune, most of which still exists as Microsoft stock. This is not because Microsoft is any less viable without him, but the day trading lemmings would all jump off the cliff. (Microsoft == Bill Gates) in the minds of many people for better or worse.

Re:Is this good or bad?

[Sloppy]

I mean, Bill G. was never THAT great of a software designer in the first place.

(I cant' believe I'm doing this...) Just a minute there. He was no god, but he actually pulled off some decent stuff in the 70s. I remember getting quite intimate with the inner workings of a Microsoft BASIC interpreter for the 6502 and being rather amazed that someone had written such a large project in assembly language. It may not sound very hard or complex to people nowdays, but try to imagine writing your own floating point routines on a processor that doesn't even know how to multiply integers, and only has one "general purpose" register.

It's not a godlike project (and I'm sure that many people reading this have done similar things), but it's quite nontrivial too, and simply impossible if you are clueless. I don't know how much of that code Gates wrote (none? all? some?) but MS was a pretty small company back then, so I wouldn't be surprised if he did much of the work.

(Not to mention the story about the Altair BASIC interpreter that ran correctly the very first time that it was loaded onto the hardware...)

Gates may have once been a decent programmer. It wasn't really until the 80s that he stopped relying on his production skills and started to concentrate on market manipulation instead. I don't even want to think about what must have happened to him, to make him turn to such limitless evil, and to so willfully betray and sacrifice even the pretense of ethical conduct.

Perhaps that's what makes him so infamous. When PHBs in suits attack our culture and try to stop the advance of technology, it is 'only' war. When a programmer does it, it is defection and treason.

---

Re:Is this good or bad?

[Rilke]

I realize this escapes all the MS-bashers here but Bill Gates is actually a *great* software designer at the conceptual level. If he manages to get MS focused on software again then Linux is in for a much harder battle.

By software designer, of course, I don't mean programmer, but rather the person who decides which projects to focus on and directs new development. And Gates has been incredible at that in the past.

The seamless integration of the Office Suite, Linking and embedding, the concept of COM everywhere, getting the entire product line Internet-ready in an amazingly short time, VBA across the product line, etc. Forget the silly flames: Gates has a very good knack of identifying the needs of the public and providing software for those needs.

This move has been rumored quite a bit over the last year as service packs kept getting recalled and NT2K kept getting pushed back. MS needs someone to get the development groups focused, and Gates is the perfect person for this. I'm not surprised he's tired of dealing with lawsuits all day long.

Re:Is this good or bad?

[nyet]

The seamless integration of the Office Suite, Linking and embedding, the concept of COM everywhere, getting the entire product line Internet-ready in an amazingly short time, VBA across the product line, etc. Forget the silly flames: Gates has a very good knack of identifying the needs of the public and providing software for those needs.

Wow I don't know where to start.

1) Office Suite integration
This is innovation? Sounds like an obvious step to me.

2) Linking and embedding.
I know several MS programmers who worked on the object embedding stuff. None of that concept came from anywhere but the project managers.

3) COM
OOP has been around a LONG time. Network + OOP was done at Xerox even way back when. Again, I know a few COM developers at MS, and believe me when I tell you, none of this came from B.G. either.

4) Internet Ready
This is where I start to suspect your post. MS was dragged tooth and nail into the Internet arena. For about 15 years TCP/IP was totally foreign to MS. Remember Trumpet Winsock?

MS insisted that the Internet was doomed because it was developed by "kids and academics" and tried to position the MSN as an Internet replacement (like AOL, Prodigy, and Compuserve, all of which have now given up on most of their proprietary stuff and are one big ISP)

5) VBA
I keep forgetting, a lot of people think this is a good thing. But I'll humor you. How is making a graphical scripting language revolutionary? Especially one based on a language as bletcherous as Basic?

Re:Is this good or bad?

[Rilke]

You're hooked on an argument I'm not making: the whole "innovation" thing. Read my post again.

Office integration should have been an obvious step, but the other office suites kept forgetting about consistency.

3) COM
Again, you're hooked on the "innovation" thing. No other desktop OS company has commited themselves to a component object model as much as MS has. Look at Apple's failures in this arena.

4) Internet ready
Sure, MS missed it initially. But it was breathtaking just how quickly they moved it into their entire product line.

5) VBA
I never said revolutionary. But there's two main points here: a) consistency: the same scripting language or variant across the product line. and b) VB/VBA created a whole industry of in-house products. Compare this to Apple, who killed virtually all similar products (including Basic and HyperCard), and left themselves without a decent RAD DB tool.

Anyway, I assumed I'd run afoul of the "say no good about MS" crowd. So be it.

Re:Is this good or bad?

[IntlHarvester]

My take:

1) Office Suite integration -- The only thing innovative here was the marketing. Buy a word proc and a spreadsheet and get a slideshow program for free and a desktop database at a reduced price. Plus the cost of MS Office was far below the combined costs of WordPerfect, Lotus 123, and DBase.

2) Linking and Embedding -- An early Mac program, Lotus Jazz had something like this. I think VisiOn did something similar under DOS. What was innovative was making it a universal operating system service -- see #3

3) COM -- Not a new idea, but since MS owns the OS, the desktop apps, the server apps, and the devtools, the integration buys users a lot. Almost no body runs any sort of Corba services on their desktops, but every Windows user uses COM.

4) Internet Ready -- Yawn. If IE didn't exist, they would ship Netscape just like anyone else. Microsoft's 'innovations' in this area, like "Channels" have been roundly rejected.

5) VBA -- The only really interesting thing about VBA is that you can rip the VB part out and use JavaScript or PerlScript. I think one would have quite a bit of trouble arguing that MS stuff is more "scriptable" than virtually anything else.
--

Re:Is this good or bad?

[xtinct]

i think you're missing something:

you attributed these technical milestones to gates superior "software designer"...

the previous poster was just debunking this claim by stating that gates had little to nothing to do with it...

*YAWN*

[Electric Eye]

So what? He's probably relieved to put Ballmer in the lion's den now.

le roi es morte

[xianzombie]

Is this billy's way of avoiding getting burned as bad as he would have as an acting CEO? Will his fallen reign will be fulfilled by one even more harsh? Forget Y2K, this is truly a sign of the apocolypse.

Gates is still in charge . . .

[palutke]

Until Bill sells his shares, he's still calling the shots. He may not be making day-to-day administrative decisions, but I'm sure all important policy decisions have to pass his approval before being implimented.

Re:Gates is still in charge . . .

[Uart]

He doesn't have a controlling interest... he has more "votes" than most shareholders, but I doubthe can just "Call the Shots"

Re:Gates is still in charge . . .

[Uart]

Possibly the ones who haven't cashed out yet

Fleshing out the old resume

[MattMann]

They switched so that Ballmer will get some of the experience he needs to run one of the post breakup baby-Bills.

A new era?

[DarkRyder]

Well, I'll be. Looks like the son-of-a-bit finally gave up. Anyone belive this is the end of Billie's reign of terror? Anyone? I didn't think so.

At least he had the decency to inaugurate a puppet CEO...

Chief Software Archetect...

[Silicon_Knight]

Well, now, hardly a better canidate for that post; after all, he did write that blue and white screensaver thingee that now runs on 90% of the PCs out there... 8-)

-=- SiKnight

Re:Chief Software Archetect...

[sporadic]

[Microsoft-speak] Mr. Bill Gates will be returning to his roots and becoming more involved with the product teams.

[Reality] Mr. Bill Gates will now be dumpster-diving in all the software companies in the Valley, looking at discarded printouts, hoping for stuff he can steal, just like the Good-Old-Days.

And just like the Good-Old-Days, personal hygiene related activities will be curtailed, and eventually phased out.

sporadic

Re:Chief Software Archetect...

[nonstop]

He has what... 80 billion dollars? He can afford to have people take baths for him.

So! Is that what they mean by filthy, stinking rich?

Monkey see, monkey do

[rakjr]

Let's see. First Red Hat does the CEO shuffle (twice), now Microsoft is doing it.

Personally, I agree with the concept when the person is worth their salt as a creative visionary. Get a business person to manage the company. Get a programmer with a vision back in the ring.

Re:Monkey see, monkey do

[b100m]

hey - a fellow u of l 'er!
____________________________________________ _____
$which weed

DOJ?

[battery841]

I am wondering if this is part of a deal with the DOJ. Anyone have any idea if the DOJ can force him to step down?

Not a suprise

[Kagato]

This really shouldn't be all that suprising. Over the past couple years bill has been taking less and less control of MS and letting steve to the work.

I think the real thing to watch for is if Steve B. tries to pull a "Steve Jobs"(tm) on Gates.

In the end not a whole lot will change. The ego and aditude is about the same. Steve is better spoken and doesn't have that child molester look that Gates has.

Re:Not a suprise

[subliminal_boy]

But looking at the photo, Ballmer looks like he eats child molesters for breakfast. Creepy lookin'.

Re:Not a suprise

[jafac]

No, Ballmer does not have that child molester look. He has that Mafia enforcer look.

I wish I had a nickel for every time someone said "Information wants to be free".

Chief Software Architect???

[Randym]

Has BillG actually written any code since that Altair Basic Emulator 25 years ago? That was a great hack *then*; what has he done recently? Will we find out that he's been secretly contributing Open Source code somewhere? ;-)

Re:Chief Software Architect???

[Djin]

But he only knows Visual Basic, anyway...

Re:Chief Software Architect???

[TacQuire]

From what I've read he was actively involved in reviewing code at least through the late 80s

Re:Chief Software Architect???

[BobNET]

Has BillG actually written any code since that Altair Basic Emulator 25 years ago?

As far as I can remember, the last program Bill ever wrote (or at least part of it) was the BASIC interpreter for the TRS-80 Model 100 portable computer. He managed to fit BASIC in its original 32k ROM along with a scheduler/address book, text editor, and terminal program.

The Model 100 was a favourite of journalists due to its small size and built-in 300bps modem. I've always wanted one of them, mainly for the "neat" factor...

It was built by Kyocera, sold by NEC (as the PC-8200) in Japan, and by Olivetti (as the M-10) in Europe.

Most of my info was found here: http://www.tardis.ed.ac.uk/~alexios/MACHINE-ROOM/T andy,Radio,Shack_TRS-80_Model_100. html.

Chris "Bob" Odorjan

Re:Chief Software Architect???

[howardjp]

According to Gates which came out ~1994, the last Microsoft product he personally coded for was MS Word for DOS 2.0.

Steven of nine?

[Fats]

Wanted: Borg picture of Steve Balmer.

:)

Re:Steven of nine?

[pspeed]

Ack! Just don't put him in a skin-tight body suit. The internet doesn't need that level of perversion/grossness. :)

Re:Steven of nine?

[anotherone]

here you go:
http://www.geocities.com/Area51/Cavern/7799/steven ofnine.jpg

Make Seven

Re:Steven of nine?

[vees]

Here's a good file photo of them both together.

--

Re:Steven of nine?

[Alan]

Even with all the migetsex sites out there?

Re:Steven of nine?

[Mija Cat]

Still looks too human. Please try again.

I really wouldn't think so.

[prisonercx]

It seems to me that Gates hasn't had a very active role in the company for a while now, what with all the practice runs for his taped antitrust deposition he had to do...

Seriously, I really don't think much will change. Maybe they'll get a little less predatory, since the man who built Microsoft from the ground up is no longer in the pilot's seat (and hot seat, for that matter), but you can never tell. Gates will undoubtedly be a force to be reckoned with, so things probably won't stray from the Microsoft party line.

Microsoft

[drwiii]

This should come as no surprise. Bill is just making sure that he and Ballmer have control of two of the three Microsofts that will exist after the breakup.

It's a set-up :)

[Reelworld]

Do you think that Bill knows something Steve doesn't ? :) Also, seeing as Bill's been in the 'Opressive Marketing / Global Domination' department for so long, what does he hope to bring to company as 'Chief Software Architect' ?

Re:It's a set-up :)

[BinxBolling]

Uhhh, read one of his books, any of them. He has great ideas about what will be done with/on computers in the future. The only idea that kinda sucks is voice recognition... I can't ever imagine really getting into that, especially for programming.

Sure, it'll suck for large-volume text entry and formatting, such as programming, or typing a paper. But how convenient would it be to simply say 'minimize' to minimize your current window, rather than having to take your hands off of the keyboard? I suppose one could set up a keyboard accelerator to handle this, but speech commands are far easier to learn and remember than obscure key combinations.

Re:It's a set-up :)

[TummyX]

Uh, voice recognition would never be used for the kind of coding we do now days. Hell, I don't forsee myself giving up the keyboard very soon. I can type faster than I can speak.

I will use voice recognition the same way I use the mouse. If my hand happens to be on the mouse already, and I think it's faster to use the mouse I'll go and use the mouse...otherwise I'll go and use the keyboard (and vice versa).
When programming for example, I usually use the k/b to press F7 for compiling, cause I usually compile straight after I stop coding, but I can image sitting there coding and saying "compile now" before my hand even reaches the F7 key.
No one input medium (human interface) will replace everything else, you have to learn to use them all effectively.

And remember that most people in the world aren't geeks. Too many people around here think that everyone MUST know everything they know, or else they're stupid.

I'd rather say "computer lights" than turn the switch, or say "car, drive me to work, and drop by the nearest store on the way" than actually have to drive there. Not that recreational isn't fun :).

Rob, Time to update your borg logo!

[Joe Mucchiello]

-title

Re:So?

[bsorensen]

I disagree that this is purely in response to the breakup news. It's been rumored that Ballmer was going to take over as CEO since he took the President slot about a year and a half ago. I personally think that there was a great deal of truth to what Gates said - he wanted to move on to other projects and take a more active role in developing new products.
I do find it amusing that Ballmer got all fired up when someone asked about the breakup - he said it would "reckless and irresponsible...reckless beyond belief" to split up the company.
There's a little more info at C-Net.

Question

[OAB]

Can anybody tell me just what the difference is between a chairman, a president and a CEO?

Re:Question

[moonboy]

I believe the CEO is actually the "manager" of the entire company and the Chairman is the head of the Board of Directors of the Corporation. I'm not sure, but I think the board decides the direction of the company and the CEO decides and maps out how it will get there. Somebody feel free to correct if I'm wrong.

----------------

"Great spirits have always encountered violent opposition from mediocre minds." - Albert Einstein

Re:Question

[costas]

I could try, but then again you can find out from the horse's mouth...
engineers never lie; we just approximate the truth.

Re:Question

[simong]

Hmm, that article jumped the gun a tad - I'm quite surprised no-one else noticed it.

Re:Question

[Jburkholder]

Well, the chairman runs the board of directors. The board is made up of good-ol buddys that typically are executives of other companies, retired executives, directors of other companies and the like. Go to the library and look at the annual reports from any two or three big companies and you'll see what I mean.

The board typically meets quarterly or so and does things like hire/fire CEOs, elect new board members, bitch and moan about stock performance, set dividends, set major corporate strategy directives (buy/sell divisions, mergers, what businesses to get into/out of) and pretty much vote themselves big stock bonuses. These are the folks at the top of the capital pyramid and the Chairman is the Alpha Capitalist. The Chairman is the one most accountable to the stockholders.

Chief Executive Officer in my company is the one that runs the operations. He is the one that all of the business unit presidents and vice-presidents report to. He tells them what to do. He sets financial and operating targets for them and they cower in fear if they don't meet their targets. CEO typically is brought in by the board on a contract basis, with all kinds of bonuses and penalties based on performance written in, and usually a nice early termination insurance clause.

Our CEO is also our president so I may have the distinction a little confused, but the President has the CEO, CFO, CIO and resource units (R&D, HR, etc) all reporting to him. He sets the overall direction for the business. He is the one who carries the business results to the board and comes back with his head in his hands and his marching orders from the board. His bottom line responsibility is to maximize shareholder value (read: run the company profitably so the stock goes up and the board doesn't get fired at the next stockholder meeting).

At least this is the way it seems to work in my company. I know there is quite a bit of difference depending on the industry (I'm in a Phone Company spin-off IS/Service Bureau) and such.

Re:Question

[MattMann]

There's an important legal distinction to add:

When a corporation is organized, by law (and in some cases regulations close to being laws) it must have

• a President, the person who "presides" over the company making day to day decisions. Everybody in the company reports (directly or indirectly through other managers) to the president.

• The president works for the shareholders, the owners, but indirectly through an group elected by the shareholders, the board of directors who represent the owners interests. The person who presides over the board of directors is the Chairman.
  For a small company, the board of directors is likely to be the investors themselves (VCs, for example). For a large company, then you see execs from other companies. (somebody here (Cliff Stoll?) said "go to the library" -- uh, there's this new thing, I like to call it the "web"? take a look here :)
  The board meets quarterly, sometimes more, and hears a pitch from the President, who then leaves while the board discusses and votes. Some decisions require board approval, but the President mostly better do what they say because they can fire her. They decide things like "we need to sell a new chunk of shares to raise money to buy AOL" or "we are not going to pay a dividend this quarter because we wish to use the money to pay down our debt"

• a Treasurer who is in charge of keeping track of the cash, the shares and the debts and the assets

I think there are other jobs like "counsel" (a lawyer) and "secretary" (keeps track of the decisions) which I will ignore. Remember, these positions must exist by law.

Now, in large organizations and those where insiders are the shareholders and they maintain a lot of control, it can be convenient for them to switch some of the roles around, consolidating and delegating on the basis of the needs of the business or the particular strengths of the personalities. This is where we get unofficial but descriptive titles like

• CEO, the Chief Executive Officer, the person who makes day to day but strategic decisions. It can be the President or the Chairman, or in rare cases neither. This is very likely to be a charismatic person who you identify with the company (Jobs or Trump) or the shrewd "brains" (Buffet) or a really good manager (Welch at GE). They are very future oriented, and keep the collective eyes on the ball.

• COO is important to a company that has extensive operations. Think of IBM, with its vast manufacturing and service networks with bezillions of employees. Day to day they don't make glamorous decisions, but they make sure the rubber meets the road.

• CFO keeps track of the financial big picture (there is way more to this than you can imagine). Generally the Treasurer, the CFO keeps track of the long-term money (from investors) with a bean counter underneath called the Controller keeping track of the short term money from/to customers/suppliers. There are probably examples of visionary CFOs who have a starched Treasurer working for them.

• CIO for companies that rely heavily on their information (Wall Street, Airlines)

• CTO, mostly bullshit so some techie with a lot of stock feels important, but can be a real job. Think of companies that use technology strategically (FedEx) not companies that produce it (Microsoft).

Re:Question

[Trak]

CTO, mostly bullshit so some techie with a lot of stock feels important

Ouch! Somebody's a little bitter about being passed-over.

Re:Question

[I.AM.BLORT]

no... actually I am a CTo, I just found out a couple of weeks ago and it is a pretty bullshit title... but it is REAL nice on a resume.

Re:Question

[MattMann]

somebody's a little bitter

Good one! :)

actually, to clarify, CTO is abused. Let me explain it this way: note that there is never a CMO, a chief marketing officer. This is because marketing the company's products is so central to the company that it doesn't need explicit representation in the executive suite beyond what the CEO brings. In a like manner, if you are a technology company, the CEO looks after the technology in the products, and the engineers are perfectly capable of selecting their own technology tools.

But think about supermarkets 20 years ago: who was going to champion the expensive installation of scanners? That's a CTO role, created when a CEO is visionary enough to understand that the company needs one.

It's important not to have strict rules about this stuff, none of it is hard and fast. Does Real Networks or AOL need a CTO? I.e., are they media companies or technology companies? There is no answer to that question, just like there is no one way to coach a football team. You make your best predictions, look at the people-assets you have, deploy them and see if you win. Winning says that what you did worked in your situation.

OH NO!

[lifebouy]

Does this mean Billy Boy really isnt the ANTICHRIST?

First Y2K fails, now this. Boy the doomsayers are really running out of fuel, huh?

Only on Slashdot...

[irix]

...would we see Gill Gates and Mike Shaver changing jobs *both* being reported on the front page.

I think that's great :)

I believe that no matter how trite it seems...

[k9-quaint]

...this must be said.
Ding Dong the witch is downsized.

Ballmer's credentials?

[SMN]

I've always wondered what Ballmer did to get such high positions at Microsoft - from what I saw in Pirates of Silicon Valley, he just happened to be with Gates and Allen in the right place at the right time. Does he have any real CEO credentials - training, experience outside of Microsoft, or otherwise?

And the ineveitable question - Does it run Lin-- whoops, answered my own question =)

Possible Reasons

[crosseyedatnite]

From reading prior posts, I have seen:

1) He's tired of it
2) Musical names

but upon thinking, I came up with an additional reason:

3) To strategically position himself so he could choose the branch of MS if it were split up.

Re:Possible Reasons

[nonstop]

Thanks to the terms of the Caldera settlement we will never know if the Chairman of the Borg gave up his CEO title as part of the settlement...

It's the Steve Factor

[option8]

bill has finally seen the light: having a Steve - even a Ballmer will do - as CEO is the best thing for a company.

a Steve, as in a Woz or a Jobs, is just a more portentous name in computing than a Bill.

Hysterical Parallell

[johnos]

Lenin has left the building Stalin has arrived

Re:Hysterical Parallell

[WillAffleck]

johnos said Lenin has left the building Stalin has arrived

Not true. Lenin is in Seattle, in the center of the Fremont neighbourhood just two blocks from my house. It's a large iron statue, kind of hard to miss, albeit not as well-known as the Fremont Troll.

And Bill is more of a Rasputin character in his own way ... Ballmer more of a Yeltsin soon to fade after the breakup, offered as a sacrificial lamb unto the Y2K gods.

Re:Hysterical Parallell

[WillAffleck]

No, Lenin is on top of an apartment building in the east village, NYC.

Perhaps, but Fremont is the Center of the Universe, whereas NYC is only known for all the yearning masses heading to Seattle to escape the Grim City of Gotham.

;-)

Still, I don't think Bill G lives in NYC, so Fremont is probably the closest place for him to go and see a statue of Lenin. Unless he has one in his house, for the kids to play on.

A brief Steve Balmer biography...

[Uri]

...can be found on the Microsoft site.

Speaking of which...

[kcarnold]

Click Here

Re:Speaking of which...

[n-baxley]

Wow!! Ballmer looks like he's 10 times the size of Gates.

Baby-Bills

[Imortus]

In haiku:

Now Bill Gates resigned
so he can CEO for
Babe-Bills tomorrow

Re:Baby-Bills

[Legerdemain]

I enjoy haiku
that you craft for us so well
on ./ stories

Gates Gone, Used Car Salesman in...

[Type-R]

Bah, IMHO, he's just saving face because he know's how the DOJ trial is going to go... :)

Resistance is futile

[atvspid]

What happened to the previous Chief Software Architect? Was he assimilated?

Re:Resistance is futile

[Twon]

If I understand correctly, there WAS no previous Chief Software Architect. I think I heard on the news report that the position had been newly created for him (probably BY him, for that matter).

This does not matter.

[moofer]

Microsoft will continue writing applications that don't work, opening windows off of the screen that you can't get to them, just like they've done for years. Fear not, good computer users. Crap will continue to be the 'standard.'

Chinese Firedrill

[Deega]

At the light, everyone get out and change seats.

This is probably just preparation for the upcoming breakup. A rearanged power structure to ensure that the serperate companies are run by the same people.

the other shoe

[McKing]

Another of the top stories on MSNBC right now is about how the DOJ is finalizing a plan to break MS into three companies.

here is the link. Interesting that this was posted almost simultaneously as the Gates/Ballmer one....

Re:the other shoe

[jafac]

naw, sounds like MS finally got sick of their team of bozo lawyers. ("You WHAT? You backdoored the DOJ's web server to deface the picture of Janet Reno? You MORONS? I don't care if you did it to prove that Apache was more secure and that Open Source was a viable competitor!")

They fired them for the Caldera suit:
(Microsoft settles Caldera suit out of court)
and now they apparently are doing the same for the DOJ case. I wonder why they didn't wait until a Friday after close of business or something?

I wish I had a nickel for every time someone said "Information wants to be free".

Choice

[ucblockhead]

How much choice do the people in charge get when their company is broken up? Anyone know? Is the CEO forced to sell stock in the other company? Can they choose what company to run?

Come in Bill, your time is up ...

[Reelworld]

Does this now mean that Ballmer has the power to give Mr Gates his notice ?

Re:Come in Bill, your time is up ...

[nevets]

I thought the same thing too.

I doubt it would happen but the thought amuses me :)

Actually, if Gates gets fired, then he can sell all his stocks without anyone knowing. No insider trading laws would affect him.


Steven Rostedt

Re:Come in Bill, your time is up ...

[drewpt]

No, as chairman of the board of directors, Gates still has power.

A CEO reports to the board of directors, which Bill is the head of.

Bill gets the last laugh

[Anonynous Coward]

All of you giggling and postulating about Bill Gates being wary of a Microsoft breakup should be aware that he may be laughing all the way to the bank in the near future.

The government might split Microsoft into 3 (or so) entities, but it can't strip Bill Gates of what will be his large ownership in all 3 companies. And will breaking Microsoft up instantly produce a viable competitor for Windows? Office? Internet Explorer? (Note: I'm not talking technical merit, I'm talking end-users BUYING what they know).

Very likely all three companies will do really well, just inflating Bill Gates' personal fortune into even more stratospheric heights. It happened to Rockerfeller when the government split up Standard Oil, don't be surprised to see it happen again.

Re:Bill gets the last laugh

[ContraB]

All of you giggling and postulating about Bill Gates being wary of a Microsoft breakup should be aware that he may be laughing all the way to the bank in the near future.

You're very likely to be right about that. But that isn't the point! Bill Gates' net worth isn't too interesting to me, other than as a point of trivia. The point is to put an end to the days when MS could illegally take advantage of their monopoly status. Breaking up the company, combined with whatever other restrictions they place on MS, will hopefully achieve this goal. That's great! That's the point.

If investors (not just Mr. Gates) make a profit from this a la Standard Oil, well, so be it...

-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

Re:Bill gets the last laugh

[mjh]

Very likely all three companies will do really well, just inflating Bill Gates' personal fortune into even more stratospheric heights. It happened to Rockerfeller when the government split up Standard Oil, don't be surprised to see it happen again.

I don't understand the preoccupation that people seem to have with the idea that a split up microsoft could be worth more than a whole microsoft. Who cares?

The point in splitting up Microsoft is not to make the resulting companies less successful than the parent. It's to keep the interaction of those individual businesses fair, so that MS Windows corp has to compete with {Linux,BeOS,MacOS,etc} on its own merits. Not on the fact that it can tie MS Applications corp's products into its products, and force MS Applications corp not to port to any other environment.

I just keep thinking of how cool it would be if suddenly MS Applications corp decided that it was in their financial interest to port to {Linux,BeOS,etc}. In such a situation, I *WANT* that company to succeed, and to be a pioneer in encouraging other applications companies in porting to {insert non-Windows OS here}.

Re:Bill gets the last laugh

[Yojimbo-San]

I just keep thinking of how cool it would be if suddenly MS Applications corp decided that it was in their financial interest to port to {Linux,BeOS,etc}

Almost the only thing within my organisation that keeps us on a (mainly) Windows OS platform is the availability of MS Office suite - which is pretty much the de-facto data exchange method for our customers

Star Office is a good start, but in the eyes of my users, not yet a replacement for MSOffice. Too much of an interface learning curve in an already busy place of work. (This is, of course, how MS keep going - they have never overestimated users :-)

If Microsoft (Apps) Corp was to produce a Linux version (port or native) of MS Office I for one would be pushing to get it on-line here. The alternatives would still be there, and would get better in the face of more competition. The TCO for a Linux desktop is usually "one good hacker" as opposed to MS OS, where is is "a handful of mediocre hackers, plus a big support contract, plus at least one almost mandatory product version upgrade every year"

Please don't confuse "I hate M$" with "I hate M$s monopoly on the interaction between good products and an OS that sucks". IMHO, naturally ...

A community effort

[Linuk]

Amazing what a UDP against @Home can do!

Magic Tricks.

[Postmaster General]

That's all it is. You know the saying, "The hand is quicker than the eye." Well, I wouldn't be at all surprised if Mr. Gates will still be calling the shots (or "pulling the strings" of Mr. Ballmer) from the sidelines in an "advisory" capacity. I almost feel sorry for Ballmer.

Interesting, but not surprising

[Monty Worm]

This is news, and interesting, but not really a big surprise.

Note: what follows is what I remember about MS structure, after reading some books

When he was at PARC, Charles Symonyi[0] (sp?) designed a scheme for writing code, where a meta-programmer gave programming instructions to ~50 actual coders. He later moved to Microsoft.

Bill Gates has always seen himself as a meta-meta-programmer. This change will enable him to function more on programming... after all, he did originally start as a coder way back when. So he's taking charge of what he does on a day-to-day basis, good for him.

This won't change MS much: he's still the owner....

0] This is the Hungarian who brought the world the questionable advancement that is Hungarian Notation,

Bob Metcafe predicted this in year end column

[peter303]

Got one New Year's prediction right.
Bomb in 1999 predicting InterNet Stock bubble
would burst and in 1996 when InterNet would
gridlock.

Re:Now it's definitely time to abandon Windows...

[BoneFlower]

for those who have not done that yet. If Bill is the chief software architect, the first service pack for Windows 2000 is going to be written in BASIC spaghetti code ;-)

That would be a good thing! Maybe they would actually code decent stuff! Its obvious things like C and assembly are far to difficult for them.

Why Gates would do this...

[Ron Harwood]

Think about it... he can't just up and quit. He is the epitome of M$... if he did that, the stock would plummet. (and he couldn't cash out)

If he takes baby-steps away from the helm... and out of the lime-light... then he can safely cash out his stock, and retire...

It's a rough game in life when you use money to keep score... 'cause you don't want to give up any points...

sim city

[Shoeboy]

I'm on an MS campus right now, and it's an odd hearing about this from /.

It's easy to understand why bill stepped down if you've played sim city. Once the city gets to a certain size, the effort required to run it begins to outweigh the fun of making it bigger.

Running MS has probably been similar. I bet it was fun launching windows 1.0. Likewise it was no doubt a blast watching OS2 nose dive while windows picked up speed. And the success of MS's internet strategy after nearly missing the boat completely had to have been thrilling.

What next? 10 years of slow, expensive court appeals? That's not fun - that's like trying to build enough police stations to handle the population of your 700 arcologies.

There comes a point in sim city where you either quit or click on the disasters menu and select all of them. I'm glad bill decided to step back instead of building a flying robotic monster and having it lay waste to the campus -- that's what I would have done.

--Shoeboy
I'm not a microsoft employee, and I'm certainly not speaking for them.

Re:sim city

[Goonie]

Good point. Bill probably figures Microsoft has reached the high point of its success and has decided to spend the next few years doing some other stuff besides kicking heads - like raising a family and giving away billions of dollars to worthy causes.

I couldn't think of *any* job more enjoyable than giving away billions of dollars to causes *I* considered worthy (provided I still spent an hour or two each day coding free software :) ).

Re:sim city

[m.o]

I couldn't think of *any* job more enjoyable than giving away billions of dollars to causes *I* considered worthy (provided I still spent an hour or two each day coding free software :) ).

It would be awesome to have billg hacking Linux kernel! He's a smart guy, and I am sure he would add a lot :)

Hey, Bill, give it a try - why not?!

Re:sim city

[Shoeboy]

It would be awesome to have billg hacking Linux kernel! He's a smart guy, and I am sure he would add a lot :)

I can see bill's first post to linux-kernel now:
You^H^H^HWE are all thieves...

Why not? ;)

--Shoeboy

Re:sim city

[spiral]

>...quit or click on the disasters menu and select all of them. I'm glad bill decided to step back...

AHA! It all makes sense now! Just think:
- MS Bob
- Netscape, the Internet in general
- laughable MS defense during trial(s)
- rise of open software

Bill *has* been clicking everything on the SimCorp disaster menu, stirring up every kind of trouble he can think of. World domination wasn't as fun as he thought, so he's trying to end the game. Problem is, his peons are too clever and keep working around it. Nothing seems to stop them.

I'm figuring that right about now his cursor is hovering around "Stock Market Adjustment". If that doesn't work he'll be forced to develop thermonuclear weapons.

Microsoft(r) Nuke(tm) V1.0 -- Guaranteed to go down in flames!

Re:sim city

[dsplat]

There comes a point in sim city where you either quit or click on the disasters menu and select all of them. I'm glad bill decided to step back instead of building a flying robotic monster and having it lay waste to the campus -- that's what I would have done.

What you are looking for is a flock of penguins!

Re:sim city

[Arandir]

How much of the money Bill Gates is donating is actually his? Contrary to popular belief, he does not have billions of dollars. He is only *worth* billions. The majority of his worth is shares in Microsoft and other companies.

The news media outlets never gave any details of his donations. But I should think his liquidating (selling) a billion dollars worth of Microsoft stock would cause a very noticable blib in the stock value. I never noticed any. Instead, I suspect he played some money games and that in the end he was worth exactly the same after as before.

Re:sim city

[FauxPasIII]

> If that doesn't work he'll be forced to develop thermonuclear weapons.

Why develop them when you can do what any self-respecting terrorist does, and buy them ? I mean hell, the man is worth just slightly more than the gross domestic product of Finland, for Chrissake...

Re:sim city

[msanto]

I think the way it works is that he donated 10K shares of MS stock to some chartity. He gets the tax write-off for the actual dollar value at the time of donation. The charity puts the stocks in their portfolio and then does what they want with it.

Some recipients like Universities already have trust funds, i.e. investments in stocks & bonds. There is no need to cache in the stock immediately. Even if they need to, they have financial planners who will gradually sell the stock over time specifically to avoid disturbing the market.

If Gates donates enough of his stock, it will, over time dilute the value of the available shares, but it wont be a blip. The stock would just be a market laggard or slow performer or something like that. At which point the financial people would probably advise the charity hold the stock and sell into the next high rather than selling low...

Re:sim city

[Malcontent]

I imagine the giving will stop once the DOJ is done with it's business. IMHO all this charity business is just a PR expense to try and repair his evil empire image. I don't think he has a charitable bone in his body.

What about code reviews?

[WillAffleck]

Yup, technically Ballmer could axe Gates for his sloppy coding style. But remember Bill still owns almost 20% of Microsoft.

In some ways, this is an insurance policy. If they split up the company, Bill is no longer CEO and can just get shares in each company and control it through himself and his buds shares.

Re:What about code reviews?

[darylp]

Yup, technically Ballmer could axe Gates for his sloppy coding style.

That's why he stepped down, so he could spend more time secretly hacking away at the kernel and seeing how it's supposed to be done!

Expect to see comments from "b!llG - 31337 h@x0r" in the source any day now.

Re:What about code reviews?

[Alan]

(assuming you're talking about the windows kernel of course)

Erhmm... where would people who aren't ms-sequestered core-code-os division secret building b-1a94c employees see the source anyway?

:)

/me shivers at the thought of bill in the linux kernel... $DEITY knows if he's actually done any real code since the basic intepreter back in the Old Days(tm)

Two Questions

[Hrunting]

1. Is it just me, or does Steve Ballmer look like Mr. Burns of The Simpsons fame?
   
2. Does that scare anyone else?
   

C|Net News.Com article

[Shaheen]

Here's the article from news.com

Chief Software Architect?

[/]

Somehow I'm reminded of the Tacoma Narrows Bridge collapse when I hear that Bill Gates will be the chief software architect. Clearly he's had his fun, and now that the DOJ is going to rain on his parade, he's taking his ball and going home (just to mix a few metaphors). I can't help but wonder what Bill Gates II will do when the stock collapses, since what he does now is tend the Gates Foundation, which is likely to see a nosedive or two.

PR Move

[Bill Daras]

I believe that it is just a move by Gates to get rid of the Bill Gates/Evil Empire connotation that haunts M$ wherever it goes.

Now it is just another company led by just another CEO, who may be evil, but does not bring with him the cult of negative personality that is associated with Gates. It also puts a more scheming and ruthless man in the top spot in preparation for the impending showdown with the DOJ.

On CNBC just a little while ago, the two men were talking about how wonderful it was that Time-Warner had been bought out by a "E-Business" and that nobody expected such a thing to be possible.

What they were really saying is that here we have a big information/media company with worldwide reach that could, with clever lawyers, be portrayed as a threat to M$ and contribute to competition in the industry which the DOJ insists is not possible with Microsoft in the state it is in.

Chief Software Architect?!?!?!?

[kerouac]

Last I heard, all Bill knew how code in was VB!
Can you image running your mission critical
network/distributed computing environment on an OS written in Qbasic?
Hmmmmm.... that would have to be some modular code indeed....

I know, I know, it's a cheap shot. he won't be coding (well, maybe just the bootstrap *wink*)
to be sure, but it will be interesting to see if he can play the role of visionary as well as he did
the role of capitalist.

not significant

[AppleJuice]

Actually, I find Steve Ballmer's face and general attitude more unsettling that Bill Gate's. All those who weep because they don't know who they will demonize for the *next* thousand years, fear not, for Darth Ballmer has arisen to take your abuse!

Slashdot Icon

[veldrane]

So, does this mean that /. will change their Bill-Borg icon to a Ballmer-Borg icon?

I suppose with the alleged imminent breakup perhaps a whole new set of icons will be needed.

*shrug*

-Vel

I knew it!!!

[sapien1]

I've said all long that MSFT's products needed help. IT abouttime tey assign someone to actually architect/design their products/

Which of them is happy about this?

[Mowog]

Take a look at the photo. Now, to my eyes, Steve seems fscked off while Bill is amused. Why would that be?

Conspiracy theories abound.. :o)

What do they do?

[Robert Link]

I'm a little fuzzy on what the various corporate officials actually do. (I've spent too much time in academe, I suppose). Can someone in the know explain the difference between the president, CEO, and chairman of the board? Which one is really in charge of the company? Basically, what responsibilities is Gates actually shucking off in this move?

-r

Re:What do they do?

[WillAffleck]

President is the president, tends to set policy, and is a corporate signing authority for legal matters. Incorporation normally has a president, a treasurer, and a secretary required to sign and affirm certain documents.

CEO is Chief Executive Officer. Tends to run the company. The big cheese.

Chairman of the board runs the meetings of the Board of Directors, which can hire and fire the President and the CEO. The chairman can either run the board (usually holding many shares then) or can be just someone who makes sure meetings occur (usually few shares or a compromise position for a company with large shareholders who disagree on certain issues).

Any of these can be given powers the others might have. This is decided by the shareholders and the Board of Directors. And their jobs can be changed at whim. The Chief Technology Architect could take control if he happened to own nearly 20% of the company (e.g. Bill Gates), for example.

It's just a name. Bill is still Bill. He just doesn't want to do the boring legal stuff anymore and at $100 billion that's his call.

That's what the problem was.

[Blindman]

"Steve's promotion will allow me to dedicate myself full time to my passion -- building great software..."

If only Bill had realized the problem years ago, we might have great software today.

Baby Steps towards an uncertain future....

[group29]

Two things interesting to me about this press release:

• One - M$ Markteing is still in overdrive with half of the press release about 'future' products e.g. NGWS (Next Generation Windows Services).
• Two - Removing all but Chairman from his title allows him the further distanced from the day-to-day operations of the company. Additionally, a time period with him not actively at the helm will quite nervous investors and placate Wall Street about who is running the company should a break up be mandated or internally driven.

IMHO - This is all prep work in case they lose.

Remember even Jobs was gone from the helm at Apple for about 10 years only to trumphantly return. He can still come back post-break up or if there is no break up.

Slate foreshadowed this nicely...

[Smack]

Interesting... Slate is owned by Microsoft. Slate posted an article this morning titled "What's the Difference Between CEO's and Chairmen?". Coincidence??? :)

The article is actually rather interesting for those who don't know the answer. Anyway, here's a link:

http: //www.slate.com/Code/explainer/explainer.asp?Show= 1/12/00&idMessage=4361

Re:Slate foreshadowed this nicely...

[knight_23]

Is it just me or did they get this from the TARDOS Times ...

The story was posted "Posted Wednesday, Jan. 12, 2000, at 9:07 a.m." and in the article it says "On Thursday, Microsoft founder Bill Gates announced that he was handing over the job of CEO"

I what to know how they know, you know?

1 answer

[jedwards]

It's just you.

It's all in a name

[M_Talon]

The CEO is always the one named in press releases, so this just seems to be a way for Gates to get out of the spotlight some. As for setting himself up to lead a Baby Bill, well that would have happened anyway. It doesn't matter what title he has, you know Gates will find a way to end up in what he sees as the most profitable position after the breakup (which I don't see how a breakup will hurt the monopoly, but that's just me).

If I was Ballmer, I sure wouldn't want to be in the CEO spot when everything hits anyway. It's always a slim possibility that something might happen, and he becomes...ahem...dispensable as many CEOs seem to be in the tech world. Gates did a smart thing getting himself out of the hot seat, and probably he sold it real well to Ballmer

"Hey look, Steve, you can have the celebrity and spotlight. It's all good, and I promise you'll have a good spot after the breakup...what? No, I wasn't laughing under my breath. You must be hearing things."

Aww gee.

[cdlu]

I don't know what to think of this, but my gut feelings are as follows:

1) Gates has been MS President since Linus was 4 years old, and perhaps its time to move on.
2) He's becoming chief software architect - i was not aware he knew how to code.
3) Is he, perhaps, up to something as this is right on the heels of the latest noises from the monopoly trial...

And it also reminds me; who is slated to take over for (knock on wood) Linus, if something happens to him? The worst thing that could happen to the linux community would be to run around like a headless chicken.

Just my $0.02 (add GST if in Canada)
#include <signal.h> \ #include <stdlib.h> \ int main(void){signal(ABRT,SIGIGN);while(1){abort(-1); }return(0);}

Re:Aww gee.

[Wonko42]

Gates most certainly does know how to code. I'm not sure how much Microsoft history you're familiar with, but he founded Microsoft based on a version of BASIC that he wrote for the Altair computer. He continued writing code for BASIC and several other programming languages well into the 80s, until his duties as CEO began to take up all of his time.

--

Re:Aww gee.

[pb]

Well, how much of any of that was written by Bill is still sometimes disputed, but if he did write it, that might explain what happened to Windows: designed by an assembler programmer good at writing *small* programs... Hmm.

In any case, we know he didn't write DOS, and it's obvious that all the later versions of DOS were pretty much just hacked up from the earlier versions. (FAT12 -> FAT16, and now VFAT / FAT32? Puh-leese.)

Windows 1.0 and 2.0 sucked, and they had teams of people working like that. Of the two, I still like GEOS better. Windows 3.0 and 3.1 was better, and more stable, but still couldn't multi-task well. In Windows '95/'98, they managed to fix the multi-tasking but drop the stability.

In Windows NT, they originally fixed the stability, but raised the resource requirements massively. In later versions, they managed to speed it up some, but now it's less stable.

It will be interesting to see what Windows 2000 brings, but none of this implies that people at Microsoft are good at big projects. Maybe they can all code great small assembler programs, and maybe they should have started with that and stuck to it for a while. After all, that's what got UNIX started. Maybe Microsoft will eventually manage to reinvent it. Or offer a good product at a fair price. Or give good tech support. Or take responsibility for their product's shortcomings, and advertise and benchmark truthfully.

...or they can just sue Al Gore for claiming to invent the Internet when we all *know* it was Bill Gates! That sounds more like it!
---
pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.

Re:Aww gee.

[TummyX]

It will be interesting to see what Windows 2000 brings, but none of this implies that people at Microsoft are good at big projects. Maybe they can all code great small assembler programs, and maybe they should have started with that and stuck to it for a while. After all, that's what got UNIX started. Maybe Microsoft will eventually manage to reinvent it


Completely disagree, Microsoft are the only company that can handle large projects. Look at Windows 95 - 2000, Office, Visual Studio, all of these are more featured than anything Unix has come up with.

And give up that "reinvent unix" thing, look at linux, it looks like Unix but it certainly only tries to behave like unix, it's not unix, and it's implemented poorly compared to commericial unixes.
I really hate it when people run around indirectly implying Unix is the best OS in the world. I would argue VMS is better at what unix does best (scalability, stability) and windows is better at APIs, Applications and I suppose almost everything else.
Win32 is rich compared to POSIX, has APIs for just about EVERYTHING.
COM, SAPI, TAPI, ODBC, ADO, RDO, MTS, MSMQ, GDI, DirectX etc etc etc etc

Re:Aww gee.

[pb]

*sigh* I'll be happy to disagree with you here.

You're right, Windows '95-2000 (there's a Y2K bug), Office, and Visual Studio all are very "featured". They also have many "mis-features", and many bugs. Unix has features that people actually *need* (that's why they put them there). Also, Unix is an Operating System, not a Word Processor, let's maintain that distinction. If you want a Word Processor for Unix, I'm sure you can find a good one, but you don't buy it from UNIXSoft, okay?

I'll have to disagree with this next one: Linux looks like Unix, it behaves like Unix, and it's implemented *well* compared to many commercial unixes. Of course, this all depends on what you want, but... ever used HP/UX? Linux makes *much* more sense compared to that. If you've used one particular commercial Unix for a while, you might be biased towards a particular flavor, as I surely am towards Linux, but they all share a lot of similarities.

What I like about Linux is that it caches *very* well, does very efficient process creation, is pretty stable, and supports a lot of devices (a note on these two: of course, some drivers are more stable than others, and there are always patches. That's what happens when you get something in development. However, I've never seen Linux get Unstable in the sense that Windows does--everything happens for a reason in Linux, and you can find out what it is if you know what you're doing.)

VMS is supposed to be good for scalability. I can't personally vouch for that, because I've seen it in situations where it must have been badly misconfigured. But that says something for its stability, because it didn't go down, it just went *really* slow. However, NT didn't get either of those features right. And I've seen Unix be just as stable as VMS, and far more friendly. :)

Win32 *does* have APIs for just about everything. It's a headache. Especially since it manages them with DLLs, which have to be the worst excuse for libraries that I've ever seen. First off, who in their right mind would let a program randomly modify/overwrite crucial system libraries? (or, even worse, let a *user* do this...) And even if you did, what if you have different, incompatible library versions with the same name? Microsoft did this many times in different versions of Office--they would replace a DLL that another Windows program used, such that installing Office breaks the other Windows program! That's apparently Microsoft Binary Compatibility for you. Maybe you could give them different names in a filesystem that did symlinks properly. Hmm... ;)

In the meantime, if you want APIs to program with, you can find tons of them for Linux. DGA instead of DirectX, many of the Windows APIs are implemented in Wine, there are many sound / graphics interfaces, some of them crossplatform like SDL, and many widget sets (I wish Windows knew what a widget set was!) and window managers (ditto for that, Windows needs more cool shells) and many free ready-made applications and stuff.
---
pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.

Re:Aww gee.

[nyet]

That's Paul Allen and Davidoff, not Bill.

Bill was his "agent", and coded very little.

Bill contribution to the software industry is limited to this letter.

Re:Aww gee.

[TummyX]

First off, who in their right mind would let a program randomly modify/overwrite crucial system libraries?


Well Linux does just as good a job as windows (eg both do nothing). Microsoft provided APIs to get DLL versions (GetModuleVersion) but some people don't use it properly. However, Windows 2000 and the next version of 9x will have SFP (System File Protection) in which system DLLs can't be overwritten. SFP also includes "Personal DLLs" in which applications have a special sub dir they stick their own DLLs in, if they want to make sure that they only use a specific version of a DLLs.

Also, there's a new article on MSDN right now (msdn.microsoft.com) about DLL Hell, even has a nice picture of a DLL burning in hell ;).


In the meantime, if you want APIs to program with, you can find tons of them for Linux.

True there are some, but I like the way windows APIs are standard in each distribution of windows.


of them crossplatform like SDL, and many widget sets (I wish Windows knew what a widget set was!) and window managers (ditto for that, Windows needs more cool shells) and many free ready-made applications and stuff.

Windows doesn't have many shells cause noone really bothers (you can try stuff like WindowBlinds tho). It's just a big hassle, it looks cool for about 2 minutes :). And Explorer as a shell is rather nice (which is why i use KFM in Linux).



However, I've never seen Linux get Unstable in the sense that Windows does--everything happens for a reason in Linux, and you can find out what it is if you know what you're doing


To tell the truth, on good hardware I've never seen Linux totally stuff it more than twice...which isnt' bad, i've had to panic on me for untaring a file :).

However, I should note that I'm been running Windows 2000 AdvServer for over 5 months and have had *no* BSOD (i'm as suprise as you) and never have been forced to reboot (not even to change networking settings ;)).

Re:Aww gee.

[pb]

Yeah, the reason I mentioned the DLL / library thing is because I knew it was a problem they were working on (in Windows)--I hope they fix it.

In Linux, either you have to make the libraries come out right (to build the apps in the first place) or hopefully your distribution properly checks dependencies. (Red Hat, for instance, does this, and all of them should)

There's nothing wrong with liking the tools Windows has to offer. The only problem is, if you don't, you're screwed. They don't exactly have as many different toolsets to choose from. (Explorer pissed me off, not that the Program Manager was much better... I use fvwm2, stripped down. Just windows, no buttons, type what you want, four virtual desktops.)

It panicked on you for untarring a file? I hope that wasn't it. I managed to trash a filesystem one time, but I was kinda using an alpha version of some drive compression software...

I saw Windows 2000 Beta 3, and it crashed non-stop in the installation, but it ran okay. I hope more people have the same rock-solid experience that you do (once it's released).
---
pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.

The DOJ can't force him to do anything

[Anonymous Coward]

The DOJ can't force him to do anything, including breaking up Microsoft. Now, if you haven't already hit the reply button and made an ass of yourself, I'll explain why: No matter what the DOJ says, all they're doing is telling him the consequences of his actions. You don't break up the company, we make you use Linux for the rest of your life. That sort of thing. Then he can either do it and escape the consequences, not do it and live the consequences, or he could just close up shop. Take a minute and critically (that means no demagogic knee-jerking kids) about what life would be like if Microsoft didn't exist tomorrow. Are you Open Source guys ready to give free tech support to every 90 yr old granny who wants to print a birthday card? I sure hope so in such a circumstance...

E.
BTW, Bill, we all know you read Slashdot. Take my advice - close Microsoft. Padlock the doors, everything, just close it down. Kick back at your awesome house and just watch the motherfucker burn. Oh, and invite me along if you don't mind, when the Open Source socialists find out that socialism doesn't work like countless other societies have had to, they'll go violent and I don't want them killing me for my food. I'll clean your pool or whatever you want, i wouldn't ask for it for free.

Re:The DOJ can't force him to do anything

[Alex Belits]

Take a minute and critically (that means no demagogic knee-jerking kids) about what life would be like if Microsoft didn't exist tomorrow. Are you Open Source guys ready to give free tech support to every 90 yr old granny who wants to print a birthday card? I sure hope so in such a circumstance...

This is why specialized support companies exist. I personally won't do even phone support for my own fhttpd for every non-technical user, but this is the reason why open source software is profitable for businesses -- someone else can have its own support infrastructure make money on it.

As for every grandma trying to print a greeting card, no one would be hurt if she wouldn't be able to -- Hallmark makes better ones anyway. One who is interested in selling software to users, whose support doesn't justify the distribution cost should deal with this problem, not developers.

Re:The DOJ can't force him to do anything

[pete-classic]

I have never known MS to give out free tech support. Maybe 30 days with retail OSes.

It seems like they make OEMs do the support for the most part.

By the way, I do tech support for a major OEM, and I don't think MS pays my company to offset the cost of paying me to support Windows.

I happen to also support Redhat Linux, also installed by my company.

I think your critical thinking skills are rather poor.


-Peter

Milking the Windows era for as long as they can

[Keel]

Microsoft is working to make its popular software, especially its Office suite of business programs, available over the Internet, in addition to the traditional way of loading it onto individual personal computers.

Looks like another strategy "borrowed" from Sun Microsystems. They still aren't likely to be ready for network based computing. As long as their success centers around Windows and the current computer/OS paradigm, they won't be able to recover the lost ground when the paradigm finally shifts into new kinds of computing. We've already seen how much ground they lost by getting into the Internet a year or two late. They were never able to "take over" the Internet the way they hoped (MSN is a prime example). They only succeeded with Internet Explorer by building it into Windows; so, again, the strategy centers on the Windows product. Can this Titanic steer fast enough to avoid the inevitable? Actually, a break-up of the company might actually help.

CEO? What's that?

[Monty Worm]

What exactly does the title CEO actually mean anyway?

To understand my point, consider id Software. Todd Hollensomething is CEO, but John Carmack is in charge, AFAIK.

Bill Gates will always be in charge, but he may have less paperwork to do. This just changes the names around a bit....

Re:CEO? What's that?

[storem]

yeah, but what if we sh*t on Ballmer in the future and leave Bill alone as the simple M$ employee he now is....

Wouldn't that really piss him off ? :-)

stupid ballmer tricks

[Lx]

Ok, scroll down so that you can't see Ballmer's scalp, and look at the face...ladies and gentlemen, the new CEO of Microsoft - Alan Alda!

-lx

Juxtaposition

[Anonymous Coward]

Am I the only one who found it amusing that this article immediately followed one entitled "Monkey Cloning. Sort Of."?

I guess the sort of means they failed badly . . . .

Re:Juxtaposition

[gewalker]

Hardly, I immediately though of the same thing and scanned through all of the replies in flat form just to see who mentioned it first.
Unfortunately, the monkey cloning is not really any such thing (only artificial twinning). I want my cloned replacement body parts, ASAP. I don't intend to live forever, but 500 years would be nice.

Re:So?

[anotherone]

Here is the (proposed) new icon for microsoft: Steven Of Nine

Make Seven

Thank God Bill's still Chairman

[BeBoxer]

It's a good thing that Bill is still chairman. Otherwise, the "Chairman Gates" / "Chairman Mao" innuendo wouldn't work any more. Chairman Ballmer just doesn't have the same ring to it.

If They Break Up, He'll Have to Choose

[Jon Palmer]

One of the antitrust lawyers, in the special /. article a few days after the ruling last fall, said that in a forced breakup, each principal can work and hold stock in only one of the resulting subentities (in this case, Baby Bills). Otherwise, there'd be no incentive to change anything. It would be scrutinized by the court, so a 'consultant' arrangement probably would not fly.

Is this news?

[sEEKz]

Pff, it doesn't matter what title Gates gives himself. Even if he becomes the cleaner of the building, he still owe's m$.

right?

Love him or hate him

[nael]

Greetings,

Love him or hate him, Bill Gates is the reason why Linux exist. If it was not for dos and windows 3.11 inferior code, Linus would not of been inspired to write linux. Can anyone argue where Linus got his inspiration? No, cuz he admited himself , look at Novemebrs issue of MIT Magazine of Innovation Technology Technology Review.

People can argue this back and foward all they want, but growing up in an era with Bill Gates pushing the internet into everyones home is the reason why some of us are what we are today. No can argue the fact that Internet is readly available toady to millions is partly because of Microsoft Mission Statement which is " A computer on every desk and in every home using great software as an empowering tool". Now some might argue that their software is somewhat not so great, but the fact of the matter most of would still be using "MAC's" today if it was not for this man we love to hate.

Bill Gates, is proably the most influential man in the high tech industry next to Tim Berns and Marc Anderson. Yea , the company was on a mission to destroy every one in its path, but thats what having a good strategy is "to over come your competition using best cost / low cost leader to differentiate yourself and gain market share at any cost."

If Netscape, Apple, and all those wining company recognized the oppurtunity before Microsoft had, then the table would of been turned. I have to wonder what kind of management these companies had, to forgo oppurtunties that existed. Proably not astute managers, thats for sure. Why else would of Netscape surrendered to competetion?Netscape had their web site to leverage to be able to capture market share in the internet arena. They didn't.. Obviously AOL know's how based on the appearance and marketing of it today. www.netscape.com The same with Apple, if they would have liscnesed the "OS" things might be different today. They didn't. Who's fault is that? Microsoft! Wrong, it's managements fault.
When it all comes down to it, a company with astute managers and good business sense is more likely to succeed and fend of competetion than one that is just made up of a bunch of "TECHIES".

With that in mind, I say Bill Gates is the greatest man to have come along since Henry Ford. He was able to mass produce a product and make it available to every one of us at an affordable price. Thus, making some of us who we are today. Network Engineers, Programers, Linux Geeks, Hackers, Web Site Desingers, entrapanuers, and so forth. Well you get the picture.

The man we love to hate! Bill Gates
Remeber him, cuz when we get older we'll all have something to talk about. :)



TTYL

Re:Love him or hate him

[redled]

I disagree about the reason why linux was made. Sure, inferior MS products provided some motivation, but so did Linus' desire to learn x86 assembly (though afaik the asm code was abandoned to make the source portable), as well as his desire to create a free alternative to commercial unices. So, as I see it, if Bill Gates wasn't around, 2 of 3 reasons to create linux would still be here. I will agree that inferior MS products are one of, if not the major reason why linux has gained so much popularity with programmers and users alike. I agree with the rest of your comment, except the "greatest man" part. Sure, he paved the way for most of the stuff out there, and revolutionized the industry, but he's still a greedy, monopolizing, capitalizing person, so I think that "greatest" is a poor word choice -a better choice might be "most important" or "most influential"

--

Re:Love him or hate him

[mistabobdobalina]

please dont compare marc andreesen to billg or berners-lee.

Re:Love him or hate him

[storem]

Maybe you where looking for these names ?

Tim Berners-Lee = co-inventor of the web (CERN)
Marc Andreessen = designer of the Mosaic browser -> Netscape -> AOL - doh

Re:Love him or hate him

[TummyX]

that's what i was thinking

andreesen, erk.

Re:Love him or hate him

[nael]

I stand corrected, he's the most influential person of our time.

This has nothing to do with a split - sort of

[cmuncey]

There has been a lot of speculation (naturally) that this announcement is a reaction to the reports yesterday that the plaintiffs in the antitrust case want to split up Microsoft. I think that's unlikely as actions like this usually take time to work out (there can be legal issues). In fact, I think that this has probably been in the cards for some time, and has been scheduled for right after the 2000 rollover.

Ballmer has been the heir apparent for some time as the designated hardass that can (they hope) keep Microsoft moving ahead of its problems. Gates is now at that age (like many of us) where the day to day business stuff that was once so exciting is a bore. He has a family, a house on Lake Washington about the size of Rhode Island, and enough money (no matter what happens) that will allow him to do what he wants as long as he wants. All he needs to do now is find something that interests him. What is there left for him to do in business? Build the richest company in the world? Become the richest man in the world? Talk about been there, done that . . .

Gates is now looking to create a different kind of legacy for himself. As far as the lawsuit or splitup is concerned, a move like this is an upraised middle finger. If they really thought a splitup was going to happen, they (Gates, Ballmer, etc.) would either both move into division management to prepare, while leaving someone with more legal/financial backgroud to manage the details of the split with the DOJ and Wall Street. Microsoft knows it has to settle to survive, and Gates has put his chief junkyard dog in charge to handle the negotiations and aftermath -- he's the bad guy who will have to take all the actions to comply along with all the blame.

New Borg Name??

[jconley]

If the DOJ breakup happens, mabye gates will change his name to 1 of 3, and Ballmer can be 2 of 3....
J

Re:So?

[anotherone]

DOH!!!!! I messed up the link... anyway its here:
http://www.geocities.com/Area51/Cavern/7799/steven ofnine.jpg


Make Seven

Gates makes his move

[Calimus]

Gates obviously isn't stupid. By maing this move he does stay with the most profitable portion of the company. It also means that maybe it will redirect some of the stress from Gates to Balmer letting Gates outta the crosshairs for a bit.

The Big reason I see Gates making this move, I think he belives that the DOJ will break up the company and if they do, then he also stay with the one part of the company that he truley started. Software is what MS was in the beginnings and if his magical kingdom is going to come crashing down, then he wants to be with the part of it that he truely feels his all his.

I could be wrong, he could be doing this for no other reason then to redirect the media attention from the AOL/Warner circle back to his own. Who really know but Bill and his little inner-circle. Then again, I could also be right *shrug*

And if year 2000 had proven bad...

[gregoryw]

Obviously any move like this would have been planned and considered for a considerable time. I wonder whether Bill might have abandoned his idea had Microsoft's installed software base catastrophically fallen over with the turn into the year 2000. After all, it might have strongly looked like wimping out under those circumstances.

What do you other /. readers think?

Hmm.... Could it be SATAN?

[mickeymutant]

Ladies and Gentlemen Satan has Left the building. I don't care who runs hell, as long as Bill Gets some time off to drop some pounds and get a tan. can't the the richest man in the World looking like a fat version of Gilligan.

Re:Steven of nine? No...

[belgin]

Wanted: Borg picture of Steve Balmer.

How about we go for a Zerg this time?

B. Elgin

Noooo!!!

[RelliK]

Seven of Nine is a really hot chick. Steve Ballmer is a fat ugly bastard. I definitely don't want to see his picture...


___

always there are two...

[mistabobdobalina]

a master and an apprentice!

Bill photo ops

[rtcmc]

http://www.msnbc.com/news/357171.asp?cp1=1 As Bill Gates stifles a giggle, Doctor Evil wonders just what Mini-Me is doing in his pants. You'd think his own company would post better pictures :)

MSFT is doomed

[slickwillie]

Chief Software Architect?

The Wizard of OS

[griffjon]

It feels to me like the point in Wizard of Oz after the house (DoJ) landed on one witch, they learn that there's another one still to go.

Seriously, tho, my first response to this was to see it as the obvious reply to the rumors of the split-up--leverage the top execs so that they are all at least somewhat experienced with the CEO seat before they get plopped into it. That, combined with Gates getting tired of being at the helm. All reliable reports I've heard is that it is true that he'd rather be in the trenches.

Whether that's a good thing or not, well...

Sim City analogy continued...

[Tumbleweed]

> I'm glad bill
> decided to step back instead of building a flying robotic
> monster and having it lay waste to the campus -- that's what I
> would have done.

What do you think Windows 2000 is?! :)

Re:Sim City analogy continued...

[technos]

Hold on now.. Most versions of DOS were acceptably bug-free, and those were the responsibility of Gates and Allen. It's only since he stopped having day-to-day interaction with the actual product that it sucked. Windows 1, while a cheap Mac rip-off, is actually a pretty good program launcher. Bill was in on that one, too. Perhaps Windows 2002 won't suck as bad as their current offerings, now that Bill seems to want back in.

Anyone seen Casino?

[Moe Yerca]

It's only a matter of time before Bill takes to title "Food and Beverage Administrator".

Where NeXt? Santized for investors

[just someone]

Poor Balmer, they don't even mention that he ran off to NeXT for a short period of time.

An interpretation

[Bigtoad]

Here's my interpretation:

The Justice Department has taken the fun out of Bill's favorite toy, so he's not going to play with it anymore. ;-)

Why is it?

[Chokai]

Why is it that according to many of the higher rated posts ANY change Microsoft makes that is not directly related to software development must be related to the DOJ? Anyone with a brain understands that companies do this type of thing all the time!!! Just because Bill decided he wanted to get away from heavy management (which for all intents and purposes it sounds like) does that have to be because of the DOJ?

The DOJ is *NOT* going to break up Microsoft. They can huff and puff all they want but if they try to they will be into 10 years of court battles. (They know that and so does anyone with half a brain.) And with every AOL/Warner deal that goes down MS can point the finger and say "look at that." It won't be hard for them to find a judge that will agree. So get over it. It's not going to happen. Microsoft is here to stay, it's power may fall or climb but it's not going to go anywhere as much as some would like it to go *poof*.

If Bill wants to have more time to spend with the product groups hell I say go for it. If he wants to spend time writing code more power to him. (Although I don't know what he has the skills to write nowadays). He should do what he enjoys and wants to do. He has that right just like the rest of us.

Bill's livin' the dream!

[Keith Russell]

Amen. He's just divested himself of tons of day-to-day bureaucratic piffle, and trimmed his job description down to Big Thinker and Chief Geek. Rasing the kids, giving to charity, hanging out in the R&D labs all day. Who wouldn't prefer that?

He might even start coding again. Maybe even contribute a few lines to Mozilla SMACK!!

Ah, that's better. Good thing the guy in the next cube has a Reality Stick. Anyhoo, IMHO, Ballmer's always been the shark at Microsoft. Nothing's gonna change, at least until the DOJ comes calling with their carving knives.

Keith Russell
OS != Religion

Alternate text on image! :)

[Thrakkerzog]

The alternate text on the image is "Bill Gates"

... but Steve is a much bigger man!

The second time he's done this.

[heroine]

Remember in 1998 when Gates stepped down as CEO and became chairman? Ballmer gave all the keynote speaches for Microsoft that year. Are they really playing musical positions or just trying to get on Slashdot?

i wonder...

[Rhydant]

i wonder how Bill Gates decided who would get the CEO position...
did they draw names out of a hat...
or measure the thickness on brown on the contestant's noses?
you tell me
--

Re:I wonder...

[Locutus]

Na, I think that Bill will stay with MS Office if Windows/OS group is split into two competing businesses. Office still has a monopoly and he would find a way to boot Office. You see, Bill needs a monopoly to leverage otherwise he is a out of the picture. Without the ability to stall purchases with preannouncements, etc., they will have to actually compete. What MSFT is really good at is preventing the need to compete by killing the competitions business model.

I hope there ends up being two OS and two apps pieces with a dev piece too. Maybe even a forth Internet piece where LookOut, IE, etc can go.

IMHO

Locutus

Re:I wonder...

[Darby]

>(just look in his book The Road Ahead and I think you'll see why)



Do you mean when he said that the internet was a passing fad and that the CD-ROM was the future of the industry?
---CONFLICT!!---

Re:So?

[GomerDomer]

Always there are two... A master and an
apprentice.

Re:Question -- what is President, CEO, etc.

[xyzzy]

The President of a company is usually responsible for the day-to-day running of a company -- for instance, are we selling enough product, do we have the right people in the right places to produce it, etc, etc.

The CEO is responsible for the LONG TERM management of a company -- issues like: does the company as a whole have enough funding? What is the appropriate positioning in the marketplace? Can we forge alliances with other companies, or buy them outright? What markets should we be entering or leaving?

In a way, the CEO is the actual head of the company.

The board is another story. The board functions as an overseer. Typically, the board does NOT set policy, make rules or even high-level decisions. This, however, varies widely from company to company, but in general, they can't -- the typical company has board meetings once or twice a quarter at most. Their job is to act as advisor to the CEO (who almost almost ALWAYS has a seat on the board, and is usually chairman), and as a brake on them. They are not employees of the company -- frequently they ARE of other companies, or are executives of other companies, and they are also the elected representatives of the shareholders. Usually a fraction, or all of the board members are re-elected each year. As a last resort, they usually have the ability to remove the CEO, as they did at Compaq last year. oh, they one area they usually do rule over are issues like executive compensation.

Pulling a Steve Jobs?

[jelwell]

Sounds like he's pulling a Steve Jobs finally. It won't be long till he returns as interim CEO. :)
Joseph Elwell.

I like this photo better

[jimmcq]

Reuter's Photo

Re:I like this photo better

[jafac]

Gilligan and the Skipper!

I wish I had a nickel for every time someone said "Information wants to be free".

No, He Doesn't

[Jon Palmer]

I used to wonder why a split-up was considered a remedy, since the ownership would stay the same. The Slashdot interview with antitrust lawyers shortly after the ruling last fall clarified this.

After a forced breakup, the principal officers of the company can work and hold stock in only one of the subentities, under scrutiny of the court.

Not even the kernel . . .

[Goonie]

I've never doubted BillG's intelligence. Often doubted his concept of business ethics, though. Like most Slashdotters, I'm also extremely sceptical that he retains any programming ability (if indeed, he ever had any).

Therefore, I'd like to challenge Bill to get a (non-documentation) patch accepted into *any* well-known free software project. In fact, I'd personally like to ask Bill to use his newly acquired free time to help out with GnuCash project.

On the theory that people contribute to free software to scratch a personal itch, I reckon Bill might like to add support for arbitrary-precision arithmetic to prevent floating-point overflows . . .

Wait a minute!

[Dinosaur Neil]

"At the core of this strategy are Microsoft's plans, announced today, to assemble the first Internet-based platform of Next Generation Windows Services (NGWS), which will power new products and services and incorporate such features and capabilities as a new user interface, natural language processing, application development approach, schema and new file system -- all of which have been in development."

Yesterday, rumors start that the DoJ is considering splitting up M$ into three parts; one for OS, one for Apps, and one for Internet. Today M$ announces that they have a whole new direction that they've already been working on that sounds to me like it involves further integration of W2K with M$ Office and IE.

(think "Bambi-eyes"): "Gosh, you can't break us up now! Our entire business strategy is built on developing an integrated whole! You'll put us out of business and destroy the software industry!"

If plan A was to walk away from the DoJ study unscathed, this must be plan B...

It's time for him to step down anyway

[RayChuang]

Folks,

Stop sounding like a bunch of conspiracy theorists who've been listening to too much Art Bell. (shrug)

Consider this: how long has Bill Gates been running Microsoft as CEO? 25 years? Given the fact he's raising a family and also does have some other serious hobbies in life (e.g., his considerable interest in biotechnology), I think Mr. Gates wants a change of scenery and do something that won't be so taxing.

His place in history is already completed; he wants to do other things like life, just like when Steve Wozniak stepped down from Apple Computer.

Re:It's time for him to step down anyway

[jafac]

Come on. you don't think Gates is REALLY interested in Biotech, do you? It's only because he found out you can patent human genes.

At least if this computer thing doesn't work out, then he can own your ass in other ways.

I wish I had a nickel for every time someone said "Information wants to be free".

Re:It's time for him to step down anyway

[RayChuang]

jafac,

Ever read the biography GATES by Stephen Manes and Paul Andrews?

In the bio, the authors extensively mentioned that Bill Gates had a big interest in biotechnology (and Gates has read many books on the subject) since the middle 1980's. This is something that has interested him for at least 15 years. Don't forget that Gates has invested a good sum of money in biotech stocks himself.

Re:It's time for him to step down anyway

[I.AM.BLORT]

come on... you just sound like someone who is just a little more than jelous so let's make THE MOST SUCCESSFUL MAN IN THE BUSINESS WORLD out to be satan himself. that is just a little immature. sure, his business practices are anticompetitve and downright unfair, but assuming that he is evil and wants to "own your ass" is wrong... he doesn't have an army of big thugs shooting people and niggaz hocking crack on the streetcorners.. he sells software... far from demonic. ruthless in business and downright evil are 2 different things.

Re:It's time for him to step down anyway

[jafac]

Okay, define "a good sum of money" to the world's richest man?

What is "a good sum of money" to you and I, or even the elitest wealthy elite, is pocket-change to Gates.

Um - for that matter, I have a big interest in biotechnology too. whoop-de-doo. I still say Gates' interest is in owning everything and being a god. Maybe he thinks he can pay to have his immortatlity engineered. But I really think he just wants to own everyone's DNA.

I wish I had a nickel for every time someone said "Information wants to be free".

Re:It's time for him to step down anyway

[jafac]

".. he sells software... far from demonic. . ."

You haven't tried to uninstall IE lately, have you?

I wish I had a nickel for every time someone said "Information wants to be free".

1st Step Towards Retirement?

[CaptainDrewle]

This announcement leads me to believe that Gates is on his way out very soon.

Gradually 'de-moting' himself from power would help to ease the panic of investors. Just like in the AOL/Netscape merger, most Netscape execs were brought over to AOL and over time they left or went 'part-time.'

I think that the DOJ case is just the breaking point (no pun intended) of Gate's decision to retire. He said in a recent interview that he "could see a world without Microsoft" making me think that Gates & Microsoft are running out of steam.

Seeing that Microsoft missed to boat with WinCE and some Internet technologies is more evidence of an aging company & CEO. There is no more excitement about future Microsoft products. When Windows95 was to be released, I remember Best Buy demoing the os in stores. Now, I have no solid idea where Microsoft is going to go after Win2k is out.

Anyways, just my .02

Ding Dong the Witch is Dead

[lisa]

hehe...he's threatening to write code. That's hilarious!

billg coding

[SEAL]

Actually Bill really enjoys schmoozing with his developers. He always took an interest in what was going on and wanted to understand all the little details.

They have periodic "billg reviews" as well, which are not easy to prepare for. You have to know your product or feature 100% because you can expect that Bill is going to ask you intelligent questions on very specific things.

That said, he does have a well-known temper and can really come down hard on people. But I think he prides himself on his coding and really puts in an effort to keep up with the latest stuff.

Best regards,

SEAL-who-used-to-be-on-the-Visual-Studio-team-so -please-don't-tar-and-feather-me :)

Re:So?

[jkenney]

Shouldn't that be Nine of Seven : a Very Special Borg?

Subtle

[phantomQ]

mmmmm.. previous story is monkey cloning, sort of

No...

[binarybits]

He'll remain as chairman. Ballmer is still President.

Is everyone here a cynic?

[Wraithlyn]

I agree with the previous post. Nearly everyone on this site is biased against Microsoft to some degree. Maybe this is flamebait but it's completely true.

I curse Windows and Microsoft on a daily basis as much as everyone else, and don't get me wrong, I fully support Linux as a superior operating system... it is. However I haven't killed my hope that Microsoft can improve. Can anyone truly say they believe that Microsoft has no talented people working for them? It's a question of how that talent is being used.. (namely, for marketing, not QA oriented goals)

Bill Gates isn't a god, or a monster. He's flesh and blood just like the rest of us, trying to do good in the hyper-competitive, vicious world we have created for ourselves.

How many of you have even considered the possibility that Gates has regrets? I doubt very much he's blind to what an unstable operating system Windows is. I think he stepped down as head of Microsoft simply because he's currently unpopular, and he wants to protect Microsoft, his life's work. (Before you start yelling at me that he made himself unpopular, I suggest you take a good look at Slashdot's Gates/Borg icon and ask yourself who really makes demons of men)

I'm not saying Microsoft is going to turn around and start laying golden eggs, but Gates stepping down from CEO and focusing more on improving their software is at least an ATTEMPT to move in that direction. Oh no, wait, I forgot. It's a big monstrous conspiracy to cleverly position himself as the uber antichrist of the next millenium. Silly me.

I'm sorry to be caustic, but the amount of suspicion and hatred flowing from what I usually find an extremely open minded, intelligent, and positive community just sickens me sometimes.

Re:Is everyone here a cynic?

[ebbv]

Very well put, and six years ago I might have agreed with you, before I became the jaded person that I am now. Anyone who has really experienced how low corporate business executives can go can truly understand what Gates & Co. are capable of.

I think you would be very surprised at how inhuman many people, especially those who have survived to get into a place of power, really are. I have lost two jobs because of purely political reasons, when I was getting terminated at the last one they even told me, during the exit interview, that there was nothing anyone could have been doing better in my position (I was working an average of 70 hours a week the last two months.) Things weren't going well, they needed a scape goat, I was a likely target.

This company I was working for was tiny compared to a behemoth like Microsoft. When they will pull stunts like that for a matter of saving-face, how low do you think they're willing to go when billions of dollars are on the line?

No, I think the demonisation of MiKKKrosoft is completely justified, while not everyone who works there is evil, I've come to realise that most people who crawl to the top of the executive ladder have given their souls away somewhere along the line.

Then again, I may just be overly cynical. But, at least now I expect the knife before it severs my spine.
...dave

Re:Is everyone here a cynic?

[perfecto]

Bill Gates isn't a god, or a monster.

oh bullshit!

He's flesh and blood just like the rest of us, trying to do good in the hyper-competitive, vicious world we have created for ourselves.

yadda, yadda

How many of you have even considered the possibility that Gates has regrets?

if he did i think he would have figured that out about $50 billion ago!

(Before you start yelling at me that he made himself unpopular, I suggest you take a good look at Slashdot's Gates/Borg icon and ask yourself who really makes demons of men)

it's his reputation that produced that icon not the reverse. by your argument, he saw the slashdot icon and decided on that day to become a prick. come on!

"The lie, Mr. Mulder, is most convincingly hidden between two truths."

Re:Is everyone here a cynic?

[Wraithlyn]

That's just it though... everyone assumes the guy on top is a cruel heartless bastard, and what does that do? It makes every sap trying to reach that position strive for that mindset.

I think the single most important thing I've learned in my life is that everyone perceives the world differently. Things that seem unfair or cruel to us are seen as "the only option" to others. The problem with capitalism is that is establishes money as a commodity to be sought at all costs.

Re:Is everyone here a cynic?

[I.AM.BLORT]

yeah. what he said.

Re:Is everyone here a cynic?

[Wraithlyn]

Your first two rebuttals are simply too well worded for me to respond to. Your third makes no sense to me, perhaps you could clarify that.

it's his reputation that produced that icon not the reverse. by your argument, he saw the slashdot icon and decided on that day to become a prick. come on!

Now this is worth responding to... I never implied Gates himself was affected by the icon. (Although I'm sure he's seen it and is less than thrilled) What is served by its being there, is poisoning people against Microsoft. It's finger pointing. It's name calling. People should be swayed against Microsoft, you say? Maybe. But they should make that decision themselves, based on good information, not biased media labels.

Re:Is everyone here a cynic?

[Le douanier]

"However I haven't killed my hope that Microsoft can improve. Can anyone truly say they believe that Microsoft has no talented people working for them?"

I hope they will.

If they would make the same kind of philosophy changes IBM went through during the last 10/15 years i think people wouldn't have more problem with MS than they have now with IBM.

Oh my god the ego on that company

[Paelon]

Just thought it was too funny when I got to this point in the press release:

These changes were announced following the release of Microsoft® Windows® 2000, which the company said is a crucial building block of its strategy to focus on software services -- a major technology shift that will transform the industry in the way the Graphical User Interface (GUI) and the Internet did.

Lay down that crackpipe Bill.

I guess I should be used to the same old marketing BS, but it never ceases to amaze what companies will try to sell their products as.

Bill Gates resigns his job at Microsoft

[TimeHorse]

Microsoft's Bill Gates resigned as CEO of Microsoft Corporation today leaving the position to long-time friend and recently appointed President, Steve Ballmer. Gates will remain as chairman and quasi-CTO. After the announcement, Gates clairified this dramatic move by making a public statement, "My old position really wan't giving me enough time to do the things I really love doing." Later when asked what he planned to do now that he was no longer CEO, Gates responded, "Well, I'm really looking forward finally spending some time home and hacking on some Linux Kernel Drivers."

Be Seeing You,

Jeffrey.

I hope so...

[SideshowBob]

sooner or later the vast proportion of Gates' wealth will be given to charities. the more the better, imho.

wealth != power

He can't possibly give a damn about money

[Uruk]

Guys like gates, love them or hate them, usually aren't motivated by money, and while he may make moves that are financially sound, I really doubt much of his motivation for doing anything is his own *personal* wealth. (Obviously he has micros~1's wealth in mind, otherwise he would have been kicked out of the CEO's chair by the stockholders)

Generally speaking, wealth is meausured in terms of orders of magnitude, not total dollar amounts. That's why somebody who has $9 million is in the same bracket as someone who has $1.2 million. Obviously, the difference of 7.8 million is a HUGE difference, but they're both "millionaires" and we leave it as that.

Billy isn't that close to jumping up another order of magnitude, because the higher you go, the harder it is to progress in terms of order of magnitude. In terms of day to day, and even life long decisions including providing for your next 3 generations, *there is no functional difference between having $5 billion and having $9 billion* Again, sure one is a hell of a lot more than the other (to the tune of $4 billion) but that is such an absurd amount of cash that I would think most people never touch the capital to begin with. You just stick it in reasonably conservative investments, and live like a king off of the interest.

Bill isn't dumb, he knows all this since he's probably got a small army of CPAs that just administer his finances. So let's be optimistic and say that with "Baby Bills" he could stand to end up $4 billion richer than he was before. WHO CARES??? He can't spend that amount in his lifetime, and it's doubtful his kids could either. (short of wholesale gambling and simply throwing it away). What's the motivation for earning the extra $4 billion? There isn't one...

Bill gets off on control and ego. He gets off on having one of the largest corporations on earth under his control, and being a celebrity probably. Money just can't be a motivating factor. If it is, then he is WAY more shallow than anyone could possibly have ever imagined. And comfortable living can't be it either, because he achieved that a long time ago.

Re:He can't possibly give a damn about money

[eggnet]

What about the motivation of being the richest person in the world?

You mention his ego, but overlook that huge point.

Re:He can't possibly give a damn about money

[Skim123]

Guys like gates, love them or hate them, usually aren't motivated by money, and while he may make moves that are financially sound, I really doubt much of his motivation for doing anything is his own *personal* wealth

I agree. If Gates didn't truly love his job, he would have gotten out of it a looooooooong time ago, when he was worth much less. He keeps at it because he loves his job, I'd assume because of the power that he has, the control he has over 30,000+ developers and many smaller computer companies.

An very business-oriented friend of mine once said he wanted to one day own a company that the government was investigating or taking to court, much like Microsoft is/has been. He argued, "Imagine the power money I'd have to possess to have the government step in and try to regulate me..." I would wager Billy-boy feels roughly the same way.

Re:He can't possibly give a damn about money

[ochinko]

Guys like gates, love them or hate them, usually aren't motivated by money...

I think guys like him are mostly motivated by being more succesful than the others and because they only measure success through the money they accumulated, I bet he's happy for every cent more that he gets. Of course, he can't spend them, and it even seems that he's going to give to charity most of them. But he would still try and get as much money as he can even if only to set a bigger record and to prove to the world and to his father that he really make it.

So the end result is that he's in for the money after all.

Re:He can't possibly give a damn about money

[dianos]

That is a lovely theory, but you forget one simple fact. There is thousands of people milking of this fortune. These people will do anything to continue getting their share of crumbs and reaching for a whole loaf whenever the oportunity arises.

conspiracy theory

[RoLlEr_CoAsTeR]

Here's one for the conspiracy theorists: I wonder if there's anything, post-potential breakup, to stop the Baby-Microsofts from licensing their code/products to external parties, and, if so, if there's something stopping Gates running off to setup another company repackaging/enhancing the existing Microsoft products. Lots of people would blindly follow Gates if he was to go his "seperate" way.

I had wondered the same thing.. whimsically, because I was wondering how you could honestly get the big Microsoft clan to actually part ways. I mean, I realize that if they gov't forces them to, da dee da. But, if they really want to, are we going to be able to stop them from making nice little partnerships with each other/trying to merge? I'm going to guess that I'm just thinking up silly questions, but, you know, are we really going to be able to instill in them a desire to compete against one another for market share? If we can, then great; they'll do a good job of breaking up. Otherwise, it's like taking naughty children and sitting them in corners in a room while we go off; they'll just get up and play together again.

Re:Chief Software Architect? -- NOT a programmer

[Anonymous Coward]

Lets get something straight. He can design programs without writing them. Designing, in my opinion, is far superior then coding. A good design is invaluable. Not say that BillG is a good designer... But the point is, it doesn't matter whether he's programmed or not.

Top 10 reasons for the job change at MSFT

[cmuncey]

Salon already has a funny top ten list of reasons for the change -- and you can submit new ones.

I can't beat these so far . . .

Immunity from depositions?

[Eric Seppanen]

Can anyone answer this: will the Chairman's position keep gates out of the reach of court depositions, by the Justice Dept. or in other suits? Bad conspiracy theory: Bill's got the dirt and this is the only way for him to hide :)
--

My take on the matter:

[Chris Johnson]

Gates is arranging matters so he can entirely cash out. He's done. He's tired of being treated like a villain, cannot understand why he'd be considered guilty in this, and at a time when it's becoming clear that _something's_ going to go down painting the braintrust of Microsoft as robber barons and criminals, Gates finds that is not to his taste.

He can't buy off the government- he's tried. But he can buy a fall guy. That is Ballmer. He can extricate himself, claim Ballmer set the whole tone for the abuses of MS, and spend the rest of his life giving away huge sums of money while still living better than most kings. Who wouldn't want that? Gates wants that.

It is also true that the kind of person who can build an empire of this nature simply will not let go- but this isn't Gates letting go, really. Microsoft's _reputation_ is being wrested from him, and I'd say this also indicates no plans of Microsoft's indicate any change in overall strategy or approach. MS will play dirty to the end- Gates doesn't see this as wrong, but he's not a dope and he does see that _others_ see it as wrong. Given enough incentive, people do change- I picture Gates thinking about his image, how he wishes to be seen. He can afford to be the benevolent philanthropist for the rest of his life, a Carnegie in the best possible way- if he chooses. But at some point he must accept that Microsoft has taken him as far as it can- and has started to get in the way of his new dreams for a well-loved future as a philanthropist. And, just like any of a thousand unfortunate tech startups that were in the way and had to go, now Microsoft, its culture, its legacy are in the way of the life Gates wants for himself- and it has to go.

Gates is not a sentimental man, and he is easily as perceptive as the Judge and intelligent enough to see the full implications of his position. At some point he began taking all this seriously- and started laying escape plans.

Ballmer is left in a position to preside over the decay of an empire. There's really no way for MS to expand further- _especially_ with AOL Time Warner suddenly appearing- and MS is hopelessly dependent not on profitability alone but an outlandish growth rate. That cannot continue and won't. Ballmer is also combative, a perfect match to the job of making Microsoft fight to the death. They won't in fact die, but their being relegated to only one choice in an industry of choices will be a very, very painful and bitterly fought loss.

Gates has the opportunity, having made MS what it is, to now cut it loose, cash in, and go home to be a lovable billionaire. Doing this is perfectly in character with the approach that made MS what it is- ironically, I'd been saying for awhile that there was no reason to believe MS would have loyalty to the USA, and now it turns out that Gates does not have loyalty to a losing MS either. Perhaps surprising, but plausible.

Get used to the idea of Gates as a benevolent philanthropist. He _will_ be able to separate himself from the unpleasantness, but his ways of doing so may be startling...

Re:My take on the matter:

[brianvan]

The story told here is both tragic and promising, if everyone will put down the biases first.

The idea of Gates as a well-loved philanthropist is something we should hold more strongly in our minds than the "BillGatus of Borg" image we beat to death. Whether truth or opinion, the image of Gates as an evil dictator is not very appealing and does no one good. The image of Gates as the next Carnegie, on the other hand, is very pleasing and beneficial to our minds and our society. My belief is that the entire presence of computers in our world is entirely mythical - although I don't want to get into that. Based on that idea, if you can swallow it, there are no heroes or villians on the Internet or in the tech industry different from those in real life. Such is why the entire antitrust case against MS is a complete fallacy, such is why AOL could merge with AT&T and all the Baby Bells if they wanted to and our existence will be no different, such is why Linus Torvalds is just some guy from Finland when he walks into a local bar.

I hate to see this as the beginning of the end (or some substantial part of it) for MS. First of all, I think Gates is taking his natural role right now rather than cashing out (as this move has little to do with money). Even if it is motivated by the imminent collapse of MS or the current turmoil, it's not as if the power structure is radically shifting - it's more like the movement of the tectonic plates. Second, the idea of this leading into the bitter end for MS is just nauseating. After all, this is a company with tens of thousands of employees, the highest market capitalization of any company existing today, hundreds of (arguably) quality products on store shelves, and a solid financial foundation. Sure, any company can give up the ghost tomorrow for any reason, but it doesn't HAVE to be that way for MS. Especially in light of the AOL-TimeWarner merger, it seems STUPID that a company like Microsoft can lose everything. AOL-TimeWarner could collapse under it's own weight, and yet Microsoft has stayed agile and responsive to the industry over the years throughout failure and success. This alone should be a good reason to not count MS out yet. Finally, like I said computers are mythical and only real people make the difference. Microsoft is still a real corporation with real people in charge... pretty much the same real people as before. No one is going to skip buying Office 2000 tomorrow because Gates isn't CEO. Office 2000 will be the same product as it was yesterday, and Microsoft's ability to continue releasing good or half-baked products and making money regardless is what will tell their future.

That said, is this the end of an era for MS and the computing industry? Maybe. I can't see how that AOL-TimeWarner merger really changes the success of other companies... for example, Yahoo isn't going to be upstaged just because they DIDN'T merge with another company. Same goes for Microsoft... it's a pure battle of control and hype, and in the end the real world fact is that I can hardly think of any major products that the new AOL-TimeWarner possesses that directly compete with anything from Microsoft and vice versa. Microsoft can still succeed in the face of AOL, the DOJ, Linux, temp workers, whatever. If they heavily rely on what they've done in the past to dictate their future, THEN THEY'RE DONE. But they really never have. Not in the real world anyway. Sure, on the computer, it's slow reused 16-bit legacy code in Windows98, it's a web browser given away for free just to crush Netscape, it's Service Pack 7 for NT, it's that annoying paper clip animation. But you have to think for a second... these are all little nitpicks. No one is going to totally upheave their computer(s) because of these things. Microsoft's OS dominance might outlast Microsoft itself. But MS can't live on that alone. And if you naively think that MS has no chance of continuing to be a dominant company, well then you are probably forgetting that all MS has to do is to keep making progress like they have been for 20 years to keep alive and healthy, never mind being the market leader.

Which is why I'm sure that Gates isn't thinking MS is doomed right now. Knowing Gates, he's doing something radical that he probably knows is in the best interests of the company... kinda like John Carmack stepping in and hiring an outsider to improve the bot code in Quake 3 Arena. I think that it's probably a nice side effect that he drops the negative attention directed toward him, and I think it's good for everyone in the real world that someone like him have as little negative attention possible focused on him. The idea of Gates as a benevolent philanthropist sounds heartwarming, even. It would be a shame if all of this posturing, hype, and hypocrisy in the tech industry ruined that for the rest of us. But that's not an issue until Bill quits everything and starts handing out all the cash. Even if Microsoft florishes or whithers, he's going to win in this situation for himself. But I think he still has MS on his mind, and I think that this might be the start of something real good for Microsoft. And possibly the rest of us.

Re:My take on the matter:

[sesquiped]

Bah. That attitude is not shown by any evidence anywhere. True, he plans to devote a lot of time and money to philanthropy, but he's not trying to "cash in." You see, he honestly believes that he is doing the world a favor by pushing his software on everyone and everything. He thinks that Microsoft will lead the world into a uptopian age of information and communication for everyone. We know that he's been going about that the wrong way, but you know how people with a vision are. And he certainly has one; it's what's been keeping Microsoft constantly "innovating" (once in a while, they _do_ come up with something slightly new) and pushing its software into every crevice of the modern world. He wants to help us all. He doesn't care about the money; do you really think you can tell the difference between $50 billion and $200 billion? The exact amount of money he has doesn't mean anything, he'll still manage to break every philanthropic record with what he has now (or even 5 years ago). He's in it for his vision, for helping humanity. He would never try to "escape" as the object of this reply put it. We can see that he's a bit misguided (ok, a lot), but it's his vision.

(Oh no! A post that's slightly pro-MS? Quick! Moderate!)

Re:My take on the matter:

[nevets]

Wouldn't it be ironic if AOL/Time Warner becomes the new evil empire, and we have both IBM and Microsoft combat them as the forces of good. (and of course Linux will be there too)

It would be like the evil IBM turn good to fight MS. No one would have thought back in 1985 that IBM would be on the "good" side. So don't rule out MS from switching the public view.

Steven Rostedt

Re:My take on the matter:

[Skim123]

Gates is arranging matters so he can entirely cash out

Do you think he will ever get out entirely, or just hold various bogus jobs at MS? I wonder what would happen to Microsoft's stock price if Bill came out and said, "I retire." Obviously it has to happen someday, the question is will Microsoft still be a dominant player on the market when it does? As a Microsoft shareholder, I hope he does not back off too far. Obviously, his stepping back from the CEO position hasn't been noted as bad news by the Street. (microsoft shares up 2 points today, various articles indicate that volatile trading isn't a concern)

He can't buy off the government- he's tried. But he can buy a fall guy. That is Ballmer

I seriously doubt this. Steve and Bill go way back as friends and coworkers. Hell, the two were college buddies. True, Bill will screw over his competitors, but his close friends? I don't think Bill is that evil.

There's really no way for MS to expand further

Posh. This is nonsense. There are many new mediums to expand into, and Microsoft can do it through various acquisitions and mergers. For example, Interactive TV, Handhelds and such. Hell, with AOL and Time Warner joining hands, whose to say that Microsoft and some other major media or cable provider don't hook up?

While the future may not look entirely bright for MS, I think it is shortsigthed to expect them on the way out. Personally, I wouldn't be surprised if MS was still around ten years from now, bigger, richer, and bad-asserer. :)

Take it easy...

I wonder...

[kcarnold]

...which of the small companies would Gates stay with "officially" (i.e., hold a position at) if Microsoft broke up. (Or would he hold "part-time" positions at all of them or something?) I think that he would personally want to stay with whatever division did Windows, since it is derivitive software from what really entered Microsoft into the software world, that is, MS-DOS. However, I think that he would stay with whatever company did IE and the other Internet stuff (just look in his book The Road Ahead and I think you'll see why). The above assumes that if there is a split, then it would be horizontal rather than vertical (which I think it will be).

Ken

Anybody got another answer?

Re:So?

[jeremy f]

I've always feared the apprentice more than the master... Always more scary -- Maul, Vader and now Balmer.

Given the choice between Gates, the incredibly rich nerd or Balmer, the incredibly rich, uh, person who is insanely greedy (moreso than Gates, from all I've heard), I'll take the incredibly rich Nerd.

This spells trouble. There is a great distrubance in the market...

Bill should do a ./ interview

[Legerdemain]

How fun would that be?

Re:Bill should do a ./ interview

[laptop006]

Yeah bill if you are reading this step up to the mic like the apple guy did (sorry about forgettting the name.), we wont think any less of you for it, in fact by giving the chance for you to answer to some of your most avid critisisers you will be increasing their opinion of you. LapTop006

Re:Bill should do a ./ interview

[stormwalker]

I'd love to see it IF people would put down their flamethrowers long enough to ask serious questions. It would be interesting to see his answers to some of the more solid criticisms of Microsoft's products (notably Windows... their other products really aren't half bad for the most part, in my experience).
To be honest, though, I can't see it happen. It's certainly not easy to step up before a group where many of its members look for any chance they can find to demonize you. If he ever were to do an interview here, I'd have a lot of respect for that, and I hope the slashdotters in general would as well.
It's easy to make Bill into a demon dead-set on owning the world--I've done it myself, I admit--but can we actually listen to what the man has to say?

A reply to the Bill Gates bashing...

[Jish]

Just wanted to remind the people here who constantly take any opportunity to bash Bill Gates as a human being that his foundation has set aside 17 billion dollars for charitable causes...

I think that at least deserves mentioning cause most of you either don't know it or don't care to remember it...

"Chief Software Architect?"

[bADlOGIN]

Bill Gates as "Chief Software Architect"?!?! Please. That's an insult to those of us who are serious about developing software and take pride in our work . I'm familiar with people holding honarary degrees, but an honarary company title? Bill "helped" do a shitty port of BASIC over 25 years ago (to what today wouldn't pass for a calculator) and he's qualified to be a "Chief Software Architect"? I put together a Linux box on my own from components: does that make me a "Hardware Manufacturer":)? I wonder if all 9 of the smart Software Developers at M$ will quit and sell off options & stock when Bill asks how to make changes to the source:)

Gates workingn at Red Hat?

[CmdrPorno]

The looks of a worried Gates and an angry Ballmer do not bode well for Micros~1's future. But what really got me is Gates' quote: "Steve's promotion will allow me to dedicate myself full time to my passion -- building great software..." What, does he mean he is going to work for a Linux company?

Fear reduction tactics ...

[connor_macleod]

... as opposed to scare tactics.
Microsoft had plans to crush Linux, sorry to disentrance all the Linux/GPL loyalists out there. But it didnt happen, for example they have let two of their major partners, IBM and Intel develop interests in the Linux area.
Everything they are doing at the moment is designed to make them look less of a threat - they can say to the DOJ now 'look we have Competition!'
Yet beneath Ballmer's bluster, there is apparently still hope that Microsoft can find a way to settle that would strip away the "monopoly" mantle the company has been made to wear as a result of the antitrust trial Their hope is, the DOJ will reneg as much as possible, but once its over, either way, Bill will be back on track implement his deferred plan ...
Lets just keep this in mind, the mainstream right now is falling for his hurt puppy dog act ...

Re:Fear reduction tactics ...

[tjstork]

If Windows is open sourced, Linux will die.

That is all Microsoft has to do to win. Why would somebody build drivers for Linux if they can already make them for Windows? Answer: they won't. Why would somebody make software for Linux when they can stick with established market? Answer: they won't.

The only compelling product reason for Linux is because it is a halfway reliable open source product. It's basically a two trick pony. Anything else Linux has are just features and Windows has plenty more of those. Windows is more friendly, it has better developer tools, it has ten versions of every program that exists for Unix and has the best games.

Hope they break up MS, but don't hope they open source Windows. You'll always be able to have fun with Linux but your revolution will go right down the corporate drain.

Re:Dr evil

[smithdog]

Yes, but Ballmer can play that role without shaving. Cat not included.

dumb thought

[tregoweth]

"Bill Gates, Chief Software Architect." shudder

Anyway, is it really necessary to provide a link to www.microsoft.com just because Micros~1 is mentioned in a story? We're all bright, MS-hating folks who know where the site is... :)

-j

Screen width - offtopic

[sustik]

Why are the lines so long? It was not so last time I read Slashdot. I did not find any way to set this. Can anyone tell me what can I do, it is really annoying. (I can increase the Netscape window size but then it limits the number of windows I can comfortably place on the screen.)

Matyas

The Post-Settlment MS...

[Ravensign]

I think MS will settle before being broken up, and instead will *attempt* to radically re-invent themselves, with Bill Gates, the supposed visionary, driving the (mostly for show) radical changes.

Unfortunately for them, Bill Gates is a creature from another generation and the "new" MS will not be able to execute this strategy, and will continue to come out with failed initatives, such as COM+, DNA, CE, Active Desktop-X-Movie, Chromeffects, etc that flop.

If you remove Windows and Office from the equation, via, let's say a revolution in OS's (linux/internet) or apps (internet/asp's, etc) MS has no real fall back products of great signifigance.

I predict after several more failed initiatives, under the new post-settlement MS, in a few years MS will be *bought* by AT+T or someone who needs some marginal web sites and services.

Mac OS X drove Bill out

[moto man]

Imo, he realized that Mac OS X will hammer W2K into the mud--
so get out before it happens.

Moto Man

"It was none other than Apple ... that has delivered on the promise
of bringing the power of Unix to the desktop of the average user."
--R. Morgan, RFI Report

Re:So?

[Anonymous Coward]

C'mon, We all knew this would happen.... There's always a master and an apprentice, just like the Sith...
-----------------
Hesiod, who can't remember his password and is too lazy to find it
david "at" ovis "dot" net
Meine Huehner Lachen Nicht.

Fear reduction tactics ...

[connor_macleod]

Addendum: letting Linux rise was definitely part of their plan to look meek (IMO). Question is: what about AOL? Have they planned their bumblings in the content field?

Popularity Contest is over, folks.

[Cytlid]

I think this is a PR move. Gates' way of saying "Hey look what I'm doing in regards to the events of late!". He's the man with his name plastered all over the papers, he's the one everyone hears about. Hmmm... how does someone retire on only $100 billion? ... I once got an IS interview because in the application, I put "Besides, I may not have a degree, but neither did Bill Gates."

Fear reduction tactics ...

[connor_macleod]

Addendum: letting Linux rise was definitely part of their plan to look meek (IMO). Question is: what about AOL? Have they planned their bumblings in the content field? Of other interest, Win2000 is going to be the most major upgrade since the win3.11 -> win95 update. Remember the promotion and hype even for win98? Where is it for win2000? And its here in 3 weeks or so ...

*W*indows *I*nternet???

[ragnarok]

so that he can dedicate all of his time to helping drive the next generation Windows Internet platform and services

Anybody else notice that *W*indows *I*nternet is in capitals? Coincidence or conspiracy, you make the call!

Re:*W*indows *I*nternet???

[TummyX]

What exactly do you mean?

Windows is in capitals cause they're refering to the product name, and Internet has been in capitals for as long as I can remember. It's also a noun.

its the beginning of the end

[Uart]

Steve Ballmer is a Dumbass he's gonna run this company into the ground! And then everyone will run Linux, BSD, or others. This is the beginning of the End.

-Karma Shmarma... Posting AC is for people who can't stand behinf their opinions.....

SOFWARE SHOULD GET BIGGER EVERY YEAR!!

[leonbrooks]

I tried a Google search for the above phrase, a quote from Mr Ballmer, and guess who headed the hit list? (-:

I suspect you're close

[jd]

But I think it's even sneakier, myself. Picture this:

• Bill Gates founds another company, let's call it "Borgs, Inc", which then "buys" Microsoft.
• Microsoft is split up into various divisions
• The senior staff of each of the "baby" Microsofts get transferred to Borgs, Inc.
• All executive decisions within the Microsofts are now handled by Borgs, Inc.
• Borgs, Inc. restructures itself, closing down the Microsoft divisions and transferring staff & equiptment to itself
• Borgs, Inc. relaunches itself as Microsoft: TNG, to avoid any legal complications

In only a few, simple steps, Bill Gates would have neatly bypassed any judgement passed against Microsoft and removed any legal barriers that might have been placed against mergers, by transferring everything out of the affected companies into a totally new shell, which then just needs to be renamed to keep brand recognition, once the transfer is complete.

You are thinking of Paul Allen

[nyet]

That Bill G. is an even marginally talented programmer is a common misperception, even among geeks.

Paul Allen (a very GOOD hacker at the time) did most of the Altair work.

At most Bill acted as Allen's "agent". He was the one angling to make sure he (and Allen) made money off of Allen's skills. Witness his now infamous "big foot" letter to Altair hobbiests, regarded now as the start of retail software sales. That is Bill Gates' primary legacy to computing, not any real programming.

My thoughts exactly.

[Evro]

I don't want to post a "me too," but this is exactly what I was thinking. Gates will be able to lead the best submicrosoft. Ballmer would have been CEO of the other one anyway, so this just seems like almost a publicity stunt. Maybe this is the first step in some MS settlement strategy? Maybe if they break MS up the way THEY want they can head off the government splitting them up the way THEY want.

I love the "Breaking up this company is such a terrible idea!!" comments from Ballmer.

______________________________________
um, sigs should be heard and not seen?

It's going to a more boring world

[tjstork]

I think it is time to admit that Bill Gates has probably gotten bored with Microsoft and that is why he quit. The press release and title of Chairman is nothing more than a bit of reassurance to Wall Street, no behind the scenes power grab.

At some level, Gates is still a person and when frustrated or unable or both he has got to want to do something aggressive, risky or both. He cannot get that satisfaction from Microsoft anymore. He can't compete with ruthless abandon because of the government. He can't be a player in innovation because he has to take a pause and learn an aweful lot. He can't plunge Microsoft into a hugely risky assault the same way he did in 1992 - it would irresponsible to his shareholders and to the economy at large.

Gates cannot have fun at Microsoft any more, so he is going to do something else. He puts enough of his name on the company to keep his shares valued highly.

Microsoft is going to become a normal American corporation, staid like an IBM and as boring as a Ford. It will make money in its market but not much news. It won't take big risks. It will be incremental, occasionally doing something flashy, but never really so risk filled, idea robbing, aggressive that you'd either despise the ethics while admiring the brilliance. There will be no eerie epics like the destruction of Borland or the fight with IBM.

Now, Microsoft has been off of its game for the last few years anyway. No doubt, a lot of you detest that company. But, when Microsoft is just another brand, when the computer industry "is mature" like cars or cola, I guarantee that you will miss these days. The computer industry is finally growing up and its not going to be nearly as much fun for it.

linux was not written to crush windows

[Shoeboy]

It's pretty well documented that Linus wrote linux to replace with a shitty OS, but the shitty os in question was Minix.

I doubt too many of the early kernel hackers cited "hatred of windows" as their prime motivation. They most likely considered dos/windows irrelevant and were motivate by dislike of the high price and unfree nature of commercial *nixen.

--Shoeboy

Mood Music - Microsoft Rhapsody

[SuperJ]

Microsoft Rhapsody by Justin Osborn To the tune of: BOHEMIAN RHAPSODY by Queen Is this the boot disk? Is this the Win CD? Caught in a deadline This software is real crappy. Open a file, look up at the screen and see, I'm just a marketer, give me some sympathy Because I'm loaded man, playing spades, on my LAN, everyday. Quality of Windows doesn't really matter to me, to me. Ballmer just quit my job On TV prime time, signed on the dotted line. Ballmer, I was having fun But now I'm going to go goof off. Ballmer, ooh, Didn't mean to make you cry, If we're not regulated by tomorrow, Carry on, carry on, cause quality doesn't matter. Too late, not having fun I'm getting very bored, with the bugs in MS Word. Goodbye ev'rybody, I'm gonna go, Gonna connect to Hotmail and hack root. Ballmer, ooh, I don't wanna use vi Sometimes I wish I knew a little Linux. I see a little silhouetteo of a man, Steve Jobs, Steve Jobs, could it be some competition Torvalds and Penguin, very very scaring me. IE5.0 IE5.0 IE5.0 IE5.0 IE5.0 Word 6.0 Alpha 0.0.0.0.0 I'm just a marketer, nobody loves me. He's just a marketer, with a long history Stealing intellectual property. Monopoly, what d'you know? will you let me go? Microsoft! No, you bought out all we know. (We like slow!) Microsoft! You bought out all we know. (We like slow!) Microsoft! You bought out all we know. (I like slow.) Bought out all we know. (I like slow.) Bought out all we know. (I like slow.) Heck no, Heck no, Heck no Prosecution Prosecution, Prosecution let me go. The DoJ has a punishment for me, for me, for me. So you think you can split us and break us apart. So you think you can fine us, we'll make a new start. Oh DoJ, can't do this to me, DoJ, I'm gonna get out, I'm gonna get right outta here. Quality doesn't matter, Windows users see, Quality doesn't matter, Quality doesn't matter, to me.

Re:Mood Music - Microsoft Rhapsody

[Greg Merchan]

Or, if you prefer Weird Al, try the Mircosoft Polka!

argv 1/ AX-25 $

Re:Mood Music - Microsoft Rhapsody

[pen]

Wasn't Rhapsody the internal name for Win95? If it was, then this even funnier...

--

Re:Mood Music - Microsoft Rhapsody

[thetzar]

No, that was Chicago. Rhapsody was a codename for Apple's in-house and now defunct next-gen OS, which has been replaced by the current OSX, based on mach.

Re:Mood Music - Microsoft Rhapsody

[Malcontent]

Oh man that was too funny. You made my day.

Number one reason

[makohund]

Reading all the comments on Slashdot takes up a lot of time these days...

Gates and Windows?

[Wateshay]

Here's an interesting thought. What happens if Gates ends up going with the application division? The good software developers that go to the windows division then leave to join MSAppDiv, because they know that Gates will make the company sucessful. Windows gets left with a low talent pool. Does anyone out there think that Gates would have any loyalty to Windows if he doesn't control it. Not if he thinks he can make more money elsewhere. And so, MSAppDiv begins fully supporting Linux. Good/Bad? I'll let you decide.

Gates Cuban Boy Alien Conspiracy

[tjstork]

Ok, here's the real truth. The little cuban boy is an alien and Bill Gates knows it. All else is a cover up, is deception grotesque. The real truth lies in the kernal, the secret Windows kernal, SETI of a newer sort, P=NP secretly proven by NSA cryptographers in 1996, all internet security a sham. Awesome computing and problem solving power. Windows, secret Bill Gates conspiracy with Government deal ends at 100 billion dollars. The net worth is reached, the deal climaxes, an alien ship deposits a cuban boy, to bring a message, hello, we found you to earth. Janet Reno stops shaking for a moment, we are not alone. The boy goes back to Cuba, out of sight but really back to space, Bill Gates retires, his deal with the NSA fufilled, millions of PCs with awesome power, contact made and now the end, and yes Fidel Castro is Java Programmer!

Did anyone catch this statement?

[Some guy named Chris]

In this article it was stated that Ballmer and Gates both said that only by having a unified company that was able to deliver across-the-board solutions was the company able to add ``real value.''

Is it just me, or does that statement parse as "Without our monopoly position, we cannot compete"? If they cannot add real value without controlling every aspect of the software market, how can they expect anyone else to compete with them?

I can't help but shake my head at the cluelessness of these guys!

Some guy named Chris

I would've been happier if they....

[caferace]

....broke hime in three pieces instead. But that's just me.

Dear Slashdotter,

[RuntimeError]

Dear Slashdotter,

I shall henceforth resigning my position as CEO of Microsoft Corp. I have suddenly realised that Microsoft is evil, corrupt and does not play fair. This is something I never realised during my 25 year tenure as CEO. As all you who have climbed up the corporate ladder know too well, the higher you go, the less you know.

By resigning my post as CEO, and going back to my dark cell from where I write code, I am going back to my roots. Yes, my geek roots. I want, once again, to become one with my computer.

I hope, now that I am one of you, that you will forgive my sins. I wasn't aware of predatory marketing tactis. I swear. That was work of the Marketing Dept. I was totally unaware of the existence of the Dirty Tricks Department, to which all other departments reported to.

After doing a lot of investigations, I found out the real culprit behind Microsoft's nefarious schemes. He is none other than Steve Ballmer, the guy who replaced me as president sometime ago. Goes onto show that becoming president corrupts any individual.

As he is the President, he is all powerful, and there is no way I can get rid of him. Therefore, I have decided to make him the new CEO.

Now let him face the music. I know that "Bill Gates is Evil" returns 1,000,000 hits on any search engine. I think that should be changed to "Steve Ballmer is Evil". From now on it should read

• Steve Balmer is Evil
• Steve Balmer is Satan
• Steve Balmer is the Evil Emporer
• Steve Balmer is the Borg King
• Steve Balmer is the Beast

Tomorrow I am going to do something I wanted to do all my life. Yes, meet Linus Torvalds, the true king. I will learn from him how to build a functioning operating system, and in exchange, I will teach him how to market a product.

Most of you out there, used to hound me saying I am the king-pig of capitalists. No, more comrades. There was Chairman Mao. Now there shall be Chairman Bill.

I hope this letter clarifies all the misunderstandings you have had during the last quarter century. May you have a long uptime.

Yours most Sincerely

Bill "ChrmnBill" Gates

Ballmer is bad news, and a breakup would be good.

[EverCode]

Steve Ballmer is overly competative, and him presiding over Microsoft will certainly bring about troubles. I have read a few interviews with him, and he is very arrogant and believes Windows is a gift to humanity.

Come on Steve Ballmer, if you had brains, you would realize that competation is a good thing for business, because it reduces stagnation. Your belief that Windows should be the only option for consumers is insane.

(Example: Intel and AMD of recent, hell it is almost FUN to watch them duke it out)

I hope Microsoft does get broken up severely, and that Steve Ballmer does get the short end of the stick out of the process.

I believe breaking up Microsoft would lead to new Microsoft products on other OS platforms, including Mac OS and Linux because they will feel not as obligated to make Windows their only home. They will feel like they have the freedom to have at least a vacation house over on Linux Island and another over at Mac OS Beach.

In theory, a divided Microsoft will conquer even more territory, but it will be in a way that will benefit non-Windows users.

DOJ, get out the axe!

Not really...

[Seenhere]

If you look at his official bio pic you'll see he's not totally bald. He has those little tufts of hair on the sides over the ears. Yes, friends, he just needs to grow them out... make them more, you know, pointy! Then we'll be all set.

--Seen

To some degree, yes.

[dmaxwell]

It's damn near impossible to grow into a competent adult without at least SOME cynicism about the motives of others. Furthermore, much of this cynicism will be focused on one is most informed about. Many of the members of the forum are VERY informed about Microsoft's past and current actions. As a group, we techies want to see the best technology win and we would prefer that winners accomplish this by Doing The Right Thing. For the most part, Microsoft's dominance is due to dirty tricks e.g. "If 123 runs then we ain't done..." and just plain bullying TRUE innovators when they couldn't buy them out. Microsoft is like algae bloom over what used to be a clear unmuddied lake; nothing else can breathe much less compete with it for resources. OF COURSE, there are a lot of bitter feelings towards them.

Most of us realize that the Best Right Thing simply cannot prevail against unscrupulous billionaires who can buy their way out of any threat against them. The bitter feelings that pain you are not without justification. Now if Microsoft were brought down a peg or three and had the smarts to realize why then perhaps our feelings might change. IBM used to be the Evil Empire you know.

Re:To some degree, yes.

[Wraithlyn]

You're absolutely right. My bit was just that it seems that no matter WHAT Bill does, everybody here instantly and automatically criticizes him. It's a collective mentality that "Bill can do no good... EVER" that permeates and affects everyone who reads this site. Now I suppose that's natural for a strongly pro Linux community, but it's gotten to the point where anything done by Microsoft is slammed regardless of any possibility of virtue. Where eventually, there are millions of people criticizing Microsoft without even looking at what they're trying to do. This is the Open Source version of F.U.D.

"When you become obsessed with the enemy, you become the enemy."
"Meet the new boss, same as the old boss."

This second is made painfully clear by that post asking for a borg/ballmer image. (Which received /.'s coveted rank 5, no less) Even before he's settled into his new office, he is villified and ridiculed. This goes beyond cynicism and into the realm of predjudism.

But hey, it's funny so who cares, right?

For the record, I AM a techie, I've been coding since I was 7. I do want to see the best technology win, and also prefer that the winners accomplish this by "Doing The Right Thing". I just am able to conceive of a future where Microsoft pulls their act together. Apparently nobody else can.

IBM used to be the Evil Empire you know.

Exactly.

muse

[Scrymarch]

I'm on an MS campus right now, and it's an odd hearing about this from /. I just got the strangest vision of Bill, having a bit more time on his hands, browsing /. and reading all the grand plans for his future ("Gates will do this"), and smiling.

Gates as system architect to Windows Linux Inc

[Morgaine]

You guys are underestimating Gates. He truly believes that Windows can easily out-compete everything else, and that Microsoft applications have no viable opposition. But he doesn't like being associated with a foundering ship.

For this reason, ol' Gatesy is positioning himself to become an independent system architect and technology advisor not only to his old baby in Redmond, but also to his new venture, Windows Linux Inc, whose primary goal will be to market a Linux-based O/S that runs all Microsoft applications.

This will achieve 3 goals simultaneously: (i) Billy Boy will be making massively more money because he'll be selling WinLinux for $300 *AND EVERYONE WILL BE BUYING IT ANYWAY BECAUSE IT'S "MICROSOFT-APPROVED"*; (ii) Windows will continue to be a success despite massive competition in the O/S market from WinLinux among others, simply because most of the world knows no better (this will vindicate him in his belief that Windows is tops); and (iii) he'll continue to make massive amounts of money by selling his apps on WinLinux as well, through a concession from Microsoft.

All the above things are easily achievable, and even its risks are of the win-win variety, without any pun being intended. Bill may be down in the dumps a bit at the moment, but fairly soon he's going to be on top of the world again. As soon as Windows Linux Inc launches, I pity Microsoft investors.

Re:Gates as system architect to Windows Linux Inc

[Morgaine]

To flesh out this scenario a little more, here are some possible answers to the more obvious objections:

- If BG's as clever as portrayed, how come that he thinks that Windows is good? Easy: it's the worm's eye view effect, ie. he's too close to the ground to see the greater picture. Or alternatively, he's got his nose stuck so deep into it that he can't smell it anymore.

- If BG thinks Windows is the best O/S, why the hell would he want to develop a rival one? Because it's a win-win situation: if Windows continues to dominate then he's vindicated for his earlier brilliance which was quashed by the DoJ, and if WinLinux decimates Windows then he's seen as The System Architect With The Midas Touch.

- And almost as important as the preceding reason is that WinLinux would surely wipe the ground with all other Linux distributions in terms of numbers of copies sold. (We geeks probably wouldn't buy it, but we're a small minority compared to the great unwashed masses.)

- And finally: Linux is GPL'd, so anything that WinLinux can do could also be offered in every other Linux distribution, so where's BG's advantage? The key here is a matter of timing: WinLinux could release a new version with ever-better Windows compatibility every 6 months, which to all intents and purposes would mean that all other distros would always lag behind it in that area. This would be the final nail in the coffin, given that the BG-sanctioned distro would have such a collosal advantage in the market anyway for its intended audience.

#1 reason

[linux_penguin]

Billy's windows machine in the boardroom will only boot in safe mode, and he has to go re-install....

Gates didn't build his empire alone.

[DevilEye]

Despite how much anyone might want to think Ballmer was just Gates' lap dog, the fact is Gates originally hired Ballmer to handle the business end of things.
So maybe Bill was in charge of the direction of the company, and handed down the orders to crush the opposition, but I'd bet my left one that Ballmer handled a huge chunk of implementing those orders.
Bottom line? Don't expect anything to change.

Re:Top 10

[aroobie]

You meant 'buy' AOL Timewarner.

Nobody wants Gates to suffer

[Andrew Cady]

We just want good software for ourselves. Gates will always be rich, but that doesn't hurt us. His company doesn't have to be unethical, though, and since we're currently afforded the power to force it not to be, it looks like that's what's going to happen. Hopefully we'll all be able to join Gates in his laugh with Office and MSIE for *NIX (etc), at least until proprietary software becomes completely obsolete.

Anybody who feels the need for some sort of jealous fit of revenge against Gates just has problems. It's about the software.

links: Microsoft legal, antitrust, Bill Gates

[Corrinne Yu]

Antitrust and other Microsoft legal
http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/doj/doj.htm

Bill Gates site
http://www.microsoft.com/billgates/

Microsoft news and legal
http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/

Corrinne Yu
3D Game Engine Programmer

Good.

[fleckster]

Good! Get da !@#$^& out Billie! Start working head-to-head with your money-sack and see just how crappy it is.
Maybe now Windows (Neptune, actually, is what he will work on) will be GOOD.

Ballmer and Dr. Evil

[Corrinne Yu]

Sorry for ditto.

You know those folks that did the Star Wars-cum-Titanic parody movie?

I want my Dr. Evil Ballmer Microsft Darth Vadar movie now!

1. Dr. Evil Ballmer is much better idea than Ballmer 7 of 9 (7 of 9 is much better played by Jeri Ryan).

2. Ballmer looks more evil than Bill Gates. He is a better visual casting choice for Microsoft helm.

P.S. Apologies to personal appearance attack to Ballmer et al.


Corrinne Yu
3D Game Engine Programmer

new /. icon

[Corrinne Yu]

Not only ditto, but ditto-ing myself. Sorry.

I look forward to the NEW /. Microsoft icon: Dr. Evil Ballmer. (It is even funnier than Bill Gates Borg.)

Then Anti-Microsoft articles can have the Austin Powers logo.

Petition Hemos/ /. powers that be for the new Dr. Evil icon for Microsoft!


Corrinne Yu
3D Game Engine Programmer

Re:new /. icon

[Ereinion]

I was inspired!

Dr. B in the flesh :)

Re:new /. icon

[Noke]

Don't ALL slashdot articles have some anti-MS slant to them?

which photo?? for /.

[wxyz]

just my $.02. guess bills photo can now be split with the laser side, of bills, and the other side of balmers... i dunno how the morph will result..

Re:which photo?? for /.

[nonstop]

just my $.02. guess bills photo can now be split with the laser side, of bills, and the other side of balmers... i dunno how the morph will result...

We don't need to change the photo... you forget how the collective works. They share the same consciousness but they have no conscience.

better idea for new Microsoft icon

[Corrinne Yu]

better idea for new Microsoft icon

Dr. Evil Ballmer

http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=00/01/13/155 0250&cid=41


Corrinne Yu
3D Game Engine Programmer

Re:better idea for new Microsoft icon

[veldrane]

I'd hate to see his good counterpart, the shagadelic, international Fed of Mystery.

Ballmer with a toupe, bad teeth and thick growth of chest hair.

*shudder*

Probably looking at Janet Reno saying, "Do I make you randy?!? Yeah, baby, yeah!"

:0

Ok, the visuals are starting to scare me now...

"Chief Software Architect"

[mellonhead]

"Nor is Sculley, who has taken to calling himself Apple's Chief Technical Officer--an insult to the company's real engineers."

-Accidental Empires- pg. 205


____________________________
Godwin is a Nazi.

My Bill Gates Top Ten

[RonaldReagan]

10. Attributed his intelligence to eating nothing but beer nuts. 9. Most famous formula: "Professional wrestling + sitting naked on sofa = fun" 8. Hosted failed game show, "Win Bill Gates's Money" 7. Once sat atop a billboard for 10 straight days to win Black Sabbath tickets 6. Windows 95 inspired by malt liquor-fueled sex-a-thon at Hef's mansion. 5. Used Windows calcutator application to prove impossibility of becoming senator 4. Whenever anyone did something dumb, he'd say, "Nice going, me." 3. Fired employee who put 87 gas in his Bimmer 2. Copied his first program from Asian kid who sat next to him in class 1. His older brother Gary -- now there's a smart guy

Could this possibly be Linus envy?

[MajorBlunder]

Bill becoming "Chief Software Architect," of course has a number of implications. One of them is that Bill is trying to rework his image. In the wake of Linus Torvalds increasing popularity, (which among some groups has become reverential awe, and is swiftly approaching worship) Bill may be looking at his future, and realizing that being remembered as merciless marketer and corporate raider, is hardly the legacy he'd care to leave behind. Being thought of as a programing genius will mean much more in the comming decades.

Thats my $.02

Think Again

[HomerG]

This is not a sign of capitulation, but more an act of revenge. Bill Gates is a saint compared to Steve Ballmer. I'm sure Mr. Ballmer is plotting the demise of all MS's enemies, real and perceived. This is not going to be a pretty picture either. Mr. Ballmer cares nothing about appearances, he will openly start pulling licenses and buying politicians until nothing hinders MS from it's objectives. I hope by the time I get home I can still log on to the internet using Linux.

Re:So?

[Edmund]

Bill has less management work to do.

Smart Move by Bill

[I_redwolf]

I think it was a rather smart move. I also think that it wasn't done because of the DOJ or the countless lawsuits pending. However I do believe that what he states as him going back to what he loves is true. He's not stepping down because he wants to. He's stepping down because he has to. He has no choice. He hasn't been involved with the everyday dirty work of the OS nor the many other MS products. As "software CEO" he can fiddle in the dirty work. This isn't a move that will make MS less of a threat. With this small stepping down expect to see some suprising things from Microsoft.

Not only that but when the shit does hit the fan he's got a fall guy. By the time it's all over he'll re-emerge with new "innovative" technology. Everyone will be wowed. Microsoft is back on the map and he's got his battleship again.

OR it could be what the general concensus is; that he wants a fall guy and wants to be remembered as a philanthropist of sorts.

Artists (well sort of)

[Penguin's Advocate]

We have a bunch of bullshit artists running the largest software company in the world. So many people use Windows not because it's great (or even tolerable) but because it's being pushed by Bullshit Artists. I think the Linux Community could use some Bullshit artists and a nice shiney commercial. Not that it matters, as long as I don't have to use Windows I could care less what Morons the majority of the people follow. Suggestion to the rest of the world : If you want to use your computer rather than stare at a bright blue screen in awe and wonder (or a blind rage) ignore the almighty Bill and his rainbow colored Windows, and get yourself a real Operating System (I recommend Linux, but there are others, and I have to admit, they're all better than that Microsoft Crap.) The World is Mine! (They just don't know it yet)

Re:Artists (well sort of)

[alumshubby]

Hmmm...a commercial. How about a fast-cut montage of Linux geex doing their thing -- with REM's "Shiny Happy People" as the soundtrack? After 25 seconds, fade to white with black lettering, "Linux. Come be a part of it."

Hey, it could happen.

Good Article!!!!!!

[nevets]

It seems to explain a lot. But this means that Ballmer can't fire Gates. Gates still is the head of the company, but doesn't seem to have to answer to anyone! So why does the title of this slashdot article state that Gates has step down as CEO. It seems that he actually has stepped up

Steven Rostedt

Re:Good Article!!!!!!

[Gid1]

Well, he answers to the shareholders. Gates remains chairman, so he hasn't stepped up. There is no single head role of a company like Microsoft, although with Bill occupying most of the top jobs, he personally was the single head of the company. Ballmer is now head of the company, while Bill is the senior big-wig representing the shareholders (the supposed top-dogs)

Theoretically, the shareholders could get rid of Gates. Billy-boy doesn't hold a majority share, so they could just vote him out.

However, they'd be stupid to do so. You can pretty much credit Bill 100% with the high share price of MSFT, and that is the number one (and only?) priority of a CEO/President/Chairman/Whatever.

Anyway, this is all pointless. Bill has his hand shoved firmly up the ass of Steve Ballmer -- why do you think Steve sounds like Bullwinkle? I can't imagine Bill actually turning over the real control of Microsoft. Can you imagine anyone telling him what to do -- Ballmer included?

Billy-boy just doesn't want to have to talk to those pesky partners, clients and suppliers, so he foists it off on Steve. Now he can devote his time to whatever the hell he wants.

No conspiracy here

[e-Motion]

Both Windows and Internet are supposed to be capitalized. It is not often done, but I believe he proper way to spell "Internet" is with a capital I. At least, that's what MS Word tells me =)

Re:No conspiracy here

[Tomahawk]

The word 'Internet' (Capital 'I') refers to what we always take that word to mean - Info.Superhighway, WWW, whatever. It is the Global Worldwide Internet.

The word 'internet' (small 'i') refers to the underlying network structure. It is not necessary TCP/IP based. An internet is a method of interconnecting many disparate physical networks and to make them function as a coordinated unit (internetworking). It accommodates multiple, diverse underlying hardware technologies by providing a way to interconnect heterogeneous network and a set of communication conventions. The internet technology hides the details of network hardware and permits computers to communicate independent of the physical network connections. - paraphrasing Internetworking with TCP/IP, Vol. I (Prentice Hall/ Comer, ISBN 0-13-227836-7)

So, MSWord should accept both 'Internet' and 'internet'. The same book describes the Internet as being TCP/IP based (TCP/IP Internet), as opposed to the other protocols which could be used.



T.

Netcraft stats... not so accurate

[ffatTony]

Netcraft's survey is much less than accurate for a number of reasons, the most important being that it is questionable that it is representative of the web as a whole and secondly (I have no proof for this), but I recall reading that apache is used in more unimportant applications (every one's personal linux machine) while IIs (because it cost $) is used more often for more important applications(important webpages, ecommerce, etc)... oh, and I am aware that apache does often has important uses as well (like slashdot!)

I do agree that asp sucks though.

Re:Netcraft stats... not so accurate

[JabberWokky]

Netcraft just told me that my server is running on BSD. Damn impressive, since it's running Linux 2.0.36.

Hurm...

--
Evan

Actually...

[nutsy]

...he looks kind of like Bob Newhart to me. Or maybe Phil Collins. I'm not sure which. Look at this photo and figure it out for yourself.

Satanic Ballmer

[doomy]

How do you like my version


;)
--

How about this?

[doomy]

My version of an ideal emBallmer walking past the pearly gates of heaven.



:)
--

What are we going to do tomorrow?

[ntang]

The first image that popped into my mind after I had been told the news...

[Outside Bill's old office]

Bill looks on wistfully as a janitor removes his name from the door and hangs up Steve's in its place. Steve stands next to him, watching, and then turns to him.

Steve: "Boy, the end of an era. So tell me - what are we going to do tomorrow, Bill?"

Bill: "Why, Ballmer, the same thing we do every day. Try to take over the world!"

[Cue theme music. They're Ballmer, Ballmer and the Brain brain brain brain brain.... Fade to logo: WB - (a division of AOL/Time Warner) . Fade to black.]

This should have happened a YEAR ago

[DerFeuervogel]

Balmer got Microsoft where it is, and was smart enough to give his boss the glory.
Now that Microshaft has to play the phoenix, Balmer should be at the helm.

By by Bill we wont miss you!
"Who will ever need more than 640K"
Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha ...

Note to Steve B.
I just built a simple app with Kdevelop. Qt spanks MFC so hard it's not even funny! Cut the bundling-tying stuff and get your developers focused on product quality/open standards.
* Kill the COM XML link - Don Box is a moron. And The choice of words! "Manifesto" Duh!
* Continue W3C support - without the politics.
* Port Office to Linux. Keep it closed. I've seen M$ code -FUGLY!
* Change dependency order: Crust. 1. Internal dev. 2. Marketing 3. I would fire marketing but that is probably asking too much.

Re:Gates Image

[Darby]

>...killed in South Park..
Yeah, and when I saw it the entire theater
cheared.

It really made my heart warm.
---CONFLICT!!---

You're more right than you know

[UberQwerty]

You called Gates the king. Lots of people think of him that way. That's why he stepped down. He still has lots of control and lots of money etc... However, it _seems_ like a change of management. MS doesn't have its king. Image is really important to coorperations, and everyone's image of MS was a big evil monopoly serving Gates. Now that Gates isn't part of the image, they have to make a new image. This gives MS the chance to influence people more - and save face. They knew quite well that everyone hated them.

Gates is better publicly than Ballmer

[TummyX]

Gates in all his photos looked kind (and sortta geeky in a nice way). But if you need any more proof, here's another article with a picture at the same press conference, Ballmer loooks like he's giving someone the look of death.

He kind of reminds me of Scott Mcneally when he's talking about Microsoft.

Re:So?

[leereyno]

What makes you think these people are out of high school?

Bugged...

[bnolan]

Like Salon says:

"Jeezuz Steve, those cunts down at slashdot aren't gonna be happy untli every single bug is ironed out of the whole 8000lines of windows 95."

"Yeah - that's true Bill, but watcha gonna do?"

"Aww fuck. If only those slack cunts down in development weren't so fucking shit-scared of a little hard work."

"Yeah - that's true Bill, but watcha gonna do?"

"Fuck'em all - like they says - if you want a job done properly you gotta do it yourself. Get me a workstation. I'm going downstairs."

Actually Ballmer will contradict him

[leereyno]

That's the thing about Gates, he looks like this mild mannered nerdy type when in fact he's very aggressive and confrontational, just with bad social skills. If you stand up to him, he will respect you and you may succeed at M$. If you don't, then you won't last long there.

Re:That's why ...

[TummyX]

Maybe Alan Cox could lend his beard to Linus :P

Re:Hallmark makes better cards?

[Alex Belits]

Isn't that like saying Microsoft can write better software than the Open SOurce community?

I have meant that grandma that need a technical support to find a "Print" button is unlikely to make a greeting card on computer that will be in any way superior to Hallmark card bought in the store, with text that she can easier write with a normal pen, but yes, Open Source community never was too prominent in greeting cards business.

Re:Question -- what is President, CEO, etc.

[Ed Avis]

So the CEO is 'more declarative' than the President :-)

Paranoid-schizo take on this

[freeBill]

All you guys out there pretenting to be conspiracy theorists get this: I know you're just spreading these ideas (that Bill has been pushed out; that he needed time to monkey with the W2K APIs; that he's getting ready to jump ship; that Ballmer's his fall guy) to throw us off the scent.

The real conspiracy: Bill is really a nice guy who's been tricked through the years into doing evil things by Ballmer (yes, he is the anti-Christ) and Myhrvold (you didn't really believe he retired, did you?). Bill's much-vaunted turnabout on the Internet came when he got out of their clutches for a week, did a little surfing, and realized the truth (but not all of the truth).

The little-known fact: Bill is a bad liar. Ballmer has tried to make up for this through the years by fooling Bill into believing the things he needs to say. This works most of the time because the press needs Bill's cute face to sell magazines or whatever. But get Bill in the same room with a sympathetic pit bull like David Boies and he gets torn apart. (You owe it to yourself to see that video. Bill demonstrates brilliantly just how bad a liar he really is.)

The problem: Ballmer doesn't have the kind of PR face that Gates can put forward. He comes across in interviews as a Yuppie with a crack problem -- a bad crack problem.

The only thing that could save these guys now: the government breaks Microsoft up.

Unfavourable scenarios

[WinTired]

Ballmer today outlined his core priorities and announced plans for a major strategy day this Spring, when the company will outline details of the Internet User Experience vision and strategy. Ballmer said Bill Gates and Microsoft's four technical group vice presidents, including Paul Maritz, Jim Allchin, Bob Muglia, and Rick Belluzzo, will drive developing the technologies and user scenarios that are key to the success of the Internet User Experience and Next Generation Windows Services.

Now, would anyone please translate this into English? What scenarios would be key to their success? Would they try to force them to occour? I don't know, I'm scared...

-------------------------

Sanity Check

[redd]

Much as I've always been against the monopoly, now Microsoft aren't in so much power am I the only one who's slightly saddened to see Bill step down?

At least up until now M$ has been run by a true (although misguided) geek. Balmer scares me.

So long and thanks for all the fish Bill.

Re:So?

[CptnHarlock]

Yeah... But let's wait and see if hes shwartz is as big as Gate's...

Bill ~ Obi-Wan

[jerralb]

Analogy:

Vader is to Obi-Wan as US Gov is to Bill.

Vader kills Obi-Wan. Obi-Wan becomes more powerfull.

US Gov kills.........

The problem with this analogy: I liked Obi-Wan.

Re:Bill gets the last laugh - no he won't

[SurfsUp]

All of you giggling and postulating about Bill Gates being wary of a Microsoft breakup should be aware that he may be laughing all the way to the bank in the near future.

No, he won't, see below

The government might split Microsoft into 3 (or so) entities, but it can't strip Bill Gates of what will be his large ownership in all 3 companies.

The conventional wisdom is that the value of the separated entities will rise higher than the value of the original entity, as happened with the Standard Oil breakup. This is just false. What will happen is the bottom will fall out of the stock price - faced with competition from free software, and no longer having the means of forcibly maintaining the existing monopoly, the Baby Bills revenue can go nowhere but down.

Microsoft's current annualized revenue is about $25 billion (being generous); its market capitalization is about $500 billion. That's a 20 times multiple on earnings whereas a mature, stable business with stable revenue would normally have something more like 2x. Microsoft's valuation is based on one thing: expectation of continued exponential earnings growth. That just ain't gonna happen. In fact, the baby Bills are going to have to dance like crazy just to avoid having their earnings decimated by the need to compete with free software and unshackled industry competitors. In short: end of exponentional earnings growth == goodbye 20x multiple on revenue. Hello 2x multiple, and maybe worse. Shareholders aren't so clueless that they can't see that as well as anybody else can; neither are the professional short sellers.

Hooboy, that means Microsoft's stock will fall like a lead balloon.

Re:So?

[Twon]

I just saw this scene on this morning's morning news.... I'm not surprised that Ballmer make this type of remark (he has all along). However, what really got me was that Gates (standing next to him at the time) was evidently trying to keep the smirk on his face from spreading... makes you wonder if he has more cards up his sleeve than we think.

The Gekko runs away, leaving its tail behind

[SurfsUp]

It's just a trick of course. Does anyone really believe that Gates won't continue to run the show? Really all they're doing is trying to shuffle the deck and say "here, see? Different deck!".

Another way of putting it is they're desperately trying to show that something has changed at Microsoft and that further remedies aren't needed. This is bullshit, and nobody should be fooled by it.

bill's buddies sound a lot like himself

[bawback]

I turned on the radio and tuned into the middle of an NPR story. Somebody was speaking for Microsoft, whining how they [DOJ] were trying to break the c'mp'ny, how inn'va[y]tion was being hampered, how consumer would suffer, on and on like a broken LP spinning at 45, and I thought I was listening to Bill Gates being interviewed. It wasn't so much the message that made me think it was Bill, it was the characteristic whining, but fast tempo, of his speech.

But NO! It wasn't Bill, it was Steve Ballmer! Is it just my imagination, or does Bill prefer to promote whining replicas of himself? (In the past, I have confused other Microsoft officials' voices for Bills as well.)

Some body help! Am I going mad? Or is this just another sign of things to come? Baby Bills? Billy Borgs? What should we call this new trend in pitched whining?

Hass Big Bill outfoxed us all?

[TheApproach]

The Register has a very interesting take on the reason for Bill stepping down

But it's FUN!

[ch-chuck]

hatred flowing from what I usually find an extremely open minded, intelligent, and positive community just sickens me sometime

Well, if anyone has ever made billions from 'duping the masses' this has got to be it. The hateful bile is really just natural catharsis, psychological healing from being paid to spend all day pretending that shit smells really good! There isn't a day goes by in my current job that at least 5 or 7 people complain about "my computer's broken again" - I'm sure this scenario is repeated endlessly across the corporate landscape - and 9 out of 10 times the COMPUTER is PERFECTLY OK! IT's the SOFTWARE whats got a registry error, or whatever, and I'm really on a crusade to enlighten all the rats following these pied pipers that the SOFTWARE IS THE PROPERTY of the MS Corp. and that they're paying me to spend hours rebuilding SOMEONE ELSES PROPERTY everytime the lousy house of cards topples over. I would LOVE to take pride in my work, but I've come to accept that it is impossible as an McSE (thank gawd I've the old BSEE) to avoid all the little glitches that make for embarassing presentations.

In short, THEY make billions, and I get laughed at. What a ceramic container of organic fertilizer!

Boojum

My, but the MS stockholders

[ch-chuck]

are getting really long-winded here.
Damage control! Battlestations!! Ensign, prepare a press release...

Boojum

Re:this is illegal

[jd]

*G* In which case, it would be a mark of consistancy, on the part of Bill Gates and Microsoft to be doing this. :)

What the heck is this garbage

[ch-chuck]

the idea of Gates as a well-loved philanthropist is something we should hold more strongly in our minds than the "BillGatus of Borg" image we beat to death. Whether truth or opinion, the image of Gates as an evil dictator is not very appealing and does no one good.

Image?? Have we really deteriorated to the point where all a captain of industry/politician is is just a mere 'image' or phantasm projected on a TV screen? How about what they have actually DONE? I see a little too much of this these days where someone commits heinous crimes, and then they clean up their act, get super polite and then try to convince the jury what a GOOOOOOD person they are. Yeah, lets forget about all the pain of dislocation, downsizing, job retraining and everyone else whose been trampled underfoot for daring to oppose the MS business cultural revolution. So he moves a gold brick from one account to another and he's suddenly a GOOOOOOD philantropist.
What I've learned from MS is that, to succeed, you A) Rob a bank (you have to do something bold, risky and daring, some power grab!) then once the heat is off and you've gotten away with it B) donate large chunks to law enforcement and crime prevention (so nobody will rob YOUR bank!) Heee.

Boojum

Re:What the heck is this garbage

[brianvan]

Gimme a break...

This is exactly what I'm talking about. Business is business. And business means hurting other businesses sometimes. It's the nature of the game. Many companies did NOT have to die in the wake of MS if they just would have done better business, although MS has been very agressive... but that's besides the point. The tech industry has always been like this, and Gates is no different from any other tech CEO in the last 2 decades. That's what I meant by the mythical stuff. This is all hero worship and villianizing. Bill Gates shouldn't have been concerned with the welfare of any company but his own... and I don't see massive layoffs coming at MS (although maybe that's why Ballamer's stepping in... maybe Gates doesn't want to be knows as "Buzzsaw Bill") so I don't think Gates is a big villian. BTW I own AOL stock, so I have no reason to stick up for MS except for my own convictions. And I'm not going to listen to any troll who thinks that Gates is the antichrist because a bunch of companies tanked when they couldn't make money anymore even though you can't blame Microsoft for that. Gates hasn't murdered anyone, so cut him some slack.

Re:What the heck is this garbage

[I.AM.BLORT]

a little more like robin hood. A) rob bank and get away with it. B) give money to disadvantaged to make up for the negative karma of bank robbing. now really do you think that the robin hood of children's tales is inherrently evil?

nowhere to go but out?

[geoff lane]

Some recent numbers from MS indicated it cost them $7 per line to write W2K and $133 per line to test it.

MS needs a major OS release every few years to maintain a revenue stream at a reasonable level to support it's rising share price.

I don't believe that MS, in it's current form, is capable of writing and testing W2.005K. Far better would be to start again from scratch using a better architecture and no historical baggage.

But Bill can't do that within MS because it's a high risk stratigy - but there's no reason not to do it outside MS...

Frankenstein from Young Frankenstein

[Gilmoure]

Balmer looks like Peter Boyle now. Maybe someone can work up a Young Frankenstein/Borg pic.

True, but I bet he knows *exactly* what he's worth

[edremy]

He clearly doesn't care that much about money: you don't give away $11 billion if your end goal is to be the richest man in the world.

However, I bet he has a program that calculates his wealth to the penny, updated every second. Come on, wouldn't you write a program like this if you had his kind of cash? It's the geek thing to do, and whatever else you think of Gates, he is a geek. Put the number up on a big wall display in your living room and watch the numbers fly.

Eric

Yep - just like mid-east politics

[ch-chuck]

where Iran is the enemy and Saddam is the good guy, then Saddam becomes the enemy and the Kurds are the poor victims, untill you chum up to Turkey and then the Kurds are the enemy, and once upon a time Albania was the communist enemy then suddenly the Serbs are the hated murders of poor Albanian victims . etc, etc, etc.

Sadly few people seem to remember or care about the days when IBM did with hardware what MS does w/ software, or when AT&T was the spawn of much wacko conspiracy theories since they were a monopoly that even owned the phone in your house, which you had to have to fit in society and had to rent from them and only them; kinda like most businesses today feel arm twisted to run their company on MS property, w/ no choice in the matter.

Boojum

Some Top Ten Reasons of my own...

[MaxwellsSilverHammer]

Some of my own Top Ten Reasons Why Gates Resigned:

Here are a few other possibilities:

-Enrolled at ITT Technological Institute.

-Decided to leave before people associated him with Microsoft.

-Figured out Where he Wanted to Go Today & went there.

-Bought the Vatican & took over as CEO of the Papal See.

-Got a job at Home Depot where he can "finally sell some -real- windows, dammit!"

-Wanted to use his iMac without Balmer's constant teasing.

-Microsoft corporate culture wasn't hip to his wanting to wear jeans, sneakers, black turtlenecks, and a beard.

-Took Steve Jobs' advice and joined an ashram.

-He -really- wanted to be the "iCEO".

-Found out that being Microsoft CEO doesn't get him free coffee at Starbucks.

-Read Nietsche (sp?) and decided to move up & fill the vacancy.

-He realized The Road Ahead was a cul-de-sac.

-After you've crushed and destroyed every competitor in your way, it's Miller time!

-Wants to help O.J. look for 'the -real- killers'.

-Buying a little south sea desert island to retire on : AUSTRALIA!!

Bill Gates's failure

[LinuxParanoid]

While I admire Bill Gates as one of the best businessmen in the world, his failure to properly manage Microsoft's response to the DOJ lawsuit marks significant misjudgement, if not a little immaturity. IMHO. Perhaps its time for someone else with better relational skills to try the CEO role.

--LP

I have a real problem with that

[ch-chuck]

in this modern day USA, that "anything goes - just don't get caught at it" - and that goes for the prez and many other clever, tricky illuminaries who think they're above the laws we little folk are held to. These people are NOT good role models (or maybe you enjoy the current state of kids in school). So everyone's a criminal, just the 'successful' ones get away with it and hire a media consultant and launch an ad campaign. The unsuccessful must have some kind of conscience that is limiting their career, but we do get a good night sleep.

Boojum

Re:I have a real problem with that

[brianvan]

True... some of these people aren't great role models...

What I have a problem with is your definition of a criminal act. Although Microsoft is ruthlessly aggressive and maybe it has gotten a little out of control, it's hard to say that anything they've done was a criminal act (well, with a few exceptions, but they've been very good about owning up to that stuff... I'm thinking the DoubleSpace/Stac fiasco). And that's besides the point. Microsoft is NOT an unbeatable company. The idea is that they can lose many battles without getting knocked out for good. Now, what stops any other company from winning battles? Well, it's true that MS does throw their weight around a lot, but they're a big clumsy corporation (although pretty swift for one anyway) that can't compete with one very quick successful startup, the elephant that can be beaten by mice.

Netscape was a good example of this, and it wasn't MS that killed Netscape, it was Netscape that killed Netscape (and AOL who swept them under the rug). Face it, there was a point when both 4.0 browsers had just come out that it was very questionable whether or not Netscape could retain their lead, and NO ONE was really whining about the OS browser bundling at that point (except Netscape). Then what happened? Netscape had (and still has) many very loyal users and it would take a thief in the night to kill all the market share that they have right now. But the crap quality of Netscape vs. the improving quality of IE gave everyone a tough decision. In the end, there's tons of people who have both IE and Netscape on their computers but choose to use IE instead. Considering that most of these people aren't first time users (first time users actually look for Netscape, NOT IE), that is a legitimate victory for MS. And currently one that big man-woman Janet Reno thinks involved some criminal act.

I agree that it's not right when criminals turn good and everyone forgets the past. But to say that about Gates, you have to show exactly when he was a criminal.

Gates a huge philantrophist

[RayChuang]

First, think about this: how old is the average person working on Linux? I believe that Linus Torvalds is only in his mid thirties! Gates himself has been involved with Microsoft since its inception in 1975, and given the fact it has been 25 years as (more or less) CEO of that company, I think he has realized that it is time for him to consider doing something else in life. After all, he has more than enough money to live a very comfortable life until the end of his life, and with a possible Microsoft breakup he could have over US$70 billion (yes, _billion_) in liquid assets to play with.

Look, Gates is now raising a family, and he now has other interests in his life: his considerable interest in biotechnology, plus the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation with some US$17 _billion_ in its coffers (far more than any other philantrophic organization in the world).

Take for example the the AIDS health crisis. I have read that the health industry has spent only US$300 million to develop a vaccine; that's a drop in the bucket in the world of medical research, where billions can be spent just to develop ONE perscription drug. Gates' own foundation could easily provide US$2 billion for such research, and that type of money will make a huge difference in developing a vaccine that can be ready for large-scale human testing.

Think of this: after Standard Oil was broken up, John D. Rockefeller had so much money on his hands from the sales proceeds that he set up the Rockefeller Foundation to provide funding for the humanities. Without that money from the Rockefeller Foundation, many libraries would not exist today, and PBS could never have been started.

Balmer move is NOT a DOJ response

[Anonymous Coward]

AnonCoward because... in a company confidential MS partner briefing in March 99 we were told about the MS reorganisation announced yesterday. It may have been in anticipation of the DOJ case but is can't have been a reaction.

We were told it's about MS' move to what they term 'Windows DNA' and Gates' desire to spend his time on what amounts to a major shift in the Windows architecture.

And IMHO, if Gates the Robber Baron wants to take a back seat to Gates the UberGeek (a species not seen since the early 80's), great. Gates the UberGeek used to do brilliant software. (so long as you stop history with the Altair :) )

AC

Check out Nitrozac's take on it...(laugh!)

[Matter Eating Lad]

Nitrozac's done a great comic with that Balmer/Gates photo... well worth a click over to After Y2K

And again I ask... Nitro, please marry me ;-)

Just the facts, sir

[ch-chuck]

I get your drift tho - excess vilification is not a good thing - we'd like to get at the truth, but lacking that, our overworked active imaginations fill in their own facts for characters of such large proportions.

Time will tell, and the stories will be told. From what I understand about the Rockefeller legend, for example, he was a clerk in a company, sent on assignment to investigate some black, tarry substance that was a nuisence to Pennsylvania farmers. He came back, told his boss it was completely worthless, quit, hired a chemist and went on to build a huge empire. Clever move or dasterdly deed? The employer he shafted trusted him, and sent him to his destiny. Will the legend of Gates be a + or - ?
Probably a positive one. The good stuff will be remembered and the bad forgotten. Thank God.

Boojum

All I want to know is

[ch-chuck]

who's the genie-ass at MS who created a button labled "PREVIOUS" that moves a pointer to an event that comes AFTER the one you were just viewing? Someone there clearly has their ass on backwards. Or Outlook being so adamant about shoving itself in your face that it covers up it's own "you have mail" box. That this stuff is worth billions just drives me crazy. That we are FORCED to use it against our wills by business personages who want buy it because they want to be billionairs too is a crime aginst my engineering sense of mathematically perfect reason and order. :))

Boojum
back to the Linux 'dos' emulator...

How does this relate to court settlement?

[Juln]

Also, didnt this happen last year? Or was tht just a shifting of responsibilities? I guess Bill stepped away from 'day-to-day' operations.

Linux people

[mrhide]

You sure love to talk about Microsoft for linux people..! Keep your friends close... but keep your enemies closer? !

Gates Steps Down As CEO, Ballmer In

[XGN]

Anyone who can't tell this is just MS's stratigic shuffle before the sh|t hits the fan with the DOJ is just ignorant. You notice this was announced right after the "rumored" DOJ breakup anouncement across the web.

Talk about thinks that make you go hmm.. - lol

-X-

Nobody added, nobody deleted = no change!

[BigMike]

Nobody has been added into the management mix. And it's not like they suddenly noticed the nedd for a Chief Software Architect - how was that function getting done before the announcement? And nobody has been moved out. I conclude that this is only a cosmetic change.

Curious -- It's Funny, Read

[ripcrd]

Does this have anything to do with the previous article on monkey cloning? I had to ask.

Bill Gates Microsoft Operational Plan for 2000

[kettch]

January:
Step down as CEO. Install proxy CEO to take the fall for any DOJ actions. Create new position in company that ensures that I will be able to put my name on software and get credit for software. Translation: $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$

February:
Take over Win2K project in time to get my name on it. More $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$

March:
Proxy CEO gets in trouble with DOJ. Step in as CEO and get company back into favor with government. Appear to be a nice guy. Gain the trust of the government.

April:
Take over the world.

May:
Force planet to recognize new month names picked out by me.

The Month of MSN:
Begin construction of super laser to carve Microsoft Logo on the moon.

The Month of IE:
Super Laser should be complete. Test fire on DOJ building.

The Month of NT:
Begin Carving logo.

The Month of DOS:
Convert worlds paint factories to produce huge amounts of red, green, blue, and yellow paint.

The Month of Monopoly:
Start building of massive inkjet printer to paint my logo.

The Month of The Almighty Dollar:
Send streams of paint to the moon and finish construction of my logo on the moon.

The Month of Gates:
Begin to charge licensing fees for making use of the moons light, looking at the moon, and everything that has anything t do with the moon or in some way has an image of the moon. This also includes any thing that is in any way affected by the moon. This will be effective immediately and will be recursive forever. (Note: Chistmas will be moved to my birthday and all traditions and beliefs will be changed to reflect that event. e.g. they must worship me)

Re:True, but I bet he knows *exactly* what he's wo

[Pathetic Coward]

He doesn't need to write one. He just goes to http://www.webho.com/WealthClock

Re:True, but I bet he knows *exactly* what he's wo

[Pathetic Coward]

He doesn't need to write one. He just goes to http://www.webho.com/WealthClock.

Re:Bill gets the last laugh - no he won't

[SurfsUp]

Addendum to my own post: I should have said "sales" everywhere I said earnings or revenue.

Re:Gates' philanthropy mostly PR

[satanic bunny]

Check out the facts. To run a Foundation like the B & M Gates Found., you must give away a certain percentage of yr holdings each year. To date, B &M G are significantly BEHIND in this endeavor. To put it another way, Bill giving $30 million to Nelson Mandela certainly doesn't hurt the entire country of South Africa - but it tells you a lot about how "philanthropic" Gates actually *is*. Proportionately, it's like me giving the homeless guy on my street five bucks!

Also Bill gives whenever he gets a DOJ or other press setback. It's so pathetically transparent

Re:Gates Image

[satanic bunny]

They cheered that scene in South Park in Seattle too - and the theater was packed

Where does he say that?

[kcarnold]

He says that the 'net will be replaced by the "Information Superhighway" (read, good old Internet with Microsoft "improvements"), which of couse didn't happen. However, many of the things that he discusses in TRA are here now, while others have proved to be bad, impossible, or already here. It was a "predicting the future" book, and we know that no one can predict the future. But Mr. Gates seems to have had some pretty good guesses in his years.

Where does he say that CD-ROM is the future of the industry? In any case, CD-ROMs (and now DVDs) will be around for quite a while. Simple reason? You can carry it with you. Can't do that with net.

(Just noticed that nowhere in that book did he mention Linux. Well it was circa '95, and Linux has done a lot of growing and evolving since then. And anyway, it's Bill Gates we're talking about here.)

Ken

Re:Where does he say that?

[Darby]

I was referring to the original book which he wrote to show what an incredible visionary he was.
It was at the time when the internet was really starting to explode and he was blissfully unaware of it. After it was published he realized what a fool and an idiot he looked like since it was already obvious to everyone what was happening, and so in a classic Big Brother revisionist history move he recalled and completely rewrote it touting himself as the visionary who saw it all coming.
The initial release was a crock and the second release was all stuff already being done by companies with some actual vision.
---CONFLICT!!---

What About The Shares

[mad161]

By my understanding of buisness, whoever has the share controls the company. Shure Balmer is in charge of the day to day running of the company, but at the end of the day he cannot do anything without the backing of the share holders. It appears to me that Bill Gates is purely doing this to effectively become a scilent partner that still has most of the power.

Or is it the question of the Dos stealing argument. I remember reading that Windows 2000 is doing away with dos, the origional program which Gates remarcably stole (sorry, lost the site I got the info off) years back. Now that he has done away with it maybe it's time for a proper software engineer to step in and take up the callenge.

Personally I'm hoping that Linex takes advantage of the company whilst It's resufelling. Then we'll see a real operating system

Re:(correction) Chief Snotware Architect

[nonstop]

I am always riled when I hear the usual press attribute the Chief Borg's wealth to his technical savvy. The CB's (Chairman of the Board, Chief Borg, your choice) most memorable technical insight was that 640K should be enough for anyone. This was at a time when I was helping friends install EMS boards on their machines. The boards could only hold two megs but the trend of increasing capacity and falling memory prices was already obvious to anyone with a technical bent. Everyone but the CB, of course.

If companies ever totaled their losses due to programmers' bugs, workarounds, data loss and response time issues due to the memory limitations imposed by the DOS architecture then the total would probably far exceeds $80 billion. In fact, it might approach the enitire market cap of MSFT.

Now, the CSA is going to architect his way to his first trillion. It involves charging people to use Orifice every month over the Web. The customers will still have choice. If they choose to never see their documents again, they can stop paying.

Web Orifice will use strong encryption to supposedly insure the users' privacy. In reality, it will be to make sure you don't share your access with someone else.

Re:True, but I bet he knows *exactly* what he's wo

[nonstop]

Besides, Visual Basic can't handle numbers that large...

Laugh hard, it's a long way to the bank.

[ikaros]

> The conventional wisdom is that the value of the separated entities will rise higher than
> the value of the original entity, as happened with the Standard Oil breakup. This is just false.
> What will happen is the bottom will fall out of the stock price - faced with competition
> from free software, and no longer having the means of forcibly maintaining the existing
> monopoly, the Baby Bills revenue can go nowhere but down.

This is an exceptional point that I can't believe I missed in the talks my friends and I have had on this topic. And it's more than just competing on a fair playing field with Linux, BeOS, etc.

One of the rumored proposals for breakup is into one applications company and two OS companies -- which means that MS faces not only fair competition at long last, but also the meanest, nastiest, hairiest competitor in the industry: themselves.

Both OS houses will naturally try to position themselves as the One True Windows Company. I wouldn't be too shocked to see them go after each other with the same, ah, enthusiasm that MS has always used on competitors.

You know, the more I think about that scenario, the more I like it :)

Meanwhile, BillG, having seen which way the wind was blowing, has himself ready to be CEO/Chairman/President/God-Emperor of MS Applications Corp., which will survive breakup much more easily than the OS side. We can fairly assume (and it has been reported elsewhere in this article thread) that Bill stepping aside has been in the works for some time; either BillG saw the breakup as inevitable a long time ago, or the timing is fortuitous. In either case, it's not a response to the breakup rumors.

I think that the geek buried deep inside him knows that shoddily-coded Windows is hosed as soon as consumers have a fair choice to make, and he wanted to be with what will be the biggest (most profitable, most successful) Baby Bill -- the applications division.

In the main, end users know squat about the OSes and NOSes they use on a minute-by-minute basis. What they care about is how to change the font on the first line of a word-processing document, how to tot up a column in a spreadsheet, how to put a cool background onto a presentation graphics slide.

Take an end user who's accustomed to WordPerfect 8 on Win95. Stick him on a Linux box running fvwm95 (or whatever it's called, I don't use it) as the x manager, running WP8 for Linux. He won't notice a blessed thing different until he goes to open a file and sees a somewhat different directory structure -- IF he even notices that.

A good OS is quiet to the end-user; it should be seen only on power-up and shutdown, and inbetween when config changes are needed. When the system is up, the end-user is focused on the task at hand, which requires officeware, not OS diagnostic tools.

Better than anyone else, BillG knows that Windows is not quiet -- it is a prolonged wail. He's positioned himself to be "on the user's side" so to speak. I know as a support tech, the only thing he and Microsoft have ever done for me is provide me with a lot of opportunities to provide support -- server-side and support-side, Gates isn't there and I don't think he wants to be there.

Long-term, what it looks like to me is that Gates will continue raking in hundreds of times the money that any of us will ever see in our lifetimes for putting out second-rate software that will have a huge following through momentum ... and he will be free to port it to any OS when he no longer has to worry about supporting the monopoly. Microsoft OS Corp (singular or plural) will take the hit a lot harder than MS Applications Corp will, and Ballmer will have a lot more sleepless nights than Gates.

ikaros, who will be quite interested when MS Applications Corp decides to create a Linux port of something ... :)

Re:hehe..

[anotherone]

Sorry, try again. Adobe Photoshop, ironically, is made by Adobe, not Microsoft.

Make Seven