The Tech Interviews of Yesteryear

nihilist_1137 writes: "Cnet has a collection of interviews with some of the 'biggest movers and shakers' of 2001. It focuses on their plans, ambitions and fears. Included is Sir Arthur C. Clark, Bill Gates, Will Wright, and Bill Joy, to name a few." It''s a fairly eclectic bunch of interviews collected from the last year, not ones done specifically for 2001 nostalgia.

Comments

bundle it up

[magicslax]

This cracks me up, in a funny-as-in-sad sort of way.

In the Gates interview, he said "If we can't add any features, then what is Windows? I mean, there were guys who sold TCP/IP stacks for $100. Should we not have put TCP/IP stacks into Windows?"

If MS was reimplementing TCP/IP for windows today, it would probably compatible only with Windows Media Packets.

Oh well ^_^

Bill Joy?

[jfonseca]

Anyone tell me how Bill Joy was a mover or a shaker in 2001?

Gates' interview is rather chilling

[J.D. Hogg]

"How can you be sure that people will want and pay for Web services? The HailStorm model is based on consumers paying for these services.
Well, some will be free, and some will be for pay. The marketplace will decide. When you describe to people that every file on their machine will be backed up--photos of their kids, business documents, e-mail--if your machine is taken or breaks, those will be available to you."

and to Microsoft for marketing purposes, to Ashcroft for his latest terrorist witch-hunt, to the IRS for the audit they had in mind for you, ...

Does Gate really think people will swallow that ? I mean, holy crap, hell will freeze over before I send any of my files to a remote storage volume owned by Microsoft (or owned by anybody else for that matter).

Re:Not chilling

[J.D. Hogg]

"By the way, why do you fear targeted marketing?"

I don't fear targeted marketing, it is merely a huge annoyance to me. But I do dislike the idea that someone somewhere knows more about me than what I told him.

"If you are not a terrorist, why do you fear Ashcroft?"

If you're not a communist, why should you fear McCarthy ?

"If you're not cheating on your taxes, why do you fear an IRS audit?"

I'd rather see the IRS people come to me directly and ask me what they want to know than do things behind my back. It's the same argument as the marketing data issue : I don't like things done behind my back, that's all.

Re:Word Source

[magicslax]

I don't know that anyone has ever asked for the source code for Word. If they did, we would give it to them.

But you can *bet* that I'm going to try it. Lemme go find a MS email address and request it. They've gotten me seriously curious. (Yes, I'm really going to do this after I post this comment.)

silly rabbit.

MS will charge you massive fees and have you sign equally daunting NDAs before you actually get to see the code. Even with source code acess, it's not as if you could turn around and give it to OpenOffice and the like without opening up yourself and anyone else who even _saw_ it to legal action.

The source is not freedom without the rights to modify and distribute. Interesting quote nonetheless.

Re:Client/server frightens you? Poor baby

[Billly Gates]

You miss the point. Like the scandal with IE, Microsoft will charge you for the service whether you want it or not with each Windows purchase. Microsoft just added that backup services plan to make its image look better when they plan to charge all corporate users. Thank about it from Bill's perspective. Investors have witnessed a %50 growth every year for close to 15 years and if Microsoft falls short of this then they lose money in the mind of the investor. The investors expect the same growth or else they will sell. The pc industry finally is in a slump and to top it off the whole market is saturated if not over saturated with Windows/Office and many customers do not need to upgrade. Microsoft has tried or are trying different markets like the server end and mobile end to keep expanding. But had no luck. NT makes up only a third of all server os installations and the number is not changing. SQL server is behind Oracle and perhaps even Sybase sales of databases. No growth here. Perhaps winCE devices might take over in the future but for now Microsoft is actually illegally giving them away below cost to hurt palm. No money in that either. At least not yet. The only way Microsoft can make more money and expand is by charging a monthly renters fee for the things we use our computers for. Examples are buying from the net, making copies of photo's taken from your digital camera, and perhaps even booting( which is what Microsoft would make a fortune off of). My guess is that the professional edition of the next version of Windows will only be available by renting via hailstorm. Free backup will be included to make it appear you are getting something for the fee and Microsoft wants to do it to keep the DOJ off their butts. But rest assured the free backup services will be required in the professional edition so Microsoft can milk its existing monopoly while ignorant home edition users will not know any of this. Microsoft has always beat the expectations in the most harsh critics when it comes to squashing competition and milking profits.