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Bill Gates to Step Down from Microsoft
Geoffreyerffoeg writes "According to Microsoft PressPass, Bill Gates will be leaving his role at Microsoft in July 2008. He'll be staying with the company, but is also moving to a more fulltime position with the Gates Foundation. 'Microsoft Corp. today announced that effective July 2008 Bill Gates, chairman, will transition out of a day-to-day role in the company to spend more time on his global health and education work at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. The company announced a two-year transition process to ensure that there is a smooth and orderly transfer of Gates' daily responsibilities, and said that after July 2008 Gates would continue to serve as the company's chairman and an adviser on key development projects.' CTO Ray Ozzie will assume Gates' role of Chief Software Architect, and CTO Craig Mundie will also take on more leadership responsibility."
yay
http://chrono.posterous.com/
Like, taking the computer industry back 10 years by saturating the market with bullshit with broken APIs and convenient deviations from standards?
He made a lot of money. That metric alone is only appreciated by very few people. Count the wasted time and effort and frustration. I'd smack him in the face given the chance.
'Once scientists, even the dim-witted social scientists, get muzzled, the Western Civilization is finished.' - oldhack
Nice troll, but I'm not biting ...
He got where he was by crooked, illegal business practices. The proper course would have been to confiscate his ill-gotten gains, same as you do with any thief. Instead, he not only gets to enjoy them, but to use them to rehabilitate his image.
Hey, if I could rob a bank of a million bucks, get to keep most of it by paying a token fine, and use a small percentage to make myself look good, maybe I'd do it ... but that wouldn't make me less of a lying, crooked, cheating, scum-sucking thief.
That's the reality. He's a crooked liar; sure, he's a rich crooked liar, but he's still a crooked liar. Here's his mug shot http://www.mugshots.org/misc/bill-gates.html.
Humanitarian programs can't clean dirty money.
The charity work publicized is just the icing on the cake. You can be sure this guy has hidden agendas left and right. What is better than having infinite amount of money? An infinite amount of people at your disposal. Think about that one.
This guy wants to quit his day to day responsibilities to give away his money to the less fortunate and all you guys want to do is bash him.
If he would pay his fair share of taxes, rather than laundering all of those copies of Windows through a Nevada shell corporation, then maybe, just maybe, there wouldn't be as many "less fortunate" people.
Don't forget, for every Bill Gates, there have to be many "less fortunate" to be exploited^W marketed to.
>> Give the guy a break, he's one of the few modern day humanitarians!
If you really believe that, you're incredibly stupid and would be better off away from Slashdot.
This guy wants to quit his day to day responsibilities to give away his money to the less fortunate and all you guys want to do is bash him.
giving away money from a massive fortune that he acquired by taking a gigantic shit on the rest if the computing landscape.
don't let the door hit you in the ass on your way out.
pr0n - keeping monitor glass spotless since 1981.
Go with whatever site you want I don't think anybody will care. I think quitting his day to day responsibilities (or not being aware of them in the first place) to give his money to the less fortunate is the least good use of Bills time and money that there is. Bill (and Microsoft) could do far more good for the world (for the worlds richest AND poorest in one fell swoop) by making their OS better, more efficient and more interoperable. Just adhering to open standards(e.g. document formats) would make all of the world far wealthier (including the poor) than than would giving a fraction of the monopoly money to the poor. Another (small) example of how they could save everyone more money than they could possibly give away: Installing new hardware or updating drivers on Windows (even in Windows Vista current beta!) has way too many steps and has pathetic options: 1. "Can Windows connect to Windows update to search for software?" Most ppl get the drivers from the manufactures site. Also while it gives u a "Yes, now and every time I connect a device" it doesn't give you a "No, not now and not at any time I connect a device". After picking "No, not at this time" we get the option: 2. "Automatic (recommended)" vs. "...list or specific location(Advanced)". Seems to give us the option of pointing straight to the correct driver right? Fraid not, after picking "...list or specific location" : 3. "Search for best driver" (Wouldn't that have been "Automatic" in the last step?) or "Don't search, I will choose". Selecting "Don't search, I will choose" should let us point straight to the correct driver right? Fraid not: 4. "Show compatible hardware" tick box and "Have disk". Clicking "Have disk" brings up floppy disk drive as the default location, even if the PC/laptop doesn't have a floppy drive !!! No drivers come on floppy disk anymore and haven't for years. This should have been fixed by first version of Windows XP at the latest ! Even when drivers did come on a floppy they are usually out of date (as they are with CDs) so new ones need to be downloaded anyway. Woe betide if you left a floppy disk in the drive because the computer has to mount it and look at it before bringing up the "Browse" button. 5. Finally we can click "Browse" and are able to point to the right damned driver. Five steps but should have been two ! Fixing this little problem alone would probably directly save hundreds of millions (if not billions) of dollars a year world wide (for businesses, governments, charities, individuals you name it) and much more indirectly. Windows is on just about every damn desktop in the world. Saving just a minute per year per PC when installing hardware represents a massive amount of money/wealth ! Obviously it's great that Bill is doing this at all but still not as good as focussing on what he is relatively best at. I don't think he's in control of his ego.