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Bill Gates Founds New "Think Tank" Company
Homncruse sends in news of Bill Gates's new adventure, adding "I was working just one or two floors under this new office when it was all coming together. I even unknowingly shared an elevator with him at one time on his way up to the office." The article notes that the name "bgC3" derives from Bill Gates, catalyst, and the "third thing," neither Microsoft or the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.
"Just months after his Microsoft farewell, Bill Gates is quietly creating a new company — complete with high-tech office space, a cryptic name and even its own trademark. Public documents describe the new Gates entity — bgC3 LLC — as a 'think tank.' It's housed within a Kirkland office that the Microsoft co-founder established on his own after leaving his day-to-day executive role at the company this summer ... However, bgC3 will also oversee Gates' personal pursuit of breakthrough ideas in science and technology. [An] insider said the goal isn't necessarily to create new companies, although ideas could be passed along to Microsoft, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation — or others — as it makes sense ..."
Did the name 'bgc3' make anyone else think "Borg Cubed"?
Censorship is obscene. Patriotism is bigotry. Faith is a vice. Slashdot 2.0 sucks.
With frickin' laser beams attached to their heads! Now evidently my cycloptic colleague informs me that that cannot be done. Ah, would you remind me what I pay you people for, honestly? Throw me a bone here! What do we have?
Ballmer: "Sea Bass"
"Speaking the Truth in times of universal deceit is a revolutionary act." -- George Orwell
Corbis is Bill Gates' second company, not the Foundation.
-Isaac
I am not a lawyer, and this is not legal advice. For Entertainment Purposes Only.
Given the MS record on REAL innovation, I hope he employees some new and better "thinkers." I'm just not to impressed with the last 30 years....
Think Deeply.
GAWD! First Google with jet fighters... now Bill Gates with think TANKS. What's next?
I will bend like a reed in the wind.
I doubt it. In any event, you'd have to be richer than Bill Gates to find out.
Can you be Even More Awesome?!
She has a relationship with Bill Gates, so I would have to say that it is pretty clear she does, even if she didn't intend to originally and was promised time and again that it wouldn't happen.
Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
Like his VP who left MicroSoft some years ago.
Costco sells offices now?
ourselves from the greater evil Microsoft was unable to deliver
while AMD buys an aircraft carrier from the near-bankrupt US Army
Umm that would be the Navy.
I smoked pot once. But I DID NOT inhale. Will you hire me?
To be honest, it sounds like a nice retirement project... sit around, drink coffee, come up with a few whacky ideas, shoot the breeze with a few interesting people. If I had his money I'd probably do something similar. Except I'd have it located somewhere a little more interesting. Like Paris, Berlin, Singapore... or all three!
A funny column on PCMag http://tinyurl.com/6gssp6
They are going to make crappy commercials staring Bill with has-been comedians.
"TV, a medium as it is neither rare nor well done." Ernie Kovacs
Bob 2.0
I hear Ballmer has already thrown in some chairs for his new office.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
At the same time, it's no ordinary office space. Visitors say it's fully stocked with Microsoft technologies, including a Surface tabletop computer with a virtual guestbook application.
wow. fancy.
I have about a million items
wrong with microsoft software products
that could use some design review.
Not sure why it didn't happen the
first time, but maybe Bill has some
time on his hands now.
Where are we going and why are we in a handbasket?
and the B&MGF just spends profits from MSFT and even has been said to require Microsoft-only software in computer donations. So no wonder Bill Gates is trying to get others to come up with an idea he can profit from. With Microsoft having been a one-trick pony for all these years, just maybe Bill can find someone else who can come up with a hit.
Knowing the history of Microsoft and Windows, it was not really the product which made the business, it was the business behind the product and that faithful deal with IBM.
So could Bill Gates really build a business around a product which has to stand the test of the market to be successful? Think how Steve Jobs did the iPod and iTunes even though the Mac was still less than 5% of the market. People loved it and when they finally came out with the MS Windows version of iTunes, it opened up a maket of 100s of millions to the product and they came. There was not tying or leveraging of the iPod to a monopoly positioned product.
Personally, I don't think he has it in him do make this work. Just they way he publicly talks about things like speech recognition as the next big thing shows he's not good at doing "the next big thing". And they, Microsoft, have always been followers in tech and only get where they do because they leverage 90% marketshare with Windows. We shall see and he sure does have the bucks to get anything off the ground. And hey, the Spruce Goose got off the ground too. ;-)
LoB
it is Bill Gates who doen't have
"Anyone who stands out in the middle of a road looks like roadkill to me." --Linus
Go on, mod me. I don't care.
you had me at #!
Do they still call it a think tank if they steal all their ideas?
I guess if they sit around and think up better ways to rip people off.
Maybe it'll be like the foundation and he'll just be trying to buy back his twisted little soul with his stolen money.
I wonder if the employment contract BG signed with Microsoft had the usual clause of "everything you've previously thought of, are currently thinking of, or will think of belongs to us" ?
Invalid Checksum. Retrying.
I used to be pretty good with a BFG3000.
I wonder if Bill likes to frag.
1. Start company
2. Spend lots of money
3. ???
Though, seriously, I shouldn't criticize. We would all be better off if the third thing in Bill's next company weren't 'profit'.
"I assumed blithely that there were no elves out there in the darkness"
Take a look at the most recent MSFT earnings report (which came out yesterday I believe). You can find it on www.microsoft.com the Investor Relations section. Basically, in terms of income (not revenue): Client (aka Windows) made $3.2 billion, Server and Tools made $1.1 billion, MSFT Business Division (I'm assuming this includes Office) made $3.3 billion, and Entertainment (includes Xbox360) made $178 million. Online Services lost $480 million.
Sink Tank, or STINK Tank, or STINK, then TANK?
Hopefully he's learned enough of what people HATE in/of/about msoft to avoid those mistakes again..
Previously: "Linux... Toward the Sunrise..." Now: "Linux... Toward the-- No, now, part of Every Sunrise"
He could follow Mark Shuttleworth's adventure in the Linux world.
Maybe an MSbuntu?
I looked at the source code of his new webpage and he ISN'T using Frontpage.
Support the 30 Hour Work Week!!!
Maybe that's why the Army is 'near-bankrupt'.
After all, who am I to disagree with a three-digit /. id?
Take a look at the bottom on TFA, in "Related Articles"
Considering that BG bought the original dos, QDDOS, from an unsuspecting hacker, and he paid meat puppets to code all the garbage he marketed, I'll bet he didn't start a new company for innovation purposes. He is nothing more than a successful scam artist.
Probably brain storming now how to buy Linux and then destroy it.
"Suppose you were an idiot...and suppose you were a member of Congress...but I repeat myself." Mark Twain
Maybe he needs a better Vista from his new office.
Thinkingman.com New Media
.
"The test of time?"
We are not so very far distant from the 30th year of MSDOS and Windows. Office 1 was released in 1990. The XBox in 2001.
MSDOS and Windows began as a client OS.
That Microsoft is strongly competitive in the server market leaves the geek with something more to explain.
Does anyone else think it's rather arrogant of Bill Gates to assume that he has been a catalyst twice?
Once I'll give him. Microsoft actually made the PC something that most people could use (and afford). I don't think IBM was going to go there; in fact, they tried to stop it with the PS/2.
I wonder if Bill knows that his new logo is almost identical to the Codemasters logo?
Didn't Paul Allen do the same thing? We used to laugh about the folks who worked at his start-ups, pulling down good money to sit around and look busy.
Throws a chair.
If enithin kan gow rong it whil. (Murfey)
They all run Linux and Macs at BGC3.
;')
Bill sits down to his new Linux/KDE4 desktop PC and thinks.."Free at last, free at last....."
Putting the aid in A.I.D.S.
"There is no fundamental reason why a desk top PC is going to be unreliable. Poor design and quality control of the OS is the cause."
You could make that argument about the Windows 3X-9X series, but not about DOS and the NT based operating systems. DOS was always pretty stable for me (DOS was certainly more stable than the graphical Apple OS's that were being sold at the time... and we don't equate Apple with bad software quality... why?), and while NT 4 was an improvement, Win2K and XP were very stable operating systems.
One thing that no one really acknowledges is that even with the newer NT based systems, Windows isn't going to be quite as stable as, say, OS X, because the hardware available to Windows is almost unlimited, while Apple systems have very few devices to have stable drivers for. With such a high number of devices available, Microsoft had to rely on the manufacturers for drivers, and those drivers didn't always mesh well with the OS. This is why when you install a driver on XP or Vista, and it hasn't been vetted by Microsoft, you get a message that essentially tells you to install at your own risk.
Once upon a time, my Linux boxes were far and away more stable than the 9X boxes I had. But if I've got good drivers on an XP box now, my Mac and my Linux box isn't any more stable or reliable.
Life is hard, and the world is cruel
Gates' personal pursuit of breakthrough ideas in science and technology.
Good that he finally gets started on some. Seriously, the guy is great in stealing and rebranding other ideas as his own, but that's it. I've yet to hear of even one original idea by Bill Gates.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
...that will not infringe on the PgUp/PgDwn patent?
Allow / Deny
soylentnews.org Go there to enjoy the people!
and damn stylish at that.
It is a FIRM belief of mine that when an OS crashes it is the fault of the OS, period. If an application fails then it is the fault of the App developers, but if the app causes the OS to crash then that is a problem with the OS. Your OS should only crash when there is a hardware problem. Anything else that causes the OS to crash is a problem in the OS.
Think Deeply.