ronjor
August 20th, 2004, 11:30 AM
People have Bill Gates all wrong. He doesn't want to rule the world (or at least the computerized portion of it). And although he may secretly hope that all Linux source code spontaneously combusts, that isn't his biggest wish.
No, the man just wants a return to the old days. Think back to the early 1990s, when Microsoft would introduce a new version of, say, Excel. The only things that mattered were what kinds of charts people could draw and how many formulas they could embed in spreadsheets. Customers--lots of them--willingly shelled out $300 or $400 a copy for the new software. The notion of security was left to the folks in uniform who kept reporters like me away from the customer briefing rooms, where good food and strong drinks were served.
How things change. For the past nine months, Gates has spent hundreds of millions of dollars to have his best programmers build a free update to an operating system that many people still don't want.
ZDNet (http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1107_2-5317443.html?tag=zdfd.newsfeed)
No, the man just wants a return to the old days. Think back to the early 1990s, when Microsoft would introduce a new version of, say, Excel. The only things that mattered were what kinds of charts people could draw and how many formulas they could embed in spreadsheets. Customers--lots of them--willingly shelled out $300 or $400 a copy for the new software. The notion of security was left to the folks in uniform who kept reporters like me away from the customer briefing rooms, where good food and strong drinks were served.
How things change. For the past nine months, Gates has spent hundreds of millions of dollars to have his best programmers build a free update to an operating system that many people still don't want.
ZDNet (http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1107_2-5317443.html?tag=zdfd.newsfeed)