
Bill Gates Interview (1993) - helloworld
http://americanhistory.si.edu/comphist/gates.htm
======
teh_klev
_In Datamation they had these bingo cards where you could check everything you
were interested in. So, we just put our name down and checked everything in
there and tried to learn about the world of computing._

When I was at high school in the early 80's I did exactly that with the
"business response" card that came with Byte magazine. Then one day, whilst at
school, my parent's phone started ringing regularly during the day with calls
from sales folks following up and enquiring if I'd received their sales
literature, etc. My poor old folks had to explain on numerous occasions that I
was just a school kid and that it'd be unlikely I'd be purchasing whatever
$10000 dollar disk subsystem/S100 Bus Chassis/Pick System/etc I'd randomly
enquired about, and apologised for the inconvenience caused :)

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spynxic
The Future of Computing (1993):
[http://americanhistory.si.edu/comphist/gates.htm#tc62](http://americanhistory.si.edu/comphist/gates.htm#tc62)

~~~
jypepin
2 years ago I went to the SF book fair which sells used books for $1-5 or
something. I went in the CS section looking for some old CS/Data structure
books, mostly for fun reading and stumbled upon Gates' "The Road Ahead" book
[1].

It's from 1995, and he talks about how internet will become etc etc. It is
mind blowing how spot on he is right on his vision, perfectly describing the
iphone and other things we use today and didn't exist at this time.

Sometime I wonder how Microsoft became so wrong on so many things despite such
a clear vision of what the future became.

[1]:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Road_Ahead_(Bill_Gates_boo...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Road_Ahead_\(Bill_Gates_book\))

~~~
raywu
It took years before multimedia took off—even though Bill Gates started
pushing for it when Microsoft went public in 1986 (first CD-ROM Conference):

> we were pushing the idea of multimedia back in 1986 that didn't really catch
> on, you could say, until 1994 so before it was in the mainstream.

According to Randall E. Stross, not everyone saw CD-ROM's rise as a medium
either:
[https://books.google.com/books?id=jrKwMK3raXoC&pg=PA71&lpg=P...](https://books.google.com/books?id=jrKwMK3raXoC&pg=PA71&lpg=PA71&dq=microsoft+cd+rom+conference&source=bl&ots=BxeKzRdm6O&sig=qWPVw6GWZvcPpj8Wflv7y3O9NCs&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwj7qO_1kePOAhVHymMKHQswAcYQ6AEILjAH#v=onepage&q=microsoft%20cd%20rom%20conference&f=false)

According to Stross above, even though Mac was technically advance, Sculley &
Apple (Jobs left in 85'), missed out on the CD-ROM evolution as a trojan horse
into the Home market (so did Manzi & Lotus). Microsoft (Robert Glaser) worked
with PC, chips, and manufactures and faced many hurdles. I guess the
breakthrough came when 486 came out.

As a teenager the mid-nineties, I remember how CD-ROM was this huge leap from
floppy disks & cassettes—that's almost 8+ years after the first CD-ROM
Conference. Right when CD-ROM is in full swing (1994), another medium was
taking shape. The pace of format evolution picked up after that; from CD-ROM &
multimedia to the Internet & multimedia—was something that definitely left
Microsoft in the wake and gave rise to a sleuth of other powerhouse.

Looking back now, how Steve Jobs bet on MP3 and the Internet as another trojan
horse into the Home market (for hand-held devices) makes everything comes full
circle—took a page from Microsoft—no wonder why Gates was impressed.

* EDIT: grammatical & add commentary on 486

------
raywu
Read up on CP/M and DOS: [http://www.computerhistory.org/atchm/microsoft-ms-
dos-early-...](http://www.computerhistory.org/atchm/microsoft-ms-dos-early-
source-code/)

Here's a copy of Gary Kidall's autobiography:
[http://www.computerhistory.org/atchm/in-his-own-words-
gary-k...](http://www.computerhistory.org/atchm/in-his-own-words-gary-
kildall/)

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asciihacker
You know how he counts to 10 don't you:

1, 2, 3, 95, 98 NT, 2000, 7, 8, 10.

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nappy
This was truly enjoyable.

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dang
We changed the submitted title (Bill Gates: TRS-80 Model 100 “is in a sense my
favorite machine”) and took the anchor off the URL
([http://americanhistory.si.edu/comphist/gates.htm#tc35](http://americanhistory.si.edu/comphist/gates.htm#tc35)).

It's against the HN guidelines to use the title and URL fields of a submission
to express which detail you think is important about an article. That cherry-
picking is a form of editorializing. It frames the discussion in a biased way,
which is not allowed on HN. Here we want readers to make up their own minds.

If you'd like to express what you think is important about an article, that's
fine, but please do it by posting a comment to the thread. That way your view
will be on the same level as anyone else's. On HN (unlike some other social
news sites!) being the submitter of an article confers no special right to
interpret or frame it for others.

(This case seems well-intentioned, not abusive, but it's a point we've learned
to insist on.)

~~~
Hydraulix989
Right, don't you think that's a little strict? I've seen way more egregious
offenses slide by here (I'm not the OP).

~~~
k__
Haha, yes.

It's a bit like Wikipedia or Stackoverflow. More and more "rules" get set up
independent of the community, but "for the greater good".

~~~
megalodon
Have you read the guidelines?

> Otherwise please use the original title, unless it is misleading or
> linkbait.

This paragraph has been there as far as I can remember.

~~~
tptacek
It's been there since June 30, 2012. :)

~~~
Hydraulix989
Like with the Chinese rave party ex-pat detainment ordeal posted on here this
weekend, it's not the rules that change, it's the enforcement that changes.

~~~
tptacek
Enforcement of this rule hasn't changed at all. The only thing that's changed
within the last two years is that the mods have gotten much more transparent
about enforcement.

