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Top African Policymakers Address Agricultural Policies Needed to End Hunger, Achie...
Meeting Convened by AGRA Focuses on Policies for an African Green Revolution.
As the world grapples with the food crisis, senior policy makers in Africa are developing appropriate policies to achieve a Green Revolution that will rapidly raise agricultural productivity for small-scale farmers in Africa. More than 90 senior policy makers and leaders from the private sector, academia, civil society and farmers organizations convened early this week to identify priority policies and institutions needed to achieve a uniquely African Green Revolution. Representatives from 15 African countries, as well as others from Europe, the United States and Asia, participated in the two-day meeting convened by the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA), a partnership-based organization dedicated to improving the lives and livelihoods of Africa's small-scale farmers... Bill Gates and Kofi Annan involved...
Meeting Convened by AGRA Focuses on Policies for an African Green Revolution. ... more -
Discuss Gates vs. Jobs: The Game!
What do you think of the game? Give us feedback and talk about your mad fighting skillz here!
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We Got You Covered 7.3.08
You'll never guess what magazine has Conor all hot and bothered in this week's rapid-fire round-up.
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Windows XP: Dead or Just Resting?
The fat lady has already packed up her girdle and gone home with a bucket of KFC. Yet it seems XP -- like Bill Gates -- is still alive and kicking, at least in some form.
The fat lady has already packed up her girdle and gone home with a bucket of KFC. Yet it seems XP -- like Bill Gates -- is still alive... more -
Il Disinformatico: Bill Gates punito dal proprio software
Mail autentica di Bill Gates, datata 2003.
Cliccando sul link troverete la fonta da cui arriva e una sintesi tradotta.
Fantastica, ne cito solo il finale...
"Così dopo più di un'ora di delirio e di trasformazione in spazzatura del mio elenco di programmi e dopo essere stato spaventato e aver visto che Microsoft.com è un sito terribile, non sono riuscito a far andare Moviemaker e non ho ottenuto il pacchetto plus.
La mancanza d'attenzione per l'usabilità rappresentata da queste esperienze rasenta l'inimmaginabile. Pensavo avessimo raggiunto un nuovo minimo storico con i luoghi di Windows Network o con i messaggi che ottengo quando cerco di usare l'802.11. (non è adorabile quel messaggio riguardante il root certificate?)
Quando riesco finalmente a usare questa roba, sono sicuro che avrò ulteriore feedback."
Mail autentica di Bill Gates, datata 2003. Cliccando sul link troverete la fonta da cui arriva e una sintesi tradotta. ... more -
Bill Gates Says His Goodbyes And Bids Microsoft Adieu To Become A Philanthropist
On his final full day at Microsoft Corp., Bill Gates went on stage to reminisce with his longtime friend Steve Ballmer, and neither man could hold back tears as Ballmer handed Gates a large scrapbook as a farewell present.
Gates, who is stepping back to focus on his philanthropy, sat with Chief Executive Officer Ballmer in a Microsoft conference room and meandered through moments in Microsoft's history. They stopped to get in a few good digs at IBM Corp., whose first personal computers were loaded with Microsoft's DOS operating system before IBM adopted its own operating software and their relations strained.
"They went off with OS 2, we were left with good old Windows, and sure enough the David versus Goliath story came out with the right ending," said Gates, eliciting laughter from the crowd of 830 Microsoft employees. On his final full day at Microsoft Corp., Bill Gates went on stage to reminisce with his longtime friend Steve Ballmer, and neither ma... more -
Gates moves on, but Microsoft keeps 'quests' alive
SEATTLE -- It is almost unthinkable that any one human could pick up where Bill Gates leaves off when he ends his full-time tenure Friday as Microsoft's leader.
But as Gates bones up on epidemiology at his charitable foundation, the software company he built with a mix of visionary manifestos and extreme hands-on management must still wake up Monday to face hard problems even he could not solve. Among them: beating Google Inc. on the Web while fending off its attacks on desktop computing.
When Microsoft Corp. announced in 2006 that Gates planned to go part-time as board chairman, so he could spend more time on his global health charity, it named two senior executives to guide the company's overall technical direction.
Gates' recent remarks, however, indicate Microsoft is looking to a much larger group of employees for big-picture guidance and long-term planning. But it's not yet clear whether the company can replicate his thinking with more traditional corporate processes _ or whether it should even be trying.
From Microsoft's start in 1975, Gates has been the company's genius programmer, its technology guru, its primary decision maker and its ruthless and competitive leader. He would famously disappear into the solitude of a country cabin to digest employee-written papers and ponder the future of the industry, then emerge with manifestos, including the 1995 "Internet Tidal Wave" memo, that could shift the focus of the entire company.
He is credited by analysts and academics for the emergence of software as a moneymaking industry; previously it had been a pastime for hobbyists or a subset of the hardware sector. He is revered by many engineers, despite his propensity to fling expletives at underlings whose ideas he scorned. And he has built Microsoft into a hugely successful monopoly that has only grown stronger despite major losses in antitrust trials in the U.S. and Europe.
At a May gathering of chief executive officers at Microsoft's Redmond, Wash., headquarters, Gates outlined how he hoped to translate the work once done within the singular confines of his brain into the sort of group projects that could be managed with the company's own collaboration software.
"We've created a thing we called quests, where we divided our types of customers down, and we got the best thinkers on these things, both the very practical people who are with the customers, the engineers who write the code, and the researchers who may be more unbound in terms of their timeframe and imagination, and put them together," Gates said.
The actual substance of the quests _ which sound more Knights-of-the-Round-Table than bleeding-edge-technology _ is blurry. Microsoft refused to answer questions about the subject or make Gates available for an interview. Even an analyst who was briefed under a nondisclosure agreement walked away confused.
But some details can be gleaned from Gates' comments to the CEOs and offhand references to the quests in other recent speeches. In May, Gates said the company started the quests in the last few years, to help it separate its five or 10-year plans from the regular product development cycle. SEATTLE -- It is almost unthinkable that any one human could pick up where Bill Gates leaves off when he ends his full-time tenure Fri... more -
Bill Gates give up day job
“He has taken over the world, end of story. Live with it. Accept it. It’s done.” So said Sir Alan Sugar of Bill Gates on BBC 2’s The Money Programme last Friday night.
Seeing old black and white photographs of the dapper Sugar standing next to one of his Amstrad PCs took me nostalgically back to my first ever computer and the wonderful world of the Windows operating system.
“He has taken over the world, end of story. Live with it. Accept it. It’s done.” So said Sir Alan Sugar of Bill Gates on BBC 2’s The M... more -
Intel non installa Windows Vista sui Pc aziendali - Zeus News
Intel non installa Windows Vista sui Pc aziendali
Secondo Otellini, l'aggiornamento dei Pc dei dipendenti con Windows Vista non apporterebbe benefici sufficienti. Meglio aspettare Windows 7.
[ZEUS News - www.zeusnews.it - 27-06-2008]
Saltare Vista e aspettare Windows 7, come dicevamo qualche tempo fa, non è per niente una brutta idea: anche Intel sembra essere dello stesso parere.
Già quando l'ultima versione di Windows venne rilasciata, Paul Otellini, amministratore delegato di Intel, spiegò che avrebbe atteso l'uscita del Service Pack 1 prima di dare un eventuale via libera alla transizione per l'intera compagnia: "Non conosco nessuna organizzazione che faccia un aggiornamento prima del Service Pack 1".
Ora il New York Times rivela che l'idea di migrare a Windows Vista gli 80.000 computer dei dipendenti è stata definitivamente abbandonata, secondo una fonte definita interna all'azienda: "Non è una questione di insoddisfazione verso Microsoft, ma lo staff IT di Intel non trova necessario adottare Vista".
Per la precisione, occorre dire che alcuni dipartimenti stanno già usando Vista a scopo di test ma l'intera azienda non lo farà, come ha spiegato un portavoce di Intel. La compagnia ha analizzato costi e benefici di un upgrade - ha detto ancora la fonte del New York Times - e ha concluso che i vantaggi non sono sufficienti a giustificarlo.
Comunque si veda la cosa, questo sembra essere un brutto colpo per Microsoft che tradizionalmente è sempre stata vicina alla società di Santa Clara (da cui il soprannome Wintel usato per indicare le due aziende insieme e l'accoppiata Windows/processori Intel). Ora bisognerà vedere quali forze di marketing Redmond deciderà di mettere in campo per far tornare Otellini (che incontra Steve Ballmer regolarmente) sulla propria decisione.
Intel non installa Windows Vista sui Pc aziendali ... more -
Bill Gates steps down, will focus on philanthropy
When future historians put pen to paper, finger to laptop, or who-knows-what to who-knows-what device, Bill Gates will be up there as one of the most influential business leaders and philanthropists of the modern age, a John D Rockefeller for the turn of the 21st century.
Future generations will balance the monopolist against the philanthropist, the copycat against the visionary. With the specs, the jumpers, and the nasal voice, Gates was never going to pull off a Rockefeller-esque swagger, but this is, after all, the era in which the geek inherited the earth. Like the legendary oilman a century before him, he saw a new technology, shaped it, dominated it, milked it – and then quit to devote the rest of his life to giving it all away.
Today, Gates is retiring from his day-to-day role at Microsoft, the company he founded 33 years ago. As far as titles go, he is merely swapping "executive chairman" for "non-executive chairman". But he is also swapping, finally, the role of technology-industry pioneer and hard-edged business leader for a new role as the world's philanthropist-in-chief, spending his remaining days guiding the work of his $39bn charitable foundation.
When future historians put pen to paper, finger to laptop, or who-knows-what to who-knows-what device, Bill Gates will be up there as ... more -
Bill Gates to sign off at Microsoft!!
The Microsoft co-founder whose boyish face and nerdy manner epitomizes the US software colossus spends his last day at the office on Friday.
Paul Allen, who teamed with Gates to start Microsoft in a garage in 1975, will be among those "roasting" his childhood friend at a gala dinner affair Friday night.
After decades devoted to Microsoft, Gates turns his attention full time to the philanthropic Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation he established with his wife.
Gates leaves Microsoft to wrestle with a fast-changing computer era and growing challenges from Internet juggernaut Google and longtime rival Apple, which makes Macintosh computers.
Three people will essentially fill the void Gates leaves behind at Microsoft.
Gate's job as chief software architect is being handled by Ray Ozzie.
Craig Mundie inherited Gate's chief research and strategy officer duties, while former Harvard University classmate Steve Ballmer is chief executive officer at the software colossus based in Redmond, Washington.
Gates remains chairman of the Microsoft board of directors and its largest shareholder.
Microsoft is losing Gates at a time when "cloud computing" is shaking the packaged software foundation on while the company's fortune is built.
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Goodbye, Bill Gates!
The software titan leaves Microsoft on June 27. Here's a look back at his career and what lies ahead.
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Will Microsoft be better once Bill Gates is gone?
On June 27th, Bill Gates steps aside at Microsoft. "Change is the only constant" is a favorite cliché among technology types. But for an industry that loves to talk about change, its leading lights don't do too much of it, at least not when it comes to turning over control of their companies. On June 27th, Bill Gates steps aside at Microsoft. "Change is the only constant" is a favorite cliché among technology types. But for ... more
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Bill Gates steps down, Microsoft loses founder
You may love or you may hate him, but you’d have to be living under a rock — without an Internet connection — not to know who Bill Gates is.
Gates was for years the world’s richest man, even if it wasn’t a mantle he wore gladly. He earned his billions by co-founding Microsoft Corp., a company whose technology — again — may be loved or may be hated but almost can’t be avoided in modern society.
Now he’s poised to leave his full-time work at Microsoft to spend most of his energy on another endeavor that fuels the public’s fascination with him: the world's biggest philanthropy, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, funded largely by his own fortune.
Chances are, his new job won’t do much to diminish the world’s obsession with him. For many, the mystique starts with one simple fact: all that money.
“If he was the third-richest man in the world, I don’t think there would be anything near the mystique around Bill Gates that there is,” said Gary Rivlin, a journalist and author of “The Plot to Get Bill Gates.”
In fact, Gates did fall to the No. 3 spot this year, according to Forbes magazine. Still, Forbes estimated that his fortune stands at about $58 billion, and his name is forever associated with the many years he ranked as the world’s richest person.
End of Excerpt
Source: MSNBC, Associated Press
In full disclosure MSNBC is a joint venture of Microsoft and NBC Universal.
We''ll miss you Bill. Even if Vista sucks. You may love or you may hate him, but you’d have to be living under a rock — without an Internet connection — not to know who Bill Gat... more -
Replacing Bill is the least of the challenges for Microsoft - Jun. 20, 2008
"The challenge isn't replacing Bill. That's already happened. Ballmer's big issues now: growth, Google, and those pesky Apple ads."
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Gates without Microsoft - FORTUNE Magazine
"Bill Gates gave FORTUNE magazine exclusive access to some rare photos from the Microsoft archive -- and share his memories about them." "Bill Gates gave FORTUNE magazine exclusive access to some rare photos from the Microsoft archive -- and share his memories about them... more
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What We'll Miss About Bill Gates — a Very Long Good-Bye
Bill Gates, we'll miss you. Not just because you're the ultimate geek-villain-pioneer-entrepreneur-monopolist. But because you've always been there for us. To love. To hate. To envy. To pick on. So this month, your last as a full-time Microsoft employee, we realized it was only right and proper to look back on your storied career. (Or we just love your mug shot from the Albuquerque arrest.)
1950s
October 28, 1955
William Henry Gates III is born in Seattle. His grandmother Adelle nicknames him "Trey," the cardplayer's term for a three. He later becomes an avid poker player.
1960s
1967
Gates, a difficult sixth grader, asks his mother, "Have you ever tried thinking?"
Fall 1967
Gates' parents enroll him in Lakeside School, an exclusive boys school in Seattle. He is the smallest kid in the class, yet has size 13 feet.
1968
Gates and Lakeside classmate Paul Allen learn Basic from a manual. Within a few weeks, the pair exhaust the school's $3,000 annual budget for time on a PDP-10 computer. The boys soon land a contract with the Computer Center Corporation to report PDP-10 software bugs in exchange for computer time.
1970s
1971
Gates writes programs for Lakeside, including one that creates class schedules; he manages to put himself in classes with the "right" girls.
September 1973
Gates enrolls at Harvard University. Academically, his record is spotty — having a near-photographic memory helps him cram, but he often misses class, neglecting showers and living on pizza and soda while programming and playing poker. He befriends Steve Ballmer, who lives down the hall in the same dormitory.
January 1975
Paul Allen sees the cover of Popular Electronics — a picture of the Altair 8800 computer and the headline "World's First Minicomputer Kit to Rival Commercial Models". He buys the issue and rushes to Gates' room. A few days later, Gates calls MITS, maker of the Altair, and tells the company he and Allen could develop a version of Basic for the 8800.
February 1, 1975
Gates and Allen finish the code and sell it to MITS for $3,000 plus a percentage of royalties up to $180,000.
November 26, 1976
Gates and Allen register the trade name Microsoft. They had considered the name Allen & Gates Inc., then Micro-Soft, but decided to drop the hyphen. Allen is 23, Gates 21.
January 1977
Gates takes a leave of absence from Harvard and establishes Microsoft in Albuquerque, New Mexico, where MITS is headquartered.
1977
On several occasions, Gates' secretary enters the Microsoft building to find him crumpled on the floor, asleep. He continues to live on pizza and is a demanding boss, often fighting with colleagues. Among his favorite responses: "That's the stupidest thing I've ever heard."
Late 1977
Gates is arrested several times for speeding in his Porsche 911 — once sans driver's license. Allen bails him out on at least one occasion.
December 1978
Microsoft's year-end sales exceed $1 million.
January 1, 1979
Microsoft moves its headquarters to Bellevue, Washington. Bill Gates, we'll miss you. Not just because you're the ultimate geek-villain-pioneer-entrepreneur-monopolist. But because you've alwa... more -
Bill Gates killed the computer mouse
Microsoft is developing a new touch screen operating system that could mean the end of the computer mouse, Bill Gates has announced.
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The 2nd Decade of the Digital Age
Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates said there will be a vast shift in Internet technology over the next decade as he met Tuesday with South Korean President Lee Myung-bak.
"We're approaching the second decade of (the) digital age," the software mogul and philanthropist told Lee at the start of their meeting at the presidential Blue House, according to a media pool report... Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates said there will be a vast shift in Internet technology over the next decade as he met Tuesday with South... more -
Bill Gates uses 10,000 times energy of average American--How Bout Y'all?
"Whether you live in a cardboard box or a luxurious mansion, whether you subsist on homegrown vegetables or wolf down imported steaks, whether you're a jet-setter or a sedentary retiree, anyone who lives in the U.S. contributes more than twice as much greenhouse gas to the atmosphere as the global average, an MIT class has estimated.
The class studied the carbon emissions of Americans in a wide variety of lifestyles--from the homeless to multimillionaires, from Buddhist monks to soccer moms--and compared them to those of other nations. The somewhat disquieting bottom line is that in the United States, even people with the lowest energy usage account for, on average, more than double the global per-capita carbon emission. And those emissions rise steeply from that minimum as people's income increases.
"Regardless of income, there is a certain floor below which the individual carbon footprint of a person in the U.S. will not drop," says Timothy Gutowski, professor of mechanical engineering, who taught the class that calculated the rates of carbon emissions. The results will be presented this May at the IEEE International Symposium on Electronics and the Environment in San Francisco."
http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2008/footprint-tt0416.htm...
Calculate your own carbon footprint here:
http://www.carbonfootprint.com/
And turn down your screen brightness while you're at it! "Whether you live in a cardboard box or a luxurious mansion, whether you subsist on homegrown vegetables or wolf down imported steaks,... more
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Bill Gates
