Bill Gates at Harvard Graduation Ceremony

This is a part 1 of 5 part speech by Bill Gates at Harvard, he has a good sense of humor. I found the next four parts really boring.

Listening to the entire speech it feels that he is not, what he is considered to be. Crook, mean, evil, ready to do anything to gain an upper hand in the world of technology. Instead it feels he has completely denounced that world, and entered a new phase of being a philanthropist. Looks like he is still very passionate about whatever he does.

It doesn’t matter what people talk about him, he has been one of the driving force for where the technology is today. Unlike his peers Larry Ellison or Steve Jobs who still are at the helm of their corporation. Gates has successfully passed on the baton to Steve Ballmer, and has given Microsoft a ability to hold its fort in his absence. Thats a great achievement not sure if Apple or Oracle has that capability.

Anyways the opening remarks of the speech are humorous, Its a good watch.

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Love between IE and Mozilla teams

Despite the cold reception from Microsoft’s top management, the Internet Explorer development team maintains a relationship with Mozilla. They meet regularly to discuss web standards such as extended validation certificates.^[151] In 2005 Mozilla agreed to allow Microsoft to use its Web feed logo in the interest of common graphical representation of the Web feeds feature.^[152]

In August 2006, Microsoft offered to help Mozilla integrate Firefox with the then-forthcoming Windows Vista,^[153] an offer Mozilla accepted.^[154]

In October 2006, as congratulations for a successful ship of Firefox 2, the Internet Explorer 7 development team sent a cake to Mozilla.^[155][156] As a nod to the browser wars, some readers joked about the cake being poisoned, while others jokingly suggested that Mozilla send a cake back along with the recipe, in reference to the open-source software movement.^[157] The IE development team sent another cake on June 17, 2008, upon the successful release of Firefox 3.^[158]

via en.wikipedia.org

I knew about the love relationship Google shares with Mozilla. Mozilla is earning big bucks on this relationship.

Never knew that IE and Mozilla dev teams share co-cordial relationship. The cake incident is funny.

I’m a PC

Good little I’m a PC ad. Emphasizing ubiquity and diverse usage of Microsoft Windows, by people belonging to melange professions and cultures. By far the best PC ad i’ve seen, in recent times…

Steve Jobs dating game – 1983

Watch the video…

More I learn about Steve Jobs more I admire him. It was a PR stunt, it really worked then. Look at the faith Bill Gates had in Macintosh platform, so did everyone then.

Little did Jobs (or for that matter Bill Gates) know then that few years later, the same Bill Gates would give his dear platform a scare of extinction by introducing his dear Windows platform.

Is it time to abandon C++ ?

For last 6-7 months I have been following the development in Web space avidly. Myself being a C++ programmer had a feeling of being superior to the folks who develop Web applications / Web Based solutions. Things are different now, there is a sense of discontent for not able to do any web stuff other than basic HTML.

Things have changed drastically in last couple of years.

When I started working, C# was newly introduced. It was branded as a clone of JAVA, accused of being slow, the general notion was VC++/MCF was the way to develop applications on Windows. Today C# is the framework to develop application on Windows, be it desktop applications or web oriented applications. Its a modern framework with the ease of VB and power of VC++/MFC.

On MAC platform as well C++ ruled in pre-OSX days Power Plant was the framework of choice. But today if you develop an application in C++ on MAC OSX, you are no better than an oaf. You can develop a applications faster and better with Cocoa (Objective-C language) framework. Again C++ loses out.

Rich Internet Applications (RIAs) have revolutionized the web space. Ajax and Gmail started it all, no one had ever thought that web applications can be give an desktop application like experience. Then it was Flash, new technologies Openlaszlo came up. Flickr and YouTube showed what web applications can do. These days reading about Adobe Apollo and Microsoft Silverlight.

I feel left out. C++ feels archaic. I can write any kind of desktop application on Window/MAC, but still there is a strong feeling of discontentment for not being part of web brigade. You don’t need to know C++ to innovate anymore, it has reached its saturation. It has now become a language of geeks writing cryptic code.

Letterman’s tribute to Bill Gates

No matter how much people mock Bill Gates and Microsoft. Everyone will agree the fact that its because of him that every home has a computer today. It was during the time of huge expensive VAXs and PDPs, Bill Gates had a dream of making computers affordable and usable by everyone not only scientists and Engineers.

In today’s world :
Windows PC is now a necessity.
MAC a luxury.
Linux is an option.

I know there are a lot of people telling MAC is better, Linux is Open its just a way to make themselves feel better for not using Windows. There was so much skepticism about Windows Vista, it has actually sold 20 Million copies more that what XP sold in 2 months. Its a fad these days to use non-windows operation system, just a fad. Everyone will slowly roll back. Yeah there will always be a small group of loyal MAC and Linux users but Windows will remain ubiquitous.

I’m a MAC developer have been using Macs for last 3 years. Having experienced both the worlds I still feel from user point of view and development point of view Windows is the best.

Microsoft CEO Ballmer laughs at the Apple iPhone

Whenever there is an argument over Apple and Microsoft, I always bring in a point of “affordability”.

All the Apple products are targeted towards the affluents. The ratio of number of people wanting to own a Apple gadget to those who fulfill their desire by owning one is very high, what I mean to say is majority of the people can’t afford Apple gadgets. iPod was an exception it had cheaper variants and they sold like hot cakes.

Its a very valid point that Ballmer makes about the pricing of iPhone. Everyone wants an iPhone, but how many of us will acutally buy one is to be seen.