Fneh
Is there some villain going round assassinating ancient computer science geniuses or what?
It was only two days ago that James Martin turned up dead off of Bermuda.
One of the shining lights of the world of Unix, retired CU professor Evi Nemeth, is among a group of sailors missing at sea near New Zealand. The author of system administration tomes covering both Unix and Linux – and, incidentally a mathematician of sufficient quality to identify problems with Diffie-Helman encryption – has …
"Nah, Bill Gates isn't a concern- he's more of a businessman than programmer. It's The Woz I'm worried about."
I think you're being a bit unfair there - like him or loath him , Gates knew how to code. In fact I'd say he was a better coder than businessman - with the business side he was just the in the right place at the right time and no doubt had a shed load of advice from his father and also there was Balmer to help out (yeah I know, he's lost the plot now , but back in the day ...). I'd say MS became a success despite rather than because of his business skills.
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>In fact I'd say he was a better coder than businessman...
Oh I wouldn't be so sure about that...
He was the richest businessman in the world at one stage. I don't think he ever achieved a similar accolade in the programming world. Admittedly he did write code using techniques that most of today's programmers only hear about in 'tales of lore', but he's no Ritchie, Kernighan, Thompson, Torvalds, Stallman the list goes on...
He did beat Jobs to the punch (more than once), took IBM for a ride, some say invented the software industry, and built the giant Microsoft to name a few notable business achievements of his.
Nah, I'm pretty sure he was a better businessman than coder.
And he is trying to save the world, and it doesn't look like he's doing it to stroke his ego. Which is nice...
Unfortunately it is a trend, as Palahniuck wrote
I think Keynes said it better (and earlier): "In the long run we are all dead".
Last year I crewed a 52ft cat on a 2000 mile non-stop voyage. It was a nightmare! Close hauled for 90% of the time and then a following sea with storm 10 wind for the last leg, sea anchor out and hoping not to broach.
Not helped by the skipper being an arsehole, and the radios, Navtext and bilge alarms not working.
My sympathies with the relatives.
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Those of us who know her personally, as a teacher, as a mentor, as a boss, know she's tough as nails (but with a soft inside). Aside from teaching us Unix and IP internetworking in the very early days of the Internet, she taught me that students rise to the level of expectation. She was always fiercely devoted to her students. And she would not abide injustice, regardless of the personal inconvenience. If I had to choose one Nina crew member most likely to survive, though she's the oldest, Evi's the toughest, and the fiercest. Hang in there; we love you Evi.
I'm afraid that many of the comments indicate a lack of knowledge about Mr. Gates' abilities. Years ago, when Byte was the magazine that everyone read, they sponsored a test to design a program to perform certain tasks. The test was timed, and the output validated. You could program in any language you preferred. Mr. Gates' choice was Basic. He competed against teams using C, Pascal, Fortran among others. He finished first; his programs ran the quickest, and his results were correct. You might not like Windows, or Microsoft (I use Linux, I started with Slackware 2.2) but it is unwise to castigate Mr. Gates' programming abilities. They are superior.
Alan