Bill Gates Biography

William Henry "Bill" Gates III (born October 28, 1955) is an American software magnate, philanthropist, and chairman of Microsoft, the software company he founded with Paul Allen. He has always been considered among the richest people in the world and was the richest of the global 1995-2009, except 2008, when he finished third.During his career at Microsoft, Gates has held positions of CEO and Chief Software architect, and remains the largest single shareholder with more than 8 per cent stocks. He has also written common or co-authored several books.

Gates is one of the best-known entrepreneurs of the personal computer revolution. Although he is admired by many, a number of industry experts criticize his business tactics, which they consider anti-competitive, a view that in some cases has been upheld by the courts (see criticisms of Microsoft). In the final stages of his career, Gates has carried out a number of philanthropic activities, donated large sums of money to various charities and scientific research programs through the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, established in 2000.

Bill Gates, has resigned as CEO of Microsoft in January 2000. He remained as chairman and created the post of chief software architect. In June 2006, Gates announced that the transition from full-time work at Microsoft who works part time and working full time from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. Gradually transferred his duties to Ray Ozzie, chief software architect and Craig Mundie, Chief Research and Strategy. Gates last full-time day at Microsoft was June 27, 2008. Microsoft remains a non-executive chairman.

Gates born in Seattle, Washington, William H. Gates Sr. and Mary Maxwell Gates, English, German and Scotch-Irish family was descent.His upper middle class, his father was a prominent lawyer, his mother served on the board of directors of First Interstate BancSystem and United Way, and his father, JW Maxwell was a president of the National Bank. Gates has one older sister, Kristi (Kristi Ann) and a younger sister, Libby. It was the fourth of his name in his family but he became known as William Gates III or "Trey" because his father had dropped his own "III" suffix. Early in his life, parents Bill Gates had a career in the spirit of the law for him.

At age 13, he enrolled in Lakeside School, an exclusive preparatory school.When was in eighth grade, the Mothers Club, the school uses the proceeds from the sale of Lakeside school revolver to buy an ASR-33 teletype terminal and a block of computer time on a General Electric (GE) for the team students.Gates school has an interest in programming the GE system in BASIC and was taught mathematics courses for continuing interest. He wrote his first computer program on this machine: an implementation of tic-tac-toe that allowed users to play against the computer. Gates was fascinated with the machine and how to always execute software code perfectly. In thinking about this time, he wrote about it and said: "There was just a neat thing about the machine". After the Mothers Club donation was exhausted, and other students sought time systems, including minicomputers PDP December. One of these systems was a PDP-10 that belongs to Computer Center Corporation (CCC), which prohibits the four Lakeside students, Gates, Paul Allen, Ric Weiland, and Kent Evans, who after being caught exploiting bugs in the operating system for free computer time.

At the end of the ban, the four students offered to find bugs in CCC's software in exchange for computer time. Instead of using the system teletype, Gates went to CCC's offices and studied source code for the various programs that ran on the system, including programs in FORTRAN, LISP, and machine language. The arrangement with CCC continued until 1970, when the company closed its doors. The following year Information Sciences Inc. hired four Lakeside students to write a payroll program in COBOL, providing them computer time and royalties. After his administrators became aware of his programming skills, Gates wrote the computer program to schedule school students in the classroom. He changed the code when it was placed in classes with students for most women. He said later that "it was hard to put a machine where I could clearly demonstrate the success." At the age of 17 years, Bill Gates created a company with Allen, called Traf-O-Data to make traffic counters based on 8008 Intel. In early 1973, Bill Gates has served as a congressional page in the House of Representatives in the U.S..

Gates graduated from Lakeside School in 1973. He did a 1590 SAT 1600 and enrolled at Harvard College in the fall of 1973. While at Harvard, he met Steve Ballmer, who later succeeded as CEO Gates of Microsoft and computer Christos Papadimitriou, under which he wrote a book about a pancake sorting. He was not sure of a learning plan, a student at Harvard and spent a lot of time to use the school computers. He remained in contact with Paul Allen, which connects to Honeywell in the summer of 1974. The year following the release of MITS Altair 8800 based on Intel 8080, and Gates and Allen saw an opportunity to start your own computer software company. He had talked this decision over with his parents, who supported him after seeing what Gates wanted to start a business.

After reading the January 1975 issue of Popular Electronics shows Altair 8800, Gates contacted Micro Instrumentation and Telemetry Systems (MITS) that the creators of the new microcomputer, said that he and others worked on a shell Basic to the platform. In fact, Gates and Allen had no Altair and had not written the code for it, they just wanted to assess Mits interest. Mits president Ed Roberts agreed to meet for a demonstration, and in a few weeks they developed an Altair emulator that took place on a mini-computer, then the BASIC interpreter. The event, held at the offices of Mits in Albuquerque, was a success and has reached agreement with the Mits to distribute the interpreter as Altair BASIC. Paul Allen was hired into MITS, and Gates took leave from Harvard to work with Allen to Albuquerque Mits in November 1975. They called their partnership "Micro-Soft&quot" and have had their first office in Albuquerque. In one year, was dropped hyphen, and November 26, 1976, the trade name "Microsoft" is registered with the British Secretary of State of New Mexico. Gates has never returned to Harvard to complete his studies.

Microsoft BASIC was popular computer hobbyists, but Gates discovered that the pre-market copy had leaked to the community and was widely copied and distributed. February 1976, Gates wrote an open letter to hobbyists in the MITS newsletter saying that MITS is no longer able to produce, distribute and maintain high quality software without payment. This letter was unpopular with many computer enthusiasts, but Gates was still in his belief that software developers should be required to pay. Microsoft mits independence in late 1976 and has continued to develop programming language software systems. The company moved to Albuquerque a new home in Bellevue, Washington January 1, 1979.

Microsoft early's years, all employees had broad responsibility for the company's business. Gates took care of business details, but continued to write code, too. First five years, he personally reviewed every line of code posted to the company, and often rewrote parts of it, as he saw fit.

In 1980, IBM approached Microsoft to write the BASIC interpreter for its upcoming personal computer, the IBM PC. When IBM representatives said they needed an operating system, Gates referred them to the Digital Research (DRI), makers of the widespread use of CP / M. IBM talks with Digital Research went wrong, and not reach a licensing agreement. IBM representative Jack Sams mentioned the licensing difficulties during a subsequent meeting with the doors and told him to get an acceptable operating system. A few weeks later Gates proposed using 86-DOS (QDOS), an operating system similar to CP / M that Tim Paterson of Seattle Computer Products (SCP) is for a team like material. Microsoft has signed a deal with SCP to become the exclusive licensing agent, and later, the owner, 86-DOS. After adapting the operating system for PCs, Microsoft has issued to IBM PC-DOS, in exchange for a payment of $ 50,000. Gates has not offered to the transfer of copyright in the operating system because he believed that other hardware vendors to copy the IBM system. They did, and sales of MS-DOS made Microsoft a major player in the industry.

Gates oversaw the restructuring of companies Microsoft, June 25, 1981, which re-joined the company in Washington State and made Gates Microsoft Chairman and President of the Board. Microsoft has launched its first retail version of Microsoft Windows 20th November 1985 and August, the company has signed an agreement with IBM to develop a separate operating system, OS / 2 Although the two companies successfully developed the first version of new system, the installation of creative differences undermined the partnership. Gates distributed an internal memorandum, May 16, 1991, announced that OS / 2 Partnership was over and Microsoft would shift its efforts on development of Windows NT kernel.

Microsoft was founded in 1975 until 2006, Gates had primary responsibility for product strategy company. He aggressively to expand the company's product range, and every time that Microsoft has achieved a dominant position, has vigorously defended.

As a manager Gates met regularly to executives of Microsoft and programs. First-hand accounts of these meetings describe him as verbally combative, berating managers perceived holes in their business strategies or suggestions that all long-term interests of society at risk. Often interrupted presentations, such as comments, "This is the stupidest thing I've ever heard! 'and' Why not just give up choice and join the Peace Corps?" The objective of his release was then defend the proposal in detail until, hopefully, Gates was fully convinced. When subordinates appeared to procrastinate, was known well known sarcastically, "I will do over the weekend."

Gate's role at Microsoft for most of its history is primarily a function of management and leadership. However, it was a software developer active in the early years, in particular on products of the language software company. It was officially the development team since working on the TRS-80 Model 100 line, but still wrote the code in 1989 is presented in the company's products. On June 15, 2006, Gates announced that the transition from his role on a daily basis over the next two years to devote more time to philanthropy. He divided his responsibilities between two successors, placing Ray Ozzie in charge of day to day management and Craig Mundie in charge of product strategy in the long term.

Many of the decisions that led to antitrust litigation over Microsoft's business practices have had Gate's approval. In 1998, United States v. Microsoft case, Gates gave deposition testimony that several journalists characterized as evasive. He argued with examiner David Boies over the contextual meaning of words like "compete", "stakeholders" and "we" BusinessWeek reports:

Early rounds of his deposition show him offering obfuscatory answers and saying 'I don't recall,' so many times that even the presiding judge had to chuckle. Worse, many of the technology chief's denials and pleas of ignorance were directly refuted by prosecutors with snippets of e-mail Gates both sent and received

Gates later said he had resisted attempts by Boies simply to distort his words and actions. As for his behavior during the deposition, said: "I fence with Boies? ... I plead guilty. Whatever the penalty should be imposed, is against me: rudeness to Boies in the first degree." Despite the denials Gates, the judge ruled that Microsoft had committed monopolization and tying, blocking competition, and the both in violation of the Sherman Antitrust Act.

Gates appeared in a series of ads to promote Microsoft in 2008. The first spot, co-starring Jerry Seinfeld is 90 seconds of conversation between strangers as Seinfeld brings the discount shoe store (Shoe Circus) is a mall and notices Gates buy shoes inside. The seller is trying to sell the shoes of Mr. Gates, who are too big. Gates buy shoes because they can keep the discount card, which uses a slightly modified version of its Mugshot, was arrested in New Mexico in 1977 and the traffic violation. When leaving a shopping mall, Seinfeld asks Gates if he has melded his mind to other developers, after, yes, he asks if you are working way to get the computer to eat, back to being a yes. Some say this is a tribute to the show Seinfeld "nothing" (Seinfeld). Another commercial kit, Gates and Seinfeld are in the average family trying to adapt the common people.

Since leaving Microsoft, Bill Gates continues his philanthropy and, among other projects, bought the rights to the series of videos Messenger conference entitled The physical characteristics of the law, given at Cornell University by Richard Feynman in 1964 and registered by BBC. The videos are available online for the public Tuva Microsoft Project.
In April 2010, Gates has been invited to visit and speak at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he asked students to take the difficult problems of the world in the future.

Gates married Melinda French from Dallas, TX January 1, 1994. They have three children. Gate's house is landside, nursing home of the hill, Lake Washington in Medina. According to King County public records, as in 2006, the estimated total value of property (land and house) is $ 125 million, and annual property tax is $ 991,000.

Him home is a 66 000 m² pool 60 feet underwater music, and 2500 sq ft gym, 1000 sq ft dining room. Also among Gate's private acquisitions's of the Codex Leicester, a collection of writings by Leonardo da Vinci, which Gates bought $ 30,800,000 at auction in 1994. Gates is also known as an avid reader, and the roof of his large home library is engraved with quotes The Great Gatsby. He also enjoys playing bridge, tennis and golf.

Gates was number one on the "Forbes 400" list from 1993 to 2007 and a number in the list of Forbes richest people in the world from 1995-2007 and 2009. In 1999, Gates's wealth briefly exceeded 101 billion U.S. dollars, which the media to call a centibillionaire. Since 2000 the nominal value of their holdings Microsoft has decreased due to low stock price of Microsoft after the bursting of the dot-com bubble and the donations of several million dollars he has made to his charitable foundations. In May 2006, interview, Gates said he hoped that he was not richest man in the world because he disliked the emphasis. Gates several investments outside Microsoft, which in 2006 paid him a salary of $ 616,667 and bonuses totaling $ 966,667 to $ 350,000. He founded Corbis, a digital imaging company, in 1989. In 2004, he became a director of Berkshire Hathaway, the investment company run by his old friend Warren Buffett. In March 2010 Bill Gates was dropped down to the 2nd wealthiest man.

Gates began to realize the expectations others had of him when public opinion mounted that he could not give more of his wealth to charity. Gates studied the work of Andrew Carnegie and John D. Rockefeller and in 1994 sold part of his Microsoft stock to generate William H. Gates Foundation. In 2000, Gates and his wife combined three family foundations into one to build the charity Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, which is the most transparent of the Charitable Foundation operated worldwide. The foundation was created to allow access to customers of how their money is spent, unlike other major charitable organizations such as the Wellcome Trust. The generosity and extensive philanthropy David Rockefeller has been credited as a major influence. Gates and his father have met with Rockefeller several times and have modeled their giving in part on the Rockefeller family's philanthropic focus, namely those global problems that are ignored by governments and other organizations.As of 2007, Bill and Melinda Gates were the second most generous philanthropists in America, having given over $28 billion to charity. 

Foundation has also been criticized because it invests the assets has not yet been distributed for the sole purpose of maximizing the return on investment. Consequently, their investments are companies that have been criticized by the worsening of poverty in developing countries, where even the Foundation aims to alleviate poverty. These are companies that pollute a lot and pharmaceutical companies do not sell in the developing world. Responding to criticism of the press, foundation announced in 2007 a review of their investments to assess social responsibility. He later rescinded the review and has maintained its investment policy to maximize the performance while using the voting rights to influence business practices.