My hero is Bill Gates III, because he funded not the most stable, but by far the most useful operating system; Windows XP or better, and the most useful office suite on Earth. I have picked the achievement of his personal and CEO achievements that has undergone a lot of seemly unrest via court cases against the US Government in the 1990s, as a no small accomplishment. US government jury trials were obvious attacks on closed source software and its profitability. He also took a journey into the unknown by leaving his safety and conventional way of Harvard.
If it wasn’t for Bill Gates, I wouldn’t be as nearly as productive as I have been. In a parallel universe there probably would be Apple and PowerPC ruling 90% of the market with Commodore International still in business taking place of “Apple Computers”. Bill Gates had the over endurance with all, he prevented Microsoft from being split up by the government, and that is a good thing, because other countries have federally funded Linux, such as China has Red Flag Linux, for their PCs and I do not want that. I’d rather have a closed source operating system for personal usage so Gates is a hero here for keeping Microsoft together. My hero is a certified border-line genius. He has a score of 1590 out of 1600 on a SAT test. Unlike me, he read encyclopedias and had a similar intellect as the main character in the movie “Good Will Hunting” where he obsessively read books so he could pass the high school academics, or became bored. I respect that he led Microsoft without much collateral damage during the Federal Trade Commission and Justice Department investigations in the 1990s. He has a couple PH.D’s in Science and is Honorary Knight Commander of the Order of the British Empire conferred by Queen Elizabeth II. He also is a humanitarian. (Biography, 2009)
He worked in the computer lab at school with his friend and hijacked the software vulnerabilities so that he could have more computer time available. He eventually got kicked out of the computer lab, and then at a later time, was requested to debug the terminal that he hijacked. (Biography, 2009)
I tend to agree with his 1976 open letter to computer hobbyists when he says that open source software should not be shared, but sold; therefore, promoting better software development though better engineering creativity. Through creativity, the development of very sophisticated speech recognition software was available to the general public. This software was called Nuisance’s Dragon Naturally Speaking 10.1. He also is involved with videogame development and has given many incentive speeches at the Game Developers Conference. (Biography, 2009)(Nuance, 2009)(Cnet, 2009)
In 2006, he received the James C. Morgan Global Humanitarian award. He has been awarded by many countries for his charity as well as putting some of his net worth into the Bill and Mellissa Gates Foundation. As well as acting as charity, the foundation does major grants for vaccine and immunization programs, HIV and AIDS research, and public education in the US. The Bill and Mellissa Gates Foundation is the world's largest private philanthropic organization. The Bill and Mellissa gates foundation is preferred by billionaires, receiving about $80 billion. (ITU, 2006)
I like his quasi dress attitude where he dressed for comfort and causality when he is at work or for an interview such as when IBM interviewed him for the MS-BASIC operating system. I would like to note that the Japanese MSX (except for American clones) had MS Basic in 1984. He cleverly bought an operating system from a programmer. As an entrepreneur, his success was based on imagination and endurance which I admire. (Biography, 2009)
All in all, Bill Gates’ operating system, with its ingenuity and software support, will be a force far in my future as I will be working with his products a lot. I wish I had a SAT test score of 1590 out of 1600, any geek would. I also believe that the Gates Foundation does decent humanitarian work. At best, I need to restrain myself when I talk about Bill Gates and his accomplishments; however, his inspiration for me has been a novel one. To me, Bill Gates is like a fairy tale story. His courageous journey in his belief system has served him well, while at the same time, benefited others.
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