Is not generally well known but Microsoft stole the idea of product activation ( as used in Windows XP and more ) and copied the methodology of the activation parameters etc from the guy that invented and patented it . There was a big court case about it and appeals , it ended with Microsoft having to pay penalty of (I recall ) $250M USD . There is very brief info on this wikipedia page <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ric_Richardson" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ric_Richardson</a><p>There is a much more detailed video by Ric RIchardson around I will see if I can find it and post the link .....<p>OK found the link.
<a href="https://rss.com/podcasts/unemployable/1485621/" rel="nofollow">https://rss.com/podcasts/unemployable/1485621/</a><p>This link has blurb for another entrepreneur company, just ignore / skip that. There is a part where the inventor gives detailed info about the court battle with Microsoft and technical details of his product activation technology.
One other thing , if you want to know all the dodgy court cases Microsoft got involved in and the penalty's that had to pay- it will be mentioned / disclosed in their annual financial reports - since these large amounts , even possible amounts needed to be advised to shareholders in case /if/when they lost .....<p>I should add a party to the court case , disclosed the amount Cira $250M USD<p>even though in wikipedia says its not disclosed ....
The irony of stealing product activation is WOW :) welcome to capitalism.
And if those pirates had been successful young Billy might not have grown up to be such a naughty boy.
The person authoring the Post-Open License (discussed in <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38783500">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38783500</a>), a paid shared source license in all but name, is the fellow they chose to interview about Gates' letter? How ... ironic. The reasoning behind POL and the growing number of shared source licenses is exactly the same as Gates' letter: developers deserve to get paid for their efforts instead of having their code shared without compensation. Both are a ringing endorsement of Gates' argument, not <i>libre</i> software and the Four Freedoms.
Seriously, I consider this to be Microsoft's key innovation: the idea that people should pay for software and that people should be forced to pay for software.
I find it fascinating how this particular sites' users post articles like this while there's so much <i>obscene</i> news about the dude right now.
What stuff? Adultery is pretty milquetoast
He was implicated in infidelity and STDs, not kiddie diddling, or was he?
Not everyone mentioned in the Epstein documents is associated with kid diddling.<p>Also the thing about "surreptitiously giving melinda antibiotics" weren't actually written by Bill and he has since denied it.<p>> <i>It’s unclear who the Boris referenced in the emails is, or if the messages were ever sent to anyone. Only Epstein is listed in the to and from fields.</i><p><a href="https://www.theverge.com/tech/871879/bill-gates-epstein-files-absolutely-absurd" rel="nofollow">https://www.theverge.com/tech/871879/bill-gates-epstein-file...</a><p>So the emails were some emails in Epstein's draft folder he never sent to anyone. This is a dude who peddled in dirt and leverage against anyone and anything, probably how he got so wealthy and why he had his island parties in the first place. There is a reason why in the Kevin Rudd related mentions he is described as a "odious character in the extreme" basically stay clear from him.
There's a bunch of stuff coming out about his coordination with Epstein to run pandemic simulations, and a lot of business level stuff going on after Epstein's initial run-ins with the law. That aside if he's on a personal enough level to ask him for antibiotics to sneakily slip his wife, then Bill would definitely know about all the rest.<p>Really don't have any more room to give these people the benefit of doubt.
Epstein made the claim, but there's no indiction whether it is true, or him making it up for clout/just to mess with Gates, etc.
I mean (allegedly) giving your significant other an STD, and then trying to procure secretive meds to give to them so that you don't have to tell them is high up on the list of horrible behavior for a person
Bill Gates was a ruthless and predatory business man. It is well known - Used to build in deliberate incompatibilities with the Windows
Microsoft quickly learned to pick their battles and basically left Windows anti-piracy features at "just about anyone will be able to do it" level, pretty much only going after large dodgy companies. MS benefited enormously from all the piracy in developing countries, around teenage tinkerers and so on.
And today, half a century later, most HN and Reddit software people are enthusiasts about software licenses. Followers, no doubt, of this philosophy.
From what was their victim software derived? How much time did it take to write the letter?<p>Is this the one with Noah Wylie?<p>XEROX Alto (PARC ), 86DOS, CPM DOS, BASIC,<p>Xerox Alto (1973) <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xerox_Alto" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xerox_Alto</a><p>The Altair 8800 has an Intel 8080 CPU:<p>Altair 8800: <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Altair_8800" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Altair_8800</a><p>Intel 8080 -> Intel 8088<p>CP/M (1974) <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CP/M" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CP/M</a><p>DOS > History: <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DOS#History" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DOS#History</a><p>86-DOS: <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/86-DOS" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/86-DOS</a> :<p>> <i>86-DOS shared a few of its commands with other operating systems such as OS/8 and CP/M, which made it easy to port programs from the latter. Its application programming interface was very similar to that of CP/M. The system was licensed and then purchased by Microsoft and developed further as MS-DOS and PC DOS. [2]</i><p>BASIC > History:
<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BASIC_interpreter#History" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BASIC_interpreter#History</a><p>HP had BASIC on mainframes in the 1960s.<p>This paper (ScholarlyArticle) was published in 1974:<p>"A BASIC Language Interpreter for the Intel 8008 Microprocessor". ACM. (19<i>74</i>) from UIUC: University of Illinois Champagne-Urbana .. archive.org: <a href="https://archive.org/details/basiclanguageint658weav/page/n8/mode/1up" rel="nofollow">https://archive.org/details/basiclanguageint658weav/page/n8/...</a> .. scholar:
<a href="https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C43&q=A+BASIC+Language+Interpreter+for+the+Intel+8008+Microprocessor&btnG=" rel="nofollow">https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C43&q=A+B...</a><p>"What Bill Gates’ first commercial code (Altair BASIC) looks like under the hood" <a href="https://maizure.org/projects/decoded-altair-basic/index.html" rel="nofollow">https://maizure.org/projects/decoded-altair-basic/index.html</a> ..
<a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/1o9wk8x/what_bill_gates_first_commercial_code_altair/" rel="nofollow">https://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/1o9wk8x/what_b...</a> :<p>Monte Davidoff:
<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monte_Davidoff" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monte_Davidoff</a> :<p>> <i>Davidoff was assigned the task of writing floating-point arithmetic routines for Altair BASIC over the summer, when the three of them lived in Albuquerque, New Mexico, where their company was then headquartered.[1] Gates, Allen, and Davidoff managed to write the software without ever seeing the Altair 8800 thanks to a simulator</i><p>BASIC > History > Microcomputer era:
<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BASIC_interpreter" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BASIC_interpreter</a> :<p>> <i>In January 1975, the Altair 8800 was announced and sparked the microcomputer revolution. One of the first microcomputer versions of BASIC was co-written by Gates, Allen, and Monte Davidoff for their newly formed company, Micro-Soft. This was released by MITS in punch tape format for the Altair 8800 shortly after the machine itself, [7] showcasing BASIC as the primary language for early microcomputers.</i><p>> <i>In March 1975, Steve Wozniak attended the first meeting of the Homebrew Computer Club and began formulating the design of his own computer. Club members were excited by Altair BASIC. [8] Wozniak concluded that his machine would have to have a BASIC of its own. At the time he was working at Hewlett Packard and used their TS-BASIC minicomputer dialect as the basis for his own version. Integer BASIC was released on cassette for the Apple I, and was supplied in ROM when the Apple II shipped in the summer of 1977. [9]</i><p>..Re: FreeBASIC, Q<i>64</i>, EDIT.COM and its new rust clone; where it's at today: <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44018152">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44018152</a>