It’s pretty amazing to go from a world where computers were unheard of and very complex to where they’re a tool of everyday life.
I definitely think leaving kids massive amounts of money is not a favor to them.
Often you just have to rely on your intuition.
Expectations are a form of first-class truth: If people believe it, it’s true.
The first rule of any technology used in a business is that automation applied to an efficient operation will magnify the efficiency. The second is that automation applied to an inefficient operation will magnify the inefficiency.
Microsoft was founded with a vision of a computer on every desk, and in every home. We’ve never wavered from that vision.
Never before in history has innovation offered promise of so much to so many in so short a time.
You don’t go to other books and take little pieces because although say a romantic scene may have been many times before all the details of who it is, where it is, are so intertwined in that text that it’s easier to write it from scratch.
We’ve got to put a lot of money into changing behavior.
Don’t tax my income, tax my consumption.
I believe that every life is valuable. That we can make things better. That innovation is the key to a bright future. That we’re just getting started.
This is a fantastic time to be entering the business world, because business is going to change more in the next 10 years than it has in the last 50.
Software will get to be somewhat more mature, ah, but it will never be as predictable as most areas of engineering.
If you’re a person struggling to eat and stay healthy you might have heard about Michael Jordan or Muhammad Ali, but you’ll never have heard of Bill Gates.
Another trick in software is to avoid rewriting the software by using a piece that’s already been written, so called component approach which the latest term for this in the most advanced form is what’s called Object Oriented Programming.
Of all the statistics in health, death is the easiest, because you can go out and ask people, “Hey, have you had any children who died, did your siblings have any children who died?” People don’t forget that.
Paper is no longer a big part of my day. I get 90% of my news online, and when I go to a meeting and want to jot things down, I bring my Tablet PC. It’s fully synchronized with my office machine so I have all the files I need.
Every day were saying, ‘How can we keep this customer happy?’ How can we get ahead in innovation by doing this, because if we don’t, somebody else will.
Well I think any author or musician is anxious to have legitimate sales of their products, partly so they’re rewarded for their success, partly so they can go on and do new things.
Even for the very best programmers ah, sometimes you’ll see someone else’s program or somebody will come along and they’ll show you what can be done in a simpler way.