Talk:Bill Gates

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This is the talk page for discussing improvements to the Bill Gates article.


Contents

[edit] 640K/1MB

What about "DOS addresses only 1 Megabyte of RAM because we cannot imagine any applications needing more." - is it sourced?

The source of "640kb ought to be enough for anybody." may have actually been "No one will need more than 637 kb of memory for a personal computer." and it may have been said in the early 1970s. // Liftarn

The earliest mention of this quote on usenet seems to be a signature by Evan Champion in 1992-07-25 (News:2175291@overmind.citadel)

LX 2.1 TD . "640K ought to be enough for anybody." - Bill Gates, 1981

Citation - Page 303, right margin of;

The Unauthorized Guide to Windows 98 By Paul McFedries Published by Que Publishing, 1999 ISBN 0789719126, 9780789719126 784 pages

 http://books.google.com.au/books?id=7eoCec_3FyAC&pg=PA303&lpg=PA303&dq=640k+anybody+1981&source=web&ots=zw-s46Ke0n&sig=z2cRRydKQp18iBoOHpul5UMrxn4&hl=en&sa=X&oi=book_result&resnum=2&ct=result#PPA303,M1

(This is not a reference, this is the simply the same misquote immortalised in print -- zcat 118.90.73.183 20:08, 26 January 2010 (UTC))

I made a number of changes to the page.

  • Organizing it similar to the JFK or Albert Einstein page with "Verified" and "Attributed" sections. Its important to distinguish between what we have good sources for and what we don't
  • In addition to the sections above I kept the "Falsely Attributed" section since it seems there are some quotes that are widely circulated and have been refuted.
  • I tried to look up some of the quotes from articles and couldn't find them in article search databases. However, fixed some book titles and publishers that were incorrect.

I don't think google groups reference is sufficient to count as a source. This is someone posting on usenet, about a speech they heard, where someone recounts a conversation they had a long time ago with Bill Gates. Therefore, I have it under attributed, but with a link to the google article.

If any can find the origin or ideally a good source for some of the quotes that would be great, e.g. the WWW one. Zsweden 15:27, 31 May 2004 (UTC)

I've heard someone saying that this sentence was actually said by an IBM engineer. Unfortunately I don't remember where I read it and neither the engineer's name. Do you know something about this?

"640K ought to be enough for anybody" *was* *definitely* said by Bill Gates. He said it at an early microcomputer trade show in Seattle in mid 1981. It is the Microsoft PR machine that has tried over the years to rewrite history and pretend that Gates never made this asinine comment.

I'm inclined to agree with the above comment, since we know Bill also said "we will never make a 32-bit operating system". Given that things were moving from 8 bit to 16 bit at the time, the eventual transition of desktop CPUs to 32-bit and beyond should have been just as obvious. But unless you can find a reliable citation, I don't think it should be on the page.. -- zcat

If he said it, come up with ANY piece of evidence. Ofcourse, he never said it, so no one can come up with any.

He did not say it, he says it himself: http://www.wired.com/politics/law/news/1997/01/1484 :) --normis

[edit] Removed what might be a translation

Someone had posted the following statement which I have removed from the article.

  • "Kommt ein Mann in den Steg Computer und sagt: "Ich hätte gerne den fettesten, gröbsten Prozessor den Sie haben!" Sagt der Verkäufer: "Tut mir leid, die Lorenz ist gerade in der Therapie"

This may or may not be a quote of Bill Gates translated into German. Statements originating in German or any other language are welcome here, preferably accompanied by an English translation, but translations of statements into German, if that is what this is, must await the development of a German language Wikiquote. There has been growing interest expressed in creating such Wikiquotes for other languages, and this statement perhaps would belong there. ~ Kalki 12:19, 13 Jul 2004 (UTC)

It's a bad joke in German, probably of a Swiss. Definitely not a quote of Bill Gates.

[edit] Source

Did Bill Gates truly say "The internet is just a passing fad" in a Microsoft press conference in late 1995? I find no source using Google.

There is also this famous "The Internet? We are not interested in it" -- Bill Gates, 1993 that keeps just appearing in a lot of forum signatures. Source Anyone?

I think 1993 is too early. I distinctly recall Gates' statement that Microsoft was not interested in 'the internet phenomenon', or otherwise downplayed it's significance, about 6 months prior to releasing IE (1995) as a competitor to Netscape. This was obviously a calculated position to take in public prior to releasing IE. I'd place it late 1994, early 1995.

1995 quote: No reason to think this is genuine. In August Gates wrote a memo (introduced as evidence in the antitrust case) titled "The Internet Tidal Wave" that very clearly recognized the internet's significance. Windows 95, released in August, included Internet Explorer 1.0 which had been licensed earlier (and before that Microsoft had tried but failed to license the Booklink browser).
1993 quote: Often appears alongside established phony Gates quotations like "640kB should be enough" and "Be nice to nerds." However, it is not impossible nor would it be terribly surprising if he said it. 1993 was the year that NCSA Mosaic was released, and before that the Internet wasn't much to look at for an end-user.
Anything Gates said about the internet at that time should be considered in the context that Microsoft was doing active development on networking in the early 1990s but not necessarily internet networking. Microsoft's awakening to the Internet as not just an interesting technology but a profitable one (which matters to Gates) is documented in Renegades of the Empire and Breaking Windows. w:User:Gazpacho 07:12, 28 December 2006 (UTC)
(PS: what do you mean by "distinctly recall"? Do you recall hearing him say it? Reading about him saying it? In what kind of source?)

[edit] "Linux best OS ever!"

http://bbspot.com/News/2001/06/gates.html may i add it?

no, that's a fake news story. 24.238.166.85 02:27, 17 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] "At a Mac conference in the eighties"

I'm unfimiliar with Wikiquote's policies, but if it were an article on Wikipedia, I would remove anything using this as a "source". w:User:RN

The sourcing is inadequate here, but I have seen the video of this statement, I believe in an early Apple promotion video, when Gates actually was working with Apple in developing Word for the Mac, and will try to get more information on it, if I can, within the next few hours. ~ Shadow 02:48, 26 August 2006 (UTC)
I intend to keep looking between other tasks, but I've not yet found definite sourcing of where the original clip is from, or what date it was, though I did find 2 video clips on Youtube of Gates making the statement: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wZfuEHAZerY & http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xtba2GkVOII

this one says circa 1984 "around the time of the introduction of the macintosh", but it still isn't very specific. Most places give seperate dates which isn't too impressing, and the germen wikiquote says a 1984 mac conference as well but no source either (http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_Gates). A slashdot comment says [1] 1984 as well. So, that's what I found after checking all of the googles for

"the Macintosh, of all the machines I've ever seen, is the only one that meets that standard"

and

"And the Macintosh, of all the machines I've ever seen, is the only one that meets that standard"

If this were a real quote, I would be expecting someone like forbes or time magazine... hopefully someone's search goes better then mine :). w:User:RN

[edit] Sourcing

Gates is a sufficiently public figure, has left a big enough paper trail, and has inspired enough bogus quotes, that I think it's reasonable to insist on very specific citations for anything that gets added here. Not just "someone posted it on the internets." w:User:Gazpacho 09:15, 30 August 2007 (UTC)

It violates the "no original research" policy to suggest that
a) All collections of humorous material, even those from Oxford University press, are unreliable; please provide a source if you wish to assert that;
b) Because it is your personal opinion that Bill Gates said something, therefore he could not have done so; please provide a source if you wish to assert that.
--Cato 18:19, 9 September 2007 (UTC)
I agree. I mean, come on - "In my case, I went to the garbage cans at the Computer Science Center and fished out listings of their operating system." A fairly obvious troll. --199.89.64.178 21:53, 14 December 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Dumpster diving quote

The dumpster diving quote (the one that starts "the best way to prepare") has a longer quote, which includes valuable extra information, in this slashdot comment. Could somebody confirm that this quote is true and then include it? --212.130.183.202 10:24, 1 February 2008 (UTC)

[edit] zcat's comments on "an obvious troll"

The dumpster diving quote is from the book "Programmers at Work: Interviews With 19 Programmers Who Shaped the Computer Industry", published by Microsoft Press. I've seen enough different people claim to have actually got the book and found the quote that I don't believe they could all be making it up, EG the above posting on slashdot or this;

http://danbricklin.com/log/2004_03_11.htm#paw

This occurrence is particularly interesting because Dan Bricklin was one of the 19 programmers interviewed in the book and in a scan of the (hardback) cover, his photo appears on the top left.

If you really want to be sure, you could just buy the book yourself from Amazon. There are four copies available right now.

[edit] Factoring large primes?

One of the Gates quotes I see most often is the (silly, no doubt) mistake regarding factoring. From Wikipedia's entry on The Road Ahead:

"The obvious mathematical breakthrough would be development of an easy way to factor large prime numbers." (p.265)

Is this quote omitted because it came from a multi-author book? If so, I can understand the reasoning: who knows who wrote it? If not, surely this should be included. 207.172.209.70 03:18, 26 April 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Limit of Quotes

Just to let everyone know this page has to many quotes.(StarWarsFanBoy 00:58, 5 December 2009 (UTC))

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