operating system and its graphical interface into one package. With a worldwide promotional campaign costing $300 million, it looks set to become the industry standard supplanting Microsoft's old warhorse DOS. Cue the triumph of Bill. A software nerd is the richest man in the world. But even as Bill Gates bestrides the PC world like a colossus, ahead lie bigger battles, battles that will make the trouncing of the Mac and mastering the IBM PC look like a tea party. The Gates fortune was built on setting the industry standard for PC operating systems. Fine as long as PC's are stand alone boxes on your desk. But now they are being linked into a worldwide network, the much hyped information superhighway. The PC on the internet is a mailbox, a telephone and a television. Of course at the centre of this will be the idea of digital convergence that is taking all the information books, art, movies and being able to provide that on demand on what the PC will have evolved into. The Internet is the next wave of the information revolution where there is as yet no industry standard, a world where even Bill Gates seems unsure. You know, if you take the way the Internet is changing month by month, if somebody can predict what's going to happen three months from now, nine months from now even today eh my hat's off to them, I think we've got a phenomena here that is moving so rapidly that nobody knows exactly where it will go. Bill Gates isn't resting on his laurels. He's making new alliances, like investing in Steven Spielberg's new movie studio, Dreamworks. He's in cable TV with broadcaster NBC and in competition with Rupert Murdoch and Mickey Mouse. These tycoons are a far cry from the nerds Bill has so far outsmarted guys like Gary Kildall who became businessmen by accident. Even Bill's victory over IBM was really with a corporate outpost a long way from the attention of Big Blue Headquarters. No - Bill's new rivals are hotshots, not hippies. And one of them is the guy I'm visiting. He hopes the Internet will go somewhere other than to Bill Gates' bottom line. He's betting it will soon consign the PC itself to the trashcan and do the same to Microsoft. Larry Ellison is the boss of Oracle, a booming business that sells software to companies who share information among hundreds of users. In Atherton, the most exclusive suburb in Silicon Valley, the bachelor billionaire has built himself a 10 million dollar samurai mansion. Naturally! I want to have a large pond about 5 acres of water surrounded by several little buildings like a village. With his ceremonial carp Larry contemplates the coming battle with Microsoft. People make a terrible mistake of thinking IBM is the present and Microsoft is the future I think IBM is the past and Microsoft is the present and the future has not happened so we don't know what company, what technology is going to be dominant. These are temple guardians from the Koma Kura period and, they you know you would have one on either side of your door and, the job was to scare employees of Microsoft away and keep them from entering the Temple. We shouldn't spend all of our time wringing our hands about Microsoft you know Microsoft world domination that eh there still room enough for innovation. there's going to be change and Microsoft's future is not assured. Anything good for the Internet. Yeah I'm very supportive of it because the Internet does not require a PC. Larry believes the PC will be replaced with a cheap device he calls an information appliance. It will be a glorified television which will access information and computing simply by connecting to giant computers via the Internet. Just like turning on a tap. and the PC will go the way of the well and the bucket. I hate the PC with a passion. Me going down to the store and buying Windows 95, I've got to get into my car drive down to a store, buy a cardboard box full of bits, ------------------------------ Читайте также: - текст Торжество на английском - текст Отряд Дельта 2 на английском - текст Кандагар на английском - текст Винни-Пух на английском - текст Он умер с фалафелем в руке на английском |