Gates shut on Microsoft

Little Known Facts about Bill Gates

• William Henry Gates was born on October 28, 1955, in Seattle, Washington.
• His SAT score was 1590. The top score for the test is 1600.
• By the age of 17, Gates had sold his first computer program, a time-tabling system for his high school, for $4,200.
• Gates told his university teachers he would be a millionaire by age 30. He became a billionaire at age 31.
• While at Harvard, Gates co-wrote Altair BASIC, which became Microsoft’s first product.
• He met his wife, Melinda French, in 1987 at a Microsoft press event in Manhattan while she was a worker for the company. They would go on to get married on New Years Day in 1994.
• In 2002, Bill Gates was considered more idolized than Chinese Communist leader Mao Tse-tungin a poll of teenagers in Hong Kong and China. The survey was conducted by the City University of Hong Kong.
• He is currently having a building named after him at Carnegie Mellon University, called the Gates Building of Computer Science.
• Bill Gates earns $250 every second; that’s about $20 million a day and $7.8 billion a year!
• If he drops a thousand-dollar bill, he needn’t even bother to pick it up because in the four seconds it would take him to pick it up, he would’ve already earned it back.

Another interesting write-up that I stumbled through yesterday, was one of his employees account on Bill's work techniques. It just goes to show, both the talent as well as dedication showed by the world's richest man.
Joel Spolsky’s tale of a technical review with Bill Gates

Bill Gates was amazingly technical, and he knew more about the details of his company’s software than most of the people who worked on those details day in and day out. He understood Variants and COM objects and IDispatch and why Automation is different than vtables—and why this might lead to dual interfaces. He worried about date and time functions. He didn’t meddle in software if he trusted the people who were working on it, but you couldn’t bullshit him for a minute because he was a programmer. A real, actual programmer.

I think...therefore I am

I happened to watch a documentary which went by the name of 'The Secret', an adaptation of a previously published book.
The first 5 minutes of the movie is very cluttered, it appears to follow the rendition of Da Vinci code, and understandably makes an effort to replicate it's effect. But once the narration starts getting clear, it starts looking more like Discovery channel material.
I did'nt intend to make this sound like a movie review, but thought it was worth a mention, coz I could really connect with the point of view of the producers.

The working of the universe is beyond any mortal's understanding, but that does not mean one cannot live in harmony with the other higher elements. In other words, it is possible to control the vistas of the future. Even though this may be apparent on a regular basis nobody pays attention to these things. Neither did I, till at least a week back. Two incidents that made me rethink my approach towards life.

I travel by bus daily, not just that I more often than not take at least two buses to college/classes. That means I will have to approach 4 bus conductors daily to buy a ticket, that makes it 28 tickets in a week and approximately 1120 tickets in a year. So after traveling for 3 years, and after buying tickets worth over Rs. 10000, I suddenly think, what the heck! why should I buy a ticket, the probability of me bumping into Ticket Examiner is not greater than me being eaten up by a shark. I don't buy a ticket but keep thinking about what if I am eaten by a shark caught by a Ticket Examiner. And yes, I was caught by a TC that day.


I wonder if I didn't think about the Ticket Examiner all through the way, would he still have been there at the bus stop. Does the way one thinks, really shapes the universe? , whatever be the case, I am a believer.

Quote of the year

"You know the world is going crazy when the best rapper is a white guy, the best golfer is a black guy,the tallest guy in the NBA is Chinese, the Swiss hold the America's Cup, France is accusing the U.S. of arrogance, Germany doesn't want to go to war, and the three most powerful men in America are named Bush, Dick, and Colon".

-Comedian Chris Rock

Guide to Interpreting Photos on Orkut

jo dikhta hai....humko lagta hain,
jo nahi diktha....humko lagta hai nahi hain.
lekin kabhi kabhi...
jo dikhta hai woh nahi hota aur jo nahi dikhta hai woh hota hai

-Ishant Awasthi

Profile Photo	Effects	What they want you to think	Truth
	Blurred	Artistic	Has acne, possibly moustache if female
	Anime	Eccentric, possibly Japanese	Computer programmer
	Holding some sort of alcoholic beverage	Fun, Laidback	Never photographed without the bottle
	Dark	Doesn’t care	Dangerous, possibly a terrorist
	Dude jamming on guitar	He's in a popular band and rocks out all the time	Unemployed
	Cartoon	Cute	Immature, possibly fat
	Face at strange, usually downward, angle	Eccentric, possibly supermodel	Unattractive; this is the only good picture of them ever taken
	Very closely cropped	Enigmatic	Fat
	Guy milking a cow	Owns a cow and thinks that’s cool	Owns a cow and thinks that’s cool

Original article : http://www.buttafly.com/

What's so happy about a birthday?

If there's one thing that's common between a 4 year old and a 94 year old, is; both of them will be looking forward towards their next birthday. The same cannot necessarily be said regarding the others. The more birthdays we have, the more complicated our idea regarding a birthday gets.

An analysis of birthday from the point of view of age:

1) 0-2 years

how old are you?
This would be answered by a third person, a parent in most cases and oddly enough you wont get a straight answer.
"She's 17 months old"
Why would I want that? I find it very difficult to convert that into years. 5 months is no big deal for me, it would make a lot more sense if you just told me she's one year old.

2)2-13 years

This is the real fun part. Birthday's are not all that common, and you love the perks they bring along, birthday parties, gifts and more importantly a promotion.

how old are you?
Nobody is just 5 years, you are "5 and a half", yeah, the half is a big deal now. It's like I am closer to 6 than 5.

3)13-21

how old are you?
"I am going on 16", the one month that's passed since my last birthday is good enough to take me to the next whole number.

4)21-29

how old are you?
This is probably the most honest phase of your life, so you are just as old as you are.

5) 30-40

how old are you?
The fact that I am 35 is good enough to pass me onto the "early thirties tag".

6)40-60

how old are you?
"I am in my late thirties", you don't expect someone of my age to lie, do you?

7)60-95

how old are you?
It doesn't make a difference, I am closer to the finish than the beginning.
"eh! could you repeat that?"

8) 95+

how old are you?
This is where the cycle takes a 360 degree turn
"I will be completing 99 next year, and if I am lucky you will see me on my 100th birthday as well!"

Engineering - An applied problem

Tution Fees for one year @ college: Rs 52,000/-
Tution Fees for maths classes @ vidyalankar: Rs 6400/-
Fanatic guides: Rs 1500/-
Clearing sem I, after scoring
40 in maths + 40 in CP + 40 in BEE: ..........................Priceless

After answering over a few hundred tests in the past 10 years, I never thought I would ever be happy with 55%, But that has changed, and by how! I have honestly never been happier with my result.

A little build up on the scenario:

Post 10th - After scoring over 85% you take up science, and would kill for a vocational subject.
Post 12th - After slogging for over 1 1/2 years, you finally give your HSC, then you give JEE, then AIEEE, then BITSAT, and if still there's some life left in you, you appear for CET.

In case your smart make that really really smart you manage to get into a college on merit, else in case you're lucky enough to have a rich daddy, or like the majority of Indians come under a minority tag you manage to get in.
Now, that was the easy part what follows is years of struggle of what will be a B.E. degree.

College begins, and by the time you sober down you realize your internal tests are on, then you have your practical exams and then finally you're in, for the university exams. Now the exams, as in case of the Mumbai University is one month of exams, each paper is spaced by around 5-6 days. 6 days is all you need for revision. But the problem is for revision you first need to study, that's where smart play comes in.

Smart play by student:
Now this is what students think they are good at
e.g. 1) take BEE, you'd realize that just 2 chapters, AC/DC (no, not the band) make up of 50% of the marks, so you leave the rest for option.
e.g. 2) You open you maths book, and realize that you are actually capable of solving 9 out of 10 sums. The 10th one is too much, for your modest brain, so you leave that.

Smarter play by paper-setter:
The BEE paper will hardly have 20 marks from AC/DC and even Phd holders in electronics won't be able to solve and your maths paper will have only the sums that were too much for you.
Think you're too unlucky?

de-evolution

Korn, came out with a song called 'evolution', some time around last year. The video shows a few scientists trying to explain a phenomenon which they call as 'de-evolution of man'. They put forth some pretty decent evidence supporting their claim; alongside this, they manage to compare a chimpanzee with man. Finally however the theory is rejected, in true yankee style.


To the casual observer, evolution is a thing of the past, something you'll come across in your history books, but the truth is man is evolving at a much faster rate than ever before. Even if you would compare today's average man, with that of the 1900's you'd find some difference. I really can't say if this is something that's desirable or isn't. But one thing is for sure that 500 years from today, man will not be the same.

Coming back to a more realistic dimension, there's been some evolution rather de-evolution happening with me on a personal level. There was a time I would score 80% and be sad about missing a rank, today after scoring 40/100 in 3 subjects, I can undoubtedly say that I'm frigging happier than anyone else. So from an academic point of view a de-evolution might have taken place, but ain't I happier now?