An excellent article. Bill Gates himself posted a comment: https://www.pagetable.com/?p=43#comment-1033
Nice! From that comment:
"There were a lot of interesting versions of BASIC done for Japanese machines this article misses (..)"
Most likely referring to MSX-Basic. Which shows it's (c) Microsoft on the startup screen.
Not the fastest, but a very full-featured Basic compared to most Basics around @ the time. Iirc it does non-integer math on BCD coded values. Single & double precision, so users can decide RAM use/speed/precision tradeoffs.
Maybe there were other Japanese machines using MS-supplied Basics before that. But if so, likely few (any?) after MSX was introduced ('83), since that was big in Japan leaving little room for 8-bit competitors.
My very first computer was a Spectravideo MSX computer which I got in exchange for writing some demo programs for the midwest distributor for the company. Fun little machine, although I still preferred Apple in general.
What do you think his hn username is? :)
Actual billg would probably not have posted, er, teenwag.com: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6121.
(It was killed as spam but I've unkilled it now so it's visible to users who don't have 'showdead' turned on.)
My curiosity got the best of me. I checked archive.org to see what it was. A digg clone for celeb porn links? Was rightfully tagged as spam :)
Related. Others?
Bill Gates' Personal Easter Eggs in 8 Bit Basic - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30110068 - Jan 2022 (1 comment)
I have a question, can something like this survive in today's world? or have the disassembling tools now too advanced to easily wipe something like this when cloning.
It sounds like you are asking whether anti-cloning or anti-piracy measures would survive in today's world, and that's something of an ugly arms race. The publishers know whatever scheme they put in will eventually be defeated, but most of them just want to deter piracy for a limited period after the release date.
The Microsoft easter egg is from an earlier era where things aren't so ugly. The Cutting Room Floor has more easter eggs of that nature, for example:
https://tcrf.net/Super_Tetris_3
Also try searching for "hidden copyright".
If you copy someone's code, always add a bunch of easter eggs saying the code belongs to company X, Y and Z. Then nobody else can claim it as their own.
I think you're thinking of the legend of DOS and mixing it with this story.
https://www.geekwire.com/2012/csi-redmond-forensic-analysis-...
interesting!
Bill gates is the only remaining hacker one can look upto. Yes he was ruthless but also the amount of work he did for humanity was orders of magnitude more than others.
The current crop of rich folks are really the wrong uns and come from a deep history of bad families. Rotten blood really shows.
One of my favorite past times is reading different Bill Gates biographies. They never get old. Right now actually just started reading the one he actually wrote recently. It's excellent so far.
Or Paul Allen in Accidental Zillionaire.
What is interesting to consider is if Dave Cutler had not been available or otherwise did not choose Microsoft in 1988.
Would Microsoft have adapted BSD NET/1 as Apple eventually did, instead of continuing OS/2?
His wife did divorce him due to his involvement with child sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein
https://www.today.com/news/bill-melinda-gates-divorce-linked...
The body language analysis [2-3] of the PBS News Hour Interview [1] is quite something.
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VOgVcFv_tWs
[2] Bill Gates was BLINDSIDED by Jeffrey Epstein question https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SwAk3797Bn0
[3] Communication Professor Reacts to Bill Gates Interview on PBS https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=79ExQWKb2vA
"The idea that Bill Gates has appeared like a knight in shining armor to lead all customers out of a mire of technological chaos neatly ignores the fact that it was he who, by peddling second-rate technology, led them into it in the first place."