World's Billionaires

[baltoro]

Forbes Magazine has a complete list of all the Billionaires on this planet. There are 1,210 of them. Their Total Net Worth is $4.5 trillion.
The Official list is Here: Forbes List of World's Billionaires
The List is browsable,...if you select one of the billionaires, you get a nice display of their profile.
Looking down the list, I discovered that Australia's richest person is, Georgina Rinehart, Net worth, $9 Billion,...she ranks number 100 on the list.
The second richest Australian is, Andrew Forrest, Net Worth, $6.7 Billion,...and, he ranks number 145 on the list.
There are 17 Australian Billionaires on the list. And, here is the list of Australian Billionaires
In the United States, the God of Microsoft, Bill Gates is the wealthiest person,...with a Net Worth of $56 Billion. He is second wealthiest person in the world, behind Carlos Slim Helu of Mexico (Net Worth, $74 Billion). In total, the United States has 412 Billionaires, with a total Net Worth of about $1.5 Trillion...the complete list is here: American Billionaires
In Canada, the wealthist person is David Thomson, Net Worth, $23 Billion,...he ranks 17 on the list. All told, Canada, has 24 Billionaires. The list is here: Canadian Billionaires

Of course, the interesting thing about this collection, is how all these people made so gaddamn much money.
...And, distressingly, there are no Assembly Programmer Billionaires in the World,... :eek

[hutch--]

Funny enough Bill Gates used to be an assembler language programmer. There is hope for all of us yet !  :bg

[baltoro]

...Bill Gates used to be an assembler language programmer,...

...And, now he is trying to eradicate malaria from the planet,...

[dedndave]

he has to spend money on something to appear philanthropic
he could probably give a rats ass

[DarkWolf]

Funny enough Bill Gates used to be an assembler language programmer. There is hope for all of us yet !  :bg

I call Shennaigans ...

I wanna see proof, didn't he drop out of university before ripping IBM off for millions ?

[clive]

...Bill Gates used to be an assembler language programmer,...

...And, now he is trying to eradicate malaria from the planet,...

I heard DDT was quite effective.

[hutch--]

 :bg

> didn't he drop out of university before ripping IBM off for millions ?

This is good PR for Bill Gates, anyone who was a dropout may have been human after all and if he succeeded in ripping off IBM then he was probably smart as well.No wonder he started Microsoft.  :P

[xanatose]

Bill Gates,the creator of Vapor Ware :)

As anyone seen "The pirates of Silicon Valley"

It was interesting the way they sell IBM an operating system that they did not have. And then turn and bought the OS from a guy for $50k.  I guess the guy is still banging his head to the wall to this day.

Microsoft was also lucky, IBM contact them second. As the president of "Intergalactic Digital Research" (later Digital Research) was flying his plane instead of meeting with the IBM folks.

Later, it was interesting how Apple got the mouse interface from Xerox (the CEO did not think something call a mouse will sell), and how Microsoft got to launch Windows 1 (with the mouse interface) before Apple could.

I  could add how Microsoft was working with IBM to create OS/2 while at the same time creating NT.   Or how they will forcing vendors to pay a license for every computer they made, irrelevant if the computer have Windows installed or not.

Good artist copy, great artist steal.
  -- Pablo Picasso.

Want to get rich? Learn how to look honest. So people will not think you are robbing them blind :)

[dedndave]

I guess the guy is still banging his head to the wall to this day.

as i remember the story, it is his wife's head (Dorothy) that gets banged against the wall   :P
she wouldn't sign the non-disclosure agreement without her husband present

Gary Kildall

[MichaelW]

IIRC Microsoft had agreed to do the compiler(s) for the PC, but declined to do the OS when IBM first asked them because of time constraints. I believe it was Gates that set up the failed meeting between IBM and Kildall, hoping that Digital Research would do the OS.

[tenkey]

And Tim Paterson, who created QDOS for SCP, did eventually go to work for Microsoft - apparently several times.
I remember him mentioning his decision to use the CP/M API for QDOS at a presentation for an 8086 board his company was selling.
At a later talk, he mentioned that he would get occasional calls from the Microsoft OS folks about the FAT-12 packing/unpacking code (which, as an aside, CP/M did not have.)

[RDRush]

Funny enough Bill Gates used to be an assembler language programmer. There is hope for all of us yet !  :bg

Here's something else that's funny Hutch, if that's your real name, purist basic looks very reminiscent of assembler. GOTO - hmm?

GOTO is like the bastard child like the pointer in C and if used correctly works just like an unconditionally what? A JMP or facsimile! i had to get that off my chest, it's been eating at me for some time.

Make your own O.S. with a chip a start up op code and a database with a GUI view that can entertain hot regions/image mapping. All you need is processing and rendering basically in concept anyway. Two nodes, an algorithm and a flat file data store -- voila. Don't forget Dolby Pro Logic, HDMI and wireless z support (130 nanobits per second bandwidth) and your choice of pearl black (thought pearls were white) or cherry red with a certified running flat for a spare. 34MPG in the city too...

[hutch--]

Somebody is pulling your leg, GOTO is nothing more than a high level mnemonic to handle a number of branching requirements in a compiler. You can get both unconditional and conditional branching from one location to an instruction address.

In pseudo code.

Code Select Expand


If CONDITION goto location
  or
goto location


[Rockoon]

$50K was a fair price for DOS because IBM would have never trusted such a rinky-dink player like Seattle Computer Products with maintaining an OS for them. Microsoft was already well known in the industry (its ROM Basics were on pretty much every machine you could buy, including Apples, Atar's, Commodores, Tandys, and IBMs) so commanded far more trust than the actual developer of the DOS, as Microsoft had an established track record of delivering.

With regards to OS/2 and NT, the official name for the in-development OS/2 3.0 was originally "NT OS/2 3.0" and thats the code base Microsoft walked away with when IBM and Microsoft parted ways (IBM took the OS/2 1.x and the in-development 2.0 code bases) .. Both 2.0 and 3.0 were in-development at the same time (3.0 was for servers, 2.0 was for clients) IBM's view of OS/2 was always as a way to sell hardware, rather than as a primary product all-on-its-own so they happily took the 2.0 code base as they were still selling plenty of workstations (remember that OS/2 itself was named after the PS/2 hardware that IBM sold.)

IBM's frustration was that Microsoft was putting more effort into Windows 3.x than they were OS/2 2.0 and 3.0, however IBM was more than happy to continually benefit from Windows features being ported into OS/2 1.x (OS/2 1.1 had the Windows 2.1 GUI framework, OS/2 1.2 had the Windows 3.0 GUI framework) by Microsoft. The split between IBM and Microsoft isn't so cut-and-dried about who-was-screwing-who. IBM didnt want OS/2 to run on clone, which screwed Microsoft.. Microsoft didn't want to sit back and let that happen, which screwed IBM.

[tenkey]

its ROM Basics were on pretty much every machine you could buy, including Apples, Atar's, Commodores, Tandys, and IBMs

Oops, IBM did not have a PC, which is why QDOS/86-DOS was bought from SCP.

As soon as the NDA for the PC-DOS project expired, Bill Gates started talking about his experience with IBM. The computer club folks here in Seattle were eager to find out what his relations with the behemoth were like. Much of what he said then is what is recorded currently in Wikipedia, and what others, such as Robert Cringely, has written.

By the way, Paul Allen, Bill's partner at Microsoft, was also an assembly language programmer; and is also on the Forbes list of billionaires.