http://blogs.siliconvalley.com/gmsv/...use-those.html
One more for the Gates legacy book: “There are work-arounds, use
those.”
Posted by John Murrell on June 26th, 2008 at 10:23 am | Categorized as
Uncategorized

Spurred by the outpouring of Bill Gates retrospection on the eve of
his departure from Microsoft (see “How many times have you wanted to
send a memo like this to Bill Gates?“), faithful reader Bill Terrill
was kind enough to share this story from back in the day:

“Ah, how I wish I had known — I could have recorded my ‘discussions’
with Bill Gates back in 1979/80. I was with Zilog at the time as a
development manager. I had a couple of groups working for me at the
time — compiler development (Programming Language Zilog — PL/Z) and
Operating System Support. Our operating system was a variant of CPM
(call RIO) and we had gotten a big contract from the U.S. military
(over $5,000,000!) for our Z80 systems with a Fortran compiler. Since
we didn’t have a Fortran compiler of our own, someone decided to
purchase one from an outside firm. That firm was Microsoft.

“One of the contract requirements was that the compiler meet all
specifications for these compilers. This was included by the military
AND in our contract with Microsoft. Well, we shipped everything off
only to be told by the government folks that the compiler didn’t meet
the specs. A few tests internally and, sure enough, some of the
standard procedures didn’t work.

“I was given the job (as support and compiler manager) to get this
fixed. So began the weekly calls to Microsoft, which lasted for about
3 months. I had a listing of the compiler, which was written by one
Bill Gates. So I called and asked to speak to him. Since there were
only a handful of folks there at the time, Bill picked up the phone as
often as not.

“I explained the problem and why this was an issue — $5,000,000 that
Zilog was not being paid. Bill’s response was (and this is literally
true!), “There are work-arounds, use those.” I explained that the
military didn’t want work-arounds and that our contract with Microsoft
was very explicit in that the compiler was required to meet the formal
specs and pass the standard tests. Bill again said that we should send
along the work-arounds to the customer (which I had already done to no
avail) and that he would look into it.

“After a couple of weeks of calling and getting the same message from
Gates, I finally pulled out the listing and went through it. It was
terrible code. Sloppy, poorly documented and generally not something
that I would have allowed my developers to send out the door. But that
was all I had, so I spent a few days going through it and finding the
errors that appeared to be causing the troubles with the tests. I then
called Bill again and explained what I had done and where would he
like me to send a copy of the corrections.

“He didn’t want them, as he could fix it himself! I went ahead and
told him the areas that needed to be modified, but he became more and
more belligerent as I went through the changes. He said, again, that
he’d look into it. I seem to have hit a nerve there as I believe that
I mentioned, more than once, what a crappy piece of code this was.

“After that whenever I would call, Bill and I ended up shouting at one
another over these modifications. After a total of about 3 months of
calling at least once a week I finally gave up and went to our company
lawyer. His solution was quite simple — Call Mr. Gates one last time
and present him with the name and phone number of our lawyer and tell
Gates that the lawyer would be calling him the next week. I did this
(quite calmly as Bill began our conversation shouting at me) and told
him that I wouldn’t be calling him again.

“We had the patched and working code before the lawyer ever got around
to calling him the next week. Seems I was an early recipient of the
Microsoft Business Model.”

"Beliavsky" <beliavsky> wrote in message
news:b7be
http://blogs.siliconvalley.com/gmsv/...re-work-around
s-use-those.html
One more for the Gates legacy book: "There are work-arounds, use
those."
Posted by John Murrell on June 26th, 2008 at 10:23 am | Categorized as
Uncategorized

Spurred by the outpouring of Bill Gates retrospection on the eve of
his departure from Microsoft (see "How many times have you wanted to
send a memo like this to Bill Gates?"), faithful reader Bill Terrill
was kind enough to share this story from back in the day:

"Ah, how I wish I had known - I could have recorded my 'discussions'
with Bill Gates back in 1979/80. I was with Zilog at the time as a
development manager. I had a couple of groups working for me at the
time - compiler development (Programming Language Zilog - PL/Z) and
Operating System Support. Our operating system was a variant of CPM
(call RIO) and we had gotten a big contract from the U.S. military
(over $5,000,000!) for our Z80 systems with a Fortran compiler. Since
we didn't have a Fortran compiler of our own, someone decided to
purchase one from an outside firm. That firm was Microsoft.

"One of the contract requirements was that the compiler meet all
specifications for these compilers. This was included by the military
AND in our contract with Microsoft. Well, we shipped everything off
only to be told by the government folks that the compiler didn't meet
the specs. A few tests internally and, sure enough, some of the
standard procedures didn't work.

"I was given the job (as support and compiler manager) to get this
fixed. So began the weekly calls to Microsoft, which lasted for about
3 months. I had a listing of the compiler, which was written by one
Bill Gates. So I called and asked to speak to him. Since there were
only a handful of folks there at the time, Bill picked up the phone as
often as not.

"I explained the problem and why this was an issue - $5,000,000 that
Zilog was not being paid. Bill's response was (and this is literally
true!), "There are work-arounds, use those." I explained that the
military didn't want work-arounds and that our contract with Microsoft
was very explicit in that the compiler was required to meet the formal
specs and pass the standard tests. Bill again said that we should send
along the work-arounds to the customer (which I had already done to no
avail) and that he would look into it.

"After a couple of weeks of calling and getting the same message from
Gates, I finally pulled out the listing and went through it. It was
terrible code. Sloppy, poorly documented and generally not something
that I would have allowed my developers to send out the door. But that
was all I had, so I spent a few days going through it and finding the
errors that appeared to be causing the troubles with the tests. I then
called Bill again and explained what I had done and where would he
like me to send a copy of the corrections.

"He didn't want them, as he could fix it himself! I went ahead and
told him the areas that needed to be modified, but he became more and
more belligerent as I went through the changes. He said, again, that
he'd look into it. I seem to have hit a nerve there as I believe that
I mentioned, more than once, what a crappy piece of code this was.

"After that whenever I would call, Bill and I ended up shouting at one
another over these modifications. After a total of about 3 months of
calling at least once a week I finally gave up and went to our company
lawyer. His solution was quite simple - Call Mr. Gates one last time
and present him with the name and phone number of our lawyer and tell
Gates that the lawyer would be calling him the next week. I did this
(quite calmly as Bill began our conversation shouting at me) and told
him that I wouldn't be calling him again.

"We had the patched and working code before the lawyer ever got around
to calling him the next week. Seems I was an early recipient of the
Microsoft Business Model."
__________________

I wonder if that approach would work with his "Microsoft Works".

(BTW, a relative says that "Microsoft Works" is an oxymoron.)

That Wordprocessor gives a GPF, as does its companion Wordpad
when trying to open DOC files.

This amusing arrest photo was just a couple years prior to your contact...

search: "bill gates" arrest photo

On Wed, 16 Jul 2008 11:10:48 -0700 (PDT), Beliavsky posted:


> ´We had the patched and working code before the lawyer ever got around
> to calling him the next week. Seems I was an early recipient of the
> Microsoft Business Model.¡

Shares in MS went down seven percent on Friday.