OMG this is pure gold. Probably [old] (the email is from 2003), but whatever

Quote :

"From: Bill Gates Sent: Wednesday, January 15, 2003 10:05 AM To: Jim Allchin Cc: Chris Jones (WINDOWS); Bharat Shah (NT); Joe Peterson; Will Poole; Brian Valentine; Anoop Gupta (RESEARCH) Subject: Windows Usability Systematic degradation flame I am quite disappointed at how Windows Usability has been going backwards and the program management groups don't drive usability issues. Let me give you my experience from yesterday. I decided to download (Moviemaker) and buy the Digital Plus pack ... so I went to Microsoft.com. They have a download place so I went there. The first 5 times I used the site it timed out while trying to bring up the download page. Then after an 8 second delay I got it to come up. This site is so slow it is unusable. It wasn't in the top 5 so I expanded the other 45. These 45 names are totally confusing. These names make stuff like: C:\Documents and Settings\billg\My Documents\My Pictures seem clear. They are not filtered by the system ... and so many of the things are strange. I tried scoping to Media stuff. Still no moviemaker. I typed in movie. Nothing. I typed in movie maker. Nothing. So I gave up and sent mail to Amir saying - where is this Moviemaker download? Does it exist? So they told me that using the download page to download something was not something they anticipated. They told me to go to the main page search button and type movie maker (not moviemaker!). I tried that. The site was pathetically slow but after 6 seconds of waiting up it came. I thought for sure now I would see a button to just go do the download. In fact it is more like a puzzle that you get to solve. It told me to go to Windows Update and do a bunch of incantations. This struck me as completely odd. Why should I have to go somewhere else and do a scan to download moviemaker? So I went to Windows update. Windows Update decides I need to download a bunch of controls. (Not) just once but multiple times where I get to see weird dialog boxes. Doesn't Windows update know some key to talk to Windows? Then I did the scan. This took quite some time and I was told it was critical for me to download 17megs of stuff. This is after I was told we were doing delta patches to things but instead just to get 6 things that are labeled in the SCARIEST possible way I had to download 17meg. So I did the download. That part was fast. Then it wanted to do an install. This took 6 minutes and the machine was so slow I couldn't use it for anything else during this time. What the heck is going on during those 6 minutes? That is crazy. This is after the download was finished. Then it told me to reboot my machine. Why should I do that? I reboot every night — why should I reboot at that time? So I did the reboot because it INSISTED on it. Of course that meant completely getting rid of all my Outlook state. So I got back up and running and went to Windows Updale again. I forgot why I was in Windows Update at all since all I wanted was to get Moviemaker. So I went back to Microsoft.com and looked at the instructions. I have to click on a folder called WindowsXP. Why should I do that? Windows Update knows I am on Windows XP. What does it mean to have to click on that folder? So I get a bunch of confusing stuff but sure enough one of them is Moviemaker. So I do the download. The download is fast but the Install takes many minutes. Amazing how slow this thing is. At some point I get told I need to go get Windows Media Series 9 to download. So I decide I will go do that. This time I get dialogs saying things like "Open" or "Save". No guidance in the instructions which to do. I have no clue which to do. The download is fast and the install takes 7 minutes for this thing. So now I think I am going to have Moviemaker. I go to my add/remove programs place to make sure it is there. It is not there. What is there? The following garbage is there. Microsoft Autoupdate Exclusive test package, Microsoft Autoupdate Reboot test package, Microsoft Autoupdate testpackage1. Microsoft AUtoupdate testpackage2, Microsoft Autoupdate Test package3. Someone decided to trash the one part of Windows that was usable? The file system is no longer usable. The registry is not usable. This program listing was one sane place but now it is all crapped up. But that is just the start of the crap. Later I have listed things like Windows XP Hotfix see Q329048 for more information. What is Q329048? Why are these series of patches listed here? Some of the patches just things like Q810655 instead of saying see Q329048 for more information. What an absolute mess. Moviemaker is just not there at all. So I give up on Moviemaker and decide to download the Digital Plus Package. I get told I need to go enter a bunch of information about myself. I enter it all in and because it decides I have mistyped something I have to try again. Of course it has cleared out most of what I typed. I try (typing) the right stuff in 5 times and it just keeps clearing things out for me to type them in again. So after more than an hour of craziness and making my programs list garbage and being scared and seeing that Microsoft.com is a terrible website I haven't run Moviemaker and I haven't got the plus package. The lack of attention to usability represented by these experiences blows my mind. I thought we had reached a low with Windows Network places or the messages I get when I try to use 802.11. (don't you just love that root certificate message?) When I really get to use the stuff I am sure I will have more feedback."

http://gizmodo.com/5019516/classic-clips-bill-gates-chews-out-microsoft-over-xp

6/26/2008 9:22:47 AM

I'm typing so fucking hard!

6/26/2008 9:37:02 AM

if that's real, that is surprisingly bad writing for such a powerful businessman

6/26/2008 9:50:57 AM

i don't know if computer geeks are usually known for their superb grammar

6/26/2008 9:54:00 AM

He's right about stuff on Microsoft.com

Every time I try to get something from there I always spend 5 minutes just trying to figure out how to download it.

6/26/2008 10:14:05 AM

Quote :

"if that's real, that is surprisingly bad writing for such a powerful businessman"

this was obviously not an official memo or anything - it was Gates getting completely frustrated and just letting off steam on his staff.


also check this one out, from right after Apple announced the iTunes Music Store (text copy/pasted from PDF)
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/dayart/PDF/Gates/gatesmail15.pdf

Quote :

" Steve Jobs abilizy to focus in on a few things that count, get people who get user interface right and market things as revolutionary are amazing things. This time somehow he has applled his talents In getting a better licensing deal than anyone else has gotten fmr music. This is very strange to me. The music companies own operations offer a service that is truly unfriendly to the user and has been reviewed that way consistently. Somehow they decide to give Apple the ability to do something pretty good. I remember discussing EMusic and us saying that model was better than subscription because you would know what you are getting. With the subscription who can prornlse you that the cool new stuff you want (or old stuff) will be there? I am not saying this strangeness means we messed up - at least if we did so did Real and Pressplay ant Musicnet and basically everyone else. Now that Jobs has done ~t we need to move fast to get somethlng where the UI and Rights are as good. I am not sure whether we should do this through one of these ~s or not, I am not sure what the problems are. However I think we need some plan to prove that even though Jobs has us a bit flat footed again we move quick and both match and do stuff better. I’m sure people have a lot of thoughts on thls. If the plan is clear no meetlng is needed. I want to make suxe we are coordinated between Windows DMD, MSN and other groups. "

6/26/2008 10:34:05 AM

that is hard to read

6/26/2008 10:43:09 AM

Quote :

"So I decide I will go do that. This time I get dialogs saying things like "Open" or "Save". No guidance in the instructions which to do. I have no clue which to do."

k, no way in hell bill fucking gates doesn't know what to do there

6/26/2008 10:54:28 AM

Yeah, there's NO way that's real.

6/26/2008 11:02:29 AM

Quote :

"k, no way in hell bill fucking gates doesn't know what to do there"

that's not the point - i'm sure he does know what to do. He was trying to frame it as an "every man" downloading it.
For even marginally competent tech/web geeks like us, Open/Save boxes are trivial. But it's still a very valid concern for "normal people" - normal people really have no idea, nor should they have to, if they need to save a particular application/.exe/.zip, and if they save it, where, then what they should do with it, or if they can open it straight from their browser
(if you don't think people are that dumb, literally as I was typing this, I am overhearing a conversation from a coworker on the phone trying to explain to his wife/mother/friend of how to open a file in Word. He has spend the last 3 minutes trying to explain how to open Word then go to File > Open)

6/26/2008 11:10:42 AM

^

6/26/2008 11:17:47 AM

^^Check out the 15 page "Tales of the Technically Inept" on page 3

6/26/2008 11:32:21 AM

i was about to say "old, saw it on gizmodo"

but then you posted the source

lol

6/26/2008 11:39:39 AM

Quote :

"if you don't think people are that dumb"

oh trust me i know lol

6/26/2008 11:43:44 AM

i thought it was a great email. it shows that when a company gets that big, it gets to be almost impossible to get the little things right.

6/26/2008 11:46:45 AM

^ yeah, i agree.

And I can totally see someone like Bill Gates actually going through the steps of downloading Movie Maker or installing WGA or something like that, and finally saying "OMG.... where did everything go wrong". But then what is he supposed to do after that? These emails indicate he simply might not be a strong enough manager to drive change, unlike Steve Jobs.

At Apple, you really get the feeling that Jobs is kicking ass and taking names and makes sure that nothing with the Apple name on it leaves the company without going over his desk first. At MS, though, it seems like Gates just doesn't have that kind of presence or control over the company (I also realize that MS is much larger and has a much wider breadth of products than Apple, and may be an order of magnitude harder to manage).

6/26/2008 12:36:31 PM

a) it's always been Windows Movie Maker (2 words)
b) it's been embedded in Windows XP since 2001

6/26/2008 12:52:04 PM

point?

6/26/2008 12:54:14 PM

why would Bill Gates refer to it as moviemaker, and why would he try to download it?

6/26/2008 12:59:16 PM

Quote :

"The great thing about a blog is that you can publish unsubstantiated crap as if it were gospel, then get a bunch of seemingly intelligent people to buy in to make it seem legitimate."

Quote :

"I'm pretty sure this email is a complete fake and this guy probably never talked to Bill Gates. Why do I think that? Because Windows Movie Maker was created in 2000 and was a part of the XP operating system, which was released in 2001. So there was never a need to install Movie Maker from scratch. However, Windows Movie Maker 2.1 was a separate upgrade and if a user had Automatic Updates enabled, it would have updated itself automatically (as well as install all of the previous Windows updates as they were released) without an issue."

Quote :

"Nobody except me thinks this is a hoax? It doesn't sound or read like Gates and Gates wouldn't address his own company in the third person like this: "so I went to Microsoft.com. They have a download place so I went there." ** They ** have a download place rather than * we * have a download place? I don't think so! And this: "Then it told me to reboot my machine. Why should I do that? I reboot every night -- why should I reboot at that time" Gates reboots every night? Why? Gates doesn't know that a lot of operations in Windows require a reboot because files affected by an installation or upgrade may be in use? Unlikely. I've heard Gates many times and he doesn't write or speak like that. I am puzzled by the statement that the reporter showed the email to Gates but maybe if he did, Gates responded without really reading it. Certainly, the alleged response is vague and generic enough to suggest that. I think the email is very likely to be a hoax. If not, I'd like to see a Snopes article about it, a WIKI segment or some evidence from someone who's seen it and/or spoken to Gates or the recipients "first person" about it. I wrote this not because I like Gates or the terrible experiences most ordinary users have with Microsoft's abysmally badly designed and bug ridden products. I don't like Gates or Microsoft but I don't believe this email was written by Gates."

Quote :

"Why would anyone refer to his own company as "they" and why would he refer to someone he names by first name only as "they?" Either Billy G is losing his grasp on English and his sense of possession, or this is a tragically flawed hack that no one noticed because they're all too busy gleefully hating on MS. (Not that there's anything wrong with that.)"

Quote :

"This smells like a hoax to me. It is remarkably un-technical and un-specific to be written by a guy who built a $51 billion dollar software company, and has been writing software for over 30 years. Example: "I went to Microsoft.com. They have a download place so I went there." Would the former CEO of Microsoft say that? "

seems fake as hell to me. i really doubt gates would send some childish shit like that out without at least running a spell-check on it. The only way I would remotely buy it is if it is gates trying to be in the customer's shoes, but i'm still not buying it.

here's a couple links of people trying to prove it's real.

PDF of the email exchange: http://blog.seattlepi.nwsource.com/microsoft/library/2003Jangatesmoviemaker.pdf

Full story:http://blog.seattlepi.nwsource.com/microsoft/archives/141821.asp

Blog of a guy who says he worked at MS when all this happened: http://wp.jarretthousenorth.com/

Web cache of some page "proving" its real: http://tinyurl.com/55tyjy
The page is/was hosted by an anti-MS site...not a law website, so i don't think it counts for crap.


I'm still not buying it. I expect a snopes entry to surface soon.

6/26/2008 1:07:10 PM

^^ so you're saying it's either a fake or Bill Gates is an idiot?

it says he wanted to buy the "Digital Plus Pack", which has more than just movie maker
the date on the email seems right. according to this press release, the digital plus pack was released on Jan 7, 2003, and the email is from one week later
http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/press/2003/jan03/01-07plusdmeavailabilitypr.mspx

as far as calling it Moviemaker instead of Movie maker - eh, i wouldn't give that too much thought. He didn't make the product and probably wasn't on the team at all, and it's hard to remember all the spacing and capitalization of all the stupid software products out there

[Edited on June 26, 2008 at 1:09 PM. Reason : .]

6/26/2008 1:09:29 PM

wtf is a paragraph?

6/26/2008 1:38:18 PM

yeah its like 392 typed that out

6/26/2008 1:56:25 PM

he should probably learn to google

http://www.google.com/search?q=moviemaker+ms&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a

first one

[Edited on June 26, 2008 at 2:26 PM. Reason : although i guess he's right in that it does have to go through windows update..shitty.]

6/26/2008 2:16:18 PM

Quote :

"[quote]So I decide I will go do that. This time I get dialogs saying things like "Open" or "Save". No guidance in the instructions which to do. I have no clue which to do."

k, no way in hell bill fucking gates doesn't know what to do there[/quote]

i think 'which; is right here - he is saying which to do between 'open' or 'save'

[Edited on June 26, 2008 at 4:03 PM. Reason : oh nevermind i misread your post]

6/26/2008 4:02:00 PM

It's real.

This is what happens when you have company of 30,000+ engineers and only 500 designers and usability folks and we are the biggest design firm in the US!

There are just soo many brilliant engineers, but so few usability people, only X number of products can get the attention they deserve. Victim of our own success I suppose. And it's not that there's a cap on designers, we just can't get qualified people, the market is SOOO thin for interaction and product designers.

6/26/2008 4:11:09 PM

Quote :

"Why do I think that? Because Windows Movie Maker was created in 2000 and was a part of the XP operating system, which was released in 2001. So there was never a need to install Movie Maker from scratch."

I had to install it from scratch on one of my PCs, so I don't buy that the situation couldn't exist.

6/26/2008 4:20:19 PM

^^ The usability issues he's describing though are not hard for an engineer to handle.

6/26/2008 5:08:57 PM

^ yes they are. or more specifically, the coordination of all the usability features is. To get a program up on microsoft.com, it probably has to go through 10 departments, each with their own specialty with and nobody overseeing the whole process to make sure it runs smoothly from end-to-end.

sure, each little individual problem that he pointed out in the email can probably be fixed pretty easily. But each fix and change has to go through committee after committee, review board after review board, and eventually it either doesn't get fixed, or gets "fixed" in a different way. Add up 20 small features that need to get done to make one clean, consistent user experience, and you'll never get there without strict and overarching usability oversight

6/26/2008 5:21:58 PM

^ Yeah I understand that, but you only have to be marginally intelligent to figure out which of those problems are going to be usability issues. And someone who is an engineer should have the logical reasoning skills to do that job. So why not make one of the engineers on the project be the usability person too?

In any case, plenty of large companies out there at least have decent usability focus. Even Sony I think does a better job than MS in this arena. It shouldn't be hard for a company as large as MS with I assume many talented people to restructure a little so that things work better.

6/26/2008 5:27:21 PM

Quote :

"And someone who is an engineer should have the logical reasoning skills to do that job. So why not make one of the engineers on the project be the usability person too?"

Logical reasoning is NOT the skill set required for a very easy and functional end-user interface.

Engineers have NEVER been good at providing end-user interface solutions. They build the guts, and the API for the user interface.

Pardon my use of a universal quantifier, but it's true.

6/26/2008 5:47:53 PM

All the people claiming it's not real obviously have never worked in a usability design and evaluation environment.

This reads exactly like emails I get on a daily basis. When senior management of large development oriented corporations gets involved, they don't hit you with the smarmy press release bullshit doubletalk you see plastered on a PR site. They cut through the bullshit and get right to the heart of the matter.

If something is fucked up, they will tell you, and chances are, they wont fucking spellcheck anything before they hit send. They're trying to tell you how to fix the shit they don't like, not impress you with their spelling and grammar skills.



^ and yeah, gs7 is spot on.

I can't tell you how many times I've been going through a UI review and I've seen something in one of my designs that I (the layour designer) and my UI designers never specified, and never even considered the use case of that had been implemented by some half-assed developer who thought he would be doing the user a favor.

Those are some serious "What the FUCK is this shit?" moments, but I digress.

It's a bit unfair to say that Engineers aren't UI designers, because they can come up with cool ideas and give you food for thought and perspective on certain use cases, but in general they're pretty out of touch.

[Edited on June 26, 2008 at 7:32 PM. Reason : .]

6/26/2008 7:27:00 PM

^winner

6/26/2008 7:29:20 PM

Ive seen a few things before on websites, and yea they are honestly trying to help you out. Ran into soemthign today on the PA dot website


The way i explained it today to my grandmother is this


Lets say you want to get a pizza


Well the design guy knows you need shoes to walk and get pizza, and you need a car.

So when you search for pizza, first you must look through shoes and cars, and then you find the listings for pizza.

They are trying to help you, but the problem is it makes the actual information you want untouchable.

6/26/2008 7:44:38 PM

Quote :

"So why not make one of the engineers on the project be the usability person too?"

Quote :

"It shouldn't be hard for a company as large as MS with I assume many talented people to restructure a little so that things work better."

gee, you make it sound so easy. maybe you should call up Mr. Ballmer and give him a heads-up.

especially at a "company as large as MS" this kind of stuff is hard. Yes, it can be done - again, Apple puts extraordinary in trying to give the customer a consistent, predictable user experience, but even they can't get it all right. Microsoft, with thousands of workers spread across probably hundreds of departments, with hundreds of products and services and thousands of webpages, would have to put forth and extraordinary effort, like an effort on the size of creating a new OS or Office version, to clean up all its consistency and usability problems.

6/26/2008 7:47:59 PM

Quote :

"But each fix and change has to go through committee after committee, review board after review board, and eventually it either doesn't get fixed, or gets "fixed" in a different way. Add up 20 small features that need to get done to make one clean, consistent user experience, and you'll never get there without strict and overarching usability oversight"

The first half of this couldn't be more wrong, but the second half of this couldn't be more right. The problem with almost ALL software is not so much good or innovative design, it's consistent design.

Quote :

"Yes, it can be done - again, Apple puts extraordinary in trying to give the customer a consistent, predictable user experience, but even they can't get it all right."

Apple ships a few dozen SKU's in a few dozen languages in a few dozen countries.
Microsoft ships several thousand SKU's in several hundred languages in several hundred countries.

It's not even a matter of MS, or any tech company for that matter, WANTING to do it right, it's that there aren't enough people with the expertise TO do it right. This was a large part of why I think we wanted to buy out Yahoo. Not so much for the IP, but for the PEOPLE.

6/26/2008 8:13:15 PM

The problem here has nothing to do with engineering or not having UI people. If you read the responses to this email by Microsoft managers (http://blog.seattlepi.nwsource.com/microsoft/library/2003Jangatesmoviemaker.pdf) , it's easy to see the problem is with the organization's management.

Bill's email bounced around seven people who couldn't figure out if their particular group was responsible for the problem. The tone in the emails were so nonchalant, it seemed as if the managers weren't afraid of Bill G coming down and firing some people.

None of the managers of each group had ownership of "user experience" nor did they have the power to tell other groups to fix their shit. The buck doesn't stop anywhere. This is a management problem -- I have no doubt that MS has the engineers and designers with the talent to get the job done. They just don't have the organization to apply the right people to the right problem.

It's widely known that at Apple, the buck stops at Jobs. Steve Jobs is notorious for going down and talking the actual engineers/designers if he sees something he doesn't like. There are plusses and minuses to this style, but the end result is that you do have someone who is paying attention to the user experience and someone who has the power to get it fixed.

6/26/2008 8:23:04 PM

Quote :

"The buck doesn't stop anywhere. This is a management problem "

I see this everyday with one of the big companies I work with (their revenue is over $10B a year..)

It's ridiculous..nobody will take responsibility for anything and nobody knows who is suppose to take responsibility for anything. So in the end you go through 15 people to get something done that for a small company is a simple answer of "yea, thats cool" for something that's not even significant

6/26/2008 8:38:56 PM

yeah, those responses are interesting

Quote :

" Bill’s situation is worse than my personal experience but still,"

wow, that takes some balls - i.e. "Bill was having a hard time. I don't really see a big problem with it, but that's just me. Bill's a bit, you know.... dense"


definitely a lot of bouncing back and forth and trying to assign blame or responsibility.

this is key - it's assigning blame to a degree, but it's a very good point, at least as far as the website goes (it doesn't address, of course, other usability concerns in or across products):

Quote :

"I also feel that the reason is it such a mess is because marketing teams own release to web in this company. Frankly, we should be up in arms about this and want to program manager and develop whatever code we need to to ensure that every customer that even thinks they want to download our bits can do so in as easy and painless a way as possible. Downloading is the first step to setup and we should think of them equally or as one experience"

overall, the email chain is surprising - it almost looks like none of those managers (presumably very senior managers, since Gates wrote them directly) were really even aware of any of this or had given it much thought. It also does give the impression that none of them were really excited to get started, or scared that their job was on the line if they didn't get their shit together.


noen

Quote :

"The first half of this couldn't be more wrong"

i was referring to the stereotype/rumor that MS is known for of "design by committee". I don't know if that's still true or not (or if it ever was - i've never worked there, obviously), but the crux of design by committee is that overall design will be done with inputs from everybody in the department (through design reviews or committees or whatever) so the overall design will be inconsistent and disjointed, instead of giving one person or group (like Johnathan Ives) authoritarian control over design.

6/26/2008 8:43:24 PM

It doesn't matter if they threw all 500 UI people at this. They could come up with the best designs ever, but there doesn't appear to be a way the dozen or so groups involved in this could have coordinated the changes needed.

[Edited on June 26, 2008 at 8:48 PM. Reason : This is another reason Jobs favors small teams with aces programmers and designers.]

6/26/2008 8:48:01 PM

I was unaware that Mr. Gates also posted on thewolfweb under the name drunknloaded

[Edited on June 26, 2008 at 9:49 PM. Reason : *]

6/26/2008 9:48:55 PM

Quote :

"i was referring to the stereotype/rumor that MS is known for of "design by committee". I don't know if that's still true or not (or if it ever was - i've never worked there, obviously), but the crux of design by committee is that overall design will be done with inputs from everybody in the department (through design reviews or committees or whatever) so the overall design will be inconsistent and disjointed, instead of giving one person or group (like Johnathan Ives) authoritarian control over design."

Like I said, it aint true. Nearly every major product in the the company now has a central UX group that owns the design, outside of the development structure. And only speaking for my division of the company, there is no such thing as the typical corporate "design by committee".

The management structure and accountability in my area has been massively overhauled since 2003. There WAS a huge problem. That problem has been largely tackled with one simple act, Managers are now accountable. We have an entirely different set of issues now, mostly centered around having 10,000,000,000 hours of work that needs to be done and not nearly enough actual people to do it.

6/27/2008 2:21:28 AM

Anyone who for one second thought this was real needs to go home and take a long hard look at where their life is headed

Oh and Noen too regardless of what he thought just because he's the biggest told you so, know it all, poster in the history of internet message boards......I can't even imagine how miserable that guy must be to actually hang out with in person

[Edited on June 27, 2008 at 2:49 AM. Reason : ]

6/27/2008 2:43:17 AM

i don't really care one way or another, but

Noen works for microsoft.

So he automatically has more credibility than you, random wolfweb guy.

6/27/2008 7:12:24 AM

Quote :

"wow, that takes some balls - i.e. "Bill was having a hard time. I don't really see a big problem with it, but that's just me. Bill's a bit, you know.... dense""

well, i think the consensus is bill wasn't really having a hard time. if the frustrations he was presenting were actually his, and not a hypothetical customer's, than i have no idea how that dude built a company like microsoft.

6/27/2008 8:48:00 AM

I thought this part from Ian Mercer was hilarious, talking about problems with Windows Update:

Quote :

" - Critical updates that aren't really critical - if you machine is behind a firewall many just aren't critical - Too many fixes bombarding users all the time - I routinely ignore them now and perhaps update once a month as otherwise I'd be rebooting all the time "

lol windows must be behind a firewall and MS should stop releasing so many fixes!

6/27/2008 9:41:49 AM

agentlion: how much did that remind you of a Grant email ?

6/27/2008 11:54:43 AM

and all the responses - i can totally see that coming from Tony, Donald and Chip

6/27/2008 1:00:41 PM

Wait,

People actually think billionaires have perfect spelling and grammar?

hahahahahahaahahaahahahahahaha

6/27/2008 1:23:31 PM

yeah i was just about to say ppl (including myself obviously) put super rich people on a pedestal as if they're perfect--obviously they aren't, they usually just have good ideas and are great leaders. their grammar isn't really a huge factor of running a business

it's still hard to read that and believe it's from bill gates. but it's def possible

6/27/2008 1:26:13 PM