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There Are A Variety Of Techniques For Breaking Software Down Into Pieces And Making Software Development More Efficient. Many Of These Techniques Have Been Sort Of... And Everybody Got Excited About But Very Little Benefit Was Actually Derived Once The Thing Was Put Into Practice.

-Bill Gates

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There Are A Variety

Bill Gates

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There Are A Variety Of Techniques For Breaking Software Down Into Pieces And Making Software Development More Efficient. Many Of These Techniques Have Been Sort Of... And Everybody Got Excited About But Very Little Benefit Was Actually Derived Once The Thing Was Put Into Practice.

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With World Health, Every Life You Save Is A Wonderful Thing, So It's Not This Question Of Whether You Solve It Or You Don't. The Chance Of Completely Solving The Problems Has Long Odds. But Really, The Thing Is That You Get To Save The First Child, The Second Child, The Third Child. You Can Just Feel Good About That.

The Death Of A Child Is An Incredible Tragedy All Over The World. Back In 1990, About 12 Percent Of Children Were Dying Before They Reached The Age Of 5.

Our Modern Lifestyle Is Not A Political Creation. Before 1700, Everybody Was Poor As Hell. Life Was Short And Brutish. It Wasn't Because We Didn't Have Good Politicians; We Had Some Really Good Politicians. But Then We Started Inventing - Electricity, Steam Engines, Microprocessors, Understanding Genetics And Medicine And Things Like That. Yes, Stability And Education Are Important - I'm Not Taking Anything Away From That - But Innovation Is The Real Driver Of Progress.

Learn From Your Unhappy Customers.

Playing Bridge Is A Pretty Old Fashioned Thing In A Way That I Really Like. I Was Watching My Daughter Ride Horses This Weekend And That Is Also A Bit Old Fashioned But Fun. I Do The Dishes Every Night - Other People Volunteer But I Like The Way I Do It.

Aids Itself Is Subject To Incredible Stigma.

Every New Change Forces All The Companies In An Industry To Adapt Their Strategies To That Change.

In A System Of Capitalism, As People's Wealth Rises, The Financial Incentive To Serve Them Rises. As Their Wealth Falls, The Financial Incentive To Serve Them Falls, Until It Becomes Zero. We Have To Find A Way To Make The Aspects Of Capitalism That Serve Wealthier People Serve Poorer People As Well.

Banking Is Necessary - Banks Are Not.

My Mom Was On The United Way Group That Decides How To Allocate The Money And Looks At All The Different Charities And Makes The Very Hard Decisions About Where That Pool Of Funds Is Going To Go.

Maintaining A Consistent Platform Also Helps Improve Product Support - A Significant Problem In The Software Industry.

This Is A Fantastic Time To Be Entering The Business World, Because Business Is Going To Change More In The Next 10 Years Than It Has In The Last 50.

Microsoft Does Not Dominate The Software Industry By Any Stretch Of The Imagination. We Have Lots Of Very Able Competitors Who Keep Us Constantly Vigilant, And Sometimes They Beat Us To The Punch. Microsoft's Success To Date Is Based Solely On The Fact That People Like Microsoft Software.

If You Rely Too Much On The People In Other Countries And Other Companies, In A Sense That's Your Brain And You Are Outsourcing Your Brain.

Giving Money Effectively Is Almost As Hard As Earning It In The First Place.

Virtually Every Company Will Be Going Out And Empowering Their Workers With A Certain Set Of Tools, And The Big Difference In How Much Value Is Received From That Will Be How Much The Company Steps Back And Really Thinks Through Their Business Processes, Thinking Through How Their Business Can Change, How Their Project Management, Their Customer Feedback, Their Planning Cycles Can Be Quite Different Than They Ever Were Before.

I Am Not A Huge Gamer. My Son Knows A Lot More Than I Do About What Is Cool On Xbox. I Played Halo But The Sports Games That The Whole Family Can Use Are The Things I Use The Most. I Threw The Javelin Very Very Far!

Good Developers Like Seeing Their Products Sell In Large Quantities. They Enjoy The Competition Of Doing A Better Job Than The Other Company, Especially If The Other Company Has More People On The Project And They're Entrenched And People Are Saying That We Don't Have A Chance Of Getting In There And... And Doing Well.

In Business, The Idea Of Measuring What You Are Doing, Picking The Measurements That Count Like Customer Satisfaction And Performance... You Thrive On That.

I Love Nuclear. It Does This Radiation Thing That's Tricky. But They're Good Solutions. You Know, It Was Interesting; Recently, In Connecticut This Natural Gas Plant Blew Up 11 Guys. It Just Blew Them Up.

For A Highly Motivated Learner, It's Not Like Knowledge Is Secret And Somehow The Internet Made It Not Secret. It Just Made Knowledge Easy To Find. If You're A Motivated Enough Learner, Books Are Pretty Good.

The Government's Ability To Select Scientists And Pick Things That Are Fairly Strange, Because Politicians Don't Like Failures. They're Only In Office A Short Term, And Many Of These Things Take A Long Time.

Paul And I, We Never Thought That We Would Make Much Money Out Of The Thing. We Just Loved Writing Software.

I Believe Technology Will Continue To Become More Affordable And More People Will Have The Chance To Use It. This Will Help More People Get Medical Care And A Good Education.

As You Get To The End Of The Project You Want To Run All The Tests Cases Against One Version And Make Sure That You Know That That Version Passed Everything. And So As You Get Late In The Project You Get A Little More Conservative About Making Radical Changes To The Software.

The Huge Turnout For Live 8 Here And Around The World Proves That Thanks To The Leadership From People Like Tony Blair And Gordon Brown The World Is Beginning To Demand More Action On Global Health And Poverty.

Around The World

People Who Say They Don't See The Acceleration Of Innovation Is A Wilful Blindness. We Are Innovation At A Wonderful Speed For The Basic Things We Think Everyone Should Get.

People Who Feel The World Is Tilted Against Them Will Spawn The Kind Of Hatred That Is Very Dangerous For All Of Us. I Think It's A Healthy Sign That There Are Demonstrators In The Streets. They Are Raising The Question Of 'is The Rich World Giving Back Enough?'

I Remember In 1980 Or 1981 Looking At A List Of People Who Had Made A Lot Of Money In The Computer Industry And Thinking, Wow, That's Amazing. But I Never Thought I'd Be On That List. It's Clear I Was Wrong. I'm On The List, At Least Temporarily.

If I Only Had Two Dollars Left I Would Spend One Dollar On Pr.

Well Private Money Can Take Risks In A Way That Government Money Often Isn't Willing To.

When You Want To Do Your Homework, Fill Out Your Tax Return, Or See All The Choices For A Trip You Want To Take, You Need A Full-size Screen.

Your School May Have Done Away With Winners And Losers, But Life Has Not.

Great Organizations Demand A High Level Of Commitment By The People Involved. Eliminate Politics, By Giving Everybody The Same Message. Keep A Flat Organization In Which All Issues Are Discussed Openly. Empower Teams To Do Their Own Things.

I Believe The Government Has The Right To Recover From The Heirs To The Fortunes Of Its Most Successful Citizens Some Portion Of Those Fortunes.

If The 1980s Were About Quality And The 1990s Were About Reengineering, Then The 2000s Will Be About Velocity.

That It's A Worldwide Thing That Families Are Better Off.

The Bulk Of The Universities Are About Teaching Kids.

Creativity Allows People To Be Effective.

It's Energy Intensification, Where We Essentially Have, Through Our Light Bulbs And Cars, The Manpower Of [hundreds Of] People Working On Our Behalf, Helping Our Food Being Created, Helping Our Materials Like Steel And Plastic And Wood And Paper Be Created. Our Lifestyles Are Incredibly Energy Intense.

I Want To Make Clear That We Respect The Role Of Government In Our Legal Andeconomic System.

If Empathy Channels Our Optimism, We Will See The Empathy And The Diseases And The Poor School. We Will Answer With Our Innovations And We Will Surprise The Pessimists.

Great Organizations Demand A High Level Of Commitment By The People Involved.

The Greatest Thing You Can Do For Your Competition - Hire Poorly.

Like Many Others, I Have Deep Misgivings About The State Of Education In The United States. Too Many Of Our Students Fail To Graduate From High School With The Basic Skills They Will Need To Succeed In The 21st Century Economy, Much Less Prepared For The Rigors Of College And Career. Although Our Top Universities Continue To Rank Among The Best In The World, Too Few American Students Are Pursuing Degrees In Science And Technology. Compounding This Problem Is Our Failure To Provide Sufficient Training For Those Already In The Workforce.

The Returns From Investing In Poor People Are Just As Great As The Returns From Investing In The Business World... And Have Even More Meaning

The Potential Financial Reward For Building The 'next Windows' Is So Great That There Will Never Be A Shortage Of New Technologies Seeking To Challenge It.

If People Had Understood How Patents Would Be Granted When Most Of Today's Ideas Were Invented, And Had Taken Out Patents, The Industry Would Be At A Complete Standstill Today.

Looking At These Issues As A Businessman, I Believe That Investing In The World's Poorest People Is The Smartest Way That Our Government Spends Money.

We All Need People Who Will Give Us Feedback. That's How We Improve.

The U.s. Couldn't Even Get Rid Of Saddam Hussein. And We All Know That The Eu Is Just A Passing Fad. They'll Be Killing Each Other Again In Less Than A Year. I'm Sick To Death Of All These Fascist Lawsuits.

Killing Each Other

I Don't Think There Is Any Philosophy That Suggests Having Polio Is A Good Thing.

Microsoft's Philosophy Is To 'do Things Better.' And Vista Has Given Us Lots Of Opportunity To Do That.

Well, Jobs Are A Great Thing. You Have To Be A Bit Careful: If You Raise The Minimum Wage, You’re Encouraging Labor Substitution And You’re Going To Go Buy Machines And Automate Things - Or Cause Jobs To Appear Outside Of That Jurisdiction. And So Within Certain Limits, You Know, It Does Cause Job Destruction. If You Really Start Pushing It, Then You’re Just Making A Huge Trade-off.

I Regret Being The Richest Man In The World Because That Position Attracts Undeserved Publicity.

I've Been Very Lucky, And Therefore I Owe It To Try And Reduce The Inequity In The World. And That's Kind Of A Religious Belief. I Mean, It's At Least A Moral Belief.

Bringing Together The Right Information With The Right People Will Dramatically Improve A Company's Ability To Develop And Act On Strategic Business Opportunities.

This Whole Phenomenon Of The Computer In A Library Is An Amazing Thing.

No One Will Need More Than 637kb Of Memory For A Personal Computer

I Believe That Every Life Is Valuable. That We Can Make Things Better. That Innovation Is The Key To A Bright Future. That We're Just Getting Started.

In The Us In The 1900's 60 % Of People Were Employed On The Farms. Today It's Less Than 1%. If You Told People Back Then That This Would Happen They Wouldn't Have Believed It. If You Told Them We Would Have Therapy, Massages And Spas That Played Important Parts In Our Lives They Would've Have Believed Us.

Anyway, The Us, As In Most Issues, Is The Best, Has The Best Capability To Lead, And Really Needs To Lead. It Doesn't [mean] That Other Countries Won't Pick Different Tacks And Emphasize Different Things. In Aggregate, They're Almost Half Of The Energy R&d. Europe, China, Japan - It's Very Important That They Come Along And Contribute To These Things.

Vaccination Is One Of The Easiest Things On The Way To Development. It's Much Easier Than Roads And A Great Education System. It's Very Basic. It's One Of The First Things You Want To Get Right.

The Obvious Mathematical Breakthrough Would Be Development Of An Easy Way To Factor Large Prime Numbers.

Today, We're Very Dependent On Cheap Energy. We Just Take It For Granted - All The Things You Have In The House, The Way Industry Works.

Our Current Expectations For What Our Students Should Learn In School Were Set ﬁfty Years Ago To Meet The Needs Of An Economy Based On Manufacturing And Agriculture. We Now Have An Economy Based On Knowledge And Technology.

Even For The Very Best Programmers Ah, Sometimes You'll See Someone Else's Program Or Somebody Will Come Along And They'll Show You What Can Be Done In A Simpler Way.

In Low-income Countries, The Main Problems You Have Is Infectious Diseases.

We Have Two Other Countries, Pakistan And Afghanistan - Again It's The Instability That Is A Problem There. So Over The Next Several Years, We Expect To Drive The Number Of [polio] Cases Back Down To Zero Because That Is Likely To Be The Second Disease After Smallpox That We Completely Eradicate.

Windows 2000 Already Contains Features Such As The Human Discipline Component, Where The Pc Can Send An Electric Shock Through The Keyboard If The Human Does Something That Does Not Please Windows.

The Competition To Hire The Best Will Increase In The Years Ahead. Companies That Give Extra Flexibility To Their Employees Will Have The Edge In This Area.

The Next Big Invention That Will Change The Way We Live Should Be Things Like Ways Of Generating Energy Like Electricity.

If People Want Capital Gains Taxed More Like The Highest Rate On Income, That's A Good Discussion. Maybe That's The Way To Help Close The Deficit.

Solutions To All Biological Problems Are Greatly Advanced By The Sequencing Work And The New Tools That Are Created.

I'm A Big Believer That As Much As Possible, And There's Obviously Political Limitations, Freedom Of Migration Is A Good Thing.

Government Investment Unlocks A Huge Amount Of Private Sector Activity, But The Basic Research That We Put Into It Work That Led To The Internet And Lots Of Great Companies And Jobs, The Basic Work We Put Into The Health Care Sector, Where It's Over $30 Billion A Year In R&d That Led The Biotech And Pharma Jobs. And It Creates Jobs And It Creates New Technologies That Will Be Productized. But The Government Has To Prime The Pump Here. The Basic Ideas, As In Those Other Industries, Start With Government Investment.

When You Develop Software, The People Who Write The Software, The Developers Are The Key Group But The Testers Also Play An Absolutely Critical Role. They're The Ones Who Ah, Write Thousands And Thousands Of Examples And Make Sure That It's Going To Work On All The Different Computers And Printers And The Different Amounts Of Memory Or Networks That The Software'11 Be Used In. That's A Very Hard Job.

The Us In Some Ways Has Been The Best. Who Figured Out Shale Gas? Although That Wasn't A Good Thing [for Co2 Levels], It Was Very Innovative. It's Led To Low-cost Energy. Who Figured Out Nuclear Power? Largely The United States. Once You Get Past The Steam Engine, Which Is Mostly British, Then The Us Has Been At The Center Of Most Of The Energy Things That Have Happened.

I Have Seen Firsthand That Agricultural Science Has Enormous Potential To Increase The Yields Of Small Farmers And Lift Them Out Of Hunger And Poverty.

Hunger And Poverty

To Succeed, You Also Have To Know How To Make Choices And How To Think More Broadly.

When You Write A Piece Of Software You Assume A Certain Type Of Hardware. If You Assume Hardware That's Too Powerful Then You Can't Sell Many Copies Cause Very Few People Have That Machine. If You Assume Hardware That's Too Simple Your Product Can't Do As Much.

On My Desk I Have Three Screens, Synchronized To Form A Single Desktop. I Can Drag Items From One Screen To The Next. Once You Have That Large Display Area, You'll Never Go Back, Because It Has A Direct Impact On Productivity.

People Think About This Idea That There's 122 Million Kids That Are Alive That Would Not Be If That Fatality Rate Had Stayed At The 1990 Level, That's 122 Million Families.

Software Is The Magic Thing Whose Importance Only Goes Up Over Time.

For Africa To Move Forward, You've Really Got To Get Rid Of Malaria.

A Fundamental New Rule For Business Is That The Internet Changes Everything.

To Create A New Standard It Takes Something That's Not Just A Little Bit Different. It Takes Something That's Really New And Really Captures People's Imagination. And The Macintosh, Of All The Machines I've Ever Seen, Is The Only One That Meets That Standard.

I Have Drifted Away From Thinking About These Philanthropic Things. And It Was Only As The Wealth Got Large Enough And Melinda And I Had Talked About The View That Wealth Wasn't Something That Would Be Good To Just Pass To The Children.

Who In Their Right Mind Would Ever Need More Than 640k Of Ram!?

I Believe Innovation Is The Most Powerful Force For Change In The World. People Who Are Pessimistic About The Future Tend To Extrapolate From The Present In A Straight Line. But Innovation Fundamentally Shifts The Trajectory Of Development.

Intellectual Property Has The Shelf Life Of A Banana.

I Feel Certain That The Personal Computer Is As Revolutionary In Terms Of The Way It Will Change The Way We Work, Learn, And Entertain Ourselves As Any Of These Previous Advances.

I Believe In Innovation And That The Way You Get Innovation Is You Fund Research And You Learn The Basic Facts.

Windows 95 Was A Nice Milestone.

When You Are Failing, You Are Forced To Be Creative, To Dig Deep And Think, Night And Day.

America And Japan Are The Two Leading World Economies In Terms Of Technology And Innovative Products. And In Software, Information-age Technology And Biotechnology The U.s. Has An Amazing Lead.

Every Three Years, We Have To Go To The Governments And Say, Okay, You Know You're Saving Millions Of Lives And Even Though Your Budgets Are Tight, Helping Africa Avoid This Disaster Really Is A Priority.

[warren Buffett ] Met With All Sorts Of Different Groups About A Lot Of Different Things, But Yes, He Took The Time, He Listened And He Wanted To Understand About Some Of The Different Diseases And The Strength Of The American Role In Doing All These Things.

My Innovation Message, Specifically Including Energy, Happened To Be The Same Week That On Monday And Tuesday I Announced The Breakthrough Energy Venture Group. Then On That Tuesday Afternoon, In December, Was When I Sat Down With Him. I Explained The Us Has Great Science Here, This Is Where The Market For These Things Is Going To Be. It Connects To Less Pollution, It Connects To U.s. Jobs, It Connects To Security, Not Needing The Energy Coming From Far Away.

The General Idea Of The Rich Helping The Poor, I Think, Is Important.

You're Never Going To Get The Amount Of Co2 Emitted To Go Down Unless You Deal With The One Magic Metric, Which Is Co2 Per Kilowatt-hour.

You Have A Meeting To Make A Decision, Not To Decide On The Question.

From The Day Microsoft Was Started, The Only Constraint To Our Growth Has Been Attracting Ah, More Great Programmers, Very Smart, Committed, Ah, People. And So We're Always On... On The Look For Ah, That Kind Of Person.

The Best Teacher Is Very Interactive.

Inspiration Starts Somewhere.

I Don't Think There's A... Boundary Between Digital Media And Print Media. Every Magazine Is Doing An Online Version.

Although I Don't Have A Prescription For What Others Should Do, I Know I Have Been Very Fortunate And Feel A Responsibility To Give Back To Society In A Very Significant Way.

I'm Not A Macroeconomics Person.

The Main Thing That's Missing In Energy Is An Incentive To Create Things That Are Zero-co2-emitting And That Have The Right Scale And Reliability Characteristics.

In American Math Classes, We Teach A Lot Of Concepts Poorly Over Many Years. In The Asian Systems They Teach You Very Few Concepts Very Well Over A Few Years.

Students Deserve Great Teachers. And Teachers Deserve The Support They Need To Become Great.

If Africa Seeks Prosperity, It Must Provide For The Health And Nutrition Of All – Including The Poorest.

The Mainstream Is Always Under Attack.

On The Supply Side, For Innovation, You'd Say, Go Look At Those R&d Budgets, And They Haven't Moved In The Last 20 Years. In The Case Of The Us - Which Is The Majority Of R&d Funding Across Every Category You Can Name: Health, Energy, Whatever - It's Been About $5 Billion A Year From The Department Of Energy.

The Pc Has Improved The World In Just About Every Area You Can Think Of. Amazing Developments In Communications, Collaboration And Efficiencies. New Kinds Of Entertainment And Social Media. Access To Information And The Ability To Give A Voice People Who Would Never Have Been Heard.

Well I Think Any Author Or Musician Is Anxious To Have Legitimate Sales Of Their Products, Partly So They're Rewarded For Their Success, Partly So They Can Go On And Do New Things.

Google's Done A Super Good Job On Search; Apple's Done A Great Job On The Ipod.

We're Responsible For The Creation Of The Pc Industry. The Whole Idea Of Compatible Machines And Lots Of Software - That's Something We Brought To Computing. And So It's A Responsibility For Us To Make Sure That Things Like Security Don't Get In The Way Of That Dream.

Depending On Where You Live, Cooking, Sex And Pooping Are Either 3 Of Life's Pleasures Or What Kills You

The Answer Is Simple, And Harsh. The Market Did Not Reward Saving The Lives Of These Children, And Governments Did Not Subsidize It. So The Children Died Because Their Mothers And Their Fathers Had No Power In The Market And No Voice In The System.

There's A Unique Thing About The Uk, Where You Give A Very Generous Foreign Aid Budget To Support Globally, Which Is Spent Wisely. We Partner With The Government Here To Make Sure That That Money Is Spent Well.

Access To The Outside World Is Preventing More Censorship. I Do Think Information Flow Is Happening In China. .. There's No Doubt In My Mind That It's Been A Huge Plus.

Information Flow

This Antitrust Thing Will Blow Over.

In The Long Run, Your Human Capital Is Your Main Base Of Competition. Your Leading Indicator Of Where You're Going To Be 20 Years From Now Is How Well You're Doing In Your Education System.

My Experience Of Malaria Was Just Taking Anti-malarials, Which Give You Strange Dreams, Because I Don't Want To Get Malaria.

With Nuclear Weapons, You'd Think You Would Probably Stop After Killing 100million. Smallpox Won't Stop. Because The Population Is Naïve, And There Are No Real Preparations. That, If It Got Out And Spread, Would Be A Larger Number.

The Wright Brothers Created The Single Greatest Cultural Force Since The Invention Of Writing. The Airplane Became The First World Wide Web, Bringing People, Languages, Ideas, And Values Together.

The Most Important People Is To Pick People Who Like To Write Software And Who Are Good At... Good Developers Like Working With Each Other. And They... They Reinforce Each Other's Skills.

Our Flame Is Taking The Normal Depleted Uranium - The 99.3 Percent That's Cheap As Heck, And There's A Pile Of It Sitting In Paducah, Kentucky That's Enough To Power The United States For Hundreds And Hundreds Of Years. You're Taking That And You Are Converting It To Plutonium - And Then You're Burning That.

So We Can Simulate Richter-10 Earthquakes. We Simulate 70-foot Waves Coming Into These Things. Very Cool. We Basically Say No Human Should Ever Be Required To Do Anything, Because If You Judge By Chernobyl And Fukushima, The Human Element Is Not On Your Side.

With The States Release Today Of A Set Of Clear And Consistent Academic Standards, Our Nation Is One Step Closer To Supporting Effective Teaching In Every Classroom, Charting A Path To College And Careers For All Students, And Developing The Tools To Help All Children Stay Motivated And Engaged In Their Own Education. The More States That Adopt These College And Career Based Standards, The Closer We Will Be To Sharing Innovation Across State Borders And Becoming More Competitive As A Country.

Whether I'm At The Office, At Home, Or On The Road, I Always Have A Stack Of Books I'm Looking Forward To Reading.

I'm Quite Worried About The Fiscal Imbalances That We've Got And What That Might Mean In Terms Of Financial Crisis Ahead.

I Really Had A Lot Of Dreams When I Was A Kid, And I Think A Great Deal Of That Grew Out Of The Fact That I Had A Chance To Read A Lot.

You Know, I'm A Big Believer In Touch And Digital Reading, But I Still Think That Some Mixture Of Voice, The Pen And A Real Keyboard - In Other Words A Netbook - Will Be The Mainstream On That.

The First Rule Of Any Technology Used In A Business Is That Automation Applied To An Efficient Operation Will Magnify The Efficiency. The Second Is That Automation Applied To An Inefficient Operation Will Magnify The Inefficiency.

Energy Is Very Primal Stuff And There Are A Lot Of Leads That Are Promising, Still At A Fairly Risky Stage, But Over The Next Decade Some Of These Breakthrough Approaches Are Going To Pay Out, And U.s. Research And U.s. Leadership On This Should Be Part Of How It Gets Solved.

We Are In The Throes Of A Transition Where Every Publication Has To Think Of Their Digital Strategy.

Software Is A Great Combination Between Artistry And Engineering. When You Finally Get Done And Get To Appreciate What You Have Done It Is Like A Part Of Yourself That You've Put Together. I Think A Lot Of The People Here Feel That Way.

Certain Teams Are More Careful In What They Write. They Generate Less Bugs. You Can Know That But It Still Doesn't Mean There Might Be There Might Not Be One Bug That Would Be Bad To Ship The Product With.

The Trick Generally Is To Break Programs Into Pieces And Have Those Pieces Be Individually Testable And So Then When You Move On To The Other Pieces You Treat It As A Black Box Knowing That It Either Works Or Doesn't Work.

In My View, Investing In Public Libraries Is An Investment In The Nation's Future.

Perhaps I Should Be Flattered That Somebody Imagines The Name Is Worth So Much, Especially Since My Parents Gave Me The Same Name 42 Years Ago For Free.

The Most Meaningful Way To Differentiate Your Company From Your Competition, Is To Do An Outstanding Job With Information.

There Won't Be Anything We Won't Say To People To Try And Convince Them That Our Way Is The Way To Go.

You Can't Have A Rigid View That All New Taxes Are Evil.

Customer Service Will Become The Primary Value Added Function Of Every Business.

I'm A Great Believer That Any Tool That Enhances Communication Has Profound Effects In Terms Of How People Can Learn From Each Other, And How They Can Achieve The Kind Of Freedoms That They're Interested In.

There's Only One Trick In Software, And That Is Using A Piece Of Software That's Already Been Written.

Analytical Software Enables You To Shift Human Resources From Rote Data Collection To Value-added Customer Service And Support Where The Human Touch Makes A Profound Difference.

Data Collection

The Moral Systems Of Religion, I Think, Are Super Important.

The Vision Is Really About Empowering Workers Giving Them All The Information About What’s Going On So They Can Do A Lot More Than They’ve Done In The Past.

Everyone Needs A Coach. It Doesn't Matter Whether You're A Basketball Player, A Tennis Player, A Gymnast Or A Bridge Player.

I'm Sorry That We Have To Have A Washington Presence. We Thrived During Our First 16 Years Without Any Of This. I Never Made A Political Visit To Washington And We Had No People Here. It Wasn't On Our Radar Screen. We Were Just Making Great Software.

Bangladesh Is Largely A River Delta, And The Rising Sea Level Means That When Storms Come In, The Human Sanitation Is Backing Up, The Ability To Farm.

I Keep Bumping Into That Silly Quotation Attributed To Me That Says 640k Of Memory Is Enough. There's Never A Citation; The Quotation Just Floats Like A Rumor, Repeated Again And Again.

If I'd Had Some Set Idea Of A Finish Line, Don't You Think I Would Have Crossed It Years Ago?

Unemployment Rates Among Americans Who Never Went To College Are About Double That Of Those Who Have A Postsecondary Education.

Vaccination Is Pretty Special Because You Can Do A Vaccination Campaign Anywhere In The World. All You Are Doing Is Gathering Women From The Villages, Getting Them The Vaccines And Asking Them To Go Around And Find The Children.

My Tax Return In The United States Has To Be Kept On A Special Computer Because Their Normal Computers Can't Deal With The Numbers. So I Am Constantly Getting These Notices Telling Me I Haven't Paid Something When Really It Is Just On The Wrong Computer.

I Set A Rule That People Weren't Allowed To Send Good News Unless They Sent Around An Equal Amount Of Bad News. We Had To Get A Balanced Picture. In Fact, I Kind Of Favored Just Hearing About The Accounts We Were Losing Because ... Bad News Is Generally More Actionable Than Good News.

Of All The Statistics In Health, Death Is The Easiest, Because You Can Go Out And Ask People, "hey, Have You Had Any Children Who Died, Did Your Siblings Have Any Children Who Died?" People Don't Forget That.

(in Response To Java) Anybody Who Thinks A Little 9,000-line Program That's Distributed Free And Can Be Cloned By Anyone Is Going To Affect Anything We Do At Microsoft Has His Head Screwed On Wrong.

Philanthropy Should Be Taking Much Bigger Risks That Business. If These Are Easy Problems, Business And Government Can Come In And Solve Them.

Exposure To The Reproductions [of Corbis-owned Fine Art Photographs] Is Likely To Increase Rather Than Diminish Reverence For The Real Art And Encourage More People To Get Out To Museums And Galleries.

I Didn't Even Complete My University Education

University Education

When I Say "miracle" I Mean A Kind Of Thing Like A Computer On A Chip, Or The Internet, Or The Cellphone, That Are Really Quite Miraculous. Most People Would Not Have Predicted Them, And Their Effect Has Been Very, Very Dramatic.

Contraception Really Shouldn't Be All That Controversial Because It's A Tool A Woman Can Use To Delay Her First Birth Until She's, Say, 18 Or 19 Years Old.

I Believe It’s Not Only Possible To Eradicate Malaria; I Believe It’s Necessary. Ultimately, The Cost Of Controlling It Endlessly Is Not Sustainable. The Only Way To Stop This Disease Is To End It Forever.

If You Have 50 Different Plug Types, Appliances Wouldn't Be Available And Would Be Very Expensive. But Once An Electric Outlet Becomes Standardized, Many Companies Can Design Appliances, And Competition Ensues, Creating Variety And Better Prices For Consumers.

The Phenomenal Generosity Of The United States In Its Aid Budget Towards Health Issues Is The Best In The World. You Can Look At That Broadly, You Can Look At It In Terms Of Hiv, The Pepfar Money Which Came Together In A Republican Administration With Bipartisan Support.

Sometimes We Do Get Taken By Surprise. For Example, When The Internet Came Along, We Had It As A Fifth Or Sixth Priority.

The Most Impactful Dollars That Australia Can Spend Are Actually What Goes To Help The Poorest.

Expectations Are A Form Of First-class Truth: If People Believe It, It's True.

We Have Over 60 Million Machines That Can Take The Same Diskette, Plug It In And Immediately Ah, That That Software's Working. And So It's Created The Worldwide Software Industry That... That Is So Very Competitive And Moving So Quickly.

The Finest Pieces Of Software Are Those Where One Individual Has A Complete Sense Of Exactly How The Program Works. To Have That, You Have To Really Love The Program And Concentrate On Keeping It Simple, To An Incredible Degree.

The Outpouring Of Support From Millions Of People In The Immediate Aftermath Of The Earthquake In Haiti Has Been Impressive.

Living On $6 A Day Means You Have A Refrigerator, A Tv, A Cell Phone, Your Children Can Go To School. That's Not Possible On $1 A Day.

Hey, Size Works Against Excellence.

My Mom And My Dad Were Both Very Sociable, Meeting Lots Of Interesting People.

Capitalism Has Shortfalls. It Doesn't Necessarily Take Care Of The Poor, And It Underfunds Innovation, So We Have To Offset That.

You Can Be A Business Thinker.

Contrary To Popular Belief, I Don't Spend A Whole Lot Of Time Following Soccer. But As I Have Traveled Around The World To Better Understand Global Development And Health, I've Learned That Soccer Is Truly Universal. No Matter Where I Go, That's What Kids Are Playing. That's What People Are Talking About.

I Think Of Myself As A Global Citizen.

If You Were Born Poor, It's Not Your Fault. But If You Die Poor It Is.

I Don't Have Any Tvs With Their Over-the-air Receivers Connected In My House. But When I'm In A Hotel Room Or Other Places That Have A Tv, Then I Turn It On And Flip The Channels Just Like Everybody Else. I'm Not Immune To The Lures Of Television. I Just Try To Stay Away From It Because I Like To Read.

While We're All Very Dependent On Technology, It Doesn't Always Work.

The Ideal Thing Would Be To Have A 100 Percent Effective Aids Vaccine. And To Have Broad Usage Of That Vaccine. That Would Literally Break The Epidemic.

The Next Generation Of Interesting Software Will Be Done On The Macintosh, Not The Ibm Pc.

The Quality Of Research In The U.s. Is Absolutely The Best.

I Was Announcing To The Public, In 2006, That I'd Be Leaving Microsoft In A Couple Of Years And Focusing Full-time On The Foundation. That Was The Time At Which We Went Back To New York And Warren [buffett] Announced These Gifts To A Number Of Foundations, With A Very High Percentage Of It Going To Us And Basically Doubling Our Capacity.

Investing In Tomorrow's Technology Today Is More Critical Than Ever.

Good Programmers Stay Open Minded To That Even Though There Is No Obvious Way To Improve What They've Done They... They Keep Looking And They Listen To What Other People Have To Say.

If You Are Born Poor Its Not Your Mistake, But If You Die Poor Its Your Mistake.

Middle-income Countries Are The Biggest Users Of Gmos. Places Like Brazil.

The Way To Be Successful In The Software World Is To Come Up With Breakthrough Software, And So Whether It's Microsoft Office Or Windows, Its Pushing That Forward. New Ideas, Surprising The Marketplace, So Good Engineering And Good Business Are One In The Same.

In Terms Of Fast Food And Deep Understanding Of The Culture Of Fast Food, I'm Your Man.

Deep Understanding

In Most Of These Things Our Foundation Is A Co-funder, So I Can Say That A Polio Or An Hiv Vaccine, That I'm Putting Our Resources Behind It In A Very Big Way And The U.s. Government Would Be The Best Partner For Those Efforts.

Technology Must Be Implemented As Part Of A Thoughtful, Holistic Approach To Education Transformation That Includes Teacher Training, Relevant Curricula, Parental Involvement, And Programs For Children That Fill Unmet Needs For Basics Like Nutrition And Health Care.

One Thing People Underestimate Is How Markets Don't Allow Anyone To Do Anything Except Make Better And Better Products. There's Not Much Leeway. The World Is A Lot More Competitive Than Most People Think, Particularly In A High-technology Area. If A Company Takes Its Eye Off Improving Its Products, If It Tries To Do Anything That Would Be Viewed As An Exercise Of Power, It'll Be Displaced Very Rapidly.

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