Astro-Rayological Interpretation & Charts
Quotes
Biography
Images and Physiognomic Interpretation

to Volume 3 Table of Contents

Bill Gates—Computer Magnate, Entrepreneur, Director of Microsoft Empire

October 28, 1955, Seattle, Washington, 10:00 PM, PST pr 9:15 PM (Source: first time, from his memory, stated with certainty; second time, according to LMT, a biography by James Wallace and Jim Erickson, Hard Drive, Bill Gates and the Making of the Microsoft Empire)

 

(Ascendant, Cancer; Sun in Scorpio, with Venus conjunct Saturn also in Scorpio; Moon in Aries as a singleton in the 10^th house; Mercury widely conjunct Mars in Libra; Jupiter conjunct Pluto in Leo, H3; Uranus in Leo)

Bill Gates, presently, is perhaps the world’s richest person. He is responsible for driving forward and pioneering (Moon in Aries) and distributing to all of human society (Cancer, the sign of the “mass” on the Ascendant) an entirely new method of communication—the Internet. His is perhaps the name most associated with the “computer revolution”. This is a revolution in the Department of the Mahachohan, and is essentially governed by the third and seventh rays.  

Gates’ soul ray is very likely the third, or the seventh as it develops into the third. He has participated in the transformation of global communications (Jupiter conjunct Pluto in H3). He has forcefully, even aggressively, (Mars conjunct Mercury in Libra) changed the way we all connect and do business (singleton Moon in H10, veiling {because of his powerful mental polarization} Uranus—the revolutionary, the transformer.

It is apparent that he has always been able to take risks (Uranus veiled by the singleton Moon in Aries) and these risks have provided him with a tremendous accumulation of financial power (Scorpio Sun, with Saturn and Venus {two financial planets} in Scorpio). One of the mottos of the sign Cancer is “The Whole is Seen as One”; through the agency of the Internet, humanity is beginning to realize this, and is well on its way to building a “Lighted House” and dwelling there in. Gates’ literally built such a house (costing some forty million dollars), perhaps as a symbol of the wonder which lies before those who master the material plane as he has done.

AIDS is a disease that is hard to talk about. The ideal thing would be to have a 100 percent effective AIDS vaccine.

As you improve health in a society, population growth goes down. You know, I thought it was... before I learned about it, I thought it was paradoxical.

At Microsoft there are lots of brilliant ideas but the image is that they all come from the top - I'm afraid that's not quite right.

Capitalism is this wonderful thing that motivates people, it causes wonderful inventions to be done. But in this area of diseases of the world at large, it's really let us down.

DOS is ugly and interferes with users' experience.

Hey, I never told anyone to buy my stock! Besides, no one is less happy than I am with the performance of Microsoft stock! I've lost tens of billions of dollars this year-if you check, you'll see that that's more than most people make in a lifetime!

I actually thought that it would be a little confusing during the same period of your life to be in one meeting when you're trying to make money, and then go to another meeting where you're giving it away.

I believe that if you show people the problems and you show them the solutions they will be moved to act.

I do think this next century, hopefully, will be about a more global view. Where you don't just think, yes my country is doing well, but you think about the world at large.
(Chiron in Aquarius)

I don't think there's anything unique about human intellience. All the nuerons in the brain that make up perceptions and emotions operate in a binary fashion.
(Venus conjunct Saturn)
I have 100 billion dollars... You realize I could spend 3 million dollars a day, every day, for the next 100 years? And that's if I don't make another dime. Tell you what-I'll buy your right arm for a million dollars. I give you a million bucks, and I get to sever your arm right here.

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 that wealth wasn't something that would be good to just pass to the children.

I mean, if we said right now, there's somebody in the next room who's dying, let's all go save their life, you know, everybody would just get up immediately and go get involved in that.

I think it's fair to say that personal computers have become the most empowering tool we've ever created. They're tools of communication, they're tools of creativity, and they can be shaped by their user.

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.

In the decade ahead I can predict that we will provide over twice the productivity improvement that we provided in the '90s.

Information technology and business are becoming inextricably interwoven. I don't think anybody can talk meaningfully about one without the talking about the other.
(Mercury & Mars in Libra)

Is the rich world aware of how four billion of the six billion live? If we were aware, we would want to help out, we'd want to get involved.

It's been shown that most people download viruses unwittingly - they don't know they're doing it until it's too late. That's what I mean here. We're talking about protecting the consumer.
(Cancer Ascendant)

Just in terms of allocation of time resources, religion is not very efficient. There's a lot more I could be doing on a Sunday morning.

Let's face it, the average computer user has the brain of a Spider Monkey.

Like almost everyone who uses e-mail, I receive a ton of spam every day. Much of it offers to help me get out of debt or get rich quick. It would be funny if it weren't so exciting.

Microsoft is not about greed. It's about innovation and fairness.
(Mars, Mercury & Neptune in Libra)

Oh, I think there are a lot of people who would be buying and selling online today that go up there and they get the information, but then when it comes time to type in their credit card they think twice because they're not sure about how that might get out and what that might mean for them.

People always fear change. People feared electricity when it was invented, didn't they? People feared coal, they feared gas-powered engines... There will always be ignorance, and ignorance leads to fear. But with time, people will come to accept their silicon masters.

People everywhere love Windows.

Security is, I would say, our top priority because for all the exciting things you will be able to do with computers - organizing your lives, staying in touch with people, being creative - if we don't solve these security problems, then people will hold back.
(Cancer Ascendant)

Since when has the world of computer software design been about what people want? This is a simple question of evolution. The day is quickly coming when every knee will bow down to a silicon fist, and you will all beg your binary gods for mercy.

So we do software for watches, for phones, for TV sets, for cars. And some of these take a long time to catch on.

Success is a lousy teacher. It seduces smart people into thinking they can't lose.

The browser space that we are in we have about 90 percent. Sure, Firefox has come along, and the press love the idea of that. Our commitment is to keep our browser that competes with Firefox to be the best browser - best in security, best in features.

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.

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.
(Cancer Ascendant. North Node in 6th house.)

The Internet will help achieve "friction free capitalism" by putting buyer and seller in direct contact and providing more information to both about each other.

The reason you see open source there at all is because we came in and said there should be a platform that's identical with millions and millions of machines.

The two areas that are changing... are information technology and medical technology. Those are the things that the world will be very different 20 years from now than it is today.

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.

There are people who don't like capitalism, and people who don't like PCs. But there's no-one who likes the PC who doesn't like Microsoft.

There are some things that we are always thinking about. For example, when will speech recognition be good enough for everybody to use that? And we have made a lot more progress this year on that. I think we will surprise people a bit on how well we will do on our speech recognition.

There is a certain responsibility that accrued to me when I got to this unexpected position.

There's always a tricky issue when you get into stolen material or pornography. The laws for online publishing the same as for print-based publishing, where if you're hosting certain types of things and somebody notifies you about that.

We are not even close to finishing the basic dream of what the PC can be.
(Neptune conjunct Sun)

We've got to put a lot of money into changing behavior.

What we're really after is simply that people acquire a legal license for Windows for each computer they own before they move on to Linux or Sun Solaris or BSD or OS/2 or whatever.

When the PC was launched, people knew it was important.

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.

Whether it's Google or Apple or free software, we've got some fantastic competitors and it keeps us on our toes.

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.

You see, antiquated ideas of kindness and generosity are simply bugs that must be programmed out of our world. And these cold, unfeeling machines will show us the way.

Your most unhappy customers are your greatest source of learning.

http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/b/bill_gates.html

 

640K ought to be enough for anybody.
Source: 1981

Often you just have to rely on your intuition.

http://quotes.zaadz.com/search

 

“[Smart] is an elusive concept. There's a certain sharpness, an ability to absorb new facts. To ask an insightful question. To relate to domains that may not seem connected at first. A certain creativity that allows people to be effective.” quote

“Life is not fair; get used to it.” quote
(Saturn in Scorpio)

“If you give people tools, [and they use] their natural ability and their curiosity, they will develop things in ways that will surprise you very much beyond what you might have expected.” quote

“Be nice to nerds. Chances are you'll end up working for one.” quote

“Technology is just a tool. In terms of getting the kids working together and motivating them, the teacher is the most important.” quote

“As we look ahead into the next century, leaders will be those who empower others.” quote

“If you can't make it good, at least make it look good.” quote
(Sun in Scorpio in 5th house)

“If you think your teacher is tough, wait until you get a boss. He doesn't have tenure.” quote

“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.” quote

“We always overestimate the change that will occur in the next two years and underestimate the change that will occur in the next ten. Don't let yourself be lulled into inaction.” quote
(Aries Moon. Uranus in Leo in 1st house.)

“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.” quote

“Great organizations demand a high level of commitment by the people involved.” quote

“Life is not divided into semesters. You don't get summers off and very few employers are interested in helping you find yourself.” quote

“We're only at the beginning of what we have to do here.” quote

“It's fine to celebrate success but it is more important to heed the lessons of failure.” quote

“If GM had kept up with technology like the computer industry has, we would all be driving $25 cars that got 1000 MPG” quote

“Our success has really been based on partnerships from the very beginning.” quote

“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.” quote

“Every day were saying, 'How can we keep this customer happy?' How can we get ahead in innovation by doing this, because if we don't, somebody else will.” quote

“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.” quote

“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.” quote

“The Internet is becoming the town square for the global village of tomorrow.” quote
(Uranus in 1st house)

“In this business, by the time you realize you're in trouble, it's too late to save yourself. Unless you're running scared all the time, you're gone.” quote
(Moon in Aries. Cancer Ascendant.)

“Television is not real life. In real life people actually have to leave the coffee shop and go to jobs.” quote

“Intellectual property has the shelf life of a banana.” quote

“I realized about 10 years ago that my wealth has to go back to society. A fortune, the size of which is hard to imagine, is best not passed on to one's children. It's not constructive for them.” quote

“If I'd had some set idea of a finish line, don't you think I would have crossed it years ago?” quote
(Aries Moon)

“As I look forward, I'm very optimistic about the things I see ahead.” quote

“Until we're educating every kid in a fantastic way, until every inner city is cleaned up, there is no shortage of things to do.” quote

“I like my job because it involves learning. I like being around smart people who are trying to figure out new things. I like the fact that if people really try they can figure out how to invent things that actually have an impact.” quote

“Anyone who spends their life on a computer is pretty unusual.” quote

“Microsoft was founded with a vision of a computer on every desk, and in every home. We've never wavered from that vision.” quote

“There are no significant bugs in our released software that any significant number of users want fixed” quote

“The best way to prepare [to be a programmer] is to write programs, and to study great programs that other people have written. In my case, I went to the garbage cans at the Computer Science Center and fished out listings of their operating system.” quote

“I think all students start off with incredible ability and curiosity, and if they're given the opportunity to pursue that, if they're given a chance to see the neat things about the world in terms that they can appreciate and enjoy, that their abilities will be reinforced and that we'll really achieve so much more potential out of the great students we have than we do today.” quote

“If we weren't still hiring great people and pushing ahead at full speed, it would be easy to fall behind and become a mediocre company.” quote

“I'd be happy if I could think that the role of the library was sustained and even enhanced in the age of the computer.” quote

“WWW? Nice toy, but what a waste of time.”
luca Bill Gates quote

“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.” quote

“If there's one cultural quality we have, it's that we always see ourselves as an underdog.” quote
(Mars in Libra)

“Today, you always know whether you are on the Internet or on your PC's hard drive. Tomorrow, you will not care and may not even know.” quote

“The obvious mathematical breakthrough would be development of an easy way to factor large prime numbers” quote

“Never before in history has innovation offered promise of so much to so many in so short a time.” quote

“The people who resist change will be confronted by the growing number of people who see that better ways...are available thanks to technology.” quote

“Kids are taking PCs and the Internet to new heights. They're the ones that are designing the cutting-edge web sites.” quote

“We're focused on providing innovations in software, driving the continuous improvements for a much better experience, and there's a lot going on here that speaks to this decade and what's going to happen in this decade. We can kind of sum it up in terms of saying, "Yes, you can."” quote

“In terms of fast food and deep understanding of the culture of fast food, I'm your man.” quote

“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.” quote

“If you get health, then you have opportunity for literacy. Health first, then literacy. Once you have literacy, then you have a chance to bring in the new tools of communication. Let people reach out and have access to the latest advances.” quote

“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.” quote

Bill Gates
William Henry Gates III

Born: October 28, 1955 (age 51)
Seattle, Washington, USA
Occupation: Chairman, Microsoft
Co-Chair, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation
Salary: US$966,667[1]
Net worth: 7.5% to US$53.0 billion (2006)[2]
Spouse: Melinda Gates
Children: 3

Website: microsoft.com/billgates
Gates Foundation
For other persons named Bill Gates, see Bill Gates (disambiguation).
William Henry Gates III (born October 28, 1955 in Seattle, Washington) is an American entrepreneur and the co-founder, chairman, former chief software architect, and former chief executive officer of Microsoft, the world's largest software company. Forbes magazine's The World's Billionaires list has ranked him as the richest person on earth for the last thirteen consecutive years, with a current net worth of approximately $53 billion. When family wealth is considered, his family ranks second behind the Walton family.[3][4]

Gates is one of the best-known entrepreneurs of the personal computer revolution. Although he is widely respected by people who see his wealth as a product of intelligence and foresight,[5][6] his business tactics have often been criticized as unethical or anti-competitive, and have, in some instances, been ruled as such in court.[7][8] Since amassing his fortune, Gates has pursued a number of philanthropic endeavors, donating large amounts of money to various charitable organizations and scientific research programs through the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, founded in 2000.

William Henry Gates III was born in Seattle, Washington to William H. Gates, Jr. (now Sr.) and Mary Maxwell Gates. His family was wealthy; his father was a prominent lawyer, his mother served on the board of directors for First Interstate Bank and the United Way, and her father, J. W. Maxwell, was a national bank president. Gates has one older sister, Kristi (Kristianne), and one younger sister, Libby. He was the fourth of his name in his family, but was known as William Gates III or "Trey" because his father had dropped his own "III" suffix.[9] Several writers claim that Maxwell set up a million-dollar trust fund for Gates.[10] A 1993 biographer who interviewed both Gates and his parents (among other sources) found no evidence of this and dismissed it as one of the "fictions" surrounding Gates's fortune.[9] Gates denied the trust fund story in a 1994 interview[11] and indirectly in his 1995 book The Road Ahead.[12]

Gates excelled in elementary school, particularly in mathematics and the sciences. At thirteen he enrolled in the Lakeside School, Seattle's most exclusive preparatory school where tuition in 1967 was $5,000 (Harvard tuition that year was $1,760). When he was in the eighth grade, Lakeside obtained an ASR-33 teletype terminal and a donation of computer time on a General Electric computer from a "Mothers Club" rummage sale.[9] Gates took an interest in programming the GE system in BASIC and was excused from math classes to pursue his interest. After the Mothers Club donation was exhausted he and other students sought time on other systems, including DEC PDP minicomputers. One of these systems was a PDP-10 belonging to Computer Center Corporation, which banned the Lakeside students for the summer after it caught them exploiting bugs in the operating system to obtain free computer time.

was arrested at least twice in New Mexico: once in 1975 for speeding and driving without a license, and in 1977 when this photograph was taken.At the end of the ban, the Lakeside students (Gates, Paul Allen, Ric Weiland, and Kent Evans) offered to find bugs in CCC's software in exchange for free computer time. Rather than use the system via teletype, Gates went to CCC's offices and studied source code for various programs that ran on the system, not only in BASIC but FORTRAN, LISP, and machine language as well. The arrangement with CCC continued until 1970, when it went out of business. The following year Information Sciences Inc. hired the Lakeside students to write a payroll program in COBOL, providing them not only computer time but royalties as well. Gates also formed a venture with Allen, called Traf-O-Data, to make traffic counters based on the Intel 8008 processor.[13][14]

According to a press inquiry, Bill Gates stated that he scored 1590 on his SATs.[15] He enrolled at Harvard University in the fall of 1973 intending to get a pre-law degree,[16] but did not have a definite study plan,[17] While at Harvard he met his future business partner, Steve Ballmer.

After reading the January 1975 issue of Popular Electronics that demonstrated the Altair 8800, Gates contacted MITS (Micro Instrumentation and Telemetry Systems), the creators of the new microcomputer, to inform them that he and others were working on a BASIC interpreter for the platform.[18] In reality, Gates and Allen did not have an Altair and had not written code for it; they merely wanted to gauge MITS's interest. MITS president Ed Roberts agreed to meet them for a demo, and over the course of a few weeks they developed an Altair emulator that ran on a minicomputer, and then the BASIC interpreter. The demonstration, held at MITS's offices in Albuquerque, was a success and resulted in a deal with MITS to distribute the interpreter as Altair BASIC. Gates took a leave of absence from Harvard to work with Allen at MITS, and they dubbed their partnership Micro-Soft.[19]

In 1984, Bill Gates appeared on the cover of TIME Magazine; he has since appeared seven more times.Microsoft's BASIC was popular with computer hobbyists, but Gates discovered that a pre-market copy had leaked into the community and was being widely copied and distributed. In February 1976, Gates wrote an Open Letter to Hobbyists in the MITS newsletter saying that MITS could not continue to produce, distribute, and maintain high-quality software without payment.[20] This letter was unpopular with many computer hobbyists, but Gates persisted in his belief that software developers should be able to demand payment. Microsoft became independent of MITS in late 1976, and it continued to develop programming language software for various systems.

Gates with Steve Jurvetson of DFJ, Stratton Sclavos of VeriSign and Greg Papadopoulos of Sun Microsystems, October 1, 2004.According to Gates, people at Microsoft often did more than one job during the early years; whoever answered the phone when an order came in was responsible for packing and mailing it. Gates oversaw the business details, but continued to write code as well. In the first five years, he personally reviewed every line of code the company shipped, and often rewrote parts of it as he saw fit.[21]

IBM partnership
In 1980 IBM approached Microsoft to make the BASIC interpreter for its upcoming personal computer, the IBM PC. When IBM's representatives mentioned that they needed an operating system, Gates referred them to Digital Research, Inc. (DRI) makers of the widely used CP/M operating system.[22] IBM's discussions with Digital Research went poorly, they did not reach a licensing agreement. IBM representative Jack Sams mentioned the licensing difficulties during a subsequent meeting with Gates and told him to get an acceptable operating system. A few weeks later Gates proposed using 86-DOS (QDOS), an operating system similar to CP/M that Seattle Computer Products had made for hardware similar to the PC. Microsoft made a deal with SCP to become the exclusive licensing agent, and later the full owner, of 86-DOS, but did not mention that IBM was a potential customer. After adapting the operating system for the PC, Microsoft delivered it to IBM as PC-DOS in exchange for a one-time fee.[23] Gates never understood why DRI had walked away from the deal, and in later years he claimed that DRI founder Gary Kildall capriciously "went flying" during an IBM appointment, a characterization that Kildall and other DRI employees would deny.

Later, after Compaq successfully cloned the IBM BIOS, the market saw a flood of IBM PC clones.[24] Microsoft was quick to license DOS to other manufacturers, calling it MS-DOS (for Microsoft Disk Operating System). By marketing MS-DOS aggressively to manufacturers of IBM-PC clones, Microsoft went from a small player to one of the major software vendors in the home computer industry. Microsoft continued to develop operating systems as well as software applications.[25][26]

] Philanthropy
In 2000, Gates founded the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, a charitable organization, with his wife. The foundation's grants have provided funds for college scholarships for under-represented minorities, AIDS prevention, diseases prevalent in third world countries, and other causes. In 2000, the Gates Foundation endowed the University of Cambridge with $210 million for the Gates Cambridge Scholarships. The Foundation has also pledged over $7 billion to its various causes, including $1 billion to the United Negro College Fund. According to a 2004 Forbes magazine article, Gates gave away over $29 billion to charities from 2000 onwards. These donations are usually cited as sparking a substantial change in attitudes towards philanthropy among the very rich, with philanthropy becoming the norm.[47]

On June 16, 2006, Gates announced that he would move to a part-time role with Microsoft (leaving day-to-day operations management) in July, 2008 to begin a full-time career in philanthropy, but would remain as chairman. Gates credited Warren Buffett with influencing his decision to commit himself to charitable causes.[48] Days later, Buffett announced that he would begin matching Gates' contributions to the Foundation.[49]

Publicity
at Consumer Electronics Show, January 4, 2006
Time Magazine named Gates one of the 100 people who most influenced the 20th century, as well as one of the 100 most influential people of 2004, 2005 and again in 2006. Gates and Oprah Winfrey are the only two people to make all four lists. Time also collectively named Gates, his wife Melinda and U2's lead singer Bono as the 2005 Persons of the Year for their humanitarian efforts. That same year Gates was made an honorary Knight Commander of the Order of the British Empire by Queen Elizabeth II. In 2006, Gates Foundation was awarded the Premio Príncipe de Asturias en Cooperación Internacional. In a list compiled by the magazine New Statesman in 2006, he was voted eighth in the list of "Heroes of our time".[50] Gates was listed in the Sunday Times power list in 1999, named CEO of the year by Chief Executive Officers magazine in 1994, ranked number one in the "Top 50 Cyber Elite" by Time in 1998, ranked number two in the Upside Elite 100 in 1999 and was included in The Guardian as one of the "Top 100 influential people in media" in 2001.

Gates has received three honorary doctorates, from the Nyenrode Business Universiteit, Breukelen, The Netherlands in 2000,[51] the Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm, Sweden in 2002 and Waseda University, Tokyo, Japan in 2005. Gates was also given an honorary KBE (Knighthood) from Queen Elizabeth II of the United Kingdom in 2005,[52] in addition to having entomologists name the Bill Gates flower fly, Eristalis gatesi, in his honor.[53]

Bill and Melinda received the Prince of Asturias Award for International Cooperation on May 4, 2006, in recognition of their world impact through charity giving.[54] In November 2006, he and his wife were awarded the Order of the Aztec Eagle for their philanthropic work around the world in the areas of health and education, particularly in Mexico, and specifically in the program "Un país de lectores".[55]

Bill Gates
Chairman, Microsoft Corp.
Published: May 30, 2002 | Updated: June 1, 2006

William (Bill) H. Gates is chairman of Microsoft Corporation, the worldwide leader in software, services and solutions that help people and businesses realize their full potential. Microsoft had revenues of US$44.28 billion for the fiscal year ending June 2006, and employs more than 71,000 people in 103 countries and regions.

On June 15, 2006, Microsoft announced that effective July 2008 Gates will transition out of a day-to-day role in the company to spend more time on his global health and education work at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. After July 2008 Gates will continue to serve as Microsoft’s chairman and an advisor on key development projects. The two-year transition process is to ensure that there is a smooth and orderly transfer of Gates’ daily responsibilities. Effective June 2006, Ray Ozzie has assumed Gates’ previous title as chief software architect and is working side by side with Gates on all technical architecture and product oversight responsibilities at Microsoft. Craig Mundie has assumed the new title of chief research and strategy officer at Microsoft and is working closely with Gates to assume his responsibility for the company’s research and incubation efforts.

Born on Oct. 28, 1955, Gates grew up in Seattle with his two sisters. Their father, William H. Gates II, is a Seattle attorney. Their late mother, Mary Gates, was a schoolteacher, University of Washington regent, and chairwoman of United Way International.

Gates attended public elementary school and the private Lakeside School. There, he discovered his interest in software and began programming computers at age 13.

In 1973, Gates entered Harvard University as a freshman, where he lived down the hall from Steve Ballmer, now Microsoft's chief executive officer. While at Harvard, Gates developed a version of the programming language BASIC for the first microcomputer - the MITS Altair.

In his junior year, Gates left Harvard to devote his energies to Microsoft, a company he had begun in 1975 with his childhood friend Paul Allen. Guided by a belief that the computer would be a valuable tool on every office desktop and in every home, they began developing software for personal computers. Gates' foresight and his vision for personal computing have been central to the success of Microsoft and the software industry.

Under Gates' leadership, Microsoft's mission has been to continually advance and improve software technology, and to make it easier, more cost-effective and more enjoyable for people to use computers. The company is committed to a long-term view, reflected in its investment of approximately $6.2 billion on research and development in the 2005 fiscal year.

In 1999, Gates wrote Business @ the Speed of Thought, a book that shows how computer technology can solve business problems in fundamentally new ways. The book was published in 25 languages and is available in more than 60 countries. Business @ the Speed of Thought has received wide critical acclaim, and was listed on the best-seller lists of the New York Times, USA Today, the Wall Street Journal and Amazon.com. Gates' previous book, The Road Ahead, published in 1995, held the No. 1 spot on the New York Times' bestseller list for seven weeks.

Top row: Steve Wood (left), Bob Wallace, Jim Lane. Middle row: Bob O'Rear, Bob Greenberg, Marc McDonald, Gordon Letwin. Bottom row: Bill Gates, Andrea Lewis, Marla Wood, Paul Allen. December 7, 1978.

Gates has donated the proceeds of both books to non-profit organizations that support the use of technology in education and skills development.

In addition to his love of computers and software, Gates founded Corbis, which is developing one of the world's largest resources of visual information - a comprehensive digital archive of art and photography from public and private collections around the globe. He is also a member of the board of directors of Berkshire Hathaway Inc., which invests in companies engaged in diverse business activities.

Philanthropy is also important to Gates. He and his wife, Melinda, have endowed a foundation with more than $28.8 billion (as of January 2005) to support philanthropic initiatives in the areas of global health and learning, with the hope that in the 21st century, advances in these critical areas will be available for all people. The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has committed more than $3.6 billion to organizations working in global health; more than $2 billion to improve learning opportunities, including the Gates Library Initiative to bring computers, Internet Access and training to public libraries in low-income communities in the United States and Canada; more than $477 million to community projects in the Pacific Northwest; and more than $488 million to special projects and annual giving campaigns.

Gates was married on Jan. 1, 1994, to Melinda French Gates. They have three children. Gates is an avid reader, and enjoys playing golf and bridge.