Bill Gates – The Road Ahead

The title in itself is a pun, because Bill Gates is the author of the book “The Road Ahead” in which he talks about technological advancements and I am using the same title for him, when he is on the verge of the end of his days at Microsoft.

This post is about the past, present and future of the man, who dramatically changed the way in which the Personal Computers were imagined. He revolutionized the concept of “Selling Software”, was the World’s Richest Man for almost 13 years in a row, with a net worth over $100 bn at his peak. With his fortune now around $57 bn, Bill Gates will now probably end up being the World’s Biggest Philanthropist.

The Journey so Far

Not exactly a rags-to-riches journey, but the life of William Henry Gates III, more popularly known as “Bill Gates” is nothing less than a fairytale in itself. Ever since his childhood, Bill was interested in computers and programming. He coded software for his school when he was 17 and also secured an admission at “Harvard” – one of the most prestigious colleges in the United States.

The tale after that is probably the one that would gather more interest, Bill became a drop-out from his college and then with Paul Allen, founded Microsoft. It was when a company called MITS invented the Altair, the first mass-produced microcomputer, in 1974, and advertised that they needed a programming language for it. Gates jumped at the chance, set up a meeting for him and Allen – and only then scrambled to invent something. They were hired, and their work formed the basis of Micro-soft, the company they founded the following year, with an impatient Gates dropping out of Harvard University to devote himself to the firm. He got the DOS from an in-famous company at around $50000 and made a killing by selling it. It was precisely at that time that Bill saw the future of Computing, a world where every desk has a computer system.

The story that followed needs no introduction, Microsoft followed the Proprietary Source code ownership model; because Bill believed that software piracy and copy would not result in quality software. He even wrote in an infamous letter, "Without good software and an owner who understands programming, a hobby computer is wasted. Will quality software be written for the hobby market? Most of you steal your software. One thing you do is prevent good software from being written. Who can afford to do professional work for nothing?"

There have been lot of other instances where fingers have been pointed against Microsoft and like every successful company, it has been garnered a lot of attention. One of the biggest was when Apple founder Steve Jobs fought Gates through the courts for years, claiming that Apple was the inventor of the style of graphical interface adopted by Windows. Apple was the pioneer, sure, but Microsoft prevailed in claiming there was no copyright infringement. Both men had borrowed off earlier pioneering companies, Gates claimed, firing back: "Hey, Steve, just because you broke into Xerox's house before I did and took the TV doesn't mean I can't go in later and take the stereo."
Various other trials based on stuff like shipping Internet Explorer alongwith the basic Operation System, which Bill Gates said resulted in seamless integration were raised as a concern against other startup corporations who were making browsers. The US ruling – stunningly – called for Microsoft to be broken apart, pulling Windows from the rest of the software business, but an appeal tempered the punishment.

Instead, Microsoft has been on a more-or-less bad-tempered probation in the US and Europe ever since. The European Union just this year fined it a record €899m for failing to comply with demands that it open up its source codes to other developers.

All said and done, whether you call it Monopoly or domination, today, Microsoft itself is worth $264bn, packing annual sales of $60bn.

The Future

Since 2006, Bill Gates had shown a desire to slowly reduce his work load and retire from the Chief Software Architect of Microsoft. Last Friday, i.e. 28th June 2008, Bill retired from the company he founded in 1975. Though in the main title, the only change would be "non-executive chairman" instead of "executive chairman", but with this, he also retires from the “day-to-day” association with Microsoft.

So, is Mr. Gates going to retire completely, play golf and smell the roses at just 52 years of age? This statement may not be entirely true. Andrew Carnegie, the Steel Tycoon and in the 19th Century, the richest man in the World, said, “The man who dies rich, dies disgraced.” He also followed this and donated most of his wealth to a lot of institutions and trusts, some of which have funds even today.

Apparently, Mr. Gates is going to follow Andrew Carnegie on the same path, with just the difference that unlike funds remaining in Carnegie’s name till now, Bill and Melinda have ensured that their donations are complete within 50 years of their death. Bill Gates has decided that, retiring now from Microsoft, he will spend the rest of his life, giving away the riches he amassed, back to the people. The mode of this transaction he chose is the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, which was established in 2000 to bring together the couple's various charitable initiatives.

When Bill was at Microsoft, even there he made efforts to ensure that something good goes back to the society. In his speech at Stanford in February 2008, he said, “One of the best investments any company makes is in its research group and in the relationship its research group has with universities, Students have really been at the heart of a lot of breakthroughs.” Microsoft made its development tools available to students for free. I, myself, experienced this first hand in 2007, when Microsoft organized “Microsoft Academic Day” at Institute of Technology, Nirma University. I was a volunteer at the event and all the participants and the volunteers were presented with the latest Visual Studio and a Genuine Windows XP Professional CD. This apparently is a business practice, as it influences developers at grass-root level (students) to have a soft-corner towards Microsoft, but again, it is a win-win situation.

Coming back to the main point, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has now got funds $ 37.3 bn, with almost $16.5 bn spent already. But this excludes a lot of funds pledged by Warren Buffet to this fund in 2006 and now the addition of Gates’ fortune to this fund is another feather in the cap. But with big money involved, there are a lot of issues being raised and the actions drawn into political controversies, the donations were either considered to be biased for some industries, or considered racist due to emphasis on people of certain ethnic background.


Final Take

There are troubled times for Microsoft now, due to increasing dominance of Google as the new World Leader. Microsoft has been futile against Google on the web-front,(ironically, I used Google to get all the images for the post, Picasa to collage them and am using Blogger to write my post) and though there is no real threat to Microsoft in its software market now, but sooner or later, Google’s dominance from Internet may shift to Operating Systems side as well. On the other hand, Apple is making a strong comeback as well. Some bearish analysts in the tech industry even wonder if there is any growth in the future for sclerotic old Microsoft – which took five years to bring out a new version of Windows that has turned out to be barely an improvement on the last version, and whose belated attempt to compete with iPod, the Microsoft Zune digital player, has disappeared without trace. The last thing that Microsoft needs right now, in these uncertain times, is for its visionary founder to walk off the set entirely.

And on the other front, many people believe that Bill Gates should not take up the responsibility of charity himself. The market disciplines that have made Microsoft a world leader, some complain, just cannot be applied to charitable work and Bill will have a tough time learning to be persistent, tolerant and understanding enough to ensure the charity work goes fine.

Considering what the experts say, both Bill Gates, and his babies, “Microsoft” and “Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation” will have they will now have to face great challenges.

In the end, I will to sign off this post wishing that, with his Foundation, Mr. Bill opens the flood-GATES of opportunities for a huge number of people, and brightens their lives opening a lot many WINDOWS of Hope.

John McCain vs. Barack Obama – An Indian Perspective

Come November 2008, we will witness yet another US Presidential Election, an election to decide who will sit on unarguably the “most-powerful” seat in the World today. Though there are a few contenders, the final showdown will apparently be between Barack Obama (Democrats’ candidate) and John McCain (Republican candidate). The result of this event would affect a lot of countries and India will be one of the nations, which will have a phenomenal influence of this change.

So, where do they stand on issues that are crucial for India?
Apparently while McCain is conservative in his outlook, Obama seems to be more of a liberal.

On one end we have Barack Obama, who is has had fundamental foreign exposure from the ground up, going back a long way into his youth, unlike his Republican John McCain. He even mentioned in one of his interviews that he had been in Karachi and Sind, Pakistan for about 3 weeks and has been closely associated with the sub-continent. He has a lot of Pakistani and Indian friends and so, unlike most of his predecessors, he is pretty aware of the culture and situation in these countries. The facts that he carries with him a small idol of Hanuman (after he came to know about Ramayana) and that he has a lot of Indian-American supporters in his campaign are good signs for India. His pronouncing Pakistan and Gandhi correctly also show that he because of his eclectic and unusual upbringing may be different from the other leaders. But this apart, Obama is against the military war against terrorism and has already shown his desire to bring back the troops from Afghanistan and Iraq, yet he also looks at military-dominated Pakistan and the fundamentalist monarchy in Saudi Arabia with deep distrust. The only thing we can be sure of is that most of the policies setup by the Bush administration will get rolled back.

On the other hand, McCain’s winning the elections would ensure that a lot of the Bush policies will be continued. The war on Terror, which has helped check terrorism and pressurized Pakistan to take action to fight terrorists, will be a good thing for India. Apart from this, McCain has gone on record saying the policies that he would likely keep, which do interest India. Over and above that, he seems to be favouring the entry of India and Brazil into the G-8, making it a larger G-8. All this said-and done, McCain is a war-hero and hence he seems to be a tight-fisted leader. Popularly believed to be a maverick in his own Republican party, what he would have in store for India is a question most cannot answer.

But, the debate does swing a little towards Republicans, when we consider the topic of outsourcing. While Obama has shown signs that he is against it, McCain has gone on-record saying he is ok with outsourcing and this is a positive stand for India. Then again, most experts say that the operational and financial linkages between the large US corporations and the Indian IT sector are very convoluted, and any efforts at untangling these ties will cause major economic disruptions in both countries. Thus an Obama-effort to reduce these would probably be futile and even suicidal to an extent. But the fact holds that Indian IT/ITES depend a lot on the US for revenues and so any effort at reducing outsourcing is bound to hurt.

Beyond that, US-India ties, at least from Washington's perspective, would continue to be largely security driven, subject to conservative impulses arising from fears of an extremist Islamist agenda to India's west and an expanding Chinese influence everywhere. Any administration would not be very different, with perhaps a little more emphasis on non-proliferation objectives, especially the Nuclear Deal. But it is very difficult to comment on Obama’s exact stand, because he is still putting the pieces and players together. But with the influence and importance that the ties these two countries have, "One thing we know for certain is that whoever becomes the President, he will not be hostile to India."

In the end of the whole analysis, the fact that still holds is that, any quest to judge the more favourable candidate for India is a futile exercise. Any Leader of a country will look only to promote that country’s interests. If India is not aligned in the same direction as The Unites States, as was the case with the Nuclear Deal, and if the priorities of both the countries do not converge, “Who becomes the Next President of United States is immaterial...!”

The Shawshank Redemption - A Review

Cast: Tim Robbins, Morgan Freeman, Bob Gunton, Clancy Brown, William Sadler, James Whitmore, Gil Bellows

Director: Frank Darabont

Written By: Based on the book, "Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption" by Stephen King

Overall Rating: 10.0/10.0 (Need I say more?)

The story starts at the proceedings of a court trial where Andy Dufresne (Tim Robbins), who is a Vice-President of a bank, is being tried for the brutal murder of his wife and her lover shortly after he found about the infidelity. The court finds him guilty of the charge and sentences him with 2 life sentences back to back and that begins his journey to the Shawshank State Prison to spend the remainder of his days.

The movie shows in a beautiful way the miseries of the prison life and like any other trial, the position in outside world does not help Andy inside the prison walls. He faces an uncaring warden (Bob Gunton), a strict and arrogant head of security (Clancy Brown), and a gang called the Bull Queers, who are more of homo-sexuals. But despite all the problems and the trauma, Andy shows a never-say-die spirit and the flame of his hope never even flickers.

He soon finds a friend in Ellis Boyd Redding (Morgan Freeman). Ellis, more popularly known as “Red” in the movie is a “business-guy”, more of an entrepreneur who with his contacts can smuggle things into the prison for a small price. The story revolves around their friendship and discussions, some lines of which are more than breath-taking. Like a few times, when Red and Andy are discussing chess and Andy says, I would like to make the chess pieces myself, Red says, that would take years, and all Andy says with a smile is “Years are what I got, what I don’t have is the rocks.”

The story shows Andy’s unbreakable spirit and over a period of time, he, with his knowledge of finance, starts to get both other prisoners and guards on his side. He offers to help one of the most notorious guards with a tax problem in exchange for bottles of chilled beer for everyone in his work party. After that, he is placed to work in the prison library, but under that pretext, the guards take his help for their tax-planning. Andy on his part, improves the prison's tiny library, and helps the prisoners to study. Over the years, he gains the respect of most of the other prisoners and guards. But most importantly, he never lets his hope die and always dreams of wonderful things in life.

What quietly amazes everyone in the prison; is the way he accepts the good and the bad as all part of some larger pattern than only he can fully see. There is another discussion with Red, when he says that he would like to go to Mexico, open a Restaurant at the Pacific and buy a boat. Red is amazed and afraid because he believes that “hope – in prison” is a dangerous thing, but Andy doesn’t agree. Though the movie is all about the struggle of an under trail, but it is more about a person who never stops believing in life's possibilities.

The movie sticks to the story in a lucid manner, never losing the audience's attention, but it never really goes hay-wire as well. Although there is some extreme violence, it is necessary to show the kind of place the prison is, and was probably needed to live up to the ambience. The main theme is hope, not despair, and the violence serves only as a backdrop to that message. The only short-coming of the movie would be that it ends really soon and I hoped it would continue for a few more moments.

A movie based on a Novel, about a guy who is imprisoned in jail, is an unlikely choice to start off with, but once you see the movie, you will realize that you just cannot get enough of it. The Shawshank Redemption lasts a little less than two hours and twenty minutes, but its resonance stays with you forever.

And so does the TAGLINE,
“Fear can hold you prisoner, Hope can set you FREE…!”

Final Verdict:
If you have not watched “The Shawshank Redemption” you are missing something in life!

The Three Mistakes Of My Life - A Review

Overall Rating: 7.0/10.0

Value for Money: 9.0/10.0

The first impression that you read 'The 3 Mistakes of My Life' is that it is a more general 'Five Point Someone', where the three main characters are not the part of a limited lot in an IIT but are three normal mortals trying to rise and come up as entrepreneurs in the city that praises business like none other – Ahmedabad.

The only other noticeable difference is that '3 mistakes' is will be better marketed because it is now associated with a known Chetan Bhagat and hence it will probably be more discussed and popularized. I believe Chetan Bhagat’s fans will not be disappointed, because of the lucid language and straight story where everyone can relate to some or the other character. The small joys and the big frustrations of growing up (which are pretty much common across India). More so, for people like me who have grown up in Ahmedabad, the whole story stirs up wonderful remembrances and events which make the story seem more real.

- The ambience of Gujarat and Ahmedabad are shown superbly and the few lines which rock the cradle of memories are:
1. Gujarat is the only state in India where people tend to respect you more if you are in business than if you are in service.
2. 'Gujarat is a dry state… People here get drunk on food'.
These are obvious facts and anyone even slightly associated with Gujarat would know how true this is!

The story revolves around 3 friends,

· Govind, a poor boy, who is driven by the desire to be a successful businessman, and grow beyond boundaries of imagination. But he is to an extent a realist as well and more of a normal boy with ambitions.
· Ishaan or 'Ish', he is the typical Indian who eats, drinks and even breathes cricket. He is a guy who has failed at living up to his passion, but he works with Govind to stay close to the thing he loves most in the world: cricket. He is also a very passionate guy and shows the true spirit of love and friendship. His selflessness is also worth a mention.
· Omi is the third of the three musketeers and probably the dumbest of the lot. He enjoys life with his friends and helped them with his “contacts” in the initial days of business.

So in their own way all three contribute to the success of the business! The book revolves around the state of Gujarat in early 21st Century, covering the gory earthquake, the Godhra Train burn and the bloody riots that followed.

The storyline has a lot of climax with addition of Ali, a young guy, who is an excellent cricketer, Vidya, who is Ish’s sister and Omi’s Mama (maternal uncle), who is dipped into politics of the state. As with his other books, '3 Mistakes' captures a reality where young people are constantly trying to make ends meet, and so instead of lavish spending, love to celebrate small things like Indian victories in cricket over a Thali joint and enjoy a lot of special moments on the building terrace or gardens rather than posh restaurants.

The story also contains a bit of religious theories and there is a time when any confused person would think the same way as Govind did when he met a charismatic Hindu leader who was provoking people in the name of religion, and the spirit of true Hindutva and Govind says: "I was both attracted to him and repelled by him. He had charisma and lunacy at the same time".

The book is definitely a good read but there are a few goof ups and a few areas where improvements could have come.

Though there are several factual goof-ups in the book itself, I think the 3 mistakes that the author made, which were a slight turn off when I was reading the book were:

1. Though he has done well, Chetan Bhagat could not take this book far away from the storyline of Five-point someone and somehow, the characters could be associated with the ones in that book.
2. Sex, boozing and friendship with a scintillating end. These things could have been managed better and the message that he leaves to the youth is pretty unclear.
3. And, last but not the least, the Gujju term for Ahmedabad residents is not Ambavadis but Amdavadis. This hurts slightly because I am proud to be one!

But glitches apart, at just Rs 95, this book is well-worth its money.

A Critique on Sarkar Raj

Cast: Amitabh Bachchan, Abhishek Bachchan, Aishwarya Rai, Govind Namdeo, Tanisha Mukherjee, Victor Banerjee, Supriya Pathak

Direction: Ram Gopal Varma

Production: Nitin Chandrachud, Abhijit Ghatak, Praveen Nischol

Written by: Prashant Pandey , Ram Gopal Varma

Overall Rating: 7.5/10.0 (which is defined as a Good to Watch Movie)

Sarkar Raj, set as the sequel of highly acclaimed Sarkar, had to fulfill a lot of high expectations. Ram Gopal Varma had precisely defined the central characters and demarcated the genre in the first part. So in the follow-up he simply had to go ahead and live up to the fame of Sarkar, and I believe he is successful in doing this to a decent level.

The sequel starts with Shankar Nagre (Abhishek Bachchan) taking the reins of the “Family-Business” and Sarkar aka Subhash Nagre (Amitabh Bachchan) taking a backseat from the decision making in the dirty game. The plot unfolds as Anita Ranjan (Aishwarya Rai), an NRI industrialist approaches the Nagre family with a power plant project to be set in the rural lands of Maharashtra under Sarkar’s domain. After initial rebuttal, but with Shankar understanding the intricacies of the progress the project will bring, Sarkar reluctantly gives a go ahead to the venture which soon takes shape of a political conspiracy.

The story then revolves around different sub-plots with a Gujarti businessman wanting to move the plant to Gujarat and power-hungry politicians paying homage to Anita’s greedy father. The movie uses the same dark backgrounds and the same music themes for creating the background ambience. The villainous roles though could have been made better because while Sayaji Shinde hums endlessly, Govind Namdeo and Upendra Limaye look as if they are overdoing the act. Thus the charm of the real dirty game gets lost and it looks like a futile comical sidekick.

Even the screenplay is moulded like the first part, when Shankar wages a political war against his opponents. But here, the roleplay of the father-son duo in this film is in clear contrast to the first part and Shankar becomes the centre-of-attraction. But the main twist is brought when though the father takes a backseat in the initial half giving authority to son, he grabs charge of the proceedings in the concluding portions and Amitabh lives to the word with his master acting in this. The whole movie keeps swapping and justifying the prominence of Abhishek and Amitabh as the drama keeps going on.

From a political war, the film finally shifts track to a regular revenge drama till it arrives to a volatile climax that forms a highlight of the movie, escalating the level of the entire plot. As far as the movie goes, full points to RGV for bringing the same effect of “Non-verbal communication” as it was in Sarkar, with the characters displaying perfect emotions with just a few words. The highlight of the movie was also the relationship that was shown between Shankar and Sarkar and the bond of unsaid love between a father and a son is beautifully depicted.

From the cast, Aishwarya Rai looks stunningly gorgeous as a business women, but from a story point of view, she plays a mere spectator to the scenes than a participant to the politics. She is her usual self and her act doesn’t have anything special. More so, the movie never really focuses on her as the screen-play is always revolving around the Nagre family. Amitabh and Abhishek Bachchan, once again, employ the intensity of their piercing eyes to add magic to the movie.

Final Verdict: Sarkar Raj was widely heralded as an homage to the GodFather trilogy, but except for a few far-fetched similarities, the movie has been highly-Indianized and hence it differentiates from the GodFather giving rise to a new adventure series, that of the Nagre Family. A must watch for everyone who loved Sarkar.