Gates: No, the best way to prepare 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 I fished out listings of their operating system.-- Bill Gates, from "Programmers at Work" by Microsoft Press, interview with Bill
00-Jun CNet:
Oracle chief defends Microsoft snooping
Oracle hired Investigative Group International to probe two research organizations, the Independence Institute and the National Taxpayers Union. The company sought to verify links between Microsoft and the organizations during its antitrust trial--and even tried to buy trash from another research group with close ties to Microsoft.Oracle told Bloomberg News today it discovered that the two organizations were misrepresenting themselves as independent advocacy groups when they were in fact funded by Microsoft. Oracle said the company hired the detective agency because the organizations were releasing studies supporting Microsoft during the antitrust trial. The financial ties between the organizations were reported by The Wall Street Journal and The Washington Post.
"As we acknowledged at our press conference in Washington, D.C. on June 2, 1999, Microsoft has been a member of The Independent Institute for the past two years."Microsoft's support has not altered any aspect of the substance or conclusions of our consistent and indeed independent work, stretching back over ten years. Microsoft's support constitutes a gift, which any first-year lawyer can tell you is insufficient to support a legally-enforceable contract.
But last Thursday, the Transaction Processing Council voted down the Microsoft-Compaq result, saying it violated a technical data-transparency provision. The TPC, a non-profit consortium whose membership largely comprises systems vendors, publishes transaction processing and database benchmarks -- and its decision toppled Microsoft from the top of the benchmark heap.Yet several sources claiming familiarity with the TPC standards-body processes say Oracle and Sun have been searching out loopholes to shoot down the Compaq-Microsoft results.
Oracle officials declined comment while Sun did not return phone calls.
