gate

"The world's best companies are built by fanatics and when you're in your 20s and 30s being fanatical comes...well at least it came pretty naturally to me."

That's how Bill Gates described the making of Microsoft to Charlie Rose last night on Rose's PBS show.

Now that he's in his 50s, he's still fanatical -- fanatical about Microsoft's new tablet/PC thingy known as the Surface, a device he believes Apple may have to follow.

Gates described how his goal with Microsoft had been to deliver "the magic of … Read more

What do you do when you've got $500 million to spare? Get an island.

Bill Gates and Larry Ellison are interested in buying the same one, according to rumors floating around Hawaii.

Billionaire David Murdock wants to sell the island of Lanai, Hawaii's sixth-largest by acreage, and potential buyers could include the Microsoft founder and the Oracle CEO, Pacific Business News reported. The island, which may be worth more than $500 million, is expected to be sold soon.

Gates and his wife, Melinda, rented the island (the whole island, mind you) for their marriage in 1994, and Ellison … Read more

Just when you thought the world was so overloaded with caricatures of Bill Gates and Steve Jobs that it just might capsize and dump us all into space, here comes a truly hilarious one to lighten the load.

This installment of Epic Rap Battles of History features a very astute match-up between the two tech giants, spitting pointed jabs at each other until Jobs has to depart and Hal 9000 lights up the whole damn joint.… Read more

Science, rationality's clever henchman, sometimes has strange ideas.

One that has entered the firmament is a "Galvanic" bracelet that uses physiological signs to measure just how engaged a child is in school.

I am grateful to the Washington Post for revealing that such bracelets are now subject to a grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

I hadn't been aware that one's skin could be such a giveaway of my mental state. Sometimes, it's just dry because I forget to lather myself in lovely Philosophy body lotion. (Try it. It smells wonderful.)

And … Read more

Whom should we revere from 50 years ago?

Should it be Pope John XXIII for excommunicating Fidel Castro? Or the Beach Boys for riding into the world with their surfin' sound? Should it be John Glenn for being the first American to orbit the Earth? Or what then was known as the European Common Market (now the EU) for admitting Greece?

I ask because Malcolm Gladwell, author of "The Tipping Point," has expressed decidedly straight views on which of tech's great and current names will be revered in 2062.

I am grateful to the often historical Business Insider … Read more

SAN FRANCISCO--It's one of the wonders of the world, and one of the most photographed things on the planet. And this Sunday, the Golden Gate Bridge turns 75.

While New York may have dozens of world-famous landmarks, and Paris is, well, Paris, San Francisco -- a great city in its own right -- may be best known for its outstanding red bridge, a masterpiece of workmanship that connects the city to its northern neighbor, Marin County.

In the late 1800s, the only way to cross the Golden Gate was by ferry, and those who ran the local vessels were … Read more

OAKLAND -- Last week marked the 75th anniversary of the Hindenburg disaster, and the end of the golden era of zeppelin passenger travel.

But anyone who lives in or around the San Francisco Bay Area is no doubt aware that these days, zeppelin travel is alive and well. That's thanks to Airship Ventures, a company run out of the NASA Ames Research Center in Mountain View, Calif., which operates one of the world's three airships, all of which were build by Zeppelin NT, a company located in Friedrichshafen, Germany.

Today, during an event hosted by the cloud storage … Read more

Clarion Corporation of America announced today at CTIA 2012 a new way to connect your iPhone to your car: the Next Gate.

Clarion's Next Gate is a 7-inch WVGA touch display that mounts on your vehicle's windshield with a suction cup, much like a portable navigation device. (However, at 7 inches, its size is only rivaled by the largest of PNDs, such as Magellan's RoadMate 9055-LM.) The Next Gate features a cable connection to the iPhone 4's or iPhone 4S' 30-pin dock connector for data and charging; meanwhile the Clarion unit itself is powered by a … Read more

Jumping on the philanthropic bandwagon that counts people like Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg, Warren Buffett, and others as members, the Silicon Valley venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz says its leaders will give to charity at least half of their lifetime VC earnings.

According to a Wall Street Journal report today, the six Andreessen Horowitz general partners said their giving will begin right away.

The partners plan to donate $1 million immediately to six nonprofits in the Valley, including the Second Harvest Food Bank and The Shelter Network, which focuses on homelessness issues, according to the Journal. The partners are: Marc … Read more