1. Microsoft once licensed a Unix-based operating system. It was called “Xenix” and was licensed from AT&T for Microsoft to redistribute. They eventually changed their minds and sold it to Santa Cruz Operation (SCO). This is ironic given that every competitor to Windows today is based on a Unix core.

2. Bill Gates’ parents originally didn’t plan on his going into computers. His father was a prominent lawyer, his mother served on the board of directors for First Interstate BancSystem, and his grandfather was a national bank president. So the family plan was for him to become a lawyer, too. Probably good he didn’t listen to them, huh?

3. Internet Explorer is a direct descendant of Spyglass Mosaic. The original Mosaic came from NCSA with Spyglass as its commercial licensing partner. Microsoft bought a copy of Mosaic from Spyglass and developed it into Internet Explorer.

4. Bill Gates’ personal programming resume includes “DONKEY.BAS.” This was a BASIC game written to test Microsoft’s BASIC interpreter. Microsoft was in fact originally only going to design programming languages, not operating systems.

5. A series of internal memos called “the Halloween Documents” details Microsoft’s corporate strategy against its open-source competitor Linux. They’re still published online here and there. They were unearthed during the US antitrust case. “Halloween” is a United States holiday celebrating ghosts, goblins, and spooky stuff, so it kind of fits.

6. Bill Gates and former US president George W. Bush are 8th cousins. That was determined by genealogist Dave Barrett. They both descended from Henry Whitney, who came from England to Long Island, NY, US, in 1635.

7. Microsoft employs “evangelists.” A technology evangelist is “a person who attempts to build a critical mass of support for a given technology in order to establish it as a technical standard in a market that is subject to network effects.” One such evangelist was James Plamondon, who spearheaded the campaign to get Microsoft’s first copy of Windows declared as the standard PC system.

8. Microsoft campus has its own annual Puzzle Hunt. It’s modeled after the famous Puzzle Hunt at MIT campus, Boston, US. For a day, employees scramble around hunting for clues, solving puzzles, and pitting their wits against engineers for a chance to locate a secret treasure hidden on the property.

9. Before trying to develop for IBM, Microsoft attempted to launch the MSX computer system. The standardized home computer architecture was introduced the 1980s, but was based in Japan. For a while there, the MSX was the de-facto gaming platform for Japanese gamers before the Nintendo came along. The MSX was never marketed much in the English-speaking world, however.

10. Microsoft Bob was Melinda French’s idea. Melinda spoke up between Windows 3.1 and Windows ’95 to ask for a more user-friendly system. Melinda was, at the time, Bill Gates’ girlfriend, and they only later married to have her become Melinda Gates. Good thing their marriage did better than Microsoft Bob did!

This year, Bill Gates, showing his usual social skills which are equivalent to a James Bond villain’s, actually brought a jar of mosquitoes with him and from the stage he released them into the audience. No, don’t ask me. The story’s at ValleyWag; ask them.

What set him off? Well, Sir Tim Berners-Lee also attended, and gave a talk about the importance of web standards. Perhaps, given the Redmond company’s stance on standards, Marvin the Microsoft Martian heard the speech and became VERY, VERY ANGRYYYYY!

Peter Brittain

But when most people think of the fairy-tale dream start-up story, they think of YouTube. Founded in February of 2005, sold to Google in November of 2006 for $1.65 billion USD. Start your site, and twenty-one months later, you’re a millionaire. Wouldn’t that be nice?

The difference is, it takes an innovative, forward-thinking company to recognize and acquire an innovative start-up. Google itself was an overnight success story, pushed through to greatness mostly by the sheer stubbornness of its founders. Having run that gauntlet themselves, they know how to recognize a good idea headed by a tough entrepreneur. This is a skill that Old Guard companies like Microsoft fail to grasp – so much so that bloggers all over the web are asking whether Microsoft is doomed, and has prompted Paul Graham himself to pronounce Microsoft dead.

Microsoft… dead. Imagine what a huge gap that would leave. Like the huge multinational banks in the United States which are getting bailed out during their economic turmoil, Microsoft seems almost too big to fail. If they did, there would not be another Microsoft. Their niche instead would rapidly be filled with the New Guard: smart, innovative, small companies that think fast and take risks… and know how to cooperate with the competition!

Peter Brittain

So when I see Gizmodo telling us “How to Get, Install and Play With Windows 7, Pain Free”, and it actually tells you to go snarf a copy off of BitTorrent, I have to wonder if torrents are just going to become the official path to releases and updates. Mind you, this isn’t some Warez pirate site we’re talking about. Gizmodo is part of Gawker Media, probably the most mainstream corporate presence on the web after C|Net and Conde-Nast.

Curious as to how important BitTorrent is to the Microsoft ecosystem, I checked some established BT trackers.

Pirate Bay has about 1000 hits for “Windows 7″, but some of those are themes and whatnot. Currently, a seed labeled “Microsoft.Windows.7.Beta.1.Build.7000.x86.DVD-GENUiNE.iMAGE” has 4,580 seeders.

ISOHunt has a broken search (“The following terms are too common and are not included in your search: 07″), (duh!), so you’ll have to figure out how to reformat that so you don’t end up with the 7zip program or something. When you search for “windows7″ with no space, you get some mild results (Windows 7 Pre-Beta Build 6801 x64, 29 seeds), but it also suggests “Did you mean: windows 7″ and when you click that link you go back to the same error page! (duuuuhhhh!)

Mininova also finds plenty of Windows 7 torrents, including “Windows 7 Beta 1 Build 7000.0.081212-1400_client_en-us_Ultimate-GB1CULFRE_EN_DVD” with 5,624 seeders at this time.

So have at it! If Gizmodo doesn’t get busted, neither will you!

Peter Brittain