July 12, 2005
I was just surfing around, looking to see any updates on GnuCash or such personal financial software to find a Linux replacement for Microsoft Money – the last nail in the coffin so I can stop using Microsoft products (other than gaming) – and came across a comparison of books that Bill Gates and Linus Torvalds had written.
I looked at an “equivalents” page found at http://www.linuxrsp.ru/win-lin-soft/table-eng.html and noticed under the ‘other’ listing that Bill Gates had written a book called “Road Ahead” and Linus Torvalds wrote a book called “Just for Fun”.
When Mr. Gates first released his book, I picked up a copy - I was joining a book club and don’t think it cost me very much, maybe a dollar or something. I’d read his many speeches at the time claiming that NT was the way of the future.
After flipping through the book and drifting off to sleep more than once, I decided to see what was on the accompanying CD. I was running Windows 2000 at the time, the latest upgraded releast which was based on NT technology.
“autorun” kicked in, and the CD spun … and quickly aborted stating that the software wouldn’t run on my version of Windows.
Oh the irony: a book and CD about how NT’s technology is the “road ahead”, yet the software on the CD wouldn’t run in Windows 2000, based on NT.