For a long time, I lionized Bill Gates and gave a lot of credit to Microsoft.

For those really familiar with the whole silly tale of how MicroSoft and IBM finally hooked up way back when, it reads more like a comedy of errors where two drunk men stumble onto a hidden treasure, than any grand vision or brilliant breakthrough.

Gates just happened to be in the right place at the right time. He's not so much a visionary as he is an astute and ruthless manipulator.

Gates and Allen got started porting BASIC to micros which was distributed on paper tape. (The new breed of computers was called micros when they first appeared in the early-mid 70s.)

About this time, Woz and Jobs introduced the Apple II, with integer basic in ROM. They followed up with the Apple II+ (my first computer!) with AppleSoft in ROM. MicroSoft, as you may guess, had written the new version of Basic for Apple. The Apple II+ was a wild success, and but for two fatal shortcomings - a 40 column display that was all uppercase - it might have been the direct ancestor to the personal computers we all use today.

When IBM came to Gates looking for an OS for their planned micro to compete against the Apple II, the future billionaire sent the computer giant's reps to see Gary Kildahl, the developer of CP/M, at Digital Research. Bothered by IBM's required non-desclosure papers, so the story goes, Kildahl's wife sent them packing.

Not one to let a naked blonde stroll twice through his bedroom (and who would?), Gates and Allen found a CP/M rip-off which they purchased and offered to IBM for their new micro, to be called the PC. The OS became DOS 1, and the rest is history, and a load of money.

Way back when MicroSoft sold BASIC on paper tape, Gates was already bitching about software theft. Over the years, Gates basic philosophy has been that no else may cheat but he.

So I think the stipulation that Microsoft must finally reveal ALL of Windows' inner workings to the rest of the world is bound to level the playing field for anyone who dares to compete with the software tyranny of Microsoft. That Microsoft has helped standardize the PC hardware and software is an undeniable benefit, but it's long been clear that Microsoft has kept certain information to itself, to the deteriment of its competitors.

But what if Gates had been asleep when the blonde made her curtain call? Maybe we wouldn't have ended up with the cobbled-together hodgepodge which became the WIntel platform, and some real visionaries might have been the ones who determined the course of personal computing over the next several decades.

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