Bill Gates. The Road Ahead Chapter 1. The First Part of the Road. I wrote my first program for a computer when I was thirteen years old. A program tells a computer to do something. My program told the computer to play a game. This computer was very big and very slow. It didn't even have a computer screen. But I thought it was kid (ам.) - ребенок; wonderful. I was just a kid, but the computer did everything I told it to do. And even today, that's what I love about computers. When I write a good program, it always works perfectly, every time. The computer was our toy. We grew up with it. And when we grew up, we brought our toy with us. Now the computer is in our homes and in our offices [' fisiz]. It has changed our lives [laivz] and it is changing them again, because now the computers are coming together to make a new system. In this system, computers all over the world are beginning to work together. Our computers will be our telephones, library ['laibr ri] - our post office, our library, and our banks. библиотека; When we talk about this new system, we call it the Internet. This book will try to answer questions about the future of the Internet – what it will be like, and how we will use it. Sometimes when we talk about the future of the Internet, we call it the "Information Highway". * * * The Information Highway, when it comes, is going to bring new ways of doing things. New worry ['w ri] - ways are strange, and sometimes people worry беспокоиться; about them, but they are also exciting. I'm very happy that I will be a part of this strange new time. I've felt this happiness and excitement before. excitement - волнение; After I wrote that first program at the age of age [ei ] - возраст; cost - стоил; thirteen, my friend Paul [p :l] Allen and I spent a lot of time using computers. Back then computers were very expensive. It cost forty dollars an hour to use one. We made some of our money during the summers, when we worked for computer companies. My friend Paul knew a lot more about the learnt [l :nt] - учился; machines than I did. I was more interested in the programs. But I learnt from him. One day in 1972, when I was sixteen and he was nineteen, he showed me something that he was reading. It was about a company called Intel that had a new microprocessor [,maikr u'pr uses ] chip. A microprocessor chip is the part of the computer that thinks. This new one wasn't very smart, but we wanted to see if we could write a program for it. In the end, we made a program for it, but we didn't make much money from it. The next microprocessor from Intel came out in the spring of 1974. It was much smarter than the earlier one. When we read about it, I told Paul that the days of the big computers were finished. But it was another new idea that excited us more. In December of that year, we saw a picture of the Altair 8800. The Altair was a microcomputer (a small computer) with the new Intel microprocessor chip. When we saw that, we thought "Oh no! People are going to write real programs for this chip!" I was sure of this, and I wanted to be part of it. It took us five weeks of hard work, but in the end we did it. We had a program for the Altair and we had something more. We had the world's first company that wrote programs for microcomputers. In time we named it "Microsoft." Starting a company isn't easy. Sometimes it means that you can't do other things that you like. I loved college. I liked having conversations and sharing ideas with so many smart people. But I knew that I had to choose. That spring, Paul decided to leave his job and I decided to leave college. I was nineteen years old. Chapter 2. Beginnings. To understand the future, it helps to look at the past. More then a hundred and fifty years ago, a British man named Charles Babbage had an idea about a machine that could work with numbers. He wanted to make a machine that could follow different orders to do order - приказ; different jobs. Today, we call this sort of machine a computer, and we call the orders rule [ru:l] - правило; software. Software is a group of rules that you can give to a machine to tell it how to do something. Computer programs are software. For the next hundred years, people worked on Babbage's idea. Finally, in the 1940th, they built the first computer. The United States and Great Britain worked on it together during the war, and the work was secret. Three of the most important men who helped to build it were Alan Turing, Claude [kl :d] Shannon and John Von Neumann [f n 'n im n]. Even before the war, Claude Shannon was interested in "thinking" machines. He showed how small switches could be the computer's alphabet. In this system, a switch that was off meant "true" and a switch that was on meant "not true". This simple system is called the binary system, and computers still use it today. John Von Neumann, an American born in add - добавить; Hungary, added something just as important. He had an idea about how computers could use a memory in powerful ways. As soon as this was possible, the modern computer was born. It is not always possible for a computer to keep - хранить; keep all its information in its memory without - без; without changing it. Often the computer has to make the information smaller so that its memory can hold more of it at one time. Many times it does this before it moves the information to another computer. Each year we'll be moving more data. Data is another word for information. Almost all of the data that we get today in different ways will come through our computer, and ring - звонить; the computer will send it to different movie ['mu:vi] - (ам.) фильм; machines around the house. If the computer gets a voice message, for example, the probably - наверно; telephone will ring. If the message comes as kind [kaind] - вид; a picture or pictures – as a movie, for yet - еще; example – it will show up on the computer screen. There will probably be other kinds of information, too, but we can't know yet what it will be, because the future is always full of surprises. There are no surprises in the past, but there are lessons. Companies that put their money into the Information Highway will try not to make the same mistakes that other computer companies have made during the last twenty years. In the past, they spent too much time working on the machine and not enough time on the software. When we started Microsoft, we worked with MITS, the company that built the Altair 8800. By 1977, other companies – Apple, Commodore and Radio Shack – were also making small computers, and we sold them our software. Our software was an important part of these computers, because users could write their programs for it, too. But users were doing another thing with our software, too; they were stealing it. One person bought it and then shared it with share (with) - делиться (с); many other computer users by making copies of the software. Sadly, this stealing disappear [,dis 'pi ] - of software has not disappeared. исчезать; Even with this problem, we were still selling a lot of software, and not only to American companies. By 1979, almost half of our business was coming from Japan. In 1979, Paul and I moved Microsoft to a town near Seattle [si tl], Washington. The company was growing. Microsoft was doing so well because we made only software, never computers. The computer companies came to us for the programs. And because almost all of them bought their software from us, our programming language, Microsoft BASIC, was the most important computer programming language. Computers and their software are different from many other things you buy because they can become more useful. If you buy a computer because you want to play computer games, the computer becomes more useful each time a company makes a new game. In the beginning, television was not as important in our lives as it is today. At first, there weren't many television shows. But as reason [ri:zn] - причина; companies sold more televisions, there were more reasons to make more shows, more people wanted to buy televisions. The same thing happened with compact disc music machines. When compact disc machines first arrived in the stores, you couldn't find many of your favorite singers favorite - (ам.) любимый; or songs on compact discs. But when singer - певец; enough people began to buy the machines, song - песня; music companies had to start making more discs. Today, when you want to buy music, you usually buy a compact disc. These lessons are important for the computer companies. Companies have to remember that people want their computers to do as many different things as possible. In 1980, two men from IBM came to Microsoft to talk about personal computers, smaller computers that people could use at home or in small businesses. IBM wanted to have these new computers ready in less than a year. It also wanted us to make the software. IBM idea seemed wonderful. We wanted to seem - казаться; be a part of this. The software system that low - низкий; we made for them was called MS-DOS. We gave them a very low price for using it, and their computers with our software sold very well. Soon other people began to write software that built on top of the MS-DOS system. This was good news for us, because in this way our system became more useful for everyone. For a few years, more than half of all personal computers in business were IBM computers. The business we did with IBM was very important to us, but in 1992, after some difficulties with different software systems for new computers, we stopped our work with them. Nothing that you sell will do well forever unless - если не; unless you work on it and make it better. instead [in'sted] - вместо, We made MS-DOS better and better, but in взамен; the end we stopped making it. Instead we completely [k m'pli:tli] - sell Microsoft's Windows software. We are полностью. planning to make a completely new Windows system every two or three years. Everyone makes mistakes now and then. What is important is what you do after these mistakes. The secret to winning in our business is change. I believe a company can stay on top by making the changes at the right time. Chapter 3. Some Things Computers Can Do for Us. When I was a kid, the Ed Sullivan was on kid - ребенок; television at eight o'clock on Sunday nights. You were in front of the television at eight o'clock or you missed it. And no one wanted to miss the Ed Sullivan Show. We decide what we watch, but television companies decide when we will watch it. That's the way I watched the Ed Sullivan Show thirty years ago, and that's the way most of us will watch the news tonight. In the early 1980s, the VCR began arrive in homes. The VCR is a machine that makes a copy of movies or TV shows so that you can watch them later or even keep them. Now you can choose when you want to watch something. Talking on the telephone has changed, too. Before the telephone answering machine, you came home after work and you didn't know that someone wanted to speak with you. Now we can listen to our messages and call people back when we want to. In the future there will be television as there is now, but there will also be television through the computer. You will be able to watch anything that has already been on TV, at any time you want. Your mail will also arrive in this way, and the computer will hold it for you until you until - до тех пор, пока are ready to read it. (не); But the Information Highway won't be just a television and a mail-box. It will give us much more. It will help us to learn, to shop, to look after our money, and to talk with our family and friends. It won't matter where in the world they are. Computer screens will be better than they are now. Their pictures will be clearer, and we will be able to use some of them to write draw [dr :] - рисовать; or draw on. Others will work together with the telephone, and will show us the face of the people who are calling us. In today's world, people need to work while travelling. For years we've had the laptop, a small computer that you carry with you, and laptop - ноутбук; now there are computers that go in your pocket. These pocket computers carry information, and they also send letters or play computer games with you. In a few years' time you won't keep money in your pockets, because you'll use your pocket computer to buy things. It will be your littke bank, and only you will be able to use it. One of the problems that people think of when they hear about the future of the Internet is "Too much information." They worry ['w ri] - think that the Internet will be a mountain of беспокоиться; data, and that the mountain will fall on them. But "too much information" is not a new problem, and it's not a problem that we only have with computers. Think about books for a minute. When you go to a library, do you worry about reading all the books there? No, of course not. You know what you are interested in. You know what you want to read. And the library system helps you find it. The Internet has filters. A filter helps you choose the information you want. Tomorrow's filters will be better than today's. If you are interested in football, your computer will show you the winners of the football games first you will ask it about sports. Of course, you'll have to tell it things first. The filter will work better if it knows more about you. Today's computers are like first-day workers. You have to give careful orders about everything. And these computers will order - приказ; always be first-days workers. They cannot learn from you. A filter that knows a lot about you can learn. It will remember what you're good at. be good at - хорошо It will remember what you like and don't разбираться в; like. And it will try to help you in other ways. Because filters will learn, they will also change. When a filter becomes very smart, we call it an "agent". It will even have a voice. Some people don't like the idea of talking to a computer. "It's too strange," they say. But we talk to machines already. When your car or your computer doesn't work, you shout instead (of) - вместо; at it. We shout at things all the time. Now, instead of shouting, we will be able to talk. But most of this won't happen for several years. Building the future Internet – the build [bild] - строить; Information Highway – will be a big job. The kind [kaind] - вид; system will have to work with many share - делить(ся); different kinds of computers and other information machines, too. And it will be since [sins] - c; (зд.) со expensive to build. But building it has begun времен; already. The Internet is a group of computers that share information. The Internet is already here, and it is the most important new idea in the computer business since the personal computer. The Internet uses the telephone systems. When I send you a message, it goes from my computer to the telephone, and then from there to my Internet company. Then my company sends it to your Internet company, and your company sends it to you. The Internet is a wonderful system but it has some problems. One of the most serious problems is hackers, people who know a lot about computers and use this to get into other people's computer systems. On November 2, 1988, thousands of computers using the Internet began to slow down. Many of them just stopped. Companies lost work hours and money. The reason for the trouble was a program that a reason [ri:zn] - причина; hacker put into the system several months trouble [tr bl] - before. беспокойство; But most of the time, the Internet works smoothly ['smu: li] - smoothly. Millions of people are using it гладко; today, and they are happy with it. Another change for the Internet is coming, too. Soon you will see movies on your television or on your computer screen because you chose them. These movies will come from cable television companies. Cable television and telephone companies will fight to get you as a customer for the offer - предлагать.