Bill Gates Essay -- Biography Biographies Computers Essays

Bill Gates William Henry Gates, III was born October 28, 1955 in Seattle, Washington. He was the middle child of three born to William and Mary Gates. ATrey,@ as he was called because of the III, was sent to a private school by his father, a lawyer, and mother, a former teacher now on several prestigous boards (Moritz, 238). At age 13, Bill had completely taught himself programming after taking a computer studies class. After scoring a perfect 800 on the mathematics half of the SAT, he graduated from Lakeside school and enrolled at Harvard University as a prelaw major. As a student Gates was a wonder. He received an A in an economics class without attending and cramming the night before the final exam. In June 1975, Bill Gates dropped out of Harvard to pursue a career in computers full time. Later that year after dropping out of Harvard he moved to New Mexico. There he and Allen Kay established Microsoft to produce their Basic for the MITS. Eighteen months later they were a few hundred thousand dollars richer and were hired by Tandy to develop software for its radio shack computers. Gates and Allen then moved their headquarters to Seattle, Washington. In Seattle, Gates re-wrote an operating system and called it MS-DOS, which stands for Microsoft Disk Operating System. Microsoft would eventually sell the rights of MS-DOS to IBM, making it a major computer corporation. Other computer companies wanted Microsoft to produce software for their computers, including Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak of Apple computers. With the operating system established, Gates and Microsoft set out to create applications software, for tasks such as financial analysis or word processing. Microsoft has continued being successful through the years and will be in the future as long as ! it keeps innov ating new and exciting computer software. Bill Gates has his eye on the future. He sees the world in a Apowerful, high-speed network-both within companies and across the so called Information Superhighway@ (Brandt, 57). He hopes to be on top of the Transformation from Personal Computers to nets. Gates predicts that an explosion of low-cost, high-capacity, networks will radically alter how we use technology in the upcoming decade. Now before Bill Gates came onto the scene in the early seventies, the main focus in the computer world was hardware. Chips, circuit boards, capacitors... ...hedgehog called Sonic, is the industry=s hottest property.@ In addition to Sega, AMr. Gates has also been talking to Time Warner and TCI about forming a venture, to be known as CableSoft, that should set standards for interactive TV.@(The Economist, 73) Bill Gates and his company Microsoft have been at the head of the rapidly changing computer industry for much of its existence. If profit margins and stock prices continue to grow and Microsoft products continue to be household names, the duo will remain in this position will into the future. Bibliography 1. Manes, Stephen; Andrews, Paul; Gates - How Microsoft=s Mogul Reinvented An Industry - And Made Himself The Richest Man In America. Doubleday 1993 2. AA Trojan hedgehog@, The Economist. January 22, 1994, p.73-74 3. AHigh noon for Billy the Kid?@, The Economist. June 24, 1995, P.59-60 4. Bitter, Gary G. AWillian H. Gates.@ Macmillan Encyclopedia of Computers. Macmillan Publishing: New York, NY, 1992, P.409-410. 5. Brandt, Richard. ABill Gate=s Vision.@ Business Week. June 27, 1994, P.56-62. 6. Moritz, Charles. AWilliam Gates.@ Current Biography. H.W. Wilson Company: New York, NY, 1991, P.237-241.

Sociolgical Imagination

Sociological Imagination Sociological Imagination can be defined as the ability to notice a difference in people due to their social circumstances, how their â€Å"social norms,† influence their lives. Sometimes these situations can lead to an outcome and it gives you an understanding as to why things happen the way they do. You understand what causes led to that specific outcome. Basically, you understand peoples lives because you can see how the outcome effects their lives and the people around them.Having an understanding of sociological imagination helps in the field of sociology because it alps you have a different perspective on peoples lives. I started dating a guy at the beginning of my senior year of high school. Not long after, we become inseparable. It didn't take very long for me to think I was in love. When I felt like it was the right time, we decided to have sex. I never thought that I would get pregnant the first time because we were safe, and I was on birth co ntrol. Fortunately, I didn't. As the months went on we would risk not using protection and I was still not getting pregnant.Stupidly, I thought well maybe I Just can not get pregnant since it has not happened to me yet. After about a year of dating, I missed my birth control for a week. About eight weeks after that I get really sick and can not keep any food down. My grandmother takes me to the doctor and I will never forget that moment when the doctor came back in and said the words I thought I would never hear. I was pregnant. My sister had gotten pregnant while she was still in high school, so my mother really depended on me to be the daughter that finished college and then started a life of my own. She was so disappointed in me.But the rest of my family viewed it as normal that I had gotten pregnant at 18. Many of my cousins started a family instead of going to college. 9 out of 11 of my cousins were teen parents. Along with the younger generation, my grandparents, aunts, and un cles also started their families very early. While I did not purposely try to start a family at my age, my family did not see it as a bad thing. My boyfriend stepped up in this situation and decided early on that he was not going to be like every other young dad and run off. He has changed every part of his life to give our baby the best life possible.A long time ago getting married at a very young age was socially acceptable, now it is morally wrong in many ultras. Since girls were married at a young age, teen pregnancy was accepted, also. In this generation teen pregnancy is still Just as common as it was then, but without the girls being married or even in a relationship. â€Å"1 . 3 in 10 teen American girls will get pregnant at least once before ago 20. That's nearly 750,000 teen pregnancies every year. 3. Less than 2 percent of teen moms earn a college degree by age 30. 5. The United States has one of the highest teen pregnancy rates in the western industrialized world. 10.Al most fifty percent of teens have never considered how pregnancy would affect their lives. (The National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy) Due to teen pregnancy rates being so high, Americans have to learn to accept and adapt to this being a new custom. â€Å"Based on a teen survey his organization conducted in 2009, a vast majority (eighty-seven percent) of teens who watched the MAT show 16 and Pregnant reported that they felt the show helped demonstrate to them the true hardships that teenage pregnancy can bring to both girls and boys. In contrast, very few (seventeen percent) felt the show actually glorified teen pregnancy. (Silvers) These shows help to show the struggles that all he young girls starring in them face. By putting their stories out there they are helping to reduce teen pregnancy rates. Even though there are shows to help try to reduce teen pregnancy, there are also movies and shows that make being sexually active teens look â€Å"cool,† or â €Å"popular. † Many movies show the virgin being made fun of for not being sexually active. Making sex look fun or cool results in teens having sex, which may lead to teen pregnancy. The social norm for young people is to graduate high school, go to college, get a career, and start a life of their own.

Affirmative Action And Its Effect On Minority Minorities...

Affirmative action is described in sociology as, policies and programs that aim to avoid discrimination and redress past discrimination through the active recruitment of qualified minorities for jobs, promotions, and educational opportunities. (i.e. Exp. Soc., pg 280). In other words, the law was put in place as an attempt to create pluralism in the United States structure of opportunity. When describing affirmative action, the generalized assumption is individuals being handed opportunities based only on their ethnicity. Whether or not that opinion rings through to the majority, consider the events that lead to the enactment of affirmative action in the first place. The structure of opportunity in the United States has always been a biased and unfair in its distribution of opportunities. Since the beginning, the structure of opportunity has always been in favor of whiter, and ultimately wealthier Americans. Segregation, discrimination, and complete disregard for people of different ethnicity and color made it as such. People of color were seen as an inferior, and ultimately poorer group of people than people who were white. In earlier time, a metaphorical â€Å"glass ceiling† held back student of different ethnicity from becoming more educated. The â€Å"glass ceiling† that held them back for so long was the structure of opportunity being as biased as it is. In essence, the economic conditions, culture, and other aspects of certain people had an impact on how they lived in society.Show MoreRelatedAffirmative Action Is Important For Society1649 Words   |  7 Pages Affirmative action Affirmative action is an attempt to address past discriminatory injustices which may be based on gender, race or ethnicity. Affirmative action may take the form of policies and programs which are mostly mandated by governments and designed to bring changes in organizations, companies and educational institutions. 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