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Bill Gates's new website: The Gates Notes
- pierrefar 17y agoThis is doing the rounds on the net too: http://www.thegatesnotes.com/robots.txt http://www.thegatesnotes.com/robots.txt It doesn't mention Bing. Amusing, and useless.
- walkon 17y agoWhy is it useless (I've never worked with robots.txt)? Are the /css and /js files not large enough to bother skipping?
- pierrefar 17y agoUseless in the sense it doesn't really need to mention Bing. Blocking /css and /js makes sense because they don't add value in being crawled. Not necessary, but doesn't hurt. Best practice: Always have a robots.txt file, even if it's empty.
- beza1e1 17y agoWhat is the reason for your Best Practice advice?
- mshafrir 17y agoLook at the comments... # robots.txt # # This file is to prevent the crawling and indexing of certain parts # of your site by web crawlers and spiders run by sites like Yahoo! # and Google. By telling these "robots" where not to go on your site, # you save bandwidth and server resources.
- thwarted 17y agoIt's a cut and paste from some sample file, so this doesn't indicate anything much. google search for the text in the comments ( http://tinyurl.com/ygtuanh http://tinyurl.com/ygtuanh ) has 49 hits, there would be more if I had not joined the lines together, I'm sure.
- lolcraft 17y agoBing ignores robots.txt anyway: http://blogs.perl.org/users/cpan_testers/2010/01/msnbot-must-die.html http://blogs.perl.org/users/cpan_testers/2010/01/msnbot-must...
- javery 17y agoWhy am I not surprised that it is using both WebForms and Silverlight... I see that big chunk of viewstate there Bill.
- kevingadd 17y agoI honestly wouldn't have guessed. The layout is understated, the page loads quickly, and it's easy to navigate and read. I wonder if the site is based on some existing content management system, or if it's something custom. It would be kind of a cool surprise if it turned out that Bill authored the site himself for fun (but that seems unlikely).
- netcan 17y agoWhy does it seem unlikely? It could be that he is using these technologies purely out of personal interest.
- cschep 17y agoI think it seems unlikely because we all think of BillG as a business man and not a hacker. Maybe I should only speak for myself, but the thought of him tinkering away into the early morning on his new site is such a wonderful juxtaposition of my image of him.
- profgubler 17y agoBut remember, Bill Gates started out as a hacker. He spent his whole high school days learning on a computer his Mom's Club purchased for their kids. He says he was probably one of 50 kids in the country that had that much access to a computer in his High School days.
- cschep 17y agoYeah totally, I certainly meant no disrespect. The man can hack. It'd be nothing but exciting to hear about him doing more of it.
- Raphael 17y agoSuch a childish signature.
- JacobAldridge 17y agoYup, he'll never make it in the real world if he doesn't master this fourth grade handwriting course.
- dnewcome 17y agoI think that Bill can do a world of good by sharing his thoughts via a blog like this. Assuming he is candid and fosters real communication, that is. Sections like 'What I'm thinking about/what I'm learning' is exactly the right attitude.
- Alex3917 17y agoThe problem is that Bill Gates only reads books that reinforce his existing beliefs. That's why he's so pro-KIPP, because he doesn't have any interest in authors like John Taylor Gatto. (Or at least this is what I heard from someone who had lunch with him recently.)
- dantheman 17y agoKIPP? Also, I'ma huge fan of the Underground History of American Education (http://www.johntaylorgatto.com/chapters/ http://www.johntaylorgatto.com/chapters/)
- jister 17y agoJust out of curiosity but how do you know this? EDIT: I am not being sarcastic or anything.
- Alex3917 17y agoBasically my friend tried telling him about how John Taylor Gatto's new book suggested that there were some unstated assumptions behind KIPP that were worth examining, but Gates wasn't at all interested in even talking about this, let alone reading the book.
- deleted 17y ago[deleted]
- unexpected 17y agoReally pretty, really well-done website. (Even if it's going to get grief because it uses Silverlight).
- moe 17y agoI humbly disagree. The fonts are microscopic here and when I increase the size to something half-readable then stuff gets pushed out the right side. (on the section-overview pages that is) I also found this sidebar on the right of the articles very distracting. Don't throw unrelated content at me while I'm reading.
- delackner 17y agoThis is one of the few sites I've browsed on a Windows machine that made me instinctively think "oh the fonts look like crap because someone designed it on Windows and didn't think about Mac usability", since I'm usually on a Mac. That the fonts look nearly unreadable at any size on a windows machine is hilarious.
- fronx 17y agoSome notes on the design: IMO { The navigation feels a little fragile, maybe because of the small font size and delicate lines. But it's also quite original, especially the "view by topic" branch. The right column (only visible on some pages) could easily be mistaken for advertising, possibly because of the tiny sans-serif type. Overall the style and copy gives a personal, likable impression. }
- thinkbohemian 17y agoNo favicon
- dskhatri 17y agoJust confirming.. built with Microsoft technology :) http://builtwith.com/?http%3A//www.thegatesnotes.com/ http://builtwith.com/?http%3A//www.thegatesnotes.com/
- terrellm 17y agoThe .ASPX extension in the URLs led me to make the same assumption
- vinhboy 17y ago// Workaround for a bug in ASP.NET Ajax Beta, you don't need this in the final version and this is also kind of funny: <!--[if lt IE 7]> ...
- thenduks 17y agoSeveral typos on the front page... I guess it's just another blog but, I don't know, I would expect Bill Gates to put his stuff through some proper proof-reading.
- ra 17y agoLulz: <!--[if lt IE 7]> <script type="text/javascript" src="/js/unitpngfix.js"></script> <link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="/css/ie6.css" /> <![endif]-->
- clofresh 17y agoI can has rss feed?
- rudin 17y agoFirst twitter and now a website? Looking over the content on the site I was depressed by all the philanthropy and environmentalism. Not that these aren't good things but I think Bill has been so successful at building software and corporations that his time would be better used teaching people these things. Imagine the articles and insight we could get if he would convert into someone like Paul Graham.
- staunch 17y agoI'm as much of a believer in the power of entrepreneurship as it gets, but I disagree. Having his brain power, management ability, and billions of dollars directed towards helping humanity's least fortunate is just about as optimal a situation as I can imagine.
- whatusername 17y agoactually, I completely disagree. What Bill was truly good at, was hiring smart people and getting them to all work towards something big. Putting a computer on every desk was a big goal. Eradicating Malaria and the other things the foundation is working on are big goals. And to be honest - I'm impressed by the way he is going about it. This site isn't about him resting on his laurels - looking back at the success he had. This is the posts/information on what he is working on now. So it wont have the deep insight that he would have about software/corporations. But the fact he is applying that insight to Philanthropy and to the world of NGO's is fantastic and I applaud him for it.
- onoj 17y agoTotally agree - and also at the very least I rest comfortable knowing that such a large amount of wealth (Most of Buffets' empire also) is bookmarked to at least try and do good. Not somewhere else (ie: funding weapons)
- nazgulnarsil 17y agorich nerds are the best hope for major change IMO (a rather randian outlook I admit). humanity is currently stuck in a quagmire of democracy and egalitarianism that doesn't seem nearly as beneficial as it would have us believe.
- mcav 17y agoDo you think he's actually writing/doing all this himself? (vs. having an intern or something like that be his social media face)
- tibbon 17y agoI'm sure he's got some other people doing stuff on the site (code, server, etc), but I'm likely to believe that this is indeed him writing the content. Maybe he's got someone proofing it, but Bill like most of us probably find something nice about writing out your thoughts and interacting with people through a blog.
- pbhjpbhj 17y agoDoesn't validate for HTML or CSS and has to include IE specific fixes for proper display of PNG. Wish he'd had to code it to spec for himself.
- sjs382 17y agoNo RSS feed? :/
- blintson 17y ago<tin-foil-hat> He could be doing all this because he wants to run for office. The site frequently refers to Gates in the third person, it's kinda structured like a lot of political candidates sites. </tin-foil-hat>
- zyb09 17y agoMicrosoft for President!
- dskhatri 17y agoIn the introduction note, Bill says: "I take a lot of notes, and often share them and my own thoughts on the subject with others through email" Besides email (which isn't that great if you don't have GMail style threads), I wonder whether he and other prominent personalities use a closed discussion forum to engage in discourse about interesting topics like HN does. I can understand why he would be hesitant to comment on a public forum like HN. That said, it's great to see people like PG, DHH (and others) mix with the no-names (or future-names) on HN.
- rmason 17y agoI think Gates should turn comments on. People should be registered, perhaps using Facebook/LinkedIn credentials. I do agree he needs to be exposed to opinions outside his comfort zone.
- pmorici 17y agoI find this line from the greeting letter a bit odd, "It often feels like I'm back in school, as I spend a lot of my time learning about issues I'm passionate about." Didn't he drop out of college to start MS presumably because he felt like the things he was learning in school were a waste of his time?
- metra 17y agoWhat about elementary, middle and high school?
- projectileboy 17y agoI don't think that's accurate - from interviews, speeches and his own writings, he's always sounded complimentary towards his Harvard experiences; it's just that starting Micro-Soft was the right opportunity at the right time, and he grabbed it.
- hrabago 17y agoThere's no conflict there. In an actual school, you're not the one setting the curriculum. This involves a lowest common denominator of a variety of subjects, some of which you'll never apply. I imagine that now he's spending his time studying things he's interested in and likely directly related to things he's doing or trying to accomplish.
- intellectronica 17y agoIt's amazing how the design of the website almost cries "don't read me".