Bill Gates

BILL GATES

William Henry “Bill” Gates III (born October 28, 1955) is an American business magnate, philanthropist, investor, computer programmer, and inventor.^[3][4][5] In 1975, Gates co-founded Microsoft, the world’s largest PC software company, with Paul Allen. During his career at Microsoft, Gates held the positions of chairman, CEO and chief software architect, and was the largest individual shareholder until May 2014.^[6][a] Gates has authored and co-authored several books.

Starting in 1987, Gates was included in the Forbes list of the world’s wealthiest people^[9] and was the wealthiest overall from 1995 to 2014—excluding a few years after the Financial crisis of 2007–08.^[10] Between 2009 and 2014 his wealth more than doubled from $40 billion to more than $82 billion.^[11] Between 2013 and 2014 his wealth increased by $15 billion.^[12] Gates is currently the richest man in the world.^[13]

Gates is one of the best-known entrepreneurs of the personal computer revolution. Gates has been criticized for his business tactics, which have been considered anti-competitive, an opinion which has in some cases been upheld by numerous court rulings.^[14][15] Later in his career Gates pursued a number of philanthropic endeavors, donating large amounts of money to various charitable organizations and scientific research programs through the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, established in 2000.

Gates stepped down as Chief Executive Officer of Microsoft in January 2000. He remained as Chairman and created the position of Chief Software Architect for himself. In June 2006, Gates announced that he would be transitioning from full-time work at Microsoft to part-time work, and full-time work at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. He gradually transferred his duties to Ray Ozzie, chief software architect and Craig Mundie, chief research and strategy officer. Ozzie later left the company. Gates’s last full-time day at Microsoft was June 27, 2008. He stepped down as Chairman of Microsoft in February 2014, taking on a new post as technology advisor to support newly appointed CEO Satya Nadella.

Baahubali Review

BAAHUBALI-the Beginning Review                            source-the guardian

The most expensive Indian movie ever made turns out to have spent a fair bit on getting one man to the top of a cliff and then leaving him hanging. SS Rajamouli’s Baahubali – a Telugu production, dubbed into Tamil and releasing in two parts (Baahubali: The Conclusion follows next year) – reportedly set its producers back around $40 million: pocket change by Hollywood standards, a sign of how the movie world’s other half live. Yet for once with these lavish items, the budget isn’t the whole story: the impressive results only set one to wondering why the American studios don’t insist on getting more for their money.

The eponymous hero (“The One with Strong Arms”) embodies several legends for the price of one. Plucked from a river, the infant Baahubali could be Moses; shifting a stone shrine several hundred feet, his teenage self is as hefty as Hercules; swinging from vines so as to climb the waterfall his village sits under, he’s as romantic a figure as Tarzan.

The film, like its hero, keeps flexing its muscles; Rajamouli clearly asked “What can’t we do with this cash?” You want to see a man wrestling a bull with his bare hands? You got it. Two lovers fleeing an avalanche on a rock? Check. A hero swatting 10,000 arrows using his sword alone? Why not.

New frontiers unfold before our eyes: one moment we’re witnessing mildly risqué canoodling in a forest of orchids, the next prowling the streets of a fortified city where hundreds of flogged and flogging extras have been charged with erecting a towering golden statue. (Again with the Moses comparisons.) The final 45 minutes roam a vast battlefield that, with its human shields and Boadicea-style murder chariots, makes Helms Deep resemble a punch-up in a chip shop. At each turn, the money’s right there on screen, yet what’s most striking is how these resources have been marshalled – to enhance, rather than clutter up, the narrative throughline.

In this, Baahubali demonstrates the pleasing, straight-ahead simplicity of certain videogames: whenever our hero accomplishes a task, some new challenge presents itself. Upon scaling that waterfall, the adult Baahubali (the genial, moustachioed Prabhas) finds he’s strayed into a civil war; only with a glimpse of warrior princess Avanthika (Tamannaah Bhatia) does he sense which side to pick. Their slyly feminist pairing makes some headway, yet that last-act battle forms part of an extended flashback that reveals the full extent of the dynastic tangle they’ve charged into. (The decision to split one epic into two films here makes narrative and economic sense: this mess will require some cleaning up.)

Throughout, Rajamouli strikes a near-perfect balance between physicality and poetics. That waterfall becomes both mirror and measure of personal growth; one lingering slo-mo shot of a warrior’s chainmail in motion would stir a Zhang Yimou or Wong Kar-wai into renewed action. It’s merely cute when Baahubali plunges into a lake to paint the hand the dozing Avanthika has let slip into the waters, yet the action has a lovely pay-off: this impromptu tattoo is seen to complete one on the hero’s bicep during a later embrace. Unlike the committee scripting of, say, The Scorpion King, a lot of Baahubali appears to have been written in the stars.

And that’s finally the film’s appeal: it’s a throwback, the kind of peppy serial that would have graced the multiplex in the days before product-placement, billion-dollar PR campaigns and obligation 3D, when the sole components required for a blockbuster were a hero, a villain, a few fights, a few songs, and a happy ending. Rajamouli defers on the latter for now, but his skilful choreography of these elements shucks off any cynicism one might carry into Screen 1: wide-eyed and wondrous, his film could be a blockbuster reboot, or the first blockbuster ever made, a reinvigoration of archetypes that is always entertaining, and often thrilling, to behold. Roll on 2016.