Funny, Colin. Most people won't get the joke but that was the shell program
created by the team that was led by ... er, drumroll please, Melinda French,
who was soon-to-be Melinda Gates!
So, Ms. French-Gates was the unit manager of a project that, oh what the
heck, I'll lift from Wikipedia:
"Microsoft Bob was a product released by Microsoft in March 1995 as an
adventure game-like interface for performing tasks on one's computer.
Despite its ambitious nature, Bob failed to penetrate the market and is
considered a failure for Microsoft. Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer named Bob as
one project "we [had] undertaken ... where we decided that we have not
succeeded and let's stop."
Did Ballmer say that before or after Bill became Melinda's spouse? The
answer is he said it in July, 2006 and the full, truly embarrassing quote,
at least for Ms. Gates is:
"We've been fortunate. There is nothing that we have undertaken -- with a
couple of exceptions like Microsoft Bob that I'll cop to in advance -- where
we have decided that we have not succeeded and let's stop," Ballmer said.
"We've either succeeded, or we're still telling you we're going to succeed."
OK, that's a nearly 2 am rant down memory lane. Maybe the Gates Foundation
will send me a few bucks now to shut up and go to bed! rofl
