- Bill Gates
William Henry Gates III (born October 28, 1955) is an American entrepreneur, philanthropist, and the chairman of Microsoft, the software company he founded with Paul Allen. During his career at Microsoft he has held the positions of CEO and chief software architect, and he remains the largest individual shareholder with more than 8% of the common stock. "Forbes" magazine's list of The World's Billionaires has ranked him as the richest person in the world since 1995, …
- Matthew Windows
Matthew Windows (born April 5, 1973) is an English cricketer. He is a right-handed batsman and a slow left-arm bowler. He has played First Class cricket for Gloucestershire since the outset of his career in 1992. Windows played four Youth Test matches in 1992, making his debut against Pakistan and appearing three times in the Sri Lankan visit in August/September of the same year. Windows' father is former Gloucestershire cricketer Anthony Windows, …
- Mark Russinovich
Mark Russinovich is a software engineer and author who works for Microsoft as a Technical fellow. He is a regular contributor to "TechNet Magazine" and "Windows IT Pro" magazine (previously called "Windows NT Magazine") on the subject of the Architecture of Windows 2000 and was co-author of "Inside Windows 2000" (4th edition). Russinovich is the author of many tools used by Windows NT and Windows 2000 kernel-mode programmers, …
- Raymond Chen
Raymond Chen is a well-known developer on the Windows Shell team at Microsoft. Since joining Microsoft in 1992, Chen has worked on OS/2, Windows 95, DirectX, and later versions of Windows. Outside of Microsoft, he is known for his articles on Windows programming. He is a popular speaker at Microsoft PDCs and other conferences. He is also known for his dry humor, and his custom of wearing suits at work.
- Ion
In Unix computing, Ion (aka IonWM) is a tiling and tabbing window manager for the X Window System. It is designed such that it is possible to manage windows using only a keyboard, without needing a mouse. It is the successor of PWM and is written by the same author. Since the first release of Ion in the summer 2000, similar alternative window management ideas have begun to show in other new window managers: Larswm, ratpoison, StumpWM, WMI, and TrsWM.
- Charles Petzold
Charles Petzold (born February 2, 1953, New Brunswick, New Jersey) is an American programmer and technical author on Microsoft Windows applications. His surname is pronounced like "pet's old." He graduated with a Master of Science in Mathematics from Stevens Institute of Technology in 1975. Aside from writing books about Windows programming he has contributed to various magazines about computers.
- Jeffrey Richter
Jeffrey Richter is a co-founder of Wintellect. He has written a number of books on programming for Windows and .NET.
- Matt Pietrek
Matt Pietrek (born 27 January 1966) is a computer specialist and author specializing in MS Windows. Pietrek has written several books on the subject and, for eight years, wrote the column "Under the Hood" in MSJ (and subsequently) MSDN Magazine. As of April 2004 he has been working at Microsoft, initially on Visual Studio.
- Tom Miller
Tom Miller (born in 1950) is a software developer who is employed by Microsoft. Miller worked as a member of the original team of developers who followed Dave Cutler from DEC to Microsoft, where he initially started working in the networking group. After less than two years, Miller moved to the Windows NT team, where he worked with Gary Kimura on file systems. In particular, he wrote the original 50 page specification document for the NT File System.
- Brad Wardell
Bradley R. Wardell (born 24 June, 1971 in Texas), commonly known as Brad Wardell, is an American residing in Michigan. He is the founder and current President and CEO of Stardock, a software development and computer games company. Brad graduated in 1994 from Western Michigan University with a degree in Electronic Engineering. His first notable achievement was the design and implementation of "Galactic Civilizations" for OS/2, …
- Bryce Cogswell
Bryce Cogswell is a Ph.D. and computer expert for MS Windows based computers. In cooperation with Mark Russinovich he created in 1996 the web site sysinternals.com to host their advanced system utilities and technical information. Microsoft acquired Sysinternals in July, 2006. He has also founded the company Winternals Software. On July 18, 2006, it was announced that he and Russinovich would be joining Microsoft.
- Inxile Entertainment
InXile Entertainment was formed in late 2002 by Brian Fargo, a founder of Interplay Productions. The company is located in Newport Beach, California. While pitching his idea for a "snarky" version of the classic fantasy role-playing game "The Bard's Tale" at the Electronic Entertainment Expo, Brian commented that he felt as though he was in exile - hence the company's name.
- John Vanderslice
John Vanderslice (born May 22, 1967 in Gainesville, Florida) is an American musician, formerly of mk Ultra but now performing with his own band. After mk Ultra broke up in 1999, Vanderslice wasted little time building a solo reputation.
- Dave Cutler
David Neil Cutler, Sr. (born March 13, 1942) is a noted software engineer, designer and developer of several operating systems including the RSX-11, VMS and VAXELN systems of Digital Equipment Corporation and Windows NT from Microsoft.
- Ellen Feiss
Ellen Feiss (born circa 1987) became an Internet phenomenon after her 2002 Errol Morris-directed television commercial for Apple Computer's Switch campaign grew into a cult hit. In the commercial, the then-14-year-old American high school student complained that her father's Windows PC had broken. Fueling the popularity of the advertisement was the speculation that Feiss was under the influence of illicit drugs during the filming of the commercial, …
- Venetian Snares
Venetian Snares is the performing name of Aaron Funk, an electronic music producer and performer from Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada. He is known for making experimental electronic music often in odd numbered time signatures. He is a prolific artist, having released records on the History of the Future, Isolate/DySLeXiC ResPonSe, Addict, Zod, Distort, Sublight, Low-Res, Planet Mu and Hymen record labels.
- James Allchin
James Edward Allchin (born in Grand Rapids, Michigan in 1951) is a former executive at Microsoft, where he was responsible for leading the development of a number of Microsoft's operating systems, streaming media products and Internet services. He worked for Microsoft for over 16 years before retiring in early 2007, on the day that Microsoft officially released the Windows Vista operating system to consumers.
- Jeff Vogel
Jeff Vogel is the president and primary programmer for the Spiderweb Software company, which produces shareware computer games for Macintosh and Windows PC platforms. Jeff currently lives in Seattle, Washington. To date, his most successful games have been the "Exile" series, its facelifted cousin the "Avernum" series, and the "Geneforge" series. His personal site, Irony Central, is home to sarcastic social commentary, humor pieces, …
- Marc McDonald
Marc B. McDonald was Microsoft's first salaried employee (not counting Monte Davidoff, who wrote the maths package for Basic for a flat fee). He is credited with designing the FAT File System for Standalone Basic which was the file system for the MS-DOS operating system and Microsoft Windows. He left the company in January 1984, citing a reason that Microsoft had gotten "too big" (Microsoft was at around four hundred employees at that time).
- Andrea Immer
Andrea Immer Demystifying wine for the American audience is a worthy goal, and here Master Sommelier Immer (she's one of just 10 women to hold the title) makes an accomplished stab at a difficult task. In chapters such as
- David A. Solomon
David A. Solomon is a computer expert in the category of the Microsoft Windows operating system. He is well known for his in-depth knowledge of system internals. Together with Mark Russinovich he published several books on this topic. Under the hood of the sysinternals.com label both are doing teaching for the software industry in courses held all over the world.
- Brad Silverberg
Brad is a founding partner of Ignition. He invests in software, infrastructure, and consumer companies. Brad represents Ignition as director on the boards of GlobalScholar, Seven, SourceLabs, and ice.com. Prior to founding Ignition, Brad is best known as an industry pioneer who built the Microsoft Windows franchise and led Microsoft's Internet turnaround.
- Cody Brocious
Cody Brocious is a computer programmer who helped Travis Watkins and Jon Lech Johansen developing the Python program PyMusique. He's also a developer of the Alky Project, a tool that converts a Windows executable to a Mac OS X or Linux binary. The Alky Project is maintained by Falling Leaf Systems, LLC, which he co-founded in 2006.
- Harri Porten
Harri Porten (born 1972) is a software engineer. Porten, a KDE developer and former Trolltech employee, is the CEO of Froglogic, a consultancy company related to Qt development. He currently lives in Hamburg, Germany. Porten originally wrote the KJS JavaScript engine for Konqueror, the KDE project's file manager and web browser. He also contributed to the development of KPPP, the KDE project's Internet dialer.
- Tjeerd Hoek
Tjeerd Hoek (born 1970 in Netherlands) is the director of user experience design for Microsoft Windows. He manages the team that designs the interface and user experience across Windows and its subset of applications. In 1992, he graduated from Delft University of Technology with a masters in Industrial Design Engineering to pursue a career in industrial design. Later in 1994, he joined Microsoft to work on products such as Office, MSN and most recently, …
- Mike Muuss
Michael John Muuss (October 16, 1958 - November 20, 2000) was the author of the freeware network tool Ping. A graduate of Johns Hopkins University, Muuss was a senior scientist at the U.S. Army Research Lab in Maryland when he died, specialising in geometric solid modeling, ray-tracing, MIMD architectures and digital computer networks.
- Noah Falstein
Noah Falstein is a freelance game designer and producer who has been in the video game industry since 1980. He was one of the first 10 employees at Lucasfilm Games (which became LucasArts Entertainment), DreamWorks Interactive (which became EALA), and The 3DO Company (which became defunct). Currently he runs The Inspiracy and writes the "Better by Design" column for "Game Developer" magazine.
- Jim Keogh
Jim Keogh is the author of more than 70 books including five "...For Dummies" books. Keogh introduced PC programming across America in his "Popular Electronics" magazine column in 1982, four years after Apple Computer started in a garage. He developed the Electronic Commerce Track at Columbia University and was a team member who built one of the first Windows applications by a Wall Street firm, featured by Bill Gates in 1986 on Windows on Wall Street.
- Quentin Stafford-Fraser
James Quentin Stafford-Fraser was instrumental in the creation of the Trojan room coffee pot: the first webcam. He wrote the XCoffee client program which allowed the state of the coffee pot to be displayed on a screen. Quentin studied Computer Science at the University of Cambridge and became the first college Computer Officer in 1989 working for Gonville and Caius College.
- Mark Zbikowski
Mark Zbikowski (born March 21 1956 in Detroit, Michigan) was a Microsoft Architect and one of the first computer hackers. He started working at the company only a few years after its inception, leading efforts in MS-DOS, OS/2, Cairo and Windows NT. In 2006 he was honored for 25 years of service with the company, the first employee to reach this milestone other than Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer.
- Servan Keondjian
In 1993, Servan Keondjian co-founded RenderMorphics, a company specialising in cutting-edge 3D graphics technologies. RenderMorphics rapidly became a world leader in its field with the widely acclaimed RealityLab technology. Microsoft bought RenderMorphics in 1995 with the aim of incorporating the RealityLab technology into Windows. Servan subsequently headed up the DirectX 3D team at Microsoft responsible for integrating 3D graphics into Windows (Direct3D).
- Jacek Skalmierski
Jacek Skalmierski is a Polish computer programmer. He was the creator of the first widely popular English-Polish, Polish-English dictionary software. The DOS version monopolized the market in the early 1990s, and had thousands of enthusiastic users. However, the Windows version did not match the original in popularity. In the late 1990s, it was largely displaced by the Collins dictionary by Young Digital Poland.
- Neil Konzen
Neil Konzen was one of Microsoft's earliest employees. He was head of Microsoft's Macintosh programs projects, including MultiPlan and Word for the Mac in 1984. He was later tasked with leading the team that created the second version of Windows at Microsoft, after the failure of the original version. Konzen is also known for creating, with Bill Gates, the infamous DONKEY.BAS game for the IBM PC
- Dan Aloni
Dan Aloni (born November 1, 1982) is a software engineer best known for the creation and initial development of the Cooperative Linux OSS project. He now works in XIV. As a self-taught software engineer interested in the software virtualiztion field, back in 2001 he had attempted to port User Mode Linux to Windows using the Cygwin project. Although this attempt has spawned the UML-Win32 project, it didn't manage to take off, …
- Peter Millard
Peter G. Millard (born October 7, 1971 in Buffalo, New York, died April 26 2006) was one of the Jabber protocol's creators and designers. Millard grew up in Amherst, New York and graduated from Sweet Home High School. Peter is an Eagle Scout and Alumni of Troop 299 of Getzville, NY. Peter earned a Bachelor of Science in Civil Engineering from SUNY in 1993. He married Christina DeMunda, a teacher of mathematics at Thorton High school, …
- Jacob Druckman
Jacob Druckman was an American composer born in Philadelphia. A graduate of the Juilliard School, Druckman studied with Vincent Persichetti, Peter Mennin, and Bernard Wagenaar. In 1949 and 1950 he studied with Aaron Copland at Tanglewood and later continued his studies at the École Normale de Musique in Paris (1954-55). He worked extensively with electronic music, in addition to a number of works for orchestra or for small ensembles.
- Szymon Stefanek
Szymon Stefanek was the creator of the UNIX IRC client, KVIrc. He at first developed it for Linux systems, but then made builds for Windows. He was born in lublin and he lives in Siena (Italy). He also plays guitar in many Bands.
- Fabian del Priore
Fabian Del Priore (* 27th of May, 1978 in Frankfurt am Main, Germany) is a composer, arranger and sound designer. He has dedicated his entire life to the world of music, for example he started composing on the Commodore C64 home computer, collected synthesizers since he was very young and took private piano lessons for over ten years. Also, he has become an established and critically acclaimed tracker musician under the nickname of "Rapture".
- Harry Sacksioni
Harry Sacksioni (born October 23, 1950 in Amsterdam) is a Dutch classical composer and guitar virtuoso. Sacksioni's works are not commercially motivated, and as a result, he is not featured often in the mainstream media. His records appear under an independent label as a protest against the high prices of CDs. The 1970s saw the peak of Sacksioni's fame. His famous works from this period include "Meta Sequoia", "Vensters" ("Windows"), …
- Scott Oki
Scott Oki (born October 5, 1948 in Seattle, Washington) is a former senior vice-president of sales and marketing for Microsoft who conceived and built Microsoft's international operations. Oki also played a crucial role in Microsoft's rapid domestic growth during the 1980s. Born to a Japanese-American family, Oki attended the University of Washington, but left after 18 months to join the Air Force. While in the service he took courses at the University of Colorado.