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Today’s English

Bill Gates is an American business magnate,computer programmer and philanthropist. Gates is the former chief executive officer and current chairman of Microsoft,the world’s largest personal-computer software company,which he co-founded with Paul Allen. He is consistently ranked among the world’s wealthiest people and was the wealthiest overall from 1995 to 2007. During his career at Microsoft,Gates held the positions of CEO and chief software architect,and remains the against individual shareholder,with 8 percent of the common stock. He has also authored or co-authored several books.

Gates is one of the best-known entrepreneurs of the personal computer revolution. In the later stages of his career,Gates has 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 was born in Seattle,Washington. His father was a prominent lawyer,and his mother served on the broad of directors for First Interstate BancSystem. At 13 he enrolled in the Lakeside School,an exclusive preparatory school. Gates graduated form Lakeside School in 1973.He scored 1590 out of 1600 on the SAT and enrolled at Harvard College in the autumn of 1973.While at Harvard,he met Steve Ballmer,who later succeeded Gates as CEO of Microsoft.

In his sophomore year,Gates devised an algorithm for pancake sorting as a solution to one of a series of unsolved problems presented in a combinatorics class by Harry Lewis,one of his professors. Gates’s solution held the record as the fastest version for over thirty years. Its successor is faster by only one percent. His solution was later formalized in a published paper in collaboration with Harvard computer scientist Christos Papadimitriou.

Pancake sorting is a variation of the sorting problem in which the only allowed operation is to reverse the elements of some prefix of the sequence,the goal is to sort the sequence in which attempts to sort with the fewest comparisons possible,the goal is to sort the sequence in as few reversals as possible. This operation can be visualized by thinking of a stack of pancakes in which one is allowed to take the top k pancakes and flip them. A variant of the problem is concerned with burnt pancakes,where each pancake has a burnt side and all pancakes must,in addition,end up with the burnt side on top.

Gates did not have a definite study plan while a student at Harvard and spent a lot of time using the school’s computer. Gates remained in contact with Paul Allen,and he joined him at Honeywell during the summer of 1974.The following year saw the release of the MITS Altair 8800 based on the Intel 8080 CPU,and Gates and Allen saw this as the opportunity to start their own computer software company. Gates dropped out of Harvard at this time. He had talked his decision over with his presents,who were supportive of him after seeing how much Gates wanted to start a company.

After reading the January 1975 issue of Popular Electronics that demonstrated the Altair 8800,Gates contacted Micro Instrumentation and Telemetry Systems(MITS),the creators of the new microcomputer,to inform them them that he and others were working on a BASIC interpreter for platform. In reality,Gates and Allen did not have an Altair and had not written for it. They merely wanted to gauge MITS’s interest. MITS president Ed Roberts agreed to meet them for a demo,and over the course of a few weeks they developed an Altair emulator that ran on a minicomputer,and then the BASIC interpreter.

The demonstration,held at MITS’s offices in Albuquerque was a success and resulted in a deal with MITS to distribute the interpreter as Altair BASIC. Paul Allen was hired into MITS,and Gates took a leave of absence from Harvard to work with Allen at MITS in Albuquerque in November 1975. They named their partnership "Micro-soft"and had their first office located in Albuquerque. Within a year,the hyphen was dropped,and on

November 26,1976,the trade name "Microsoft"was registered with the Office of the Secretary of the State of New Mexico. Gates never returned to Harvard to complete his studies.

Gates stepped down as chief executive officer of Microsoft in January 2000,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.

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译文

比尔盖茨是美国商业巨人、计算机程序设计及慈善家。盖茨是世界上最大的个人计算机软件公司即微软公司的前首席执行官和现任主席。他与保罗艾伦一起创建了微软公司。他一直名列世界富人榜，并且从1995年到2007年连续蝉联世界首富。在微软公司的职业生涯中，盖茨担任过首席执行官和首席软件架构师，是该公司最大的个人股东，持有该公司8%的普通股，他还撰写和与其他人合著了若干本书。

盖茨是个人计算机改革的著名企业家之一。在让职业生涯中的最后阶段，盖茨不予遗力地致力于慈善事业，通过”盖茨及梅琳达 盖茨基金会“为各种慈善组织和科学研究项目投入大量资金，这个基金成立于2000年。

比尔盖茨出生于华盛顿州的西雅图。他的父亲是一名著名律师，其母请是第一洲际银行系统的董事。13岁时，他就就读于独立预备学校湖滨中学。盖茨于1973年从湖滨中学毕业，他在SAT(美国大学入学考试)测试中得到1590分，满分为1600。他于1973年秋季进入哈佛大学学习。在哈佛大学学习时，盖茨得到了继他之后称为微软公司首席执行官的史蒂夫鲍尔默。

在大学二年级的时候，盖茨为煎饼排序开发了一个求解问题的算法，这是在综合课上由他的教授哈里刘易斯提出的一系列未解问题之一。盖茨的答案破了长达30年的快速求解记录。后来的纪录保持者只快了1%。他的求解后来发表在哈佛计算机科学家Christos Papadimitriou联合出版的论文上。

煎饼排序是一种变异的排序问题，只有被允许的操作才能反转序列中前面部分的元素。它不想传统的排序算法，试图尽可能地采用最少的比较次数来排序，目的是以尽量少的的交换排列好序列。这种操作可被形象化地理解为一个煎饼栈，在该栈中允许将上面的k个煎饼取出并翻转它们。一个引申的问题是有关煎饼的，每个煎饼都有一个煎好的面，此外，在结束时所有煎饼必须将煎好的一面朝上。

作为哈佛的学生，盖茨并没有明确的学习计划，而是花费了大量时间使用学校的计算机。盖茨和保罗艾伦一直保持联系，并于1974年的夏天和他一起进入了Honeywell。次年基于英特尔8080中央处理器的MITS Altair 8800发布了，盖茨和艾伦把这看成开创他们的计算机软件公司的机遇。这一次，盖茨从哈佛退学了。他和父母谈起过这件事，他们在盖茨多么想成立这家公司后支持了他的决定。

在阅读了于1975年1月出版的介绍Altair 8800的《大众电子》杂志后，盖茨与新型微型计算机的开发者Micro Instrumentation and Telemetry Systems(MITS)公司取得了联系，告诉他们说他和伙伴们正在为该平台开发BASIC语言解释程序。实际上，盖茨和艾伦既没有Altair,也没有为它开发代码。他们只是想试探一下MITS公司的兴趣，MITS公司总裁爱德华罗伯茨答应看看他们的演示。在接下来的几周内，他们开发了一个运行在微型计算机上的Altair 模拟器以及BASIC解释程序。

在位于阿尔伯克基的MITS办公室进行的演示十分成功，促使他们与MITS公司签署协议以发布Altair BASIC解释程序。在1975年的11月，保罗艾伦受雇于MITS公司，盖茨从哈佛退学并与艾伦一起在位于阿尔伯克基的MITS公司工作。他们命名这种合伙企业为”微软“，并拥有了在阿尔伯克基的他们的第一间办公室。不到一年的时间，在1976年11月26日，商标”微软“在新墨西哥事务机构注册。盖茨再也没有回到哈佛完成他的学业。

盖茨在2000年1月辞去微软公司首席执行官职务，但仍然担任微软公司主席和新创建的首席软件架构师职位。在2006年6月，盖茨宣布他将从微软公司的全职工作中过渡到兼职工作，而全职工作于”比尔及梅琳达 盖茨基金会“。