They used to say exactly this about IBM, that no one person was critical to the success of Big Blue. But that was before Lou Gerstner proved it wrong. And Finally, the government got Microsoft's number and began to score big in anti-trust court. Even Bill knew it was time for his role to change if Microsoft's role was to not change. And so we have it.
Nothing is different.
Not all that much has changed, either, from the look of this week's other big bit of business, the coming-out of Transmeta, the supersecret startup that employs Linus Torvalds. We've seen instruction mapping, tiny hardware, and asynchronous logic before. 68030 Macintosh inside a PC clone. And asynchronous logic, which allows Crusoe to ratchet down its clock speed and fuel consumption to exactly match application needs, has been demonstrated for years in experimental processors coming from Alain Martin's lab at CalTech. Of course Transmeta has taken these technologies, put them all together in a modern and elegant package, then pasted Linux on top.