異類:不一樣的成功啟示錄 第35期:蓋茨慷慨大方的原因

C-cubed eventually went bankrupt, so Gates and his friends began hanging around the computer center at the University of Washington.

但電腦中心公司最終破產(chǎn)，蓋茨和他的同伴開始到華盛頓大學(xué)的計算機中心轉(zhuǎn)悠。

Before long, they latched onto another outfit called ISI,

不久，他們受到另外一家名為ISI公司(信息科學(xué)有限公司)的委托，

which agreed to let them have free computer time in exchange for working on a piece of software

為公司編寫工資單程序，

that could be used to automate company payrolls.

從而換取自由上機的時間。

In one seven-month period in 1971, Gates and his cohorts ran up 1,575 hours of computer time on the ISI mainframe,

在1971年的7個月間，蓋茨和他的同伴得到了ISI主機1575個小時的上機時間，

which averages out to eight hours a day, seven days a week.

一星期7天，每天平均8個小時。

"It was my obsession," Gates says of his early high school years.

“那是最令我執(zhí)迷的時間，”蓋茨說起他在中學(xué)的早期歲月，

"I skipped athletics. I went up there at night. We were programming on weekends.

“我們上機的地方總是換來換去。我們常常晚上去上機，幾乎每個周末都在編程，

It would be a rare week that we wouldn't get twenty or thirty hours in.

很少有哪個星期不是超過20或者30個小時的。

There was a period where Paul Allen and I got in trouble for stealing a bunch of passwords in crashing the system.

整個一段時間，我和保羅.艾倫都挖空心思去盜竊計算機密碼，沖擊計算機系統(tǒng)。

We got kicked out. I didn't get to use the computer the whole summer. This is when I was fifteen and sixteen.

最終我們被開除，整個夏天都不能使用電腦，這時候我是15歲至16歲。

Then I found out that Paul had found a computer that was free at the University of Washington.

后來，我發(fā)現(xiàn)保羅已經(jīng)在華盛頓大學(xué)找到了一臺能夠免費使用的電腦，

They had these machines in the medical center and the physics department.

這些免費的電腦一般安置在醫(yī)藥中心和物理系。

They were on a twenty-four-hour schedule, but with this big slack period,

這些電腦一般24小時都可以上機，但有一段時間卻比較空閑，

so that between three and six in the morning they never scheduled anything." Gates laughed.

在凌晨3點至6點這段時間鮮有任何安排。”蓋茨笑著說，

"I'd leave at night, after my bedtime. I could walk up to the University of Washington from my house.

就寢時間過后，我就開始動身到華盛頓大學(xué)，要么走過去，要么坐公交車。”

Or I'd take the bus. That's why I am always so generous to the University of Washington,

“為什么我對華盛頓大學(xué)總是那樣慷慨大方，

because it let me steal so much computer time."

就是因為他們被我竊取了不少上機時間。

Years later, Gates's mother said, "we always wondered why it was so hard for him to get up in the morning."

多年之后，蓋茨的母親說：“我們常常覺得奇怪，為什么他每天早上很晚才起床。”

One of the founders of ISI, Bud Pembroke, then got a call from the technology company TRW,

ISI的一位創(chuàng)始人，巴德.彭布羅克，被湯普森-拉莫-伍爾德里奇科技公司(TRW)雇用。

which had just signed a contract to set up a computer system at the huge Bonneville Power station in Southern Washington state.

當(dāng)時，TRW剛剛簽訂一項合同，為華盛頓州南部龐大的博納維爾電站建立計算機系統(tǒng)。

TRW desperately needed programmers familiar with the particular software the power station used.

TRW急需熟悉電站運作專業(yè)軟件的程序員，

In these early days of the computer revolution, programmers with that kind ofspecialized experience were hard to find.

但在計算機革命的早期，要找到一個熟悉專業(yè)領(lǐng)域的程序員并非易事。

But Pembroke knew exactly who to call:

不過彭布羅克知道找誰最為合適：

those high school kids from Lakeside who had been running up thousands of hours of computer time on the ISI mainframe.

那些湖邊學(xué)校的中學(xué)生，他們已經(jīng)在ISI的電腦系統(tǒng)操作數(shù)千個小時。