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Bill Gates to be Knighted
gexen writes "According to an article in the Telegraph Bill Gates is going to be knighted by the Queen of England for "services to the global enterprise." She's just handing them out like candy these days!"
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I refuse to kneel before Gates! Fight the Aristocracy!
You can mod your friends, you can mod your nose, but you can't mod your friend's nose.
When will the Microsoft-worship end???
Honey, I shrunk the Cygwin
charged with keeping the Kingdom secure. ;) FP?
are you fucking kidding me? Dont knights have to be able to use a sword, wear armor, and ride a horse?
> "I allege that SCO is full of it" -Linus
I knight thee!
Arise, Sir Plenty of Bugs, Sir Mega of Lomaniac, sir Screen of Blue, Sir Embrace of Extend, Sir 640 of K....
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
Who cares?
Next up, McBride will be knighted for "services to the global knighthood".... Hell, if he pulls it off, Microsoft sure will be happy!
Linus had better get a knighthood, too.
With a name like William Gates III it was only a matter of time!
I forget what its called but Bill Gates cannot be "Knighted" with full title as he is not a british subject , its kinda like being knighted "lite"
Don't you need to be British to become a knight?
He cannot be known as Sir Bill because he was not born in the United Kingdom.
This has Tony Bliar's (intentional mispelling, btw) fingerprints all over it...
Sir Bill, the Black Knight!
Satan is getting knighted tomorow.
Gates does not deserve a knighthood. Microsoft under his reign has done incredible harm all around
Since I'm pretty sure no one could possibly appreciate the numerous bugs and issues caused by Microsoft... I've decided billy must be hittin' it in order to get knighted... will he stop at nothing!?
Knighthood is just like awarding the Hollywood Star. They should display icons of all the knights down the Thames.
We need to create a rewards system that rewards not celebrities but progressives. The Martyr Award or the like. Give it a sexy title... and *poof* suddenly being a progressive is hip.
The Custom Mary
Don't forget that Yasser Arafat won the Nobel Peace Prize.
It puts all these awards into perspective.
As stated in this news release
The honour does not allow them to use the title sir.
No Sir for you! [Mr Gates]
This is just an excuse to get a sharp object hear his neck...
I am one of many. My idea is not unique, nor do I expect my voice alone to sway you. I speak in a chorus of opinion.
The *flat* side of the sword, not the sharp edge!
No problem, let's reboot and start over.
I guess next George Lucas will invite Bill to be Darth Vader for "services to the universe."
I thought that they had trouble keeping the respect in the eyes of the population?
What are they thinking? Will the British population react favorably to this?
I knight thee for thy geek prowass, in spite of thy buggy insecure software, in spite of thy pending antitrust litigation, I knight thee for thy introduction of technology which will allow geeks around the world to stream Monty Python sketches over the web and share them with their geek brethren, in spite of the fact that you stole the concepts behind it from your competitors and insisted on including crippling and inherently broken DRM.
-- The Queen Mother
--Got Lists? | Top 95 Star Wars Line
Sometimes it really sucks being British - having some clueless hereditary monarch handing out gongs to media moguls, software barons and dodgy heads of state.
I have been a user for about 10 years. This ends Feb 2014. The site's been ruined. I'm off. Dice, FU
Clearly, Mr Brown never used a PC in his lifetime and possibly has a Mac, making this whole thing very "tongue in cheek".
Hate me!
I wonder how much that cost, oh I am sure there wasn't a direct payment but perhaps he bought her a nice gift like a battleship or maybe he found a nice Concord on ebay.
It's only a trick so she can get him close enough to chop off his miserable head.
Deltron 3030 - Virus (music video)
After all, it's not the Queen's fault - she gets told who's to be knighted by the PM, although it seems this time the Chancellor has stuck his oar in...
I always did think Labour were too damn close to WBG the III. At least he doesn't get to call himself 'Sir', not being British...
Simon
Physicists get Hadrons!
If I were Bill Gates, I would not accept invitations to kneel before someone with a sword.
Now, Knighting Steve Jobs would be a good thing. Knighting Bill Gates?!?!? That is like knighting George W. Bush or William J. Clinton......
It's either on the beat or off the beat, it's that easy.
I moderate therefore I rule!
--
Thanks, I just found this doing a search "Citizens of countries which do not recognise the Queen as head of state sometimes have honours conferred upon them, in which case the awards are "honorary" - the holders are entitled to place initials behind their name but not style themselves "Sir ...". Examples of foreigners with honorary knighthoods are Bob Geldof and Rudolph Giuliani, while Arsene Wenger and Gerard Houllier have honorary OBE's. Recipients of honorary awards who later become subjects of Her Majesty may apply to convert their awards to substantive awards. There is no law preventing foreigners from holding a peerage, though only Commonwealth citizens can sit in the House of Lords. However, the Canadian prime minister was able to advise the Queen not to grant Conrad Black a titular honour while he remained a Canadian citizen. "
Knighthoods and other decorations have very often been sold to the highest bidder one way or another. It's not even particularly offensive, but a good way of paying for the monarchy. I'd rather that Bill gets a knighthood by paying for it in cash than for making large contributions to the political party in charge, which is the other way it happens.
"All hail to Sir Borg^h^h^h^hBill!"
Ceci n'est pas une signature
I for one, welcome our new satanic overlord.
huh?
This kind of thing happens all the time. If you look at the history of Europe and the aristocracy, you will see much inbreeding to concentrate power and wealth. Most Kings, Queens, Princes of different countries, and so on were all related by blood. Knighting Bill Gates is probably has little to do with his "innovation" and more to do with his wealth, concentrating that power into a closed circle. If you ask me, I think the Queen is stroking Gates for some unknown reason. Money is the obvious guess, but I think there might be even more to it. Who knows what kinds of deals are struck behind closed doors in smoke filled rooms. Gates becomes a knight, and the Queen lobbys her contacts in parlement to not force open source consideration in government?
Rosco: "If brains were gunpowder, Enos couldn't blow his nose."
If Yasser Arafat can win the Nobel Peace Prize Bill Gates can be knighted. All signs that the apocalypse is at hand.
There have been cases of people in my country (Australia) turning down a knighthood because they want the country to become a republic. So what does this mean for a US citizen? Didn't you cut those ties with Britain hundreds of years ago?
First of april has been relocated to January 25th for reasons of convenience.
The old bat has just plain gone looney. No other explanation for it.
I, for one, welcome our new knighted monopoly overlords.
The Braying and Neighing of Barnyard Animals Follows.
According to this latest news, the ceremony will be performed by a robot likeness of the Queen. The robot will be running Windows XP and connected to the Internet, whereby a populist vote of Internet users, the sword will be either flat-side or edge.
Tomorrow's news: Script-kiddies cut head of software giant head.
I honestly checked my calendar...
We are the knights who say......
Let's see... Mr. Gates has donated billions to charities, AIDs research, etc. How much has Linus donated?
I wonder how much $$$$ he bunged the
Windsors for this dubious accolade?
siggy played guitar
When I read this article, I get a mental image of Bill Gates thinking how awesome it would be to be officially titled "Sir Bill Gates". I then picture him dialling the extension for his publicity department and asking them to "get on it right away".
There are probably hundreds of people in the IT industry more worthy of knighthood than Gates... think of people like Wozniack, Torvalds, Stallman, Page... guys who made REAL advances in computer science without greed as a primary motivator.
Computers are useless: they can only give you answers. -- Pablo Picasso
That's it! I'm switching to Linux now!
Cheers,
Keith Richards
Really, seriously, this is a sad day. Gates is a goddam fanatical lunatic, bent on dominating every industry he gets into to the exclusion of all others. Other businesses fight for the largest piece they can get, Gates seems to think it's his God-given right to have it all.
Read about what goes on "behind the scenes" at MS; Gates is really weird.
Sticking feathers up your butt does not make you a chicken - Tyler Durden
Heck, I'd be glad to knight him if, in exchange, I were to get complimentary copies of Windows XP, Office 2003, and various server softwares in bulk for all of my royal palaces.
:-)
What's next?
Maybe some improvements in handling of Italian and Latin can get Bill beatification.
... making lots of money, more like.
/obref spotter gets a cookie.
yes, we have no bananas
I'd like that too:_)
Since all he has done is exploit a mixture of luck and technical ignorance by the mass population to make himself a global monopoly of questionable aims and to earn lots of cash, why exactly does he deserve a knighthood anyway? Was it the subtly forced upgrade paths? Perhaps the insecure webservers that keep getting infected. Maybe that out of billions in R&D they only manage to spend about $1million on any kind of superficial security in order to keep pushing said upgrade paths.
It seems the parent is right, they really are handing them out to anyone these days. Probably because 3/4 of them seem to be getting handed straight back at the moment unaccepted.
As a Brit all I can say is that this one should never have been handed out in the first place. Aren't knighthoods supposed to be about service to society and/or humanity? How does forcing our most advanced technologies into the dark ages so you can constantly skin us for another $200 on updates each year for the rest of eternity count as a service to humanity.
The constitition says in part "No Title of Nobility shall be granted by the United States: And no Person holding any Office of Profit or Trust under them, shall, without the Consent of the Congress, accept of any present, Emolument, Office, or Title, of any kind whatever, from any King, Prince, or foreign State. "
does this mean congress has to vote on it? or already has?
for me to succeed, it doesn't matter if MY point of view is right or wrong, there must just be reasoned replies.
every day http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
I'd rather he be crowned instead.
-
ping -f 255.255.255.255 # if only
When someone gets knighted for efforts towards global enterprise, and the overall cause is down to a company who continually gets sent to court with antitrust suits because the organisation believes its above the law. The Queens advisors REALLY need to do a little more research before giving out knighthoods like sweeties.
Whatever little respect I had left for the Monarchy just fell off the table. Why not Knight the local neighborhood drunk, while we're at it.
Knighthood is depreciated
At least torvalds doesn't donate money he didn't earn in a fair way
I thought you had to be a Brit to be knighted? Guess not...
...instead of the flaming and crude jokes that I know are going to happen anyway, is a serious discussion of exactly what Bill Gates has done to earn an honor of this magnitude.
What I mean is an examination from an alternative viewpoint, not for the sake of making a favorable impression of Microsoft -- but as an academic exercise.
I'm well aware that Microsoft, especially on this forum, is seen as one of the most evil entities to ever exist. With that in mind, I'm going to rush right into Godwin's Law and make the following comparison with Hitler's Germany: In just a few years, Hitler managed to transform Germany from an highly agricultural, economically decrepit country into a modern, industrial, profitable one. This was all before the Holocaust, and during that period, he enjoyed immense public support.
Now examine Microsoft. They are a convicted monopolist, and continue to enjoy unparalleled control over the domestic software (and to an extent, hardware) market. But what has arisen from this that would lead their chairman to be considered for an honorary knighthood? Thrust aside the seething hate for a second and just look. What accomplishments have arisen? Computers running software whose price/performance is fantastic? One of the easiest-to-develop-for video game consoles ever? Highly capable web servers that run some of the busiest sites--Dell.com, Nasdaq.com, MSNBC.com? Software conformity (and all the positives and negatives that result)?
As I said, this is intended to be an exercise, not a trumpeting endorsement, in the interests of shedding new light on this piece of news.
The coolest voice ever.
Ok, so the English Queen is giving an honorary title to the man most disliked by Linux fanatics and for that she is said to be giving out titles like candies. Grow up!
I may not like the way Microsoft does think (somewhat arrogant) but give credit where it's due. Mr Gates' contributions in my mind are as follows:
1) Making IT not just for the geeks and the super rich but making it affordable for hundreds of millions of IT illiterates to learn how to use a PC. (I agree Macintosh and others were better but point 2 is the reason why MS succeeded).
2) Standardizing the way GUI applications work so that ordinary folks can get productivity out of them instead of endless tweaking and fumbling. (of course, sometimes it crashes and those @#$%^*!! words start flowing)
3) Bill is a philanthropist and a marvellous example compared to many other rich folks.
Let's be rationale, we may not like some aspects of a company or a person but don't throw out the good parts. That is character murder and a sign of immaturity on our part.
Reality is what we taste, smell, see, hear and touch yet we cannot comprehend it...only approximate it.
And now, the revolution begins, as the government is ousted by an army of Linux users armed with angry penguins.
Beware of the Leopard.
this knighthood better come with some serious-ass EULA, because the Queen may need it when he goes ballistic over the Europe switching to Linux from MS(CO)
You can't handle the truth.
I'm no Christian, but they do have a point with the parable about the widow's mite.
Steve Ballmer for services to the global entertainment. Sheesh...
"services to the global enterprise."
The only enterprise Bill Gates has ever served is his own. He has done more to destroy all other enterprise in his industry than any other person alive.
Let's see... Mr. Gates has donated billions to charities, AIDs research, etc. How much has Linus donated?
Arguably Linus has donated much, much more to the benefit of all worthy causes. Unfortunately, I don't believe Linus has even a single billion $ to his name.
G'day to you, Sir Troll
People reponsible for killing millions of other people, were knighted, so who cares about Bill Gates being knighted?
Gates got his wealth while using clearly unethical tactics. Guess it doesn't matter how he got it, huh?
A school in the Netherlands awarded Bill Gates an honorary doctorate. So he already has the highest scientific achievement you can get without doing anything for it. Of course, it is pretty telling that it is not a school of computer science that awarded him this title, but a school of management - and, as it is, in the Netherlands this school is considered to be more a "school of networking": it does not teach you anything, but boy can you be assured of a good job if you finish it. "Nobby parents get nobby children high-paying jobs that do not require any skills". Fits Gates well, I should think.
Suddenly, being a republic sounds a little bit nicer.
Linux - an OS you can use without paying monopolists, and getting extorted. I think this is as good a contribution.
no really, im watching all the naysayers mocking, but i don't see their names mentioned, why do you think that is ?
if you are going to do something, make sure you do it well, wether its marketing your flakey software products or winning the richest person competition you cannot go into an office worldwide without meeting at least 1 of his products
Other Americans to have received the KBE include George Bush, the former president, Rudolph Giuliani, the former mayor of New York, Steven Spielberg, the film director, and Alan Greenspan, the chairman of the US Federal Reserve Bank.
Now Gates???
Guess, queen just knows people which I hate. And from this I can draw only this function
English knight == ???morron???
And in future news: Subscribe to announce-list of new morrons (I mean knights)
Signature Pro version 1.13.2-3 release 83.5 beta3try7 after-breakfast edition
exactly what Bill Gates has done to earn an honor of this magnitude.
Giving loads of money to good causes always helps.
My Karma: ran over your Dogma
StrawberryFrog
Can the queen force her knights to fight for her in wars?
I believe posters are recognized by their sig. So I made one.
If I remember correctly only BRITISH people can be properly given a knighting. I remember when the Queen could not give Rudi Giuliani a Knighthood so she gave him the highest title a non-britian person could be given... somthing like Knight Commander of the British Empire. Link for confirmation. So unless BG is british I dont believe Sir Bill Gates is happening.
If you could sum it up in a nutshell, maybe you should be writing O'Reily books. --- Domasi 2001
So when is the pope going to make Gates a saint(tm). Or should he be dead first? Hmm, maybe I could live with that..
I formed a software company, and through lies and deception (among hard work and sweat) built it up to a corporate powerhouse at the forefront of American capitalism.
The company has only recently produced a workable operating system, but its other products are full of security holes and OS-compromising exploits.
I give a few hundred thousand to charities here and there just to keep critics off my back. It's a tax write-off anyway; could THAT be why I'm doing it? To offset my taxes? NAH!
I deserve KNIGHTHOOD!!!!
I did not even think of that. From my reading, it means the USA can not give out any titles, and no politician can use it. But I do not think it would stop a private citizen from accepting a title.
Rosco: "If brains were gunpowder, Enos couldn't blow his nose."
It probably has something to do with all the money he's donated to AIDS research and educational grants (warning, this link is to the gates foundation website so is certainly biased, but it does list the monetary amounts they've donated to various schools) in recent years.
I'll admit that he's not the best philanthropist, but he does donate a lot of money to a lot of organizations. He could just swim in it all day like Scrooge McDuck, so he deserves some definite props for doing what he does.
Don't sell him short just because he's mostly evil...
The Right Reverend K. Reid Wightman,
I really don't get the hateful Microsoft bashing. I understand not liking Microsoft and all, they do make some crappy products and have used some less than nice techniques on their road to becoming enormously successful but I guarantee the same thing happens every day in a ton of other industries that you don't know about simply because they don't have the same oversight. For some reason, people are obsessed with Microsoft and the Slashdot crowd seems bent on hating anyone that is succesful. I've noticed that Red Hat has started to suffer the same sort of bashing more frequently too. Suse is getting major attention now so I guess they are next. Luckily, there will always be some obscure distribution to keep you happy and working with a product that no one else has heard of so you can feel exclusive and cool.
It might occur to you that Gates has donated billions to charities and education in this country and after he's dead will have donated more dollars than the top 5 previous top-of-the-list philanthropists combined. Maybe thats why he's being recognized by the brits?
OK, gotta go get a new IP address before the hacks start!
will be howling sycophants towing the party line, taking the easy obvious mindless potshots at your remarks
which you have already guessed at
but you still have your reward: the perspective of a free mind, unbridled by popular whimsy and high school clique-level faddishness (ooh! linus torvalds in a swimsuit! ooh ! ooh!)
your free mind is your reward, enjoy it, in spite of the howling tired crap you will hear in return for speaking honestly... your free mind is more valuable than the pain of having to endure the tired old bores and their tired old unthinking geek frat boy-level indoctrinations
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Hopefully they're knighting him just as a preparation for sending him out on some stupid crusade from which he'll never return.
We are the knights who say NI!
and we require a.... a.. beowulf cluster of sony playstation 2's
The queen has lost her mind. The downfall of the british empire is complete.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
His lifework.
I think Douglas Adams* is spinning in his grave!
*-"The idea that Bill Gates has appeared like a knight in shining armour to lead all customers out of a mire of technological chaos neatly ignores the fact that it was he, by peddling second-rate technology, who led them into it in the first place."
I for one bow to our new Microsoft-aristocracy overlords....
Oh wait.... Screw that!
Viva la Revolution!
I have misplaced my pants.
I'd love to see someone in a Pinguin costume getting knighted.
:-D
That pic would be classic. Linux being knighted would be perhaps the funniest thing ever.
Microsoft announces "Windows XP knights edition". This package includes built in firewall and preloaded with Apache too keep the kingdom safe from intruders. Updates will be totally automatic because everyone can trust "sir bill". This little baby definately comes with a kings ransom as MS stopped taking the firstborn last month. We will settle for bleeding the kingdoms gold one upgrade at a time. Act now and get a personally signed version in a box that looks like the Gates family crest.
You have to be kidding me. Hell really has frozen over.
Got hosting
Captin: Lock on guns on the incomming boat. Crewmember: I am rebooting, Sir.
Rosco: "If brains were gunpowder, Enos couldn't blow his nose."
He could be The Knight Who Says GNU!
Yes yes, good good, but will he say "Ni"?
The only "clever" thing he did was buy QDOS and foist it as a useable system to IBM, and somehow talk IBM into letting MS retain the rights. And to this day the 8.3 naming system lurks underneath everything (yeah, even in XP), showing up unexpctedly and at the most annoying moments.
As for his chairty, more wealthy people give to charity than you seem to think. Most of them just don't feel the need to issue press releases when they do so, or name their caritable donations after themselves.
But then againt knighthoods were once bestowed for those who could gather the most swag and booty for king and country, so maybe this *is* appropriate.
--- Ban humanity.
"Let's see... Mr. Gates has donated billions to charities, AIDs research, etc. How much has Linus donated?"
Do you even know what the phrase "tax breaks" means? If you think those donations were for anything other than that, and publicity stunts, you have a seriously warped view of reality.
Slashdot account: mahhy (too lazy to log in)
"No Title of Nobility shall be granted by the United States: And no Person holding any Office of Profit or Trust under them, shall, without the Consent of the Congress, accept of any present, Emolument, Office, or Title, of any kind whatever, from any King, Prince, or foreign State."
Here, read it for yourself: Constitution for the United States of America.
There are just so many ways to look at this (specifically where Bill Gates is concerned), that this could keep constitutional lawyers happy for years.
He's in a position of profit and trust, but is it Under the States? Is geographic location, making that much money, and having your software so deeply enshrined in so many State governments enough to make that connection? Note: Office does not specifically say POLITICAL office...
Oh yeah, HUGE can of worms.
Tips for gaining karma:
1. Post a question containing a (albeit incorrect) supposition (get karma).
2. Answer one's own question (get more karma).
Then when karma is got:
3. Post TK and GNAA trolls at +2 (karma has to be used for something).
When will the Linux-worship end???
I think Muslim and Christian Fundamentalists talk about each other this way too
fanatics OF ALL FLAVORS are stupid, period
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
What's more, if he ever decided to become a British Citizen, then he could have it "converted" to a full knighthood. The last notable (ex) US citizen to do this was the late Sir Paul Getty.
You never know what is enough unless you know what is more than enough. - Blake
Does this mean we can call Bill a "son of a silly pearson"? Can we taunt him "a second time"? What about fart "in his general direction"?
I think we should know what this title entitles us!
Since he's not a British citizen, he will be a Knight Of The Realm. e.g. William H. Gates III, KTR.
:)
Don't worry.
GJC
Gregory Casamento
## Chief Maintainer for GNUstep
This is pretty interesting. Can be chose one or the title is already prepared for him ? Can the society participate in choosing the right title ? I am sure, Slashdot crowd would vote for 'Your Billness'.
MySQL Error 1040: Can't return sig, Too many connections!
Thats it ... Im leaving the country.
Electronic Music Made Using Linux http://soundcloud.com/polyp
> Let's see... Mr. Gates has donated billions to charities, AIDs research, etc. How much has Linus donated?
His lifework.
And you're forgetting that he donated it for FREE.
Imagine how much money would have been spent on Linux if it wasn't free? SuSE, RedHat, Mandrake and all those other Distros make up a large section of the IT market just on CD SALES and SUPPORT for what is essentially a free product.
MSFT got rich on selling the same product that Linus gives away for free.
Do not meddle in the affairs of geeks for they are subtle and quick to anger
Hitler was Time Magazine's Man of the Year once.
Like someone else said previously, Yasser Arafat has a Nobel Peace Prize.
Milli Vanilli once had a Grammy.
George W. Bush has made a mockery of the US Presidency.
of Windows does it take to become a knight?
Maybe the Queen is tired of worms/viruses/trojans in her Outlook e-mail and this is her way of getting even. Just think of all the derisive jokes that will come out of this!
How many knights does it take to install a copy of Windows XP? (Fill in punch line here)
If "disco" means "I learn" in Latin, does "discothèque" mean "I learn technology"?
The joys of a mis-spent youth, being able to quote the following from memory, 25 years later:
You don't frighten us, English pig dogs! Go and boil your bottoms, you sons of a silly person! I blow my nose at you, so-called "Arthur King," you and all your silly English K-nig-hts.
$0.02 (CDN)
Off with his head!
:)
then stick it on a pike in the tower of london.
How about an operating system that works, that they can use with complete freedom and take ownership in without worrying about BSA at the Gates.
A respectable "widow's mite" in this case, giving all that he has to the public, rather than taking all as Bill Gates has done from the beginning, before and after taking a bride who realized they had to buy some respectability.
From Wikipedia.org:
Let's see... Mr. Gates has donated billions to charities, AIDs research, etc. How much has Linus donated?
Gates isn't being knighted because of his donations, but because of his services to global enterprise, and that's why it's so damn controversial. In my opinion, his business behavior doesn't deserve any praise.
It's generally accepted that when the constitution speaks of "The United States" as if it were an entity, it is referring to the Government. He's a private citizen, he can get the knighting. Doing so will ensure we never have to worry about President Gates though. ;)
how much has Gates' earned by circumventing laws and price gouging governments and nations around the world? Hence a lot of people!
How much has Linus taken from the same people?
A tax rebate is when the government decides to give back money from you it shouldn't have taken. Here, Bill Gates through immoral and illegal actions has garnered billions and is "generous" to give back. Forgive Linus for not going through that route but instead helping create and organize the production of Linux, a product that'll continually give back to the public.
Consider that for each person that is using Linux but wouldn't have heard about FreeBSD or some other free system and would instead of had to pay for Microsoft. How much money is that? How about governments and organizations that are now saving from the microsoft tax?
I'm in no way saying he should be knighted. But his donation of time has resulted in quite impressive results. It's just not a fair comparison to say he hasn't donated large sums of money when you consider how Bill got his money.
In times like these, it is helpful to remember that there have always been times like these. - Paul Harvey
Linux helping Windows boot faster, Spirit on the way to working again, Opportunity successfully landing and now Bill Gates being Knighted. At this rate Beagle 2 will come back to life, Duke Nukem Forever will get a release date and this story won't be duped!
What a week!
WTF?!?!?! is the only resonable response to this.. they knight criminals now??
that Bill Gates has done more for the world than, say, Mick Jagger or Elton John. He runs both an incredibly successful company and gives away gobs of money to charities.
Hated? Yes. Undeserving? No.
slashdot, news for crazed liberal socialist zealots
Oh see him revel in this FUD of all FUDs...
The monarchy in this country is about to go down shit alley anyway. Prince Charles is being investigated for his alleged involvement in the Death of Diana.
Electronic Music Made Using Linux http://soundcloud.com/polyp
...of Apocalypse, you bet!
It was likely a recommendation by Toady Blair. He's met with Gates a number of times and in appreciation has given Microsoft a number of government contracts. After you've made it difficult for anyone but IE users to access the government's website what's an honourary knighthood.
Since Blair seems to love American "oppressors" so I'm sure the next one on his list for honourary knighthood is George W.
(Note: Don't take this as an anti-American comment. It's just an anti-Gates and anti-Bush comment.)
Some of what I say is fact, some is conjecture, the rest I'm just blowing out my ass...you guess.
Amazing, to see how low the standards for knighthood have dropped, if they allow ones such as Billy to be knighted now. Methinks many previous monarchs will be spinning in their graves over this one.
If I am not mistaken he is at the helm of a convicted criminal organization. Perhaps we should knight a few drug lords as well. I feel sorry for our friends in the UK that have to endure such humility.
Got Code?
For years it was suggested that Mr. Gates was hording his wealth and not being generous with his excess. Then the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation was founded, and through it he has done a lot of good. I don't have a problem with him being recognized for it.
:-)
I remember seeing an interview with Larry Ellison, who has always been generous with his wealth to deserving organizations. His memorable comments (paraphrased) were "after the first billion, who needs more?" and "when you're giving money away you get to deal with a lot of crackpots." Of course all of us would *love* to have that problem.
There was some issues back when the Beatles got something (cant remember if it was a knight-hood) and many people on the list refused to accept theirs. I guess it pisses me off in a way, given what i know about Bill Gates that the general population doesnt read about, but i can just about deal with it - atleast he does give to charity, even if sometimes its to help his own product line. In reality though, all thats happening is that some old woman who lives in a big house (or 10) in my country is going to give some award i dont really care about to some guy i dont really care about. So its not really a biggy.
;)
Maybe when shes doing that sword bit, she can chop his head off
This comment does not represent the views or opinions of the user.
Maybe we will get lucky and the Queen might "crash" when she is using the sword to knight him.
I wonder how much this cost Bill?
I always knew it was a surrogate operating system, now its proven... "Sir O Gates".
However, they are just handing out Knighthoods these days. Didn't Mick Jagger just get one? And what for? Inflicting Brown Sugar upon us. I challenge you to go into a British pub with a jukebox, and sit for more than an hour, without being subjected. If you're doubly unlucky, there will be a live band on. They will also play Brown Sugar. To add insult to injury you might also be sujected to Mustang Sally and various aural manure by Van Morrison.
Stick Men
Gates has been one of the most giving in the technology realm. I am sure most of it is for tax write off's, but still, he has given a large percentage of his wealth away. Many of it we never hear about.
Most people do not know that here in Alabama, he has given nearly every principal and superintendent either a pda or laptop and training on how to use them to their full potential as a way to increase technology literacy.
Mr. Gates makes so much money because he has a temporary monopoly. Microsoft has never made money on products in which it did not have some kind of monopoly position, such as file incompatibility.
Mr. Torvalds is one of the leaders of a very large team that has delivered tens of billions of dollars worth of benefit and lasting value to the entire world.
Giving money to charity is just the pasttime of bored wives of rich people everywhere. If Mr. Gates truly wanted to benefit the world, he would fix the problems in Windows XP. Part of the purpose of giving money to charity is that it works as public relations. Rich people distract attention from the bad things they do by giving money.
For example, Microsoft has deliberately designed the NTFS file system in Windows XP so that it cannot copy all of its own system files. (Microsoft tech support employees have verified that this is so.) That's why you can't use XCOPY.EXE or NTBACKUP.EXE or ROBOCOPY.EXE to make a functional full hard disk backups of a Windows XP system partition.
Many of the problems with Windows XP come from the fact that it was designed for copy protection, not usability. For example, Windows XP puts system settings in one big file called the registry. If something goes wrong in the registry, it can be necessary to re-install and re-configure all the programs. For some users who run many programs, this can take more than a week.
Think of the world of computing without Mr. Torvalds and Linux. It would be a world in which doing things that are bad for the customer would be accepted business practice. Mr. Torvalds has created strong competition. Even those who don't use Linux are benefited, because competition from Linux has the effect of limiting the abuses to which we are subjected.
It's about time that Britain recognized that the idea picking some unremarkable people and calling them royalty serves no useful purpose. The royalty are parasites that limit the success of Britain in the modern world. "The Queen" is just a large organization that is trying to survive by attaching itself to well-known people. The real woman who is called "The Queen" probably neither knows nor cares about Mr. Gates, and probably has never touched a computer. Giving Mr. Gates a national honor is old-fashioned fakery; as the article indicates, it's happening because of the political aspirations of someone named Gordon Brown.
Actually, the article says the recommendation came from the pretender to the throne - Gordon.
Allergy advice: Contains eggs.
Yes, this is the way it usually works.
If you steal millions from widows and orphans and then endow an orphanage you are a great man and a philanthropist.
If you dedicate your life to directly aiding widows and orphans you're a bum who never amounted to anything.
It really doesn't take too much reading of history to discover that this principle is almost invariable.
Or you can just take the shortcut and read Mark Twain's essays.
KFG
Well, during the dark ages the baron who robbed the land they owned and lived well by stealing the hard work of peasants also got dubbed with titles.
Although these things are undeniably a good thing[1], I don't see how they fall under "services to the global enterprise.".
Max.
[1] however, I doubt they constitute a significant proportion of his income, not that I looked to find out.
Max.
She's going to take the opportunity when she's got a sword on his shoulder, to lop off his head. I don't feel like stopping it ;).
Mod "Overrated" instead of replying "I disagree with you," you coward.
Could he realy swim in it? What ablout taxes? I suppose all the donations braought quite a tax-reduction? If he had to lose the money anyway it's of course better to donate it...
I bet all Gates' friends back at the D&D will never believe this.
"Sir Bill Gates, level 15th Paladin...a true warrior for the people if I do say so myself" - Bill Gates
Wise men say, "Forgiveness is divine, but never pay full price for late pizza."
Is that a typo? The only person I could imagine knighting Bill Gates is Sauron.
./revolution
If he gets rid of spam and makes things much better (not the usual slightly less worse - e.g. no spam, but pay MS lotsa money).
Is there any way we can petition the queen not to "Knight" Bill Gates?
OK. Credit where credit is due. He has given quite a bit to charity. But does that really excuse him for running his monopoly so ruthlessly? Yes. Yes. I know. He runs a business and of course he will work to increase his profits at any costs. But that does not make him an ethical man. It doesn't even make him a good man.
I say we petition the Queen to not do it and identify Bill Gates for who he is. He is the Dictator of the information age.
It was Gordon Brown, not Tony Blair, and Blair's not too happy. And what is your deal with Blair, would you prefer Michael Howard in control of the country (remember the Newsnight interview), or John Major, or Ken Livingstone?
--
It is not the commies, the government, the nigger, nor the corporates. It is your paranoia.
Does this mean that he can be challenged to a duel? Perhaps a joust, methinks?
at the last moment the Queen will stab Bill in the heart with the sword, saying "And THAT'S for all the bloody Blue Screens Of Death I keep getting!"
The queen then laughs, then heads back to her computer to install Linux...
...use a lightsabre instead.
... oh dear..."
"I knight thee in the name of... ZZZWURTCH
The controversial software company creator - whose commercial success has led to hatred of him among his competitors - is worth an estimated $40 billion (22 billion).
I think maybe repeatedly breaking laws has more to do with this than jealousy. Anyway, what is the protocol for challenging a knight to a sword fight or joust?
Some U.S. citizens have already been knighted without anyone complaining. The most recently citizen to be knighted, to my knowledge, was Rudy Giuliani.
[this
> I'll admit that he's not the best philanthropist, but he does donate a lot of money to a lot of organizations
What is the point in donating some amount , when the money you have acquired is by illegal and immoral means ?
So if he succeeds with all his DRM plans, does he get crowned?*
(*hit on the head)
=Smidge=
Here in Australia the Queen is still the head of state. But if she knights that criminal Gates, well, that's it! We'll vote her out at the next referendum and become a republic. See if we don't!
Don't sell him short just because he's mostly evil...
The devil can cite Scripture for his purpose.
An evil soul producing holy witness
Is like a villain with a smiling cheek,
A goodly apple rotten at the heart.
O what a goodly outside falsehood hath!
KFG
you had to be a citizen of one of the countries that the queen is the head of state of?
"Going to war without France is like going deer hunting without your accordion." - Jed Babbin
Of course is canonization by the Pope. Jolly ol' St. Bill
Queen Liz-2 : Arise, Sir Lucifer of Newcastle!
Hell is not other people; it is yourself. - Ludwig Wittgenstein
the value of being a knight.
+Funny
No, if a withered narcissist like Mick Jagger can be knighted, Gates certainly deserves the honor. It's a shame, though, that the British are honoring him when, frankly, he deserves the Presidential Medal of Freedom. It galls me to write this, but it's the truth.
[this
When Slashdot reported that Tim Berners-Lee was to be knighted a month ago, it was with great enthusiasm and aplomb...
... He will join luminaries like Isaac Newton, Francis Drake, and... Mick Jagger.
... but it was for the great Berners-Lee. With Gates and Microsoft, it's always the same shameless spin. Linux is attaining parity with Gates' OS and is growing up; Slashdot should do the same.
Tim Berners-Lee has been promoted to Knight Commander of the Order of the British Empire
Knighthood was definitely more than candy in that post
Windows was so bad, it drove geeks by the thousands to Linux and BSD. Microsoft was so nasty, it drove it's partners and customers there too. Without Microsoft and Bill Gates, open source software would still just be a geek dream rather than the strongest up-and-coming competitor to Microsoft. Frankly, this is an unusual move, akin to knighting the dragon for its role in inspiring the defense of the kingdom.
A good result of this: Bill Gates will not be allowed to run for president of the US. (Presidents of the US may not have British noble status)
As a Brit I am offended at Queenies recent knight-hoods. Silly old broad is probably bored lately, and likes swinging that sword around.
However Bill Gates has done wonders for the economy of Amamricania (Or whatever that country is called).
Beh.
C17H21NO4
Maybe the old girl is planning on striking a little harder than usual this time--you know, "for services rendered".
Whats next, the Magna Carta?
Let's pick apart your silly world view and give real credit where it's due. You claim that Microsoft has given us:
Nonsense. If you think Microsoft crap is easy, you need to play with a Mac or Knoppix. Tests have shown that real people do just as well with KDE as they do with XP, despite only having Microsoft computing experience. The free GUIs are here and can be just as easy to use as non-free, though Apple deserves real credit for a useful and easy to use GUI. As a philathopist, Bill leaves much to be desired. Almost all of his giving has strings attached to make even more money for his company and himself. The greatest act of charity Mr. Gates could perform would be to free the code he owns, most of it was purchased and has long since paid for itself. The second greatest gift he has would be to simply stop making anti-competitive deals and putting other companies out of business. In other words, if he could quit being a criminal and give the world something new, he might deserve some respect. As it is, Mick Jagger and Michael Jackson are better examples.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
so this means we have a chance to see duel between sir sean connery and knight bill? guess i know outcome already ;-)
Cite (scroll down).
Gates has thumbed his nose at the political classes in America in ways that the rest of us only dream of being able to do. Part of the reason for the rage and fury of the DOJ case. Many other IT luminaries (i.e. Ellision and Jobs) line up for their blowjobs from politicians regularly.
---
'Swounds, 'tis the chance of mine life. Now I may face Sir Bill on the field of tourneyment! Long have I dream'd of his bespectacled visage at the end of mine lance!
Mine blood runneth hot! To battle! I shall not rest till he lieth broken upon the field, shriven of his armour.
Come squire, my lance.
kill elrond
take elrond
put elrond in cupboard
>Antitrust aside, MS is not built on crime and in modern
>times that is about the only thing that would make him
>not be Knighted
Ummm, lets see. Try stepping back a decade or two and reconsider this position.
They illegally broke the back of DRDOS and OS/2 for that matter. Doing this is one of the key things that made them a monopoly that so many grant was "naturally" acquired. WIthout the monopoly none of the rest would follow.
Well, actually Edison was no 'Edison'.
Most of his 'inventions' were the work of others (his employees or other researchers).
Edison wasn't really an inventor, he was an entrepreneur that made those inventions work in the marketplace - just like Bill Gates did with PCs.
now we'll need to reverse engineer Knighthood to add any further knights.
I hope Linus is up for it....
The truth about Led Zep should never be told on
The article specifically said he was getting an honorary KBE (Knight Commander).
I think Gates deserves a Knighthood for his charity work, such as his tireless quest to help 3rd world countries fight of diseases that most people couldn't care less about (Malaria, TB, etc.).
Gates is the most charitable person in this history of... um... charity. That should give those of you who are saying he should be beheaded instead of knighted a bit of pause.
I wouldn't accept any "title" from a remnant and reminder of totalitarian dictatorship. So-called "royal" families are a vestige of a world we all left behind a looong time ago. The queen is nothing more but a leech that lives off the back ofthe british people, and a knighthood is acceptance of this system. I say screw the royal family, if I were in power in Britain I'd propably confiscate thier property and kick them all out.
Not even to mention to disrespect accepting a title does to our country in the USA. Regardless of how you interpret the constitution it is totally offensive to our country and government to go and accept a title from another government (something we founded are current governmental system SPECIFICALLY to stand against.)
Gates will get an honorary knighthood. As he is not a British citizen he will, thankfully, not be able to call himself "Sir Bill".
he's going to assimilate the queen. wonder if she's had any (ass)imilation lately?
Alcohol & calculus don't mix. Never drink & derive.
"M'Lady, that bastard is robbing you blind." might do. She only needs to have a chat with an IBM representative, be given a Mac laptop or see a Knoppix demo to know that her govenment is nuts to be giving Mr. Gates all the money they do.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
It is NOT the Queens decision who she knights - it's decided by the GOVERNMENT.
In this case, by the chancellor Gordon Brown (the usless c*nt).
Remember that not only is Bill Gates the self-made, richest man in the world, but he is also one of the top philanthropist of all times due to the charitable gifts of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. He has already given away billions. So, it's not too surprising that he is knighted. I'm surprised it didn't happen sooner.
I'm definitely not a Microsoft fan (I'm a Unix admin). But give the guy some slack. I think some people take this anti-Microsoft thing too personally.
uh... "KBE/Stallman" ??
;^)
...but how many hit points does a Knight have?
A firewall can not protect you from yourself. Turn off what you do not need. Do not use the firewall to do your work.
Larry Ellison and Scott McNealy issue press releases that they are equally qualified to receive a knighthood...
Richard Stallman is complaining that this type of honor shouldn't be closed and everybody should be able to get one...
And Linus Torvalds is reverse engineering one and creating a KBE tree in Bitkeeper...
The disgrace is that the US governenment continues to do business with a criminal. The US government has already branded Mr. Gates a criminal monopolist, so there is no position of Trust. A criminal should not enjoy a position of Profit at the public expense.
As he continues to enjoy his position, it is doubtful Congress will care much what the Queen does with him. What they care most is that he continues to rob her.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
...how much he paid to swing this deal? ;-)
Put the nobility to death long ago.
All of them, with as few exceptions as possible.
Time for another round of revolutions? I never understood why so many countries needed to retain their monarchs anyway. They are a pimple on society's ass.
Giuliani was not a federal official.
This is the second story I've broken that the editors of /. have squashed only to have one of their handpicked minions get credit....
"Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom. It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves
Gates is the unacceptable face of capitalism to many. But, his (and his wife's) charitable giving through their foundation is spectacular and will likely have a huge impact in selected areas. A ruthlessly collected global tax on software with the proceeds spent on the problems of the poorest of the poor is a hell of an idea, oh, and it makes lots of people very wealthy. OSS may in the end be a better idea. It will be interesting to see. Meanwhile, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation brings to philanthropy some the same hard-nosed performance driving business practices of Microsoft and it does so without being a trojan horse for Microsoft Corporation. The Arabs have a saying that you can only take with you what you have given away. So I have some bad news for those who hate Bill Gates. There's a good chance he'll be the richest man in heaven too!
Dude, if you steal a million and give ten thousand to charity, that does not make you "noble". Robber barons and thieves like Gates have been giving money to charity for hundreds of years. This serves many purposes:
1) Confuse and cloud the issue in simple minds (like yours, apparantly).
2) Deflect criticism by re-directing it (insurance).
3) A way to "legitimize" your enterprise.
The money that Billy gives away is peanuts compared to what he would lose if the laws of the land were justly applied to his pack of thieves.
Magnus.
Maybe MS is finally done with the Justice Dept. and the settlement and is moving to BC.
Personally, I find it funny that those who rejected the crown's authority in a violent and repressive, (ask an empire loyalist family tossed out of the US after the brits lost), revolution would accept a knighthood, let alone be given one.
This is an older article but sheds some light on how Gates got started in philanthropy.
Not appropriate to give symbols of aristocracy to one who has done so much to destroy capitalism while seeking to ensure the elitist superiority of obviously non-blue-blood geeks everywhere.
"Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom. It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves
foreign citizens are not dubbed (i.e. the tapping with the sword on the right and left shoulder) when receiving KBE.
He could still be stabbed with a bajonet by a member of the Regiment of Foot Guards i think (the ones with the bearskin coverd headwear).
She's just handing them out like candy these days!
Yes, but that doesnt mean that he hasnt deserved it. A lot of people may not like Bill Gates but he has done a lot for IT even if he didnt lay the foundations.
Giving IE users a taste of their own medicine since 2005 - http://pods.-is-a-geek.net/
:ahem:
BSD, anyone? Or is it not free enough for you linuz zealots?
And people are still wondering why bill is getting the knighthood? :)
this for a second:
sum total of last 20 years:
Billion of profit
vs
no billions of profit
so whos smarter?
Its not a question who deserves it
sorry officer, left my sig in my other computer.
I don't know- I haven't seen her handing out any of her royal candy lately.
Mmmmm... English Toffee...
Read jack phelps dot net
Aside from all the anti-MS stuff, what really is the good of being knighted anyway? Just so that the women can ask "Is that a sword in your pocket or are you just happy to see me?"
Do your best, hope for the best, suspect the worst.
1) Actually Linux did ONLY the kernel, not the OS; they could have as well wrote a new kernel from scratch
2) Someone's lifework could be worthless so donating it by itself doesn't mean much
3) I believe that overall it would be more efficient to buy bundled Windows XP and save
a) electricity
b) time (compared to tweaking, learning and compiling Linux)
c) hence, money
Then with the surplus time everyone could donate that time and do some volunteering.
Just another way to look at things...
It's similar to the way government runs department of defense so that every individual doesn't have to prepare for war...
Actually I do think that in long term Linux will become more efficient from the society cost perspective, but even if it is now, it's 5 years behind Windows (overall) and Linus'es contributions to GNU/Linux aren't as great as Bill's to charities and Windows (and Microsoft).
And finally, how about BSD and other OS'es? Why not their main authors?
So what does Torvalds do with his money he didn't earn in a fair way?
Like many posting here, I would dance around the flames if Microsoft were to crash and burn. That being said, the money that Gates has contributed to research for a malaria vaccine - probably the world's most pressing health problem, and one that is shamefully underfunded by our government - could potentially save the lives of millions.
So, if I go make my billions by say, creating a monopoly on electricity and holding the world's energy hostage, with the decline in service that a monopoly implies (and Bill Gate's monopoly has demonstrated), such as power outages induced by any script kiddie with a home built circuit, random crashes of the power grid for no apparent reason, etc., and amass my billions despite having been convicted and hand-slapped for misusing my power monopoly to gain 70% market share in television sales (by, say, randomly cutting power to my competitors factories), but I turn around and give a few hundred million of my stolen billions to malaria research, does that make my a nice guy worthy of knighthood?
Does the fact that I gave 0.01% of my stolen money away make me a good person, or worthy of the kind of fawning I see here?
In the eyes of any clear thinking person, no, it does not (regardless of how much "good" that stolen and donated money might provide, the money, along with the other billions that dwarf it, would have done much more good had it not been stolen in the first place).
In the eyes of the British Crown (or at least Tony Blair, who is likely far more behind this than a 70-year old lady), apparently yes.
This is disgusting. The man has done more to harm computing over the last 20 years than any hundred other people, he has destroyed thousands to feed his apparently bottomless avarice for money (always unethically and often illegally) and only began giving to charity after his family shamed him into it. He is an unrepentent monopolist who continues to wreck havoc upon the industry, and whos shoddy products have been a disservice, not a service, to global enterprise.
Bill Gates should be ashamed. Great Britain should be ashamed. Frankly, anyone with a knighthood should be ashamed.
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
I take it you never understood the point of Robin Hood either?
2004-01-25 04:55:51 Bill Gates to be Knighted by Q of E (articles,microsoft) (rejected)
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Lameness filter encountered. Post aborted!
Reason: Please use fewer 'junk' characters.
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Excellent, excellent, excellent.
ROFL
I'm sure someone's done this before, but...
Bill Gates??!! knighted?!...NOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!
I always dreamt of a knighthood as a kid. It seems to mean a little less now.
To mail me, remove the 'mailno' from my email addy.
"Yeah. It smells, too..."
tax write offs....
Is the juice worth the sqeeze?
The statement that the X-box is easy to program is just a smidge disingenuous and twisted. The X-box is merely an easy-to-develop-for platform because many developers have been immersed in the API for a half-decade. Had the X-box come, fresh out of the gate, with the current layer of DirectX having been implanted on the PC simultaneously; everyone would decry the Xbox (and especially Direct3D) as being as confusing and as complex as programming in raw Emotion Engine assembler.
GL/AL/SDL. 'nough said.
-John Le'Brecage.
Being excited about things you love or worship is a good thing; hurting others beccause the don't share your views is the problem.
This knight thing comes after M$oft gave how much "free" software to who?
If any one needs to be nighted for "giving" the world some "free" software; it's Linus.
Sincerly Yours, FANatic
I don't want a pickle; I just want a Motor-Cycle! A four foot cop arrived with a five foot gun!
If Bill Gates was from there... :)
God help us all. I hereby renounce by British citizenship. Though not officially if anyone from immigration is reading this!
I guess it's no surprise; it just shows that if you're rich enough you can get anything you want, no matter how often you lie in court, break the law or act immorally.
I am always sickened when I hear of one of my fellow Americans kneeling before some supposed king or queen in order to supposedly become some supposed knight. Especially the supposed king or queen of England.
Edison was also a weaselly-shrewd lying, cheating, world-class FUD spreader of a hardball businessman.
Read up about how he stole movies from European movie makers, pirated them and showed them in movie theaters without paying royalties. Read about how he tried to spread FUD about AC electricity, to avoid admitting Tesla was right. Read about the inventions he stole from his underlings.
GCHQ Quantum Insert installed. If only our tongues were made of glass, how much more careful we would be when we speak
Though I guess there are some special provisions or something granted to Americans, so you can swear conditional fealty. Still, "Sir William the Traitor" has a nice ring to it.
Do you really need reason for beer? Wingman Brewers
Perhaps what is better noted about his giving is he doesn't have any disease (except for maybe a black heart *cough*linuxkarma*cough*). This is an important point IMO that no one has made. Take some other celebs, for example Christopher Reeves. He didn't give a shit about paralisys before he fell off his horse. Gates is saving others lives without self-interest.
"The truth suffers from too much analysis"
I'm no MS apologists and Linus may very well deserve a Nobel prize/knighthood in the future but Gates deserves this award.
"Oh come on. Like it or not, Bill Gates is the man who made computers accessible to the common people. He certainly deserves credit for that."
You're joking, right?
20 years ago, the MACINTOSH was the first computer with a GUI, the first computer with a mouse, the first computer that you didn't need to know command line or programming to use, the first user friendly computer, and overall the ONLY good computer around.
And where was Bill Gates? Sitting in a garage plotting to BUY DOS and then copy Macintosh a few years later.
Won't Sir Tim Berners-Lee and Bill Gates III KBE be surprised when the Queen summons them to fight for Great Britain in her next war.
I guess the British are concerned with Information Warfare, after all.
This is such crap. it seems Gates gets publicity and honours simply for being the richest man on the planet. I don't know why it should piss me off, because I know that's the way of the world, but it really does.
FFS, the man was headline news on BBC Radio this morning for his pronouncement that he would defeat spam within two years. If Microsoft really does achieve that, I will eat these words, but what utter BS. There is not one idea in that story that is his, or Microsoft's, and yet it reads like he is being given full personal credit for achieving some miracle.
I'm too mad to carry on with this.
When you have BILLIONS of dollars, it is easy to give a hundred thousand dollars to something.
1,000,000,000 = 1 Billion.
100,000 = 100 thousand.
Now, if you have $50,000 then you could give $50 and still be giving the same PERCENTAGE.
In other words, if you go to church every Sunday and put $5 in the collection plate, you've given $60. Which would be MORE than someone with ONE billion dollars giving away one hundred thousand dollars.
There was an article in the NYTimes stating that numbers release by the IRS suggest that the top 400 American earners (who only make up 1% of overall income) reported 7% of chartiable donations on their income tax returns that year. But what's most interesting is that the article go on to suggest that people like Bill Gates contribute even more than what he has reported.
It's Queen damn it!
...knight Linus too! Then they could just fight it out, ala swords!
Isn't it treason for an American to avoid US military service and join up with the British Army?
So, if I excel at making money, I should get knighted? Mr. Gates and Microsoft has done lots of things, but making money is the only thing they've ever done well.
I understand the first sentence above. I understand the second sentence. Why does the first demonstrate the second, though?
If you mean Margaret Thatcher, she is already a BaronessActually, I rather like the idea of our monarch having a nice sharp sword and Bill G kneeling on the conveniently blood-coloured carpet in front of her.
Oh, pleeeeeeeease........!
And do Ballmer while you're at it your maj!
Dear Queen Mum,
Please do the world a favor. When you knight fuckhead, please use a sharpened sword and give it a good swing, in a horizontal fashion.
A clean strike (right about neck level) would be greatly appreciated.
If there is any way to provide a quality simulcast of the event, with microphones sensitive enough to hear the subsequent thump and spatter, this would be a big plus.
Regards,
Humanity
But does that offset the fact that he got that money by violating US law?
Would the Queen knight me if I stole money from banks, but gave 20% of it to orphans?
Well, they're getting more than they WOULD have gotten, otherwise. So I'm a good guy. Right?
When the Romanian revolution happened in 1989, the queen promptly unknighted him ....
The Raven
Hmm.. does this mean at sometime we'll hear him say "I attack the darkness!" The horrors of Knighthood
The vast resources of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation are being used to battle diseases that have cursed mankind since the beginning of history. Particularily malaria and polio.
We are close to completely removing polio from the face of the earth, as we have done to the other ancient horror, smallpox.
Granted: the Gates legal team created the foundation to shelter the family wealth from taxes, and the wealth was created in less than honorable ways.
But, it is currently being directed successfully towards a goal that will benefit all humans now and in the future.
This is why the nerd king is being recognized as Sir Bill.
Would that not be Sir Linus and Dame Margaret? It's a lot easier to become a Lord or Lady I hear. You can buy a title but you have to be picked for a knighthood.
I'm still waiting for them to knight Darl McBride, for "globally promoting and upholding IP law," or something like that.
He's a clever man, no doubt. First buy a knighthood. Then buy a Nobel peace prize. And top it off with buying sainthood from the pope. Whats the use of all that money if you cant buy what other people cant have?
The last one was Queen Anne in 1707. The present incumbent is Queen of the United Kingdom, not England.
Carry on.
"Bill Gates has led one of the planets most profitable companies for over a decade. He deserves a Knighthood."
And Mussolini got the trains to run on time. What's your point?
Eh, whatever. She ain't my queen...
Theres' going to be a massive stink about this in the UK:
1. he's not British (yes I know hes being given a KBE), but nonetheless I'm sure there are far more deserving Brits and not Septic's
2. Yes it is built on criminality, what the hell is M$ vs Burst all about then? I though it was theft.
This is Gordon Browns idea of making close ties with the US, I wagger Bill gave the Labour party a big "donation" in exchange for a knighthood and the sweeping asside of all the OSS trials that are going on the the NHS etc.
llegally? How so? I'm assuming that you're talking about introducing deliberate incompatibilities in their software, thus reducing the market for their competitors.
Now, I grant you that that's illegal for a monopoly, but by your own admission, they were not a monopoly at the time, so anti-trust laws don't apply. Unless of course I'm confused (perfectly possible), and you mean something else.
It's official. Most of you are morons.
Note to Queen: Follow through with your swing.
Thats your problem, you don't excel at anything shitbag.
Please tell me where we can get his lifework for free. Because everywhere I look for it it surrounded by thousands of rabid lawyers.
NOTHING other that charitable donations of MONEY that bill gates has made is free.
No, donations of software should not count in any way.
and anyways... How is it working in the Microsoft PR department?
So, if bad people were knighted before, that makes it okay today.
No.
"Bill Gates has led one of the planets most profitable companies for over a decade. He deserves a Knighthood."
So, Knighthood means "gathers a lot of money"? I wasn't aware of that usage.
"So yes. Gates deserves his Knighthood."
Say it once, say it twice, third times the charm.
Just becuase you keep repeating it does not make it true.
"Antitrust aside, MS is not built on crime and in modern times that is about the only thing that would make him not be Knighted."
But that anti-trust is WHY Microsoft made so much money. And it is ILLEGAL in the US and Europe. So while it may not be "crime" it is illegal.
And just because bad people were knighted in the past is NOT justification for doing so now.
I have no qualms with admitting that Bill Gates' contribution to commerce is exactly on par with the likes of his fellow knights Mick Jagger and Elton John.
Don't label something "offtopic" unless you know the topic well enough to tell what's on topic.
He's sorry that Microsoft has a Washington presence, likely because he believes that politics and business shouldn't have to mix. It doesn't necessarily follow that he will always stay out of politics on a personal level to some degree.
Want to improve your Karma? Instead of "Post Anonymously", try the "Post Humously" option.
...and possession of gigabucks is a proof of one's smarts? Accumulating vast hoards of cash is in no way a requisite (nor even necessarily desirable) application of one's intelligence. Of course it may take smarts to realize that truth.
... and he's still considered evil and undeserving of an honorary award? Wow, how pathetic and petty can some people be?
Learn to seperate people... don't like his product, don't use it and/or write something better. Don't like his company, don't invest in it and/or compete against it. But to hate the guy just because he's more successful than you or I? Petty...
Did Billy give the Queen a donation or something? Is this the English equivalent of Lincoln's bedroom? Why would the Queen make herself even more irrelevant by handing out knightships to every Tom, Bill and Harry?
he is a citizen of the US of A.
He can be honorarily knighted, or change his citizenship, I suppose.
So he'll never be Sir BIll Gates.
Hw can be Bill Gates KBE.
(Knight Commander of the British Empire. )
Hmm I wonder if he can command all you british typs to install his OS?
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
In that case, i hope she slips.
GAAH! MY PRINTER IS ON FIRE!!! PUT IT OUT! PUT IT OUT!
Given that most of the people on the list for Queens Honours are politcally selected (ie the current government selected (with they aid of civil servents) who gets on the honours list)
Whats the betting this is another way for Tony Blair to get in bed with Bill.
It isnt enough that they effectively handed government websites to MS (and thus made them incompatible with anything but IE), they invite bill over at any opportunity
I for one do not want honours doled out this way, there are plenty more people that deserve the honour. But alas our political masters (or overlords) decide bill needs something his money cant buy easily.
I'll admit that he's not the best philanthropist, but he does donate a lot of money to a lot of organizations. He could just swim in it all day like Scrooge McDuck, so he deserves some definite props for doing what he does.
From the Duck Tales movie, Treasure of the Lost Lamp , just after having discovered the treasure trove:
(paraphrased from memory)Sounds like the company of those who refused is a lot better than those who accepted...
One thing that has been grating at me is the way slashdot evolves more and more into a hate-group. The similiarities to 1930ies Germany are striking - when everyone was quick to assure people that they'd be the first ones to dance around the fire if people finally started doing something about all those jews, but, you know, there are some they know personally who are actually exceptionally gifted people.
Tribalism and dualistic thinking have never in human history lead to something positive. Posters - be aware of what what you saying implies about your thinking.
"slip" with the sword.. Could we get so lucky??
Melinda: If you dont fund my organization, you wont even get to see my boobs!
Bill: awww, but I dun
Melinda: not another word, or you wont have chances at sex again for another 3 years
Bill: Fine, god dammit. you stupid bitch, I'll fund your little useless cause
Melinda: and you can get more potential customers and more publicity!
Bill: Wow, did I tell you how beautiful you are?
prolly went down something like that.
Donating $1 million in software is going to set him back.
Come to think of it I sould create a software package and mail it off to an organization and claim that I donated $100,000.
hmm... for fun I enjoy launching DDoS attacks against 127.87.42.5
2) Standardizing the way GUI applications work so that ordinary folks can get productivity out of them instead of endless tweaking and fumbling. (of course, sometimes it crashes and those @#$%^*!! words start flowing)
That's utter B.S. The standardization that you see in the Windows UI came from IBM; Microsoft merely implemented it and then bastardized it. Today, the Windows UI is one of the least consistent UIs around; you just have to observe some newbie users struggle with it to know.
3) Bill is a philanthropist and a marvellous example compared to many other rich folks.
Really? He only donates a tiny fraction of his wealth and he would be left with more money than most small nations even if he donated a big fraction of his wealth. How is that an example of philanthropy, even if he had earned the money legitimately?
...is more or less designed as an "anti-corruption" bill towards foreign governments (i.e. you do this and that, and we give you a title), to ensure the independence of the US government. For common citizens, I don't see it's applicable as they hold no Office.
And personally, I think it's applied rather liberally. Technically, the President couldn't accept a souvenir gift during a visit abroad if you follow this to the letter.
Kjella
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
Hey kid, what are you, 24? Ok, then I guess it's understandable that you didn't know about the Xerox word processor that was also a personal computer. I used 'em, what 22, 24 years ago?
Gosh man, don't they teach history in the schools any more? You didn't know that Apple STOLE the GUI and mouse ideas from PARC?
Not, as you seem to assume, how much they have GIVEN.
AND your $65 million figure is spread over YEARS that haven't even passed yet.
Here's an example:
12.3.2003
TCI Foundation
$8,500,000 over 5 years to implement a large scale effective HIV preventive intervention among the truckers and associated sex workers of India
So, LAST MONTH they promised to give $8.5 million OVER THE NEXT 5 YEARS.
Which works out to about $1.7 million per year.
"Look, you don't have to like Bill G's company or the software they make, but until you've figured out how to earn a few billion and donate it to charity, you should not try to insult the generosity of those who have."
So, if I break the laws of this country and ILLEGALLY make lots of money, then it's all okay if I give back a TINY PERCENTAGE of to charity?
Like I said, anyone with $50,000 giving $5 every week at Church is doing THE EXACT SAME PERCENTAGE as someone with $1 Billion giving $100,000.
I wouldn't miss $10 a week and Bill certainly isn't missing that money.
It's easy to be "generous" when you won't even notice the "loss". So you admire Bill for doing something that is easy?
So far, most of the comments have overlooked the most important bit of the original article.
For all you folks over the pond, a bit of recent UK political history starts here:
The person who nominated Gates for this award is Gordon Brown, currently the Chancellor of the Exchequer. Brown and Blair have a love hate relationship based on the fact that Brown believes he was stitched up by Blair over the Labour party leadership prior to Labour's victory in the 1997 election.
This animosity is kept quite on the whole because no government in the UK will dare to show a division of support for its leader as it's a great turn off for the voters as several Tory opposition leaders have found over the last 8+ years.
Blair is in a very vulnerable position for the first time in years as the shit is heading for the fan re: Iraq and Brown sees this as a good time to position himself for the take over if Blair goes down. The entrepeneurs conference Brown has set up is basically (as the article suggests) a "look how important I am and how powerful my friends are" day. Incidentally, the conference's most notable claim to fame is the lack of speakers who have started the business they currently run.
Personally, I find the concept of being lectured on entrepeneurship by people who have taken on the CEO post at a multinational or run their own predatory destroyer of start-ups, small businesses and competitors insulting in the extreme and hope Brown fall flay on his face despite my intense dislike for Blair.
I don't know whether there's a mechanism for objecting to honours in the UK but if anyone does, now may be the time to speak up.
Hmmmmmm..... Deep fried and look like Squirrel.
Once a warrior gentle of birth,
Then a person of civic worth,
Now a fellow to move our mirth.
Warrior, person, and fellow -- no more:
We must knight our dogs to get any lower.
Brave Knights Kennelers then shall be,
Noble Knights of the Golden Flea,
Knights of the Order of St. Steboy,
Knights of St. Gorge and Sir Knights Jawy.
God speed the day when this knighting fad
Shall go to the dogs and the dogs go mad.
Some keywords for the NSA in the Lord of the Rings universe: One Ring bind find Sauron quest Nazgul freedom
Didn't I see this in a James Bond movie. He's not building an ice palace too is he?
o)
Bravely bold Sir William rode forth from Redmond WA.
He was not afraid to crash, Oh brave Sir William.
He was not at all afraid to lose data in nasty ways,
Brave, brave, brave, brave Sir William!
He was not in the least bit scared to be smashed in the face with a pie
Or to have his PC lock up on stage during a product demo,
To have his Passport account stolen and sold on eBay
And his systems all hacked and Win-Nuked, brave Sir William!
His hard drive infected with worms
And his clusters lost and FAT table not found
And his registry a mess and files corrupt
And his personal mail forwarded to all
And his pass--
(with apologies to Monty Python)
Liberals call everyone Nazis yet they are the closest thing to it.
The queen will slap him around with the sword and shout something like: "You sommamabiatch, my Windows XP crashes all the time! Fix it you sommamabiatch!"
OK let us look at the fact. First he gave hundred of Million , not Billion. Still lezt us look what it is in %. Then let us look what the top giver from the "modest" less rich people give in %. See what i mean ? Second I may be wrong on that side , and BG may be a true philanthrope, but I have the strange feeling that there are tax opportunities there too. My take on that ? BG might be a philanthrope, but do not over throw praise at him. he might give 5% of its total worth and not feel a difference whereas IMO the true philanthrope out there give from 5% upward of their worth and are totally unrocognized because their worth is only a few thousands...
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
Where do I apply??? Man if that idiot can get one, #@@@! then I certainly should be able to get one!!!
Gamblers Forum
Remember "Lord Black of Cross-Harbour" (Conrad Black)? He couldn't get knighted because the Liberal Caucus thought he was a scoundrel, so he got a UK citizenship. If Parliament consented, he'd be "Lord Black of Winnipeg".
Right.
...... sometime in the unspecified future.
"Even if I grant you his illegal and/or underhanded, ruthless business practices, at worst he is a modern day Robin Hood, stealing from the well off, giving to the poor off (and keeping a healthy chunk for himself - although he has pledged to eventually give away close to everything he's earned)."
He takes from the rich
And gives to the needy
He keeps a little bit
But I'm not greedy!
-or-
They robbed the rich
And gave to the poor
except what they kept for expenses!
Let me crush your world image right now. ANYONE can promise to do ANYTHING thing
If you want to talk about how wonderful Bill Gates is, please just TRY to restrict yourself to ACTUAL activities.
And that "close to everything he's earned".... well, that all depends upon what YOUR definitions of "close" and "everything" and "earned" are and what HIS definitions are.
"If I were in the software business, I would hate Microsoft for what they are and what they symbolize."
Translation: If you were trying to support yourself and your family by doing honest work...
"If I were some starving person in Ethiopia, I would be saying, "fucking finally, someone is willing to put their money where their mouth is.""
Translation: If you were the object of his generosity....
So, it all comes down to whether you are the victim or the benefactor.
Let's try looking at this in a more enlightened mode, eh?
Look at the whole process. He breaks laws and amasses a HUGE personal fortune. But then he gives away a portion of that fortune. A small portion. A portion he will not even notice.
Now, to me, that doesn't seem like a person or behaviour that is "good".
I don't recall Robin Hood living in a castle with servants and such, all paid for by his "steal from the rich and give the table scraps to the poor".
You obviously haven't been paying attention. When someone like Bill Gates wants to control the whitehouse, they buy themselves a mindless puppet who will obediently grant them everything they want. It's always better to be the one pulling the strings.
See the current presidency for an example.
If you spread around a LOT of money, lots of people will not look too closely at HOW you managed to acquire that money.
The same in the past as it is today.
I'm saying that TODAY we SHOULD start looking at it.
We SHOULD have looked at it back then. But we didn't.
So Bill Gates is being knighted and the media is aghast. This whole situation can be remedied quickly. When you donate $26 freakin' billion dollars for charitable causes, like Mr. Gates has, you may complain.
26... billion... dollars...
That's WELL over half of his liquid worth, and it nears 3/4 of his liquid wealth, which is currently sitting somewhere near $40-42 billion. And he's the "anti-christ"?
Yep, you are completely correct.
Which makes my initial figures even more vile. Someone with $200,000+ is going to be less likely to notice $5 than someone with $50,000.
and not let such a hostage to fortune pass us by.
Only seven hundred and twenty nine days left till Sir Billy banishes spam, and counting.
OBE has long been interpreted as "Other Bloke's Effort". This is an area where Bill excells.
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
What's this I keep hearing about a foundation?
I thought he was being rewarded for Microsoft's Bob.
Ok, tell me what Bill Gates has been convicted of in criminal court. Now tell me what he has been convicted of in Civil court. Don't tell me suits brought against him. Tell me convictions, because I can bring a suit against Playboy for making me too horny, but that doesn't mean I am going to win, or that Playboy did anything wrong.
Quit your bitching, Bill gates is probably a better man than you, and by the standards of Knight Hood, he definitely ranks up there with what has been knighted in the past, using intelligence and guile to achieve wealth and power, has always been the definition of Nobility, so try not being such a liberal baby for a minute and just accept, he's doing better than you, and no one gave it to him.
Anonymous Cowards - Oh God, How I hate you
magine the scenario: Darth Gates is kneeling before the Queen, ready to recieve his reward. The Queen then wheels the swords round her head and with a shout of "fear the penguin" decapitates Gates in a single swing. It turns out that the Queen is a secret Linux zealot, and likes to compile her kernel just like the rest of us queen@palace # chmod +x Gates queen@palace # ./Gates
Brave Sir William ran away,
He wouldn't run Linux today.
When blue screens reared their ugly heads,
He could have run Redhat instead.
Yes, brave Sir William hit ctrl-alt-delete
Gallantly, not admitting defeat,
And knowing Open Source can't be beat,
He bravely uses lawyers to cheat,
Bravest of the brave, Sir William.
Liberals call everyone Nazis yet they are the closest thing to it.
I think I'll get a knighthood instead.
I am not real sure, but pretty sure that you have to be a royal subject to be knighted.
WARNING: I cannot be held responsible for the above, as I am schizophrenic, and don't know if it was me that typed it.
This is the most retarded thing I've ever seen get on slashdot.
Said resources aren't that vast.
On a percentage basis of their worth, the average church going family contributes more into the plate the the entire sum of Gate's contributions.
Bill Gates won't be a "sir" as he isn't a british subject - he'll be Bill Gates KBE (Knight of the British Empire), but not "Sir Bill Gates" (I'd have more chance - mind you I'd need to change my name to William Gates, and do something worth getting knighted for... but you know what I mean).
As to does he deserve it? I don't see it personally, but then I miss the "Golden Age" when computers were all different (Amiga, Atari, Mac, etc). "Which version of XP do you want?" (Home, Professional, Media, Tablet) isn't quite the same really. As we have Billg to thank for the near monoculture of modern IT I find it hard to applaud.
Citizens of countries which do not recognise the Queen as head of state sometimes have honours conferred upon them, in which case the awards are "honorary"
An honorary honour, go figure.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
Reagan gave the Med. of Freedom to mob associate Frank Sinatra, a violent, abusive dickhead. I don't get his music, either. His cover of "Mrs. Robinson" was probably the best thing he ever did.
"Make yourself at home, Frank. Hit somebody." -don rickles
Are you talking about Baroness Thatcher here? If so, do try to keep up. She got in the House of Lords ages ago.
> Illegally? How so?
Microsoft added a message to Windows that gave a warning about incompatibility with DR-DOS. But Microsoft's own testing had shown DR-DOS's compatibility to be essentially perfect. The message was a lie, intended to defraud the public.
Microsoft also added intentional (and encrypted) incompatibilities to Windows 95, while keeping DR-DOS out of the Windows 95 test program. It was a deliberate act of sabotage.
But there are more recent examples of Microsoft's criminal activity:
Sabotage:
> "Strategic Objective [is to] kill cross-platform Java by grow[ing] the polluted Java market" -- Microsoft Pricing Proposal for VJ++ 6.0
Fraud:
> "As i [sic] told charlesf [Fitzgerald] on the phone, at this point its [sic] not good to create MORE noise around our win32 java classes. Instead we should just quietly grow j++ share and assume that people will take advantage of our classes without ever realizing they are building win32-only java apps." -- Armstrong Decl., Ex. 23.
Extortion:
> Gates wrote, "Apple let us down on the browser by making Netscape the standard install." Gates then reported that he had already called Apple's CEO (who at the time was Gil Amelio) to ask "how we should announce the cancellation of Mac Office...."
> In Waldman's words: Sounds like we give them the HTML control for nothing except making IE the "standard browser for Apple?" I think they should be doing this anyway. Though the language of the agreement uses the word "encourage," I think that the spirit is that Apple should be using it everywhere and if they don't do it, then we can use Office as a club.
Almost every one of Microsoft's "victories" has involved similar illegal behavior.
The sabotage of Java alone has delayed the introduction of e-commerce by years, resulting in a loss of as much as $100 billion per year for the U.S. economy. And when you take that much wealth out of the world, people die.
Bill Gates doesn't deserve a Knighthood. He deserves to be in jail.
not tomention the flying cows over the mountains.
Bill Gates has done more for the world than, say, Mick Jagger or Elton John.
This is nonsense. Gates has done nothing, nothing at all to further the world's economy. On the contrary, he's done the opposite: by doing his best to prevent competition in the software industry, with his illegal monopolistic tactics, he has actually destroyed wealth. If you can't see that you have been duped by him.
Furthermore, the filthy evil worthless contemptable shit has made it his life-work to destroy freedom as far as computers are concerned. For example, he's tried to:
Giving gates a knighthood is about as appropriate as giving one to Saddam Hussein.
You all appear to have forgotten that we wouldn't have cheap standardized hardware to write free software for if it wasn't for Microsoft and Bill Gates. Bill Gates is the reason we have web logs to bash Bill Gates on.
Don't hand out awards (such as knighthood) for great deeds to an industry to individuals widely reguarded as the downfall of same.
I don't actually exist.
These people have replaced royalty as the elitist bastards who try to raise themselves above everyone else. Only, unlike the mass-murderers of the past, these people have no power, and are just wannabe-elitist, and laughed at by most people. People who aren't trying to be so painfully politically correct as these morons.
OK, here's the deal. Bill Gates doesn't get to be "Sir Bill". (And certainly not "Sir Gates" - knights are always styled as Sir ). Whilst Bill will recieve a KBE, the right to style oneself "Sir" is only available to subjects of the Crown.
Next up, the Queen has nothing to do with deciding who gets knighted. The lists are made up by the Government, and the Queen approves them. Whilst she proably technically can say "no", she's constitutionally bound to approve the list.
There are a small number of honours that are within the Royal gift - I think the order of the Garter, and maybe the Bath, remain in the Queen's personal gift.
So basically, Bill's getting a KBE because he's buddies with Tony Blair.
I imagine the whole thing will be a bit boring though...
||| I still can't believe Parkay's not butter.
My goal in life is to become the very first combination Knight/Saint/MCSE!
if you make lots and lots of money, people will bestow the highest honors on upon you, regardless of how you made that money. And it's not just clueless Americans that think this way!
Aging Pope 'Just Blessing Everything in Sight'
Matt Groenig
Larry Elison
Bill Cosby
Ross Perot
Polly Shore
Yoko Ono
The Iron Chef
Jessie Ventura
Rush Limbaugh
Mary Tyler Moore
William Howard Taft
Avoid Missing Ball for High Score
... a shrubbery!
Is there any formal way of protesting against someone being given an honour? Obviously I can write to my MP, but are there any other routes I can take?
What facilities are there on the Internet for setting up a petition against this?
Can anyone suggest any other things to do? -- if so, please email me at zen19725 at zen.co.uk, or add a comment to this article on my blog.
-- SYS 64738 --
QUEEN.
idiot
We seem to be missing one. Im sure Billy-Bob's response to the trials was "Its only a flesh wound!" Word
you'll resort to character attacks. :)
:)
"Only to someone massively jealous and ashamed of his own inferiority is a charitable organization having donated over $7 billion of grants and with $25 billion in assets pandering "table scraps.""
What their ASSETS are, in this case, supports my position. They have $25 billion in assets AND they're supposed to be a CHARITABLE ORGANIZATION, but they only donate $7 billion?
So, they donate $7 billion BUT KEEP $25 billion?
That seems to support my position.
"Actually by my count the BGF is by far the largest philanthropic organization ever."
So? Bill Gates also has the MOST MONEY IN THE WORLD.
If it were otherwise, that would be complete validation for my point.
"Obviously I would expect, and anyone should expect, Mr. Gates to put his money where his mouth is regarding his pledge to eventually donate the vast majority of his assets over time, but given his track record I don't see any reason to doubt him, since he's giving away more tens of millions every week, on average."
Read "The Road Ahead" sometime. It's "written" by Bill. Make sure you find a FIRST EDITION of it, also. Then read the LATER EDITIONS and notice how the story has changed.
Or, you could try reading up on the Netscape vs Microsoft trial and listening to what Bill said UNDER DEPOSITION about whether he actually "sent" an email or not.
"Why should he immediately give away everything he has just to please your sorry ass?"
Now my ass is sorry? Try not jumping on the strawman bandwagon.
I didn't say he should give away everything. I said that he didn't even notice the money he was giving away. The same as someone making $50,000 a year wouldn't notice $5 every Sunday in the church collection plate.
Please TRY to keep your facts straight.
"People like you will never be satisfied - Gates could jump in a river to save a drowning girl and not make it in time and you would bitterly accuse him of letting her drown, too concerned with his own life to swim faster."
Please, lay off the crack for 24 hours before you try to post something. You aren't making any sense and you've lost all track of any facts.
"What have you done for the world lately, Sir Khasim The Righteous?"
Donated 35% of my December income (after taxes) to the FosStars progam.
That was totally non- non- non- non- non-heinous.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
It says in my passport that you can lose your US citizenship by serving in the armed forces of another state. I know its not enforced often but if he is knighted can we stop him from coming back to the US...please?
Linus didn't donate BSD. He donated Linux. Hence the name.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
This is Slashdot, not reality.
I stated a simple fact... Bill Gates has given Billions (that's giga, not mega for all you geeks out there) to help people. Linus Torvalds has not (period). I'm not talking about quality of software, which one is the better geek, etc... I'm talking about which one is helping to find a cure for cancer and AIDS.
Those are the facts. I'm a huge linux fan myself, but when it comes to the real-world (hint... not Slashdot), giving people money to fund research and sending them to uni is what matters, not writing software to give away. Now, if that SW cured cancer or AIDS or sent people to unis, it'd be a different story, but it doesn't... it simply clones a 30 year-old OS and makes it freely available, nothing more. Get a does of reality.
A guy used to be knighted for doing cool deeds like pillaging countries in the name of the king/queen or outright murder of thousands in the name of God or some shit like that.
Actually, here are a few other titles they could give him:
Arise, Sir Dark Knight, Sir All Youbase, Sir Borgalot, Sir Freedomis Cancer, Sir Megalockin, Sir Hot Male (NOT!)
While I'm not sure what this has to do with anything: No, not even this. Economic swings up and down were stronger than today back then, and when Hitler came to power, the economic recovery was already well in progress. So, the best you could say about his economic "achievements" is that he had luck with his timing, and good marketing.
Anyway, with Hitler's being one of mankinds most crazy and evil assholes of all time, what does it matter how he did economically??
Stupidity is mis-underestimated.
I, for one, welcome our honorary Knight Commander of (the) Order of the British Empire overlord.
I was mod'ed up because it was "insightful". Deal with it.
.52% of $50,000.
....... $5.2 MILLION per year.
I was using those numbers as an example of how the PERCENTAGE works out.
Here they are again, slightly corrected.
Someone making $50,000 a year give $5 a week at church.
$5/week = $260 / year
Which is
Now, if we're talking about $1 billion, then the $5 equivalent is
So don't let the SIZE of the numbers fool you (as they obviously have with you). Look at all the factors. What percentage of his wealth he donates and what form the donations come in. It's easy for him to transfer a lot of Microsoft stock to his foundation because Microsoft gives him a LOT of stock.
Yes Master!
Now, since you are Sith Lord go and exterminate all
Jedi.
MSFT got rich on selling the same product that Linus gives away for free
I bought a PC in 1997. There was some difficulty installing some devices but most devices worked. I wouldn't have dreamed of installing most devices for Linux. Microsoft has put a lot of effort into making PC components compatible. Now I don't worry about being able to install anything in Windows.
We have the feeling that Microsoft is motivated to maintain its standards of service. There is little doubt that open source will continue to improve but if there is a lot of expense involved to develop a new feature it becomes iffy whether anyone will do it for free.
Know your pads. One time pad: good for cryptography. Two timing pad: where to take your mistress.
I was impressed to read that he donated 26 BILLION to charity. And that he's invested millions and millions of dollars into research for an AID vaccine. I think that is just about the best way the money can be spent.
Forget this list. Like a lot of "you owe Microsoft" style posts, it consists of accomplishments that are debatable either because their accuracy or whether they really stand out above their competition.
Microsoft's (as both a separate entity and alter-ego to Bill Gates) real contribution is in its history. Once again, Microsoft advocates often miss the mark by starting their list with "Internet for the masses" or the beginnings of Windows (with both points being dubious). It goes further back than that.
Microsoft's biggest contribution to computing is being a conduit for the process of making computer hardware a commodity. Kind of an odd turn of events since they were entirely a software company at this point. And likely more accidental than planned.
At this point in history, microcomputers were coming in to their own. They were no longer toys for hobbyists but rather important business tools. It hadn't taken long for IBM to notice that a market they had resoundingly ignored was quickly growing. IBM backpedaled and rushed out their own entry - the IBM PC. It was such a success in the business market that soon became a defacto standard. It might be worth pointing out that in IBM's rush to market, their IBM-PC product was heavily dependent on off-the-shelf components and and a licensed operating system from a small outfit based in New Mexico.
Enter Compaq. Compaq was the first to produce a legal IBM-PC clone in their Compaq Portable product (although not the first clone to market or first "portable" computer). This was done through a meticulous and expensive reverse engineering process. This was a necessary step since the hardware involved was available but the underpinnings of the IBM-PC, its BIOS, was not. The investment paid off - Compaq had a fully functional clone which launched the company to becoming one of computing's major players.
However, Compaq's success would have been questionable if it wasn't for Microsoft. The reason to go through this tedious reverse engineering was to create a machine that functioned just like an IBM-PC. The BIOS was one piece. The operating system was another. But unlike previous microcomputer products, the OS was not owned by the manufacturer. Compaq licensed the same OS, Microsoft's DOS, that ran on the IBM-PC.
I find it hard to believe that Bill Gates foresaw this turn of events. It is very likely that he simply saw software as being as important as hardware, that the microcomputer would take off, and that getting a portion of each IBM sale would lead to more profit than an outright buyout of DOS. Or maybe Bill reflected on their success with BASIC and did, in fact, see a day when their OS could be licensed in the same manner.
In any case, Compaq was the first of many. More clones came to market. This challenged IBM's product and lead to a situation where the "IBM-PC" became a compatibility standard as much as an available product. Clone companies continued to compete on price and features as the "IBM-PC" market shifted away from IBM's proprietary product to a commodity.
And Microsoft collected a fee for each "IBM-PC" sold.
There are a couple interesting points worth stressing here.
IBM began this process, albeit unintentionally, by relying on off-the-shelf parts that any other manufacturer could also purchase. IBM then attempted to protect their product with proprietary firmware. There are some echos of this behavior in today's computing environment.
Microsoft rode the wave of the hardware market becoming a commodity. Whether this was luck or not might be open to some debate but they
Nerds truly rule!
you guys would've been creaming your pant if it was announced that Linus Torvalds was gonna get kinghted ...
grow up..
As he was one of the Irish Bacons, it would have been an Irish peerage and could have been considered an insult to the real Irish government.
And an insult to pretty much anyone else with Irish ancestry who suffered under the rule of the empire.
The criteria for a Knighthood are well established. I.e. You must excel for an extended period at something that the Quean find important. That's all. Note that "Quean" refers not just to 'liz, but also the battalion of "advisors" that command her.
I would guess that there are additional requirements beyond that. Perhaps service to the common good et... In that case perhaps it should be Sir William Gates and Lady Melissa Gates. Both of them and their efforts at the gates foundation have made a tremendous difference anywhere they set up operations. Congratulations Sir William, sorry about being slighted Lady Melissa.
dictionary.reference.com defines "Quean" as:
1. A woman regarded as being disreputable, especially a prostitute.
2 Scots. A young woman.
They define "Quean" also as:
1. A woman; a young or unmarried woman; a girl. [Obs. or Scot.] --Chaucer.
2. A low woman; a wench; a slut. ``The dread of every scolding quean.'' --Gay.
"All tyranny needs to gain a foothold is for people of good conscience to remain silent." [Thomas Jefferson]
At precisely the time I saw this headline, I lost the last bit of respect for the british monarchy. Not as if there was much to begin with, but this is just pathetic. As if Gates had acted out of any other motive than to make money. The very notion is rediculous.
Who's next? Some oil billionaire from Bahrain?
If a train station is a place where a train stops, what's a workstation?
I mean, Gates is no Torvalds.
"Nine times out of ten, starting a fire is not the best way to solve the problem." - my wife
if you look at the entire list of fellow recipients, it's rather a worthless thing after all anyways. Rudy Giuliani? George Bush????!! it's hard to know whether to laugh or cry at the foibles of my fellow man :D next person up might as well be Bill Gates|Clinton|Thornton. Yeck.
The French have decided to knight a Penguin, just to stick it to the English.
This post will probably never be seen, but Bill Gates has given nothing to charity, only his foundation has. This makes a big difference since he can write all this off as charitable donations. Oh yes, and guess who sits on the board of his "charitable trust?" Right. His family. They draw very nice salaries plus expenses. You paid for it! For example -- the donation to the Boys and Girls clubs. $100 million, they claimed. In fact, it was something like $80 million dollars in software and $20 in cash. So he is out of pocket only $20 million, but he gets a writeoff of the FULL RETAIL VALUE of the software! In other words, if he's writing the "$100 million" off at 50% deduction (1985 it was 50%, in 1986 it was 100%), then he just made $30 million off the backs of joe taxpayer. That's YOUR money he's "donating." We should all gather around him and say "Thank you sir, may I have another?!?" The worst part is that people actually think that he's giving significantly to charity. According to Salon, he gave $600 million since 1994. That's right, that was his first charitable donation. 1994. That's not even $80 million a year if you add it up on a company which will soon have a thousand times that much in the bank. How many years was he a BILLIONAIRE before he gave his FIRST charitable donation? If we had any sense, we'd be running this guy off the plan for our new "never return" Mars mission. Yes, he's very clever. Yes he's managed to use every single rule, and break many, to his advantage. But the idea that anyone would honor this criminal astonishes me.
The baby's fine -- please stop sending business cards.
Oops forgot it is melinda(person) not melissa(virus)
He brought the internet to the masses and put us all in work, directly or indirectly. Sure there have been others since, but he set the ball rolling. He stated he would do something and did it. People like Steve Jobs, as cool as they were, didn't have any idea how the computer revolution would turn out..
Congrats! Sir Willaim Gates!
He will be knighted, just the same as everyone else (visit to Buckingham Palace, sword on the shoulder, medal, etc)
Yes, except there'll be no sword involved. As the page you link to says, "Foreign citizens occasionally receive honorary knighthoods; they are not dubbed..." Foreign nationals (along with women and clergymen) don't receive the "accolade" (the touch of the sword on the shoulder) and cannot call themselves "Sir".
GROGGS: alive and well and living in
I don't think he'll be entitled to the title "Sir". At least not through this award. I think that ir reserved for subjects of Her Majesty. That may well includes members of the Commonwealth. A certain War of Independence will preclude Bill.
Special Relativity: The person in the other queue thinks yours is moving faster.
Monopolies are not per se illegal under British Law. The top people at De Beers (world diamond monopoly based in London) cannot travel to the US because they are under indictment for illegal trade practices.
BTW he won't be Sir William since he is not a British subject. Neither is Speilberg Sir Steven. However, the difference between an honorary knighthood and a "real" one eludes me.
Funny, wasn't in town to discuss software prices with Gordon?
Gates is being rewarded for his contributions to society as a whole with all that money he gives to charity.
Linus has just built an OS.
When it boils down to it, it's just an OS. If Gates were getting the prize because of Windows then this would be a valid argument. But he's not.
Lots of people give their lifework. But not all lifework is worthy of being recognized as nobel.
Linux could die tommorrow and it wouldn't matter. There are dozens of alternatives like FreeBSD, OpenBSD, OS X, Windows, etc.
The money Bill Gates has poured into medical research to cure the world's most deadly diseases produced results that will last forever.
You don't get knighted because you're rich. You get knighted because you've contributed to society in a meaningful way. Linus hasn't. It's just an OS.
Ben
Work Safe Porn
Wow, Slashdot readers prove their tunnel vision again. Bill Gates started the largest charity in history. His work has saved more lives in Africa than likely any other human in history.
It is despicable that you cannot see past your petty grievances.
You should really read over your post. Several times if need be, and REALLY THINK about the logic of what you just said.
-- Thou hast strayed far from the path of the Avatar.
World politics aside, is there anything in British Law stating that the Queen can't kill whomever she pleases.
Assassinate the Queen, obviously. If you are with me, email me at the agreed upon address.
Your knighthood will be 2-5% faster, due to it being compiled with the -funroll-red-carpet -m1660 flags set.
Bill Gates. Born to advantage. Thief/stealer of other people's ideas and code. Monopolist. Philanthropist/tax avoider. Wants your last dollar if he can license you out of it. The evil dragon.
Richard Stallman. Visionary. Social/Ethical/Political revolutionary. Dogmatic and single-minded. And if you didn't have him, you'd now be in a world of shit without even the rope to lift you out of it. Exactly what you needed before you needed it; you just may not have figued that part out yet. The sword to slay the dragon.
Linus Torvalds. Pragmatist. Codemaker. What he needed you can use too. Friendly, likable and a natural leader. Dragonslayer.
Knighted? That's nice if you think honors bestowing a title for an outdated, class-based hierarchy are important.
These two other guys deserve the Nobel prize for economics.
Now choose, or what part don't you get?
Now we know who "Sir NotAppearingInThisFilm" was.
Bill Gates to be knifed? or Bill Gates should be knifed? or
What would you have him do ? Smack the person back ? With the way the courts are these days, he'd only lose big on an assault charge because he has money.
Sometimes our screwy laws (not sure about Britain's though) work to even out: sometimes money buys you all the absolution in the world, but other times it makes you a target of ridiculous lawsuits.
The Gates Foundation notwithstanding, as much as some people hate MS and of course I curse it frequently myself, Bill Gates and Microsoft has helped to drive the economy and tech sector throughout much of the nineties. Much of our infrastructure and even culture owes it's existance to MS, along with Sunn, Netscape, AOL, and Oracle as well as some others.
Would the tech sector and economy boom like it had without MS, would MacIntosh or OS/2 rule the desktop today ? Maybe, maybe not. Hard to say. Probably not, I think.
I'm not mindlessly defending MS's well known lack of ethics, but I am willing to acknowledge the the overall effects.
I think people give the wrong Bill credit for the economic boom of the nineties: It wasn't so much Bill Clinton that "grew" the economy (Buzzword alert), it was Bill Gates and Bill Joy if anyone. Add to that Steve Case, Larry Ellison, and Mark Anderseen, and you have a pretty complete picture.
I think MS's drive is a huge part of what created such a computer culture in America and around the world, made computing socially acceptable, popular, less nerdy and downright trendy, along with the advent of the World Wide Web. What family today would be caught dead without a computer in their home ?
Linux, OTOH, due to the GPL's very nature of being "free", would never have spawned the ecomonic boom that MS did in the last decade. That may change as people discover ways to create an economic infrastructure around it, but it wasn't ready in the nineties, and neither was OS/2, because IBM just didn't have the vision
Heck, there is even truth to the saying that buggy computers are job security, to a point.
One thing I'd like know, is for all the financial damage and liablity of viruses and worms, how much is offset by the creation of an entire tech sector designed to combat it? That's big business all by itself ! Look at how many companies and products are out there just to support Windows in one way or another, it's created hundreds of thousands of jobs by becoming an industry in itself.
On my job, our servers are all Linux and NetWare, but the end user's workstations are all MS, not Macs or terminals. If it weren't for MS, I doubt I would have had my last 2 jobs, which have much brighter futures than the consumer electronics tech repair crap I did before - who's going to pay $100 to get their VCR fixed when you can buy a new one for less ?
So, I say, for all their unethical business practices, despite their blind ambition, Microsoft has nonetheless provided a great benefit to the world and it's economy, and for that, I can understand Bill Gates deserving a Knighthood. More than I can understand Mick Jagger getting it, honestly.
Look back up at my post, now look back down, you're on the Internet. Now look back up. I'm a signature.
This MUST be something the Monty Python crew put together as a comeback? Its just as bizarre as when BG got his honorary doctors title here in sweden.
HTTP/1.1 400
Will the penguin get its due?
To everyone saying the standards of knighthood have fallen:
the main standard for modern knighthood is CHARITY. to maintain a knighthood you have donate a huge percentage of your time and money to charitable causes.
Bill has given over 20 billion dollars to charity. He is among the highest individual contributors to aids charities.
disliking the software is one thing, but slamming him getting a knighthood like this is just lame. STFU.
Bob Geldof's knighthood is not honorary. He is addressed as Sir Bob Geldof. Giuliani, and others such as George Bush (Snr, not GWB), Steven Spielberg, and Alan Greenspan are honorary.
Great, so does this mean that one can legally challenge him to a Duel to defend his honor?
You would think that a knight should at *least* be able to defend himself (and his honor) in a duel - so I say we challenge him and find out.
And I am not talking about Quake!
so to be knighted now a days one only needs to build a huge monopolistic company using one's ruthless, take no quarter, screw-the-law, killer instinct.
Oh well. At least there have been a lot of people knighted when it still ment something.
The race isn't always to the swift... but that's the way to bet!
Its just an honourary title, its not a true knighthood. ... Gates is not a citizen of a commonwealth country, he is not a subject of the queen, so he isn't eligible for a true knighthood.
But what the heck, he deserves whatever he gets, have any of you donated $26billion to charitable foundations lately?
George Bush + Linux = "I will not let information get in the way of the fight against Windows"
...Bill Gates is going to be knighted by the Queen of England for "services to the global enterprise.".... By enterprise, I think she meant empire.
Maybe she just wants the opertunity to get a sword near his neck.
"I dub thee... Blue scream of death!" *WHACK*
"Trademarks are the heraldry of the new feudalism."
Neither do I because free and superior alternatives exist.
It's hard to imagine that Mr. Gates really cares about education, though. His little pet organization, the BSA, has robbed public school systems of millions of dollars for having the nerve to run unauthorized coppies of M$ Word. Public school systems that can't afford computers and software to begin with should not be taxed by the world's richest man. If he cared at all he could grant all educational organizations a royalty free and perpetual license to use any and all Microsoft junk without sharing a line of code. This would save shcool systems billions of dollars a year, but Mr. Gates is more interested in taking than giving.
I'll reserve judgement on his AIDS work till I've seen more. His record of taking credit for other people's work is a black mark that he will have to work hard to overcome.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
And He looked up and saw the rich putting their gifts into the treasury, and He saw also a certain poor widow putting in two mites.
So He said, "Truly I say to you that this poor widow has put in more than all; for all these out of their abundance have put in offerings for God, but she out of her poverty put in all the livelihood that she had."
He would be "William Gates, KRC" or somesuch, would he not?
/usr/games/fortune
WHOIS BillGates? Who cares. Knighthood is now devalued. My condolences to Britain.
Need I say more?
Let me get this straight. The British Empire, known in history to have forcibly assimilated cultures in the ambition to be the largest colonial empire, robbing them of their wealth and dignity, impressing them into service and ruling with an iron fist.
Bill Gates, head of the Microsoft empire, known in modern history for assimilating the intellectual work of others, hijacking independent development and ambitiously expanding to control the technology industry with an iron fist.
I can see why the Monarchy holds Mr. G in such high regard.
Does that make Linux users patriots?
-Crolis
What? Voluntarily take a demotion?
Before any more anti Bill Gates & Microsoft Continues, you must remember that Linux was created to provide an port of Unix to the cheap and ubiquitous personal computer. And we owe a great deal of the pc phenomenon, wether you like it or not, to a then small company called Microsoft. Dou you really think that other company, perhaps Apple would have allowed the multi brand multi os revolution?
Let the flaming begin!
Okay, it's in a trust, whatever. But the money that is in the trust came from Bill's personal fortune.
Furthermore, that software writeoff thing was disallowed over 5 years ago, back when MS was doing it. Bill didn't even start his large donations until after that law was clarified, so he hasn't done much of that.
Do you think Bill Gates give a fuck about it? It's him, the richest man, who should give the Queen of England a knighthood.
Jared
Arise! Sir Osis of Liver! ...
Arise! Milk of Magnesia!
http://www.animationartwork.com/artwork/sku2408
This
And The Green Knight (or is that Emerald), and the White Knight, now we've got the Blue Knight
Couldn't it be called "Knighthood CE?"
Striking fear in the authors of godawful fanfiction, I am here, appearing in darkness, Tuxedo Jack!
... for him to lose Knighthood:
"In extreme cases, when a knight was found guilty of treachery or treason, he could lose his honour by formal degradation - a public ceremony in which his accoutrements were taken off him. In 1468, Sir Ralph Grey was taken to Doncaster where, being guilty of treason, his 'gold spurs were hewn from his heels while his sword and all his armour were broken'. The last public degradation was in 1621 at Westminster Hall, when Sir Francis Mitchell was found guilty of 'grievous exactions' and had his spurs broken and thrown away, his belt cut and his sword broken over his head. Finally, he was pronounced to be 'no longer a Knight but Knave'."
We just have to wait for him to do something bad enough, and/or be convicted of it. We'll see what happens when the courts in the U.S. are through with him...
Only British citzens can be referred to as "Sir So-and-So." So, Bill Gates will just be Bill Gates, KBE. Given that he didn't graduate college, it might be nice to finally have some fancy acronyms after his last name:)
Of course, this leaves open the possibility that he can just cross the atlantic, take up British citizenry so he can be called Sir, like Rupert Murdoch or some other media mogul did. I'm sure quite a few people would like that.
just hope the lightsabre isn't using an embeded WindowsCE OS or it may not work.
And yet IBM has done things just as evil if not more so, yet they're championed here on Slashdot because they had no other choice but to embrace and push Linux once NT was taking off, and they had no product of their own to push.
Ever heard of Sir Edmund Hillary? He's not British. NZ is part of the Commonwealth though, and still barely connected to Britian, to. So I'm not sure what qualifies exactly.
If you want to talk about how wonderful Bill Gates is, please just TRY to restrict yourself to ACTUAL activities.
Ignoring the fact that you think there should be a line break after every sentence--you seem to have forgotten that Bill Gates is literally the world's biggest philanthropist and has given more billions to more charities than you or your children or your children's children will in their lifetimes.
Yes, I see why he's being Knighted. Have you looked at all the medical research he's funded? Or are you just buying into the frothing, blind, Slashbot mentality of "M$ AND BILL GATES = BAD!!1 BECAUSE I USE GNU/LINUX"
-Robert
Err... KBE
/usr/games/fortune
Just on a technical note: he isn't permitted to prepend his name with the title "Sir" unless he is a subject of the Crown.
It's a pity they are still encouraging the brutal empire that had once enslaved thousands of people including the americans.
They still have an old queen handing out knighthoods to evil people.
Stop those crazy brits
MSFT got rich on selling the same product that Linus gives away for free
Uhh... no.
Same genre? Yes... same product? Hell no.
I'm not going to get into a huge debate, but both Unix systems and Windows systems have their advantages. Windows is really really easy to use. Linux is harder to use but is more reliable for servers and such. (Sure there's more for each side, but that's the general division)
Why don't you start complaining about Apple computers while you're at it? They charge a pretty penny too...
Hmm... no one here has really complained about them and the money they make...
see here for an overview of the full british honours system
I totally disagree. Most people in the UK use MS products without any bitter and twisted view about Bill Gates. If they could identify him, they would align him with our own Richard Branson, a British business hero (bar none !).
BTW, this is what I really think but go on, mod me down as a troll or something. For a place that advocates free this and free the other, any non-anti Bill Gates comments are marked up right away as 'trolls'. So free speech doesn't come into it !
How history gets twisted! Microsoft wrote OS/2! To say they broke its back is ridiculous! They spend hundreds of millions of dollars developing and marketting it, IBM spend a billion on marketing. They couldnt sell it.
Back before the phrase was "developers developers developers" and "windows windows windows", the original chant was "os/2 os/2 os/2". Steve Baller would come running down the hall by my office (i was an MSDOS developer) shouting "OS/2 OS/2 OS/2" letting us know our project was doomed.
He can't be knighted, he can only be awarded a KBE, as he is not a British subject. KBEs don't even entitle a person to be called "sir".
that's right. now all bill needs is a squire with two rocks to follow him around to simulate those hoof-on-ground noises.
----
http://www.hellection.com
Jesus, you'd think that Bill Gates spent his days stomping on puppies and biting the heads off of kittens with all this burning hatred for the man. Seriously, fuck you people. The guy donated 26 billion dollars to malaria research. That's a good thing, regardless of your groupthink. Does it instantly make Bill Gates a good guy? Of course not. Does it make him deserving of Knighthood? I'd certainly say so. I'd say in the grand scheme of things the lives his donated money will save goes far beyond the bullshit of the software business and your sad personal worlds where Gates is hiding outside your window waiting to steal your computer and rape your mom. Grow up.
And no Person holding any Office of Profit
Note: Office does not specifically say POLITICAL office...
How did the US constituents know that Gates would hold an MS Office that would make a lot of profits ?
It would be nice to see /.ers see this comment before they say stupid things like "Gates donates a few million... blah blah blah", since they won't RTFA.
"Only 35%? The net worth of the Bill Gates Foundation is roughly 60% of Bill Gates'."
But ONE of the differences is that I no longer have control over the 35% I donated. Bill still controls ALL of the money that his foundation has.
"In the 4 years it's been in existence, it has donated a little over $7 billion."
That's downright AMAZING because their books don't show that number. They must have more than DOUBLED their contributions in the 2 years that aren't shown.
http://www.gatesfoundation.org/nr/public/media/a nn ualreports/annualreport02/finGrants.htm
It also seems that they're taking in MORE money then they're GIVING out.
http://www.gatesfoundation.org/nr/public/media/a nn ualreports/annualreport02/finActivities.htm
"If we trace this as a linear trend,...."
Can you TRY to restrict yourself to FACTS? No extrapolations, no guesses, no promises about what MAY happen, just the facts.
The facts SHOULD be enough for you to make your case.
"And yet you criticise him for not doing enough."
What I'm doing is pointing out that the amount of money he is giving is NOT THAT MUCH when it is calculated as a PERCENTAGE of his income.
When it is calculated as a PERCENTAGE of his income, then you can see how much MORE other people have given. Regular people. People who don't have billions of dollars at their disposal.
"Well, fair enough, he could always do more - but let's try to get some perspective here shall we? Maybe even a little credit where credit is due?"
Have you missed my posts? That is EXACTLY what I have been doing.
"You've got $25 billion and you want to get the most out of it - do you spend it all at once or do you spend it slowly over time, keeping the remainder held in investments? YOU would spend it all at once, because you're an idiot, but a wise investor would not."
This is NOT AN INVESTMENT. Unless you're investing in having charitable causes.
This is about FIXING PROBLEMS. You don't fix a problem by investing money that could be spent on fixing that problem.
Here's an easy example, his "challenge grants". That's where his foundation will give 2x the amount of money raised by local efforts.
So, your library needs computers. If you raise $5,000, Bill will give you $10,000.
Well, that's nice. But it doesn't really SOLVE THE PROBLEM does it? Why not determine how much money it would cost to put enough computers in those libraries and just DO IT?
Again, his foundation is taking in more money than it is spending so it isn't a cash flow issue.
If there aren't enough computers in those libraries today, and he doesn't give enough money to put enough computers in there, then what use is the investment you're talking about? Whatever the PROBLEM was that would have been SOLVED by putting sufficient computers in those libraries will still be a PROBLEM because it wasn't completely dealt with.
"The problem is that you are thinking in terms of percentages whereas I am thinking in terms of absolutes."
There are no absolutes in this world. Deal with it.
"Bill Gates hasn't donated enough of a percentage of his income. Well see, the thing is, percentages don't matter."
Yes they do. What is $5/week to someone with $50K is over $200 MILLION to Bill. So just looking at those big numbers is not enough.
"Burger King Worker makes $10k per year and donates 10% of it - that's $1k. Pro Athelete makes $1m and donates 1% of it - 1/10 what BKW does! - and that's still 10x more than what BKW donates."
Fascinating. You've managed to FINALLY re-state my INITIAL POSTING.
"PA is doing more good than BKW."
Well, that assumes that both contributions go to equivalent "good" causes and are used in the same fashion. But I'm willing to allow that.
"Note that I'm not saying PA is a BETTER PERSON than BKW - he may well be an ruthless lying asshole like Bill Gates."
WHOA!
Hail Gates, long live Microsoft and Windows! May Linux crumble to bits like the Xerox of old!
It's absurd for you to compare BG's "donations", considering he's got tens of billions of dollars in financial worth.
If you stop and consider how he got that money, you'll probably not consider his donations so valuable.
By hook or by crook he has essentially taken money from every US citizen, plus many citizens of other countries. The monopolistic and politic behaviors of Microsoft have wasted and siphoned public funds, not to mention corporate funds, needlessly, for years. No company can maintain 80% profit margin without underhanded tricks, unless of course they have the market cornered on some particular resource. Microsoft doesn't have any special resouce - not any more than other companies. But they have stolen, robbed, bribed, and marketed their way to monopolistic domination.
Fortunately, all giants fall. Microsoft will fall, and perhaps someday, Bill Gates will be recorded accurately in the history books.
.sigs are for post^Hers.
This is dependent on the time of knighting. Australia and NZ still have the queen as the head of state. In Australia the top honour used to be a knighthood officially into at least the eighties. Then the order of Australia was introduced to take over from knighthoods as the official top honour.
Basically like the court system at the time (upto 1986 the highest court/ court of last appeal in Australia was the british privy court. Canada had the same arrangement until 1949, and New Zealand upto last year) the honours system for rewarding outstanding acheivement actually extended upto british knighthoods. The australian government and states could recommend directly to the queen, people who should receive knighthoods, and the titles were officially recognised (by political protocol) with the official title of Sir Blogs.
An interesting quirk of this is that now if the queen was to award a knighthood to an Australian, like she is doing to Bill Gates, it would be a large outcry from people saying that it was undermining the Order of Australia as the top honour in Australia, instead of an award from a foreign head of state which is how the US will view the award to Bill Gates.
Edmund Hillary was knighted in an age where the top honour in New Zealand was a knighthood, and the NZ government of the time would have recommended his knighthood. He would also have been addressed by his title at all official events.
another funny story about knights, swords and kingdoms... and mr. Gates is there too. Coincidentally, I visited these links a few days ago:
http://www.gamedev.net/reference/articles/article3 90.asp
3 91.asp
http://www.gamedev.net/reference/articles/article
And how are his merry men selected?
I thought knighthoods were reserved for ex-Beatles and Hollywood actors.
I never really cared before, but this sort of stupidity really makes me want to be completely dissociated with that wanker monarchy.
And Tony Blair, (since I'm sure you read Slashdot), you have some problems. First George W's dick, now Billy G's. Stop sucking.
...I will turn it down.
Thanks a lot "Sir" Billy!
It may not be built on crime, but it is quite definitely built on tort. Who's next? Silvio Berlusconi?
Gates may receive his honorary knighthood, but no one is under any obligation to respect it or congratulate him for it any more than they are with regard to his wealth, or for that matter any more than they are required to kneel before the Queen. Titles of nobility, especially of the honorary variety, entitle the recipient to nothing from anyone but the party awarding the title.
Now kiss my ring.
"Even if I grant you his illegal and/or underhanded, ruthless business practices, at worst he is a modern day Robin Hood, stealing from the well off, giving to the poor off (and keeping a healthy chunk for himself"
So being a crook is okay, just so long as you spend some of your ill gotten gains to buy a good reputation?
*IF* his sucess comes from illegal/unethical/immoral practices, I don't think giving away money he could never find anything to spend on suddenly makes him a model citizen. Really his donations are not sacrifices. He only gives away what he can easily afford, suffering no discomfort or even inconvienience. I guess those Ethiopians must hate people like me because I don't live out of my car so I can afford to send them a couple thousand dollars and put my money where my mouth is. Bill sitting in the mansion writing out fat checks obviously cares a lot more than me. Since I don't have billions I guess I'll just never be as good a person as Bill Gates. If I really cared I wouldn't mind trampling all over other people so I could amass a vast fortune to give away and aid the oppressed and downtrodden.
But the fact is he is buying something, an improved reputation. Funny how he became big on charity after microsoft's public reputation started to become tarnished. From what I've seen its definately money well spent.
Congratulate "Sir William" and move on
Hmm. I heard that if your not British, then you don't actually get the title, "Sir", but I could be wrong.
"I have never let my schooling interfere with my education." - Mark Twain
Luke Chapter 12 41And He (Jesus) sat down opposite the treasury, and began observing how the people were putting money into the treasury; and many rich people were putting in large sums. 42A poor widow came and put in two small copper coins, which amount to a cent. 43Calling His disciples to Him, He said to them, "Truly I say to you, this poor widow put in more than all the contributors to the treasury; 44for they all put in out of their surplus, but she, out of her poverty, put in all she owned, all she had to live on."
"Bob Geldof's knighthood is not honorary. He is addressed as Sir Bob Geldof."
Sorry, but Geldof's knighthood is honorary, as will be confirmed by any of the biographical material found here. As an Irish citizen Geldof cannot hold a full knighthood unlessa) He takes British citizenship (or subjectitude, or whatever) AND
b) He gets approval from the Irish government (if he also wants to retain his Irish citizenship).
A couple of Irish citizens who also hold British nationality have accepted full knighthoods with the permission of the government, notably former Heinz supremo and current newspaper magnate Tony O'Reilly (or Dr Sir Anthony J. F. O'Reilly as he probably prefers to be known).
It's true that Bob Geldof is often styled 'Sir Bob' in the media, but this is not an official title, and the status of his knighthood is no different from that of Spielberg or Greenspan.
I just read on slashdot that *Bill Gates* is going to be KNIGHTED by the Queen of England, but I don't remember taking any hits of acid.
Boy, that Queen has REALLY been drinking too much gin this time...
Game Maker Community
if i had that much money id buy my knighthood too. please send me all your money so i can be knighted. i like the way "sir" sounds in front of my name. and theyd have to say my entire name all the time.
That may be true.
Microsoft wrote OS/2! To say they broke its back is ridiculous! ... They couldnt sell it.
That is only part true and contains enough omisions to make it a deliberate lie. IBM also put lots of development into OS/2. They provided sane guidance but what they got from Microsoft was nothing compared to what it became. More importanlty, however, Microsoft did break OS/2 with anti-competive agreements with big PC makers that insured that OS/2 would always cost the end user more than Microsoft's offerings. Microsoft was convicted of breaking anti-trustlaws for that it is the main reason OS/2 lacked device drivers and never was adopted. It was a better system, it could have cost less and it is still better than Microsoft's current kludge, XP.
Today, free software is better and it will soon take over. Once again, IBM is on the bandwagon. They have always picked the best of breed. Microsoft's days are numbered because they can't lock out free.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
I heard that they plan to knight Charlie Manson next.
I used to be a paranoid, now, I'm just a noid.
What one really needs is a good university or institute or even better, one's own country with a monarchy you have in your pocket.
Bill Gates is buying these things up left and right. He knows he's a total shit, and that's driving him crazy, and he tries to buy away his image of himself. He 'bought' a doctorate a couple of years back in Stockholm, where the year before Linus Torwalds had got one for free, but that's the difference: Linus is a nice guy, and he's doing nice things people like, and Gates isn't.
So if this is scary, it's scary because it seems to tell us money can buy anything and anyone.
Interesting, the queen no longer rules the world.
Bill Gates does rule the world.
And she is knighting him?
Oh, what a give-away. Did you hear that? Did you hear that, eh? That's what I'm on about. Did you see him repressing me? You saw it, didn't you?
In exchange for his knighthood, Bill has agreed to give the queen a discount on MS .Net Developer and invite the queen and her family to the annual MS fundraising banquet in Redmond. The queen must however give up her rights to the domainname royal.gov.uk because it sounds too much like "sco.com"
We could have lobbied to have Bush knighted!
"73% of quotes on the Internet are made up" -Ben Franklin
Interestingly, there was a proposed amendment that would have automatically stripped the citizenship of any American who accepted such a title. Some conspiracy theorists claim that the amendment was, in fact, ratified in 1819; however, that notion has been pretty thoroughly debunked.
Sir William Gates the 3rd...mighty impressive name, isn't it ? a true king's name, if I might say so.
...glitch in the program.
But right now I am having a trip...I imagine Star Wars with Bill Gates as Darth Vader...the Death Star as the Microsoft headquarters...and Linus Torvalds as Luke Skywaker, approaching the Death Star with a squadron of fighters...As they get closer, a big Microsoft logo is made clear on the Death Star:
Linus: we see it!!! the Big Microsoft Headquarters...This is the place that brought slavery to our land...we must eliminate it!!! stay on the Leader...
Inside the Death Star:
Anonymous programmer: Sir, we are picking something in our radar. Something is approaching us.
Bill Gates (with deep Darth Vader-like voice): put it on the video panel!!!
The radar operator puts it on the video panel. For a couple of seconds, a nice Windows XP desktop appears, only to be replaced soon after with a blue screen of death...
Bill Gates: What is this????!!!!
Anonymous programmer: Sir, we had a little
Gates: how dare you!!! you insult Sir William Gates the 3rd!!! a Knight of the British Empire!!! (...who missed beheading by a couple of inches thanks to the force!!! 'The queen just slipped' my ass...)
Now we all know why the Death Star exploded. It was a bug in the software, providing root access to the Death Star through a broken COM interface...
Long Live Sir William Gates the 3rd!!!
the difference between an honorary knighthood and a "real" one eludes me
The real ones are cheaper.
No. Contrary to what many believe (or would like to believe, in the case of our Congresscritters), the Federal Reserve is not part of the government. It's just a regular bank that happens to be where the government keeps its money.
Bravely, bold Sir Gates rode forth from Redmond City. He was not afraid to die, oh, brave Sir Gates. He was not at all afraid to be killed in nasty ways. Brave, brave, brave, brave Sir Gates. He was not in the least bit scared to be mashed into a pulp Or to have his eyes gouged out and his elbows broken, To have his kneecaps split and his body burned away And his limbs all hacked and mangled, brave Sir Gates, His head smashed in and his heart cut out And his liver removed and his bowels unplugged And his nostrils raped and his bottom burned off And his penis- Brave Sir Gates ran away. Bravely ran away, away. When danger reared its ugly head, He bravely turned his tail and fled. Yes, Brave Sir Gates turned about And gallantly he chickened out. Bravely taking to his feet, He beat a very brave retreat. Bravest of the brave, Sir Gates.
charles manson gets the Congressional Medal of Honor!
pr0n - keeping monitor glass spotless since 1981.
It's all according to his plan... (back to an old favorite...)
l
http://www.theonion.com/onion3121/billgates.htm
If only it were KDE..
By the time of Windows, DR DOS was already dead meat. It was still kicking a bit but its days were numbered.
In any case, Digital Research blew its chance years before when its owner - Gary Kildall - decided to go flying his plane instead of meeting the IBMers who wanted to talk about an operating system for their new microcomputer. They went to Microsoft instead.
All I want is a secure system where it's easy to do anything I want. Is that too much to ask ~~ Randall Munroe
Your chart goes back 10 years. Big diff 'tween $7 Billion in 4 years and $7 Billion in 10 years. The 10 year figure supports my position.
"Tracing current and past data to show possible future trends."
Is an exercise in futility. Who cares what POSSIBLE future trends are?
"I know that's what you're saying. And what I'm saying is WHO CARES."
Obviously not you. But it does show that Bill is not the generous person you claim he is.
"Now let me explain why it would be very stupid for any charity to blow their wad all at once and not keep a sizable treasure chest on hand."
Don't bother. I understand investments. Very well.
"It doles out money carefully, in reasonable sums, over time, while keeping the rest of its assets invested."
Again, this is a valid approach ONLY if you are interested in keeping problems around so you can "donate" to them.
"Or it could spend $25 billion today and have nothing in 2104."
Again, you have a problem with facts so you'll stick to extrapolations. I do not have a problem with facts and I understand extrapolations are nothing more than fantasies.
"Because although Bill Gates is the richest man alive he does not have enough money to solve all the world's problems."
If you can't solve them ALL, it's best not to solve ANY?
Sorry, I don't agree with your "logic" on that one.
"And you propose to "deal with" this problem how? Computers in libraries will ALWAYS be a problem because computers will ALWAYS break and get obsolete."
So, you believe that the "problem" was "there are not enough computers in libraries".
I, on the other hand believe that "putting computers in libraries" is the approach taken to solving the real problem.
Even if that WERE the problem, partially solving it still sounds like "a problem" to me.
Again, his foundation is making MORE MONEY than it donates, but isn't solving ANY problem COMPLETELY.
"$5 is an absolute. 5% is a percentage."
$5 is $5. 5% is a percentage. They are not absolutes.
"But dear khasim, I've already shown that Gates gives away more money - both in absolute dollars and as a percentage of his assets - than, for example, you do. Which is even more than most other people do."
No you have not. You keep claiming this, but you have NOT shown it.
"I think you are exactly right here. But I also think that people who live in glass houses should not throw stones, which is to say that YOU could donate more too. 35% of your December income?"
Nice try. But I'm too wise to fall for that strawman. We're discussing Gates, not myself.
Again, PLEASE TRY to stick to the facts. It isn't that hard.
"I will grant you that yes, Bill Gates' company has engaged in illegal business practices, but I would say that the good he has done, especially with regards to his philanthropy, outweighs the bad by a pretty substantial amount, making him deserving of a knighthood, to get back on topic."
And that is your opinion. Which you are unable to support with any facts.
My opinion is that Robin Hood, who takes from the children (see MS's school license program here) and buys himself a nice house with the money, then gives back a portion of the money to one family is NOT doing something good.
Take a look at various governments and how much they pay MS (which is where Bill gets his money). Those governments have to TAX more to pay Bill. Either that or cut back on schools and police and fire departments.
So, Robin Hood takes from everyone, builds a nice castle, hires servants, etc, then gives back a LOWER PERCENTAGE than others.
Somehow, I don't see Robin Hood as being "good" when he keeps 99%+ of the money.
No one's mentioned it but the British National Health Service is busy negotiating the purchase of 800,000 copies of windows.
85-90% of Italian Jews survived the Holocaust. Don't mention Mussolini, mention the SS.
Robin Hood was morally bankrupt. He didn't create wealth. He simply stole it. And not just from corrupt govt officials, who at least you can argue were overtaxing people unfairly for their own benefit. Robin Hood also stole from merchants, who are the people that brought us out of the middle ages as cities developed as centers of trade. Bill Gate and Linus Torvalds are heroes not because of what they gave away, but because of what they created. They created software that is useful, something of value to everyone. Giving to the poor is horoable, but starting a company which provides useful goods/services and provides people jobs does a lot more to raise the standard of living for everyone.
Vote for Pedro
Well let's see what Quake manual says:
Knight
Canned meat. Open 'er up and see if it's still fresh.
People who like this sort of sig will find this the sort of sig they like.
dictionaries are a wonderful resource in finding the meaning of words. This can aid you in not sounding like an illiterate bafoon.
Oh dear.
No, but KSC is an option...
Saint!...I have the certificate hanging on my wall! I am also an honorary Doctor of Theology. You can call me Dr. Darkharlequin
In the US, we probably won't see any more "heros". We're to set on worshipping money (see the rest of this thread).
Anyone is "good" as long as s/he has enough money.
Other cultures and nations might spawn their own "heros", but most of the US population will never hear of them, nor ever care.
Am I the only one that finds this trend of "knight someone because they are rich" or "knight someone because they are famous" unfortunate? I mean, isn't the knighthood supposed to be about honor, valor, and self-sacrifice? (mumbles to himself) Gee, I hope no one looks up the history of the knighthood... (looks around) ;)
-Vendal Thornheart
link
trifecta ( P ) Pronunciation Key (tr-fkt)
n.
A system of betting in which the bettor must pick the first three winners in the correct sequence. Also called triple.
i dont really get how that applies tho. maybe you meant horsemen of the apocolypse?
>Don't sell him short just because he's mostly >evil...
>>The devil can cite Scripture for his purpose.
>>An evil soul producing holy witness
>>Is like a villain with a smiling cheek,
>>A goodly apple rotten at the heart.
>>O what a goodly outside falsehood hath!
Troll it may or may not be, but it is also the most pertinent (Having logical precise relevance to the matter at hand) observation ever penned by man.
KFG
just because linus hasnt had one.. dont hate. the man (bill) donates millions of dollar to charity, on that alone he should be knighted.
He should have to duel with Eric Raymond to defend Windows' honor.
In a world that is Free and Open, who needs Windows and Gates?
A tax rebate is when an individual decides they want to bribe the populace into voting them into office so they can redirect funds into their buddies businesses in the name of national security and leave the country facing a massive budget deficit.
"Taligent is still pure vapor. Maybe they'll be the last who jumps up on Openstep... "
Was that knighted or indited by the queen?
Well, what else do you give the geek who has everything?
The only Queen of England is Peter Mandleson, Elziabeth Widsor is the queen of the United Kingdom of Great Britian and Northen Ireland. Even though my own political stance may not agree with her position, she *IS* the Queen of England, Scotland, Wales and Northen Ireland, it would be wrong to refare to her as the queen of only one of these.
Damn Yankees
The old legend of knights being sent out to slay dragons is something of a staple of medieval storytelling.
This time around, I'm really gonna root for the dragon....
Bruce Lane, KC7GR,
Blue Feather Technologies
The Canadian government, at least, would officially ask the British government to withdraw the nomination. It is the policy of our government that citizens, even joint citizens, may not accept foreign honours.
A few years ago, Conrad Black, a joint British-Canadian citizen, was nominated to be knighted. It might have had something to do with him being arch-nemesis of the Prime Minister of Canada at the time, but the knighting was blocked. So Conrad renounced his Canadian citizenship and went on to become Lord Black of Crossharbour.
Eh, Getting sick of the Torvalds loving going on.
Here's the deal, Gates is a business man and always was, and always will be.
Get off the dude. We should just be happy that he made computer useable to the average person at their job so they can use a computer and give sys Admins like myself a job. (well I am still looking for one actually)
Its not really his problem. A lot of companies think they fix a problem by how much money the spend on it. Like a previous employer, I recommended a snort based IDS, but the Cisco one cost a crap load more money and worked with less functionality.
So, did the company go with the free better working alternative, or did a bunch of CCIE's Descend on my data center and install a Cisco shitbox...
Yup, there is now a Shitbox in the network rack of my previous employer against my recommendations.
Corporate giants have the money, (we the consumer don't) and neither do Universities or other educational places. Corporations are what fuels all computer and software growth. The money Dell makes from Corporate accounts is staggering and only 1.5% of their business is consumer and educational. (Don't ask me the source I heard it on the financial report of WGN Radio 720 here in Chicago).
Corp wants to spend money and get a grantee. You cant get that easily in Linux, Its easy as cake with Windows. And duplicating a windows Sys Part, Veritas, ArcServe, and Dantz do just fine. There is another over priced software that comes with a "guarantee".
Now Bill do something in Windows that will only accept Tech support from Americans!!! I am tired of people in India taking away my ability to pay the rent after I took a while and learned how to fix your products!!!!! I WANT TO EAT AND PAY MY RENT!!!!!!!!!!!!SOMEONE HIRE ME!!!!
Next from Sir Bill of Gates, MS-Knighthood 1.0!
What do you want to be called today?
1. Get to talk to the Queen. ...
2. Buy your Knighthood title.
3.
4. PROFIT!
With MS-Knighthood 1.0, you don't need to browne-nose anymore. Get your own title for o<!-- fohw wef -->nly $199.99! System requirements: Wind</gnfplm>ows XP (to print the certificate), any Microsoft-supported GDI printer and a Passport account. Please note that MS-Knighthood does not run on Linux!
Also available from the Microsoft/Buckingham joint venture: MS-Diploma 1.0 (Get U n i v e r s i t y D i p l o m a s without taking a<!-- xysfoijef -->ny exams. No-one turned down. Discr<!-- foijwef -->eet and reliable.
woefij woeif we adsl kasd g lasghsowifhew efoij
cpghost at Cordula's Web.
...Mr. Gates and Microsoft has done lots of things, but making money is the only thing they've ever done well...
Actually, that's half right. The other thing they've done just as well is made shitty software and operating systems. Windows 1.x-3.0 were failures. It wasn't until version 3.1 came along that Windows really started taking off. Even then, I feel it wasn't until Windows 98 that they started making a decent OS. I may be wrong, I may not be, but that's how I see things...
Hope be with ye,
Cyan
Any American who accepts a knighthood is sanctioning the system of hereditary privilege which we overthrew in the revolutionary war.
It is beyond pretentious.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
And Mussolini got the trains to run on time.
As it happens, he didn't. That was just bullshit fascist propaganda.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
...this is an article from The Onion...right???
MS has been convicted of crime in both a US and two German courts that I know of (and probably others). When you consider how hard a corporation has to try to get itself slapped down in the USA these days, that says a lot. If you actually look at the evidence which was submitted to the US circus, you'd expect someone like Al Capone to be pushing for his knighthood, not QE2. If you include stuff that was disallowed on technical grounds, you start looking for a convenient wall to stand the man against. Then if you examine what his other companies are also doing, you don't wait to find a wall.
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
...then I am the Duke of Ted
Xix.
"Everything is adjustable, provided you have the right tools"
Bill Gates regularly tells his audiences that he's "the smartest man in the world". Poor Trey. I guess he's trying to achieve that in the same way that he achieved market dominance: by lying long and loud, and buying/trashing anyone who disagrees.
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
Hmm are you a fanatic anti-fanatical? Down with ye!
It's more about what he symbolizes. With great money and power come the attribution of symbols and projections of who we believe he is. That may be wrong, but what else can we do? Without the symbol, the dislike for the corporate state is more difficult to deal with.
Competitors exist, but this does not mean that those competitors have any control. Monopoly does not necessarily mean you're the only one standing, it means that you're the only one in control.
The courts didn't find MS guilty of being a monopoly as such, they found them guilty of abusing monopolistic power.
This MS continues to do. My problem with the courts is not that they officially slapped MS down, but that they didn't convict them of enough of their unfair practices, didn't deprive them of the fruits of their crimes at all, and the penalties which were applied barely even rate at "wrist slap" - and MS complained about them anyway.
And even if they'd been fined fifty billion dollars up front in one lump, they could have paid that out of cash and kept right on trucking with the tens of billions in cash that they had left over. Fifty BILLION dollars! Fifty billion DOLLARS! FIFTY billion dollars! (think of "Twins") Chump change, and they didn't even lose that. Many of their competitors were tricked or bullied out of EVERYTHING THEY HAD. Where is their recompense?
And some toff wants the instigator of this knighted!
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
"85-90% of Italian Jews survived the Holocaust"
Too bad the same can't be said of the miserable french.
he gets to call himself "Sir Crashalot" now?
... the toilet seat down. Can I be knighted, too?!
Whatever he donates in software, he donates through Microsoft. They get a tax writedown on the full wholesale price of the software (and sometimes retail), not on what it cost to make and donate.
There's more like this. Look harder.
So for a lot of those donations, he's getting a tax writedown, good publicity, and most of his money back, to boot.
But wait, there's more!
If he donates for vaccines and someone (typically the UN) matches his donation (typically dollar for dollar), he will actually get more money back through his pharma co's than he gave away. Here it is, in sequence:
"But," you may argue, "the AIDS sufferers get vaccinated, don't they?" Sorry, they don't.
They die waiting for Bill and Co to get around to shipping them vaccines while at the same time the US government (prompted by...?) tells countries who are prepared to make and ship vaccines at a far lower price not to do it else they face economic sanctions under TRIPS laws (just like they told Peru and Argentina that if they did't buy Microsoft software, there would be economic sanctions).
On top of this, because Bill and Co jack up the price of the vaccines to many times the price that the country I have in mind was offering them for, fewer AIDS sufferers get vaccinated than if Bill and Co didn't exist.
But wait! There's more... much more... is it worth posting that here? Dollars to doughnuts you're going to keep right on believing that Bill's all shiny and clean and generous at heart, and not the cold, calculating, desperately greedy control freak he's always been. Read up on some of his history, sucker, and not at microsoft.com
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
Only problem is, to be a saint, you'd have to be dead first...
*cha-ching*
On a comparitive note, and on an equal percentage of wealth, I give 30cents to beggers/drug addicts begging in the streets too....
... where is my Knight hood?
So
Liberty freedom are no1, not dicks in suits.
Word? Bought. Publisher? Bought. Internet Explorer? Bought - sort of. Actually, closer to stolen from SpyGlass Systems. MS-DOS? Bought (from Seattle Computer as QDOS). They wrote MultiPlan - and trashed it, replacing it with the (bought) Excel. Windows NT? Bought the programmer from DEC, stole the code. SQL Server? Bought the database from SyBase, bought the programmer from DEC. The bulk of their actual development seems to have been aimed at chrome and lockin. One of the reasons Exchange sucks so much internally is because it is one of the few products which they built (from cobbled-together parts) mostly by themselves.
Meanwhile, practically the entire computing population now has to deal with backslashes, spaces and drive letters in their filenames (in C, try "C:\\\\WINDOWS\\\\BRAIN\\ DEAD.SYS" for telling a command about a file). OS/2 was single-queued at Microsoft's insistence (IBM wanted multiple queues). Bill's house-of-cards email system and nailed-on-later MIME processing is largely responsible for many billions of dollars in losses to viruses every year. These and a million other tiny annoyances have really dragged computing standards down, been destructive rather than creative.
Other than that, your argument's fine. (-:
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
To not like Gates, or more accuratly MS's business methods but to hope for his death is just absurd, and down right immature.
You sound like a bunch of four year olds. Get a grip.
VENI, VIDI, VICI, DIXI
let me let you in on a little secret about Bill and Melinda Gates so-called "Foundation." Gate's demi-trillionaire status is based on a nasty little monopoly-protecting trade treaty called "TRIPS" - the Trade-Related Intellectual Property Rights rules of the World Trade Organization. TRIPS gives Gates a hammerlock on computer operating systems worldwide, legally granting him the kind of monopoly the Robber Barons of yore could only dream of. But TRIPS, the rule which helps Gates rule, also bars African governments from buying AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis medicine at cheap market prices.
Example: in June 2000, at the urging of Big Pharma, Bill Clinton threatened trade sanctions against Argentina for that nation's daring to offer low-cost drugs to Southern Africa.
Gates knows darn well that "intellectual property rights" laws such as TRIPS - which keep him and Melinda richer than Saddam and the Mafia combined - are under attack by Nelson Mandela and front-line doctors trying to get cut-rate drugs to the 23 million Africans sick with the AIDS virus. Gate's brilliant and self-serving solution: he's spending an itsy-bitsy part of his monopoly profits (the $6 billion spent by Gates' foundation is less than 2% of his net worth) to buy some drugs for a fraction of the dying. The bully billionaire's "philanthropic" organization is currently working paw-in-claw with the big pharmaceutical companies in support of the blockade on cheap drug shipments.
Gates' game is given away by the fact that his Foundation has invested $200 million in the very drug companies stopping the shipment of low-cost AIDS drugs to Africa.
Gates says his plan is to reach one million people with medicine by the end of the decade. Another way to read it: he's locking in a trade system that will effectively block the delivery of medicine to over 20 million.
The computer magnate's scheme has a powerful ally. "The president could have been reading from a script prepared by Mr. Gates," enthuses the Times' cub reporter, referring to Mr. Bush's AIDS plan offered up this week to skeptical Africans. The US press does not understand why Africans don't jump for Bush's generous handout. None note that the money held out to the continent's desperate nations has strings attached or, more accurately, chains and manacles. The billions offered are mostly loans at full interest which may be used only to buy patent drugs from US companies at a price several times that available from other nations. What Africans want, an end to the devastating tyranny of TRIPS and other trade rules, is dismissed by the Liberator of Baghdad.
We are all serfs on Microsoft's and Big Pharma's 'intellectual property.' If Gates' fake philanthropy eviscerates the movement to free Africans from the tyranny of TRIPS, then Bill and Melinda's donations could have the effect of killing more Africans than then even their PR agents claim they have saved. And for our own Republic, we can only hope that when the bully-boy billionaire injects his next wad of loot into the Bush political campaign, he uses a condom.
Sure, let's knight Bill Gates... WITH MY PENIS!!!
There is nothing more symbolic than the declining and obsolete monarchy giving an elitist knighthood. The monarchy is on its last breath. I don't think it will survive another 50 years.
I think I just became an enemy of the state with my position (Canadians are supposed to be subservient to the Queen).
Sivaram Velauthapillai
Sivaram Velauthapillai
Seeking the meaning of life... @slashdot of all places
... might as well give Darth Vader and Dubya knighthoods too.
Even Hitler had some good qualities. He was a brave man- his record from WWI is one of the best of any soldiers, in any army, ever, period. He was intelligent, charasmatic, and commited. He was also an incredibly talented painter.
If he had pushed for world peace(through means other than subjugation)... things would be different. Its a pity really... he could have done more good for the world than anyone in recent memory. It is sad that opportunity was lost.
My point is... no surprse that Bill Gates has redeeming qualities- even the worst people do.
even for this place....this is the most shameful thread ever.
bill gates is the greatest philanthropist of all time. period. try and think of a better reason to be knighted.
reading through this crap, here seems to be the general attitude:
1. its not that much money when compared to his overall wealth - thats obviously a load of shit. we are talking about 10s of billions of dollars. how many other billionaires do you see donating the majority of their fortunes away? thats because its an extraordinary gesture 2. its for tax purposes! - as if donating the majority of your fortune is going to put you ahead of the game somehow. 3. the horror of a fucking $100 windows license and ms's clearly anti-trust behavior OUTWEIGHS potentially saving millions of lives. the level of zealotry has risen to new heights (depths?). congratulations. btw - this inability to think rationally whenever microsoft is involved is going to prevent linux from winning. that is all.
So what?
In terms of earnings, I donate more to charity than he does. I earn less than 20k per year. I donate more than 20% of that to charity. That doesn't include the *time* I donate. How much time does Bill donate? Does he spend time talking to people at local nursing homes? Does he volunteer as a local fireman? Does he go to his neighbors houses and fix their plumbing when they need help doing so? (I'll bet he serves on political committees, tho
Where the fuck do you equate donating massive amounts of money to charity as anything worthwhile? Have you never just helped someone out because they needed help? Have you done an analysis on his charity that tells you just how much of that money is actually *used* wisely and not just swallowed by "administrative" costs?
Donating money to one's own foundation is no more than PR; especially when you make sure your company issues press releases about it. Don't forget that he can write that money off on his taxes. Well, I don't write my time off on my taxes. I couldn't, anyway - it's *given* time. That's something that Mr. Gates will never, ever understand.
Your point is....what? I fail to see it.
SB
It's old. The more humans I meet, the more I like my cats. At least they are honest.
Monopolies are not per se illegal under British Law.
Given that the British Monarchy is a monopoly unto itself, I'd say that's an understatement.
That's even worse than I thought. Do you have any specs that I can read up on?
Which I'd guess was aimed directly at the British crown. Does this mean if Gates accepts, he's breaking the law? (obviously, IANAL)
if the Brits announce they're adopting Linux before (or during) his knighting.
I've finally got a fan! Now what do I feed him?
Keep this in mind... Bill Gates is only "mostly evil". Microsoft has a will of it's own, I don't know Bill Gates personally, so I don't care either way. I just hope he has the good sense and humility to refuse it.
NOT the Queen of England. She is the Queen of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland (of which, England is only one kingdom).
that we can challenge him to a duel to the death? Line starts over there-->
"Name time, place and weapons."
"At dawn, on the slopes of Mt. Olympus, with enraged halibuts!"
-Lars
I'm going to Mars to start a new life.
When I am king, you will be first against the wall.
what it means is that IF he did not have prior congressional approval he just tossed his US citizenship in the crapper and can't come back into the country....
And if you really want to make a stink it can be construed in much the same light as sedition or treason...
SHHHHHH.... don't tell him!
wellll....
yes and no.
You can purchase "lairdships" in Scotland and VERY rarely in England (there are some titles that are attached to property and not to families, anyone owning the land is the "lord"). But there is being a "lord" and then there is being a LORD...
The outgoing PM is almost always made a "life" peer (title expires when they do), almost always a Baron. Laurence Olivier was made a Baron because he had already been knighted and well they wanted to give him something more because he was still alive and all...
A "LORD" always has a seat in Parliament (well up until recently IIRC Blair is doing his best to phase that house out), and can vote in same. Your "lords" and "lairdships" don't have seats in Parliament and really don't mean much if anything.
You can not buy a "LORDship". Those have to be inherited or granted by the Monarch (almost always they are approved beforehand or suggested by the PM). It is upto the Monarch to ennoble you. Or the British postal service can do so under extremely and I do mean EXTREMELY rare conditions.....
If you receive a summons to Parliament (IE to sit and vote), and you show up and take your seat? You are made a Baron by summons.... It is a permanent title and can be passed down to your children. But that has not happened in 200 years at least...(and oddly even though it is only a lowly Baron it is considered to be a BIG deal to a noble as a result of Parliamentary summons). The only other way to become a noble is to be made one by the Sovereign and the last time that happened was the late 60's....
Lets honour all those that have broken the law in order to satisfy their greed.
Way to go man, justify greed no matter the means.
Way to go.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
We would like to uphold the long honoured tradition in the Western world of peer reviewable work and collaborative effort when it comes to a scientific or technical endeavour.
We would like to see how the software we rely upon for our livelyhood works.
We are not sympathetic of companies that break the law in order to maximize their profits.
But we are the bad people somehow, whe are fanatics because we have the balls to have principles and to point the finger in the direction of people that clearly lack moral when conducting themselves.
No wonder politicians in the US and many other places are becoming indistiguishable one from each other, they just reflect the apathy of the general population and how to have convictions of any kind, supported by a sound phylosophical context, is seen by some as fanaticism.
I guess every single person that claimed the emperor had no clothes has been classed a fanatic.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
TIme awards the person of the year award to the individual that had the most influence in a given year.
Nobody can claim that Herr Hitler was not the most influential man not only for a year, but at least for 5 or 6 until his empire of terror collapsed.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
It is not like I was forced to buy MS software when I did not know any better.
It is not like I have been forced to spend sleepless nights during panic sessions while the WIntel admins were frantically patching their virus incubators.
It is not like I see my friends frustration trying to rip a CD to MP3 format just to be told that they should rip to WIndows propietary format.
And, and, and... etc.
No, personal? Never! Why should I?
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
Colombian drug trafickers are well known for improving their local communities, normally contributing to worthy causes like building schools and churches.
I think I need not to say any more to show how laughably flawed your logic is.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
What about personal responsibility in how you run a company?
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
I feel for her majesty on such a day.
:
On the plus side, everyone without a knighthood gets a promotion!
I could be wrong, instead of strenuously avoiding the MS monopoly taxes, I should have paid them. A large proportion of the money collected was going to a charitable foundation. It should say this on the boxes
Microsoft Windows : the Charitable Choice. Every pound spent on Microsoft products will help improve the planet.
... is the typo which immediately springs to mind
Dunstan
The last scintilla of doubt just rode out of town
I can only say that it's a sorry state of bias of the moderators that the origional post got such a high rank and yours didn't.
Slashdotters have gotten mixed-up between the Microsoft co-operation, which is indeed evil and Bill Gates as a person, who is obviously getting this knight for his philanthropic activities.
He has proclaimed to give away the bulk of his wealth by the time he is dead and already he is on target for this, if you take into account his age and the amount that he has already donated. His wealth is in mainly the form of MS shares, so obviously he can't sell the whole lot in one go (the stock price would plumet)
Maybe theyll do the same they did with international domains and let anyone give them away!
Get your own knighthood for only $6.99 a year, or $5 a year if you buy 10 in advance!
So if he succeeds with all his DRM plans, does he get crowned?
... No, we get screwed ...
Am I the only one who heard this and immediately pictured the Holy Grail scene with the Black Knight?
"Your computer has crashed!"
"It's only a flesh wound, have at you!"
I found it by stumbling over it. I'm about to crash (hi from GMT+08) and very woozy, else I'd do some looking for you.
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
So by your argument Bill Gates is 'better' more than Ghandi, Jesus etc. because he gave more money away than either of them... time for you to have a reality check, I think!
...creative and entirely altruistic (or perhaps he didn't forecast the eventual consequences) which was invent and give away (free as in beer) the Verdana-ish font families.
He's taken them off line, you're theoretically not allowed to get them anywhere else but the no-longer-populated site, and if pressed he might start suing people for using them other than with MS-Windows, but those are darn good fonts, and until he realised that his competitors were also using them, you could easily and legally help yourself to them.
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
Ever heard of Godwin's law? Google it.
"If you had looked at the chart, you would have seen that the vast majority of the donations took place from 1998 onwards and the really big ones didn't start happening until 1999. Nice try at distorting the facts though, I would have expected no less from you."
So, he's only recently turned into the nice person you believe he is. But he had LOTS AND LOTS AND LOTS of money back in 1997. So I'll just average it over 10 years. That $7 Billion over 10 years which is.... $700 million per year.
So, 1.75% of his wealth was donated per year.
That sounds like table scraps when he's worth $40 Billion.
Your "Robin Hood" takes from EVERYONE (including children's schools) and KEEPS 98%+ of it for himself.
But that's just fine with you because you know that if he gave, oh, say 10% of his wealth, he might not have enough money.
It's really GOOD that he keeps 98%+ of that money and those kids' schools have to cough up money for those software licenses because Bill will INVEST that money and then dole out 1.75% of it back to them.
"Bill Gates has a choice. He could spend everything at once, and end up with very little."
Oooooh, that's what we call one of them "logical fallacies".
http://www.fallacyfiles.org/eitheror.html
He has a LOT more options, but he CHOOSES to only give 1.75% of his money and you think this is a good thing.
"First of all, the range of problems Bill Gates is capable of "solving" is actually quite limited."
Keep believing that.
"Secondly, just because Bill Gates doesn't "solve" everything he can by spending everything he has right this instant, it doesn't mean he thinks "it's best not to solve any" problems.""
I don't know whether he believes it or not, but that was YOUR position on the subject.
"I have no idea what he thinks, but Greenpeace, the Sierra Club, all major political parties, Cato, Rand, PNAC, Heritage, you name it, all have substantial cash reserves on hand, just like the Bill Gates Foundation."
Political parties are NOT charitable organizations. Why are you including them?
"Why don't they spend everything they have this very instant to solve problems?!?!?"
Again with the logical fallacy. Spending enough to solve a problem is not the same as spending all of your money.
Your "Robin Hood" keeps 98%+ of what he takes.
"Oh but we are discussing you, Mr. Khasim!"
Oh but we are not. My name is not Bill Gates. Please just TRY to work with the FACTS.
"You should consider yourself highly involved in any kind of discussion in which you demonize a man who has donated more in 10 years than you could make in a dozen lifetimes."
I'm pointing out that he gained that cash ILLEGALLY and then is so MISERLY that he only donates 1.75% of it.
But you believe that because he has SO MUCH CASH that it must be GOOD. After all, it is SO MUCH CASH. Even if it is taken from children's schools and city budgets (for fire fighters and police and so forth).
"The key phrase here is not "straw man" but "flaming hypocrite.""
I'll put up my 35% against his 1.75%. I have LESS than he does but I give a LARGER percentage.
Do you even KNOW what "hypocrite" means?
"It's OK to criticize Bill Gates if you think he's not doing enough, but not without equally criticizing yourself... unless you think your donation of 35% of your after-taxes December income is going to buy you a shining halo and a first-class ticket to Heaven."
There isn't any Heaven. Sorry to shatter another of your illusions. No absolutes, no Heaven.
"On the other hand, you seem happy to ignore the thousands of local and worldwide jobs Microsoft and Gates have created (and they are notorious for treating their employees well) and the massive wealth they've produced for the millions of people who own their stock (including vast numbers of the middle class)."
Microsoft does not produce wealth for people who own their stock. Microsoft only R
...their (still?) owner, Conrad Black, has just had his knighthood blocked so no boubt his PR department is spreading FUD.
In any case a nerd like Gates would surely rather be a Jedi Knight.......?
I'd suggest that like most everything else associated with Microsoft, there's a real "QA" issue here.
Excuse me? Whether or not you agree with his way of doing things, I hardly think he's spent the last 25 years just watching TV and playing pool...
The thing a lot of people seem to overlook is that Gates (for better or worse) revolutionised the way computers work along with Apple, IBM etc. Maybe someone else would have done if he hadn't, but he did and they didn't, and he did it through a huge shitload of feckin' hard work.
Business is business, dude, and 90% of big businesses push the rules as far as they can and pay the fines if they snap. Doesn't mean they shouldn't be recognised for genuine achievement.
sig:- (wit >= sarcasm)
Um...he HAS given donations to AIDS research.
sig:- (wit >= sarcasm)
MSN tried to build a private MicroSoft InterNet in the early 90s. They were trying to crush AOL rather than that flakey academic network. Then Bill saw the light and embraced the national InterNet in 1995. Even though he doesn't own 100% of it, he made inroads by having IE crush the competition and the Justice Department. XML/NET is poised to grab even more control.
The president and congress give out recognition medals to important social, cultural, and scientific figures. Gordon Moore got a Presidential Medal of Science for Intel microprocessors. People in the uS usually dont get these medals until they are elderly or about to croak.
In relation to Bill Gates: I thought that anyone holding US citizenship was not allowed to accept honours from foreign governments/monarchs, but I may be wrong.
I'm a UKonian and I think like most people here the knighthoods are a pile of crap and mean nothing -- mainly because they are shrouded in mystery and given to totally the wrong people -- in fact, I was discussing this just the other day.
People who get knighthoods are generally rewarded fot their money and power (often gained by immoral/illegal means) not whether they have helped humanity (though there are exceptions like Berners-Lee who I said a while back should be knighted before he was). Don't Saddam Hussein and Robert Mugarbe have knighthoods?
Joe Llywelyn Griffith Blakesley
[This post is in the public domain (copyright-free) unless otherwise stated]
Yes.
Remember Britain was capitalis before the USA existed.
--= Isn't it surprising how badly I spell ?
Nonetheless, I thought there was some legislation about this in the US for normal citzens which might make it illegal.
Joe Llywelyn Griffith Blakesley
[This post is in the public domain (copyright-free) unless otherwise stated]
If you are a major achiver within the comonwelt then a Nighthood is expected. I.e. Several Criketers have been Nighted including the curent chairman of the west indies criket board. Sir Vivian Richards.
For a none comonwelth citezen it takes a much larger acivment so only the people who dominate a field are considerd. I.e. Micheal Jordan and Tiger Woods.
--= Isn't it surprising how badly I spell ?
The 'off flying his plane' story appears to be an U.L. that some have debunked. What has NOT been debunked is the strong culture-clash between Digital Research and IBM. The people running D.R. were the sort who would go out of their way to insult the 'dark suit, white shirt' sorts who ran IBM.
Gates and Microsoft were far more accomodating. Perhaps they 'sold out' to IBM in that regard. Bill Gates didn't die in a biker bar as a has-been, though.
---
Sir Crashalot!
Actually, I thought you had to be a subject of the royal crown (aka a citizen of the UK) to be knighted. Does Gates have to renounce his US Citizenship to accept? Is it a clever ploy to make hime a taxpaying royal subject?
You are in a maze of twisted little posts, all alike.
I though elected had something to do with votes.
That applies to accusing the other side in a debate of acting like Nazis. I was not doing that. I was making a statement that even the most evil people have some virtues. Hitler happens to be an excellent example of that principle. Incredibly evil, but there were some clear, even admirable, virtues in his character.
Godwins law does not apply to using Nazis as an example, only to accusations of Nazi like behavior.
The Order of the British Empire is the order of chivalry of the British democracy. Valuable service is the only criterion for the award, and the Order is now used to reward service in a wide range of useful activities. Citizens from other countries may also receive an honorary award, for services rendered to the United Kingdom and its people. There are more than 100,000 living members of the Order throughout the world.
http://www.royal.gov.uk/output/Page498.asp
Yeah, the french had it very bad. Peace on their heads.
Errr, sorry guys, but for our sins here in Scotland, Lizzie Saxe-Coburg-Gotha-Windsor is actually Queen of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland (plus sundry titles to do with the colonies, protectorates etc.). That, sadly, includes Scotland. And Wales.
At all times in discussions with members of the pro-Monarchy people, they should be reminded that Britain has a 150-year lead on the French, and a ~270 year lead on the Russians, in the "Kill your Abusive Monarchs Stakes".
The big fun is going to come if Big-Ears declines to step aside when Lizzie becomes expensive corgi-food.
[Exit, stage left, sharpening an axe.]
Birds are not dinosaur descendants;birds are dinosaurs, for all useful meanings of "birds", "are" and "dinosaurs"
...and if you actually used the links people have already been providing you instead of just scorning them for one reason or another, I'd bother posting some of my own. There are pages which even go to the trouble of listing Microsoft's assorted forms of roadkill, right up there alongside the long lists of illegal acts. But you can find them yourself.
BTW, Bill did do one thing which was genuinely altrusitic until he noticed it was: paid to have Verdana and friends designed and then made them freely downloadable. BoC, when it was noticed that non-Windows users were downloading them as well... oops.
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
Gates references Monty Python on his impending knighthood.
Gates, sword, knight, Monty Python, a very certain scene comes to mind.
"Come back here and take what's coming to you. I'll bite your legs off!"
One really well researche piece of shit about moi.
I'm flatterd, really I am. Now kiss my ass.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
Tahoma and Webdings. Nobel Prize next?
[swish] [thunk!] [THUD!]
"Whoopsie! We underestimate the strength those new exercises must have imparted to our arms! Someone make this mess vanish!"
"Next!"
"Next...?"
Look at the bright side: there's always seppuku.
A lot of Alfred Nobel's stuff used to blow up as well. (-:
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
OS/2 was broken by IBM. MS was involved but walked away from the project when every other mainframe programer kept submitting requests for changes so to keep the old IBM mainframe system involved in the office computer environment. IBM went along with this becuse they wanted to protect thier mainframe sales. In a sense, OS/2 was becoming little more then a mainframe interface.
Joined up government: see BBC News on EU vs. M$
Joe Llywelyn Griffith Blakesley
[This post is in the public domain (copyright-free) unless otherwise stated]
... when he gets his next award .
"And a voice was screaming: 'Holy Jesus! What are these goddamn animals?'" - HST
Ummm...I think your belief of Japanese culture is based on some 20 year old view. I have three friends in Japan that will explain to you exactly what kind of workforce they have, you can ask Mike when the last time he had a raise or cost of living increase. Your belief of things is rediculous that the japanese companies look after their employees anymore than any other company.
Anonymous Cowards - Oh God, How I hate you
"Fact #1: Your method of dissecting posts down to their individual component phrases and analyzing and responding to each one as if it stands independently of the rest and has no surrounding context is FUCKING ANNOYING and makes it impossible to have any kind of meaningful discussion which makes talking to you a waste of time."
:)
I feel your pain. It must be very sad to live your life.
"Each of your "facts" is total bullshit backed up with nothing but selective criticism and emotion."
His wealth is a fact.
His contributions are a fact.
Are you arguing with the mathematical average?
"In an argument with someone who rips up my throwaway sentences as if they were my central theses and is blind to my posts as wholes, what can I do but call them a jerkoff in response?"
Your whole position is a "throwaway". That isn't my fault.
"Please see here for a good example of how to structure an argument and support it with "facts and logic" (the real kind, not your kind)."
Nice. So that means that you FINALLY see that Bill Gates is NOT the great person you claimed he was at the beginning?
Why do I have the feeling that you'll STILL argue that point? Despite all the evidence presented in both these threads.
Oh well. Believe what you want.
Doh, I originally read that snippet from the constitution after hacking a sendmail.cf file for about an hour... soo I didn't quite grok it all.
okay, i get IANAUSC, but what is BACOTEGB? but am citizen of empire of great britain?
Joe Llywelyn Griffith Blakesley
[This post is in the public domain (copyright-free) unless otherwise stated]
Oh, Oh, oh! if only she could tremble and get parkinson when the sword is so close to his throat, if only, if only!!! ;oD
I hate you so much.