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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 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?
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. "
Because he's not a British citizen he can't officially be called 'Sir' Bill Gates, just Bill Gates KBE (no, not KDE).
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It is not the commies, the government, the nigger, nor the corporates. It is your paranoia.
Make that hereditary heads of state being told by the politicians who they will bestoe an honour upon.
Since the restoration (where the British asked the king back 'cos even he was less tyranical than the parlimentarian revolutionaries) the monarch has had no real power to do anything much. In fact the monarch is forbidden to do anything remotely seen as overtly political.
Honour lists are made up by Whitehall functionaries (civil servants) and the political classes, most notably the ones in power at the time. The majority of knighthoods are given to civil servants so that they can be given a certain level of job where one of the unofficial prerequisits for the position is the title. This is especially true in the Ministry of Defence. As for the others they seem to be all purely political "thank-yous."
The best argument for the current status quo with respect to the British constitutional monarchy is that the head of state has no political power and hence no politician craves the position. Hence, we don't have a power hungry lieing sod in the position, merely a grandmother in a disfunctional family.
Agrajag: "Oh no, not again!"
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,
Unfortunately, That applies to officers of the government, not to businessmen.
In Europe, there's nothing strange in being a knight and a robber at the same time - the castles of the Raubrittern (robber knights) are actually a tourist attraction of the Rhine valley. If you want to try to convince Her Majesty to change Her mind, you have to prove that Bill Gates is a coward - but if you'll just say "Your Majesty, this man is a criminal!", the response would be "so fscking what, my dear subject?".
Were he Canadian, he couldn't be knighted at all. He would have to settle for an Order of Canada.
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
From Wikipedia.org:
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. ;)
That says two things:
1 - The US Government does not grant titles of Nobility. It means they can't invent a "Noble" class and start knighting people, etc. This goes along wiht "All people are equal" and stuff.
2 - It says that, more or less, someone holding a public office or public trust cannot accept entitlements, gifts, knighthoods, etc, from a foreign monarch or government, without permission of congress.
So basically it means if Britain tries to knight Arnie, he has to refuse, or get permission from congress first.
The article specifically said he was getting an honorary KBE (Knight Commander).
Tim Berners-Lee got the knighthood less than a month ago.
The Gates Foundation has an endowment of approximately $24 Billion. When you put $5 in the collection plate, you have, perhaps, paid for one meal for one homeless person. When you donate $24B, you can, among other things, spend more than $65,000,000 per year to treat AIDS in the developing world.
Look, you don't have to like Bill G's company or the software they make, but until you've figured out how to earn a few billion and donate it to charity, you should not try to insult the generosity of those who have.
Monopolies are not per se illegal under British Law. The top people at De Beers (world diamond monopoly based in London) cannot travel to the US because they are under indictment for illegal trade practices.
BTW he won't be Sir William since he is not a British subject. Neither is Speilberg Sir Steven. However, the difference between an honorary knighthood and a "real" one eludes me.
Err... KBE
/usr/games/fortune
Just on a technical note: he isn't permitted to prepend his name with the title "Sir" unless he is a subject of the Crown.
That may be true.
Microsoft wrote OS/2! To say they broke its back is ridiculous! ... They couldnt sell it.
That is only part true and contains enough omisions to make it a deliberate lie. IBM also put lots of development into OS/2. They provided sane guidance but what they got from Microsoft was nothing compared to what it became. More importanlty, however, Microsoft did break OS/2 with anti-competive agreements with big PC makers that insured that OS/2 would always cost the end user more than Microsoft's offerings. Microsoft was convicted of breaking anti-trustlaws for that it is the main reason OS/2 lacked device drivers and never was adopted. It was a better system, it could have cost less and it is still better than Microsoft's current kludge, XP.
Today, free software is better and it will soon take over. Once again, IBM is on the bandwagon. They have always picked the best of breed. Microsoft's days are numbered because they can't lock out free.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.