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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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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!
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
Bill Gates is unquestionably a great and accomplished man. The height of Nerddom. Probably a better choice than the handfull of rock stars...
...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.
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
The queen doesn't hand them out any more, they're political gifts.
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
> 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
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
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
How cute, they still have a monarch. How very 18th century of them. :-)
I notice the smiley, but still it's just not true. Some of the most modern states of the world - Japan, Britain or almost entire Scandinavia (Denmark, Sweden, Norway) - are monarchies. At the same time, some of the most backwarded states that are not even in the 18th century by our standards, like the African or Middle-Eastern failed states are republics. So are the banana republics in Central America. When you see what kind of a person can get elected as a president, monarchy no longer sounds as such a bad idea.
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
Knighting Steve Jobs would be about the same.
He's the marketing dude.
I think you might be mixing him up with Steve Wozniak.
---
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
>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.
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.
"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...
Don't be such a tightass. Bad people? Let's play devil's advocate here. Round up all the OSS developers. Every single individual. And tally up how much they've donated to charities, schools, museums, communities, universities, third-world aid efforts. Now round up Bill Gates and do the same with him. Bill Gates outdoes all of them combined, even if you don't include the value of the software he's donated. Bill Gates is the greatest philanthropist in the history of the world. No joke. 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).
If I were in the software business, I would hate Microsoft for what they are and what they symbolize. 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."
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".
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"?
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
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
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.
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.
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.
Bill Gates is the greatest philanthropist in the history of the world.
It's also important to remember that people like Carnegie and Rockefeller were even more reviled in their time than Gates, and far outdid him for pure sleaze and avarice. But their principal legacy was a number of magnificent philanthropic works, which arguably did far more to improve society than their business practices did to debase it. Howard Hughes is an even better example; his fortune went towards medical research and is the basis for one of the largest private funding sources in the nation.
I despise Microsoft and refuse to buy, use, or support their products whenever possible, and I don't respect Gates for the way he acquired his money, but I think the fact that he's using his fortune to make the world a better place far is far more important than his past misdeeds. In fifty years, he'll be remembered for helping improve Africa, not for a collection of lousy but ubiquitous software. Larry Ellison, on the other hand, will be known as "that asshole with the yachts."
But I think all this Bill Gates bashing is rooted in anti-capitalist ideals and/or PURE JEALOUSY.
In every profession, the exertion of the greater part of those who exercise it, is always in proportion to the necessity they are under of making that exertion... and, where competition is free, the rivalship of competitors, who are all endeavouring to justle one another out of employment, obliges every man to endeavour to execute his work with a certain degree of exactness... Rivalship and emulation render excellency, even in mean professions, an object of ambition, and frequently occasion the very greatest exertions.
This comment on the benefits of competition between companies in the same field was written by that well known commie, anti-capitalist Adam Smith in The Wealth of Nations, Book V, Chapter I, Park III, Article III.
I spend a lot of time knocking Gates not because I'm envious or anti-capatilist but because his business practises are anti free market, predatory, anti-competitive and just generally centered around filling the Gates bank account regardless of the damage his activities may inflict on others.
One of the most often used quotes by so called "capitalist" politicians is that small business is the engine that drives the economy. This is mainly founded in the idea that for new, small companies to succeed in any market place, particularly one that is dominated by large, wealthy corporations they have to exercise levels of creativity and innovation that established businesses with their large internal beurocracies seldom match.
Gate's crime isn't that he charges for his software, it's that he has used unethical and immoral methods to beat competitors to a bloody pulp and maintain a monopoly that has for years, had an adverse effect on competition.
Seriously, If Microsoft had had real competition through the 1980s do you think that Windows 95 and 98 would have been as piss poor, bug-ridden and insecure as they were? OK 2000 wasn't as bad but it's still a freaky piece of crap based on the nasty piece of work that NT had become. And Gate's response to compettion from Linux? Good programming? Better software? Nope, stuff a hand up Darl and hurl the FUD about, bring in DRM and start patenting everything in site.
The worst part of it from my country is that the politicians and Microsoft victims are so fucking stupid that they wont even help themselves. Newham council think they're clever because they used Linux to knock MS down to price. Once Longhorn's out and installed do you think Newham will have an option to swap? If MS pulls a patent war out of the hat and Linux gets killed off what do you think is gonna happen, price cuts all round from Microsoft - BOLLOCKS!
If Gates gets a knighthood, the British government will be effectively condoning a method of business business lacking in rules, morals and ethics.
If Microsoft were so sure of the superiority of their products, they'd use open standards and let the consumer decide. Until then you've got Windows, Office et al.
Hmmmmmm..... Deep fried and look like Squirrel.
In the least, I find it insulting that someone who set back the computer world by at least 20 years is getting rewarded!
I think you'll need to provide more evidence of your claim.
Sure, it's nice to think about "hey, what if..." arguments, like "hey, what if Microsoft wasn't there, and everyone all shared their source code, and all the problems were solved, and everyone lived happily ever after."
It's possible you're right, but nobody seems to even examine the alternative case. I imagine a world without Microsoft, where no platform or human interface is standardized, the average computer literacy is equal to the average literacy on a BSD system today, I can't share a file with my friend because none of our hardware matches up and the formats are all different.
Would hardware be as cheap if a manufacturer could only market each device to 15% of the market? Maybe there would be a standard, but let's face it, microsoft did turn some standards (as in some committee agreed on something), into standards (as in everyone can actually use it).
Maybe you're right. But I'd never trade in the current reality, which is something spectacular, for a parallel universe in which Bill Gates was never born.
I'd just be too worried that the computer industry would turn into an appliance, with accessories and weird quirks, like so many companies have actually tried to do. Every company out there wanted to turn a computer into some kind of appliance it seems, except MS. We may be able to connect to the internet today, but that would probably have the same fate as the telcom industry. I don't know that MS is the company that really allowed computers to become what they are today, but I believe they played an important role.
I run gnu & linux, I love open source software, and free software, and all the development behind them. I don't like MS software much myself, but I at least appreciate its significance.
Social scientists are inspired by theories; scientists are humbled by facts.