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Gates Gets Government Guards for Gala
Nick Irelan writes "The home of the world's richest man was a 'temporary security zone' when he held a party for members of the National Governors Association. Bill's guests included Newt Gingrich, Tommy Thompson, and Leon Panetta. Gates also put in $150,000 for the governors' meeting held the next day. News.com covered this story very well." If your invitation to Gates' place got "lost in the mail", you can read about a Microsoft intern who got to have dinner with the big cheese.
From the linked interns blog and speaking of Bill Gates: "His response (verbatim, might I add), "well it was the dumbest thing I've ever read!". I have actually heard him say this very statement with a crass addendum or modifier in response to an engineers rather thoughtful bit of insight into a problem. Perhaps he was having a bad day, but I found this to be more than a little arrogant and perhaps may go part way in explaining why Microsoft has problems with innovation. As to the title, "Gates gets government guards for gala", I would suggest in Bill's defense that the guards are for some of the guests which is not unusual. I've not been to a soiree at the Gates compound, but I have been to plenty of other events with government folks who pack their own "escorts". Gates likely has his own security detail which if they work like other security details, will usually defer to the secret service (or other federal) detail supervising any government officials who may be present.
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I thought the owner of IKEA was now worth more than Gates.
Gates Gives Governor's Gala, Gets Government Guards
For all the Microsoft bashing that goes on (and I figure /. readers won't need to look far for examples), the note at the end of the MS intern's blog about Gates' daughter was a nice touch.
As much as people love to hate Bill and his company, he is just one guy after all. We seldom here about this side of him (albeit for security reasons in relation to his kids?). Perhaps a Bill Gates book in the vein of Linus' "Just For Fun" is due?
Gates that is. Remember, since he isn't CEO anymore the primary fsck-ups (SCO anyone?) are not something he agreed the company should have ever touched in the first place, when instead the new CEO said "yay! Lets GO DO THIS!".
The journal of the intern is not the only one I've seen where people who meet and spend time with Gates end up with a surprisingly pleasent experience. Geek + Dad + Down to Earth. Of course, people here will continue to flame Gates as if he is CEO, continue to say what a greeding person he is and ignore the intern's journal, or say that the intern is a Microsoft employee.
I hope people can eventually look beyond the company and see the man behind what started it. He's not half bad if you give him a chance.
"We're breaking out the ramen noodles. . . "
"Really? Is it someone's birthday?"
was the dancing monkey they had for entertainment. It looked kind of familiar for some reason.
It is a sad statement on human nature that when a person becomes so wealthy and powerful, they no longer get to enjoy the simpler things in peace. I suspect there are many days when he and his family wishes they could drive to Disneyland and go on the rides like everyone else. Most public places are probably off limits due to the complexity of managing security. Kidnapping is an endless concern.
I may not agree with all that Microsoft does as an entity, but I sometimes wish our world would let the man talk about his kids.
I've argued at length with Bill Gates, He's sharp!
It was a little over 10 years ago, and the man and i argued about computer technologies and programming.
He had a variety of perfect angles at defending his position, and was fully up to date on all the latest trends and tools. This should not have been but was. Perhaps it was his hobby.
Mevertheless the guy was packed with info and loved a heated loud debate with a non-employee.
I will always respect that man's brain, even if I hate every microsoft product except some early mac products of theirs.
By the way he had NO SECURITY DETAIL of any kind at this San Jose party. (This was before his pie in the face attack in Belgium, but after Bill Joy (?) abduction).
Bill Gates is a super geek giant, and truly knows it all.
Sorry but I can't stand all this being nice to Bill stuff, This is /. for god's sake.
Microsoft has reached and held on to the current position it occupies by destroying competitors in the most appalling and brutal way possible. They did it to Lotus making sure that 123 couldn't work on each new release of Windows, they did it to handwriting pioneers Go, they did it to Netscape (trying to destroy the reputations of a number of genuine innovators like Tim Bray who was subject to a vicious, deeply personal extended attack by Microsoft in which they tried to destroy his career and took lethal action against a small struggling company because his wife worked there, all because he'd signed a consulting engagement with Netscape), they more or less did it to Apple and they're having a damn good go at Sun, and they will do it to Linux if they can work out how to. Now if Gates, as the starry-eyed intern suggests, actually believed passionately in software and computing (as I do) he wouldn't work for a company that sets out to kill anything interesting or innovative that he comes across. Perhaps its all Ballmer's fault, but I doubt it.
The wife of a coworker of mine works for the CDC, and she travels all over the place doing field studies. She remarked of a recent trip to Haiti that people practically worship the Gates family for their support of health clinics. In fact I remember one story she told of an occasion when Bill and Melinda visited there, and some locals were dropping their pants to show them that they were healed of whatever diseases were affecting their genital regions. Needless to say, Melinda was pretty embarrassed ;-) Apparently people aren't very shy in Haiti compared to the U.S.
Read my keyboard review.
He's helping people via money he gets by maintaining a monopoly.
It's unimpressive....it's all about relative wealth and disposable income. The money he gives is a drop in a tiny tiny tiny bucket for him. While it is admirable that he is doing good things with extra money compared to others, it's not really out of his way.
What irks me is that he, and microsoft, have so much cash and such a profit margin that they could retool their whole image and whole process and become a benevolent company. Instead they choose not to, and continue doing things like pushing around smaller companies and bankrolling sco.
It just amazes me. It would be so easy for them to do a 180 and start becoming better in the publics eyes. And I'm not talking geeks. The majority of regular people are frustrated with the lackluster quality of the software even if they don't realize the monopoly or the practices.
But, the reason Gate's got to where he is is his "never enough" mentality. While it may have made him one of the richest people in the world, and may have allowed him to do some good...the harm his company does by maintaining a monopoly and stifling innovation outweighs those benefits. It's called pulling a fast one people. Look, look I'm giving these people free cookies! Look! (Please don't look at the other people whom I'm beating down with my corporate moneystick.)
See aerial photos of his house.
(mirror site) http://cryptome.sabotage.org/gates-eyeball.htm
(main site) http://cryptome.org/gates-eyeball.htm
Choice? where is it? for years whenever I walked into any store selling computers they sold boxes with windows installed. For 99% of the people out there, there hasn't been any "choice" beyond this theoretical "if you maybe heard of another operating system and maybe could track it down and maybe get it installed then maybe you had a "choice"". People don't run windows because they comparison shopped, they run windows because that's what came on their computers. I know people who have never even *seen* a macintosh, let alone anything different on the x86 platform.
Don't confuse slashdot readership (that would also inlcude you and me) with the "market" in general. Microsoft got where they are via industry collusion, bribes, threats, kickbacks, etc in some very high places, not from normal consumer "choice" at the computer store. Heck, I've even got an older 1996 IBM computer here I bought severely discounted but still brand new in a sealed box, it didn't have os2 on it, it had NT on it when I bought it.
"Choice" is only relative when it actually exists in enough of a widespread manner that it is available to most consumers where they shop. It is only in the last two years that there has been any significant breakthrough in operating systems choice, and even now it is still mighty thin on the ground. I did a look in my area, there are 6 stores total that sell computers near me, none of them carry anything but XP boxes, nor are there even any alternative OSes on the shelf with the various software for sale. This is NOT "consumer choice selecting the best product".
It's unimpressive....it's all about relative wealth and disposable income. The money he gives is a drop in a tiny tiny tiny bucket for him. While it is admirable that he is doing good things with extra money compared to others, it's not really out of his way.
Call me when your net worth is tens of billions of dollars and you're giving away 95% of it. I really suspect the basis of this comment is a mistaken belief in your own decency, viz, "If I had billions of dollars, I'd give it all away except a couple of million to live on." Everyone SAYS that. I suspect it's much harder than it sounds. I might be way off the mark here, but if you are a working geek, chances are you have disposable income. What are you doing with it? It's a fair question because if it really is just about relative wealth and disposable income, some dirt farmer or kid going through the garbage in a third world country could justifiably look at you and say, "Wow! If I had that guy's cash, I'd be giving it away like mad!" And then he would wonder, unless I miss my guess, why you aren't.
While it may have made him one of the richest people in the world, and may have allowed him to do some good...the harm his company does by maintaining a monopoly and stifling innovation outweighs those benefits.
I could buy the argument that the ends don't justify the means. But to argue that the harm MS has done really outweighs the good Gates has done with his personal wealth is mindboggling. So some relatively affluent people have been put out of work (in a country where the government would take care of them, worse case scenario), and your favorite software isn't as popular as maybe it might otherwise be. A lot of the money he is shoveling out is going more or less directly to save people's lives. Do you really think the two compare?
That's about all I can think of at the moment, it was an interesting experience but I didn't come away as impressed as some people have. If I had that much money to spend on a house I'd have hired a better architect and told him to do something genuinely innovative.