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Gates Nose-Dives at CES

Posted by michael on from the look-out-below dept.

Lots of submissions this morning about Bill Gates' performance at the Las Vegas Consumer Electronics Show. His Media Center PC presentation crashed. (The presentation is online.) He also gave an interview to CNET, where he described anyone who doesn't support ever-increasing intellectual property laws as "communists". Boingboing has some commentary on that interview as well.

32 of 1,451 comments (clear)

  1. I spy a new meme by beeglebug · · Score: 5, Funny

    Fly the flag with pride comrades!
    boingboing.net/images/copyleftcommie.gif

    1. Re:I spy a new meme by finkployd · · Score: 5, Insightful

      I find it offensive to associate the GPL with a form of government that's responsible for killing many millions of people.

      Are you aware of a major form of government that is NOT responsible for killing millions of people?

      Finkployd

    2. Re:I spy a new meme by Benanov · · Score: 5, Funny

      That should be a patent-unencumbered PNG! Where is your sense of decency, comrade? :)

    3. Re:I spy a new meme by demachina · · Score: 5, Interesting

      "Communism is a method of government"

      Actually Communism is a way of living. It derives from living in a commune. You might note it has the same root as a word us Linux people use a lot, community. Bill Gates is in fact right, sharing MP3's and open source software development IS communism. The catch is thanks the word was hijacked by a bunch of socialist dictators, specially Stalin. Its been turned in to a dirty word and thats why Bill Gates and Co. try to lay it on file swappers and Linux. Americans in particular freak at the word and start warming up the jets on the deck of the aircraft carriers everytime the get a wiff of it in the air. That is exactly what Bill is trying to do here, mobilize the American people and government in to a reactionary frenzy in which they wipe out file sharing and Linux. Oh, and in the process he just happens to get "Trusted Computing" and he locks Linux off of the Internet and out of personal computing because it can't be "Trusted". In the process he further secures his monopoly because all computers have to be trusted and Microsoft will seek to control the implementation of that trust(in all hardware and all software). It is classic Marxism, the community versus an ever expending capitalist monpolist.

      At its ideal Communism is a group of people living together sharing their resources and labor, working together for the common good. They are not dividing the world up in to personal property which at its worst usually means one percent of the people own everything, including all the land and everyone else is dirt poor and share cropping or working in outright servitude. Thats what Russia was like prior to 1917 which is why there was a revolution. Its also classic Marxism that when you have capital you have a huge advantage in making more capital over people who have no capital. And of course there is a near inevitable concentration of wealth in a few hands and ever larger monpolies because large corporations can dominate smaller ones and huge monopolies are extremely good at making money, and destroying or gobbling up their competitors. Unless government restrains it through antitrust law, which is ... gasp ... socialism it is a nearly inevitable evolution of Capitalism that eventually you end up with one company that owns everything, and in the computer age it would most likely be Microsoft unless they screw the pooch at some point.

      --
      @de_machina
  2. Lesson for Gates by bitswapper · · Score: 5, Funny

    Never show up at an event hosted by a comedian.
    Using Windows.

  3. You see, this just proves it. by millennial · · Score: 5, Funny

    I always knew Gates was a robot. Now they installed SP2 on him, and LOOK WHAT HAPPENS! Increased security, my foot!

    --
    I am scientifically inaccurate.
  4. That's pretty funny... by Sottilde · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I wish they'd stop developing new, useless BS out at Microsoft and get to work on bug fixes.

    1. Re:That's pretty funny... by Asprin · · Score: 5, Insightful


      Agreed - the last paragraph of that sfgate piece really sez it all:

      "While Microsoft's goal is to turn the PC into a superhub that does everything -- plays music, works as a cell phone, stores your photos -- they're running up against the fact that most people buy discreet components that do particular things."

      Personally, I kinda like having seams of one sort or another. They are boundries around systems that restrict their awareness and let me take control of them again when I need to.

      --
      "Lawyers are for sucks."
      - Doug McKenzie
  5. What's wrong with communism? by G-Licious! · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I'm going to accuse them of being modern day capitalists.
    Sounds just as bad to me.

    1. Re:What's wrong with communism? by mindaktiviti · · Score: 5, Insightful

      I'm not going to defend capitalism (granted I think it's much better than communism), but communism itself is pretty bad.

      I myself have fairly left-wing views (I'm from Canada and completely agree with universal healthcare, etc), but communism doesn't seem to take one thing into consideration: Humans are greedy, and this includes the ones controlling the government of a communist country. Much like the very purpose of an incorporation (Check out this movie), there's an underlyting wrongness about communism that doesn't have enough checks and balances (at least not in my country of origin).

      Anyway, Bill should grow up and know better than to call people commies. It's unprofessional.

  6. Is this a metaphor? by PDXNerd · · Score: 5, Funny

    It sounds like Bill Gates may be infested with SpyWare, a typical memetic programming that took place in the 1950's in which everyone who was not a right-wing-christian-gun-loving-American was a communist. It sounds like it's causing his PR ability to crash. Should we help him out and format him and put linux on him? (Wait.. Put linux on him, linux is Tux, the mental image that is coming to mind is... DISTURBING!!!! ACK REBOOT REBOOT!)

  7. Re:Where is that video by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    http://www.cnn.com/TECH/computing/9804/20/gates.co mdex/

  8. also... by millennial · · Score: 5, Funny

    When I read that he nose-dived, I was hoping for a video of him tripping and flying off a stage or something. I am sorely disappointed!

    --
    I am scientifically inaccurate.
  9. Obligatory Dr. Strangelove Quote by nudnikmeow · · Score: 5, Funny

    Gen. Jack D. Ripper: I can no longer sit back and allow communist infiltration, communist indoctrination, communist subversion, and the international communist conspiracy to sap and impurify all of our precious bodily fluids.

    --
    free ipods
  10. Search. by saintlupus · · Score: 5, Insightful

    From the interview, on the topic of search engines:

    Oh, sure, everybody is working on those things, but just take the idea of finding your local pizza place and doing that right; search doesn't do that well today.

    Sounds like someone needs to clue Bill in to using Sherlock under OS X -- that's exactly what I used it for yesterday.

    --saint

    1. Re:Search. by rbolkey · · Score: 5, Informative

      Hey Bill, here are your local pizza joints.

  11. Anything like this by JohnHegarty · · Score: 5, Funny

    Worlds largest blue screen of death here

    --
    Cruise TT
  12. Welcome to the revolution! by thewiz · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I, for one, welcome our new copyleft communist masters (and logo).

    [rant]
    Seriously, Bill Gate and Co. continue to try and paint anyone who doesn't agree with their stance on IP as un-American. Who died and made him J. Edgar Hoover, Jr.?

    America was NOT founded on the principles of IP but on freedom of choice (religious and otherwise) and the idea that everyone is supposed to contribute to the public good. The recent push to IP, patent, and copyright every little "innovation" (think one-click)is what is hurting our ability to produce something new and better without having to wade through a morass of legalities.

    I will continue to support copyleft, OSS, and any other program that contributes to the dissemination of knowledge and ideas.
    [/rant]

    --
    If "disco" means "I learn" in Latin, does "discothèque" mean "I learn technology"?
    1. Re:Welcome to the revolution! by Garwulf · · Score: 5, Insightful

      "Rather, America was founded on the idea that each person could retain control over what they had created/built/earned/believed without someone "more deserving" taking that control away from them.

      People chose to contribute to the common effort because they believed in it, not because they had to."

      Very well said.

      One of the things that constantly bugs me are the extremists. I'm an author - intellectual rights are very important to me, as a large part of my living right now depends on how they are used in regards to my work. Quite frankly, if I spend a year and a half writing a book, that book is mine, to do with as I please. That's the letter and spirit of the law.

      But then you have the extremists on both sides, who abuse the spirit and/or letter of intellectual property law. Companies like Microsoft use it as a weapon to stifle others from innovating, essentially by trying to take their ideas away from them and claim them as their own. The extremists on the other side react by wanting to strip away intellectual property rights entirely, and make any new creation into part of the public domain.

      When you think about it, both are theft. To use the chair example, the first group of extremists come to you after you've made a chair and demand that you give it to them and not make any more because they made it first. The second group of extremists come to you after you've made a chair and demand that you give it to them so that it can be contributed to the public good. Neither is terribly respectful to the person who made the chair in the first place, and who should be allowed to sell it if they want, give it away if they want, or just sit in it if they want.

      --
      Robert B. Marks
      Author, Demonsbane in Diablo Archive
  13. Your parents told you... by Transcendent · · Score: 5, Insightful

    he described anyone who doesn't support ever-increasing intellectual property laws as "communists".

    But... doesn't sharing mean caring? At least that's what my parents always said.

    In all seriousness, there's nothing wrong with a communial society, it's just really really hard to pull off because of human nature.

  14. Dennis Miller called it years ago ... by Titusdot+Groan · · Score: 5, Funny
    "Bill Gates is a Persian cat and a monocle away from being a villain in a James Bond movie."
    -- Dennis Miller
  15. Bill bet the farm by maskatron · · Score: 5, Interesting

    He has to say this sort of thing since he's bet the MS farm on DRM and the like. When you hear people making these kind of references though, you know they are concerned. That tells me the DRM plan isn't going as well as they thought it would.

    --
    Have you seen Ironstayn vs Supergovernment yet?
  16. It's MS who's communist here, not us by KiloByte · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Note that capitalism is not about monopolies. In fact, capitalism relies on free market, and you can't have free market if one of the players controls a majority of it.

    The basic ideas of capitalism work just insanely effective. When we had communism in Poland, most shops had empty shelves -- and within just months after the communism's fall any shortages were just gone, as if by a wave of a magic wand.

    On the other hand, communism is based on monopoly. It's supposed to be a monopoly of the "working class", but in reality in all cases it turned out to be a monopoly of the Party. And then, if you can buy the Party's blessing -- you can have a monopoly in your sector, too!
    Whatever you say, you can't ignore the fact that all real-life implementations of communism were based on the control the Party had on the citizens. In fact, it's the control what the communism is about.
    So... we have a company who tries to gain the sole control of a sector of industry -- and it's them who dare to call their enemies communists.

    --
    The creatures outside looked from Alt-Right to Antifa; but already it was impossible to say which was which.
  17. Run screaming from this!!! by maynard · · Score: 5, Insightful

    "Fly the [boing!boing! USSR/Copyleft] flag with pride comrades!"

    NONONONONO!!! I know you're trying to be funny, but I'm not laughing... The last thing free software proponents need is to associate themselves with a failed economic ideology that has resulted in tens of millions of unnecessary deaths worldwide. Free Software has nothing to do with statist communism and everything to do with individual freedom of association and collaboration. When Bill Gates frames the debate between the capitalists on his side and communists on the other, the last thing to do is embrace the presuppositions of his frame! Down that road evokes an ideological wasteland of failure! Do copyleft supporters want to associate themnselves with that? --M

  18. Microsoft is a State-Sponsored Monopoly by NotoriousGIB · · Score: 5, Insightful

    The irony of Bill Gates' anti-communist rhetoric in the wake of his recent crash and burn presentation on Windows Media Center is that Microsoft itself resembles a creaky Soviet-era state-run monopoly much more than a lean, mean emblem of free-trade capitalism.

    In my opinion Microsoft is essentially a state-sponsored monopoly and, as such, represents, little more than a tweaked version of the classic communist state entity.

    The rational for this position is the simple fact that although Microsoft has been found guilty of being a monopolistic barrier to free-trade in the software industry it was given tacit state sanction to operate as such when the courts and the DOJ failed to press for meaningful controls on their business practices.

    From an objective perspective this is no more than a refined version of the classic communist state monopoly. Like Soviet era monopolies Microsoft must compete in the international market as a representative of the State economy while at home it is given tacit control of the market in exchange for loyalty to the political leadership. Also like Soviet era monopolies, state pressure for reform of business practices amounted to little reform but a large increase in the amount of money passed on to corrupt politicians. Take a look at Microsoft's political contributions post-trial and I think you'll see this pattern is quite obvious.

    What's worse is that this "tweaked" form of state control can be conducted legally through Political Action Committees with little need to resort to passing money under the table as occurred in the old Soviet Union.

    That's right folks, Microsoft's brand of communism is conducted right under your noses while real innovation and competition in the software industry is systematically squashed through monopolistic trade practices tacitly sanctioned by the state. It's high time that all you Democrats and Republicans out there swallow the blue pill and see things as they are, not how you want them to be. Either we believe in free trade or not and no matter how you dice it monopolies are antithetical to free trade. Those who acquire them will always attempt to redefine competition so that the rules don't apply to them. Ooogedy boogedy people! Look-out! International competition means we have to stick together and support our local monopoly. Oh no! Look over there people, those communist are trying to wreck our good capitalist monopoly. It's total nonsense if you just step back and take a look at it for what it really is.

  19. Re:Time of crash by keeleysam · · Score: 5, Informative

    Actually four. The digicam thing crashed twice in about three minutes, then the game gave the BSOD, then Conan's game was lagging A WHOLE LOT. He was getting 2fps, while Gate$ was gettign the full 60fps.

    --
    Nothing for you to see here, Please move along.
  20. We're "software terrorists", Bill by nysus · · Score: 5, Funny

    Communists? Come on, Bill, you can do better than that! Who cares about Communists anymore? Just look at all the business we're doing with Communist China these days. The word "Communism" has definitely lost its cache.

    Here's some advice for your public relations folks: We're not communists, we're "software terrorists", Bill, and we're out to kill little babies and children in the name of FOSS. We hate freedom and the American way of life and we're out to destroy it.

    Now, if you can get that message across and paint that picture to the American public, you'd kill FOSS forever. Hell, you could probably get the FBI to start raiding the homes of Linux users.

    Good luck in your future endeavors, you Capitalist Pig.

    --

    ---Technology will liberate us if it doesn't enslave us first.

  21. Pointing out logical fallacies may be useless... by AthenianGadfly · · Score: 5, Insightful

    But I'll just add one more comment, trying to deconstruct what Gates says about communism and IP:

    1. Communism is generally considered to be a negative adjective in the US, no matter how you slice it. Also, I would argue that most communist governments have done quite a bit of damage by being communist (note that we're talking about communism not socialism, which is something different altogether.
    2. He is also, largely, fighting a straw man: very few people (that I know of, anyway) are actually in favor of abolishing all intellectual property. Rather, most seem to advocate more moderate limits.
    3. He maintains that the purpose of IP laws are to provide an incentives for those who create content. I agree that this was the original intent of the laws - whether that is still their function is debatable. However, I have a hard time imagining a musician (or any other content creator) sitting down to write a song (or any other content for that matter) but deciding not to because it would only remain protected until 75 years after their death (the current laws protect it for 95 years, I believe). I understand wanting to leave something to one's heirs, but 95 years is several generations - is this really a factor in whether people create new content?
  22. Not the red scare by MoronGames · · Score: 5, Funny

    We're not having the Red Scare anymore. Why didn't he label them terrorists? That's today's thing.

    --
    hey!
  23. Re:Another example of fantastic journalism from /. by revscat · · Score: 5, Insightful
    News Flash: Slashdot is not unbiased towards Microsoft. This seems to shock you. And the thing is, they (we!) understand that MS is pure crapola and borderline-to-outright evil, and so for /. to do what you suggest they would have to approach the situation dishonestly, pretending that MS's history of security problems, bad software, and monopolistic characteristics just don't exist. Gates making vapid proclamations about the future direction of MS is neither newsworthy nor interesting; that happens every single year, and they usually turn out to be almost completely wrong.

    What *is* interesting is the so-called "world's greatest software company" has a demo crash on their most public figure, and that he resorts to anachronistic political labels for buttressing his argument.

  24. Favorite quote by TheMediaWrangler · · Score: 5, Funny

    About 33 minutes in and just after the second crash, Conan provides some filler and gives my favorite quote in the presentation:

    "Last night ... I got so drunk, I woke up with a hooker. Bill got so drunk, he woke up with an Apple computer."

    --
    People should not fear what they do not understand; people should fear because they do not understand.
  25. Religion is exactly the ideological retort to use by maynard · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Come on, the deaths caused by Communism were a result of Religious Fervor.

    I'm really short on time so I can't fully reply to all of these messages, or even to you. But I'm really not debating the underlying ideologies of communism, capitalism, or even religious expression. I'm talking about a cultural taboo against communism which continues in western cultures today. Look at the success of the Swift Boat Vets red baiting the Kerry campaign as a prime example; McCarthyism continues fifteen years after the fall of the Soviet Union and fifty years after McCarthy's downfall.

    If the Free Software movement willingly accepts Gate's frame as being inspired by communist utopian idealism, the debate is over. Gate's will have won by default. If any of those EFFers or Project GNU folks are listening here (right - *cough*) I would recommend framing project GNU and BSD ideals by referencing simple down-to-earth small town values like church bake sales, community volunteer firefighting, and the Salvation Army. These are examples of community cooperation everyone can understand. And when Gates (or his surrogates) compares writing free software to communist destruction of capitalist intellectual property rights, argue back that his argument is like destroying the church bake sale for the profit-rights of local restaurants. That is an frame which skewer his debate talking points.

    This is not about communist or capitalist ideology, this is about manipulating public opinion in order to promote - long term - a specific political agenda in Washington. Realize that and all this ideological bullshit smoke disappears like evenscent fog clearing on a sunny day.

    Cheers,
    --Maynard