Slashdot Mirror
Bill Gates Handwriting Analyzed
Kaal Alexander Rosser writes "The BBC is reporting that a doodle left behind at a Davos press conference given by Tony Blair, Bill Gates and Bono shows the writer to be: "an unstable man" amongst other things. The Gates Foundation has confirmed the doodle was left there by Bill Gates."
and before anybody jumps on this bandwagon, let's remember that handwriting analysis is only a little more authoritative than phrenology or astrology
Why doesn't Slashdot ever get slashdotted?
Here's a look at the actual doodle .
"...all the labours of the ages, all the devotion, all the inspiration, all the noonday brightness..." yada yada
Slashdot posts the original story the same day that FARK runs the retraction. http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2-1463867, 00.html
freeminimacs, just becau
If you want to see the doodle in full, you can here.
"Nothing can shake my belief that this world is the fruit of a dark god whose shadow I extend." - Emil Michel Cioran
Is that why every major government intelligence house in the Western world devotes so many employees to it? Because oddly, I've never heard of a phrenologist working for the CIA and the astrologer/psychic they hired a few decades ago as a consultant was unceremoniously relieved of her duties after a string of nothing but failures, whereas the handwriting analysis unit is still around.
It's not, except for entertainment. We have a few shows here that have used polygraphs as entertainment as well ;-)
People say I'm crazy, I got diamonds on the soles of my shoes...
Psychologists and handwriting experts were drafted in by the press in the hope of getting a glimpse into the inner workings of the prime ministerial mind.
Newspaper stories contained phrases such as "struggling to concentrate" and "not a natural leader".
That's why the pshychologists and handwriting experts spend a lot of time analyzing a doodle while Bill Gates is very rich and leads a multi-billion dollar industry.
It reminds me of someone who was explaining to me that there's no money in the cumputer business. He said that he was a business owner in an excellent industry. I later found out that he was the bathroom dude in a bar.
Moreover, they were employed by an anti-Blair newspaper, so their comments are likely to reflect what their employers wanted to hear, rather than the results of any genuine analysis.
Process is one thing, but the people interpretting are another.
I was taking a law / ethics class back in college (simple class, not the advanced stuff) and we went over a case that kind of freaked some of us out. It was about a man falsely imprisoned in Texas.
The guy was brought in on bad evidence and testimony. That was bad enough, particularly the "witness" who never actually saw anything.
While waiting for trial, the police sent in a psychologist. They didn't even inform the guy what was going on, they said they had to "check" something. So, they had him draw a picture, sign his name, try to draw a perfect circle and that was it.
The trial comes, and the psychologist said he examined the defendant and based on his handwriting and drawings he was one of the most vile killers he'd ever seen. The shrink went on and on, and went on to pat himself on the back for helping catch such a dangerous killer..
Remember, this was just from a circle, his name, and a picture of a house (or something similar) all done within like 5 minutes. This had nothing to do with the evidence, because there was no note or anything, it was supposedly a crime of opportunity.
Years later, the real killer came forward. After re-investigating, they found the witness was a screwball AND didn't see anything, and a lot of other stuff that had gone wrong. They eventually let him go with no pay or anything. Meanwhile, the guy had spent like a decade in jail.
You have to wonder about these supposed shrinks that analyze handwiriting and what-not. I'm not saying it doesn't work, but in this case I think a bunch of them were quacks that just wanted their name in teh paper.
Youre wrong about Gates not writing anything from scratch.
/. )
He wrote most of the succesful software for the Altair, probably one of the first personal computers, including the boot sequence and a BASIC compiler.
Its true that he probably hasnt written anything significant in decades, but thats what happens to programmers in management positions (see the thread about that here on
There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics.
I can't speak for Canada, Europe, or anywhere else, but in the United States, polygraphs are (sadly) admissable in most jurisdictions at the discretion of the judge. Of course, the other side can challenge the admission of a polygraph for various causes.
It was a long time ago so I can't quote it. As I recall, he release form I saw said that they could use the information in any way they deemed apropriate. That they would not disclose information from the test to anyone unless they determined the other party should have the information (basically that they could give the info to anyone they wanted). That they were not laible for any harm to me or my reputation.
:)
It was a page and a half saying they could do anything they wanted and I couldn't hold them liable.
No way I'd sign that.
The emplayer was a retailer you'd find a majority of malls in the US.
To be fair, the man that was there to administer the polygraph was the president of his own company contracted by the retailer. He said the retailer's liability waiver was more extreme than most and showed me the standard one he uses for other clients. It still wasn't something I'd sign given how unreliable and subjective polygraphs are.
He then asked if he could do a security interview. He explained that to be asking all the same questions but without the polygraph machine. I agreed to whichever he wanted to do.
I don't see any volunteers coming forward, though.
:-P
I'll come forward (and you thought your straw man was safe). I only worked for Microsoft for a year, but I was in a high-profile group, and had the opportunity to interact with Bill a few times. What I can gather from a few short interactions is that he has a prodigious ability to understand the heart of very diverse problems. At our first meeting with him, we demonstrated an extremely complicated system. After only 15 minutes, he had incredibly insightful, out-of-the-box commentary, and had picked up on a known weakness that we thought we'd hidden well.
Hate him if you want to, but the Slashdot community does a disservice to itself by pretending that he's just business smart.
As for his stability, I can't comment. Maybe you could ask his friends
The real gotcha though is what they don't/won't tell you until afterwards. Even if you're 100% innocent, and know you're innocent, the sheer fact that you've been accused of something is enough to trigger a huge response when asked about it. So basically you can come across as lying even when you know you're innocent because you're traumatized simply from the accusations.
In my case the person evaluating me agreed that the results were due to my reacting to the accusations, not any guilt, and this went into the report. However the fact remains that the damned machine said I was lying. From my experiences I can recommend 100% that no one ever take a polygraph. If you'll lose your job for refusing, so be it, you're just as likely to end up losing it because of false positives anyway. Might as well lose it on principle than end up losing it because a machine says you're guilty of something you're not.
Posted as AC for fairly obvious reasons I would think. This isn't something I want linked back to me, it was a very traumatic experience all around and I still have nightmares about it years later. (Not just the polygraph, the whole ordeal.)