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."
i dont know about gates, but his OS is damn unstable.
The war with islam is a war on the beast
The war on terror is a war for peace
I'd have to say, no surprise there. Anyone who is a geek knows were all at least a little unstable... You have to be to be attracted by Technology more than girls.
are probably nothing more than variations of the $ sign... =)
Geez, what next? Are they going to do his star charts? or read the coffee grind remains in his mug?
People say I'm crazy, I got diamonds on the soles of my shoes...
The 'unstable man, unstable OS' jokes may begin ... now.
I hear there's rumors on the Slashdots
Really, handwriting analysis? This is the computer age... I don't even know how to write... I put an 'X' in the 'sign here' section... everything else I type... If they analysed my handwriting, well... they'd think I was a 2 year old with a crayon. ;)
---
Programming is like sex... Make one mistake and support it the rest of your life.
A "news" article saying something bad about Bill Gates on Slashdot?!
Will wonders never cease????
a "doodie".
I thought, pity the lab technician who had to do this for media purposes.
Paula: Can you grab my purse. .George showing Jerry the piece of paper he picked up
,if you think they look like this?
George: Yeah.( reaches for the purse and finds a piece of paper . he looks annoyed.
Monks , next day
Jerry: Yeah! So
George; Don't you see what this is?
Jerry: Yeah! It's a doodle.
George: Yeah!, a doodle of me...look at the size of the nose , the ears, all my features are distorted.
Jerry: Oh!.It's an affectionate caricature.
George: I'm grotesque . I look like a troll.
Jerry: It's just a drawing.
George: Don't you see what this says? How can you possibly like somebody
Free XBox, PS2
Lack of stability leads to corporate strong-arming, so as to achieve more stability in one's life? Hmmmmm.
what bad joke is this setting up?
so uhh the real question is:
where's a scan of these notes and doodles?
The Christian in me says it's wrong, but the corrections officer in me says, 'I love to make a grown man piss himself.'
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?
Hey, the poor guy has been hammered left right and center for years - can you blame him for being a bit troubled !
I bet he draws penguins and apples and little tiny bugs and all sorts of odd things when he's bored !
A slashdotting - you get the stick first and then the carrot !
He was the head of Microsoft, and now seems to be the hand too. Maybe the analysis showed that he is unsafe too.
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
The "struggling to concentrate" part probably just means that Blair's conference was being really boring, I guess...
The AACS key is NOT 0xF606EEFD628B1CA427BEA93A9CA9773F
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
Most of those assessments were made when the "graphologists" in question were under the belief the doodle was Blair's. So we should withhold judgement until we have second opinions from the Phrenologists, Dowsers and any other Pseudo-Scientific Charlatans who feel like chipping in with their worthless, substance less opinions...
Athletic Scholarships to universities make as much sense as academic scholarships to sports teams.
Excuse me while I go consult the "I Ching" to find out whether Microsoft intends to embed Internet Explorer in "Office 2007".
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
Right up there with reading tea leaves and goat entrails.
Now analysis to verify for a court that this is the defendants handwriting yes or no,for example is a science.
Tying some Psychological profile to someone's doodle is a joke......
So Long and Thanks for all the Fish.
Blair left his doodles behind for analysis, too. And so we can conclude from the absence of Bono's doodles, and consequent lack of analysis, that Bono is paranoid, justifiably.
--
make install -not war
Seriously. WTF. It's like you plug in "Bill Gates" into Google
the fact who "analysts" thought was the source of writing turned out to be incorrect makes it pretty interesting. :)
...when someone has read the bumps on his head.
How did they crack the DRM on the doodles so they they could be analysed outside of Media Player?
/. effect.
:-) Or was it a monkey screaming 'oooh ooh develoopers! developers developers! aaaargh!'
And why didn't the paper contain a little ticker that showed the time and date and author of the doodle?
Anyone have a link the torrent? Oh man, I feel strange... it must be the
Did the doodles point to any new ideas in windows? Or was one of the doodles a strange on-flying bird like creature being beaten to death by office stationary (paperclips)
Who knows?
#hostfile 0.0.0.0 primidi.com 0.0.0.0 www.primidi.com 0.0.0.0 radio.weblogs.com
Handwriting analysis is probably mostly bunk. There are some personality characteristics that may show up in some cases, but anybody claiming detailed personality analysis from handwriting alone is full of crap.
Table-ized A.I.
This should come as no suprise to anyone who is familiar with broadcast interviews and recorded seminars given by this man. The barely contained rage and insecurity evident in his body english as well as his face and eyes during moments like those infamous Windows crashes in the middle of presentations is telling. I'd bet my left tootsie some serious headrolling occured after those little booboos. He is certainly a vain and troubled man.
Wouldn't you be, though, if you were smart enough to know that your codehouse creates the most derided, the most reviled, the most attacked products in the world; to be have amassed the world's biggest fortune selling stuff to people that seem to garner nothing but resentment and to feel (perhaps rightly) the paranoia that everyone is out to get you?
The surprise here isn't that he's unstable but rather that we haven't yet found the bodies.
A spokesman said: "Following the press conference given by the prime minister, Bill Gates and Bono in Davos on Thursday, a number of newspapers printed stories claiming that a page of notes and doodles left behind on the platform belonged to Tony Blair, and provided an insight into the mind of the prime minister.
"They were in fact doodles made by Bill Gates.
"We look forward with amusement to explanations by a variety of psychologists and graphologists of how various characteristics ascribed to the prime minister on the basis of the doodles, such as 'struggling to concentrate', 'not a natural leader', 'struggling to keep control of a confusing world' and 'an unstable man who is feeling under enormous pressure', equally apply to Mr Gates.
"We are astonished that no-one who ran the story thought to ask No 10 if the doodles were in fact Mr Blair's, particularly as it was obvious to anyone the handwriting was totally different."
In other words, graphology is BS and the people who analyzed it already had a preconceived notion about whose it was and made the appropriate BS analyses.
I remember one card had a Skull...
and the other had a Penguin.
Apparently it was a conference attended by Tony Blair(PM of Britain) and Bill Gates. The press picked up the doodle thinking it was Tony Blair and had psy guys analyze it and come up with the "not a leader", "mentally unfocused" and so on analysis.
Then after publishing all that they found out it was Bill Gates' doodles. He may not be mentally focused or a leader, but he just happens to be the wealthiest man in the world.
So Gates drew some doodles on a piece of paper. They though it was blares analysided it and figured that he was not a good leader then found out it was Gates. Ok so what do these doodles consist of. A picture of him ripping apart a penguin. Or just pritty flowers everywhere, or just abstract lines that may loosly resemble something. There isn't much insite in saying hey our sciencetist think that Gates is unstable because of his doodles, what about the doodles proove this?
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
Either Bill G suffers from all of the characteristics that are currently being attributed to Tony Blair in the press.
Or handwriting analysis is a load of baloney.
Even if none of them was able to recognise it was a fake, you would have thought that they might at least have mentioned an obsessive streak, or social awkwardness, or the other typical geek attributes that Bill certainly has .
Even after reading the article and another article provided by a slashdot member, I can't seem to understand WHO's handwriting we're talking about, Blair or Gates???
Does anyone dare analyze RMS's handwriting?
Adidas To Bring Back Sneakernet
The "unstable" and "unfit to lead" assessments were made when the doodle was assumed to have been made by Tony Blair. While you would think that the same conclusions would be drawn regardless of the identity of the scribbler, there is speculation that the original conclusions were politically motivated.
Geez, is nothing sacred? I suppose next we'll be reading about a psychochemical analysis of Mr. Gates based on stool residue he may have left behind in the public loo. Heh, I wish this were just a joke, but I've seem some nanotech that might just make that sort of thing feasible in the future...
To the making of books there is no end, so let's get started
We can clearly see a goalpost in the doodle... Makes me think if it wasn't Blair after all.
I'm sorry, the number you have dialed is an imaginary number. Please rotate your phone 90 degrees and dial again.
I mean, this is supposed to be "Stuff that matters"?
"Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former" - Albert Einstein.
From reviewing the doodle, it's is my expert opinion that Bill Gates has the doodling skill of my five year old son!
If someone says he and his monkey have nothing to hide, they almost certainly do.
Bill Gates' psychological analysis using the science of Numerology, his tea leaves from his last sushi dinner and a phrenologic reading of his cranium.
Sounds like that applies to handwriting analysts as well...
"Note to self: no more photo shoots for Teen Beat magazine; must attempt to keep what shreds of dignity I've got left..."
No doubt that Microsoft has some shady business tactics. There's no question that they provide shoddy products from a security perspective and then push responsibility for their goofs to on user community. There's the issue ,of corse, that they hound free software by the cheapest pr tricks in the book and the system Microsoft sucks shit! Well, hell! There's a lot of valid complaints when it comes to chastising Microsoft as a corporation
I really don't want to ideolize Mr. Gates and he is often guilty of wrong speak; willingly or out of ignorance.
But attempting a character analyses from a doodle he left at a conference (which potentially was boring) is just plain juvenile.
Hold your ammunition for the real issues, slashdot, and retain your credibility in the bargain...
ich bin der musikant
mit taschenrechner in der hand
kraftwerk
"Any idea where I misplaced Steve Ballmer's stool sample?"
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
My analysis? He was practicing writing with his alternate hand - because he was bored. I tried this over the weekend, and my scrawl looked similar to this.
I dunno - I don't consider myself all that anal, but my notes are generally a lot less flamboyant than that - a little more organized, legible, useful, etc.
cyn, free software and *nix operating systems enthusiast.
it was kind of an annoying form anyway, something somebody has knocked up on word and never tried to use so you get:
....... [whole page width] .. [2 inches]
First Name:
Address of Mortgage Provider (1st Applicant)
but i got the same thing, my handwriting was appalling even when i was at school. i looked at this form after i had completed it and just wanted to cross my name out and write "MUNGO" in large letters across the page. and i had to print in capitals. even i cant read my own joined up writing any more.
Tony Blair, Bill Gates and Bono walk into a bar.
"So, Bill", says Tony, "What about that 80% discount on MS software?"
"No way" says Bill.
"Bill. Software patents. Just for you. A word to the jury in patent cases."
Bill stares at Tony, takes out a pen and starts nervously doodling on a coaster.
"No. I can't. Not 80%".
"Must be 80%. Just the government. Schools... We'll make it obligatory in schools. No discounts either."
"60%, please, Tony, I can't." - Bill bites his lip and staring blankly at the coaster, continues to doodle.
"But, Bill. The antitrust. The EU. The monopoly. The fines."
"Tony! Don't force me..." Bill gasps, his hand with the pen running in circles over the coaster.
"Removal of Media Player."
The pen snaps under the pressure. Bill breaks in tears.
Tony grabs Bill and supporting him on his shoulder whispers "75" and leads Bill out.
Bono quietly hides the coaster in his pocket...
Bill Gates.
An unstable man.
Indeed.
45 5F E1 04 22 CA 29 C4 93 3F 95 05 2B 79 2A B2
So now being a singer in a rock band makes you an expert on international economics?!? WTF?!?
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
Clippy "It looks like you're trying to understand my masters doodles, would you like some help?"
Researcher "No"
*Five Minutes Later*
Clippy "It looks like you're going to write degrading things about my masters doodles, a Redmond Brute has been notified."
Slashdot sucks
analyzing Steve Ballmer's monkey style dance? I bet the conclusions are a lot easier in that case :)
The AACS key is NOT 0xF606EEFD628B1CA427BEA93A9CA9773F
That's an early flowchart from the MFC design team.
http://apple.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=137854&c id=11529372
Excuse me while I go consult the "I Ching" to find out whether Microsoft intends to embed Internet Explorer in "Office 2007".
Since this is Microsoft and Bill Gates we are talking about, shouldn't you consult "Ka Ching" instead?
Fly me to the moon Let me sing among those stars Let me see what spring is like On jupiter and mars
see subject.
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
RTFA. The British press clearly used prejudiced analysts, who believed they were criticizing Blair. Blair is unpopular, this was just a "pig-pile on the PM" attempt.
OTOH, had the analysts been told it was Bill's note, they'd probably have claimed a whole different list of negative traits.
Why is this newsworthy? Graphology is completely unsound from a scientific point of view, though it might interest students of the Forer effect. What next? Steve Ballmer's horoscope? What the tarot has to say about Larry Ellison's future? Crop circles resembling Linus' face? (All right, I reckon the last one could possibly be newsworthy. But, still, do we really want to go further in this direction?)
and it hurt
if it was me it would say "homicidal tendencies due to stress wanting to wipe the smug look off of Bumo's face with a cheesegrater"
/me physically restrained and dragged away from ranting
did you see the clip where TB gave his speech the day before and Bumo was in the audience with a cap on back to front? oh yeah you da man bono! keep it real for da kids!
all this attacking of Gates should stop. Join forces now to stop Bumo's master plan to become the 1st president of the united earth. I mean at least BG didn't release a song that got to number one that sounds just like 'keep me hanging on' by Kim Wilde. And what does KW have to do now? adverts for health food shops!
...and the bar tender says, "We don't serve big wigs here like you.".
Tony Blair says, "But can we at least vote on it?".
The bartender says, "No!".
Bill Gates says, "But we just need a place to crash.".
The bartender felt betrayed because he expected support from Bill, and thus said, "You too??".
Bono says, "Yes...".
testing out my trending skills
I dislike micro$oft as much as the next slashdotter, BUT handwriting analysis! Why not check his bio-rhythmn and astrological correspondences while you're at it. I bet even Bill still has enough geek in his soul to laugh at the morons who think his handwriting revealed anything other than the colour of ink he was using.
This just further reinforces the lousy reputation /. has as a news post.
Of course, if he'd used a Tablet PC to doodle on, this whole hullabaloo would never have happened.... But then, that too is telling, that it's easier to doodle on paper than on a tablet pc.
This reminds me of the story about Mark Twain and the phrenologist Lorenzo Fowler:
"However, he found a cavity, in one place; a cavity where a bump would have been in anyone else's skull. That cavity, he said was all alone, all by itself, occupying a solitude, and had no opposing bump, however slight in elevation, to modify and ameliorate its perfect completeness and isolation. He startled me by saying that that cavity represented the total absence of the sense of humor!"
Three months later, he returned and identified himself first, and then
"Once more he made a striking discovery-the cavity was gone, and in its place was a Mount Everest-figuratively speaking-31,000 feet high, the loftiest bump of humor he had ever encountered in his life-long experience!"
Note to graphologists, palm-readers, astrologers, and other pseudo-scientists: if your "prediction" depends on your audience, you are at best a fraud and a charlatan.
This tagline is copyrighted material. Please send $10 for an affordable replacement.
You have a gun but only two bullets, who do you shoot?
I am hijacking this thread because a sudden to ask the Slashdot readership the following:
What really interesting framework / infrastructure projects are currently going on in the Linux world? I don't think there is much interesting progress anymore.
HAL and DBUS are two interesting projects - they are building something new to solve integration of hardware management in a non-hackish way. But what is KDE doing? Refining the framework, adding small, specialized features, but I can't see any real inventions coming along. A small feature here, a small feature there About Gnome, I can't say, don't know it enough. Beagle seems interesting but will it be a standalone, nonintegrated application, or will it blend in to the GNU/Linux infrastructure, making its indexes useful at the commandline as well as on the desktop? Will it be infrastructure, or will it be just another application on Freshmeat?
The configuration nightmare - there seems to be no progress. X.org - what is really happening over there, the future seems very far away. The linux kernel - what new developments are _really_ interesting, from a pure user perspective? Native Java - is it reasonable to believe it will make real inroads in major distributions soon - can we expect it to be fully accepted, and part of the core? Mono - could be promising, but seems still not mature.
Sorry for the hijacking, but I think a discussion about this is far more interesting than grafology about with Bill Gates.
Who writes this shit?
violence with those three boring?
wtf?
I'd go sit with them and join in.
Graphologists typically want at least a full page of writing and/or doodles. They also want the writer to use a non-felt tip pen. This is so that they can judge the pressure applied. For instance someone under stress would apply greater pressure and indent the paper more than a calm person.
Graphologists are also very careful NOT to use just one trait to form an opinion of the writer. For instance someone who crosses their "T"'s with a long bar at the top are generally considered to be protective, but if the prevailing signs in the sample are agressive, the long bar might be taken as hostility.
I see a lot of posts ridiculing graphology. This is probably because it is in the realm of psychology; a science that probably does not get much respect among Engineers and programmers.
We have always been at war with Eurasia!
'nuff said.
(there's a simpsons quote somewhere there, but too lazy to look it up.)
Here is a copy of the image in question.
Doodle
...Bill Gates unstable and a poor leader? I don't see it.
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.
As the parent notes the story isn't really about doodles by Bill Gates, but about doodles that aren't by Tony Blair. And the ensuing BS because people assumed they were. The only thing remarkable about Gate's involvement is that he's such a clear proof that the graphology is crap. Him being a genius and all.
It's like when 2 students pass in the exact same assignment and get 2 vastly different marks.
It's interesting but why does slashdot care about some doodles? I'm sure most of us don't. It has nothing to do with tech or tech-related news. If, however, there was an improved version of quick sort hidden in the doodles we should all sit up. Is there a way to mod the original articles down?
Alex Baldwin is dead? Does Alec know?
666-607: 6th floor apartment of the beast
I had a bad experience with graphology woo-woo-heads about 20 years ago. I wrote about it to Bob Carroll of The Skeptic's DIsctionary, and it was posted in the reader's comments section. I'll just copy that here rather than retype the story:
Just wanted to let you know how much I appreciate your remarks about graphology. I've found that a distressing number of people assume there must be "something to it" without thinking about it at all. Let me share an anecdote regarding my brush with graphology:
When I graduated from college in 1986 with a degree in chemistry, I went to an employment agency, which got me an interview with a local paint company I'll call FooBar Paint. The unusual thing was, they asked me to submit a handwritten essay about my hobbies before they would schedule the interview. I complied with this request, and a few days later was told they would not interview me since they had determined some unspecified character flaw through graphological analysis.
I was livid, of course -- Both because they had dismissed me without even talking to me, and they had been dishonest in failing to tell me what they planned to do with my essay. I wanted to do something, but I was an impoverished and unemployed 21-year-old. Unable to hire an attorney, I contacted the Seattle Human Rights department, who was very interested in my story. SHR filed suit against FooBar, and subpoenaed all of their documents regarding hiring policy. We were suing for a job and back pay. It was quite a heady feeling.
Two days later, I got a phone call from the president, Mr. FooBar himself, asking me to come in for a personal interview. Mr. FooBar wanted to "set things straight" as it was costing him time and money to comply with SHR's document subpoena. When I got to his office, he explained that graphology was their preferred method of determining who fits into the "FooBar mosaic," as he put it. I explained that this was a totally unsubstantiated method, and asked him why he didn't employ witch doctors or use a magic 8-ball to determine a candidate's fitness. He had no answer for that, instead offering me a job if I'd drop the suit and take another handwriting test. Apparently, one of the qualities FooBar likes in its "mosaic" is unmitigated gall.
I ended up dropping the suit after FooBar twisted in the wind for a while. I had to get on with my life, and the best I could get was a job working for those clowns. Still, I felt I had made my point.
I sincerely hope that people refuse to take workplace pseudoscience lying down. If this type of "new age" employer is given free reign to evaluate people on graphology, I Ching, auras, or whatever, they'll just keep doing it.
There wasn't that much at stake in my case, but there could have been much more if my circumstances were different. People need to educate themselves about pseudosciences like graphology, so they might have the conviction to stand up against it as well as the facts to win the fight.
--end quote--
I'd like to add that when I went to SHR, I wasn't looking to sue them. I just wanted to know if what they did was legal and if not, ask them to call them and tell them so. But they just went forward and did it, and I was fine with it.
I'll never forget sitting in that idiot's (Mr. FooBar's) office. I swear, he looked just like Lumbergh, but lacked his intellect and personality.
I'm sorry, but I bet you wouldn't get as well in portuguese also. So we make it even, ok.
[]'s Victor Bogado da Silva Lins
^[:wq
I've always said that you need to be nearly insane to become a successful business man. That's why I'm into music and computers.
-"...bad old ideas look confusingly fresh when they are packaged as technology" - Jaron Lanier (Digital Maoism on Edge.o
And up until this point I thought it was all hard science. Next you are going to tell me that psychics and spoon-benders don't really have extraordinary powers.
My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.
Oh, wait, this is slashdot, wrong answer:)
There's some humor about handwriting analysis, and other silly spycraft, in the film The Man With One Red Shoe.
Now before I get modded down, I be to remind whoever might read this that what I am saying is FACT. - bogaboga
An analysis of Bill's stool on ratemypoo.com?
Tantamount to reading palms, tea leaves, or casting horoscopes.
It is completely ridiculous.
...not that I'm a pirate.. Hell I've never even fired a cannon. - oldwolf13
This is really of bad taste guys. As much as I think Bill G. is Napoleonic and demented I don't put that basis on his handwriting.
Now, he'll be the first to tell you that it's not a perfect science -- but if you see five different indicators that suggest the person is dishonest, there's a better chance that there's a correlation.
Here are a few points that I remember from reading the manual that he had written --
- Pressure of the writing is an indicator of the person's stress level. [how hard are they pushing the writing implement into the paper?].
- A person who tends to come back and write back over the top of their words (not to make a correction -- writing over it twice or more) is a sign of dishonesty.
- Your normal handwriting tells your personality; Your signature tells how you want people to think you are. (so a person whose signature is like their handwriting is more likely to be comfortable with themselves)
- A person whose lines slope downwards as they write tend to be pessimists (if upward, optimists)
There are things that can be infered from the angle the writing, the general shape of letters, how the person dots their i's, the width of the margins, how they place the addresses on the letters.I would relate handwriting analysis to be more like reading someone's mannerisms and how they dress -- it can be a good indicator, but isn't a perfect correlation. Whereas, astrology and the like are basically just cold reading (normally, based on the person's reactions, mannerisms, and how they dress), and not really on the stars.
Now, that's not to say that someone can read something wrong -- I'm sure it happens all the time -- my grandfather has one indicator (the size of decenders) that he attributes to 'passion' -- someone may attribute it to sexuality, sports, or even as agression and a tendancy towards violance. You have to read it in combination with other indicators.
Build it, and they will come^Hplain.
Am I the only one who finds that peole are throwing tags around at random in slashdot articles? This one has a link to the BBC's report, and no link to the Gates Foundation's confirmation. Why is the link in the part about the Gates foundation and not round at least the words 'BBC' and 'reporting'? As for the other link, it's hardly useful to be told that the submitter's email address is nobody@127.0.0.1
A pizza of radius z and thickness a has a volume of pi z z a
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.
You know your famous when people care enough to take the time to analyze random doodles you do... I'd feel pretty wierd if people started analyzing my handwriting and doodles... they'd probably lock me up.
Good thing I'm just a lowly techie in the big scheme of things.
The toughest part about college was filling in the application form.
Sticking feathers up your butt does not make you a chicken - Tyler Durden
When I doodle, I end up with spheres and cubes and conic sections, not because I'm a great three-dimensional thinker, but because I like to practice light/shadows and foreshortening.
Maybe Bill was practicing his triangles? Even if they were Tony's doodles, what's so wrong with Tony practicing triangles?
What I get from it is this: Some of the most powerful people in the world have fun with triangles, so they must be okay to play with.
.. pa-ra-bo-la, pa-ra-bo-la, 2 pi R, 2 pi R, where's your latus rectum, where's your latus rectum, 2 pi R
Quackery.
Why certainly!
I imagine Bill was struggling mightily to keep from bursting out with a lusty Bwoohahaha!!! just thinking about the windfall he'd just paid himself.
(Bill owns a bit more than a billion shares of Microsoft stock, and due to W's "tax reformation", is only going to pay at most 15% in taxes on the $3B of dividend income he paid himself in early December)
Wouldn't you have a bit of trouble maintaining composure in this situation?
You are wrong sir. Actually, if you read the article, you'll see that it was initially thought to be Blair's, but was later found to be left by Bill Gates. Do you actually read articles or research your assertions before posting?
"...all the labours of the ages, all the devotion, all the inspiration, all the noonday brightness..." yada yada
RTFA. It was originally thought to belong to Blair before people realized it actually belongs to Gates.
Thinkin' Lincoln - a web comic of presidential proportions
"'struggling to concentrate', 'not a natural leader', 'struggling to keep control of a confusing world' and 'an unstable man who is feeling under enormous pressure'," And the reason this doesn't sound exactly like Bill Gates is....???
But Officer, I DID read the f**king article!
People remark about my hand lettering quite often, my handwriting (which is cursive for the uninitiated) on the other hand is so terrible that at times even I am unable to decipher my scratches.
If you ignore the other uses of a tool, does that make the tool less useful, or you less useful?
There is already enough evidence that Bill Gates doesn't have the qualities of a leader, and that he has few social abilities.
For example, look at Microsoft's keynote at CES. (Click on 100K or 300K to watch the video.)
There is no need for more evidence than watching any of Gates's public appearances to understand what kind of person he is.
I don't see what we could learn more from a handwriting analysis. There already is enough information available that is more relevant than what is mentioned in the article.
What kind of gun? If it's powerful enough, line two of them up and shoot both with one bullet.
I saw a show on the Discovery Channel a few years back that sort of discussed the same sort of thing- handwriting analysis, art critiquing, phychics, etc.
They showed art critics discussing the art they were looking at and describing, in detail, the emotions and message that the artist was trying to convey.
The show's host didn't believe any of that so he showed some "respected" art critics a piece of art, which looked like scribble to me- it was just random strokes of the brush in different colors. The critics all agreed with each other and explained what exactly the artist was thinking, and the raw emotion that went into the painting.
Very impressive, I thought- and maybe I would have believed them had the artist not been AN ELEPHANT.
Yes, an elephant painted the picture with its trunk. The "respected" art critics were really just good at winning popularity contests- in reality they had no clue what they were talking about. It's the same thing between a "good" phychic and a "bad" psychic- neither one knows what they're talking about, but one just seems "more believable" than the other.
his phrenology results, and his tarot card readings?
/.'s front page.
Please, I don't like pseudoscience crap on
Bill Gates is an ADD (Attention Deficit Disorder) case. Most (if not all) good programmers are. And don't tell me he's not a good programmer. Anyone who can read assembly code on paper in an airplane to debug it and tweak it is a good programmer. I'm sure he is struggling to concentrate. He's probably not a natural leader but that doesn't mean he's not a good leader. Good leaders always have good people supporting them (Balmer, Shelley, Allen). For ADD leaders, those are the people who provide the follow-through lacking in their leader. So even though he can be thinking of 10 different things in any second and probably has no real follow through and shows other signs of ADD that does not mean that he's a moron who can't lead flies to shit.
Unless you can be part of creating a company that has been a sucessfull as Microsoft the only reason you riducle the man is to make yourself feel better about only having one comma in your net worth.
Come on, have you even read some of the comments. NOBODY IS BASHING BILL EXCEPT THE BBC. Get a grip. Everybody here seems to be completely dismissive of the report.
Best regards.
See for yourself: this scan shows some definite signs of instabilty.
... that most of his notes are in relation to aid to poor countries. I know as much as the linux community would love the martyrdom that would come with Bill Gates hating you... he's just worried about poor little unvaccinated children. Better luck next time.
Damn, must be a very slow news day. Come on, I know taking jabs at Bill is fun, but this one is downright stupid. Even if they are Bill's doodles and chicken scratches, anyone with half a brain knows that handwriting analysis is NOT considered a valid diagnostic tool. So called "graphologists" who say they can detect personality traits from handwriting are no more capable of doing so than someone with a crystal ball can tell me anything about me. This type of graphology has basically been discredited in legitimate diagnostic psychology, but obviously reporters could not care less.
Bill Gates unstable? You call this news ?
I'm guessing BSOD.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
Right up there with reading tea leaves and goat entrails.
I've heard that sometimes you can read goat entrails cruelty free simply by looking directly into the goatse
Would you say Bill Gates was a strong and charismatic leader? That he's NOT struggling to keep control of the world? That he's NOT an unstable man who is feeling enormous pressure?
For the moderator who rated the parent "Offtopic", you should watch "Dr. Strangelove", wherein a deranged USAF General doodled about Purity of Essence, and ranted that Communists never take a drink of water, since water has been tainted by flouridation. Bill Gates has ranted that Linux is equivalent to Communism. I guess the reference was too subtle for someone.
It's all a bunch of flap-doodle.
Handwriting analysis is well known to be a non-science with non-facts based on non-events that produce non-results.
It's also a non-brainer way for slashdotters to do some M$ bashing.
Maybe it's time for /. to move on or for me to stop wasting my time. The quality of information on this site is degrading every day.
i think the qualities they saw as negative in tony blair, world leader/ politician who had made unpopular decisions and done questionable things come across as extremely positive in an extrenely wealthy midde aged man.
the doodles are probably mind maps of some kind ot help him concentrate and stay focussed when it his turn to speak, by the looks of it. alos they oook concerned and nervous, as man who is concerned baout the world
ever since i read the open letter to hobyists i have hated this mean. ever since i used his software i have despised this man.
i think it is very plausible that the new [ last 10-6 years] mellow rich bill is different from the old borg evil bill!
#we should focus on what he hopes to do in the future . software, socially and politically -- if inly keep an eye on him. i do belive i saw 'world domination' as one of the items. seriously
This doodle had apparently fallen behind the desk. gates doodle
What do I have to do to get a sig around here?! www.bearscanfly.org
I hate to say it, but nerds have finally gone too far. Do you guys have ANYTHING better to do than player hate all over Bill's doodles?!
This was the only Tablet PC that Gates could rely on.
Ah, what fine powers of perception you have.
With augury you at least get a meal out of it. (ven though it may be your last.)
MSBPodcast.com The opinions expressed here are my own. If you don't like 'em... Think up your own stuff.
He has created one of the biggest companies of all time, and made it almost unassailable.
There is nothing technical he can do that one (or a dozen) of his employees can't do 10 times better and faster.
He has (probably) saved millions of lives through his malaria research.
He has a nice wife and three kids. He has a really cool house.
What else is there left to do?
Maybe he could try being a Linux Kernel Hacker...
My handwriting is non-existant. My verticals go off in every direction and my line is uneven.
Am I disorganized? An idiot?
No. I have MS. To me the pen is an instrument of torture; my own.
MSBPodcast.com The opinions expressed here are my own. If you don't like 'em... Think up your own stuff.
You have a gun but only two bullets, who do you shoot?
Bill, twice. Bono's already dead and Tony'll be savaged by the electorate anyway.
"We returned the General to El Salvador, or maybe Guatemala, it's difficult to tell from 10,000 feet"
I haven't the foggiest idea what you mean.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Seems like flamebait but I'll bite. How many BASIC compilers have you written in 2 months without touching the target hardware before you were 20? some bio page
My daddy is a lawyer and once I worked for his law office as office monkey and I served some papers! HOW DID YOU GUESS --
Oh wait. I haven't killed anyone. Yet. I guess this must be a prophecy. Oh no! What do I do now! I feel like I'm in some Greek tragic play here, sniff.
bread for its skills in magic. Bill's favorite
An unstable man
struggling to concentrate.
George Bush? No. Bill Gates.
I wrote a forth compiler for the 6502 processor at the age of 17. A BASIC interpreter of the standard we're talking about back then was not as complex as you imagine. If I remember rightly, his was about 4K of object code. A couple of thousand lines of assembler. Big fucking deal. Impressive because he was the first to implement on a microprocessor, although there were minicomputer implementations for him to copy. But not a genius level accomplishment.
The other BG news out of Davos is that he's short the dollar. He thinks that the trade imbalance is getting too big to sustain with the current (already low) dollar valuation. Of course, you cannot graphologically analyze his spoken words, so it must not be important.
That is all.
That could be useful, you should write a book
So Long and Thanks for all the Fish.
Perhaps that shows that an elephant is capable of deeper thought and emotion than previously believed?
It was the Daily Mail who picked up on these notes, and like usual they get it completely wrong. The quality of the UK tabloids is frankly shocking; basically the Mail's only function is to anger up the blood of xenophobic middle-class idiots. They will run front page stories on how some immigrant gets a nice house from the govt, or how a white, God-fearing kid didn't get an ice cream because a family of asylum seekers cut in line etc. etc. And they are self-righteous beyond belief, with their campaigns to ban computer games, or chat rooms, or whatever. At least with other tabloids like the Sun or the Mirror, no-one takes their stories seriously. Grr.
My grandfather is Carl Pacifico, and after being a chemical engineer, moved to management, and then, after selling his company, became a business consultant. (which is when he was doing handwriting analysis).
He started studying human behavior, and from that, thinking in general, and now spends his time trying to further research into cognative neuropsychology.
He's not some Miss Clio wanna-be trying to hawk his wares. I don't even know if he's done much with his handwriting analysis work in years, if not decades.
From the times that I've tried analysing other people's (and my own) handwriting, it seems to compare well with what I knew of the people, but I haven't tried doing double blind studies or anything else that would provide statistical proof as to the accuracy of the studies.
Build it, and they will come^Hplain.
Here in the states, he is known simply as a wanker with a good singing voice... Hey, here's an idea: maybe if everybody simply stopped paying attention to them, then entertainers would stop spouting off their political ideas every chance they get? Think we could simply convince people to stop buying the crap they're selling? Nah... not a chance!
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
Howard Hughes was a very rich man, too. He died with Kleenex boxes on his feet surrounded by jars of his own urine.
I might know what I'm talkin' about, but then again, this is Slashdot...
Graphology is just as laughable as astrology, acupuncture or homeopathy. Here's a nice experiment for your amusement: when you meet a "graphologist" who'd like to demonstrate her amazing "skills" to you, be sure to make an experiment using text copied from some newspaper, the same text written by all of the tested people who had no contact with the graphologist before and during the handwriting examination at all. Observing the graphologist's face when she doesn't have "side channels data" and no interaction with people to play with "cold reading" is a trully hilarious experience.
"This shape might sometimes mean that maybe some kind of a impatience... am I right?"
"Just keep going, I don't want to disturb you!"
And the most funny thing is that unlike psychics they can't just make up some dumb excuses that they feel some disturbance of Force or that the Angels are scared by the camera, because they are supposed to be scientists. Looking at someone's writing you can usually tell the gender and age--the same I can guess reading someone's palm... Or foot... Or arse! Does it make me an arsologist?
For more interesting informations read: Wikipedia article on graphology, James Randi's comments on graphology (by The Amazing Randi of JREF who offers "a one-million-dollar prize to anyone who can show, under proper observing conditions, evidence of any paranormal, supernatural, or occult power or event"), graphology in the Skeptic's Dictionary by Robert T. Carroll, PhD, and of course the excellent Quackwatch paper How Graphology Fools People by Barry L. Beyerstein, PhD. This is not the first time we can laugh at psedoscientific morons on Slashdot thanks to The Amazing Randi.
And a comment to CmdrTaco: please add the Monty Python foot to the article because without it we look like a bunch of imbeciles. What next? Bill Gates tested by the lie detector and a story posted on science.slashdot.org? Please just add the foot. Thanks.
Sincerely,
Pan Tarhei Hosé, PhD.
"Homo sum et cogito ergo odi profanum vulgus et libido."
BillG strikes me as unstable, and as not a natural leader. He's also an insufferable asshole, which I find more interesting. What happened during his childhood that made him so utterly unable to be a peer or a friend to the people around him? He seems to have an uncontrollable urge to kick everybody in the balls and steal their lunch, just because he can. What makes a person behave like that?
sight -> site
sentance -> sentence
puposeful -> purposeful
spitiual->spiritual
Indeed.
This is known in forensics as questioned document examination, forensic document examination, document examination, or handwriting examination. This has nothing to to with graphology, the pseudoscience. See: Questioned document examination and Graphology articles on Wikipedia, and also see this post for more links.
Sincerely,
Pan Tarhei Hosé, PhD.
"Homo sum et cogito ergo odi profanum vulgus et libido."
I think the subject says it all. This is news?
A wise person makes his own decisions, a weak one obeys public opinion. -- Chinese proverb
Honest? You really think he will be. All the disenfranchised lefties are going to vote for Charles Kennedy? Or are we going to all swing to swing to Howard? As much as I would like to see Tony Blair booted, it just isn't going to happen. Blair will plod along in the same way that Bush got re-elected. The alternatives are so appalling - I mean, Kerry, honestly - how can you lose against one of the most hated presidents of all time?
No, I think we're stuck with Blair, or at least until Brown takes over.
catch (HumourFailureException e) { e.user.send("You, sir, are a humourless idiot."); }
Blair will plod along in the same way that Bush got re-elected. The alternatives are so appalling - I mean, Kerry, honestly - how can you lose against one of the most hated presidents of all time?
Funny, it almost sounds like Kerry was running against Blair.
"We returned the General to El Salvador, or maybe Guatemala, it's difficult to tell from 10,000 feet"
If I ever become rich and famous, I am going to leave doodles of boobies all over the place. They will think I am a sex obsessed pig.... Oh.
All of you were busy looking at how graphology is crapola.
o nal Taxes
:(
Newsflash, it is.
Now onto important issues. We can deduce IMPORTANT things that Mr. Moneybags (B.G.) has on his mind!
Looking at the pic tells me:
Debt Cancellation
Vaccines
Malaria
Money
Internati
MGA
Prep.(prepare?) for aids.
MSP-AD up
Now for the part where I get Flamed into non-existence. I have to defend Gates....
From the doodle, we can see that gates is using his cash for vaccines. He is working on the how/what/why 's about his vaccines. At the same time i surmise that tha G8 were talking about cancelling the debt of 3rd world nations.
Gates is doing good with his money, I AM GLAD. EVEN if he STOLE it from the consumer he has turned around and given it(some of the money) to people who need it. (to be fair, he only gave like ~1.5 % of his wealth away, but thats ok)
it looks like he is trying to figure out how to get the money the fastest with the least stupid government problems to the people who need it the most.
Check journal for info on Anti-TextBook, an idea by me.
He had free money from his mommy, therefore he had no risk, it didnt matter if it all failed.
So you're saying everyone who has rich parents is able to create a monopoly to completely dominate an industry? Sure, any of us could create a start up if we had the capital. But how many of us could take $50k and turn it into multiple billions?
Duhh... any idiot can do a rough upward 20% graph with googled statements saying how market size is increasing etc... crap.
But no one can keep it up for decades. I'm sorry, but it's simply not possible. Stop being delusional and face the fact that Bill Gates did not get to where he is by lying to his shareholders for thirty years.
Don't blame me, I didn't vote for either of them!
This thread useless without pictures
What's the point in talking about Bill Gates' doodles if we don't get to see them?
All kings is mostly rapscallions. -Mark Twain, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
Just mod the original article down.
Quis metamoderunt ipses metamoderatores?
After a futher analysis, the doodles say : "Linux ownz!".
I read this automatically as being about Bill Gates at a Davros press conference. Immediate thought: Davros, inventor of the Daleks, and Bill Gates together. You just know it makes sense.
Hmmm. Must . get . out . more.
Bitter and proud of it.
I think anyone who actually gets caught up in, or gives a damn what Bill was doodling on paper is seriously in need of something real to do. Besides, we all know Bill really uses MS Paint to do his doodling.
There are 10 types of people in the world; those who can read binary, and those who can't.
this version of the doodle is hard to comprehend, is badly organized and doesn't seem to make much sense - but just wait till the 2.0 release!
Cake or Death? Cake Please!
Nah, just that rich people can afford to screw up over and over without having to worry about struggling for survival for the rest of their lives. So they're more likely to "take risks" that might payoff big 'cause they're not really taking as big a risk as someone who is investing their whole life savings.
Actually, I remember from the book "Hard Drive" (Bill Gates autobiography) that he actually practices his hand writing several times a day. He does this to maintain the muscular control in his hands, so that it isn't completely lost by the use of a keyboard. Sounds like a good idea.
Never hit your grandmother with a shovel, for it leaves a bad impression on her mind...
"Go to CNN [for a] spell-checked, fact-checked summary" -- CmdrTaco
this just epitomizes the media circus and the clowns who run it...not that I have anything against clowns...its just so very, very sad and f*ucked up!
Well done.
Exactly. I would have done it myself, but when Bill was lying to people and pitching his vaporware back in 74, I was busy growing fingers and toes.
;)
Microsoft is definately his baby all right.
That was a choice bio to post, btw... sure you're not a troll in sheeps clothing?
-1 Uncomfortable Truth
Thanks! :^)
If you're interested in trying it, then the basic formula, is:
____ go(es) into a bar. The bartender says, "We don't serve _____ here.".
____ says, "[insert punchline]".
If you force yourself to really stick to a topic, you'd be surprised at what you could come up with. In the case above, I broke protocol and added a couple of extra lines, but in general, it's more fun if you can try to stick to a formula.
testing out my trending skills