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Bill Gates to Receive Honorary UK Knighthood
jolyon writes "Yahoo is reporting that Bill Gates will receive his honorary UK knighthood on Wednesday. He doesn't get to call himself 'Sir' though. He becomes a Knight Commander of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire."
This is *not* and I do mean *not* a troll. At least this reply was funny!
Regardless of how we feel about Microsoft as a corporation and Bill Gates as a ruthless evil business-demon, he has done wonderful things through his Bill and Melinda Gates foundation. I don't know if he is deserving of knighthood. He is a good capitalist, if that is something to be proud of.
Like the dept tagline says, all it takes is billions of dollars. Knighthood must be hurting for worthy people these days.
-- Having a Creationist Museum is like having an Atheist place of worship
Sure, he has the money and we don't, but it is easy to say that if you were a billionaire, you would be that giving as well, it's probably harder to actually do. Let's give this man some credit where credit is due, he is doing phenomenal things with his money and (let's be honest here) he is EXACTLY what we all want to one day be: billionaire software developers.
Linus is not quite a doll, compared to anyone; he is a leader. However, I agree with you in that Stallman deserves more, as he has done more than Linus or anyone else for the Free Software.
Stupidity is an equal opportunity striker.
Fellow slashdotter Bill Dog
As nice as the chivalrous knights would have been, I'd wager it was the headchopping assholes who actually got shit done.
Way of the world.
oh wait...
A lot of now-defunct software companies could have given to charities if MS didn't put them out of business by underhanded tactics.
Bill Clinton: Pimp we can believe in. - The Shirt!!!
Degraded honour. What value is it to give this to a businessman.
Is he serving people? Is he even working for Great Britian. What a sham.
As a consideration that most Slashdot readers are American, and that Slashdot is hosted by an American, and that Slashdot was created by an American, it's quite easy to assume that "our" would mean "American". Now, if you're NOT an American on Slashdot, then you probably should read a bit more carefully, because there are hundreds of these subtleties that we Americans use every day, and that people who are not American also use to indicate people of their citizenship, whatever that may be.
Communication boundries aside, if you understand the context of the sentence, then there's no reason to get hostile about it. Slashdot is a forum of open communication and what should be a common area for discussion about technology and how it affects us. Too much lately it's a bashfest for whoever can bash the most. It's time for Slashdot readers to grow up..
"Victory means exit strategy, and it's important for the President to explain to us what the exit strategy is." G.W.Bush
No, it's sad that we don't strip citizenship from and deport the vast majority of our citizens who couldn't become citizens if they weren't born here. The requirements to become a citizen are an affirmation of the principle that democracy doesn't work when the people know nothing about their government and couldn't care less how it's run. Now if only our education system was still based on the same principle, our elections might become something more than a popularity contest.
Don't blame me; I'm never given mod points.
But he's given enough of what he stole to decent charities that I say let him be crowned or sainted or venerated by the sort of people who do that sort of thing. As long as he keeps giving to charities, I just don't care.
... nevermind the millions he may have destroyed elsewhere. Be a good American(tm) and venerate him, for as a very wealthy man (never mind how he got there) he is akin to God.
It is exactly that attitude that has allowed the status quo to remain largely unchanged, despite the fact that humanity has had the resources and technical knowhow to end all poverty since about the 17th century.
As long as we get a few crumbs, we'll tolerate any amount of injustice. Add to that the vague dream that we may become one of the haves and enjoy the privelege of trampling on the have-nots that folks like Bill Gates enjoys, and we'll defend to the death their right to grind the rest of us beneath their heals.
It's OK. He's saved a few lives here
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
Microsoft might be an unethical monopoly, but is Gates complicit in the deaths of his own employees, as Carnegie was ?
People of the time didn't exactly have a high opinion of the steel magnate after that incident. People aren't fond of Gates now.
As an employee of the Carnegie Museums, I say give it a hundred years. We have Carnegie to thank for the museum of art, the museum of natural history, and the Pittsburgh public libraries. You think anyone remembers the labor strike?
Microsoft can't last. What Gates does with his money, however, has the potential to.
And we see why Keith Richards has thumbed his nose at the prospect of being knighted. Mick, on the other hand, sold out.
bance.net
Unless you have a really low threshold for what qualifies as evil then I can't come up with any.
The dude has billions of dollars - more money than anyone else in the world. It is really that generous of him to give small fractions of it away?
My point, however, is that it's just a name. The reason people say "American" and mean someone from the USA is because it's shorter to say than to spell it all out. It's not because they don't think Canada or Mexico or any other country isn't part of an American continent. It's because "Canadian" and "Mexican" are faster to say than "person from the USA."
Perhaps if you could come up with a name for us citizens of the USA that's similar in length and time to say to "American" people could start using that instead. Any ideas?
"You're older than you've ever been, and now you're even older."
This the same reason why you never see Anthony Hopkins credited as "Sir Anthony" in US films.
I tought Antony Hopkins' knighthood was revoked when he became a U.S. citizen. It was a minor scandal a couple of years back.
No sig
I suggested elsewhere that generosity is based on what you sacrifice. And Bill has not sacrificed much of anything by giving a few billion off the top of his fortune.
I don't know that any of us can comment on Mr. Gates' intentions. Only he (and maybe people close to him) really knows the intentions of his actions. In the end he is the one who has to live with his own conscience and if he's greedy and doing it just to get an extra $100,000 tax refund then that is his problem. If he's doing it out of guilt for being the leader of a monopoly then that is also his problem.
In the end the "Teen Beat" article could well have been the brightest moment in his career.
"Give me taste, give me funk, give me fury, gimme some more."
And come on, I don't think that's fair. Look at it from a point of view of the person receiving the gift. If you gave $50 to a homeless man, would he not consider you generous? Might not be much to you, but to him that's like a month's worth of food.
Sure, and therein lies the problem is assessing generosity. Say Bill Gates kept all of him money, except for 500 dollars he gave to a homeless man on the street. By any reasonable standard, Bill is not being generous. Yet that dude that got the 500 bucks would consider Bill generous.
That is why I suggested that generosity is only meaningful in terms of the sacrifice one makes. Perhaps that is not the dictionary definition, but I think it is the only definition worth worrying about.
His net worth is a good deal different from the amount of money he has. Presumably a tremendous proportion of it is tied up in Microsoft stock, and so there is a much smaller proportion of it actually available for his philanthropy. Besides, even if we look at the proportion of his net worth which has been donated to charity, it's still on the order of at least 10% (assuming a net worth of 30 billion), which I'm sure is a lot more than a lot of people here give to such causes. Now, I realize that he still has billions of dollars for himself, but no matter how you look at it, he's still given a huge amount of money to worthy causes. I realize that lots of people argue "If I had 5 billion dollars I'd give 99% of it away because I don't need that much money", but considering it's never happened, I get the impression that's a lot harder to do than one might think. Compared to people of similar net worth, he's still an enormously generous person.