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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."
"(Gates) is one of the most important business leaders of his age," he said. "Microsoft technology has transformed business practices and his company has had a profound impact on the British economy."
If only Knighthood came with all the grandeur that fairytales make it out to be. Luckily for Gates he falls right into the lot of Knights that were brutal barbarians who killed their competitors off by lopping their heads off with a sharp steel sword.
Among the pomp and grandeur of the formal state rooms at the palace, Gates will kneel in front of the sovereign, who will gently tap him on the shoulder with a sword.
You have to wonder if this is something like Gates received from the DOJ... "Among the pomp and grandeur of the formal courthouse, Gates will kneel in front of the judge, who will gently slap him on the wrist.
They need to name that something cool like Honorary Convicted Monopolist or something.
to have a Most Excellent Adventure through knighthood. Does this mean he call himself Bill H Gates, Esquire now? Party on Dude!
sorry, so so sorry
Oh dear lord... what's he in charge of? More importantly does this affect his borg status at all?
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Programming is like sex... Make one mistake and support it the rest of your life.
So, exactly how much money does one need in order to be called "Sir"?
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Outdoor gear, MREs, and more!
I swear he received this like a year or two ago.
AHA!
and I was not wrong.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/3428673.stm
Almost all of us Brits have that title. It's handed down from father to son, in the same way the family bible would be.
We all live in castles too.
When does mc chris get is knighthood?
Honestly, this is old news. I remember the story being out there over a year ago.
OCO is Loco
The Blue Shield of Death.
Knight Commander of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire or KCOTMEOOTBE
Yes Bill, but: I believe we will not get Eddie Van Halen until we have a triumphant video.
Ted, It's pointless to have a triumphant video when we don't even have any decent instruments.
But how can we have decent instruments when we don't know how to play?
That is why we need Eddie Van Halen.
And that is why we need a triumphant video.
Excellent!
Finally, Microsoft will be able to have an official launch of their Crusade against Open Source. The Open Source heretics must die, and Bill Gates will lead the army to do it.
Java has no friends.
Does he become a full member of the House of Lords?
Can I challenge him to a jousting match? I'll even let him choose the OS his mechanical horse runs...
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
Come and see the patents inherent in the system!
Help help! We're being repressed!
"The idea that Bill Gates has appeared like a knight in shining armour to lead all customers out of a mire of technological chaos neatly ignores the fact that it was he who, by peddling second-rate technology, led them into it in the first place." (Douglas Adams)
:-)
Now all he needs is the shining armour
Arise!
Sir Embrace of Extend!
Sir Protector of FUD!
Sir Blue of Screen!
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
.."Knight Commander of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire." Protector of the Order of the BSOD, Royal Disseminator of FUD, and Patcher of the Realm.
What does this button do...
An explaination of who gets to call themselves sir.. For those not quite in the know of how the Brittish Knighting system works.
Quoting Wikipedia: "Citizens of other countries, however, may be admitted as "honorary members". They do not count towards the numerical limits aforementioned, nor are they addressed as "Sir". (They may be made full members if they subsequently become British citizens.) Notable foreign members of the Order have included Pelé, Bob Geldof, Bill Gates, Rudy Giuliani, Alan Greenspan, Steven Spielberg, Tommy Franks and Wesley Clark (all Knights Commander)."
"Victory means exit strategy, and it's important for the President to explain to us what the exit strategy is." G.W.Bush
it's pronounced "Sir William H. Gates, the Turd"
But if you're a Canadian, you might have to renounce your citizenship to get peerage from the UK...
You have to be a British Subject to be called 'Sir'. For Bill Gates, that would mean a lot of taxe$ - probably more than he is willing to spend, and very expensive indeed.
It's odd that all it takes to get the civilian hono(u)rariums that a country has to offer is a lot of dough. I watched "The age of Wal*Mart" the other night. It featured a scene where George Bush I placed the Medal Of Freedom (highest US civilian honor) around Sam Walton's neck. I was like: For what? Being really rich? Maybe there was some charity involved somewhere with either Billy Gates or Sam Walton, but on a percentage-of-wealth scale, they don't look more impressive than the same level of giving by a poorer person. Heck donating 5% of income is a heroic sacrifice for the average Wal*Mart employee, but for Sam Walton, or Bill Gates, giving 99% would leave them still extremely wealthy and living like kings. Less impressive, really than the cashier who donates 5%.
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.
Today the part of Arthur will be played by Linus and the Black Knight by Mr. Gates:
Arthur: You are indeed brave Sir knight, but the fight is mine.
Black Knight: Had enough?
Arthur: You stupid bastard. You havn't got any arms left.
Black Knight: Course I have.
Arthur: Look!
Black Knight: What! Just a flesh wound.
You can have my cynical agnosticism when you pry it from my cold, dead logic.
(Darth Raymond) "I challenge you to a duel, Master Gates."
(Jedi Gates) "All right, just let me boot up my light saber."
10 minutes pass
(G) "Ok, my blade's on."
(R) "Then to battle!"
(G) "No, wait, now I need to turn on Windows Media Player so I can change my saber color."
(R) "What?"
(G) "Great, now let me close all of these pop-ups that show up whenever I turn on my saber."
(R) "You get light saber popups?"
(G) "Yes, but that'll be fixed in Service Pack 20, due out next year, barring unforeseen delays. Popups are really a normal part of dueling, you know."
(R) "You're a loony."
(G) "Am not!"
They fight. Gates is skilled, but after a few strikes his blade flickers and goes out, letting Raymond's blade slip through and destroy him.
(R) "Bill, Bill, Bill...didn't you read your own EULA? Longhorn isn't for use in airports, nuclear power plants, or other dangerous environments."
Stop learning! Only you can prevent esoterrorism.
I can only apologize.
I feel so ashamed...
I suppose instead of being one of the knights who say "NEE!", he'll be one of the knights who say "moNEY!"
Having MCSE certification doesn't make you an engineer either.
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
It's just the British. We have a big thing for pomp and ceremony, helps keep things moving.
I believe the US invented a lot of things along a similar vein - useless things given for no reason. The Oscars, for example.
How many people can read hex if only you and dead people can read hex?
No, she doesn't. She runs IIS-5.0 and has done since 2001. Sadly.
Resistance is futile. Reactance buggers it up.
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!!!
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
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.
Well, Bill Gates has written a keyboard driver which does not only drive the F1 key, but F2 to F12 too, not to mention all the other keys on your keyboard ... so if a mere F1 driver is enough to deserve knighthood, then a driver for more than 100 keys deserves it all the more! :-)
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
of the US constitution:
No Title of Nobility shall be granted by the United States: And no Person holding any Office of Profit or Trust under them, shall, without the Consent of the Congress, accept of any present, Emolument, Office, or Title, of any kind whatever, from any King, Prince, or foreign State.
(emphasis mine)
So, Mr. Bill could be Sir Bill if he can get Congress to pass a bill giving him permnission to receive it. As it is, he can only receive the "honorary" honour, so to speak.
Recent American KBE's (according to my friend Google) include Tommy Franks, Alan Greenspan, Wesley Clark and Andres Previn. Stormin' Norman Schwarzkopf and Colin Powell, a KCB, which IIRC is more exclusive. Of course, Reagan, Bush the First and Cap Weinberger got GCBs, which is a more exclusive degree than KCB.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
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.
Not more pomp and tradition. You Americans might love it, but im sick of all the crap that goes on in this country. Why do we have such rubbish traditions here in the UK??
Look at Europe - yes Europe, any European hating beer drinking louts (hopefully they cant use a keyboard let alone a PC). Simple formal parliaments, not morons in an old fashioned ornate horrible old building who yell at each other like children instead of agreeing when things are a good idea, and constructively working towards a sollution to things which need solving.
Why does the prime minister have to follow silly old traditions where he goes and talks to the queen and all that crap? Hello there was a civil war, parliament won, and at that point we should have formed a secular, truly democratic state like france attempted at that point. But no... instead we have some horrible mess of inefficiency.
Dont get me started on how if the royal familly has all their money and businesses, that MY taxes that I pay for working hard, are paid to those morons who do NOTHING for me!!!
Knighthood indeed, he can have it. Outdated tacky traditional crap.
I'm a rabid Linux fan, and I detest every moment I have to test my work in IE. However, I have to say that what Bill Gates is doing outside of the computing world is nothing short from wonderful.
I have a deep interest in education, in particular, how to solve the problems we are facing without throwing more money at them. So I am heavily involved in the school issues in my neighborhood, and I am organizing people to research things we can be doing to help out the district. What Bill Gates is doing to the education field is nothing short of amazing. Most recently, he said that the current high school system should be scrapped because it is a complete waste of time. I don't know any Linux fans that would disagree with that.
He is also putting his money where his mouth is. I know that we are looking at getting some of his money to implement his plans in our own district, or at least in the final stages of getting the grant. I don't think there is a district in the US that isn't getting some benefit from what he is doing.
And he does more than that. I don't know the specifics, but I know he is working in Africa and South America trying to help raise the living standard from sub-human to at least what we would call "poverty" in the US.
That is what he is getting knighted for, and not for his achievements in amassing a huge amount of wealth. It is how he is using it that really counts.
Now, I also realize that what Bill did to the computing world was nothing short of amazing as well. Before Bill, we were a sub-culture to be derided and spit upon. Now we are cool, and our skills have street-cred. We have Bill Gates to thank for that.
The radical sect of Islam would either see you dead or "reverted" to Islam.
he has done wonderful things through his Bill and Melinda Gates foundation.
Except it's not his Bill & Melinda Gates foundation. It's his father's.
I am Sartre of the Borg. Existence is futile.
Bill Gates and Microsoft did not invent the Personal Computer nor the operation system. Luckily I was involved in the start of the microcomputer revolution. I think that computing would have been much better off if there never was a Microsoft. There was a time when there was much innovation in the computer science field. Once Microsoft came around, companies were being put out of business by some of MS's anti-competitive business practices. For instance, I was the lead programmer for Commodore Amigas Novell Netware. Both Commodore and Novell were adversely affected by MS's business practices. There is not debating that the Amiga OS was lightyears ahead of MS WIndows 3.1. AmigaOS had real multitasking, high-resolution video and audio, and much more software available for it. Novell Netware was the cats-meow so far as Networking systems in the late 80's and early 90's. Microsoft couldn't compete... But so they bundle the network software with the OS, and low and behold, Novell is no longer needed. Then there was the browser wars, etc...
There are people like anorlunda who think that without MS computing would be nowhere. I was contributing and innovating through the 80's and 90's and had some of my work stolen by MS. I have worked on at least three projects which have since been taken over by MS. MS is not innovative, they are predators...
Michael Uman
Michael A. Uman
Sr Software Engineer
softwaremagic.net
Sheesh! First announced on January 26, 2004 and it took until March 1, 2005 to find a "mutually convenient date"?
This certainly doesn't look good in regards to getting Longhorn out any time soon...
Sig cancelled due to lack of interest
He becomes a Knight Commander of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire
Will Bill and Ted be presenting?
Good for him. That'll look nice on a business card, right next to his "Supreme Evil Minion" title bestowed on him by Satan himself.
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No, the not-being-called-Sir part is from Britain, not Congress. As he's not part of the commonwealth, he can't call himself Sir. It's nothing to do with America or Congress or Bush or anything, but a British thing. He's a foreign foreigner, and as such, not a Sir.
Unless you have a really low threshold for what qualifies as evil then I can't come up with any.
this is a restriction to hold public office. ordinary citizens are unaffected.
i doubt there's trouble even when someone already knighted wins office, this is geared towards preventing bribary. does anyone know whether people have been made to renounce titles before taking office?
Aren't these influential men also deserving of Knighthood?
Tag lost or not installed.
From the sounds of it, Bill Gates has the cheapest, most common knighthood that the Queen can bestow. The Queen gets to pick the honors on her birthday, but the regular honors list is dictated by the Prime Minister.
Most likely, the Prime Minister told the Queen to give Mr Gates a knighthood, and the Queen told Blair where he could stuff his ideas, with this being the best compromise they could agree on. After all, I doubt they believe Americans would understand the insult or even know there had been one.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
We are the coders who say NEE!
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."
Of the Constitution states:
No Title of Nobility shall be granted by the United States: And no Person holding any Office of Profit or Trust under them, shall, without the Consent of the Congress, accept of any present, Emolument, Office, or Title, of any kind whatever, from any King, Prince, or foreign State.
Office of profit? Perhaps that means someone who controls vast amounts of money.
Does this deny, and make unconstitutional Bill Gates's "reward"?
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Heroscape, it's like legos combined with anachronistic wargames.