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Get on the 'Gates for President' Bandwagon
netbuzz writes "Dilbert's Scott Adams kicked off the idea in his November 19th blog post, saying there isn't anything wrong with this country that President Bill Gates couldn't cure in less time than it takes to get a new operating system out the door. Today, the idea is moving forward with a brand-new 'Bill Gates for President' Web site. Adams is also back on the campaign trail, flogging the site and Gates' candidacy." A blog post at Network World includes a lot of eye-rolling about this idea, but neither Adams nor the folks at the 'Gates for President' website seem to be taking this lightly.
For innumerous jokes about constantly having to reboot the government. And the need for constant government upgrades.
Let's forget open-source software for any public activities.
Er...uh...*cowers*
On the flip side, special interest groups declare bankruptancy. Groups claim they became ineffective because when ever they tried to buy Bill Gates he declined expressing that he already had enough headaches trying to spend the billions he already has.
...but I wouldn't mind voting for Scott Adams!
Circumcision is child abuse.
My main objection to a Gates presidency is that Bill can do far more good for the world as the head of a well-funded private foundation than he could possibly do as master of ceremonies and chief law enforcement officer of the United States. Now that he's stepping down as Borg Queen, he has an unprecedented opportunity to improve the quality of living for so much of the human population... why waste a man like that on a job where he'll have to negotiate with Congress, waste time overseeing dozens of secretaries, etc.
http://alternatives.rzero.com/
Bill Gates for President? I'm a Microsoft employee, and even I don't think that's a good idea.
Why not? Well, Billg is a very smart guy, he's extremely intense, extremely intelligent - can pick out and remember the smallest details from specs that are hundreds of pages long - and has generally been a pretty good leader for Microsoft. Not many people can make the transition from running a small business with 3 employees to having that business become the biggest software company in the world, with over 60,000 employees. He did, and he did it well. He's got real talent.
However, Microsoft is also a frigging bureaucratic mess of unbelievable proportions. A lot of you have probalby read that Joel on Software article about the shutdown menu in Vista, and the dev's response to it in which he describes a year-long process of weekly meetings mostly spent arguing over design features. The thing is, the whole company is like that. While I'm pretty sure Billg is a nice guy (I don't know him pesonally, but it's my impression) and he's very smart and I'm sure he has far more integrity than most politicians, I don't really want to put anyone who oversaw the creation of such a bureaucracy in charge of the government. After all, it took government far longer to evolve such a horrid bureacracy, Microsoft did it in only 30 years, and most of that happened in the last 20.
So, while I have tremendous respect for Billg for his accomplishments at Microsoft, and also for Linus Torvalds and Steve Jobs for their accomplishments, I wouldn't like to see any of them become president of the United States, thank you very much (not that Linus could, because of the stricture on being a citizen by birth, of course).
serioulsy off-topic, but only here will you find a 2-point post with a 2-point "mod parent up" post. That's pretty funny.
In U.S. history people from following classes have been elected President:
1. State Governors
2. Vice-Presidents
3. U.S. Congressional Representatives
4. Generals
5 (almost never, but once in a century or so) a U.S. Senator
This means that the following people will NOT be elected President in 2008:
Bill Gates
Condoleeza Rice
Rudy Guliani
and the following people have a real chance only if their opponent is also a U.S. Senator:
John Kerry
Hillary Clinton
John McCain
John Edwards
If 'the people' in Amendment 2 are 'the state' then Amendments 1, 2, 4, 9, and 10 benefit the state, not you.
One might suggest that the reason that it is difficult to build a successful business is ethics. Perhaps I'm wrong, I've never performed the experiment of trying to build to separate businesses, one ethically and one like MS. Has anyone else done this and produced some results? How much easier does a complete lack of concern for one's fellow man make business building?
SIGSEGV caught, terminating
wait... not that kind of sig.