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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.
Hmmm...I seem to remember that Bill say that he was going to be stepping down as Microsoft CEO in a couple of years...right about when the 2008 Presidential campaign would be heating up.
Microsoft decided to get into the console gaming arena without any prior experience. Perhaps Bill is thinking this same thing with politics. After all, Arnold Schwatzenegger and Jesse Ventura both won state governorships primarily on name recognition. And as much as I despise is company's tactics, he is quite intelligent and has real management skills.
Craig Steffen
http://www.craigsteffen.net
Geez ... if people thought Dick Cheney was cold and ruthless, wait until they have Bill Gates in charge. Plus, imagine some of the innovations we'd see:
... the new city will be named Capitol 2.0
... at first you may think it looks just like DC, but we actually repainted all the buildings, and added innovative new parking meters that destroy your car if you try to park in same parking spot more than 3 times.
Pres Gates Day 1: The U.S. needs to become the most innovative country in the world, so I have decided in interest of attaining this goal we will rebuild Washington D.C.
Pres Gates Day 365: The Capital 2.0 is running ahead of schedule, I know it's been tough living and working out of trailers, but we should be finished within a year
Pres Gates Day 700: Due to the new competition from Tokyo's rebuilding operations, we have decided to restart our Capitol 2.0 project, but the delay will be worth it since our new Capitol will be even better than the original one planned
Pres Gates Day 1000: We have found that the Capitol 2.0 subway system was incompatible with the Capitol 2.0 sewage system, so we will rebuild DC's old subway system and try to make it work within the Capitol 2.0 structure
Pres Gates on his last day: On my final day in office, I am proud to unveil Capitol 2.0
Crack - Free with every butt and set of boobs
"Blue State of Death" ?
"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"
Have things really got that bad?
*''I can't believe it's not a hyperlink.''
Steve Forbes for president? Or Ross Perot? Look how far those two smart, rich, successful businessmen went.
Toronto-area transit rider? Rate your ride.
My calendar is about to say December 1, not April 1. This is really dumb. I don't bash Bill Gates a lot. I admire him in some ways. But come on, who wants a president whose company has been conviceted of being an illegal monopoly, that has been found gulty of being a predator, that has stifled innovation while claiming the opposite, that has run roughshod over consumer rights and then tried to weasel out of every penalty anyone ever tried to impose on it?
Oh, wait... is he running as a Republican?
1. He wants to buy an old Cesna, paintit flashy colors, and call it Air Force '95.
2. He heard that some government agencies were using UNIX.
3. He wants to get that illegal sports car in SF Bay into the US.
4. He just thinks it would be neat to be president of two big thingies.
5. He's hot for Janet Reno.
6. His ego needs to be inflated.
7. He lost the key to his mansion, so he needs a new place to live.
8. He thinks that he can use MS Money to balance the budget.
9. He feels that Perot just didn't throw enough money at it.
10. He wants to make Windows '95 the official operating system of the USA.
Ok, those look kind of dated...but still funny
On the serious side, I wonder how many people with the power to see into the mysterious future, were tempted to e-mail the editor about a SERIOUS problem with this story!
Transporter_ii
Doctors destroy health, lawyers destroy justice, universities destroy knowledge, religion destroys spirituality
I’ve been saying for years that we need to stop electing millionaires.
Careful what ya wish for, I suppose.
Quantum materiae materietur marmota monax si marmota monax materiam possit materiari?
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/
Thank you, Scott.
If you let it be too efficient, then they do things like round up all the gays, communists, jews, and anyone else they dislike and throw them in jail.
One of the major reasons the US is so sucessfull is that it created multiple layers of bureaucracy (Senate, House, Executive Branch, Legal system, State governments, etc.) instead of making one thing that just works well.
Fast governments do things without thinking, ignoring the wisdom of "hey, maybe we ought to stop and think about it before we make abortion illegal", and just go ahead and passes laws that people think they want when they are scared and terrified, instead of thinking long and hard about the long term consequences of it.
excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
Crow T. Trollbot
Will there be a "Cowboy Neal" option on the ballot?
Monstar L
Beware of Sales Reps bearing gifts.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Um.....
No.
Good government is reasonable and thinks and debates until it's time to do something, then goes out and does it. "Inefficiency" and "Debate" are two completely different things, and equating them is like equating "debating the war in Iraq" with "not supporting our troops..." They are two completely different things that look somewhat alike to the unaware observer. I guess the real problem with our government is the people it has come to represent. Let me put it this way:
The seventh most visited site in the US is run by less than 50 people.
If that isn't a small number of people doing something beneficial for an extremely large number, I don't know what is. That's what I want out of government - run the water, run the electricity, run the courts system so it's fair, provide a social safety net, create an armed force that can defend our interests at home as effectively as necessary as cheaply as possible, push the economy to a high rate of growth, etc. And do it with as small a portion of the population and the population's resources as possible. The way our government is run now is completely purpose-less and the majority of it is done out of either sheer habit or the self-interest of politicians.
My little site.
You keep using that word. I don't think it means what you think it means.
An economically-efficient government could provide the same social services while charging less tax.
I think an ideal government would be slow to change laws and efficient with spending.
A slashdotter who didn't build his own computer is like a Jedi who didn't build his own lightsaber.
So what does he do for the other 23 hours and 55 minutes?
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
...and extend it...
Step into a huge movement. Don't Tread In Me.
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).
Boy are *you* gonna regret that comment 90 days after he's elected!
"If you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear." - Every fascist, ever
Successful? Absolutely. Ethical? Not a bit. Everything Microsoft did in order to gain its "successful" position has been completely ethically bankrupt--unfair competition, shady deals, outright theft (see Stac), the list goes on and on.
Is Bill smart? Certainly. Probably not that much technically (as is often said, what has he done himself since the Altair days?), but businesswise he's probably better than the very best Mafia dons in being able to barely skirt the law and use every dirty trick he can invent in making his business more successful, no matter who it hurts.
But the question is, do you really want someone smart, in a criminal way, to run the country? I certainly don't.
However, it seems we keep electing criminals to office anyway (Bush, Delay, etc.), and our current criminal president is utterly incompetent, so maybe we'd do better with a smart criminal like Bill...
A criminally smart President doesn't mean a criminal President. It would be a good thing, as long as he could be kept in check. Think about security companies who hire top-notch crackers as consultants. It's because of their criminal (aka street?) smarts. Smart is smart, regardless of the subject.
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.
Bush has showed us that ruthless determination isn't such a great trait in a president.
Gates would make a horrible president because the country is not run like a dictatorship like all companies are. At MS he was the dictator, what he said went and anybody who questioned him could be canned. As a president you have to work with the congress. Bush had a compliant congress who were sycophantic to an obscene degree but even then he failed miserably in just about everything he tried.
Gates is not used to compromising, he is not used to being disagreed with. He would make a horrible president.
evil is as evil does
If I had mod points, I'd be tempted to mod this up for the sheer irony of it.
Care about privacy? Read this!
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.
I'm in an odd position. I respect Bill gates for his achievements, but dislike Microsoft as it stands (and cannot beleive Ballmer is in chanrge, wtf's up with that?). Barely anyone remembers that Microsoft were once the good guys saving us from the evils of IBM and Unix (back when unix was a million flavors, and they were all damn expensive, before the wonder that is Linux).
Bill is a shark. If he took his business abilities, which are somewhat fearsome, and turned them to politics, then interesting things could result. Look what happened when he turned to Charity, the biggest infusion of private funds into charitable works *in* *history*.
However, is that really what America needs? I don't think so, not right now. Incidentally England was run by businessmen in the 18th and 19th century. The empire wasn't about glory, it was about profit. We did rather well out of it, even though people try and pretend that england was some kind of holy democracy. Remember the Suiz Canal Crisis? Think the motivation was political? Hell no, it was pure business reasoning. Ok it went badly for us, but that was because the climate had changed. The same reasoning had made us the most powerful nation on the planet, but its time had passed.
The fact is that at certain points in history, businessmen have been the right people to run things.
Remember that War of independence you had? Who were the initial group that started it all. Politicians? Nope, Businessmen....
Who were the people who did the most to ensure America's technological dominance and ultimate victory in WWII? Businessmen. When politicians make war armaments decisions entirely you get bad decisions, History showed this clearly. For example, the UK's war spending and research was almost entirely government controlled. That's why we rejected the Jet until the war was almost over. Would a businessman have done that? Oh hell no.
I have, I'll get right on it... oh, er, whoops!
To err is human, to arr is pirate.