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BBC Solicts Questions to Ask Bill Gates

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the let's-be-big-boys-and-girls dept.

James Hunt writes "The BBC are doing an interview with Bill Gates on Sunday 17th October at 8pm BST on BBC2, and are looking for questions people might be interested in putting to him. Heavy hitting BBC interview veteran Jeremy Paxman - known for not holding back on interviewees is conducting the interview. Email: paxmanvsgates@bbc.co.uk to submit your questions. " <preach> Remember polite and incisive question will do a better job than flame. Let's be grown-ups. </preach>

6 of 210 comments (clear)

  1. Paxman by ebcdic · · Score: 5

    For those who don't know, Jeremy Paxman is the interviewer who recently asked Henry Kissinger if he felt like a fraud for accepting a Nobel peace price considering his support for Pinochet, the Chinese government and the bombing of Cambodia.

  2. Re:But I want to flame! by sparks · · Score: 4
    You say you are just flaming. But those questions are very much in the Paxman style. He likes to make people squirm. But he isn't abusive, trivial or sensationalist; his subjects squirm because the questions are usually very perceptive.

    I can easily see him asking "Are you ever going to produce a product that saves more time than it wastes?" or "When will you realize that stability is important?"

    There was one famous interview where he asked a senior politician the same question thirteen times in a row until he got a straight answer. I look forward to seeing that same no-bullshit style used against Uncle Gates' carefully prepared marketing drivel.

  3. I just don't care by coyote-san · · Score: 5

    You know, I really don't care what Bill Gates says about anything... and that should terrify him.

    This isn't a casual statement, I did give thought to a question. And I might still submit it, or a variant:

    A&E Biography recently named you the 41st most influential person of the past 1000 years. That is quite an honor... but Robin Williams in the same show attacked your truthfulness in a series of one-liners about several honorees. A well-regarded computer trade journalist (whose name I forget!) has commented that no one would throw Microsoft and the truth into the same room for fear of a matter-antimatter explosion.

    Doesn't it concern you that Bill Gates and dishonesty are becoming as synonymous as John DeLorean and cocaine trafficking?


    But the sad truth is that I simply don't give a damn what Bill Gates has to say about anything. There is simply nothing he can say that will interest me because I know, from a decade of Bill-watching, that it will be self-serving, vaporware, or both.

    I wish Jeremy Paxman the best of luck, but I honestly think it would have been easier to interview Richard Nixon shortly after Watergate than Bill Gates today.

    --
    For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong. -- H L Mencken
  4. About the OMG.... by Gab · · Score: 5
    Dear Bill,

    The OMG (www.omg.org) is a standards body with a membership list of over 800 companies - one which reads like a who's-who in the industry. It's mission is interoperability - helping different vendors software work together.

    Microsoft is a member and yet appears to ignore the resulting standards. Microsoft continues to push it's own propriority solutions.

    Does Microsoft really believe these 800 other companies are wrong? Or is it safe to conclude that Microsoft is not interested in interoperability, the innovation that releases and the customer choice that this engenders [1].

    Gab

    [1] For instance there is one vendor of the Microsoft 'Application Server' solution (DCOM) - Microsoft, and about 20 vendors of application servers based on the OMG standard (CORBA).

  5. Re:Paxman should be good by albalbo · · Score: 4

    This is how it should go...

    [Dong] Do, do do do do do do do...
    It's Universally Challenged, with your host Jeeeeeeeeeeeremy Pax-mannnnnnnn.

    (Jeremy) And here's your starter for ten. In the 'development lifecycle' of software, what comes after marketing?

    (silence)

    (Jeremy) Oh really now, come on.

    [Bzzt! Gates, Harvard drop-out]

    (Bill) Testing?

    (Jeremy, pulling face) No, no, no, no, really now.

    .... etc

    (For those over the pond, Jeremy Paxman is also a gameshow host for 'University Challenge'. He asks ridiculously hard questions, and then harries the contestants and ridicules them when they (inevitably) get one wrong. 'Don't be silly' is a typical response, as is 'Of course it isn't', and 'No, no, no, no, no, no [shaking head]'.)

    And the stuff about him asking a polititian (Michael Howard, then Home Secretary I think) the same question 13 times - he later admitted it was the director's fault. "Fill, Jeremy, fill!" he was shouting down the earpiece. Jeremy couldn't think of anything else to ask him, but was relieved when he realised he wasn't getting a straight answer and could keep asking the same question.

    --
    "Elmo knows where you live!" - The Simpsons
  6. What I'd Like To Know by Effugas · · Score: 5

    Mr. Gates:

    Two questions:

    First, I do not villify you. I do not consider you a "Great Satan" of the world, nor do I plot your downfall or anything of the sort. However, there are people out there who have some extremely negative reactions to your success, and the perception that you've gotten where you are through legal chicanery, false advertising, and outright bullying not only appears to be a common sentiment but also one justified in a disturbingly large amount of evidence. My questions to you are as follows:

    First, if you had the power to do so, what would be three things that you would go back and change about the ways in which your company has done business over the years? Or, so as to not put too many words in your mouth, are there three things over the past twenty or so years of Microsoft's "ascent to stardom" that you regret on a personal level, an ethical level, or a simple bottom line profitability calculation?

    My second question to you is more subtle, and probably won't engender me too popular with my Slashdot brethren. Your programming team which composed Internet Explorer 5 did an outstanding job creating a browser that, while not perfect, easily can stand on its own as a significant advance in any number of web technologies. Unfortunately, their work was marred by relatively horrific enforcement of your company's mandate to eliminate Netscape at all costs--one incident led to Compaq recieving official termination of its licensing agreement for all Windows operating systems; another led to Gateway 2000 practically thanking Microsoft for the right to allow Netscape to be a customer choice in an extremely limited circumstance. As a leader and perhaps a role model to the engineers of Microsoft, how do you justify the apparent denegration and distrust in the quality of their work, even when they create products of excellent quality?

    That's what I'd like to know. Knowing a few of you here on Slashdot, you probably think I was paid off by Microsoft, or am really some 35 mid forties PR schmuck hired to defend The Man.

    Nope. Email me or check my web page, and don't even try to get all geekier-than-thou with me :-)

    Yours Truly,

    Dan Kaminsky
    DoxPara Research
    http://www.doxpara.com