Bill Gates to be Knighted 1116
gexen writes "According to an article in the Telegraph Bill Gates is going to be knighted by the Queen of England for "services to the global enterprise." She's just handing them out like candy these days!"
The british monarchy? (Score:2, Interesting)
What are they thinking? Will the British population react favorably to this?
Re:Requirements for Knighting (Score:3, Interesting)
and congress will accept this? (Score:5, Interesting)
The constitition says in part "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. "
does this mean congress has to vote on it? or already has?
for me to succeed, it doesn't matter if MY point of view is right or wrong, there must just be reasoned replies.
Re:Hollywood Star (Score:5, Interesting)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_people_who
No Sir! Stars who refused honors--CNN Article [cnn.com]
Article I, Section 9, par 8. (U.S. Constitution) (Score:3, Interesting)
Here, read it for yourself: Constitution for the United States of America [constitution.org].
There are just so many ways to look at this (specifically where Bill Gates is concerned), that this could keep constitutional lawyers happy for years.
He's in a position of profit and trust, but is it Under the States? Is geographic location, making that much money, and having your software so deeply enshrined in so many State governments enough to make that connection? Note: Office does not specifically say POLITICAL office...
Oh yeah, HUGE can of worms.
Re:What I would like to see... (Score:5, Interesting)
Well, he has given away a very substantial amount of money to worthy causes through his and his wife's foundation.
Is this a good thing? Of course. Sort of. Where did the money come from? Basically from a sort of involuntary tax extracted from millions upon millions of PC users around the world. So it's good that the money is going to a good cause, just bad that progress and innovation had to be retarded to make that happen.
The real reason why he's getting a knighthood, however, has nothing to do with his gifts to good causes. It's a powerplay between the Prime Minister Mr. Blair and his Chancellor Gordon Brown. Mr. Blair is in serious political trouble at the moment, what with the 45 minute claim, the missing WMDs, the ongoing situation in Iraq and various political issues at home (tuition fees for Universities). By coincidence, Mr. Brown who fancies being PM one day is having all his friends in business over for a conference - flexing his muscles and making it known that he has "important" friends too. By all accounts Mr. Blair didn't even know about this conference until 2 weeks ago!
I'm a director of an entrepreneurial company in the UK (well, I like to think so anyway :-)
and we tried to get to go to this conference,
but we're firmly not invited. It's only for
those "innovators" in big business, see. This
makes me quite bitter because big business only
accounts for about 20% of the UK economy, making
them fairly irrelevant as far as growth and
innovation are concerned.
Rich.
Re:Sour grapes! (Score:1, Interesting)
But he does have a better track record than many rich folk.
Re:We'll never live this down (Score:1, Interesting)
There's no law that prevents the monarch from acting overtly political; in fact much of her official duties are overtly political -- appointment of the prime minister being one. On the other hand, the monarch can't exert her own poltical opinions (she's effectively told what to say); but even here there is no law that prevents her from doing so. It would be perfectly legal for example, for the Queen to appoint a prime minister who isn't the leader of the majority party in the Commons. However, to do so would almost certainly guarantee that there would be a revolution the next day.
I agree. Although I'm not a monarchist I am also not a republican. It irritates me when the media assumes that there are only two alternatives -- monarchy or republic -- what's wrong with democracy?
Mr. Torvalds is a true leader. (Score:1, Interesting)
Mr. Gates makes so much money because he has a temporary monopoly. Microsoft has never made money on products in which it did not have some kind of monopoly position, such as file incompatibility.
Mr. Torvalds is one of the leaders of a very large team that has delivered tens of billions of dollars worth of benefit and lasting value to the entire world.
Giving money to charity is just the pasttime of bored wives of rich people everywhere. If Mr. Gates truly wanted to benefit the world, he would fix the problems in Windows XP. Part of the purpose of giving money to charity is that it works as public relations. Rich people distract attention from the bad things they do by giving money.
For example, Microsoft has deliberately designed the NTFS file system in Windows XP so that it cannot copy all of its own system files. (Microsoft tech support employees have verified that this is so.) That's why you can't use XCOPY.EXE or NTBACKUP.EXE or ROBOCOPY.EXE to make a functional full hard disk backups of a Windows XP system partition.
Many of the problems with Windows XP come from the fact that it was designed for copy protection, not usability. For example, Windows XP puts system settings in one big file called the registry. If something goes wrong in the registry, it can be necessary to re-install and re-configure all the programs. For some users who run many programs, this can take more than a week.
Think of the world of computing without Mr. Torvalds and Linux. It would be a world in which doing things that are bad for the customer would be accepted business practice. Mr. Torvalds has created strong competition. Even those who don't use Linux are benefited, because competition from Linux has the effect of limiting the abuses to which we are subjected.
It's about time that Britain recognized that the idea picking some unremarkable people and calling them royalty serves no useful purpose. The royalty are parasites that limit the success of Britain in the modern world. "The Queen" is just a large organization that is trying to survive by attaching itself to well-known people. The real woman who is called "The Queen" probably neither knows nor cares about Mr. Gates, and probably has never touched a computer. Giving Mr. Gates a national honor is old-fashioned fakery; as the article indicates, it's happening because of the political aspirations of someone named Gordon Brown.
Re:He cant be just "Knigtef" (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Does Bill count as having an office of profit or trust?
Nothing new. (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:DEAR FUCKING LORD (Score:4, Interesting)
Look up the word 'Insightful' you crack smoking mods!
Yes. Microsoft people think criticism comes only from envy and can't get over that speed bump. I've seen "Pirates of Silicon Valley" too, but that was a movie. From what I read, Bill's mother was on the board of directors of the same charity as the CEO of IBM and said "I know someone who can find you an OS for that new PC thing". Bill went out and bought one, mostly changed the drive IO parameters, and MS-DOS was born. What has always been at the front of my mind is how could someone NOT make a billion or two riding on the coat tails of that wave?
Yes, Microsoft did successfully break from IBM. But did he personally invent and write Windows? I don't think so. So "the height of nerddom". I don't think so. The guy is no Edison.
But weaselly-schrewd lying, cheating, world-class FUD spreader of a hard ball businessman, yes. The guy is a throwback to 19th Century robber barons. Which, come to think of it, probably makes him a good candidate for knighthood.
Re:Article I, Section 9, par 8. (U.S. Constitution (Score:2, Interesting)
Cite [theglobalist.com] (scroll down).
Gates has thumbed his nose at the political classes in America in ways that the rest of us only dream of being able to do. Part of the reason for the rage and fury of the DOJ case. Many other IT luminaries (i.e. Ellision and Jobs) line up for their blowjobs from politicians regularly.
No Edison? (Score:2, Interesting)
Most of his 'inventions' were the work of others (his employees or other researchers).
Edison wasn't really an inventor, he was an entrepreneur that made those inventions work in the marketplace - just like Bill Gates did with PCs.
Re:DEAR FUCKING LORD (Score:3, Interesting)
I have this sick image of Bill Gates storming onto the stage in full armour to show off Windows' new OS.
I also have a rather satisfying image of him tripping over a stuffed pengiun and crashing down.
Then maybe there's a really off chance that after he's knighted, the'll sue the fsck out of him an... there are all kinds of things that can be done to a knight of the realm if he's been really bad. (Then again, this is just my hopes.)
Although, in his defense, him and his wife have done a lot of good human betterment stuff. If you look past the whole Microsoft thing, the're actually good people. And no, this isn't a troll!! Just look at their foundation.
This is not surprising (Score:5, Interesting)
Remember that not only is Bill Gates the self-made, richest man in the world, but he is also one of the top philanthropist of all times due to the charitable gifts of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. He has already given away billions. So, it's not too surprising that he is knighted. I'm surprised it didn't happen sooner.
I'm definitely not a Microsoft fan (I'm a Unix admin). But give the guy some slack. I think some people take this anti-Microsoft thing too personally.
Re:and congress will accept this? (Score:1, Interesting)
Interesting...wasn't Rudy Giuliani given an honorary knighthood while he was still mayor of NYC? I don't remember hearing about Congress having to approve it first.
I hate to say this but...... (Score:5, Interesting)
For all you folks over the pond, a bit of recent UK political history starts here:
The person who nominated Gates for this award is Gordon Brown, currently the Chancellor of the Exchequer. Brown and Blair have a love hate relationship based on the fact that Brown believes he was stitched up by Blair over the Labour party leadership prior to Labour's victory in the 1997 election.
This animosity is kept quite on the whole because no government in the UK will dare to show a division of support for its leader as it's a great turn off for the voters as several Tory opposition leaders have found over the last 8+ years.
Blair is in a very vulnerable position for the first time in years as the shit is heading for the fan re: Iraq and Brown sees this as a good time to position himself for the take over if Blair goes down. The entrepeneurs conference Brown has set up is basically (as the article suggests) a "look how important I am and how powerful my friends are" day. Incidentally, the conference's most notable claim to fame is the lack of speakers who have started the business they currently run.
Personally, I find the concept of being lectured on entrepeneurship by people who have taken on the CEO post at a multinational or run their own predatory destroyer of start-ups, small businesses and competitors insulting in the extreme and hope Brown fall flay on his face despite my intense dislike for Blair.
I don't know whether there's a mechanism for objecting to honours in the UK but if anyone does, now may be the time to speak up.
Bill Gates is a Criminal (Score:5, Interesting)
Microsoft added a message to Windows that gave a warning about incompatibility with DR-DOS. But Microsoft's own testing had shown DR-DOS's compatibility to be essentially perfect. The message was a lie, intended to defraud the public.
Microsoft also added intentional (and encrypted) incompatibilities to Windows 95, while keeping DR-DOS out of the Windows 95 test program. It was a deliberate act of sabotage.
But there are more recent examples of Microsoft's criminal activity:
Sabotage [sun.com]:
> "Strategic Objective [is to] kill cross-platform Java by grow[ing] the polluted Java market" -- Microsoft Pricing Proposal for VJ++ 6.0
Fraud [sun.com]:
> "As i [sic] told charlesf [Fitzgerald] on the phone, at this point its [sic] not good to create MORE noise around our win32 java classes. Instead we should just quietly grow j++ share and assume that people will take advantage of our classes without ever realizing they are building win32-only java apps." -- Armstrong Decl., Ex. 23.
Extortion [usdoj.gov]:
> Gates wrote, "Apple let us down on the browser by making Netscape the standard install." Gates then reported that he had already called Apple's CEO (who at the time was Gil Amelio) to ask "how we should announce the cancellation of Mac Office...."
> In Waldman's words: Sounds like we give them the HTML control for nothing except making IE the "standard browser for Apple?" I think they should be doing this anyway. Though the language of the agreement uses the word "encourage," I think that the spirit is that Apple should be using it everywhere and if they don't do it, then we can use Office as a club.
Almost every one of Microsoft's "victories" has involved similar illegal behavior.
The sabotage of Java alone has delayed the introduction of e-commerce by years, resulting in a loss of as much as $100 billion per year for the U.S. economy. And when you take that much wealth out of the world, people die.
Bill Gates doesn't deserve a Knighthood. He deserves to be in jail.
Re:That is how much money they HAVE. (Score:5, Interesting)
How do we protest against this? (Score:2, Interesting)
Is there any formal way of protesting against someone being given an honour? Obviously I can write to my MP, but are there any other routes I can take?
What facilities are there on the Internet for setting up a petition against this?
Can anyone suggest any other things to do? -- if so, please email me at zen19725 at zen.co.uk, or add a comment to this article on my blog [cabalamat.org].
Not really knighted. (Score:3, Interesting)
But what the heck, he deserves whatever he gets, have any of you donated $26billion to charitable foundations lately?
Re:Bill Gates is a Criminal (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Aristocracy!! (Score:4, Interesting)
For those of you that are not familiar with British politics: There is this guy Tony who is in charge. Then there is this guy Gordon who wants to be in charge. Gordon and Tony agreed that Tony will be in charge for a while and then Gordon will get a turn. It is increasingly looking as if Tony is screwing Gordon out of his turn. Time is running out for Gordon because, since their party has screwed the British public and treated them like serfs for two terms, their party probably only has one term left in government - maybe. And since they have screwed up so royally Gordon will probably be dead next time their party gets put in charge again. So Gordon only has one term to possibly lead the government. So he has started screwing Tony. He has built an empire around his ministry and just about every other part of government now reports in some way to his department. He is the one that holds the country's purse strings. Every chance he gets he usurps the authority of Tony. Tony on the other hand is increasingly looking like a deer caught in the headlights. This honouring of Gates is just another kick in the groin at a time when Tony is already holding his guts to stop them from spilling. Gordon is playing low and dirty on this one.
British politics beats any soap hands down. I am sure it is the same in many other countries. Pity then that it affects real lives.
Re:the money in the trust came from him (Score:1, Interesting)
If he puts a billion dollars into his "foundation" then he gets a $500,000,000 writeoff on his taxes. His family, the "Board Members" then siphon off their expenses (ie. drivers, retirement benefits, houses and wages, etc.) out of the foundation. The foundation gives 10 cents to charity. In short, his family gets rich, and we give him a half billion off his taxes. And maybe if we're lucky he gives one one thousandth of his networth to some charities.
Personal charitable foundations should be outlawed!
Re:Congratulate "Sir William" and move on (Score:4, Interesting)
Basically like the court system at the time (upto 1986 the highest court/ court of last appeal in Australia was the british privy court. Canada had the same arrangement until 1949, and New Zealand upto last year) the honours system for rewarding outstanding acheivement actually extended upto british knighthoods. The australian government and states could recommend directly to the queen, people who should receive knighthoods, and the titles were officially recognised (by political protocol) with the official title of Sir Blogs.
An interesting quirk of this is that now if the queen was to award a knighthood to an Australian, like she is doing to Bill Gates, it would be a large outcry from people saying that it was undermining the Order of Australia as the top honour in Australia, instead of an award from a foreign head of state which is how the US will view the award to Bill Gates.
Edmund Hillary was knighted in an age where the top honour in New Zealand was a knighthood, and the NZ government of the time would have recommended his knighthood. He would also have been addressed by his title at all official events.
Re:I would say (Score:3, Interesting)
Oi, meathead! (Score:3, Interesting)
Competitors exist, but this does not mean that those competitors have any control. Monopoly does not necessarily mean you're the only one standing, it means that you're the only one in control.
The courts didn't find MS guilty of being a monopoly as such, they found them guilty of abusing monopolistic power.
This MS continues to do. My problem with the courts is not that they officially slapped MS down, but that they didn't convict them of enough of their unfair practices, didn't deprive them of the fruits of their crimes at all, and the penalties which were applied barely even rate at "wrist slap" - and MS complained about them anyway.
And even if they'd been fined fifty billion dollars up front in one lump, they could have paid that out of cash and kept right on trucking with the tens of billions in cash that they had left over. Fifty BILLION dollars! Fifty billion DOLLARS! FIFTY billion dollars! (think of "Twins") Chump change, and they didn't even lose that. Many of their competitors were tricked or bullied out of EVERYTHING THEY HAD. Where is their recompense?
And some toff wants the instigator of this knighted!
Re:Bill Gates is a Criminal (Score:3, Interesting)
and, where competition is free, the rivalship of competitors, who are all endeavouring to justle one another out of employment, obliges every man to endeavour to execute his work with a certain degree of exactness... Rivalship and emulation render excellency, even in mean professions, an object of ambition, and frequently occasion the very greatest exertions.
Therein lies the difference between a craftsman and a salesman.
One does his work out of pride, another does his work out of greed.
That may be inflammatory, but as someone who does both jobs at the same time, I prefer the craftsman side. In any case, I'd get my ass kicked by those who know better to be bullshitted, if I was so foolish as to try.
In my work, it's a steep slope. I can't bullshit a contractor whom I am trying to sell something, when he knows more than I do. I know better than to do so, but I see colleagues try it every day. On the average, they don't last long. We have a saying at work: "We provide Service; our (local) competitors sell product".
It makes me sick to see all the crap in our environment that implies that being rich is being "successful". It's one of the worst and most persistent lies being perpetuated on our society....by...our society.
I once knew a shrink who said that he'd diagnose our society as "self-delusional". I disagreed with him at the time (20 yrsago) but I don't anymore.
Pardon my preaching. Or don't.
SB
Re:Congratulate "Sir William" and move on (Score:2, Interesting)
Which I'd guess was aimed directly at the British crown. Does this mean if Gates accepts, he's breaking the law? (obviously, IANAL)
Comment removed (Score:3, Interesting)