Bill Gates Handwriting Analyzed 609
Kaal Alexander Rosser writes "The BBC is reporting that a doodle left behind at a Davos press conference given by Tony Blair, Bill Gates and Bono shows the writer to be: "an unstable man" amongst other things. The Gates Foundation has confirmed the doodle was left there by Bill Gates."
Handwriting analysis? (Score:3, Informative)
See for yourself (Score:5, Informative)
Wow (Score:1, Informative)
Want to see the doodle? (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Handwriting analysis? (Score:2, Informative)
Re:handwriting analysis? (Score:4, Informative)
Handwriting experts = psychics? (Score:3, Informative)
Newspaper stories contained phrases such as "struggling to concentrate" and "not a natural leader".
That's why the pshychologists and handwriting experts spend a lot of time analyzing a doodle while Bill Gates is very rich and leads a multi-billion dollar industry.
It reminds me of someone who was explaining to me that there's no money in the cumputer business. He said that he was a business owner in an excellent industry. I later found out that he was the bathroom dude in a bar.
They weren't describing Gates (Score:2, Informative)
Moreover, they were employed by an anti-Blair newspaper, so their comments are likely to reflect what their employers wanted to hear, rather than the results of any genuine analysis.
Re:The real scoop (Score:3, Informative)
I was taking a law / ethics class back in college (simple class, not the advanced stuff) and we went over a case that kind of freaked some of us out. It was about a man falsely imprisoned in Texas.
The guy was brought in on bad evidence and testimony. That was bad enough, particularly the "witness" who never actually saw anything.
While waiting for trial, the police sent in a psychologist. They didn't even inform the guy what was going on, they said they had to "check" something. So, they had him draw a picture, sign his name, try to draw a perfect circle and that was it.
The trial comes, and the psychologist said he examined the defendant and based on his handwriting and drawings he was one of the most vile killers he'd ever seen. The shrink went on and on, and went on to pat himself on the back for helping catch such a dangerous killer..
Remember, this was just from a circle, his name, and a picture of a house (or something similar) all done within like 5 minutes. This had nothing to do with the evidence, because there was no note or anything, it was supposedly a crime of opportunity.
Years later, the real killer came forward. After re-investigating, they found the witness was a screwball AND didn't see anything, and a lot of other stuff that had gone wrong. They eventually let him go with no pay or anything. Meanwhile, the guy had spent like a decade in jail.
You have to wonder about these supposed shrinks that analyze handwiriting and what-not. I'm not saying it doesn't work, but in this case I think a bunch of them were quacks that just wanted their name in teh paper.
Re:Speaking as a geek... (Score:2, Informative)
He wrote most of the succesful software for the Altair, probably one of the first personal computers, including the boot sequence and a BASIC compiler.
Its true that he probably hasnt written anything significant in decades, but thats what happens to programmers in management positions (see the thread about that here on
Re:The real scoop (Score:2, Informative)
Re:The real scoop (Score:5, Informative)
It was a page and a half saying they could do anything they wanted and I couldn't hold them liable.
No way I'd sign that.
The emplayer was a retailer you'd find a majority of malls in the US.
To be fair, the man that was there to administer the polygraph was the president of his own company contracted by the retailer. He said the retailer's liability waiver was more extreme than most and showed me the standard one he uses for other clients. It still wasn't something I'd sign given how unreliable and subjective polygraphs are.
He then asked if he could do a security interview. He explained that to be asking all the same questions but without the polygraph machine. I agreed to whichever he wanted to do.
Re:Is this the Bill obesssion? (Score:2, Informative)
I'll come forward (and you thought your straw man was safe). I only worked for Microsoft for a year, but I was in a high-profile group, and had the opportunity to interact with Bill a few times. What I can gather from a few short interactions is that he has a prodigious ability to understand the heart of very diverse problems. At our first meeting with him, we demonstrated an extremely complicated system. After only 15 minutes, he had incredibly insightful, out-of-the-box commentary, and had picked up on a known weakness that we thought we'd hidden well.
Hate him if you want to, but the Slashdot community does a disservice to itself by pretending that he's just business smart.
As for his stability, I can't comment. Maybe you could ask his friends
Re:The real scoop (Score:1, Informative)
The real gotcha though is what they don't/won't tell you until afterwards. Even if you're 100% innocent, and know you're innocent, the sheer fact that you've been accused of something is enough to trigger a huge response when asked about it. So basically you can come across as lying even when you know you're innocent because you're traumatized simply from the accusations.
In my case the person evaluating me agreed that the results were due to my reacting to the accusations, not any guilt, and this went into the report. However the fact remains that the damned machine said I was lying. From my experiences I can recommend 100% that no one ever take a polygraph. If you'll lose your job for refusing, so be it, you're just as likely to end up losing it because of false positives anyway. Might as well lose it on principle than end up losing it because a machine says you're guilty of something you're not.
Posted as AC for fairly obvious reasons I would think. This isn't something I want linked back to me, it was a very traumatic experience all around and I still have nightmares about it years later. (Not just the polygraph, the whole ordeal.)