Ajay Juneja

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Bill Gates Talk at CMU this morning... it SUCKED
So Bill Gates came to CMU this morning (and apparently to Cornell right afterwards) to give a talk on *Hard problems in Computer Science.*

We all wake up at about 8 am to make this talk at 10am, and sit for an hour waiting for him to come out. So we hoped this would be an awesome, insightful talk, like Steve Wozniak and Kevin Mitnick have given in the past here.

Unfortunately, all we got was a glorified sales pitch about SPOT watches, multimedia, and spam filtering.

I'm sorry, but I think we already know about these things. Bayes' Filtering works quite well for spam, and sure, we could use a few better tools for that, but big deal. Where's the *hard problems* we were supposed to hear about? Our audience didn't come for a sales pitch and a pep talk, we came to hear some real meat!

What Bill Gates did show us, is that he is really lacking in charisma, still can't dress well, and has all the creativity of a doormat. Steve Wozniak and Kevin Mitnick are so much cooler! More charisma, more charm, and most importantly, a more engaging talk with substance.

You'd think Bill would learn how to do public speaking after all these years of doing it. I guess not.

I also want to give a hand to Beth Lynn Eicher, head of our Western Pennsylania Linux Users Group, and KGB (especially Ed, who asked Bill Gates if he had ever used Linux, and then offered Bill a free copy! Bill took the copy -- anyone with pics of that, email me and I'll post them here) for giving out Gnoppix CD's outside of the event (Beth and I planned this idea, I didn't have the time to help execute it, but KGB had similar plans and did).

They also painted our fence, put a penguin on top of the University Center (which was removed by Campus Security at 6am I hear) and sent a message to Bill "Bill Gates PH34RZ [fears] Wean."

These Pictures explain it all:
Bill Gates Fears Wean

blue screen campus front

Blue Screen Campus Back
For those of you that don't attend CMU, note that painting the fence is a tradition here. As is giving speakers warm welcomes!

I welcome all comments to this post, and please do send me other pictures of the event if you have them, and I'll post them here. Also, did any of you at Cornell give Bill a warm welcome like we did?

Published Wednesday, February 25, 2004 7:39 PM by ajjuneja

Filed under: , , ,

Comments

# Bill at Cornell@ Wednesday, February 25, 2004 7:46 PM

We gave him a very warm welcome, and the audience received him very well. One person asked about Linux but he essentially ignored his question when replying. Overall, though, people were very happy with his talk and it was nice seeing what is in his mind. Actually I'm quite happy he didn't give a lecture about pure computer science since it would have put me to sleep.

Mike

# re: Bill Gates Talk at CMU this morning...<b> it SUCKED</b>@ Wednesday, February 25, 2004 7:57 PM

Pretty mature audience. I admire Gates more than 90% of the people in the IT industry for one reason:

He actually gets that it's a business. Religion is for churches.

Jeff

# re: Bill Gates Talk at CMU this morning...<b> it SUCKED</b>@ Wednesday, February 25, 2004 8:02 PM

Actually, we did have a very mature audience. We also had some fun too :)

Ajay Juneja

# re: Bill Gates Talk at CMU this morning...<b> it SUCKED</b>@ Wednesday, February 25, 2004 8:07 PM

Jeff - Amen! :)

Seriously - I am embarrassed for you, Ajay. Obviously you must like MS AT LEAST as much as Linux, else you wouldn't have a blog on a .Net site. I like to think that on our side of the fence we have moved beyond the religion and into trying to use software to save or make money. That's what its all its about - sure, its fun, but the bottom line is the bottom line - if computers didn't save or make people money, you couldn't find someone to pay you to play with them.

Maybe someday someone will invent the coffeehouse where you can stand up and sing old folk songs while you code and have people leave you tips in your laptop bag.

-e

# re: Bill Gates Talk at CMU this morning...<b> it SUCKED</b>@ Wednesday, February 25, 2004 8:14 PM

Well, I *used* to like .NET. Not as much anymore... there are several reasons for that.

Most of which has to do with the fact that thin embedded systems don't run virtual machine code very quickly.

The joys of pure C are coming back to me :)

And no, I'm not the least bit embarrassed to state my honest opinion on something -- note I gave Jennifer Chayes from MSR a glowing review last October. Bill Gates was just so... disappointing and not intellectually stimulating by comparison.

Ajay Juneja

# Alternative Review@ Wednesday, February 25, 2004 8:48 PM

Jeff is very much correct. Business is business. I have to admire Bill for being an excellent businessman. I don't agree with what Microsoft does and has done, but I still give Bill Gates respect for what he has done.

For an alternative and slightly more detailed view, feel free to check out what I posted on my blog: http://missig.org/julian/blog/000048.html

Julian

# Julian??@ Wednesday, February 25, 2004 9:04 PM

Dude, Julian, is that you also? X-ViRGE? Guess who ;-)

I've already left my comments on Bill G's lecture. I actually enjoyed it!

Mike Shafer

# re: Bill Gates Talk at CMU this morning...<b> it SUCKED</b>@ Wednesday, February 25, 2004 9:04 PM

In case you are getting the impression Gates was pied or something at CMU: the atmosphere was pretty cordial, the audeience listened attentively, there were some good questions about MS and about the Gates Foundation, and bill IMHO did a pretty good job answering them.

As for the content of the talk: I am not sure what Ajay was expecting, but I thought my expectations were generally met. He talked a little bit about MS' history, a little bit about where MS is, business and technology wise, and a little bit about where it is going. Also a couple of cool demos. He did not reveal any deep insights about computing or about the nature of man, but then that is not what he is about. As for comparisons with Mitnick or Wozniak, the former I missed, the latter was an unaldurated exercise in narcissism.

The sign on the fence and the one on top of Wean were good though :) (the latter I guess was partly a reaction to Bill not going to the CS building at all). And the guy giving him the copy of Linux got some laughs too (Bill took the copy with a smile; even had a joke about the gift not costing anything).

Mahim Mishra

# re: Bill Gates Talk at CMU this morning...<b> it SUCKED</b>@ Wednesday, February 25, 2004 9:07 PM

Oh, and yeah, "creativity of a doormat"? Uhhhhh... I think you have an interesting definition of "creativity" that I would like to hear about.

Mahim Mishra

# re: Bill Gates Talk at CMU this morning...<b> it SUCKED</b>@ Wednesday, February 25, 2004 9:16 PM

He gave the same lecture at Cornell and didn't go to our CS building, but who cares: what's he going to do, have a tour? The man was on his way to Boston to lecture at MIT and Harvard tomorrow. Richest man in the world might not have time for the dime tour of computer science facilities, only to see what the latest machines are in the lab.

Mike Shafer

# Gates at CMU.@ Wednesday, February 25, 2004 9:41 PM

I wasn't there. Don't take my word for it. Ask Ajay. Go ahead. OK, here's what he said. With pictures. it SUCKED" href="http://weblogs.asp.net/ajuneja/archive/2004/02/25/80113.aspx">Bill Gates Talk at CMU this morning... it SUCKED...

TrackBack

# re: Bill Gates Talk at CMU this morning...<b> it SUCKED</b>@ Wednesday, February 25, 2004 9:49 PM

Umm... What's the SEI rating of Microsoft again? :P

Taran Rampersad

# re: Bill Gates Talk at CMU this morning...<b> it SUCKED</b>@ Wednesday, February 25, 2004 10:14 PM

Mike: sure. I'm not saying he _should_ have gone to the CS building. I am only saying some people had something funny to say about the fact that he didn't.

Mahim Mishra

# re: Bill Gates Talk at CMU this morning...<b> it SUCKED</b>@ Thursday, February 26, 2004 12:22 AM

I'm totally down with people expressing themselves, but the least you could do is strive for a little bit of accuracy.

The notion that other OSs are somehow more stable than the current offerings from MS is just pure crap. It might have been true last millennium that Windows occasionally sux0red, but XP and 2003 server are rock-solid. After several years of use at home and at work, including the betas, I had my first XP blue screen a couple days ago, and it occurred while running a beta version of VPC, so I can't say I was *that* surprised.

That, and the notion that MacOS is more stable is just poppycock. I've had *many* more crashes with OS X than I have with XP, and I use XP much, much, much more often than X. That, and when Finder goes down in X, you might as well unplug your machine and punt kick it to the other side of the neighborhood - there isn't a graceful way to recover. At least in Windows, should explorer ever shut itself down, I can restart it easily from the task manager.

Yup. It's also really cool that your university welcomed him with such open arms. This guy takes time out of his *seriously* busy schedule to talk to you, and you greet him with childish gags.

Think about this: When it comes time to pay for all of your computer science degrees, unless you happen to be fortunate enough to be the child of a rich mommy and daddy, you're going to have to take a job that pays. I won't be surprised if a small handful of you and your cohorts manage to get OSS jobs that pay, but the rest of you are going to be grumbling on slashdot everyday about how mean MS is, and about how angry you are that your CS degree hasn't gotten you a job.

Oh, well. I guess it means less competition for me.

Rory

# re: Bill Gates Talk at CMU this morning...<b> it SUCKED</b>@ Thursday, February 26, 2004 12:56 AM

Oh, Rory, you need to calm down. (If I've ever seen a Microsoft lunatic on a fringe, I think you'd fit the bill).

Also, you are wrong on so many levels -- you weren't at the talk. We all greeted him very respectfully -- there was all applause and no hissing or booing, and we graciously offered Bill the Linux CD (I wanted to give him a penguin, but I lost out on the idea of the actual software).

And if you'd notice, the blue-screen fence, was a rendition of the windows 3.1/95/98 blue screen, not the NT4/Win2k/Win2k3 blue screen.

No where in this post do I talk about OS religion, that Windows sucks / windows is great, blah blah -- I *specifically* talk about the fact that his TALK SUCKED.

That's right Rory. I never said anything about Windows...

I said BILL GATES TALK SUCKED.

Also please note I gave Jennifer Chayes from MSR quite a bit of praise a few months ago. Why? Cause she gave a great talk. And I'd bet Jennifer is just about as busy as Bill. She's also a lot better of an orator for a technical audience.

Ajay Juneja

# re: Bill Gates Talk at CMU this morning...<b> it SUCKED</b>@ Thursday, February 26, 2004 1:13 AM

> Oh, Rory, you need to calm down. (If I've ever seen a Microsoft lunatic
> on a fringe, I think you'd fit the bill).

Except that I run OS X and Linux at home, and also do work with Linux when clients request that I do so. I also occasionally mess with an iSeries if someone really wants me to (although green screen work doesn't really interest me).

Point being, I'm not a Microsoft lunatic.

> Also, you are wrong on so many levels -- you weren't at the talk. We all
> greeted him very respectfully -- there was all applause and no hissing or
> booing, and we graciously offered Bill the Linux CD (I wanted to give him
> a penguin, but I lost out on the idea of the actual software).

That's right: I *wasn't* at the talk. So, what I have to go on is the set of photos that depict a totally childish welcome.

Show me the photos of you guys hanging out, having a good time, and treating Gates with some respect. I'm not saying that you don't have any, but you certainly didn't post them, and that doesn't help your case.

> And if you'd notice, the blue-screen fence, was a rendition of the windows
> 3.1/95/98 blue screen, not the NT4/Win2k/Win2k3 blue screen.

Oh, please. That's such a minor detail.

It was still highly disrespectful.

I happen to think that Linus Torvalds is a bit of a tool, but I would never greet him in a disrespectful way if he chose to come to my place of learning/work to speak.

> No where in this post do I talk about OS religion, that Windows sucks /
> windows is great, blah blah -- I *specifically* talk about the fact that
> his TALK SUCKED.

I realize that you talked about his talk sucking, and I can completely understand that.

However, you presented the photos that demonstrated a childish approach. The students at your school (for which I've lost some respect) didn't even wait until after the speech - there was no way to know *beforehand* that he was going to suck, and yet he was razzed anyway. Totally ridiculous.

Plus, take a look at your previous post:

"I do believe a Mr. Bill Gates is coming to CMU in a couple weeks [snip] Maybe I can find a plush penguin to give him as a thank-you-for-visiting."

What kind of childish crap is that?

> That's right Rory. I never said anything about Windows...

The photos that you posted *did*.

> I said BILL GATES TALK SUCKED.

I understand. That much of it makes sense. It's all the childish stuff on the side that irritated me.

> Also please note I gave Jennifer Chayes from MSR quite a bit of praise a
> few months ago. Why? Cause she gave a great talk. And I'd bet Jennifer is
> just about as busy as Bill. She's also a lot better of an orator for a
> technical audience.

Saying whatever you said a few months ago has nothing to do with what was posted recently.

Rory

# re: Bill Gates Talk at CMU this morning...<b> it SUCKED</b>@ Thursday, February 26, 2004 1:20 AM

> Show me the photos of you guys hanging out, having a good time, and
> treating Gates with some respect. I'm not saying that you don't have
> any, but you certainly didn't post them, and that doesn't help your
> case.
>

We weren't allowed cameras in the actual talk, hence no pictures of that. But even the president of our university said we were remarkably quiet. (See, I didn't even break the rules to go take pictures of that).

The webcast is also only accessible to CMU students/staff/faculty.

The childish stuff I thought was really funny! Where's your sense of humor? Bill Gates didn't even get so ruffled about it.

Here's how we greeted Kevin Mitnick last year:

http://www-2.cs.cmu.edu/~akj/pictures/kevin_2003/Audience_1.jpg

http://www-2.cs.cmu.edu/~akj/pictures/kevin_2003/Audience_2.jpg

http://www-2.cs.cmu.edu/~akj/pictures/kevin_2003/Audience_3.jpg

My posting would have been different had he not sucked.

Ajay Juneja

# re: Bill Gates Talk at CMU this morning...<b> it SUCKED</b>@ Thursday, February 26, 2004 1:41 AM

> > Show me the photos of you guys hanging out, having a good time, and
> > treating Gates with some respect. I'm not saying that you don't have
> > any, but you certainly didn't post them, and that doesn't help your
> > case.
> >
>
> We weren't allowed cameras in the actual talk, hence no pictures of
> that. But even the president of our university said we were remarkably
> quiet. (See, I didn't even break the rules to go take pictures of
> that).

OK - that makes sense.

> The childish stuff I thought was really funny! Where's your sense of
> humor? Bill Gates didn't even get so ruffled about it.

Bill Gates has taken a lot of crap over the years - enough to the point that he's probably pretty used to this sort of thing.

However, that still doesn't make it any more acceptable. I like to think that I have an extremely good sense of humor, but it typically only involves itself with things that are *funny*. Taking seriously cheap shots at someone isn't all that funny - it's just irritating - especially when the entire world already seems to be involved in one mass "Hey, Fuck you, Bill!" chorus . It's somehow magically made even worse by the *fact* that most people engaged in the chorus don't know what they're talking about. I'm not saying that you're among the people who don't know what they're talking about, but you posted and supported the pictures of the work done by those people which makes you a de-facto figurehead.

I understand the nature of college pranks (I got to spend a couple years in college several years ago before completely running out of dough), but I guess we weren't quite so brazenly rude at Reed.

Trust me: If anybody on this planet gets pissed off that other people can't take a joke, you better believe it's me. However, a joke should have some redeeming quality - if you're going to talk trash, then at least make it something that the butt of your joke can appreciate, too. Did the students at your school *really* think that a "wind0ze sux0rz" style joke would be something clever? Original? Something that Gates would appreciate? I seriously doubt it, although it's possible that the sort of person who would choose to be that mean might not be in possession of the perceptual faculties that might be used to discern when a joke's gone too far/sucks.

> Here's how we greeted Kevin Mitnick last year:
>
> http://www-2.cs.cmu.edu/~akj/pictures/kevin_2003/Audience_1.jpg
>
> http://www-2.cs.cmu.edu/~akj/pictures/kevin_2003/Audience_2.jpg
>
> http://www-2.cs.cmu.edu/~akj/pictures/kevin_2003/Audience_3.jpg

I sincerely hope that you aren't attempting to equate a "We [heart} Kevin" greeting with a "Here - suck it up, Bill - your OS blue screens, you loser" style greeting.

The Kevin greeting was jovial whereas the Gates one was simply rude.

The other bizarre thing to me is that you guys would have gotten so excited about Kevin arriving rather than Bill. Kevin's just a washed up hacker whose greatest skill was his understanding that most people "back in the day" didn't know anything about security, whereas Bill Gates and his team have shaped a planet in terms of how personal computing is done (and with the proceeds have done a *lot* of good for the world (the Gates Foundation has $24,000,000,000 slated for charity - how much is Mitnick giving away? Torvalds? Stallman?)).

It's a weird world. I guess people prefer to like what's "fashionable," but it's your loss.

All that aside, to reiterate: The Gates greeting was rude without any redeeming qualities, whereas the Mitnick greeting was quite appropriate and respectful. They weren't even remotely the same.

Rory

# re: Bill Gates Talk at CMU this morning...<b> it SUCKED</b>@ Thursday, February 26, 2004 3:00 AM

you ms biased people need to relax.. understand that computer science is not about MS ya morons. I develop in .net and it works, but its not the only solution. you bill gates lovers can kiss my frackin ass!!

rx

# re: Bill Gates Talk at CMU this morning...<b> it SUCKED</b>@ Thursday, February 26, 2004 3:22 AM

rx -

"understand that computer science is not about MS ya morons"

Right. That's understood. I don't think anybody in the "MS camp" claimed that comp sci *was* about MS.

"you bill gates lovers can kiss my frackin ass!!"

Hm. That's an intelligent argument.

Anyway, I'm more of a Bill Gates supporter - just because the rest of the world is mindlessly (emphasis on the "mindless" part after reading your comment) engaging in Gates-bashing doesn't mean I have to follow suit.

Rory

# re: Bill Gates Talk at CMU this morning...<b> it SUCKED</b>@ Thursday, February 26, 2004 4:00 AM

Why is it impossible to criticise a single event (not even the company that the person who they represent) without someone going on with "you OSS weenies blah blah blah". This post/thread has absolutely NOTHING TO DO WITH OSS.

Ajay just said that he was disappointed with the talk BG gave .... and a couple of pics of some students sense of humour .. as far as I can tell Ajay wasn't even involved in the painting incident.

Rory, I hate to imagine your reaction to any form of journalism when you wake up in the morning :)

CC

# re: Bill Gates Talk at CMU this morning...<b> it SUCKED</b>@ Thursday, February 26, 2004 9:14 AM

Ajay didn't exactly say he had a problem with the pranks either.

> Here's how we greeted Kevin Mitnick last year

If a picture is worth a thousand words, I can't imagine how many of those words are "computer" and "dork."

Even in my college days (if they happended a few years later than they actually did), I would've killed to see Gates, Ellison, McNealy, Fiorina, Wozniak, Jobs or any of these people even if I couldn't stand what they stand for or disagree with their opinions. Ellison comes off as the biggest jerk in technology, but that doesn't mean I couldn't learn something from him.

When I was in school at little Ashland University in Ohio the school's conservative political institution brought in Margaret Thatcher, Dan Quayle, Colin Powel, Dick Cheney (weird how those two came back to light), and I couldn't see them because I wasn't in the right circles. That crap aside, and disregarding that I don't care much for the policy of any of those people, I would've done anything to see them speak.

Involved or not with the "reception," I think it reflects poorly on your school and the kids that will graduate from it.

Jeff

# re: Bill Gates Talk at CMU this morning...<b> it SUCKED</b>@ Thursday, February 26, 2004 10:57 AM

"That, and the notion that MacOS is more stable is just poppycock. I've had *many* more crashes with OS X than I have with XP, and I use XP much, much, much more often than X. That, and when Finder goes down in X, you might as well unplug your machine and punt kick it to the other side of the neighborhood - there isn't a graceful way to recover. "

Maybe Finder wouldn't crash so much if you'd stop kicking your machine.

Under Force Quit, you can select Finder and click "Relaunch"

Ryan

# re: Bill Gates Talk at CMU this morning...<b> it SUCKED</b>@ Thursday, February 26, 2004 3:43 PM

Judging from the comments about bottom lines, it's disappointing to see that students from such respectable universities believe that Computer Scince ought to be a major in the Engineering or Business colleges.

Daniel

# re: Bill Gates Talk at CMU this morning...<b> it SUCKED</b>@ Thursday, February 26, 2004 3:59 PM

(regexp-replace "Scince" comment "Science") ...

Daniel

# re: Bill Gates Talk at CMU this morning...<b> it SUCKED</b>@ Thursday, February 26, 2004 4:16 PM

CC -

"Why is it impossible to criticise a single event (not even the company that the person who they represent) without someone going on with "you OSS weenies blah blah blah". This post/thread has absolutely NOTHING TO DO WITH OSS."

The smack about the event is fine. I actually thought that the complaints were perfectly valid.

However, given the photos, something involving OS talk was bound to arrive.

"Ajay just said that he was disappointed with the talk BG gave .... and a couple of pics of some students sense of humour .. as far as I can tell Ajay wasn't even involved in the painting incident."

It doesn't matter that Ajay wasn't "involved in the painting incident." What matters is that he posted the photos - that makes him a de-facto spokesperson whether he likes it or not.

"Rory, I hate to imagine your reaction to any form of journalism when you wake up in the morning"

When I wake up in the morning, I shower. It isn't until later in the day that I willingly assault my brain with the stupidity of others.

Rory

# re: Bill Gates Talk at CMU this morning...<b> it SUCKED</b>@ Thursday, February 26, 2004 4:18 PM

Ryan -

"Under Force Quit, you can select Finder and click "Relaunch""

I didn't see a "Force Quit" option, and was unable to research one at the time - with a frozen machine, my hands were completely tied.

Rory

# re: Bill Gates Talk at CMU this morning...<b> it SUCKED</b>@ Thursday, February 26, 2004 4:38 PM

It is nice to see all the frothing at the mouth :)

Hey y'all, relax. We paint The Fence to mark ANY occasion. There is a new coat of paint up *every day*. People have to sometimes carry out round-the-clock stakeouts to get to paint it, and then to protect what they have painted. And it is very rarely that something complementaty is said about the subject of the painted message. Given this context, I would have been shocked to see someone not paint that sort of message when Bill Gates himself was visiting campus. I mean, the richest man in the world comes to campus and no one even paints the fence?

That said, the talk went off well, there was plenty of applause, even some laughs at Bill's jokes, there were good questions asked and good answers given, it was a packed house, and a few hundred people watched the video feed in the adjacent auditorium and many others watched the streaming and cable feeds on campus. Oh, and yes, we all had to register a few days in advance, and I believe there were 3000 requests for a 1000 available seats. So yes, we were excited that he was coming to campus. Although, to put in my honest two cents, Bill and Microsoft probably got more out of this visit and out of their relationship with CMU than the other way around. We don't have a Gates Computer Science Building yet :)

Mahim

Mahim Mishra

# re: Bill Gates Talk at CMU this morning...<b> it SUCKED</b>@ Thursday, February 26, 2004 7:17 PM

This is the cutest thing ever.

I don't suspect that Gates is going to change how he thinks about one of the best CS programs in the country based on a few 19-year-olds being playful. College students are fundamentally still kids. Let 'em be kids. If we're all lucky, they'll never stop playing.

Getting up to hand something to Gates would have terrified me at that age. Learning not to be cowed by hierarchy and celebrity is a good lesson. So is standing up to make a point, and doing so in a way that is entertaining instead of shrill.

I find the spirit in which this happened to be charming. No one protested, hissed, or crossed the line into being borish or rude. I see the message on Wean Hall was done with chalk -- sure to wash away without any clean up needed. People thought this through, and found sane ways to express themselves without causing damage -- on a variety of levels.

Good job! This is the sort of thing that makes me glad to be an alum, both of CMU and KGB.

Imp

# re: Bill Gates Talk at CMU this morning...<b> it SUCKED</b>@ Thursday, February 26, 2004 7:27 PM

http://linux.cuteness.org/

More pics there.. 1024 smurfs died to paint this fence :)

Also pics of Gnoppix cd's being handed out.

Enjoy!!
Ajay

Ajay Juneja

# re: Bill Gates Talk at CMU this morning...<b> it SUCKED</b>@ Thursday, February 26, 2004 11:10 PM

Wow. Human rights violations in China, Cuba and Iran. African debt enslaves and kills thousands of people on an ongoing basis. Human traffic from Russia to Europe. GM foods, cloning, chemical weapons, MOAB, tactical nuclear weapons...

And all those sad nerds can do is paint walls to protest about a flaming operating system which people freely choose to use?

Holy crap! What a waste of paint!

Wellingtonean

# re: Bill Gates Talk at CMU this morning...<b> it SUCKED</b>@ Friday, February 27, 2004 12:55 AM

"how much is Mitnick giving away? Torvalds? Stallman?"

MIrnick- Knowledge (read his book's, quite interesting)

Torvalds- Knowledge (from linux kernel source code), and, well, linux

i think you get the idea...

anyways, for my opionion of MS:
i do respect bill gates for being a great bussiness man, and MS for devolping easy to use software. HOWEVER:
i DO NOT approve of MS's bussiness practices (which i dont think needs further explaining), and, despite the fact about Bill Gates being a great bussiness man, he IS going a bit to far, dont ya think? especially the whole thing about trying to end Open Source (which is 99% likely to be just becuase its a threat to his bussiness). Although many of bill gates plans may not SEEM to be trying to end Open Source, but look closer.

And for all you "anti-open source" people, i ask this question: How can you be anti-open source? thats basically bieng against free-knowledge. do you really think you should have to pay for knowledge? think about it..

i do have more to say, but im running out of room, so, as my ending request, i ask everyone who reads this to think about it before coming to an immediate response.

sincerely,
"younggeek"
owner,admin,and webmaster of http://geekout.4x2.net (a work in progress)

Anonymous

# re: Bill Gates Talk at CMU this morning...<b> it SUCKED</b>@ Friday, February 27, 2004 5:28 AM

Reading these some of these comments, I think its desperately sad to see computer science viewed as simply some tool of business rather than as a science.

I'm in this as I love the science, not to make rich people richer. And as a science, it doesn't matter what operating system you use, who has the monopoly...only business should be concerned with that.

I for one, quite enjoyed those pictures. They weren't personal attacks on Bill, they're simply some fun. University is so business orientated nowadays, with students going to uni just to make money, its good to see some life in a campus.

Philip Miseldine

# re: Bill Gates Talk at CMU this morning...<b> it SUCKED</b>@ Friday, February 27, 2004 11:23 PM

Kevin Mitnick, cool?

Sorry, nobody still wearing a mullet in the 21st century is cool.

Daniel Stoddart

# some reflections and corrections@ Saturday, February 28, 2004 2:52 PM

This was a fun thread to read, especially because I just spent the week travelling with Bill on the university tour (including CMU).

To clarify: Bill did four things at CMU.
1. He had a roundtable discussion with faculty and adminisrators at CMU. The CMU faculty set the agenda for the discussion. It was very thought-provoking.
2. Bill gave the speech.
3. We went downstairs after the speech, and saw presentations from several CS students on their projects -- the ESP game to get images tagged with metadata, HazMat, the roboreceptionist, and the Women@SCS group. We could have gone over to the CS building, but in discussing this with the CMU staff we decided that it would be better to have less travel time and more time to actually talk about stuff. So even though we didn't make it to the CS building, we spent a lot of time talking about CS with faculty and students.
4. Bill did a press roundtable Q&A session, including a reporter from the campus paper.

Bill is very thankful for all of the time and effort that the people at CMU put into his visit, and he was especially appreciative of the warm welcome and thoughtful questions that the students asked. The student Q&A at the end of the talk was one of his favorite parts. He didn't mind the "gift of linux" thing at all. He really likes hard questions; the only thing that bothers him is when people are rude. Actually, we were prepared for (though not necessarily expecting) some rude questions at all five schools, and in the end we didn't get a single rude question at any school -- a real testament to the students. We came away with a very strong impression that the students at CMU are super smart and very well-informed, which was great to see.

I started writing a clarification on the open source thing, but it got long-winded so I moved it to my blog (where I'm expected to be long-winded :-)

Anyway, it was my first visit to the CMU campus too, and I really enjoyed it, as did Bill. We're both very thankful that you all took the time to talk with us and for giving us such a warm welcome.

Kevin Schofield

# Wow... thanks Kevin!!@ Sunday, February 29, 2004 12:56 AM

Wow Kevin, I must say I'm truly impressed at your reply, especially after seeing all the flaming that went on in my comments section (I suppose even jokes about operating systems these days spark "religious wars" rather than spark critical thinking).

I was honestly a little suprised as to the amount of misinterpretation (and attention) my little blog post got. Just to clarify things, basically, my expectation was that Bill would really talk about "Hard problems in Computer Science" and some really technical stuff, when what came out was a speech very similar to the one he gives at the intern barbeques at his house every summer. And I was hoping for something more groundbreaking to come out from the talks, something we hadn't heard before at SpeechTek, Comdex, WinterCES, or read on CNET.

Just something to keep in mind for the future.

And as you saw, we were a good group of students, even if we did have a bit of fun with a silly blue-screen fence reminiscent of the win 3.1/95/98 days, and a little "Geek speak" as chalk on the top of our CS building.

With regards to open source issues, I don't think that "blind use" of the GPL license is occuring as much as you think it is. Most programmers have to eat and pay their bills somehow, and most businesses have to stay in business. There are some things, IMHO (standards for one) that really should be open for the world to see and see implementations of. Also one of the major benefits of the GPL is that it encourages people to contribute to the "overall success" of the product, regardless of profit, where as BSD-style licensing enables and in a way encourages, a lot of "source code forks" and proprietary systems built utilizing the same core, and yet that core then has to be solely improved upon by whomever is doing the proprietary usage of it.

Example: The Windows NT TCP/IP stack which came from FreeBSD, and has since of course been through many in-house revisions at Microsoft. Wouldn't it be interesting to take a look at where that implementation is now as compared to the current FreeBSD TCP/IP stack is now? Wouldn't it be nice if you could immediately take advantage of their bug fixes and security patches? Wouldn't a more secure stack be made if your team at MSFT working on this also contributed to the BSD stack? And does this particular piece of code being shared trivialize Windows NT as an OS? Of course it wouldn't!

I personally am set to be commercializing some research out of CMU, and looking at things going forward, it seems to me that a hybrid of open source and closed source is probably the best thing for both your business's financial (and personal) success along with the benefits of more secure, robust code that open source provides.

There's a line here somewhere in the GPL/BSD/Proprietary code wars where both sides benefit. Something along the lines where your competitive assets stay closed and proprietary, but your supporting code that isn't part of the competive asset is open for inspection, improvement, and change. I think Apple has come closest to this balance with OS X, where the core of their OS is BSD licensed, but their major competitive assets, the look and feel, carbon API's, programming enviroment, and GUI are all proprietary code.

Hopefully, over the next few years of this debate, Microsoft will find that fine line. You guys might even be surprised at the positive results when you do. It's a really hard thing to do though, to determine what is "support code" and what is your "competitive assets."

Finally, if I have one request, show those pictures to Bill, he'll probably get a kick out of them, since you guys probably didn't get to see them in the short time you were at CMU :)

Have a great weekend relaxing from the school-hopping!

Ajay Juneja

# cheap shots@ Tuesday, March 02, 2004 2:18 PM

Rory: "Taking seriously cheap shots at someone isn't all that funny - it's just irritating "

Like your recent Steve Jobs cartoon?

thad

# re: Bill Gates Talk at CMU this morning...<b> it SUCKED</b>@ Wednesday, March 24, 2004 1:31 PM

what up what is u doin my g

utg

# Carnegie Mellon in the News@ Friday, March 26, 2004 4:59 PM

[link=http://www.cmu.edu]Carnegie Mellon University[/link], where I got my [link=http://www.cs.cmu.edu]B.S. in Computer Science[/link], has been in the news a fair amount recently.

For instance, there's this [link=http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?...

TrackBack

# re: Bill Gates Talk at CMU this morning...<b> it SUCKED</b>@ Monday, March 29, 2004 12:10 PM

youre stupid

boo

# re: Bill Gates Talk at CMU this morning...<b> it SUCKED</b>@ Tuesday, May 11, 2004 11:34 AM

Jo you homeslice I want some pictures of him and by thou way you are very stupid

Josh Smith

# Mr. Bill Gates, how did you get to where u are, help me reach there@ Friday, July 23, 2004 3:46 AM


I wish to congratulate Mr. Bill Gates for all the endeavours he has put into the sucess and use of a computer. I am communicating from Africa and kampala[Uganda]in general.

My subject matter is different from his speach for today.

Here in Africa, we want to work but because we are in third world countries, jobs are very scarce making the mode of living very hard for us and me to work.I wish to create a vision of my own and maybe employment for myself through job creation.The problem that surrounds most of us here and me mainly is that we cannot afford the capital investesment to create jobs for myself[ourselves] which will curb the high poverty range to a point where one daily income does not even make $ 3

it is my request if granted the opportunity that Mr. Bill Gates gives me some clues as to how he has managed to set up one of the worlds biggest employment opportunities for people in the world which not only caters for the better well being of people in the world but also creating permanent jobs for people.

I know that i am a low class person in Africa and given an opportunity to communicate with one of the World richest most powerful and enterprising figures, its an opportunity which i respect with high regard.

MR BILL GATES, IF IT PLEASES YOU, KINDLY EDUCATE ME ON HOW I CAN CREATE A JOB FOR MY SELF THOUGH THE MAHOR PROBLEM IS THE FINANCIAL ASPECT WHICH WILL MAY BE PUT ME OFF BECUASE OF THE NON AVAILABILITY OF FUNDS.

I f it is okay with you Mr Bill gates and i earn favour before you,my local email address is bamentl@mail.com

however, on the subject matter, thank yo for all the effort you are putting in to make this work for the local person mainly us here in the third world country

Belinda







Belinda

# re: Bill Gates Talk at CMU this morning...<b> it SUCKED</b>@ Tuesday, August 03, 2004 12:42 AM

All I know is I use Word everyday and I hate it. And it is never going to change. I actually went onto Microsoft's site and found something called "Wishlist" and filled out the form, and got an email saying I had sent the form to the wrong place. How can I send a form to the wrong place, it was their form? So, I resent it and made sure I chose "Word" from the dropdown menu. Then, I got 2 emails saying Microsoft wanted my input. But an incredible amount of verbage and web links. The e-mail was impossible to figure out. I just deleted it. Hey, Bill, if you are out there, fix Word. It is not even as usable as WP5.1 was. The most true sentence ever written. Word cannot even come close to WP5.1 for speed and features. Isn't that sad? Ever going to address that in a forum, Bill? Probably not... Programmers and world economies don't need word processing. Just the little people (read: women) on the bottom who use it each day and start each day saying "I wish I did not have to use Word" and "I wish I did not have to use Windows."

May

# re: Bill Gates Talk at CMU this morning...<b> it SUCKED</b>@ Tuesday, August 03, 2004 12:48 AM

Correction: Verbiage.

May

# re: Bill Gates Talk at CMU this morning... it SUCKED@ Monday, January 28, 2008 6:06 AM

<a href= http://index1.wtoet.com >bigger thicker penis</a>

olesja

# re: Bill Gates Talk at CMU this morning... it SUCKED@ Wednesday, August 12, 2009 7:03 AM

PLEASE take this down.  By this time, you have already graduated (or dropped out) and we no longer need your childish post embarrassing the school.  Please and thank you.

Patrick

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