“Bill Gates, the Microsoft founder and the world’s wealthiest man, is to receive an honorary knighthood for ‘services to global enterprise.’ The recommendation that he receive the honour was made by the Chancellor, Gordon Brown. Buckingham Palace is expected to announce it tomorrow, when Mr Gates will speak at a conference on ‘Advancing Enterprise’ organised by Mr Brown,” Robert Peston reports for The Telegraph.
“The controversial software company creator – whose commercial success has led to hatred of him among his competitors – is worth an estimated $40 billion (
Well they could put him in a suit of armour and have him joust the queens champion
Dave H:
I appreciate a good history less now and again, but please understand that I don’t bear any 230 year old grudges. My kinfolk didn’t arrive in the States until early 19th century.
Actually, the brew to which I was referring contains barley and hops.
“Is there nothing Bill Gates can’t buy?”
A decent operating system for his PC.
Actually, only citizens or subjects of those countries where the Queen is still Head of State get the title “Sir” or “Lady”, as in Sir Jack Brabham (the Australian former F1 World Champion).
However, ‘honorary’ knights become Steven Spielberg K.B.E. (Knight of the British Empire [sic]), and convention says they cannot use the title ‘Sir’.
An interesting note is that “a person may be stripped of his knighthood should he be convicted of a criminal offence by a Court of Justice”, which begs a few questions as to our Chancellor recommending Bill G in the first place.
Being the de facto head of a company that has been found guilty of being an abusive monopolist may not be a criminal offence per se, but surely it indicates a certain moral ‘flexibility’ that is hardly worthy of a KBE in my opinion, even if I did agree with the honours system which I don’t.
Quite ludicrous, and yet another reason not to vote Labour at the next election as if I needed one.
As a member of the commonwealth, all I have to say is WTF !!! how can they cheapen a Knighthood with that losser!
& No he won’t be called Sir Bill, he can’t use it (Sir) as he’s an American.
Just a opportunity to get a sharp object next to his neck…
Someone in England tell the Queen she has to swing REALLY hard.
W00T !!!
It’s pretty obvious that Queen Elizabeth will knight anybody these days!
I thought that Bill Gates was a bad choice for an honorary knighthood but after reading that he would be joining the company of Rudolph Giuliani and George Bush I now have no respect for the title at all.
I agree Sol, what has Gates really done? We know that he donated lots of money for humanitrian causes, but has HE done anything himself besides donate $$?
BTW: Being an honorary knight is the best a non-Brit can get. As an honorary knight, he doesn’t get the title ‘sir’, and cannot be called ‘sir’.
For some info on the honorary knighthood, go here: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/1817333.stm
under the section ‘No better friends’
The only reason that Americans can only have “honorary” knighthoods is that American citizens are prohibited by the Constitution (Article I, Section 9, clause 8) from receiving titles granted by foreign governments; or, at least, so says the Supreme Court, even though the plain language of the Constitution has it only applying to government officers or employees.
$40 billion
ISTR he had $75bn a few years back. So he’s spent, donated or lost almost half of his peak worth.
I give Bill 10 more years!
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Dave,
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Thanks, but we don’t want to finish discussing the history in one shot, do we? Otherwise, we may have to talk about computers!
“ISTR he had $75bn a few years back. So he’s spent, donated or lost almost half of his peak worth.” – Throm Strummond
That was his wealth on paper. It included his shares of Microsoft and other companies. As the stock prices tanked, so did his fortune (if you can say $40B is tanked). Also, the moment he unloads his shares to get that $40B in cash, he floods the market and drives the price down; thus, his $40B is reduced even further.
In the meanwhile Gates has said he will eliminate spam within two years by requiring a email to perform a calculation before it’s sent out.
For a few emails, it’s ok, but bulk mailings would slow any machine to a crawl.
“….security flaws in the Windows operating system mean that viruses or hackers can subvert the machines without the owner being aware.”
“Steve Linford, chief executive of the spam-blocking company Spamhaus, said: “We have a list of 800,000 machines that we know have broadband connections and have been compromised by viruses, because we’ve been sent spam from their internet address.” Mr Linford said the number of infected machines was growing by 50,000 to 100,000 a week worldwide as more people got broadband connections and were infected by viruses such as SoBig and Beagle, which emerged last week as the latest threat.”
Of course this is all due to the fact that Windows is severely flawed, so instead of fixing the flaws, he provides a solution that will go obsolete.
The fact of the matter is this, Microsoft is just too dam big to move effectively against new threats. Apple is more secure because it can.
So no matter what, Microsoft will always be security prone and this is the reason not to use their software, period.
Government snoops have had backdoor access to most PC’s ever since they have been out. It’s the virus writers that upset the gov’s apple-cart.
That’s awful and frightening…
MOM, lighten up. It was a joke
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Dave H:
Whew, that’s a relief. Have a good week.
And this is Mac related news, how?
Come again?………………………………..What?……………………………….How?
Seriously, only one person here has even made a vague reference to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. For all of you who worship Steve Jobs, ask yourself if he does anything as altruistic as that. If any of you knew Steve Jobs, you’d know that he’s an arrogant leader, belonging to the “dominant” personality in the DiSC system. If you want someone to blame for bad business tactics, look to Steve Ballmer, not Bill.
For those who are just envious, look past that and see a role model.
Hmmmm Bill Gates to get a knighthood and the UK Parliment are looking into iPod batteries, has our government been taken over by m$ or the US Dept of Justice?
And in two thousand years the legend of William Gates will have grown into a monstrosity where he himself defended the great fortrous against the incompetant programming hordes… riding a white horse and wearing the silver sheild produced by Sir Norton AntiVirus…
He better hope that Buckingham Palace isn’t taken down by a Trojan horse or virus before he makes it out of town. Having an aging queen waving a sword around your head can be a bit nerve-wracking I’m sure.
Lin,
That is very funny. If I stole from your house and I gave your money to the poor, would you give me an award? Doing charity is great, but only if where the money came from is “clean”. At the end of the companies he cheated and killed and stole from, there are employees who’s just trying to make a living. This is not a Robin Hood story.
As for Gates not using bad tactics, wrong. He used the tactics long before Ballmer was abroad. Also, Gates is notorious for being involved in every aspect of his company. Why does he not stop Ballmer from using tactics he does not approve? You can see his involvements when he was proven to have lied to the court during the monopoly trial.
Andy,
Cheering for a twice convicted illegal monopolist, who ‘gives’ away money (or more usually software) he stole (always with conditions I might add) from companies whose former employees are now in new fields because they can’t get new jobs in programming if it means working for M$.
As for altruism, it would be really swell if YOUR hero would ‘donate’ funds to starving American kids – rather than the promise of a shiny, new Windows computer with great Microsoft software.
BTW, Steve Jobs – regardless of his temperament – hasn’t
Envy. Anyone that’s envious of BG3: wishes that they could of stolen as much as he did; destroyed as many companies has Bill has; was found guilty twice like he was; yet has retained ALL of his ill-gotten empire like he did. Those that don’t qualify as envious (see above) are actually ANNOYED (see- http://www.dictionary.com)
FYI, Steve ‘I-Love-This-Company-Yeeeaaah’ Ballmer has been with Bill since 1975 – Google it. Jeez.
… ?
BTW, Steve Jobs – regardless of his temperament – hasn’t ‘pretented’ to be an altruist.
I always wondered what it meant to be knighted. Mick Jagger, Elton John, Bob Geldoff etc… Sure, good guys… did some nice things… and lots of nasti-ol-sex, drugs and partying… I think Keith Richards thinks along the same lines as I do though –it approaches absurdity.
Then we get this corporate thug (who’s balls are wanted by countless countries including his own for anticompetitive behavior and corporate extortion) who donates 100’s of millions of dollars annually to various charities because… ??? well, because his chief accountant says he must do so in order to take advantage of certain tax breaks.
I mean really. What the hell is going on? Who needs the publicity most, the Monarchy or Bill… or was it a mutual negotiation?
To use the parlence of our times: You do the math.
freaking BS, I enjoyed the IP http://www.buy-audio.narod.ru/