Bill Gates came to the GSB today to speak about random crap.I was one of the 400 “lucky” students who got to see it. There was a lottery that was supposed to be randomized, but it definitely wasn’t. Extreme preference was given to CS people; it seemed like half of those from the department who applied got a ticket. I know at least 13 people from our department who got tickets, and I know just a couple on non-majors who got in. Business students likely also got preference. I had no complaints, and it does makes sense to give preference to us (maybe more if people actually used M$ crap in the department, but that is besides the point), but it was supposed to be random.

The talk touched on a lot of random. The talk was framed around the fact he was leaving M$ to work at his foundation full time. He had some “comedy” video made with lots of big names (Al Gore, George Clooney, Bono, Brian Williams, Hilliary Clinton, Obama, Warren Buffet, etc…); it seemed like it had a fairly high production value. He drives a Ford Focus in it, which just strikes me as strange since he is loaded; maybe it was meant to be funny. At one point, he is in a recording studio, where you can clearly make out a Mac in the background. Perhaps it was just a tactic to ease the audience into the ensuing bullshit.

He talked about his foundation a decent bit, which was somewhat interesting. I think he has picked a lot of very good and important things to fund, but I do not think it a great act of humanitarianism. I think it would have been near a crime to not give most of it away; it is only his duty. Besides, I do not thing the non-merits of his career give him the right to decide how much of the world’s philanthropy. Apparently, he is pulling many of the same games with the foundation as he did at Microsoft. I think that, in large part, Gates has hurt the software industry far more than he is helped it. The main thing that I think Microsoft has done for the computer revolution is make computers cheap; without Windows, the cheap knockoff would have probably never been successful.

As far as his other comments, I thought he made far more points against Microsoft’s role in the future of technology than for it. At one point, he discussed rich, intuitive graphical interfaces on the web; he started to list things: “computer maps, computer Earth…” I think he continued, but it was clear, I think including to him, that if he had said Google instead of computer, it would have made more sense. I forgot many of the other lines, but it just struck me Gates knew Microsoft was being beaten by the likes of Google, Amazon (at one point, he described a device like the Kindle as being part of the future), etc… I cannot remember much of what else he said along these lines, but it was along these same lines.

It moved onto questions after that….

I was hoping to ask something about the OLPC, but I ended up not after he addressed enough to invalidate the question. I wish I had gotten up though. Most of the questions were either about the foundation, some random computer thing (some confused, some boring), and then it got to the obligatory open source question. The person asked something along the lines of “open source something something business something something future.” Essentially, Gates said that business and open source are incompatible, and there are only a few circumstances where it made sense, etc…. I don’t remember a lot of it as I just started getting pissed. One of my friends just got up and left. He made it out to be some weird, anti-social thing. He compared the GPL to a virus. The best comment, however, was something about how open source developers cut hair during the day and work on software at night. My CS friends and I all think that various barber jokes should circulate the CS department for a while to follow. I couldn’t help but think of Stallman after hearing it. It was really just infuriating that he just lied so blatantly like that to us. Borja, a CS grad student, wrote up a better summary than me. Such is Gates.

SG had some dumb thing that was consistent with my opinion of it.

It would be nice to believe that the rest of the audience came away thinking that he was as much of a toolbag as I did, but there is definitely a reason that the talk was hosted the business school and not the CS department. My roommate Alex, who got in with a press pass, said most of the reporters there ate it all up. They were happy to give all sorts of free press to Gates and MicroSense (thats a joke, laugh).

I suppose it just reinforced what I already knew. I just had never really encountered it so first hand.