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Sanity check: Five things we have learned from Bill Gates

I remember the movie too well. Its because it was this movie that inspired me to start my own company - Stingray Studios.i had started it from the next itself after watching the movie.

Well, you got to give to the guy. If you can stretch things a little and think of him as a modern day conqueror. As in the way he transformed our lives. Not even Alexander the Great, the Roman Empire or the Church can claim as much. How come he hasn?t succumbed to fast women and fast cars its beyond me. Clinton take note.

> How come he hasn?t succumbed to fast women and fast cars its beyond me.

Not to mention simply getting bored with running a company: lots of tech entrepreneurs go do something else once they have become independently wealthy. I don't expect ever to become rich, but if I found myself with something like ten million dollars I would probably spend the rest of my life collecting master's degrees in a dozen different fields.

He did not give in to fast women. That I agree to. But he drives a few fast cars, one of them a turqoise Porsche Turbo convertible. Though the car is fast, he does not drive it fast. Not because of the speeding fines, but because of not being mentioned in the news for such a CO2 blower...

From what I have read he was a womaniser. It was just kept quiet. I remember reading about a female journalist that he kept hitting on during an interview; she asked around about it later and was told that he did it a lot.

I think He hasn't succumb to Fast Cars & Fast women because He & His Wife have Morals. And I also think He is Smart enough to know that His business came first only second to His Family! Great Man, Great Vision, Success! I salute you Mr. Gates & your Family too. Good Job Sir! Keep up the philanthropy work too! One Man can make a difference in the world.

"He & His Wife have Morals"

Maybe his wife does, but not him. How quickly some forget that Bill Gates was the most successful software pirate in history.

As goes with most of his innovations, he just did it better.

He bought Q-DOS which contained unlicensed code of Gary Kildall's CPM. Luckily for him Gary was too lazy to sue. That laziness by the way cost him the IBM deal that Gates serendipitously picked up. My paraphrase from Robert X. Cringely's Accidental Empires, check it out yourself.

Working for IBM Gates was developing a GUI with object oriented computing(OS2)he bailed and left them in a sorry state and took the concepts to q-dos (which he bought)and launched win 1.0 which was really just another dosshell. Nothing illegal, but certainly unscrupulous.

MSdos or Qdos as it was branded for IBM initially came long before OS2. IBM and MS partnered to develop OS2 but there was five or six versions of Dos before that. Windows NT was the Microsoft fork of OS2; both companies took a copy to develop on there own and MS marketing of the lesser winNT stomped all over IBM's far better OS2 and lesser marketing.

(Qdos may actually be the original CP/M clone that MS bought but I'm a little fuzzy on those details)

what about his several worldwide antitrust lawsuits? I would rather him sleep around then immorally squash the competition.

What does antitrust lawsuits have to do with morals? It just so happens that MS is the biggest OS/Software company in the world and although they have in some cases done some unscrupulous things that is probably not why they have these lawsuits. Its because they are the biggest. They could be the most moral company in the world but because they are big there is always going to be people analyzing everything they do and one slipup and there is a lawsuit. Heck with how big they are they will probably be sued just for being there.

Oh and they didn't really get "defeated" by the government's antitrust lawsuit... They got a slap on the hand.

Sure let's just sell out american workers, american intelligence and america for the sake of bigger profits, if you call that moral and ethical man I've got a bridge to sell you.

Your viewpoint typifies the misunderstanding of basic business. You obviously have no idea what comprises business concerns and especially software licensing. If you would start at this level & re-educate yourself, while putting on the shoes of a large conglomerate (growing), you might better understand that having your corporate name and business in the news (always) can & will hurt at some point. There are literally tons of armchair critics ready to slice & dice MS for acting (primarily) in the best interests of it's own employees and shareholders. This is called basic business practice, in order to be successful. Has zero to do with morals. Morals come into play where right & wrong play in the same field as an individual does; and is measured by the integrity of that individual. Get a dictionary and really learn the meaning of the few words I've used. It will help you to understand better that your present perception of MS and Bill Gates is skewed by the ever-present, pseudo-sofisticated, misinformed IT masses who think that they too, are pretty damn smart.

I don't need to read any further... this paragraph speaks the truth.

Well said.

Okay, I'll try the same tactic as the previous poster:

/me does a lot of hand-waving, doesn't say anything of any particular logical validity or evidentiary rigor, and implies others are stupid for disagreeing with him.

There. Was mine "very well done" too?

All sarcasm aside, I have a recommendation for you: In the future, realize that saying something doesn't make it so. Saying morals are irrelevant to business practice isn't the same as morals actually being irrelevant -- and the same goes for ethics (which, I'd argue, is actually a topic more relevant here than morals, since ethics can be argued with noncircular logic).

The fact that a corporation is defined in law as a "person" doesn't mean that people who act as agents of a corporation are not making moral and ethical decisions when they act. Okay, so maybe a corporation is not itself subject to morality, but that's because a corporation doesn't act or decide anything. The CEOs of corporations and their other executives, on the other hand, must answer to themselves and whatever higher powers they believe have jurisdiction on matters of conscience, however, and if they take the "I'm just acting on behalf of the corporation, so I'm not culpable!" excuse, all they're doing is proving a willfully negligent disregard for the rights of others as they pursue reprehensible, ultimately inexcusable patterns of behavior.

Members of the board of directors are every bit as culpable for their own acts, including their seal of approval through direct support or through willful ignorance on the acts of corporate officers.

A corporation that, through the acts of its agents, violates the rights of others and imposes its will on the market through initiations of force (via economic power, legal chicanery, legislative influence, and fraud) against competitors represents a collective act of significant unethical character on the part of those agents. It is not a moral and ethical shield that absolves its agents of all guilt, as many people seem to imagine it is. It is not an amoral force of nature, as people seem inclined to believe. It is a legal convention used as an excuse to materially profit in the short term at tremendous cost to others.

If you want to see an ethically managed business, start by looking for a sole proprietorship.

"Get a dictionary....-sofisticated,"

Good point, but you should check your dictionary as well (sophisticated).

While I find ohmbuoy's entire argument thoroughly distasteful, in all its apologism on behalf of corrupt corporate bureaucracies, I think you're maligning his/her use of the English language unnecessarily. It seems to me that the misspelling of "sophisticated" was meant to be ironic, in that context.

. . . though I suppose I could be mistaken. Maybe (s)he just thinks it's spelled "sofisticated".

http://sob.apotheon.org/?p=444

This is an essay written by one of the regular journalists. I'd suggest his articles on security also if you where interested but this is a pretty good analysis of Corporate America and the god you worship.

I found this by following the backlink from my personal weblog. Little did I know something I'd recently written there was being used as educational material here.

It's amazing to me the number of people who serve as free marketing for corporate excess -- what Lenin called "useful idiots", basically: people who buy the propaganda so fully and without in-depth questioning that a sort of mutant grass roots support for establishment practice can help convince the masses to go along with those who do them much harm. Such people, who use "capitalism" as their justification for all the pain people like Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer inflict on others, seem to have zero understanding that the circumstances of corporate law -- of the legal foundation for the existence of the corporation itself -- actually negates all possibility for a truly free market.

. . . but many of them will still call themselves "free market capitalists", as if they had any idea what that really meant.

Meh. I get a little worked up when I run across someone more properly called a mercantilist trying to pass him/herself off as a free market capitalist. It's a bit like when Chomsky tried defending Pol Pot as a beneficent agrarian reformer, or the way Mac-heads often act like they're such individualists for making sure their drapes match their iMacs -- except that those Mac-heads are pretty harmless, but a neo-mercantilist giving free market capitalists like me a bad name by associating themselves with the term "capitalism" is anything but harmless.

I couldn't resist. It seemed very applicable and my summary wouldn't have done it justice. I was hoping the person throwing business school theory at everyone would respond with some educated points or at least consider a view of the corporation from the consumar side rather than the executive side.

If I wanted to keep it secret, I wouldn't have posted it to the Web. Use and abuse. I even provide my content there under the terms of a permissive license.

What you quote is the core of what is currently wrong with Corporate America. Corporate America has forgotten that they are there for those that are paying the bills. It is not the share holders or the employees that are paying the bills. It is the customers. Here in lies the problem with Microsoft as with many other corporations. They see the customer as a sheep to be fleeced instead of seeing them as the reason for the company's existence.

I know what basic business practices are... My post was in response to prior posts about relating the amount of lawsuits to whether Bill Gates is "moral" or not. My point was (and maybe it wasn't as clear as I would have hoped) that MS being so large is going to have a lot of lawsuits, antitrust especially, whether or not they are "moral." I know that businesses need to and want to make a profit and that is the main force behind their drive. But that wasn't the point of my post... And I like your spelling of sophisticated...

is amoral and aethical, then I agree wholeheartedly.

Business ethics do indeed say you should act in the interest of your shareholders. Employees?, don't make me laugh, any corporate that acted in teh best interst of it's employers could not act in the best interest of it's shareholders, with the exception of a co-operative.

So do you really want to argue that given individual morality and ethics must be suspended in order to be successful, that this success is worth the price?

To whom ?

Who decides ?

Who pays ?

Smarts doesn't it?

Of course, the pursuit of self-interest - that is, the interests of the shareholders - should be the function of business managers everywhere.

Indeed, where managers start to pursue their own agenda in conflict with the interests of the shareholders (e.g. awarding themselves stratospheric salaries in exchange for grotesque incompetence, as seems to have been standard in financial services for the last three decades), that in itself is immoral.

But you are wrong to pretend that this amoral approach is not linked to the individual morality of those who pursue it. Brutal or shady conduct is always ordered (perhaps not overtly) by someone - and that person's moral character IS affected this.

So you're basically saying you'd rather he'd done his job badly than the governments do their jobs well, then?

Monopolies are the natural result of unregulated successes and/or economies of scale. It's the government's job to regulate them, not the firm's job to cut itself short.

I'd have wished the government had some balls and broken Microsoft into "baby bells". The smaller entities would have had to then compete based on products again instead of marketing and consumer hostile strategy. The consumer and market would ultimately win.

But, this is probably where we won't ever agree; there is a difference between predatory and successful. A business can be successful while still competing in a way that does not harm the market. A monopoly position can be held without anti-competitive practices. When gross profit margins are your only goal and the expense of the consumer, the market and your own product quality; something is very wrong.

What we have instead is a computer industry dominated by McDonalds because very few have any interest in learning about nutrition. When someone new tries to bring a higher quality of food to the customer; they are stomped out through tactics unrelated to food production. If this really was the food industry; how long does the population live if 90% of the time, we're eating McDonalds? If "Supersize Me" is any indication; you can expect liver failure in about six to eight weeks.

I'd have preferred Bill Gates be a computer genius instead of a strategy genius or Microsoft had kept focus on what was really important; the product and the customer.

Again, no one can argue that Microsoft has not been a successful business measured by market share and profits. At what cost to the market and consumer has that success been gained though?

"Monopolies are the natural result of unregulated successes and/or economies of scale."

That's not correct. Monopolies are the result of unnatural advantages that arise as the result of interference in market forces. Period.


"It's the government's job to regulate them, not the firm's job to cut itself short."

Actually, it should be regarded as the government's job to stop screwing with market forces so we don't have monolithic corporations engaging in classic sociopathic behavior thanks to the necessities of "corporate responsibility" in the first place. It's the company's job to do the best it can to profit by outperforming the competition without engaging in behavior like threats and fraud to undermine that competition.

Both the government and Microsoft have spectacularly failed to do their jobs, by that measure.


edit: fixed the quotes

Nobody denies Gates' impact in software industry both for good and for bad. That requires brains, I give you that, but morals? If he were started his foundation at the beggining of his career as many philanthropists did, I would have a reasonable doubt. But since that foundation was created AFTER his marriage to Melinda and at a time when he was already widely recognized as one of the most wealthy men in Earth, I have no doubt about that foundation was his wife's idea and he supported it in the hope of it would impact the dark image of his business. A similar case was Alfred Nobel's: while dynamite was a very profitable invention, it was terrible for public relations due to its impact in war casualties, so he felt responsible for this harm and tried to balance his legacy. Now he is recognized virtually only for the Nobel Prize he sponsored instead of his company's dark deeds.

I know world class business is a tough battlefield, but I would like to be remembered for the good impact of my work instead of for the record of most companies gone in my way to the top. Gate's legacy will include great things (like Excel, the .NET initiative or the spread of personal computers) along side with his bullying practices, whether there is a Foundation or not.

Okay, I've read a number of these messages and really felt like I had to jump in here. As far as Bill's motivations for the Foundation, they have always been pure and honorable. It was never about his image or how history would remember him -- it was about his wanting to make the world a better place. Melinda has certainly been a good influence on Bill and helped encourage him to find a healthy work/life balance, she isn't the sole reason behind his philantropy effort. Long ago Bill said that he had more money than any one person ever should and that he intended to give most all of it away. He stayed on at Microsoft as long as he did out of his sense of responsibility to the employees and shareholders of the company. He worked through a very long transition plan to ensure that Microsoft was bigger than he as leader. Most leaders would have jumped with their bags of money long ago but Bill wanted to do what was in the best interest of the company -- its emploees, shareholders and customers.

I am anxious to see what this man will do during the rest of his life. He is a driven individual, demands results from those around him, and won't give up or give in. When this guy wants to tackle problems like world health issues and disease, I have to say I have the utmost confidence in his ability to make huge inroads in these areas. I would not be surprised to see history remember Bill more for the things that he does AFTER his Microsoft tenure than during it.

"Bill wanted to do what was in the best interest of the company -- its emploees, shareholders and customers."

If Bill Gates isn't an unethical scoundrel -- if he really wants to do what's best -- then he's something of a mental midget when it comes to his ability to distinguish right from wrong. Even if we ignore everything else he's done and allowed to be done in his name, simply letting a sociopath like Steve Ballmer have the reins of Microsoft as its CEO is an ethical gaffe of monumental proportions.

"I am anxious to see what this man will do during the rest of his life. He is a driven individual, demands results from those around him, and won't give up or give in."

Considering how he has chosen to direct that drive of his in the past, I think the best thing for the future at this point would be for him to get hit by a bus. Whether he's amoral, immoral, or simply misguided, the damage he has done and is capable of continuing to do in the future is frightening to behold.

People talk about his "contributions" to the software industry as if the advances of the last thirty years wouldn't have happened without him. It's sickening to see people become so sycophantic over the successes he's achieved through anticompetitive business practices, misrepresentation to the customer base, and unconscionable pressures on the DoJ and legislature, just because he managed to position himself at the right place and time to ride the crest of a wave of technological advancement. Somehow, people think he created that wave, which just boggles my mind. He did nothing but take advantage of it, and knock others off the wave so he could claim it for his own at every opportunity.

"When this guy wants to tackle problems like world health issues and disease, I have to say I have the utmost confidence in his ability to make huge inroads in these areas."

Having the ability to do something doesn't mean someone will do it -- even if that person tries really hard. I have the ability to drive my car safely to the other end of town, but if I put my car in reverse every time I intend to shift into first gear, I guarantee that's not going to be the outcome. Progress is about velocity, not just speed; no matter how fast you go, if you're aimed in the wrong direction, you aren't going to get to the destination you had in mind.

I think he's more likely to waste his foundation's resources influencing legislation that will fail to address the issues he claims to want to address than to actually put those resources to productive use. As a result, we'll end up with another three layers of red tape legislation spread across the problems we need to solve in this world, making it ever more difficult to actually get at the problems themselves and implement useful solutions.

Sorry apotheon, my message was actally supposed to be a comment, and here it goes once again...

The Foundation I believe is not directly helping any particular instance but is spread over many geopolitically varied institutions, that are functioning in reality and who have, I presume no bad reputations. In this way the Foundation does not seem to exhibit any specific bias. This is a very tricky business even for political Gurus, and I think Bill and Melinda have kept themselves wisely in the background. That way there is less danger of him making a personal mistake or do some harm as you think he will inevitably do if allowed to follow the way of his in-your-eyes scheming self. I am personally also convinced that Bill is not planning some mass new corporate colonialism or some direct political reformation but indeed trying to help. Why should such a deed appear to demand a great benign character, whose traces you are apparently too ready to deny to exist in Bill Gates or I presume to acknowledge in any other human being? It may have more banal reasons, just the fact that he who has got so much can bring it upon himself to think about those who have got almost nothing and to care about the things that really matter, like the fate of the planet.

Furthermore if he disrupts unintentionally something here in the social and ecological sphere due incompetence, is that anything new? I have this feeling such issues are less resolved through competence than determination and luck. Who is really competent here? Intentions are what should count here in our judgment, not competences. And the judgment of competence, should generally be left to those without personal bias.

As far his riding on the crest of a wave, I think you are mistaken in that. He is more intelligent than to believe in that or feel his ego inflated because of congenial public illusion. Yes, some people may think he has throughout his life done some pioneering software wizardry, but seriously people are not all that ignorant as you think they are, and certainly not those who he meets in his professional life. In fact the media and many people just consider him to be an extremely clever businessman. He is certainly not basking in that sunshine. The fact is that he is generally more occupied with future rather than sitting on his past laurels. You do not want to see him in a more than one perspective.

Of course I have my negative judgment too. He or rather Microsoft potentially tend toward right, i.e., more control, more red-tape, more energy in investing in checks and controls, exhibiting a mono-cultural ethos, a secluded walled community that inevitably rouses envious or disgusted or curious and sometimes aggressive intrusive passions of those outside or of those trapped inside. But these characteristics within the Microsoft culture belong to a whole group, including that what you probably condone the most: aggressive, domineering and strategically planned approach to consumers and to society and life in general. However aggressive free-market tactics are not solely Bill?s domain, they are necessary selective pressures imposed by our current system, where we just can not find any viable alternative at present. Nevertheless Bill as a person is more than that. He is also an old friend of Steve Jobs. Besides people also change. May be today he thinks differently and perhaps even regrets having made so many enemies at one time.

Not knowing all the facts fully, I am neither praising him nor condoning him in extremes. But I have this feeling you exhibit an extremely radical view of him, almost like a personal bias. No human being can be only that and just that.

You make a lot of assumptions about what I think, and most of them are wrong.

You also don't seem to know what "free market" means.

Assumptions? Or misunderstood your posts or read between the lines? If it is fact,
I sincerely apologize. That way I have been guilty of exactly that what I seem to have accused you of. Projecting my own ignorance and maybe bias onto others.

Of course I do not know any damn thing about the free market, for if I did I would certainly be spending my time making money rather than accusing innocent and unbiased people of bias. I am glad to hear that it is not so? Oy! No sane human being can be just that one sided! Sorry if my post implied as much! Cheers!

BG is an excellent businessman. Sometimes I think that people that put him down are either jealous or just upset because some O/S on their notebook crashed, or they couldn?t figure out how to make Excel work the way they wanted it to.
I have always been interested in BG. He is extraordinary in many categories. His ability to digest and analyze huge amounts of information is astounding. His marketing techniques are better than IBM when they were considered the marketing gurus in the 70s & 80s. And, his visions are right on target. How many CEOs can you say that about?
I have worked on many platforms in my 40 years in IT. I worked with SAP, JDE, Oracle, IBM, Burrows, etc. etc. I am currently in the BI arena and have work with DW and BI for the last 11 years. I have come to realize that the MS platform is the best. It?s more cost effective and just as powerful as the rest. So, I decided to stick with their BI platform over all others even though I get calls daily to work on the others.
Why am I saying this? Because MS rules. They rule because of BG?s capabilities. My only problem right now is that Gates is out of the picture (maybe). But, I feel that he will be keeping a very close watch on his baby.
Maybe we should all just shut up about him, and learn from him.

An excellent business many; absolutely. There is no questioning that. Licensing instead of selling writes to software; that was the starter. Leveraging every advantage to thwart competition and user choice; brilliant if your goal is profits.

His prediction from "The Road Ahead" may be bang on even if years late. We're getting pretty close to just using satphones instead of cell or landlines but it's not there yet.

"Because MS rules."

That just makes you sound like a child who thinks a ball is better than the rest because it happens to be the new favorite colour.

From the business side, sure, kudos undoubtedly but try and consider MS history from the user side. They have accelerated the adoption of computers in every home (it was inevitable but they helped) and provided an almost good enough quality product for everybody to use with little training.

- malware runs rampant, viruses remain supported across versions of Windows
- standards are intentionally broken to only benefit MS; not even it?s end users
- many better technologies have been destroyed limiting the evolution of technology overall
- the market is constantly abused by anti-competitive monopoly practices and will eventually die if it's left unchecked (maybe the EU market can survive, the US has proven to have no teeth)

Maybe it's not just about Bill Gates. Maybe one can admire the things he has been very good at while still taking issue with the monster he created (balmer and the corporation). Maybe you should be a little less defensive and consider why others take such issue. If all you come up with is jealousy, start your analysis over.

The guy is inquestionably smart but his success has been at the expense of more than just inferior products.

I encourage anyone to look deeply into the issue of vaccines. I have, and there's a very dark history in there.

Without laying out the mass of details, that Gates jumped on that particular bandwagon indicates to me that those at the top do basically sell out to the devil.

Truth is stranger than fiction: the first two populations to develop "AIDS," one in Africa the other gay men in New York, have one thing in common:

They were both given the same BATCH of an experimental vaccine developed under the auspices of a military biological weapons program coming out of the Kissinger white house. (you think the president means anything anymore?)

Check this out:

http://www.brasschecktv.com/page/280.html

"improved behavior" ...read "brain dead zombie."

nt

EOL

Or Obama in a "hate the white man" church

I have no love for Obama, but this stuff about his church's preacher is blown a bit out of proportion. If we all cut ties with everyone who held a reprehensible opinion, most of us would be without any associates at all -- and only a lucky few would have one or two left.

Of course, whether anyone wouldn't have cut ties with Obama probably depends on whether "reprehensible" is measured by way of common perceptions, logically consistent systems of ethics, or personal opinions. If logically consistent systems of ethics were the criteria, Obama would shortly find himself quite friendless.

If I remember the articles, he had been going to the church all his life. The minister of the church made some comments in poor taste. That doesn't cancel out all of the scripture he preached though. They are still indaviduals.

Does a priest being caught with a boy invalidate all the scripture he reads from the pulpit or mean that every other man in the congregation practices the same dispicable interests?

(Let's just accept the extreme example and not go down that topical tangent though. I'm sure my responce to walking in on that discovery is far more harsh than most.)

My podre back home speaks English and Spanish fluently; why can't I speak Spanish fluently? I grew up going to that church and I can barely count to ten in rather horrible Spanglish.

The part that realy got me about that entire thing was this; WTF does Obama or any other person's religion have to do with it? Hours of airtime wasted wondering what religion the person was rather than what there political platform and ability to do the job was.

1. I find it ironic that in many cases the same person will denigrate Obama based on both his association with a Christian preacher who said some politically incorrect things and rumors that he's a Muslim. The two seem kinda contradictory if you ask me -- unless someone's going to claim the preacher is actually a Muslim, too.

2. You're right, Neon -- his religion should have no part in the matter. Any politician who makes his religion part of his or her appeal in an election is suspect, in my eyes, because I want representatives in government who are clearly able to separate church and state.

. . . and I'm not 100% sure that Obama is able to do that. I know for a fact Bush isn't. Oddly enough, McCain and Clinton both seem better able to separate religion from government than Obama, even though I wouldn't trust either one of them within half a mile of anything I cared about.

If Obama couldn't figure out how much of a whack-job his preacher, who married him and christened his children, was, then how in the heck is he going to run the country.

And I've left a church for far less than that.

Us internationals are only third party viewers at the show. Here's hoping for the best though.

Now, if anyone in the running demonstrate that religious choice was more important than governance; completely suspect. That entire separation of Church and State was done for a very good reason. Anyone who can't do that in such a multicultural nation has no business Chief. But this is the same as personal sexual preferences or any other quirk that has no place in business; if no effect on professionalism then it should be a part of it at all.

I remember the "is he Muslim or is he Christian" crap that went around and it turned my stomach. The news has never avoided topics that cause conflict and improve viewer numbers though.

May be best candidate win and here's hoping they bring a big roll of tape for some of that mess your present administration has made.

At some point I took the beneficial values of the church and split away from the mysticism and theater. It works for some and does provide a great sense of community if you can keep clear of the social and ideological politics.

I still say that if Obhama is professional enough to seporate his sunday worship from his political position then he can be a crazy snake kisser for all I'd care. If he's filtering out the BS spouted by his minister (the ethnic opinions at least ) and focus on the message in scripture then it's a none issue. If he demonstrates an inability to do that, well, we see about changing the domain names on all the Impeach Bush websites.

The vote is a personal decision though and everybody eligible should make it themselves. (I just wish fewer would make it based only on Fox reporting. Even your bad policies end up effecting us neighbors.)

Gates is something of a Porsche aficianado. His daily driver for years was/is a 1999 Porsche 911. In 1988, Gates attempted to import a rare Porsche 959 in spite of the fact that it had never been approved for federal emissions or crashworthiness. His stature did him no good and this $500,000 car sat in a customs warehouse for a decade. There's a false urban legend that Gates pressured Bill Clinton for a directive to legalize the car for "collectors."

It's on the public record that that (as a youth) he was briefly jailed in Albuquerque for racing a Porsche 911 in the desert.