From: sip1@ellis.uchicago.edu (Timothy F. Sipples)
Subject: Re: Bill Gates:  What a weenie...
Reply-To: sip1@midway.uchicago.edu
Organization: Dept. of Econ., Univ. of Chicago
Date: Mon, 4 Jan 1993 02:39:16 GMT

In article <dlcogswe.726111080@vela> dlcogswe@vela.acs.oakland.edu (Dan Cogswell) writes:
>Did anybody catch Bill Gates' interview on This Week with David
>Brinkley?  It had to be the most awkward ten minutes of television
>history.  What a geek.
>One good point:  he admitted that he's the richest man in the U.S.
>because he was in the right place at the right time.  
>I especially like the bone he threw to IBM about how they were "still
>likely to play an important role in the computer industry" followed by a
>nervous grin (i.e., "I didn't really believe what I just said, but I
>sure wish they still liked me...").
>All in all, I'm glad I'm not buying this man's products. 

I don't share the general slant of this post.  I really don't have
much opinion on the interview.

However, I did chuckle when David Brinkley asked Bill Gates,
paraphrasing, "So, you and Paul Allen got together and wrote some of
the first software for microcomputers, you kept writing software, and
you made a lot of money.  What have you done since?"

It did sort of put things into cosmic perspective, didn't it?

Brinkley also told Gates at the end of the interview that, eleven
years ago, he bought one of his products, "EasyWriter 2," and that he
liked it a lot.  Gates tried to explain that his company didn't
produce EasyWriter 2, but Brinkley would have nothing of it.  He said,
again paraphrasing, "It said right in the front of the manual that if
I had any questions I was to write Bill Gates."  (I'm not familiar
with this bit of computing folklore, and I'd be real curious to see
the EasyWriter 2 manual now, but my suspicion is that the programmers
were expressing frustration with DOS.)

At the beginning of the interview, Brinkley asked Gates if he had any
opinion on his generation of Baby Boomers (the topic of the show,
after all).  Gates replied that he was born in 1955, and he really
wasn't a part of the Baby Boomers, because he was too young to serve
in Vietnam.  A long, awkward pause followed (and Brinkley seemed about
to ask something like, "Well, why are you here, then?"; or possibly
"Did the producer check you out?").  Later, George Will tried to
salvage things by referring to Gates as a member of that generation,
albeit a trailing member.  Which really didn't help any, come to think
of it.

Donaldson (the pit bull of the crew, you might say) pressed Gates on
his net worth at one point in the interview.  Donaldson asked Gates
whether he was really worth $6 billion.  Gates replied that he owned
part of the company, Microsoft, and that the stock value tended to
fluctuate from day to day depending on the market.  Donaldson
retorted, in essence, "Oh, so that means you're worth a mere $5
billion one day and then perhaps $7 billion the next."  Gates: "Yes."

I had a good chuckle -- it really was entertaining.  Perhaps for
unintended reasons.

-- 
Timothy F. Sipples      | Read the OS/2 FAQ List 2.0h, available from
sip1@ellis.uchicago.edu | 128.123.35.151, anonymous ftp, in /pub/os2/all/info
Dept. of Econ., Univ.   | /faq, or from LISTSERV@BLEKUL11.BITNET (send "HELP")
of Chicago, 60637       | [Read the List, THEN post to ONE OS/2 newsgroup.]
Xref: sparky comp.os.os2.advocacy:11301 comp.os.ms-windows.advocacy:3579