Get on the 'Gates for President' Bandwagon 654
netbuzz writes "Dilbert's Scott Adams kicked off the idea in his November 19th blog post, saying there isn't anything wrong with this country that President Bill Gates couldn't cure in less time than it takes to get a new operating system out the door. Today, the idea is moving forward with a brand-new 'Bill Gates for President' Web site. Adams is also back on the campaign trail, flogging the site and Gates' candidacy." A blog post at Network World includes a lot of eye-rolling about this idea, but neither Adams nor the folks at the 'Gates for President' website seem to be taking this lightly.
Worst idea I've ever heard. (Score:3, Informative)
Re:A philanthropist President (Score:3, Informative)
Now, now. He didn't steal it. He bought it legitimately.
Re:Remember (Score:5, Informative)
Perot actually did rather well (about 19% popular) (Score:3, Informative)
That was running against a rather centrist democrat. What would happen if a third party candidate as viable as Perot ran against far more extemeist candidates from both the Republicans and Democrat sides? I think the tenor of politics has polarized so much that a third choice is very viable right now, if they are the right person (I'm not sure Gates has the personality for this) and have enough financial backing (there Gates is doing just fine thanks). What if in fact Perot had been running this last presidential election? Is it so impossible to think he would have won - handily?
In every election now the swing votes are the independents. If they all have someone else to swing to, and republicans and democrats swing as well... you have a winner right there.
It doesn't even have to be libertarian, another new party created from scratch (as Perot did) would work just fine. Heck, reassemble the Perot party! You could even use the same charts he used today.
Re:The very same things which make us hate M$... (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Remember (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Uh... (Score:3, Informative)
You want to elect an evil genius, on the basis that while he might be evil, the genius part would be great if you can keep him in check?
Prove your democracy's "checks and balances" can handle something as dangerous as a baby's rattle without fucking up international politics, then maybe we'll look at getting you that really handy assault rifle, mmmkay?
"Smart is smart, regardless of the subject."
Yes, but you have to ensure the subject remains "how can I best promote freedom and benefit this country and the people in it", and stop it changing to "how can I get as rich as possible, while still forcing the little people to do my bidding".
Again, if you can't do this with an unintelligible mumbling fool, you really, really don't want to elect Dr Evil and trust him to act in the common good.
Re:Uh... (Score:3, Informative)
[...] outright theft (see Stac), [...]
Since when is a patent violation "theft" ?
Besides, I thought we'd all agreed that software patents were bad, mmkay ?
It was the clear copyright infingement that riled most people.
Microsoft copy-n-pasted the code!
Also, it was a depressing to see how badly our legal system handled the infraction, Stac was killed causing everyone there to lose their jobs and breaking up a good development team. The only relief was a few hundred million dollars for the investors in the company, much of which went to their lawyers. Stac probably would have become a multi-billion dollar company and today we might all have faster disk access through a clever mix of compression and better filesystems.
Of course copyright infringement isn't theft either. Stac might have survived if the management had thought more about keeping the operation going than worrying about the Microsoft lawsuit. They could have handed over the lawsuit handling to a few trusted people and gotten a good cash infusion down the road to help launch a future product. Instead news reports at the time indicated that they freaked out and then missplaced their business thinking caps.