David Coursey: Give Bill A Break

David Coursey: Give Bill A Break "Bill Gates’ getting the dread “blue screen of death” during his keynote this week at the Consumer Electronics Show is more a comment on the hazards of live performances than it is on Microsoft products. Over the years, I have hosted a number of highly-produced events and the occasional crash is going to happen almost regardless of how much you prepare or rehearse.
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Sure it’s embarrassing that Bill got a blue screen and it’s fun to say, “Well, if Bill Gates can’t keep his software running what hope is there for the rest of us?” But that’s just fun and I think anybody who goes onstage with a live demo of beta software will eventually have a crash. This time it was merely Bill’s turn."

I agree completely. BTW the people who are having a field day with Gates' use of the term "communist" during a CES interview last week might want to brush up on their history a bit; communism != Stalinism (nor "communism" as practiced today in, e.g., China or North Korea), and the founding tenets of communism do indeed have a lot in common with the free software movement.

Excerpt from ZDNet interview:
"[Q:] In recent years, there's been a lot of people clamoring to reform and restrict intellectual-property rights. It started out with just a few people, but now there are a bunch of advocates saying, "We've got to look at patents, we've got to look at copyrights." What's driving this, and do you think intellectual-property laws need to be reformed?
[Gates:] No, I'd say that of the world's economies, there's more that believe in intellectual property today than ever. There are fewer communists in the world today than there were. There are some new modern-day sort of communists who want to get rid of the incentive for musicians and moviemakers and software makers under various guises. They don't think that those incentives should exist."