[Am-info] Sarah, 15, sticks it to Bill Gates

[Gene Gaines]

,

I love it!

See: http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/4/23274.html

Full text below.

Gene Gaines
gene.gaines@gainesgroup.com
Sterling, Virginia 


>From The Register

Sarah, 15, sticks it to Bill Gates in BBC interview
By John Lettice
Posted: 07/12/2001 at 17:29 GMT

Bill Gates whizzed through the UK yesterday, not meeting Tony Blair,
as previously detailed here, not saying much public about his pitch to
National Health Service Trust chief executives, and not saying much
of interest in his pitch on behalf of MSN to ad executives.

You can hear the latter pitch if you go here, but you may find it more
amusing to go there using a browser that doesn't have the correct
plug-in enabled, in which case you'll be presented with just
about the largest splash ad for MSN that you could possibly imagine
instead. Given that the pre-publicity for the gig as peddled by
Reuters said that MSN is "developing a comprehensive program
that allows ad agencies to devise larger and more interactive Web
ads," this is surely far more on the mark than Bill's speech itself.

A smattering of professional journalists got to ask Bill questions
towards to end, although as is frequently the case with the great man
these days, they had to submit them prior to the gig. We've no idea
whether they were dull to start with, or whether the spin doctors only
selected the dull ones. But all is not lost, apparently - Bill did have to
deal with some hard-hitting questions from an unlikely source. So
let's hear it for Sarah, 15, from Lincolnshire.

At the MSN gig Gates got something impossibly dull about branding
from one of the marketing pubs and a question about TV so
unspeakably tedious from The Times' Ray Snoddy that we fall
asleep every time we even try to think about it. At BBC children's TV
Newsround, however, he got these from Sarah (15):
"Your company is now a household name but some people claim
you have a monopoly on the IT industry. How do you react to that?"
Question number two, after the soft lead-in question about how it
feels to be the richest man in the world - nice technique, Sarah)

Bill is just as useless as he is when confronted on video by a team of
thugs hired by the DoJ: "Well Microsoft has had its success by doing
low-cost products and constantly improving those products and
we've really redefined the IT industry to be something that's about a
tool for individuals."

Question 3: "OK.[Nice again Sarah, shows you don't buy this crap]
How did you take the news that Microsoft were going to be taken to
court over the supposed monopoly?" The nose-dive into inarticulacy
continues: "Well I suppose Microsoft has had some sort of
discussion with the government on various topics for over a decade
and it's not atypical when you're successful to have various things of
that kind of nature. It's not the part of my job that I enjoy the most. I
love building the products, seeing people use the products but you
know along with success comes the need for a dialogue with the
government."

Question 4: "On the subject of success, what do you think of the way
some people seem to dislike the success you've had with
Microsoft?" (This girl doesn't let up, does she?) Bill responds with
survey data about Microsoft being the most admired company in the
galaxy. We won't detain you with this. But she's back with question 5:
"What do you think it is that they particularly dislike?" He dodges.
"It's mainly the competitors that speak out." And then she lets him off,
which is reasonable - once you've got them on the floor, there's no
need to stamp too hard.

The whole of this coming media star's oeuvre, including Bill's shock
admission that his computer definitely crashes, is available here. ®
at:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/cbbcnews/hi/club/your_reports/newsid_1697000/1697132.stm