BayStar spokesman McGrath would not say who called BayStar managing partner Lawrence Goldfarb, but Goldfarb told BusinessWeek that it was not Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates or Chief Executive Steve Ballmer.
McGrath said the suggestion came from unidentified "senior Microsoft executives" but not Bill Gates, Microsoft's chairman, or Steven A. Ballmer, its chief executive.
Niall:
OK. Two questions.
1. Was Microsoft ever directly involved with the SCO Group in their lawsuit against IBM, either through BayStar Capital or others?
2. Why is Microsoft recently choosing to go after supposed patent violations with various operating system companies?
Bill:
I don't know BayStar.
Niall:
It's an investment company. One of their executives testified Microsoft invested $50 million to offset SCO's costs in the lawsuit.
Bill:
When?
”His declaration mentions Microsoft specifically as being the company that sent him (Baystar) to invest in SCO.“If you look at Groklaw's Timeline page, find the IBM exhibits and look for Goldfarb if you need more details. His declaration mentions Microsoft specifically as being the company that sent him (Baystar) to invest in SCO. Of course Microsoft denies it. Also look for the Mike Anderer memo.
Where does that leave Mr. Gates? It is very hard to find (I've spent about an hour searching) a connection between Bill Gates himself and BayStar. My attempt is to prove that Gates' reply to Niall's question was untruthful (i.e. that he was just playing naive).
At risk of going tangentially here, the reason why I suspect Bill Gates may have lied, is past evidence, some of which is presented below in order to convince you, the reader, that Gates was caught lying many times before (even repeatedly).
The arrogance and rudeness of Bill Gates can be seen here, but deception and pathological lies are something that we have not discussed here before. Well, now we will.
Only last week, Bill Gates was pretty much caught lying, again.
"Two years from now, spam will be solved."
— Microsoft's (MSFT) Bill Gates, 2004, World Economic Forum in Switzerland
[...]
"I never said it would be solved," Gates said in an interview with USA TODAY last month. "I said it would be substantially reduced, and in fact it has been reduced a lot."
A few days later, I saw what Bill Gates had to say in a recent Newsweek interview about the Mac as compared to Vista.
"I mean, it's fascinating, maybe we shouldn't have showed so publicly the stuff we were doing, because we knew how long the new security base was going to take us to get done. Nowadays, security guys break the Mac every single day. Every single day, they come out with a total exploit, your machine can be taken over totally. I dare anybody to do that once a month on the Windows machine."
My reaction, like most knowledgeable people who read this, was open-mouthed astonishment. Now, either Bill is heavily drugged and delusional, which I don't believe, or he's just completely ignorant, which I also discount, or he knows exactly what he's saying and has an ulterior motive. That's my best guess.
Bill Gates knows that he's at best exaggerating and at worst completely lying through his teeth. So why's he doing it? Because he also knows that Apple's new ads are helping Macs to sell like hot cakes, and that security is a big reason why a lot of people are throwing up their hands in disgust at Windows and switching to Apple's computers.
Who reads Newsweek? Not computer pros, but Joe and Jane Computer-user, and Joe and Jane tend to believe what they read in the mainstream media when it comes to computers, especially when that nice, smart philanthropist Bill Gates is the one saying it. He's Mr Computer, after all, so he must be right!
Denial! C'mon Billy Boy, you know things suck in the land of Vista. Just admit it and we'll be on our way.
Boies: Do you remember that in January, 1996, a lot of OEMs were bundling non-Microsoft browsers?
Gates: I'm not sure.
Boies: What were the non-Microsoft browsers that you were concerned about in January of 1996?
Gates: What's the question? You're trying to get me to recall what other browsers I was thinking about when I wrote that sentence?
Boies: No, because you've told me that you don't know what you were thinking about when you wrote that sentence.
Gates: Right.
Boies: What I'm trying to do is get you to tell me what non-Microsoft browsers you were concerned about in January of 1996. If it had been only one, I probably would have used the name of it. Instead I seem to be using the term non-Microsoft browsers. My question is what non-Microsoft browsers were you concerned about in January of 1996?
Gates: I'm sure -- what's the question? Is it -- are you asking me about when I wrote this e-mail or what are you asking me about?
Boies: I'm asking you about January of 1996.
Gates: That month?
Boies: Yes, sir.
Gates: And what about it?
Boies: What non-Microsoft browsers were you concerned about in January of 1996?
Gates: I don't know what you mean "concerned."
Boies: What is it about the word "concerned" that you don't understand?
Gates: I'm not sure what you mean by it.
Here is our local copy of the depositions of Bill Gates in the Microsoft anti-trust suit. We did our best to convert the original Windows Media files into an Open format, ogg. Your webmaster is responsible for the video transcoding, the audio-only files are contributed by a Groklaw member that requested to stay anonymous.
Bill Gates has been busted in a big fat lie and we've got the statistics to prove it.
If you watched the above video you will recall that bill gates said that british consumers will not be paying more than US customers, and that any price difference is merely due to differences in exchange rate
Speaking before a Senate committee earlier this month, Gates said that America is facing a critical shortage of tech workers. He recommended boosting the number of H-1B visas to allow more foreign tech workers into the U.S.
[...]
"I think that has created an environment where the population of advanced skill workers has shrunk a lot in the U.S., because we just haven't created a fair system," he says. "Where if you go to other countries, you'll find national policy around broadband deployment, which creates a much more even playing field for people of all income levels to learn by and work by."
"We did it to ourselves," he says.
...a new study from Duke University calls this argument bunk, stating that there is no shortage of engineers in the United States, and that offshoring is all about cost savings.