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| Picture Credit: Time Magazine |
“Behind every
great fortune, there is a great crime” - Honoré de Balzac
The
name Bill Gates represents different personality to different people. To the
Dangotes, he is the yardstick for measuring success and building business
empires. To many academicians, he is that genus that intentionally dropped-out
of the prestigious Harvard University because he felt the system was slowing
him down and needed to move at his own pace. In Harvard, he was notorious for
attending courses that are not meant for his level and refusing to attend those
lectures that he needs to graduate. To many of us in the information and communication
technology (ICT) profession, we see him as that computer wizard that led the
world to revolutionalsed the operating system and moved away from the complex
command driven black screen DOS to the flexible colourful and user-friendly
windows operating system. But beyond all these I also see him as a con-man.
Oh
yes, that’s exactly what I mean, a swindler who exploits the confidence of his
victims. Hmm, but before you begin to pass a judgment on me as a perfect case
of an ignorant villager that is questioning the science that takes a rocket to
the moon, I will like you to patiently
read this piece to the final full-stop because I have a new message for you. I
hope to make my point clear base on common knowledge, history and not base on
computer tricks (computricks). At the
end of this, I also don’t want to be known as the guy that exposed the Machiavellian Gates!
In
the late1990s, the world was submerged in the euphoria, exhilaration, uncertainties
and expectations of what the coming new millennium will look like. While many
fake prophesies were made on how the world would come to an end when the second
hit the year 2000. At the same time, many scientists were so occupied with
projections of the type of technologies that are likely to dominate the new
millennium and also the scientific problems that remain unsolved. But one
problem was timely, it was said to shutdown and damage computers when the clock
hit the new millennium and so it was called the “millennium bug”. For those of you that have a volatile memory, let
me remind you that the so-called millennium
bug was a myth about a programming error that was said to begin January 1,
2000 caused by programming that coded years with only 2 digits; ambiguity
arises in the year 2000, whether 00 represents the year 1900 or 2000, and
calculations based on it may fail or produce incorrect results.
Mr.
Gates and his allies were quick to recognize this myth as a potential goldmine.
They know that only a tiny percentage of the world population at the time critically
understood computer programming. They know that a very large percentage of the
world population at the time is not computer literate and more than half of the
world population at the time have computer phobia (the fear of the computer). But
more importantly, they also know that people need to be told lies to part with
their cool cash. So they repackaged the pack of lies. They told the world that as
the clock tick on the year 2000, all computers that contain this bug will
automatically shutdown themselves and then damage all stored information.
Thereby resetting themselves to a factory
settings of 1900 kind of. This sends fear into most people’s minds. Both individuals,
cooperate organisations, schools and governments that uses computers panicked
with fear. Banks and other financial institutions begin to scream for help
because they are at risk of losing all customers’ records and that will be a major
catastrophe. Suddenly, the anxiety of the arrival of the new millennium jumped
to a new all-time high.
In
the mix of this chaos, Mr. Con-man and other western media tries to convince
people that scientific programming started the very moment the clock started
ticking at Microsoft. So, within a very short period he came out to announce a
solution through his Microsoft Company. The solution was that we all have to
change to what they called “Y2K compliant
PCs” which their company produced. In no time all roads leads to Microsoft
and the swindler shot straight up the ranks to become the richest man in the
world. The whole millennium bug hypothesis was nothing but a hoax! The entire
Y2K compliant PC solution was a fraud because the magnitude of the problem itself
had been highly over exaggerated. We only need a simple solution like
installing corrective software which may cost close to nothing to fix this
error. Mr. Gates and his cronies knows this simple solution better than all of
us, but they decided to use fear and took advantage of our collective ignorance
to dupe us.
Now
let’s look at my darling country in light of the events. But before I proceed,
can we just accept it that we like to copy things “follow-follow” without reasons? Yes, we do. I was still in the
University during my undergraduate days when all these things happened. I can
still remember how my department had to squeeze from their small budget to
purchase some of these so-called Y2K compliant PCs. I can still remember how
the University Computer Centre was divided into two partitions; the alleged
bugged systems in one partition, while the other partition housed the Microsoft
branded Y2K compliant PCs. It was there that yours sincerely performed his
armature experiment. Immediately after
the January 2000 New Year break, I was among the first students to book for
time at the University Computer Centre. I tried my curious hands on the alleged
millennium bug infected systems and to the best of my little knowledge; I was
unable to discover any damage on the systems. Oh, wait a minute! Did anyone
heard of a report of any millennium bug damaged computer system as the clock
ticked pass the new millennium in Nigeria? If no, why did we decide to keep
mute?
I
know by now you may also be asking the question, why is the author trying to
wake more than a decade old ghost from its grave? The answer to this question
is simple, we learn from our mistakes. So, when Mr. Gates went back to Harvard
University few weeks ago for a fundraising
event he announced another costly computing error. He said the overly-complicated
three-key combination of “control-alt-delete”
use to log-on to a PC or to start a task manager was a mistake!
"It was a mistake. We could have had a single
button, but the guy who did the IBM keyboard design didn't wanna give us our
single button."
On hearing this, he quickly woke the
curious guy in me. Is Mr. Gates also trying to wake another ghost from its
grave just to make some cool cash or just another computrick error? As for me;
I was wise enough to escape the Microsoft Vista hype. Can someone please help
me tell my Con-man that - once bitten, twice shy.
Shafi’i
Muhammad Abdulhamid
wrote-in from the Federal University of Technology Minna.
PUBLISHED IN:
1. Omojuwa.com, "The Machiavellian Gates", 09/11/2013
2. SkytrendNews, "The Machiavellian Gates", 09/11/2013, 01:54pm
3. The Will, "The Machiavellian Gates", 10/11/2013
4. Universal Reporters, "The Machiavellian Gates", 08/11/2013, 11:19pm
5. Abuja Voice, "The Machiavellian Gates", 10/11/2013
6. Africa Outlook, "The Machiavellian Gates", 09/11/2013
7. Abusidiqu, "The Machiavellian Gates", 09/11/2013, 08:15am
8. The Herald, "The Machiavellian Gates", 10/11/2013
9. FrontiersNews, "The Machiavellian Gates", 12/11/2013, 19:55
