Computer guru Bill Gates, one of the world's most powerful men, might be the Devil in disguise, according to Internet hackers.

For they have found uncanny number sequences in his name - and in his world-beating Windows software.

They say that 40-year-old Gates and Windows are linked with the Satanic number 666.

In the world of computing, every letter is given a number known as an ASCII code (pronounced askey).
By converting his full title, Bill Gates III, into code you get: B=66, I=73, L=76, L=76, G=71, A=65, T=84, E=69, S=83, I=1, I=1, I=1. Add the numbers and the total is 666.

Or take the name of Microsoft's operating system MS-DOS 6.21. Converted into ASCII code the result is 77 + 83 + 45 + 68 + 79 + 83 + 32 + 54 + 46 + 50 + 49 = 666.

And Windows95, Gates' new operating system, gives: 87 + 73 + 78 + 68 + 79 + 87 + 83 + 57 + 53 = 665. One short. But the upgraded Windows96 will tally up to 666.

The number 666 is said in the Book of Revelations to be the "Number of the Beast". It was banned from car number plates by the Driver and Vehicle Licensing Center in 1991 because motorists believed it caused accidents.

One religious sect, known as the Exclusive Bretheren, has asked schools not to teach their children with computers because they consider them the "tools of the devil."

And the former Archbishop of York, John Habgood, said he considered the information revolution to be "devilish".

So is billionaire Bill out for world domination? Is Satan himself lurking behind that computer screen?

A Microsoft spokeswoman said yesterday: "We can assure everyone that he is not the devil!"  (Just what you'd EXPECT them to say!)

Article in the Daily Express, by Paul Gallagher, 28/09/96.

        Current history knows three antichrists:
        - Adolf Hitler
        - Joseph Stalin
        - The Pope

        Is the fourth beast Microsoft corporation which represents
        the power of money?

* Revelation 13:16 and 13:18 says:
*
*    He causes all, both small and great, rich and poor, free and
*    slave, to receive a mark on their right hand or on their
*    foreheads.
*
*    and that no one may buy or sell except one who has the mark or
*    the name of the beast, or the number of his name.

        "Windows compatible?"

    And think on this - soon we'll all be wearing a small device that uses our body's' electric fields to transmit data - including banking information (much like a debit card and electronic business card rolled into one). Guess who's going to make the chips? Intel. Guess who's going to write the software? Microsoft.

    The environment that nurtures creative programmers kills management and marketing types - and vice versa. Programming is the Great Game. It consumes you, body and soul. When you're caught up in it, nothing else matters. When you emerge into daylight, you might well discover that you're a hundred pounds overweight, your underwear is older than the average first grader, and judging from the number of pizza boxes lying around, it must be spring already. But you don't care, because your program runs, and the code is fast and clever and tight. You won. You're aware that some apple think you're a nerd. So what? They're not players. They've never jousted with Windows or gone hand to hand with DOS. To them C++ is a decent grade, almost a B - not a language. They barely exist. Like soldiers or artists, you don't care about the opinions of civilians. You're building something intricate and fine. They'll never understand it.

    BEEKEEPING
    Here's the secret that every successful software company is based on:

    You can domesticate programmers the way beekeepers tame bees. You can't exactly communicate with them, but you can get them to swarm in one place and when they're not looking, you can carry off the honey. YOu keep these bees from stinging by paying them money. More money than they know what to do with. But that's less than you might think. You see, all these programmers keep hearing their fathers' voices in their heads saying "When are you going to join the real world?" All you have to pay them is enough money that they can answer (also in their heads) "Geez, Dad, I'm making more than you." On average, this is cheap. And you get them to stay in the hive by giving them other coders to swarm with. The only person whose praise matters is another programmer. Less-talented programmers will idolize them; evenly matched ones will challenge and goad one another; and if you want to get a good swarm, you make sure that you have at least one certified genius coder that they can all look up to, even if he glances at other people's code only long enough to sneer at it.
He's a Player, thinks the junior programmer. He looked at my code. That is enough. If a software company provides such a hive, the coders will give up sleep, love, health, and clean laundry, while the company keeps the bulk of the money.

    OUT OF CONTROL

    here's the problem that ends up killing company after company. All successful software companies had, as their dominant personality, a leader who nurtured programmers. But no company can keep such a leader forever. Either he cashes out, or he brings in management types who end up driving him out. Or he changes and becomes a management type himself. One way or another, marketers get control.

    But, control of what? Instead of finding assembly lines of productive workers, they quickly discover that their product is produced by utterly unpredictable, uncooperative, disobedient, and worst of all, unattractive people who resist all attempts at management. Put them on a time clock, dress them in suits, and they become sullen and start sabotaging the product. Worst of all, you can sense that they are making fun of you with every word they say.

    SMOKED OUT

    The shock is greater for the coder, though. He suddenly finds that alien creatures control his life. Meetings, Schedules, Reports. And now someone demands that he PLAN all his programming and then stick to the plan, never improving, never tweaking, and never, never touching some other team's code. The lousy young programmer who once worshiped him is now his tyrannical boss, a position he got because he played golf with some sphincter in a suit.

    The hive has been ruined. The best coders leave. And the marketers, comfortable now because they're surrounded by power neckties and they have things under control, are baffled that each new iteration of their software loses market share as the code bloats and the bugs proliferate. Got to get some better packaging..Yeah, that's it.

Oh, come on ... Gates isn't *evil*.  He has some control issues, that's all. At any rate, we have to deal with him, for now.  I've become fond of my PalmPilot, and I really resent having to use this Gatesian mess.  I feel as if I've been embraced and extended a little too far these days.

But ... imagine being Wild Bill for a moment.  You wake up, scratch your balls and wonder, "Where do I want to go today?"  knowing wherever you go is news.  You brush your teeth and realize, "I'm possibly the most powerful man in the world, and I don't even have a nuclear bomb!  Yet.  Mental note ... Get reactor on-line."  You drive to work and have a flash -- "I don't need to be here.  I could be in Kuala Lumpur, embracing and extending the Malaysian economy."  You shake your head at the people around you, thinking, "I dropped out of Harvard for this."  You can hear your ears whistle through the air as you shake it.

Bill Gates is lucky.  Very lucky.  He's lucky that his competitors fell asleep (it's easy to do that when you get patted on the back too much -- ask any baby).  He's lucky that Digital Research was golfing when IBM wanted someone to sign that DOS contract.  He's lucky that Dell and Compaq and everyone else didn't tell him to fuck off.

I get the sensation -- not a intuition, just a sensation -- that Mr. Gates' luck is about to run out.  Microsoft has developed both corporate hubris and inertia, and we're about to see the results of that.  I recall the lessons taught by IBM and Apple; inertia and hubris are a bad combination.  ("Nobody ever got fired for buying IBM."  -- from a '70s magazine ad.)  Microsoft will lose the next big fight.

MS may not get broken up, but I believe they are about to collapse under their own collective weight.  MS is not a prestigious resume listing anymore.  Their pay scales are well-known now, and they're pathetic.  No one wants to work there, unless you're a rah-rah corporate head.  They're losing the battle for the hearts and minds of the world (no matter how cool their ads try to be).  When you can make IBM look revolutionary, you should sense something's wrong.

Already, you can smell decay coming from Redmond.  You can see it in how they deal with customers.  If you don't have 15,000 copies of Office, you aren't shit (and if you do, you are).  That's the attitude they're exuding right now.  They've become an antirevolutionary company, one based on the numbers rather than on their software.  Bugs aren't bugs anymore.  They're not even anomalies.  They're *the way the software works*.  Your complaints do not matter to them.  Their "service release" for Office didn't fix anything of note.  It added features that few people Out Here (not in Redmond) wanted.  It's rot at the core.

Evil?  No ... rot.  They're rotten as a software company because they are rotten at the core.  Their core is not software but business.  Software is a commodity, not a product.  They create it casually, as if they don't care about it (they don't).  They treat Office products as if they were games -- if it doesn't work, that's too bad for you.  Hah hah, we have your money.

It may sound strange, but I don't believe Microsoft's management knows much about running a software company.  I don't believe they understand the extent to which software has taken over in the workplace.  I really don't believe (not even for a moment) that Microsoft understands the extent to which people depend on *their* products.

Return To Sanctuary