“Behind every great fortune, there is a great crime” – Honoré de Balzac
The name Bill Gates means 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 ajudgment 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 like 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 errorthat 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 percent of the world population at the time criticallyunderstood computer programming. They know that a very large percent 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 becausethe 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!
“itwas 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.
Written By Shafi’i Muhammad Abdulhamid
Twitter:@shafzon
FaceBook: Shafi’i Abdulhamid
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