Bill Gates’s Farewell

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Amazingly, all the demos worked, so Gates will get to quit CES while he's ahead.

Gates did explicitly acknowledge that this was the last time he'd be keynoting, and that served to introduce his video, one of the strongest yet. It was a mockumentary of his upcoming last day at Microsoft. The continuing joke was that Gates will have unlimited time to kill. After playing with "Star Wars" figures, bulking up with Matthew McConaughey as a personal trainer and honing his "Guitar Hero" skills, Gates decides to branch out into a new career. This allows for a cavalcade of celebrities trying to gracefully let Gates know that he couldn't cut it in their world. Bono has to tell him that he couldn't replace the Edge in U2. Jay-Z breaks the news to Gates that he isn't a rocker. Spielberg turns him down for the movies. And both Hillary and Obama nix him as a running mate. The audience, many of whom had waited in line as long as four hours for the keynote, loved it.

Next year, no lines. But maybe CES officials can convince him to do another video.

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Posted By: ah7903 @ 01/09/2008 11:45:04 AM

He didn't do bad for a man that created an empire on stolen software.
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Posted By: aaabbb @ 01/09/2008 6:45:44 AM

This charity stuff has been invented by the Microsoft marketing folks to improve Gates' public image which has become very very dim.
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Posted By: brewerhaus @ 01/08/2008 12:25:20 PM

If only Levy could leave out the jabs and innuendo, perhaps just write the technical review. Maybe someday he could do re write this without his petty and personal desire to zing a man who has done far more good in the tech world than harm.