BILL GATES: Evil Overlord?

Bill_gates_1Is Bill Gates an Evil Overlord?

Before you say, "No way! He’s history’s greatest benefactor of mankind!" consider the following.

The Evil Overlord List contains one of the following resolutions:

9. I will not include a self-destruct mechanism unless absolutely
necessary. If it is necessary, it will not be a large red button
labelled "Danger: Do Not Push". The big red button marked "Do Not Push"
will instead trigger a spray of bullets on anyone stupid enough to
disregard it. Similarly, the ON/OFF switch will not clearly be labelled
as such.

Now, in keeping with this, most Microsoft and related computer products do not appear to have a self-destruct mechanism (not an intentional one anyway), but how clearly are their on/off switches labelled?

Consider the two images below. Does EITHER clearly convey the idea that you press it to turn the machine off? Either of them????

Onoff Startbutton

Bill Gates: Evil Overlord.

Think about it.

Author: Jimmy Akin

Jimmy was born in Texas, grew up nominally Protestant, but at age 20 experienced a profound conversion to Christ. Planning on becoming a Protestant seminary professor, he started an intensive study of the Bible. But the more he immersed himself in Scripture the more he found to support the Catholic faith, and in 1992 he entered the Catholic Church. His conversion story, "A Triumph and a Tragedy," is published in Surprised by Truth. Besides being an author, Jimmy is the Senior Apologist at Catholic Answers, a contributing editor to Catholic Answers Magazine, and a weekly guest on "Catholic Answers Live."

7 thoughts on “BILL GATES: Evil Overlord?”

  2. So, all I need to be an evil overlord is to satisfy just one item on the evil overlord list?
    All your base belong to us!
    Bwahahahahahaha

  3. 1)Microsoft doesn’t make a whole lot of computers so they can’t be blamed for that particular aspect.
    2)The circle icon is a standard icon to represent power on/off.
    3)The standard power on/off icon is a compassionate way of eliminating situations in which tech support people have to actually TELL computer novices, “It’s the button that says On/Off”, thus giving said novices “plausible imbecility”.
    4)How many devices do you actually know of that have a butten labeled “on/off”?

  4. I truly dislike those “international” universal symbols like the on/off symbol. They aren’t intuitive in the least. Simply labelling it on/off would much easier to understand for everybody, including non-English speakers, but the French I’m sure would have none of that.

  5. As I recall the first computer I had back in the early 80’s didn’t have an on/off button, but instead had a toggle switch, labled “|” for on and “0” for off, these being rpresentative of the 1 and 0 of the binary code computers run on.
    Since the rest of the funtions of the machine, and every application it runs are different configurations of switches set to 1 or 0, I suppose it makes sense for the main switch to be labled in the same way.

  6. That he’s evil is a given, but is he an evil overlord (using the term in a secular sense)? Once I finish typing this into Internet Explorer running on Windows, I’ll let you know. 🙂
    Two other comments:
    1. The one thing that is keeping him from world domination is his failure to embrace Linux, or at least provide applications for it. If he’d consent to do that, then all your base WOULD belong to him.
    2. Successful companies often do well for a decade or more, then are overtaken by competitors. Montgomery Ward is gone. A&P is a shell of its former self. K Mart is in the doldrums. Wal Mart will be overtaken someday.
    Successful technology companies are often the victims of their own success. The people that found such companies are usually incapable of growing them.
    However, Microsoft has grown from college dorm to megacorp, and Bill Gates still runs the firm. In addition, while they have had minor setbacks, they are still a dominant firm. In fact, I don’t see anything that will defeat Microsoft as long as Gates and Ballmer are still living.

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