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Scheming Geek Speaks (8/26/99)
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Speaking of company histories, we know where Steve Jobs stands on TNT's made-for-cable romp, "Pirates of Silicon Valley." He actually invited his buddy Oracle CEO Larry Ellison over to watch it on the night it premiered, and while Steve wasn't too thrilled with having been written as a big meanie, he did keep his sense of humor. In fact, he was so impressed with Noah Wyle's portrayal of His Royal Steveness that he called the ER star the very next day and invited him to take the stage at the Macworld Expo keynote address, which was a fun stunt to say the least.
Now, for those of you who saw the movie, you'll probably agree that Bill Gates came off better than Steve did; sure, he was a geek who couldn't get the chicks, but he was a shrewd geek with a profound amount of business sense. And while he was shown to have made some weaselly moves in the establishment of the Microsoft empire, at least he wasn't a psychotic drug-abusing child-abandoner like Steve was portrayed. But there's been no sign of a Gates response to the film-- until now.
A Reuters article details how Gates finally broke his "Pirates" silence while addressing the audience at a Dell customer conference. "Maybe I'm too close to the situation to like the portrayal, but that was not history," quoth the hometown-geek-made-good. "They didn't get the facts quite right." Wow-- a made-for-cable prime-time TNT movie didn't get the facts quite right? And here we thought they were making a documentary. This makes us wonder if Bill demanded his money back from the theater manager after complaining that "Robin Hood: Men In Tights" wasn't historically accurate.
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SceneLink (1744)
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And Now For A Word From Our Sponsors |
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 | | The above scene was taken from the 8/26/99 episode: August 26, 1999: Amazon.com takes some heat over revealing what people from different companies are reading; the top sellers to Apple employees might surprise you. Meanwhile, Bill Gates finally comments on the historical inaccuracy of "Pirates of Silicon Valley," and the Java built into Windows contains a nasty security hole, but if you use a Mac, you're in the clear...
Other scenes from that episode: 1743: It's All In The Books (8/26/99) Remember Apple's brain drain a couple of years ago? Back when the "Cupertino Titanic" was most definitely a sinking ship, the talent was heading for the lifeboats quicker than The Mod Squad came to home video... 1745: Read Email, Get Toasted (8/26/99) You know things are slow in the world of Apple when we resort to telling you about the latest Microsoft security flaws, but hey, it's the silence before Seybold, you know? So until Steve takes the podium and announces new "Yikes!"...
Or view the entire episode as originally broadcast... | |  |
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