billg vs. a liger

September 15, 2005 11:42 AM

Bill Gates meets Napolean Dynamite. Microsoft has a history of doing little spoofs at their developer events (a couple years ago Gates and Ballmer did a send up of the GTI commercial and then there was The Matrix). While this one is a shaky camera capture (hopefully someone uploads the original), it's still pretty amusing and fun to watch Gates poke fun at himself. Of course, the unintended comedy videos involving Gates are often funnier.
posted by mathowie (54 comments total)

Wasn't Napoleon Dynamite cut on a Mac?
posted by bstreep at 11:53 AM on September 15, 2005

Wasn't Napoleon Dynamite cut on a Mac?

aperantly

That said, what's your point? It's somehow ironic that bill gates parodied a movie that was edited using their competitors software (a competitor who is 10% owned my microsoft?)
posted by delmoi at 11:56 AM on September 15, 2005

Yes, that was my point. Aperantly.
posted by bstreep at 12:11 PM on September 15, 2005

What's the sign say over the two tables? One is M$. The other? Looks like maybe United States of America? It's all blurry on my screen.
posted by ajpresto at 12:12 PM on September 15, 2005

developers, developers, developers!
posted by blue_beetle at 12:15 PM on September 15, 2005

Quicktime stamps all over windows media player. christ, I can't even see this.
posted by bonaldi at 12:17 PM on September 15, 2005

Am I still the only person below 30 in the world that thinks that Napoleon Dynamite is one of the least funny and grossly overrated movies of all time? I am? Just checking...
posted by emptybowl at 12:19 PM on September 15, 2005

emptybowl: Yes, you are.
posted by wakko at 12:24 PM on September 15, 2005

emptybowl: You are not alone
posted by darkness at 12:25 PM on September 15, 2005

I think Microsoft sold off almost all of its Apple stock back when Apple became more of a real threat again. I might be wrong, though.
posted by abcde at 12:27 PM on September 15, 2005

emptybowl: At 17, I found it pretty mediocre. My 50- and 67-year-old parents liked it much more than me.
posted by abcde at 12:29 PM on September 15, 2005

WaitingWaitingWaiting. No content makes me a sad panda. waaaah!
posted by CynicalKnight at 12:31 PM on September 15, 2005

I'd be more impressed by a video where Bill Gates gets through one keynote without a technical failure (or even one where Jobs fails to rock the house).
posted by abcde at 12:41 PM on September 15, 2005

I thought the movie was dull and unfunny, but then again I'm over 30.

And Jon Heder is a cutie.
posted by iconomy at 12:45 PM on September 15, 2005

bonaldi writes "Quicktime stamps all over windows media player. christ, I can't even see this."

Are you saying quicktime is better, and that if it was a quicktime video rather than wmv it would load, and thus it won't load because it's not quicktime and that's why you can't see it?

Personally, I've found that wmv has really good compression. Much larger viewing area than mpeg-4 at the same MB size, as much as I may be annoyed with MS they did a fantastic job with the wmv video.

Or are you saying that the player itself (and not the format) is the issue here? I agree that WMP does stink. Which is why I use Winamp to pull up all windows media files. But Quicktime isn't any better. The least Apple could do is make a frickin' media player that attempts to fit in with the OS it is built to run on. If you make a program for a Mac, you should use native widgets and follow the "look and feel" GUI guidelines. When you release something on Windows, you should do the same for that platform. Apple's refusal to do so for Quicktime (and iTunes for that matter) annoys the shit out of me, largely because I know how much bitching would ensue if MS released a program for OSX that used the Windows-standard GUI interface features.

That link to the Matrix spoof - one of the images near the bottom apparently is a blurry screen grab of a Linux laptop showing a crash error (alert box on screen says something like "Kernel error - recompile drivers?") which is pretty damn lame for two reasons. I mean, first, MS is making fun of the stability of Linux? (Um... yeah. Pull the stick out of your eye before you tell me about the speck in mine, MS.) And second, what the hell would a Linux Matrix agent be doing with a GUI desktop anyway? Feh.
posted by caution live frogs at 12:47 PM on September 15, 2005

not working.
posted by Edible Energy at 12:49 PM on September 15, 2005

I thought the movie was dull and unfunny, but then again I'm over 30.

I'm with you. I am usually pretty quick on the uptake, but it seemed like enjoying Napoleon Dynamite was predicated on "getting" whatever the meta-joke was. Was it that they had 30-something character actors playing the part of school kids... or was it something else? I still don't unnerstan'.
posted by psmealey at 12:52 PM on September 15, 2005

Whatever I FEEL like I wanna do, GOSH!!
posted by sdrawkcab at 12:55 PM on September 15, 2005

Is there a corollary to the Godwin "all arguments devolve to nazi mentions" meme about how any ND movie mentions end up as discussions about 'getting it' or 'not getting it' and why?

Chalk me up as an over-30 who found it amusing, if not the greatest thing since sliced bread.
posted by phearlez at 12:57 PM on September 15, 2005

I still don't unnerstan'.

It was odd. That made me laugh. No meta involved.
posted by iamck at 12:58 PM on September 15, 2005

I found this very funny, considering that I AM the combination of Napolean Dynamite and Bill Gates.
posted by SirOmega at 1:00 PM on September 15, 2005

When I try to play this it says "Server Not Responding". Is there a mirror anywhere?

BTW, regarding Napoleon Dynamite, the only part of the movie I actually might describe as 'hilarious' would be Pedro's thuggish cousins driving up in their lowrider and looking menacingly at the bully. That's the only part of the movie I laughed out loud during, though I did enjoy the Kip/La Fawnduh romance, mostly because La Fawnduh should have been a giant fat woman but was kind of hot.
posted by nonmerci at 1:00 PM on September 15, 2005

Re: Napolean Dynomite: I laughed until I cried and snot and sputum flowed openly from all my face holes and the fanny-pack-wearin' uber-dweebs around got up and moved away from me in the theater out of obvious discomfort.

Not a bad first date with the girl I now live with.

But then it was almost a movie scripted directly my school-aged life. Even the godforsaken moonboots. Then again, I also laughed at Slackers when I first saw it. A lot. Perhaps too much. But I'm a genuine dyed-in-the-wool dork, and the older I get the less ashamed I am of it.

However, the one liners from ND got old real quick, and the whole thing just got a wee bit tiresome. It's not as fun when you're in a theater full of people lauging AT Napolean, rather than WITH him.

Rerail:

Looks like the video link is borked or slammed.
posted by loquacious at 1:07 PM on September 15, 2005

caution live frogs: well partly it was frustration at the not-working link, but since that happens to me all the time with windows media player -- can't open files, poor streaming&co, I blamed it. Whereas quicktime always just works, and with h.264 it does it astoundingly well to boot.
posted by bonaldi at 1:10 PM on September 15, 2005

If only MS spent as much time working on making quality software as they do on trying to make Bill Gates look cool. Then perhaps I wouldn't have to spend a half hour everyday cursing Word into submission.
posted by fenriq at 1:11 PM on September 15, 2005

bonaldi, what's h.264?
posted by fenriq at 1:12 PM on September 15, 2005

fenriq, what's Google?
posted by grouse at 1:17 PM on September 15, 2005

Christ haven't we already done the whole 'i loved it/i didn't like it' discussion ad nauseum in both the blue and the green? Why don't we just put a little I Heart ND or I Don't Heart ND next to everyone's username and then we won't have to do this everytime there's a link that even slightly references ND.

And for the record I Heart ND and I'm 35 and an Aquarius.
posted by spicynuts at 1:27 PM on September 15, 2005

could someone post a link to a mirror please? i can't get the original to come up (server is busy, etc.)
posted by analogue at 1:31 PM on September 15, 2005

I downloaded the file if someone wants to host it. I have not the bandwidth for such an undertaking.
posted by danb at 1:43 PM on September 15, 2005

mostly because La Fawnduh should have been a giant fat woman but was kind of hot.

Kind of hot? What kind of women are there where you live?

I loved ND, though I am old enough to have an 18 year old (and he loved it too).

I have no idea what that means in the grand scheme of things.

Oh, and I'm a Capricorn and I like long walks on the beach.
posted by jokeefe at 1:47 PM on September 15, 2005

hey what do you guys think of the movie napoleon dynamite?
posted by Satapher at 1:48 PM on September 15, 2005

Bang on the vid link 10 times and eventually you'll get it. It has funny parts such as ND slappping Gates in the face over tater tots. You won't see the CEO of General Motors do a piece like that.
posted by StarForce5 at 1:59 PM on September 15, 2005

I worked so hard to stream that?

Freakin idiots!
posted by darren at 2:06 PM on September 15, 2005

Grouse, that'll work too.
posted by fenriq at 2:18 PM on September 15, 2005

It's funny 'cause he's a narcissist. (Gates)
posted by Smedleyman at 2:18 PM on September 15, 2005

Well, I though it was great. Really. I laughed. I cried. I wished I could find some way to pirate streaming video...
posted by TheStorm at 2:24 PM on September 15, 2005

There's an alternate link over here.
posted by smackfu at 2:29 PM on September 15, 2005

fenriq: it's a new way of coding files so that you get high quality with small file sizes. I dismissed it until I saw the webcast from the iPod nano launch -- instead of the usual jumpy, tiny window, I could run it in full-screen with acceptable quality. They have a page up about it.
posted by bonaldi at 2:36 PM on September 15, 2005

It's somehow ironic that bill gates parodied a movie that was edited using their competitors software (a competitor who is 10% owned my microsoft?)

No, Apple is not 10% owned by Microsoft. Apple did sell them $150 million in non-voting stock at one point, which given Apple's market cap was nowhere near 10% of the company, but they later sold it (for a nice profit, I should add).

Microsoft does own some Apple stock through a Private Capital Management fund, but Apple owns about 100 more of its own stock through PCM than Microsoft does. (Microsoft owns about 0.0046% of Apple through PCM, Apple owns about 0.39% of itself the same way.)
posted by kindall at 2:38 PM on September 15, 2005

Gates is a painfully boring individual and Steve Ballmer is downright scary. There always seems to be a malaise at a Microsoft conference, I suspect that's why they have to do these stupid videos, to bring some temporary relief to the hopeless geeks that look up to Gates.
posted by disgruntled at 2:57 PM on September 15, 2005

Oh yeah, the iPod nano launch was cool. But I think most Apple users are burnt out from too many new products over the last two years. No one can keep up. It's almost like people were worried that he was going to unveil the new G6 and a holographic monitor.
posted by disgruntled at 3:02 PM on September 15, 2005

If you can't get the video, you're not missing much. It's a really bad camcorder pirate - out of focus and the sound is terrible. I'd wait until the real video's actually posted to the web, which will probably happen soon enough.
posted by fungible at 3:22 PM on September 15, 2005

Wow, this comment thread kind of wandered all over the place. I think all we need now is to work a pro/anti Bush thing in here, and we're done for the year.
posted by davejay at 3:28 PM on September 15, 2005

I thought it was great. I'm always (well, nearly always) really impressed with self-deprecating humor. Plus, I'm so cool that I saw the DC premier of ND with Jon Heder in attendance, and, like, talked to him and stuff afterwards.
posted by MrMoonPie at 3:31 PM on September 15, 2005

Bush sucks.
posted by loquacious at 4:03 PM on September 15, 2005

I think all we need now is to work a pro/anti Bush thing in here, and we're done for the year.

Throw in loquacious' magnificent Ode to Time Cube Erotica, and I believe we have indeed covered just about everything.
posted by jokeefe at 4:23 PM on September 15, 2005

And Jon Heder is a cutie.

Holy cow. He got hot pretty darn quick.
posted by kosher_jenny at 9:01 PM on September 15, 2005

pretty funny, dance, rich man, dance!
posted by The Jesse Helms at 9:22 PM on September 15, 2005

there won't be anything but shaky cam versions of this.
posted by andendau at 9:50 PM on September 15, 2005

That blows. Wanted to look at QT 7. Instead, it insists on bloody iTunes too.
posted by Samizdata at 12:01 AM on September 16, 2005

Samizdata : not so.
posted by punilux at 1:26 AM on September 16, 2005

I wonder how he "got hot". Some sort of image consultant and a ton of cosmetics, or did he have some kind of prosthetics on in the movie.
posted by snoktruix at 2:44 AM on September 16, 2005

punilux: Too late now, I guess. (sheepish grin)
posted by Samizdata at 9:46 PM on September 16, 2005