Bill Gates

Speaking to UT students and faculty, Microsoft founder Bill Gates spoke of the future of technology, the software industry, the goals of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and his last day in office. Gates is officially leaving Microsoft to pursue full

I think he’s just a fantastic guy, on both technical and humanitarian levels. Getting the opportunity to photograph him was intense; originally his handlers told us that it wasn’t allowed, but Andrew (a new photographer at the Texan) and myself managed to sweet-talk the event staff into letting us take photographs while Maya interviewed him.

They opened the door and shushed us in, and it was a pretty intense 30-45 seconds trying to make a good photograph out of a man sitting at a table talking–literally 30 seconds before his staffer made a “throat-cut” gesture. I took nine exposures in total; this was the eighth.

I took sound too, out of habit and practice, but I’m not sure what to do with it. I could transcribe the more inane parts of the public Q&A session:

Student: Hi Bill! When I start up Windows Media Player on my XP Computer, it always gives me a bunch of error messages. If I upgrade to Windows Vista, will the errors go away?
Mr. Gates: I guarantee that if you upgrade to Vista, there will be different error messages.


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