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Early Life
William Henry Gates III was born in Seattle, Washington on October 28, 1955 to wealthy parents. He was the fourth of his name in his family but was known as William Gates III or “Trey” because his father had dropped his own “III” suffix.
Bill Gates’ father is prominent attorney William H. Gates, Sr., a founding partner of the law firm Preston Gates & Ellis (aka K&L Gates).
His mother, Mary Maxwell Gates (1929-1994), was the daughter of J.W. Maxwell, a national bank president. A former schoolteacher, she later became “the first female president of King County’s United Way, the first woman to chair the national United Way’s executive committee where she served most notably with IBM’s CEO, John Akers, and the first woman on the First Interstate Bank of Washington’s board of directors.” Mary Gates also served eighteen years on the University of Washington board of regents.
Gates has one older sister, Kristi (Kristianne) and one younger sister, Libby (now Libby Armintrout).
Bill Gates’ mother-in-law is Mimi Gardner Gates (maiden name Neill), an American art historian and socialite who is Director of the Seattle Art Museum. She married William H. Gates, Sr. in 1996. (hmmmmmm, mother-in-law??? Isn't she his step mother???) ...cal
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mimi_Gardner_Gates
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Mary 'Mimi' Gates (née Gardner) (b. ca. 1943) is an American art historian who is the recent Director of the Seattle Art Museum. She married William H. Gates, Sr., father of Bill Gates, in 1996. Gates has a B.A. in art history from Stanford University, a certificate with honors in Chinese language and culture from the École Nationale des Langues Orientales Vivantes in Paris, a master's from the University of Iowa, and a Ph.D. in art history from Yale. An old friend of Theresa Heinz Kerry,[1] she is also a frequent juror for the Heinz Awards, appointed by the Heinz Family Philanthropies to award outstanding achievement in the area of Arts and Humanities.[2]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Maxwell_Gates
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Mary Maxwell Gates (born Mary Maxwell on July 5, 1929 — June 10, 1994) was an American businessperson. Gates served 18 years (1975–1993) on the University of Washington board of regents. She was the first female president of King County’s United Way, the first woman to chair the national United Way’s executive committee where she served most notably with IBM's CEO, John Opel, and the first woman on the First Interstate Bank of Washington's board of directors. Mary's son Bill Gates is the co-founder of Microsoft.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Kappa_Kappa_Gamma_sisters
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Mary Maxwell Gates
Beta Pi Served on the board of regents University of Washington (1975–1993),
mother of Bill Gates
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Higher_education_governing_board
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In the United States, a board often governs public institutions of higher education, which include both state universities and community colleges. In each U.S. state, such boards may govern either the state university system, individual colleges and universities, or both. In general they operate as a board of directors, and they vary by formal name, size, powers, and membership. In some states, members are appointed by the governor.
In some private institutions of higher learning, a board of regents is a volunteer, non-governing body charged with various responsibilities, including but not limited to major gift cultivation and fund raising. Members are often appointed by the governing body.[citation needed]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Opel
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John R. Opel (born 1925) is a U.S. computer businessman.[1] He served as the president of IBM between 1974 and 1985.[2] He then served as the CEO of IBM from 1981 to 1985.[2] Finally he was the chairman of IBM between 1983 and 1986.[2] A discussion he had with Mary Maxwell Gates while they were both serving on the board of United Way resulted in an IBM contract being placed with her son's company Microsoft to create an operating system for IBM's first personal computer.[3]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_iron_(computing)
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Big iron, as the hacker's dictionary the Jargon File defines it, "refers to large, expensive, ultra-fast computers. It is used generally for number crunching supercomputers such as Crays, but can include more conventional big commercial IBMish mainframes".
The term bears a slightly humorous, but respectful, connotation.
The term is often used in reference to IBM mainframes, often when discussing their comeback/survival after the assault of lower cost Unix systems. More recently the term is also applied to powerful computer servers and computer ranches, whose steel racks naturally invoke the same association.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Preston_Gates_%26_Ellis
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Jack Abramoff Investigation
http://www.c-span.org/special/Abramoff.asp
04/30/06 C-SPAN Book TV: "K Street Gang", Abramoff Scandal & His boss, Preston Gates, Bill Gate's father.
Audio: http://www.apfn.net/pogo/M001I06043006-k-street-gang-4-30-06.MP3 (9.03MB) 39Min 27 Sec
http://www.apfn.org/apfn/abramoff_scandal.htm
http://techrights.org/2008/12/22/microsoft-gates-abramoff-connection/
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Microsoft Management’s unbridled love of the corrupt GOP/RNC is no surprise, as Microsoft’s top management includes some of President Bush’s more prominent fund raisers. Microsoft’s ex-CFO John Connors, and Microsoft’s CEO Steve Ballmer, are both prominent Bush supporters.
Only recently Microsoft had to “fire” consultant fundamentalist christian Ralph Reed after a public outcry over Reed’s influence in local politics via Microsoft. Additionally it appears that Ralph Reed was on the Microsoft Payroll at the same time he headed up President Bush’s SE 2004 Campaign.
Another Microsoft “consultant”, the anti-tax crusader Grover Norquist, who also specializes in picking the economic bones of countries we invade, is still on the payrolls of Microsoft as far as we know.
http://people.forbes.com/profile/john-g-connors/57739
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John G. Connors
Independent Director
Nike, Inc.
Beaverton , OR
Sector: CONSUMER GOODS / Textile - Apparel Footwear & Accessories
52 Years Old
Mr. Connors, 52, a director since 2005, is a partner in Ignition Partners LLC, a Seattle-area venture capital firm. Mr. Connors served as Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer of Microsoft Corporation from December 1999 to May 2005. He joined Microsoft in 1989 and held various management positions, including Corporate Controller from 1994 to 1996, Vice President, Worldwide Enterprise Group in 1999, and Chief Information Officer from 1996 to 1999. Mr. Connors is a certified public accountant. Mr. Connors is a member of the Board of Trustees ? Swedish Medical Center, and is currently a member of the Board of Directors of Scout Analytics Inc., FiREapps, Inc., DataSphere Technologies, Inc., Splunk, Inc., Tier 3, Inc., Korrio, Inc., the Washington Policy Center, and the University of Washington Tyee Club.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Ballmer
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Ballmer was born in Detroit, Michigan to a Swiss American father and a Jewish American mother. He grew up in the affluent community of Farmington Hills, Michigan. In 1973, he graduated from Detroit Country Day School, a private college preparatory school in Beverly Hills, Michigan and now sits on its board of directors. In 1977, he graduated magna cum laude from Harvard University with a A.B. in mathematics and economics.
At college, Ballmer managed the football team, worked on The Harvard Crimson newspaper as well as the Harvard Advocate, and lived down the hall from fellow sophomore Bill Gates. He then worked for two years as an assistant product manager at Procter & Gamble, where he shared an office with Jeffrey R. Immelt, who later became CEO of General Electric.[5] In 1980, he dropped out of the Stanford Graduate School of Business to join Microsoft.[6]
http://www.cheappower.org/power_struggle.htm
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Condemnation of PGE's distribution system -- the network of poles and wires that sends electricity to customers' homes and businesses -- is a "no brainer," said Tim Sercombe, an attorney with Portland's
Preston Gates & Ellis.
From there, questions arise. The city might run into legal problems condemning gas-fired power plants, for example, attorneys say. Legal challenges also could erupt if the city tried to take over hydro plants, some of which are partially owned by Native American tribes, or if the city tried to assume some of PGE's long-term electric power contracts.
http://www.seattlepi.com/business/article/Preston-Gates-Ellis-OKs-merger-1222485.php
Excerpt:
Preston Gates & Ellis OKs merger
New firm will be one of world's largest
By ANDREA JAMES, P-I REPORTER
Published 10:00 p.m., Thursday, December 14, 2006
Preston Gates & Ellis, a prominent Seattle law firm, agreed Thursday to a merger that will more than triple its size and boost it into the top 10 firms nationally.
Preston Gates began talks in July with Pittsburgh-based Kirkpatrick & Lockhart Nicholson Graham and announced the potential merger in September. The new firm will call itself Kirkpatrick & Lockhart Preston Gates Ellis LLP, but will brand itself simply as K&L Gates.
Effective Jan. 1, the new firm will employ 1,400 lawyers in North America, Europe and Asia, creating one of the world's largest firms with an annual revenue topping $750 million.
"It was overwhelmingly approved by our partners," said Kari Glover, Preston Gates' managing partner. "People a
re quite excited here. There's a lot of happy buzz in the hallways."
http://www.channelingreality.com/The_Coup/reinvention_of_america.htm (I couldn't find John Akers on Wiki links but here it is right here, and I know from working at IBM that he was CEO before Gerstner and I had never heard of John Opel.) ...cal
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In 1991, John Akers, was CEO of IBM. He must not have wanted to take the leap into fascism though. (I'm just giving the Wiki links because they have adequate information for my purpose).
John Fellows Akers (born December 28, 1934) is a U.S. computer businessman. He was the president of IBM between 1983 and 1989. He was the CEO of IBM from 1984 until 1993; and chairman of IBM between 1986 and 1993. He was also on the Board of Directors of Lehman Brothers when it filed for bankruptcy. CNBC has named Akers as one of the "Worst American CEOs of All Time", stating that, "While the rest of the world was moving toward personal computing, Akers remained stuck in the mainframe age, never quite figuring out what to do. Many outsiders viewed Akers as being in over his head. IBM was paralyzed by his lack of decisiveness.
Of course GE owned NBC so the propaganda campaign against IBM was a "slam dunk". I remember that media propaganda campaign very well. "Big Iron is DEAD" they said. And traders (traitors) drove IBM's stock price down to around $40.00. Then John Akers resigned and Lou Gerstner took over and the stock went back up. It wasn't true that "Big Iron" was dead of course. PC's could never replace the mainframes and they weren't designed to replace them. "Mainframe" sounds big but they were actually pretty small. They were just designed to handle lots of attached devices and they needed big clean rooms with special cooling and halon systems both to protect the data and for the peripheral devices (hard drives, tape drives, communications controllers, printers etc).
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The Gates family refers to the members of Microsoft founder and chairman Bill Gates' family and relatives who include:[1]
- William Henry Gates, his paternal great-grandfather
- Rebecca Eppinhauser, his paternal great-grandmother
- William Henry Gates I, his paternal grandfather
- William H. Rice, his maternal great-grandfather
- Isabella Thompson, his maternal great-grandmother
- Lillian Elizabeth Rice, his paternal grandmother
- William Henry Gates, Sr., his father
- Lillian Elizabeth Rice, his paternal grandmother
- James Willard Maxwell, his maternal great-grandfather
- Belle Oakley, his maternal great-grandmother
- James W. Maxwell, his maternal grandfather
- William J. Thompson, his maternal grandfather, Adelle Thompson's father
- Ida Medcalf, his maternal grandmother, Adelle Thompson's mother
- Adelle Thompson, his maternal grandmother
- Mary Maxwell Gates, his mother
- Kristianne Gates Blake, his older sister
- Kerry Adelle Blake, his niece
- Sullivan Michael Blake, his nephew
- Libby Gates Armintrout, his younger sister
- Stephen Maxwell Armintrout, his nephew
- William Henry Gates III, commonly known as Bill Gates
- Melinda French Gates, his wife
- Jennifer Katharine Gates, his daughter born in 1996
- Rory John Gates, his son born in 1999
- Phoebe Adelle Gates, his daughter born in 2002
- Kristianne Gates Blake, his older sister
- Mimi Gardner Gates, second wife of William, Sr.
- Mary Maxwell Gates, his mother
- Adelle Thompson, his maternal grandmother
"There are two kinds of people in America: Italians, and those that want to be Italian." Everyone laughed! (This isn't funny to me as I believe that certain Italians feel this way.) ...cal
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lakh
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A lakh (
/ˈlæk/ lak or /ˈlɑːk/ lahk; also lac) is a unit in the Indian numbering system equal to one hundred thousand (100,000; 105). It is widely used both in official and other contexts in Bangladesh, India, Maldives, Nepal, Sri Lanka, Myanmar and Pakistan, and is often used in Indian English.http://www.thehindubusinessline.com/industry-and-economy/info-tech/article1327438.ece
Excerpt:
IBM now has one lakh staff in India
Bangalore, Feb. 10:
All speculation around the number of employees IBM has in India would perhaps be laid to rest now with the IBM Chairman himself admitting that the company has close to one lakh people in India, representing 25 per cent of its global workforce. IBM has 3,99,409 employees worldwide, according to the company Web site.
“In India, we have close to a lakh people — that may not be huge to Indians, but 25 per cent of our workforce is in India... so that's big,” said Mr Samuel J. Palmisano, Chairman, President and CEO of IBM, during a guest lecture at the Indian Institute of Science here. Mr Palmisano was on a visit to India in commemoration of IBM's centenary celebrations.
For long, IBM has refused to come on record about its India work-force numbers. The last time IBM reported its India headcount was in 2007 when it had over 73,000 employees.
“Though IBM has tried to guard its India numbers, it's was always an open-secret that it employs a lakh people here,” says an industry analyst.
And with Mr Palmisano's revelation, IBM can now ‘officially' be placed in the lakh-league. Tata Consultancy Services is the largest IT company in India with 1.7 lakh employees, followed by Infosys with 1.2 lakh people. Wipro and Cognisant too have over 1 lakh employees.
Excerpt:
The fact that IBM has over one lakh people on its rolls in this country is one of India Inc's best-kept secrets. No one in US-headquartered IBM will admit that it employs such a large number of people in India -- for fear of a backlash at home. There's been rising anger in the US over the transfer of `American jobs' to lower cost havens, particularly India. Faced with an economic slowdown and a politically-damaging high employement rate, Barack Obama himself has begun to sound jingoistic. He has issued barely-veiled threats against US companies that ship out work and promised candies to those who stay patriotic.
Even as an IBM spokesperson declined comment when contacted, a source within the company said that in a couple of years, the India employee strength could cross that in the US, where it employs about 1,55,000 people, and where the pace of hiring is substantially slower than in India. IBM globally has a little over 4,00,000 employees. So, close to 1 in 3 of its employees is already an Indian.
http://wraltechwire.com/business/tech_wire/news/blogpost/9712730/
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Updated Jun. 10, 2011 at 11:44 a.m.
New global union calls for IBM to 'respect' workers' rights
By RICK SMITH, WRAL Tech Wire Editor
The Global Union Alliance at IBM, which took shape in May, unveiled a video on YouTube on June 10 that includes employees and union representatives from around the world offering a “happy birthday video.” (Watch the video here.)
The collective union also called for a “common action” across IBM’s global operations on June 14 as a demand to “call on the company to recognize the vital role played by IBMers in the company’s success and to respect their rights as workers.”
The video and call for action are the first major initiatives launched by the Global Union Alliance.
A spokesperson for the union said the group’s complaints about workers rights and unions primarily focused on Bulgaria, Turkey and Chile where he said IBM has fought to keep workers from joining sanctioned organizations.
In the past, unions organized a “silent strike” and a “virtual strike” in cyberspace.
As part of Friday’s announcement, union representatives asked for a meeting with IBM Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Sam Palmisano.
IBM has been asked for comment.
The world’s largest technology company with 430,000 employees recently cut an undisclosed numbers across the US, including in RTP and North Carolina, while opening a new data center in the Midwest and expanding operations in India. India reportedly now has the largest number of IBM workers. (Read more about the layoffs here and IBM's growth in India here.)
Secrecy about job cuts
“In the US, job cuts are constant,” said Tom Midgley, president of Alliance@IBM in the US. “IBM hides that fact, as well as the number of jobs cut, from other employees, communities, elected officials and the media. IBM is off-shoring work at a record pace and sending loyal IBMers to the unemployment line.
“The more than 15,000 ex-employees terminated in the past few years and the thousands more fearing future job loss and declining working conditions will not have the spirit of celebration IBM executives are hoping for.”
IBM no longer says how many employees it has in the US, citing competitive reasons.
Based on data previously provided by IBM, its workforce in the US has declined substantially since 2005. No data was made available in 2010.
- 2009: 105,000
- 2008: 115,000
- 2007: 121,000
- 2006: 127,000
- 2005: 133,789
As a matter of policy, IBM also does not announce layoffs nor confirm details about the so-called “resource actions” if the media learns about cuts and asks about them.
IBM has asked its employees to volunteer 8 hours or more with local service organizations as part of its 100th anniversary. Palmisano said earlier this week that some 62 percent of BigBlue workers were doing so. (Read details here.)
The “heart” of IBM
One speaker on the video asks that IBM “take care” the workers who are the “heart” of the company.
Another, a woman who says she has worked at Big Blue for 30 years says it is no longer the “great company” she had joined.
A representative also asks that IBM include unions in its anniversary celebrations.
The group is also seeking pay raises.
Various unions represent IBM in several countries. Alliance@IBM, an affiliate of the Communications Workers of America, is seeking to represent IBMers in the US.
The global alliance is an effort to expand unionizing efforts at IBM, which so far have been largely unsuccessful, especially in the US.
IBM employs some 10,000 people at its campus in RTP and across North Carolina.
The Global Union Alliance also said Palmisano had been asked to “intervene” in Bulgaria where IBM has “refused to recognize the union as it is legally obligated to do.” That request was made in October, and Palmisano has not responded, the group said.
Get the latest news alerts: Follow WRAL Tech Wire at Twitter.
http://articles.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/2010-08-18/india-business/28286029_1_ibm-daksh-ibm-s-india-ibm-spokesperson
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IBM is India's second largest pvt sector employer
BANGALORE: Tata Consultancy Services is the largest private sector employer in the country. It had 1,63,700 employees as on June 30. But guess who's number 2?
The honour goes to -- surprise, surprise -- IBM. That's right. Not to any Tata or Ambani company, or to Infosys or Wipro.
http://www.itbusinessedge.com/cm/blogs/tennant/us-grand-jury-subpoenas-infosys-in-visa-fraud-investigation/?cs=47148
Excerpt:
The honour goes to -- surprise, surprise -- IBM. That's right. Not to any Tata or Ambani company, or to Infosys or Wipro.
http://www.itbusinessedge.com/cm/blogs/tennant/us-grand-jury-subpoenas-infosys-in-visa-fraud-investigation/?cs=47148
Excerpt:
U.S. Grand Jury Subpoenas Infosys in Visa Fraud Investigation
Posted by Don Tennant May 25, 2011 2:14:20 PMhttp://healthfreedoms.org/2010/03/02/indian-law-would-make-criticizing-gm-crops-an-imprisonable-offense/
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