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Nic Name · 08-24-2002, 08:09 PM

The world's richest bridge player, Bill Gates, rolled into Toronto this week to headline the much-touted CanWin conference. While innovation, education and other eye-glazing topics were the official agenda, fellow speaker Paul Tellier reportedly quipped about investments with the Microsoft mogul. "I hope you're not going to make any calls to your broker on the way out," joked Mr. Tellier, the chief boxcar keeper at CN Rail. Mr. Gates is CN's second-biggest stakeholder with 10.12 million shares or 5 per cent of the railway's entire float.

It was more of a Can'tWin for Mr. Gates earlier in the day. His big-screen demonstration of the .Net strategy of taking software to the Internet froze like exposed skin on a Winnipeg winter's morn. Every awkward attempt to fish data from the network failed -- complete with the cursed spinning hourglass and error message. It was pure geek tragedy for the thousand-plus restless tech heads who nervously slurped their filtered coffee as a stoic Mr. Gates did what any software billionaire would do: He blamed the Internet connection.

08-24-2002, 08:09 PM	#109
Nic Name retired Join Date: Dec 2001 Location: Toronto, Canada Posts: 1,930	OK, that's enough being nice to Bill. The world's richest bridge player, Bill Gates, rolled into Toronto this week to headline the much-touted CanWin conference. While innovation, education and other eye-glazing topics were the official agenda, fellow speaker Paul Tellier reportedly quipped about investments with the Microsoft mogul. "I hope you're not going to make any calls to your broker on the way out," joked Mr. Tellier, the chief boxcar keeper at CN Rail. Mr. Gates is CN's second-biggest stakeholder with 10.12 million shares or 5 per cent of the railway's entire float. It was more of a Can'tWin for Mr. Gates earlier in the day. His big-screen demonstration of the .Net strategy of taking software to the Internet froze like exposed skin on a Winnipeg winter's morn. Every awkward attempt to fish data from the network failed -- complete with the cursed spinning hourglass and error message. It was pure geek tragedy for the thousand-plus restless tech heads who nervously slurped their filtered coffee as a stoic Mr. Gates did what any software billionaire would do: He blamed the Internet connection.