RE: Proof That the World Revolves Around Bill Gates

Joe Barrera (joebar@MICROSOFT.com)
Tue, 27 May 1997 21:04:34 -0700


Um...

Both Internet Explorer (the wait animation in the upper left corner,
where netscape would have the big green N), and the United Airlines home
page (www.ual.com) show the earth going counter-clockwise about the
North Pole. I'm not sure if this is in agreement or disagreement with
your description of "clockwise (to the right)", since "clockwise"
without reference to a pole is ambiguous.

I believe Internet Explorer and the UAL home page are correct - they
would result in the sun setting in the West, which usually is the case.

When I view http://www.teledesic.com/visualizations/earth.html with
Internet Explorer 3.02, it at first looks that the earth is rotating in
the opposite direction - clockwise about the North Pole. But then I
realized that the animation is just broken, and it actually shows the
earth rotating smoothly counter-clockwise (in the correct direction) for
a degree or two, then jumping back to the original position. Since the
jump is more visible than the slow rotation, the eye initially just sees
the clockwise about the North Pole motion. (Insert appropriate GEB
reference here, e.g. Figure 5, Escher's Waterfall).

- Joe

Joseph S. Barrera III (joebar@microsoft.com)
http://research.microsoft.com/~joebar
Phone, Office: (415) 778-8227; Cellular: (415) 601-3719; Home: (415)
588-4801
Pager (100 char max): 1338993@roam.pagemart.net or (800) 864-8444

-----Original Message-----
From: Dan Kohn [SMTP:dan@teledesic.com]
Sent: Tuesday, May 27, 1997 8:15 PM
To: 'Fork'
Subject: FW: Proof That the World Revolves Around
Bill Gates

Great example of the power of an erroneous meme. We've
received half
a dozen of these letters.

- dan

-----Original Message-----
From: Dan Kohn
Sent: Monday, May 26, 1997 3:25 PM
To: 'Fun_People@langston.com'; 'psl@langston.com';
'psl@acm.org';
'marca@wilson.harvard.edu'; 'jim.cerny@unh.edu'
Cc: 'Keith Dawson'
Subject: RE: Proof That the World Revolves Around
Bill Gates

We don't mean to discourage the occasional Bill Gates
humor item, but
the Earth spins clockwise (to the right) both in our
visualization and
in reality. No additional "standardization" was
necessary.

- dan
--
Daniel Kohn <dan@teledesic.com>
Teledesic Corporation
+1-206-602-6222 (voice) 602-0001 (fax)
http://www.teledesic.com

>From: Peter Langston <psl@langston.com>
>Date: Thu, 22 May 97 15:34:22 -0700
>To: Fun_People@langston.com
>Subject: Proof That the World Revolves Around Bill
Gates
>Reply-To: psl@acm.org (Peter S. Langston)
>
>Forwarded-by: Marc Abrahams <marca@wilson.harvard.edu>
>From: James W Cerny <jim.cerny@unh.edu>
>
>If you want further proof that Bill Gates really is the
axis around
which
>the world revolves, go to the Web site for his recently
formed
company,
>Teledesic, the compnay that is going to put the
Internet in the sky
via 841
>satellites.
>
>There is an extraordinary animated GIF file that shows
how this will
work.
>The really cool thing is not just that it has the
satellites moving
in
>orbit, but it has the earth turning (slowly) underneath
*in the
wrong
>direction* ... or should I say, in what will become
the right
direction?!
>
> http://www.teledesic.com/visualizations/npole.html