Judge likens Microsoft's Bill Gates to Napoleon

The judge who ordered Microsoft Corporation to be split in two has likened Bill Gates to Napoleon, condemning his 'arrogance deriving from unalloyed success'.

Judge Thomas Penfield Jackson says that Gates has a Napoloenic concept of himself and his company, that Microsoft officials act like children and that the company's legal representative was not very clever.

In an appeal, filed in November, Microsoft said that Judge Jackson has shown himself in interviews to be biased against the company.

Speaking to The New Yorker magazine, the Judge said: "I think Gates has a Napoleonic concept of himself and his company, an arrogance that derives from power and unalloyed success, with no leavening hard experience, no reverses."

Of Microsoft officials, the judge said: "They don't act like grown-ups!"

Jackson also said that Microsoft's lead attorney, William Neukom, is "not very smart, or at least I don't think he has any subtlety."

Microsoft's brief said: "By repeatedly commenting on the merits of the case in the press, the district judge has cast himself in the public's eye as a participant in the controversy, thereby compromising the appearance of impartiality, if not demonstrating actual bias against Microsoft."