Microsoft boss Bill Gates has just retired. The first thing he is going to do is sit in a huge pile of money, throw it up in the air and then roll around in it.

No, actually, that’s what I would do if I were him. He’s more laid back. He’s going to have his two-hectare garden carpeted with hundred dollar bills, then have helicopters rain cash down, and THEN roll around in it.

What a story! A young nerd drops out of college, tinkers in his garage and singlehandedly starts the personal computer revolution—that’s the tale of Bill Gates, also known as Steve Jobs.

Fans say Bill is a smart programmer who got rich from writing software. Industry insiders say he is a flesh-eating businessman who amassed a fortune adopting other people’s products and his charitable giveaways are the guilty return of a portion of his ill-gotten gains.

Hmm. Smart geek or feral businessman? Read the following and decide.

I am passionately opposed to getting children hooked on computers. But I came home from work one day some years ago to find my wife (she prefers the term "VP-Domestic") had got the children hooked on computers.

The infant prodigy, then aged two, was installing a Microsoft game called Barney the Dinosaur.

After she inserted the disk, a dialogue box popped up which said the game would not work unless an internet connection program was installed as well. There was an "OK" button but no "Cancel" button. The toddler clicked it and kickstarted a long era of Barney-worship in our household.

But after she went to bed I checked the computer. First, I found that the bit about Barney not working without an internet connection was wrong. The game had no on-line elements. Second, a new icon had appeared on our computer desktop. It said: "The Internet" and had a picture of a globe on it. Internet Explorer, a Microsoft program strongly influenced by (in the journalistic sense of "ripped off from") the Netscape browser, had been smuggled on to our computer.

Microsoft was using TODDLERS to expand its empire. Is that hardball or what?

At about the same time, Bill Gates visited Asia and asked to meet respected, influential journalists here.

They couldn’t find any. So he met me instead.

The meeting took place in his limousine. All my questions received monosyllabic answers. Gates was the sort of businessman who wants to appear accessible but is so careful that when you say "Good morning," he thinks through the legal implications of all possible answers before answering with a slight nod of the head.

I did not raise the Barney issue since we were passing through a rough area and I wanted to get home alive.

So I tried a different line of questioning. "I hear your wife is pregnant. Are you nervous about being a dad?"

"How did you know?" he replied, his eyes widening. "Actually, I am a bit."

I suggested a name for his baby: "Windows99". He promised to consider it. We abandoned the formal interview and chatted about fatherhood. He relaxed and become semi-human.

I’ve now completely forgiven him for the using my kid as a smuggler. In fact, I’m thinking of sending his kids a Barney the Dinosaur disk as a gift.

(With a hidden program that reconfigures his computer as a MacBook.)

Visit our columnist’s Barney-free website at www.vittachi.com