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Yes, if you are willing to give to a religious charity I recommend World Vision. They have a gift giving catalog which lets you donate school supplies, livestock, medicine, etc. There are some really unique giving opportunities:
http://donate.worldvision.org/OA_HTML/xxwv2ibeCCtpSctDspRte.jsp?lpos=top_drp_WaysToGive_Gift+Catalog&go=gift&&section=10389

No, not true. Google's users *with websites with AdSense on them* use bandwidth, so Google gets to be in the ad business without having to pay the cost of doing business sufficiently, and forcing others to shoulder it. Time for that to end.

But that bandwidth is caused to be consumed by users visiting one of those sites. No users, no bandwidth. You want to stop users from visiting the sites of their choice?

Google gets a lot of its content for free. Somebody always pays. If you get the traffic, pay the price.

Speaking for my content, I want Google to make it available to users. And I already pay the telecoms for the bandwidth my servers uses to deliver it. Google offers this basic service for free. Or for a fee if I'm willing to buy some keywords. But that's between me and Google. So long as I pay for the bandwidth subsequently consumed by my own web site, that's all the telecoms need to worry about. If they try to stick their nose in to the contractual relationship between myself and Google, I'll see them in court. If they do this to a large enough group of businesses, they'll be filing Chapter 11 to protect themselves from civil suits. If they don't end up in prison for felony violations of the Sherman Antitrust Act first.

If the consumer can't be persuaded to pay it, and you can't develop a subscription model, be prepared to find content migrating away in the end.

As a consumer, I'm already paying for a nice fat broadband tube into my home. As a businessperson, I also pay for the tube connecting my server to the Interweb. If the telecoms are losing money on this business model, then they need to charge more. So long as they charge the same for connecting users with Google, my business, or World Vision, fine (thinkofthechildren).

As far as "content migrating away", why would it do that? Everyone is happy with the way things work today. Content is there. Its free. Google helps us find it. For free. The only'cost' is having to look through a few ads.

But if they insist on getting a cut of the action, so to speak, it would do them well to consider what sorts of activities landed John Gotti in his final residence.

World Vision

Amnesty International

Etcetera

Is the added cost tax-deductible?

Personally, I do my giving through an organization that provides food, medical care, education. There's far too much poverty in the world to go around handing out laptops. Malnourished and sick children are going to have a hard time concentrating in computer class.

For the price of these two computers a person can sponsor a child through World Vision for a year, and it's tax-deductible.

Nah, now they are forced to suicide like Turkey makes its females that violate honor.

Really? Girls that go to school in Afghanistan are forced to kill themselves? Or the mothers that take them there are? Please kindly supply a link to that effect. Maybe you'll find that sort of information here, or here, or here, or here. That last one documents the yearly doubling of girls attending school there. You can just cut to the chase by linking to an article showing that the rate of those girls' mothers being forced to kill themselves has also doubled. Or you can just STFU and grind your "Afghanistan was better under the Taliban, and Mullah Omar just needed a little more time to really show some progress" axe in some other way.

No shit.

There are more hungry children living under conditions of the most heart-rending, abject poverty in parts of Africa and Asia than this mere $126,155.29 could even begin to properly help.

But it could at least help put some nutritious meals in the bellies or buy medicine for some of them for a little while anyway.

I suggest give it all to some organization like World Vision of one of the other legitimate charities who do the same kinds of things.

A mere $30 could feed a child for a month, or buy enough antibiotics to save the lives of a couple kids with bacterial pneumonia.

Think about it tonight while you stuff your face with pizza sitting in front of your PC playing Warcraft.

World Vision is a pretty good company. I do work with them professionally, and they're a straight up organization.

Not that this isn't an extremely impressive move, but seriously - they're going to spend all this money trying to compete with NASA to get to Mars? Yes, the fulfilment of human greatness, scientific forethought and everything, but c'mon - I could think of a thousand better ways of spending that money. This is sad.

Disposable Income of a "geek" taking on a "project" and complaining about missing his "lunch" so he could post about it on his "personal website" and obtain "geek cred" when he gets linked on "slashdot":

Price of a Rio Carbon Mp3 player: ($225) x2 $450

Price of a Nikon d70 6 mega-pixel camera: $999.95 (without lenses)

Price of his Digital SLR Zoom Lens: $974.95

Total for just this one disgusting wankoff: $2424.90

Compared to the Average Annual Wage in Indonesia: $3,971

Congratulations. You just blew 62% of the annual wage of the poor saps that have to make this electronic gizmo shit, sitting all day in closed rooms full of mercury vapor and pain, all on a pile of crap you'll likely toss in the trash inside of a year or two.

Happy 9/11 day, motherfuckers.

and more conventional bombs don't strike hospitals that are too close? As long as they don't directly target a hospital, there's no breach of the convention. Unfortunately you don't have to target a hospital to damage it

Starvation after war

Another one

Iraq's imports of food and medicine are not now and have never been affected by any of the various sanctions regimes imposed by the UN or the US.
You might want to update your knowledge here

And at the risk of starting a flamewar: an example, please, of "lies, propaganda, subterfuge, bribery and bullying threats". Let's think for a moment about the way George Bush has become 'president'. Here is something to get you started reading on that one.

Makes me wonder how you can install a democracy if you aren't a democratic leader yourself.

Firstly, charity is something you should do because you want to, not because it allows you to save some money from the taxman. The idea of charity is not to provide affluent geeks with a ready-made tax break, it's to raise money for good causes.

Secondly, if you're really interested in donating to charity, at least make it one that really helps people in need, not one that at the end of the day, accomplishes very little in the grand scheme of things. There are starving children in Africa, victims of ethnic cleansing in Montenegro, children forced into prostitution across the globe and countless other causes that accomplish real good for millions of people.

I think it's tragic that charity is only considered to be useful as a tax dodge, and that even then it's more "geek chic" to promote the EFF than the hundreds of charities genuinely improving people's lives.