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Gates Pledges $750M to Vaccinate Children
chriskzoo5 writes "The Bill and Melinda Gates foundation is pledging $750M to vaccinate children worldwide over the next 10 years. Much maligned for his business practices, is this proof that sometimes the ends justify the means? Let's see if the Linux community can match his generosity."
Okay let's say Bill is worth 50 billion dollars on paper. 750 million is something like 1.5% of his total worth? Is this a huge amount for him? It would be like if I had a hundred bucks and I gave the homeless guy on the street a $1.50
-Dipster
Excatly - this is what people dont realise.
:)
They aren't donation money - they are donating licenses of the Microsoft Virus Scanning Tool - FREE to any third world country child who wants to download it.
You can't expect to wield supreme executive power, just because some watery tart threw a sword at you
What percentage of Sir Billy's income/wealth goes to charity? What percentage of income/wealth of the average (presumably working) charity-giving Joe goes to charity? Let's see who wins the pissing contest on that basis.
Did he inhale?
What, the article that doesn't clarify but just blindly states "$750 million" everywhere ?
:-
Perhaps you should read more articles and you might discover that a quote that Bill is "giving" $X million can be used by a journalist to cover anything from
Bill is actually giving nothing at all (in common sense terms)
to
Bill is giving $X million in cold hard cash
Welcome to the real world of sloppy journalism
Jeremy
Ever try to eat an OS distro? Ever try to warm your family by having a secure firewall? The linux community is offering a product less than 10% of the world's population can appreciate. And less than a fraction of 1% actually does appreciate. Not exactly a great contribution to the world's well being.
The difference? One of them is someone who can afford to make such a generous donation, while the other is still making his software available for free over the Internet.
The other difference is that a very loud (and slashdot-powered) portion of "the Linux Community" takes every opportunity to malign Gates personally, decry his success, and claim that MS shouldn't exist. Discussing whether or Gates is generous isn't the issue - his foundation shells out much, much more than the amount in this particular gift, and has been doing so for years and years - rather, it's whether or not his rabid (philosphical) opponents are generous enough (intellectually) to conceed that he's not actually The Devil, or Hitler, or any of the other evil icons to which they compare him.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
Moderation -1 100% Bullshit My bullshit detector just went off the scale.
tell that the the kids dying of malaria in sub-saharan africa. im sure a free operating system would get them all giddy with excitement.
Not.
No, we all still lose, because the money Gates is donating didn't come out of thin air, it came out of your and my pockets. And Gates is only donating a tiny fraction of the money he took from us to good causes; the rest sits in his bank accounts and the bank accounts of other early Microsoft employees.
If you want to help children in need, donate your money and fight Microsoft's monopoly and business practices; in the end, that's far more efficient.
I submit that that $750 million would be more useful if it had never been acquired by Mr. Gates.
Sticking feathers up your butt does not make you a chicken - Tyler Durden
typical....you make a fair point and some pre-pubescent mod without an idea of whats important in the world mods me troll! ha. Gotta love slashdot
From what I've heard, this vaccination includes a little extra preventative medicine for that dangerous recently-diagnosed strain called Firefox Fever. And there's a Linux Laxative just in case the poor kid has seen a little too much Gnome.
Many older kids (2+) have apparently seen a Windows Longhorn bootup screen flash briefly before their eyes, and, in a few rare cases, some kids distinctly remember what appears to be a man who was yelling "Developers, Developers", who has become a godfather-figure ever since.
Of course, they're just kids, so you can't trust everything they say...
This sig donated to Pater. Long live
...You will see that Bill has given $27 Billion ...
Imagine that a Linux type OS hit the mainstream 20 years earlier. The value to society would have made $27 billion seem like a drop in the bucket, but that didn't happen specifically because Bill Gates and friends chose to criminalize copying rather than embrace it.
A free (as in "freedom") OS would not only have been worth hundreds of billions more to society, but empowered people in a way so that they could help themselves rather than begging to uncle Bill every time. Well, I'm sorry, but the plantation masters of the 1850's were noted for being chariatable too. Maybe it's because they, like Bill, know they are criminals and are just trying to justify it. Thanks, but no thanks. A free slave
Let's think directly of children and Microsoft. I'd like the same for every school that's had problems with M$ junk. How about Microsoft giving back every cent of profit it ever made selling that junk to schools to begin with? They might even give back the $250,000 settlements the BSA extorted from Philadelphia and Los Angleles school systems because a few teachers coppied M$ Word and other crap administrators demanded they have but refused to pay for.
Can Free Software match Gates in generosity? No, it will do much more. It will end his company's parasitic load on schools, hospitals, churches and other worthy organizations. The sum of that donation makes $750,000,000 look very small.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
Bad IT policy hurts everyone including doctors and hospitals. In the Microsoft World, the one that all large publishers want to build, you will pay and pay again for the tools and information you need. In the free software world, you own your tools and information is freely shared. As an exercise in the difference in costs between the two models, compare $750,000,000 over ten years to amount of money wasted on M$ software by schools and hospitals in any given year. Also consider the detrimental effect 100 year long copyrights are having on the spread and publication of medical information by libraries and other institutions.
The money Mr. Gates is giving today, he got yesterday by ill means. I'm glad he's giving some back, but I'd be more impressed if he would free his software and quit impeding the free flow of real information for hollywood pimps.
some people really need to grow up.
Indeed they do. Examine your priorties.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.