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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
Is this $750 million of real money that Bill is donating ?
In the past quite often such donations consisted of software "worth $X million" i.e. software with a retail price of $X million which cost a dollar fifty to actually produce.
This "donation" could just be 7.5 million copies of office "which the child vaccination centres can use to imrove their productivity therefore benefiting children worldwide"
Or should I adjust my cynicism setting a little ?
Cheers,
Jeremy
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 $750 million would be more useful if it had never been acquired by Mr. Gates.
Sticking feathers up your butt does not make you a chicken - Tyler Durden
typical....you make a fair point and some pre-pubescent mod without an idea of whats important in the world mods me troll! ha. Gotta love slashdot
I do so every year.
Given it is bill gates personally, and not the M$ community, I'll look at it as a personal contribution too.... With the proviso that income and assets are taken into account, I am giving away MUCH MORE of my net worth than ol Bill is each and every year....
I know he is contributing a great deal, and that is fantastic given he doesn't have to. But lets not make him out to be a sait here!!! There are many ordinary everyday people doing just as much or more in proportion to available expenditure.
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
Before the Linux community goes 'up in arms' about the wording of this article, perhaps one should look at the 'flip side'.
If it was the Linux community that had pledged $750mil, and the article asked if Billy G was going to be able to match the donation, this thread would be filled with praise for the penguin.
Perhaps the wording of the article was meant to instill anger among the Linux community. Perhaps the individual who wrote the article is a Microsoft supporter and is tired of the way that Microsoft is constantly bashed on these forums. I myself am a Microsoft supporter (here comes some more negative karma). Why do I support Microsoft? Because that is how I make my money. How much of the /. crowd would be out of work if Microsoft went out of business? How much of the /. crowd use Microsoft product everyday?
Am I anti-Linux? No. Do I support what the /. Linux community has to say about Microsoft? Also a No. How many people on Slashdot claim to be 100% Linux? I dont have an exact figure, but I would venture a guess that it is above 90% of the posters. Which makes me ask another question, if 90% of the /. community uses Linux at home, Linux at work, and when helping family/friends recommends Linux and supports it for them, why is the Linux market share so low?
My suggestion to the posters on /. is to quit whining about Microsoft business practices. Instead, if you are unhappy with the cost, functionality, or just want to use Linux because it's 'cool', then stop supporting Microsoft by not using their product.
Here are some suggestions:OS - Some flavor of Linux instead of Windows
Office Suite - OpenOffice
Web Browser - Netscape, Firefox, or some other Mozilla browser.
Web Server - Apache
FTP - BSDftpd, or ProFTPd, or whatever other Linux FTP you like.
Of course, these are only suggestions. You could go on flailing your arms about speaking the evils of Microsoft, but until you stop supporting Microsoft in action as well in words, the 'boys in cornflower blue' will continue to ignore you.
...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.
Twitter, you're a petulant cock-gobbling sycophant to Linux Torvaldyos! Quit taking DP from ESR and RMS's feculent cocks and why don't you try to stop sucking quite so much? Get out of your parents' basement and see the real world - maybe then you'll see how pathetic you sound, with your neverending stream of bullshit about how Microsoft is stalking you. Wasn't it you who said that Microsoft believes your insane ranting is actually a threat to them, so they PAY PEOPLE to reply to you on Slashdot? No sir, I don't get any money. I do it for the love. Someone has to go up against your paranoid whining. So get back in your cage and shut the fuck up already.
Twitter, you're a petulant cock-gobbling sycophant to Linux Torvaldyos! Quit taking DP from ESR and RMS's feculent cocks and why don't you try to stop sucking quite so much? Get out of your parents' basement and see the real world - maybe then you'll see how pathetic you sound, with your neverending stream of bullshit about how Microsoft is stalking you. Wasn't it you who said that Microsoft believes your insane ranting is actually a threat to them, so they PAY PEOPLE to reply to you on Slashdot? No sir, I don't get any money. I do it for the love. Someone has to go up against your paranoid whining. So get back in your cage and shut the fuck up already.