Gates Donates $15M to Preserve Computing History

Dan-DAFC writes "The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is donating the sum of $15 million to the Computer History Museum in California, according to the BBC. The money is the biggest single gift in the museum's $125 million fund-raising campaign, which is still $50 million short of its target. The funds raised will be used to add more exhibits and educational programs."

Comments

Bill gates

[Dragoonkain]

sniffs ajax

Re:Bill gates

[Anonymous Coward]

Bill donates where he belongs!

Re:Bill gates

[Anonymous Coward]

Bill donates where he belongs!

Really? Has he donated to hell yet?

Wow

[Anonymous Coward]

Huh, I've already read about this on like 10 other sites...way to keep up with the times, slashdot.

And, why the hell wouldn't Billy donate? I'm sure the museum will have the largest section devoted to Microsoft.

Re:Wow

[bedroll]

And, why the hell wouldn't Billy donate? I'm sure the museum will have the largest section devoted to Microsoft.

Because it's good PR. $15 mil. is pocket change to him, but it buys never-ending advertising in a place sure to only ever be visited by the target audience.

Re:Wow

[Mishra100]

Nice thought. In a sales point of view this makes total sense... Looking at it that way, I'm suprised he didn't donate more. Well with the billions that he has

Re:Wow

[Anonymous Coward]

why *wouldn't* he, dumbass :p

Re:Wow

[knoebelsPT]

Target Audience goes to this museum?

I think not. The visitors to this museum are hardcore computer geeks that are already well aware of their choices and are likely not going to dump their current setups for Microsoft's latest and greatest based on their experiences at this museum.

Microsoft's target audience is corporate executives and average consumers, not enthusiasts

Re:Wow

[Phroggy]

Nice thought. In a sales point of view this makes total sense... Looking at it that way, I'm suprised he didn't donate more. Well with the billions that he has

Would donating more money have bought more advertising? Really?

Re:Wow

[qualico]

Yep, and its only getting worse.
http://www.alexa.com/data/details/traffic_details? &range=2y&size=large&compare_sites=slashdot.org&y= t&url=digg.com

Take it or leave it.

Re:Wow

[commodoresloat]

it buys never-ending advertising

Yeah -- look, it got him mentioned on slashdot!

Re:Wow

[linuxfanatic1024]

Microsoft's target audience is corporate executives and average consumers, not enthusiasts Actually, they do try to get people who use other operating systems to use M$ Window$. The only thing is, they have to make free programming tools and power user tools available (and supported), as well as getting the system not to have a full crash whenever something like a game fails, before that happens. And it would be a good idea not to charge so much as well. Come on, software is not like making cars. Once you have one copy of the software, making so many more is very, very cheap. It does NOT cost $300 just to produce one copy of the software! Just my $.02

Re:Wow

[PingPongBoy]

Somehow the wrong moderation was sent so I'll post something and cancel my moderation in this topic.

It is possible, very possible, that Bill Gates has some expectation of benefit to Microsoft. Rather than finding fault with Bill or raise questions about conflict of interest or even contemplate that Bill ought to return some cash into the needier aspects of computing, I'll suggest that from an objective view Microsoft has made contributions to computing industry worth preserving. Microsoft products typically have not been sold as luxury items and I doubt a big donation was intended to attract people with overly expensive displays. Any presentation of Microsoft or the impacts of Microsoft will likely be costly so give Bill a chance to pay for some of it. Bill could have paid for the entire museum but he made a fairly proportionate contribution. Jobs for artists and tourism. No biggie.

If he can own the past

[UltimaL337Star]

He'll buy the future,... and exhibits a-h, including the good water fountain.

Re:If he can own the past

[kunakida]

When I first read the title, I thought it said: "Gates Donates $15M to Preserve Continuing History"

Too late for PR stunts BG

[PyroGx1133]

No ammount of good will heal the wounds you have open.

Re:Too late for PR stunts BG

[USSJoin]

Honestly, this is asinine. While you personally might disagree (as many do) with some of Microsoft's business practices through the year, at the same time, one must honestly be impressed with what they've managed to accomplish. Making computing ubiquitous, and easy to understand-- these aren't things to be taken lightly. Yes, things crash, and yes, he stole some things, but I think that most /.ers wouldn't be here if they hadn't been introduced to computers at some point; most people are introduced to computing through Windows. And maybe yes, we move on to bigger and better things, but at the same time, it's nice to have a computer I'd give my grandmother.

Re:Too late for PR stunts BG

[dedazo]

Tell us about it, PyroGx1133. Did the Microsoft Special Forces raid your village and kill your family back when you lived among the hill people of the north?

Re:Too late for PR stunts BG

[Anonymous Coward]

You make it sound like Bill Gates is Hitler or something. Queue Gates = Hitler jokes. The Gates Foundation has donated an enormous amount of money to many different types of organizations that helps millions.

Re:Too late for PR stunts BG

[Zebra_X]

Big PR stunts? Gates has been giving money for *years* (at least as far back as 1997) to charitable organziations. He's also personally responsible for the gates foundation. MS, and gates in particular has been quite generous. Much more so than other silicon valley tech companies. In fact, i recently tried to find information on charitable giving done by steve jobs or apple but to no avail. It seems that they collected some money for the red cross in the wake of katrina but i didn't find any actual donations from apple. How generous of them to off "free" advertising space.

Re:Too late for PR stunts BG

[NoGuffCheck]

it's nice to have a computer I'd give my grandmother.

mod parent up.. its about time someone on /. expressed their dissdane for their own lineage...

Re:Too late for PR stunts BG

[linguae]

I think that most /.ers wouldn't be here if they hadn't been introduced to computers at some point; most people are introduced to computing through Windows.

I don't know if I'd say that, though. Many people's first experience of computers were with DOS (still Microsoft, I know, but not Windows), Apple II, Apple Macintosh, Commodore 64, Amiga, and probably a plethora of other platforms from the late 70s and 1980s that I forgot to mention. And then we have some old-timers here who were introduced to vacuum tubes, punch cards, IBM mainframes, PDP-11s, and some other ancient stuff.

Computers have been around for about 60 years now, and they have been in Joe Average's workplace for about 25. I'm pretty sure that except for the youngest generation, most people have been exposed to computing prior to Windows dominating the market.

Re:Too late for PR stunts BG

[fishmasta]

He doesn't need PR. He needs medical treatment for those open wounds. The smell is disgusting!

Re:Too late for PR stunts BG

[adtifyj]

one must honestly be impressed with [Microsoft] ... making computing ubiquitous, and easy to understand...

Without Microsoft, the world would not have stood still. Moore's `law' is what drove the recent information age; I doubt any company could have stopped it. The Internet is the only component of the puzzle that was critical for our lifestyle, and the formation of Internet as it know it was a coup of the people over the mega-corps if ever there was one. Without Microsoft, the Internet would be a much safer place to do business.

It is my opinion that without Microsoft, companies like IBM, SGI, HP, Sun, Apple, etc would be very viable companies now with quality goods in constant competition. They were starting to introduce low end workstations in the timeframe that MS-DOS was becoming popular. And while MS-DOS was still learning about pixels, SGI Iris had multimedia.

Instead of the hardware engineering industry being matched with quality in software engineering, quantity has always been the "name of the game" for the bulk of the software industry.

My gut feeling says that RMS will be remembered long after all of Gates monuments and plaques have deteriorated away.

Re:Too late for PR stunts BG

[NanoGator]

"I'm pretty sure that except for the youngest generation, most people have been exposed to computing prior to Windows dominating the market."

There is a bit of a difference between being exposed to computing and actually having one in nearly every home. Don't forget that programmers aren't the only ones that make a living with computers. Most (if not all...) of the 3D artists I know, for example, got their start because they learned skills in 3D at home on their PC.

In any event, it's silly to deny that Windows hasn't had a positive effect on the number of machines in people's homes these days. I realize it's not fun to think about and all, but honestly, that's just not something to be in denial about.

Re:Too late for PR stunts BG

[Alien Being]

"...one must honestly be impressed with what they've managed to accomplish. Making computing ubiquitous, and easy to understand-- these aren't things to be taken lightly...."

MS didn't cause those things to happen. They've just been along for the ride. It was cheap hardware that made computers ubiquitous. It was IBM that made the PC the defacto standard microcomputer and, at the same time, turned a smalltime software house into a malevolent behemoth. I'll give MS some points for ease of use, but no more so than some other environments.

Re:Too late for PR stunts BG

[adtifyj]

If Gates really wanted to preserve computing history, he should donate money to the dying *BSDs! Im sure that PR stunt would raise some eyebrows on /. and close a few wounds.

Re:Too late for PR stunts BG

[91degrees]

What, like bringing BASIC programming to the masses? Standing up to Apple to prove that they don't own the WIMP GUI? Setting up the Bill and Melinda Gates foundation?

And what harm has he done? Reduced choice for a load of rich geeks? Competed unfairly with some other companies, thus making some highly employable people have to find other jobs?

God. He's evil.

Re:Too late for PR stunts BG

[Achromatic1978]

The realities of such a statement aside, etc, this statement doesn't exactly come across as "awe-inspiring": thus making some highly employable people have to find other jobs.

Re:Too late for PR stunts BG

[MysteriousPreacher]

I disagree with the methods of some of the more brutal African warlords but one must honestly be impressed with the quality of the diamonds that come from their mines.

Re:Too late for PR stunts BG

[replicant108]

Of course, maintaining the fiction that MS were responsible for the birth of popular computing is a good reason for Bill to invest in computer "history".

Re:Too late for PR stunts BG

[dangitman]

In any event, it's silly to deny that Windows hasn't had a positive effect on the number of machines in people's homes these days.

I don't know. It would be just as silly to claim that it is just because of Windows. I thought more people had computers, because they have gotten cheaper, and more necessary for work. Windows makes computers more expensive, and not as easy to use.

There is simply not the data to prove whether or not Windows had a significant effect on computer adoption. most people were going to end up with one, anyway, whether the software was made by microsoft, Apple, Commodore, Google or some company that exists in a parallel universe.

Since we don't have access to a parallel copy of the universe, we don't know whether Microsoft helped or hindered computing. Perhaps more people would own computers if today's software and Operating Systems weren't so demanding of resources? Or if they remained network, rather than desktop-centric.

I have never known anyonw who bought a computer because of Microsoft. Many but in spite of Microsoft. I have known people to avoid getting into computers at all, because of Microsoft, though.

Re:Too late for PR stunts BG

[meringuoid]

most /.ers wouldn't be here if they hadn't been introduced to computers at some point; most people are introduced to computing through Windows.

BBC Micro model B, followed by RiscOS on Acorn Archimedes. I might add that when I moved to high school I switched from RiscOS to Windows 3.1. A painful experience.

Re:Too late for PR stunts BG

[91degrees]

Most of those computers listed by thegrandparent would have been experienced in the home. Something like an Amiga or and Apple II was considerably cheaper than a contemporary PC, and could do most of what the PC could do. Windows required a hard disk at the very least, and a lot of memory. If Microsoft didn't exist, we'd still have a computer in every home. It may even have been better.

Re:Too late for PR stunts BG

[humina]

I think gates used/uses his money to improve his tainted image. The best way to get money out of Jobs and others might be to start a personal campaign against them. The only way out of it would therefore be public donations.

I'd like to see a tech company use some of their donation money to improve the workplace and pay of those people that do the soldering and assembly of the actual computers. Personally I'd like to see the money go towards improving the future instead of preserving the past. I guess I'll just have to flame bill a bit more in order to get the money out of him.

Re:Too late for PR stunts BG

[MysteriousPreacher]

Doing good deeds does not change the fact that you've been nasty. Hamas runs welfare systems, does this mean that their violent side isn't so bad after all?

He's not Hitler by any stretch of the imagination however he should be remembered both for his charity and the methods he used to obtain that money.

Re:Too late for PR stunts BG

[meringuoid]

In any event, it's silly to deny that Windows hasn't had a positive effect on the number of machines in people's homes these days. I realize it's not fun to think about and all, but honestly, that's just not something to be in denial about.

Still not convinced. It's the open IBM platform more than the Windows OS that made the PC take off in popularity and leave the Mac behind, but that was never really a mass home market.

Ten years ago the most basic home PC cost about a grand, and might have as its big selling point a copy of Encarta. That's the home PC á la Microsoft. Nowadays a basic PC costs a few hundred, and has as its big selling point a connection to the Internet. That's what's changed. We have to thank the massive drop in hardware costs and the increased importance of the Internet for the huge number of home PCs today. The OS is quite irrelevant. Any cheap graphical interface would have done just as well; all that DOS / Windows had as an advantage was that they were far less expensive than the commercial Unices at the time.

Re:Too late for PR stunts BG

[Weh]

So you're saying that Bill Gates is a little like Robin Hood?

Re:Too late for PR stunts BG

[natd]

USSJoin: but I think that most /.ers wouldn't be here if they hadn't been introduced to computers at some point; most people are introduced to computing through Windows.

I wonder how true that is. Personally, mine was the Vic-20. I didn't get in front of Windows until 1995 at work (Win 3.1 at the time, but I installed 95 to try), and that was enough to convince me that Windows was not a suitable replacement for my Amiga 4000.

I bought a 486 DX2/66, put slackware on it, then a few years later supplimented that with a Mac (OS 8.6) and then moved to OS X. I see no reason other than Battlefield 2 to go back to Windows as my main machine :)

/. is probably reasonably stacked wth people who ddn't need to be introduced to computing by their workplace or local harvey norman / computer world / best buy.

Re:Too late for PR stunts BG

[Lucractius]

Then will he give me 10 million to devote my life to spreading the availability of quality computing resources into new areas... thats a full time job no one pays for... but $10 million dollars annual investment returns would fund and pay for my time doing it...

I realy do wonder just whats going to happen to the heirs to his fortune... i mean realy... does any one have any clue what the Jnr Gates s are going to do with the worlds largest inheritance...

Re:Too late for PR stunts BG

[BokLM]

Making computing ubiquitous, and easy to understand-- these aren't things to be taken lightly.

Hmm, computing is not really easing easy and ubiquitous with Windows. That's what they want us to think, but it's not true.
Most people I know have many problems using their computer, which are full of virus, spyware and that kind of shit. I would say that 80 or 90% of people having a computer connected to the internet can't use it correctly.
Some others OSs are not always as easy to use, but at least they work and don't try to make you think that something which is inherently complexe is simple (making it actually more complexe if you want something working because they hide you all the details).

Re:Too late for PR stunts BG

[Tim C]

That's a ridiculous comparison even for slashdot.

Re:Too late for PR stunts BG

[houghi]

My first contact with anything like a computer was a C64, later I got a 386DX40 as my first real PC with Windows 3.1

If it were not for Bill Gates, I would have looked at codes much sooner then I did now and were much further. So if anything, Bill Gates and closed source held me back.

If he would not have been there, I would have picked up another kind of PC that would have been available. Perhaps a Mac, perhaps something completely different.

Re:Too late for PR stunts BG

[MysteriousPreacher]

It's an exageration without a doubt but the basic principle is the same. The parent seemed to be saying that it's okay to like Bill because despite the dubious business practices of Microsoft, they make some real nice stuff.

Does that make more sense to you?

Re:Too late for PR stunts BG

[Anonymous Coward]

Charitable donations are tax deductable. What Gates is doing is very similar to what Andrew Carnegie and other "Robber Barons" did around the first of the century with their foundations. It would be curious to know who will be the administrators of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation after they have deceased and how well, if at all, they will be paid.

Re:Too late for PR stunts BG

[LtOcelot]

Making computing ubiquitous, and easy to understand-- these aren't things to be taken lightly.

Indeed. If Microsoft were uniquely responsible for doing those things, this comment would support your argument. They weren't, and it doesn't.

Re:Too late for PR stunts BG

[LtOcelot]

I think gates used/uses his money to improve his tainted image.

Why is the parent post moderated "troll"? Be realistic, people -- this is one of the prime motivations for wealthy individuals and corporations to make charitable donations. Not the only motivation, mind you, but anyone who thinks it isn't a consideration in a multi-million-dollar donation is seriously naive.

Re:Too late for PR stunts BG

[metamatic]

http://www.theregister.co.uk/1999/10/01/leaked_ema il_exposes_ms_charity/

Re:Too late for PR stunts BG

[sisukapalli1]

I realy do wonder just whats going to happen to the heirs to his fortune... i mean realy... does any one have any clue what the Jnr Gates s are going to do with the worlds largest inheritance...

The couple of articles below will answer probably a majority of questions.

Check the conversation between Gates and Buffet on this topic to see that their views are fairly noble indeed:
http://www.fortune.com/fortune/technology/articles /0,15114,1117906,00.html

Excerpt on why Buffet thinks Gates is able to manage philanthropy better than Buffet:
"FORTUNE: You have different philosophies about philanthropy, with Bill giving a lot of his money away today and Warren waiting until he dies to give it away. What arguments would you make to the other that your way is the right way?
BUFFETT: Well, I think his way is better. He and Melinda, they're devoting a huge amount of money, terrific brains, and heart to it. That's a great combination. I couldn't have done that when I was in my 40s and added anything meaningful. At my age now, you can argue that a very significant percentage of the money has been made. And I don't need the stock to control Berkshire, so it may make sense to do something very significant before I die."

-----------

While you are it, please see this old (1986) article about Buffet (referenced from the earlier one) titled "Should You Leave It All to the Children":
http://www.fortune.com/fortune/articles/0,15114,11 16457,00.html

"Susan Buffett, who works in Washington as an administrative assistant to the editor of U.S. News & World Report and is married to a public interest lawyer, admits her father's position is tough to live with. 'My dad is one of the most honest, principled, good guys I know,' she says. 'And I basically agree with him. But it's sort of strange when you know most parents want to buy things for their kids and all you need is a small sum of money --to fix up the kitchen, not to go to the beach for six months. He won't give it to us on principle. All my life my father has been teaching us. Well, I feel I've learned the lesson. At a certain point you can stop.'"

S

Re:Too late for PR stunts BG

[Braino420]

I think Bill has already though about this

Re:Too late for PR stunts BG

[humina]

Why is the parent post moderated "troll"? Be realistic, people -- this is one of the prime motivations for wealthy individuals and corporations to make charitable donations. Not the only motivation, mind you, but anyone who thinks it isn't a consideration in a multi-million-dollar donation is seriously naive.

I call it like it is and someone mods me troll. Brilliant. Maybe if I post it again I can get smarter mods:

I think gates used/uses his money to improve his tainted image. The best way to get money out of Jobs and others might be to start a personal campaign against them. The only way out of it would therefore be public donations.

I'd like to see a tech company use some of their donation money to improve the workplace and pay of those people that do the soldering and assembly of the actual computers. Personally I'd like to see the money go towards improving the future instead of preserving the past. I guess I'll just have to flame bill a bit more in order to get the money out of him.

Re:Too late for PR stunts BG

[GeneralHorel]

Without Microsoft, the Internet would be a much safer place to do business.

I doubt this. If windows wasn't on 90% to 95% (extremely rough guess) and it was some other OS then all the malious hackers and script kittys out there would target that OS. we'd still have the same problems and people would bitch about who ever released said OS

Re:Too late for PR stunts BG

[JakartaDean]

I have done some development work in third-world countries, and the stuff Bill & Melinda's foundation supports is brilliant. They are not encumbered by the obligations government aid gets (buy from donor country, or cannot support abortion rights). They also have piles of money, so they can take on smart, useful and long-term projects which ultimately save many lives and improved education levels and economies.

Having said that, I believe that Bill never donated a dime to anyone until he got married, saying that he wanted to be actively involved in working with recipients and didn't have the time back then.

I don't like the guy's software, nor his business practices, and his sudden conversion to philanthropy may be a concern, but the work his foundation does is absolutely fantastic.

Re:Too late for PR stunts BG

[Lucractius]

reading that makes me think of him running a mr burns style search for an heir.

if hes only going to give 30 million to his kids. why not search out 7 other people and chuck them 10 million each to spread the wealth around more. not as much philanthropy, as seeding the economy, and being very generous to 7 random people. A person with 10 million can do a lot of good if they set their mind to it, imagine if you never had to worry if the bills were paid and you could every year funnel that 100 thousand dollar income (not part of returns on the 10 million and yould probably have a big chunk of that you could funnel in too.) into a charity or to being generous and helping people.

Simple point. Theyll give a kid in etheopia a laptop for free but Comp Sci students in the western world wont even be able to buy them yet? *points to his Univesity SUBSIDISING laptop prices and still not bringing them under a grand* If some charity would cough the dough, id buy a thousand of those laptops and just give them to any of the students in the Comp Sci department. They did a study and proved it helped, so theyre unfortunatly giving an unfair advantage to those with $. If i had 100 grand a year for being generous, i could do that every year, not a single student in the department wouldnt have one and theyd all have the benefit.

Re:Too late for PR stunts BG

[Kiaser Wilhelm II]

Barclay stood nearly trembling, his eyes drawn to the back of the slim
body of young Cadet Crusher cavorting naked under the gentle
waterfall. His round pale buttocks, so smooth, so pink, so...
virginal. And with that doofy art-boy haircut plastered wetly to his
head he seemed even more attractive...

Wesley turned, full lips, flaccid, uncircumsized penis hanging limp
from his near-hairless groin over two unimpressive wrinkled little
testicles, his arms awkwardly akimbo, he stared at Barclay, a grin
spreading across his face.

"Broccoli! Come for a swim." He reached into the pool of water
swirling around his thighs, waded toward the older man, splashing and
grinning wickedly.

"W-Wes, d-don't... stop splashing me!" Barclay staggered awkwardly,
backing away from the waterfront, away from the wet, naked boy. His
stretchy standard-issue uniform pants only accentuated the bulge
swelling from his groin.

Wesley grinned, enjoying the lieutenant's discomfort, smug in the
knowledge that his youthful body excited the officer. He stepped out
of the water and grabbed Barclay's wrist; heaving backward and to the
side as he'd learned in his judo class, he sent Barclay to his knees
in the muddy bank of the pool...

But Barclay *had* somehow managed to get through the Academy's basic
training, and he did outweigh the lad by nearly 30 lbs... his hand
snaked out catching Wes' ankle and the two were on the ground in a
flash. Blue uniform wet and muddied sliding against the laughing
slippery wet young boy Barclay's hands grabbing whatever appendage was
handy in his efforts to pin the brat rubbing himself hard against the
smooth hairless body he easily pinned the arrogant little snot-nose
face-first in the mud.

"Well, Wesley..." Barclay rubbed his clothed groin against the firm
round crack of young Ensign Crusher's nether region.

Wesley giggled, even as Barclay leaned forward to keep Wes pinned down
by the weight of his upper body as he lowered his soggy pants to let
his hard penis spring forth, using his free hand to guide it between
Wesley's pink firm cheeks, tapping against the virginal little brown
button hidden therein.

"I've been wanting to to d-do this for a l-long time, you little...
little BRAT!"

Barclay plunged his penis into Wesley's rectum; the lad squealed,
impaled, as Barclay proceeded to ride his ass. He began humping back
at the cock violating his hind quarter, moaning in youthful excess...

"Gee Broccoli, this is *great*... what do you call it?"

"COMPUTER! FREEZE PROGRAM."

Barclay continued cornholing young ensign Crusher. Having secured his
program so that only he could access or stop it, he was at the moment
oblivious to the presence of his commanding officer, lost in his lusty
revenge fantasy.

"CAPTAIN'S OVERRIDE!"

Barclay landed with a thud, the head of his penis slamming into the
cold matrix grid of the holodeck floor howling in agony his pants
around his hips his erection vanished rolling onto his back clutching
his injured organ attempting to curl into a fetal position.

"Mr. Barclay..." his features etched in stone, so much control over
his facial muscles that it was difficult to move his jaw enough to
speak, Jean Luc Picard spat his words out very carefully.

"Consider yourself on report. Mister. Barclay." Picard tugged
meaningfully at the bottom of his uniform shirt.

Barclay lay with his knees drawn to his chest, his buttocks exposed,
his genitals clutched protectively, his eyes squeezed tightly shut
rolling desperately from side to side.

Computing Museum

[VincenzoRomano]

Gates is also donating a copy of all his software products.
Infact their bugs has made the history as well as their poorly engineered solutions!

Re:Computing Museum

[yoyhed]

Thanks for the most original joke I've seen for a long time on Slashdot. I mean, really, an anti-Microsoft joke about bugs in their software? You're just fucking hilarious.

their bugs has made

Even if the "joke" had been good, you would have discredited yourself by failing to properly conjugate your fucking verb.

Re:Computing Museum

[VincenzoRomano]

Thanks: it is so difficlut to find careful people! :-)
I type as I live: fats and with lost of erorrs!

Re:Computing Museum

[Anonymous Coward]

Fuck off, Fatso. The thin people are talking.

WIth just a few minor alterations, mind you.

[Anonymous Coward]

I took a tour of the museum shortly after this announcement. Bill Gates only asked for a few changes to made following his generous donation.

Middle Age Clockwork Computer: Invented by Bill Gates
Punch Card Programmable Computer: Invented by Bill Gates
Analog Computer: Invented by Bill Gates
Digital Electronics: Invented by Bill Gates
Atanasoff Berry Computer: Invented by Bill Gates
Z3 Universal Computer: Invented by Bill Gates
ENIAC: Invented by Bill Gates
EDSAC: Invented by Bill Gates
Integrated Circuit: Invented by Bill Gates
Personal Computer: Invented by Bill Gates
Internet: Invented via a joint effort from Bill Gates and Al Gore

Re:WIth just a few minor alterations, mind you.

[dangitman]

Gates was later found kneeling in the rain, screaming GOOOOOORRRE!

Re:WIth just a few minor alterations, mind you.

[MysteriousPreacher]

Nah, he won't go that far. He'll just charge them more for Windows if they want to have a Netscape exhibit in the museum.

Re:WIth just a few minor alterations, mind you.

[Anonymous Coward]

s/invented/patented/

Re:WIth just a few minor alterations, mind you.

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't joke. A friend of mine had a university text book published by the Microsoft Press. Inside the cover there was a timeline of the history of computing. The first entry was 1980, the founding of Microsoft.

Only 15 Million?!?!

[Iron_Yuppie]

What a fucking cheapskate!

Re:Only 15 Million?!?!

[Virak]

You know, I hate Microsoft just as much as (if not more than!) you, but until you donate anywhere near that amount, shut the fuck up.

Re:Only 15 Million?!?!

[mriya3]

"64...ehm... 15'000'000 ought to be enough for anybody." Bill Gates, 2005.

Re:Only 15 Million?!?!

[Iron_Yuppie]

I'll donate the same percentage of my net worth. Aka, my two cents.

Re:Only 15 Million?!?!

[midav]

It is like a bully after shaking school kids for years of their breakfast money donated $1.50 to support a school exhibition dedicated to achievements of those he used to terrorize.

Re:Only 15 Million?!?!

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow, did you like spend the last 12 hours trying to come up with some analogy that would fit, so that you could carry on with your Jihad? Loser.

Re:Only 15 Million?!?!

[adtifyj]

No problems! I'll do that right after he refunds everyone for software that was broken, or pays the damage for any ill effect of software his company has released. This is the standard expectation for consumers purchasing any product.

Back in reality for a moment, I realise that damages are not warrented, but in my part of the software industry, refunds do happen. Big clients expect that software is actually able to do what is described in the documentation, does not crash, and that it interoperates.

Re:Only 15 Million?!?!

[Anonymous Coward]

yeah but you probably didnt even do that.

and it doesnt matter if it is a small percentage, his .00000000001% donation is far better and more useful than if you donated 75% of your worth

cause the difference is millions and when the organization gets abig check that is all that counts.

In other words...

[nmb3000]

The change jar on Bill's dresser was getting full :)

Don't take that the wrong way. Whatever his reasons (and I believe them honest), you can't help but respect the Foundation. A quick look shows they've donated over $28B and over $1B each year. That's a lot of money doing a lot of good, and is probably better spent than most Government-sponsered projects.

Re:In other words...

[Hyperlink Processor]

A quick look shows they've donated over $28B [wikipedia.org] and over $1B each year.

Is that counting the monetary equivalent of "donated software"?

Re:In other words...

[Anonymous Coward]

Wether it is or not, it's still far more than Linux has donated.

Re:In other words...

[iceanfire]

linux is *in it self* the donation. How much money did Linus sell linux for? NOTHING. Add to this the time contributions of the entire community and you have something that rivals gate's contributions. Linux is a boon the the economy, freedom... all all the other buzzwords that are alive and well in American politics today.

Re:In other words...

[Atario]

A quick look shows they've donated over $28B and over $1B each year.

Uh, no. It says their endowment -- the amount in the bank -- is currently $28B. They are required to donate at least 5% of their assets per year, which, therefore, is currently over $1B/yr.

Still a boatload of cheddar. Hey Bill! Care to give to the "Atario Solvency Fund"?

Re:In other words...

[Anonymous Coward]

Charity donations are tax deductible. Every single buck they give away will return in another form: less taxes and/or free publicity. Though it may seem impossible, there are ways for big corporations to make money by... well, donating money.

Re:In other words...

[Anonymous Coward]

Whatever his reasons (and I believe them honest), you can't help but respect the Foundation.

I respect the Foundation. I don't respect Gates. When people admire him for donating lots of money to charity, I don't think they realise just how rich he is. He and his entire family could live like royalty for the rest of their lives and not get through 1% of it. The interest he earns is enough to feed every starving family in Ethiopia. Inaction is inexcusable. Not enough action is inexcusable. Why is he hoarding all that money when it could be doing so much good? Why does he use only a fraction of his wealth to help people when he could easily do a hundred times more without it affecting his lifestyle in the slightest? He's hoarding money and it's greedy. That is true regardless of how much he's already given. This isn't pac man, the person with the highest amount of money doesn't "win" anything. He should keep enough to be fabulously wealthy for the rest of his life and to provide for his family, but anything more is just greed.

Re:In other words...

[humina]

Bill Gates: Steal from the poor. Give a small slice back to the poor in order to allow the theft. Live richly.

I refuse to get on the "but he does some good" bandwagon here.

Re:In other words...

[citog]

I refuse to get on the "but he does some good" bandwagon here.

I hear that. Getting down off your high horse just to climb up on the bandwagon does seem like a lot of trouble.

Re:In other words...

[BlueHands]

If they really can have a positive cash flow by donating money, fantasic!

Sure, it just means the federal goverment gets less money but I am ok with that, even if it is not being spent in the best fashion. The more money moves, the more likely it is to end up in the hands of somebody who really needs it.

Re:In other words...

[a.d.trick]

I agree. I think that things like this are good. However, this does not mean that Microsoft is not guilty of owning a monopoly and killing compettion.

Re:In other words...

[spagetti_code]

Just to be clear - not all donations have been in cash. Many have been in software which actually costs him next to nothing to provide.

Further, the whole thing started at the time he got sued by the govt. It was originally a PR exercise.

Still, it is doing some good work.

Re:In other words...

[humina]

My horse is quite comfy thank you very much. What's it like under the bridge?

Re:In other words...

[dwater]

In my mind at least, it's not the amount of money that counts, so much as the percentage of his/their worth and the reason you he/they it.

Of course, I'm not the one receiving it...

Re:In other words...

[tehshen]

It's nice under the bridge, we're not getting wet from the rain.

Re:In other words...

[rtb61]

Oh yes, the endless cry of the corporations, you can't trust the government to spend taxes wisely which is why instead of paying 30% tax they manage to fudge things enough so they only end up "donating" 5% to charities. What is really contemptible, the governments that corporations say you can't trust to spend you tax money are the same ones that the corporations pay to get into power.

The offensive idea that you can trust a corporation with the future of society when everybody knows that for the majority of corporations, the sole reason for their exisitence is to generate profits for themselves regardless of the cost to society as long as it is legal, or breaking the law causes so little effect it is still profitable to do so or the very worst act of all, using their fiscal influence to alter the laws when the affect upon society is palpable harm but that is okay because they are going to generate extra profits for themselves (well at least senior management gets the opportunity to cash up and brokers and major shareholders get to pump and dump legally).

If you are unhappy about the way your government is spending your tax dollars become involved in the political process and do something about. Don't expect greed driven corporations to do it for you because they are just doing it to you whilst marketing the idea of political indifference so that you wont become involved and you will let them run your life and all the lives of the people around you for no better purpose than to satisfy the lusts and ego of the very few who actually profit from this deceitful fraud.

Now really what else would you expect when the story comes out about willie donating money to a computer museum other than, yeah as long as the museum records his version of computing history and says really, really nice things about him and the board of Microsoft, true or not it is still funny, well at least for everyone else apart from willie and his buddies ;-).

If willie wanted people to say nice things about him he should have focused on doing nice things but no he focused on making as much money for himself as possible and is now attempting to buy a nice reputation for himself with a minor percentage of that money, I tell you what, when he gives all of it away like he said he was going to then I will give him the benefit of the doubt, until then nahh he got the reputation he earned ;-).

Re:In other words...

[orin]

That is a wonderful response. Is it yours, or did you lift it from somewhere?

Re:In other words...

[Anonymous Coward]

probably better spent than most Government-sponsered projects

How can it not be? It was voluntary, not compulsive. How can any voluntary transaction NOT be better spent than any compulsive transaction? By definition, the voluntary transaction couldn't have been achieved unless it had the blessing and complete will of those participating. A government program, by contrast, cannot possibly achieve the blessing and complete will of every single participating individual -- if it could, it wouldn't need to be compulsive!

So if the "best spent" money is that which brings the most value to the spender -- and if the spender doesn't voluntarily spend money on things he doesn't value -- then there can be no question that the best spent money is that which is spent 100% voluntarily.

Re:In other words...

[arose]

A kernel with source code for everyone.

Re:In other words...

[Anonymous Coward]

Pleae explain how voting for politics is more effective, or more trustworthy, or more likely to promote change, than voting with your dollars in the market. (You seem to imply that it is near impossible to get business to change, while at the same time, government magically changes at the snap of a finger.)

Furthermore, it makes a lot more sense to me to trust those who operate on the principle of voluntary association (ethical business people), over those who operate on the principle of coercion (government). Unfortunately, government (and its tool of coercion) is now so deeply entangled in the market that the ethical businessman has become a rare species.

Re:In other words...

[Anonymous Coward]

We've had those since the 60s. Try again.

Re:In other words...

[LaughingCoder]

I will always trust corporations to be more responsive than government because corporations (yes, even Microsoft) have competitors that keep them honest. Conversely, if you don't like waiting in line for 2 hours at the DMV only to be told, rudely, that you need to wait in a different line, what are you going to do, wait 3 years until election day and cast your vote against the troll who happened to have been in office at the time? Or, you could fire off an angry letter to be read by an uncaring beaurocrat. Unfortunately, your vote is usually swamped by the hundreds of votes bought by incumbents handing out your hard-earned tax dollars to relatives, friends, public unions and sycophants. No thanks. I'd rather vote with my wallet and shun the products of companies that I don't want to associate with, for whatever reasons I might have. If enough people share those perceptions, that company will either die or change. The very same oft-criticized attribute of companies, their accute attention to the short-term bottom line, is the same characteristic that makes them so responsive to the market. Your strengths are your weaknesses.

Re:In other words...

[lowe0]

I'm pretty sure a lot of us are profiting from this deceitful fraud. How much did the computer you're typing this on cost? Yes, we have an absurdly out-of-balance distribution of wealth in this country. But then again, we have an absurd amount of wealth compared to the poorest parts of the world.

Also, is there any evidence for the assertion that Gates has asked for revisions to the exhibit?

Re:In other words...

[Tango42]

They're buying free publicity? Odd definition of free...

Re:In other words...

[Mark of THE CITY]

I read this as saying, government is unresponsive. Have you considered organizing politically to get what you want? Maybe fundraising to buy your own poliicians? Barring structural reforms in the Amercian political system, that is how things get done. Whining about government being bought is naive, and using it to promote a pro-corporate agenda is antidemocratic (see Kevin Phillips 2002 book "Wealth and Democracy." You can find it in your government-run public library :) .

Re:In other words...

[runderwo]

I refuse to get on the "but he does some good" bandwagon here.

I see I'm not the only one who read the title as "Gates Donates $15M to Rewrite Computing History"

Re:In other words...

[LaughingCoder]

Thanks for the pointer. Unfortunately I am still waiting (2 months and counting) for another book to become available at my government-run library. Maybe I should just go to Barnes & Noble - when they don't have a book I want they get it for me within the week. Funny, that.

Re:In other words...

[Darby]

Also, is there any evidence for the assertion that Gates has asked for revisions to the exhibit?

I doubt there is currently evidence for it, but it would be the only thing consistent with all of his previous actions. It isn't prejudice to assume that he would continue to act in accordance with his character, it's just common sense.

Re:In other words...

[Helios1182]

Well, he has also pledged to donate the vast majority of his personal wealth between now and death. He had to build up a lot of wealth before he could donate a lot.

Re:In other words...

[Helios1182]

It would make sense that his motive on this one. He has done more for computing than almost everyone and he certainly has profitted more from it that anyone. He is a shrewd businessman, but he is also a super-geek, and computers have been his love. It would make sense that he would want to preserve the history of computing. People can still hate him for other things, but even when the big evil corporation donates money and people scream "tax write off!" etc., just remember, they didn't have to donate the money in the first place.

Re:In other words...

[iceanfire]

why is this flamebait? I was just coutering the misunderstanding that linux never contributed anything to society. I did not flame bill gates nor did I say his contributions were useless. huh?

Re:In other words...

[Mark of THE CITY]

Different models. Bookstores have more copies of current books, while libraries have more titles. Maybe your library should network with others; in San Diego County, California, with a mix of city and county libraries federated as the "Serra Library System," this is effective.

Re:In other words...

[LaughingCoder]

I agree the models are different. One model treats the customer like, well, a customer. The other treats a customer more like an inconvenience. And my library already networks with lots of libraries in the region (including at least one very large city). The problem is, this is apparently a very popular book (1776). To be fair, they did locate and obtain another book (in much less demand) for me awhile back and it only took them about 2 weeks.

My comments were more of a general nature, though when you brought up the library example it illustrated very nicely what I was trying to say. I have observed that the likelihood that I will be disappointed with a particular "service rendered" is much, much higher if that "service" was provided by the government (choose one, local, state, federal). Very rarely do I find myself pleasantly surprised when I interact with a government agency or official. Almost always it's the opposite. Conversely, occassionally a company or private business upsets or dissappoints me, but the general rule is that they don't. And further, oftentimes I am pleasantly surprised. Perhaps your experiences have been different. Or perhaps you never really thought about it.

Re:In other words...

[Mark of THE CITY]

I did notice that the Post Office got more pleasant after they lost parcel business to UPS, Fedex, and others, and letter busines to fax and email.

1776: "Wealth of Nations?"

Re:In other words...

[LaughingCoder]

No, "1776", by David McCullough.

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0743 226712/qid=1129841990/sr=2-1/ref=pd_bbs_b_2_1/104- 6981505-9258325?v=glance&s=books

Re:In other words...

[Mark of THE CITY]

Should be good. I read "Johnstown Flood" in my teens and "Truman" when it came out and enjoyed both.

Another donor?

[DeafByBeheading]

Maybe Jack Thompson will pitch in ten grand...

Re:Another donor?

[Wilson_6500]

You mean PA will do it for him?

That's like oil companies donating money

[iamacat]

To preserve the history of species that went extinct because of drilling. Well, at least students will know there were other computers and operating systems before our new worm-infested overlords.

Re:That's like oil companies donating money

[Anonymous Coward]

>...To preserve the history of species that went extinct because of drilling

Like what?

Re:That's like oil companies donating money

[Anonymous Coward]

Like what?

Dentists.

But...

[the_skywise]

Will it include a copy of CP/M?

Re:But...

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, MS-DOS will be included.

Re:But...

[guruevi]

CP/M does not belong in the HISTORY of computers. Your very own Windows Vista runs CP/M under the shell.

Re:But...

[Taladar]

You mean VMS. Windows 9X/ME was CP/M

Batter up: Mr. Steven P. Jobs

[tyrione]

Okay Steve, time to shell out the rest to really stick it in Bill's craw.

Re:Batter up: Mr. Steven P. Jobs

[Anonymous Coward]

Butter your craw Billy Boy! Steve plans on storing his .history file there for at least $20M. Crawfish and Apple Pie. Last Tango in Paris Hilton Hotel California Uber-Alles. Where's Mrs. Robinson? Oh, I see said the blind man.

Will Dos be on display?

[ghoul]

Everyone says DOS is a dinosaur and now we have a museum of history so DOS should be on display. But seriously speaking DOS did revolutionalize the personal PC segment so it has its place in history. So for that matter does the first mouse, the first GIMP , the first laser printer but then it might become a Xerox PARC archive instead of a museum of computer history.
              Anyway wonder how a software can be displayed in a museum. Would they have old computer terminals running DOS on which people can play around or would they just have a number of big boards with writeups abbout the software. A museum of
computer history seems to me to an unique challenge for a curator.

Re:Will Dos be on display?

[dimator]

the first GIMP

I think you meant, the first WIMP.

Re:Will Dos be on display?

[Wilson_6500]

In the lobby of the Museum, they have a working Pong game standup.

So, in a way, yes. The rest is just mercury memory and so on.

Re:Will Dos be on display?

[badman99]

Hmmm DOS Disk Operating System or Denial Of Service ?

Re:Will Dos be on display?

[admactanium]

actually they have a punchtape of the original dos. this was years ago before the microsoft donation. pretty cool.

Re:Will Dos be on display?

[meringuoid]

But seriously speaking DOS did revolutionalize the personal PC segment so it has its place in history.

No, the IBM PC did that, because it was an open platform, of which any manufacturer could create compatible clones. DOS was just along for the ride. The PC platform succeeded despite DOS, not because of it.

Re:Will Dos be on display?

[tooth]

No, the IBM PC did that, because it was an open platform

IBM tried to stop the clones, the didn't build the PC open, companies (basically Compaq) reverse engineered the BIOS. See PC Origins.

Re:Will Dos be on display?

[DaHat]

You've got to give DOS some credit... after all, if it wasn't a usable system that enabled people to do what they wanted on the system, it would have been unlikely that others would have cloned the hardware due to lack of popularity.

Re:Will Dos be on display?

[mwvdlee]

Even further; MS maintained rights to MS-DOS, so Compaq's reverse engineered machine actually could use the same OS as well. Without MS-DOS being available, Compaq arguably wouldn't even have bothered to reverse engineer the IBM-PC.

Re:Will Dos be on display?

[Bert64]

DOS didn`t revolutionise anything, it was just a cheap copy of what had come before.. and only achieved success because it came bundled with IBM`s hardware, and it was IBM compatibility that everyone wanted.

Re:Will Dos be on display?

[Bert64]

The hardware was open, the software (including the bios) was closed..
Compaq and others cloned the bios, and they would have cloned dos too had microsoft not just conveniently sold it to them.

Re:Will Dos be on display?

[ghoul]

GUI Icon Mouse Platform. You could call it Windows Icon Mouse Platform but it means more or less the same

Re:Will Dos be on display?

[westlake]

No, the IBM PC did that, because it was an open platform, of which any manufacturer could create compatible clones. DOS was just along for the ride. The PC platform succeeded despite DOS, not because of it.

Let's not rewrite history. The clones flew off the shelves because they could run software written for the IBM PC. MS-DOS software.

That is what was advertised and that is what sold.

Re:Will Dos be on display?

[vertinox]

A museum of computer history seems to me to an unique challenge for a curator.

Especially since someone keeps formatting the hard drives on all the hands on machines. ;)

Computer History Museum website!

[55555 Manbabies!]

I'm glad their web site is full of tiny pictures with unreadable text. Example here. I suppose I have to visit the museum in person and pay admission to find out what that diagram says. On the other hand, I could probably look at it elsewhere on the web, for free, and with much more information surrounding it.

Re:Computer History Museum website!

[Anonymous Coward]

Admission is free at CHM. Donations welcome, and membership encouraged, but tours are free. It's an exciting tour through the last century of computing

Re:Computer History Museum website!

[55555 Manbabies!]

Thanks for the tip! But the pictures are still too small :(

mod do3n

[Anonymous Coward]

won't b3 shouting Lay down paper numbers continue In aadition,

Re:mod do3n

[fantababy]

he could have donated more!

Bill gates on computing history

[sqeaky]

I wonder if they are going to preserve key points and dialogues in computing history like "No one needs 640 kilobytes of ram..."

Re:Bill gates on computing history

[mythicflux]

I wonder if they are going to preserve key points and dialogues in computing history like "No one needs 640 kilobytes of ram..."

I'm sure he would be more than willing to, a soon as someone can actually find a copy of that article where he actually said it...

Re:Bill gates on computing history

[Phroggy]

I wonder if they are going to preserve key points and dialogues in computing history like "No one needs 640 kilobytes of ram..."

FYI, the quote you're thinking of is an urban legend; Gates didn't actually say it. (If anyone here believes otherwise, please cite your sources.)

Re:Bill gates on computing history

[NanoGator]

"I wonder if they are going to preserve key points and dialogues in computing history like "No one needs 640 kilobytes of ram..."

You want them to preserve a fictional history?

Re:Bill gates on computing history

[ozmanjusri]

In an interview with David Allison, 1993.

BG: "Microsoft was playing a much broader role[laughs] than just doing software for this machine. I mean whether it is the keyboard, the character set, the graphics adapter, or even the memory layouts. I laid out memory so the bottom 640K was general purpose RAM and the upper 384 I reserved for video and ROM, and things like that. That is why they talk about the 640K limit. It is actually a limit, not of the software, in any way, shape, or form, it is the limit of the microprocessor. That thing generates addresses, 20-bits addresses, that only can address a megabyte of memory. And, therefore, all the applications are tied to that limit. It was ten times what we had before. But to my surprise, we ran out of that address base for applications within -- oh five or six years people were complaining."

Re:Bill gates on computing history

[killjoe]

I would prefer the following.

"Knife the baby"
"Cut off their air supply"
"F**king Eric Schmidt [Google's chief executive] is a f***ing p****. I'm going to f***ing bury that guy. I have done it before, I will do it again. I'm going to f****ing kill Google."
"Open source advocates are communists"
"Open source is un-american"
"Open source is a cancer"
"If they want to sue me they can get in line"

There are so many gems from the sleazy MS executives, somebody ought to dig them up and make a list.

Re:Bill gates on computing history

[WilliamSChips]

You want them to preserve a fictional history?

No, but I want to preserve Ballmer's chair-throwing and vowing to kill Google.

Re:Bill gates on computing history

[master_p]

Personally I think they should also keep the video of Steve Ballmer jumping up and down and shouting 'developers, developers, developers'. Future generations will think even more highly of Bill Gates due to having helped solving the problem of the missing link in Darwin's Evolution Theory.

Re:Bill gates on computing history

[Anonymous Coward]

I wonder if they are going to preserve key points and dialogues in computing history like "No one needs 640 kilobytes of ram..."

No. He just paid $15 million to get rid of that exhibit.

Re:Bill gates on computing history

[Rico_Suave]

Yes, because Microsoft is the *only* company *ever* that has spoken badly about their competition. Those bastards!

Re:Bill gates on computing history

[Anonymous Coward]

According to Jon Katz he didn't say it. Which seems to me a pretty good indication he did say it.

Re:Bill gates on computing history

[toopc]

I would prefer the following.

"Knife the baby"

"Knife the baby" is a quote from an Apple excutive.

For example, Tevanian claimed Microsoft's Christopher Phillips had told Apple executive Peter Hoddie that the company should back away from QuickTime.

Tevanian told the court: "Mr. Hoddie said, 'Do you want us to knife the baby?,'" referring to QuickTime. "And Mr. Phillips said, 'Yes we're talking about knifing the baby.'"

So please make sure Apple gets the credit.

Re:Bill gates on computing history

[Elbowgeek]

Ah yes, but don't forget so many other un-visionaries: Steve Jobs declaring that he sees no possible want or need for a colour version of the Mac...

Re:Bill gates on computing history

[Elbowgeek]

But there is one more boo-boo by Mr. Gates. In the mid-80's he was part of a panel game-type thing, for charity I believe. He was asked if there was such a thing as an erase command in S&M-DOS (or is that MS-DOS? ;-). He stated "No", however that is one of the original commands within command.com. In fact, it's in XP as well ;-) Cheers

Scobleized?

[spongman]

I wonder if Bill was influsnced by Scoble's video tour on Channel9?

well worth a look if you can't make it there yourself.

Re:Scobleized?

[spongman]

influsnced

No, officer, I'm not under the influsnce.

Give me a break!

[crottsma]

It houses an impressive collection of more than 4,000 computing artifacts, 10,000 images, 4,000 linear feet of catalogued documentation and gigabytes of software.

$125 million just to boost a collection of old artifacts? Hell, give me half that money and I'll double the size of that collection, with enough money left over to fill the toilets with beer!

Re:Give me a break!

[The Clockwork Troll]

Bill Gates felt the same way, which is why he only donated $15 million.

Specifically, he was quoted as saying, "$15 million should be enough for anybody."

Re:Give me a break!

[ChipMonk]

give me half that money and I'll double the size of that collection

Having gone through the museum twice, I can tell you that the collection on display (less than half their actual inventory) is irreplaceable. The very first Apple I, with Woz's signature, is there. Several other artifacts are similarly unique. You may be able to double the inventory, but you would lessen its actual value in the process.

However, the funds are not all for the collection. The Museum also needs operating funds, such as very strict climate control (typical for a museum), building maintenance, insurance, and material expenses for cataloging, handling, and restoration of the artifacts. The material expenses are unique, due to the Museum's unique inventory and the stringent policies regarding restoration.

Re:Give me a break!

[crottsma]

I'm being somewhat speculative, because I haven't visited the museum, but I can't conceive of how an existing museum would require $125 million to continue its operations. How much of an expenditure is needed to keep Woz's signature intact? This would be the amount required to build and fill a museum, from scratch! Granted the museum intends to expand it's infrastructure, it is nonetheless an exhorbitant sum. Will this money fund all their endeavors over the next decade? Probably not. They'll continue to collect entrance fees, continue their fundraisers, and continue to accept donations. Do you think this much money would be necessary if the staff wasn't being paid extremely well? The museum may have numerous active displays, which require professional maintenance and setup costs, and therefore warrant high wages, but in that case, wouldn't it be more cost-effective to hire contractors, not keep 6-figure employees year-round? There's nothing wrong with paying museum workers well, but when money is tight, I guess the alternative to running on a budget, is to continue to feed the monkey. Something is unsettling about all of this. Museums, as grand as they may be, generally learn to work with a limited budget, and this amount gives no indication of that. A government organization will often expand to fill the amount it's given, much like bacteria, but if you limit the amount it's given it'll work with that, too. I'm not sure what type of organization this museum is, but it sure seems to be acting like a government entity.

tax

[timmarhy]

pure an simple. he has more money then he knows what to do with. 15mill is a lot to you and me but to him, he'd blow that on a 1 week holiday. he donated the money as a tax break, and probably to help boost his ego and get them to show off MS stuff in the museum.

Re:tax

[Anonymous Coward]

"nerds"?

Presumably "nerds" implies some closer relationship with information and learning, yet you've demonstrated a profound lack with respect to the topic. No doubt there are tax benefits but perhaps you should pay attention to the hundreds of references to the Gates Foundation on this very site. Additionally, every several months we're treated to any number of stories documenting the charitable donations. How is it that you've been unable to integrate this information (along with so many of your peers)?

Re:tax

[killjoe]

There three ways to look at it.

1) Proportion. If the red cross came to my door asking for donations and I gave them a quarter am I being generous? In a way yes because I could have shut the door but in another way no because I can certainly afford to give a little more generously.

2) What's left. If I have a million dollars to live on for a year and I give 50 thousand dollars to a charity I can still live pretty comfortably on what's left. If a person has 75 thousand and gives away he only has 25 thousand dollars to live on for a year. Who is impacted more? Who is more generous.

3) What you actually lost. If I have a million dollars and I give away that money I lost a million dollars. If I have a suitcase full of paper that I got for nothing and I give it somebody who later sells that paper for a million dollars I lost a suitcase full of money and possible future income. That's what Bill Gates does, he gives stock to the foundation, the foundation then sells that stock and gives away the money with much publicity always making sure Bill gets mentioned by name.

Re:tax

[halleluja]

pure an simple. he has more money then he knows what to do with. 15mill is a lot to you and me

In general, I do think he manages his finances quite responsibly* (donations, etc); just imagine what a Paris Hilton would do with these kind of funds.

*Aside from the Windows ME fiasco.

Re:tax

[Lumpy]

I think you as well as others fail to grasp the size of money that $15 mil is.

If you put it in a current passbook savings account that is getting 0.5% interest you will make $75,000.00 a year with it sitting in a do absolutely nothing account. It would be brain dead easy to get 2.5% interest on that size of money so you are looking at not just living a comfortable lifestyle at $75,000.00 but possibly living the rich lifestyle on that $375,000.00 interest.

Fools that get a windfall spend it, I can see spending as little as possible to pay off bills, but the morons that go out to buy cars, houses, and other crap are exactly that..... morons.

15mil in the bank = damn decent income for you forever, and for your children for pretty much forever (if you can keep their fingers out of it.)

Now think how much money Billy G. has. he is probably dumping a bit of interest income.

15 million is not a lot of money, it is an absolute buttload of money.

Re:tax

[mwvdlee]

So you're going to donate the money you normally spend on a 1-week holiday to charity too?

Re:tax

[stanmann]

if you have 15 Million CASH, you can make more like 5% using rotating 5-10 year CDs

Z-bug and the old ZamJak 72g

[milktoastman]

I wonder if his money will go to finding and preserving an old copy of the Apple IIe children's game, Z-bug, which was supposed to teach kids to type. That's a bit of computing history I remember, but can't find any references to even on the 'Net. I'm not making that up either, so don't mod me down. It was a piece of my childhood. It probably won't make it to the history of computing, though, because no one seems to remember it. Also reminds me of the ZamJak 72v. At least some people DO remember that crappy platform (http://www.zamjak72g.net./ Mostly just to make fun of, though. I think it was a basement computer enthusiast's attempt to get rich, but who didn't quite have a Bill Gates story in him.

Real Agenda

[Anonymous Coward]

So the museum can buy an archival copy of Windows Vista.

Re:Real Agenda

[Anonymous Coward]

MOD PARENT UP

Slashdot Story Predictor 1.0 FINAL

[Anonymous Coward]

Slashdot Story Predictor 1.0 predicts with a certainty of 0.097, 96.54% of the following comments will be as follows:

0) FIRST POST!!!!
1) "$15 million dollars?!? it's clear that this is pocket change to him i did the math and it's like me donating a quarter."
2) "$15 million dollars? what a cheapskate this is just 15 million totally free PR"
3) "When's the last time you donated to charity you grease-faced Slashnerd? Bill Gates is to be admired."
4) "I can't believe he's not donating the whole $135 million needed."
5) "Step one: start computer museum. Step two: .... Step three: $15M PROFIT!!!!1111"
6) "It is now official. The Computer History Museum has confirmed: *BSD is dying."
7) "hay guys i didnt read the article but i think bill gates is a cheapskate for only doonating 15000 dolalrs"
8) "the museum has a kids section: it has kids toys like PHP"
9) "bill gates will put drm on the museum so that only people with a valid windows xp can activate their pass to get into the museum hay guys drm"
10) "This is a blatant abuse of monopoly power by Microsoft to use its domination in other areas of computing to compete in the historic computing market."

School Donations

[lappy512]

The Bill Gates foundation is pretty nice. Even though I support Linux, they have kept our school computers very nice. For example, we recieve upgrades almost every two years, and we just upgraded almost a week ago to 2.8 Celeron D's in our whole school. When our network was only 10BaseT, they helped us upgrade to 100BaseT, speeding login times. Of course, there are the disadvantages, with MSIE only, and Word, but there's always PortableFirefox and PortableOpenOffice!

Re:School Donations

[ErichTheWebGuy]

What part of the county do you live in? I live in Colorado, and I have never ever recieved anything from the Bill foundation. In fact, I do contract work for the local school district and the majority of the PC's are less then 500 MHz/128MB RAM/10GB HDD. So when you say you just upgraded to 2.8 Celeron D's in your whole school, while I am fighting to keep ~300 500MHz machines running, you can see why I am bitter. So screw you. Either you're a liar (at worst) or you are in a preferential area (at best). Either way, screw you.

Re:School Donations

[killjoe]

The name of the foundation is Bill and Melinda Gates foundation. How come nobody says "Melinda Gates foundation"?. Bill didn't give a cent to anybody until after he got marrried, maybe it's Melinda that's the generous one. Ever think of that?

By the way I glad you found a way to circumvent using the software Bill Gates is shoving down your throats. Teach your fellow students the same thing. It would be a shame if your school graduated a generation of children who didn't know anything that wasn't made by MS.

Re:School Donations

[lappy512]

I live in Redmond, actually. So, it makes sense for the Bill Gates and Melinda Foundation to donate to our schools, however not-necessary it is.

Re:School Donations

[lappy512]

Yep, many of my friends use PortableFirefox (although not openoffice since the portable version doesn't work as well, and is slower) because PortableFirefox (my distrobution) has Flash, and the admins have not bothered to install flash on MSIE. That's a real hit to those people who play arcade games in the library. Coral Cache helps too :D.

Re:School Donations

[meringuoid]

The Bill Gates foundation is pretty nice. Even though I support Linux, they have kept our school computers very nice.

The crack dealer at the front gate has the same policy. If Bill can make sure that all schools use his software, then a generation grows up that knows nothing but Office on Windows. A great way to cement a monopoly, ne? Better yet, it costs Bill nothing to stamp out some more Windows CDs for schools, but he can claim his generosity against tax at full market value!

Isn't it great to be a selfless, altruistic philanthropist?

Re:School Donations

[WWWWolf]

Of course, there are the disadvantages, with MSIE only, and Word, but there's always PortableFirefox and PortableOpenOffice!

Do they really mandate what software should be bought and used on those things? I have a vague recollection of Gates Foundation giving money to some Finnish libraries years and years ago. I vaguely remember Bill himself visiting the place, touring the place with that perma-smile of his, and watching people use Netscape on these brand new computers. =) The Local Microsoft Yesman in the "holy war" newsgroup said that of course it didn't matter what software they ran!

Re:School Donations

[Evro]

I remember back when I was in college, Microsoft donated 40 computers to the professors in the Computer Science department, all of which came with NT4 (this was in 1999, I think). In their press release they claimed that the donation was worth $400,000. The machines they provided were relatively high-end at the time, but I don't see how they could possibly say they were $10,000 each, so maybe they were just making up a value for Windows. That's a fantastic way to invent tax deductions - donate a $200 piece of software (that costs you nothing to duplicate) to a school and write it off at a value of $5000+. I asked a couple of profs if they were going to format the machines and put Linux on them and most said they'd like to but were contractually bound to run NT for a while.

Ah, here's some info: http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~brd/Press/msr.html

While donations are great and I hate to find ulterior motives for everything, corporations rarely do anything out of the goodness of their hearts. Most "charitable foudations" created by corporations or extremely wealthy individuals exist as a way to create tax deductions for the individuals or corporations in question. They get the tax break and also get to spend the money in a way that may directly or indirectly benefit them. It's mostly a win for everyone involved, but don't chalk it up to altruism or anything like that.

Re:School Donations

[glesga_kiss]

I am fighting to keep ~300 500MHz machines running, you can see why I am bitter. So screw you. Either you're a liar (at worst) or you are in a preferential area (at best). Either way, screw you.

Have you contacted any charities or foundations for help? Or are you just sitting there whining away doing nothing about the real problem?

Re:School Donations

[Ced_Ex]

While donations are great and I hate to find ulterior motives for everything, corporations rarely do anything out of the goodness of their hearts. Most "charitable foudations" created by corporations or extremely wealthy individuals exist as a way to create tax deductions for the individuals or corporations in question. They get the tax break and also get to spend the money in a way that may directly or indirectly benefit them. It's mostly a win for everyone involved, but don't chalk it up to altruism or anything like that.

So basically when I donate to charitable foundations such as the Breast Cancer Society, or the Heart and Stroke Foundation I'm really doing so to save my OWN ass? Get real! Altruism exists whether you choose to believe it or not.

Re:School Donations

[metamatic]

Bill didn't give a cent to anybody until after he got marrried, maybe it's Melinda that's the generous one. Ever think of that?

No need to speculate, if you Google you can probably find a copy of the leaked memo from Microsoft's corporate PR department, which suggested to Gates that he should consider setting up a charitable foundation in order to improve the general public's view of the corporation.

Hey presto, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation appeared shortly afterwards.

Re:School Donations

[mormop]

Our school was in the same position with 700MHz Celerons, 64MB RAM etc. Since January, we've stripped them all out and built our own replacements using 2400 Semprons with half a Gig of DDR, 40GB HDD etc. (£105 each due to bulk buy) and am currently expanding our network and swapping the CRTs for flat screens.

All this was funded by by dumping 5 NT/2000 servers and fitting 2 Dual Xeons running 10.2, lDAP, Samba, Postfix/Opengoupware etc. The saving made on server licences, CALs, Exchange CALS etc. really was that good and although we have XP on the desktops the Linux side was all done with the free downloads.

The schools hardware stock is now up to 250 desktops and around 50 laptops with the old PCs being turned into CUPS print servers with click and print driver setup and per user quotas provided by pykota.

Well worth it:)

Re:School Donations

[Darby]

Get real! Altruism exists whether you choose to believe it or not.

You are not a corporation. You actually do have a heart (real blood pumping muscle, and presumably figurative decency and morality as well).

Huge difference.

Re:School Donations

[KrispyKringle]

I suppose that's why they give most of their money to world health, immunization, and other projects, right? Because once you get the third world up to speed in terms of things like fresh drinking water and protection from easily curable diseases, they're just a wider user base for Microsoft Office?

Cut me a break. If the Gates Foundation were about being a "crack dealer" for MS products, they wouldn't spend most of their money on providing basic health in third world countries that neither buy not can even afford Microsoft products to begin with.

How's that tin foil hat fit, anyway?

Re:School Donations

[KrispyKringle]

Also, as an addendum, I don't think I made it clear that what you say simply doesn't match the facts. As far as I know (from reading the Wikipedia entry), the Gates Foundation doesn't give any Windows software as part of their donations--they give cash. So your nonsense about pressing more CDs as a tax deduction is, well, just plain wrong.

Then again, this is Slashdot. Perhaps I was being a bit optimistic to expect otherwise.

Re:School Donations

[the-build-chicken]

I suppose that's why they give most of their money to world health, immunization, and other projects, right? Because once you get the third world up to speed in terms of things like fresh drinking water and protection from easily curable diseases, they're just a wider user base for Microsoft Office?

Diabolical!

Re:School Donations

[Elbowgeek]

Indeed. In my opionion there should be a completely separate, parallel computer industry, producing computer equipment and software for educational institions only. This would be a completely independant and non-profit, generic set of hard and software which bears no markings or resemblance to any commercial product, so that no child is unduly influenced by a particular manufacturer's product. And, of course, no educational institution should be allowed to take one cent from any individual or company which has any dealings or association with any private computer product manufacturer. Nope, those underfunded inner-city schools will just have to find some other way to fund computer purchases from Generic Computer Industries Inc.; On a more serious note, keep in mind that this is a practice which goes way back. IBM, DEC, et al were giving tonnes of big iron to major institutions for the very same reason as Gates' largesse. And because of that, perhaps some of slashdot's readers got a good start on their lucrative careers. Hmmm...

memory upgrade?

[ErichTheWebGuy]

I wonder if he will buy me another core memory plane so I can complete this upgrade I've been working on? Seems like he could preserve quite a bit of history of he did.. As in another 255 KB of my history at any given point!

Break even?

[Harmonious Botch]

Ok, so he's doing good. Let me know when he reaches the break even point.

If I were the Computer History Museum

[SpaghettiPattern]

If I were the Computer History Museum, I'd beware of history forging influences.

I know what he's doing...

[cdn2k1]

He's trying to wipe out all references to his early comment that "Nobody will ever need more than 640k RAM!"

here goes

[pintomp3]

que all the comments stating why this is bad/driven by greed.

Donation insures Gates viewed in positive light

[amadeusb4]

What better way to secure how history perceives you than to buy it? The guy has been making tax shelters ahem "donations" for quite some time now. This happens to be a good fit between his financial and personal PR goals.

control

[Jacek Poplawski]

"Who controls the past controls the future"
Computing History may contain lots of Microsoft ideas...

Re:control

[Anonymous Coward]

And... ahem... why is this a troll? Seems to me to be pointing out a Historical Fact. (see: Fahrenheit 451 and other such tin-foil-hattery)

-AC is for *real* men!

Re:control

[JackDW]

But computing history is Microsoft!

• Multitasking Operating System - invented by Microsoft to replace DOS
• GUI - invented by Microsoft to make DOS easier to use
• Mouse - invented by Microsoft as a way of selling a bit of hardware for a change
• Virtual Memory - invented by Microsoft to allow less efficient programs to be used in DOS
• Internet - invented by Microsoft as an add-on for the Microsoft Network
• Web Server - invented by Microsoft to allow remote access to NT boxes
• File Permissions - invented by Microsoft to allow all Windows users to run as Administrator
• Firewall - invented by Microsoft as an alternative to fixing security bugs
• FreeBSD - invented by Microsoft to save maintenance costs on their web servers

kid, I already have a computer history museum

[mbius]

in the hall closet.

Maintaining classic pieces in the museum's collection has grown difficult lately, not for lack of funding, but due to a dark and sinister force known as my wife.

thanks Bill!

[Anonymous Coward]

Nice to know all the proceeds from all those copies of Windows I paid for and chucked in the trash are going to good use!!

Missing Fellow?

[ziegast]

Anyone notice which $15 million donor is missing from the Hall of Fellows awards? Too bad they already picked their 2005 winners.

Re:Missing Fellow?

[wangotango]

No reason for Gates to be listed in that crowd. Those selected are hard core R&D technical people. Gates isn't a technical type, he is a businessman. Steve Jobs is missing for the same reason.

good start, now open-source DOS...?

[weighn]

How about re-releasing MS-DOS 6.22 and MS WfW 3.11 as open source so as to get kiddies in Africa and South-East Asia into computing. You never know, it just may stop those kids from getting hooked on Linux. Not that there's anything wrong with that.

Re:good start, now open-source DOS...?

[jurgenaut]

You mean, release the foundation of all modern Microsoft OSes as Open Source? I don't deem that very likely.

SHUT! THE! BLOODY! FUCK! UP! IDIOT!

[Anonymous Coward]

you r dumb

Our geek history is worth preserving

[custompccases]

Especially the old 'super computers'. As they say, they don't make them like they used to.

$125M??

[koick]

I'm sorry, but I can get old computer parts for free or like twelve bucks on ebay, what in the world do they need that kind of money for?

Re:$125M??

[Anonymous Coward]

No-one wants your crappy ISA SB16 but there aren't that many Burroughs mainframes left. Many of those are still in use too. Heck people were still using Multics until a few years ago, so the old-school big-iron that a museum of computing history should contain is much rarer and much more intrinsicly valuable than commodity expansion cards.

Re:$125M??

[Lucractius]

Cause $12 bucks doesnt buy that 3 ton mainframe thats somehow survied decades without being destroyed...

Re:$125M??

[koick]

I bet something like that 3 ton mainframe is like art; if no one pays attention to it, it's practically worthless, but it's a different story if someone's willing to pay to get it. That is, a month ago say you call the guy who has that mainframe sitting in his lab and he says you can have it if you come get it, but now that Gates is hosting a computer museum, well, now that same guy's gonna charge you half a million for it because it's "so unique".

For $15 million...

[Anonymous Coward]

All your history are belong to us!

Mwahahahahahahahaha!

Thats called foresight

[geo_2677]

He probably realised that MS Windows may pretty soon be relegated to history.
Reserving space before its too late :)

Re:Thats called foresight

[Linker3000]

The dilemma is that with all those bugs inside one building, is it a technology museum or a natural history museum?

Re:Thats called foresight

[Anonymous Coward]

I hate Linux zealots. With a market share of 95% (as referenced in a recent /. article), I doubt Windows is going anywhere anytime soon. Sorry Linux users, but your OS just doesn't cut it for 95% of the computer using population.

It figures

[Baloo Ursidae]

This is just like really old people buying a plot in a cemetery in preparation for the inevitable...

Fantastic news, sincerely.

[admactanium]

i did some pro-bono advertising work for the computer history museum and our agency also had the microsoft account. so we somewhat facilitated this step. if you have a chance to visit the chm, it's really a worthwhile trip. when i met them they weren't in their current building and their "visible storage" was in an old airplane hanger. the new display is quite interesting. everyone stops at the front display for at least 20 minutes looking at all the tech they've owned over the years. they have a lot of very significant machines (including one of the enigma machines).

they also hold a number of symposia with very significant speakers. i saw a tim berners-lee there. pretty humbling to see the man who is largely responsible for the invention of the internet. try to catch some of their lectures by people who have made history. it's really enlightening.

Re:Fantastic news, sincerely.

[commodoresloat]

i saw a tim berners-lee there. pretty humbling to see the man who is largely responsible for the invention of the internet

So Al Gore was with him?

Re:Fantastic news, sincerely.

[JoeCommodore]

I second that, it's an excellent place to experience computing history. Its not just old micros, there's a lot of big iron and a few past supercomputers in the museum, examples of various forms of storage, and a couple re-creations of old technology (as in getting a PDP-1 or a large IBM mainframe operational for educational and preservation purposes.

On November 5th and 6th the CHM will host the 8th West Coast Vintage Computer Festival which is a conference/expo of sorts of vintage computing enthusiasts and luminaries, definately a great time to take in two computing history experiences at the same time!

Check out my site for pictures of some previous VCFs and the CHM (in its old and new digs).

Re:Fantastic news, sincerely.

[Anonymous Coward]

While strolling through computing history, you might want to take note of an invention called the "Shift" key. There are two that can be used, even perhaps as a backup to one another in case one fails. They are located below the "Caps Lock" key (similar to the shift key, but only to be used for annoyance purposes) and below the "Enter" key.

Thank you, and have a nice day.

Re:Fantastic news, sincerely.

[poot_rootbeer]

i saw a tim berners-lee there.

Which one? The famous one that directs the W3C?

pretty humbling to see the man who is largely responsible for the invention of the internet.

Ahem. World Wide Web != Internet.

I don't think you can even give him all the credit for the "killer app" that brought the Internet mainstream. Before the Mosaic devs extended the HTML standard to support inline images, it was just another hypertext system comparable to Gopher or WAIS.

Right...

[FST777]

You mean you can get a Xerox Alto and a PDP-11 for a few bucks? Wow... :-O

You're unfortunately mistaken

[Anonymous Coward]

We who have been in the IT industry for some time have a saying: "Linux is free only if your time is worth nothing". While 'free' software elitists like to bemoan the fact that Microsoft has put a computer in every home by making the interface intuitive for the non-expert, what they overlook is perhaps Microsoft's biggest contribution to the corporate world: efficiancy. Now, you're too young to remember, but before Bill Gates came along, all that there were in office were visicalc and similar CLI ('command line interface', ie: programs like DOS and Linux) interface programs. It is widely acknowledged in the real world that the CLI is highly inefficiant; both from an interface efficency viewpoint and a learning curve viewpoint.
You mentioned the economy; the only contribution which Unix (the predecssor of Linus) has made to the economy is being sufficiently obsure and unmanagable enough to require a team of Unix Experts (or 'gurus' as they're called in less formal settings). Unfortunately this 'gain' is eaten away by the losses incurred by wages paid for the extra hours that the 'gurus' have to perform maintence on a machine or install new software.
In stark contrast, Windows simply works, everyone from the secretary to the executive can use it and it does not require a CS degree to use it.
So, Linus -while appearing to be 'free'- has been proven time and time again to actually be quite expensive both in terms of downtime, man hours and lost productivity.
Compared with Gates' contributions (which not only include his monetary donations, but also his contribution to society by bringing computing into every home and office), Linus has actually created a deficit -both financial and moral- in the computering world.

Re:You're unfortunately mistaken

[Anonymous Coward]

"We who have been in the IT industry for some time have a saying: "Linux is free only if your time is worth nothing". "

If that's true then Bill gates owes me a couple of million dollars. I figure he owes me 50 thousand dollars just to compensate me for every second I waited for windows to reboot during my years as an IT professional. Furthermore he owes for every minute wasted trying to understand his lsd induced API, his habit of changing database access methods every two years, his revamping of windows every four years, his cryptic documentation etc.

Windows is the biggest time waster on this planet bar none. It may take me a long time set something up linux but once it's set up you never need to touch it again. With windows you have re-install it every six months.

Bill Gates is evil, he has no morals, he has no ethics. God says love of money is root of all evil. Bill Gates loves money so much he has collected more then anybody on the planet. So who is right? You or God. I think I will go with God on this. Bill Gates is the most evil person on the planet simply by the virtue of being the richest person on the planet. "It is harder for a rich man to get to heaven then for a camel to go through the eye of a needle".

Re:You're unfortunately mistaken

[Anonymous Coward]

You know, these moderators are insane. There was NOTHING imflammatory about that comment. He was simply expressing an opinion. But because his views of Linux don't line up with the moderators, it's tagged as flamebait. Grow up, moderators. Just because you don't agree with someone doesn't mean it's flamebait.

How many other donations will theire be?

[Anonymous Coward]

This is really cool, I wonder how many more people will be doing this. Microsoft's competition should also join in for a challenge, like what about the Mozilla Foundation, hopefully they will donate something...

Oh wait, this is something for the evil tyrant companies to do, doh

The history is DRMed...

[Anonymous Coward]

...pay Bill first before you can experience it!

are you familiar with tax breaks?

[YesIAmAScript]

The tax break is on the money you donate.

So, he gives $15M, and saves the taxes on that $15M. Those taxes could be 40% or so. So he saves $6M in taxes.

But he's still out at least $9M no matter how you slice it.

I'm glad he donated some money. And yeah, I'm sure some MS stuff will show up there, but that's okay.

Now perhaps Google should to pony up. They're only like 200 yards away from the museum.

It'd be great if Steve Jobs would too.

I've been to the museum. Nice place. Really empty. Let's hope for the best.

Re:are you familiar with tax breaks?

[DaHat]

Now perhaps Google should to pony up

Already done. They donated one of their first production servers to the museum a while back.

Re:are you familiar with tax breaks?

[NineNine]

Now perhaps Google should to pony up

Already done. They donated one of their first production servers to the museum a while back.

Jesus, that's pretentious. At least Bill didn't give a copy of every OS they ever made along with the $15 mil. Google hasn't been around long enough to have influenced "computing history".

Re:are you familiar with tax breaks?

[Anonymous Coward]

Ditto that. It's not like google's search algorithms are anything new... they're in a niche market that inevitably someone would succeed in, and many more will follow and replace google. There is only one MICROSOFT. Long live the innovative Bill!

They could buy this massive eBay collection...

[edashofy]

This is a seriously insane museum collection of computer history. Apparently $45K wouldn't do it, but I certainly think getting saving all these old machines for posterity would be worth it.

http://cgi.ebay.com/Classic-Vintage-PC-Collection_ W0QQitemZ8706273723QQcategoryZ4193QQrdZ1QQcmdZView Item

(And no I'm not the seller, or related to him/her in any way)

queue and cue are two different words...

[YesIAmAScript]

I do agree with your sentiment though.

Re:queue and cue are two different words...

[Anonymous Coward]

Too bad for you both of those words work in his sentence... damn language Nazi.

he never said that...

[YesIAmAScript]

And besides, MS-DOS supported 768K of RAM on other machines besides PCs (like the Victor 9000). It wasn't Microsoft or MS-DOS (or PC-DOS) that limited people to 640K RAM, it was IBM and their (project Chess) hardware design.

(Actually, some searching on the internet says the Victor 9000 could do up to 896KB of RAM. No one I used had that much. Perhaps that much RAM cost more than the onwers of the machines I used could afford?)

Don't Forget

[Imp00]

Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego and: Oregon Trail Fine piece of childrens software I grew up with on the Apple. Though I did have the original IBM PC hand-me-down with GW-BASIC as my home computer. Had a whopping 20MB hard drive too. Think the thing costed around 5000 back in 1984 or so.

Government-sponsered projects

[Uukrul]

That's a lot of money doing a lot of good, and is probably better spent than most Government-sponsered projects

I'm from Spain. We have a very good health care system for free, but it costs a lot of money. Some of that money goes to buy Microsoft products for the computer that it's in the desk of a lot of doctors and a lot more for administrative purposes.

So I'm not very impressed that they spend some of the money earned from our social security systems to preserve some old computers in the United States.

It's my opinion.

Re:Government-sponsered projects

[LaughingCoder]

Perhaps it would be better to go back to the old days when everybody was shuffling paper. That way they could send their money to the papermills and the pencilmakers instead.

Re:Government-sponsered projects

[Anonymous Coward]

Better to go foward to OSS way. ;-)

TCPA - yep its appropriate to preserve

[SalsaDot]

A very appropriate measure.

Once that TCPA thing gets mandated by the government, computers as we know them WILL need preserving. All that will be left are locked up, pre sanitised and centrally monitored appliances.

Or maybe because....

[gilesjuk]

Maybe because he wants to walk around a museum and laugh at all the competitors he put out of business. Worlds biggest ego trip :)

Maybe...

[Anonymous Coward]

MS starts asking 15M bucks for XP license and Bill decided to donate a copy of XP?

... to be spent on windows licences

[Anonymous Coward]

Monopoly money...

Re:That's called foresight

[Anonymous Coward]

One more thing, it's "That's called foresight", dickhead.

Brits in the south of england may be interested..

[Burb]

.. in this local museum. Much smaller, but enthusiastic and they could use your help! Donate now.

It's even dirtier

[Arru]

Actually it's Quick and Dirty Operating System later shortened into DOS - Dirty Operating System?

That's actually kind of nice...

[jejones]

...perhaps people will be able to remember when one actually had significant choice in mass-market computers.

Turnabout is fair play!

[WheelDweller]

A contrarian play:

For two decades, every available dollar has been put into making US upgrade to newer and more expensive computers....so now he invests millions to lock some in time? That's kinda ironic.

Re:School Donations +5 okashi...kunai?

[Anonymous Coward]

sou desu neeee....., ore mo sou omou. ookii mondai desu yo na. ano, buchakete iu to, kare wa chotto inchiki desu yo. doushiyou....komarimasuyo... ma, shouganai yo. itsuka kawaru yo, kitto. toriaizu, nande unicode denai no? surashudotto mou... ma, zenzen damenanjan, tabun. mukashi ikenai

15 mil is like 20 bucks to you and me

[Danathar]

Although I highly applaud Bill G for giving 15 Mil to the museum, giving 15 Mil is like me opening my wallet and pulling out a 20 dollar bill. Gates probably Makes $20 mil every hour or two in profit off of dividens.

If he was going to contribute 15 mil, why not the whole 50 mil they needed? If a begger is asking for $1.00 and you have it to spare AND intend on giving it to the begger, why only give 30 cents?

Re:15 mil is like 20 bucks to you and me

[gromitcode]

your comments are bullshit unless you yourself actually took the effort to donate more than that $20 to them. personally I bet you didn't even make the effort to donate that $20 let alone make the effort to donate more. So quit your whinning at how others make an effort to help while you yourself make none.

Re:15 mil is like 20 bucks to you and me

[tomstdenis]

Donating ill-gotten-gains isn't what I call selfless.

Now had he made his fortune via proper business ethics and just "being nice" that would be different.

Just because he has acquired a lot of money doesn't mean he's done it in a respectable manner.

I mean, would you applaud a drug dealer or kiddie porn leader who donates to charity?

Tom

Re:15 mil is like 20 bucks to you and me

[gromitcode]

no more than I would applaud someone that can only whine about others generosity.

Re:15 mil is like 20 bucks to you and me

[ifwm]

"I mean, would you applaud a drug dealer or kiddie porn leader who donates to charity?"

Yes I would. Charity is charity, the hungry kids don't give two craps where the money came from.

And since the alternatives are enhancing his personal wealth, or reinvesting in MS, YOU should be applauding this gift too.

But your bias is too strong, and you're too weak to overcome your stupid prejudices.

Re:15 mil is like 20 bucks to you and me

[tomstdenis]

Um, think 10 seconds ahead of the immediate now.

Why are the kids poor? What are their parents making in terms of salary to support the elites?

When banks and walmarts and mcdonalds and what not post billion dollar profits and pay their employees THE LEGAL MINIMUM they're definitely not poor by choice. I mean someone has to work the stores, you need to get clothes and other household goods from somewhere.

Similarly MSFT extorts a lot of money from schools, students and businesses. They get stuck into Dell, HP, Sony, etc. They use descriminating licensing policies, etc.

Having corporations and the individuals behind them like Microsoft, McDonalds or whatever donating money is not because they want to help. If they wanted to help they'd pay their employees properly. It's solely for the tax-write off and the positive P.R.

Tom

Re:15 mil is like 20 bucks to you and me

[tomstdenis]

How is it generous to "donate" what you're not entitled to? The guy is a crook. He's donating your money [one way or another].

I mean I just stole 100$ from your chequing account and gave it to the cancer society. Am I generous?

Tom

Re:15 mil is like 20 bucks to you and me

[ifwm]

"Why are the kids poor?"

Because their parents died in a car crash, the kids were abused, or any of a variety of other circumstances. You talk about parents, but you forget how many kids don't have any.

"When banks and walmarts and mcdonalds and what not post billion dollar profits and pay their employees THE LEGAL MINIMUM they're definitely not poor by choice."

YES THEY ARE POOR BY CHOICE. They CHOOSE not to educate themselves (virtually EVERYONE can get a student loan, so save your money arguments) they CHOOSE to have kids they can't support, they CHOOSE not to work three jobs if necessary.

I reiterate my previous statement

"your bias is too strong, and you're too weak to overcome your stupid prejudices."

Otherwise you'd realize that MS could very easily get away with giving NOTHING AT ALL EVER. And save your stupid "tax breaks" arguments too, there are a hundred ways to shelter earnings that don't send any money to charity.

"If they wanted to help they'd pay their employees properly. It's solely for the tax-write off and the positive P.R."

This is stupid. OF COURSE it's for the PR and tax write offs, but that doesn't make it inherently bad. As far as paying their employees, those employees CHOOSE to work there. If they don't like the pay, LEAVE.

So, apart from a few incredibly weak arguments that I've easily refuted, is there anything else you'd like to say about the subject? I'm sure if I destroy your points often enough, you'll see the error of your ways.

Re:15 mil is like 20 bucks to you and me

[tomstdenis]

Poor by choice? Really? How many people have degrees and can't find employment in their field of choice? Sure you can get a loan, but how does that help when your job has been outsourced.

I mean yes, there are a lot of people out there that give up early. For them I say "too fucking bad". I'm with you on that one.

But there are also a lot of people who just didn't get the same chances in life. They didn't go to schools with proper text books, they had problems at home that got in the way of study, whatever. Not everyone can overcome adversity and really it's shouldn't be a life of turmoil and anguish because your boss doesn't think a teller is worth more than 28k/yr.

Now I'm not against sending jobs overseas. What I *AM* against is sending them overseas because they have laxer laws with regards to minimum salaries [or the employees just demand less]. You don't end up with higher or even often equivalent quality products and the customers end up paying the same anyways. You act as if the average corporation operates with even a shred of ethics.

There isn't anything wrong with being a bank teller or cashier or what not. And I agree with you that having kids is something people ought to plan out more than 3 seconds ahead of time.

But to sit there and act all smug like "who cares how they got the money, the fact they gave a bit away makes them generous" is just immature. I mean you can't tell me with a straight face that what Bill Gates does, what Microsoft does, is actually for the good of the customer and not just "the good of the company".

I'll say it again, let me steal 100$ from your pocket and "donate" it to charity. Then you can praise how generous I am.

Tom

Microsoft is feeling the heat...

[Arru]

I think not. The visitors to this museum are hardcore computer geeks that are already well aware of their choices and are likely not going to dump their current setups for Microsoft's latest and greatest based on their experiences at this museum.

Microsoft's target audience is corporate executives and average consumers, not enthusiasts

The corporate executives are MS's strongest foothold. The people saying that we might as well give up the fight (of not being pwnd by MS), not because they're insightful but because they never understood that struggle anyway.

As of today, hardcore geeks are the most likely to abandon MS if they haven't already. Being aware of the perils of Microsoft, they are also main targets for the "Bill Gates ain't so bad"-campaign currently running at a slashdot near you.

Give me $15 million and I'll go on eBay...

[digitaldc]

...and I will build you the LARGEST collection of computer junk you could ever imagine!

I wonder if they have the W.O.P.R. (War Operation Planned Response) computer system?

Do they also have the M-5 from Star Trek? It sounds like something right up Microsoft's alley:
from: http://www.startrek.com/startrek/view/series/TOS/e pisode/68766.html

The U.S.S. Enterprise is chosen to be the test ship for the new M-5 multitronic computer system, a computer meant to be able to run a starship without human intervention. Also aboard for the test is Dr. Richard Daystrom, the inventor of the M-5 and an obsessive and unstable individual. Initially the M-5 performs well, but when it decides to destroy a robot freighter, Kirk orders the test canceled. The M-5, however, protects itself and makes it impossible for it to be disconnected. The computer becomes increasingly erratic, a result of Dr. Daystrom's decision to impress his engram onto the computer as part of its programming. Starting a scheduled war games drill, M-5 uses the full arsenal of the U.S.S. Enterprise to attack four other Federation starships.

In a last-ditch appeal to the M-5, Kirk makes the computer realize that it has committed the sin of murder. Since Dr. Daystrom would be ethically abhorred at such an act, the M-5 is equally penitent and tries to commit suicide by leaving the U.S.S. Enterprise defenseless against a counter-attack by the remaining other starships. At the last moment, Spock and Scott are able to finish disconnecting the M-5 unit. Kirk keeps the shields down, gambling successfully that the attacking ships would not fire on an undefended vessel. Restoring communications next, the fleet is called off.

cause microsoft is almost already history

[gaizka]

:P

Hall of fellows

[Bert64]

The computer history museum website has a "Hall of fellows section" Which is described as:

For over a decade, the Computer History Museum has been publicly recognizing individuals of outstanding merit who have contributed to the development of computing. Chosen on the basis of accomplishment--formal education is not a factor--are nominated by a panel composed of Museum staff, industry peers, and former Fellows.

At least 10 years must have elapsed between a specific contribution and an individual's nomination in order to properly assess the historical importance of his/her achievements. The contribution must thus be of a foundational nature, one that has strongly influenced the intellectual, disciplinary, or industrial underpinnings of computing.

Bill gates is not on this list, because he has stifled development more than contributing to it... I imagine part of the terms for this donation will be that he gets listed..

Melinda

[jkind]

She must have long since set the record for "Most money of my husbands that I've given away" award.
I guess she's still pretty well off, not dining on Mr. Noodles & water by any means.

Re:Melinda

[Anonymous Coward]

If by Mr. Noodles you mean my johnson, and by water my supersperm, then you are in fact, quite mistaken.

Sincerely,
Bill G.

And where is Apple?

[Anonymous Coward]

I haven't seen a list of where Steve Jobs is donating his money. Perhaps one of the Apple fanboys (or fangirls) could explain that the goodwill glow from all the iPods is enough.

But lets not sell him short... He did donate $1,000 on 3/25/2004 to Congressman Rahm Emanual campaign. see.

My Alma Mater..

[Digz]

..is a (recently turned) suburban area of Cincinnati that had its high school restructuring funded by the Gates Foundation.

More info here and here.

Actually Gates is donating five copies of Windows

[Master of Transhuman]

He found five copies of Windows which are the only known copies which never crashed during their time in service.

These are so rare that eBay auctioneers have determined their value to be in the millions...

All five are, however, known to be riddled with spyware...

All things relative...

[jozeph78]

...I gave a bumb $.75 earlier last week.

re: always the cynics....

[King_TJ]

Unless you've got some kind of evidence that the history museum is being influenced to change the nature of their exhibits to lean towards a more Microsoft-centric history - I think you're just being another anti-Gates troll with this comment.

It's pretty clear that Gates is a guy who has a real interest in computing, no matter what else you think of his company's own products or business practices. I think almost *any* of us with a similar interest (both personal and business) in computing technology would throw some donation money towards a museum catering towards preserving computing history - assuming we had loads of cash sitting in a bank account for these purposes already.

If you see Bill Gates donating millions to a "bowling hall of fame" - then you might say "Ok, what's the catch here? Microsoft powered bowling alley scoring systems?" But Bill isn't an avid bowler, last I checked. This is a little bit different....

You have no clue, do you?

[SinisterAngel]

He makes millions every few hours on dividends, does he? Here is a clue: dividends have to be declared, record what stockholders get them, and THEN they are distributed. You might want to do your homework before you start shooting your mouth off.

Re:You have no clue, do you?

[Moderatbastard]

dividends have to be declared, record what stockholders get them, and THEN they are distributed.

If you mean that the dividend payments don't happen literally in realtime, that they are paid (say) quarterly after yadda yadda administrative processes yadda, then thanks for the lesson - hoping to be a business major, are you? Notwithstanding those bloody obvious facts that you've so patronisingly posted, it's possible by means of mathematical equations and similar magic (ask your teacher) to average those out into an hourly rate.

If that wasn't what you meant, then WTF did you mean?!?

Gates Donates $15M to Preserve Computing History

[webrunner]

... in Frozen Carbonite

Maybe the can get a donation from Ballmer....

[8127972]

.... such as the infamous chair. That's a piece of history we all want to see preserved.

Re: always the cynics....

[amadeusb4]

I wasn't born a cynic, but life has made me this way.

Unless you've got some kind of evidence that the history museum is being influenced

Yeah, the evidence is in the article. Follow the money. Even if he was donating to a bowling hall of fame, there would be some reason for that. You don't give that kind of money away and continue to be rich. It just doesn't happen. Most of his donations are there to protect the money from taxes and the feel good PR is a nice byproduct for him. He can even choose these shelters to appear cool, generous, interested, whatever.

downtime?

[namekuseijin]

is this supposed to be serious? and Windows "just works"?!

i'd mod you +5 funny if it was my turn...

if they did an exhibit on image compression...

[YesIAmAScript]

Would they display a collection of JPEG artifacts?

wow, where does it say that?

[YesIAmAScript]

That the reason is because he stifled development more than contributing to it?

Is it on the plaque in small print? Or did you just make it up?

I'm not quite so sure lately, but I think DOS and Windows 95 were incredibly important to innovation. Anyone who watched the PC platform when Windows 95 came out knows better than to say that MS stifled development. By creating a platform for developers, they allowed the lowly PC platform to catch up greatly to the Mac in usability and bring capabilities to buyers of low-cost hardware that might never have come to them otherwise.

Re:wow, where does it say that?

[mrsbrisby]

Anyone who watched the PC platform when Windows 95 came out knows better than to say that MS stifled development.

Agreed. I think it's more appropriate to say they set it back twenty years.

By creating a platform for developers,

Actually, that was GNU: By developers and for developers. Windows is probably the most unpleseant platform to develop for still in active use.

they allowed the lowly PC platform to catch up greatly to the Mac in usability

You'll end up shot if you tell a Mac person that.

Windows never came close to MacOS in terms of usability. Not to mention your leading about developers- MacOS was and still is extremely pleseant to develop for.

and bring capabilities to buyers of low-cost hardware that might never have come to them otherwise.

You mean like how almost half of a reasonable system goes into Microsoft's pocket?

Preservation?

[NaiL2001]

Maybe he knows he's getting part of history and want to preserve himself.

Hey Bill.... over here. Osborne for mere $24k

[bookhappy]

Bill, to get the museum off to the right start, I am willing to part with my beloved Osborne luggable. (Think portable sewing machine at about 24 pounds.) The screen is an attractive green 5 inch beauty. And as an added plus there are two floppy drives and a selection of floppies: each of which can hold almost 10 pages of text. Wordstar and SuperCalc included.

Is American Programmer already in the myseum?

[Anonymous Coward]

If not - they should get one ASAP while there is still some of them left.

Foundation

[Munchini]

Say what'd you'd like to say about Bill the person, but his foundation has helped many of people in my city. I went to high school in Tacoma, and the highschool itself was easily one of the most badly-talked about schools. It was built in the 60s with a California style open campus - but it failed to take into account the Washington weather. Anyway, the foundation has continually helped many low income students such as myself to go to college, usually giving out 9,000 dollars a year until one obtains a degree. The foundation is also 'repairing' most of the inner city high schools here and also built a totally new high school to replace my old high school - same name different building. It's easily the most expensive in Washington State by far. Again, say what you'd like but if it wasn't for the foundation, I probably would be in serious debt for college.

? How much ? old PC-JR?

[watermodem]

How much are they willing to pay for that old pc-jr in my garage? I got the whole offical pile. Put it away ages ago (worked then) and haven't touched it since. It even has the 640K hack. I will throw in a Basic Cart. and Mouse Cart with it but they have to find their own special dos2.2 as mine mildewed.

Jobs doesn't have to BUY respectability.

[Anonymous Coward]

When you spend most of your life being an arrogant bastard, ruthlessly stealing other people's work and/or putting other people's companies out of business by questionable/illegal means which are then all aired in court during an antitrust trial, that's when you've got to spread the cash around so you'll still be fondly remembered when you're gone.

For that kind of money...

[Anonymous Coward]

You can just fill the museum with NEW computers, and then just wait for next year to open.

Wonder if DR-DOS will be there or...

[JCCyC]

...when the curator tries to include it, a nasty guard will shout "ILLEGAL OPERATION!" - but not actually stop him from doing anything.

re: Gates and giving away money

[King_TJ]

Did you ever hear the interview with Bill Gates that PBS did years ago? One of the statements he made way back then was that he envisioned himself as becoming one of the great philanthropists of the modern era. He looked up to people like Carnegie who were "immortalized" with foundations bearing their names, and so forth.

As I recall, the comment came about because the interviewer pretty much directly asked him why he wasn't donating more of his money to charitable causes. Bill explained that he still saw himself as a businessman first and foremost. He felt he was still too young to start in with the philanthrophy, but that was part of his "long term plan".

So yeah, of course the donations serve as tax write-offs for him, as all of them do. But it seems to me Gates is doing pretty much what he said his personal goals were.....

It will take much more...

[Anonymous Coward]

...to preserve the current computing history where Microsoft and other handful of proprietary software companies dominated the world.

Here's to change and open source!

OS/2 money coming

[Anonymous Coward]

finally! I can sell my old OS/2 stuff off to them! Gates will love that.

I meant money

[YesIAmAScript]

It's great they donated something they thought was significant. But unless they expect that item to generate large cash amounts for the museum, they still should pony up dough, IMHO.

This is easy for me to say, as I've given the museum very little money myself.

no, they don't

[YesIAmAScript]

Queue would be to place it in line. If you queued it, it might never happen.

He's referring to "cue", which is when you start something (a process?) on a signal.

Since we saw the jokes, I have to assume they were "cued", and not just "queued".

I wrote that post on a Mac

[YesIAmAScript]

the last one, and this one too.

I've been a Mac person (to the core) since 1987.

And I didn't shoot myself after typing it.

GNU has done very little for application developers. No GNU platform is a viable platform for shipping consumer-level applications on, yet...

When I say developers, I don't mean people who toil away. I mean people who make a business of it.

I do agree Windows is not pleasant to develop for. But the money makes it worth it. When you're a businessman, not a hobbyist, it's the results that matter most. Windows created a platform that has lined many developers pockets with money.

And it doesn't matter where half the money of that low-cost systems goes to. That system would never have reached $500 with just Apple making GUI systems. Apple does not have an in-built tendency to reduce costs to make something available to wider audiences. It took the competition of Windows to make that happen.

Re:I wrote that post on a Mac

[mrsbrisby]

GNU has done very little for application developers. No GNU platform is a viable platform for shipping consumer-level applications on, yet...

I'm sorry, then what exactly is on your Mac? On every new solaris system? On every Linux machine?

When I say developers, I don't mean people who toil away. I mean people who make a business of it.

Yeah see, that's why you're a dick. You immediately mean to say that what I do, isn't business. If it always shows a profit, and it pays people their sole income to put food on the table for more than a dozen people, it's not a business because it's based on GNU.

Fuck you.

Windows is not pleasant to develop for. But the money makes it worth it.

Obviously to you. But as I kindly point out, you're nothing but shit for brains with confused half-concepts of what business is, what makes you think that you can tell me what is worth it?

New developers don't know better. Kids that come out of school simply do not know what it is like to develop on an enjoyable platform.

And it doesn't matter where half the money of that low-cost systems goes to.

Again, shit for brains.

That system would never have reached $500 with just Apple making GUI systems.

You're completely confused. I happen to have on my desk right now, a $500 modern macintosh. It's actually worth it. At the other end of my desk, a $250 Linux workstation. It's worth it too.

My neighbor has a $500 DELL. It's not worth it, not even to them. To the point where it gathers dust, and my machines get used every day.

It took the competition of Windows to make that happen.

Until you pass Go and collect a clue, don't ever suggest for a moment that Windows has ever competed with anyone. They are sub-par products by sub-par people that charge an arm and a leg (not to mix metaphores: creating more sub-par people) because of an illegal monopoly.

Tell me, kind wizard: If nobody enjoys developing on it, and nobody enjoys using it, how can ``The Money'' it possibly be worth it to anyone to write on it?

Because they're an illegal monopoly it's everywhere. Everywhere can make it worth it to some people to write for it. Being as how that everywhere is getting smaller every day, I find it easier to convince people that it isn't.

But I'm so glad it's 1998 again, and retarded monkeys like yourself can post to slashdot and remind us that you're only doing software development for real, when you do it on Windows.

As a side note, it's interesting that you point out by your own convictions that you don't do software development for real, and then intend to lecture those who by their own definitions, do.

Fuck you.

COOL!

[Anonymous Coward]

I fully support this donation, in fact, I think we should lobby to thank Bill, and especially Melinda for theuir donation, and I know just how to do it.

Make the virtual curator/host Microsoft's greatest creation...

Microsoft Bob

8-)

No Changes Except....

[Anonymous Coward]

All references to Seattle Computer Systems, Digital Research and Tiny Basic have been excised... ;-)