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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."
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
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.
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.
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Maybe Jack Thompson will pitch in ten grand...
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Will it include a copy of CP/M?
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.
I wonder if they are going to preserve key points and dialogues in computing history like "No one needs 640 kilobytes of ram..."
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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.
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.
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
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!
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Specifically, he was quoted as saying, "$15 million should be enough for anybody."
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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.
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.