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Bill Gates Wants To Reinvent the Toilet
redletterdave writes "Bill Gates, the man responsible for bringing software to the masses with Microsoft and Windows, has plans to reinvent and popularize another industry: Sanitation. Gates, whose philanthropic efforts have helped bring clean water and resources to developing countries via the foundation created by he and his wife Melinda, said at the 'Reinvent The Toilet Fair' in Seattle on Wednesday that he plans to build a toilet that's better suited to developing countries in an effort to cut down on disease and death in those regions. 'Inventing new toilets is one of the most important things we can do to reduce child deaths and disease and improve people's lives,' Gates said. 'It is also something that can help wealthier countries conserve fresh water for other important purposes besides flushing.'"
Science Insider has some information on the winning designs from this year.
So we have something new for Windows 8 to go down.
he's spent all these years making crap.
can't wait to see for the BSOD on that.
plans to build a toilet that's better suited to developing countries
toilet starter edition...
At his house they wipe with $100 bills - they are going to install similar dispensers around the world!
"Murderer? Well, that's a harsh word. I prefer to think of myself as a Mortality Technician."
Oddly, that's the one place I've always wanted to put Windows.
I'm just going to wait for Apple's competing product. The toilet is a perfect example of an Apple product. It has one button, one function, and it needs to be clean and durable.
I'm sick and tired of all these Windows 8 ads on slashdot.
No hon, the toilet just crashed again.
Just press down on the seat while you toggle the handle and urinate at the same time.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
"Bill Gates, the man responsible for bringing software to the masses with Microsoft and Windows..."
Fucking hell, this is Slashdot, not Readers Digest.
Apparently genital mutilation wasn't preventing disease.
So lets spend millions to reinvent the wheel while we're at it!
There are already a multitude of solutions available, eg. bio-friendly bags that turn poop into fertilizer and just need you dig a hole. Seems to me that if he really want to reduce disease and improve lives he should aim to develop soap which doesn't require water. or something.
Why do I feel like we've talked about this before?
Oh, yeah. Because we have.
Can you please design one that doesn't leave shit streaked all the way down the back when you take a dump? I thought a toilet was a toilet, until I saw all the kinds they have in Europe. You have to scrub every one of them down after a dump. The worst was one that had a flat shelf to dump on and the water would wash it off. Yeah, good luck getting that loaf to wash away. What the hell? Sorry for the shitty post, but this is the topic we were presented with.
There was an item long ago where one of our troops (possibly as part of a UN peacekeeping or rescue effort) was deployed in an impoverished place, and he pointed out a simple everyday 'creature comfort' thing we take for granted: What do they do for toilet paper? Although it seemed such a callous reaction at first, it seemed he was right on the money after all. Clean water, hygiene, good health...everything follows. It would take a man like Bill Gates to jumpstart the program. Thank $DEITY he's retired and can look at other essential things beyond the desktop.
Todays captcha: conserve =)
I know the typical /. response is to either make a "Windows Sucks!" crack or to launch into some conspiracy theory about how this is part of some secret agenda to foist MS-brand proprietary toilets on the world. But I'm going to applaud his efforts instead.
But if you have to have a crack, here's one: This beats the crap out of anything Steve Jobs ever did for the third world.
What political party do you join when you don't like Bible-thumpers *or* hippies?
The best use for human excrement is fertilizer really - high phosphorous and nitrogen content, ideal for the fields. It's certainly more environmentally friendly than fossil-fuel based fertilizers (and not just in the third world either).
"I bless every day that I continue to live, for every day is pure profit."
This is great and I applaud and respect him for doing this. After you get done cracking jokes, go read The Big Necessity by Rose George. I never fully understood just how privileged we are.
"2.6 billion people don't have sanitation. I don't mean that they have no toilet in their house and must use a public one with queues and fees. Or that they have an outhouse, or a rickety shack that empties into a filthy drain or pigsty. All that counts as sanitation, though not a safe variety. The people who have those are the fortunate ones. Four in ten people have no access to any latrine, toilet, bucket, or box. Instead, they defecate by train tracks and in forests. They do it in plastic bags and fling them through the air in narrow slum alleyways.... Four in ten people live in situations where they are surrounded by human excrement because it is in the bushes outside the village or in the city yards, left by children outside the backdoor...
In 2007, readers of the British Medical Journal were asked to vote for the biggest medical milestone of the last two hundred years. Their choice was wide: antibiotics, penicillin, anesthesia, The Pill. They chose sanitation."
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
I've often wondered why, compared to other harware in the home, toilets are so unrealiable. I've never had to replace a door. I've had to replace a sink once. But the toilet needs constant repairs. Why? What is the design flaw in toilets?
I think he'll probably inventing a system that involves shells. Sylvester Stallone will be angry.
You can see a video of Gates's presentation and an up-close video of toilet 2.0 here: http://www.itworld.com/windows/289818/bill-gates-wants-better-toilet-insert-joke-here
At least, I think. There are some minor differences. http://tech.slashdot.org/story/11/07/13/1527242/bill-gates-looks-to-reinvent-the-toilet
"God does not play Minecraft with the world." - Albert Einstein
We already "reinvented" the toilet. It's called the composting toilet. You can buy it on amazon, or find plans on google and make one yourself. Now, if more people would buy them, mass production could get the cost down. The SunMar one must be assembled by hand or something, with the price as high as it is.
2.5 billion people live without the "minimum necessary" sanitation services. Access to safe, clean and effective human urine and feces disposal facilities is the most basic definition of sanitation. Improvements sanitation and hygiene has demonstrated positive effects on health. Unfortunately, many people are denied access to sanitation technology and/or infrastructure and thus lack the means of disposing of their waste. The challenge scales with population and can reach critical mass of non-functionality in areas of high population density in developing countries.
There is no single solution. The answer to the challenge requires management of fresh water and access to sanitation technology that mitigates today's risks while scaling with a determined uplift of infrastructure. This kind of massive-scale civil and social architecture requires great resources (fiscal, intellectual, and moral) directed in a continual and strategic ways. I believe Bill, Warren, and others are well positioned to drive success in this area...
Just what the world needs, a toilet that clogs up and over flows twice a day. No wonder this man is one of the richest in the world. At least its not something that is the basis of the productivity of the country this time.
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
Let's hope he does something better than the Stockholm "green" toilets they tried in Mongolia:
http://www.theatlanticcities.com/neighborhoods/2012/07/toilet-tuesday-death-worlds-largest-eco-toilet/2783/
http://www.chinadialogue.net/article/show/single/en/5068-Eco-toilet-scheme-ends-in-failure
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
With Windows? All Windows users are potty trained now.
Toilets are great. Poor sanitation has arguably killed more people than wars.
That said, cheap, energy efficient air conditioning should be next on the list. AC is practically required for any kind of modern economy. Building a low-power AC would benefit millions - and reduce the amount of power infrastructure needed in developing countries, which in general would be a good thing.
He's looking for somewhere to put Windows 8. Normal toilets that sufficed for previous versions of Windows just aren't capable of handling Metro. God help you if you run across one of these new toilets and don't know where to "Start".....
GStreamer - The only way to stream!
What will the licensing fee be, to use this new toilet?
-- By all means let's be open-minded, but not so open-minded that our brains drop out.
There's a difference between "consumed" water and "flushed" water.
Water that you use in your house and return to the sewers can be cleaned and re-used.
Water that you put on your plants or waste on golf courses evaporates and is consumed.
A new toilet attacks the small part of the problem: the flushed water that is reused. Instead, Bill should focus on reducing water consumption.
--PM
does it have some patents? will it be open sourced so everyone could extend it?
or as usual it's just another way to make a buck by selling it to 3rd world countries?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ILoo
Join the Slashcott! Feb 10 thru Feb 17!
He might be a tactical genius and raped computing for a few generations of humanity, but at least Commodore Gates is trying to make mends with the planet by doing good deeds.
Maybe 100 years from now, people will talk about "Flushing the Gates."
...given his legacy with windows.
I'm sure it'll have "Are you sure you want to flush?" on the tank instead of a handle. It might also have "Advanced" options like a water volume slider bar, the ability to schedule an automatic cleaning, & maybe even a fancy sound when flushing(AKA.The Windows start-up/shutdown sound). Of course, there'll be drawbacks, like becoming unusable while receiving updates, it will be vulnerable to viruses(real & code), & finally can you imagine having to De-frag "Windows Commode"
I thought my comment was perfectly reasonable. Here it is
Gates said :- "The flush toilets we use in the wealthy world are irrelevant, impractical and impossible for 40 percent of the global population, because they often don't have access to water, and sewers, electricity, and sewage treatment systems."
Why does a flush toilet need electricity? Mine doesn't; moreover, although I live in a wealthy rural part of the UK I have no main sewer connection. The toilet flushes to my own septic tank where the stuff decomposes - it is little more than a masonery tank set below the ground and looks after itself apart from my getting the solids pumped out once a year. It isn't rocket science.
It uses water, but doesn't most of the World's population live near water? Far more than 60% I'd wager. It does not need to be drinkable. Yes, there are regions that do not, but we have plenty of it in the UK, so no thanks Gates, this "wealthier country" does not need to your stinking toilets to conserve water. Take your concerns elsewhere.
It would be simpler to filter and reuse the same water in the system rather than drawing on fresh supplies.
There are already a multitude of solutions available, eg. bio-friendly bags that turn poop into fertilizer and just need you dig a hole.
And the "multitude of solutions available" don't always work.
Here's a "lessons learned" article on the Daxing Ecological Community toilet experience; hope the Gates foundation is willling to learn from other peoples' failures: http://www.chinadialogue.net/article/show/single/en/5068-Eco-toilet-scheme-ends-in-failure
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
I have a friend working on water quality in Saharan Africa. She sent me this picture which I find hilarious. However, it's true. There are parts of the world where there is barely enough water to drink, let alone crap in. I think it's a noble cause.
Also, this story is a dupe.
One of our competitors trademarked the term "hypothesis". From now on, we will call them "boneheaded ideas".
there is a cheap ac system it's called an ammonia absorption unit. the downside? it's extremely toxic in usable concentrations. the plus side? it can cool a room to -20 F(or below) in 100 F weather. if you eat meat it is ammonia cooled.
https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html
get it right. :)
Most of the pre-low-flow toilets just waste all the water rather than putting it to good use actually flushing stuff. I have a 4.8 liter (1.26 gallon) toilet that is designed well and it does a great job--big tank for water pressure, big valve between tank and bowl, it just doesn't drain the whole tank on every flush.
I don't want to pay licenses for my toilets.
So the US will have global face recognition in toilets too?
http://anonpr.net/trapwire-928/
The typical behaviour where I lived was to use your left hand for wiping, your right hand for touching food, shaking hands, etc.
Toilets are great. Poor sanitation has arguably killed more people than wars.
...and through most of history, wars have done most of their killing by means of poor sanitation.
What are you doing to yours? I replace some 30-year-old toilets because they used far too much water, not because they stopped working.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pig_toilet
Wansu, th' chinese sailor
I lived in a place in Congo where for most of the year water was carried (by human power) several hundred vertical feet up from the river. People did not have enough money for masonry on their houses, much less for underground septic tanks, and there is nobody around to pump out solids later.
Incidentally, the electricity would likely be for an electric incinerating toilet--a reasonable option if you have no running water but do have power.
This must be Bill's tribute to the 50 year anniversary of the Seattle World's Fair.
Windows 8 SP1 locks the doors so no one can poop without a valid license on their smart phone. All of Bill Gates supposedly good works are always tied back to Microsoft some way. It's not generosity, it's advertising.
no time to read all comments...has anyone referenced the After Y2K comic?
And I thought that's what the Windows 8 team was already doing!
Not the toilet, just it's intended contents.
Any insufficiently advanced magic is indistinguishable from technology.
I thought he already did that! It sure functioned like one, at any rate...
"I love animals! Some are cute, others are tasty, what's not to like?" - Betsy Schroeder, Jeopardy contestant
... for Bill Gates. I wonder how much Mr. Gates' PR firm paid to have this article placed here?
AC is a first world problem. Europe can have summers like TX but you don't here them whining on about it. Build your buildings properly, from solid materials, insulate them, use reflective roofing materials. Only the US uses wood to "build" houses, and then wonders why the power bill is $200 to $400 a month depending on the time of year.
..are a sign that you have more people than an area can sustain. Why does the western world insist on artificially supporting these populations well past the point of disaster? All it does is inflate the population, and then some other malady will come along and cause far more suffering than if nature had run it's course from the get go.
... a toilet with bugs... now that's disgusting!
Because he's not happy with the way shit's going.
William of Ockham had no beard. The most likely explanation is that it was chewed off by squirrels every morning.
The "Windows 8 belongs in the toilet" joke was funny the first time, but please do not allow this thread to be polluted by a billion repetitions of it when we're discussing such a serious issue. The "redundant" tag is there, please use it. I had to do a considerable amount of scrolling to find some legitimate, informative and relevant discussion.
Honestly, I think the karma system for "funny" posts needs to be re-examined. The karma whores trying to be comedians are making /. less informative by the day.
Drill baby drill - on Mars
He probably was tired of throwing all this crap through his Windows and decided a toilet was a better place.
Wouuuuaaaaaaahhhhh!
Gates talked about this years ago. Nice way to keep up slashdot.
Besides, he already created the perfect toilet multiple times. Windows ME, windows vista, windows 8.
One of the last episodes of the West Wing:
Hollis: I'm starting a foundation, because if I hold onto all this money, I start to look impolite. I want to find a single problem I can attack, something which might actually have some kind of substantive effect. Maybe I should be fighting AIDS in Africa. Maybe it's malaria. Could be clean air or election reform. I don't know. But my sense is that you would have a unique perspective on what that could be and how to make it happen.
CJ Cregg: A single problem.
Hollis: It's a complicated question...
CJ Cregg: Highways... is what you're looking for.
Hollis: Really? It's not sexy.
CJ Cregg: No one will ever raise money for it. But nine out of ten African aid projects fail because the medicine or the personnel can't get to the people in need. Infrastructure's the problem. Blanket the continent with highways, and then maybe get started on plumbing.
(later on, CJ refers to this conversation as "Frank Hollis wants to give me ten billion dollars to fix the world")
the man responsible for bringing software to the masses
Wants to bring new toilets to the asses! :-)
I make rhyme!
Bill Gates has a lot of critics, myself included, but I think he deserves at least some credit for trying to improve the lives of the world's poorest people. Much of the famine and disease in Africa is caused by lack of water, both drinking and irrigation. It seems to me that if someone can come up with a waterless toilet it would be helpful. Perhaps the end product can be used to fertilize crops? Gates represents a new breed of philanthropists. The old way was to just write a big check to some charity and trust that they spend the money efficiently and in the way you want it spent. I have worked for non-profits and I can say that the ones I worked for were very inefficient...along the lines of government agencies (yes, I've worked for them too). They mean well and have noble causes but there is a lot of waste. Gates wants a direct hand in the money he donates so that it will get spent in the way he wants and the recipients will be made to show some progress. Frankly, I don't see a problem with that, given the vast amounts of money he has pledged. Some of the ideas will work and others will not but nobody will know unless they try.
User: Ahhhh, time to get down to business. ::User bursts out of toilet wearing...well...poop::
Toilet: Performing firmware upgrade to version 9.1442. Your toilet will restart in 10 seconds. Please do not use the toilet while it is in the process of powering up or down.
U: What? God, I need to...::bathroom sounds::
T: An error has ocurred in module processDump32.dll [0xF4127]. If this problem continues, please contact your hardware manufacturer. System flush will occur in 3..2..1
U: System what?
T: Would you like to sign up for a brief customer satisfaction survey? Your input is invaluable in helping us design and create new products. Thank you for using Microsoft, where quality is our number one priority.
-- Political fascism requires a Fuhrer.
I already have a new, green, California-approved, low-flow, small-reservoir toilet.
It works great — if you flush it six or seven times. The current record is 14.
And, like Windows, it crashes frequently (handle, chain, float, flapper valve).
http://www.flickr.com/photos/wrwetzel/7585494254/in/set-72157630609076830
In the words of the product description:
The iJohn digitizes both liquid and solid waste products and sends them electronically to a central facility for processing and disposal. Because of the high level of redundancy in the waste stream it can be compressed to a small fraction of its original size resulting in transport costs far lower than with traditional methods. And because the waste products are in digital form they can be easily routed to alternate destinations based on available capacity, labor costs, and the regulatory environment.
The first toilet that requires regular updates and is incompatible with your butt!
Only the dead have seen the end of War. - Plato
where do you want to go today?
Good people go to bed earlier.
Why do they need to rely on 'old whitey' to bail them out? Are they so stupid that they can't even invent a working toilet? YES.
Warning: the following site contains graphic images of the filth and disease surrounding the 'holy' Ganges river in India...
http://www.chinasmack.com/2010/pictures/filthy-india-photos-chinese-netizen-reactions.html
Reinventing the Same story a year later...
People have been crapping for millennia. This ain't rocket science.
Have gnu, will travel.
He needs something for Steve Ballmer will use instead of throwing his feces at people.
Democracy Now! - uncensored, anti-establishment news
Chances are, that what you call a "normal toilet", is a device which uses 8 liters of flocculated, sedimented, filtered, disinfected, aerated potable water, and then you use this valuable liquid to flush your poo from location A to location B.
In 100 years, kids will be horrified to learn about our "normal toilets", I'd want to bet.
As a "gedankenexperiment", just imagine that you flush your toilet with beer every time you have had a poo, and when someone asks you in a horrified way "why the hell did you mix that beer with your poo and then threw it away down the drain", and you answer is "well, it's obvious; if you leave the poo in the toilet, it starts to smell bad and attract flies, so naturally we must flush it away with the beer!".
The kids in 100 years must think that we were very rich, to live like this.
To be, or not to be: isn't that quite logical, Slashdot Beta?
Great links. The ordos story reminds me of San Francisco's problems
On a recent visit to San Francisco, I was struck by the smell of sewage along the Embarcadero. This was my first experience with something I had only heard about on the news.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
Either the wee man has gone totally potty or he is so flushed with success that he needs to throw more money down the drain. Not one to take the piss I have to say that something stinks about this and the answer may be in the wind. First Microsoft then the Gates Foundation this is his turd attempt at success. Lets hope it isn't just a flash in the pan or gets bogged down with red tape.
I can see it now. Once Bill releases his toilet he'll try to kill off all the trees and bushes on the planet to prevent people for opting for the "Free and Open" alternative.
Cheers,
Dave
They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither safety nor liberty.
Ben
I think this is part of a bigger plan to replace first world toilets and harvest the old ones to send to third world areas that really could use some better sanitation.
Hmm, the humour and sarcasm seem to have been be lost on you.
There are many facilities in public parks that stink to high heaven and attract flies. See also, my other post to this story regarding San Francisco's low flow water problem. People interested in using alternative systems in rural areas are prevented by law from doing so in California, or levied with heavier fees from governments. In particular, Santa Cruz County will charge you annual inspection fees for alternative systems, assuming you can get approval at all. This causes people to "go guerilla" in a lot of areas. As is often the case, the real problems are political and social, not technical. When Mr. Gates solves these problems in the "3rd world", maybe he can bring the solutions home.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
I see you're taking a dump, would you like some help with that ?
Wasn't it Bill's house that had a toilet with ``No TP'' sign?
...'nuff said.
Like all things Bill Gates - I'll believe it when I see it and not a second sooner.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
Is this like Samsung reinventing the iPhone or iPhone reinventing the Sony phone?
Perfect man for the job.
The problem with conserving water there will not be enough fluid for all this shiite to be carried away to its final destination. This will clog sewer pipes and make a big stinky mess.
Rather than genetically modifying corn, soybeans and misquitos to introduce a retrovirus to insert drag resistance agent (DRA) codes into the human genome to counter the secondary effects of water effecient toilets it might be worth considering modifing a fleet of roombas to collect everyones shit and fertilize large fields of monsanto demon terminator frankin crop instead.
Nuff said.
I'm behind you Bill, 100%
Just don't expect me to wipe.
That's an exceedingly lame attempt at a joke.
Actually it's much more clever than you think; you just have to know something about common toilet cleaning products.
No matter, I liked it and am happy to publish it for all to enjoy.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I was going to question the idea of improving the living conditions for the world's poorest without also requiring them to take more responsibility for living sustainably.
However, I see that the Gates Foundation is also a big promoter of family planning, so I'll cut them some slack.
In any case, it's always important to keep in mind the big picture when solving the world's problems.
A new toilet better suited for developing countries. Forget the fact that most of the per capita waste in the world happens right at home in N. America. But yeah, stick a "developing countries" label on it to make it go down better with the Politically Correct crowd.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
AC is practically required for any kind of modern economy.
Nitpicking here, I know, but I live in Scandinavia. I have practically never even been to a place here (save cars) that has an AC. And I really would consider us a "modern economy".
Your statement comes with a latitude threshold - one which includes a vast majority of the world population, admittedly.
May we live long and die out
The Germans build toilets to prevent any possibility of splashing.
Meanwhile the French build toilets to ensure a good splash...
Americans just leave it up to chance.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
The *great* thing about water-based sanitation is that it ... wherever i.e. it's a transport mechanism
(a) Takes the shit away to
(b) and (by design if not 100%) separates pathogens (and other pollutants) until they have been neutralised.
Right! Now we have better uses for water than flushing gallons down the bog. So we lose (a) and its payload (b). Now what do we do?
Low-tech can work with a little bit of knowledge and plenty of land and plenty of strict regulation. But in a slum the only 'safe' route is piped water and you have to live with the zero-cost disposal option. Horrible I know but towns are predicated on services while villages are predicated on 'community wisdom'. [Eh? responsibility+knowledge+enforcement]
Really?
REALLY????
Does nobody actually speak English any more?
whenever anyone strives for headlines about how they are going to solve the sanitation problem in third-world countries, I always want to press them for their solution to the scarier birth rate problem. If you don't get the birth rate under control faster than saving the babies, then the next generation is going to have even worse food, energy, and water shortage problems.
Excellent, so I can expect a toilet that will cost a fucking fortune but that I won't actually be able to shit in.
It's OK Bender, there's no such thing as 2.
All toilets should be Free - Richard Stallman.
I grew up in Australia on the edge of a desert - without air conditioning.
Air conditioning is a very much appreciated luxury but not strictly necessary for the locals.
Or just wait a little bit longer and buy one from Samsung that lets you sit however you like on it.
This is a hacked account, for which the owner can not be held responsible.
Thomas Crapper's improvements to the flush toilet had a lot to do with it's popularity. In his honor, people to this day call the act of using a toilet going to "take a crap". Will that be changed to "take a Gates"?
But I bet your grandparents burned wood like it was going out of style, arguably increasing my need for air conditioning.
This is a hacked account, for which the owner can not be held responsible.
Well, Seattle now has its second Thomas Crapper
whatever it takes to keep the creep away from software.. :(
oh sh..t it's "soft" "ware"
Now we'll have to wait SP1 to flush it.
Flushing finished in 2 days ... ... ... ... ... ... ...
Flushing finished in 5 hours
Flushing finished in 8 hours
Flushing finished in 3 minutes
Flushing finished in 5 seconds
Flushing finished in 0 seconds
Flushing finished in 0 seconds
Blue Screen of Death
An other problem would be the updates
"You have to download a framework so you can use this toilet" ..."
"Please buy the new version of the Microsoft because this version isn't compatible with your shit
.....this is a rehashed story from 4 years ago. This is OLD news. "Crappy" news story all around.
There are 2 groups of people you can make fun of on the Internet without fear of attack. The illiterate, and the Amish.
Aha. It was "...created by he...." Obviously grammar was the first thing flushed down the toilet.
I told a lawyer and several people in email. I did write a design diagram but am no longer sure I still have it because I get assaulted constantly. I explained where the inspiration came from and some issues and the purpose of it. It was not long ago but not very recently either, so I no longer remember exactly what I had in mind... though I am sure I can come up with it again without much memory effort. But of course Microsoft has been very busy establishing PARALLELISMS. Someone ought to know what I mean exactly. Thank you for the news.
As for developing countries, they will never develop if they do not try developing anything by themselves and always wait on us.
Danilo J Bonsignore
PS. I ought to still have the emails with me, but surely the gov offices I write to would have backups of them.
I guess Slashdot editors don't read Slashdot... this was posted here over a year ago already http://tech.slashdot.org/story/11/07/13/1527242/Bill-Gates-Looks-to-Reinvent-the-Toilet
Bow before me, for I am root.
Bill Gates has always been involved in toilet products so it comes as no surprise that he is thinking about building an actual toilet.
The thing I saw was laying on ground. I'll(woman) just pee standing up then?