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Bill Gates Answers Questions From Redditors
First time accepted submitter rroman writes "Bill Gates is answering questions on reddit. He talks about the work that is being done by Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, about his life and about his opinions on various topics."
Jump right to the answers.
Sign of the times... when /. is linking to Reddit.
Ubuntu is an African word meaning 'I can't configure Debian'
Think about the last time you saw Bill Gates on television. Did he look normal? Did he look quite how you remember him? If you were paying attention, you would have noticed that something was not quite the same.
The Chinese character for the JFK assassination looks a lot like the character for Bill Gates's name.
Invested parties have done a lot to make sure this stays under wraps.
In 1750, Benjamin Franklin was observed by over fifteen residents of Philadelphia as he branded an unidentified man with an Illuminati insignia. He was overheard telling one of his associates, "my work will be done once Bill Gates arrives to complete it."
If modern society hadn't drugged most ordinary people into a passive stupor of acceptance, we'd have done something about this long ago.
Shortly after the JFK assassination, the number of diabetes cases in children born to parents living nearby almost tripled. However, the government refuses to research this effect or compensate the affected families.
Corporate interests are preventing us from getting the truth out.
Consider the facts, and ask yourself: are you willing to let them get away with this? The answer should be a resounding no.
I think we've all moved on to Steve Ballmer being an idiot rather than Bill Gates being evil
If you had bothered to look, he has been answering for the last 6 or so hours, and his last post was only 5 minutes ago as of this posting.
This really is an excellent AMA. It's good to see Mr. Gates mixing witty one-liners with several long, open and thoughtful answers.
In a weird way I wish that this was the Bill Gates that was still leading Microsoft. I mean, in that alternate universe it certainly wouldn't be all rainbows and freedom, but at least Microsoft would be a company that I could understand. These days, I have no clue where Microsoft is going and it kind of makes me sad that they are becoming a weaker, less competent rival to their open source and corporate opposition. Ah well, It's likely better that he's taken his drive and his billions and put it towards a noble cause.
I want one!!
http://i.imgur.com/1JqrLVc.jpg
Robots, pervasive screens, speech interaction will all change the way we look at "computers". Once seeing, hearing, and reading (including handwriting) work very well you will interact in new ways..
I'm very surprised he's still hung up on handwriting recognition. It is a DEAD END for human interfacing to a computer (with the sole exception of OCRing existing handwritten documents, and perhaps security as a form of credential). Think about it for one moment, the amount of muscle control, precision and time required to DRAW A SHAPE which is then interpreted as a single input glyph. It is a horribly slow and tedious method of input - I would rather (and literally have) key Morse Code into my android phone than write text.
It also shows he's still a bit out of touch, and still thinking stylus-centric (which, IMO, was one of the reasons Window Mobile / Windows CE failed, was because it never completely shook the stylus-required-to-interact-with-tiny-widgets problem). Is a person really expected to draw on a modern touch screen with their finger to write letters for the device to recognize (and feel like a preschooler fingerpainting)? Or are we going to step back into having to keep track of a stylus?
Just found it odd he threw in handwriting in this day and age. It was beat to death with Palm starting a decade and a half ago. It's gone. Dead. Byebye.
Better known as 318230.
I like the windows 2000 response.
We love the guy!
As soon as you try to explain why/how being rich is bad then we'll talk. Because of right now you're sounding a little bit crazy...
Bill Gates supports circumcision as a way to fight HIV. That really is not an effective way to fight HIV, since many Americans are circumcised and still get HIV. Also, many European men are not circumcised and they don't get HIV as frequently as Americans. Using a condom is really the most effective way to protect yourself from HIV, and if you're going to use a condom, then there's no need to get circumcised.
Not to mention the fact that babies aren't even capable of having sex, so there's no need to circumcise a baby. When he's an adult, let him decide for himself whether he wants to permanently remove a body part that offers sexual benefits. And in 15-20 years there may be a REAL cure for HIV.
Saying that we should circumcise babies to protect them from HIV makes as much sense as saying we should give mastectomies to all young women to protect them from breast cancer.
If you are young and briliant you have a choice, help the world or help yourself and become filthy rich
False dilemma. Profit seeking capitalists have done far more good for the world than philanthropists.
Everyone in my class learned Logo in 3rd grade. In middle school they taught everyone HTML. In high school we were using Scheme in several math classes.
I also learned C++ and Java in high school, though admittedly that was not everyone, and it was AP level classwork.
I think the earlier you teach kids computer languages, the better, and the quicker they'll pick it up. I don't think OOP is something terribly scary. After all, objects is kind of what people have to deal with every day in the real world. You explain it as nouns and verbs, and it's not that hard to understand.
-mrxak
Onions Will Kill You