Let's see if the Linux community can match his generosity.
Heck, let's see how many European countries can match his generosity. From the article:
Norway's parliament has announced a donation to GAVI of 290 million dollars between 2006 and 2010.
That works out to $72.5 million per year over 4 years... still less than Gates has donated per year, and over less than half the time. So 1 single American is giving more to GAVI than a whole European country? C'mon Old Europe, step up to the plate! Show us how "superior" you are!
"On paper" means he doesn't actually have $50bn sat in the bank. I have to wonder quite how much of his total worth is tied up in shares (especially of MS), and quite what it would do to the share price(s) if he tried to sell them all at once.
Why does he have to sell the shares? Most likely, he's giving the donations in the form of stock... the added benefit is that he can deduct the full value of the donation from his taxes without having to pay the capital gains tax on the appreciation.
Marc Andreesen is a clown who is famous for being famous.
So you're saying he's the tech community's version of Paris Hilton? Seems fitting, because although he might not have appeared in porn, he seems to be quite the connoisseur of porn.
Huh... It is very possible that the US stocks stagnate, the same way Japanese stocks has stagnated for 20 years. Good luck if it is *just* before you retire. After all, Asia is coming out strong, "Old America" may not stay an economic engine forever.
That's why I have 40% of my money in funds that invest outside the US exclusively, with 25% of that money in emerging markets like India and South Korea. Another 10% of my money is in a long/short fund that isn't correlated with the US market (a.k.a. a hedge fund).
How is it obivously curved?
0.0% -> $0
50% -> $B
100% -> $A
if A=100,000,000,000,000 and B=50,000,000,000,000 the line is not curved. Why do you say it's obviously curved?
Because his post contained the following (highly logical) assumption:
where B > A - this is Capitalism.
Why is it a logical assumption? If your pay was taxed 100%, and you received no additional benefit from going to work, would you go to work or sit on your ass all day goofing off?
But if I'm horribly wrong and my diverse investments all tank, I know I won't be left during my old age with absolutely nothing. That's why the "security" part of social security is so important.
If you're properly diversified, that really isn't a concern. If my diverse investments all tank, then the US' and the rest of the world's stock markets have tanked along with them, and we're all in a world of hurt. In such a scenario, I don't expect Social Security to still be around...
That is a deliberate LIE that is repeated over and over again by the Bush administration.
The TRUTH is that Social Security is fully funded until 2042 (according to the Social Security Administration. The Congressional Budget Office thinks it can go until 2052). At that point its trust fund runs out...
Ummm... the trust fund's already gone, moron. It was "used" to make the deficit look smaller during the 90's (and before?). Social Security will be paying out more than it's taking in by 2018. That's only 12 years away...
W's massive budget deficits are what caused the Social Security problem.
WTF are you talking about? Social Security has been on the road to bankruptcy for years, because no politician can afford to cut benefits to seniors (which is the only way we're going to get out of this mess).
W's done a lot of stupid things, but ruining Social Security isn't one of them.
Your children will enjoy paying off the $500 billion dollar bill for your stupidity while you die in the street after Social Security is bankrupted. Family values my ass.
Social Security is already going to be bankrupt in a few years. Anyone counting on it for retirement is a complete moron.
BTW -- though I didn't vote for W -- he did have a better plan for reforming SS than Kerry.
/. readers will be happy to know that among the various achievements was 'at least 285 gallons of vomit'... although unknown how much when it was used for filming the Apollo 13 movie.
Vomit wasn't the only bodily excretion when the vomit comit was used for filming The Uranus Experiment. So I guess that makes 285 gallons of vomit and one pop-shot.
No it can't, and in some respects an unwanted fetus could even be likened to a parasite. It requires the mothers womb to survive and without the womb it dies.
So could a newborn baby. It requires outside help (feeding/cleaning/other care) to live, and without such help it dies.
But you yourself admitted that a tapeworm/parasite/fetus was alive, by your admission that without the "host" it would die... and how could it die if it wasn't alive? So ultimately, this debate comes down to the following question: what is the value of a fetus' life?
Why should the decision be taken away from the "host" before that time?
If it's your position is that a fetus is a parasite, then I think it's a valid one. It directly answers the question about the value of a fetus' life. Reasonable people can disagree about the value of life, of course, just like people disagree about the value of convicts' lives, etc.
I think that you're wrong, though, simply because a fetus has more potential than a tapeworm. Given the proper environment, a fetus will grow into the most advanced life form that we know about. OTOH, given the proper environment, a tapeworm will still be a tapeworm.
It's still wrong for the government to take away people's control over their own bodies.
I agree completely... how dare the government take away my right to punch you in the face! Stop trying to control what I do with my body, you damn gubmint bureaucrats!
Ah yes and at that moment this "life" cannot survive outside the mothers womb.
So what? A tapeworm can't survive outside of its host... is it alive? A fish can't survive out of water... is it alive? You can't survive outside of a breathable atmosphere... are you alive?
Also, is there conciousness at this point? Can you prove it?
Are you conscious? Can you prove it? You can't even prove you exist (to me).
The bottom line is this: we don't know when life begins... but we do know it happens sometime after conception and before birth. So shouldn't we give the fetus the benefit of the doubt to make sure we're not killing an innocent?
This isn't a humiliation for the American system... it's a politically-motivated insult brought by European countries that don't like Bush (for many good reasons, mind you...), and by association, the US.
Look: the system here worked. We had an election that was very, very close. It was so close that the votes had to be recounted and the outcome was within the statistical margin of error. But the system worked. The issue went to the Supreme Court, was decided, and the transfer of power happened peacefully. There was no rioting in the streets... no looting... no coup attempt... not even a power grab (like is happening in Russia). This is exactly how you expect a stable republic to settle such an issue.
So why is Europe coming over to monitor our elections? Because they really think that it will make a difference? Or to tarnish the US' reputation with the unfounded and unproven implication that our elections aren't fair? One might think that they've been listening to Michael Moore too much...
after they are done lambasting Blair for being a dishonest Bush lapdog, they point out that at least he has a grasp of the English language.
Check out this quote from Blair (regarding terrorists, halfway down on this story): "But our response has not got to be to weaken.... Our response has got to be to stand firm." Has (not) got to be? The man talks like a yokel.
How long do you think it would take for the finance director to get the same things done if each of those 400 emails was someone knocking on his door or sending a letter from outside the company?
I think the point is that he wouldn't have 400 people knocking on his door. Many of those emails aren't things that probably require his direct input, but email makes it (too) easy to keep people in the loop. This can have positive effects (e.g. the director sees something that needs to be fixed and thus avoids a problem) and negative effects (e.g. the director is swamped and can't give all of the emails the attention they deserve, though the senders think he has...).
Every conversion project I've been involved in has led to at least 4x the productivity, that certainly sounds like technology making things move more efficiently.
Initially, I can see where you would gain productivity... but I'm not sure that you can preserve those gains as people get more accustomed to the technology. It's entirely too easy to copy people on emails that they don't really need to be copied on. And the more people you send an email to, the fewer people will actually respond. It's like the amount of time spent on an email is constant, so if you copy more people, the amount of time each one will spend on the email actually decreases, and less gets done as a result.
In theory, the sickest person that is compatable is supposed to get the organ. In practice, being rich/famous probably gets you moved up a few places, witness Mickey Mantle and David Crosby, who both got liver's soon after their cases were wildly publicized. I think on the flip side, these very public cases help everyone, because more organs get donated.
I think what would help even more would be if people like Mickey Mantle would die from not getting preferential treatment, just like thousands of normal people do every year. That way, the public would see that there is a need for livers, and not foolishly believe that everyone who needs a liver gets one within a few days.
Just to clarify, this is not a point for the evolutionists. The monkey came by it's walking behavior through a disease and brain damage, not a genetic abberation, so it won't pass it on to it's kids.
On the contrary, it most definitely is a point for the evolutionists. In this case (as in the case of dramatic climate change), the idea is that the natural selection pressures change, and the creatures adapt by the route of natural selection. So a few monkeys overcome an illness by means of going bipedal, and see an advantage to it. Others try it ("hey, why didn't we think of that?" or their kids just wanna walk like daddy does) and also discover the advantage. And within a few generations, natural selection is selecting for different traits than it was before. IOW, evolution in action. It's another possible explanation for the kind of rapid species change that evolution has had a hard time explaining in the past.
Slashdot Mirror
Heck, let's see how many European countries can match his generosity. From the article:
That works out to $72.5 million per year over 4 years... still less than Gates has donated per year, and over less than half the time. So 1 single American is giving more to GAVI than a whole European country? C'mon Old Europe, step up to the plate! Show us how "superior" you are!
Why does he have to sell the shares? Most likely, he's giving the donations in the form of stock... the added benefit is that he can deduct the full value of the donation from his taxes without having to pay the capital gains tax on the appreciation.
Anyway, you can get the same results by searching for the words "Andreessen" and "dickman" in Google Groups.
So you're saying he's the tech community's version of Paris Hilton? Seems fitting, because although he might not have appeared in porn, he seems to be quite the connoisseur of porn.
Yeah, Ashcroft's out of a job now, isn't he?
That's why I have 40% of my money in funds that invest outside the US exclusively, with 25% of that money in emerging markets like India and South Korea. Another 10% of my money is in a long/short fund that isn't correlated with the US market (a.k.a. a hedge fund).
Because his post contained the following (highly logical) assumption: where B > A - this is Capitalism.
Why is it a logical assumption? If your pay was taxed 100%, and you received no additional benefit from going to work, would you go to work or sit on your ass all day goofing off?
If you're properly diversified, that really isn't a concern. If my diverse investments all tank, then the US' and the rest of the world's stock markets have tanked along with them, and we're all in a world of hurt. In such a scenario, I don't expect Social Security to still be around...
Lol... I meant "Fisher Price".
Ummm... you misspelled "Fischer-Price".
Ummm... the trust fund's already gone, moron. It was "used" to make the deficit look smaller during the 90's (and before?). Social Security will be paying out more than it's taking in by 2018. That's only 12 years away...
WTF are you talking about? Social Security has been on the road to bankruptcy for years, because no politician can afford to cut benefits to seniors (which is the only way we're going to get out of this mess).
W's done a lot of stupid things, but ruining Social Security isn't one of them.
Social Security is already going to be bankrupt in a few years. Anyone counting on it for retirement is a complete moron.
BTW -- though I didn't vote for W -- he did have a better plan for reforming SS than Kerry.
For many Slashdotters, the palm is still their one and only.
Vomit wasn't the only bodily excretion when the vomit comit was used for filming The Uranus Experiment. So I guess that makes 285 gallons of vomit and one pop-shot.
Yeah, but are they actually getting any?
So could a newborn baby. It requires outside help (feeding/cleaning/other care) to live, and without such help it dies.
But you yourself admitted that a tapeworm/parasite/fetus was alive, by your admission that without the "host" it would die... and how could it die if it wasn't alive? So ultimately, this debate comes down to the following question: what is the value of a fetus' life?
Why should the decision be taken away from the "host" before that time?
If it's your position is that a fetus is a parasite, then I think it's a valid one. It directly answers the question about the value of a fetus' life. Reasonable people can disagree about the value of life, of course, just like people disagree about the value of convicts' lives, etc. I think that you're wrong, though, simply because a fetus has more potential than a tapeworm. Given the proper environment, a fetus will grow into the most advanced life form that we know about. OTOH, given the proper environment, a tapeworm will still be a tapeworm.
I agree completely... how dare the government take away my right to punch you in the face! Stop trying to control what I do with my body, you damn gubmint bureaucrats!
So what? A tapeworm can't survive outside of its host... is it alive? A fish can't survive out of water... is it alive? You can't survive outside of a breathable atmosphere... are you alive?
Also, is there conciousness at this point? Can you prove it?
Are you conscious? Can you prove it? You can't even prove you exist (to me).
The bottom line is this: we don't know when life begins... but we do know it happens sometime after conception and before birth. So shouldn't we give the fetus the benefit of the doubt to make sure we're not killing an innocent?
Look: the system here worked. We had an election that was very, very close. It was so close that the votes had to be recounted and the outcome was within the statistical margin of error. But the system worked. The issue went to the Supreme Court, was decided, and the transfer of power happened peacefully. There was no rioting in the streets... no looting... no coup attempt... not even a power grab (like is happening in Russia). This is exactly how you expect a stable republic to settle such an issue.
So why is Europe coming over to monitor our elections? Because they really think that it will make a difference? Or to tarnish the US' reputation with the unfounded and unproven implication that our elections aren't fair? One might think that they've been listening to Michael Moore too much...
Check out this quote from Blair (regarding terrorists, halfway down on this story): "But our response has not got to be to weaken.... Our response has got to be to stand firm." Has (not) got to be? The man talks like a yokel.
I think the point is that he wouldn't have 400 people knocking on his door. Many of those emails aren't things that probably require his direct input, but email makes it (too) easy to keep people in the loop. This can have positive effects (e.g. the director sees something that needs to be fixed and thus avoids a problem) and negative effects (e.g. the director is swamped and can't give all of the emails the attention they deserve, though the senders think he has...).
Every conversion project I've been involved in has led to at least 4x the productivity, that certainly sounds like technology making things move more efficiently.
Initially, I can see where you would gain productivity... but I'm not sure that you can preserve those gains as people get more accustomed to the technology. It's entirely too easy to copy people on emails that they don't really need to be copied on. And the more people you send an email to, the fewer people will actually respond. It's like the amount of time spent on an email is constant, so if you copy more people, the amount of time each one will spend on the email actually decreases, and less gets done as a result.
I think what would help even more would be if people like Mickey Mantle would die from not getting preferential treatment, just like thousands of normal people do every year. That way, the public would see that there is a need for livers, and not foolishly believe that everyone who needs a liver gets one within a few days.
On the contrary, it most definitely is a point for the evolutionists. In this case (as in the case of dramatic climate change), the idea is that the natural selection pressures change, and the creatures adapt by the route of natural selection. So a few monkeys overcome an illness by means of going bipedal, and see an advantage to it. Others try it ("hey, why didn't we think of that?" or their kids just wanna walk like daddy does) and also discover the advantage. And within a few generations, natural selection is selecting for different traits than it was before. IOW, evolution in action. It's another possible explanation for the kind of rapid species change that evolution has had a hard time explaining in the past.