Right, so if nobody exactly remembers the situation and frankly nobody in that room cared at the time (except the person that wrote it down/leaked it out) then if I were Bill, I'd also tell everyone I never said it. Heck, I'm a billionaire. I can say anything and people will believe me.
My point was that it's one person's word against another. There may be a note written someone from a studious person that says it... but it's still one man's word against another.
It's just a joke and anyone putting more time into arguing the validity of it is wasting time. (including myself.) Laugh and move on.
You have to have a way to get the waste out or deal with it locally. Those two methods require that someone crap in a bucket and carry it somewhere since plumbing would be a bad choice for maintenance and cost reasons. From the gist I'm getting, this is even a problem for some. People are looking for a magic bullet fix to the problem and there isn't one without first reforming the whole social structure in the area.
If they live in slums, who's going to maintain the extensive waste networks or maintain the toilets if they break? Even solar powered solutions need someone to clean off the panel every now and then (if they aren't stolen.)
1) You ship the water in trucks, and have the people dump bucket loads in the john... not exactly convenient, and not sure if it makes economical sense.
Honestly... convenience? We only need to look back a few years to find that households in America still did essentially this. There was a windmill outside that would pump water up into a bucket if you were lucky... otherwise you had a hand pump. You'd carry whatever water you needed into your house and use it in whatever manner was needed. Bathing, drinking, cleaning...
I'm sure there is enough time in at least one of the people in the household to be able to get a few buckets of water from the community well.
The problem isn't really efficiency though. The cities where this is happening don't have to social or economic structures to handle those systems. Sure, it may stay running well for a few years but if something breaks they are not likely to go out and replace it with only genuine replacement parts. Someone will cobble together a rubber mat and some string to fix that pipe. Even in western civilization, there are people who don't have the money or the education to properly repair their plumbing/electricity/etc. and they duct tape it all to hell because that's what they have on hand.
I mean seriously. It's unknown if he said it or not, but you trust Bill to admit he made a rather silly statement? If there was no audio or video evidence of me saying/doing something stupid as a kid, I'd definitely deny it.
It's all fine and grand, but most of the places in Africa already lack the social order required to maintain such systems. Building it would be a temporary fix to the real problems. It actually may make things worse if a neighboring warlord decides that those facilities should be theirs to use.
So, Bill Gates comes in and installs plumbing and toilets in every home... building up the infrastructure and leaves. Everything should be cool, right? I mean, they'll wake up to the overpopulation problem and control their population?
No. They'll likely just use the facilities, not do anything to upkeep or repair them and continue down the road they are in right now. They'll beat their neighbor for access to their restrooms and when that one breaks? Start crapping in their vegetable gardens again.
Now, I don't know if that's the real conditions over there, but providing waste treatment for a city that has other social/economic issues in play is not going to resolve their problems overnight. At best, it's a band-aid fix.
And don't act so high and mighty, it wasn't so long ago in the west we burned people alive for voodoo, oops witchcraft or killed people for their faith and made lampshades out of them.
I sit here within easy reach of enough food to last me a week, pure water how ever much I want, power for a dozen gadgets, in building that doesn't even budge in the worsed storms. Maybe you are too, but I don't pretend that my state in the norm in the rest of the world.
I'm honestly baffled that someone would think that I am acting "high and mighty" and that I think "my state of living is normal for the rest of the world" from anything I've written here.
I simply stated that there have been methods for dealing with waste for as long as humanity has walked the Earth. Some of it is bad. Some of it is good. A simple building with a hole in the floor and an access panel in the back where someone could spread and bury waste is quite simply the simplest method (outside of digging a hole and crapping in it...) that anyone has ever thought of. If the people of Africa can't handle this simple task, how are they going to maintain compost toilets, plumbing of any kind, or any of the other various methods named in these threads? If there's an overpopulation issue due to poor social standards and Bill Gates walks in creating toilets for the population to prevent the death and diseases from spreading... how does that help the people in 10 years when they under-appreciate those facilities and continue their social habits of reproduction?
Yes, waste management is an important part of any society, but if they can't be bothered to do the most simple task known to man for all time... how can you sit here and tell me I'm an ass for not appreciating their problems? All societies have developed ways to deal with it. From the Western to the Eastern societies. IF they can't deal with the waste they are producing there far more serious issues at hand.
No, I consider simple being a hole in the ground with a place to sit above it. I grew up on a Midwestern farm and we had an outhouse that was no longer used by us... but I understood it's purpose. I even went camping, a lot, as a kid and had to dig holes where I would bury my waste. It's not something I needed a degree in biology or waste management to understand.
5%* tax on all purchases split 50/50 amongst the origin and destination states. In the case of national export, origin is considered destination (the origin state gets all taxes.) The company collecting taxes shall issue checks to respective states at the end of each quarter.
I'm not sure where my joking starts or ends. Could you clarify where you think I'm joking?
You've listed a solution that may work for them. Why hasn't this billion dollar fund heard of these toilets then? What sort of solution is Mr. Gates looking for if these compost solutions were not sufficient enough for his solution?
If the small villages in Pakistan can figure out that they need to go to "x" location on the other side of the hill when they need to dump their waste, why can't someone in Africa designate an area that people will go to do that?
Why do they need someone else to come in and dig a latrine for them? Do they lack the knowledge on digging a hole?... building a stick/rope structure to hold up a person? Why is there really an issue with people squatting anywhere they damn well please in Africa if all the other places all over the world figured this out already? There are remote places all over the world that have figured out that this waste is bad and they work with it just fine. How is it any different in Africa? They don't know how to mix the feces with dirt and/or bury it?
It's not like there haven't been all kinds of methods devised for getting rid of waste. Hell, NASA probably researched a million different chemicals and methods for getting rid of such waste. I'm sure they didn't just blow all that money on a single toilet.
Also, there no need for name calling. So I went a little wordy with my sentence... big deal.
Obviously, the vocal Chrisitian... why? Because someone has to keep the pews full. The non-vocal person helping society does nothing for the hegemony of the church. If everyone just privately practiced their religion, there would be no real power in the churches and they wouldn't be able to pool together funds to create schools, build billboards, print bumper stickers, or create silly cartoons to brainwash kids into their ideology.
Oh, you meant better for society? Obviously the person that does the most work in the community without constantly preaching their ways to the people they help. But that doesn't sell any Bibles.
I'm just trying to figure out why he wants to violate the KISS methodology. You have few options for feces. Put it it into a treatment facility (flush, carry...) to be treated with bacteria that live on that sort of thing, use it for fertilizer or burn it.
The use of toilets in "western society" simply facilitates the first step in those methods be it an out house, a ceramic bowl, or fancy plastic. I don't understand what he wants them to do. Maybe learn how to use sea shells for less paper usage? There's only so much waste you can get rid of with a small amount of water, and any breakthrough in toilet technology that would make it cheap enough for the third world and use little water will likely be patent encumbered for the next 50 years (probably by Bill himself.)
Your sole argument was that 200 jobs are not enough of a concern regardless of the output of the operation... as if somehow manpower is the primary component in determining the worth of an operation.
I clearly said nothing about manpower. Just jobs. From a utilitarian perspective, 200 jobs is not worth it, whether they're desk jobs or elbow grease jobs. What number of jobs would be worth it? I don't know, but it's higher than 200.
Even if said factory with 200 jobs were producing all the light-bulbs needed to supply the world for a year? (not sure if they do, but it was never mentioned what production values were.) Now, the company decides to shutdown the whole plant instead of scaling down and you say, "Meh, it's only 200 jobs."
Wait... you're telling me that if Congress stopped working on all their subcommittees and whatnot for some period of time, the local police forces, courts, and legal systems would just sort of vanish and we'd all be running around in whatever we could scavenge from our unlucky neighbors?
That's one hell of a slope on that graph.
Congress makes laws and provides funding. It's up to the Executive branch to execute those laws. Closing Congress for any period of time would not constitute the death of the nation as long as the bills continued to be paid. It would just cease to change. I cannot see any logical path to Anarchy. I think the jump you've made is a bit irrational.
That's kind of an odd chain of thought. Would you feel better keeping the plant open if they hired 10,000 people? It sounds like one of those "too big to fail" arguments where it's alright to kill some factory with only 10 employees and 10,000 robots but it's not cool to shutdown a plant with 10 robots and 10,000 employees. Why do I bring robots into the argument? Because we don't know if those 200 jobs were assisted or not. Your sole argument was that 200 jobs are not enough of a concern regardless of the output of the operation... as if somehow manpower is the primary component in determining the worth of an operation.
I recently apologized to one of my co-workers for writing a "confrontational email" that hurt their feelings... but I still feel like their implementation was crap and needed to be scrapped and re-written. It didn't change my opinion of the person or their work simply because I apologized.
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Somehow I find it humorous that vegiVamp likes haggis. ;)
I don't believe I ever misunderstood the problem.
Right, so if nobody exactly remembers the situation and frankly nobody in that room cared at the time (except the person that wrote it down/leaked it out) then if I were Bill, I'd also tell everyone I never said it. Heck, I'm a billionaire. I can say anything and people will believe me.
My point was that it's one person's word against another. There may be a note written someone from a studious person that says it... but it's still one man's word against another.
It's just a joke and anyone putting more time into arguing the validity of it is wasting time. (including myself.) Laugh and move on.
You have to have a way to get the waste out or deal with it locally. Those two methods require that someone crap in a bucket and carry it somewhere since plumbing would be a bad choice for maintenance and cost reasons. From the gist I'm getting, this is even a problem for some. People are looking for a magic bullet fix to the problem and there isn't one without first reforming the whole social structure in the area.
If they live in slums, who's going to maintain the extensive waste networks or maintain the toilets if they break? Even solar powered solutions need someone to clean off the panel every now and then (if they aren't stolen.)
1) You ship the water in trucks, and have the people dump bucket loads in the john... not exactly convenient, and not sure if it makes economical sense.
Honestly... convenience? We only need to look back a few years to find that households in America still did essentially this. There was a windmill outside that would pump water up into a bucket if you were lucky... otherwise you had a hand pump. You'd carry whatever water you needed into your house and use it in whatever manner was needed. Bathing, drinking, cleaning...
I'm sure there is enough time in at least one of the people in the household to be able to get a few buckets of water from the community well.
The problem isn't really efficiency though. The cities where this is happening don't have to social or economic structures to handle those systems. Sure, it may stay running well for a few years but if something breaks they are not likely to go out and replace it with only genuine replacement parts. Someone will cobble together a rubber mat and some string to fix that pipe. Even in western civilization, there are people who don't have the money or the education to properly repair their plumbing/electricity/etc. and they duct tape it all to hell because that's what they have on hand.
.. says Bill Gates.
I mean seriously. It's unknown if he said it or not, but you trust Bill to admit he made a rather silly statement? If there was no audio or video evidence of me saying/doing something stupid as a kid, I'd definitely deny it.
It's all fine and grand, but most of the places in Africa already lack the social order required to maintain such systems. Building it would be a temporary fix to the real problems. It actually may make things worse if a neighboring warlord decides that those facilities should be theirs to use.
So, Bill Gates comes in and installs plumbing and toilets in every home... building up the infrastructure and leaves. Everything should be cool, right? I mean, they'll wake up to the overpopulation problem and control their population?
No. They'll likely just use the facilities, not do anything to upkeep or repair them and continue down the road they are in right now. They'll beat their neighbor for access to their restrooms and when that one breaks? Start crapping in their vegetable gardens again.
Now, I don't know if that's the real conditions over there, but providing waste treatment for a city that has other social/economic issues in play is not going to resolve their problems overnight. At best, it's a band-aid fix.
And don't act so high and mighty, it wasn't so long ago in the west we burned people alive for voodoo, oops witchcraft or killed people for their faith and made lampshades out of them.
I sit here within easy reach of enough food to last me a week, pure water how ever much I want, power for a dozen gadgets, in building that doesn't even budge in the worsed storms. Maybe you are too, but I don't pretend that my state in the norm in the rest of the world.
I'm honestly baffled that someone would think that I am acting "high and mighty" and that I think "my state of living is normal for the rest of the world" from anything I've written here.
I simply stated that there have been methods for dealing with waste for as long as humanity has walked the Earth. Some of it is bad. Some of it is good. A simple building with a hole in the floor and an access panel in the back where someone could spread and bury waste is quite simply the simplest method (outside of digging a hole and crapping in it...) that anyone has ever thought of. If the people of Africa can't handle this simple task, how are they going to maintain compost toilets, plumbing of any kind, or any of the other various methods named in these threads? If there's an overpopulation issue due to poor social standards and Bill Gates walks in creating toilets for the population to prevent the death and diseases from spreading... how does that help the people in 10 years when they under-appreciate those facilities and continue their social habits of reproduction?
Yes, waste management is an important part of any society, but if they can't be bothered to do the most simple task known to man for all time... how can you sit here and tell me I'm an ass for not appreciating their problems? All societies have developed ways to deal with it. From the Western to the Eastern societies. IF they can't deal with the waste they are producing there far more serious issues at hand.
No, I consider simple being a hole in the ground with a place to sit above it. I grew up on a Midwestern farm and we had an outhouse that was no longer used by us... but I understood it's purpose. I even went camping, a lot, as a kid and had to dig holes where I would bury my waste. It's not something I needed a degree in biology or waste management to understand.
5%* tax on all purchases split 50/50 amongst the origin and destination states. In the case of national export, origin is considered destination (the origin state gets all taxes.) The company collecting taxes shall issue checks to respective states at the end of each quarter.
*arbitrary
Complex database solved.
I'm not sure where my joking starts or ends. Could you clarify where you think I'm joking?
You've listed a solution that may work for them. Why hasn't this billion dollar fund heard of these toilets then? What sort of solution is Mr. Gates looking for if these compost solutions were not sufficient enough for his solution?
If the small villages in Pakistan can figure out that they need to go to "x" location on the other side of the hill when they need to dump their waste, why can't someone in Africa designate an area that people will go to do that?
Why do they need someone else to come in and dig a latrine for them? Do they lack the knowledge on digging a hole? ... building a stick/rope structure to hold up a person? Why is there really an issue with people squatting anywhere they damn well please in Africa if all the other places all over the world figured this out already? There are remote places all over the world that have figured out that this waste is bad and they work with it just fine. How is it any different in Africa? They don't know how to mix the feces with dirt and/or bury it?
It's not like there haven't been all kinds of methods devised for getting rid of waste. Hell, NASA probably researched a million different chemicals and methods for getting rid of such waste. I'm sure they didn't just blow all that money on a single toilet.
Also, there no need for name calling. So I went a little wordy with my sentence... big deal.
Another tough nut to crack "Show me the science"-type.
Yeah, stupid science. What we need is more people like Bob here who know more about magic beans than those ignorant science type people.
Karma be damned...
Obviously, the vocal Chrisitian... why? Because someone has to keep the pews full. The non-vocal person helping society does nothing for the hegemony of the church. If everyone just privately practiced their religion, there would be no real power in the churches and they wouldn't be able to pool together funds to create schools, build billboards, print bumper stickers, or create silly cartoons to brainwash kids into their ideology.
Oh, you meant better for society? Obviously the person that does the most work in the community without constantly preaching their ways to the people they help. But that doesn't sell any Bibles.
I'm just trying to figure out why he wants to violate the KISS methodology. You have few options for feces. Put it it into a treatment facility (flush, carry...) to be treated with bacteria that live on that sort of thing, use it for fertilizer or burn it.
The use of toilets in "western society" simply facilitates the first step in those methods be it an out house, a ceramic bowl, or fancy plastic. I don't understand what he wants them to do. Maybe learn how to use sea shells for less paper usage? There's only so much waste you can get rid of with a small amount of water, and any breakthrough in toilet technology that would make it cheap enough for the third world and use little water will likely be patent encumbered for the next 50 years (probably by Bill himself.)
He's got to get work done sometime if he's on Slashdot all day. ;)
I suppose he doesn't have to worry about them if he's dead.
Your sole argument was that 200 jobs are not enough of a concern regardless of the output of the operation... as if somehow manpower is the primary component in determining the worth of an operation.
I clearly said nothing about manpower. Just jobs. From a utilitarian perspective, 200 jobs is not worth it, whether they're desk jobs or elbow grease jobs. What number of jobs would be worth it? I don't know, but it's higher than 200.
Even if said factory with 200 jobs were producing all the light-bulbs needed to supply the world for a year? (not sure if they do, but it was never mentioned what production values were.) Now, the company decides to shutdown the whole plant instead of scaling down and you say, "Meh, it's only 200 jobs."
Wait... you're telling me that if Congress stopped working on all their subcommittees and whatnot for some period of time, the local police forces, courts, and legal systems would just sort of vanish and we'd all be running around in whatever we could scavenge from our unlucky neighbors?
That's one hell of a slope on that graph.
Congress makes laws and provides funding. It's up to the Executive branch to execute those laws. Closing Congress for any period of time would not constitute the death of the nation as long as the bills continued to be paid. It would just cease to change. I cannot see any logical path to Anarchy. I think the jump you've made is a bit irrational.
That's kind of an odd chain of thought. Would you feel better keeping the plant open if they hired 10,000 people? It sounds like one of those "too big to fail" arguments where it's alright to kill some factory with only 10 employees and 10,000 robots but it's not cool to shutdown a plant with 10 robots and 10,000 employees. Why do I bring robots into the argument? Because we don't know if those 200 jobs were assisted or not. Your sole argument was that 200 jobs are not enough of a concern regardless of the output of the operation... as if somehow manpower is the primary component in determining the worth of an operation.
Are you a union steward?
I recently apologized to one of my co-workers for writing a "confrontational email" that hurt their feelings... but I still feel like their implementation was crap and needed to be scrapped and re-written. It didn't change my opinion of the person or their work simply because I apologized.