HOWTO: Spend A Billion Dollars

shine-shine writes: "Forbes is running an article helping you figure out how to spend that spare billion you got laying around (don't you just hate when that happens?). Apparently, a geek would buy 500 black-market clones of himself, while the narcissist would most likely build "a monument similar in size and scale to Mount Rushmore, featuring his own face.""

Land, land, and more land

[idiotnot]

- Primary residence on North Carolina's Outer Banks
- Vacation home in Northern Europe
- Ski Chalet (Rockies)
- Plot in a Banana Republic

Of course, also I'd need...

- Multi-million dollar yacht
- Plane
- Fleet of cars for each residence
- 1967 AMC Ambassador SST

Computers...

I can't, really....several offerings from Sun, a top-o-da-line TiBook (every single time they release one that's better, I'd get a new one), Cray.....

With the rest, I'd put it into a trust where the interest will be protected, and I'll live on the interest. At death, Uncle Sam will get a cut (unfortunately), and the rest will go to worthy causes of my choice (my alma mater, Debian project....)

How to spend it best

[SoLoatWork]

What's the best way to spend some of the billion?

Saving Farscape [savefarscape.com].

Speaking of Bill Gates...

[cscx]

This may sound a little simplistic, but Billy G. would give a billion away to charity.

$1 billion over 20 years to establish the Gates Millennium Scholarship Program, which will support promising minority students through college and some kinds of graduate school.
$750 million over five years to the Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunization, which includes the World Health Organization, the Rockefeller Foundation, Unicef, pharmaceutical companies and the World Bank.
$350 million over three years to teachers, administrators, school districts and schools to improve America's K-12 education, starting in Washington State.
$200 million to the Gates Library Program, which is wiring public libraries in America's poorest communities in an effort to close the "digital divide."
$100 million to the Gates Children's Vaccine Program, which will accelerate delivery of lifesaving vaccines to children in the poorest countries of the world.
$50 million to the Maternal Mortality Reduction Program, run by the Columbia University School of Public Health.
$50 million to the Malaria Vaccine Initiative, to conduct research on promising candidates for a malaria vaccine.
$50 million to an international group called the Alliance for the Prevention of Cervical Cancer.
$50 million to a fund for global polio eradication, led by the World Health Organization, Unicef, Rotary International and the U.N. Foundation.
$40 million to the International Vaccine Institute, a research program based in Seoul, South Korea.
$28 million to Unicef for the elimination of maternal and neonatal tetanus.
$25 million to the Sequella Global Tuberculosis Foundation.
$25 million to the International AIDS Vaccine Initiative, which is creating coalitions of research scientists, pharmaceutical companies and governments in developing countries to look for a safe, effective, widely accessible vaccine against AIDS.

Re:No imagination

[blincoln]

That would be cool, but the advantage of having a zeppelin is that you can deploy the hot chicks to any location on the globe. Hot chicks in your Imperial throne room? Okay! Hot chicks on top of the Golden Gate Bridge, where everyone can see, but no one except you and other zeppelin-enabled billionaires can get to? No problem!
Heck, you could deploy them as a smokescreen to cover your entry into otherwise inaccessible areas. Go to Area 51 and swipe some Switchblades! Install your favourite multi-monitor capable games on the computers at Cheyenne Mountain! The possibilities are endless. And only a zeppelin full of hot chicks can make it all a reality.

There exists a novel on this topic

[alhague]

Some years ago German SF-writer Andreas Eschbach came out with a novel entitled "Eine Billion Dollar" [amazon.de] (which actually means a /trillion/ dollar). It features the young son of a poor italian shoe maker, who suddenly turns out as the heir of a 16th century merchant (go igure: centuries are the time by which small fortunes grow into really big ones) and is meant to "change something". The novel, however, has IIRC not yet been translated into english.

To all geeks that have girlfriends!

[Corporate Troll]

If you are a geek with a girlfriend (a rarity), don't forget her to tell her that she is worth $40,000,000. It's one heck of a compliment, and now you have proof of in with this article ;-)