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.""

Does it bother anyone...

[billstr78]

... that 2 companies dominate with thier heirs or stock holders comprising of 8/10 of the top 10 richest persons in America. Also, it is slightly un-settling that Walmart alone keeps positions 4 to 8 in the list.

ever heard of buy-low sell-high?

[lingqi]

Here is what happens: when you buy a LOT of stock, you will artifically inflate the stock's price by a certain amount. the more the merrier. samething happens when you SELL a lot of stock. it will go lower.

so if you buy and sell a certain stock, you can *always* make money from it, provided that you generate enough volume... so:

if i really had a billion bux, i will go wash it in MSFT stock. a lot. it will completely fuck up their stock price, and i will get really rich (erm... even more so... heh)

now... if only somebody will give me a job... (wall-street analyst or mutual fund manager, perhaps?)

A giant city-destroying robot!

[dpt]

C'mon, it's what we've all wanted forever ...

Actually, I'd like two smaller ones. Zoltar's mistake in Battle of the Planets was that he always launched a different attack each week with one city destroying robot. G-Force would show up, and save the day. What he should have done was save up for two weeks, build *two* robots, and let them loose on opposite sides of the Earth. With only one G-Force, one has to succeed!

So, one for Redmond, and one for ... let's say somewhere where lots of IP lawyers and media cartel execs hang out.

Re:R&D

[Jason Earl]

I hate to break it to you hpavc, but there already is a pretty good water purification system available to villagers. Perhaps you have heard of it, it's called distillation. Heck, simply boiling the water would be good enough in most cases, or the addition of a little chlorine. Even the poorest of the poor can afford to boil water. And we already produce more than enough food, too.

You see, for the most part the problems of poverty have very little to do with moral problems like corruption. If there are people starving in Africa you can bet it is because someone in power there wants them to starve. Chances are good that they are working behind the scenes to get the donated food diverted to someone else too.

I used to feel the same way you do, but then I spent some time in Peru, and I learned that Peru's problems stem from the fact that the people in power want to keep the people poor and uneducated so that they are easier to control.

The only way to get out of this vicious cycle is the way that Chile has. Root out the corruption. Once you have cleaned up your government, getting investors to give you money isn't much of a problem.

Re:MSFT Shares

[Anonymous Coward]

Since MSFT is worth $254 billion, try these companies (and slashdot jokes) instead:

Sun's market cap is $9.869B according to finance.yahoo.com [yahoo.com]. "That's a lot of Java!"

Lucent's is $3.433B [yahoo.com]. "Imagine all the fiber..."

Oh yeah, and VA Software (LNUX) has a market cap of $61M [yahoo.com]. Yes, $61 million. No joke needed.

Re:Bill's donation schedule

[sehryan]

$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.

Taking out the ones that you bitched about, here is what is left. Still totals over $400 Million. How much have you given lately?

Re:I'd never clone myself

[dirk]

I'd clone my girlfriend (2 or 3 times should be enough)

Which brings up an interesting question. If you clone yourself, and have sex with yourself, are you gay, or is it masturbation? And if you clone you girlfriend, and sleep with them all, is it really cheating?