Bill Gates Gives $20M to CMU for New Building 919
touretzky writes "Carnegie Mellon University announced on Tuesday that The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation had donated $20 million toward the cost of a new building to be called the "Gates Center for Computer Science". Some faculty have suggested that in acknowledgment of Mr. Gates' profound influence on the computer software industry, the building should be painted bright blue."
Before you ask (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Before you ask (Score:5, Funny)
In acknowledgment of Mr. Gates' profound influence (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Before you ask (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Before you ask (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Before you ask (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Before you ask (Score:4, Funny)
Shortly? It'll take 4 years for the tenants to finish building it!
Re:Before you ask (Score:5, Funny)
Once the contractors are brought into the picture they'll wage a holy war over which building materials are the best. The original design will be built in steel b/c it's such a robust and flexible choice. One of contractors will completely reject the rigid structure steel requires you to work in, instead he'll choose a more flexible material, clay, because he used that once to make this wonderful outdoor grille. The left handed building will use brick b/c they're different and don't want to be mainstream.
The tenets will show up to help build the building b/c, this is a community project right. 98% of the tenets will walk around the construction site complaining about how nothing is done and how this and that need to be changed. Occassionaly people will jump in by building out their offices, or enhancing the restroom facilities near their office.
After 6 months a sign will go up announcing the completion of the project in 3 weeks. After another 6 months the sign has will still be there. 3 years later the clay project will have fallen in on itself several times, eventually becoming a worthless pile of unsightly clay. The left handed building will be completed, and will be loved by all left handed people, but will never be used by the faculty who tend to be mostly right handed. Teh left handed building will gain no mainstream acceptance. The steel building will be completed as well. Unfortunately it is the most sterile unsightly building you've ever seen. Minimilism could learn a thing or two from this building. There are no electrical outlets in the offices, only bare wires that "allow you to interface directly with the electrical module". Nice feature.
The residents of the Gates building have been watching for four years while these building were built. They'll talk about how much more robust steel is and how they wish they had more of it in their building. They'll talk about how nice the brick is, and the left handed tenets will dream of a day when they'll get left handed doors and talk about banding together and migrating all at once. Several people will talk about all of the space over in the steel building, but will complain that the tenets are hard to talk to because they're always fixing things in their building and all that manual labor makes the whole building wreak of sweat, the hygeine habit of the steel building's tenets is generally questioned. One of the women complain that when she went over to the steel building and asked to use the restroom, she was pointed an empty room, when she asked why the room was empty she was met w/ a nasty look and a sharp "Hey it's free lady! Build it yourself. We can't do everything for you... newbies."
Slashdot - News and commentary on par w/ CBS
Re:Before you ask (Score:5, Funny)
Something not so funny about Bill Gates ... (Score:4, Interesting)
When news of "Gates" becoming the apellation of the building broke, heated discussions appeared on the local university electronic bulletin board. Many people were dismayed that Bill Gates, a college dropout with little knowledge of computer science, would receive the honor of having the computer science building named after him. It is no ordinary building. It is the building housing the pre-eminent computer-science department that is among the top 3 in the nation.
One mathematics professor lamented that money buys anything -- including undeserved honors. He commented that Stanford University might as well name the building after "Donald Trump" since he is a billionaire.
Personally, I object to honoring Bill Gates for anything. As far as I am concerned, he is an unethical shmuck who bears principal responsibility for the suicide of Gary Kildall. Search on "Gary Kildall" [yahoo.com] if you do not know who he is.
Re:Something not so funny about Bill Gates ... (Score:5, Insightful)
One mathematics professor lamented that money buys anything -- including undeserved honors. He commented that Stanford University might as well name the building after "Donald Trump" since he is a billionaire.
Your mathematics professor should take a refresher course in logic. Bill Gates paid for most of the building. Donald Trump didn't. See the difference?
In any case, as long as you have a shiny nice new building on Bill's dime, who gives a crap what it is called? I never gave a second thought to the names on the buildings at my university even though many were named after robberbarons significantly more sinister than Bill Gates has ever been in their day and within their own respective markets.
As far as I am concerned, he is an unethical shmuck who bears principal responsibility for the suicide of Gary Kildall
That's funny, I always thought Gary Kildall bore principal responsibility for his own suicide. Isn't that what suicide is?
Re:Something not so funny about Bill Gates ... (Score:3, Informative)
First, the poster clearly stated that Bill Gates did not pay for most of the building. Second, the point of the mathematics professor was that it wouldn't be appropriate to name the building after Donald Trump even if he had payed for most of the building. Hence, it shouldn't be appropriate to name the building after Bill Gates simply because he provided a
Re:Something not so funny about Bill Gates ... (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Something not so funny about Bill Gates ... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Something not so funny about Bill Gates ... (Score:5, Insightful)
sponsor for each classroom (Score:4, Interesting)
In Montreal one of our finest Commerce Universities (HEC), when they built a complete new campus they decided to sponsor each classroom and put the name of the sponsor on the front door of each classroom. Its ok when your finance classroom is named after a bank, but one classroom was named after a chicken fast-food chain and their was a little bit less of glamour in the name of that class. :)
Anyway they had an insanely great new campus for less money and who cares about the names?
Re:Something not so funny about Bill Gates ... (Score:5, Interesting)
All of Stanford University itself is named after a railroad robber baron.
Re:Something not so funny about Bill Gates ... (Score:5, Insightful)
I had no idea as to who Gary Kildall was. I did a quick search and found out. The cause of death is not clear tho, but nowhere it says it was suicide.
Now, I believe you have your reasons to blame Gates for Kildall's death, but in my own humble opinion, nobody is responsible for someone else's suicide. If you take the decision to kill yourself, no external factor is to blame.
As for "honoring" him by naming the building after him, well, he is paying for it. If the donation comes with strings attached and Stanford doesn't like it, they can always turn him down.
He might be a college dropout with little knowledge of CS, but he *is* doing something for the field: he is donating resources, just like the person who doesn't know anything about medicine, but donates money for a new hospital wing, or simply gives blood. You contribute with what you can.
(yes, I know Gates isn't probably doing it out of the goodness of his heart... he is getting publicity for it, but does it really matters so long as the job gets done?)
Re:Something not so funny about Bill Gates ... (Score:5, Insightful)
Saying that external factors cannot affect a person's decision to commit suicide doesn't seem reasonable. It's the same as saying that external factors cannot affect us at all, for any reason. Even if I did the evil things above, I certainly wouldn't be entirely to blame for his suicide (after all, he pulled the trigger, or took the pill, leapt off the bridge, whatever), but if I set up circumstances to the point where he felt like he had no way out, I would be at least partly culpable, by any reasonable moral standard. (I don't know if I could be held legally liable, in a criminal sense, although I probably could be successfully sued in civil court for wrongful death, or somesuch, assuming that his family could provide evidence).
I don't think that responsibility is always (or even usually) as simple as "one person is completely responsible for this." If a person commits a crime, and if external circumstances can affect that, then that person is still ultimately responsible, but it doesn't mean that we should relieve him of any responsibility and let him off scot-free, NOR does it mean that we should blame him entirely and not take a hard look at what society is doing that might encourage him to be criminal.
This really is getting off-topic; maybe I'll write a journal entry about it.
Re:Something not so funny about Bill Gates ... (Score:3, Insightful)
I guess the tought of a top CS building being named for the top software companies top employee doesn't really rankle me that much.
Re:Something not so funny about Bill Gates ... (Score:3, Informative)
Maybe if you tried a different search engine [google.com] you would know that the popular legend that he killed himself is not true [thocp.net]. He was killed in a fight at a bar, and by all accounts it wasn't the least bit deliberate.
Re:Something not so funny about Bill Gates ... (Score:4, Funny)
You mean Bill Gates beat him to death?
Re:Before you ask (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Before you ask (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Before you ask (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Oh come ON! (Score:4, Insightful)
Poor Bill (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Poor Bill (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Poor Bill (Score:5, Interesting)
If you don't like the news, buy the press.
Maybe these were distortion-free dollars, or something...
Re:Poor Bill (Score:3, Informative)
Now, if 20,000 large doesn't freshen your breath to CERT, dunno what will.
Actually CERT is within SEI [cmu.edu] which is pretty much a free-standing entity.
Re:Poor Bill (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Poor Bill (Score:5, Insightful)
But you're probably implying they'd want to immigrate. In poor countries you probably have a point. In western Europe (where I live) the few US haters that I know (there aren't that many) would definitely not be interested in a green card.
I wouldn't pass up on an opportunity to work and live in the US for a few years. I wish the western world would get together and make this kind of exchange (both ways) a lot easier, would be good for everyone. It would also promote a little more mutual understanding, which, reading this subthread, seems badly needed.
Re:Poor Bill (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Poor Bill (Score:5, Insightful)
Let's dissect some other things:
your mom doesn't really love you for you, she loves you because of how you make her feel.
The fireman who saves you in the building is really only doing it because he wants his buddies to call him a hero.
Someone who gives a homeless person a dollar is only doing it because they don't want to get shot by the homeless man.
Your fiancee is only marrying you because she doesn't want to have to be self-sufficient.
and finally: Stallman does what he does to impress the ladies.
Can't we just let people do good things sometimes? There is always some element of selfishness in every good deed we do. Let it go. It's a win win situation. Bill gives a great contribution to a school, and he gets to pimp himself a little. so the fuck what.
Re:Poor Bill (Score:5, Insightful)
That being said the best gifts are the anonymous ones. When it's not anonymous, sure, he's giving $20 million and that's great, but he's it at least partly for his name. Still, I'm not complaining that he's doing it.
Re:Poor Bill (Score:3, Informative)
Rude? (Score:5, Insightful)
Who cares if he's really rich? If he gave away $20 million every day, he wouldn't be for very long, would he? No matter how you look at it, $20 million is a LOT of money.
I am sometimes absolutely appalled by the unappreciative nature of some people.
Re:Rude? (Score:5, Informative)
Depends if you think 5.5 [google.com] years is very long
Re:Rude? (Score:3, Insightful)
I think that the foundation has done a lot of things that are absolutely great (I'm told my local YWCA wrote a letter asking for assistance in building a new wing and remodelling and received a very sizeable che
Re:Poor Bill (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Poor Bill (Score:5, Insightful)
I agree. I hope this isn't troll/flamebait, but I'm ready to burn some karma, so here it goes....
Bill Gates may be one of the founders and leaders of a certain company that we all know and love [microsoft.com] [microsoft.com], and there is a lot of things that I don't like about Microsoft (Windows, convicted monopoly, business practices) but Gates himself is an interesting person. He started out as a geek like most of us here. He also does a lot of good things, like donate to schools, AIDS and cancer research, and other charity organizations. Now, I don't like the way that he has ran Microsoft, but I feel that it is important in some cases to separate Gates and his organization from MS. Gates may be "evil," but I think that he shouldn't be flamed for helping out or his donations; not everything he does is a part of an evil plan for M$ to take over the world.
Re:Poor Bill (Score:3, Insightful)
Many Columbians still think he was a good bloke because of the great charitable donations.
Re:Poor Bill (Score:4, Insightful)
The kicker is that BillG is a proponent of the situation that puts AIDS care out of reach for millions so that pharmacudical companies can maintain their profits from disabling fair competition. This is a complete exploitation of the necessity for AIDS treatment made possible by our wonderful patent system.
You can read more about all this here:
http://www.globalissues.org/EnvIssues/Population/
Blue (Score:5, Funny)
BSOD jokes (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:BSOD jokes (Score:5, Funny)
Re:XP BSOD == Cold Reboot (Score:3, Informative)
Yes it is true. There is a checkbox in system settings under the System Failure section that says "Automatically restart". It is checked by default.
Re:XP BSOD == Cold Reboot (Score:3, Interesting)
Removing it involved delving into the registry in 2000, but there's a simple checkbox in XP.
Either way, it was a royal pain the first time I discovered this "feature" when my Win2K box
Re:XP BSOD == Cold Reboot (Score:5, Informative)
The more Highly-Available you get, the more forced-reboot paths you get. Counterintuitive? Look at SunCluster. When it detects a condition which could, even only theoretically, cause data corruption, any potentially-dangerous node will deliberately PANIC itself.
Take a simple 2-node cluster, with storage shared between them. When everything's running smoothly, they can both write to the shared storage. If the interconnect between them dies, then neither node can know the state of the other node. Both race to put a SCSI reserve on the quorum device (the SCSI protocol ensures that only one can succeed) - any nodes which fail to get their SCSI reserve on the quorum device will kill themselves the fastest way possible - the "failfast" driver.
It might turn out that it would have been safe for them to stay around and shut down cleanly, but with mission-critical data, it is not worth taking the risk - don't even pause to work out if it's safe - those microseconds could trash the database.
UNIX is perfectly happy to accept the possibility of unknown bugs, and take responsibility for them in advance, as well as for external hardware faults. If a reboot may be needed, it's better to lose uptime than to lose data.
And, of course, uptime is something in which UNIX excels, so it's not even much of a compromise.
FWIW, I believe that Windows clustering has a similar quorum model, although the Windows view of clustering appears to be rather more conservative.
Blue? (Score:3, Funny)
Why doesn't Bill Gates blow more of his money? (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Why doesn't Bill Gates blow more of his money? (Score:3, Interesting)
Gates is to be commended for this. He's no slouch when it comes to spreading the wealth around.
Re:Why doesn't Bill Gates blow more of his money? (Score:3, Informative)
you want crazy.. you GOT crazy (Score:3, Informative)
Suchetha
Microsoft at CMU (Score:5, Interesting)
Now the Gates Center is a $50+ million project. If you want to name the building in your honor instead, you could always kick in the rest of the dough.
Re:Microsoft at CMU (Score:3, Insightful)
Microsoft presentation is standing-room only.
Reminds me of the crusty old Republican grandpa that attended all the Democrat conventions. His reason? "Just ta keep ma disgust afresh"
Attendence does not imply support. I'd probably attend such presentations. Anyway, like all good universities CMU supports a variety of viewpoints, not the mono-culture that M$ would like to impose.
---
It's wrong that an intellectual property creator should not be rewarded for their work.
It's equally wrong that an IP
Gates will be the Carnegie of the 22nd century (Score:5, Interesting)
Like it or not...
Re:Gates will be the Carnegie of the 22nd century (Score:5, Insightful)
John D. Rockerfeller Jr. (John D.'s son) was the guy who actually spent a great deal of the money, and the one who had a passion for it; John D. had one passion -- the Standard Oil business. It took a generation for people to forget the Rockerfeller name stood for vicious anti-competitive trusts which left human wreckage in its wake, and turn the Rockerfeller name into one that meant philanthropy. Gates is managing that within a generation, although he did not have to start out in the public relations hole John D. did. Gates, however vilified he is by the slashdot crowd, has been more a hero to the average American. America once despised its capitalist masters. Now we lionize them.
The Rockerfellers did not follow Carnegie's lead. Carnegie took a lot of criticism for his rather shameless self-promotion. Rockerfeller had a strict religious upbringing and considered giving a duty, one that was its own reward, and was not meant for glorifying oneself. You'll see Gates memorial this-or-that here and there, but for the most part, it doesn't look like Bill Gates is interested in having lots of things named after him.
History will be very forgiving to Bill Gates. People today think anti-trust legislation is some sort of government power trip to stifle progress, not a vital safeguard that restrained some of the most brutal machinery of captialism ever unleashed. Rockerfeller was shunned and vilified by the presidents and other politicians of his day, and now he's considered a great benefactor to mankind. How much more is Gates going to be remembered as the great success story who gave his money for the good of others? Any blemishes on his character will be easily waved away as jealous competitors, not anyone with a serious grief.
Another interesting note: the guy that John D. first hired to be his chief for philanthropy was named Frederick Gates.
Unfortunately.... (Score:5, Funny)
CMU is an Excellent School (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm not just getting down on Microsoft either, I would feel wary about any large software company. On the other hand, it is a very nice thing for Mr. Gates to do. I'm always impressed by the really great things he and his wife choose to do with all of that money.
Cheapskate (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Cheapskate (Score:3, Interesting)
It's a good day to be a college dropout, apparently.
It makes me a little proud to think that you can still work hard and with a little luck have your name on a building, regardless of things like educational status or initial wealth. This applies more to Sidney, I suppose, than Bill. (Now, the fact that it was a half-stolen, poorly written OS and liquor sal
Other building features (Score:5, Funny)
2. All digital locks can be opened with the admin password 1-2-3-4-5
3. Vibrating Window panes will cause random crashes
4. All wall decorations are essential and directly integrated into the building and cannot be removed without destroying the entire structure
Re:Other building features (Score:3, Funny)
obligatory simpsons... (Score:3, Funny)
"I wouldn't do that, that's a load bearing poster.."
In front of the building... (Score:5, Funny)
That, and the building won't have any locks.
Donation??? (Score:4, Insightful)
If it was a real donation it would be more discretely done (eg. name it after a famous person other than Gates and perhaps put up a small plaque saying it was funded by Gate foundation).
$20M but... (Score:5, Insightful)
Even better, though, the proposed location for the new building is on top of this really shitty excuse for a building that looks like a few mobile homes shoved up against eachother and is generally an eyesore. In the artist's rendering of the plans, it apppears to be styled like many of the more nice looking new and old campus buildings (Green roof, light colored brick, etc) which is definitely a good thing. CMU has some pretty buildings, but it also has some impressive eyesores. Good to see one of them go away.
Also consider that Microsoft is the #1 employer of CS grads from CMU. This school's students and expertise have served him well, so I'm glad to see that he's willing to give something back.
Originally... (Score:5, Insightful)
IBM (Score:4, Informative)
Actually I was mostly confused at the joke at first, thinking, "Wait a minute, I thought IBM was 'Big Blue'"
so sad for bill... (Score:5, Funny)
CB#
Naysayers Unite! (Score:3, Insightful)
This does not fit our general characterizations of the man.
How can we reconcile this seeming incongruity? By adopting the following reasoning: "$20 million for a building?! People on this planet are still starving to death! The ego!"
What CMU had to do to get this (Score:5, Interesting)
CMU may have quite a few good individual professors and research projects in CS, but the institution as a whole doesn't think twice about being a corporate-flak career school... from their advertising slogan "The Professional Choice" in the early '80s on (when CMU accepted a certain large donation from IBM and almost decided to make all its students buy PC's in 1982).
Thankfully, many CMU students are still practicing some degree of creative resistance [notdot.net], although a penguin statue allegedly placed on the roof of the student center overnight before the Gates speech was hurriedly removed since apparently CMU values its clean public image more than its students' creativity [mit.edu].
One other thing to note is that this is likely not much more than a matching grant for further increases in students' tuition [jpdavin.com], which pays for a much higher share of an education at CMU than at many peer schools.
Re:What CMU had to do to get this (Score:3, Insightful)
It wasn't an act to destroy the creativity of students or supress their free speech rights, it was the janitors taking down something that was put up in an act of intellectual masturbation by a bunch of college students who apparantly had too much time on their hands.
If someone donated $20 million to your school, you'd probably go a bit out of your way to make sure they feel welcome. That includes taking down ads for / mascots of their compet
Give the man a break (Score:5, Informative)
$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.
Source: New York Times
And all this was of the year 2000. Now I have not checked this, but I suspect the charitable donations from every Linux distro CEO combined would fall well short of this. Admit it, Bill Gates is in fact doing some good in this world.
Re:Give the man a break (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Give the man a break (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Give the man a break (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Give the man a break (Score:4, Insightful)
If a drug dealer game money to local schools would he be a saint? While we are at it Osama Bin Laden built lots of orphanages and schools too.
"Now I have not checked this, but I suspect the charitable donations from every Linux distro CEO combined would fall well short of this."
In terms of absolute dollars yes, in terms of percentages I bet they gave more.
Re:Give the man a break (Score:5, Funny)
Gates Millennium Scholarship Program
To train more potential Microsoft employees! Obviously!
Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunization
Only an attempt to keep people alive so that they can buy more Microsoft software!
teachers, administrators, school districts and schools
To obligate them to push a Microsoft curriculum and keep Apple and Linux out of the classroom!
Gates Library Program
Do they have any non-Microsoft Press books at these libraries? Probably not!
Children's Vaccine Program, Maternal Mortality Reduction Program, Malaria Vaccine Initiative, Alliance for the Prevention of Cervical Cancer, global polio eradication, International Vaccine Institute, elimination of maternal and neonatal tetanus, Sequella Global Tuberculosis Foundation, International AIDS Vaccine Initiative
Again, keep the potential customers alive! This is one of the cornerstones of capitalism -- ever expanding markets!
The guy is obviously evil. That you can't see the motives behind these dubious donations just goes to show how easy it is to buy people's favor!
Bill Gate$ is teh eviL!!1!!!1! OMGOMG!!
--Jeremy
Times have changed (Score:4, Interesting)
Give Bill a Break (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes he is mega rich but he still doesn't have to give the money away does he?
I am sure he could find other ways to get rid of the money. Instead he is doing some good.
His foundation has practically wiped our Malaria in third world countries [nationalgeographic.com].
I suppose he did that for advertising as well??
No I am not a MS support, Linux is my vehicle of choice, but I am man enough to applaud someone doing good for the community.
Would be nice if some of the wallies posted here could do the same.
Yeah I know, fat chance of that.
Screw You Mr.Gates (Score:3, Interesting)
Generosity, or just PR? (Score:4, Interesting)
I say PR. If it were an act of generosity, Gates would have encouraged them to come up with a more creative name. Nothing like the ego of someone with too much money, too much power, or just a delusional state of having either.
Microsoft Skynet has become self-aware (Score:3, Funny)
Every School Needs a Gates Building (Score:5, Interesting)
IBM (Score:3, Informative)
Re:IBM (Score:3, Funny)
What's $20m when you are worth $61 Billion (Score:3, Informative)
Bill spending $20 million to get his name on a building is like someone with $500k of wealth spending $164.
So next time you buy a Games Console for your nephew stick your name on it to show everyone how generous you've been.
(And if it's an XBOX you're helping a very small amount to pay for another University building)
I wonder what KGB will do... (Score:5, Interesting)
When Bill Gates came to visit campus earlier this year, the group painted the Fence [cmukgb.org] (a frequently painted object in the middle of campus) bright blue in his honor. Also, during the Q&A session of the talk, KGB's president Ed asked the following:
(transcribed from rough memory)
Ed: Hello Bill. Have you ever used Linux?
Bill: Yeah, a few times.
Ed: Would you accept my gift of Linux? [holds up Linux CD]
(chuckles and applause from audience)
Bill: What's it worth? (grins)
(more chuckles and applause from audience)
Bill: Sure.
(Ed gives Bill Linux CD)
Architecturally speaking... (Score:3, Funny)
My first postive thing on BG on /. (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Blue (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Bright Blue eh? (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Beatch Please! (Score:5, Insightful)
whe
Re:Beatch Please! (Score:3, Insightful)
This could have gone back into the Microsoft Warchest... would that have been a better option?
Re:Beatch Please! (Score:4, Informative)
The Bill Gates Foundation donated $10 million to Milwaukee Public Schools this year, in order to help them with their plan of breaking up the large schools and creating smaller ones. The money has facilitated this and the inner city students are already showing increased grades and scores on their standardized tests.
Without the money, the switch would have taken close to a decade. With the money it will take 2-3 years. His foundation has donated to MANY good causes like this, so who the fuck cares if he gives additional money to CMU?
You come across as a complete idiot on this one. Gates may be a ruthless businessman with illegal business practices, but his charitable giving is above and beyond what every other billionaire gives.
Re:And of course... (Score:5, Insightful)
Even worse, Slashdot will be crapflooded with dozens of people preemptively complaining about the Slashdot bias, and they will be moderated to +5 Insightful as well.
Re:And of course... (Score:3, Interesting)
It is unintelligent to not critique an action that will prove directly beneficial to the person partaking in the act. It should be recognized that this industry is the same industry he is in. That is what debate/discussion is, looking at various points of view. Of course slashdot has a slant and to be honest, that's why I come here. I got a lot of the pop perspective from those other moving p