Bill Gates Enrolls His Kids In Khan Academy 286
theodp writes "At some schools, a teaching load of five courses every academic year is considered excessive. But Sal Khan, as an earlier Slashdot post noted, manages to deliver his mini-lectures an average of 70,000 times a day. BusinessWeek reports that Khan Academy has a new fan in Bill Gates, who's been singing and tweeting the praises of the free-as-in-beer website. 'This guy is amazing,' Gates wrote. 'It is awesome how much he has done with very little in the way of resources.' Gates and his 11-year-old son have been soaking up videos, from algebra to biology. And at the Aspen Ideas Festival in front of 2,000 people, Gates gave Khan a shout-out, touting the 'unbelievable' Khan Academy tutorials that 'I've been using with my kids.'"
khaaan (Score:5, Funny)
KHAAAAAAAAAAAAN.
What do you get if you cross God Father and an economist?
An offer you can't understand
I have nothing else :(
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Re:khaaan (Score:5, Funny)
Re:khaaan (Score:5, Funny)
All your material are belong to us.
Insert Star Trek Quote (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Insert Star Trek Quote (Score:4, Funny)
Steve: I've done far worse than bankrupt you, Gates. I've humiliated you. And I wish to go on humiliating you. I shall leave you as you [kinda wish you could have] left me... marooned for all eternity in the mire of public opinion. Buried alive... buried alive
Bill: JOOOOOOOOOOBS!
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Using Gates in place of Kirk, make your own cool Star Trek: Wrath of Khan movie quotes! Discuss...
AHA! Now that I'm in control of the Enterprise I will take it back to the Borg Collective for assimilation!
Wait, what the hell are the Borg doing here so early!?
Gates Foundation (Score:5, Insightful)
It would cool, if the Gates Foundation donated for Khan Academy, because as far as I know Khan is now burning his savings.
Re:Gates Foundation (Score:5, Insightful)
It would be nice if Microsoft hadn't been overcharging education establishments for their software for years. Perhaps then they would have had more money to spend on other things.
All that money Gates and Microsoft have is down to them emptying everyone's pockets for mundane software like Office, adding the Microsoft "tax" to every PC sale and so on. Gates's charity is all about recognition. The best charity is that where the donors are anonymous, that way they have no agenda, they aren't trying to change the way people think about them.
I'm sure if we all had more money than we could possibly spend we would give it away.
Plenty of criticism here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_%26_Melinda_Gates_Foundation#Criticism [wikipedia.org]
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It would be nice if Microsoft overcharged educational establishments enough that academics outside math, physics, computer science, and finance also started using LaTeX, which is older but vastly superior to Word.
I love LaTeX, but really, now (Score:5, Insightful)
> started using LaTeX, which is older but vastly superior to Word
I love LaTeX, it produces beautifully typeset math, but for your average biologist, English professor, etc., I can see that something a bit less high-powered and easier to use ("what you see is approximately what you get") would be more optimal.
In other words, it's not chance that many academics don't use LaTeX.
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Anyone who thinks LyX is worth its weight in bits is kidding (him/her)self. The UI is horrible and it's buggy as hell.
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Ooops, forgot to add --- all those academics who don't use LaTeX could probably use something open-source (OO.o, Abiword, KWord), except that my guess is that (many of) the journals they publish in only accept their submissions in MS Word format. So they decide to play safe and use MS.
RTF and ODT are Word-compatible formats (Score:3, Informative)
(many of) the journals they publish in only accept their submissions in MS Word format
RTF is an "MS Word format" because Word 2007 will read it. As of Office 2007 SP2, so is ODF [msdn.com].
Re:RTF and ODT are Word-compatible formats (Score:5, Informative)
Unfortunately, Word and OpenOffice still can't seem to agree on formatting. It's subtle, but it does result in screwing up my every attempt to place appropriate page breaks -- one will make the text just slightly longer than the other.
I've found a safe solution is to use OpenOffice, but ultimately produce a PDF if I care about printing. If I don't, I use something like Markdown and HTML.
Re:RTF and ODT are Word-compatible formats (Score:4, Informative)
Re:I love LaTeX, but really, now (Score:4, Informative)
Re:I love LaTeX, but really, now (Score:4, Insightful)
Err, nonsense. This is a tool you use everyday right? How long did it take to learn to use a pencil? OK so there is a bit of "upfront" learning, then you can write documents everywhere you can find an editor, and seldom think about formatting. Yet your documents look fantastic (or sh!t if you've got no taste).
How many Microsoft Word users actually use Styles? (Fewer than you think) How many understand Sections? (Fewer than you think) How many actually understand tab stops and how to use them (I mean the different kinds)? (Fewer than you think)
So you either have a tool that when you don't know how to use it, you're totally aware you don't know how to use it, or a tool that most people think they know how to use even though they don't have a clue.
Now what's optimal?
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In other words, it's not chance that many academics don't use LaTeX.
That's for sure! The greatest minds wasted to syphilis, again! What a shame.
Re:Gates Foundation (Score:5, Insightful)
The criticisms presented there seem to essentially be criticisms that could be thrown at any charity. None of them registered as problem with the foundation itself. In some of the cases, the only solution to resolve the complaint is to lower or eliminate the amount donated.
Sorry, but those people complaining are going to complain whatever happens.
Re:Gates Foundation (Score:5, Insightful)
The criticisms presented there seem to essentially be criticisms that could be thrown at any charity.
This. Essentially, the criticisms are saying that the money could be better utilized, and not saying that it is doing any damage as it is. Put another way, had Bill Gates never provided the money in the first place (which is his right), nothing would be better. The Foundation isn't making anything in the world worse.
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1. Do you have a citation that they were charging large amounts? I'm not doubting it, but I need evidence.
2. Frankly, even if he charged $1 million for each license for each school, I don't sympathize with the school. There have always been cheaper alternatives - unless you can show me that MS somehow forced them to buy MS products.
Re:Gates Foundation (Score:5, Informative)
I tell you one example when the schools didn't have choice:
Hungarian government seals a 25 billion HUF deal with Microsoft. That includes both academic and government licenses. The universities had no say whether how would they prefer to spend the money spent in their name.
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Microsoft often donated the software FREE to academic facilities, and when it wasn't totally free, they got huge discounts often paying 1/6th (or less) of the normal price. Somehow I fail to see how this is "overcharging" unless you take the view that all software should be completely free. I guess $10 for an office sweet is "overcharging" if you see things that way.
I'm starting a revolution, I call it "lawn care should be free", or "open source lawncare". Perhaps you wouldn't mind coming over to my house a
Re:Gates Foundation (Score:5, Insightful)
Wow. What an angry, narrow-minded post. 'Insightful' indeed.
I have no more love for Microsoft than the next guy, but you act like we're all being forced to buy MS products and that every cent they've earned was all but stolen from our pockets, and that, if it weren't stolen from our pockets, we'd be giving all that money to charity ourselves. Yeah, right.
Gates believes that recognition will drive more people to charity than anonymity. As an un-involved businessman who gives a small piece of his small profit to charity every year, I share your preference for anonymous donations, because the cause (whatever it may be) is certainly more important than the donor. This isn't what Gates is arguing. He's saying that whatever harm comes from the recognition factor, at the end of the day, you'll have an order of magnitude more money coming in from people who want that recognition such that, if the cause is so important, funding it an extra order of magnitude is much more important than our anonymity principle. That's a tough case to argue, because vanity is definitely a big piece of philanthropy, and as much as I think stamping people's names on university buildings or theater/classroom seats is dumb, I'd rather have a theater or a classroom with some stranger's name on everything than not have it.
Gates' charity is not 'all about recognition,' either. He honestly believes that recognition is an important piece of the cycle; you're free to disagree, but as I imagine that neither you nor I have achievements that even come close to what his charity accomplishes in a single year, I think it's very easy for us to throw stones and paint him as a jerk.
As it happens, I actually don't completely support a big piece of what his charity does -- focusing on disease in Africa -- but it's foolish and simply wrong to suggest that Gates is just a successful crook rather than an accomplished individual who is free to spend the fruits of his labor as he pleases.
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What he is saying is give your time away free now rather than 5 percent of profits from over charging for it later. In terms of karma of course giving you time counts far more that giving a portion of the proceeds of deceit (false advertising is deceit upon a grand scale).
Whilst it is nice to donate to charity you can not of course buy karma. If a doctor and their research who spent the life learning and focusing upon solving some of the humanities greatest problems comes up with a cure for a terrible di
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OK, I'll bite. What do you think is wrong with a charity combatting disease in Africa?
Re:Gates Foundation (Score:5, Insightful)
I was just talking about that subject this morning, as it happens. The argument against fighting disease in Africa basically says that, when you spend hundreds of millions fighting diseases and starvation that kill children in Africa in countries without well-developed, democratic societies, what you get in 20-30 years is a large population of healthy young adults who are still in a country without a developed society, without even a semi-modern economy, and without much modern healthcare outside of what other countries donate. In other words, you have a population that is vastly larger than what the country can economically support, and you don't have jobs for them, so you get a lot of militant young guys whose pasttimes are either making lots of babies or causing problems.
Now, that's a gross oversimplification of the problem, and I'm actually not sold on it as a reason to say 'bah, let disease kill millions!' as that's a pretty cold stance to take. You'll sometimes hear opponents of this kind of charity point out that disease is Nature's way of controlling population, but you could justify quite a few scary things with that reasoning.
I do think that the 'feel good about yourself by donating to starving children' drive of the last 60-70 years is shortsighted in this respect, but of course it's much easier to feed even large numbers of starving people than it is to set up a modern government and economy in some of these African countries, assuming even that you have the right to try and do so (which is a big assumption).
In other words, not unlike Mr. Gates himself, the 'disease and starvation in Africa' subject is a complex one that has a lot more going on than the sound bytes you usually hear. I haven't reached a conclusion on Africa because most of the conversation about it goes like this:
Feels Good Guy: I just gave $1,000 to charity and saved the lives of 100 kids in Africa!
Skeptical Guy: What about their education? Their future health care? Do they have a chance at being self-sufficient later or will they simply need even more external support as they get older?
Feels Good Guy: Racist!
Anyway, that's what's (potentially) wrong with it. I tried to paint a pretty neutral picture because I really do want to hear more actual conversation on the subject rather than the knee-jerk stuff that's out there.
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Well, the main problem I see is that you don't see these charities supporting trade schools, only elementary schools (and that won't improve the students' job prosopects).
Re:Gates Foundation (Score:5, Insightful)
But given that the Gates Foundation spends money on third world development as well, that seems to mostly satisfy that reservation of yours.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_%26_Melinda_Gates_Foundation [wikipedia.org]
Of course the foundation and every other charity can do little about the politics of some countries. But letting people needlessly die because they are in a country which currently has a bad government is not really on. Besides citizens of those countries will not concern themselves with fixing their politics whilst they are still concerned with basic survival. See:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maslow's_hierarchy_of_needs [wikipedia.org]
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The problem with that argument is that having a healthy, young population is how you DEVELOP a society.
The economy isn't a pie that gets divided up among the people, it is a pot-luck in which every person contributes to the larger picture. The more people you have with demands to fulfill, the more people you have fulfilling demands.
Jobs don't just spring up in a void without people to fill them. Jobs come into markets from outside when an untapped labor force exists. Jobs are created within a market when so
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With America's wealth, it shouldn't need charity to fight disease. Also, the two aren't mutually exclusive. Also, it's not more important.
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You have no more love for Microsoft than cmdrsalamander (102098)? [slashdot.org] The guy posted one comment 10 years ago, and it wasn't even about Microsoft. How could you possibly tell? ;-)
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Ha, a personal note from an AC. Fantastic.
Umm, we are. Every time you buy a computer from a large vendor, it WILL have windows preinstalled. Sure, you could assemble your own or buy from a small, independent retailer that does this for you, but economies of scale will ensure that even with the "microsoft tax", the large vendor will be cheaper.
In other words, 'every time you MAKE THE DECISION to buy a computer with windows preinstalled, you're forced to buy windows.'
Yes. And I have a choice to buy elsewhere or build my own. As it happens, that's exactly what I do. Even the big manufacturers offer alternatives to Windows these days, though it's not really a big money-maker for them (not that you care about such trivial realities). My business buys some MS products that my business uses (like SQL Server and
Re:Gates Foundation (Score:4, Informative)
Yes. And I have a choice to buy elsewhere or build my own. As it happens, that's exactly what I do.
Good for you.
I go to a public university. As part of my computer science degree, I get a "free" -- that is, paid through via either tuition or tax dollars -- copy of several versions of Windows, Visual Studio, and about a dozen other random Microsoft products. In addition, there are dozens of computer labs around campus which are available to me for "free", meaning whether or not I use them, I'm paying for them one way or another.
So you see, it doesn't matter that my laptop came with Ubuntu preinstalled. I still have to pay for Windows, one way or another. Even if I went to another university, my tax dollars would still end up here.
Now, I don't have a huge problem with this, as there are likely hundreds, if not thousands, of random deals the university makes with outside vendors to give me free shit. I'm sitting here with a "free" water bottle that I got just for moving into the dorms.
But even you aren't pretending you can avoid Microsoft:
My business buys some MS products that my business uses (like SQL Server and Windows Server) and very cheaply at that.
Yep.
Nobody forced us to do this and we could switch to an open-source alternative if we wanted to (and we have a few reasons why we might one day, but not yet).
I'm betting the "not yet" reasons are significant, or you'd already have switched.
How many products does MS make? You want to get rid of every single one of them because they got convicted of bundling browsers and Windows pre-installation schemes?
I would, actually. It would send a powerful message -- when the head of your company is corrupt, you get fucked. If you don't want all your eggs in one basket that way, don't make a single gigantic corporation -- because it takes a gigantic corporation to make truly gigantic fuck-ups that even the government can't control.
It won't happen, of course. If the government won't do it to BP, I can't imagine they would do it to Microsoft.
How many businesses and consumers that depend on MS (out of their choice!) would be screwed out of a livelihood
When your livelihood is that tightly tied to a single vendor, you're in a dangerous situation anyway. I know -- I worked for a startup which lost everything that way.
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It would be nice if Microsoft hadn't been overcharging education establishments for their software for years.
Citation?
Plenty of criticism here:
Sorry - those criticisms are not "The Foundation is causing harm", but "If I had the money, I'd spend it on something else". Had the Foundation not existed, nothing in the body of those criticisms would be better in the world.
Re:Gates Foundation (Score:5, Insightful)
The website says that "generous individuals" have donated enough that he can do it full time. Given Gates' well known financial commitments to education it wouldn't surprise me at all if Gates has donated.
To a lesser extent I guess Google is also donating by hosting the projects infrastructure for free, notably YouTube but also AppEngine and other things.
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The website says that "generous individuals" have donated enough that he can do it full time. Given Gates' well known financial commitments to education it wouldn't surprise me at all if Gates has donated.
Give Gates' use of tax-crediting 'charity' for self-promotion and aggrandizement, we'd know already if he'd given him money. There would pictures of enormous checks and handshakes.
The cynical view: Money you give to charity is money you would have had to give to income tax, but you get to look generous and to make sure it goes to causes that do not interfere with your investment strategies. Bill looks generous to you, to cynics he just looks calculating.
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Money you give to charity is money you would have had to give to income tax, but you get to look generous and to make sure it goes to causes that do not interfere with your investment str
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Seeking out people who are already doing great things on their own and then offering help is probably the only Gates can get any real work done; I'd imagine there's a deluge of people promising him the moon 2-3 years after they receive his "support," but 99% of them don't really have a vision.
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attention to the polarised (Score:5, Interesting)
He's the rich founder of MS, yet he's an awesome [givingpledge.org] philanthropist and geek father keen to educate his kids properly.
You have stuff to learn from this guy.
Re:attention to the polarised (Score:5, Insightful)
Give me fooking break (Score:2, Interesting)
He gives money away that he has no use for anyway. Result: He can steer the direction of research that 'his' money goes to, he gets to decide which charities get money. With being an criminal in how he did business in Microsoft, he's effectively stolen money from hundreds of millions of people, driven other business into the ground, and taken away the choice to give to charity to other people
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What the fuck have you donated to?
What diseases have you put a real effort into trying to solve/cure?
Yes, I get it, you don't like the guy. So lets just bash him into the ground with whatever made up bullshit you can just to get mod points on anti-MS slashdot. Fuck facts, as long as you can pull mod points for flamebait and outright trollish posts.
Re:Give me fooking break (Score:4, Informative)
He gives money away that he has no use for anyway. Result: He can steer the direction of research that 'his' money goes to, he gets to decide which charities get money. With being an criminal in how he did business in Microsoft, he's effectively stolen money from hundreds of millions of people, driven other business into the ground, and taken away the choice to give to charity to other people. Whether that would have been done is another matter, he's still taken away the choice. Oh and as to giving away 'his' money, from what I've read he has not actually done so but in effect set up another business (the business of providing money to his selected charities) which is based on 'his' money but mainly giving other people's money, those people who have given their money to his foundation, away to his selected charities.
You make it sound as if he made most of his money by charging the Windows tax for every computer sold, because that's the only really troublesome thing he did.
Since you're talking about "choice", almost always people had the choice not to buy MS software. Almost always there was a viable alternative. If they paid for an overpriced product, almost none was forced to.
And suggesting he's not giving his own money is just plain ignorant. Look it up - he gave $3.5 billion of his own money just in the last few years. And it's estimated that over his whole life, he's given $28 billion of his own assets away.
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There is nothing I can learn from a sociopath like Billy gates.
Even the most Evil person on Earth teaches something we can all learn.
What NOT to do.
I respect Gates as a business man but I wouldn't pause to mourn his passing as a person.
Re:Give me fooking break (Score:4, Insightful)
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On what date precisely were all these businesses forced to simultaneously install Microsoft software?
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When even the USDOJ finds you guilty of exploiting your monopoly position, and engaging in anticompetitive practice, you know you've fucked up.
Microsoft has been repeatedly shown to have developed their own applications using secret APIs, and to have inserted unnecessary delay loops into public functions. So even if you don't believe that they behaved anti-competitively from a business standpoint, they did so from a technical one! And frankly, the old saw "DOS ain't done 'til Lotus won't run" has not been d
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When even the USDOJ finds you guilty of exploiting your monopoly position, and engaging in anticompetitive practice, you know you've fucked up.
You know that you haven't spent enough time lobbying in Washington. MS was fairly apolitical before that. It learnt its lesson.
Microsoft has been repeatedly shown to have developed their own applications using secret APIs,
So what? The question you should be asking is, "Are the public APIs good enough?" not, "Why can't MS do everything exactly as I want it?" And you're always welcome to use secret APIs, unlike on many Apple platforms - it just won't be supported and may break.
and to have inserted unnecessary delay loops into public functions.
Evidence?
the old saw "DOS ain't done 'til Lotus won't run" has not been debunked
I hear you are a paedophile. I see this hasn't been debunked.
Microsoft has a long history of malfeasance of all types and to ignore history is to be an idiot.
Yes, MS does lots of annoying things. I sincerely recomme
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and to have inserted unnecessary delay loops into public functions.
Evidence?
It would be nice if I could scrape some up; we've discussed this issue here on Slashdot when discussing Microsoft's secret functions before, but I'm sure you know that the local search function is useless, and that google does not maintain a full cache of Slashdot's content.
I hear you are a paedophile. I see this hasn't been debunked.
Very funny, but they're not remotely the same thing. There's good basis to believe that Microsoft really did break Lotus on purpose, whereas the only evidence that I'm a pedophile is that one with my name lived in my town once. I was sho
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oddly enough, many win2k drivers don't work on XP, most XP drivers don't work on Vista, and many Vista drivers don't work on Windows 7.
The difference is the magnitude of the problem. Of course all software that updates may have incompatibilities. The issue is how much of it, and why. Of course, siting 12+ year old versions of Windows as having SOME incompatible drivers is a pretty far cry from linux driver issues.
"Cited". Also, undefined: "linux driver issues". FUD. Especially given that I have problems with Windows drivers all the damned time. I have an AMD-chipset netbook with R2xx graphics which works properly only under Vista, which does not itself work properly. The Windows 7 driver is not only an older catalyst revision but it completely breaks suspend/resume, which works with the VGA driver. Pretending that Windows is free from driver problems of any kind is ridiculous; indeed, it has more kinds of driver pro
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Re:attention to the polarised (Score:5, Insightful)
Gates Foundation makes for-profit investments that are killing the very people they claim to be helping [latimes.com]
Gates is personally heavily invested in big Pharma [theregister.co.uk]
You have stuff to learn from this guy.
Yeah, how to hide in plain sight and control governments.
Re:attention to the polarised (Score:5, Insightful)
Yeah, what's happening here is that someone with a lot of capital is investing it to increase the amount of money available. This is what almost all well-funded foundations do. It would be, you hopefully realise, fucking stupid to either stuff the money under the mattress or give it all away immediately.
Now, such investments will almost certainly in some ways trickle down to operations which are harmful to some people in some way. Every cent you have in a bank or other investment account is doing a similar thing. It is perfectly legitimate to call a foundation up on this in the hope that you can encourage them to make investments you consider more ethically sound, but it doesn't imply some sort of plot to exploit / harm the ones you're helping.
In Gates' specific case he's tried to stop the investment side from interfering with the giving side and vice versa to prevent conflicts of interest. The inevitable result is that sometimes an investment will appear in some indirect way to harm a charitable effort. Perhaps you can argue that each side should keep a closer eye on what the other is doing.
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Yeah, what's happening here is that someone with a lot of capital is investing it to increase the amount of money available. This is what almost all well-funded foundations do. It would be, you hopefully realise, fucking stupid to either stuff the money under the mattress or give it all away immediately.
It's also bullshit to claim that you're altruistic when you're too uninterested in positive progress to even be cautious about where you invest.
Every cent you have in a bank or other investment account is doing a similar thing.
This is why what little money I do have is banked with a local credit union, not a federal one, or a mainstream bank. For a while I was using WAMU because they seemed less evil than other banks and I liked being able to find an ATM, but then they were declared insolvent even though they were in a better position than many other banks, and taken over by Chase. Chase
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It's also bullshit to claim that you're altruistic when you're too uninterested in positive progress to even be cautious about where you invest.
Except that the aim is not to "claim that you're altruistic" but to support a specific set of causes. If I love cats and donate billions a year to cat charities you can't bitch, "You're not being altruistic because you made your money selling landmines!" All I claimed was that I wanted to help cats.
Also, you can argue that he's not being cautious enough if you like - that he's too goal-directed and happily makes certain high-return investments to guarantee the greatest possible revenue source for his specif
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This isn't He Man vs Skeletor. Consider what he's doing that's good and try to do something about what he's doing bad. Don't just exclaim, "Well he's a cunt because he does at least X Y Z wrong; we'll ignore him!" and throw your arms up in self-righteousness.
Self-righteousness? Ad Hominem. Gates is a cunt specifically because he is aware of examples like this one in which his foundation is investing in evil, and his response is that checking to see if he's doing harm would be difficult, so it's not going to be done. The most important vote you can cast is the disposition of a dollar, or other currency unit. Gates controls more of them than almost anyone else on the planet. He deliberately chooses to be careless, or to be evil in the guise of carelessness, about
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Maybe he has a different sense of priority to you. In the case of air pollution addressed earlier, maybe Gates recalls how many Western countries - and now China and India - have gone/are going through periods of intense pollution killing or harming a great number of people. Maybe he believes this is part of the process of industrialisation, and the solution is not to stop investing in companies which pollute but to save the workforce from far more basic problems so the country's development can accelerate.
Re:well written apology for Mr. Gates' behavior (Score:3, Interesting)
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It would be, you hopefully realise, fucking stupid to either stuff the money under the mattress or give it all away immediately.
I don't know... My "Serta Fund" has been outperforming most of my other investments lately...
Re:attention to the polarised (Score:5, Interesting)
What's wrong with being invested into "big pharma"?
The Gates Foundation will not provide immunizations for nations which do not provide strong patent protection for pharmaceutical companies. This is not necessary for immunizing the developing world. This is a clear conflict of interest when coupled with Gates' personal investments, to say nothing of those of the foundation itself.
Hate "big oil"? Stop driving your car.
I drive as little as possible, I've changed my vehicles for more fuel-efficient turbo-diesels, and I've amassed some oil and a biodiesel processor. As soon as I work out a way to get the 55 gallon drum of methanol to my house I'm going to make a whole bunch of biodiesel.
Hate "big government"? Stop putting your hand out to take their give aways.
Indeed, I wish they would stop trying to give me so much. Then they would stop taking so much, and then I could afford to do as you say. But of course, the system was designed to be self-perpetuating.
0
Hate "big media"? Put out your own free media so that people have an alternative.
Plenty of people are doing that, for the average person it is enough to consume such media and support the artists.
Stop demanding that others change, change yourself.
Oh, the irony. Keep your hypocrisy to yourself. Log in so I can foe you.
Invest yourself into systems you think are corrupt and change them yourself.
Fighting the system from within is a sad joke. The answer is to put your energy into another system.
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- investment in local businesses and providing substantial star
Re:attention to the polarised (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:attention to the polarised (Score:5, Insightful)
Even if his giving today is completely the result of his dad persuading him, what exactly is wrong with that? Are you saying that goodness is only goodness if the decision to be good is made in a vacuum?
"Yeah, he saved my life, but he only saved my life because last Thursday his grandmother encouraged him to attend a First Aid course." The guy still considered the options and made the final decision to attend the course / give away the money. He didn't have to.
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You are reading too far into his post. All he said was that it doesn't: "[make] you wonder. was he being an asshole about microsoft and money just so that he could have more to give now?"
We know this isn't the case because "He started giving money away because his dad yelled at him about not giving anything back." ie: that was not his original plan, as the OP was wondering.
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Pardon me if I have a little more respect for Bill Gates who earned his living selling products people want, building an entire company that employs 100K people versus William Gates Sr. who made his living off the bureaucracy known as the legal system.
And nowhere in the article you cite does it mention William Gates Sr. lecturing Bill Gates about giving.
Most self-made rich people are very giving.
It is the wealthy who make their living based on government and patronage that tend to be the most selfish... as
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What kind of argument is that? 'Get a life'? This is not relevant at all to the case at hand. Even if I didn't have a life, it still wouldn't be relevant.
Considering how many of the criminals that get their funding via Microsofts incomptence and Microsoft creating an insecure monopoly in computers, I'd say they're gu
Education... (Score:5, Funny)
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Can you elaborate on that?
I am a scientist (PhD in Comp. Sci., currently working in an EU project along with around other 20 scientists and their PhD students) and do not see any issue with the Kahn material.
Basically, because he is not claiming any new scientific achievement but just explaining currently known and proven facts and processes in a way which is easy to understand to the majority of people.
Hence, he does not need any "scientific method" to impart such knowledge.
So I reiterate, can you please
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I mean it's not scientific if you have to believe in that. (Kind of half assed irony here.) Sorry, if I sounded ambigous. I love Kahn's work too.
Where's the lecture on ... (Score:2)
... how to make your computer and/or your web browser be able to play these videos without borging it with Flash?
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flash gordon will play flash by converting it to javascript.
presumably you could create your own page feed in the flash object of interest and be able to play the flash video without flash, of course the details are left as an exercise for the reader.
alternatively you can use the adobe's flash player or use the gpl version.
seriously get over it, flash may not be open but its free enough to work on most systems where allowed. It's only Apple really that has an issue with flash on the iPhone. Not that flash c
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Those are very real
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Security is not a "get over it" issue. Flash is broken and insecure. It would be the big gaping hole in an otherwise secure computer. Just because the masses run their computers insecurely, that doesn't mean others should, too.
This would not be the same issue if we were talking about something that ONLY Flash could do. If that were the case, then it would be a genuine tradeoff. But playing video is NOT limited to Flash. It's been possible long before web sites like YouTube. And browsers like Firefox could a
Think about it (Score:5, Interesting)
Many schools are emerging that are online-only (http://keystonehighschool.com/) or otherwise devoted to technology (http://www.neatorama.com/2010/01/09/school-teaches-its-students-almost-entirely-through-video-games/). You can even earn a doctorate at an online university (http://www.phoenix.edu/colleges_divisions/doctoral.html)! Additionally, online resources like the amateur Khan Academy or the commercial ALEKS (http://www.aleks.com/) are beginning to challenge several long-standing assumptions about the need for face-to-face instruction or even the need for teachers. Most importantly, it is worth stating that the research on eLearning is mixed, as a whole. A specific eLearning package may help in reading but not in mathematics, may help at third grade but not eighth grade, or may help on a state-level test but not on a national-level test. So, there is no clear answer on a “best” package or way to use technology. However, there are several key points to consider:
Embarrassment
To be honest, nobody likes to be wrong, and mathematics is a subject in which students are often told that they are, at least technically, incorrect. It is no wonder that eLearning can get such positive feedback from students. Many packages use little to no direct contract with a teacher; even if they do, a student is not going to be told they are incorrect in front of twenty or thirty of their peers. A private email is not so bad in comparison to even the gentlest public rebuke. Similarly, nobody needs to know if a given student has been successful either. It is often considered geeky to be good at school, especially in the STEM subjects. This turns many people away from science and mathematics, particularly girls. eLearning can provide a method to circumvent such peer scrutiny.
Motivation
Students like computers. Given a choice between a hands-on activity and an identical computer activity, many students will opt for the latter. Moreover, students like games, and eLearning developers are actively trying to capitalize on that appeal. While good in theory, a key implementation problem is that much edutainment uses the games as a reward for practice (http://www.funbrain.com/math/index.html) rather than as the means for actually teaching the material (http://ldt.stanford.edu/ldt1999/Students/kemery/esc/rockyDemoFrame.htm). I certainly approve of additional practice, but even the most motivated student requires a good explanation now and then.
Willingness
Another thing to keep in mind is that school occurs on a set schedule over which the student has little to no control. Much of eLearning is available whenever the student is willing to participate. In other words, those who succeed are those who have chosen to participate. In fact, research often shows that eLearning success is strongly dependent upon the amount of time a student participates. Of course, convincing someone to dedicate time and effort to actual eLearning is no
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A calculator can only crunch numbers, it can't think for you.
Just because you can push buttons doesn't mean you're dumb if you use it.
You still have to be smart enough to know which buttons to push.
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Wow. (Score:5, Interesting)
This is one of the most impressive things I've ever seen on the Internet. Finally, somebody is taking a new medium and presenting this kind of lecture material in a format and method where students can obtain the material themselves. Kids, without money, can actually obtain this stuff and learn from it. It's not a product being sold, it's just incredible. I dreamed of this kind of content as a kid. I think all geeks did. It was only available to be doled out by clueless adults to learn at the pace they felt you were ready for it, or it was crap being shoveled at parents to give their kids a "head start"
...and presenting it world-wide, this is *stunning*.
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One may say the tech innovation is the video aspect, but people have been making educational videos for years, often selling that at very low prices or giving them away for free. I have a friend who does this and sells them in the villages of developing country where is from. They don't have internet access or
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Bill Gates dropped out of his expensive and prestigious university. Of course, he already had trust fund money from his rich lawyer fore bearers, so its not as if he was going to be destitute if that whole computer thing didn't work out. But then again, we here tend to work in an industry that commonly lists "BS in CS, EE or related field, or equivalent experience". Self learning and a fully-stocked lab, perhaps at a local hacker space, and the smart people can get that equivalent experience whether they
Gates complains a situation he created (Score:5, Insightful)
Gates complains about smart Americans all going to Wall Street instead of R&D. But Gates has gone before the US congress, many times, and argued that even more US tech workers should lose their jobs to H1B visa workers.
Just last year, even as Microsoft was firing US tech workers by the thousands, Microsoft was simultaneously hiring their H1B replacements.
Due to the situation that Gates himself has helped create, smart Americans would be stupid to train for STEM (Science Technology Engineering Mathematics) jobs.
Re:Gates complains a situation he created (Score:4, Interesting)
This is why I left the tech sector and went straight into finance. That along with the ridiculous job requirements (must know every language under the sun) & ageism, staying in the tech sector for the long run didn't seem like a good idea.
Still code as a hobby though :)
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Just last year, even as Microsoft was firing US tech workers by the thousands, Microsoft was simultaneously hiring their H1B replacements.
Were these people in directly comparable jobs? I am no defender of Microsoft, but it is hardly unique during a recession to lay off some unprofitable divisions whilst maintaining other more profitable ones (a company has to keep hiring to replace people who leave).
Due to the situation that Gates himself has helped create, smart Americans would be stupid to train for STEM (Science Technology Engineering Mathematics) jobs.
There are many people working in financial services who have degrees in mathematics or the sciences.
Sale Sale Sale (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Gates complains a situation he created (Score:5, Insightful)
No - what often happens with H1B is the lying. You ever see those job postings which ask for impossible things like 20 years experience with Java or 7 years experience with Windows 7? The companies that want an excuse for H1B will accept (knowing its false) that the H1B applicants actually have that experience. They will use that excuse to say "Look - we can only find people with H1B that have this experience! We need to hire internationally!".
I'm not saying all the time impossible skill requirements are because of this (there are ignorant people often writing job requirements) but it is true sometimes.
Nothing like playing the race card (Score:2)
Oppose any immigration, or visa, policy, and there is a 100% certainty that those trying to take US jobs will trot out the same Bullshit.
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Nice attempt at an ad-hoc argument.
Want proof? Go to google and enter "2009 microsoft layoffs" without quotes. Then look up MS H1B hiring in the same year. Then lookup all times Gates has testified before congress about the desperate shortages of US tech workers, even while MS was laying off US tech workers by the thousands, and MS was hiring H1Bs and offshoring US jobs at a furious pace. All while the US is suffering it's worse unemployment since the great depression.
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Enjoy training your H1B replacement, or having your job offshored.
Just to let you know: everybody thinks it will never happen to them. I have worked in IT for 30 years. I hear it all the time: "I'm much too valuable, they could never hire a foreign worker to do what I do."
Pride before the fall.
Gaates (Score:2, Funny)
GAAAAAAAAAAAATTTTESSSSSSS!
Happy Student (Score:4, Interesting)
The fact that his work is steadily garnering more attention is a good thing in my view, since it increases the likelihood of more excellent videos being made available for free as a result of donations, grants, etc.
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The person to whom you are replying isn't saying that people don't need to be taught; the person is saying is saying that being lectured to is not a good way to be taught: Lecture != education.
Re:Here we go again ... (Score:5, Informative)
Um, whom are you referring to when you say "he should 'give something back'" ? The lectures are not by Bill Gates, they're by Sal Khan. I don't think anybody accuses Khan of not giving back. Bill Gates is merely stating that Sal Khan is doing a good job, but Sal Khan does not work for Bill Gates or for Microsoft. Nor do Bill Gates or Microsoft seem to donate any money to Sal Khan.
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[...] real--and competent--teacher.
You are literally lucky to find one, while this is just a guy with a tablet and an internet connection doing a pretty decent job... To claim it's 'disastrous' is a bit of a hyperbole.
In my experience most people who hate math and geometry (and consequently suck at it) seem to have had inadequate tyrants as math teachers in high school (there is an apparent abundance of those). So a guy who tries to teach in a pleasant way which might stimulate your child(ren) to learn more about the subject is the best po