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.'"
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:I love LaTeX, but really, now (Score:2, Informative)
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.
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.
Re:I love LaTeX, but really, now (Score:4, Informative)
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.
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: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.
Gates Foundation Invests in Monsanto (Score:2, Informative)
Gates Foundation Invests in Monsanto
http://www.infowars.com/gates-foundation-invests-in-monsanto/ [infowars.com]
http://www.seattleglobaljustice.org/2010/08/for-immediate-release-gates-foundation-invests-in-monsanto/ [seattleglobaljustice.org]
Community Alliance for Global Justice
August 27, 2010
Farmers and civil society organizations around the world are outraged by the recent discovery of further connections between the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and agribusiness titan Monsanto. Last week, a financial website published the Gates Foundation's investment portfolio, including 500,000 shares of Monsanto stock with an estimated worth of $23.1 million purchased in the second quarter of 2010 (see the filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission). This marks a substantial increase from its previous holdings, valued at just over $360,000 (see the Foundation's 2008 990 Form).
"The Foundation's direct investment in Monsanto is problematic on two primary levels," said Dr. Phil Bereano, University of Washington Professor Emeritus and recognized expert on genetic engineering. "First, Monsanto has a history of blatant disregard for the interests and well-being of small farmers around the world, as well as an appalling environmental track record. The strong connections to Monsanto cast serious doubt on the Foundation's heavy funding of agricultural development in Africa and purported goal of alleviating poverty and hunger among small-scale farmers. Second, this investment represents an enormous conflict of interests."
Monsanto has already negatively impacted agriculture in African countries. For example, in South Africa in 2009, Monsanto's genetically modified maize failed to produce kernels and hundreds of farmers were devastated. According to Mariam Mayet, environmental attorney and director of the Africa Centre for Biosafety in Johannesburg, some farmers suffered up to an 80% crop failure. While Monsanto compensated the large-scale farmers to whom it directly sold the faulty product, it gave nothing to the small-scale farmers to whom it had handed out free sachets of seeds. "When the economic power of Gates is coupled with the irresponsibility of Monsanto, the outlook for African smallholders is not very promising," said Mayet. Monsanto's aggressive patenting practices have also monopolized control over seed in ways that deny farmers control over their own harvest, going so far as to sue--and bankrupt--farmers for "patent infringement."
News of the Foundation's recent Monsanto investment has confirmed the misgivings of many farmers and sustainable agriculture advocates in Africa, among them the Kenya Biodiversity Coalition, who commented, "We have long suspected that the founders of AGRA--the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation--had a long and more intimate affair with Monsanto." Indeed, according to Travis English, researcher with AGRA Watch, "The Foundation's ownership of Monsanto stock is emblematic of a deeper, more long-standing involvement with the corporation, particularly in Africa." In 2008, AGRA Watch, a project of the Seattle-based organization Community Alliance for Global Justice, uncovered many linkages between the Foundation's grantees and Monsanto. For example, some grantees (in particular about 70% of grantees in Kenya) of the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA)--considered by the Foundation to be its "African face"--work directly with Monsanto on agricultural development projects. Other prominent links include high-level Foundation staff members who were once senior officials for Monsanto, such as Rob Horsch, formerly Monsanto Vice President of International Development Partnerships and current Senior Program Officer of the Gates Agricultural Development Program.
Transnational corporations like Monsanto have been key collaborators with the Foundation and AGRA's grantees in promoting the
Re:RTF and ODT are Word-compatible formats (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Gates Foundation (Score:1, Informative)
How is that an example of Microsoft forcing the schools to use MS products? That's the Hungarian government forcing the schools to use MS products.
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.
Re:Wow. (Score:2, Informative)
As far as I can tell, the key innovation is that the Khan Academy education videos are actually good. He explains concepts in a way that actually works for a lot of people. It is quite possible that there are other good educational videos, which leads into the other innovation: free internet video is a very accessible medium, so the opportunity cost of trying out the Khan Academy videos is almost nothing, and someone who likes the videos can easily and quickly recommend them to their friends who can start watching them immediately if they are interested. To be fair, anyone who is going to be watching the Khan Academy videos is probably self-motivated to learn the topic or they would not be watching the video, so there may be some bias on how well they work vs. a teacher in a classroom who cannot guarantee an interested and well-motivated audience.
I agree that a good, real, live teacher who could answer questions is important for a good education... but a good lecturer means you do not have as many questions in the first place. Putting a good teacher in every classroom is, obviously, a hard problem. I recall from school that pretty much any time there was an educational video, it was awful. I cannot imagine anyone volunteering to sit through any educational video we were shown in school; luckily they were rare. It is possible that a video of a good lecture has its place in a high school classroom. At the same time, doing so seems like admitting that the teacher can't deliver a good lecture.
I should note that I have not actually watched any of the Khan Academy videos; I strongly prefer learning from written information, but I realize that is a personal preference.