Bill Gates Promotes Vaccine Projects, Swipes At Google 481
Nerval's Lobster writes "In a new interview with Bloomberg Businessweek, Bill Gates discussed his Foundation's work to eradicate polio and malaria, while suggesting that vaccine programs and similar initiatives to fight disease and poverty will ultimately do much more for the world than technology projects devoted to connecting everybody to the Internet. While Gates professes his belief in the so-called digital revolution, he doesn't think projects such as Google's Internet blimps (designed to transmit WiFi signals over hundreds of miles, bringing Internet to underserved areas in the process) will do the third world nearly as much as good as basic healthcare. "When you're dying of malaria, I suppose you'll look up and see that [Internet] balloon, and I'm not sure how it'll help you," he said. "When a kid gets diarrhea, no, there's no website that relieves that." Gates then sharpened his attack on the search-engine giant: "Google started out saying they were going to do a broad set of things. They hired Larry Brilliant, and they got fantastic publicity. And then they shut it all down." Google focusing on its core mission is fine, he added, "but the actors who just do their core thing are not going to uplift the poor." The Microsoft co-founder also has no intention of following Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, and other tech entrepreneurs into the realm of space exploration. "I guess it's fun, because you shoot rockets up in the air," he said. "But it's not an area that I'll be putting money into.""
He's right, of course. (Score:3, Interesting)
Successful man, bright man, ruthless man, and entirely correct.
Bill Gates grew up. Page and Brin may still have some growing up to do, but Bezos has no excuse. And Musk's work has always been overrated, though it's almost geek suicide to suggest so.
As much as I like Bill Gates (Score:4, Interesting)
I think he's wrong about the importance of space exploration. He's trapped on this sphere just like the rest of us and one stray gamma ray burst could end us all with zero warning. Figuring out how to spread out is a worthy human endeavor.
Either or ... it is a logical fallacy Mr. Gates (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Idea (Score:4, Interesting)
Well he does, sorta... if it weren't for the massive charitable 'contribution' he gave former Prez. Vicente Fox' wife for her 'charity (causing a planned migration to Linux to instead swerve back towards Windows)', Mexico would've been using primarily Linux by now, reducing Microsoft's market share (and thus its stock price, thus Gates' bank account, etc).
Hell, I suspect the whole third world would've been using Linux by now judging by that one yardstick...
Re:Idea (Score:2, Interesting)
For the record, Dow Chemical has a very good environmental record. Please site some specifics regarding their aleged pollution.
Re:Idea (Score:5, Interesting)
The UK's healthcare system is ill-managed, under-funded, and constantly in traumatic reform as it's become a political football always kicked around between factions. The waiting lists are long, the wards overcrowded, and the hospitals understaffed.
And yet we still managed to beat the US on every major metric of public health, with the exception of cancer survival rates - and we spend a smaller portion of GDP on it via taxes than the US does via insurance premiums and medical bills.
Even our badly-run mess of a single provider manages to beat the US. Really, America... when you are being beaten in the life expectancy charts by the like of *Cuba*, you really need to admit you are failing.
Re:Idea (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Idea (Score:5, Interesting)
The problem in the US is that we already had socialized health care, thanks to a Reagan-era law, but we refused to admit it. We passed a law in the 80s making it illegal to refuse emergency treatment. This of course means that uninsured people wait until they need emergency care, then get very expensive care that they cannot pay for. The rest of us are left picking up the tab, and hospitals and emergency facilities in poor areas either close or get subsidized by the state and local authorities. One ER doc, who may or may not have been exaggerating, claimed that it would be cheaper to ride a doctor to each person's house in a limo for house calls than to treat everyone without insurance in the ER.
I'm generally against "unfunded mandates" such as the emergency care rule, and I'm generally against the idea of refusing emergency care. That leaves me with no choice but to reluctantly admit that I support some form of socialized health care. I would have preferred less emphasis on Medicaid in the Obamacare system, but it's better than what we had.
Re:Thank you! (Score:2, Interesting)
You are taking your First World education and wealth, for that matter, for granted.
How does someone with no education to start with utilize the internet or WikiPedia or any other education website?
They can't read or write. They do not have any basic skills, and yet, they are supposed to go to the internet and get 'educated'.
See what I'm getting at?
The ability of the internet to educate is only available to those that have already received a basic education.
That seems to be lost on everyone here.
Re:He's right, of course. (Score:2, Interesting)
> What the hell has Microsoft done for the poor?
Lots.
Microsoft's employee's have donated over $1 billion to non-profits and MSFT has matched those donations" [microsoft.com]
MSFT donates, on average $1 million worth of software to non profits every day. [microsoft.com]
MSFT works to help recovery from natural disasters [microsoft.com]
MSFT offers training programs and career opportunities in economically disadvantaged countries.
I know many of these programs aren't aimed at the poor specifically, but the poor most definitely do benefit from them.
Gates needs to see it from other viewpoints (Score:5, Interesting)
.
2) Gates is an individual, google is a corporation. Apples and oranges to compare the two.
Gates needs to look past his self-important blinders and see the whole picture.
Re:Idea (Score:2, Interesting)
Gates is attempting to make Google look bad, mostly through classic propaganda techniques. He employs faulty syllogism and use association: that Google's intent for better Internet is solely aimed at world health. He's acting more like a congressman every day. In their eyes, making the opposition look bad makes them look good. But it's really the question of who's the lesser of two evils.
Re:Idea (Score:4, Interesting)
You can do something though! Do you refuse to do anything to help even one person with disease because it won't fix the entire problem? No, you start by helping people. People standing on the sidelines aren't helping at all when they say "Doomed to fail, just saying 'told you so today' to save time tomorrow."
Throwing money at problem can also lessen the problems even if they don't eliminate it entirely. Imagine how much worse it would be if there weren't the free medicines or trained doctors.
Perfect is the enemy of the good.
Re:Idea (Score:4, Interesting)
I don't know if it is better, but one fundamantal thing I don't like about the current US democracy is it is basically a 2 party system.
For example I life in the Netherlands, we have a some what different system. After the elections the winning party is the first that is allowed to form a coalition of multiple parties that together form around 50% or more.
Re:Idea (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Idea (Score:5, Interesting)
Dow has what I would argue is an objectively bad record, but...
One of the reasons you can say "very bad" and ackthpt can say "very good" is that "bad" or "good" for Dow usually means 'in comparison to other representitives of the industry'. (I don't claim to know what either you or ackthpt were thinking, beyond what you or he (?) actually posted, but that does seem to be common to many people making such evaluations).
Many people forget that Union Carbide is now a wholly owned Dow subsidiary, but at the time of the Bhopal disaster, was a competing corporation - Dow bought them 17 years later. Do we count that as Dow was at least better than UC, and UC is not as bad now that Dow owns it, or not? Surely we don't blame Bhopal on Dow?
Morton-Thiokol had a magnesium related explosion in 1971 that killed 29 people and injured about 50 others, but the official cause of that one is that the US government gave them some very bad advice about some unusual additional explosive risks, known to the military but not to most civilian chemists, in storing magnesium based flares in extreme bulk, in spaces which didn't have powered venting and detectors, and otherwise even hundreds of flares burning off wouldn't have led to an actual explosion. Probably, M-T has a better environmental record for the same time frame than Dow, but that's if we believe the causes of the M-T 1971 Georgia explosion have been adequately analyzed by the courts.
The chemical industry in general is bad on both the safety and environmental records. Searching for "Chemical Industry Accidents", "Industrial Disasters" or such terms doesn't yield much evidence, but try searching for "Superfund Sites" and see how many of these tie to the major chemical industry players. Even if Dow somehow stood near the top of the pack in their industry (they don't), it's a lousy industry.