I'm sure that African peoples dying by the million in Africa are really concerned about the times you had a blue screen of death. Malaria and malnutrition are such minimal concerns compared to your ease of use.

I'm not busting your chops because you haven't donated as much to effective charities by three or four orders of magnitude...no, wait...yes I am. When you donate your first billion and make sure it is effectively spent, crap all over Bill Gates. Until then, put up or shut up.

Its a joke. Try and laugh now and then, its good for you.

Bills a big boy, he can take a punch.

He's a geek, but he's our geek (yes, I work at the circle M). He's made a ton of money being a geek, and he really is putting it to work. Plus the company is truly serious about encouraging it's employees to be charitable. Thank goodness he has never given away his sense of humor - he'd find those funny as well ;-)

> He's made a ton of money being a geek, and he really is putting it to work.

He made a ton of money thanks primarily by being born into a family with enough money and connections that his mother was on the board of the National United Way at the same time as the Chairman of IBM.

He made a ton of money thanks primarily to Gallic Arrogance.

While his accomplishments are not trivial, the thing he really stands out for is an example of how effectively marketing a mediocre product can drive a far better product, even an established one -- out of business. In other words, he calls to task both the notion that you can't have a monopoly as well as the notion that the free market system always gets people the best goods money can buy.

I don't resent the guy's money -- I just resent what he's done with it -- produce utter crap software that I wouldn't want my name associated with. Some companies have no real choice but to produce crap. Gates knows better, but doesn't care.

> I'm sure that African peoples dying by the million in Africa are really concerned about the times you had a blue screen of death.

My, we ARE armed with a thoroughly immaterial sense of humor, aren't we? A positive gossamer web of laughter and hilarity!

P.S., the "by the millions" is *VASTLY* overestimated:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/04/05/AR2006040502517.html

What? The UN pushed blatantly faulty statistics out the door trying to stimulate greatly increased aid donations?

Nawwww, that sounds so... cynical!

Next thing, you'll tell me that a lot of that money allocated for poor, starving Iraqis was being pocketed by UN bureaucrats and their cronies in sums that make the thieves at Enron look like two-bit pikers!!

HUH! Apparently, you'll say just about anything to deride the U.N. and deprive it of its pristine image, won't you, you Philistine swine?

You wouldn't allow anyone to maintain their ideal of the U.N. as a wonderful, peaceloving body with joy in its heart and good will towards humankind, would you!?! No, I can tell, you're a cold-hearted one, YOU are!!

By the way, I respect someone who makes US$30,000 a year who donates $6000 to charity a heck of a lot more than someone who makes US$3 billion a year and donates $600 million. Not that it isn't valuable -- but the guy donating the 20% of HIS check is doing without. About all Mr. Gates does without is a few hundred new mansions and a couple dozen yachts...

This is not to say that his donations to charity are not relevant -- it's just that, charity which costs you something of some personal importance is certainly got more moral "ooomph!" behind it than something that costs you very little of importance. And when you do it very much in the public eye, you're doing it just as much for the PR as for the charitable motivation.

As Stephen Colbert said the other night, after Warren Buffett announced that he was donating the bulk of his estate to the Gates Foundation: "My God! Warren Buffett is so rich he's hiring Bill Gates to spend his money!!"