Summer Cleaning

Even though it's something of an Autumn theme, I decided it was time to change the layout again. To all the readers I lost whilst on furlough, welcome back, and I hope you like it.

I recently turned on the FM radio again and listened to NPR yesterday. They were talking about Warren Buffet's gargantuan gift to the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. Now if you haven't been following this, Bill Gates will step down as Chief Software Architect of Microsoft Corporation, supposedly in 2008. He will stay on as Chairman, but that's about all he'll have to do with the company he co-founded. Gates wants to concentrate his efforts toward his charity, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. Good job, Bill.

Warren Buffett is the world's richest stock trader. He apparently knows his shit. From what I heard from a caller on Talk of the Nation, he had plans for his wife to distribute his wealth after he died. That didn't work out too well, because his wife died a couple of years ago. They say he did a lot of thinking and finally decided to give (at today's price) over 31 billion dollars to the Gates Foundation. I think it's so many billion every year for a number of years, but it's still a great gift. I haven't done all of my homework on the foundation, but I volunteered at a YMCA in Colorado Springs that had a computer lab worth $10,000+ all furnished by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. I think they're probably doing a lot for people who can't afford these things, and with Buffet's gift they'll have a lot more to do.

Another caller complained that if Microsoft hadn't overcharged us in the first place, their money wouldn't have to be put back into society. I've got an answer or two for that one:

1. If you got to keep your filthy money, sir, you would have spent it on gas or candy bars, and it wouldn't, sir, help society for you to have a fatter ass or go on vacation. Your money would have never left the country to help those in need.

2. You bought a product that you use every single day and now would have trouble living without. IM me on Windows Messenger and we'll talk about it. Switch to Linux, sir, and do without a tech support number and have fun configuring your printer and synching your PDA all by yourself.

That's all I really have. I'm certainly not a Windows fanatic, but many people would be completely lost without this OS. It's all they know due to its fantastic success with the PC over the years. I could get into that later, I guess. I love Linux as much as the next guy, but it's certainly not for the masses just yet. Whatever you think about Gates or Buffet, kudos to them anyway.