9 ms·

Bill Gates: What I Learned in the Fight Against Polio

160 points by denzil_correa 13y ago

arithma 13y ago
I love what Bill Gates is doing. It seems he will be remembered more for his health care incursions than his tech-building. You always feel that weird confusing feeling about rich people donating very little slivers of money for public reasons. It seems such an "easy" thing to do rather than actually doing an effort. I can't say that about Bill.
- pyre 13y ago
  IIRC, he was the one that changed Warren Buffet's mind on things like whether or not the rich should be taxed more.
  - jacalata 13y ago
    interesting, got any sources? I had the impression Buffet had always had a pretty consistent view on this, but I'm not very familiar with him.
bluedevil2k 13y ago
I think it's a misconception we have in the US that polio is "disease from the 50's that's been eliminated". I know personally, I was surprised just last week when I went to my travel clinic, told them of an upcoming trip to Israel, and they recommended a polio booster. There's currently polio virus found in sewage in a modern country. Though no one has been found to have the disease in Israel, it's because of their high inoculation rate. In Syria, without inoculations, they are seeing an outbreak. Health organizers worry that the virus will spread around, by healthy people, who visit the region. Just shows how hard it is to completely eradicate a disease. Also, the book Polio was a fascinating read about the history of the disease and vaccine.
melling 13y ago
"27 million Indians born each year" Now the next important thing to do in the 21st century is to educate all these people. I imagine with more automation, robotics, etc, people will need a good education to survive. Some people born today will be alive in the 22nd century.
- denzil_correa 13y ago
  The article mentions education along with clean water, health care etc. too. > The accomplishments of India's vaccinators and children and politicians will not end when polio ends in their country. Now that they have found India's children, they can bring them and their families other vaccines, clean water, education, advice on maternal and child health, and support for agriculture—all the things that people need to live healthy and productive lives.
- mtgx 13y ago
  Guess what? The Internet will provide most of that education to those people in the future. But for Bill Gates, the Internet isn't a priority.
  - MichaelGG 13y ago
    Not a priority over "basic needs" like food and health.
- marincounty 13y ago
  Too many people period. And no--education is not the answer. The world has to stop procreating--including Ameicans. Enough is enough. We are ruining this small planet for all species. The next time she opens the gates of hell--demand birth control. Yes--you.
  - hnriot 13y ago
    you need to understand how evolution works. populations don't control themselves, they are limited by their environment, and thus far the environment hasn't acted to limit the species population, but it will. We've not be around that long, give things time. procreation is the only thing that a population does. the rest is fluff.
denzil_correa 13y ago
There are many reasons why one would remember William Henry Gates - Microsoft, technology et al. But, I would remember Bill for his life after Microsoft via his philanthropy. He's having an unprecedented impact on global society in energy, health care, education and many more areas which are too many to list. Even his worst of technology critics (like me) can't hide away from the fact of his impact on modern society. I was reading the 2013 Annual letter from Bill Gates as part of Gates Foundation [0]. Each word in the report is magnificently detailed and precise. Gates foundation has helped "almost" completely eradicate polio with lesser than 1000 reported cases in the world. This is pretty amazing! If and when polio would be completely wiped out of the face of this earth, it would just be the second disease to be wiped out. Nigeria, Pakistan and Afghanistan are the only countries with children affected by polio. I also see a sharp decline in child-birth cases. This report is a MUST read and if possible do your bit to support the Gates foundation. Even if he doesn't do a single thing from now on - Bill Gates has earned his RESPECT with not only his impact in technology but life outside technology. Personally, I would always remember Bill as the philanthropist rather than the tech-wizard. [0] http://annualletter.gatesfoundation.org/pdf/2013_AL_English.pdf http://annualletter.gatesfoundation.org/pdf/2013_AL_English....
- simonebrunozzi 13y ago
  Link doesn't work.
  - denzil_correa 13y ago
    Thanks, I fixed it now.
  - deleted 13y ago
    [deleted]
  - pmelendez 13y ago
    This seems to be the document he tried to link: http://annualletter.gatesfoundation.org/pdf/2013_AL_English.pdf http://annualletter.gatesfoundation.org/pdf/2013_AL_English....
  - deleted 13y ago
enraged_camel 13y ago
I'm deeply disappointed that Gates made no mention of a major contributor to his fight against polio, Rotary International. Besides the humongous amount of money they donated, often times it was Rotarians who traveled to these countries to administer the vaccine to children. In addition, they usually traveled on their own dime and, in the case of some countries, at their own risk. Anyway, I founded a community service organization a few years ago, and through one of our projects we made a very paltry donation to the polio eradication cause. One of the major challenges we ran into while fundraising was getting young people to care. Older folks were very generous, since a lot of them remembered polio from their own childhood, and even had friends overseas who were victims. But people in their 20s and early 30s simply did not know. It was greatly disturbing. As a society we make a great effort to keep reminding people of the horrors of World War II, and yet we are on the verge of largely forgetting about this ancient disease.
- pyre 13y ago
  Vaccinations are a young enough technology that we may find that we have to go through a few 'cycles' similar to how the atrocities of war seem to get forgotten after a couple of generations. Right now the anti-vaccination crowd has the luxury of living in a world where many of the horrible maladies of yester-year are all but gone due to the herd immunities granted to us via vaccines. When they look at the risks of vaccination, they get to weigh the risk of side effects of the vaccine vs. the risk of getting sick in a world where you get to 'leech' off of everyone else's vaccination-induced immunity. Polio is rare enough in the first world, that it seems a 'solved problem' much like small pox.
- k-mcgrady 13y ago
  >> "But people in their 20s and early 30s simply did not know. It was greatly disturbing. As a society we make a great effort to keep reminding people of the horrors of World War II, and yet we are on the verge of largely forgetting about this ancient disease." Is this not a positive thing? I'm in my early 20's and only know one person (they are much older and I don't know them well) with polio. That's great. The fact that we are on the verge of forgetting is because it's largely irrelevant or gone in most countries. Also great. >> "One of the major challenges we ran into while fundraising was getting young people to care. Older folks were very generous" Was this because young people were not as aware of polio or is this a more general trend in charity donations (that older people give more)?
notdrunkatall 13y ago
Amazing.
wanda 13y ago
I cannot imagine being Bill's friend. I get the feeling this is the only thing this guy would ever talk about. "Hey, Bill, want a beer?" "I don't think that would fit into my plans to cure the world's diseases." "Oh. Hey, do you know what this Java programmer said to me the other day?" "I'm not sure that's really appropriate to discuss, given my other commitments." He might be giving lots of money compared to most billionaires and me might successfully buy a pleasant historical picture of himself next century, but it'd be fantastic if he talked about something else for a change.
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
- general_failure 13y ago
  Take one guess as to how how successful people become successful. Hint: they are completely consumed by the problem and won't stop until it's solved.
- k-mcgrady 13y ago
  This is an article in a newspaper. What did you expect him to talk about?? It's something he's passionate about and the only reason he is in the newspaper is to publicise it. If you want to see other things he's interested in check out his blog[1] (The Gates Notes). He does posts on books he's reading (not all related to disease) and reviews them among other things. [1]http://www.thegatesnotes.com http://www.thegatesnotes.com
- DanBC 13y ago
  > but it'd be fantastic if he talked about something else for a change. Bill gives his opinion on something? I predict a comment saying "Who cares what he thinks? Why does he think I should be interested in his opinion? Hasn't he cured polio and malaria yet?"
icecreampain 13y ago
I'm having a very hard time being as enthusiastic about Bill Gates and his philanthropy as the rest of y'all are. I keep thinking about how he ran Microsoft during the 90's: ruthlessly to the point of being found guilty of abusing his monopoly by the DOJ. I liken him to a mafia boss, donating money to charity after having amassed a fortune extorting and threatening people: can the money still be considered an honest donation or a PR effort to make ensure that the mafia boss is remembered in better terms than "antisocial criminal"? Sorry, Bill. You may be far richer than I'll ever be, but my money is made honestly. I wasn't born rich, haven't built my whole empire on other people's work (QDOS was bought, Windows comes from OS/2, etc) and I haven't been found guilt of a crime by the DOJ. Also: sorry people dying of diseases, that I can help y'all by being rich enough to buy small islands. The little, honest man is such a powerless pawn in today's money-centric society.
- btilly 13y ago
  I consider Bill Gates to be the modern equivalent of Andrew Carnegie. Both good and bad. I can recognize the one without forgetting the other.
  - huherto 13y ago
    Exactly Andrew Carnegie sounds right. As a business man, Gates was ruthless building his empire, but he will eventually do more good in areas that ultimately more important than computers.
  - patrickg_zill 13y ago
    When did Carnegie ship sub-standard steel the way MSFT shipped sub-standard software? The Bessemer process he invested in produced steel of higher quality. EDIT: my point is, one guy advanced the state of the art and the other retarded the state of the art...
    - btilly 13y ago
      The fact that the parallel is not exact does not mean that it is not illuminating.
basicallydan 13y ago
This is a very inspiring story. If you are even slightly interested in the fight against diseases like polio, this is an uplifting report which shows that with hard work, ambitious plans and great support serious, hard problems can be solved.
graycat 13y ago
I still believe that it is his wife that has him doing this and that his wife got her devotion to such values from the nuns in her schooling. I have to conclude that Bill really loves, cares about, communicates with, respects, responds to, and trusts his wife. Smart guy, couple. Apparently Melinda has, with Buffett and her call for 50% from other wealthy people, essentially raised $100+ billion. Smart girl.
salilpa 13y ago
am quietly amused by this Mr. Gates is the co-founder and chairman of Microsoft and co-chair of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation does he need an introduction?
test001only 13y ago
The perseverance and ingenuity of the Indian government and the NGOs needs to be appreciated. The success of polio eradication programme has been result of decades of work in India and Bill is trying to replicate the model in other parts of the world.
iconjack 13y ago
A few people in this thread say they are having a hard time embracing Bill as a good guy because of the monopolistic business practices of Microsoft in the 90s. To be honest, I've never quite understood the reasoning behind the charges made against the company brought by the DOJ or by the company's detractors. There was a surge of hate for Microsoft back then that was frequently expressed in forums on the fledging web and in the newsgroups. Very often you'd see complaints about Microsoft being a monopoly, followed by (in the same post), a pitch for Linux or Mac or every once in a while some other system. “Linux is better than Windows, and it's free!” This left me scratching my head. So there's a superior, less expensive alternative to Windows—what's your definition of monopoly again? And what of OS/2? Runs Windows apps better than Windows, says IBM, a not so small competitor. (For the youngsters, IBM was a large computing corporation of the time, once the very symbol of market dominance.) The judgment the DOJ eventually won forced Microsoft to untangle IE from Windows. While there's no doubt IE had a huge advantage by piggybacking on every copy of Windows, I say “so what”. Can anyone imagine Apple being ordered to not ship nor require iTunes on the iPhone? Gates wanted to kill Netscape Navigator because it made business sense. Probably every company wants to knock off their competitors, whether they come out and admit it or not. Look what Jobs did to Flash. I don't mean to pick on Apple. You should read about some of the dirty tricks pulled by Nintendo, IBM, Dell, etc. More than likely every company of any size has some contemptible actions in their history; these are just ones I happen to know about. I like Bill Gates. At the same time, I can see how some people wouldn't like him. But let's keep things in perspective. We're lucky to have a hyper-intelligent, eminently competent man at the helm of the world's largest foundation.
derleth 13y ago
Bill Gates is an aggressive man. When turned to business, this aggression leads to the creation and abuse of monopoly powers, especially if there's an IBM to abuse in the early days. When turned to Public Good, it is just as fearsome in a more positive direction. It is, fundamentally, the same tool in both instances. This reminds me of an old Orwell essay, "A Good Word For The Vicar Of Bray": http://orwell.ru/library/reviews/vicar/english/e_vicar http://orwell.ru/library/reviews/vicar/english/e_vicar > Thibaw, the last King of Burma, was also far from being a good man. He was a drunkard, he had five hundred wives — he seems to have kept them chiefly for show, however — and when he came to the throne his first act was to decapitate seventy or eighty of his brothers. Yet he did posterity a good turn by planting the dusty streets of Mandalay with tamarind trees which cast a pleasant shade until the Japanese incendiary bombs burned them down in 1942. > The poet, James Shirley, seems to have generalised too freely when he said that “Only the actions of the just Smell sweet and blossom in their dust”. Sometimes the actions of the unjust make quite a good showing after the appropriate lapse of time.
apa-sl 13y ago
Bill's approach to what you can and should do is simply amazing. I respect him for leaving the comfort zone of IT world (which he ruled at the time) and going after real people problems (affecting whole populations, no matter how technologically advanced the society is).
poolpool 13y ago
I love all the angst shown in some comments about the most successful "hacker" ever.

160 points by denzil_correa 13y ago

I love what Bill Gates is doing. It seems he will be remembered more for his health care incursions than his tech-building. You always feel that weird confusing feeling about rich people donating very little slivers of money for public reasons. It seems such an "easy" thing to do rather than actually doing an effort. I can't say that about Bill.

pyre 13y ago
IIRC, he was the one that changed Warren Buffet's mind on things like whether or not the rich should be taxed more.
- jacalata 13y ago
  interesting, got any sources? I had the impression Buffet had always had a pretty consistent view on this, but I'm not very familiar with him.

bluedevil2k 13y ago

I think it's a misconception we have in the US that polio is "disease from the 50's that's been eliminated". I know personally, I was surprised just last week when I went to my travel clinic, told them of an upcoming trip to Israel, and they recommended a polio booster. There's currently polio virus found in sewage in a modern country. Though no one has been found to have the disease in Israel, it's because of their high inoculation rate. In Syria, without inoculations, they are seeing an outbreak. Health organizers worry that the virus will spread around, by healthy people, who visit the region. Just shows how hard it is to completely eradicate a disease. Also, the book Polio was a fascinating read about the history of the disease and vaccine.

melling 13y ago

"27 million Indians born each year" Now the next important thing to do in the 21st century is to educate all these people. I imagine with more automation, robotics, etc, people will need a good education to survive. Some people born today will be alive in the 22nd century.

denzil_correa 13y ago
The article mentions education along with clean water, health care etc. too. > The accomplishments of India's vaccinators and children and politicians will not end when polio ends in their country. Now that they have found India's children, they can bring them and their families other vaccines, clean water, education, advice on maternal and child health, and support for agriculture—all the things that people need to live healthy and productive lives.
mtgx 13y ago
Guess what? The Internet will provide most of that education to those people in the future. But for Bill Gates, the Internet isn't a priority.
- MichaelGG 13y ago
  Not a priority over "basic needs" like food and health.
marincounty 13y ago
Too many people period. And no--education is not the answer. The world has to stop procreating--including Ameicans. Enough is enough. We are ruining this small planet for all species. The next time she opens the gates of hell--demand birth control. Yes--you.
- hnriot 13y ago
  you need to understand how evolution works. populations don't control themselves, they are limited by their environment, and thus far the environment hasn't acted to limit the species population, but it will. We've not be around that long, give things time. procreation is the only thing that a population does. the rest is fluff.

denzil_correa 13y ago

There are many reasons why one would remember William Henry Gates - Microsoft, technology et al. But, I would remember Bill for his life after Microsoft via his philanthropy. He's having an unprecedented impact on global society in energy, health care, education and many more areas which are too many to list. Even his worst of technology critics (like me) can't hide away from the fact of his impact on modern society. I was reading the 2013 Annual letter from Bill Gates as part of Gates Foundation [0]. Each word in the report is magnificently detailed and precise. Gates foundation has helped "almost" completely eradicate polio with lesser than 1000 reported cases in the world. This is pretty amazing! If and when polio would be completely wiped out of the face of this earth, it would just be the second disease to be wiped out. Nigeria, Pakistan and Afghanistan are the only countries with children affected by polio. I also see a sharp decline in child-birth cases. This report is a MUST read and if possible do your bit to support the Gates foundation. Even if he doesn't do a single thing from now on - Bill Gates has earned his RESPECT with not only his impact in technology but life outside technology. Personally, I would always remember Bill as the philanthropist rather than the tech-wizard. [0] http://annualletter.gatesfoundation.org/pdf/2013_AL_English.pdf http://annualletter.gatesfoundation.org/pdf/2013_AL_English....

simonebrunozzi 13y ago
Link doesn't work.
- denzil_correa 13y ago
  Thanks, I fixed it now.
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
- pmelendez 13y ago
  This seems to be the document he tried to link: http://annualletter.gatesfoundation.org/pdf/2013_AL_English.pdf http://annualletter.gatesfoundation.org/pdf/2013_AL_English....
- deleted 13y ago

enraged_camel 13y ago

I'm deeply disappointed that Gates made no mention of a major contributor to his fight against polio, Rotary International. Besides the humongous amount of money they donated, often times it was Rotarians who traveled to these countries to administer the vaccine to children. In addition, they usually traveled on their own dime and, in the case of some countries, at their own risk. Anyway, I founded a community service organization a few years ago, and through one of our projects we made a very paltry donation to the polio eradication cause. One of the major challenges we ran into while fundraising was getting young people to care. Older folks were very generous, since a lot of them remembered polio from their own childhood, and even had friends overseas who were victims. But people in their 20s and early 30s simply did not know. It was greatly disturbing. As a society we make a great effort to keep reminding people of the horrors of World War II, and yet we are on the verge of largely forgetting about this ancient disease.

pyre 13y ago
Vaccinations are a young enough technology that we may find that we have to go through a few 'cycles' similar to how the atrocities of war seem to get forgotten after a couple of generations. Right now the anti-vaccination crowd has the luxury of living in a world where many of the horrible maladies of yester-year are all but gone due to the herd immunities granted to us via vaccines. When they look at the risks of vaccination, they get to weigh the risk of side effects of the vaccine vs. the risk of getting sick in a world where you get to 'leech' off of everyone else's vaccination-induced immunity. Polio is rare enough in the first world, that it seems a 'solved problem' much like small pox.
k-mcgrady 13y ago
>> "But people in their 20s and early 30s simply did not know. It was greatly disturbing. As a society we make a great effort to keep reminding people of the horrors of World War II, and yet we are on the verge of largely forgetting about this ancient disease." Is this not a positive thing? I'm in my early 20's and only know one person (they are much older and I don't know them well) with polio. That's great. The fact that we are on the verge of forgetting is because it's largely irrelevant or gone in most countries. Also great. >> "One of the major challenges we ran into while fundraising was getting young people to care. Older folks were very generous" Was this because young people were not as aware of polio or is this a more general trend in charity donations (that older people give more)?

notdrunkatall 13y ago

Amazing.

wanda 13y ago

I cannot imagine being Bill's friend. I get the feeling this is the only thing this guy would ever talk about. "Hey, Bill, want a beer?" "I don't think that would fit into my plans to cure the world's diseases." "Oh. Hey, do you know what this Java programmer said to me the other day?" "I'm not sure that's really appropriate to discuss, given my other commitments." He might be giving lots of money compared to most billionaires and me might successfully buy a pleasant historical picture of himself next century, but it'd be fantastic if he talked about something else for a change.

deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
general_failure 13y ago
Take one guess as to how how successful people become successful. Hint: they are completely consumed by the problem and won't stop until it's solved.
k-mcgrady 13y ago
This is an article in a newspaper. What did you expect him to talk about?? It's something he's passionate about and the only reason he is in the newspaper is to publicise it. If you want to see other things he's interested in check out his blog[1] (The Gates Notes). He does posts on books he's reading (not all related to disease) and reviews them among other things. [1]http://www.thegatesnotes.com http://www.thegatesnotes.com
DanBC 13y ago
> but it'd be fantastic if he talked about something else for a change. Bill gives his opinion on something? I predict a comment saying "Who cares what he thinks? Why does he think I should be interested in his opinion? Hasn't he cured polio and malaria yet?"

icecreampain 13y ago

I'm having a very hard time being as enthusiastic about Bill Gates and his philanthropy as the rest of y'all are. I keep thinking about how he ran Microsoft during the 90's: ruthlessly to the point of being found guilty of abusing his monopoly by the DOJ. I liken him to a mafia boss, donating money to charity after having amassed a fortune extorting and threatening people: can the money still be considered an honest donation or a PR effort to make ensure that the mafia boss is remembered in better terms than "antisocial criminal"? Sorry, Bill. You may be far richer than I'll ever be, but my money is made honestly. I wasn't born rich, haven't built my whole empire on other people's work (QDOS was bought, Windows comes from OS/2, etc) and I haven't been found guilt of a crime by the DOJ. Also: sorry people dying of diseases, that I can help y'all by being rich enough to buy small islands. The little, honest man is such a powerless pawn in today's money-centric society.

btilly 13y ago
I consider Bill Gates to be the modern equivalent of Andrew Carnegie. Both good and bad. I can recognize the one without forgetting the other.
- huherto 13y ago
  Exactly Andrew Carnegie sounds right. As a business man, Gates was ruthless building his empire, but he will eventually do more good in areas that ultimately more important than computers.
- patrickg_zill 13y ago
  When did Carnegie ship sub-standard steel the way MSFT shipped sub-standard software? The Bessemer process he invested in produced steel of higher quality. EDIT: my point is, one guy advanced the state of the art and the other retarded the state of the art...
  - btilly 13y ago
    The fact that the parallel is not exact does not mean that it is not illuminating.

basicallydan 13y ago

This is a very inspiring story. If you are even slightly interested in the fight against diseases like polio, this is an uplifting report which shows that with hard work, ambitious plans and great support serious, hard problems can be solved.

graycat 13y ago

I still believe that it is his wife that has him doing this and that his wife got her devotion to such values from the nuns in her schooling. I have to conclude that Bill really loves, cares about, communicates with, respects, responds to, and trusts his wife. Smart guy, couple. Apparently Melinda has, with Buffett and her call for 50% from other wealthy people, essentially raised $100+ billion. Smart girl.

salilpa 13y ago

am quietly amused by this Mr. Gates is the co-founder and chairman of Microsoft and co-chair of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation does he need an introduction?

test001only 13y ago

The perseverance and ingenuity of the Indian government and the NGOs needs to be appreciated. The success of polio eradication programme has been result of decades of work in India and Bill is trying to replicate the model in other parts of the world.

iconjack 13y ago

A few people in this thread say they are having a hard time embracing Bill as a good guy because of the monopolistic business practices of Microsoft in the 90s. To be honest, I've never quite understood the reasoning behind the charges made against the company brought by the DOJ or by the company's detractors. There was a surge of hate for Microsoft back then that was frequently expressed in forums on the fledging web and in the newsgroups. Very often you'd see complaints about Microsoft being a monopoly, followed by (in the same post), a pitch for Linux or Mac or every once in a while some other system. “Linux is better than Windows, and it's free!” This left me scratching my head. So there's a superior, less expensive alternative to Windows—what's your definition of monopoly again? And what of OS/2? Runs Windows apps better than Windows, says IBM, a not so small competitor. (For the youngsters, IBM was a large computing corporation of the time, once the very symbol of market dominance.) The judgment the DOJ eventually won forced Microsoft to untangle IE from Windows. While there's no doubt IE had a huge advantage by piggybacking on every copy of Windows, I say “so what”. Can anyone imagine Apple being ordered to not ship nor require iTunes on the iPhone? Gates wanted to kill Netscape Navigator because it made business sense. Probably every company wants to knock off their competitors, whether they come out and admit it or not. Look what Jobs did to Flash. I don't mean to pick on Apple. You should read about some of the dirty tricks pulled by Nintendo, IBM, Dell, etc. More than likely every company of any size has some contemptible actions in their history; these are just ones I happen to know about. I like Bill Gates. At the same time, I can see how some people wouldn't like him. But let's keep things in perspective. We're lucky to have a hyper-intelligent, eminently competent man at the helm of the world's largest foundation.

derleth 13y ago

Bill Gates is an aggressive man. When turned to business, this aggression leads to the creation and abuse of monopoly powers, especially if there's an IBM to abuse in the early days. When turned to Public Good, it is just as fearsome in a more positive direction. It is, fundamentally, the same tool in both instances. This reminds me of an old Orwell essay, "A Good Word For The Vicar Of Bray": http://orwell.ru/library/reviews/vicar/english/e_vicar http://orwell.ru/library/reviews/vicar/english/e_vicar > Thibaw, the last King of Burma, was also far from being a good man. He was a drunkard, he had five hundred wives — he seems to have kept them chiefly for show, however — and when he came to the throne his first act was to decapitate seventy or eighty of his brothers. Yet he did posterity a good turn by planting the dusty streets of Mandalay with tamarind trees which cast a pleasant shade until the Japanese incendiary bombs burned them down in 1942. > The poet, James Shirley, seems to have generalised too freely when he said that “Only the actions of the just Smell sweet and blossom in their dust”. Sometimes the actions of the unjust make quite a good showing after the appropriate lapse of time.

apa-sl 13y ago

Bill's approach to what you can and should do is simply amazing. I respect him for leaving the comfort zone of IT world (which he ruled at the time) and going after real people problems (affecting whole populations, no matter how technologically advanced the society is).

poolpool 13y ago

I love all the angst shown in some comments about the most successful "hacker" ever.