Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates “wants to reinvent the toilet,” Scott Olson reports for TIME Magazine.
“This next big idea for the good of mankind will now also be getting help from German taxpayers after Development Minister Dirk Niebel earmarked $10 million for a joint project with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation,” Olson reports. “Gates says it’s time to move on from the era of the classic toilet. He points out that, despite all the recent achievements, 40% of the world’s population, or some 2.5 billion people, still lives without proper means of flushing away excrement. But just giving them Western-style toilets isn’t possible because of the world’s limited water resources.”
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Olson reports, “Dutch engineer Frank Rijsberman… heads the Water, Sanitation & Hygiene department at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, and he is presently working on two projects. With one project, the foundation supports the construction of pit latrines in rural areas and slums without sanitation facilities. With the other, it supports research projects, giving grants to scientists who come up with new ideas for using human excrement.”
“In April, Gates met with German Chancellor Angela Merkel and President Christian Wulff in Berlin,” Olson reports. “In a press conference he told journalists that they didn’t talk politics, but discussed the idea of the ‘ultimate toilet.'”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Don’t laugh, the old thief’s an expert: For decades he’s been churning out shit and getting suckers to pay for the privilege of dealing with it.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “NuBee” for the heads up.]
Paul Allen: Working with Bill Gates like being in hell – April 18, 2011
Microsoft co-founder Allen: Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer schemed to rip me off after I got cancer – March 30, 2011
Still no room for Apple products in Bill Gates’ house – October 25, 2010
Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation invests in Monsanto – August 26, 2010
Bill Gates’ other company fined millions for intellectual property theft – July 22, 2010
Bill Gates: ‘iPad is not quite there yet… because it has no input’ – June 4, 2010
Bill Gates wants to build nuclear reactors – March 23, 2010
Bill Gates: ‘There’s nothing on iPad I look at and say, ‘Oh, I wish Microsoft had done it’’ – February 10, 2010
Bill Gates has lost his mind: calls Apple liars, copiers; slams Mac OS X security vs. Windows
TIME Magazine: Microsoft’s Windows Vista ‘an embarassment to the good name of American innovation’ – February 02, 2007
Microsoft’s Windows Vista: Five years for a chrome-plated turd – January 30, 2007
Bill Gates’ sarcasm regarding Apple iPod: ‘Oh, wow, I don’t think we can do that’ – September 07, 2004
Toilet that really SUCK!
…but he already did!
It’s called Windows!
” it supports research projects, giving grants to scientists who come up with new ideas for using human excrement”
Isn’t that Micro$oft has been doing all along?
There was a man from Medina
Who thought that toilets could be finer
He sketched and he crapped
Had visions and yapped
And made millions for being the designer
Everyone feels better after making a big flush
There was a man from Medina
Who thought that a toilet could be finer
He sketched and he crapped
Had visions and yapped
And made millions for being the designer
Don’t be so hard on Bill. I suspect he is trying to work off some karma. Actually, he might claim he is working off some of Steve Jobs’ karma, considering Jonathan Ive was designing toilets when Steve recruited him to design the iMac.
Thomas Crapper (1836-1910) is credited with improving the functionality of the early flush toilet. It’s where we get the word “crap”.
Any connection to improving the toilet always leads to 2nd grade remarks.
It’s a risk for him to take on this type of project. It’s not like he needs the 10 million, or that it is a really large amount of money to spend on research.
His intentions may not always be evil, especially when it will affect his name.
Actually, Thomas Crapper, who was a plumber holding several patents, did *not* invent the toilet or give us the word “crap.”
See Snopes among many other sources.
Bill’s name is already synonymous with crap.
Backyard pond, comfortable squatting bench at edge of pond, carp swimming in the pond, sell a fish at local market from time to time, many world problems solved.
Now this is really shitty news coming from a really shitty person having the shittiest company on the face of the earth as well as the shittiest products. Poor Melinda having such a shitty husband to boot.
I say save it all up and make a giant shit sandwich for Bill Gates to eat. Then Ballmer can dine on Billy’s load, followed by every other Microsoft employee, in order.
Man, I think I actually disgusted myself with that comment.
I’m thinking it’s a bad idea to involve Mr. Microsoft: how often will this new toilet stop working, and you have to clean it out and restart it?
Sometimes you have to be like a stenographer and just pencil it out!
Taking cues from Lion’s natural scrolling behavior, I’m sure the new Windows toilets will make you pull the flush handle up.
This will represent you pulling fresh, clean water up into the bowl to replace the other contents. Most people will initially complain, but others will agree it makes more sense to them once they used it for a few days.
HAHA! And the the flush handle will be located on the right side too.
Geez, just build a super frictionless toilet. From bowl to trap. You’ll just need a glass full of water to flush. Maybe even less. Near frictionless will let all your poop and pee slide rite down straight to the bowels of oblivion, with no stain or crap to stick around the bowl. We have the tech and it can be done.
Some pretty funny jokes and puns! HAHA But in all honesty, if one thinks this is a waste of time or money, then they have never seen how much of the world still lives. While we sit here on our shiny Macs, PC’s, or iPhones, people are dying because of human excrement tainting water because water and sewage processing is nearly non-existent in many places.
When you simply use a hole in the ground as a toilet, that seeps into the water table. In most cases, places that use holes for toilets usually also use ground water for drinking. This gets pretty complicated and I’m simplifying it here but the problems exist.
While I don’t use Windows nor care for it even after years of use, I think Gates has a good thought to reinvent the toilet.
Google’s toilet.
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pVvxOAq4eBo?rel=0&w=560&h=349%5D
In all honesty, I realize how important having clean drinking water and waste disposal is, but this makes me wonder how we got along 2000 years ago, or how animals got along before us.
Of course, that leads me to the one conclusion that seems applicable to a very many problems facing today’s world…population. It seems reasonable that 100’s (or 1000’s) of years ago, this wasn’t much of an issue because there weren’t that many people/animals on the planet. How many other issues are we facing that could be attributed to the same cause? Poverty–too many people to feed? Economics–too many people collecting support from governments? Environment–too many people vying for natural resources?
Are we (Human population) getting too big for our britches (Earth)?
Not sure I want to blue screen in the middle of a dump.
Is Bill Gates still playing golf? Wonderful abuse of local water tables is universal since it’s a businessman’s game. Hypocrite.
I’d like to see Bill Gates invent the ultimate toilet, then flush himself down it.
I’m sure spending his life on Windows it’s unescapable he’s gained great insight into the workings of toilets…
A lot of mean spirited responses about someone who’s trying to do something good for billions of less fortunate people. Shame on all of you!
Philanthropist or not, Bill Gates is still a dick. And only a fraction of his foundation’s resources are actually spent to help the unfortunate. Don’t think for a second that the Bill And Melinda Gates Foundation isn’t a money-making operation.
go read about how Bill Gates made all his billions, the lawsuits from people he ripped off, the charges against his company by the U.S Government for unfair practices etc are especially enlightening
Judge Jackson during one of the Microsoft trials: ” Microsoft executives had “proved, time and time again, to be inaccurate, misleading, evasive, and transparently false. … Microsoft is a company with an institutional disdain for both the truth and for rules of law that lesser entities must respect.”.
As one his friends said “when Bill plays with you he makes sure he walks away with all the marbles”.
Bill Gates reminds me of the Renaissance Warlords like the Borgias: they made fortunes without scruples and then in their old age did charity and built churches as they were afraid of Hell.
whatever the posters on this board have said it’s not even one percent of what Bill Gates did the employees of companies he ground to dust with unfair practices. His company stole ideas and then defeated lawsuits with his billions at his disposal.
i like our strategy, I like it a lot!