Bill and Melinda Gates are The Time Persons of the Year

[Brett_Tabke]

[newswire.ca...]
[gatesfoundation.com...]

“We’re honored to have been named, together with our friend Bono, as Time Magazine’s Persons of the Year.

“We’re grateful that Time recognizes the importance of the world's inequities, whether they are in the United States or thousands of miles away. We are also pleased by Time's recognition that we can solve these problems and that many people must play a part in doing so.

“In recent years, our foundation has worked with organizations, governments, grantees, and committed individuals in the United States and around the world. We have great admiration for the determined and often anonymous people who work every day to make the world a better place, whether they are principals improving inner city schools in New York or scientists testing potential life-saving vaccines in Mozambique. The people we’ve met have inspired us and refueled our optimism many times over.

[europeforvisitors]

Good for them!

And good for Bill Gates Senior, who has set a fine example for his son.

[King of all Sales]

This is why MS has been so fantastically successful and why they will continue to be successful.

[steve40]

Having over the years developed a love / hate relationship with Microsoft , One of things that does endear me to Mr Gates is his foundation to help others , It is one of the largest foundations ever created and is used in the US but also worldwide and from what i have read and seen over the years is used well and intelligently
This award is well deserved and I would hope that if any of the webmasters here were as half as successfull in their lifetime they would use our wealth as well to help those less fortunate

steve

[BillyS]

Well deserved! You can disagree with Microsoft, but everyone should agree the man has vision.

[aleksl]

reminds me of Godfather part 3 - but credit where credit's due. Well done!

[andrea99]

Bill and Melinda Gates certainly deserve recognition for their good deeds but I thought that the Time Person(s) of the year were supposed to be those who most influenced news and events during the year.

Time seems to have changed the nature of the yearly cover. It never used to be an award, Hitler and the Ayatollah Khomeini have been featured in the past--it was not an "award."

[edited by: andrea99 at 7:00 pm (utc) on Dec. 19, 2005]

[Rugles]

>>but credit where credit's due. Well done!

I second that, the guy walks the walk, and so does his lovely wife. Makes buying your expensive software less painful when I know a sizable chunk of the profit goes to those less fortunate than I.

Plus.... Cheers to Bono too. You rock and your current tour is a must see, enjoyed every minute (my ears just stopped ringing after two months).
:-)

[joeduck]

Superb choices by Time.

Nice to see applause here for the Gates' decision to focus their resources and intellect on the world's most pressing problem - health in developing world.

Bravo to them!

[Rugles]

>>>It never used to be an award, Hitler and the Ayatollah Khomeini have been featured in the past--it was not an "award."

The dumbest choice they ever made was Peter Ueberoth (spelling maybe). Many who read this post will say "Peter Who". Well he was able to turn a profit with the LA olympics, the world will never forget.

[Essex_boy]

He is very generous and many people have their lives because of of his donations.

Not a great fan of MS but well done MR & MRs Gates.

[bradentonmafia]

This whole thing is a misguided farce.

See this excellent op-ed in the New York Times for the real deal on Africa, Bono, and Gates.

[nytimes.com...]

[abbeyvet]

Interesting article, but as someone who has lived in Ireland on either side of the 'economic miracle', I find the comparison between here and Malawi a bit fatuous to say the least. It totally overlooks its geographic location not to mentions the billions poured into this country by the EU over the last 20-30 years, without which..... And Ireland may have been a backward country at the outset of that investment, but its last famine was a long time over, democracy was long established and nobody was dying of hunger or wanting for simple vaccination.

From all I have read it seems to me that the money the Gates spend is particularly well targetted and totally accounted for. Good for them.

[Rugles]

Easy to criticise, harder to actually try to make a difference.

[skunker]

The NYT will do anything to get their readership back. It's a known issue that they are digging themselves a deeper and deeper hole every day they write those pathetic articles. They are so extreme liberalist that they make Cindy Sheehan look bad.

[Mario]

What a shocking badly written piece of tripe. The EU spent billions upon billions bringing Ireland into the 21st century - it would never have happened without that investment.

[eSai]

>>Makes buying your expensive software less painful when I know a sizable chunk of the profit goes to those less fortunate than I.

So guys, we can buy MS softwares without much pain. Because indirectly we are also helping the less priviliged than us.
Get the good work going.

[andrea99]

...a sizable chunk of the profit...

Gates Foundation Contributions, cy 2004
$711,453,000 (KMPG LLP report)

Microsoft Corp. Net Income fy ending June '05
$12,254,000,000 (Yahoo! Finance)

[europeforvisitors]

Gates Foundation Contributions

Microsoft Corp. Net Income

Aren't you comparing apples and oranges?