Bill Gates Signs UNESCO Agreement
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Microsoft has signed a pact to work with the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) to increase computer use, Internet access and teacher training in developing countries.
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WASHINGTON -- Microsoft Corp. founder Bill Gates said the United States should end limits on visas for skilled foreign workers as part of plan to boost US economic competitiveness.
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Microsoft chairman Bill Gates announced Friday at the World Economic Forum that his foundation would give $306 million to use green technology and farming techniques to boost millions out of hunger and poverty.
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Microsoft founder Bill Gates has donated  $900,000 to set up a training facility for health professionals  working with AIDS in Africa's Great Lakes region.
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(InfoWorld) - Bill Gates returned to Harvard University on Thursday to address its graduating class and receive an honorary degree after dropping out of the college 33 years ago to found Microsoft. He spent much of his address on the issues of global poverty and disease, advancing ideas on how to encourage more people to get involved in trying to resolve those huge problems. "I've been waiting more than 30 years to say this: 'Dad, I always told you I'd come back and get my degree,'" the Microsoft chairmanÂ said to hearty audience laughter as he began his speech. All commencement speakers are given an honorary Harvard degree, and Gates was awarded a Doctor of Laws degree. He's already received a handful of honorary doctorates from other universities around the world, the most recent being awarded by China's Tsinghua University in April. When Gates arrived at Harvard as a freshman in 1973, he was uncertain of his course of study but sure of his abiding passion for software. He quit Harvard in his junior year to focus full-time on the software startup, Microsoft, which he cofounded with his childhood pal Paul Allen. Gates described how he encouraged Harvard buddy Steve Ballmer, now Microsoft CEO, to quit business school and join the software company when it was only about 50 employees strong. "I'm a bad influence," Gates said. "That's why I was invited to speak to your graduation. If I had spoken at your orientation, fewer of you might be here today." He also reminisced about his accommodation at Harvard, saying his particular lodgings were a great place to live. "There were more women up there, and most of the guys were science-math types," Gates said, with a smile. "That combination offered me the best odds, if you know what I mean. This is where I learned the sad lesson that improving your odds doesn't guarantee success." However, Gates was all seriousness and a fair amount of fervor during most of his 25-minute address, expressing his one big regret about his time at college. "I left Harvard with no real awareness of the awful inequities in the world," adding it took him "decades to find out" about the unbelievable poverty and disease in developing countries. He's currently transitioning out of a day-to-day role at Microsoft to spend more time on his global philanthropy work in the areas of health and education at the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. He began that move in June 2006, and it's expected to be complete by July 2008. "Humanity's greatest advances are not in its discoveries -- but in how those discoveries are applied to reduce inequity," Gates said. He spoke of trying to find ways to develop "a more creative capitalism" that could help market forces work better for the disadvantaged. "If you believe that every life has equal value, it's revolting to learn that some lives are seen as worth saving and others are not," he added. He described his frustration at being on a global health panel at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, several years ago and being bored rigid. "It was so boring even I couldn't bear it," Gates quipped. The contrast between that panel and a Microsoft launch event he'd just attended were starkÂ -- people were really excited about version 13 of a new piece of software. "I love getting people excited about software," he said. "But why can't we generate even more excitement for saving lives?" The issue isn't that people don't care about the world's ills, Gates argued, it's that they don't know what to do to resolve them. "Even with the advent of the Internet and 24-hour news, it is still a complex enterprise to get people to truly see the problem," he said. Using computers, the Internet, and breakthroughs in biotechnology, Gates believes that people can begin to cut through the complex problems of poverty and disease and start to improve lives. Gates challenged both Harvard University and its graduating students. For Harvard, he encouraged the academics to think about applying more of their resources to dealing with the world's issues and to ensure that their students left the college educated about global poverty, hunger, and the prevalence of curable diseases that continue to kill millions of children. For students, he exhorted each of them to embrace one of the world's complex issues and become a specialist on it, whether that issue becomes the focus of their career or more of a part-time passion. "Don't let complexity stop you. Be activists," Gates said. "Take on the big inequities. It will be one of the great experiences of your lives."
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Bill Gates hints at possible partnership with giant electronics company.
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The British National Health Service (NHS) has signed a massive software licensing deal with Microsoft. The deal will ultimately save the NHS $625 million in licensing fees, as well as requiring that Microsoft
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(InfoWorld) - Forty students from around the world got to pitch their software projects to Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates on Tuesday as part of a worldwide software development challenge. Gates as well as Craig Mundie, chief research and strategy officer at Microsoft, asked questions about and tried out software innovations from the students, who visited Microsoft's Redmond, Washington, headquarters from Egypt, Japan, France, Poland, Korea, the U.S., and the U.K. TheÂ Imagine CupÂ is Microsoft's worldwide software design competition for students. This year it challenged participating teams to build a product that can enable better education for everyone. It has attracted 100,000 students in 100 countries. The final competition will happen in Korea in August and Tuesday's event was an opportunity for some of the leading teams to present their ideas to Gates on Microsoft's campus. The group from Egypt designed software that would allow teachers to input test questions and automatically generate a test that is modified for students with special needs, such as dyslexia or attention deficit disorder. A math test, for example, suited for a dyslexic student would use images of houses rather than numbers in addition problems. The U.K. team's project would allow kids to learn software programming. Looking at an image of a fish bowl, a user could, for example, move one of the fish and then see on the side of the screen the code that makes the fish move. Gates called the software "fantastic." "The magic of software can do far more amazing things than people imagine," Gates said in his introduction to the event. Some of the other teams have developed social networking services that let students with similar interests from around the world meet online. The U.S. team had a service that allows students to help each other learn languages, improving their rankings on the site each time they help out another member. The Imagine Cup started five years ago and initially attracted 10,000 participants. Then, the contest had a more general technology focus. "It took off when we connected technology to a social cause," said Sanjay Parthasarathy, corporate vice president of Microsoft's Developer & Platform Evangelism Group. Last year students were challenged to focus on medical innovations. The winner of the first Imagine Cup, Tu Nguyen, spoke to the competitors visiting Microsoft's campus, urging them to let the judges see their passion for their projects. A student at the University of Nebraska when he won, Nguyen has since built a company, DocCenter, to commercialize his invention and recently received a $375 million investment. He developed a system for his parents' Vietnamese restaurant that lets wait staff take orders in English using handheld devices and then translates the orders into other languages understood by the cooks, displaying them on monitors in the kitchen. He built the system because his family relied on him for that translation service and he wanted to get out of the restaurant business. While some of the bright students progressing in the competition could be targets for jobs at high-tech companies like Microsoft, such companies say they are severely restricted in doing so by the limited number of worker visas made available by the government. U.S.Â lawmakers are currently wranglingÂ over new immigration legislation and high-tech companies are lobbying them to dramatically raise the number of visas the government issues for foreign workers and students. Currently, the government issues yearly 65,000 work visas plus an additional 20,000 visas for students with advanced degrees from U.S. universities.
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Microsoft chairman Bill Gates will sign a cooperation agreement with United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation on Wednesday to improve access to computers, the Internet and IT training in ...
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BRUSSELS  - The European Union's incoming antitrust chief said Friday she thought Microsoft chairman Bill Gates was doing a "good job" when she awarded him an honorary degree eight years ago as head of a Dutch business school.
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Microsoft magnate Bill Gates gives $750m to a vaccine fund he says will save millions of children's lives.
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MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. --Â  Microsoft Chairman and Chief Software Architect Bill Gates, during an appearance here Friday at the Computer History Museum, expressed no fear of Linux usurping Windows in the software industry.
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LOS ANGELES -- Microsoft chairman Bill Gates presented his company&#39;s vision of digital entertainment Tuesday, and the keyword was unified.
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Microsoft has added its support to the efforts of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (Unesco) to apply IT to education initiatives in developing countries.
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Microsoft will support the OpenID standard, Bill Gates and Craig Mundie said today at RSA.
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Microsoft chairman Bill Gates speaks at a meeting part of the &quot;Futurshow 3004&quot; technology fair, in Milan, Italy, Thursday, Nov. 18, 2004.
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The Bill &amp; Melinda Gates Foundation says it will expand its program to give people access to the Internet in libraries and other public places to two Eastern European countries and the African nation of Botswana.