Bill Gates funds scientists in unorthodox health research | Hacker News Reader

Bill Gates funds scientists in unorthodox health research

timesonline.co.uk

20 pointsnickb7 comments

Gates might have done a lot of unsound things in the past, but it's so nice to see he's using his money to help others, not to bathe in.

This is very exciting, and although some of these ideas sound crazy, something great might just come out of this.

What kind of unsound things?

Like running a criminal monopoly.

The problem with monopolies in the technical area is that they have a business reason to be incompatible (otherwise, they'll be cloned). That means they build over complex systems which have finicky compatibility problems.

For a typical example, see this: http://www.robweir.com/blog/2009/05/update-on-odf-spreadshee...

The monopolist's need for obscurity and complexity doesn't just cost the developing company money, it hurts people trying to use their systems or interact with their systems.

Also, it hurts the speed of technological change. When an area is owned by a monopolist, the development investments are moved to an area that isn't owned yet -- paid for by milking the safe income. That means the owned areas (like web browsers) languish.

In short, unethical monopolies hurts my life quality in multiple ways, since I get to work with worse systems (well, not that I work with Windows any longer).

Edit: Grammar, clarity.

Repeatedly lying in court, during a nationally televised trial was unsound. If he authorized presenting a fake video as evidence, that was "unsound", too.

i feel like this is the ycombinator of medical research. finance a revolutionary idea a bit (100k is not much for medicine), and see how it can grow. gotta love it

100k is very little for medical research. Scientific instruments are far far far far more expensive then desktop PCs. And labs are far far far far more expensive then garages.

I am still waiting for the day when med. tech. is commoditized the way IBM clones were, and the price of scientific research drops so low that almost anyone can dabble in it.

That was my first thought. I agree that $100k is low for medical research, but it is very similar to the YC idea: fund something for a few months to see if it can get legs. If it can, additional investment can be found.

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