Speech by Bill and Melinda Gates: Why We Are Impatient Optimists

October 27, 2009
Speech by Bill and Melinda Gates: Why We Are Impatient Optimists
“LIVING PROOF: Why we are Impatient Optimists” is a story about success. Millions of lives have been saved, improved and empowered because of the investments in global health made by the United States and its partners around the world.



We have seen the remarkable successes—living proof that these investments are paying off. There are millions more success stories yet to come.

In their presentation at Sidney Harmon Hall in Washington, D.C., Bill and Melinda Gates explained why they are Impatient Optimists, and encouraged their audience to share the proof and become Impatient Optimists as well.

The live comments section is now closed. However, we encourage you to continue the dialogue on our Facebook page, and on Twitter at #IOChat.









October 27, 2009
Remarks by Bill and Melinda Gates, co-chairs

ANNOUNCER: Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome Bill and Melinda Gates.

BILL GATES: Thank you.

Well, good evening. It's great to see all of you here. If you came for the hockey game, you need to go across the street. If you came for Shakespeare, you need to come another night.

A lot of times when people come to the capital, it's to criticize government programs and talk about how they should change. How often do you hear about a very large, bipartisan program that's working better than expected?

Well, tonight we want to talk about one. We're here to say two words tonight you don't often hear about government programs: Thank you.

Back in 2000, when Melinda and I started our foundation, we saw there were incredible inequities in health. There were millions of poor people dying of diseases that we'd cured in this country. And we decided to make that a major focus of our giving.

Now, about the same time, the U.S. government was starting to increase its own spending on global health. In fact, it's been increasing for each of the last 10 years.

And so we're here to thank America's leaders and America's taxpayers, and we want to show you the proof that these investments are really working. We want you to hear this good news and then help us share it with other people so that we can do even more.

MELINDA GATES: When it comes to global health, Bill and I are optimists, but I have to say that we are impatient optimists. We're optimistic because of the people that we meet on the ground, in the developing world, whose lives are absolutely transformed by American investments.

Just a couple of years ago, Bill and I visited an AIDS clinic in Durbin, South Africa, and we expected to see in this clinic what we see a lot of places in the developing world, an overworked staff, long waiting lines, not many drugs available.

But, in fact, we saw something completely different than that in this AIDS clinic. We saw a well trained staff, we saw an ample supply of medical drugs, and we saw patients being counseled about how to live with HIV. And this clinic was completely paid for by the American people.

So, as we left, we thought, my gosh, if every American could see what we see when we travel around now on the ground now, particularly in Africa, they would understand how amazing these investments have been. And yet when we come back home and you pick up the newspaper, you look on the Internet, you hear just the opposite, you hear all the negative stories.

So, we are optimists: The world is definitely getting better.

But it's not getting better fast enough, and it's certainly not getting better for everyone. For every two people who go on the antiretroviral treatments that we saw in this clinic in Durbin, South Africa, five more people become infected.

Now, we know how to prevent these infections, but they do happen anyway, and that's the kind of thing that makes us impatient optimists.

We want you to hear tonight the good news that we are seeing in global health so you'll be just as optimistic as we are. And it's why we're here launching this initiative called the Living Proof Project. It's about real people whose lives have been transformed and changed, people who are literally alive today because of the U.S. commitments. They are the living proof.

BILL GATES: I want to start by showing you what I think is the most beautiful picture I've ever seen. Not that one. No, not even that one. Not that one either. Yep, it's the chart.

This shows the progression of child mortality in the last 50 years. What you see is that in 1960, over 20 million children died before their fifth birthday. And it goes down every year until last year it was measured at under 9 million children dying.

Now, during this time the number of births and therefore the number of children rose by about 25 percent. So, we are reducing the number of deaths by more than a factor of two while there's even more children alive.

I think this is one of the greatest accomplishments of the last hundred years.

Now, why did it happen? There's two things that came together. The first is higher incomes that meant a better diet, better sanitation, and that accounts for part of it. The second was the smart spending on global health.

Now, the United States gives over a quarter of all the money given for global health. So, you might think, wow, this is a huge amount of money, it must be a large part of what the country spends. Well, actually it's a lot less than most people think. The overall federal budget, of course, is 3.6 trillion. That's the pie that we start with here. Foreign aid, which often people say is perhaps 10 or even 20 percent of the budget, is actually a bit less than 1 percent. And of that foreign aid, the piece that goes on global health, the things we'll talk about tonight, is around 8 billion. And so roughly that's .22 percent or a little less than a quarter of 1 percent.

Now, this number has gone up. Back in 2001, it was about a billion and a half. In 2005, it was just over 3 billion. So, it's reached its peak level, this 8 billion, this year.

Now, how does that compare to other givers? Well, our foundation, by making global health our top priority, and spending a bit over half of all the money we spend on it, we put in 1.8 billion a year, so less than a fifth as much overall for global health.

We're committed to global health. For our entire lives we'll be doing the best we can, spending the majority of the foundation's grants on this cause.

But it's America's investments and the investments that it causes others to make that are saving the large number of people, and so that's what we'll be talking about tonight.

Let's look at another really beautiful picture. This is a child receiving a vaccine. Right now, the child might not be too excited about it, but this is the best way to save lives that the world has.

Investments in vaccines have an incredible payoff. Let me give you some living proofs of this. Smallpox was a terrible disease. Back even in the 1950s, over 50 million cases a year were experienced around the globe. Now, a quarter of those people died. Of the remainder, many were scarred or made blind. So, it had an unbelievable disease burden.

There was actually a type of vaccine going all the way back to 1796. In fact, the very word vaccine comes from the gener work on trying to inoculate a young boy.

But that vaccine was not very reliable, it wasn't delivered to many people, and it wasn't until the 1970s that the world decided that we could get the vaccine out to everyone.

It was tough because the disease would break out in different places. And a brilliant public health expert, Bill Fahey, came up with the idea of looking at each outbreak and understanding who you had to vaccinate in that area, and very quickly going in and doing that, and that tactic worked. By 1977, this disease had been eradicated, the first and so far the only disease to be eliminated from the planet.

Well, this was actually an amazingly inexpensive activity. It was 130 million from the U.S. over the 10-year period. And because of that, no country has to spend on vaccinating people or treating them. The savings for the U.S. alone since the eradication is over 17 billion.

So, when you think, okay, would I spend 130 million over 10 years to save the 17 billion, and to save untold human misery as well, of course you would take that bargain. And that's why I say vaccines are a phenomenal value.

Now, smallpox is the only disease that we're completely done with. We have another disease which we're fairly close on, and that's polio.

Polio has been eliminated in the United States, and it's an amazing story. There's books like the "Polio: An American Story" by David Oshinsky that tell this story. It goes back to President Roosevelt and creating the March of Dimes and getting lots of contributions. It goes back to the great scientific work of Salk and Sabin and figuring out how to make vaccines safe and get them out in very large numbers.

And so today, we just take it for granted that no kids in the United States have this disease. It's been gone for over 30 years.

Now, there is progress around the world. The U.S. government is the biggest funder on this. Rotary International has really activated people and made this an important cause. And between their efforts and others, over 2 billion people have been immunized. That's a lot of polio drops.

And we are seeing progress. Let's take and show representation that is equal to how many people had polio back in 1988. So, we'll light up part of the audience and that represents that number. Then if we take how much polio we have today, it would be down a great reduction from this, it would be down literally to one person. Sorry. And so that's a 99 percent reduction.

We have four countries left where we have a substantial number of cases: India, Nigeria, Pakistan and Afghanistan. And unfortunately as the disease transmits there, it does tend to spread out, and so we get a small number of cases in other countries as well.

So, this is a very tough disease to go after. The cases are more silent than the smallpox cases. Many of them show no symptoms at all, and when you do see the symptoms, it's well after the disease has struck and perhaps spread to other children.

When I was in a slum outside of Delhi about a year ago, I met a nine month old named Hosmon (ph), who you see here, and Hosmon is a polio victim. I talked with her mother, and her mother talked about how Hosmon doesn't know it yet, but she'll never be able to go out and play with her friends, never kick a ball. And certainly when you see Hosmon, talk to her mother and think about the consequences, the reaction is we need to end this. We are so close, we cannot let up now. We have the pieces in place. We have vaccines, we have lab tests, we have surveillance infrastructure, and we've got a global commitment.

So, we're going to have to keep putting in resources for a number of years, and then when we achieve this triumph, it will invigorate the whole field of global health. Just like the smallpox elimination did, this will be another really incredible victory.

Well, now Melinda is going to come out and talk about another great chance to save a lot of lives, and that's rotavirus.

MELINDA GATES: So, in the early 1990s, Bill and I read a newspaper article about something called rotavirus, and we said, my gosh, what is this thing called rotavirus? We'd never heard about it. And yet when we read in this article, we learned that yet 500,000 children were affected by rotavirus and died every single year. We said, oh my gosh, this can't possibly be true, rotavirus, but if it is true, there must be something that we can do about it.

So, what is rotavirus? Rotavirus is a diarrheal disease that many, many children get in the poor world.

Now, children in our country get diarrhea and it's pretty simple. You go to the drugstore and you get an over the counter medication, or you might take them to the doctor, and they live. But that's not the case in the developing world, because poor children become severely dehydrated.

But because our country doesn't face rotavirus, there's really very little incentive to create a vaccine.

But I'm pleased to tell you tonight that we do have a new vaccine for rotavirus. It was developed by Dr. Paul Offit. He worked in his lab for over 26 years tirelessly on this vaccine, and he was supported by the pharmaceutical company Merck.

It's a fantastic success story. It's a case where we've created a vaccine for the poorest children on the planet, and it's just beginning to reach them.

And I'd like to show you a short video of what it's like to get a vaccine like that from Dr. Offit's lab in Pennsylvania out to a remote village in Nicaragua.

(Video segment.)

MELINDA GATES: So, you've just seen what it takes to get a vaccine into one country, and because of the U.S. investments and the commitments that we've made as a country, we're now going to start delivering it to every poor child that needs it in all the developing countries that need it around the world.

You know, often in the U.S. we talk about if somebody here saves one life that they're a hero. But what do you say to somebody who's already saved hundreds of lives, and possibly is on their way to saving hundreds of thousands of lives? And I think the only thing that I know what to say to that person is thank you. And so I'd like to have Dr. Paul Offit stand and be recognized tonight. Thank you, Paul.

Vaccines really are the great miracles of our lifetime, vaccines for smallpox, polio, measles. Since 1980, we've been able to bring down cases of diphtheria 93 percent, tetanus cases 85 percent, measles 93 percent.

So, where we have these vaccines, where we have this lifesaving advance, we need to deliver those to the developing world. And where we haven't yet invented the vaccines, we need to do that.

Now, some vaccines, like in the case of HIV/AIDS, are years or possibly even decades away. And so I think a right question would be tonight, in the interim is there still an argument for optimism, particularly when it comes to AIDS, and I would tell you yes there is.

There are 3 million people today in Africa receiving antiretrovirals. That's up from 155,000 people just five years ago. People are alive because of the investments as a country we've made in things like the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis, and Malaria, and because of the President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, otherwise known as PEPFAR.

PEPFAR has been incredibly generous. This is a case where American people recognized the fact that we could get these drugs in our country, but you couldn't get them in the developing world. And so what was happening? Poor people were dying. The American people said, poor people shouldn't die just because they can't afford these drugs.

Now, I'll let you in on a little known fact, and that is there has been a huge price decline in these drugs over the last two years, thanks to what's happened, and it's because of that drug price decline that America's generosity can have a much larger impact than it would have otherwise.

Now, there were many partners who were involved in this work, and I want to show you though first a little bit about what's happened with these costs of the drugs.

We put up a chart here that's going to show the cost of just first line drugs for antiretrovirals in Uganda. Now, this chart is going to show only the cost of the drugs. It doesn't include personnel costs or the cost to deliver the medications, but it's a great proxy for how much progress we've actually made.

So, in 1998, the cost for the drugs was $12,000 per person per year; can't buy many drugs like this for poor people in the developing world at that price. But as I said, many partners got involved in this and recognized that the price was too high. And pharma agreed eventually to two-tiered pricing; that is, a price for the developing world that would be much, much lower. So the cost dropped to $7,000 per person per year, then 2,000, then 140. Last year, it was less than $90.

So, a decade ago, where $12,000 would have bought enough drugs for one person, that now buys enough drugs for 130 people.

So, that's the chart and some of the statistics on AIDS, but I want to show you the human face of AIDS. I want you to see what we're dealing with here.

I've a film of a little girl and her name is Avelile, and she lives in South Africa.

Avelile is seven years old. And as you can see, she weighs about the same amount as a one year old. Her mother had HIV and she passed the virus onto her daughter during childbirth. And her mother died during childbirth. And Avelile became very, very ill, and quite frankly the nurses were not very hopeful about her condition.

Now, this is Avelile one year later. She got antiretrovirals and medical care. It's hard to believe this is the same little girl. She's not just alive, she's thriving. You can see why they call this the Lazarus effect.

So, this is what treatment does. This is what it does and what we have to build on.

But I have to tell you that the cost of the drugs has now leveled off at that $90 price that I showed you, and that makes it hard to fund treatment for everybody that needs it, because as I said earlier, for every two people that get infected who get the treatment, five more people are becoming infected.

So, we have to move upstream, we have to work on reducing the number of infections, and that means focusing on prevention.

Now, we haven't made as much progress so far on prevention as on treatment, but there is still some good news. We're starting to do a better job protecting babies. In 2004, just 10 percent of the mothers who were HIV positive when they were pregnant were able to get the lifesaving medicines they needed in low income countries, 10 percent. But in 2008, that number is 45 percent; that is women in the developing world can get the drugs they need to not pass on HIV during the childbirth process. So, there are thousands of children who won't go through what Avelile experienced.

So, with America's help we're also finding that the countries themselves are finding really innovative ways to prevent HIV, and education is a really key step here, because with education you can start to demystify HIV, both how you get it, how you can contract it, and what you do about it, and you ultimately break down the stigma about the disease.

I'd like to give you just one example tonight. In Namibia there's a five-man a cappella group named Vocal Motion. They started 10 years ago in their hometown of Rundu, and they won Namibia's version of American Idol.

And what they do through a PEPFAR funded program since 2006 is they tour Namibia singing prevention messages, and they performed before 85,000 students in Namibia. They're kicking off a short U.S. tour, and they're here tonight, as you see, and they've agreed to sing for us.

(Musical segment.)

MELINDA GATES: That was beautiful. I bet you didn't know HIV prevention could be so gorgeous.

So, Bill and I are hopeful about HIV, both because of what's happened so far, but also because of what's yet to come. And I would like to talk a little bit about yet what is to come.

Researchers have been working to simplify treatment. When the PEPFAR program first started, and when antiretrovirals were first getting out there early on, it took 16 pills a day when you were on antiretrovirals. That's now been simplified, and it's down to one pill a day. And the pills are much safer on the human body, and much easier for the patients to take. Now, the next step, of course, would be if you could get an injection where you just got it once a month, because that would, of course, even more simplify the treatment, and the more you can simplify the treatment for people, the more they're going to adhere to it. The more they'll tolerate it. They'll reduce transmission, and ultimately, of course, we'll save lives.

On the prevention side, there are also a few other reasons to be optimistic. And one of them that you might not know about is male circumcision. Research has found in the last couple of years that, in fact, a male can be protected by up to 60 percent if he's circumcised from not contracting the virus from his female partner. Now, if we had a vaccine that was that effective, we would be jumping for joy. But we are working as a community to make sure that male circumcision happens, particularly in Sub-Saharan Africa.

Researchers, though, are also working on pills, microbicide gels, indirectable drugs, because we need to have everything we can find to work on protection against this virus. Right now, there are seven clinical trials going on of drugs that are being tested against high risk cases of HIV, and we'll start to see the results of those trials in 2011.

Now, of course, a vaccine is the ultimate prevention tool. We are making slow, but real progress. Scientists have gained the crucial insights, the characteristics of this virus, and how it invades the immune system. And every time they learn something about this, it makes it possible to have a more promising vaccine candidate come forward. You may have heard about the trials that we all learned about from Thailand last month, the 16,000 healthy volunteers that participated in that trial. It showed that a vaccine could actually provide partial protection against HIV infections, and that was an important advance. That advance was funded almost entirely by the U.S. Government.

So, let me be clear, this virus is ingenious. An effective vaccine could be years, it might realistically be decades away. But American tax dollars are contributing to progress where not long ago there was completely a sense of hopelessness. So, we need to keep making these investments.

BILL GATES: HIV is the most recent disease to affect millions. The oldest is probably malaria. There are Chinese medical texts from over 5,000 years ago that talked about malaria. And the symptoms are the same today as they were back then, chills, fever, weakness, inability to work or eat. And if you're undernourished, or quite young, there's a good chance it will kill you. In fact, over 800,000 deaths a year are caused by malaria, and an additional burden from all the suffering from malaria.

Now, this disease used to be all over the world, not just in the poor countries. In the United States, it was most severe in the deep south, but it was also significant here in Washington, D.C. In fact, there was a proposal that a wall at the height of the Washington Monument be built around the entire city to somehow block it out.

So, if you look at 1900, the map of where malaria was, it was basically everywhere. In fact, it wasn't until a bit after 1900, that a British military doctor figured out that it was transmitted by these mosquito bites.

So, this terrible disease received a lot of attention, and by 1970, the rich countries had made unbelievable progress. In fact, it was eliminated from the rich countries.

How did this happen? We had DDT as an insecticide. We had a number of drugs that were quite effective. But once it was eliminated from these rich countries, the energy dropped off. It was there in the poor countries, but there wasn't that kind of market demand. There wasn't the incentive.

DDT had side effects when it was used broadly particularly in agricultural applications, and there started to be resistance, both to the insecticides, and the popular drugs. And so government funding went away from these programs, and malaria, in fact, reached its peak death toll subsequent to 1970.

So, let's look at where we are today. Well, in the last decade, new energy has gone into working on malaria, particularly investments by the U.S. Government. There are new organizations, like Malaria No More, Nothing But Nets, that are drawing in people to help with this cause.

When Melinda and I a few years ago had a meeting of malaria experts, we raised in the discussion the idea of could it possibly be eradicated, you know, starting, reducing the map, but eventually getting all the countries. And people felt, yes, that is something that could eventually be done. The strategy today you see on this map is to take the countries in yellow, and go all out to try to achieve local elimination. In the countries in red where it's more difficult, the idea is to dramatically reduce the number of deaths, to get new drugs out there, and get other new interventions. So, we have a long way to go, but we are making substantial progress for the first time since the 1970s.

The American funding is paying for a lot of things. It's paying for indoor spring, which is using DDT, but in a very focused way. It's paying for bed nets that are very, very effective. And between 2004 and 2008, Africa received over 190 million bed nets. They still need more, but that gets you to one or every four people in Sub-Saharan Africa, and in the years ahead we'll reach total coverage.

Now, when you go in with these interventions, what's the effect? It wasn't known for sure. There was a lot of hope that if you scaled up for a big community, and did multiple things, that it would really bring the cases down. Well, in the last three years, that's what we've seen. In Rwanda, the cases are down 45 percent. In Cambodia, they're down over 50 percent, in Zambia also over 50 percent; the Philippines even more, 76 percent, and Eritrea, down over 80 percent. And even in those countries, there's more that can be done.

So, I'm optimistic about this disease. We have not only the U.S. Government, but now more nonprofits, we have drug companies pitching in to help out with various things, the cost of the key drugs that are very effective will continue to go down quite a bit. There's great work going on on a vaccine. In fact, there's a partially effective vaccine going into late stage trials, and hopefully would be available as a new tool within the next five years. And there's lots of research that isn't proven yet, but some of which will give us new things. The idea of spatial repellents that don't require the indoor walls, that it just is like a chemical window screen, and it keeps the mosquitoes out.

We're doing computer modeling, very sophisticated approach, to understand exactly what we need to do to achieve these eliminations, and that's guiding us so that our investments are most effective.

It's hard to predict when an eradication might be possible. Year by year, we're going to make progress, and my work at Microsoft taught me that when you're making year by year progress, sometimes people can expect too much in the short-term, but they often underestimate what can happen as a result of those long-term efforts. And so here I would say, it can't be eradicated in the short-term, but in the long-term I do think this is a significant possibility.

So, let me take some of the things that Melinda and I have talked about, and summarize. Smallpox was eradicated; polio, down 99 percent, still some work to do, but a great chance of eradication there; measles, down 93 percent; AIDS, four times as many mothers receiving these preventative drugs; and with malaria, many things including the 190 million bed nets out there in just the last for years.

Now, America is the biggest contributor to every one of these things. Europe is also very generous. In fact, I believe that generosity here leads to more generosity. The U.S. has the biggest economy, as we step up to our part of this it really is very helpful at maintaining and increasing the donations that come from others.

So, the conclusion here I think is pretty inescapable. The spending that the United States does on health for the world's poorest people is the best investment we make for improving and savings lives, bar none. The way to reduce the number of children who die is to support this spending on global health.

Now, there are people who even look at what we've talked about and they have doubts about whether this will work out, whether it's an appropriate thing to do. There are skeptics everywhere. Some of them might even be here in Washington, D.C. So, we want to address some of the more common arguments that we run into.

The first one is really about corruption. After all, if you look back at the history of aid some of it was not done very carefully, some of it ended up in the pocket of the local dictator. So, why is this different? Well, here, particularly for the health interventions, we can measure the impact. We can see that vaccines are really getting out to those children. W e can make sure that the resources are not being taken away from the desired impact.

Global Fund is a great example of this. They do independent auditing. They bring in people like KPMG or PriceWaterhouse, those firms do reports that are published up on the Global Fund Web site. And, in fact, in several cases they've found places where the money wasn't being used in the best way, and that money was cut off. So, there is real accountability.

There are other measures that we're using to make all the groups who work on these things more accountable. The United Nations, which historically had not been that coordinated in thinking about how these things come together, adopted in 2000 the Millennium Development Goals. And those are clear-cut, very ambitious goals to show that these new efforts are making a difference. It measures things like the bed nets and vaccinations and it can be independently verified.

Another mechanism that's been used for broad development grants is the Millennium Challenge Corporation. And here you actually have to qualify on a number of criteria before you're even eligible to get the aid. You write an overall compact, you show how it's going to have a strong return, how it can be sustainable. And so this rewards good governance, it rewards economic freedom. In fact, there's many countries, even before they got the pact, or even who didn't get the pact, who looked at these measures and were able to take what would otherwise be unpopular measures and drive them through and therefore benefit their country, even independent of their opportunity to get aid.

Another skeptic would ask, what's the long-run picture, will we have to give this aid forever? Are we even creating a sense of dependence? Doesn't the aid actually in some ways hold the incentive structure back and prevent them from developing their economies? Well, certainly, the goal here is to help countries become self-sufficient. That is how aid in the past has really been the most impactful.

If you go back to the 1960s the set of recipient countries for aid was much, much longer than it is today, almost double the number of countries. It included money and Peace Corps volunteers going to Brazil, or Thailand, or Egypt. Today these countries are not net recipients of aid. Brazil donates money and expertise to global health. Thailand actually is paying back the loans it originally received for aid. So, aid done properly can help a country unleash their potential.

Certainly, improving the health of a country with vaccines, and bed nets allows the country to do a lot better. Tanzania was able to double its health budget since the 1990s, because by improving health there was more economic activity. Poor health blocks economic activity. So, health is really a necessary thing. If you don't improve it in a country you're never going to get self-sufficient. If you do improve health, then you've taken one of the key steps that's always been there to be on this road to constant improvement and being self-sufficient.

So, I think as we look ahead we'll see several things. We will see countries graduate. We will see them become self-sufficient. We'll also see the number of people in these countries who need aid go down. So, I expect, like we've seen in the past, the number of countries, say, in just the next two decades, that we give aid to, we will be able to reduce it by half.

MELINDA GATES: I'd like to address another comment that we often hear, another skepticism. And that is, if we improve health, aren't we just going to have more people in the world? We can't afford to risk over-population. Quite frankly, this is something Bill and I worried about a lot when we started working in global health. In fact, we initially focused on reproductive health, and we wondered when we moved to these other global health areas, because we said, if there are more people on earth it's going to be a lot harder to educate them, to sustain the environment.

So, we even asked ourselves, don't these investments make things worse off for the world? But, I think we should look at the data. I'm going to put up here a chart from Hans Rosling. He's a brilliant professor of public health at the Karolinska Institute in Sweden.

This chart shows the relationship between health, as measured by life expectancy, and family size, as measured by the number of children per women. In a minute we're going to plot every country based on where it was back in 1960, and you're going to see two clusters. In the upper left quadrant you're going to see rich countries with good health and small families, and in the lower right quadrant you're going to see the rest of the world with poor health and large families.

So, let's add the countries now. Each country here is represented by a bubble, and the size of the bubble represents the population of that country. And you'll notice two clusters: on the upper left developed countries, good health, small family, and on the lower right you see the developing countries, poor health, and large families.

We've marked here India and Bangladesh in particular so you could follow those countries, and in a moment we're going to animate this chart, and show you what's changed since 1960.

Health is going to improve, life expectancy overall is going to go up. But, if better health causes larger families India and Bangladesh should go straight up on this chart, because you'd expect these countries to just continue having these large families. But, let's see what happens. The poor countries don't move straight up, they go up, and to the left, because women choose to have smaller families when they know more children of theirs will survive into their adulthood years.

So, by 2007 you get this huge cluster of countries up in the left-hand corner, with good health and small families. Now, this is a result of health investments that have been made. When people have smaller families it's easier for them to feed their children, it's easier for them to send them to school, they make more money, the children have better nutrition, the economy in that country improves and life by every single measure gets better.

Now, there's one last counter-argument that I think I should mention, and that is the counter-argument of, it's not all good news, is it? And I have to say, unfortunately, this one is exactly right. There's on area that we've made very little progress on as a world, and that is keeping mothers and very young babies healthy. We have made, as Bill pointed out earlier, amazing progress on child mortality, that is the deaths of children under the age of five-years-old. But, in that first 30 days of life, that newborn period, we've made very little progress at all.

There are still 4 million babies that die in that first 30 days, most of them are in poor countries, and three-quarters of those babies die in the very first week of life. Many of these deaths happen in rural, remote parts of Africa. And what we hear from the parents when you go out and visit them is they don't even name their babies, because they tell us it's just a little bit less heartbreaking to bury a baby that has no name.

In addition to these newborn deaths, there are half-a-million mothers that die every single year in childbirth. Now that, alone, is a tragedy. But when you think of what happens to that family, and how it destabilizes the family, and the father, and the other children and that newborn, it's absolutely horrific. Without a mother, the family often can fall apart.

So, I would like to introduce tonight Liya Kebede. She's a fashion model. You might have heard of her from Ethiopia. In 2005, she was named WHO's Global Ambassador for Maternal, Newborn, and Child Health. And she's seen the real challenges, and progress in Ethiopia on these newborn and maternal issues.

(Video segment.)

MELINDA GATES: So, Liya is here with us tonight. Liya, will you stand and be recognized. The video you've just seen shows why there's been very little progress on these newborn births. Conditions for giving birth are very, very tough in these rural areas. But we do have a chance to turn things around, and it starts with health workers. We have to have people, that is that staff these very remote health clinics, and who can visit expecting mothers at home, and give them the basic medical supplies that they need. And countries like Ethiopia are starting to make this happen. They're seeing the benefits. I visited Ethiopia twice in the last 12 months, and I was completely blown away to see these 30,000 health extension workers that they have trained, and these 15,000 remote rural health clinics where a woman can come in and deliver her baby, or the rural health worker can go out and visit the woman in her home. These new workers are just starting to make a difference in Ethiopia.

Most newborns die of a few basic conditions. They die from severe infections. Often a woman will wash her baby right after it's born, and that can introduce an abrasion, and then an infection through the skin. Many of these babies die of hypothermia. And we know what one of the main causes is of mothers dying during childbirth, and that's hemorrhaging. So, these health workers who work in these remote places, they don't have to know everything about pregnancy, they just have to know the key things that can make a really, really big difference in tackling this. And they have to be able to treat those conditions.

Now, some of the solutions are actually really very simple, and they're cultural. And that is, teaching a woman not to wash her baby when it's first born. Keep the vernix on the baby, and to wrap the baby up, and keep the baby warm. That goes a very long way in terms of preventing hypothermia. A mother who breastfeeds her baby right away gives the baby's immune system a chance to begin to develop, and to work.

There are also two very inexpensive drugs that can prevent postpartum bleeding for a mother so that she doesn't hemorrhage during childbirth. One of them they get when they come into a remote health clinic, or another one we're looking at eventually being able to deliver to the woman so she could take it home with herself. And if there's not someone to attend to the birth, she could give it to her, herself. And it's less than a dollar.

So, Bill and I are optimists, but sometimes the word "impatient" quite frankly feels too polite to me. We're optimistic, because the world knows what the main causes are of these maternal and newborn deaths. And we've developed low-cost solutions to these things. But the solutions won't solve anything if we don't deliver them to the mothers who need them.

Every human life is precious, and a child's death is absolutely tragic. So, whenever we see an urgent need, and we're not meeting it, it can be really, really frustrating for us, but it can also be deeply motivating.

BILL GATES: One of the big reasons for these huge inequities is that he people who see the worst of it don't have the resources to defeat it. And the people with those resources don't often see the worst of it. We have one last piece of footage that we'd like to show you, and this was shot in a remote part of Tanzania. It's a bit hard to watch, but I think it will give you an even better sense of what we're up against.

(Video segment.)

BILL GATES: I've seen that video several times now and it doesn't get easier to watch. All Shayla needed was malaria medicine, and that costs just a little bit more than what most of us would pay for a cup of coffee every day. Fortunately, most of us have never been through what that mother did. If it happened here in large numbers there would be a large outcry, the government would act in ways to stop it. The market demand would be large, and it would drive a lot of brilliant research, and resources of all types around the country would be brought to bear. But, Shayla wasn't born in the United States, and that made all the difference.

Now, I'm optimistic that we can make progress. We've got continuing tragedies like Shayla, and that gives us a sense of urgency. We've got great science. We've got more resources, and that gives us the optimism. So, that's why Melinda says we are impatient optimists.

Let's just look at one metric of this, which is that child mortality figure. We talked about how it's gone down from 20 million to under 9 million in less than 50 years. My view is that it won't be too difficult to more than cut it in half again, and this time a lot faster, in well under 15 years. How would this work? What would it take? Fortunately, a few interventions make a dramatic difference. And so we actually looked, did some modeling working with some people at John's Hopkins, and tried out different scenarios on the big interventions. If there's no new investments then, because we have additional births the death rate actually goes up a little bit, to 9.3 million. So, let's take four interventions and apply them one at a time and see this cumulative effect.

First, let's take the vaccines we have and get them out there in a widespread fashion. That brings us down to 8.3 million, a big difference. Now, let's take malaria and get all the interventions out there in large numbers, and here again a big difference. Now, we're down to 7.7 million.

Next, let's take some of the care for newborns that Melinda talked about, and get that out to a significant part of the world. And there we see a huge reduction. We're down to 6.3 million. And finally, let's take two of the diseases that we have new vaccines and drugs for, the diarrhea and pneumonia, and apply those on a global basis. And those four steps alone get us down to this target of 5 million deaths. Now, new inventions, faster ways of getting this out can beat what I'm showing on this chart. So, this is well within the realm of possibility.

Now, how is this all going to come together? Well, we have countries that are leading examples of all of those things I talked about. Rwanda practices like breastfeeding have allowed them to reduce newborn mortality. In Ghana they've gotten their vaccine coverage up to very high percentages. So, what it takes is the continued investments, and sharing best practices so that all the countries become as good as the ones that are leading the way.

Now, our Foundation will be doing everything we can as part of this, funding research, working closely with the U.S. government and others. We're excited that we have more foundations, other nonprofits. We've got the pharmaceutical companies, a broad range of actors that see this as very important. The U.S. government role, though, is absolutely central. Foundations like ours can do some research funding, we can test pilot programs. But, it takes the capacity, the resources, the expertise, the leadership of the rich world countries, with the United States doing the largest share, to get out there and deliver these interventions that will save the millions of lives.

That's why I think it's important to get the word out that these investments work, that even in tough times where there no doubt are going to be tradeoffs that have to be made in government spending, that these investments are so effective that they're worth continuing.

MELINDA GATES: We found that people are interested in supporting global health when they know that it works. And that is why we need to share the proof, the living proof of what is working, and that U.S. investments save lives. So, through this living proof project we want to attract great storytellers, filmmakers, and writers to bring their talents to bear on this work. In fact, this will be a bit of my own focus over the next couple of years.

So, we've invited you here, because you can help. Your opinions are important to what shapes the nation's beliefs. And so, we've given you each a DVD tonight that has some of the stories that we showed you here. Those are also available on the Web site, Livingprojectproof.org. And we simply ask that you do one thing, and that is if you believe what you've heard tonight is to take those stories and share them with one person whose opinion you respect. That would go actually a very long way. If we have convinced you of anything, we hope that we've convinced you tonight that America's global health investments are, in fact, saving lives.

BILL GATES: Some say that the United States has a responsibility to do this, because we're the richest country. And I'd certainly agree with that. But, I think saving lives goes beyond that, and it connects to something that's fundamental in the unique beliefs of this country, our belief in equality. The country was founded on this idea, that everyone deserves a chance to make the most of their talents.

Melinda and I were very lucky to be born here, and we had a chance to take advantage of all of our abilities. And every child, no matter where they're born, should have that opportunity. So, investing in health really makes a profound statement about our belief in equality, not just for Americans, but for everyone in the world.

The United States has already done a lot for the health of the world's poorest people. We've proven that it works. We've proven we have the skills, knowledge, and the resources to do even more. Tonight, you've seen the living proof. Now, please help us share it.

Thank you, and good night.

WHAT STOPS POPULATION GROWTH?

What stops population growth? from Gapminder Foundation on Vimeo.

About this Video
Hans Rosling is once again debunking myths. Watch this high-definition video to find out what population growth really is.

KIPP

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

The Most Amazing Cinematic Car Crash Ever

Topps releases mind-bending webcam hologram baseball cards

The Fordson Snow Motor

Dual Electronics’ XGPS300 adds a little GPS to your iPod touch

Nope, I’ve never heard of Dual Electronics either, but it looks like that’s about to change. Well, it did, in fact, just change, technically speaking. Let’s just get on with it. The XGPS300 is a normal looking cradle-dealie for the iPod touch that grants it the ability to use GPS. Handy, yes. It should be out sometime in the first quarter of this year.

It’s not too hard a concept to explain: you stick your iPod touch inside the cradle and then you’re able to use real life GPS applications. (A special version of NavAtlas will be released alongside the little guy, but you’ll be able to use any GPS app you want. Remember, this is real GPS, not phony GPS; any App should work.)

The Antikythera Mechanism — The Amazing Ancient Greek Device Decoded

Did you find this year’s new technology presented at CES boring? The Antikythera device has been described as being so sophisticated for a 2100 year old machine that it’s discovery 100 years ago was like discovering a functioning Buick in the middle ages. Recent technological advances in 3D imaging have allowed us to see that that may be putting it mildly.




The Antikythera Mechanism — The Amazing Ancient Greek Device Decoded

his video shows what happened when we recently took several touchscreen systems out for a test drive:

DIY Touchscreen Analysis from MOTO Development Group on Vimeo.

Video – If Air Travel Worked Like Health Care

Tasty Low-Cal Treats From 'Hungry...

Lisa Lillien explains how to eat what you want without the calories and guilt.

Winter Hazard: Snow-Covered Traffic...

LED lights don't emit heat to melt snow on traffic lights, hiding signals.

How to Prevent Cancer

Dr. David Servan-Schreiber discusses integrative medicine in preventing cancer.

How Not To Look Like a Jerk While Wearing a Bluetooth

This is Part 1 of 7 for Flash Developers, Using Unity 3d.

DESCRIPTION

This is Part 1 of 7 for Flash Developers, Using Unity 3d.

http://waterxbread.blogspot.com/2009/06/unit3d.html

1) Capabilities
2) Basic Scripting
3) Prefabs
4) Mouse Interaction
5) Tutorial 5
6) Basic Physics
7) Basic Collision Detection

推薦一個不錯的Unity教學網站Unity Tutorials，裡面有七篇寫給Flash開發者的教學影片，有興趣的朋友可以看看

Capabilities http://www.unitytutorials.com/video/54/r-h--1-of-7
Basic Scripting http://www.unitytutorials.com/video/60/r-h--2-of-7
Prefabs http://www.unitytutorials.com/video/59/r-h--3-of-7
Mouse Interaction http://www.unitytutorials.com/video/58/r-h--4-of-7
Tutorial 5 http://www.unitytutorials.com/video/57/r-h--5-of-7
Basic Physics http://www.unitytutorials.com/video/56/r-h--6-of-7
Basic Collision Detection http://www.unitytutorials.com/video/55/r-h--7-of-7

Thank You Richard

The crash can happen again Pt4

The crash can happen again Pt4

Robert Johnson: Nothing in current financial reform legislation will stop another crash

Financial New Year's Resolutions

Three tips for making the most of your money in 2010.

The World Welcomes 2010

Russia's Leaders In Red Square Dance

This is kind of Russian folk musik called "Chastushki". They consist of small quatrains with 4 short lines in each.
1st:
Medvedev:
It became a fashion
To resume the year
Putin:
So we will take a turn
And resume it.
2nd:
P: I was driving Jak Rogg in (president of International olympic commettee) in Sochi (Russian city- host of winter olympic games of 2014)
In Niva (Russian car- implied that it is not safe to drive)
M: And his desire to find faults dissapeared.

Russian TV viewers get a surprise with a cartoon duet from their President and Prime Minister immediately after Dmitiri Medvedev's official New Year's Eve address.

Russia's Ruling Pair Dance Cartoon TV Duet

4:07pm UK, Friday January 01, 2010

Julian March, Sky News Online
Russian TV viewers were treated to a surprise cartoon duet from their President and Prime Minister immediately after the latter's official New Year's Eve address.

In the two-and-a-half-minute animation, caricatures of President Dmitri Medvedev and his sidekick Prime Minister Vladimir Putin reviewed their year in a jaunty ditty while playing the accordion and tambourine on Red Square.

The ruling pair take turns to sing lines in the song, and when one of the men embellishes his performance with a flourish, he is immediately congratulated by his partner.

At one point the judo black belt Putin slaps his own bottom with his tambourine.

Russian President Dmitri Medvedev and Prime Minister Vladimir Putin in a cartoon duet reviewing 2009

Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin in an unusual guise. Pic from 'Mult Lichnosti'

Russians are more used to seeing him hunting with a gun or sitting in the cockpit of a fighter jet.

When President Medvedev wishes the Russian people "A Happy New Year for the second time", his predecessor gently reminds him that "one of us has done that nine times already".

There's an indication that this comedic appearance was not just a one-off.

Russian President Dmitri Medvedev and Prime Minister Vladimir Putin in a cartoon duet reviewing 2009

Putin & Medvedev indulge in a bit of cossack dancing. Pic from 'Mult Lichnosti'

The pair have been added to the cast of Mult Lichnosti, a twice-weekly show poking fun at political figures which runs on Russia's state-owned Channel One.

The station's director, Konstantin Ernst, said that he was not obliged to consult the Kremlin before developing his latest characters.

"We have to be careful," he told the New York Times.

"One shouldn't do anything insulting.

"In any case, our authors have no desire to insult them."

PC Magazine_ November 2006 _Special Double Issue_

PC Magazine_ November 2006 _Special Double Issue_ -

Charlie Rose - Tom Friedman 11/20/09

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ajzwSd03a7c


Charlie Rose - Tom Friedman 11/20/09

Charlie Rose - Mark Pincus 12/28/09

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Exi-n5hXZQY

Charlie Rose - Mark Pincus 12/28/09

How Saint Nick Met a Space Alien

An out of this world story about Santa Claus's bizarre encounter in the sky.

Hitting the Waves: Santa Claus gets wet and wild

About 360 Cities

in szeged



We're dedicated to:
Promoting geo-referenced, interactive panoramic photography and its best practitioners around the world. Check out our World panorama map and Photographer map
Hosting virtual tours of hotels, restaurants and tourist resorts and enabling members to create new tours from their panoramas. More on Virtual Tours
Instroducing the world high-resolution, immersive imagery to an even wider audience of visitors through our content layers on Google Earth
Providing the best-anywhere platform for publishing panoramic photography for our unique and talented network of the world's best panoramic photographers. Why join 360 Cities?
Taking you to new places in surprising ways. See for yourself.

李安：勇敢面對自己

http://video.cw.com.tw/pages/public/movie/player/tv_player.jspx?id=40288ae71addaf66011ade11b88001f7


李安，台灣人的驕傲。從推手到色戒，李安為什麼始終對自己的電影充滿自信？面對人生的挑戰時，李安用什麼來對抗內心的脆弱？對李安來說，成長是什麼？人生最重要的部份又是什麼？（採訪：蘇育琪）

Talks Rory Bremner's one-man world summit

About this talk

Scottish funnyman Rory Bremner convenes a historic council on the TEDGlobal stage -- as he lampoons Gordon Brown, Barack Obama, George W. Bush and a cast of other world leaders with his hilarious impressions and biting commentary. See if you can catch a few sharp TED in-jokes.

Cheers勇往職前，贏在未來講座：豐富生命的旅行

Cheers勇往職前，贏在未來講座：豐富生命的旅行

China phone rental and travel assistance

斯坦福大學國際管理學院斯隆 (Sloan) 項目成員來華期間使用 YOYOOR 智能 GPS 手機

杭州2008年7月17日電 /新華美通/ -- 久負盛名的斯坦福大學國際管理學院斯隆 (Sloan) 項目成員日前來到了中國，開始他們為期兩周的中國內地-越南-香港之行。這些企業管理學員首先到訪了北京和上海，參觀了一些國內重要企業，包括聯想、康明斯和寶鋼總部。在此期間，擔當“陪同”任務的是全新的 YOYOOR 智能 GPS 手機。

對處理斯坦福大學學員們繁忙的行程， YOYOOR 租賃手機 ( http://www.yoyoor.com ) 遊刃有餘 -- 該手機擁有強大的數據信息支持繫統和全面的城市指南，使用者可以便捷地找到關於交通、購物、旅遊、餐飲等各方面的資訊。實惠的本地通話費取代了國際漫遊的高昂成本，大大節省了通話費。而讓學員們感到最安心的是，YOYOOR 呼叫中心為他們提供了中英文雙語的專業客戶服務，使得完全不會中文的他們隨時可以獲得翻譯服務，克服了文化、語言上的障礙，真正做到了“一機在手，溝通暢通無阻”，YOYOOR GPS 定位服務更保障了學員們出行的安全便利。

其中一位學員評價說，“手機很棒，客戶服務尤其出色，下次來中國還會考慮租用。”學員的導遊則發現手機的群組管理很有用，他說，“我在整個行程中一直使用 YOYOOR 手機和成員們保持聯繫，發布重要信息，保證每個人都知道行程中的一些臨時的變化。”

隨著奧運會的日益臨近，YOYOOR 希望能為大量湧入國內的海外遊客提供高質量的、快捷周到的服務，同時也希望能成為國內各會議組織者和外事機構的合作伙伴，提高其客戶滿意度和業界的國際形像。

YOYOOR 公司成立於2007年，總部在美國舊金山，目前在中國各大城市設有分支機構。它專為海外來華人士提供智能移動電話租賃及配套服務，它提供的服務包括：智能手機租賃，用實惠的本地通話費取代高昂的國際漫遊費用，為客戶節約大量話費。YOYOOR 手機上裝有 YOYOOR 自主開發的高科技軟件，能為客戶提供全面的城市指南和 GPS 定位服務，更重要的是它有一個功能強大的呼叫中心，中心的服務人員使用標准的英語全年為客戶提供各種服務，以滿足他們在中國的交通、住宿、旅遊、餐飲、購物，資訊等方面的需求。





Mobile Tourism


In China, the world’s largest mobile-phone market by users, the usefulness of your handset goes far beyond making and receiving calls.

Text the name of a restaurant to a listings magazine and you’ll receive the address. Buy an air ticket and the confirmation number and flight times will be sent to your phone. Don’t speak Chinese? Text the phrase you want to know and services such as Moka.com will reply with a translation.

And the market is diversifying. In March 2008, CIB reported on i-Vision (尚视互动), pioneers of mobile TV in China, and in the October issue on the battle being fought among the developers of mobile phone operating systems (OS), which may well see its most significant action on Chinese soil.

But the incompatibility of networks and OS means many US cell phones don’t work in China, presenting an often unexpected challenge to travelers, while opening up a niche for companies offering mobile phone-based services for foreigners faced with the particularly obstructive language barrier and challenges in everyday communication. The speed of technological advancement, however, means that these firms face a challenge keeping up with the latest equipment, as well as the wants and needs of users.

SMART IDEA

Yoyoor, a Hangzhou-based startup founded in 2007 by Cybernaut (China) Capital (塞伯乐中国投资), is taking full advantage of the incompatibility issue and the language barrier by offering Nokia smartphone rental to visitors. Each handset features a GPS positioning and navigation system, a comprehensive in-phone listings guide covering several cities, a hotline to a 24-hour English-language call center for help and orientation, and international direct dialing. It also doubles as a high-resolution digital camera.

Consulting the locals also becomes a more plausible possibility thanks to the phone’s integrated Chinese phrasebook and dictionary which, though limited, contain useful phrases that appear in Chinese characters and can be played back, avoiding the embarrassment of not being understood at the second or third attempt.

Such services, says Yoyoor’s vice-president of marketing and business development, Ray Zhu, are designed to make traveling in China as painless an experience as possible. “We called the company Yoyoor because the phone is like a yo-yo — you carry it in your hand, it is magic and fun — but it also makes your life easier and safer as a traveler,” he explains.

Certainly, Yoyoor’s services may embolden travelers to pursue a more scenic route not planned in their hotel room the night before, safe in the knowledge that they can consult the GPS or dial the call center if they get lost. Those who have tried to unfold a map on a windy street corner, or who are reluctant to use a guidebook for fear of appearing conspicuously new to a city, will also no doubt prefer the convenience and even the street- credibility of consulting a smartphone.
Not all of its services are as user-friendly as they seem, however. In navigation mode, the phone’s GPS system shows the user’s present location, as well as a list of restaurants, bars, banks and attractions close by. Doing this returns a long list of businesses – performing such a search at a random intersection in Beijing, for example, produced 2,000 listings. Another downside is the lack of insurance. Lose your Yoyoor phone or have it stolen and you are liable to pay for a replacement, which is likely to set you back almost USD 600.

REVENUE STREAMS

As well as phone rental and international calls — Yoyoor offers different packages, from a daily USD 12 rental fee with free outgoing local calls to pay-as-you-go packages — the company’s main revenue source comes from advertising, in the form of messages sent to the user promoting local restaurants or bars, as well as commission on flights booked or restaurant reservations made via the call center.

Strategic partnerships have already been signed with network operator China Mobile (中国移动), which offers Yoyoor lower airtime rates and volume discounts, and Air China (中国国际航空), which has given Yoyoor booths at Beijing Capital Airport. China-bound passengers flying from New York’s JFK, San Francisco and Los Angeles also receive a Yoyoor boarding-pass holder to enhance awareness of the service.

Since its launch in June 2008, Yoyoor has achieved moderate success, and now attracts more than 300 phone rentals a month. However, CEO Joss Shen is keen to broaden the company’s service offering. Its next project is Yofone, “a basic handset that is free to use for local calls but international call will be charged to your [hotel] room,” Shen explains. “Hotels will then decide whether they want to sell advertising to target their clients in the form of SMS, the revenue from which will be shared with Yoyoor.”

The service will be launched in Hangzhou in the coming months and will expand to Shanghai later in the year. In the long-term, Shen hopes to roll it out across China, and eventually overseas, as well as offering a similar service for Chinese travelers abroad.

DOWNLOAD DILEMMA

However, with Chinese networks poised to roll out 3G technology and working on compatibility with US handsets, and with an increasing number of mobile users now owning sophisticated smartphones — sales totaled 36.5 million units worldwide in Q3 2008, an 11.5% year-on-year increase according to IT research and advisory firm Gartner — the market for handset rentals seems set to diminish.

Zhu is aware that the company’s long-term future may well lie in offering its software and services as a downloadable package, rather than forcing users to rent a separate handset while they are in China. “People’s phones are dear to them, they like to use them and hang on to them, so we have to make all of our software compatible with all the different operating systems,” Zhu adds.

WHO YA GONNA CALL?

One firm that has a head-start in terms of offering services to existing phone owners is One2Call, a Dutch-owned company headquartered in Singapore, which offers telephone-based interpretation, personal-assistant and concierge services to foreigners in China.

One2Call owns and maintains a database covering 15 major cities in China and listings for more than 20,000 merchants, from bars and restaurants to shops and airlines. Included in the many details are the longitude and latitude, to allow for detailed proximity-based searches for export to handheld GPS devices, particularly useful for smartphone users.

According to managing director Harm Hindriks, “This is a very exciting time − 2008 was boom-time for us and I think 2009 will be even better.” He adds that the service is aimed not only at visitors, but also at “longer-term expatriates who have been here some time but who, without being disrespectful, have not learned the language sufficiently, like myself. I often use the service in fact.”

At a time of corporate downsizing and expenditure cuts, Hindriks also identifies the cost-saving aspect for companies with foreign staff in China, which are then able to dispense with the services of a full-time interpreter.

The call center is manned by a full-time staff of 34 and 100 part-timers, all of whom undergo three-months’ training before starting work. “You can ask our people absolutely anything and they will be able to help you,” Hindriks claims. “Out of every 100 people we train, only 10 make it through the three-month course. We deal with VIPs who are used to having problems solved and we have to be able to guarantee a high level of service at all times.”

With China likely to become an increasingly important destination for both business and leisure travelers, and with sales of smartphones soaring worldwide, the market for location-based, mobile tourism services appears set to grow. The challenge for contenders such as Yoyoor and One2Call is to find the right business model, both for advertisers and, more importantly, for customers.

Shopper's Market: 12/7: Skateboarder Tony Hawk changes the 'game'

Shopper's Market: 12/7: Skateboarder Tony Hawk changes the 'game'

Stopping Heel Pain: Q&A with Dr. Manny: I have plantar fasciitis, how can I stop the pain in my heels?

Stopping Heel Pain: Q&A with Dr. Manny: I have plantar fasciitis, how can I stop the pain in my heels?

A conversation with William Gates Sr. and Bill Gates Jr.

A conversation with William Gates Sr. and Bill Gates Jr. about the book "Showing Up for Life: Thoughts on the Gifts of a Lifetime"

CHARLIE ROSE: Bill Gates and his father, William Gates Sr. are here.
Together, they have had a productive and lifelong collaboration. The elder
Gates is one of his son’s closest advisers and confidantes. He’s a former
lawyer and civic leader in Seattle. He now serves as co-chair of the Bill
and Melinda Gates Foundation. He’s also the author of a new book called
"Showing Up For Life." It relays the wisdom of a life spent practicing
law, serving the community, and helping raise three successful children.

Joining me now, father and son, Bill Gates Sr. and Bill Gates. I’m
pleased to have them both at this table. Welcome.

WILLIAM GATES SR.: Glad to be here.

CHARLIE ROSE: Good to see you again.

BILL GATES JR.: Thank you.

CHARLIE ROSE: Your son knows this table.

WILLIAM GATES SR.: Yes, I know he does. It’s new to me.

CHARLIE ROSE: Let me just start with this. I mean, this is a story
about a family. Only two of them are here. There is your late wife and
his mother, and two siblings.

WILLIAM GATES SR.: Right.

CHARLIE ROSE: Why did you want to write this book at this time?

WILLIAM GATES SR.: Well, it started off -- you know, I’m 83 years
old. I have had a lot of experiences and had a lot of things that I
believe in, and I was going to write a memoir for my grandchildren and
future generations, because I didn’t have anything like that from my
predecessors. And as we got working on and I had some help with it, people
said, well, we should -- this is better than -- this is more important
thing to get out than to just give to your family and friends. We should
see if it might attract a wider audience, and so that’s the phenomena that
occurred is that people encouraged me to do this.

CHARLIE ROSE: How many grandchildren now?

WILLIAM GATES SR.: Eight at this point.

CHARLIE ROSE: My goodness. You said, Dad, the next time somebody
asks you if you’re the real Bill Gates, I hope you’ll say yes, I hope
you’ll tell them that you’re all the things the other one strives to be.
What is that? What is it the other one strives to be?

BILL GATES JR.: Well, my dad has set an example by what he does, you
know, whether it was at the university, speaking out on tough political
issues or going to war, or being a great lawyer. You know, he’s the one
who really got the foundation going, encouraged me to give early, got us
involved in some very key causes and helped us build what is now a strong
group of people that I -- I get to work with full-time. So my dad is
somebody I aspire to live up to what he’s done.

CHARLIE ROSE: To know you, and you and I have done interviews for a
while now, is to know of this insane curiosity. To read this book is to
know it started very early.

BILL GATES JR.: That’s right. A love of reading. A desire to ask
questions. And when parents made it fair game to talk to them about my
dad’s lawsuits or my mom’s charitable activities, you know, the questions,
were they doing things the right way. And so, we had great dinner-table
conversations and we had a comfort with talking to adults and knowing what
adults were up to.

WILLIAM GATES SR.: You have to understand that he had a point of view
about whether we were doing it the right way or not.

(LAUGHTER)

CHARLIE ROSE: What do you mean?

WILLIAM GATES SR.: Well, he matured early.

CHARLIE ROSE: Now, this -- your bedroom was in the basement at some
point?

BILL GATES JR.: That’s right.

CHARLIE ROSE: And he was in the basement, and his mother called down
and said -- you pick up the story.

WILLIAM GATES SR.: And said -- well, we were all standing around, the
two girls and Mary and I were standing around upstairs, waiting to get into
the car and go somewhere. And said, “Bill, what are you doing?” He said,
“I’m thinking, Mother. Don’t you ever think?”

And mother and I...

CHARLIE ROSE: You don’t say that to your mother.

(LAUGHTER)

WILLIAM GATES SR.: Well, Mother and I looked at each other on that
question, and looked at each other rather carefully and said, “You know,
I’m not sure we do.”

CHARLIE ROSE: There is also this, which is alluded to here. There
was a point in which somebody in the family thought it might be a good idea
if he had some counseling, yes? And after the counseling, the counselor or
whatever he was -- psychologist, psychiatrist.

BILL GATES JR.: Yes, psychiatrist.

CHARLIE ROSE: Said to your parents, give up?

(LAUGHTER)

BILL GATES JR.: Well, yes. He actually told me that, you know, my
parents were on my side, and it was a pretty important insight, that, you
know, fighting with your parents over things is just -- you know, that’s
really not where things are. And that happened early. So as I grew older,
I -- my parents were helping me, and I focussing my energy on the world at
large.

CHARLIE ROSE: Let me just give a different interpretation, if I may,
even though I wasn’t there.

BILL GATES JR.: OK, good, good.

CHARLIE ROSE: It was that he said to your parents, stop arguing with
him. He’ll never stop arguing, and he’ll always win in the end. Does that
ring true to you?

BILL GATES JR.: Well, yes, he said that I had this unfair advantage,
that, you know, they really cared about me and, you know, didn’t really
prove anything. I shouldn’t think of myself as benefiting from winning
some argument. And he really brought me around.

CHARLIE ROSE: Oh, so you changed?

BILL GATES JR.: I did change. I was a little bit nicer.

(LAUGHTER)

CHARLIE ROSE: A little bit nicer.

(CROSSTALK)

WILLIAM GATES SR.: Right on.

CHARLIE ROSE: Do you remember that moment, when he was a little bit
nicer?

WILLIAM GATES SR.: Well, I really do remember the advice from the
counselor, which was quite profound.

CHARLIE ROSE: What do you two disagree about?

BILL GATES JR.: I think my dad might give more sooner. You know, he
encouraged me to start the foundation while I was still working full-time
and, you know, for a few years I wasn’t sure that was right, but then with
him offering to help out, I absolutely did that, which I’m very glad I did.
And you know, he empathizes with the needs out there, and so it’s been a
very positive influence to push me to think with more humility and to do
more rapidly.

CHARLIE ROSE: It is often said that parents learn by watching -- that
children learn by watching their parents. But you say here, parents learn
by watching their children.

WILLIAM GATES SR.: I do say that, and I absolutely believe it. I
experienced it and I -- there are things about their mother and certainly
some things about me which I have learned from watching them. Our oldest
daughter is, for example, just meticulously confident about things. And
her...

CHARLIE ROSE: She’s the accountant?

WILLIAM GATES SR.: Pardon me?

CHARLIE ROSE: Is she the accountant?

WILLIAM GATES SR.: She’s the accountant, yes, yes. And it all fits.

(LAUGHTER)

WILLIAM GATES SR.: And she’s a terrific example of, you know, you
think about that when you’re confronted with choices, and you say, well, if
Christy were here, I guess that’s what I’m going to do.

CHARLIE ROSE: His mother had a passion for community service. Served
on the board of regents of the University of Washington.

WILLIAM GATES SR.: Yes.

CHARLIE ROSE: And United Way. What was that about?

WILLIAM GATES SR.: Well, to start with, it was genuine. I mean, she
believed in the value of community activity, and in addition to which,
which is just sort of tangential, she was also very good at it. So little
wonder that it was a very significant part -- significant part of her life.
It started from a very serious motivation about working on things that
could be made better.

CHARLIE ROSE: Do you remember when he first got interested in
computers?

WILLIAM GATES SR.: At this high school where Bill went to school,
there was this very, very beginning kind of computer, keyboard and a
teletype sort of a thing, but it was fascinating to him and some of his
classmates, and they spent hours fiddling with that thing and learning
about it, and ultimately, while he was still in high school, running
programs. He and those boys who he was in cohorts with actually did the
programming for the high school. They assigned teachers to classes and
kids to classes, and did the whole schedule for the high school, and in the
course of that, arranged which girls would be in the classes they would be
in, as a matter of fact -- as a matter of choice.

CHARLIE ROSE: There’s merit in that, isn’t there?

(CROSSTALK)

CHARLIE ROSE: Reflect on that for a moment. Because you -- Gladwell
writes about it. I think Paul Allen shared the passion with you at the
time and you two went off to do something important.

BILL GATES JR.: Yes, the school bought this device, and the teachers
found it a bit confusing, and lots of students clustered around. I was a
lot younger than most, but I had done well on some national math exams, so
people kind of challenged me to figure it out.

CHARLIE ROSE: Go ahead.

BILL GATES JR.: And after a few months, it winnowed down. Paul
Allen, who was two grades ahead of me, myself, and just a few others really
stuck with it, and we got basically addicted and kept learning more. So it
was a phenomenal opportunity. And then of course Paul later, you know, we
stick together, do a lot of things, and then he founds Microsoft with me.

CHARLIE ROSE: Addiction may be a mild term, might it not? I mean,
you once said to me you...

BILL GATES JR.: That’s true.

(LAUGHTER)

CHARLIE ROSE: It was maniacal. Is that the word?

BILL GATES JR.: No, if you’re engaged...

(CROSSTALK)

BILL GATES JR.: ... in something like that, you really learn a lot.
And we wanted to know how it worked and how to write software.

CHARLIE ROSE: You went to Harvard?

BILL GATES JR.: Briefly.

CHARLIE ROSE: Briefly.

BILL GATES JR.: Not long enough to get a degree, but it was nice
while I was there.

CHARLIE ROSE: Well, you promised your father you’ll eventually get
it, and in fact you did later. But let me just stay -- so you go to
Harvard, but you’re still maniacal about the computer and its
possibilities. Paul is in Albuquerque or somewhere by then, is he not?

BILL GATES JR.: Not yet.

CHARLIE ROSE: Not yet. OK, help me out.

WILLIAM GATES SR.: Paul was actually in Massachusetts as well,
working for...

BILL GATES JR.: Honeywell.

WILLIAM GATES SR.: ... Honeywell?

BILL GATES JR.: Yeah.

WILLIAM GATES SR.: And actually, it was there that the article came
out in “Popular Mechanics” about this company in Albuquerque, which had a -
- it actually was a kit for a desktop computer. And that Paul came running
over, as I understand the story, to Bill’s dormitory and said here it is,
here it is, Bill, here we go.

CHARLIE ROSE: What did he mean?

BILL GATES JR.: Well, Paul had spotted this computer on a chip, the
microprocessor, and we’d been talking about that for several years. And he
had encouraged me, hey, let’s start a company, let’s start a company.
Well, I was under some pressure to go to school and do -- you know, be
semi-normal. So he came back to Boston to keep convincing me we should do
it.

So actually when that computer showed up, we were excited, but we also
thought, wow, this is happening without us, because Paul and I had seen
that the combination of these chips and software could do something
amazing, and that’s why we immediately wrote some software and called up
that company, and they became our first customer.

CHARLIE ROSE: And then you ended up with Microsoft and Intel, and
then you were off to the races.

BILL GATES JR.: That’s right. When we did the first Basic, there was
no looking back. Even though I was on leave there, I did not return.

CHARLIE ROSE: All right. Remember that period for me, because here’s
your son who’s gone off to Harvard, and you thought he would at least
finish four years.

WILLIAM GATES SR.: Yes.

CHARLIE ROSE: You and Mrs. Gates...

WILLIAM GATES SR.: Mary. Yes.

CHARLIE ROSE: ... had high hopes for Bill.

WILLIAM GATES SR.: Yes.

CHARLIE ROSE: And he’s going to leave after one year.

WILLIAM GATES SR.: Well, actually, it wasn’t quite that. He was
taking a semester off, so we weren’t confronting the ultimate demise of
college education there. We -- he was going to take a semester off and go
to Albuquerque and help Paul work there, and then he would go back. And in
fact, he did take a semester off and go back. The second time after he was
back for a semester, I have got to go back to Albuquerque. Now we started
to get...

CHARLIE ROSE: Nervous.

WILLIAM GATES SR.: ... a little bit concerned, and he never did go
back.

CHARLIE ROSE: And how was Mrs. Gates handling that?

WILLIAM GATES SR.: I would characterize her as being more concerned
than I. She just -- she had a stronger view in her mind of this is one of
my children. My children graduate from college. My children graduate from
college. My boy is not going to graduate from college? Oh, my word!

CHARLIE ROSE: She died of breast cancer and did not get to see this
movement in which you’re asked to come back, deliver the commencement
speech and get an honorary degree. As you go up to the podium, you look to
your father and say? What did you say to your father?

BILL GATES JR.: I said...

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BILL GATES JR.: Dad, I always told you I’d come back and get my
degree.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BILL GATES JR.: And that was a fun moment.

WILLIAM GATES SR.: Yes, it was. It was.

CHARLIE ROSE: If you look at that as a fun moment, suggest to me in
this relationship and in this business career, moving into philanthropy,
that had been sort of the signal moments for you and for the family.

BILL GATES JR.: Well, as the business got bigger, I got advice from
my dad. Going public was a key milestone that we sat around the living
room and talked a lot about. And I...

CHARLIE ROSE: Now, were you the lawyer for the firm, for Microsoft?

WILLIAM GATES SR.: The law firm in which I was a partner -- actually,
the managing partner -- was the law firm that represented him in this
offering.

CHARLIE ROSE: Right.

WILLIAM GATES SR.: I felt like it was wise for me to step back and
let others be the hands-on lawyers for the project.

CHARLIE ROSE: Just thought it was not a smart idea for father to be
representing son?

WILLIAM GATES SR.: Precisely. Precisely.

CHARLIE ROSE: OK, so going public is one idea.

BILL GATES JR.: That was a big, big milestone. You know, the
contract with IBM, then the break with IBM, and getting to be quite large,
deciding to step down as CEO. These are all things that I had a chance to
talk to my dad about before I decided, and then just now, a little less
than a year ago, actually moving to the foundation full-time.

And during all that, my dad’s encouraging me, hey, what about the
giving? When -- can you start sooner and do more? And as early as about
2000, my dad volunteered, and so we started a new relationship, which was
he was looking at the letters and helping gather the team that became the
foundation.

CHARLIE ROSE: I want to come back to the foundation, but I want to
stay with the idea of this relationship within this family.

This has to do with Warren Buffett. Mrs. Gates and you are having a
dinner party in Seattle.

A conversation about print journalism in the digital age

A conversation about print journalism in the digital age with Arianna Huffington of Huffingtonpost.com and Tom Curley of the Associated Press


The future of news and how it’s distributed is in great upheaval. The
debate is growing over how to adjust to digital media. On Monday, the
Associated Press announced that it will take legal action against any Web
site that uses articles without permission. The move raises complex
questions about intellectual property and the fair use of content.

Joining me now is the president and CEO of the Associated Press, Tom
Curley, and from Los Angeles, Arianna Huffington. She is the founder and
editor of The Huffington Post. I am pleased to have both of them here to
talk about this very important issue.

First, just for clarification. AP is a legendary name, as UPI was a
legendary name. What is AP today? Give me the history of what happened to
bring you to make this statement that if you want AP, you have got to pay
for it? One small note, Huffington Post wants AP and in fact, they already
pay for it.

TOM CURLEY: They are a licensee, and we’re pleased to have them.

We made some decisions several years ago, and we’ve had one licensing
policy for the web. Clearly, we’re at a different place. The web has
evolved or devolved, depending on your point of view, and what we believe
is people are trying to build businesses on our back, on our good work, and
on the works of our journalists, who are in some cases risking their lives
to get that news. So they are building their business and they are not
compensating us. And that’s what we want to stop.

CHARLIE ROSE: And how do you suggest you stop that?

TOM CURLEY: We need to get control of our content.

CHARLIE ROSE: So what you want to do in your own judgment is restore
the balance of power between the publishers of content and search engines?

TOM CURLEY: That’s right. We want a fair deal.

CHARLIE ROSE: So tell me how you see where we are at this moment and
where it might go.

ARIANNA HUFFINGTON: Well, first of all, we need to clarify, Charlie,
that Google has a multimillion arrangement with AP in order to carry their
content, and to have it on their server. Huffington Post has an
arrangement with AP whereby we pay for using their content, and so do many
other sites.

The question is, do we recognize, as Jeff Jarvis puts it, that we’re
living in the linked economy, where links are actually incredibly valuable?
They drive traffic to content providers. At The Huffington Post, you know,
half our traffic comes from links and search. So either we’re going to
really acknowledge the brave new world we’re living in, as opposed to
trying to pretend that we’re still living in the old world, where simply
content reigned supreme, then we need to see how do we monetize links. And
many are doing just that.

For example, MSNBC, NBC, Comedy Central, they have embeddable players
when it comes to video, and so they can monetize that. You can put on a
segment of Jon Stewart’s “Daily Show,” and you get multiple other links
taking you to other parts of Comedy Central, and you get ads that can be
monetized.

So the question is, of course you need to monetize your content, as
Tom has been saying, but how do you do it? Do you do it by creating walled
gardens, which is not going to work? It hasn’t worked when “The New York
Times” did it. That’s why they ended Times Select. It’s not going to
work, because consumer habits have changed. Consumers are used to going
around, surfing the Net, finding different links, following them,
searching. You’re not going to change those habits.

CHARLIE ROSE: All right. But this is true too. Bill Keller just
made a speech in the last couple of days in which he suggested that “The
New York Times” as well is looking for a new model. I mean, do you have
sympathy for the Associated Press, and do you believe that there is a way,
some new model that we don’t know yet, that would satisfy all concerned?

ARIANNA HUFFINGTON: There are going to be many new models, but I’m
confident that the only new models that will succeed will be those that
embrace the linked economy, that embrace the Internet. Any model that
fights it, any model that tries to create walls is not going to work.

And in fact, I recommend very highly to Tom and anybody else trying to
make this work to read a book by Clayton Christensen called “The
Innovator’s Dilemma.” How do you deal with disruptive innovation? The
Internet, let’s face it, is disruptive innovation. If you try to pretend
that you can go back to the old world, it’s not going to work. If you try
to just put your finger in the dike and stop what’s happening from
happening, you’re going to lose precious time, as many newspaper providers
have lost, instead of learning to ride the rapids and actually provide new
ways to reach the consumer.

TOM CURLEY: There’s a theory out there that all we have to do is make
our stuff available, and there will be enough traffic, there will be enough
audience, and we’ll get proper compensation for that.

CHARLIE ROSE: And that was true in part up until 2008, when there was
a lot of advertising dollars going towards the Internet.

TOM CURLEY: Only true in part. I think most of us knew that free was
never a business model that could really make it. The Internet experience
for most has been a bomb. Unlimited competition, unlimited inventory, a
bad customer experience, very difficult to hold a brand. Arianna’s
HuffIngton Post has been one of the few that has really managed to get a
brand buzz and build content.

We enjoy working with her. We enjoy the license that we have, and
she’s a good example of what we’d like to have -- somebody who takes our
content, uses it in a licensed way, and then blogs about it in a certain
way to build an audience. What we’re talking about is those that take it
and don’t pay for it and try to build a different business.

CHARLIE ROSE: Is your primary concern Google? And the fact that
Google, under fair use, takes clips, and therefore people can access the
clips without necessarily linking to you, because they don’t want to see
the rest of the story?

TOM CURLEY: You know, Google is out there, and everybody is trying to
make it into an AP-Google, and AP trying to out-Google Google. I assure
you that’s not where we want to go. Google is a licensed user of AP. But
it’s what happens to it in the web that goes beyond that license that we
need to pull back, and that’s what we’re working on.

CHARLIE ROSE: Just to make sure I have this, what is AP going to do?
What are you going to create?

TOM CURLEY: There are a couple of things that we want to do. Number
one is we want to create what we call landing pages, but the news map that
takes people to the authoritative source who broke the news. Another thing
that we want to do is a content registry. Take people to the sources of
information and protect the content as it goes through the Internet. Put a
beacon on it, watch where it goes, and police it better than we have.

CHARLIE ROSE: Do you think this will work or not work, Arianna?

ARIANNA HUFFINGTON: Well, first of all, everybody is trying to invent
the new rules of the road. And I think experimentation is absolutely
great. For me, there’s one simple rule, which is are you trying to build
walls around your content, or are you honoring and celebrating the linked
economy? Because if you try to do the former, then it’s not going to work.
You know, a great Greek philosopher Heraclitus said you cannot step into
the same river twice. So the old river of content providers being supreme
and links meaning nothing cannot be recreated.

CHARLIE ROSE: Do you believe that the AP, in terms of what they have
announced, are trying to put a wall around the AP, or B, refusing to
acknowledge the new digital linked economy?

ARIANNA HUFFINGTON: You see traditional newspapers moving to the web,
and doing incredible work there, like “The Washington Post,” like “The New
York Times.” They have great content that originates on the web, great
blogs, and we all link to them. We get hundreds of requests every day for
links, because links are powerful. Links can be monetized, and
increasingly, we see that content providers are not just looking to get
consumers to their sites. They’re looking to get their content wherever
consumers are. That’s kind of new promiscuity, if you want. It’s what can
be monetized. And YouTube is doing it and Facebook is doing it. And that,
I think, is going to be the future.

TOM CURLEY: Charlie, this also has to dovetail with some efforts to
get paid differently. What started as a conversation last fall has turned
into a loud roar. We need to get better compensation. We, the industry,
need to get paid differently. The advertising is not going to be there.

So at AP, we’re looking at a couple of things. One is to take our
content and divide it into three broad buckets -- headlines, that first
paragraph that has the who, what, where, when, why, how. And then free --
what we call free the -- everything else that might make the story, how you
would present it in full forum.

We can imagine restricting the number of headlines, restricting the
number of first paragraphs that get out there. We can imagine keeping a
lot of photos back, and we can imagine keeping the full text back. So
there are different business models that we’ll all be experimenting with,
and that’s an approach that we’ve been looking at.

We’ve heard from every major media company except one, that they are
in support of it. So the second thing was to build consensus around these
types of steps.

So I think we’re in a very good spot to continue the conversation and
to imagine different products.

Everybody out there in media, the people who are doing the original
work, has to look at new sources of revenue and how to get it.

CHARLIE ROSE: And you accept that, Arianna?

ARIANNA HUFFINGTON: Charlie, there has been a perfect storm of the
new technology, Craigslist and all that has happened in the last 15 years,
coming together with the economic crisis that has had such dire impact on
advertising. So, obviously, I mean, we read every day headlines about
what’s happening to newspapers, including today “The Boston Globe.”

So there’s no question that everybody needs to be thinking of
innovative ways to deal with the future. All I’m arguing for is to be very
careful not to pretend that consumer habits have not changed, and not to be
looking to get consumers going to a particular source of news, because
they’re not going to do that. They’re used to going everywhere.

CHARLIE ROSE: She has not said anything to you, I guess, that you
didn’t think about long and hard before you made this announcement.

TOM CURLEY: Well, that’s correct. People have looked at this and
have lived with it for 15 years. And I mean, everyone has decided it’s
time to go in a different direction. The one major point to keep in mind
is that the market for news is growing.

CHARLIE ROSE: That’s exactly the reality you have to face, it’s how
people are seeking out the news that they want, and how they are using a
digital revolution defined in a different way. And if in fact you change
that, what has become to them free, you are risking something that may very
well be your own downfall, making you, as she just suggested, Detroit.

TOM CURLEY: ESPN has done a very good job at figuring out how to get
premium payment and how to put some other content out there to drive
traffic. People are talking in terms of all or none. That’s not the way
we see it. We see some headlines out there. We see some stories out
there, but we don’t see everything out there.

ARIANNA HUFFINGTON: I think it’s very important to recognize the new
realities in terms of consumer habits, in terms of what technology makes
possible, and look at some of the success models. Look at the embeddable
players, for example. I think that’s a great model for the future, because
instead of what was happening even a few months ago, of trying to get all
the traffic to say “Saturday Night Live” itself, now with this embeddable
NBC player, the traffic can go wherever the consumer is. But NBC monetizes
that through advertising, through other links to other content that they
are providing.

TOM CURLEY: There’s a disconnect. I appreciate what she’s saying,
and we know where the market is going. We’ve launched a whole lot of new
products. We have a mobile news network that’s been out there for a year.
We have 1,100 newspapers participating. You can get up-to-the-minute news.
You know, we have the world’s largest video news service. We have the best
technology platform in media out there that can link and participate in
this environment. So we’ve studied it carefully. It’s a matter of pulling
it together in a way that we get paid for our hard work.

CHARLIE ROSE: You want to be your own aggregator, too.

TOM CURLEY: We just are business-to-business. We don’t see ourselves
going directly to the consumer, but we can create landing pages or the news
map that our partners in media can put their content on.

CHARLIE ROSE: What’s out there that you think is showing viability?

TOM CURLEY: I’m not sure micro payments will work. I think you need
some business operation that is a collector. The cable model is one that
keeps coming back. We see that happening with mobile sooner. But I think
you can imagine premium types of content where people do pay directly.
That would be more limited applications, probably 1 or 2 percent here or 5
or 6 percent there. But you can restrict your content in how it’s used and
make sure that more of it comes back to your site originally if you put
some out and bring some back. So I think that’s the simplest and the one
that will go further fastest.

CHARLIE ROSE: We are, Arianna, to sum this up, in a moment of change.
People -- notwithstanding all of the historical flow that is so clear and
that you represent, there is, it seems to me, within the conversation a
sense that this is a moment to look for all of the future models that might
be possible, and the kind of questions that Tom has asked with respect to
AP; Rupert Murdoch is asking clearly, making strong statements about “The
Wall Street Journal”; Bill Keller and Arthur Sulzberger are asking about
“The New York Times” -- this is a moment, is it not?

ARIANNA HUFFINGTON: The point is that a lot of these ideas are really
not celebrating and fully accepting the present, which is going to be an
essential part of the future. We are not going to go back to the past.
And that’s my only concern about any model that ignores the reality of how
people consume news. Through links, through search, through going to the
communities they love and that resonate with them.

And also, we cannot ignore citizen journalists. Increasingly, we have
many news broken through Twitter and through basically citizens,
individuals who happen to be where the plane lands on the Hudson, or during
the terrible time in Mumbai.

CHARLIE ROSE: But that’s just adding value. That is not the change
in the model. It seems to me that you’re saying we have seen the future
and it is here. It is a linked economy, it is search engines, it is online
advertising. That’s where the future is, and if you can’t find your way to
that, then you can’t find your way.

ARIANNA HUFFINGTON: I -- you said it perfectly. That’s exactly what
I believe, and that’s exactly what gives all of us an enormous amount of
room to maneuver. There are many, many different models within this
future. There are many ways to experiment, and we all should be
experimenting. The rules of the road are being worked out. But the one
thing we cannot do is go back to the past, and anybody who tries to do
that, I predict, will fail.

CHARLIE ROSE: Well, Tom would say to you -- and I’ll give him the
chance to say it -- he is not trying to go back to the past. He’s trying
to find a link to the future.

TOM CURLEY: The question that I would ask is who’s going to pay to
ask the tough questions of government? Who’s going to pay to get the
lawyers to help file those Freedom of Information requests? Who’s going to
pay for the security in Iraq or Afghanistan? And who’s going to put that
infrastructure in place to get that news back in a few seconds from
wherever it breaks in the world? That’s what this is about. Not putting
up toll booths, not becoming a plumber. This is about a new world, where,
yes, we’re willing to link, we’re willing to have the content go in
different directions, if there’s a compensation model attached to it. And
that’s the point of change that we’ve reached.

This is about a fair deal. And it’s time that it came back to the
people who are doing the work.

CHARLIE ROSE: Arianna, who’s going to pay?

ARIANNA HUFFINGTON: Well, absolutely. These are really the models
that we’re working our. On investigative journalism, for example, we’re
experimenting with a for-profit/not-for-profit model. Because after all,
investigative journalism is a public good, and I believe there are going to
be increasingly foundations that are going to be paying for it, because
just think of it...

CHARLIE ROSE: I thank you very much, Arianna Huffington. Great to
see you, as always.

ARIANNA HUFFINGTON: Thank you.

CHARLIE ROSE: Tom Curley, AP, thank you too.

A conversation with Michael Arrington, TechCrunch

Michael Arrington is here. He’s the founder and editor of TechCrunch,
one of the most widely read blogs in Silicon Valley. TechCrunch was
founded in 2005, and now has separate sites covering specific countries and
technologies. Arrington has also formed a country to develop a tablet
commuter primarily to use the Web. It is called the Crunchpad. I’m
pleased to have him back on this program. Welcome, sir.

MICHAEL ARRINGTON: Hello, Charlie.

CHARLIE ROSE: Google versus Microsoft. We now have Bing, their
search engine at Microsoft, and Chrome, which is going to be an operating
system, a browser and an operating system.

MICHAEL ARRINGTON: Yes, it’s fascinating, because you think of Google
as a search engine company, which most of the revenue is derived from
search marketing, and Microsoft as a sort of software company. Windows and
Office, that’s where they get a lot of their revenue. And yet these two
companies are competing head on, viciously, because Microsoft wants search
share. There’s so much money in it. So they’ve got Bing and they’re
trying to do things with Yahoo! And Google, I don’t know if they want --
if they want sort of revenue from Office and the operating system, but they
certainly want to take that revenue from Microsoft. So you have them with
Chrome OS and Google Docs competing directly with Windows and Office. And
they’re going at each other’s core businesses, and it’s fascinating to
watch.

CHARLIE ROSE: But do they really look to have great success in that?
Do they expect to take away a lot of Microsoft’s operating system?

MICHAEL ARRINGTON: If you listen to Eric Schmidt at Google, he seems
pretty serious, that they want -- they want to do innovative things in the
operating systems space.

I don’t know what their projections are around that, but...

CHARLIE ROSE: There was a story that Eric was the one resisting going
ahead with Chrome as an operating system.

MICHAEL ARRINGTON: Oh, I don’t know if he resisted or not, but he’s
certainly behind it now that it’s public. And they also have Android, of
course, the mobile phone operating system that is also based on Linux.

CHARLIE ROSE: There’s also Bing. So, Bing got very good notices.
People in the business, the Walt Mossbergs of the world.

MICHAEL ARRINGTON: Yes. Bing is a great search engine. They
launched it, what, two months ago now. And it’s a little too early to tell
what kind of market share gains they’ll have, if any, but it’s definitely a
great search engine.

One of the problems with search -- and all the guys who do search
testing will tell you this-- it doesn’t matter what the results look like
if you have a testing group sort of blind sampling. If you put the Google
logo on top and ask them what they think of the search results, they like
it more than they like it otherwise. And so Google just has the brand in
search, and it’s going to take a lot of time and a lot of money.

CHARLIE ROSE: And a lot of people have to say Bing was better.
Someone said to me this interesting point, that what Google sometimes
worries about if somehow Microsoft computers, PCs, wouldn’t take Google.
Does that make sense to you?

MICHAEL ARRINGTON: I think that Microsoft in the past has made
changes to Internet Explorer that stopped the gathering of information by
the browser -- by Web sites. The browser sort of puts up not a firewall,
but you can imagine something like that. I think that’s part of the reason
why Google decided to back Firefox so heavily and also to create their own
browser, to stop that from happening. But I think with Google...

CHARLIE ROSE: So, it wouldn’t be Explorer?

MICHAEL ARRINGTON: Yes. Right. And Explorer’s market share is
dropping.

But I think Google wants to get Microsoft out of the PC entirely. And
they’re offering alternatives across the board to Microsoft software, which
makes that battle so fascinating.

CHARLIE ROSE: Speak to me about mobile phones and mobile technology
and where are we?

MICHAEL ARRINGTON: We’re in an awesome place. I mean, think back. I
know you talk about the iPhone quite a bit. The iPhone changed --
absolutely changed the mobile landscape. And people said, you know, some
people said that Apple couldn’t do this, they won’t do it.

CHARLIE ROSE: Because they began to see it as a computer in itself?

MICHAEL ARRINGTON: Well, yes.

CHARLIE ROSE: That’s what...

MICHAEL ARRINGTON: Although not just that.

CHARLIE ROSE: And it looked good and everybody wanted to have one
because they thought it was so cool.

MICHAEL ARRINGTON: They also figured out Web surfing on a phone with
a small screen that’s a touch screen, but it’s small, but they figured out
the gestures to zoom in and out, and it’s actually an adequate Web surfing
experience that they figured out. No one else had done that before.

CHARLIE ROSE: And what about the Palm Pre?

MICHAEL ARRINGTON: It’s a great phone.

CHARLIE ROSE: It’s a great phone. Why is it a great phone?

MICHAEL ARRINGTON: The operating system I think is as good or in some
cases better than the iPhone. The operating system is quick, you can have
lots of apps open, it’s a great operating system.

The hardware on the phone I think was a little rushed and feels a
little cheap, so for me I’m sticking with the iPhone, but I came close to
choosing the Palm Pre, partially because of the physical keyboard. I think
it’s really nice, and also because I feel like I’m getting a little bit too
tied to Apple.

CHARLIE ROSE: OK. Tell me what Crunchpad is.

MICHAEL ARRINGTON: About a year ago -- and I really like where the
industry is going with this -- about a year ago, I realized I just want a
big iPhone. I want a computer that I can sit on the couch and surf the Web
without having a weird keyboard stuck to it that doesn’t really work when
you’re not sitting at a desk. And so we started this project on TechCrunch
just talking about it, saying we want to build this and we want help from
the community, and great things happened over the course of a year. We’ve
hired a team. We’ve had lots of people, partners come on board and
contribute their time, their resources, suggest partnerships.

CHARLIE ROSE: Did you go get venture money?

MICHAEL ARRINGTON: Well, you know, I’m not going to answer that
question.

CHARLIE ROSE: Why not?

MICHAEL ARRINGTON: Because I haven’t -- I don’t want to answer the
question.

(LAUGHTER)

CHARLIE ROSE: We have our ways, sir.

MICHAEL ARRINGTON: But I’ll say this. I think that Apple -- so
there’s rumors -- forgetting the Crunchpad and the fact that I want to
build that -- Apple is talking about coming out with a tablet computer,
which is going to be a large-screen iPod, or iPhone or iPod Touch. I think
that’s a good thing. I think they’ll sell a lot of them.

Google’s new operating system, Chrome OS, is a Linux-based operating
system with a browser on top, and the idea is you never see the operating
system. You never go to the desktop on the computer. It goes right to the
browser, which is what we’ve been talking about for a year. They’ve been
working on it for a long time. I’m not suggesting we had the idea first.
I have no idea. But the point is, it’s coming to market as a free
operating system. I think that’s really good, and we’re going to see
netbooks without keyboards. We’re going to see computers with other input
mechanisms besides keyboards, or alternative input mechanisms that I think
are going to -- really exciting stuff.

CHARLIE ROSE: Facebook versus Google. Is that a big competition?

MICHAEL ARRINGTON: You know, last time we talked, it was Facebook
versus MySpace. And the funny thing is, that’s not the question anyone
asks anymore.

CHARLIE ROSE: It’s what is Facebook becoming?

MICHAEL ARRINGTON: Right. And what is Google becoming. I think it’s
almost like everybody is chasing Twitter right now, and Facebook clearly
is. But when it comes down to it, the social aspect of Facebook, where
your friends are recommending things to you, which could be products or
news items, and it’s the constant sort of logging into the site 25 times a
day is something that Google needs to address. And right now they...

CHARLIE ROSE: So that’s Zuckerberg’s argument. Look, I mean, who
better to go for a search than your friends? If you know and trust.

MICHAEL ARRINGTON: Exactly. Exactly. Yes. Why not?

CHARLIE ROSE: Because they will know who you are and what you like.

MICHAEL ARRINGTON: Some of the startups that buy traffic on Google
search are talking about the conversion rates from those -- conversion
rates meaning a purchase or a signup that they get from that purchase
traffic from Google is good, but not nearly as good as the conversion rates
they are seeing from Facebook and Twitter. So if I just send out a link
saying, wow, I just saw this movie and it sure is good, and you click on
that, you’re more likely to go see the movie than you are if you do a
search for it and click on a paid ad from Google.

Google is very aware of that. The free stuff on Twitter and Facebook
is better than the paid ads on Google. And that has to be freaking them
out a little bit.

CHARLIE ROSE: So, what did you do? You published some internal
financial documents from Twitter?

MICHAEL ARRINGTON: There’s this hacker...

CHARLIE ROSE: I know that.

MICHAEL ARRINGTON: This French guy that got these documents from
Twitter because of these guest books (ph)...

CHARLIE ROSE: Right, and so what did you do?

MICHAEL ARRINGTON: I’ll get to it. He -- so what he did was, he
wanted to warn Twitter that, you know, your security is awful. And also he
wanted to get credit for doing this as hackers and crackers do. So, he
went to the French media, and a French journalist -- he was told about it,
this French journalist went to Twitter and said what happened, Twitter
wouldn’t respond. So he dropped it, came to us and said...

CHARLIE ROSE: Who came to you?

MICHAEL ARRINGTON: This hacker, anonymously, and said, here are all
the documents and sent us all these documents. Started this fascinating
discussion about...

CHARLIE ROSE: What was in the documents?

MICHAEL ARRINGTON: It was hundreds of documents taken from Twitter’s
employees’ attachments to e-mail accounts. And it included interview
schedules, people they interviewed in Silicon Valley, prominent people that
work in other companies that didn’t end up at Twitter. So very
embarrassing stuff. Credit card information for many of the employees. E-
mails, inbox screen shots, executive meeting notes, financial projections,
et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. Just the whole sort of thing. And we
looked at that and said, we’re going to post some of this. Some of it
we’re not. But we said...

CHARLIE ROSE: Like credit card numbers, you’re not going to post
that.

MICHAEL ARRINGTON: We’re not going to post the credit card numbers or
things that would embarrass people, but some of this was -- we thought was
pretty darn newsworthy, particularly the financial projections and the
executive meeting notes from the last few months. And so we engaged in a
dialogue with our readers, where we said, look, we have got these
documents. We haven’t decided yet what we’re going to post, we think a
couple of documents. We talked to Twitter, sent them all documents, so
they knew what was going on. Talked to our lawyer...

CHARLIE ROSE: So, what did they say, go ahead and post them?

(LAUGHTER)

MICHAEL ARRINGTON: They said...

CHARLIE ROSE: We have no problem with this?

MICHAEL ARRINGTON: The ultimate answer was, we know you’re going to
post a couple of these, and that’s OK, but for most of these, we’d really
rather you not, and so that’s not a problem, we absolutely won’t. And we
worked with Twitter on the back end to make sure they closed up some of the
security holes that they had. But the interesting thing to me wasn’t the -
- the documents were fascinating. The interesting thing to me was the
discussion that was generated around whether we should publish them or not.

And there are people that have come out, major journalists who have
come out said it was unethical for us to do this. And there were
journalists who had come out and said it was absolutely fine and ethical
for them to do this. In fact, their readers deserve that kind of access.

And obviously I have an opinion because I’m in the middle of the
story, but just taking myself out of it, I think it’s a fascinating
discussion, because I know in the old days, when "The New York Times" or
"The Wall Street Journal" got documents like this, they weren’t -- they
didn’t have that discussion with the readers.

CHARLIE ROSE: It’s interesting how you did it, you know, engaging
your community.

MICHAEL ARRINGTON: I engaged them, and I would say that 80 percent of
my readers disagreed with me. And let me know about it.

CHARLIE ROSE: So, why did you do it?

MICHAEL ARRINGTON: Because I think -- well, you know, it’s funny.
When I make decisions with TechCrunch on whether to publish or what
position to take, often I’ll look back after everything is played out and
say, would I do things differently with the benefit of hindsight? And
there are a couple of instances in the past where I would have probably
done things differently. In this case, I think I absolutely did the right
thing, and I wouldn’t do things any differently. So.

CHARLIE ROSE: Do you know the site called Looped (ph)? It’s amazing.

MICHAEL ARRINGTON: It’s this mobile social networking. And it’s all
about location.

CHARLIE ROSE: Wherever you are, you know everybody in your block.

MICHAEL ARRINGTON: Yes. I can turn mine on -- I mean, I don’t have
my phone with me, but I can turn it on when I get out of here and see
everyone around me who’s a friend. Actually, mine is set up a little
differently, so I’ll see everyone who wants me to see them. And it’s a
different way of networking socially.

I love it. In fact, I’ve written about this, where you can imagine a
time where you walk into a bar and you pull out your phone and you see --
for everyone that wants you to see it, you see -- and you laugh and it’s
funny, but it’s also big business. Everyone’s picture who’s the opposite
sex or whatever your sexual preferences are, who is single and maybe wants
to -- you can see all of them. And that way you know, you know, you can go
and flirt with them on the phone and it sort of helps you meet people in a
bar.

Or you go into a business cocktail setting, and you see people on your
phone that you’ve met before and maybe it helps you with their first name
or to remember things. I think that’s the kind of thing that Looped (ph)
and others are doing that is going to change social networking.

CHARLIE ROSE: So, tell me how you see the future of social
networking? I mean, is it...

MICHAEL ARRINGTON: I don’t know what it is. I mean, it’s hard to
define. It’s -- if you look at Facebook, it’s really the plumbing behind
the interactions online between people and helping them map to the real
world. It’s clear that people love interacting with each other on Web
sites. And it’s clear that Facebook has been able to get third parties to
build applications on their platform that leverage you having your friends
sort of seeing what you’re doing. And it’s clear also that they can then
take that -- if you saw what they did with CNN around the elections, and
then you can comment and your friends can see you comment, you know, what’s
going on during the election.

That’s all -- it’s sort of really fascinating. What’s unclear is
whether it can really become profitable over the long run. Because
Facebook has these massive expenses, and the revenues are growing rapidly,
but it’s unclear if in the long run, they can make that vastly profitable
like Google has.

CHARLIE ROSE: What about the Kindle space?

MICHAEL ARRINGTON: The ebook reader space is very interesting, and I
wouldn’t expect Apple to stay out of it for much longer, to be honest, but
Amazon has been successful in selling the Kindles. I think they -- the
estimates are they might sell a million or so this year. They sell lots of
books on top of it and subscriptions, so it’s a great revenue stream for
them.

I’ve argued that Amazon should not be building a hardware device
specifically. They should be building the software or the device and let
anyone build a Kindle if they want. These are forcing Sony and Barnes &
Noble and Apple and others to come up with their competing sort of closed-
off ebook systems. And so I think that Amazon should really say, look,
we’re going to do the books, we’re going to do the software for the Kindle,
but other people build the hardware.

CHARLIE ROSE: You take care of the hardware. Yes. TechCrunch, thank
you.

MICHAEL ARRINGTON: Thanks very much.

CHARLIE ROSE: Michael Arrington.

Thank you for joining us. See you next time.

END

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