Results tagged “billgates”

The good news: The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation has announced that it's giving over $300 million to the cause of training good teachers and figuring out what makes a good teacher. The bad news: None of the money is coming to San Francisco. $290 million is being spread around to four testing ground school districts in Tampa, Pittsburgh, Memphis, and L.A., where it will be used for teacher training and new programs and incentives to encourage the best teachers and remove ineffective ones. Another $45 million will go toward research. The foundation purposely chose four diverse school districts in, well, three corners of the country, each with their own problems and successes. Vicki Phillips, who directs the foundation's K-12 education program, hopes the outcome of the grants will "rock" every school district in the nation.

Forbes annual list of billionaires around the world came out today. Jealous? And for the first time in 14 years Warren Buffett (at $62 billion) snatched the number one spot from Bill Gates (who came in at a dismal $58 billion.) This post was created using Explorer, not Firefox, in condolence.

-- Girl fight! [KGO]

Lotta activity on Capp Street lately: not only was a man caught beating and trying to strangle a woman around 15th and Capp, but a few weeks earlier, the SFFD found a pot farm on fire two blocks down, in the same building as the Space 180/Locus Arts gallery (where Kim-Shree Maufas and Jane Kim had their school board election party.)

San Francisco is proud host of a new reality show called "How to Get the Guy" that's unfortunately not a descendant of Will and Grace, Queer Eye, The L Word, American Idol etc. Also a biodefence lab is coming to the East Bay and SFist teaches wine pairing.

Two big names announced this week that they're stepping down at Microsoft -- first, the most human face of the company, Robert Scoble, followed shortly by founder and icon Bill Gates. While we seriously doubt the two moves were related in any way, both moves could substantially impact the company's future. If for the worse, then big trouble at Microsoft could mean a big boon to Silicon Valley.

Phillyist notes a fistfight between local pols that leaves one man down for the count. Jehovah's Witnesses get a Philly contributor out of bed, things get a little geeky with a film festival and geeky gets taken to a whole new galaxy when they talk with the Dragon Queen of the Dark Kingdom.

Look! Up in the sky! It's... well, just a bunch of fog, apparently. People have been spending a lot of time looking to the tech world for heroes and personal saviors, only to have those illusions shattered when they realize all they're getting are software, search engines, and MP3 players.

Our concert picks for the week of 7/21-7/27.

Yesterday on Slashdot was a review of local NYT tech correspondent John Markoff's new book, "What The Dormouse Said: How the 60s Counterculture Shaped the Personal Computer Industry." Quoting the review:

It's good to be a nerd. At least that's how SFist feels after hanging out at the Swedish American Hall, taking full advantage of the open bar, nodding our head to the DJ's beats, nibbling on tidbits from the trays of finger food and stuffing our bag with schwag at the Creative Commons party last night. Intellectual property lawyers sure know how to party!

However things aren't all hunky-dory down in Cupertino, either. One iTunes user is suing Apple for anti-competitive practices for not providing iTunes downloads in a format that works on players besides the iPod. Apple has had a tradition of making their software exclusive to their hardware, though until the AAC format they have had very open media standards (and a small hardware marketshare). Apple is also a plaintiff in two cases involving leaks to the web of details on their upcoming products -- the first regarding their firewire audio device, the latest involving their sub-$500 desktop and office suite which was revealed by ThinkSecret. Looks like somebody inside Apple has taken their non-disclosure agreement a little too lightly.

SFist is shocked to see that we failed for the 31st year in a row to make the Forbes list of the top 400 richest people in the world. Much like those US News and World Report stickers that show up on local editions of the America's Top Colleges magazines ("NORTHERN CALIFORNIA! Berkeley, Stanford, and Mills are represented in here!"), someone has thoughtfully compiled a compendium of California-based information for your perusal.