Bill Gates joined on stage by jar of poop as he confesses deep love for talking about toilets Bill Gates' obsession with all things faecal continued apace on Tuesday as the billionaire philanthropist took to a Beijing stage armed only with a fierce determination to improve global sanitation. And a jar of poo. The stunt may remind some of the 1993 episode of the BBC current affairs quiz show, Have I Got News For You, …
I once wrote a trashcan desktop icon application that was a toilet (back in the windows 3.x days).
Nowadays, we can expect that "windows everywhere" will soon turn EVERY desktopcomputer into a toilet. After all, it's the new "lowest common denominator" platform upon which UWP must "look and feel" the same, everywhere, because, Win-10-nic.
now, how will that 2D FLATSO toilet interface work again?
That would've gone well with the .wav of a toilet flushing that I used with Windows 9x in place of the default "empty recycle bin" sound.
Also, your coupling of "2d flatso" with "toilets" has given me an entirely new perspective on the holes in the animated Yellow Submarine film...
A very useful skill is to walk out stage with a large bucket of it, climb into the bucket, stand there up to your knees in it. All while holding a lengthy news conference. Do not mention the bucket or its contents even once. Don't even react to it. If questioned, deny its very existence. "There is no bucket, and I'm not standing in it."
This is the skill that is required these days.
"/me can't find 'poo' icon..."
I'm sure it's in Unicode somewhere, though YMMV when it comes to rendering that properly. U+1F4A9 or 💩 if that helps.
Edit: El Reg says "The post contains some characters we can’t support", so I deleted the actual poop character.
maybe it would be an improvement over the so-called "low water flush" toilets. So instead of flushing ONCE [older designs], by using LESS water per flush, you have to flush it 3 times to "get it all"... (or listen to it running constantly when the 'bulk' has too much mass to get past the bendy part because it 'uses less water').
Either that, or it'll be "flush it 5 times" like a reboot process during "up"grades.
what's next, 'slurping' up data about what we've been eating, and if "it floats" it's "you're eating too much meat/fast-food" and activists will now picket your house?
The potential assault on privacy and freedom (and marketing it or using it against you politically) is too much for Micro-shaft to ignore!
what's next, 'slurping' up data about what we've been eating, and if "it floats" it's "you're eating too much meat/fast-food"
Some while ago I had an orange circle pop up on Skype admonishing me "Add a photo! It'll help people get to know you!" I can just imagine a MS-powered toilet telling me "You should eat more fiber!" or "Another night at the bar! Tsk Tsk"
No, that’s not what I meant.
I know this is going to attract an inflammatory response and, tragic it is that so many infants are at risk, might I suggest it would be better in those places where the risk is greatest if the blokes were encouraged to keep their todgers under control?
One of my favourite charities "Water Aid" also takes a keen interest in sanitation. Having learned a little about how the world works outside of my immediate surroundings, I can understand why.
Very noble, a good cause I do agree with. The issue is that the end goal is rather unrealistic. Why? A lot of the problems are also cultural.
For example; digging your own "shitpit" (i forget the formal name) or filling in an existing one (generally just handling your own excrement) is seen as beneath people in India, and to be known to do so could brand you as an untouchable, the lowest caste in indian society. There's an increase in India of people wanting to build overly huge pits that are going to last for multiple decades of use just so they never have to get involved with excrement maintenance. Not only this, but in India open defecation is seen as the norm. Attempts to introduce toilets to indian villages have lead to varied responses, included the toilet becoming a shrine or being used to make curries.
Likewise, there are areas of Africa where the floors are absolutely littered with literal human excrement and other waste; there are beaches absolutely filled to the brim with human faeces and polluting the ocean. Again, there is the issue of open defecation being the norm, but there's also clearly a cultural component here as well; there's no centralised giant pile of rubbish, its largely dropped as its used.
In china as well, open defecation is a reality for millions and millions.
The (seemingly insurmountable) challenge isn't just more efficient methods of waste disposal, but in changing long held cultural beliefs around the handling of excrement and how people are supposed to defecate.
unfortunately, we cannot "do for them" what they are unable/unwilling to "do for themselves" without executing some kind of pressure upon them, like foreigners refusing to go to cities (or employ people) where public 'un-sanitation' is considered "normal".
I'm not sure anyone is so altruistic as to subscribe to that notion. However, if it DID become a 'human rights' issue of some kind, at the U.N. for example, it would have to side with those who are adversely affected by poor/nonexistent public sanitation.
In the 1st world, trash pickup and sewers and sewage treatment are considered 'normal'. The black plague was one of the reasons why this is so. Preventing plagues was a huge motivation behind not dumping bedpans or chamber pots into the street, and requiring the use of public toilets instead of gutters.
Then again, with things being as they are (and getting a bit worse, I'd say), places like San Francisco are looking more like the 3rd world every day...
Anyway, attitudes have to change. Just like it is with some countries still violating civil rights based on sex, religion, etc. we can't fix THEIR problems until THEY are willing to fix THEIR problems. [it's possible to pressure them to change their minds, but that's a slow and politically charged process sometimes, especially when that country makes your electronic toys or provides you with oil or raw materials]
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