I <h3art my trillian, but man this is amazing.

Wow.

Yeah...wow. That is cool. Almost seems like there should be a catch.

Ah, apparently it's only available in the US at the moment. Looks I'll be waiting for it to start up here.

Couldn't one just donate manually?

Not to besmirch what Microsoft is doing here, but soon there will be an entire generation of self righteous *******s who think they are saving the world by chatting, and fail to see the need to do anymore.

Cool, but i'll stick with Trillian Astra.

I don't know about that. I doubt the people who would act like you say give to charity as it is. I'd imagine that those who donate already would continue to do so alongside this initiative.

If you can't beat the competition using slimey business practices or superior products, it's time to resort to bribes!

Exactly, they're only doing this to get people to join.

lol mikkro$oft r bribing peopls!!11

:sigh:

I am utterly fed up with posts like Brian's and Cool Matty's.

I don't care what Microsoft's motivations are, good things can come from this.

I second this.

If it was Linux IM or Apple IM donating to charity it would be alright, but the evil M$ can't do that! Bill Gates is such a jerk even though he helps a BUTTLOAD of foundations and donates more money to charities than just about anyone else.

I guess this is why I can't login.

perhaps they are trying to buy their soul back...

Wow, **** those of you who can't see this for the good. Seriously. I don't care what their "morals" behind it are. The fact of the matter is that a company that could whipe their *** with their advertising income is instead using some of it for charity. Yes, it's a ploy to get people to download and use their program. Who cares?

I think I'm going to at least start it up and get some friends to use it. A damn good cause if all I have to do is look at ads.

Sorry, but I don't think that charity can help a lot. And now don't get angry... They have still enough to "whipe their ***". I think it's kind of funny not to care for the morals, but seeing it as a good thing.

I think the intention of an action is quite important. Ok, now there are guys like me who think that M$ is doing quite a lot of "evil" - if you don't think so, sure then it's a good thing. But I don't think it's makeing up for what they are doing elsewhere.

It's like buying clothes made by African children and than at christmas give money to some charity program that helps children in Africa...

Isn't the reason Bill is so generous to charities because of the tax breaks anyway?

But it isn't like that... at all.

A better comparison would be if you sent money to africa, and then bragged about it, and then broke your next door neighbor's bike.

You don't like that microsoft breaks people's bikes, and that they brag about giving money to africa. I don't care about those things, and am happy to see africa getting money.

Wow, no ****ing ****, huh? Oh no, guys, a company is promoting its product!! Watch out for those slimeballs!

You don't care? I think that's bothersome.

Of course it's great that some charities are going to get money. But it's downright pathetic that Microsoft uses it solely as a gimmick. It tarnishes the idea of charity.

It comes down to this:

They aren't donating to charity to help the charity. They're donating to help themselves. It's still selfish.

So would you prefer that they don't do it at all?

Hey man, that's not how you do Charity.

You're BAD at charity.

Stop being charitable.

I'd perfer they do it for the right reasons, obviously.

If you don't see the stupidity in that statement, you've got problems.

"Give money to people who need it, but only if you're not doing it for attention/profit."

It doesn't matter how you cut it.

My stand on this comes from the answer to one question: Which came first? Let's give more money to charity, or let's try and come up with another way to get people to use Live Messenger.

It's a very moral issue for me, like Matty. I am glad they're giving money to charity, but this is exactly like those people who throw in the money in the collection basket so they don't look out of place. When it comes to major companies making large donations, it's hard to tell what's their motivation so how about you all shut the **** up and let them do it? Massassi is not a place to debate morals, and you sure as hell won't change anyone's. Especially Bill Gates's.

Morals are a very touchy subject with me, because I base my morals on me, unlike what I'm fed at school or my friends or anything like that. If you want to give money because you feel good about helping someone, NOT because someone tells you to, then I'm 100% behind you. I personally gave $10 (significant amount to me, with no job) to a Compassion Child project in our classroom (I know, those things are usually scams, but whatever) because I felt good knowing I had just spent $10 to helping a kid in Mexico get an education, a Bible, and a good daily diet, something I take for granted and don't always take advantage of.

Oh, and didn't I read somewhere that like 35% of Gates's fortune when he dies is going to select charities?

You're still looking at it totally wrong.

"Give money to people who need it, because you want to help them."

That's it. It's that simple. None of this "but only" crap.

So let's just ignore their illegal business practices that put dozens of good companies out of business and thus made thousands of people lose their jobs. Let's ignore the fact that the B&M Gates foundation invests in companies that are downright evil and use child labor, break environmental laws, etc.

You need to look at a company (or a person) as a whole and decide whether their NET contribution to society is more good or more evil. In microsoft's case, I would definitely lean towards more evil.

Plus, they're donating "a portion" of their ad revenue. Nowhere does it state what that portion is. It could be .00000000001% and the charities won't get crap. How can you trust a company that's screwed so many people over? It just doesn't make sense.

And to take the focus off Microsoft for 5 seconds, what about the Book IT program that encourages young people to read a lot? Sounds great, right? But there's more than one way to view it.

http://www.cnn.com/2007/EDUCATION/03/02/reading.for.pizza.ap/index.html

Did you just put kirby on global ignore?

What the ****, Brian?

We had this when I was a kid, I thought it was awesome. Mind you, I already liked reading, so I guess "taking shortcuts" never appealed to me.

Maybe I should have worded things a bit more specifically.

I'm fed up with people who only post in these threads to push their own excessively cynical conclusions on everyone without posting a shred of reasoning as to why they think this way.

If you have a foregone conclusion that people who've done bad things in the past are only going to continue to do bad things then I seriously pity the way you look at the world.

Guess what, there are good police officers in the US, there are people in positions of authority at Microsoft who aren't just out to make money and the vast majority of politicians are really trying to do some good.

I agree that Bill Gates has done some stupid things in his life, but I think he really is a good person and not this evil anti-christ that everyone makes him out to be. He's done a lot of good with his money, and he's even stepping down from Microsoft soon to spend more time focusing on his foundation, so to say that he is evil is just stupid.

Smug warning!

It's a good thing you all can see my posts now.

You people are seriously confused. Why do you care about the morality of the act? Why do you care about if they want to "help" someone or not? Why does it matter how they acted towards countries? I'm not saying: "Well, THIS makes microsoft awesome." I'm saying that this is nothing but a good thing, regardless of their reason for doing it.

I'm not ignoring the bad things they've done. Microsoft still sucks. Windows IM still sucks. But this is a really really cool thing that they're doing.

Yeah ok, I think I got your comparison. I just think that a lot of people give money to charity organisations to to soothe their conscience. Now, a company doesn't have a conscience, but they have to take care of their image.
Ok, here you got a point, since they give their money somewhere where not their doing is causing the "evil".
Still, it helps to improve their image. But why should that be bad?
Because they only want that people join them so they can make much more money? I have to admit I loved that beer campaign (in Germany) where they gave money to save the rain forest for every box beer.
There was some argument back than, that this is unfair competition tough. But I didn't really follow it.

I don't like charity because it doesn't really grip the roots of the problems. Just doctoring a bit the symptoms. I think that free software is a requirement for a good future and that is more important than some charity. But perhaps that's another discussion.

I totally agree with the above post. I just think we had a difference in value, not in opinion.

Exactly who the **** do you think you are? I come in here, disagree with some people about microsoft, and all of a sudden I'm some evil *******? I don't even know wtf you guys are talking about. People like you preach tolerence until someone disagrees when you then you jump to conclusions and start assuming stuff about people. Ridiculous.

I don't think any rich person can give to charity without it being seen as done for the wrong reasons.

Lowering their taxes

Lowering their estate when they die

Etc, etc

The same applies to a corporation