For $150, Third-World Laptop Stirs a Big Debate

Eduardo Cavazos wayo.cavazos at gmail.com
Sat Jan 6 14:40:05 UTC 2007


On Fri, 2006-12-01 at 22:11 +0000, J J wrote:

> And predictably stupid.  As Bill Gates and Co. have no concerns in this 
> world other then money, the best thing that could possibly happen for them 
> is for more of the world to get educated and start producing wealth (which 
> turns into money sooner or later, and windows/intel is largely the only real 
> alternative for personal computing at the moment).  But instead they focus 
> on the fact that they don't get to tax *this* transaction.

Jim Gettys wrote:

> Bill Gates has put enough money, and more importantly, time and energy
> into philanthropy in the developing world over the last number of years
> that I do not doubt the sincerity of his motives. Go take a quick look
> at the Gates Foundation web site.

> Remember, it is a bitter pill for Bill Gates to swallow that his
> company's software is not the software we are concentrating on; if you
> were chairman and founder of Microsoft, you'd probably believe fervently
> in your product too.  To he and his company's credit, they have been
> much better about OLPC than Intel has been.
>                           - Jim

Greg Palast wrote:

I bet Mr. Gates, so quick to shout "piracy!" could name two products that 
depend heavily on the lifted intellectual discoveries of others: MS-DOS and 
Windows. To make sure no one could steal from him what he had so freely 
boosted, Gates has run an international campaign to legally lock up his 
monopoly on ideas. Bill's nobody's fool. He must know that if the 
intellectual property defenses are breached, it will come from the need to 
get cheap AIDS drugs to Africa. So we see Gates putting his two cents (in his 
case, two billion) into the Africa AIDS holocaust issue. In February 2002, 
Bill and wife Melinda made the cover of Newsweek for their bighearted 
philanthropy. The grinning couple's foundation has spent hundreds of millions 
for AIDS treatment in Africa, working paw-in-claw with Merck and other Big 
Pharma corporations tied to a PR campaign that drowns out the calls of 
doctors pleading to end TRIPS restrictions. If there's any doubt where the 
Gates's hearts lie, the Wall Street Journal notes that their foundation has, 
oddly, invested over $200 million in drug company stocks. If 
this "charitable" operation eviscerates protest against the TRIPS 
thought-police and medical patents are upheld, Gates's donations could have 
the effect of killing more people than they save.

	From "The Best Democracy Money Can Buy" page 190



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