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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