Brad McCormick wrote: > I'll let others with more facts argue against what you have said here, > but I think your cynicism here goes beyond what cynicism is > warranted (and I do think a lot of cynicism about > Mr. Microsoft is warranted).
Hmm... what more cynical -- Gates' Orwellian philantropy or my description of it? If you think I made this up, look e.g. at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_rice ("In June 2005, researcher Peter Beyer received funding from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to further improve Golden rice" "consumption of golden rice would not eliminate the problems of blindness and increased mortality" === "golden rice is a Trojan horse that will "open the door" to more widespread use of GMOs") If you look at M$' tricks in first giving away software for free to create dependencies and then raise a fee after people got dependent on the stuff (the old trick of drug dealers), you can calculate that Golden Rice is a trick to wean off subsistence farmers from their old rice varieties and switch them to GM rice. If ending vitamin A deficiency was really Gates' goal, he could easily distribute vit.A-pills. But that wouldn't help the GM industry (and provide no substantial profits to Big Pharma either). > However, the point I was aiming at is that, after persons' bellies are > full but not distended, when their needs at the base of Maslow's > pyramid have been securely met, they will look for meaning in > their lives, and I think that here, *too*, Bill Gates has the resources > to be doing something creative. I'd suggest Gates should first bring meaning to his customers' computer work (instead of messing it up with bugs, bluescreens & open gates for hackers etc.) before thinking about how to spend the money that he would owe to them for product liability if it wasn't for corrupt lawyers who exempted him from it. Chris ________________________________________ A pessimist is a well-informed optimist. _______________________________________________ Futurework mailing list [email protected] http://fes.uwaterloo.ca/mailman/listinfo/futurework
