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Microsoft Thinks Africa Doesn't Need Free Software

DIY News writes "Microsoft has claimed the cost of software is not an important issue in the developing world. According to MS, while you can give people free software or computers, they won't have the expertise to use it."

7 of 729 comments (clear)

  1. Re:... Nice by TubeSteak · · Score: 1, Troll
    As opposed to what... ?
    Making them pay for computers and software they won't have the expertise to use?

    I think Microsoft's problem with Africa is that the public is not already locked into/onto MS products. You ask them about Windows or Linux and they'll say we have windows in our house, but wtf is Linux. As far as they're concerned, neither product is better because they haven't yet been "educated" about the differences.

    In summation: Microsoft can't compete with free.
    P.S. I didn't RTFA

    --
    [Fuck Beta]
    o0t!
  2. You've got to be kidding me. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0, Troll

    How? By turning every Nigarian into email scammers so that any one of them would be richer than all of us combine?

    Kind of hard to do that when they are mostly financially dependent on domestic products. Maybe you are talking about how computers would revolutionalize their marketing and shipping methods? What a great idea! Except there is one small problem...golbalism.

    What on earth are you thinking?!

    Without basic needs, technology is nothing.

  3. Re:Not just Microsoft are poorly-informed by Lars83 · · Score: 0, Troll

    what's the use for computers if you don't have food?

  4. Re:No, they don't need free software by maxpublic · · Score: 0, Troll

    Or you could stop keeping them in poverty by ruining global markets with your illegal subsidies and trading practices

    Illegal subsidies and trading practices? According to American law - the only law that applies to the United States, being a sovereign country and all - these "subsidies and trading practices" you speak of aren't illegal. The laws of other nations, or the pathetic whining of jealous foreigners, are of no consequence.

    The biggest way you could help there is not to insist on the ability to enforce patent rights on anti-retroviral drugs.

    They could always refuse to do so, but clearly they haven't. Sounds like an internal problem to me, corrupt politicians not representing the interests of their own people.

    but what you're doing to the third world makes me sick to think you're our (Europeans') cousins...

    You aren't my cousin, asshole. Never have been, never will be. Don't flatter yourself.

    Max

    --
    My god carries a hammer. Your god died nailed to a tree. Any questions?
  5. Re:uhm yes by maxpublic · · Score: 0, Troll

    some of those countries managed to compete against the unfair trading practices of the United States and Europe in markets like textiles

    Waah, waah, cry me a fucking river. More jerkoff liberal twaddle about the 'evils' of the Western world. Sounds to me like only the complete and utter subjugation of the West to the Third World would make you happy.

    but the produce from farming in Africa (fruit, coffee etc.) is still (as you hint) unfairly and illegally forced out of the global market

    It ain't illegal to outcompete African farmers, no matter how many laws foreign nations pass. Those laws don't apply to the U.S. - or to those evil European farmers either - so they're irrelevent. If these laws even exist which, so far as I can tell, they don't.

    Africans aren't inherently corrupt, they're just corruptible, like most us!

    Then the problem is *corrupt Africans*, not *the evil West*. For chrissakes, at least try to be somewhat coherent in your ranting.

    Max

    --
    My god carries a hammer. Your god died nailed to a tree. Any questions?
  6. 'Africans' already did: www.ubuntulinux.org by slaida1 · · Score: 1, Troll
    It amuses us europeans that you north americans think africans don't have expertise for various things north americans themselves can't use very well. See for example windows xp and compare it to for example ubuntu linux.

    It seems to us europeans that africans have better expertise to use computers than north americans.

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  7. Re:No, they don't need free software by maxpublic · · Score: 0, Troll

    UN laws don't trump US laws; never have, never will. And really, I could give a flying fuck what the UN thinks of anything. So far as I'm concerned, the UN is a failed experiment that some stupid twats are trying to turn into a vehicle to impose the abomination of one-world government on all and sundry.

    As for the mass grave - there isn't a power on Earth that could achieve the genocide you so sociopathically wish to inflict on an entire people. Although from your love of mass murder, I'd be guessing that you're German.

    Max

    --
    My god carries a hammer. Your god died nailed to a tree. Any questions?