About as sophisticated a set of arguments as "Gee! I really don't understand this OSS thing!"
Basically a set of tautologies.
"The average user can't fix software".
Duh!
This idiot completely misses virtually every point due to an inability to see where they properly apply and an inability to contrast OSS with closed source where NONE of the points apply.
"Is" and "effects" are not the same thing (at the risk of sounding like Clinton.)
Meditators do not know what consciousness IS - they know its effects.
And nobody said it would be easy. That's why nanotech is needed - to permit real-time observation of brain function during normal consciousness.
As for locality, there is no evidence that our experiences occur in only one place in the brain. Indications are that normal consciousness affects multiple areas of the brain simultaneously. MRI experiments show multiple areas "lighting up" during normal recall of word meanings, for instance. How this is done given the brain's physical structure is a primary point to be researched. Given the slowness of biochemical processes as opposed to electronic, it has been presumed that massive parallism is involved, given the number of neurons in the brain. As for how, this is the point to be researched. It may well be possible that quantum effects are involved (I believe some research has been done on this) but I don't know the details. In any event, there is absolutely no evidence of any non-physicality being involved. Everything so far indicates all brain functions are localized in the physical brain.
I do have a theory about how such paranormal effects as telepathy and related matters could be done (essentially a "biological Internet"), but I don't know exactly how the physical mechanism of data transmission would work.
I thought only Rush was left who considered Iraq a "success"...
They're not "easing back", cretin, they're on the verge of fleeing the country with their tails between their legs.
The fucking MARINES are hiding in bunkers, like Beirut - and sooner or later, they'll lose another 200 troops by doing so.
The resistance is now in total control of the ground and can move and attack at will.
It took the US ten years and the intervention of the North Vietnamese Regular Army to do what the Iraqis have done in 16 months - reduce the US military to a state of total helplessness.
After 16 months, the military admits they STILL have no clue who their enemy is (there are at least a couple dozen resistance groups, if not many more) or how to find them. They have no reliable intelligence so they arrest anybody standing around, which is why they have resorted to torture to try to find anything out.
80-90% of the Iraqi people want their asses out yesterday. Only the fact that Sistani is keeping his eye on the ball for equal representation of the Shia in the elections has prevented him from issuing a fatwa which would put another thirty thousand or so resistance fighters on the street (and hundreds of thousands of rioters and protesters). The senior Sunni clerics are openly calling for jihad against the occupation.
The entire Iraqi "government" is considered a lame joke by the entire Iraqi population. Allawi is recognized as a former Saddam assassin and CIA asset, and nobody else in the government has any credibility on the Iraqi street.
Only a moron like you would consider this "success".
All this would do is make some drugs ineffective - which means the addiction market - and it is a market - will merely switch to other drugs.
Eventually one would be found that could not be inoculated against without major biochem advances, and that drug would become the new primary method of addiction.
More likely, this whole thing is sponsored by the "legal" drug purveyors - the booze makers.
The only reason US troops aren't dying by the dozens in Iraq is because they're hunkered down in bunkers and have given up patrolling the hot spots because they were getting their asses handed to them.
I just read two articles today that paint a picture of the US military position in Iraq today.
The picture is this: 1) The Marines - the fucking MARINES - are hunkered down in positions and are completely unable to go out on patrols because they get shot up by hundreds of insurgents. The best they can do is keep Highway 10 open for convoys by running patrols down it that get hit every time.
2) The US Army is unable to patrol Anbar province hardly at all. The only reason dozens of US troops aren't being killed daily is that they have virtually abandoned the province and no longer run patrols they deem as too dangerous.
Here's a quote - read between the lines since the "spin" is that it's all a "success":
The aggressive patrols that marked the Marines' arrival this spring were met with frenzied and bloody insurgent attacks, leading to some of the heaviest U.S. losses of the Iraq conflict. Since the patrols gave way to the more modulated "outposting" strategy, however, American deaths have declined dramatically.
Marines say the scaled-back blueprint has worked in other ways: Unlike Fallouja, Ramadi still has a U.S. military presence designed to keep open the city's main artery, back up Iraqi police who protect the heavily fortified Iraqi government center and prevent the city from falling into complete chaos or insurgent control. ======
The reduced U.S. visibility here also coincides with the return of sovereignty to Iraq and a nationwide push to keep American troops in the background as much as possible. Still, no one doubts that Iraqi security forces would be outmatched here if not for the U.S. military presence. ========
"We've had some success ? Highway 10 is open, and we're seeing the Iraqis take more and more charge of their own security," said Capt. Christopher Bronzi, who heads Golf Company from the frequently attacked Marine base known as the Combat Outpost, a former Iraqi army facility along Highway 10, the city's main drag. "People in Ramadi are ready for us to be less a part of their country." === Not shit, Dick Tracy!
Before the Marines' arrival, the commander of the Army's 82nd Airborne Division, Maj. Gen. Charles H. Swannack Jr., declared that Al Anbar was "on a glide path toward success" and pronounced the insurgency here in "disarray" ? far from the situation faced here today by the Marines who took over from Swannack's soldiers.
The Marines' initial strategy of high-profile patrols was far more aggressive than the Army's limited-engagement efforts. The violent backlash demonstrated that the insurgents in Ramadi had never been vanquished, Marines say, and probably had been consolidating forces during the Army occupation. ==== In other words, anything you hear about US "success" in Iraq is bullshit.
"It's like ghost fighters," Cpl. Hamby said. "You can get into a firefight, and afterward when you go to the exact spot you were firing at, you won't find any shell cases, bodies, nothing. They grab everything and they're gone."
Arriving at the Islamic Law Center, where the Marines of Squad 3 were pulling a 12-hour shift the other day, is an unequivocal war zone exercise: Several Humvees block all traffic along Highway 10 and form a safety cordon with machine guns at the ready, while other Marines dismount and train their weapons on buildings, passersby and vehicles. Relieving troops sprint the final 10 yards or so to the metal front door, which is quickly opened and shut. ====== BWAHAHAHAHAHA!!!
The months of fighting have made it clear to these Marines that they are in an inhospitable place where much of the population would like to see them gone ? and many want them dead. A decisive military victory here is widely viewed as unlikely, Marines say.
This shit makes Vietnam look like a cakewalk.
When the MARINES have to hide in bunkers, you know shit ain't going well.
And the mass national resistance hasn't even started yet. Both the main Shia and Sunni groups are holding back waiting to see how the elections go and which side gets screwed over by the US in them.
If you believe most of the morons in the US military are "trained killing machines", you are seriously naive. (Unless your "some thousand" is meant to reduce the numbers to something reasonable.)
Most of these idiots have trouble murdering civilians in Iraq.
Only the Marines and the various Special Forces units have any significant training at all.
And they're still getting their asses kicked by the resistance in Iraq.
And the real mass resistance hasn't even started yet. On the Shia side, Sistani has not yet issued his fatwa. On the Sunni side, a recent interview with the sheikh in charge of one of the tribes - a two-million strong tribe - stated, "This isn't a resistance. We will make Vietnam look like a picnic." Within the next 6-12 months - unless Bush pulls them out to go to North Korea (where the Pentagon estimates fifty thousand dead in the first ninety days) - the Iraqis are going to DESTROY the US military forces in Iraq. The US forces will be forced to flee the country hanging from helicopter rails a la Vietnam (unless Sistani allows them a truce to evacuate) and leave behind them billions in US equipment which I'm sure the US troops will see again, used against them.
This will be the greatest military defeat in US history. And the results will be worse than the Vietnam defeat. It will be decades before the US military can regain its standing, just as it was twenty years and Gulf War I before the US could regain its standing after Vietnam.
The incompetence, stupidity, brutality and poor training and doctrine that led to this massive defeat will be analyzed for decades.
It's over for the US military.
And I couldn't care less except to laugh my ass off. This is nature's way of eliminating the stupid.
Given the Diebold voting machines, forget the vote.
Go straight for the rifle.
As we anarchists say, "Don't vote - it only encourages them." And "No matter who you vote for, the government gets into office." And "If voting could change the system, it would be illegal."
"it's not as if you'll be denied a jury trial if it's a major offense."
Tell that to the boys in Quantanamo who have been held for two years and only now the Supreme Court has said they need "some" representation.
Or the US citizens who have been picked off the street and held incommunicado and without lawyers for months.
And who knows what laws will get passed with "PATRIOT III" - which no doubt will be proposed as soon as Bush can get the next "terrorist incident" off the ground this fall.
"Slippery slope" just doesn't cover it adequately. The average US citizen today looks like that commercial from some years back with the penguin slipping on ice and sliding into the Antarctic. (No Linux jokes here, please! Save until the end!)
We used to refer to "Saddam's rape and torture chambers" when he was running them.
So why aren't we referring to "Bush's rape and torture chambers"?
Of course, the right would claim that Saddam personally ordered these actions while Bush did not. Leaving aside the DOJ torture memos which indicate otherwise, it's still valid to claim that the person responsible for the actions is the person who oversees them. The buck stops at the White House - not some hillbillies from West Virginia (not that I believe it stopped anyway close to them in any event - clearly it went right up to at least Steven Cambone and Donald Rumsfeld).
I see today both The New York Times and the Washington Post are proclaiming the Army's just released report on the abuses as an "obvious whitewash".
The NSA is prohibited from using US NSA employees from listening in on US citizens.
So they get the UK Echelon employees to do it.
Not to mention that they want the laws prohibiting the CIA from doing domestic intelligence, and the military Posse Commitatus laws to be removed in the name of "efficiency in fighting terrorism".
It's so fraggin' obvious what's up that only rightwing morons like Rush and O'Reilly and the nerdboys on/. who buy into it.
It's like the modus operandi of every state in human history is not allowed to apply to the US because we live here or something.
It's called "cognitive dissonance" - unless you're like me. I just call it "morons".
No, they can't just give it back to Bill. That's obvious.
But they CAN use it to further Bill's financial and business aims (and perhaps even social aims if he has any, which I doubt) under the guise of investments. Which is exactly what the Gates Library Foundation does.
The DSLReports article indicates other areas where this is true, which is why I pointed it out.
So why should I assume everything else is on the up and up? Because suckers like you say so?
Face it, the only reason you believe Gates about anything is because he's rich and you're not. You could argue the opposite about me, but you'd be wrong because I don't care that he's rich, particularly. I care how he got there and what's he doing with it - or NOT doing with it, in the case of the stock dividend and buyback.
In case you haven't noticed my other posts, I happen to be politically a "free market anarchist", meaning I approve of the free market and therefore have no complaints about people being rich provided they got there honestly (for that matter, I'm not even sure the latter is a requirement, as long as they aren't egregious about it - which Gates is.)
But I don't bow to people just because they're rich either, like a lot of gullible/. fools.
You evidently have no interest in anything I've said, merely in proclaiming the usually postmodern nonsense masquerading as "profundity". You ignore commonsense and/or scientific definitions of things in order to make apparently profound but actually meaningless statements.
If one - as I did during Vietnam - joins the military and allows one to be sent into a situation where one can get killed at somebody else's order, then one is a moron.
That simple.
"Only doing your job" is the excuse the Nazis gave for murdering people. The same applies to US troops who are murdering Iraqi civilians on a daily basis.
The Geneva Conventions make every single individual soldier responsible for his actions. And so does any rational view of correct behavior.
What part of "stock laundering" don't you comprehend?
It's irrelevant to that concept how much stock in OTHER companies they own. That was Forbe's point. The point is that Gates stock has been converted to cash. Stock that he couldn't convert because of SEC rules.
Secondly, the DSLReports article points out that the Foundation is using that cash to gain control of companies in which Gates has a financial, not charitable, interest. In other words, Gates has learned from the Rockefellers that the real purpose of a large foundation is CONTROL, not handing out money.
As for the "$7 billion in grants", do note that Forbes says the actual amount is around $1 billion and that most of that came from the INCOME on the assets, not the assets themselves. And Forbes also notes it didn't even cost them much to manage those assets. So that $750,000,000 you tout is over FIVE YEARS, easily paid for by the INCOME from the Foundation's investments.
Sure, you can argue that this is a smart way to do charity, i.e., don't piss away the assets in one time grants, use them to make money, then piss that away. You can argue that, but it goes against Bill Gate's innate nature, as you would know if you've ever read any biography of him - or for that matter, any biography of any rich guy.
In other words, the assets are PRESERVED, USED FOR CONTROL, and the "grants" are PR moves.
I'm not even emphasizing the Gates Library Foundation which requires libraries to install Microsoft software AND TO UPGRADE THAT SOFTWARE EVERY FOUR OR FIVE YEARS BY CONTRACT.
Slashdot Mirror
About as sophisticated a set of arguments as "Gee! I really don't understand this OSS thing!"
Basically a set of tautologies.
"The average user can't fix software".
Duh!
This idiot completely misses virtually every point due to an inability to see where they properly apply and an inability to contrast OSS with closed source where NONE of the points apply.
How moronic does it get?
"I will not relinguish my throne! The Supreme Court ruled in my favor!"
Jodie Foster as Eowen: "Try to touch my tits, Witch King, and I'll cut your head off!"
Winona Ryder as Arwen: "Father, you saw a child! From all those rock stars I slept with!"
Timothy Leary as Gandalf: "Fireworks? You want fireworks, toke some of this!"
Graham Norton as Gollum: ('Nuff said)
"Is" and "effects" are not the same thing (at the risk of sounding like Clinton.)
Meditators do not know what consciousness IS - they know its effects.
And nobody said it would be easy. That's why nanotech is needed - to permit real-time observation of brain function during normal consciousness.
As for locality, there is no evidence that our experiences occur in only one place in the brain. Indications are that normal consciousness affects multiple areas of the brain simultaneously. MRI experiments show multiple areas "lighting up" during normal recall of word meanings, for instance. How this is done given the brain's physical structure is a primary point to be researched. Given the slowness of biochemical processes as opposed to electronic, it has been presumed that massive parallism is involved, given the number of neurons in the brain. As for how, this is the point to be researched. It may well be possible that quantum effects are involved (I believe some research has been done on this) but I don't know the details. In any event, there is absolutely no evidence of any non-physicality being involved. Everything so far indicates all brain functions are localized in the physical brain.
I do have a theory about how such paranormal effects as telepathy and related matters could be done (essentially a "biological Internet"), but I don't know exactly how the physical mechanism of data transmission would work.
You're obviously just a troll. You have no facts about anything, just a mouth.
Fuck off, moron.
Jesus, what a moron.
I thought only Rush was left who considered Iraq a "success"...
They're not "easing back", cretin, they're on the verge of fleeing the country with their tails between their legs.
The fucking MARINES are hiding in bunkers, like Beirut - and sooner or later, they'll lose another 200 troops by doing so.
The resistance is now in total control of the ground and can move and attack at will.
It took the US ten years and the intervention of the North Vietnamese Regular Army to do what the Iraqis have done in 16 months - reduce the US military to a state of total helplessness.
After 16 months, the military admits they STILL have no clue who their enemy is (there are at least a couple dozen resistance groups, if not many more) or how to find them. They have no reliable intelligence so they arrest anybody standing around, which is why they have resorted to torture to try to find anything out.
80-90% of the Iraqi people want their asses out yesterday. Only the fact that Sistani is keeping his eye on the ball for equal representation of the Shia in the elections has prevented him from issuing a fatwa which would put another thirty thousand or so resistance fighters on the street (and hundreds of thousands of rioters and protesters). The senior Sunni clerics are openly calling for jihad against the occupation.
The entire Iraqi "government" is considered a lame joke by the entire Iraqi population. Allawi is recognized as a former Saddam assassin and CIA asset, and nobody else in the government has any credibility on the Iraqi street.
Only a moron like you would consider this "success".
All this would do is make some drugs ineffective - which means the addiction market - and it is a market - will merely switch to other drugs.
Eventually one would be found that could not be inoculated against without major biochem advances, and that drug would become the new primary method of addiction.
More likely, this whole thing is sponsored by the "legal" drug purveyors - the booze makers.
Anybody see booze mentioned in that article?
You're an idiot.
Get your news from someplace other than Fox.
The only reason US troops aren't dying by the dozens in Iraq is because they're hunkered down in bunkers and have given up patrolling the hot spots because they were getting their asses handed to them.
Even the MARINES are bunkered down now!
Oh, really?
I just read two articles today that paint a picture of the US military position in Iraq today.
The picture is this:
1) The Marines - the fucking MARINES - are hunkered down in positions and are completely unable to go out on patrols because they get shot up by hundreds of insurgents. The best they can do is keep Highway 10 open for convoys by running patrols down it that get hit every time.
2) The US Army is unable to patrol Anbar province hardly at all. The only reason dozens of US troops aren't being killed daily is that they have virtually abandoned the province and no longer run patrols they deem as too dangerous.
Here's a quote - read between the lines since the "spin" is that it's all a "success":
The aggressive patrols that marked the Marines' arrival this spring were met with frenzied and bloody insurgent attacks, leading to some of the heaviest U.S. losses of the Iraq conflict. Since the patrols gave way to the more modulated "outposting" strategy, however, American deaths have declined dramatically.
Marines say the scaled-back blueprint has worked in other ways: Unlike Fallouja, Ramadi still has a U.S. military presence designed to keep open the city's main artery, back up Iraqi police who protect the heavily fortified Iraqi government center and prevent the city from falling into complete chaos or insurgent control. ======
The reduced U.S. visibility here also coincides with the return of sovereignty to Iraq and a nationwide push to keep American troops in the background as much as possible. Still, no one doubts that Iraqi security forces would be outmatched here if not for the U.S. military presence. ========
"We've had some success ? Highway 10 is open, and we're seeing the Iraqis take more and more charge of their own security," said Capt. Christopher Bronzi, who heads Golf Company from the frequently attacked Marine base known as the Combat Outpost, a former Iraqi army facility along Highway 10, the city's main drag. "People in Ramadi are ready for us to be less a part of their country." === Not shit, Dick Tracy!
Before the Marines' arrival, the commander of the Army's 82nd Airborne Division, Maj. Gen. Charles H. Swannack Jr., declared that Al Anbar was "on a glide path toward success" and pronounced the insurgency here in "disarray" ? far from the situation faced here today by the Marines who took over from Swannack's soldiers.
The Marines' initial strategy of high-profile patrols was far more aggressive than the Army's limited-engagement efforts. The violent backlash demonstrated that the insurgents in Ramadi had never been vanquished, Marines say, and probably had been consolidating forces during the Army occupation. ==== In other words, anything you hear about US "success" in Iraq is bullshit.
"It's like ghost fighters," Cpl. Hamby said. "You can get into a firefight, and afterward when you go to the exact spot you were firing at, you won't find any shell cases, bodies, nothing. They grab everything and they're gone."
Arriving at the Islamic Law Center, where the Marines of Squad 3 were pulling a 12-hour shift the other day, is an unequivocal war zone exercise: Several Humvees block all traffic along Highway 10 and form a safety cordon with machine guns at the ready, while other Marines dismount and train their weapons on buildings, passersby and vehicles. Relieving troops sprint the final 10 yards or so to the metal front door, which is quickly opened and shut. ====== BWAHAHAHAHAHA!!!
The months of fighting have made it clear to these Marines that they are in an inhospitable place where much of the population would like to see them gone ? and many want them dead. A decisive military victory here is widely viewed as unlikely, Marines say.
This shit makes Vietnam look like a cakewalk.
When the MARINES have to hide in bunkers, you know shit ain't going well.
And the mass national resistance hasn't even started yet. Both the main Shia and Sunni groups are holding back waiting to see how the elections go and which side gets screwed over by the US in them.
Right - and that's what I want to do: work on conceptual processing.
Meditators know nothing about the ORIGINS of consciousness - only the EFFECTS.
Only neuroscience backed by nanotech can determine the origins of consciousness and how it can be produced or otherwise affected.
It's preserved and even increased that $20 billion.
What part of "preserve and increase" do you not comprehend?
Idiot.
Looks like fun. I bookmarked it for later.
Of course, this little "protest anarchism" is not significantly more effective than "armchair anarchism" either.
If you believe most of the morons in the US military are "trained killing machines", you are seriously naive. (Unless your "some thousand" is meant to reduce the numbers to something reasonable.)
Most of these idiots have trouble murdering civilians in Iraq.
Only the Marines and the various Special Forces units have any significant training at all.
And they're still getting their asses kicked by the resistance in Iraq.
And the real mass resistance hasn't even started yet. On the Shia side, Sistani has not yet issued his fatwa. On the Sunni side, a recent interview with the sheikh in charge of one of the tribes - a two-million strong tribe - stated, "This isn't a resistance. We will make Vietnam look like a picnic." Within the next 6-12 months - unless Bush pulls them out to go to North Korea (where the Pentagon estimates fifty thousand dead in the first ninety days) - the Iraqis are going to DESTROY the US military forces in Iraq. The US forces will be forced to flee the country hanging from helicopter rails a la Vietnam (unless Sistani allows them a truce to evacuate) and leave behind them billions in US equipment which I'm sure the US troops will see again, used against them.
This will be the greatest military defeat in US history. And the results will be worse than the Vietnam defeat. It will be decades before the US military can regain its standing, just as it was twenty years and Gulf War I before the US could regain its standing after Vietnam.
The incompetence, stupidity, brutality and poor training and doctrine that led to this massive defeat will be analyzed for decades.
It's over for the US military.
And I couldn't care less except to laugh my ass off. This is nature's way of eliminating the stupid.
Hey, fucktard!
If I'd been smart I WOULD have gone to Canada.
But I was operating under the misguided notion that I might actually learn something interesting in the military.
OTOH, I wasn't dumb enough to be drafted since I knew any moron that stupid would end up in the infantry - and I wasn't THAT stupid. So I enlisted.
Major mistake.
The same moronic mistake the rest of the morons in Iraq and Afghanistan have made. (And will make in North Korea.)
And now they're gonna pay for that mistake - while I sit back and laugh.
Have a nice day, nerd-boy, while your relatives end up dead in other countries.
BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!
Given the Diebold voting machines, forget the vote.
Go straight for the rifle.
As we anarchists say, "Don't vote - it only encourages them." And "No matter who you vote for, the government gets into office." And "If voting could change the system, it would be illegal."
"it's not as if you'll be denied a jury trial if it's a major offense."
Tell that to the boys in Quantanamo who have been held for two years and only now the Supreme Court has said they need "some" representation.
Or the US citizens who have been picked off the street and held incommunicado and without lawyers for months.
And who knows what laws will get passed with "PATRIOT III" - which no doubt will be proposed as soon as Bush can get the next "terrorist incident" off the ground this fall.
"Slippery slope" just doesn't cover it adequately.
The average US citizen today looks like that commercial from some years back with the penguin slipping on ice and sliding into the Antarctic.
(No Linux jokes here, please! Save until the end!)
This does remind me of a fun point.
We used to refer to "Saddam's rape and torture chambers" when he was running them.
So why aren't we referring to "Bush's rape and torture chambers"?
Of course, the right would claim that Saddam personally ordered these actions while Bush did not. Leaving aside the DOJ torture memos which indicate otherwise, it's still valid to claim that the person responsible for the actions is the person who oversees them. The buck stops at the White House - not some hillbillies from West Virginia (not that I believe it stopped anyway close to them in any event - clearly it went right up to at least Steven Cambone and Donald Rumsfeld).
I see today both The New York Times and the Washington Post are proclaiming the Army's just released report on the abuses as an "obvious whitewash".
Duh!
Actually, no, the FBI would NOT like to talk him if he really COULD identify terrorists by appearance.
That would really screw up the FBI's ability to ignore threats long enough for them to actualize.
Just ask Sibel Edmonds.
I mean, if the FBI were actually EFFECTIVE, their budget might be cut.
And that would hurt somebody's career and GS rating.
This is how the NSA Echelon system works.
/. who buy into it.
The NSA is prohibited from using US NSA employees from listening in on US citizens.
So they get the UK Echelon employees to do it.
Not to mention that they want the laws prohibiting the CIA from doing domestic intelligence, and the military Posse Commitatus laws to be removed in the name of "efficiency in fighting terrorism".
It's so fraggin' obvious what's up that only rightwing morons like Rush and O'Reilly and the nerdboys on
It's like the modus operandi of every state in human history is not allowed to apply to the US because we live here or something.
It's called "cognitive dissonance" - unless you're like me. I just call it "morons".
And when the cell door hits YOU in the face, don't come crying to /.
Nationalist fascist.
Stuff your patriotism up your ass.
No, they can't just give it back to Bill. That's obvious.
/. fools.
But they CAN use it to further Bill's financial and business aims (and perhaps even social aims if he has any, which I doubt) under the guise of investments. Which is exactly what the Gates Library Foundation does.
The DSLReports article indicates other areas where this is true, which is why I pointed it out.
So why should I assume everything else is on the up and up? Because suckers like you say so?
Face it, the only reason you believe Gates about anything is because he's rich and you're not. You could argue the opposite about me, but you'd be wrong because I don't care that he's rich, particularly. I care how he got there and what's he doing with it - or NOT doing with it, in the case of the stock dividend and buyback.
In case you haven't noticed my other posts, I happen to be politically a "free market anarchist", meaning I approve of the free market and therefore have no complaints about people being rich provided they got there honestly (for that matter, I'm not even sure the latter is a requirement, as long as they aren't egregious about it - which Gates is.)
But I don't bow to people just because they're rich either, like a lot of gullible
More semantically meaningless drivel.
You evidently have no interest in anything I've said, merely in proclaiming the usually postmodern nonsense masquerading as "profundity". You ignore commonsense and/or scientific definitions of things in order to make apparently profound but actually meaningless statements.
I saw through that crap years ago.
Forget about it.
Do you read
If one - as I did during Vietnam - joins the military and allows one to be sent into a situation where one can get killed at somebody else's order, then one is a moron.
That simple.
"Only doing your job" is the excuse the Nazis gave for murdering people. The same applies to US troops who are murdering Iraqi civilians on a daily basis.
The Geneva Conventions make every single individual soldier responsible for his actions. And so does any rational view of correct behavior.
Hardly a reply. No reasoning involved.
Clueless.
What part of "stock laundering" don't you comprehend?
It's irrelevant to that concept how much stock in OTHER companies they own. That was Forbe's point. The point is that Gates stock has been converted to cash. Stock that he couldn't convert because of SEC rules.
Secondly, the DSLReports article points out that the Foundation is using that cash to gain control of companies in which Gates has a financial, not charitable, interest. In other words, Gates has learned from the Rockefellers that the real purpose of a large foundation is CONTROL, not handing out money.
As for the "$7 billion in grants", do note that Forbes says the actual amount is around $1 billion and that most of that came from the INCOME on the assets, not the assets themselves. And Forbes also notes it didn't even cost them much to manage those assets. So that $750,000,000 you tout is over FIVE YEARS, easily paid for by the INCOME from the Foundation's investments.
Sure, you can argue that this is a smart way to do charity, i.e., don't piss away the assets in one time grants, use them to make money, then piss that away. You can argue that, but it goes against Bill Gate's innate nature, as you would know if you've ever read any biography of him - or for that matter, any biography of any rich guy.
In other words, the assets are PRESERVED, USED FOR CONTROL, and the "grants" are PR moves.
I'm not even emphasizing the Gates Library Foundation which requires libraries to install Microsoft software AND TO UPGRADE THAT SOFTWARE EVERY FOUR OR FIVE YEARS BY CONTRACT.
Get a clue about the rich.