if Apple gets PPC chips from a vendor who cares about portable computing (like Apple itself) they just might switch back to take advantage of the negative compiler optimization hit on PPC.
Since neither Apple nor PA Semi has any fab facilities another possibility is that Apple contracts with Intel to actually make the chips.
Speaking of discounts, students now pay full price for iPods. You used to be able to save $20-$30 on them.
I don't care if the discount on iPods were $100, I still wouldn't get one. I last got a portable player, a cd player, several years ago for Roller Blading.
One good thing Scully did was push the Newton, which was spun off into a (profitable) subsidiary before Jobs came back and killed it.
According to Wiki the Apple Newton wasn't successful. "Wired" magazine says "Early models were bulky, expensive and bug-ridden. Apple marketed the Newton poorly, and it was widely ridiculed; a memorable Doonesbury strip by Garry Trudeau effectively doomed the device." In "Apple scraps Newton" C|Net News says the Newton was not historically profitable (dated 27 February 1998).
They really can't use their patents without money to back them up or by becoming patent trolls with nothing to lose.
With a patent an inventor can go to a manufacturer and try to negotiate to have them manufacture the product without being concerned the company will simply steal it as their own. Or they can go to an angel investor. Maybe they can convince someone to bankroll them. Without the legal protection of a patent it can be much harder to have an invention manufactured.
What's new in patent history is the recent prevalence of patent trolls who impede companies making real products.
I've covered patent trolls twice in my conversation with you, did you miss it or are you ignoring it?
One additional problem that your proposal doesn't cover is patent trolls, who lay out many patents, unaware of the potential value of each. I tried to cover this by making the patenter price the patent himself. In your case, the patent trolls does not incur any costs, as they do not make the product themselves. Am I missing something?
Yes, I think you missed something. I specifically stipulated someone issued a patent had a couple of year in which to put a product using the invention on the market otherwise they lose the monopoly. That means by-by patent trolls who only apply for patents then sit on their asses and wait until someone violates the patent, like NTP did to RIM over the Blackberry.
I'm really late to reply to this and I doubt it's going to make a difference, but if you're going to copy and paste this story a million times, at least go to the trouble of making sure it's correct. WTO is the World Trade Organization. The World Health Organization is WHO.
I didn't spell it myself, I put it in quotes because I copied and pasted it.
That might help *some* of the issues (specifically, net neutrality, because I could maybe pick an Internet 'gateway' provider who uses routing policies I like), but it still doesn't solve the problem that, fundamentally, someone still has a monopoly on the last mile. I've used a DSL ISP that had to depend on the local incumbent telco for the actual physical regional network, and you know what? While I loved that ISP, they couldn't survive. And you know why? Because customers who used the local incumbent payed $29/mo, while customers who used the 'third-party' ISP *still* had to pay $29/mo to the telco, PLUS $15/mo to the ISP.
Ah but if you separate ownership of the infrastructure and delivery of the services it can provide you don't run into that problem. Because they couldn't sale you the service and are required to have open access they can't keep or try to keep other companies from providing the service. In other words the owner can't provide services to the end customer, only to the third parties who can then sale services to the end user.
Now, if you required that the telcos could *not* provide direct access to the Internet, and so compete with the other ISP's, that might solve that problem, but *oops* that's government regulation which, apparently, is ALWAYS EVIL.
Not all government regulations are evil. In the current climate many regulations are evil, but not have to be. You list some good ones such as truth in advertizing.
All open access rules will do is cause the last-mile providers to still charge the same amount (don't dream they'll reduce prices, ever, unless they *must*), plus add an additional fee on top of that.
Most if not every state in the US has a Public Utilities Commission which regulates how much a utility can charge. this can easily be extended to internet access. At least in theory but it may prove difficult in practice.
What would the country be like if there were a bunch of private/mercenary armies?
Oh, but there are private military contractors in the US, and not just manufacturers. Blackwater Worldwide is one. Blackwater now trains the US Navy SEALs, but who trained the Blackwater personnel? The Navy. Blackwater is also a major contractor in Afghanistan and Iraq. they provide logistics and security, both of which the military used to do itself.
Clinton started privatizing the military but Bush has taken what he started and gone further. Myself, I'd rather move to a military like Switzerland has. Every adult, er people between 18 and say 45, 50 or 55, are part of a citizen's military who would have their own firearm. They would be expected to do so much training each year but would otherwise be free to do whatever they want whether that's an auto mechanic, banker, doctor, or pilot. Then there'd be a small professional core who only work in the military. Their, the military's, job would be to defend the country and to aid in natural disasters.
One problem with the idea you're proposing is that you are simply taxing income. Since taxes only reduce a percentage of income, there would never be a point at where you wouldn't make money off of the patent. The untaxed portion of income would get reduced over time but would remain >= 0, and as such would never become "not worth paying for the monopoly".
However you left out cost of making the product. Before any tax or patent is included, if your profit margin on a product is 50% but your paying a 50% fee on income for the patent you're basically breaking even. Which is one reason I said "income" not profit.
Another reason I said income is because if profit was used as a basis, you'd see companies getting more and more into Hollywood Accounting.
What if the return on a patent was limited by a multiplier of how much the patenter is willing to pay for his patent? For example, let's say that patents allow for 1000x multiplier on the application cost. If a patenter is willing to pay $1,000 for the patent, they are not allowed to gain more than $1,000,000 in value from the patent. If they are willing to pay more, they get more protection; pay less, and get less monetary benefit.
This would hurt the small inventor more than megacorp. Instead do something like this: someone applying for a patent has to have a product with the patent on the market within say a year or two. Then they get exclusive rights to it for say 5 years. After the 5 years in order to continue the monopoly for another 5 years they have to pay say 5% of the income produced as a patent tax. Those 5 years go by in which they generated enough income to decide to keep the monopoly, so to get another 5 year monopoly they pay 10%. Then 20% and so on, the longer they own the monopoly the more they pay. When they decide it's not worth paying for the monopoly it's released into the public domain.
Patent applicants put up a larger fee that assumes that the patent will be rejected. If the patent is accepted, the applicant gets a refund. If the patent is rejected, the applicant gets no refund, but they do get a review of how the patent is deficient or unclear and needs to be revised.
This isn't a solution, it will only make it worse. Raising patent application fees will only shut out the inventors who don't have the money to file for a patent.
Bill, an engineer at Small Business LLC with 5 employee owners, is having lunch with his buddy Carl, an engineer from Megacorporation and describes a process whereby they are efficiently able to extract hydrogen from a glass of water which then powers a fuel cell. They are in the process of creating a prototype to make sure everything works right before applyig for a patent.
Carl takes some pages of doodles he made during lunch to show his boss, a PHB. PHB goes ahead and files an application for a patent using those pages. So when Small Business LLC files for a patent they find Megacorp already has the patent, and even though they have a prototype they are denied the patent.
Patents were crafted by people who accept capitalism and competition as inviolate principles, and wish to prevent the sort of secret hoarding that defined the guilds of the Mercantile age.
Dude, you obviously don't know, or forgot, what capitalism is about. To educate, or remind you, what capitalism is about I suggest you read Adam Smith's, the Father of Capitalism, "The Wealth of Nations" and "The Theory of Moral Sentiments". He was opposed to monopolies but believed that limited monopolies granted by patents, key word being "limited", could bring benefits. Then Thomas Jefferson at first opposed patents as well but then his friend James Madison convinced him they could benefit society as well.
The point of patents was to force secret societies to reveal their secrets if they wanted the law to continue to validate and enforce their control. If you didn't reveal the secret, you couldn't ask the cops to go shut that guy down, but if you did, you could.
This would be better realized in the modern age by making transparency of process a requirement to enter the market, period.
Add the requirement that a patent application included a working example of the invention, which used to be required but was dropped. Requiring a working product, as you say released to the public, would prevent patent trolls like NTP from suing others like RIM over the Blackberry.
A lot of regular Slashdot readers seem to get their economics from Libertarian ideas, or magical pixie land as it is known to most economists.
Name one economist who thinks Libertarian ideas that come from "magical pixie land". In making such a request I should provide aqn example of one economist that disagrees. Nobel Prize winner Milton Friedman disagrees with you. Friedman probably has been the most influential Libertarian of the 20th century. Imagine than, an Economist, Nobel Prize winner, and a Libertarian.
Patent fees have simply not kept pace with the value of IP and innovation. If they put them on a pricing schedule that goes up over time, and start them at $300k today, we'll see a dramatic reduction in frivilous patents.
Yea, raise patent fees so that small inventors will be shut out. NOT!
The USPTO would be vastly improved if licensing fees were reduced significantly
How does reducing patent fees improve patents? If anything I'd think it would make it worse. Reduce the fees would mean more patent applications could be filed for the same price thus in increasing the work load.
but all income went back into the USPTO,
Making the patent office just another business and maximize revenue by maximizing patent applications.
the government *could* bid out such monopolies to companies based on who guarantees the best service/price ratio.
Or government could separate ownership of infrastructure from ownership of those who provide services the infrastructure can provide and require the owner to allow open access.
I agree that the issue is a proper job for the FTC, not the FCC.
Why the FTC and not FCC? Afterall they are the Federal "Trade" Commission and the Federal "Communications" Commission. While trade takes place on the net, the net is all about communications.
So the real issues of "Network Neutrality" is anticompetitive and rent-seeking
It already is anticompetitive. Forgetting the fact that telcoms and cablecos already got hundreds of millions of tax payer dollars to upgrade their networks, but didn't, not anyone can just string up cables or lay down fiber to offer telecommunications services. In competitive markets anyone with the ability would be able to do it.
Oh, ok I see why you say the FTC, and I agree but not for the reasons you give. The reason I'll give for the FTC doing it instead of the FCC is because I believe the FCC should be abolished. Not only is there no reason for th FCC to exist but just by getting a few thousand people from a certain group to complain to the FCC a network is fined because of a wardrobe malfunction.
Huh. I did not know that. In fact, I didn't even know it was possible to have a fault line of any significance in the middle of a tectonic plate like that. Interesting.
Donating money is normally just a waste of your own money; little of it gets to other countries, and even less of it does any good. Giving money is a largely irrational response to poverty, and makes little difference.
I agree, I'd rather teach a person to fish than give them one.
The correct answer is to make it easier for them to sell their products to us, or make it easier for them to immigrate over to the West.
While making it easier to sale products will help it'd help more if the US, EU, Japan, and other developed nations didn't give farmers and big agribusinesses hugh farm subsidies. In 2004 the US gave $47 billion in subsidies. But the EU and Japan gave even more, $133 and $49 billion respectively. In the US Cargill and Archer Daniels Midland, ADM, are poster children for corporate welfare. ADM is a great example of a corporate welfare queen. These subsidies allow these businesses to export food to sell in the Third World cheaper than Third World farmers can grow food.
There aren't a lot of resources in many places in the Third World, and it seems pretty pointless to try and continue the settlements.
Heck some US based multinational corporations are being sued, under the Alien Tort Claim Act of 1789, in US courts for supporting those who violate human rights. Coca Cola is being sued for supporting paramilitary units in Colombia while Unocal was being sued for supporting "human rights abuses committed by Burmese soldiers" in Burma.
Furthermore, the value of "a dollar a day" depends entirely on how inflated their economy is compared to ours and thus their cost-of-living. This "dollar a day" statistic is just a comparison of costs of living and inflation. It's no measure of poverty.
Heck poverty, as used to the west, needs to be redefined. A farmer in Africa can grow enough food to barter or trade with others to feed their family and keep a roof over their heads yet they can still be said to be living in poverty. Sure, they may not have enough money to take a vacation for 4 weeks a year but they make enough to live on. And by opening up international trade and cutting subsidies they could make enough to afford to go to Disney.
When deciding to buy Office in order to get my business critical information I should have considered the optiona: a) Not buy office b) go out of busiess due to not being able to get the information that I need in order to operate.
I use NeoOffice, the native Mac port of OpenOffice.org, which is a couple of versions behind OO.org and I haven't had any trouble opening Office 2007 documents and I've opened up several of them. Now whether it can handle macros I don't know as I don't know if any the docs had scripts. If you're counting on being able to open docs and want to make sure anyone you send docs to can also open them them you all need to use the latest MS Office. And MS Windows version, as there are incompatibilities between Office for OS X and Office for Windows. You also ignore *nix users. It may not concern you if you're a closed shop, but for others can be.
I'm not sure where the "problem" is in that analysis. If Bill Gates's foundation cures malaria, then he'll certainly have a legacy as the guy who cured malaria. But just because he gets something out of it (a good legacy) doesn't mean that every single person who won't have malaria in the next 500 years is somehow harmed. In a way, it's a win-win transaction -- Bill Gates gets to feel good about himself and people in sub-Saharan Africa get to not have malaria. There's nothing mutually incompatible about those goals.
The contradiction in what the Bill and Melinda Gate Foundation is doing come from how it doing it. While the foundation is working to help people it has also invested in a corporation that pollutes in the Third World. The foundation is invested in Eni, an Italian petroleum giant, which has harmed people with the pollution it creates.
Slashdot Mirror
if Apple gets PPC chips from a vendor who cares about portable computing (like Apple itself) they just might switch back to take advantage of the negative compiler optimization hit on PPC.
Since neither Apple nor PA Semi has any fab facilities another possibility is that Apple contracts with Intel to actually make the chips.
FalconSpeaking of discounts, students now pay full price for iPods. You used to be able to save $20-$30 on them.
I don't care if the discount on iPods were $100, I still wouldn't get one. I last got a portable player, a cd player, several years ago for Roller Blading.
One good thing Scully did was push the Newton, which was spun off into a (profitable) subsidiary before Jobs came back and killed it.
According to Wiki the Apple Newton wasn't successful. "Wired" magazine says "Early models were bulky, expensive and bug-ridden. Apple marketed the Newton poorly, and it was widely ridiculed; a memorable Doonesbury strip by Garry Trudeau effectively doomed the device." In "Apple scraps Newton" C|Net News says the Newton was not historically profitable (dated 27 February 1998).
FalconThey really can't use their patents without money to back them up or by becoming patent trolls with nothing to lose.
With a patent an inventor can go to a manufacturer and try to negotiate to have them manufacture the product without being concerned the company will simply steal it as their own. Or they can go to an angel investor. Maybe they can convince someone to bankroll them. Without the legal protection of a patent it can be much harder to have an invention manufactured.
What's new in patent history is the recent prevalence of patent trolls who impede companies making real products.
I've covered patent trolls twice in my conversation with you, did you miss it or are you ignoring it?
FalconOne additional problem that your proposal doesn't cover is patent trolls, who lay out many patents, unaware of the potential value of each. I tried to cover this by making the patenter price the patent himself. In your case, the patent trolls does not incur any costs, as they do not make the product themselves. Am I missing something?
Yes, I think you missed something. I specifically stipulated someone issued a patent had a couple of year in which to put a product using the invention on the market otherwise they lose the monopoly. That means by-by patent trolls who only apply for patents then sit on their asses and wait until someone violates the patent, like NTP did to RIM over the Blackberry.
FalconI'm really late to reply to this and I doubt it's going to make a difference, but if you're going to copy and paste this story a million times, at least go to the trouble of making sure it's correct. WTO is the World Trade Organization. The World Health Organization is WHO.
I didn't spell it myself, I put it in quotes because I copied and pasted it.
FalconThat might help *some* of the issues (specifically, net neutrality, because I could maybe pick an Internet 'gateway' provider who uses routing policies I like), but it still doesn't solve the problem that, fundamentally, someone still has a monopoly on the last mile. I've used a DSL ISP that had to depend on the local incumbent telco for the actual physical regional network, and you know what? While I loved that ISP, they couldn't survive. And you know why? Because customers who used the local incumbent payed $29/mo, while customers who used the 'third-party' ISP *still* had to pay $29/mo to the telco, PLUS $15/mo to the ISP.
Ah but if you separate ownership of the infrastructure and delivery of the services it can provide you don't run into that problem. Because they couldn't sale you the service and are required to have open access they can't keep or try to keep other companies from providing the service. In other words the owner can't provide services to the end customer, only to the third parties who can then sale services to the end user.
Now, if you required that the telcos could *not* provide direct access to the Internet, and so compete with the other ISP's, that might solve that problem, but *oops* that's government regulation which, apparently, is ALWAYS EVIL.
Not all government regulations are evil. In the current climate many regulations are evil, but not have to be. You list some good ones such as truth in advertizing.
All open access rules will do is cause the last-mile providers to still charge the same amount (don't dream they'll reduce prices, ever, unless they *must*), plus add an additional fee on top of that.
Most if not every state in the US has a Public Utilities Commission which regulates how much a utility can charge. this can easily be extended to internet access. At least in theory but it may prove difficult in practice.
What would the country be like if there were a bunch of private/mercenary armies?
Oh, but there are private military contractors in the US, and not just manufacturers. Blackwater Worldwide is one. Blackwater now trains the US Navy SEALs, but who trained the Blackwater personnel? The Navy. Blackwater is also a major contractor in Afghanistan and Iraq. they provide logistics and security, both of which the military used to do itself.
Clinton started privatizing the military but Bush has taken what he started and gone further. Myself, I'd rather move to a military like Switzerland has. Every adult, er people between 18 and say 45, 50 or 55, are part of a citizen's military who would have their own firearm. They would be expected to do so much training each year but would otherwise be free to do whatever they want whether that's an auto mechanic, banker, doctor, or pilot. Then there'd be a small professional core who only work in the military. Their, the military's, job would be to defend the country and to aid in natural disasters.
FalconOne problem with the idea you're proposing is that you are simply taxing income. Since taxes only reduce a percentage of income, there would never be a point at where you wouldn't make money off of the patent. The untaxed portion of income would get reduced over time but would remain >= 0, and as such would never become "not worth paying for the monopoly".
However you left out cost of making the product. Before any tax or patent is included, if your profit margin on a product is 50% but your paying a 50% fee on income for the patent you're basically breaking even. Which is one reason I said "income" not profit.
Another reason I said income is because if profit was used as a basis, you'd see companies getting more and more into Hollywood Accounting.
FalconI'd like to see that, however I think ComCast would trot out it's lawyers and lobbyists.
FalconWhat if the return on a patent was limited by a multiplier of how much the patenter is willing to pay for his patent? For example, let's say that patents allow for 1000x multiplier on the application cost. If a patenter is willing to pay $1,000 for the patent, they are not allowed to gain more than $1,000,000 in value from the patent. If they are willing to pay more, they get more protection; pay less, and get less monetary benefit.
This would hurt the small inventor more than megacorp. Instead do something like this: someone applying for a patent has to have a product with the patent on the market within say a year or two. Then they get exclusive rights to it for say 5 years. After the 5 years in order to continue the monopoly for another 5 years they have to pay say 5% of the income produced as a patent tax. Those 5 years go by in which they generated enough income to decide to keep the monopoly, so to get another 5 year monopoly they pay 10%. Then 20% and so on, the longer they own the monopoly the more they pay. When they decide it's not worth paying for the monopoly it's released into the public domain.
FalconPatent applicants put up a larger fee that assumes that the patent will be rejected. If the patent is accepted, the applicant gets a refund. If the patent is rejected, the applicant gets no refund, but they do get a review of how the patent is deficient or unclear and needs to be revised.
This isn't a solution, it will only make it worse. Raising patent application fees will only shut out the inventors who don't have the money to file for a patent.
FalconYea, I read his "A Modest Proposal" in high school, along with Chaucer's "The Canterbury Tails", which I have an edition of on my bookshelves, Charles Dickens' "A Tale of Two Cities", and "Beowulf". I recently found out the movie "Beowulf" was made though I don't know when.
FalconBill, an engineer at Small Business LLC with 5 employee owners, is having lunch with his buddy Carl, an engineer from Megacorporation and describes a process whereby they are efficiently able to extract hydrogen from a glass of water which then powers a fuel cell. They are in the process of creating a prototype to make sure everything works right before applyig for a patent.
Carl takes some pages of doodles he made during lunch to show his boss, a PHB. PHB goes ahead and files an application for a patent using those pages. So when Small Business LLC files for a patent they find Megacorp already has the patent, and even though they have a prototype they are denied the patent.
FalconPatents were crafted by people who accept capitalism and competition as inviolate principles, and wish to prevent the sort of secret hoarding that defined the guilds of the Mercantile age.
Dude, you obviously don't know, or forgot, what capitalism is about. To educate, or remind you, what capitalism is about I suggest you read Adam Smith's, the Father of Capitalism, "The Wealth of Nations" and "The Theory of Moral Sentiments". He was opposed to monopolies but believed that limited monopolies granted by patents, key word being "limited", could bring benefits. Then Thomas Jefferson at first opposed patents as well but then his friend James Madison convinced him they could benefit society as well.
The point of patents was to force secret societies to reveal their secrets if they wanted the law to continue to validate and enforce their control. If you didn't reveal the secret, you couldn't ask the cops to go shut that guy down, but if you did, you could.
This would be better realized in the modern age by making transparency of process a requirement to enter the market, period.
Add the requirement that a patent application included a working example of the invention, which used to be required but was dropped. Requiring a working product, as you say released to the public, would prevent patent trolls like NTP from suing others like RIM over the Blackberry.
FalconIf the poor guy can't bring the idea to market, he shouldn't be in a position to prevent others.
While true raising patent costs can prevent an inventor from bringing an invention to market.
Patents are for OUR benefit, not "the little guy" and not "the faceless corporation".
Patents bring benefits by allowing anyone who comes up with an invention to have for a limited tyme a monopoly on the invention.
FalconA lot of regular Slashdot readers seem to get their economics from Libertarian ideas, or magical pixie land as it is known to most economists.
Name one economist who thinks Libertarian ideas that come from "magical pixie land". In making such a request I should provide aqn example of one economist that disagrees. Nobel Prize winner Milton Friedman disagrees with you. Friedman probably has been the most influential Libertarian of the 20th century. Imagine than, an Economist, Nobel Prize winner, and a Libertarian.
FalconPatent fees have simply not kept pace with the value of IP and innovation. If they put them on a pricing schedule that goes up over time, and start them at $300k today, we'll see a dramatic reduction in frivilous patents.
Yea, raise patent fees so that small inventors will be shut out. NOT!
FalconThe USPTO would be vastly improved if licensing fees were reduced significantly
How does reducing patent fees improve patents? If anything I'd think it would make it worse. Reduce the fees would mean more patent applications could be filed for the same price thus in increasing the work load.
but all income went back into the USPTO,
Making the patent office just another business and maximize revenue by maximizing patent applications.
Falconthe government *could* bid out such monopolies to companies based on who guarantees the best service/price ratio.
Or government could separate ownership of infrastructure from ownership of those who provide services the infrastructure can provide and require the owner to allow open access.
FalconI agree that the issue is a proper job for the FTC, not the FCC.
Why the FTC and not FCC? Afterall they are the Federal "Trade" Commission and the Federal "Communications" Commission. While trade takes place on the net, the net is all about communications.
So the real issues of "Network Neutrality" is anticompetitive and rent-seeking
It already is anticompetitive. Forgetting the fact that telcoms and cablecos already got hundreds of millions of tax payer dollars to upgrade their networks, but didn't, not anyone can just string up cables or lay down fiber to offer telecommunications services. In competitive markets anyone with the ability would be able to do it.
Oh, ok I see why you say the FTC, and I agree but not for the reasons you give. The reason I'll give for the FTC doing it instead of the FCC is because I believe the FCC should be abolished. Not only is there no reason for th FCC to exist but just by getting a few thousand people from a certain group to complain to the FCC a network is fined because of a wardrobe malfunction.
FalconI would think that the ISP's would be on their best behavior until after the elections.
Check ComCast, /. has done a number of items about them throttling P2P applications.
FalconHuh. I did not know that. In fact, I didn't even know it was possible to have a fault line of any significance in the middle of a tectonic plate like that. Interesting.
"Many faults occur far from active plate boundaries.
FalconDonating money is normally just a waste of your own money; little of it gets to other countries, and even less of it does any good. Giving money is a largely irrational response to poverty, and makes little difference.
I agree, I'd rather teach a person to fish than give them one.
The correct answer is to make it easier for them to sell their products to us, or make it easier for them to immigrate over to the West.
While making it easier to sale products will help it'd help more if the US, EU, Japan, and other developed nations didn't give farmers and big agribusinesses hugh farm subsidies. In 2004 the US gave $47 billion in subsidies. But the EU and Japan gave even more, $133 and $49 billion respectively. In the US Cargill and Archer Daniels Midland, ADM, are poster children for corporate welfare. ADM is a great example of a corporate welfare queen. These subsidies allow these businesses to export food to sell in the Third World cheaper than Third World farmers can grow food.
There aren't a lot of resources in many places in the Third World, and it seems pretty pointless to try and continue the settlements.
Actually there's plenty of resources in the Third World. Some, not all but some, of the problems the Third World has is from the Washington Consensus and Neoliberal policies. Other problems stem from natural resources. The abundance of a natural resource can and frequently does lead to conflicts and fighting. Coltan, used in cellphones, for instance. Rebel groups there fight to control the mining of coltan along with copper, diamonds, gold, and other natural resources. In the Niger Delta of Nigeria rebels are fighting over a share of money from oil. The Bushmen of Africa is another good example. In Botswana they are being forced off their ancestral lands so mining companies can mine for diamonds.
Heck some US based multinational corporations are being sued, under the Alien Tort Claim Act of 1789, in US courts for supporting those who violate human rights. Coca Cola is being sued for supporting paramilitary units in Colombia while Unocal was being sued for supporting "human rights abuses committed by Burmese soldiers" in Burma.
Furthermore, the value of "a dollar a day" depends entirely on how inflated their economy is compared to ours and thus their cost-of-living. This "dollar a day" statistic is just a comparison of costs of living and inflation. It's no measure of poverty.
Heck poverty, as used to the west, needs to be redefined. A farmer in Africa can grow enough food to barter or trade with others to feed their family and keep a roof over their heads yet they can still be said to be living in poverty. Sure, they may not have enough money to take a vacation for 4 weeks a year but they make enough to live on. And by opening up international trade and cutting subsidies they could make enough to afford to go to Disney.
Falcon
When deciding to buy Office in order to get my business critical information I should have considered the optiona: a) Not buy office b) go out of busiess due to not being able to get the information that I need in order to operate.
I use NeoOffice, the native Mac port of OpenOffice.org, which is a couple of versions behind OO.org and I haven't had any trouble opening Office 2007 documents and I've opened up several of them. Now whether it can handle macros I don't know as I don't know if any the docs had scripts. If you're counting on being able to open docs and want to make sure anyone you send docs to can also open them them you all need to use the latest MS Office. And MS Windows version, as there are incompatibilities between Office for OS X and Office for Windows. You also ignore *nix users. It may not concern you if you're a closed shop, but for others can be.
FalconWell, the whole post was a joke.
Ok.
FalconI'm not sure where the "problem" is in that analysis. If Bill Gates's foundation cures malaria, then he'll certainly have a legacy as the guy who cured malaria. But just because he gets something out of it (a good legacy) doesn't mean that every single person who won't have malaria in the next 500 years is somehow harmed. In a way, it's a win-win transaction -- Bill Gates gets to feel good about himself and people in sub-Saharan Africa get to not have malaria. There's nothing mutually incompatible about those goals.
The contradiction in what the Bill and Melinda Gate Foundation is doing come from how it doing it. While the foundation is working to help people it has also invested in a corporation that pollutes in the Third World. The foundation is invested in Eni, an Italian petroleum giant, which has harmed people with the pollution it creates.
Falcon