Re: [Fsfe-uk] Re: M$ jump on the poverty bandwagon

[Alex Hudson]

On Tue, 2005-07-05 at 08:24 +0100, Lee Braiden wrote:
> Yes, well... most pop stars don't steal their fellow pop-stars' ideas and 
> then 
> crush them.

I'm not sure about theft of ideas(!), but certainly the anticompetitive
practices of MS are what gets most peoples goat.

> I'm also disturbed at how Bill has been popping up with world leaders etc. 
> recently.  Seems he's interested in becoming a political figure, and, if he's 
> appearing to crowds of teenagers at rock concerts rather than appearing on 
> the news or -- *gasp* giving anonymously and altruistically -- then I suspect 
> it has more to do with selling X-Boxes and/or online music services to 
> dominate markets, than anything else.

Bill has always been this way though; it's a matter of the opportunity
presenting itself - there's no huge amount of difference between
appearing at Live8 or appearing on the Simpsons or Frasier. And without
resorting to Bilderburgian paranoic conspiracies, he's been attended
economic events (e.g, World Economic Forum).

> Everyone can and will make up their own minds of course, but Bill and his 
> company have a long history of very nasty activities.  As someone said, a 
> person is not who they were the last time you met them, but who they've been 
> throughout your whole relationship.

Well, I wouldn't rule out the possibility of forgiveness that
completely, but yeah, MS have their bad side.

More tellingly, though, I suspect it's pretty easy to be charitable when
your personal wealth is some $44B or whatever. I would be interested to
know if, proportionally, he is more charitable that the average person.

Cheers,

Alex.