Gates is the father of “ransom-ware”. It isn’t that his software is so wonderful. It isn’t. Gates’ fortune was built on Microsoft’s monolithic intellectual property prowess.

Holding gravely ill patient’s hostage against a $94,000 ransom is quite different than requiring people to pay $300 for a word processing program, and then making them upgrade every two years.

No one ever died from not having MS Word. To apply Gates’ machiavellian intellectual property schemes to life sustaining, life saving medications isn’t just irresponsible and predatory – it is the very definition of Evil.

Big Pharma no doubt runs on Microsoft software. Gates’ support for Big Pharma’s predatory pricing schemes isn’t philanthropy. For him it is just good business.

e·vil
ˈēvəl/

noun
noun: evil

1.
profound immorality, wickedness, and depravity, especially when regarded as a supernatural force.
“the world is stalked by relentless evil”
synonyms: wickedness, bad, badness, wrongdoing, sin, ill, immorality, vice, iniquity, degeneracy, corruption, depravity, villainy, nefariousness, malevolence; More…

Ya cheese, sorry to go off topic but…

I was speaking with a doctor at Vejthani a short time ago. I explained my choice of sof/dac was as much political as medical and she said that yes they could get that there now. I said, yes but could she get it for $1000 or was it more like 6-7 thousand dollars? She kinda looked at me funny, and the conversation changed to a different subject. A few minutes later, as I was getting ready to leave, she walked off for a minute and returned with a piece of paper with a bunch of calculations on it. After running through those calculations and converting at 35 baht to the dollar it was a total of US$15,768 for 12 weeks of sof/dac.

Now I don’t know how easily an average Thai can get a passport, but a flight on Malaysia Air through KL to Dhaka is currently running $243rt and a rt direct flight can be found in the $350 range. Add in the $700 price of 12wks Darvoni and it’s ~$950-1050. I bet a bus ride to Myanmar could move the total price even lower.

And I bet very few people in Thailand have any idea they can do that.

You were looking for activist ideas, right?

“And not to forget who is on the side of monopolists… Bill Gates ( former CEO of Microsoft) just declared US drug pricing system is better than most and that Gilead’s prices are justified: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-06-…tem-better-than-most

For sure when reading such “wisdom” one barely can handle the own anger,”

I started to go off that bloke after Windows 3.1. Eventually wised up in 2011 and went Apple all together. But of course stuck with Windows 7 and Word for work and Uni, and for my wife using Word at Uni too.

I found the whole experience with that corporation’s products (with some relief via Win 98 and XP at home, and now 7 at work) more traumatising then the Hep C virus. Had bought a laptop with Vista and one for my wife with Windows 8 (Bill did not do that one?) which is considerably worse. What were they thinking???

I don’t think Mr Gates is really qualified to talk about software least of all Gilead’s pricing structure. I think the ‘market’ they manipulate eventually tricks them into believing their own bullshit.

Yours

Jeff

Christ almighty. Bill Gates dispenses the Kool-Aide, and without questioning the veracity or examining the intention of his statements, people just take the bait and run with it.

Sorry, Vororo – but he just got you too. There is no ‘American’ or ‘US Pricing system’. There are only soulless global corporate hegemonosts like Microsoft and Gilead, and a thousand others who use the laws of virtually every country in the world to twist and subvert the intention of international patent, trademark and copyright laws to do what they were never intended to do. Namely to provide carte blanche to ravenous global corporate raiders, who treat the public trust and interest like a hostile takeover target as they gut, vivisect, and feast upon it until there is nothing left on the bones.

The principles which allow them to do this are global, and are encoded in the Berne Convention: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berne_Convention They apply to your country no less than they do to mine.

There is a very dark side to Globalism, and corporate hegemonists like Gates, Soros and Zuckerberg are its poster boys. Jobs was as well, but he was always exactly who he was, and never pretended to be anything or anyone else.

Good points all on Open Office (love it), and the fake philanthropists, and fake philanthropy of world.

I said I wasn’t going to post for a while, and now I’ve gone and done it anyway. I yield the floor.