CryoNet #33314

CryoNet - Sun 6 Feb 2011

    #33314: Re: CryoNet #33295 [Mark F Connaughton]  [John de Rivaz]

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Message #33314
From: "John de Rivaz" <[email protected]>
References: <[email protected]>
Subject: Re: CryoNet #33295 [Mark F Connaughton] 
Date: Sun, 6 Feb 2011 09:09:57 -0000

Gates produced a product that was capable of self replication, but put a 
block on it so that instead of allowing it to replicate, every copy had to 
be bought from his company.

Obviously he and his staff had to be paid for producing the product, but the 
legal systems of countries around the world were squabbling about how much 
and by what mechanism. Although they didn't put it like that, they just 
thumbed through their vast and incomprehensible rule books to try and find 
rules that were never written with such a situation in mind. Their members 
made vast fortunes in arguing the point, but never, of course as much as 
Gates and his colleagues. They would also have burned off a lot of the time 
of Gates and his colleagues when they should have been working on improving 
their product.

Dr Stodolsky also mentioned the pharmaceutical monopoly. There are, of 
course, several pharmaceutical companies. The same problem exists. Medicines 
are relatively cheap to produce once they have been designed and tested, but 
sell at extortionate prices. People, or their carers, have to buy them or 
they die. Lawyers argue themsleves into huge fee incomes, and politicians 
generate huge campaigns about this, but few people if any look at the basic 
problem: how to fund pharmaceutical research.

Cryonics revivals are likely to depend on self replicating nano machines, 
but they have to be designed. Some say this will be done by AI. But however 
it is done there is the question of who will pay. Will it be done for the 
glory, like Linux or the world wide web? The WWW works, but Linux lags 
Microsoft products by several years. Or will monopolies take over, as with 
pharmaceuticals? It has already been seen that there is no mercy with the 
pricing of cancer trestment products that give just a few more months of 
poor quality life. Imagine a product that gives an indefinite extension of 
youthful healthy life, that is the result of many years of research and time 
on big expensive supercomputers. (There will always be supercomputers, even 
if desk top computers with similar power appear ten years later.)

--
Sincerely, John de Rivaz:  http://John.deRivaz.com for websites including
Cryonics Europe, Longevity Report, The Venturists, Porthtowan, Alec Harley
Reeves - inventor, Arthur Bowker - potter, de Rivaz genealogy,  Nomad .. and
more

----- Original Message ----- 
    #33311: Re: CryoNet #33309 - #33310 [David Stodolsky]
<del>Bill Gates owes his fortune to the abuse of MS's operating system 
monopoly, as proven in numerous court findings.
<del>

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