Re: [atlarge-discuss] Important

[espresso@e-scape.net]

At 18:26 -0400 2002/08/15, Joey Borda **star*walker** wrote:
>Thanks for ALL the information and encouragement, and bringing me up to 
>date. ;-)
>[...]
>Mine was just a thought prompted by Eric's touching post. Thanks for taking 
>it seriously. I would not disagree with anything you say.

You're very welcome. As you may have gathered, I think the Digital Divide is a *very* serious matter, given the current political and economic repercussions of not having access to information.

>In keeping with your idea of providing some Web space to encourage people 
>to involve themselves and providing supportive information I revise my 
>suggestion then to propose, in time, that we have a BADD (Bridges Across 
>the Digital Divide) page with links to every other site we can find at our 
>web site. :-)

That would be extremely useful. There are many other sites but the trick is to put the information wherever the technically-savvy are likely to be so as to interest them: it's too easy for people who always work with the latest bells and whistles to think "well, most people use Windows and Office on a Pentium or better, and everyone else uses some flavour of UNIX" without stopping to reflect on how much that costs and how much of the world's population can't afford anything of the kind. 

>Well I just read a piece by an interviewer who'd interviewed Bill G again 
>recently (I believe it was in 1996 the first time), and got the same rise 
>out of him that he did in '96. He asked Bill how he liked being in the 
>Upgrade Business, likening Microsoft to all the car makers.
>
>Bill once again very vehemently denied he was in the upgrade business!

Of course he's not in the upgrade business! He's in the BUSINESS business, which means he does everything he can to maximize his company's market share and profits, regardless of what that does to real people living in the real world. That's why Microsoft behave the way it does with respect to upgrades, privacy and security, W3.org standards, etc., etc. And, like many people who have prospered immensely through pratices which are not necessarily in the public's best interests, once he had more money than most countries, he set up a foundation to salve his conscience and knock a little off his taxes... but he certainly wouldn't use it in ways that undermine his own business.

>>"cogito ergo lego ergo cogito..."
>
>My best attempt at translating the above is "I think therefore the law 
>thinks." It's been too long since high school Latin. Correction please.

Actually, it's "I think, therefore I read, therefore I think..." (lego="I read", rather than a form of lex="law").

HTH,

Judyth

##########################################################
Judyth Mermelstein     "cogito ergo lego ergo cogito..."
Montreal, QC           <espresso@e-scape.net>
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"History teaches us that men and nations behave wisely once 
they have exhausted all other alternatives." (Abba Eban)
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See the UNESCO OBSERVATORY ON THE INFORMATION SOCIETY!
http://www.unesco.org/webworld/observatory  



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