...or for that matter buying 'cover'?

Hi Keith,

Bill Gates, as the richest man in the world, has to have a charitable foundation or the equivalent in his name. It is simple self-preservation.

However, his altruistic nature is always subtly, or not so subtly, furthering the Microsoft agenda and dominance throughout the world.

His donations of computers to libraries was linked to a microsoft software inclusion.

His efforts in the third world are subtle efforts of getting microsoft in at the ground level in developing nations, their governments and their populations who will be, in ten to thirty years, microsoft customers.

Yes, he may be glad he is helping out folks - but when your net worth is what his is - dropping a million here and ten million there is more akin to dropping a fiver to a panhandler and a twenty to a homeless person on Christmas for most folks.

Heck, Joe Firmage, who is like a pauper next to Gates, managed to cough up a million for a children's hospital ward in NY - of course this was to cozy up to Carl Sagan's widow, Ann - sealing a deal and (which apparently failed) merger of interests.

All too often the charity is just concealed business. Self-interest in disguise.

Yes, free enterprise is wonderful but the government has had the toughest time with the antitrust lawsuits and mega-tax dollars have been spent in getting them to even slightly clean up their act.

The only thing that has gotten Microsoft off the hook is that their new windows XP is 'snoop friendly' and categorizes users and files in such a way as to make government intrusion and monitoring much easier.

Was this a coincidence?

Well, sure. Naturally.

Gates is no saint. His foundation could spend hundreds of millions a year on vaccinations, AIDS, computers and college grants - and it still would not offset the damage done to the freedom and progress of the computer software developer or his competition.

Besides its all tax deductible. If you run a business of that size, particularly a monopoly, you have to donate or you risk attracting more negative attention than he already gets.

Yes, Gates has surrounded himself with some ruthless folks and Microsoft could teach Standard Oil a thing or two about monopolies and 'foreign good samaritan' incursions.

Anyways, I said means and meanness were not absolutes - but rather a very common occurence. It was not meant as an ironclad rule - or simply a Gates bash-fest.

Heck, Bill Gates is one of the nicer ones.

Take care Keith,

SDAI-Tech1