X-Message-Number: 33314 From: "John de Rivaz" <> References: <> 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> Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=33314