Predatory Genius: Bill Gates

Nobody's Opinion: In the year 2000, I was sitting in a large room at Epcot Center at Disney World and very excited to be among hundreds of "entrepreneurs" and "inventors" who had come to an inventors meeting in hopes that some company would license their ideas. Once a year, our Patent and Trademark Office puts an Inventor's Convention on, and I had just gotten my third patent, so I went. Nevertheless, I felt way beyond my league sitting in a room with all those creative minds. Not only was I one of the few women there, I was the only one in shorts and a cowboy hat.

No wonder no one talked to me.

I didn't know it then, but at these meetings your chances of "licensing" your idea were about as slim having Vladimir Putin send you a birthday card. These "conventions" are mostly just money makers for the resorts and government officials who put them on. They are also a great place for big multinational companies to "steal" your ideas, while pretending to be interested...but that's another blog.

The main speaker that day was a guy whose whole theme was how Thomas Edison's invention of the electric light bulb did not even compare to the invention of some newly invented computer chip. He swore this very little chip had changed the world in more ways than Thomas Edison could ever dream of. Thomas was a mere autistic child compared to this genius---who's name escapes me now.

Being the nobody that I am, I wanted to argue that without electricity, the "chip" would have never been born. But then, being a nobody, I kept my thoughts to myself.

While most inventors are creative people, they have the business sense of a cow from Jersey. But, sometimes there are people who possess the combination of genius with predatory capitalistic business guru, like Bill Gates.

Bill Gates...let's all just take moment and pay homage, then put up our dart board.

Don't get me wrong...like most people on the earth, I love my computer. Carbon paper was not exactly a fun thing. And information at the click of a button is certainly more exciting than turning on a light bulb. Not to mention all the extraordinary and exciting ways it has given birth to a whole new world.

BUT...despite the fact Bill Gates made the desktop computer available to millions, thereby closing down newspapers, and helping small hungry children all over the world get their malaria shots while looking at the wonderful food they will never get online...I am getting tired of Bill's predatory ways. Yes, Bill Gates...the carnivorous computer eater, in this sad economy, is causing the poor nobodies of the world a big pain in the hard drive derriere.

And as Bill would say: "Life is not fair, get used to it."

You see, last week, my computer just crashed again, for the very same reason all five of my other past computers crashed.

I downloaded something from Microsoft.

Boom. Computer destroyed. And replacing a computer is not exactly cheap.

Coincidence? Of course not. To get to be as rich as Bill Gates, you must practice the ruthless predatory tactics of making sure your product has the self-life of a gerbil.

And to be fair to Bill, all the big companies practice it.

If you're really good, you get the government to help you "force" people to buy your product. You outlaw a perfectly good light bulb with one full of mercury, thereby making all the multinational drug companies very happy at the same time. Governments are the experts on predatory behavior, it only makes sense they work together!

It's called predatory capitalism...combine that with predatory lending and you have a sure fire road to the next world of Corporate Controlled Governmental Fascist Complexes.

It's the real reason communists have such big fodder to work with right now.

In the old days, when America had integrity, a company's best selling point was good quality, and lifetime guarantees. America was the leader in fine products.

When did that change?

Nothing new...I know. But I'm really mad at myself for not following my gut. I should have suspected something was going on when every single talk show host I listened to was sponsored by CARBONITE---a company that will back up your files for just fifty dollars a year.

Everyone...from Glenn Beck, Mark Levine, Rush, Laura Ingram, Kim Komando---you name it...the warnings of computer crashes were everywhere.

I didn't listen.

Put in the bad economy, and you have Windows 7 not doing too well. Many of us would have stuck with XP for another decade.

So, how do you get everyone to "update?"

You make sure you crash those old ones.

That's ridiculous you say. Bill Gates would never do such a thing. And General Electric would never "FORCE" us to change our light bulbs. And they would never "FORCE" you to throw away those old albums, which played fine, by taking all records off the shelves, and we will never "FORCE" you to update to the new green products...

It's all in the name of progress!

Every time I talked to a President of a company to try to license my idea, the argument was always, always...the same. Make your product a cheap throwaway. If it's made to last, we don't want it.

I refused to make a cheap product. I was actually concerned about filling up landfills! Therefore, there was no deal. I have no money to buy a new computer...so, like most Americans, I charged it.

The banks are ecstatic!

While all these guru's of predatory capitalism are telling us we are trashing the planet, they are actually the ones causing this "trashing" by forcing everyone to throw out billions of tons of trash for the new technology.

Where are they going to put all those outdated car batteries and computers?...Mars?

How about Bill Gates back yard?

New Technology is great. But, some people don't want it, just like we don't want Universal Health Care. Forcing one to buy your product is...predatory.

It was predatory lending that destroyed our economy they tell us. I wonder when we will hear that it's predatory capitalism (not to be confused with a fair capiltism) that is destroying not only the green planet, but pushing the whole world into some kind of Corporate Fascist One World Al Gore Wonderland of Human Consumer Predators.

That's why I'm going to paste a picture of Bill Gates face over my movie poster of Jurassic Park... and throw darts.

Many would say, I'm wrong. It's evil bin Laden computer guys trying to destroy all the computers in the world...just sitting at computers just for the sheer joy of destroying all the nobodies world's data. I'm not saying they don't exist, but, really, they can't even brag about it.

I might buy that if the computer world had more than one Bill Gates in it.

Bill Gates may be a genius, and we all are thankful certainly... but..he's not very nice.

Speaking of nice...have you seen AL Gore's computer? My God...it's almost beautiful, and I bet he got it free....

Where's my darts?