"Dead Reckoning": Cross Cultural Risk Part IV

BillGates Bill Gates18 Nov

What is most likely to cause your untimely death? http://b-gat.es/1bVc2z9  pic.twitter.com/1Enl6jCNGX

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Tweet from Mr. Bill Gates.   See?  Great minds think alike.  Infectious Diseases and Birth Problems.  Seizing used computers bound for hospitals to avoid "future disposal risks" of used PCs looks to me like an excuse for planned obsolescence in hindsight.  It helps to read the comment from Reddit:

"I feel like many people misunderstand exactly what this chart represents. This is not about the number of people who had an early death in each category. It's about the number of expected years of life lost. In other words

LIFE EXPECTANCY – AGE AT DEATH = YEARS LOST

The death of a child accounts for more years lost vs. an old man dying of a heart attack."

When people are running around making up numbers like "80% of all exports" to scare people out of reuse and recycling, and posing children at dumps to say that's where the Egyptian CRT purchases are burned,  it's not just untruthful, it impacts humans efforts to fix actual problems.   There are more than enough real actual risks, we don't need to go conjuring up new "e-waste" ones.

And Bill, while we're talking, I'd suggest letting go of the whole Windows Authorized User thing in Africa.  It's in your company's interest for Africans to grow up using Windows.  Make money on them later, when they have a little more of it.  I doubt the Microsoft Authorized Refurbishers effort in Africa pays for itself to begin with.