Caffeine

I don't think the caffeine in soft drinks is intentionally addictive, any more than the sugar
is. At most this could be considered an unintentional bonus for the soft drink company. They
do make caffeine free variants and people prefer the "kick" from the version with the
stimulant.

Lots of other products have caffeine in them. A normal more or less healthy human feels a bit
better after a dose of a mild stimulant like caffeine, so it is included in symptomatic
treatments for self-limiting diseases like colds. A product like "LemSip" might include dose
controlled pain relief, something that might make it a bit easier to breathe, and a stimulant,
so you feel better even though you've done nothing about the actual virus.

Oh, and nicotine is poisonous, it's just that there's so many worse things in tobacco that
you're better off deliberately dosing yourself with nicotine to dull the cravings than smoking
a cigarette. As with caffeine it's just about possible to kill yourself with readily-purchased
supplies (for caffeine, knocking back handfuls of "stay awake pills", for nicotine, swallowing
large quantities of nicotine-based stop smoking products).

Anyway to return to topic, I somewhat agree that the Win XP OLPC is poisonous. Not least it's
a betrayal of the intentions of at least some of the people who donated time and money to the
project. Still, if the kids do end up with a robust, low cost laptop that lets them work and
play together without investing in expensive infrastructure then it's a success even if it
doesn't meet the Free Software objectives. It's just a shame that Microsoft always seems to
find a way to put their business interests first when supposedly being charitable. That's a
pretty slimey way to do things.