Slashdot Mirror
Gates and Security
An anonymous reader writes "Orwell was wrong about Big Brother! Microsoft founder and chairman Bill Gates told a homeland-security conference on Wednesday afternoon that Orwell's dystopian vision of the future, in which Big Brother used technology as a form of social control, 'didn't come true, and I don't believe it will.'" Other tidbits about this security conference: Gates had his own troubles with security (Drudge is copy-and-pasting from a subscriber-only Roll Call story). Gates is apparently trying to sell interoperability to HomeSec. Meanwhile, Microsoft viruses continue unchecked.
I really don't like it when people say he's "quite the philanthropist." It's quite the opposite. My father's a CPA and one of the first things he tells a rich client is to give a lot to charity for tax purposes. If someone makes $100,000/yr and gives away $5,000 that's 5% going to charity. If Bill G's assets are (let's just say) increasing by $1 billion per year, giving away $10,000,000 is only 1% going to charity. So giving $50 million to charity may seem like a lot, but it's a very small portion of what he's got.
But much more important are where the so-called charity is going. Most of it goes into the trust his wife manages. Do you know what that charity does with their assets under management? The money that's in holding and not going out to good use is put into investments - tax-free investments in companies who are Microsoft's allies. I can't find the link at the moment, but the "charitable" Bill G is using his donations to fund companies to help Microsoft and put competition out of business. Also, much of the donations are for Microsoft software to be put into school systems. There's a lot more going on than cash going to poor starving children.
Developers: We can use your help.
Um, or download AVG from grisoft.com for free, and aget a lower memory-footprint, and fewer clutter-things than McAfee or Norton.
No need to get illegal here for inferior products.
Returned Peace Corps IT Volunteer
AAAAHHHH!!!! It's happening here too!! When my sister read Animal Farm in school they told her the same thing; read the book as an historical allegory. Be warned!! Avoid this reading at all costs!! The book (and 1984 too) will lose all art and relevance if you do such!
Yes, they were inspired by Orwell's dissillusionment with Stalinist SSR, but they were not strict allegories! They dealt with the nature of political power and the tools of oppression and control. They were inspired (nearly) as much by what he saw in Franco's Spain as by Stalist USSR.
Reading these two novels as strict historical allegory does them a tremendous disservice.
"I think we should tax people who stand in water! " - Mr. Gumby
By fucking caring, that's how. By spreading the understanding to those around you (if you are in the U.S.) that they live in a fucking bubble, which seems to be growing smaller every day. By living your life as if you have choices (of music, of movies, of religions, of beliefs, hell, of operating systems) besides those which society shoves down our throats. By not being fucking complacent, only then will things even begin to change.
Voting will never solve anything, as your options consist of a corporate-owned whore or a corporate-owned slut.
There's plenty of options. There are only two that are really shoved down our throats, and most likely the one elected will be one of them. BUT - if third-party (fourth-? fifth-?) candidates get significant amounts of votes, people will pay attention. They will see new names, new choices creeping into their field of vision.
I LOVE my country. I love the Constitution and rights it grants me. I love the ideals that the founders had in mind.
But I HATE what my country has become. I hate the laws that have created and the loopholes left gaping which circumvent my Constitution. I hate the ideals that my society expresses.
This world is not static; it is either evolving or devolving. It is up to us to care which direction it goes.
Yo mama so fake, she failed the Turing Test.
Remember, terrorists are what the big army calls the little army.