Gates Nose-Dives at CES

Lots of submissions this morning about Bill Gates' performance at the Las Vegas Consumer Electronics Show. His Media Center PC presentation crashed. (The presentation is online.) He also gave an interview to CNET, where he described anyone who doesn't support ever-increasing intellectual property laws as "communists". Boingboing has some commentary on that interview as well.

Comments

Where is that video

[suso]

someone provide a link to the video where Windows 98 crashed on Gates and former MS employee at Comdex in Chicago circa 1998.

Re:Where is that video

[Anonymous Coward]

http://www.cnn.com/TECH/computing/9804/20/gates.co mdex/

Re:Where is that video

[illusion_2K]

Yeah, from 1998.

Windows 98 went from 'funny' to 'sad' years ago.

Re:Where is that video

[Walrus99]

At least the one from '98 is in Quicktime. The link in the Slashdot article is for a video in Windows Media Player. If you are going to post something in an anti-MS article it could at least be in Quicktime or RealPlayer.

--When will they ever learn? When will they ever learn?

Re:Where is that video

[ViolentGreen]

uhm. That would be the wrong video. I would hope Gates is not demonstrating Win98 at Comdex.

If you look at the post above it, you'll see that it's not the wrong link. It is the one that was requested. The old one was asked for/

Re:Where is that video

[Breakfast Pants]

Quick time most definitely IS a format. Are you suggesting that AVI is not a format? Neither are codecs but they are definitely FORMATS. Format is a rather general term and you just made yourself look like an ass with your lame "ROFL."

I spy a new meme

[beeglebug]

Fly the flag with pride comrades!
boingboing.net/images/copyleftcommie.gif

Re:I spy a new meme

[Ford Prefect]

In Soviet, erm...

I'm sure there's a joke here somewhere, but I can't for the life of me remember what it is. ;-)

Re:I spy a new meme

[finkployd]

I find it offensive to associate the GPL with a form of government that's responsible for killing many millions of people.

Are you aware of a major form of government that is NOT responsible for killing millions of people?

Finkployd

Re:I spy a new meme

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, isn't a government granted monopoly (copyright) and "incentives" more communist than capitalist? Do we really need to pour millions of dollars into the pockets of the recording industry and artists? I mean, I accept the premise that entertainment is worth money, but when one organization controls the distribution channels, content, and advertisement, where's the competition?

Re:I spy a new meme

[sisukapalli1]

I find it offensive to associate the GPL with a form of government that's responsible for killing many millions of people.

Come on... People have killed more in the name of religion, but that doesn't make the concept of religion a bad thing (or, to give an example, a cross is a perfectly fine symbol). The sad thing about communism was that in some countries it delved into dictatorships and so on. Some countries have a more palatable socialistic governments that are doing pretty fine.

It is sad though that Bill Gates thinks that by associating GPL with an "american taboo word of the 20th century," he can accomplish something. Now, he seems to be taking the role of Steve Ballmer. May be time to see Bill Gates jumping up and down screaming "Developers... Developers... Communists... Develpers..".

S

Re:I spy a new meme

[eno2001]

To paraphrase the NRA member logic: Governments don't kill people, people kill people. The communist form of government had little to do with killing people. It ultimately fell victim to a human trait called greed. The people in power in the former soviet states felt that they were more equal than others. If you ask me, I will tell you that our capitalist republic is failing in the same exact way. The only difference is that with capitalism, the PR machine has better beads and trinkets. Now before anyone jumps on me to tell me that capitalism is an economic model and communism is a political model, don't forget that in communism, the economic model is defined by the political model. Here in the U.S. the economic model is also defined by the political model, but the balance is different. Here the economic model has more power than the political model. And those people who would have been high ranking politicos in the U.S.S.R. are instead CEOs in our corporations. Very effective way of attempting to take over the world without letting things like politics and ethics get in the way.

Re:I spy a new meme

[Benanov]

That should be a patent-unencumbered PNG! Where is your sense of decency, comrade? :)

Re:I spy a new meme

[Anonymous Coward]

You have nothing to lose but your ipchains!

Re:I spy a new meme

[aurb]

In Soviet, erm...

In Soviet America Bill Gates Copylefts You?

Re:I spy a new meme

[cL0h]

considering they have to deal with a LOT of crap we do not
Yeah. Those heavy cocaine habits are a bitch to kick .

Re:I spy a new meme

[master_p]

One key difference between Communism and Capitalism is the existence of a middle class in Capitalism. In other words, Capitalism let's you have a house, a TV, a car, and it let's you dream about being rich, whereas in Communism these things are not allowed by the law.

Generally, Capitalism is better in the short term, but in the long term, both are equally bad, because greed is a key factor in both systems.

As for Gates, he became ultra-rich from Windows...what did we expect? personally, I did not expect anything else.

The sad fact is that although technology has the power to transform the world to a paradise, it's people with the mentality that BillG showed in this case that do not let that happen.

Re:I spy a new meme

[arkanes]

Communism is a method of government, what we're talking about here is socialism, the economic theory. So with that out of the way, lets go on: Copyright is a violation of "pure" economic principles, because it's a market control to create an artificial scarcity. However, nobody with any brains actually wants a market totally free of any controls, even so-called free-marketers. There's some other considerations, like that copyright creates a market where there otherwise wouldn't be one.

However, anti-copyright is not socialist, because socialism is ENFORCED public sharing/ownership. The absence of copyright means that there's no legal protection for works, not that you're required to share them. (As an aside: patents as well as registered copyrights require disclosure["sharing"] as a requirement).

The RIAA is an industry organization made up of record labels. It doesn't directly interact with artists in any way, but people (at least on Slashdot) will refer to "the RIAA" when they mean "record labels and/or the music industry as a whole", as well as the RIAA per se. Any artist with any signifigant amount of distribution (ie, outside their home county) will have to sign with an RIAA member, because record labels control access to all the major means of distribution - you won't get your album into stores and you won't get radio play without a record deal with a major label. One more note: despite there being a whole shit-ton of record labels, they're mostly subsidaries or imprints of each other. There's a fairly small set of people who control the music industry and while they compete with each other to a degree, they mostly collude.

In summary: Grandparent is wrong to call copyrights communist (or socialist), but your rebuttal is equally wrong pretty much everywhere.

Re:I spy a new meme

[caluml]

A better picture.

Re:I spy a new meme

[4of12]

in fact by forcing it to be open and free for the public you are saying you should share it

No.

Rather, by allowing free and open commerce in recorded media you are saying let the available technology and the market set the price.

If that price comes down to US$0.32 per Brittney Spears CD, then consumers have benefitted. I think.

Re:I spy a new meme

[Fallingcow]

Hitler thought his armies and his works (esp. with regard to the Jews) were holy, and killed in God's name. Or, at least, that's what he claimed he thought.

Does that count?

Re:I spy a new meme

[TheGratefulNet]

To paraphrase the NRA member logic: Governments don't kill people, people kill people.

no no no. you got it all wrong:

guns don't kill people. apes with guns kill people

Re:I spy a new meme

[arkanes]

What is the incentive for a person to spend time and money to create a work if it will not be shared with the public (for profit probably)? Again, without copyright this person has no legal basis for recouping payment. So why would someone devot a lot of time and receive nothing (especially if it is their form of income)?

It's funny how often people say this, in spite of the fact that people will and do create stuff for enjoyment without the incentive of money. What do you think Open Source is? There may or may not be more created with copyright - I'm not convinced that copyright is working in that regard.

Metallica, and several other major acts, produce under thier own label, it's true. But you'll find a few things in common: They, almost without exception, did not get to be major artists that way - they created thier own label instead of re-signing or by breaking thier current contract. Second, the "label" they record under is generally merely an imprint or re-branding of another, larger label. I'm not familiar with Metallica specifically, although they are not the norm in the music industry, so I don't know if this is the case for them or not, but it's the general case for artist-owned labels - they don't actually have the infrastructure or contacts that a real label has, it's just a different branding of the same old crap.

Re:I spy a new meme

[jacoberrol]

In capitalism it is assumed that with no government intervention wealth will find a way to SHARE itself in a more fair and just way than if government intervened.

Where did you get that idea? Capitalism is about efficiency. There is no garauntee regarding the fair distribution of wealth. Example: Guy who hits a ball with a stick = millionaire.

Re:I spy a new meme

[AviLazar]

It is a legitimate concern. Some people/organizations want to create their product for profit (nothing wrong here). Put it this way - we know games like Doom 3, Halo 2, etc are multi-million dollar games and some of the most popular. How is the open source gaming industry doing? Except for a few games I played on Linux Redhat (came with it) that looked remarkably like other games I have played (one looked like Atari Asteroids) I didn't see anything there too original...none of them were spectacular. Though the Penguin body-sled game was pretty neat.
In your second paragraph you discuss how (generally) artists do not have the infrastructure or the contacts needed in this global industry...well so they are going to the RIAA/MPAA organizations and signing a contract - yes the organizations may get a majority of the profit - but it doesn't seem like the artists are doing too bad. As long as an artist can get one really good hit song out there they are sure to make a ton of cash. It's a trade off. What these guys are saying "You bring the talent we supply the capital taking a risk in you. If you do poorly you lose time but get some money, if you do great you get rich, we get richer. If you do not like the deal we are offering, do it on your own, nobody is stopping you."
The only thing I disagree about the RIAA/MPAA is their price fixing (notice cd/dvd sale prices never drop, even though in an elastic market it should); and possibly their thing about backing up cd/dvd's (though I understand their reasoning, since many people are stealing this material not just simply backing up material).

Re:I spy a new meme

[AviLazar]

But whose choice is that to make? Your choice (or the peoples)? What gives you the right to decide how much Brittney Spears and her organizations want to charge for their own creation? Or should we let the gov't choose the price?
With available tech people steal the material. If people are legally allowed to steal the material (now it is not stealing, it is just taking for free) - they will do so. In all honesty - how many people are going to pay for something, when they can get it for free legally? Hell how many people out there pay for something when they can take it illegally with little risk of capture?
It is not our property - we did not make it, we have ZERO say. It is like if I knit a sweater. I can charge nothing for it(give it away), I can charge 5 bucks or I can charge 5,000 bucks. My choice. Your choice is to pay or not pay for it. If i see that people are not buying my sweaters I can either reduce the price or leave it as is. Again I have a choice to sell at the price that I want to sell, you have the choice to buy it or not. I can't see why this concept is so hard to grasp?

Please note I am not trying to incite you to anger, I am just trying to figure out why people have a problem with someone setting a price that they want on their property.

Re:I spy a new meme

[bheerssen]

One key difference between Communism and Capitalism is the existence of a middle class in Capitalism.

Let's keep it that way. The middle class is currently shrinking in a dramatic way. The upper class is not growing appreciably, but they are making more money. The poor class, on the other hand, is growing. This suggests a shift of power away from the middle class to the upper class. This is not a good thing. As the powerful amass more power, they will abuse it to the detriment of everybody else. That is why power should reside in the largest segment of the population as possible -- to help ensure that as few people as possible face abuse from the rest of society.

Re:I spy a new meme

[bcattwoo]

Hitler thought his armies and his works (esp. with regard to the Jews) were holy, and killed in God's name. Or, at least, that's what he claimed he thought.

Hitler may have been anti-Jew, but I don't think he was for any religion other than the worship of Hitler himself.

Re:I spy a new meme

[BlueStraggler]

It is not our property - we did not make it, we have ZERO say. [snip] I can't see why this concept is so hard to grasp? [snip] I am just trying to figure out why people have a problem with someone setting a price that they want on their property.

Because some people have figured out that intellectual property is not property. It is non-rivalrous, can be reproduced at negligible cost, and it cannot be stolen (ie. you cannot be criminally convicted for theft of IP). In other words it has none of the characteristics of real property.

IP is a legal monopoly on ideas, which is enforced through contracts and civil law (ie. license agreements). Only businessmen attempting to invent a market by means of a false scarcity call it "property".

See here if you're really trying to figure this out.

Re:I spy a new meme

[Yartrebo]

The basic tenet of communism is "from all according to ability, to all according to need". It would be trivial to deduce that any free good, such as art after the first copy has been made, should be available to all.

So, yes, communism is about sharing. If the state will do anything, it will be to punish leechers, because they are not giving according to their abilities.

Re:I spy a new meme

[demachina]

"Communism is a method of government"

Actually Communism is a way of living. It derives from living in a commune. You might note it has the same root as a word us Linux people use a lot, community. Bill Gates is in fact right, sharing MP3's and open source software development IS communism. The catch is thanks the word was hijacked by a bunch of socialist dictators, specially Stalin. Its been turned in to a dirty word and thats why Bill Gates and Co. try to lay it on file swappers and Linux. Americans in particular freak at the word and start warming up the jets on the deck of the aircraft carriers everytime the get a wiff of it in the air. That is exactly what Bill is trying to do here, mobilize the American people and government in to a reactionary frenzy in which they wipe out file sharing and Linux. Oh, and in the process he just happens to get "Trusted Computing" and he locks Linux off of the Internet and out of personal computing because it can't be "Trusted". In the process he further secures his monopoly because all computers have to be trusted and Microsoft will seek to control the implementation of that trust(in all hardware and all software). It is classic Marxism, the community versus an ever expending capitalist monpolist.

At its ideal Communism is a group of people living together sharing their resources and labor, working together for the common good. They are not dividing the world up in to personal property which at its worst usually means one percent of the people own everything, including all the land and everyone else is dirt poor and share cropping or working in outright servitude. Thats what Russia was like prior to 1917 which is why there was a revolution. Its also classic Marxism that when you have capital you have a huge advantage in making more capital over people who have no capital. And of course there is a near inevitable concentration of wealth in a few hands and ever larger monpolies because large corporations can dominate smaller ones and huge monopolies are extremely good at making money, and destroying or gobbling up their competitors. Unless government restrains it through antitrust law, which is ... gasp ... socialism it is a nearly inevitable evolution of Capitalism that eventually you end up with one company that owns everything, and in the computer age it would most likely be Microsoft unless they screw the pooch at some point.

Re:I spy a new meme

[4of12]

I am saying that it should be the IP's owners decision, not anyone elses decision, to set the price.

I believe the creator of the content should have the decision to set the price for their work. And they do.

But, the reality of copying and recording technology means that they really only have the right to set the price for the very first copy of their work.

This is much like centuries ago when, after a great composer allowed their work to be performed, it was possible for musicians with good ears and memory to copy down a transcription of a great piece of music.

That it was possible to do this was regarded as reality.

If laws that distort the market by granting exclusive rights to sell duplicated information are reformed, then we might well have artists that would be paid by enough fans getting money together for induce them to perform a First Performance, since that is the only service for which they inherently ought to have the right to charge for. They are permitted to set the price for this First Performance as they wish, they can refuse to play unless the price is to their liking, and they can refuse to perform in the presence of recording equipment. All of those choices are the right of the content creator and I believe those rights should be preserved.

But, when I copy one file of bits to another on my computer and email it to a friend and RIAA demands payment, it's an artificial distortion of the market. Next thing you know, the authors of child-rearing advice books will want cameras in my home to help them charge me in case I actually use on their copyrighted techniques for child-rearing.

Re:I spy a new meme

[DrWhizBang]

I think it is more that some people are trying to make IP not property.

You keep using that word. I do not think it means, what you think it means.

"Intellectual Property" is a bit of an oxymoron, isn't it? Property means something that one possesses, and it is very difficult to possess something that only exists in someone's head, in my opinion.

Historically, (as far as I can tell) people have not wrangled so much over the ownership of ideas. It only, as you say, since people have started investing so much money into ideas, to be later confronted with better copying techniques, that this has been a problem. Patrons of the art, for instance, have always existed, but generally have not expected a return on their investments. Nowadays, the patrons are all record producers and software companies and the like.

Did it ever occur to you that it is insane to invest millions of dollars into an intangible work? Probably not, because the industry has us trained to believe that that is normal. You are probably worried that without the current industry there would not be new games and books and recordings. But remember that artists have always worked for thousands of years, and that this industry structure is less than a hundred years old.

Re:I spy a new meme

[AviLazar]

A rose by any other name is still a rose. I think then the argument is over the name... People hate assigning the word property to non-tangeable products. But why can't property be applied to non-tangeable products.
According to dictionary.com
Something tangible or intangible to which its owner has legal title: properties such as copyrights and trademarks.

IP is not physical property, but it is as real as money. Why is it so hard to apply the same thought process we do about money to copyrightable material? That hundred dollar bill is a piece of paper worth less then a penny, but we assign it a great value. You say that because something is not tangeable it is not property? I have some money in the bank - not tangeable at the moment...is that not my property?

Why can't criminal law on theft of tangible property be applied to non-tangible? Because we say so? Because the old laws do not support it? Since when do people in the tech industry, one of the fastest changing industries if not the fastest, resist change to old ideas?

Re:I spy a new meme

[lemur337]

You're just not getting it are you?

"It is like if I knit a sweater. I can charge nothing for it(give it away), I can charge 5 bucks or I can charge 5,000 bucks. My choice. Your choice is to pay or not pay for it. If i see that people are not buying my sweaters I can either reduce the price or leave it as is. Again I have a choice to sell at the price that I want to sell, you have the choice to buy it or not. I can't see why this concept is so hard to grasp?"

It's like if you knit a sweater and people, because of new technology, are able to make perfect copies of it at little or no cost. That is good. That is why we developed technology. That's why the the Constitution seeks to "promote the progress of science and useful arts."

Now that we have this technology we should be allowed to use it. You have been deprived of nothing. You still have your sweater. And we all have sweaters too. You can still sell your sweater, and if it's any good you can probably get a good price for it as an "orignal" (kinda like getting good ticket prices for a live concert).

Wake up man! If groceries started growing on trees would you cry for the grocery stores that went out of business? No. They would find new ways to contribute to society and all of us would be the richer.

Re:I spy a new meme

[Fallingcow]

That may very well have been the reality of the situation, but it's certainly not what he claimed.

Re:I spy a new meme

[qbwiz]

In Soviet Russia, YOU control copyright!

Re:I spy a new meme

[demachina]

You sure are throwing that "liar" word around a lot without any actual justification.

"you are lying when you say Bill Gates is calling open source developer or Linux developers communists"

This is exactly what he said:

"No, I'd say that of the world's economies, there's more that believe in intellectual property today than ever. There are fewer communists in the world today than there were. There are some new modern-day sort of communists who want to get rid of the incentive for musicians and moviemakers and software makers under various guises. They don't think that those incentives should exist."

He obviously didn't say LINUX in bold letters but who exactly do you think he is talking about when he is refering to "software makers" here? The "incentive" here is that software makers should hold all their software under proprietary license and get paid for it, an arguement he's been making since his famous letter in 1976.

OK if that didn't clarify who the liar is here lets hop in the wayback machine and remember when Steve Ballmer, Bill's partner called Linux "communist" outright. He said:

"Yet Linux sort of springs organically from the earth. And it had, you know, the characteristics of communism that people love so very, very much about it."

"what you are doing is essentially changing that into an attack on open source."

I am doing no such thing. I'm merely pointing out that Linux IS communist in the classic sense of the word. It is a community working for the common good, and renouncing private ownership of the fruit of their labors for that good. There is nothing resembling an "attack" in that. It is an entirely positive thing. I'm pointing out than when Gates and Ballmer use this word it comes across as an attack because the true meaning of the word "communist" has been so distorted in today's world especially in the U.S. that it is a pejorative and they are trying to associate Linux with all the badness that was and is the U.S.S.R and China which weren't even remotely communist in reality, the were and are oppressive socialist dictatorships.

All in all you strike me as a classic anonymous coward chickenshit slinging terms like "big liar", without supporting it, while you cower under complete anonymity. If you believe what you are saying and aren't a chickenshit at least post it under your login.

McCarthyism for the shareholders

[Anonymous Coward]

Now there's a desperate man for ya. He's sweating the shareholders' realizing MSFT is not the great holding they thought it was.

Lesson for Gates

[bitswapper]

Never show up at an event hosted by a comedian.
Using Windows.

You see, this just proves it.

[millennial]

I always knew Gates was a robot. Now they installed SP2 on him, and LOOK WHAT HAPPENS! Increased security, my foot!

That's pretty funny...

[Sottilde]

I wish they'd stop developing new, useless BS out at Microsoft and get to work on bug fixes.

Re:That's pretty funny...

[Asprin]

Agreed - the last paragraph of that sfgate piece really sez it all:

"While Microsoft's goal is to turn the PC into a superhub that does everything -- plays music, works as a cell phone, stores your photos -- they're running up against the fact that most people buy discreet components that do particular things."

Personally, I kinda like having seams of one sort or another. They are boundries around systems that restrict their awareness and let me take control of them again when I need to.

Re:That's pretty funny...

[Dogers]

That, and your data/life doesnt get held hostage when something goes wrong with it!

Re:That's pretty funny...

[Twanfox]

To heck with taking control of them, I just want the devices discreet and seperate so that, god forbid, my DVD player take a dump on me, I can still watch TV, watch a VHS tape, play a game on a console, or look up my email on my computer. The 'One Box Does It All' mentality may simplify what you have to carry or buy, but it also represents a single point of failure for a large number of services. Getting it repaired, especially if it's out of warrenty, can be a major pain in the ass.

(Only one device I've ever really had repaired was my Minidisc player, twice, and that was under CircuitCity's own extended warrenty. Took weeks to get it back, though thankfully it did come back fixed, or at least with an explaination as to a point of failure like the power adaptor. TV, Microwave, my Clie.. it's almost cheaper to just buy a new one since it is generally designed to just barely outlive it's warrenty)

Re:That's pretty funny...

[dickens]

discrete (d-skrt)
adj.

Not joined to or incorporated with another; separate; distinct.

discreet

adj 1: marked by prudence or modesty and wise self-restraint; "his trusted discreet aide"; "a discreet, finely wrought gold necklace" [ant: indiscreet] 2: unobtrusively perceptive and sympathetic; "a discerning editor"; "a discreet silence" [syn: discerning] 3: heedful of potential consequences; "circumspect actions"; "physicians are now more circumspect about recommending its use"; "a discreet investor" [syn: circumspect]

</pedantic>

Re:That's pretty funny...

[mydigitalself]

just to point out the obvious...
if, God forbid, your TV took a dump on you, then you can't watch TV, a VHS tape or play a game on your console. so all you could do is check your email on your computer...so you almost do have a central point of failure as it is anyway.

i only mention this 'cos my telly just "took a dump" on me and i've been medialess for 2 weeks as i run xboxmediacenter for all my music - and that's dependant on screen-based navigation!

Re:That's pretty funny...

[NatasRevol]

Maybe you need a free iPod...

What's wrong with communism?

[G-Licious!]

I'm going to accuse them of being modern day capitalists.
Sounds just as bad to me.

Re:What's wrong with communism?

[Dachannien]

Obviously, Gates intends to make the allusion that these people are big-C Communists (whose motivation is to keep themselves in power through suppression of the masses), rather than little-c communists (whose motivation is to serve the people through suppression of those currently in power). He's playing off the ignorant knee-jerk reaction of most Americans to equate the word
"Communism" with "Evil" (Stalin did, after all, kill millions of his own people).

Re:What's wrong with communism?

[mindaktiviti]

I'm not going to defend capitalism (granted I think it's much better than communism), but communism itself is pretty bad.

I myself have fairly left-wing views (I'm from Canada and completely agree with universal healthcare, etc), but communism doesn't seem to take one thing into consideration: Humans are greedy, and this includes the ones controlling the government of a communist country. Much like the very purpose of an incorporation (Check out this movie), there's an underlyting wrongness about communism that doesn't have enough checks and balances (at least not in my country of origin).

Anyway, Bill should grow up and know better than to call people commies. It's unprofessional.

Re:What's wrong with communism?

[a whoabot]

Objectivism is the most baroque, grotesque, venal, intellectually masturbatory philosophy ever constructed.

Just plain disturbing. Pseudo-philosophy for people who have some brains but think they are much smarter than they are and so fail to respect many of the complexities of the world. Just a pet fundamentalism for them to latch onto. If you like some of the ideals in Objectivism, then read some Nozick and Rawls for the love of God, and put down the Rand trash for a little while. They at least have rigor in their philosophy and respect for complexities. Rand just spirals off in petty intellectual obscurantism.

Is this a metaphor?

[PDXNerd]

It sounds like Bill Gates may be infested with SpyWare, a typical memetic programming that took place in the 1950's in which everyone who was not a right-wing-christian-gun-loving-American was a communist. It sounds like it's causing his PR ability to crash. Should we help him out and format him and put linux on him? (Wait.. Put linux on him, linux is Tux, the mental image that is coming to mind is... DISTURBING!!!! ACK REBOOT REBOOT!)

Bzzt

[The Cisco Kid]

But while promoting what he calls the "digital lifestyle," Gates showed how vulnerable all consumers -- even the world's richest man -- are to hardware and software bugs.

It would *REALLY* be nice to see someone in the media finally get this right.

SB: ... showed how vulnerable all *WINDOWS USERS* - even the founder and ex-CEO of the very company that makes Windows -- are to ... (the fact that Windows is a buggy piece of shit)

Re:Bzzt

[Jeff DeMaagd]

Keep in mind there is a danger in letting people assume that non-Windows systems are totally secure and 100% bug-free.

Re:Bzzt

[Speare]

Okay, so (1) how is a video game able to tear down the entire operating system? and (2) how does this blame-shifting actually help the users?

Sure, a few game buyers might return their game, but they'll still have an operating system with lurking landmine bugs that will crash in exactly the same way for some other product next week.

Sweet Jebus!

[Ligur]

Head for the hills! The Commies are everywhere!

Out of touch....

[jsimon12]

Is it me or does Gates seem to be very out of touch with what is going on in the real world and mostly seems to be getting his current information from his "Human Search Engines". Not to mention the fact he is constantly doing little more then plugging Micro$oft products.

Just remember: If you don't buy from Micro$oft you are a Communist!

also...

[millennial]

When I read that he nose-dived, I was hoping for a video of him tripping and flying off a stage or something. I am sorely disappointed!

Obligatory Dr. Strangelove Quote

[nudnikmeow]

Gen. Jack D. Ripper: I can no longer sit back and allow communist infiltration, communist indoctrination, communist subversion, and the international communist conspiracy to sap and impurify all of our precious bodily fluids.

How Bill can succeed...

[i_want_you_to_throw_]

Use his influence with the federal government to tie the open source effort with terrorism. Terrorism is the new communism. Cloak anything you don't like in terrorism and it gets done. Couple that with this administration's ability to be bought off by corporate interests and he can get what he wants. OK, mod me down now.......

Search.

[saintlupus]

From the interview, on the topic of search engines:

Oh, sure, everybody is working on those things, but just take the idea of finding your local pizza place and doing that right; search doesn't do that well today.

Sounds like someone needs to clue Bill in to using Sherlock under OS X -- that's exactly what I used it for yesterday.

--saint

Re:Search.

[rbolkey]

Hey Bill, here are your local pizza joints.

Re:Search.

[gl4ss]

hell, fucking google does that for me good enough, in fact it finds a page with reviews too in top 5.

and i'm in a smallish 20k person suburb, in finland...

but i guess what bill meant was that the he wants an engine that the pizzeria owner needs to pay for to be in and the user needs to pay for use..

Re:Search.

[pknoll]

Go2online does that pretty well, too, for those of you who don't have Macs. Sherlock is a wonderful tool, though. =)

I think what Bill meant was that Microsoft is working on these things, but Microsoft's search products don't do that well today.

Anything like this

[JohnHegarty]

Worlds largest blue screen of death here

Welcome to the revolution!

[thewiz]

I, for one, welcome our new copyleft communist masters (and logo).

[rant]
Seriously, Bill Gate and Co. continue to try and paint anyone who doesn't agree with their stance on IP as un-American. Who died and made him J. Edgar Hoover, Jr.?

America was NOT founded on the principles of IP but on freedom of choice (religious and otherwise) and the idea that everyone is supposed to contribute to the public good. The recent push to IP, patent, and copyright every little "innovation" (think one-click)is what is hurting our ability to produce something new and better without having to wade through a morass of legalities.

I will continue to support copyleft, OSS, and any other program that contributes to the dissemination of knowledge and ideas.
[/rant]

Re:Welcome to the revolution!

[Anonymous Coward]

"America was NOT founded on the principles of IP but on freedom of choice (religious and otherwise) and the idea that everyone is supposed to contribute to the public good. "

NOT

Rather, America was founded on the idea that each person could retain control over what they had created/built/earned/believed without someone "more deserving" taking that control away from them.

People chose to contribute to the common effort because they believed in it, not because they had to.

Re:Welcome to the revolution!

[Garwulf]

"Rather, America was founded on the idea that each person could retain control over what they had created/built/earned/believed without someone "more deserving" taking that control away from them.

People chose to contribute to the common effort because they believed in it, not because they had to."

Very well said.

One of the things that constantly bugs me are the extremists. I'm an author - intellectual rights are very important to me, as a large part of my living right now depends on how they are used in regards to my work. Quite frankly, if I spend a year and a half writing a book, that book is mine, to do with as I please. That's the letter and spirit of the law.

But then you have the extremists on both sides, who abuse the spirit and/or letter of intellectual property law. Companies like Microsoft use it as a weapon to stifle others from innovating, essentially by trying to take their ideas away from them and claim them as their own. The extremists on the other side react by wanting to strip away intellectual property rights entirely, and make any new creation into part of the public domain.

When you think about it, both are theft. To use the chair example, the first group of extremists come to you after you've made a chair and demand that you give it to them and not make any more because they made it first. The second group of extremists come to you after you've made a chair and demand that you give it to them so that it can be contributed to the public good. Neither is terribly respectful to the person who made the chair in the first place, and who should be allowed to sell it if they want, give it away if they want, or just sit in it if they want.

Unusual

[papasui]

I find it pretty unusual that both cases caused the machine to stop responding completely. That hasn't happened to me since Windows 98/Me. 2000 and XP have generally been pretty stable theirselves. Individual programs still crash, but they don't usually take the system down with them. I wonder if there was some bad ram or other hardware failure as part of the cause. Still funny and I'm sure embarrassing all the same. :)

Minute 7

[kngthdn]

If the video still works, Conan O'Brian does some hilarious stand-up badmouthing Gates at minute 7. Skip the garbage before that.

Re:Minute 7

[Phisbut]

It'd also be nice to know exactly when in the video are those freezes and bsod... I don't feel like watching an 80 minutes pro-Microsoft video just to see that...

Re:Minute 7

[kngthdn]

Minute 26...

O'Brien: And right now 9 people are being fired.
Gates: hahahahaha
O'Brien: Digital fired...wireless...there's no connection. That's the beauty of it. You don't need a firewall or...I don't know what I'm talking about.
Gates: Okay.
O'Brien: I'm a monkey. Alright we'll get this going I think. should we start? you ready to go? Okay, the first photo here is you picking me up at the airport. But that was...are we seeing these at all?
Gates: No, I don't think we are...
O'Brien: No? I don't think we are.
Gates: That's the problem when you have the wrong remote control. It's a good thing you only have one through.
O'Brien (looking baffled): Yeah...that's good. Well, is anyone going to do anything or should we just move on? Did I mention there's gambling in this town, Las Vegas? Feel free to hit the tables. You can come back when we get this thing working!

This is followed by much laughter and Bill quickly changing the subject. Ah, the wonders of only having *one* remote....

Your parents told you...

[Transcendent]

he described anyone who doesn't support ever-increasing intellectual property laws as "communists".

But... doesn't sharing mean caring? At least that's what my parents always said.

In all seriousness, there's nothing wrong with a communial society, it's just really really hard to pull off because of human nature.

Re:Your parents told you...

[Anonymous Custard]

Communal societies work if they're voluntary. But you can't force someone to participate. It's the difference bewteen someone giving something away and someone forcefully taking something away.

And the lesson is ...

[totatis]

So, his media player presentation crashed, and the link to this is ... a .asx.

Kinda ironic don't you think ?

Dennis Miller called it years ago ...

[Titusdot Groan]

"Bill Gates is a Persian cat and a monocle away from being a villain in a James Bond movie."

-- Dennis Miller

Re:Dennis Miller called it years ago ...

[chochos]

Or....

Bill Gates is a bald cat and a pinky-in-mouth away from being dr. evil

Re:Propoganda

[Anonymous Coward]

Sometimes, all it takes is one comment. If Bush comes out on public television and makes one strong line of pure and clear racial charged comment against minority groups. Do you think everyone will say, well, using one comment against him is just propaganda?

.segmond

You may laugh...

[east coast]

he described anyone who doesn't support ever-increasing intellectual property laws as "communists".

While this is generally laughed at by the slashdot community we still need to consider that Joe Sixpack pretty much sees it the same way. Not that he minds downloading free music and pr0n but ultimatly he does see it as theft.

And this could really bite at the community in the future. While most people here laugh at Joe Sixpack he's the one who helped Gates build an empire.

I see your point but...

[Lifewish]

a) Calling free culture advocates commies shows a... slight misunderstanding of the two ideologies. At its best, Communism was never particularly concerned with the individual (possibly why it is so successful in the Confucian environment of China).

b) Arguing that "Communist" is not a pejorative is likely to go down like a lead balloon in much of America. The McCarthy witchhunts were ludicrous but they happened for a reason. Communists *were* the enemy - defending them carries the same overtones as defending Naziism to the French.

Re:I see your point but...

[missing000]

a) Bullshit. Don't talk authoritatively about things you don't know anything about. The important quote here is ""From each according to his ability, to each according to his need."
The center of the system is protecting the individual who is perceived as being exploited by the state.

b) Communist is indeed a pejorative term in the US. The fact that "they" were at one time the enemy is hardly a moral justification of continued discrimination. I'm not a "commie", so I won't defend thier ideology, but I would suggest that any criticism be directed at ideas and not cultural impressions.

Re:I see your point but...

[SilkBD]

Which means 80% is NOT supported by the government, so, by further application of your logic, 80% of the US is NOT "Communist". Of course, 42% of all statistics are made up... by people who pull shit out of their ass...

Re:Propoganda

[burbankmarc]

Propoganda? In the late 70's/early 80's he wrote a letter to Stallman stating that he should be banned from all computer events because he supports free software...

Now to me, this doesn't sound like propoganda, but rather, who he actually is.

Marketing

[Anonymous Custard]

I wonder if the fathers of capitalism ever imagined the levels of marketing we would have today. I believe it really skews the whole idea of competition...

It didn't hurt Windows 98 sales after Gates got a blue screen during a demo, Ashlee Simpson is still selling albums even though we found out that she really, really, can't sing (SNL + Orange Bowl), and G. W. Bush got the presidency despite being a below average public speaker.

The american public really doesn't hold public figures to a very high standard anymore.

There are music geeks who hate Ashlee for taking away a spot at a record company that some talented band might have had, political geeks who know every single word GW has said wrong, and normular computer geeks who know the design flaws in Windows.

Still, the public doesn't seem to care, and prefer to be sheep following celebrity shepards rather than thinking humans supporting the most qualified public figures.

You have to be a really dedicated researcher if you want to get beyond the multi-million dollar marketing hype surrounding most products and people these days.

Microsoft in a nutshell...

[mogrify]

Although he accepted guffaws from audience members in the theater, the technical hiccups didn't prompt Gates to engage in a hard-hitting analysis of computer reliability and security.

Doesn't that just sum up everything that's wrong with Microsoft?

Hmm

[MrRuslan]

Throwing words like comunist is very imature and unprofessional on Bills behalf IMHO.

Trouble starts at 26 minutes 50 seconds (or so)

[Arkahn]

Fast forward to the interesting portion of this riveting presentation.

Anarchist, dammit

[Lifewish]

I can't think of a single anarchist government that's killed millions of people.

Re:Anarchist, dammit

[Catbeller]

"Anarchist government" is an oxymoron. True anarchy arises from lack of order spontaneously, and a lot of scores get settled with blood. Everyone: the US killed over 300,000 Filipinos alone in the Spanish-American war. We've killed 12,000-100,000 in Iraq; the exact number is classified. "Communism" didn't kill anyone any more than our "democracy" has. Nothing about the theories demand you murder people. The ideologies don't kill. People kill. Stalin and Lenin killed millions for political and economic advantage, and we are killing for the same reasons now. And the Russians thought they were defending their motherland and freedom as well. And were as deluded as we are now, for the exact same reasons.

Re:Anarchist, dammit

[nbert]

Whilst making a valid point in your post, this statement is highly misleading:

"Communism" didn't kill anyone any more than our "democracy" has.

You should really read this article about Democide in the Soviet Union before you make such a statement. I really hate to bring death tolls into such discussions, but in this case there is a completely different dimension in numbers *and* course of action.

Re:Anarchist, dammit

[MartinG]

But there is such a thing as a sense of humour.

Re:Anarchist, dammit

[Junior J. Junior III]

That's very true, and I'd mod you up if I werent responding to your comment.

BUT, you have to acknowledge that Soviet-style Communism isn't really Communism, it's totalitarianism. USA-style democracy isn't really democracy, either, but that's another matter...

Re:Anarchist, dammit

[gramiq]

You're perpetuating a false dichotomy.

Communism is an economic system, akin to capitalism. Democracy is a system of government.

"Communism" hasn't killed any more people that "capitalism" has. (cf. Union Carbide) I will, however, agree that "totalitarianism" has killed far more people than "democracy" has.

The sad fact is that democratic communism has just never been tried, even though the theories seem to match up so well.

Re:Anarchist, dammit

[Clock Nova]

I'm glad someone finally made this point. The opposite of Communism is Capitalism, not Democracy. I'm all for Democracy. I love it... when it works. It's out current capitalist system that needs to be rethinked. Free market capitalism should only apply to small businesses. All corporations should be subject to heavy governmental regulations (that are actually enforced.) Personal wealth should also have limits.

Screw the rich.

But then, I must be one of them there "new commies."

Re:Anarchist, dammit

[memco]

1) It is impossible to prove something doesn't exist as your mere conception of it brings it into some semblance of existance. Everything that doesn't exist we don't know about as existence is the compendium of all life, matter, ideas, and otherwise that we know about. 2) Failure to prove a claim does not make it false. I cannot prove to you that 2+2=4 (thought I can prove .9 is =1), but does that make that statement false? Not necessarily. It is possible that proof exists, you can only be certain of something once you can prove the opposite of it to be either true or false. In the case of God for example, if you can't prove that He exists, you must prove He doesn't exist to say that He doesn't. If you can't do either you must agree that the existence of God is up for question or personal opinion. Once a case with emphatic evidence has been brought up, then you can declare one way or the other. Until then... I DEMAND RIGID BOUNDARIES OF UNCERTAINTY.

Re:Anarchist, dammit

[__aanebg9627]

Probably because there's no such thing as an "anarchist government"...

Erm, incorrecto. The Spanish government fighting Franco in the Spanish Civil War was a coalition government of Socialists Communists and Anarchists. Yes Anarchists. Orwell's "Homage to Catalonia" is my favorite introduction to the Spanish Anarchists, well worth reading both to understand them and Orwell himself.

Re:Anarchist, dammit

[Lobo93]

Thanks for the pointer to Orwell; I quickly found an online version of "Homage to Catalonia" right here.
Should be a good read, me being one of those Damned anarchists and all. ;)

re: Communists

[bogie]

You know I was ready to call B.S. as I was reading the article because I got to here and read "There are fewer communists in the world today than there were". I thought man, saying that Bill called everyone communists was a bit of stretch but then I read a little further, "There are some new modern-day sort of communists who want to get rid of the incentive for musicians and moviemakers and software makers under various guises."

Yep, he pretty much just said that if you don't support IP then your a Communist. What a douchebag. That statement is going to haunt him for a long time and rightly so. The world's richest man and still as greedy as ever. Again, what a douchebag. Oh btw for the 12 year olds among you who can't think like adults yet, yes you can still be a douchebag and be philanthropic at the same time.

Time of crash

[Anonymous Coward]

For those interested, the crash for this year's CES happens at about 26 minutes in.

Re:Time of crash

[keeleysam]

Actually four. The digicam thing crashed twice in about three minutes, then the game gave the BSOD, then Conan's game was lagging A WHOLE LOT. He was getting 2fps, while Gate$ was gettign the full 60fps.

Eh?

[hey!]

Shows you what you know. Flags are for fat old aparachnik fogies. All the cool revolutionaries know you wave bloody shirts.

To the barricades!

If we were really communists....

[FlimFlamboyant]

We'd be supporting the idea of the government owning all intellectual property.

However, not to defend Mr. Gates (and surely to piss off a lot of the OSS community), but there is some small degree of validity to his statement, though he used the wrong word.

Many people who completely reject the idea of intellectual property (not all) aren't really communists as Mr. Gates would propose, but in fact, radical left-wing anarchists. They despise authority in any form that it comes in; that is why such things as IP and copyrights are hated so much. The idea of God introduces a supreme authority, so they hate him even more.

They wear the "communist" label with pride, not understanding who they really are, or what communism really is and what it has done to nearly every single society that has been foolish enough to try it.

They are the modern day hippy, when it comes right down to it. They stand for and oppose the same things and the same principles.

Bill bet the farm

[maskatron]

He has to say this sort of thing since he's bet the MS farm on DRM and the like. When you hear people making these kind of references though, you know they are concerned. That tells me the DRM plan isn't going as well as they thought it would.

I lived in Utah for ten years

[wiredog]

and was surprised, at first, to find that many people there actually believed that.

Of course Gates would claim communisim...

[haplo21112]

...reforming the IP laws to be fair to all people would hurt his pocketbook. The real problem as I see it is that the laws need to be reformed enough so that OPEN/FREE software can do anything that Closed/Commercial can. Right now some of the IP laws prevent this from happening, and some of the coming ones will tighten that even more. All I presonally want is a level playing field, and so long as we have "Trade secrets", Broadcast flags, CSS, etc that can never happen because IT locks out Open/Free which requires that those secrets begiven to everyone using the software and nothing be hidden. Thankfully we won the battle with the W3C and they dropped that whole RAND thing for web standards. A step in the right direction, but not the whole road.

One comment?

[gad_zuki!]

>Using one comment against him his just propoganda.

This is not one comment. This is him openly claiming:

1. The current IP system is what makes America great. Yes, that's what he's saying.

2. The current IP system doesn't need reform, except perhaps making better patent systems. Note Microsoft has been dealing with Eolas and others regarding patents so Bill is only seeing the light only when it serves his company.

3. He calls those who call for IP reform "new communists." That's just an insult and trivializes the real concerns many have with using the law (think DMCA and others) to maintain monopoly status and crack down on how one can use one's machine and software.

He spoke like a perfect monopolist. He knows IP laws help him and help maintain the status quo, thus creating a nice and healthy (for him) barrier to entry. He only diverged from the party-line when it came to patents and it should be obvious why.

Of course, he may be right about patent reform, but its soley in his interest and in the interest in his monopoly, comrade.

I will give MS credit, they are the perfect monopolists. Perfect. No wonder he uses such outdated and misused terms like "communism." MS has shown that ruthlessness pays off and Bill might be seeing himself as Ayn Rand, say versus Karl Marx, when he's just an old fashioned monopolist. Monopolies are of course, a symptom of a market failure or corruption. This is called irony.

I find this rhetoric to be common amongst the wealthy business class and conservatives in general. Such as: Commies! X makes America great! Sure there will always be a debate on Y, but lets not jump to conclusions! etc

Re:I see**2 your point but...

[lenski]

There is communism (insane totalitarianism found in USSR and an earlier China) but they never achieved that Marx wrote about. No "government" ever has (In the '60's and '70's people had communes, but they always broke apart on the shoals of human nature). The people who started "communist" revolutions never completed the process. I don't call those insane assholes "communists", they are insane oligarchs, just like the Czarist regime before them.

There was a time when the new government in this continent did something that had not been done before or since: They *gave up power*, placing that power in the hands of people. Since then, the concept has fallen on hard times. Today, we have oligarchs like Mr. Gates trying to restore Traditional Values: Own and control access to *fucking everything*. And they have enough financial resources to buy off what passes for government these days. And the only people doing anything about it (in information technology, they are FOSS advocates) eschew government and political process. Too busy writing actual reliable code, I suppose...

I don't like arbitrary authority, so I don't like big centralized government. On the other hand, I cannot think of another way to slow down the assholes who want to charge me for the privilege of working (using "their" "intellectual" "property"). It's a dilemma that I don't know how to resolve.

It's MS who's communist here, not us

[KiloByte]

Note that capitalism is not about monopolies. In fact, capitalism relies on free market, and you can't have free market if one of the players controls a majority of it.

The basic ideas of capitalism work just insanely effective. When we had communism in Poland, most shops had empty shelves -- and within just months after the communism's fall any shortages were just gone, as if by a wave of a magic wand.

On the other hand, communism is based on monopoly. It's supposed to be a monopoly of the "working class", but in reality in all cases it turned out to be a monopoly of the Party. And then, if you can buy the Party's blessing -- you can have a monopoly in your sector, too!
Whatever you say, you can't ignore the fact that all real-life implementations of communism were based on the control the Party had on the citizens. In fact, it's the control what the communism is about.
So... we have a company who tries to gain the sole control of a sector of industry -- and it's them who dare to call their enemies communists.

Re:It's MS who's communist here, not us

[physick]

>Real life implementations of communism that *work* and were >not based on party control exist - kibbutzim in Israel, >communes in the US and elsewhere. They aren't based on a >Party structure at all.

They "work" because they are tiny and powerless and are protected by the power of the state within which they exist. They also don't satisfy the conditions for being called "communist" in the sense described by Mark and Engels, ie "Communists everywhere support every revolutionary movement against the existing social and political order of things."

>The totalitarian government you had in Eastern Europe was not >really communism, it just went by the name.

Oh, really? As far as I know, the USSR implemented the following:

1 Abolition of property in land (collectivisation)
2 Abolition of right of inheritance (at least houses, land and large amounts of money)
3 Confiscation of the property of rebels and emigrants (and I think rebel in reality just means anyone who upsets the party bosses)
5 Centralisation of credit in the hands of the State, by means of a national bank with State capital and an exclusive monopoly
6 Centralisation of the means of communication and transport in the hands of the State
7 Extension of factories annd instruments of production owned by the State; bringing in to production of wasteland and the improvement of the soil (I think they got a bit lost on the last one there, especially around Chernobyl)
8 Equal liability of all to labour
9 Combination of agriculture with manufactoringindustries..... a more equitable distribution of the population over the country (they just didn't ask the "people" if they wanted to be moved across several time zones)
10 Free education for all children in public schools (unless your parents upset the party bosses in which case, no education, at least at university level)

Now THAT is communism, according to its Manifest from 1848. And it looks pretty much like what I hear life in the USSR was like. It also does NOT look like any kibbutz I have heard about.

>Drawing conclusions about the validity of real communist >principles from the USSR is like drawing conclusions about the >lifespan of a human by studying how long penguins live.

I am not sure what you think are "real communist principles" if not the ones that Marx et al described and were implemented in the USSR, China etc. "Let's all share everything and be nice to each other" does NOT appear in the communist literature I have read.

Re:It's MS who's communist here, not us

[Kiryat Malachi]

There's a value in precision in language; whether other people are imbeciles or not doesn't obviate our responsibility not to misuse words we know we're misusing.

I don't say Christian when I mean snake-handling cultist, and I don't say communist when I mean totalitarian. Hey, I don't even say communist when I mean free software zealot. I damn well will jump on people who misuse words and conflate two very different things into one.

I'm not arguing communism has worked at the national level. I don't think it will, as I said in my previous post. However, I pointed out that the principles are applicable on some scales, and that those principles weren't the real guiding principles of the USSR, which operated as a totalitarian oligarchy.

Re:It's MS who's communist here, not us

[Kiryat Malachi]

If you give your children money, and let them form a free market in your kitchen, it *is* capitalism. Yes, it's small scale, but scale doesn't change the fact that the structure, which is what's actually important, is capitalist. Similarly, if something is small-scale structured as a communist organization, it remains communist, just at a smaller scale. Certain structures do work better at certain scales than others; however, saying that it isn't communism (despite fitting the principles as you defined them) just because its small is bullshit.

I'm *not* arguing your point re: communism being ineffective at large scales. Please stop saying I am. It hasn't worked, and when it's been attempted, it has invariably devolved into totalitarian/authoritarian structures (USSR, Cuba, China).

Further, you cannot solely cite the founders of an intellectual tradition; you also have to accept the further development of that tradition. Marx is not the sole arbiter of communism; there has been other original thought on the subject since then. Democracy today has many differences from democracy in the time of Plato; would you argue that just because we don't take everything Plato says as gospel, it isn't democracy?

The key word was *force*. My understanding of Marx's doctrines is that he was saying "In a communist countty, the population will redistribute itself more equally." That it would be an inevitable consequence, an "invisible hand" effect, if you don't mind mixing your socioeconomic metaphors. The USSR used violence to force these transfers, something that I believe Marx would have felt to be antithetical to the very notion of communism. A totalitarian government has no issue with using violence againsts its citizens to force them into behaviors it considers desirable; a communist government working from Marx's blueprints would have very real issues with the idea that violence against the working class would be necessary to achieve the desired distribution of population.

re: dog and tail - exactly my point. Just because a totalitarian country represents communist does not make it communist.

The lack of checks in the Soviet implementation of communism was the fatal flaw that allowed it to be consumed from inside by totalitarianism. It is not, however, something that is inherent to communism, just like the strong checks and balances in the US republic that make it relatively difficult to subvert are not inherent to the concept of a republic. The idea is that the Party is controlled by the collective will of the people, yes? If you allow the control of the Party to be assumed by one person, you *already have* wounnd up with a dictatorship, ant then you are living in an authoritarian society with a collective economic system. Communism was both a political and economic system; with only one part and not the other, what you have left is not communism. The second Stalin took power, the USSR ceased to be a communist country.

The plural for kibbutz is kibbutzim; Hebrew word, Hebrew pluralization. The proper word for describing a kibbutz (in the general sense) is socialist, though some essentially function as communist organizations. You remain hung up on communism only in the context of nations, whereas it is a blueprint for organization of groups of people. Again, Marx and Engels originated it, but thought has moved on since their time. The countries established under communist systems have *all* failed, true; but their failure was allowing their system to become an authoritarian system. I'm not certain that it's possible to have a communist nation-state that doesn't fail in this fashion, but the truth is - there never has been a communist nation-state, not for more than a few years. Blaming communism for Stalin's abuses is like blaming democracy for the abuses of the French Revolution.

Who's to blame? Stalin. Robespierre. The dictators, the fascists. Not the systems they subverted.

Re:Personally...

[geoffspear]

But "Communist" is a more accurate description that brings up even more deeply ingrained negative images.

There are lots of good ideas that have a lot in common with the ideals of socialism and communism. Marx would no doubt be happy with programmers (petty bourgeois though they be) creating wonderful software to share with everyone instead of having their labor exploited by capitalists. This is socialist, and there's nothing inherently wrong with that.

The trick is that when people hear "Communist" they think "evil, megalomaniacal dictators who couldn't care less about the workers in whose name they're killing anyone who opposes their rule" instead of "people working together for the common good instead of for the profit of the few".

There may be valid arguments to be made against socialist economics, but it's easier to throw pejorative labels around than to actually try to make those arguments.

Hypocritical at best

[canuck57]

where he described anyone who doesn't support ever-increasing intellectual property laws as "communists".

Does this make Bill Gates a communist? Xerox and Apple had windows before Microsoft. TCP was borrowed from Digital. Sun for RPCs and J#. Supercalc and other had spead sheets before Microsoft. Does work perect or others get roaylties rom Word for the word processor?

In fact, Linux uses X for it's windows which predates Microsoft. Maybe Microsoft should pay royalties to commercial UNIX and Linux for the RTU of Windows.

And look at Microsoft's legal track record.

This was obviously a hypocritical comment on Bill's part. A typical reaction to a monoplistic looser.

Oh, it doesn't get better than these comments...

[spamfiltertest]

"So when people say Firefox is being downloaded onto people's systems, that's true, but IE is also on those systems. Firefox is new, and people are trying it out. There's a certain percentage of people who do that--it's very easy to download."

Why is IE on those systems, Bill, oh that's right because you made it part of the OS and there was little way for it not to be on the system.

"...We need to keep IE the best. So no big problem; it's not that people have stopped using IE, it's just we've got lots of good ideas that can match and move ahead...."

I'm sure the Firefox is being downloaded, over and over, but it's not catching on... right? IE hasn't been the best in years.

And for the best (in terms of the IE talk)

Well, no one invests more in security of their browser than what we do on IE.

I'm going to go out on a limb and say this is correct. The part Bill seems to ignore is the fact that the $ is wasted is you base that on their track record of making things secure.

Run screaming from this!!!

[maynard]

"Fly the [boing!boing! USSR/Copyleft] flag with pride comrades!"

NONONONONO!!! I know you're trying to be funny, but I'm not laughing... The last thing free software proponents need is to associate themselves with a failed economic ideology that has resulted in tens of millions of unnecessary deaths worldwide. Free Software has nothing to do with statist communism and everything to do with individual freedom of association and collaboration. When Bill Gates frames the debate between the capitalists on his side and communists on the other, the last thing to do is embrace the presuppositions of his frame! Down that road evokes an ideological wasteland of failure! Do copyleft supporters want to associate themnselves with that? --M

Re:Run screaming from this!!!

[plumby]

Free Software has nothing to do with statist communism and everything to do with individual freedom of association and collaboration.

And statist 'communism' as practiced in places like the USSR and China has very little to do with real communist/socialist theory.

Re:Run screaming from this!!!

[jafac]

Come on, the deaths caused by Communism were a result of Religious Fervor. The folks who participated didn't have a religion, so they substituted "Humanism" as their bailywick, and justification to slaughter.

People want to slaughter. It's in their nature. Religion often provides a reasonable excuse for it, but so does racism, or any ideology. (Including Capitalism).

Re:Run screaming from this!!!

[Omnifarious]

And communist theory has very little to do with reality.

Re:Run screaming from this!!!

[rho]

Ah, yes, this is a old chestnut: "Communism is a good system run by bad people."

The problem with communism/socialism is not the people who are running it, it's people. We just don't work that way in groups larger than a high school study group, and that's why it fails every time.

Re:Run screaming from this!!!

[vbweenie]

in contrast with the capitalism that is working very well, thank you.

Relatively speaking, yes.

Re:Run screaming from this!!!

[0racle]

You don't live in the real world do you? In current capitalist countries, the Rich get richer and the poor a whole hell of a lot poorer. The more socialist systems, where health care, education and every other social benifit of society are guarenteed have a higher general standard of living accross the board.

Re:Run screaming from this!!!

[demachina]

"failed economic ideology that has resulted in tens of millions of unnecessary deaths worldwide"

There was a great opinion piece on Space Daily a few days ago that pointed out the irony that the Russian space program is a pragmatic group, doing a lot of great work with very limited resources and are in fact great businessmen, especially with their space tourism attempts.

The article then contrasted it with NASA's manned space program which is in fact an incompetent bureacracy with all of the worst characteristics you expect from a the "failed economic idealogy" of "statist communism". An agency laced with incompetent bureaucrats who aren't held to account for failure or rewarded for success and who squander state funds at a breathtaking pace and build incompetent empires. I hate to break it to you but if you look at the massive growth of government spending in the U.S. it is in many ways a socialist state too. Vast segments of the American economy are completely tied to and dependent on government spending and contracts which is pretty much socialism. There was a time the Republicans blamed all this socialism on the Democrats but now they have complete control of the government and they are accelerating government spending and intervention in the economy, not slowing it.

As an aside I'm pretty sure capitalism and dictatorial socialism which is what you see in China and the U.S.S.R, not really communism, are both to blame for millions of unnecessary deaths. Vietnam for example was a mutual effort of the two ideoligies as they fought proxy wars around the world see they couldn't do it directly. The U.S. most certainly did kill millions of civilians in Vietnam and is killing plenty of civilians unnecessarily in Iraq today.

There have certainly been some major slaughtering of innocents in the U.S.S.R, China and North Korea but that really has NOTHING to do with ideology. That is just what you get from dictatorships whether they be left or right leaning. The U.S. has propped up, if not outright installed, plenty of right wing dictators who slaughtered innocents, Pinochet for example may finally be held to account for all the people his U.S. backed government murdered.

Minute mark

[eclipsemgp]

Just so you don't have to watch the entire video (2 hours), the crash happens when they are trying to modify a car at around the 01:13:30 mark.

Wait a minute here.

[Mindjiver]

Havn't Steve Jobs been going on and on about the digital hub for the last several years? Nice to see that Microsoft is using their good old R&D-lab called Apple again.

Software Communism Good?

[miyako]

Ok, so I'm going to go a little bit off topic here, but gates implies that if you support free software, then you are a communist, the thing of it is, I'm not sure how exactly this is a bad thing.
Capitalism and Communism are each at opposite ends of a scale of scarcity- that is to say, Capitalism works great when there is a limited amount of stuff to go around, relative to the population size. It encourages effeciency and results in a population as a whole getting the most of what it wants from a limited pool of resources. Communism on the other hand is ideal for a world where, relative to the population size, resources are unlimited, or at least nearly unlimited. In the perfect theoreticaly communist society, the only limit to how much of something that can be made is the number of people available to make it.
Socialism is basically just the name given to the middle ground.
Now, capitalism is great for a lot of things, because as a society/country/planet today in many areas our resources are still finite. For many aspects of our world, capitalism is still the best thing we've come up with to deal with the limited resources we have, relative to the world population.
In the world of software however, we have a situation which is more closely related to the communist ideal world. Once a program is written it can be copied over and over again essentially for free. In this case, the only limit to the software that can be developed is the amount of skilled people who are able to work on it.
Looking at it like that, what I see when gates says people who support free software are communists is really his admission that we are using a superior philosophy for our little section of reality.

Re:Software Communism Good?

[DuckofDeath87]

To flesh this out a little more...
The reason why Capitalism works best when there is just enough stuff to go around is because it is based on Supply and Demand. If there is too much Supply, then the price drops so low that you can not sell it and make a profit. This is one of the many factors that cause the great depression in america. (too much food was produced, so farmers could no longer afford to grow food and sell it). Communism doesnt have this problem because everything is distributed by the government, which can cause its own problems if the government it bad. There is a lot more too it, but that is the basics. However, I am no expert, this is just how i see it.

But, as you said, since there is no limit to the amount of software, you dont need anyone to regulate the distrobution of the software.

Re:How can we trust Microsoft's software...

[Dr. Evil]

It's tough to set this kind of stuff up for exec demos.

I bet they took some poor tech support person, told them to set up the machine, then gave him them a bunch of drivers which are so bleeding edge that he or she has never seen them before. Then 30 minutes before the presentation, the A/V guy says "hey, the projector's pointer needs this special driver..."

As a techie, the right thing to say to the CxO would be "while it could be used, we intended to <insert planned method here> and the <insert projector here>'s driver stands a slim chance of trashing the machine or making it unstable. We have no time to troubleshoot in the event of a problem."

I had to set up this kind of demo before (not for Microsoft, and not quite as experimental), and part of it was keeping a second machine handy and running which could be swapped out in the event of a catastrophe.

Just imagine what it takes to swap out a live machine with a crashed machine, on a podium during a presentation with roughly a thousand people watching (cat-calling with technical advice), and a CxO which is too preoccupied with their audience to take any special instructions in the event of a failure (i.e. you can't give instructions like, "you were on slide 30", you really need to just get them to that slide).

I never had to do the swap though. No serious problems.

This is the nature of Windows... but the problem isn't really the OS, it's the amount of third-party junk out there and a "just install it, it works on my home machine" kind of attitude.

Microsoft is a State-Sponsored Monopoly

[NotoriousGIB]

The irony of Bill Gates' anti-communist rhetoric in the wake of his recent crash and burn presentation on Windows Media Center is that Microsoft itself resembles a creaky Soviet-era state-run monopoly much more than a lean, mean emblem of free-trade capitalism.

In my opinion Microsoft is essentially a state-sponsored monopoly and, as such, represents, little more than a tweaked version of the classic communist state entity.

The rational for this position is the simple fact that although Microsoft has been found guilty of being a monopolistic barrier to free-trade in the software industry it was given tacit state sanction to operate as such when the courts and the DOJ failed to press for meaningful controls on their business practices.

From an objective perspective this is no more than a refined version of the classic communist state monopoly. Like Soviet era monopolies Microsoft must compete in the international market as a representative of the State economy while at home it is given tacit control of the market in exchange for loyalty to the political leadership. Also like Soviet era monopolies, state pressure for reform of business practices amounted to little reform but a large increase in the amount of money passed on to corrupt politicians. Take a look at Microsoft's political contributions post-trial and I think you'll see this pattern is quite obvious.

What's worse is that this "tweaked" form of state control can be conducted legally through Political Action Committees with little need to resort to passing money under the table as occurred in the old Soviet Union.

That's right folks, Microsoft's brand of communism is conducted right under your noses while real innovation and competition in the software industry is systematically squashed through monopolistic trade practices tacitly sanctioned by the state. It's high time that all you Democrats and Republicans out there swallow the blue pill and see things as they are, not how you want them to be. Either we believe in free trade or not and no matter how you dice it monopolies are antithetical to free trade. Those who acquire them will always attempt to redefine competition so that the rules don't apply to them. Ooogedy boogedy people! Look-out! International competition means we have to stick together and support our local monopoly. Oh no! Look over there people, those communist are trying to wreck our good capitalist monopoly. It's total nonsense if you just step back and take a look at it for what it really is.

Where is the flub?

[Nanite]

As entertaining as Conan O'Brian is, how far into the keynote video in the crash? Watching Gates talk for too long makes me dry-heave.

Blah blah blah, yadda yadda yadda

[boodaman]

Article summary: Microsoft is a huge company with massive, crippling market share. We've got all sorts of different things going, but we can't really describe them specifically so that you can understand what we're doing. We intend to lock you in and control every aspect of your life, from the content on your hard drive to the content you see, hear, and use for entertainment to the content you send back and forth with friends and family. Don't worry, though, because we're huge and lots of other huge companies are partnering with us, so whatever we're doing must be good.

So no big problem; it's not that people have stopped using IE, it's just we've got lots of good ideas that can match and move ahead.

Translation: Microsoft no longer innovates. We have massive, crippling market share, so we don't have to innovate. We wait to see what cool things other people come up with, then we steal them and tell everyone we thought of them first. The general public is stupid and doesn't know any better, so they believe us.

In terms of our agility to do things on the browser, people who underestimated us there in the past lived to regret that.

Translation: Microsoft has massive, crippling market share. Competing with us is an exercise in futility, because we will crush you. Ask Netscape if you don't believe us.

All in all, 100% image and 0% substance in that interview. I have to ask: does Bill actually DO anything any more? Or is he just a gloating talking head?

Re:Personally...

[geoffspear]

Capitalism without capital is just ism.

Competition isn't capitalism if it's not competition for profits. GNOME and KDE being developed at the same time might benefit both of them, but it's because they're able to cooperate and borrow what works from each other rather than because there's financial pressure to create a better product or lose out on profits.

Capitalism works best for consumers with a level playing field, but the goal of the individual capitalist is to create an unlevel playing field so he can personally profit. Antitrust legislation exists to protect society from the capitalists, not to maintain a level playing field so capitalism can flourish. In a true laissez faire system, innovation is only necessary until someone can grab a monopoly position and exploit it; Microsoft is a prime example of the ideal capitalist corporation.

We're "software terrorists", Bill

[nysus]

Communists? Come on, Bill, you can do better than that! Who cares about Communists anymore? Just look at all the business we're doing with Communist China these days. The word "Communism" has definitely lost its cache.

Here's some advice for your public relations folks: We're not communists, we're "software terrorists", Bill, and we're out to kill little babies and children in the name of FOSS. We hate freedom and the American way of life and we're out to destroy it.

Now, if you can get that message across and paint that picture to the American public, you'd kill FOSS forever. Hell, you could probably get the FBI to start raiding the homes of Linux users.

Good luck in your future endeavors, you Capitalist Pig.

Re:The Video

[fwitness]

Yeah, I could actually see the video but its at like .3 fps. I skipped to the good parts (about 26mins for the first incident (I can only hear them talking, video stalls a lot) and I think someone said 75 for the second. I wanted to see just how big a deal this actually was.

Pointing out logical fallacies may be useless...

[AthenianGadfly]

But I'll just add one more comment, trying to deconstruct what Gates says about communism and IP:

1. Communism is generally considered to be a negative adjective in the US, no matter how you slice it. Also, I would argue that most communist governments have done quite a bit of damage by being communist (note that we're talking about communism not socialism, which is something different altogether.
2. He is also, largely, fighting a straw man: very few people (that I know of, anyway) are actually in favor of abolishing all intellectual property. Rather, most seem to advocate more moderate limits.
3. He maintains that the purpose of IP laws are to provide an incentives for those who create content. I agree that this was the original intent of the laws - whether that is still their function is debatable. However, I have a hard time imagining a musician (or any other content creator) sitting down to write a song (or any other content for that matter) but deciding not to because it would only remain protected until 75 years after their death (the current laws protect it for 95 years, I believe). I understand wanting to leave something to one's heirs, but 95 years is several generations - is this really a factor in whether people create new content?

Intellectual Property Reform = Communism?

[TarrVetus]

From the CNET article: "What's driving [intellectual property reform], and do you think intellectual-property laws need to be reformed?"
"No, I'd say that of the world's economies, there's more that believe in intellectual property today than ever. There are fewer communists in the world today than there were."

Notice how Mr. Gates immediately equates intellectual-property law reform with 'communism?' It appears that the anti-trust cases are finally starting to break him down; if calling intellectual property reform "communist" is the best argument he can make, then we know his logic and rationale beginning to break down to baseless assumptions and insults.

In other words, the reformists may be winning in Gates' view.

Re:fp

[phats garage]

It really is rediculous all around. Bill neglects to carefully consider that the GPL and other open source licenses are simply gifts of intellectual property to the community at large. In no way does the GPL or BSD licenses "disrespect" commercial licenses, they just offer a better value than the commercial licenses, ie., our software is our gift to you.

Link for non-windows users?

[maxgilead]

I suggest that someone with Windows machine download and share the file so that non-windows users can see it as well. Here neither MPlayer not Totem seem to be able to play the provided link or any of the URLs provided inside that file (it's text file). It looks like problem with being even able to start downloading (non-standard protocol?).

I'm not talking about re-encoding, just providing a link usable with normal HTTP-enabled client.

I find what he says rather worrying

[TiggsPanther]

Seriously, a fair bit of what he says really sits uncomfortably. For one thing what he says about IE and Firefox is, although perfectly true, not quite as clear-cut as he seems to be making it sound.

So when people say Firefox is being downloaded onto people's systems, that's true, but IE is also on those systems.

That's not exactly by choice in all cases. I am confident that were IE trivially uninstallable from a Windows setup then that point would be less valid.
I don't necessarily think that every FF user would uninstall IE if it were easily doable but I do think that in many of the cases where "IE is also on those systems" it's only because there's no simple way of remiving it.

As for his stance on IP rights then I think he hasn't got a clue.
However what I will say is that I'm no businessman and he runs a very successful business. So I freely admit that as much as I disagree with his points of view they obviously work in business. In fact I'd be pretty surprised if he didn't have views like that - many businesses seem to share the "IP Rights are Good" mentality.

Having said that I do think that what's good for business isn't always good for innovation and incentive. And that's why I personally think that the concept of "Intellectual Property" needs a major overhaul. Patents and non-terminating copyrights simply have too many drawbacks.
Like the main incentive for Patents that companies seem to have is that if they have a great idea then not only should they benefit from selling it but they shoudl benefit from anyone improving on it - as they'll have to pay to license it. Great from a business perspective but from a technical perspective this is dreadful because if someone's got great dieas to extend something but no money or Patents to bargain with then the new idea will be lost.

From a BBC News article about the speech:

Mr Gates said the PC, like Microsoft's Media Centre, had a central role to play in how people would be making the most out of audio, video and images but it would not be the only device.

"It is the way all these devices work together which will make the difference," he said.

Obviously I find it a bit odd when Bill Gates (or anyone Microsoft spokeperson) talks about things "working together". Unless they're having a complete turnaround in their policies he probably means that when "devices work together" they will always be working via Windows.
Obviously this makes a great quote as he goes down as saying that interoperability is important - or something like that - but it just falls flat as more often than not he isn't tlaking about devices talking with non-Microsoft devices.

Not the red scare

[MoronGames]

We're not having the Red Scare anymore. Why didn't he label them terrorists? That's today's thing.

Re:Yes, especially Atheism!

[mog007]

On the whole, religion has killed more people than all forms of revolution and all wars over money, gold or resources.

Re:Even simpler...

[EvilTwinSkippy]

Never show up at an event...using Windows.

Actually never show up at an event with a presentation made under Windows. I'm a network admin at a science museum, and I regularly get called up to more or less make people feel really stupid about embedding videos, decorative fonts, and transition effects into their presentation that the machine playing the presentation doesn't have.

And no, if the new version is 600 MB, about the only way it's going to get from your office to said laptop in time for a 9:00am presentation over the internet. Frankly, if the presentation is on Monday, and today is Friday, you would do better to fed-ex a CD. Not really windows specific, but common enough to merit another snide comment.

Re:I Don't Get It...

[JWW]

... proof that the Microsoft PR department astroturfs /.

Ok, ok before the guy with the very large user id blows a gasket, I'm only joking, really.

I have 4 words for you...

[melvo]

I LOVE THIS COMMUNISM

http://www.ntk.net/ballmer/mirrors.html

Re:Another example of fantastic journalism from /.

[revscat]

News Flash: Slashdot is not unbiased towards Microsoft. This seems to shock you. And the thing is, they (we!) understand that MS is pure crapola and borderline-to-outright evil, and so for /. to do what you suggest they would have to approach the situation dishonestly, pretending that MS's history of security problems, bad software, and monopolistic characteristics just don't exist. Gates making vapid proclamations about the future direction of MS is neither newsworthy nor interesting; that happens every single year, and they usually turn out to be almost completely wrong.

What *is* interesting is the so-called "world's greatest software company" has a demo crash on their most public figure, and that he resorts to anachronistic political labels for buttressing his argument.

Pot calling the kettle..

[Zareste]

where he described anyone who doesn't support ever-increasing intellectual property laws as "communists"

Communism is where everything is owned by the government and is distributed among the citizens. Intellectual property is where everything you've *payed* for is owned by a company after in your possession.

So we're not a communist state; we're far worse.

Re:Yes, especially Atheism!

[rco3]

Going out on a limb, here - you're Catholic, right?

Favorite quote

[TheMediaWrangler]

About 33 minutes in and just after the second crash, Conan provides some filler and gives my favorite quote in the presentation:

"Last night ... I got so drunk, I woke up with a hooker. Bill got so drunk, he woke up with an Apple computer."

"You'll notice that this scanner build..."

[PhYrE2k2]

"So you just plug it in, and Windows says 'hey- I've found a new device'. You'll notice that this scanner build *blue screen* whoa. Ummm... I guess this isn't why we're not shipping Windows 98 yet."

I wonder if that bug actually made it to production...

-M

top secret BSOD

[YetAnotherDave]

I saw a funny thing on my way to vegas recently - not quite as big a BSOD, but the same one on dozens of machines in US customs. I tried to take a picture and nearly had my camera confiscated...

Close-up screenshot from Video

[Spy der Mann]

I could take a snapshot from the video of Gates amazed at the technical difficulties. Couldn't fix the colors, sorry if it looks a bit yellow.

Re:Yes, especially Atheism!

[arkanes]

Christ, where do you get this bullshit?

First off: retaliation is not defense, no matter how many times national leaders claim it is. When it happens on a small scale people recognize this, I don't get why peoples brains stop working when we talk about religions and nations. There also was more than one, so stop talking about it in the singular.

Second: Where did you learn about the Inquistion? Torquemada's Revision of The Truth School for Retards? The mandate of the Inquisition was the exposure and punishment of heresy. Confession by torture was common place. There's been more than one (and in fact the order of the Inquisition still exists today) and it's not always been about blood and torture and burning but it absolutely DID happen and it WAS under the mandate of the Church and trying to claim that it was about creating fair trials for heretics is so ridiculous it makes my brain hurt. The fact that Church was very heavily involved in secular governments at the time does mean you can always claim it "wasn't about religion", but it's pedantic and silly nitpicking at best, dishonest at worst - you can just define any behavior you don't approve as not about religion, even when religiously motivated and done at the behest of religions authority. The Church was a major secular power in the Middle Ages, something that's hard for people to comprehend now - it had it's own armies, it's own banks, and it essentially ruled huge swaths of land even larger numbers of people. It had it's own courts (yes, of Inquisition) and would try and condemn people purely on it's own authority as well as that of the local rulers. Some rulers didn't allow the Inquisition into thier lands, those rulers faced excommunication. To claim that all this was done in the "name" of religion rather than "for" religion is missing the point.

RYes

[wiredog]

Bodily fluids. People in southwest Utah, where I lived, considered Ronald Reagan to be far too liberal, and aren't completely convinced that GW Bush isn't a Democrat in Disguise.

RMS answered the "communist" slur in 1992

[Hobart]

RMS answered the "communist" accusation in 1992's Why Software Should be Free, the section "Why don't you move to Russia?".

Forza Motorsport BSOD

[bbzzdd]

Seek to 1:13:25 in the video to watch the Xbox game Forza Motorsport blue screen with an "out of system memory" error.

image

It proves something else

[Roadkills-R-Us]

I've said for many years that Gates was just another mad fascist out for world domination at any cost.

How old was Hitler when he began gnawing carpets?

"Bill! Spit that out! The MSNvideo interview is about to begin!"

"But I LOVE chocolate brown shag! Mmmmmm...."

AAAARRRGGGHH!

[Anonymous Coward]

How can this load of uninformed bullshit be modded informative?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crusade
http://en. wikipedia.org/wiki/Inquisition

Re:Hate to break it to you...

[brsmith4]

And I don't know about you, but my copy of the communist manifesto doesn't say much giving people a choice; it just makes an assumption that communism is a historical inevitability, and that you'd better learn to live with it.

The manifesto is like a pamphlet to describe the general idea of Communism. Throughout much of Marx and Engel's more detailed writings, they not only allude to, but directly state that the Communist economic system must be hand-in-hand with some sort of popular government, a democracy, a republic, etc. In fact, Marx and Engels frequently state throughout their work that the adoption of a Communist economic system must be brought about by the will of the people.

Just like every other communist country is a dictatorship.

The fact that they are Communist is not the reason that they were dictatorships. They were dictatorships because they were modeled after the original Soviet system. It was originally envisioned by Lenin (who grossly modified Marx and Engels work) and later modified by Stalin. When Stalin came to power, Soviet hegemony throughout Asia and Eastern Europe spread, and with it, the Soviet system of government, a dictatorship.

Don't be fooled by people. The Communist Manifesto is not the no-all, end-all of communism, just a simple leaflet compared to what is really out there.

Check out this link for Marx and Engel's real work.

Marx and Engel's Selected Works

I especially recommend that you read "The Principles of Communism".

-5: Self-redundant

[Just Some Guy]

How many times are you going to submit the same post? How many times will the mods mark it up all the way?

Re: Communists

[ErikTheRed]

I was ready to call B.S. until I started reading the Slashdot thread full of people explaining how Communism isn't so bad. I'll let them explain this to my girlfriend, who grew up in part of the former USSR (now Latvia). Funny thing - since we got together I've met many people who used to live in the Eastern Bloc - 100% of them (the ones I've met) think that Communism is about the worst thing to ever infect the planet. The scariest thing (at least to some of the posters in this thread) is that most of them now vote Republican.

What kills me is that the left-wingers who advocate communism (to call them Liberals would be an insult to, well, Liberals) so blindly ignore the fact that it has caused some of the worst environmental and human rights abuses in history. We go around villifying Hitler, and rightly so, but he was strictly junior-varsity when compared to Stalin. The most evil corporate polluters (and yes, I think that a few companies are actually evil in this regard) have nothing on Moscow's old five-year plans.

My suggestion to these wanna-be Commies is that they go live in an actual Communist country for awhile. Enjoy life in these workers' paradises full of happy people. Oh, what, these people have either thrown the Communists out, or would do so if they didn't have guns to their heads?

Yes, I know there are a few people screaming about why they can't mod this post -50 flamebait (feel free, I have karma to burn). I'm not saying everyone that supports Open Source, Creative Commons, etc. is a Communist. Far from it: I doubt that more than a tiny, tiny percentage of them actually are. I am, however, shocked at how many crawl out from under their rocks when a subject like this pops up.

Torrent

[Pseud0]

I put up a torrent (177MB) just for you guys! :-)

Re:I Don't Get It...

[All Names Have Been]

I don't know what you guys are doing to fuck your Windows boxes up so much, but I have no problem keeping mine up and running.

What do I do to fuck up my Windows box? Connect it to the net and tried to read email, that's what. I know a lot of people who run Windows at home. Out of all those people, I can't name a single one that hasn't had a problem *IN THE PAST 2 MONTHS* with some sort of virus, spyware, random flakiness, or other bullshit. Right now, on a freshly installed XP system from the factory (with nothing else on it) Windows Update is stuck trying to install some sort of fix, but can't for some reason, with the end result being that I can't get SP2 for it. Fuck it up? Yeah, it's fucked up. But it wasn't me - it was fucked as designed.

Rebooting once a week to "keep it running smoothly." Ha. The fact that you need to do this points to something wrong with your system.

Re:Hate to break it to you...

[Xabraxas]

...but yeah, the Soviet Union WAS really practicing "real communism". Just like every other communist country is a dictatorship. That's the only way communism can be enforced. And I don't know about you, but my copy of the communist manifesto doesn't say much giving people a choice; it just makes an assumption that communism is a historical inevitability, and that you'd better learn to live with it.

You just totally contradicted youself. None of the countries that claimed to be communist evolved into communism the way Marx and Engels envisioned. The communist manifesto really has nothing to do with the "communism" that those countries practiced. The communist manifesto does not predict that revolution is a necessary step to communism.

...but yeah, the Soviet Union WAS really practicing "real communism". Just like every other communist country is a dictatorship. That's the only way communism can be enforced. And I don't know about you, but my copy of the communist manifesto doesn't say much giving people a choice; it just makes an assumption that communism is a historical inevitability, and that you'd better learn to live with it. The communism you're thinking of is a Utopian concept that can never exist when people have freedom and choice.

If you actaully read the communist manifesto you will realize that we just have not reached that stage yet. Capitalism has to fail, and that hasn't happened yet, not fully at least. There is no way to prove your point when everything has yet to play out. Of course, if it never does play out, then I guess there really is no way to prove it either way, and I can accept that.

Minute 71... roughly.

[Lemm]

The demo of whatever racing game they're plugging is roughly at 71 minutes.

The guy's showing off the fact that you can pick a car, then modify it... and it just goes blue. DOH!

A little further on, there's a bit where Conan and Bill are going head-to-head in a race and Conan has absolutely no idea what he's doing. And when the force feedback kicks in, he has no idea what the fuck's going on. :)

Founded by Programmers...

[podperson]

From the last paragraph:

"Microsoft was founded by programmers and is still run by programmers, and the bias of programmers is that software can do anything"

From Donkey:

"We thought the concept of the game was as bad the crude graphics that it used. Since the game was written in BASIC, you could list it out and see how it was written. We were surprised to see that the comments at the top of the game proudly proclaimed the authors: Bill Gates and Neil Konzen ... we were amazed that such a thoroughly bad game could be co-authored by Microsoft's co-founder, and that he would actually want to take credit for it in the comments."

The problem isn't that Microsoft was founded by programmers. The problem is that it was founded by bad programmers.

The real issue is derivatives

[SuperKendall]

What is the incentive for a person to spend time and money to create a work if it will not be shared with the public (for profit probably)? Again, without copyright this person has no legal basis for recouping payment. So why would someone devot a lot of time and receive nothing (especially if it is their form of income)?

Obviously some limited protection is good for the ability of someone to gain reward from a work they spent time on.

But 75+ years? That is too excessive, and the worst thing of all is that it prevents derivative works until long after the creative value of a derivative work might come into play.

You can see a practical effect from this by Disney no longer doing animation of traditional stories and the like - any interesting stories left to cover are now under the copyright flood. So Disney makes attempts to make up stories from scratch - which in fact they are not at all good at, all really good creative story writers work elsewhere now.

You could say that Disney is the prime example of how great things can come from derivative works, for all of the great movies they have done based on traditional tales. So it serves both as an example and a warning.

Religion is exactly the ideological retort to use

[maynard]

Come on, the deaths caused by Communism were a result of Religious Fervor.

I'm really short on time so I can't fully reply to all of these messages, or even to you. But I'm really not debating the underlying ideologies of communism, capitalism, or even religious expression. I'm talking about a cultural taboo against communism which continues in western cultures today. Look at the success of the Swift Boat Vets red baiting the Kerry campaign as a prime example; McCarthyism continues fifteen years after the fall of the Soviet Union and fifty years after McCarthy's downfall.

If the Free Software movement willingly accepts Gate's frame as being inspired by communist utopian idealism, the debate is over. Gate's will have won by default. If any of those EFFers or Project GNU folks are listening here (right - *cough*) I would recommend framing project GNU and BSD ideals by referencing simple down-to-earth small town values like church bake sales, community volunteer firefighting, and the Salvation Army. These are examples of community cooperation everyone can understand. And when Gates (or his surrogates) compares writing free software to communist destruction of capitalist intellectual property rights, argue back that his argument is like destroying the church bake sale for the profit-rights of local restaurants. That is an frame which skewer his debate talking points.

This is not about communist or capitalist ideology, this is about manipulating public opinion in order to promote - long term - a specific political agenda in Washington. Realize that and all this ideological bullshit smoke disappears like evenscent fog clearing on a sunny day.

Cheers,
--Maynard

Torrent

[mnordstr]

There is a torrent available of the entire video at this blog.

re: communists

[greenskyx]

>where he described anyone who doesn't support >ever-increasing intellectual property laws as >"communists"

Lawrence Lessig on The Tyranny of Copyright

"We are invoking ideas that should be central to the American tradition, such as that a free society is richer than a control society," he says. "But in the cultural sphere, big media wants to build a new Soviet empire where you need permission from the central party to do anything." He complains that Americans have been reduced to "an Oliver Twist-like position," in which they have to ask, "Please, sir, may I?" every time we want to use something under copyright -- and then only if we are fortunate enough to have the assistance of a high-priced lawyer."

NY Times Jan, 2004
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/01/25/magazine/2 5COPYR IGHT.html

And the audience was eating it up?

[happyemoticon]

Props to Conan for his good improv skills and ability to work a crowd, but doesn't it say something weird about our age that Microsoft itself can't keep its own product from going down at a major technology trade show, and that the crowd finds this acceptable, even funny? Remember, Microsoft's product is on warships these days. Would the crowd have also been yucking like a bunch of doped-up Amsterdam tourists if this had been wargames off the coast of England, and HMS Windows had given them a GPF when they tried to launch a missile? Please, boys: don't believe your own hype, and for God's sake, don't let anybody with a pulse take Ballmer seriously for a nanosecond.

Re:And the audience was eating it up?

[brkello]

Of course they find it funny. Have you ever given a demonstration and something goes wrong...we deal with that with humor. They are trying to show off new technology, which is always a risk. Windows XP has never crashed on me, ever. But I don't do anything crazy with it...just play games and general computing use. Yet here at work, I can't even insmod a damn module for 10 Gb Ethernet in my SuSE distro. It crashes the whole system and forces me to walk to the lab and reboot it. Does Linux suck? Hell no...and neither does XP. Would people be laughing if ANY OS screwed up and fired a missile when it shouldn't? Of course not, your example is retarded and pointless. Did people die when my linux server crashed 7 times today? No. Did the people in my depeartment shake their head and laugh when I told them about my problems? Yeah, because we all know how hard it is to deal with technology and software...particularly when you are on the bleeding edge. So to you people who have no perspective and objectivity when it comes to this stuff...I say shove it. An OS is a tool, and each has advanatages over the other. If you can't admit it, you are fool with an agenda. Let go of it...it is so much easier to appreciate that we have these fantastic OSs at all and to use each one to its full benefit. Object to MS's business practices, criticize security models, but before you place your finger squarely at MS, realize that all OSs have a long way to go before they just work (like as simple as turning on your TV).

Let me clean up your argument for you.

[twitter]

Microsoft is a state sponsored monopoly, directly and indirectly. They are dependent on the false concept of "IP", something that is entirely government created. They also depend on generous government spending.

The only sensible thing that can be said about "IP" is that it's a government granted exclusive franchise or monopoly. Copyrights, patents and trademark have about as much in common with each other as they do with the local electric utility. The most natural American thought is to limit all forms of exclusive franchises. This includes "IP" franchises.

It never ceases to amaze me that local, state and federal governments continue to purchase Microsoft. There are many alternatives that cost less and have fewer problems available.

The fact of the matter is that Microsoft would be in a tail spin right now if it were not for billions of dollars in government spending. Does anyone think they would have been able to make their "numbers" had the DoD not stepped up to the plate with ridiculous decade long exclusive purchases of software that has yet to be written? I think not and such purchases of inferior goods are the surest sign of state support.

The market, however, is not to be conned. There's only so much impact the government can have. When the limit hits, they will sink without a trace. It will not be a big deal either.

Guardian online article

[chihiro]

the Guardian online section has an article on this speech. It doesn't mention communism though, concentrating mainly on the relationship between MS and Consumer electronics companies.

"Gates grins and bears it
The Microsoft boss endured a few jokes at the US gadget show, but the software giant is starting to overcome consumer mistrust, reports Jack Schofield"
http://www.guardian.co.uk/online/news/0,12597,1384 586,00.html

The Artists

[groovemaneuver]

For an artist to make ANY profit at all off of an RIAA-backed album, the artist has to sell 500,000 copies of the album. The artist is ultimately responsible for covering all recording and various other production and distribution costs.

The RIAA, on the other hand, makes a profit off of each and every album that gets sold, whether it's one copy or a billion. Regardless of whether an artist makes a profit or not, they are still obligated to repay the money loaned by the label at contract signing time.

Less than 1% of RIAA artists will ever sell over 500,000 copies of an album, so while that 1% does bring in an enormous amount of money, it's not like the other 99% are bleeding the industry as bad as the RIAA tries to make us all believe. That 99% however has managed to make themselves a major part of the RIAA's income.

Even if an artist doesn't sell a single copy of an album, the labels still get that loan money back, and you can be sure that there's interest added into the mix there too.

To answer your question: the artists are always on the losing end of the deal in this situation, and by most of the facts and figures I've read recently, that's an overwhelming percentage of signed artists.

Note to Gates: Monopoly = Communism

[dtjohnson]

As an economic system, monopoly and communism are the same thing. It's all about top-down central control of everything.

Conversely, there is nothing communistic about eliminating a lot of outmoded IP laws relating to copyrights and such. Doing so wouldn't eliminate incentives for creative people but it would eliminate gouging by record companies and publishers who want to control distribution of content and collect tolls.

you have to steal their mojo.

[twitter]

We're not communists, we're "software terrorists",

He already tried that but it backfired. M$ tried to blame windoze viruses and worms on FOSS. It was easy to show that the worms were written on Windoze by people who know about Windoze. All the accusation did was admit that there was a worm problem and give a good example of blame shifting. It also highlighted the relative security of free software.

Concentrated efforts by real Communists against free software have failed. No automated worms have emerged, despite the majority use of free software in typical targets of such efforts: high profile corporate webserves.

Microsoft themselves have engaged in such activities against previous competitive threats. There are court documented cases of them breaking code for DrDOS, Netscape and a host of others. It would be interesting indeed if they were to try to classify such activity as "terrorist".

If there is a software terrorist threat, it's dependence on Windows. Windows systems, including large banks, have continued to be trashed and this has an effect on public moral and institutional confidence.

Mojo, free software's got it, M$ don't.

I bought one of these Media Center PCs

[Like2Byte]

My brother just got one and it seemed pretty like a pretty neat computer. Since I was also on the lookout for a new PC, I bought one days after he did.

AMD-64 3400
1.8G FSB
512M RAM
200G Hard Drive
128Meg AGP Video Card (Quoted on the documentation)

Now for the fun part.
First, the video board is really a PCI card (not to be confused with PCI-Express). I've yet to resolve this issue as I didn't realize this until just the other day.

Now for the Operating System: Windows XP - Media Center Edition. Windows ME's big brother.

Applications suddenly terminate - not all the time, but enough.

Premiere 6.0 is a nightmare on this system - crashes repetedly on the same project within seconds after starting up. If I place a video on a timeline and resize the edit window the app crashes. No other OS (WinXP, Win2K or Win98) crashes.

Windows Messenger - Where to start. First-off, you can not uninstall Windows Messenger (at least without uninstalling The Media Center)!

Running the media center to listen to the radio (which is a cool idea) causes Windows Messenger to run. That particular PC is not connected to the Internet therefore I don't have to worry about it nor can I report it's behaviour after the Windows Messenger comes up. Maybe someone can fill in those details.

On the subject of the Windows Firewall and Anti-virus detection schemes: Oi! (Remember, now, that this system is NOT connected to the internet.) I uninstalled the pre-packaged Norton AV and Norton Internet Security because of it's constant whining about connecting to the net to get updates. It just would not stop prompting me - so I uninstalled it. That's when SP2's problem reared it's very ugly head.

I thought, "OK, I'll just 'change the way Security Center alerts me.'"

I checked the requesite check-boxes in the security center (4 check-boxes total (two under 'Change the way Security Center alerts me and one each under the firewall and AV recommedation buttons). After two restarts, the checkboxes miracouslty (-2 sp) un-check themselves and the Security Center continues to nag me to death. ( I imagine there is some other procedure to effectively (permenently) turn off this mis-feature; but, I haven't found it, yet.)

Anyway, I give 4 'drives down' on WinXP-MC.

Re:I bought one of these Media Center PCs

[Bambi Dee]

( I imagine there is some other procedure to effectively (permenently) turn off this mis-feature; but, I haven't found it, yet.) ~ I don't know anything at all about MC, but there's a Security Center service here (on XP Pro) that I deactivated in services.msc; the Security Center itself is still available (control panel), it just doesn't nag anymore.

Re:fp

[Chris Burke]

"You have the freedom to do anything but deny freedom to others" are not big fat chains, and are only strings to the sociopathically greedy.

Re:I Don't Get It...

[Cederic]

That's odd. I use Windows at home. You know what? It just works for me.

I don't get viruses.
I don't get adware.
I don't get random flakiness.

Maybe it's because I continually use the web, obsessively read email, run an intentionally open wireless network? Or maybe it's because I'm not a fucking muppet.

Don't slag off the OS if people don't know how to use it efficiently. Trust me, if 90% of PC owners ran Linux they'd have a malware infested unstable operating system within weeks.

Now I'll concede that using the provided tools (i.e. IE and Outlook Express) will cause problems, and that probably is Microsoft's fault. But knowing they're shite and using them anyway? That's user error.

~Cederic

Re:Religion is exactly the ideological retort to u

[maynard]

I slapped the flag on my livejournal with a link to the article. The point of flying it is not to link myself or free software to communism, but to point out the hate-mongering spread by billy G. Most of us have probably already made the comparisons you suggest, or something similar.

Well, first of all, it's your blog. So take what I write in the spirit of friendly advice. Basically, yeah - most of the FS community understands what I'm writing. But don't think for a minute that Gates has the FS/geek movement in mind when he speaks to reporters. His words are to set the tone for columnists and other press, the business community elite, government officials, and finally what little public may be paying attention. He doesn't care what we think, he cares about setting a frame of reference for the press to repeat.

With repetition ion the press comes popular belief, leading finally to general consensus opinion. It doesn't matter how rational or irrational the statement, if a statement is repeated enough the population as a whole will usually accept it as fact. And once so, it is the general population who will look at geeks running this flag and misinterpret it as a stand in solidarity for communism. You could even directly state your opposition to communism and it wouldn't matter, because the image evokes such an emotionally powerful taboo. There is nothing rational about this process, but people (as a population) do react in this manner - particularly when an assertion, factual or not, is linked to an emotionally powerful image. --M

Re:I Don't Get It...

[All Names Have Been]

BTW, do you know what I've found to be most rock solid software from Microsoft? Windows Server 2003. I've got 12 servers with 8-20 terminal server users each running IE (Gasp!) Outlook Express (The Horror!) on an internal network (proxy for mail/web access) that haven't been rebooted since May of last year (yes - they're behind on their security patches) and don't show any signs of stopping.

These machines are pounded day and night, and hold up incredibly well, despite two of them running on the same crap commodity hardware as some of our problematic XP desktops.

As a comparison, according to my stats, I have exactly three XP machines in this office that have had > 2 weeks of uptime, *EVER*.

Re: Communists

[scot4875]

What I find sad is that there are so many people out there that actually believe in these 'ivory tower liberals.'

What I find scary is that the United States, as a whole, is so rabidly anti-intellectual. Mention any remotely intellectual activity to an 'uneducated' person (bridge, LUGs, discussion groups), and they'll immediately assume you're a snob.

--Jeremy

Re: Communists

[10Ghz]

My suggestion to these wanna-be Commies is that they go live in an actual Communist country for awhile.

I'm a liberal (AKA libertarian in the USA), but still: could you name one communist country, past or present, that has existed? USSR? China? North-Korea? Perverted dictatorships that were "communist" in name only. Just because they said they were communists, were they really? USSR was an "Union of Republics", was it really that? You can call yourself whatever you want, but that doesn't mean that you really are what you say you are.

Really, saying "communism doesn't work and it's evil!" is rather pointless, since we haven't had _real_ communist country on this planet. AFAIK the communist manifesto doesn't say one thing about one-party rule or sending people to gulaks. Neither does it say anything about state owning the means of production. Those things were something that Russian revolutionaries and Stalin thought up. Instead of really giving the power to the people, they decided that The Party represents the people and it can have all the power and the means of production. And the fact was that The Party did not in fact represent the people, it represented The Party.

Hell, it's just as pointless to say "capitalism and free-market are the greatest thing since sliced bread!" since we haven't had any pure capitalist or free-market-systems in this planet! USA? Sorry, government interferes in business, you have to think of something else! We can't know for certain that would pure capitalism be all that good, since we haven't had a system that implements it. Same thing with communism. We had one attempt (Russia) that got perverted in it's infancy, and it then spread elsewhere (China, Cuba etc.). Your comment of "Communism sucks, and as proof, I present my girlfriend from Latvia!" misses the mark 100%, since Latvia had very little to do with communism.