Gates Issues Call For "Creative Capitalism"

theodp writes "Bill Gates makes his case for Creative Capitalism in TIME, citing projects like a Text-Free UI for illiterate computing, the use of Multimouse technology to allow fifty kids to share one computer display, cell phone billing by the second, and Bono's RED campaign as examples of the type of corporate creativity that can make the world a better place for the billion or so people scraping by on less than a dollar a day. Michael Kinsley, a former Microsoft employee whose wife still advises the Gates Foundation, says it's hard to object to Gates' goals, but notes that creative capitalism does have its share of skeptics, and points out that there was not a whole lot of energy devoted to lifting up the world's poor during Bill's three decades at Microsoft."

Comments

Text-free UI?

[mangu]

There's prior art on that. It was invented in ancient Egypt.

Let's face it, text was invented for a purpose. A picture may be worth a thousand words, but they may not be exactly *the* thousand words you need to convey your information.

Re:Text-free UI?

[TubeSteak]

Let's face it, text was invented for a purpose. A picture may be worth a thousand words, but they may not be exactly *the* thousand words you need to convey your information.

When you can't even count on the user/operator to have an 8th grade education, a dozen pictures is worth far more than 12,000 words.

Re:Text-free UI?

[$RANDOMLUSER]

640 words should be enough for anyone.

Re:Text-free UI?

[Esteanil]

Yeah, so let's get access to some of that text.

Project: Open Source System for automatic user-initiated translation of blogs/articles/etc. Add a "Read this in:" which is autotranslated to location (GeoIP, etc) and a "Translate this". Basic idea being ad-sharing as payment for translating blogs. Open Source project, because I mainly just want to see more content out there, and translated content is great. Wiki-based.

From the user's point of view: You enter a page, and see it in English. You're quite good at English in addition to Chinese, so you write a quick translation.

Re:Text-free UI?

[FilterMapReduce]

Let's face it, text was invented for a purpose. A picture may be worth a thousand words, but they may not be exactly *the* thousand words you need to convey your information.

Indeed, this is related to text-based computing in a very direct way. Shell scripting (like all programming) is the practice of describing to the computer exactly what you want it to do—word for word, so to speak. Graphic UIs, for all their advantages, don't let the user give such specific instructions, forcing them to perform the individual steps themselves: click that file, move it here, click that file, move it there, executing the algorithm yourself instead of describing to the computer. Like the summary says, "illiterate computing" pretty much nails it on the head.

Not that I'm bashing GUIs or saying that anyone who uses one is non-metaphorically "illiterate". Good GUIs are obviously indispensable in modern software, and with good reason. But they can never fully replace the expressive abilities of the command line. To swing back on-topic, a fully graphical UI for people who really are fully illiterate is a noble idea, but considering the limitations of a normal GUI, it would suffer serious drawbacks, to say the least.

The literacy metaphor in comparing text-based and graphical interfaces is explored very nicely in "In the Beginning was the Command Line" by Neal Stephenson.

Re:Text-free UI?

[Cairnarvon]

And BTW, Gates, plug a second mouse to a Mac and you can control the cursor using two mice automatically without any further effort.

Windows has been able to do that since at least Windows 95 as well. That's not what he was talking about here.

There's some irony in complaining about how Gates has made a career out of stealing ideas, and then bringing up Apple as a counter-example. If anyone has been stretching the word ``innovation'' beyond all recognisability, it's Jobs.
(Not a Gates fan either, though, and as a rule, I'll take predictability over ``innovation'' in user interfaces any day.)

Creative Capitalism

[MrKaos]

That's a synonym for Open Source, Mr Gates.

Re:Creative Capitalism

[Cathoderoytube]

Funny thing about 'creative capitalism'.. Bill Gates owns one of the larger image banks on the internet right now. Unfortunately the current laws which allow the creative individuals who make money off their artwork on those image banks are costing Mr. Gates a portion of money (what with them owning the rights to their own work). SO he's currently one of the voices trying to get the copyright laws changed so any non-registered creative works become orphaned if their creators don't watch over them like a hawk (the current laws copyright everything by default and you don't have to pay money for it). If the law is changed all the works on those image banks will lose their copyright and Mr. Gates will be able to turn a profit on them, while all the creative people learn a hard lesson in capitalism.

Re:Creative Capitalism

[wellingj]

That's not capitalism. That's using government to get what you want by force.

Re:Creative Capitalism

[MrKaos]

If the law is changed all the works on those image banks will lose their copyright and Mr. Gates will be able to turn a profit on them, while all the creative people learn a hard lesson in capitalism.

Thats no reason to question the sincerity of a man on a mission to relieve poverty while dressed in a $10,000 Armani suit.

I always wondered what a Billion dollar Bill looks like.

Re:Creative Capitalism

[KGIII]

But, well, it is creative. ;)

Re:Creative Capitalism

[Cathoderoytube]

I'm a bit of a cynic. I don't see a whole lot of difference.

Re:Creative Capitalism

[burnin1965]

I don't see an obvious connection here.

Here, I'll help...

Microsoft's products are developed, marketed, and sold using the capitalism economic system (I realize that Free Market is supposed to be part of a Capitalist Economy and Microsoft has used illegal business tactics to destroy Free Market in their main business sector, but bear with me). Their main product, Windows, is currently going for around $150. At one dollar a day an individual would need to work about half a year to purchase the operating system to run a computer let alone the hardware.

Giving up half a year of income to buy software is a rather surmountable task when you also need to buy food, clothes, residence, transportation, etc. Just to put it into perspective, the average car in the United States costs about one half of the average annual income and most people have to borrow money on a 3 to 7 year loan to pay off a new car. Imagine borrowing money on a 3 to 7 year loan simply to buy Windows. Its ridiculous.

So in order to provide the benefits of the latest technology in computer operating systems to someone who makes a dollar a day there needs to be a creative solution. One possibility would be to cut into those massive 80%+ margins built into the Capitalist price of Windows to make it more affordable, that doesn't even require much in the way of being creative. But to really be creative how about changing the licensing and distribution of the product to further reduce the costs to deliver and purchase the product. Well, guess what, its already been done, its called Open Source.

The initial development costs for an operating system are expensive, but once it is developed the distribution costs are minimal. Now you can create a licensing scheme that creates a fake supply side in the supply demand equation there by inflating the cost of the product, but Open Source does not do this. An Open Source license is a creative way to not only reducing the cost of delivery, but it also creates an abundant supply and spreads the initial cost of development.

Now the cost of acquiring the operating system which is Open Source is at most the cost of the media and transporting or even cheaper if there is internet access.

Creative eh? ;)

Of course you will get a bunch of flak from people suffering from psychotic paranoia delusions about Open Source being Socialist, Communist, or even Cancer, but the fact is there are many hard core for profit capitalist corporations in the red blooded United States of America who are not only relying on Open Source software but they are part of the development community. All I can tell you is pay no heed, they are simply blinded.

Re:Creative Capitalism

[Ghubi]

http://medicine.plosjournals.org/perlserv/?request=get-document&doi=10.1371/journal.pmed.0010056&ct=1

Re:Creative Capitalism

[Cathoderoytube]

The definition of a reasonable search is somewhat loose. Because of this new bill a bunch of new businesses are popping up who's sole purpose is to keep track of peoples copyrights. That is copyrights people would now have to pay for. Since most artists can create thousands of works in a year registering all those copyrights is impossible. So let's say somebody like yourself decides since they can't draw or have no reasonable talent they need some art. They find an image they like and they do a 'reasonable' search to see if that particular image is registered anywhere they looked. So they go ahead and use it in a big ad campaign. The original artist finds out about it and hauls them into court. It now falls on the artist to prove that the asshole who stole their work knew they were breaking the copyright, as opposed to the old way where the they just had to demonstrate the work was theirs. none of this 'reasonable search' crap.
It's supposed to be illegal to remove watermarks from images, but it's easy enough to do, and all somebody has to do is claim the image never had a signature on it in the first place. The whole good faith issue is a nice little loophole. People can say 'Well I searched index abc and I couldn't fiiind them', when that could be an outright lie.

Artists won't be big beneficiaries. For example music will still remain copywritten. Companies like Disney are registering all their copyrights to make sure they don't get orphaned, same goes for the record companies. Personally I prefer the old knee breaking compensation. It prevents no talent little assfucks from stealing works from artists.

cell phone by the second

[sylverboss]

It's about time that cell phone companies introduce per second billing, but this is not going to happen anytime soon as it is a major part of their business... and fat profits. SB

Re:cell phone by the second

[xaxa]

It's about time that cell phone companies introduce per second billing, but this is not going to happen anytime soon as it is a major part of their business... and fat profits.

They bill per second in the UK (e.g. Orange, O2)

Re:cell phone by the second

[Mishotaki]

it's been in Canada for years! My first cell phone was billed by the second with Fido http://www.fido.ca/web/Fido.portal?_nfpb=true&_pageLabel=MonthlyPlans/ .... There's only one problem with that: they only do it with suscription plans, meaning that you get billed by the minute if you're using prepaid like i am now...

needs a logo

[gEvil (beta)]

I think the only way a Gates innovation like "Creative Capitalism" will really take off is if it has a nice logo to indicate when something is Creative Capitalism compliant. I suggest two lowercase C's in a circle.

creative

[rpillala]

What does this have to do with capitalism? Creativity isn't limited to any particular economic system.

Re:creative

[Metasquares]

Forget capitalism; I was going to ask what it had to do with creativity :)

Re:creative

[ceoyoyo]

For capitalists, not screwing your customer (quite as much) is such a radical proposition that they think it's creative, "thinking outside the box" stuff.

But, but...

[Anonymous Coward]

Creative *is* a capitalist company!

Gotta monetize it

[HalAtWork]

MS is obsessed with monetizing everything. Creative Capitalism is just their answer to Creative Commons, and Open Source. Public Domain they don't care much about because they can at least charge for access to the content or a conversion of the content depending on the platform.

"It is mainly corporations that have the skills to make technological innovations work for the poor. "

He means money, not skill, and if you are trying to help the poor, then you have to give them a way to survive despite not having money, not a way to keep depending on money and make that dependence even stronger. Who knows, maybe they are just interested on getting poor countries up to getting an economy going just so it's a new place to put up a toll booth or a new culture to start selling Windows to every hear, and if they develop these markets then they will start funneling money towards MS or at least not investing time/energy/mindshare in OSS.

The OLPC may not have succeeded with its goals but it at least had the right philosophy: Start making the third world independent and self sufficient, get people to discover and collaborate on their strengths, and to build themselves up without reliance on those who are already self sufficient. For developing countries it is very important to come up independent so others don't come in and take advantage of you whenever you have gained any amount of wealth. It's a lot harder to be taken advantage of, and you also have more bargaining power in the world forum, if you are independent.

Re:Gotta monetize it

[Anonymous Coward]

>Who knows, maybe they are just interested on getting poor countries up to getting an
>economy going just so it's a new place to put up a toll booth or a new culture to start
>selling Windows to every hear, and if they develop these markets then they will start
>funneling money towards MS or at least not investing time/energy/mindshare in OSS.

Did I miss something?
What's the problem with this? It sounds like both parties involved benefits greatly.

Re:Gotta monetize it

[Amorymeltzer]

You have completely missed the point. I'm guessing you just read the title, not even the summary! This is not Bill Gates speaking on behalf of Microshaft, this is Bill Gates speaking on behalf of good conscience, one of the greatest foundations in existence, and a complete understanding of the corporate world.

We'd all love to give money to help the world, but we all also happen to want/need it as well. It's hard for businesses to give money away because their job, their entire purpose, is to make it for themselves.

Take the example of the RED campaign, as given up-top. They managed to sell something (absurd, imho) that people buy, thereby making more money (and, presumably, problems) for them and their stockholders, but meanwhile a portion of all the profits goes to AIDS work.

That is Creative Capitalism.

Gates understands that you can't just throw money at a problem, you need to create a project that is beneficial for all parties involved. He's suggesting we do more for ourselves by helping others.

Re:Gotta monetize it

[Amiga Trombone]

Say what you will about bill gates and M$, but the man has donated a fuckton of his money to make the world a better place(Malaria cures, anyone?)

Has he done the world more good giving away his money than he did in the process of earning it? Think about that one for a while.

Re:Gotta monetize it

[Bastard of Subhumani]

A few typos in there, pal.

the man has donated a fuckton of our money, that he stole through illegal monopolistic practices, to salve his conscience and save his image

That's what you meant to write.

Re:Gotta monetize it

[HanzoSpam]

The critical uncertainty is whether or not the other guy would've done the same with regards to charity. Think about -that- one for a while.

As if that would have made any difference.

Re:Gotta monetize it

[Reid]

It's not clear what the "it" is that Gates did in your post, but it's not at all certain that someone else would've done what he and MS did. I could imagine a world where a GNU OS was used in place of DOS/Windows by all the PC builders, and no one person got $50B in the process. Just for example.

Re:Gotta monetize it

[drsmithy]

Has he done the world more good giving away his money than he did in the process of earning it? Think about that one for a while.

Unquestionably.

On the one hand, we have money being made by selling software to willing customers. On the other, we have money being spent saving people from dying.

I find it amazing anyone even feels the need to ask such a stupid question.

lets be honest now

[SirShmoopie]

People scraping by on less than a dollar a day aren't going to be interested in anything like this.

Ordinary priorities like eating, keeping a roof over their heads and trying not to get sick and die are likely to be far more important.

Also, with all due respect to his charitable efforts, for which, if for little else, I respect him, what does he, as one of the richest men in the world, think he's doing saying what people in abject poverty want?

I'd venture a guess that what they want is for a persons worth and entitlement to the basics of life to be unrelated to money.

If we can afford to pour billions into a shallow fight to control Oil, We can afford to make life's basics free for anyone who asks.

Re:lets be honest now

[Bombula]

If we can afford to pour billions into a shallow fight to control Oil, We can afford to make life's basics free for anyone who asks.

I certainly agree with your sentiments, but the truth is that we can't afford to. There are simply too many people and there isn't enough wealth in the world. Capitalism's main problem is that it doesn't distribute wealth equitably. But it IS great at generating wealth. This was a main point Gates made in the article. But it isn't enough. We aren't wealthy enough, and the growth of wealth in our global economy is not enough to keep pace - even in theory - with past or present population growth to carry everyone forward adequately (i.e. with a standard of living acceptable by modern western standards) even if all wealth was distributed evenly. The easiest proof of this comes from the well-known study that showed if everyone one Earth consumed the same resources as the average American, we would need 3 Earths to generate the basic inputs of materials and energy - clearly an impossibility.

My field of expertise happens to be international development, and one of the issues that has recently become impolitic to mention is population growth. We used to more openly recognize population growth as a major problem. Not so much now - you can conjecture why if you like. Regardless, population is and will continue to be the major obstacle standing in the way of broad-scale socioeconomic and environmental sustainability. There are just too many people.

As one quick example, I worked in the Middle East for a number of years in several countries that were really close to an ideal development scenario: the governments had tons of money thanks to oil and low initial populations. It was basically a blank slate with a blank check - fantastic! Build roads here, power plants there, schools here, hospitals there. And things have gone really very well. But rather than enjoy a GDP per capita of something like $20,000, those countries now have GDP/c of something under $5,000. Why? Because Islam forbids birth control just like Catholicism, and the populations are growing at 15-25% annually.

Re:lets be honest now

[houghi]

Ordinary priorities like eating, keeping a roof over their heads and trying not to get sick and die are likely to be far more important.

And what if they already have a roof and enough food? Or do you think that there are only two groups of people, starving people and people who have plenty and can easily pay for a new PC every year.

This is basicaly the stage of 'learning a man to fish' instead of giving him a fish.

Here a smaple of a multi seat solution which still requires multiple monitors and costs 50% of what they would pay normaly. Now imagine removing 50% of the monitors, so that students have to work together on one monitor.

Not only will this cause a drop in price, it will cause kids to work together and learn social skills at the same time and will learn what they need to learn better, because of the interaction with other kids.

So this could benefit kids in shools everywhere, including the rich kids.

Re:lets be honest now

[gibbsjoh]

>Because Islam forbids birth control

Um, no it doesn't. http://www.unh.edu/msa/familyp.htm

In fact there are condom factories in Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Iran and more or less every other Middle East nation. Now, the attitudes of the people regarding birth control is another matter, but please get your facts straight.

Bill Gates' new role in life

[Anonymous Coward]

is to furnish useful case studies of, "What would happen if some well-connected billionaire tried to solve some of the world's problems by..."?

As opposed to actually solving them. But at least we learn something that we can discuss in a coherent way.

Corporations as philanthropists is not the goal

[cryfreedomlove]

Every time there is a discussion about the Gates foundation, someone will predictably stand up and say that Gates is not a philanthropist because his actions as Microsoft CEO were not consistently philanthropic.

I don't look to commercial corporations to be philanthropists. A commercial corporation is a voluntary collective of investors who want to maximize their financial investment. That's OK with me. If that investment is maximized then some of the individual investors will see a personal calling to use that money for philanthropy. This is what you see happening to Gates today. That is genuine and real. Corporate philanthropy, on the other hand, is most often a flim flam exercise in repairing ill will so the corporation will restore its ability to generate lots of revenue.

So, give Gates a break. He's hugely rich. Now he's getting older and perhaps he has become more reflective about making a difference in the lives of people less fortunate than him. I'm not going to bust his balls for that.

Re:Corporations as philanthropists is not the goal

[moteyalpha]

I am not sure that you can separate a person from their past that easily. This is not a simple person and the motives that drive Bill are likely to be well beyond characterization in simple terms. Much like everybody, they have their personal slant on life and I am sure that he curses open source. I think that if he really wanted to fix some problems, he could give his money to a proven winner like open source technology that benefits everybody. The goal of business is to make profit and that is not -always- the best thing for people in general.

Re:Corporations as philanthropists is not the goal

[Znork]

I don't look to commercial corporations to be philanthropists.

It's not the purpose of corporations to be philanthropists. In fact, a corporation that can actually afford to be philanthropist is unlikely to be engaged in free market capitalism.

The theory of free market capitalism has it that competition with the incentive of possible profit will enhance the efficiency of production so that everyone benefits from lower costs for more value. Most corporations are not interested in that; increasing efficiency is hard. It's often easier to affect the other side of the equation; decrease competition. Buy the competition, lobby for more protection, raise switching costs, tie products, use loss-leaders, etc. Gates is the posterboy for such corporate monopolism; anticompetetive behaviour that keeps the price of things out of the hands of exactly the people he claims to want to help.

So, give Gates a break.

I see no indication that Gates has changed. He's still not interested in competitive free markets; he's got his fingers deep in the patent pot, something that's actively preventing cheap medicines in many countries.

Sure, he's found a new mission in whitewashing now, but his actions suggest it's the same old Gates. Control and profit's the name of the game, wether you're pushing software or image.

Re:Corporations as philanthropists is not the goal

[khallow]

I am not sure that you can separate a person from their past that easily.

I'm unclear why we're trying to seperate the person from their past. Rich people getting rich first then doing charity is a strong tradition going back millenia. Gates is notable in that his charity will probably be particularly effective, especially giving money to treat Third world diseases and parasites. I see no reason that Gates should jump on the latest fad. If he thinks he has a viable alternative to open source, then I see no reason he shouldn't try it.

Further, I don't see the point of your remarks on business. Of course, the goal of business is to make money not to do the best thing for people in general. I don't see why that scope should change. Do you think it'd be a good idea for Microsoft to act based on what they rationalize as the "best thing"? My take is no organization or person has sufficient vision or lack of bias to decide what is "best". As a result, I don't think it is a worthy goal to strive for. Your idea of what is "best" is going to conflict with mine. Instead, I feel any society where people can be happy, strive for ambitious, personal goals, and be free from opression is a good enough society.

Not Surprising

[dangitman]

A long-time practitioner of "creative bookkeeping" and "creative business practices" advocates "creative capitalism." What a shocker.

I'm sure mob bosses would rather people call murder "creative surgery" too.

The big opportunity for capitalism: solar

[CrazyJim1]

When you invest in solar, you can very likely get your money back and then some(if you invest in profitable solar companies). The key is solar is great to be corporate because corporations have a way to pushing things to their saturation point. Solar has no saturation point as long as there are stars in the universe. But for right now, we should at least be looking to capitalize on Earth's potential.

Once we have abundant energy on Earth through Solar, we can use it in electric or hydrogen vehicles. With electric vehicles, we can transport the energy from one plant or another with only using human labor or electric trains. Once you have "free energy" powering vehicles, the cost of transportation gets less. When the cost of transportation gets less, the cost of food and water gets less. Also "free energy" by the coast can turn salt water into drinking water then vehicles can transport them inland.

Right there, you just made an impact on many poor peoples' lives without actually donating any money. I think any geek who wants to use technology to solve the world's problems should look inward into conserving money so they can buy stock in profitable solar. I think you should do your research into different companies. I've found mine: nanosolar.com. The only problem is that they haven't gone public yet. So I save money. I'm pretty much broke, but at least I got the spirit of it all.

WTF is this "education" worship going on?

[DaedalusHKX]

I've had to correct memos written by people with "degrees", not just that mythical 8th grade education. Know what? I've met 8th graders from that evil third world where they supposedly can't get by on a dollar a day. Strangely, they also can write coherent sentences... they even know the difference between "they're" and "their". Something most college grads seem to not know. Too bad you can't fire people (lovely government interventions) for having been too stupid to get value for their money when they shopped for "education".

Re:WTF is this "education" worship going on?

[c6gunner]

they even know the difference between "they're" and "their". Something most college grads seem to not know. Too bad you can't fire people (lovely government interventions) for having been too stupid to get value for their money when they shopped for "education".

The problems you're talking about are a result of NOT shopping for education in the first place. Proper spelling and grammar should be learned before the 8th grade - and most children up to that point attend public schools. You just made a pretty strong argument for bringing in the voucher system.

Re:WTF is this "education" worship going on?

[theheadlessrabbit]

when i was in university, our 1st year English course dedicated 2 weeks to the 3 there's.

on the other hand, my middle school ESL students know the difference between 'they're', 'their', and 'there'.

i spent 2 weeks in university on this stuff, while 14 year old Korean kids who can't speak English know their theirs.

Re:WTF is this "education" worship going on?

[DaedalusHKX]

Unless its a "right to work" state, you can't fire people for poor spelling or poor grammar, unless they're language teachers. (Or is that "grammer" I can't tell anymore.) Seriously though, if you fire someone for "can't spell" or "stupid enough to have overpaid for their low grade education," you're bound to get dragged through lawsuits about "well how does that affect his or her duties?" "Did it affect their (there? lol) performance on the job?" Etc etc etc. And while it turns out to be a frivolous lawsuit, its like the hot coffee at Mac Donald's thing. You end up settling or losing so much productive time, that you might as well close the company. Even if you win, you lose if you engage them. You either settle, or lose more money proving you're in the right. Period.

Re:WTF is this "education" worship going on?

[foobsr]

The so called "fruedian slip" is more like the "storage" slip, ...

Probably too early for you to comment (either time- or knowledgebase-wise) ?? ;-)

CC.

P.S.: frueh (German) = early

Re:WTF is this "education" worship going on?

[SanityInAnarchy]

Good to know that education is defined by how well you can write a bureaucratic memo, not how well you think critically, problem solve, general knowledge or how to work as a team. No, no, we want drones that all think the same and use proper grammar.

Because using proper grammar naturally leads to "thinking the same", right?

Darwin used proper grammar. So did Jefferson. So did Martin Luther King, Jr -- and many other people who thought very differently, and actually had a big impact on the world.

Can you guess why?

It's about communication. It doesn't matter if you have all the ideas in the world if you can't communicate them. And it's kind of essential to "working as a team", also -- how can you work with a team if you can't understand them?

It certainly isn't making it easy for your teammates if they are wincing every time they have to read an email from you -- or if your code is awesome, but your comments are unreadable.

And you know what else? It's not that fucking hard. Even if it is stupid, and unnecessary, it's a simple barometer. It means you know how to pay attention in school, and learn things, even if it's not something you want to learn. It means you actually care what people think of you.

Misusing "they're" may have nothing directly to do with coding, but it is somewhat like showing up for an interview without a shirt. Depending on the job, it might not disqualify you, but you'd better be wearing some damned nice pants. (Apologies to "Persuit of Happyness".)

And it's far easier just to throw on something resembling a suit.

Re:WTF is this "education" worship going on?

[plantman-the-womb-st]

I don't know, I'm neither Korean nor young and I speak English.

Re:WTF is this "education" worship going on?

[StarkRG]

You just made a pretty strong argument for bringing in the voucher system.

And see, here I was thinking that it made a pretty strong argument for putting MORE money into the public schools, not less.

Re:WTF is this "education" worship going on?

[jlarocco]

And see, here I was thinking that it made a pretty strong argument for putting MORE money into the public schools, not less.

Clue: under a properly implemented school voucher system the total money spent on education remains the same or increases.

Also, if the government is screwing up this badly already, what makes you think adding *MORE* government is going to help anything? Has that ever worked?

Re:WTF is this "education" worship going on?

[jlarocco]

Right now in the US, adding more school *is* adding more government.

Re:WTF is this "education" worship going on?

[DaedalusHKX]

"The right wing" part of your remark already tells me you're one of those suckers still polarized by the rhetoric. I'll let you in on a secret. The only time in my whole life when I voted, was for a democrat. I've spent all that time washing my hands of the blood that man indirectly put upon them. I've forgiven myself for that... but lets be clear, just because you bought the polarizing bullshit, both sides "left" and "right" of modern politics are about more government control and intervention. Both are beholden to the Fabian Socialists (or whatever that organization goes by) which sold you the wonderful idea of "populism"... hint.. not all people are equal. Some are more talented or skilled than others.

All people equal before the law, or all people equal. There is a BIG difference. To have everyone equal as the socialist propaganda entails, you have to punish some for their skills or talents, in order to bring them in line with the rest. Yes, I know, its hard to grasp this. I was suckered in by that propaganda once too. See that's the beauty of my life, I've experienced where you come from, because I walked that path. I regretted it, until I realized that "you can't understand them, if you haven't walked a mile in their shoes."

I've even done the "broke" (you call it "poor") man thing. I agree it was horrible. You know the funny part? I still had lots of time in my day. Even with active slashdotting. Why? Because I spent almost NO time in front of the Tee Vee... that everpresent brainwashing mechanism. As was once said... "I've already got machines to wash my laundry and my dishes, why would I want one to wash my brain too?"

Take some time away from the political "left right" bullshit, and notice that your heroes, and their foes are ALL crooks. That's why I didn't vote for Ron Paul... he's a politician... he's part of the system. Fool me once, shame on you... fool me twice... oh hell, it doesn't happen anymore. Nobody you can vote for can truly change things. Nobody in the "public arena" actually serves the public. Sure, they might be allowed to tell the truth, but in the end, they end up perverting it. You may want to keep buying their rhetoric and "5 year plans", but as a former witness to 5 year plans, I can tell you they always needed "more time, more money, more labor". Amazing how Americans could've sold their birthright, but not unsurprising. Having been swimming in prosperity, the "majority" voters forgot how bad it can get. About to get a memory jog sooner or later. I feel sorry only for the cats and dogs who will be left homeless in the big city. They don't deserve it.

Re:WTF is this "education" worship going on?

[lilomar]

I have a present for you.

Re:WTF is this "education" worship going on?

[clone53421]

Good point. It would be better written as the(y'?re|ir).

Speaking of ancient Egypt

[Moraelin]

Speaking of ancient Egypt and writing, it's kinda funny... they actually invented a phonetic writing (hieratic) _before_ hieroglyphics, but preferred hieroglyphics anyway.

It's kinda funny how many things about Egypt are contrary to what we take for granted, and what stuff like Civilizations teach us. We tend to think that inventing an alphabet was oh-so-vital and a major improvement over hieroglyphics, but Egypt invented them the other way around. And for a long time it was, along with Mesopotamia (where cuneiform was also hieroglyphic), at the forefront of science and technology.

(Another anomaly about them was that they knew about coins all right, but preferred barter anyway. They first minted coins to pay some Greek mercenaries, and then continued to do so for external trade with the Greeks and Phoenicians. But internally they used barter until the Romans conquered them and forced them to. They were an economic powerhouse anyway.)

So, well, maybe there is something to the idea that a picture is worth more. The Egyptians sure thought so :P

Re:Speaking of ancient Egypt

[Angst Badger]

Egyptian hieroglyphic writing was largely phonetic, contrary to what is surprisingly common belief here. Some signs were logographic or ideographic, but the majority of signs were phonetic. Hieratic came after hieroglyphic, and was largely just a cursive form of hieroglyphics, used to write quickly in informal contexts. In any case, Egyptian used a far smaller set of signs than modern Japanese, which is also a mixture of phonetic, logographic, and ideographic signs. Alphabetic writing probably originated in the Levant as a simplification of Egyptian monoconsonantal signs, culminating in the Phoenician alphabet, which formed the basis of virtually all modern scripts of non-Chinese origin.

Currency was simply unnecessary through most of Egyptian history. Ancient Egypt was a command economy and the overwhelming majority of its trade was internal. Under those circumstances, at least in a pre-industrial state, currency is a needless complication.

Re:Speaking of ancient Egypt

[Moraelin]

Imagine that! A stubborn people, ruled in tyranny by an emperor who is also a religious figure, continue to do things the old fashioned way instead of changing with the times. You NEVER see that happen! :)

Way I see it,

1. The "tyranny" argument is kinda fuzzy when applied to ancient times.

Even for the Greek states, the larger mass of the citizens were usually (though not always) better off under a tyranny than under the democracy of rich slave-owners. Plus, it was democratic voting which led to excesses like executing otherwise capable officers who lost _one_ battle, or to antagonizing Sparta (an ally at the time) all the way to a disastrous war from which Athens never recovered.

Or people see movies like 300 or read ancient greek texts and get ideas like Greece = teh uber-defenders of democracy, vs Persia = teh uber-oppressive tyranny. Well, here's a funny thought. Greece was based on chattel slavery, and at the apex of it in Athens even the word for "craftsman" was a synonim/euphemism for slave. Sparta's rite of passage to adult involved going out and terrorizing the Hellots to keep them in line. By contrast in Persia despots like Darius or Xerxes were vehemently against slavery, and only used paid workers. Probably also because Zoroastrism forbade slavery. So some 90% of the population were actually more free in "despotic" Persia than in "democratic" Greece.

In Egypt, technically the Pharaoh was a supreme despot, but in practice they seem to have treated their citizens pretty well. Their standard of living actually went down a lot under the Romans, although that doesn't necessarily say much, as Rome was gradually switching towards an Empire at the time.

Mind you, I'm not saying "democracy is bad", but mostly "democracy back then differed in several significant aspects from what we call democracy today." By the standards of _that_ time, the difference between democracy and tyrany were sometimes more subtle and sometimes in the other direction than you'd imagine.

2. In a way, a theocracy is actually a very vulnerable system, and a God-Emperor actually has a lot less room for doing evil stuff than a plain old one. The slightest sign of things going downhill or breaking the sacred ideas of balance and justice (Ma'at) can be taken as a sign of losing that divine power, or, as the case may be, mandate. Both Egypt and China (another empire by divine mandate) lost more than one dynasty that way.

And again, their ideas of Ma'at actually set limits on what central power can do too. E.g., apparently you couldn't tax your peasants as much as you wanted, you had to go by the sacred calculations depending on the inundation level. (I.e., on how much a peasant could actually produce in that year.) E.g., you couldn't just put the squeeze on your workers, you had to go by the sacred rules saying how much they can work per day and what rations they should receive. Etc. Those were sacred rules handed over by the gods themselves on sacred scrolls (e.g., most of them from Thoth), and even a Pharaoh could only deviate so far before people started wondering if he really is one of those Gods as he claims. It didn't always work (e.g., we have mentions of over-taxing in, say, the chaos of the first intermediate period), but mostly it seemed to do decently well for that time and age.

In a way, it was more like a semi-constitutional monarcy (even if in a weird religious way) than what some people imagine as God-Emperor.

3. _Why_ they didn't change the economy is a good topic by itself. (Short story: yeah, mostly religion and being stubborn.) The more interesting fact, though, is that it worked well nevertheless. It included more crafts and trading than a lot of other economies based on coins.

If you think about it, when your food is your "currency" the effect is somewhat like that of inflation in modern times. There's a strong incentive to invest and spend that "money" instead of keeping them hidden somewhere. It also produ

wouldn't it be better to

[Anonymous Coward]

Ensure that everyone the world over can READ? I would think Literacy would be a far (far) more important skill that computer literacy, especially in parts of the world without as many computers. In first world countries there's just no excuse for illiteacy (other than severe, crippling learning disabilities). A computer even the illiterate can use is a fine goal, but ensuring universal literacy in at least one language for the entire world is better.

How many people could Bill feed?

[MrKaos]

If they just ate him.

Not Frivolous.

[Anonymous Coward]

Did you know that that the lady who sued McDonalds in that frivolous suit had 3rd degree burns, and that it was found that that McDonalds was serving coffee much hotter than customary?

Gate's legacy

[QuietLagoon]

Bill Gates is just trying to improve how the history books will view his life. Fortunately, his legacy of illegal activity, the stifling of innovation in th ePC industry, and the draining of profits from the PC industry will outlive the recent attempts of his publicity staff to have him be seen as a humanitarian.

Re:Gates' legacy

[QuietLagoon]

your "facts" are actually just bitter whiny opinions

.
Read the court transcripts.

The simple fact is you lost.

I did lose, as did hundreds of millions of other PC users who have had to put up with an unreliable operating system from a company that was more concerned about protecting its monopoly than engaging in the advancement of the PC industry via real innovation.

Monopoly laws are a relic of the steel and oil industries

That's your opinion. However, the monopoly laws are still on the books and have to be obeyed. If you break them, you suffer the consequences. It is good to see, however, that you implicitly acknowledge that Gates engaged in illegal activity to gain his wealth.

640 words?

[drolive]

640 words should be enough for anyone.

This is why I think there is a world market for maybe five dictionaries.

Re:640 words?

[$RANDOMLUSER]

There is no reason for any individual to have a dictionary in his home.

Creative Capitalism Blog

[jhanderson]

Anyone that is really interested in this subject should check out the Creative Capitalism blog that was started in response to Bill Gates' speech at Harvard. It is a collaborative effort that has very insightful commentary from about every angle imaginable. http://www.creativecapitalismblog.com/creative_capitalism/

Text-free UI to teach reading

[trawg]

Rather than give illiterate people more reason to not learn how to read, why not make a Text-free UI to teach them how to read first?

Dumbing everything down just seems like the wrong way to go about anything.

Re:With all due respect, how many real-world probl

[MrKaos]

Again, you are dodging the question of how much money someone like Richard Stallman or anyone else in the Open Source movement have donated to poor people.

No, you've changed your question from With all due respect, how many real-world problems has Open Source solved? How many kids have been fed? How many billions, millions, or even thousands of dollars has Open Source contributed? to the above. Perhaps you now realise that Open Source is not a company like Microsoft i.e Richard Stallman is not on the board of Open Source inc with Open Source shareholders. To answer this question, I don't know how much money people who write Open Source software donate. You aren't satisfied that Open Source contributors already donate their time to write software that anyone can use and continue to try to maneuver me into an answer where you have a basis to critcise the significant contributions the Open Source community has made to ALL communities.

But to follow your forced reasoning, Open Source Software has donated 7.5 Billion dollars of labor for Debian Linux alone, and that does not include the labor donated for the rest of the Open Source offerings. I don't know how to qualify this into how many kids have been fed, because this is the value of the software *available* to charities to use. I am using a foam clue stick here but by all means move on to telling me that I'm avoiding your specific generalisations about subjective specifics.

I only ask this because you seem to be highly critical of Bill Gates and his company doing good for the world so I'm simply turning this question around on you.

Well I donate to three charities, one of the same ones Mr Gates donates to (Amnesty), I wish I could do more. And which company are you refering to? Microsoft doing good? Well I guess "do no evil" was taken. Yes, I'm critical of Bill Gates because he and Microsoft have earned distrust and cynicism of thier motives. Maybe after five or ten years in the BAMGF that will have changed.

You know, I'm sick of the term "convicted monopolist"

Well I've never seen anyone use the term "convicted monopolist" to refer to M$ but I rather like it. I thought the term "corporate criminal" was more appropriate because they commit corporate crime - notice the present tense. But convicted monopolist commits corporate crime has a certain ring to it.

The breaking of anti-trust rules (which are extremely nebulous especially when it comes to the EC) results in a fine just like parking in a red zone results in a fine.

So you're saying since they are still parked there we should fine them again. Could be a good idea you have there.

The US case was done and over with and Microsoft got fined. In the case of the EC, that's simply another way of imposing a tariff on Microsoft since the EC can declare Microsoft guilty of something if they simply have a majority of the small-to-medium server market as defined by the EC.

Well I guess windows just won't run on a mainframe. When someone said that a better word than "fan boy" should be used to describe M$ fan bouys, I started using the word "shill" because I actually wanted to use the word "shrill", but now I realise that Shrill Shill can work too. I'm not saying you are a shrill Microsoft shill, *yet*, but - with respect - criticising a countries legal system for enforcing the laws of the land could be construe as such behavior. I don't care, so blathering on about how hard done by Microsoft is will only earn you ridicule.