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Bill Joy For New National CTO Post?
jddeluxe writes "In an article in today's NY Times, John Doerr of Kleiner-Perkins proffered up Bill Joy's name when queried by Barack Obama for a recommendation for the position of Chief Technology Officer of the Unites States which Obama has promised to create and that the country is overdue to have.
I think that's a brilliant idea, and while you're at it, have the FCC report to him as well, why don't you?" If Bill is unavailable, I'll throw my hat in the ring, although I'm holding out for Secretary of Tubes.
Not eleven, not twelve, but thirteen. If you guys keep putting only 12 stripes on our flag, then the terrorists have won.
Believe in hoarding? You realise he made massive contributions to BSD, including the TCP/IP stack, which were released under a permissive license allowing anyone to use it?
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
Apparently, Ed Felten is interested, while Lessig isn't.
We don't need a national CTO. We can make our own technology decisions without the government telling us what to do.
I really hope you're being sarcastic. Otherwise, you just come across as an idiot. It's not like the government is essentially a very large organization that would benefit from someone overseeing how technology is implemented and deployed within it.
You're probably thinking about the 2000 article in Wired, 'Why the Future Doesn't Need Us', which he said in a 2003 interview was Wired's title, not his.. It was criticized in quite a few places, but there were plenty of people who gave merit to what he was saying.
I think it's wise to understand that there are risks inherent to almost any solution, and no just adopt technology for technology's sake -- look at what happened with the election machines, and those damned flash splash pages in the late 90s. I probably need to re-read his article, as I can't remember most of it, but I don't remember it being as pessimistic as people made it out to be.
Build it, and they will come^Hplain.
If you think the government has been staying out of the financial industry for the past 70+ years, you haven't been paying attention.
Link
"The cup is in turn designed for holding hot or cold liquids, and has an open rim and closed base." --US Patent #5425497
That's a flat out lie, mod parent down.
The community reinvestment act was passed during the Carter Administration, and has nothing to with the FACT that lenders made unqualified loans KNOWING IN ADVANCE that those loans would be bundled and sold so that the originator was no longer directly on the hook for the potential (probable) loss.
Deregulation allowed these criminals to get away with this.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/10/01/conservatives-seek-to-shi_n_131020.html
Samsung took back my unlocked bootloader because Google wants me to rent movies. They're both evil.
The CTO wouldn't set policy for all software development in the U.S. It would simply be an advisory position to aid the President and federal agencies in the making of techology decisions. Think of all the millions of our tax dollars that have been wasted by various agencies in ill-considered system "upgrades" that never worked and you'll understand why a CTO might be a good idea.
This ain't rocket surgery.
The division between commercial and investment banking broke down under Clinton, with bi-partisan support. And Congress-critters, democrat and republican, both made certain Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac remained unregulated or loosely regulated.
That said, Bush did push deregulation or simply lack of it via the SEC.
Gerry
It wasn't Bush, but it was deregulation and it was Championed by conservatives. The reason why you don't see it mentioned specifically might due to some embarrassment over the bill being signed by Bill Clinton in 1999.
----from wikipedia---
Provisions that prohibit a bank holding company from owning other financial companies were repealed on November 12, 1999, by the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act, which passed the U.S. Senate in one form on a party-line vote of 54 (53 Republicans and 1 Democrat) to 44 (all Democrats) and on a 343-86 vote in a different form in the House of Representatives, before being resolved by a joint conference committee; the conference report was approved by both houses of Congress (Senate: 90-8-1, House: 362-57-15) and signed by President Bill Clinton.[2][3]
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And here is a thoughtful perspective on re-regulation from people you probably hate:
http://www.aflcio.org/aboutus/thisistheaflcio/ecouncil/ec03052008a.cfm
Samsung took back my unlocked bootloader because Google wants me to rent movies. They're both evil.
You missed one and got 'em in the wrong order, though.
"There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order."
- Ed Howdershelt.
The quote is a shortcut for what how a healthy representative government works.
1) Soap box. Don't like a law? Whine and bitch about it enough, and maybe your elected representative will change it. (The Do-Not-Call list was a good example.)
2) Ballot box. He didn't listen? Vote his ass out and vote in someone who will. (I'm told that something like this happened earlier this week :)
3) Jury box. None of your legislators will change the law? Civil disobedience and jury nullification are two sides of the same coin. If you don't like a law, and your legislators won't change the law to your liking, you test it in court. With civil disobedience, you break the law, fully aware that you're going to end up in court as a test case, hope that the jury will say "not guilty" anyways - and with jury nullification, you serve on a jury and are prepared to render a "not guilty" verdict based, essentially, on the grounds that the law in question isn't worth enforcing. (Observe RIAA's declining success rate in RIAA-vs-everyone P2P lawsuits.)
4) Ammo box. Open this one last. The point of representative government is that as long as it exists (even if it's not terribly healthy), you'll never have to open this one at all.
The order in which you open the boxes is as important as the number of the boxes.
BAKER (R-LA): It is indeed a very troubling report, but it is a report of extraordinary importance not only to those who wish to own a home, but as to the taxpayers of this country who would pay the cost of the cleanup of an enterprise failure. The analysis makes clear that more resources must be brought to bear to ensure the highest standards of conduct are not only required, but more importantly, they are actually met.
WATERS (D-CA): Through nearly a dozen hearings where, frankly, we were trying to fix something that wasn't broke, Mr. Chairman, we do not have a crisis at Freddie Mac, and particularly at Fannie Mae, under the outstanding leadership of Mr. Frank Raines.
MEEKS (D-NY): As well as the fact that I'm just pissed off at OFHEO, because if it wasn't for you, I don't think that we'd be here in the first place, and now the problem that we have and that we're faced with is: maybe some individuals who wanted to do away with GSEs in the first place, you've given them an excuse to try to have this forum so that we can talk about it and maybe change the, uh, the direction and the mission of what the GSEs had, which they've done a tremendous job. There's been nothing that was indicated that's wrong, you know, with Fannie Mae! Freddie Mac has come up on its own. And the question that then presents is the competence that -- that -- that -- that your agency uh, uh, with reference to, uh, uh, deciding and regulating these GSEs. Uh, and so, uh, I wish I could sit here and say that I'm not upset with you, but I am very upset because, you know, what you do is give -- you know, maybe giving any reason to, as Mr. Gonzales said, to give someone a heart surgery when they really don't need it.
ROYCE (R-CA): In addition to our important oversight role in this committee, I hope that we will move swiftly to create a new regulatory structure for Fannie Mae, for Freddie Mac, and the federal home loan banks.
CLAY (D-MO): This hearing is about the political lynching of Franklin Raines.
FALCON (OFHEO Regulator to MEEKS (D-NY)): Sir, Congressman, OFHEO did not improperly apply accounting rules. Freddie Mac did. OFHEO did not fail to manage earnings properly. Freddie Mac did. So this isn't about the agency engaging in improper conduct. It's about Freddie Mac.
SHAYS (R-CT): Fannie Mae has manipulated, in my judgment, OFHEO for years -- and for OFHEO to finally come out with a report as strong as it is, tells me that's got to be the minimum, not the maximum.
FRANK (D-MA): ...etcetera. Uh, I -- This -- You -- you -- you seem to me saying, "Well, these are areas which could raise safety and soundness problems." I don't see anything in your report that raises safety and soundness problems.
WATERS (D-CA): Under the outstanding leadership of Mr. Frank Raines, everything in the 1992 has worked just fine. In fact, the GSEs have exceeded their housing goals. What we need to do today is to focus on the regulator, and this must be done in a manner so as not to impede their affordable housing mission, a mission that has seen innovation flourish from desktop underwriting to 100% loans.
MANZULLO (R-IL): Mr. Raines, 1.1 million bonus and a $526,000 salary. Jamie Gorelick, $779,000 bonus on a salary of 567,000. This is -- what you state on page 11 is nothing less than -- than staggering. The 1998 earnings per share number turned out to be $3.23 and 9.mills, a result that Fannie Mae met the EPS maximum payout goal right down to the penny. Fannie Mae understood the rules and simply chose not to follow them. If Fannie Mae had followed the practices, there wouldn't have been a bonus that year.
RAINES: Because banks don't -- there aren't any banks who only have multifamily and single-family loans. These assets are so riskless that their capital for holding them should be under 2%.
CLINTON: The responsibility that the Democrats have may rest more in resisting any efforts by Republicans in the Congress or by me when I was president to put some standards and tighten up a little on Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.
You don't make the poor richer by making the rich poorer. - Winston Churchill
This is a solution to an un-defined problem. We should only implement solutions AFTER we have defined a problem. "Jumping to Solutions" is why so many decision-making processes go wrong.
Expanding the Presidential Empire is not necessarily the answer to our current problems. Government interference in the distribution of goods and services normally reduces the effectiveness and efficient workings of the marketplace, thus depriving the potential customers.
"The mind works quicker than you think!"