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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.
While Stallman would make an excellent adviser to the National CTO, he's too much of a "Throw the baby out with the bathwater" kind of guy. While I agree with RMS most of the time, that kind of personality doesn't last long in US politics.
All ideas^H^H^H^H^Hprocesses in this post are Patent Pending. (as well as the process of patenting all postings)
If the Republicans went crazy over Obama's friendship with Bill Ayers, just wait until they find out what Bill Joy said about Ted Kaczynski (the unibomber) in Wired.
Isn't it time we had someone in charge of evaluating new technologies who actually KNOWS how computers work, rather than having to refer to the opinions of out of touch people who still struggle with their VCR flashing 12:00 over and over since 1986?
We don't need a national CTO. We can make our own technology decisions without the government telling us what to do.
This thread points out the problem of anointing one person as CTO. Hate to say it but this is one of those things that might do better with a board, not a leader. That is to say that while there may be a judge, it's the jury that counts. Using one man is not enough, even the SCOTUS has nine. When it's important enough to do something, it's important enough to do it right. RMS should probably be on the jury, along with other notable technology evangelists.
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I don't think RMS would even take it. Being in government requires adherence to a set of principles that many people end up finding reduces their ability to be principled. As an example, RMS would be required to back, in public, copyright law policies that he in private would vehemently disagree with. I just don't see RMS doing that, he's too much of a man of principle.
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
I just don't see RMS doing that, he's too much of a man of principle.
It goes beyond that. Certain people define themselves as opposition, as being not-the-man, and as such are uncomfortable in any position of authority, even if their principles were in no way being challenged.
These people serve a valuable role in society, but it is not within the corridors of power.
Bruce Schneier perhaps?
Nah, put him in charge of Homeland Security... then in 6 months when he dissolves it as "redundant and ineffectual" transfer him to the NSA working on crypto and shoring up our technology infrastructure. Could also put him in charge of the TSA for a bit to help streamline that down to something sane like it used to be and eliminate all the security theater.
Curiosity was framed, Ignorance killed the cat.
I don't know how to break this to you but the position of National CTO isn't quite as important as the role of SCOTUS. Upholding the laws and constitutional freedoms of the citizenry is much more important than what IM client government employees wil be allowed to use.
Why doesn't Slashdot ever get slashdotted?
One of the first things that should be done is to mandate equal consideration for .NET and LAMP because Java has way too much of a fanboi following in the federal government.
Of course the fact that the federal government has done research that finds that reducing the number of languages reduces costs has nothing to do with them preferring to pick a single standards based, multi-vendor approach. Nope its because they are "Fanboys" and that stuff in the military drones would be better done in LAMP than in Java...
Federal Government uses LOADS of different technologies most of them are in the heavy lifting space rather than being about LAMP type areas (LAMP for Air Traffic Control?).
Ah but you are just talking about websites, which is a single part of the estate and are of course not thinking at all about support and maintenance across thousands of sites and the advantage of having a limited set of technologies would bring in enabling more cross government sharing.
Nope you just want to see your favourite technology being used.
Personally I'd like to see the CTO take a machete to the costs of IT in federal government, OSS would be part of that but consistency would be the major element.
An Eye for an Eye will make the whole world blind - Gandhi
Yes it's funny but it's funny because of the hint of truth. Which is exactly why you do not want a CTO at a government level. How easy is it to corrupt government officials? How many of them are idiots (ever heard Nancy Pelosi speak, wow... just, wow...)? Sure Bill Joy would be great but what if next election you get Bill Gates? Or Steve F'in Balmer? How about MS Windows being mandated for all government work because of ? How about letting the free market (no, not an MS monopoly that is, despite stories to the contrary, slowly slipping away...) decide what works best rather than some government appointee with an agenda (or a greedy streak).
At worst deal with it at the state level so you can at least move if you don't like the way things are going.
Don't laugh. Be afraid. Be very afraid...
"Just clinging to my guns and religion..."