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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.
Under Bill, vi will be the national standard. Yeah!!!
All ideas^H^H^H^H^Hprocesses in this post are Patent Pending. (as well as the process of patenting all postings)
Secretary of the Internet.
I claim first use of "Error No. 0B" - or "No. 0B error." It'll be the new ID 10T!
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)
Not eleven, not twelve, but thirteen. If you guys keep putting only 12 stripes on our flag, then the terrorists have won.
I seem to recall Bill Joy having some decidedly pessimistic and even luddite attitudes towards future tech, but it's been so long since he's been in the news that I don't remember now what. Paranoid about nanotech, I think, for starters.
Infuriate left and right
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
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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Apparently, Ed Felten is interested, while Lessig isn't.
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.
Under Bill, vi will be the national standard. Yeah!!!
There will be a revolt! We, the Emacs revolutionary council, will take up arms and fight to the death!
Hear Hear...
A board of 7. must have a mix of OSS and Closed source experts, as well as hardware experts.
Experts... not some guy that was CTO for some corperation, I want people that are either leaders in IT technology, or people that made a difference.. Being able to Code or design is a requirement for the position. too many time I have seen CTO's that were promoted from the Sales department.
Oh wait ,that will never happen... because it would be fair and balanced.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
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.
The Obama administration may be the place where the driving of the golden spike uniting open source development with open source government takes place. Using Federal IT standards to drive proprietary formats out of the government departments will create a cascade of rationalization and standardization throughout the US economy. Our creaky and costly medical care system desperately needs this kind of rationalization.
Accordingly, a prominent and effective member of the Open Source community should occupy this position, not a big-time software corporatist.
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Bill Joy is also the guy who keeps warning of the end of the world if we don't stop developing various technologies. He wrote a number of articles and did a bunch of interviews about the world turning to gray goo if we don't kill nanotech research, how computers and weapons will kill us all, etc.
He started work on a self-sufficient, solar powered sailboat, presumably his form of a bomb shelter for the coming techpocolypse.
Basically, he has turned in to a crazy old coot.
Yes, I know what you're saying also, but let me quote rs79, a /. oldtimer:
Brian K. Reid. Everybody else is either too corrupt or too bizarre to actually do the job. Brian understands people, unlike most geek geniuses.
Now, limiting the controlling input to such a function for the ENTIRE COUNTRY to one person is fraught with problems as illustrated by the quote above. Even one President is backed up by House, Senate, and SCOTUS. See, if it's important, there should be some checks and balances. Just the mere mention of M$ on this site is cause for a flamewar. How would a single CTO personage be able to deal with all the crap/politics/bribery/governmental interference and all that will come their way? Even the DoJ was not free from corruption. One person, without a jury behind them, will fall prey to special interests. It seems inevitable. The idea is right, perhaps even the execution of that idea will be, but I have doubts about a single person as head of that implementation.
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We need someone with real vision.
I nominate Ray Kurzweil.
Virginia is for lovers. EVE is for griefers.
He prefers to commune with the wild beastes. I'm pretty sure RMS is sasquatch.
"The cup is in turn designed for holding hot or cold liquids, and has an open rim and closed base." --US Patent #5425497
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?
My president (and Fox News) has taught me that it's more important that Americans "feel" secure than actually be secure. He just doesn't get that. You gotta listen to your gut on these things. He's too much of a thinker. Probably socialist, too.
the growth in cynicism and rebellion has not been without cause
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
He'd likely have a staff... and robes... and commandments.... wait, got derailed there.
"There are no facts, only interpretations." --Friedrich Nietzsche.
Obama: Nuclear power worth considering, not panacea
Could it be that Obama is actually a center-Right presidential candidate, and not the radical left wing terrorist sympathizing deep green wacko he was portrayed as in the campaign? Say it ain't so, Joe (the Plumber).
Under Federal law, you have to be a licensed theoretical physicist if you want to begin a multi-billion-year chain fusion reaction.
But think about it, a really representative panel of that sort would really need someone representing, say, Microsoft, maybe Apple, maybe HP and/or Dell, and then a couple of FOSS guys. Imagine Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, RMS, and ESR on such a committee. Easily imagined. Now imagine anything getting done by this committee, ever... Not so easily imagined. When the closed source guys were not fighting over which of their personal pet technologies was best for a given purpose, they'd be in grid-lock as RMS and the FOSS guys try to block all proprietary anything. I'd be inclined to say that the closed source people should get 4 seats and the FOSS 3 seats: on the theory that it's more likely that at least on closed source advocate would side with FOSS on a given specific question than that the the FOSS guys will ever side with the closed source guys, and if all 4 cosed source guys agree with something it's likely to be a least a slightly open system.
Still I think one guy, preferably fairly neutral and willing to work with all parties and being advised by a committee like you recommend, would be better. He might not always do what any one of us might want or hope he'd do, but a least something will get done.
I don't need a million points of light, just two points of multi-mode fiber and a 10 Gig-E router.
I think a board is the right move. And Ballmer should hold the chair.