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Bill Gates: Tech Companies Inviting Government Intervention (axios.com)
In an interview with Axios on Tuesday, Bill Gates warned Apple and other tech giants that they risk the kind of nightmarish government intervention that once plagued his Microsoft if they act arrogantly. Axios reports: The big picture: "The companies need to be careful that they're not ... advocating things that would prevent government from being able to, under appropriate review, perform the type of functions that we've come to count on." Asked if he sees instances of that now, Gates replied: "Oh, absolutely." Why it matters: With the Big Tech companies feeling they're suddenly drawing unfair scrutiny, this is Microsoft's co-founder saying they're bringing some of the problems on themselves, by resisting legitimate oversight.
They'll keep making as much profit, gain as much market share, and reducing/externalising costs as much as they can until someone or something stops them. The only way they understand of avoiding government regulation is lobbying politicians to stop legislation and funding for regulators from going through. It's the government's responsibility to protect the people from abusive practices by corporations. It's time for government to do their job.
Debate is a form of harassment. Do not question my truth.
In another words, using encryption that works and not installing back doors every time the NSA asks.
Gee - thanks Gates, for having our backs. But please go to hell.
No wonder Microsoft can't be trusted with our data if it was founded by assholes like him.
I don't have to buy Google's services; however, I *do* have to buy Uncle Sam's, or be thrown into a cage for refusing.
You can get ahead of it, or you can get run over by it. You may get away with shenanigans for a long time, but once you cross the line, the government hammer is going to hit you hard. Unfortunately a lot of companies have no restraint. They will creep up to the edge of legality, pretty much guaranteeing government intervention.
The problem is that the oversight provided turned illegitimate when the government decided to build a mass surveillance apparatus in violation of the fourth amendment of the US constitution. It is the government itself that is driving people to encryption. It's no surprised that trust has been lost in the government when even the local PD will hack your phone and make a complete copy without a warrant. Encryption is a way to ensure your rights because they abdicated themselves of that responsibility. The fact that they have been burned by their own bad behavior is unfortunate but there is nobody else to blame but themselves.
Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
I don't have to buy Google's services; however, I *do* have to buy Uncle Sam's, or be thrown into a cage for refusing.
You have no choice.
You do consume Google/Alphabet's services and you have no choice in the matter other than staying off the internet and mobile devices.
And considering what little people like me have dealt with the last decade, government is a MUCH lesser evil - even with Trump in office.
It's ok to bully the customers into giving you their lunch money, but if you start shaking them down and they come to class in their underpants, teachers might have to intervene.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
These words are subject to interpretation. I initially jumped to the conclusion that he means encryption; anyone who knows anything about how good encryption works knows that that's just bullshit because math doesn't abide by human law. Then I thought about Uber's Greyball and similar advanced authority-evading tactics and I realized that there is a legitimate point to be made if that's the context he's referring to instead of encryption.
Don't you just LOVE ambiguity?
I mean, that's just patently false.
Not only is it a legitimate personal choice to avoid Internet services or mobile devices, and not only is it possible to rig software to thwart Google's machinations, but it's also the case that Google hasn't killed millions of lives in pursuit of its goals, or thrown people into cages for making beer (Prohibition) or smoking a leafy plant in the privacy of their own homes, etc.
You're out of your mind. There is no basis for your analysis. NONE. Your subjective reality is bonkers.
Your BS Meter that assume the Government wants to hurt People an Business only want to help.
You Screw up enough and the People will Demand the Government Passes Laws. Then you only have yourself to blame.
And that is Bill's Hard Learned point.
What's the problem with trillion dollar tech companies, Bill? Well, obviously not monopolistic nor oligopolistic behavior. Nor selling our profiles to anyone with money. Nor buying and selling government officials to get the money and laws they need. Nor pushing policy towards increasing inequality, autocracy, and legal invasion. Nor building advanced weaponry so we can wipe out villages and cities around the world. Nor cooperating with our spy agencies, who now know everything about us. Nor profiting from endless new hardware as the old hardware pollutes the earth. Nor accelerating the destruction of local agriculture and production. Nor externalizing and socializing costs while privatizing profit. Nor reshaping everyone's life into the production and consumption of trivial entertainment. Nor hiding the world from us with advertising and monopolized media. Nor blind, self-serving positivism.
No. The tech companies are somehow protecting us too much.
Baloney. "Hate speech" is and has been a cudgel used by people who want to silence someone they don't agree with, usually for pointing out something the silencer doesn't want placed under scrutiny.
Jordan Peterson is a case in point. Reading through the accusations against him, you'd think he's Hilter, Mao, Stalin, and Satan in the flesh. And all that for the crime of pointing out that there are two genders and government has no authority to force you to believe otherwise.
The price of your freedom is my freedom. And also the right of the Klan to hold an occasional rally. Deal with it, cupcake.
they risk the kind of nightmarish government intervention that once plagued his Microsoft
It was found that Microsoft violated a de facto monopoly position, and they got off with a handslap. "Plagued" is not the right word here, unless you want to say that we were plagued by Microsoft, as it has been said that Microsoft set back computing significantly.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
It took yours that long? Mine pegged at "Gates".
Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
That's the big problem. Sally and Joe LocalShopOwners don't want to go online and see a torrent of vile, disgusting insults thrown at them just for saying something. Women don't want to experience rape and death threats just for being a woman on a gaming site. People don't want their kids to see racist hate mongering.
There is HUGE pressure to clean up the internet. It may have started as the private playground for a few, but it's a resource for the world now, and Sally and Joe and all others like them are demanding that safe havens for the worst and most vile are taken down, and platforms become a place where reasonable humans can go without fear.
On one hand, I think that any site that want's to set rules for behavior, should. If someone makes the kinds of threats you mentioned, they should be banned.
However, if people want to have their own little racist, sexist, whatever site, then they should be able to. Obviously as long as no one is breaking the law or actually trampling someones else's rights and freedom, then what's the issue.
If I don't like it, then I don't have to visit that site. This is what I don't understand about proponents of censorship. If someone else likes something and it's not harming anyone, then don't participate in it if you find it offensive.
There is no reason to believe that the Democratic party has any intention of repealing the PATRIOT Act or FISA.
Unfortunately, our democracy has been crippled and has resulted in a non-representative government that doesn't work for the people because of the reductive first-past-the-post voting system that in effect in 99.9% of the country.
Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
Yes, vote out the entire DNC out of Congress. Obama spied on an opposition campaign, using information from Hillary, and then the DNC congress did its best to prevent citizens from finding out about it. Meanwhile at least 2 DNC senators (Schiff and Warner) were attempting to collude with Russia to get dirt on Trump while claiming doing so was treasonous.
The DNC is the enemy of the 4th amendment. They have shown they believe abuse of government is acceptable and you finding out about it is not.
Unless we forget, Embrace Extend Extinguish. Also, some of the "contract" that required paying M$ for every "PC" sold - even if it didn't ship with Windows. I know a company that got around it by selling a rack-mount computer as a "network appliance" running Linux to get around it. You could easily install Windows on it, but there was absolutely no info on the the company web site about ever being able to do that. Abuses against other browser (notably Firefox) products. Yeah, I'd say they pretty much invited government intervention.
Not even comparable to encryption issues.
If the government backdoors encryption, other governments will want the key, too. Then encryption is useless unless you use a non-backdoored one. Which will have to be made illegal. Use to be exporting encryption was on par with exporting a nuke (ITAR). Now importing will be criminal.
Alternatively, if the government backdoors encryption, no other country will buy US products, especially security products, since the US Fed will have the magic key. No government is going to use a US product where they know the US can spy on them, like they want to do on us.
The courts are secret, the decisions are secret, the evidence is secret, the verdicts are secret. And no jury.
Lawmakers however would like you to think, that copyright-violations are bringing our countries to their knees and threatening their foundations.
Windows 2000 - from the guys who brought us edlin
The disaster of Somalia is the result of a failed State; the failed government was formed under single-party, "scientific" Communism.
When it inevitably collapsed into chaos, the culture of Authorianism in Somalia naturally led to the rise of warlords, who (along with their minions) are themselves a form of government yet again (that is, they are a form of organization that allocates resources by coercion rather than by agreement in advance).
Nevertheless, without the burden of a monstrous State, the people of Somalia have seen an enormous improvement in the quality of their lives, as old quasi-capitalist means of commerce re-emerged; by some measurements, their quality of life has improved faster and to a greater extent than the quality of life in the surrounding, more "stable" States.
TL;DR: Authoritarians gonna authoritate. Somalia is a warning about Authoritarianism, not Libertarianism.
or the French will do it for you
Anyone remember the Key Escrow crap?
It did not end because Demos or Republican'ts didn't want it.
It ended when PGP hit the market from France proof against casual gov't spying.
If you fancy yourself to be a member of civilized society, then you should delight in both asking that question and trying to find an answer, not scoff at it.
He did ask the question and did not scoff at it.
You avoided answering, and seem to be the one scoffing at it. So apparently "trying to find an answer" is not high on your list. By your criteria, apparently you are not a member of civilized society
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
The difference between "do as I say" and "do as we agreed" just shows that you don't consider yourself part of the community.
Government can't be an "I" in a democracy. Government in the US is "we." You and me, buddy. We get to vote and we get to convince each other we're right. And we're going to agree on things in the form of legislation, and if we don't do as we agreed, we'll end up paying fines or rotting in prison thanks to the institution we agreed to create to enforce our agreements.
The point, I think, was that true libertarianism is inevitably replaced by authoritarianism. You will never see a libertarian paradise, because it can only exist long enough for a strong man to gather enough power to destroy it.
And I think you think it means "I".
The problem is that the oversight provided turned illegitimate when the government decided to build a mass surveillance apparatus in violation of the fourth amendment of the US constitution. It is the government itself that is driving people to encryption. It's no surprised that trust has been lost in the government when even the local PD will hack your phone and make a complete copy without a warrant. Encryption is a way to ensure your rights because they abdicated themselves of that responsibility. The fact that they have been burned by their own bad behavior is unfortunate but there is nobody else to blame but themselves.
Exactly this.
When I read the words "legitimate oversight" the first thing I thought was "You mean for the Government? Yes, we certainly DO need legitimate oversight."
But there's a line, and where we draw the line is the real issue.
Jordan gets significant more hate and threats than, for example, Cathy Newman, yet Cathy and her spin machine are crying about how terrible it is that her failed wildly dishonest hatchet job on Jordan spawned the small amount of hate and threats that it did against her.
The facts of the matter are that men are predisposed to defending women for both social and evolutionary/genetic reasons, so much so that women have been getting away with over-blowing all things related to them. The term for it is damseling. "Help! I'm a damsel in distress!"
That other identity groups are also damseling is no surprise. The left, however, refuses to acknowledge whats going on.
Jordan Peterson, Bret Weinstein, and Dave Rubin are just 3 of the thousands of cases where not only is there damseling by identity group, but also where the press itself is complicit in it with complete and absolute dishonesty. All 3 of these liberal men have been called alt-right racist nazi sexists by the press itself just because they didnt tow the complete identitarian narrative in its entirety.
More cases include James Damore, and Milo Yiannopoulos. The case of the last one is a special sort of gross dishonesty by the press, as they labeled the homosexual jew that is married to a black man a nazi white supremacist and they are still doing it to this day.
The progressives in concert with the press are very rapidly ruining any credibility the progressives have and it can only hurt any actual progressive policy that someone might want to support. In short, this bullshit harms everyone. The progressives have become so regressive that its dragging us all down, both on the left AND the right.
As far as the clan burning the cross... the clan did start out as primarily anti-catholic and they still are anti-catholic today. In rational minds, burning the cross is no different than burning the flag. You have a right to complain about either of them, but you dont have a right to prevent either of them, because free speech is the most important value we have.
"His name was James Damore."
I agree completely?
I remember many years ago, when the antitrust litigation was just winding down against Microsoft ... one of my best friends said to me, "Have you noticed how it seems like the government really got to Bill Gates? The comments he's making suddenly all sound like exactly what they told him to say. I wonder if this was part of the settlement with them?"
At the time, I thought that was somewhat insightful -- but perhaps a bit too "tin foil hat". As time has gone on though, I'm thinking he was right on the money.
If you look at the statements Bill made before and after the Justice Dept. got ahold of him, it's a night and day difference. And ever since then, he's continued to be pretty much a mouthpiece for Federal government agendas. The latest I've seen him advocating for (after pushing "Common Core" teaching in schools) is "IEPs for all students". Honestly, that would be a horrible idea, considering the current IEP is difficult enough to get teachers and faculty up to speed on and cooperating with, when you have a student with real disabilities or behavioral problems affecting their learning. If everybody had an individualized list of requirements and details on accommodations that would "best suit them", you'd probably double or triple the cost of running public schools. You'd need far more faculty to actually go through all of the IEPs and to implement them for everyone, plus more expense providing all the things they'd ask for like quiet places to take exams by themselves.) It's madness.
Well the FISA court in the end rejected blanket open-ended surveillance, it was the republican-controlled congress that passed a special law for it. You can complain that Obama should have rejected that, but using that a a bludgeon against all democrats is disingenuous.
There is no denying that Republicans, on the whole, are worse on this matter than Democrats. That said, it's important to remember 2 things:
1) Some of the biggest friends we have on this issue comes from the libertarian wing of the Republican party (Rand Paul, Justin Amash, etc)
and
2) The majority of democrats also voted for the law that expanded the NSA's powers (including the democratic leaders of both the house and senate).
The solution is to clean both parties of the people who think this sort of crap is ok, and if that means replacing 70-90% of the republicans, and 60-70% of the Democrats, then so be it.
"Bill Gates warned Apple and other tech giants that they risk the kind of nightmarish government intervention that once plagued his Microsoft..."
And MS showed that if you have enough money, nothing bad will happen to you. So, no worries, tech giants.
Dear Slashdot: next time you want to mess with the site, add a rich-text editor for comments.
In what world do people cooperate out of the goodness of their own heart? You need some sort of enforcement. If not the Government, then who?
I think you're missing my argument here. (I can't speak for those who push for Communism from their public education. I'm certainly not advocating for that.)
We have 3 kids in the public school system right now, and what I've seen wrong includes:
1. Systemic issues with spending FAR too much taxpayer money on administrative staff. When I was in public high school, it was a pretty good-sized school and yet you only had one person with the title of principal. Today, smaller schools than the one I attended will regularly have 3 principals, plus a number of assistant principals. What changed to require 3x or more work from that job title since the late 1980's or early 1990's??
2. Far too much focus on standardized testing, to the point where our high schools don't even have a formalized program in place for reading skills. In one area school (not even in a poor neighborhood, like some would guess), about 70% of the kids coming in as Freshmen can't read at a high school level. The high schools respond by teaching to the proficiency tests they're required by law to give - rather than ensuring the kids are actually capable of reading at the proper grade level. The teachers all claim they "don't have enough time in the class day" to do anything else. And really, this problem seems to stem from further back in the middle and grade schools, where many of them no longer teach grammar, phonics or even "sight words".
3. The Bill and Melinda Gates' vision for "IEPs for all!" revolves around having the ability to custom tailor computer teaching/testing software to each student's needs, so they can sit down in front of screens for more of a class day and let the machines do the teaching and testing. IMO, it's the LAST thing we need more of in our public schools -- and it's somewhat telling that Gates sent his OWN kids to a private school where technology was essentially off limits.
4. It's not really been my experience that parents are "pushing mediocre students into advanced programs". Rather, the standard classrooms have become such a "zoo" or "free for all", the kids who care at all about learning are frustrated by all the noise and distraction - so THEY push to be put into honors classes, even if their academic proficiency doesn't really justify it.
A, a non sequitur without a purpose. You are a regular rebel without a clue, aren't you?
Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
Isn't going to take any advice, not even from one of its own who knows a thing or two about "inviting" the government to clean up up your act for you.
Fuck off, Geoffrey was spot on.
These contracts will be enforced through the blockchain.
You need to read more books and leave the opinions until you've learned some history. Have you even looked into religions? Have you met mankind (aka, peoplekind, heh)? Do you know how our brains work and the shit they come up with? You're a whiner, not a complainer. Big difference.
I'm for standardized tests. It sounds like it's done poorly in the US. There should be a consistent planned curriculum for the whole state that all kids are taught. At the end of the year, you and everyone needs to know how much is learned/retained. This measures the effectiveness of teaching and the materials. When I took Canada wide standard tests in middle and junior high, the results were pretty fucking close to each kids average grades and reflected the strengths (math) and weaknesses (English). They weren't cooked tests, they covered actual fucking stuff we learned. Nowadays, there's schools intended for the smarter ones so they can accelerate. Very few actually thrive in those schools, so they take a 3 week summer school to replace a 9 month course (or they combine shit, like getting English credit for a history report). There's no fucking way the material covered and obsorbed is the same. The final exam I take and graded on that I would compete for job or college applications, better fucking judge us fairly, and you do that with a standard test. I have 4 sisters that are teachers. They complain about shitty parents, overactive kids without discipline, and large class sizes. (They also complain about teachers passing shitty kids because they don't want them a second year, so lots get to grade 9 and still haven't been tested for learning disabilities). It seems the US is mostly fucking the standard testing because of the funding based on results. That is what encourages the shortcuts and shitty teaching. Full. Stop.
OK, cool, I suppose. If you get us to a point where we don't need a government to not get screwed by everybody else, I'll be psyched about that. But it sounds like you agree that that isn't possible today.
No amount of bold text changes the fact that "government" is not some evil force that descended from the stars to harm us. In the case of the US, it was just a bunch of guys who got together to build a decision-making framework so we could decide as a group:
1) what happens when my freedom to do what I want butts up against your freedom to not have it done to you,
2) what services we want to provide for the community so that each individual person doesn't have to worry about those things, and
3) how we're going to pay for that.
All of the results of that are government. Not the evil "other" that a few of these comments have been making it out to be.
It really doesn't matter to me how you vote, but as long as you think of government as an uncontrollable evil, your locus of control will always be external and you'll be stuck in learned helplessness and despair. Once you understand that government is what we make it, you get to try to remake it, and as frustrating as that is, it's better than the alternative.
So what happens with the universal stuff like theft and murder? Do I just sign a contract with the local police agency that they'll avenge my death? What if the guy who kills me pays them more than I did to look the other way? Is there someone that enforces that breach of contract? Do I need a contract with them, or is it done by a non-government government?
*absorbed. Don't know how that slipped past spell check. I must have done that before.
In a free society, a government is interpreted as damage, and routed around.
Tell me, how does bursting into someone's private home, shooting his dog, roughing him up, and then throwing him into a cage, all for growing and smoking a plant in the "privacy" of "his own" home, come out of your 3 points?
One should consider why these companies want stiff regulation. They are big. They own their markets. They can absorb the extra costs and simply pass it along. Small startups cannot absorb the cost or pass it along. So effectively these companies are asking the government to stifle competition from startups. Think about it.
{^_^}
M$ and BillWG seem to have made out okay despite the DOJ's attempts to prosecute them for all of the anti-trust, anti-competitive activity and the piracy they commited to build Windows and Office.
They showed the rest of tech how to buy your way out of a lawsuit with the DOJ.
Antitrust is the way that the government promotes markets when there are market failures. It has nothing to do with the idea of free information. - Bill Gates
Government can't be an "I" in a democracy. Government in the US is "we." You and me, buddy. We get to vote and we get to convince each other we're right.
And when you fail to convince the other person you're right, you—as the one with power and/or numbers on your side—go ahead and do it your way anyway, never mind the cost to those who disagreed, and then proceed to claim that they're equally responsible for the outcome just because they're part of this "we" you invented as cover for your own selfish choices.
That's your "democracy" in a nutshell.
Civilization is found in unanimous consent, not majority rules.
"The state is that great fiction by which everyone tries to live at the expense of everyone else." - Bastiat