gates to a bad future and rewritten past
Feb. 28th, 2007 10:29 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
miriam_eI've lost a lot of respect for Scientific American magazine. They referred to Bill Gates as "the leader of the PC revolution" when they published an article by him in their latest (January 2007) issue. I read the article because it was about robotics and I figured even Bill Gates might have something useful to say on the subject. Unfortunately it amounted to a worthless advertisement for the latest product from Microsoft. In the article he praised himself over and over again while subtly rewriting history.
If control of robots falls into the hands of the likes of Bill Gates then we have all lost. Far from being the leader of the revolution in computing, he had one good idea once. He sold BASIC interpreters for the first microcomputers. Other people designed the computers. Other people designed the BASIC language. Bill Gates capitalised on it. He did some marvellous initial programming of the ALTAIR interpreter, but that's about it. Since that initial good idea, however, he and his company have dragged their feet on every major innovation in computing. And when they have finally realised what other people have been doing he has either bought them out and sold it as if it was his development, or bought them out to suppress it, or sabotaged them, or simply stolen the idea.
Microsoft have set the computing industry back about 10 years. Where Microsoft operating systems are now is just about where things stood about 10 years ago -- 1997. Sadly things have gotten much worse in many ways. Whereas previously Microsoft targetted other companies as enemies now it also targets you. Its operating systems now spy on you and allow backdoors that can be exploited by spooks and malware programmers, while each successive generation of their OS gets slower and more bloated and unpredictable. Microsoft commission research into ways to destroy open systems that give us quality products and freedom of choice. Microsoft want a future where we each pay Microsoft for every minute we use our computers; where we rent everything from them and we don't even own our creations. They want a future where they control everything. (If you don't believe me, read about their proposed "trusted computing platform", where you or anybody can be isolated from everyone else at whim and you can be as easily locked out of your own computer as spooks can gain access to it.)
And if you think that you have nothing to fear because you are a good, law-abiding citizen, then just remember how safe were the the good, law-abiding Jews in Nazi Europe, or the good, law-abiding teachers and engineers and doctors in Pol Pot's Cambodia, or how the good, law-abiding moslems didn't fear the mass-murdering christians in the former Yugoslavia, or the good, law-abiding Iraqi citizens need not fear being invaded by the coalition of the greedy.
If you give power to a bully then you have everything to fear.
If control of robots falls into the hands of the likes of Bill Gates then we have all lost. Far from being the leader of the revolution in computing, he had one good idea once. He sold BASIC interpreters for the first microcomputers. Other people designed the computers. Other people designed the BASIC language. Bill Gates capitalised on it. He did some marvellous initial programming of the ALTAIR interpreter, but that's about it. Since that initial good idea, however, he and his company have dragged their feet on every major innovation in computing. And when they have finally realised what other people have been doing he has either bought them out and sold it as if it was his development, or bought them out to suppress it, or sabotaged them, or simply stolen the idea.
Microsoft have set the computing industry back about 10 years. Where Microsoft operating systems are now is just about where things stood about 10 years ago -- 1997. Sadly things have gotten much worse in many ways. Whereas previously Microsoft targetted other companies as enemies now it also targets you. Its operating systems now spy on you and allow backdoors that can be exploited by spooks and malware programmers, while each successive generation of their OS gets slower and more bloated and unpredictable. Microsoft commission research into ways to destroy open systems that give us quality products and freedom of choice. Microsoft want a future where we each pay Microsoft for every minute we use our computers; where we rent everything from them and we don't even own our creations. They want a future where they control everything. (If you don't believe me, read about their proposed "trusted computing platform", where you or anybody can be isolated from everyone else at whim and you can be as easily locked out of your own computer as spooks can gain access to it.)
And if you think that you have nothing to fear because you are a good, law-abiding citizen, then just remember how safe were the the good, law-abiding Jews in Nazi Europe, or the good, law-abiding teachers and engineers and doctors in Pol Pot's Cambodia, or how the good, law-abiding moslems didn't fear the mass-murdering christians in the former Yugoslavia, or the good, law-abiding Iraqi citizens need not fear being invaded by the coalition of the greedy.
If you give power to a bully then you have everything to fear.