From "Facebook’s Tone-Deaf Attack on Apple/The company declared in newspaper ads that it was “standing up to Apple.” It’s a desperate ploy that’s unlikely to work" by Kara Swisher (NYT).
The topic is not free speech and censorship, but Swisher goes on to criticize Mark Zuckerberg for "stubbornness in the face of persistent criticism" — which may be relevant to the topic under discussion — and to justify that characterization by pointing to his company's support for the user's free speech:
It delayed for years before finally tackling disinformation on its platform. The company continued untoward cozying up to the Trump administration. I am almost never surprised to see Facebook take the hard line when taking a softer one might do.
Support for freedom of speech is only "delay" if you believe we are on track to suppress that freedom and it's just a matter of time. As for "untoward cozying up to the Trump administration" — it seems designed to push NYT readers to take the Apple side in this dispute. I'm already inclined to side with Apple on the privacy issue, but I don't like seeing freedom of speech processed into cozying up to Trump! That's a low move.
Posts
71 comments:
"...but I don't like seeing freedom of speech processed into cozying up to Trump! That's a low move."
Democrats/Progressives are against the concept of free speech, Trump is for it, ergo it has to be associated with Trump. Another prime example is military intervention. All those who voted for intervention in Iraq and Afghanistan were vilified by progressives. Once Trump said let's get out of there, any agreement with that position was seen as cozying up to Trump, ergo withdrawing troops was irresponsible.
It goes back to basic position that Progressives are anti-free speech. Everything must be filtered and censored. This is the battle for at least the next 4 years, which is to hold onto any semblance of free speech.
There are plenty of low moves in that excerpt. Another big one is the “Apple is no saint.” So what if Apple is supporting consumer privacy because it benefits their business model instead of out of altruism? I’d rather it benefit their business model—it’s more reliable that way. But, in standard liberal fashion, if they make money off it, it’s bad. Period. The profit motive cannot, by definition, be a force for good.
Isn't that newspaper great! No scandals of erroneous reporting and fantasizing can slow NYT down. A new day, a new piece of brilliant analysis. Free speech is bad and Mark Zuckerberg kinda supports it sorta. Hard-hitting, I like it!
tim maguire: if librills hate profits why are they dominating the global billionaire elite technology entrepreneur class of free market capitalist robber barons?
Good for Apple. I still won't buy their stuff. Privacy is an allusion. Resistance is futile, but is a great marketing tac tic.
Kara Swisher is a nasty whack job.
Ha! I got this notification last night when I tried to place a Facebook ad. It's funny because my yoga studio owner was just telling me FB had changed its algorithms recently so videos he posts aren't getting the reach to his "friends" in the same way. They are trying to push him and businesses like him to pay for ads.
another NYT article by Someone named Harold Schmit suggested we only give the vaccine to people of color to "level the playing field"
As Kissinger famously said of his hopes for the Iran Iraq war: casualties.
-XC
David Begley, your mother will wash your mouth out with soap and water for that. Kara Swisher is a high-quality professional who can deliver objective analysis; and we should thank Althouse for keeping her views out there where her blog readers can study them -- and maybe improve themselves a little. Between you and me, Howard could probably use some improvement, don't you think? But back to Swisher, I like this item from her wikipedia page:
In January 2019, Swisher told people who disapproved of a Gillette advertisement, following the January 2019 Lincoln Memorial confrontation "And to all you aggrieved folks who thought this Gillette ad was too much bad-men-shaming, after we just saw it come to life with those awful kids and their fetid smirking harassing that elderly man on the Mall: Go fuck yourselves."
In some lesser worlds, that strong viewpoint might have compromised Swisher's status as a journ-O-list. But we are talking NYT here. The top, you know. If you don't read NYT, well -- you won't have much to talk about at your next zoom dinner party.
In an earlier thread (yesterday), one of liberal regulars stated: ""As far as I'm aware, Congress has made no laws against any part of the First amendment during the current pandemic."
We are home free folks! Unless Congress passes a law suppressing free speech, we have it.
Stopped reading the NYT last year. Am in the process (so our tech bosses say) of eliminating my FB account. Not buying Apple products until it gets its supply chains out of China.
These creeps deserve each other.
The tech oligarchs obey their leftwing corrupt proggy masters. same with the woke assholes who write for the corrupt NYT.
Google just placed a major thumb on the scale for crook Biden.
Giant elephant in the room nobody mentions.
NYT creep:
"These tech companies have too much power. And no matter how you slice it, they are all in dire need of government regulation."
This is corrupt progressive NYT writer shorthand for: All tech companies must obey Democrats, and promote The Party. or else!
"David Begley said...
Kara Swisher is a nasty whack job."
"In January 2019, Swisher told people who disapproved of a Gillette advertisement, following the January 2019 Lincoln Memorial confrontation "And to all you aggrieved folks who thought this Gillette ad was too much bad-men-shaming, after we just saw it come to life with those awful kids and their fetid smirking harassing that elderly man on the Mall: Go fuck yourselves."
This is what you get when no one asks you to prom.
Howard said...tim maguire: if librills hate profits why are they dominating the global billionaire elite technology entrepreneur class of free market capitalist robber barons?
Hmm...where to begin?
I’ll start by congratulating you for publicly recognizing that the Democratic Party is the party of billionaires and giant corporations. Any claims to care about the poor are just posturing around election time. I could see why a superficial perusal you might lead you to think that there is a contradiction between their public statements attacking profits and their private behaviour greedily hoovering up all the money they can, but for the rank and file, it’s simple hypocrisy. I’ve known many socialists and every one of them wants to live in the luxury they want to deny others.
But those people aren’t rich, they just want to be and they hate capitalism because capitalism won’t just give them what they want. Here, you’re talking about people who already are rich. Why do they embrace Democrats and leftism? Because now that they are through the door, they want to close it behind them. Liberal politics offers the greatest opportunity to enlist the government itself in the struggle to crush their competition. Liberals do a terrible job of seeing how their ideas help the 1% by making it harder for the 99% to join them. But the 1% sure sees it.
One of my hopes for 2021 is that Kara Swisher marries Maureen O’Dowd.
One of the things that helps me watch soccer on TV is reminding myself every now and then that the announcers' yammering has no effect whatsoever on what's actually taking place on the field.
Apple is definitely no saint, like obviously. They use slave labor to manufacture their phones. But they just so happen to be correct on this particular issue.
Google just locked down whole accounts and slapped warnings on anything not property Pro-Democrat Party or anything negative about The Party(D) - during an election.
Anyone leftwing a-hole at NYT talking about breaking up the Google monopoly?
yeah - lets worry That Apple might trip up Facebook.
Who cares? The ultimate goal of The corrupt democrat party and the tech industry and the creepy woke corrupt NYT staff and writers is to play ball with the Corrupt democrat Party. The Party. Advance the Party. Advance the cover-ups, fill the swamp, ignore real crimes by democrats... etc.. The Party shall be worshiped and made wealthy and powerful while they tell the proles they give a shit about free speech.
"We gonna REGULATE!"
Imagine The NY Times has the politics, funding and ideological commitments of ‘The Guardian’ and this makes more sense. Some important differences will persist.
Howard: I’m guessing because your collectivism, Idealism and ideological commitments generally lead towards social persuasion, control and capture of existing institutions and hierarchies.
This isn’t necessarily because such ideas and commitments are fully true (they offer some truths). It also isn’t because you really have to know too much about human nature, history, nor how to run other people’s institutions for them.
If these be your commitments it follows they also don’t restrict violence, bloodshed, and overthrow of these existing hierarchies in theory. This is a tragedy and leads to institutional failure and much worse.
So we’re back to the truth and truism that what motivates you could be hatred of ‘the rich’ and the idea of ‘the rich’ as well as envy at some people and the idea of ‘those people’. I’m also guessing as well you have many, many positive qualities like all of us (love, sacrifice, family, learning, friendship etc.)
By your comments at Althouse, such would drive much of your thinking and action in the world.
If so, when did it start?
In a hundred years or so a Washington Irving-type will write a thrilling story about Orange Man Bad, immortalizing him forever. Meanwhile, we're surrounded by Ichabod Cranes.
How many people, upon finding that the client of a client of a client is potentially using people in involuntary contracts, would sacrifice their own job and paychecks? Or their phones?
Doesn’t look like that many, if it is true.
If it is true, it’s probably not good.
Then again, If John Brown’s abolitionist mob is coming down the road for you, are his moral truths worth your death?
Do you trust people who claim the current moral high ground to run US government agencies with the power and authority to root out such practices?
What if it escalated into a war?
Not exactly so simple...
Are blogs dead?
Are the message boards more like toilet-stall walls these days?
Deep thoughts, man.
It is a “low move”, but no surprise there... it’s the NYT.
if librills hate profits why are they dominating the global billionaire elite technology entrepreneur class
See "The Devil and Daniel Webster"
Zuckerberg and Gates and Buffett and Ellison and the rest are certainly very, very rich. But they are not "free market capitalists". They support and have gotten rich from crony capitalism.
Apple's action, of defaulting to opt out and requiring the idevice owner to opt in, has nothing to do with free speech and harming small businesses. The argument that they are is obvious nonsense. Apple may be doing this to enhance or improve the competitive positioning of their products, that is likely their motivation, but it is a move that benefits consumers and individuals without taking anything away from them.
The article author has to tie Zuckerberg to Trump otherwise NYT readers would side with him.
By your comments at Althouse, such would drive much of your thinking and action in the world.
If so, when did it start?
In Howard’s case, it appeared with the onset of leprosy and IBS...
noting Apple’s hegemony over mobile
If "hegemony" means "has about 25% of the market".
Why is "kneecapping" Facebook good for Apple?
I'm thinking the most important concept in that article isn't relating to "privacy" or "free speech". It's the part about "dire need" and "government regulation".
But that's the issue I find interesting. I am generally in favor of letting the marketplace decide things and government having a limited or no role but it is hard to hold to that belief when it comes to the tech companies. Except I am not sure government regulation will actually improve the situation. At all. Ever. In any way.
Your preferred political party does not like freedom, Althouse.
Perhaps a slightly older canine needs a new trick?
I remember when Bill Gates got hauled before congress.
Congress claimed they were worried that Microsoft was the default operating system of world.
Bill Gates was slack jawed that congress couldn't see he had no evil intent. Gates was so unaware of the world he walked in, he had no idea that congress didn't give a rip about his business. Congress was on the war path because Gates spent a small fraction of what his revenue required for lobbying.
Congress wasn't getting their protection money, and his store was about to experience a devastating confluence random accidents of fate.
One element of statism is a drive to suppress free speech.
When the state controls the economy, then criticism of the state is wrecking of the economy.
To criticize Trump's socialist opponents is to wreck the socialists' efforts to control the economy.
The Wikipedia article on Wrecking summarizes this crime against Socialism as follows (emphasis added):
-----
.... "wrecking" and "sabotage" referred to any action which negatively affected the economy, including failing to meet unrealistic economic targets, allegedly causing poor morale among subordinates (e.g. by complaining about conditions of work), lack of effort, or other incompetence. Thus, it referred to economic or industrial sabotage in the very broadest sense. The definition of sabotage was interpreted dialectically and indirectly, so any form of non-compliance with Party directives could have been considered a 'sabotage'
-----
Everywhere such logic justifies, in statists' minds, the suppression of free speech.
When Diamond and Silk committed the crime of supporting Trump while being Black, they not only violated community standards, they also wrecked Socialists' efforts to win control the US economy. That is why Socialists employees of Facebook banned Diamond and Silk. Z
Zuckerberg was compelled to remove Facebook's ban on Diamond and Silk, but there still is much pressure on Zuckerberg to approve future bans on "wreckers" who are using Facebook to support Trump in particular and to support other critics of Socialism in general.
Leftist Collectivists hate free markets. They hate free markets because individuals will enter into trades with other individuals that leave both better off. They hate this because there is no government involvement. And, therefore, there are no opportunities for corruption and graft. It is only with that corruption and graft, mixed with a little regulatory capture, that generates the billions in wealth Howard applauds Leftists from extracting from their neighbor via the government.
Nobel Prizes in Economics were earned for understanding this process. Howard is unfamiliar with James Buchanan and therefore says stupid shit.
Leftist Collectivists hate free markets because they hate freedom for others. Can a billion Chinese or a million Karen's all be wrong?
My system and browser have never worked with either Facebook or Apple, which accounts for the irrelevantness of the ads I see. Amazon however has spotted my desire for replacement laptop screens and offers them constantly.
That's a low move.
Its advocating censorship, which is exactly what I would expect from the NY Times.
If your business relies on ads, then you don’t have a business.
So, is this [nyt] an ‘opinion’ piece, or a ‘news’ piece?
The New York Times hates Facebook because so many people get their news off of Facebook. People don't want to pay for news when they can get it for free. That's why the NYT is talking about "disinformation" on Facebook, and how they want the company to "do something about it."
I don't think the NYT is against free speech, per se. But they want tighter editorial controls on Facebook. They want Facebook to oversee everything that is said on their website, and remove the bad stuff. This would be incredibly expensive for Facebook (if not impossible). And it would also turn their business model completely inside-out. Facebook would be a lot more like the NYT, with the same cost structure. Plus if they have editorial control over everything that is said on Facebook, then they could be sued for what is said on their website.
Freedom = more money for Facebook
editorial control like the NYT = expensive, bad business model
Zuckerberg is not a free speech guy. He's a looking-out-for-Facebook's-bottom-line guy. His problem is that his company is filled with leftists who want to regulate speech. What he really needs to do is move his company to Texas.
"another NYT article by Someone named Harold Schmit suggested we only give the vaccine to people of color to "level the playing field"
It was actually "Harald Schmidt, an expert in ethics and health policy at the University of Pennsylvania, said 'Older populations are whiter. Society is structured in a way that enables them to live longer. Instead of giving additional health benefits to those who already had more of them, we can start to level the playing field a bit.'"
But he is incorrect, since "society is structured in a way that enables" Asians and mestizos to have the longest life-spans in the US, not whites.
"VA to Give Nonwhites[/Asians] Higher Priority Access to Vaccine"
VA: "What criteria will VA use to decide which Veterans get the COVID-19 vaccine first? ...
"Race and ethnicity. Data shows that some groups of people have been disproportionately affected by COVID-19. These include Black, Hispanic, and Native American communities"
As Sailer points out, "Men with COVID-19 three times more likely [than women] to need intensive care" but nobody is suggesting that men get vaccine priority over women.
I will pile on any social media or tech firm regarding privacy all day every day ... but people who “need” their smarphones *and* demand privacy are kidding themselves.
You are the product being sold. You and your every word you speak or type, everywhere you go, every site you visit, every app you use including how long you look at every picture, how active you are, when you’re sleeping and for how long and how well, etc. All of it tracked, analyzed, and sold around the world to ... who knows? Anyone who will pay for it.
And if you have not yet watched The Social Dilemma, watch it today.
"they are all in dire need of government regulation."
But then, everything is, except the Biden family business.
"I don't like seeing freedom of speech processed into cozying up to Trump! That's a low move."
That's a very nice sentiment. But then, we are dealing with progs, so any move goes.
Freedom of speech is in the Trump camp, these days. If you haven't noticed it, you haven't said stuff that's typically cancelled.
Hunter Biden story, anyone. Anyone? Facebook has nothing to say when it comes to either freedom of speech or privacy. Neither does Apple. But Apple is less obvious about it. Facebook is all about data collection, censoring, and manipulation. Apple is also about data collection, and more data collection. But they do, at least, produce products of value. Facebook produces nothing. They make their living collecting information on you, and selling it to anyone offering up money for it. Including governments around the world.
Facebook is a disease. And it astounds me how many submit to this disease and make it an integral part of their life.
Eton College ("fields of Eton") fired a teacher for thinking men and women were different. BBC story
He specifically got fired for posting his cancelled proposed talk on youtube.
via derb
"These tech companies have too much power. And no matter how you slice it, they are all in dire need of government regulation."
One can argue with the second sentence, but who could seriously disagree with the first? They just elected a president for fuck's sake.
Apple may be on the right side in this instance, but it's still a case of giant monopolies or oligopolies fighting over who gets to haul off more of your carcass.
Harald Schmidt, an expert in ethics and health policy at the University of Pennsylvania
Probably the official spokesman when it comes to Nordic/Aryan affairs ...
I liked him better when he was the "David Letterman of Germany" ...
Google and YouTube have publicly declared their policy to prevent all discussion about the election fraud that happened in the 2020 election.
However, discussion of that topic still is permitted on Facebook. That is an enormous gap in the wall that is being built against all such public discussion. That is why Zuckerberg is being criticized and pressured.
Although Google owns Blogger, discussion of the election fraud still is permitted on its blogs. For now, Google is simply preventing effective searches for such blog articles.
Google's effort to remove all such articles from Blogger is still in the future. Google still needs to hire many more recent university graduates to do the thorough work of purging all such discussions from Blogger.
Howard, the tech billionaires are not "liberals," they're using progressives, don't be a dumbass.
Oh Kara. She picks out a praiseworthy thing Zuck did last year in refusing to police political advertisements--not saint-like either since FB gets a ton of money for these ads--and tries to turn it into pro-Trump. Apple is kind of scary and big, but it's still a hardware company. It's old fashioned in a way, making things and selling them and then making other things that work with those things and selling those, creating a whole eco system of things that interoperate nicely, a semi-walled garden of things that play better with one another than with things from, say, Samsung. But if people stop liking their things, which happened once before in the mid-80s when they lost huge market share, Apple loses their power, and quickly. They have diversified their revenue streams for sure, taking a piece of everything sold in their garden, but it's still more or less a hardware company and until not too long ago was more or less valued as one, if you look at the multiple they were getting on revenue. Then 2020 happened. Anyway, Apple is a company that arose and can thrive in a world with personal data privacy, and doesn't depend on its total erosion for its eventual monetization strategy just as every single tech "platform" that's launched since myspace does. So Tim Cook may be annoying, and their products overpriced and their negotiating tactics reminiscent of the mafia, but Apple is structurally one of the good guys. So's Tesla, even if they take a lot of govt cheese. All the rest are evil, even if Zuck may try to find a free speech concordant message.
...untoward cozying up to the Trump administration.
"Son, your mother and me would like you to cozy up to the Zuckerberg boy...
Will you shut-up? We're not gonna have a tech industry brawl!"
I suspect some see this fight between Apple and Facebook as one akin to the conflict between Trotsky and Stalin. (At this point I can’t say who’s Stalin in this analogy)
Howard said...
"Privacy is an allusion."
I agree but an allusion to what. That's the big question.
John Henry
Harald Schmidt, an expert in ethics and health policy at the University of Pennsylvania
An ethicist is a credentialed expert who provides high-minded reasons why you need to die.
Steve Jobs has been dead 10 years but his legendary reality distortion field lives on.
How does Apple have "hegemony"?
Apple has about 13%market share.
Samsung has over 20%
Android has over 80.
Fuck Apple and all their twee fanboys and fangirls.
Where are they now in computer market share? Less than 5%?
John Henry
Zuckerberg thru a foundation spent $500 million to elect Biden.
FB is pay to play. It’s becoming harder and harder to get reach organically without paying. And most advertising is done wrong, wastes money, especially since Facebook and Google keep changing what works.
Apple sees Facebook and Google as competitors. Facebook and Google are “free”, so you are the product. Your private information is a resource they need in order to get advertisers to pay. Apple threatens Facebook and Google by making their targeting less effective by reducing the ability to track you physically and across the web.
"I'm already inclined to side with Apple on the privacy issue, but I don't like seeing freedom of speech processed into cozying up to Trump! That's a low move."
It's a move you have been paying the NYT to make daily for the last four years. Kara Swisher takes it for granted that having a positive relationship with the sitting, elected President of the United States is reprehensible. It doesn't even cross her mind (not a long journey in any case) that this might be a position requiring some sort of justification. All her friends hate Trump!
Battlespace prep. The Biden/Harris administration is going to neuter Zuckerberg and Facebook. Facebook is too powerful, as they know first hand from using it for the past four years as a weapon against Trump and the Deplorables. If they can do it, someone else can turn it around on them.
Swisher's schoolgirl crush on Hillary is coloring her analysis here.
Blogger Howard said...
tim maguire: if librills hate profits why are they dominating the global billionaire elite technology entrepreneur class of free market capitalist robber barons?
"Hypocrisy is the deference that vice grants to virtue." Hypocrisy is a necessary part of .
Congress was on the war path because Gates spent a small fraction of what his revenue required for lobbying.
Congress wasn't getting their protection money, and his store was about to experience a devastating confluence random accidents of fate.
He learned quickly and began spending billions on lobbying and shifted his politics left.
“Howard, the tech billionaires are not "liberals," they're using progressives, don't be a dumbass.”
One of the defying characteristics of progressivism is the belief in an elite who can make decisions for the rest of us better than we can through their expertise (real or imagined). In a lot of respects, this is the opposite of classical liberalism. Progressives quite happily suppress speech that they don’t like, because it is, in their expert opinion, bad for society.
This was probably Trump’s biggest sin - that he didn’t trust the elite and its experts, instead seeing that they often are out only for themselves. And of course, Joe and Jill Biden are all in, with trusting the elites. You did know that Jill Biden has a doctorate degree, and that makes her an expert and part of the elite? Joe’s solution to the COVID-19 pandemic would have been to trust the experts more. Perfect progressive response, except that they were a big part of the problem in the first place.
I don’t think that these American plutocrats are actively evil, for the most part. But Hitler probably didn’t think that of himself either. I suspect that more, they are just progressives who hold real power. They just want what is best for mankind, and are uniquely positioned, due to their obvious superiority (as evidenced by their obscene wealth combined with adherence to progressive thought), to make decisions for the rest of us. And getting even more filthy rich is just a mere byproduct of them sacrificing to make the world a better place. Indeed, it is almost Calvinistic the way they associate virtue with financial success. (At least until the occasional hiccup, when one of them, such as the aforementioned Jobs, does something really really stupid, and pays the price (he died, and probably shouldn’t have, if he were really as smart as he thought he was)).
Another of Trump’s sins was to point out that China did not really portend what what is best for mankind. They have, for the most part been run by a bureaucracy of the best and the brightest for many centuries. Except, that those on the very top, like our tech billionaires, are perfectly willing to live the life of the obscenely rich and powerful, as long as they can pretend that it is for the common good. They may be smarter than the rest of us (Orientals are statistically smarter, on IQ tests, than Whites, by between a couple and maybe 6-8 IQ points), but that doesn’t really translate into innovation. They really did give us COVID-19. They very likely did create it in one of their virology labs, probably negligently released it into their own society, and in trying to save face, allowed wed it to explode around the world. (No one should be surprised that COVID-19, along with similar coronaviruses, tend to not be as virulent among Orientals - they were very likely engaged in bio weapons research when they created it). And they quarantined by welding the doors of apartment complexes shut.
Individuals do not matter to progressives, unless they are part of the ruling elite. Nor, of course, to communists. And that is maybe where they most differ from traditional liberals, where individuals matter more than institutions in society.
Bruce Hayden said...
“You did know that Jill Biden has a doctorate degree, a
So do hunter and joe
The only thing that makes Dr Biden different from Dr Biden and Dr Biden is that she wants people to call her by it.
John Henry
“ He learned quickly and began spending billions on lobbying and shifted his politics left.”
Funny thing about Gates and Microsoft is that the only technology that they ever really did well, was Gates’ original product - compilers. He just had a very good eye for technology trends. He stole DOS from DRI, and the Windows interface from Apple. And then spent much of a decade getting a multithreaded operating system to operate adequately, when he could have done it very quickly by just hiring the right people from legacy computer companies, instead for naive fresh outs from college. The technology was out there - MSFT just refused to hire the people who understood it. They just reinvented the wheel again - slowly.
I definitely remember the time when his company was growing like crazy, and they seemed completely oblivious about the reality that they needed to concentrate on the political and legal side. For example, I interviewed there for a patent attorney slot there in the late 1990s. I was shocked, at the time, first by the discovery that they had fewer patent attorneys than we had in our Austin office for my employer at the time (their corporate revenues at the time were maybe 4-5x ours, and we had >10x the number of patent attorneys) And none of them were as experienced as I was (less than a decade under my belt at the time). But then, the lead there asked me what I thought of their new shrink wrap license (that gave them unlimited paid up patent and copyright licenses to all of their licensees patents and copyrights). Having discussed it online, I was prepared - it almost assuredly violated Sherman §2 (Monopolization). She said”what?” And I didn’t get the job offer. Within a month, the DOJ had sued them for just that - violation the Sherman Antitrust Act with their shrink wrap license. I think that this was right after having been similarly sued for tying Windows 95/98 to their version of DOS (yes - they had added code to test whether it was running over MS or DR DOS, and put out an error message in the latter case - the DOJ expert who found the code was on our Thurs conference call) Part of why I thought this so odd at the time was that I was dealing with a bunch of IBM lawyers at the time (they inevitably had more lawyers present and involved than anyone else). And they had all been required to take an antitrust class as part of their orientation when going to work there.
Eventually, after my last real interactions with MSFT, they did figure out that they had to deal with Wash. DC. Just a cost of doing business. Other big tech companies go through the same sort of growth curve. A decade ago, I was lobbying against the America Invents Act, and we were shocked to discover that the companies pushing the legislation had more paid lobbyists opposing our feeble volunteer effor, than there were members of Congress. Some of the big money was from the pharma companies, but biggest was apparently Google. Supposedly, at the time, they were spending $100 million a year lobbying, in DC.
That all said, I do think that the Gateses together are doing good things with their money, using it far, far, more effectively than the government ever could. They really have saved a bunch of lives. But I also appreciate what other tech companies have done in other areas, and esp in space exploration.
“You did know that Jill Biden has a doctorate degree, a”
“So do hunter and joe”
“The only thing that makes Dr Biden different from Dr Biden and Dr Biden is that she wants people to call her by it.”
It was a reference to the comments over the last couple days about the quality (or lack thereof) of her “dissertation”.
It has been thirty years since I received the same sort of doctorate degree that SLO Joe and Humpin Hunter have. I have used “Doctor” rarely. Sometimes to get cheap magazine subscriptions, and the like. And on my annual ski trips when we had several MDs, PharmDs, and even a chiropractor, using the honorific. And, I used it with foreign correspondence a bit. German, maybe Russian, and many of the Latin countries (Dr is gendered in at least Spanish) are overly into this sort of honorifics (a friend of mine was addressed as Professor, Dr (JD), Dr (PhD), LT Col, whenever he would take his sabbaticals in Germany). Here, in the US, it is considered gauche. Worse than Esq.
Oh, and in dealing with my kid, and their newly acquired PhD. I have been noted to have addressed them as Dr xxxx Hayden, then signed the missive Dr Bruce Hayden. And even used the “Dr” when referencing to my father, next brother, and sister in law. Since my kid are sometimes addressed at work as “Dr xxxx” (since there is another xxxx working there), I have recently adopted that - the “Dr” with just our first names, since most of us share the same last name (and the sister in law could, but never has).
Kara Swisher is a liberal lesbo, she's always running her liberal mouth on CNBC, just another liberal.
Facebook (and all social media) are evil.
YOU are the product and you're not getting paid.
Apple is a huge company, but until proven otherwise they are at least trying to build privacy safeguards into their products.
I knew what you were doing bruce and approve. We need to mock Dr Jill Biden EdD every chance we get.
I was just piling on. To avoid future confusion, I'll try to remember to refer to them as Dr Joe, Dr Jill and Dr Hunter.
John Henry
How did Bill Gates "steal" DOS?
Everything I've ever heard was that he bought it for money from a willing seller.
Was kildahl dumb for selling it so cheap? Perhaps,in hindsight.
On the other hand we can't predict the future and a bird in the hand etc.
Hardly theft. Theft means illegality. I don't even see it as any way immoral.
John Henry
That's like saying Jobs stole the point and click interface from Xerox (which "inspired" Windows too) and their research facility. If you know not what you have, or don't know where to go with it, and then someone shows the way, that's not theft.
The mouse was not easy. It took mountain going into labor.
"How did Bill Gates 'steal' DOS?
Everything I've ever heard was that he bought it for money from a willing seller.
Was kildahl dumb for selling it so cheap? Perhaps,in hindsight."
On July 27, 1981, Gates paid for right to the "quick and dirty operating system" (QDOS) from a company called Seattle Computer Systems. He did not buy it from Kildahl.
There have been those over the years who insist that MS-DOS (or QDOS) was little more than a repackaging of Kildahl's CP/M, but the evidence for this is thin. One might just as well argue that Kildahl stole CP/M from Digital Equipment Corp. as he used much of the same file structure, and included functional equivalents of Digital's utilities.
But a more rational view is that much of what went into CP/M and MS-DOS was common knowledge in the computer science world of that time, and thus nothing was "stolen." What Gates had that Kildahl didn't was the insight to see a huge business opportunity, act promptly to seize it, and then defend his newly-won position ruthlessly.
Post a Comment