Who do you want to torture today?

Matthew X profrv at nex.net.au
Thu Apr 15 03:55:12 PDT 1999


"...
This guy, William Gates, is my age....I've never met him. I hate to pick on 
him. He's obviously a smart man. Obviously a nicer guy than a lot of his 
competitors. Physically killed and ate all of his competitors. The older he 
gets, the uglier he gets.
It's all about fear, uncertainty and hate. Where do you want to go today to 
give us some money?
The man seems troubled. He has a guilty conscience. Financing third-world 
kids. Palladium-secuirty state. An operating system that fears and hates you.
Like an airport. They still expect you to spend money in there.
Where to you want to go today? Men with automatic weapons. Surveillance 
cameras all over the place. You can't sob as you kiss your mother goodbye 
at the airport, because it's all on videotape. Then a security check, 
assumes you've swallowed dynamite and will kill any one you see.
That's the contemporary computer system. Razor-thin returns on investment. 
Can't innovate. If you do it will be swept up into Microsoft OS (or Apple).
Largest legal destruction of wealth in history. VCs should admit it. 
Swaggering tech CEOs a race of slaves, like deer in market's headlights.
Moral choices keep getting starker. Even free software guys spend most of 
their time aping commercial software.
Free software still has an almost pirate state of mind. GNU's Not Linix? 
What are you, then? Something childish about that.
Not as bad as the scene in commercial software. There's no reason to buy 
Microsoft software that spies on you. Do you want ot make Jack Valenti the 
king of your box and Mickey Mouse your commissar?
Why do you put up with viruses? Not just infecting your girlfriend, boys, 
you get your mom, your five-year old daughter. Why don't you teach your 
11-year-old daughter not to click on that attachment? Because she's your 
11-year-old daughter, moron.
My posting software just crapped out for a few minutes, which means that I 
lost a bunch of this talk. So I'm just going to listen.
FROM
http://www.siliconvalley.com/mld/siliconvalley/business/columnists/dan_gillmor/ejournal/3742378.htm
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