Guest essay by Eric Worrall
h/t James Delingpole – Microsoft founder and entrepreneur Bill Gates has joined the growing ranks of green activists, who think that ordinary people aren’t qualified to choose who should govern them.
According to Gates;
… Those who study energy patterns say we are in a gradual transition from oil and coal to natural gas, a fuel that emits far less carbon but still contributes to global warming. Gates thinks that we can’t accept this outcome, and that our best chance to vault over natural gas to a globally applicable, carbon-free source of energy is to drive innovation “at an unnaturally high pace.”
When I sat down to hear his case a few weeks ago, he didn’t evince much patience for the argument that American politicians couldn’t agree even on whether climate change is real, much less on how to combat it. “If you’re not bringing math skills to the problem,” he said with a sort of amused asperity, “then representative democracy is a problem.” What follows is a condensed transcript of his remarks, lightly edited for clarity. …
Read more: http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2015/11/we-need-an-energy-miracle/407881/
Some other highlights – Bill Gates on Renewable energy;
Well, there’s no fortune to be made. Even if you have a new energy source that costs the same as today’s and emits no CO2, it will be uncertain compared with what’s tried-and-true and already operating at unbelievable scale and has gotten through all the regulatory problems, like “Okay, what do you do with coal ash?” and “How do you guarantee something is safe?” Without a substantial carbon tax, there’s no incentive for innovators or plant buyers to switch. …
On the need for more government;
… Realistically, we may not get more than a doubling in government funding of energy R&D—but I would love to see a tripling, to $18 billion a year from the U.S. government to fund basic research alone. Now, as a percentage of the government budget, that’s not gigantic. But we are at a time when the flexibility—because of health costs and other things, but primarily health costs—of the budget is very, very squeezed. But you could do a few-percent tax on all of energy consumption, or you could use the general revenue. This is not an unachievable amount of money. …
Bill Gates has attracted significant controversy during his career, for example when he accused developers of free software of being communists, when they refused to give Microsoft unfettered rights to exploit their work. Gates has also spent a lot of time in courtrooms defending Microsoft from accusations of sharp business practices, of being a monopoly, of violating anti-trust laws. So to me personally, it is no surprise that Gates’ response to the difficulty of convincing people to accept his point of view on climate change, is to express authoritarian contempt for ordinary people having such freedoms.
“Representative Democracy is a Problem” … so is Windows 8, and the Windows 10 upgrade
+10,000 ( give or take two degrees )
I upgraded to Windows 10. Boy, what a mistake that was. At the moment I can’t be bothered to do a system restore and reinstall all my apps, but I am seriously considering it as some important external hardware (A simple USB hard drive) now no longer works reliably.
My wife upgraded to Windows 10. She’s now running a Mac.
I believe the corporate world is preparing to go down the migration path from Windows 7, 8 and 8.1 to 10. I believe it will be a disaster similar to Windows 8. Absolutely nothing wrong with Windows 7 (32 or 64 bit). I have to stick with “Windoze” because of the IT world I work in. In fact the last site I worked at migrated from Novell to Microsoft, and then the New South Wales Govn’t (Australia) outsourced the whole lot.
Dammit people, migrate to open source! Install linux parallell to your windows and use only windows when absolutely necessary. Distrowatch.com will get you started. Open source is democracy, it is a beautiful concept and it works. I dont understand why people think they must pay for an OS, i really dont.
I understand what you say, unfortunately (Fortunately for me as it pays me beer tokens every month) the corporate world is locked in to this path. But from what I understand, the Windows 10 licensing model is different whereby you effectively “rent” the OS and any applications. No more the once off cost of a license key. I, and many other users, am stuck with M$ as I use it 99% of the time.
Wife’s computer is 10-mine is XP guess which one is the more stable and reliable.
XP of course! If I did not need more than 4GB RAM (I do a lot of VMWare work…need lots of RAM), I’d still be using it.
I refuse to “upgrade” to Windows 10. Windows 8 was bad enough – managed to get back to windows 7 on my computer…
My laptop refuses to be upgraded. It dies at boot.
I use windows 10 across the board, runs perfectly in completely contrast to windows 8 which was a complete nightmare to install and only worked after spending nearly 15 hours on the phone with Microsoft.
I only use Photoshop, Bridge and Lightroom and whilst there are still a few issues with graphics card problems which are more likely due to Adobe than windows, they also work faster than before.
What continues to surprise me is how guys like Gates can be so smart within their own specific discipline yet completely stupid when they presume to understand a subject which should be within their grasp – numbers – but clearly not. Gates wouldn’t parrot someone’s ideas about his own discipline without verification especially if it affected his wallet but when it comes to matters about climate he apparently presumes to know everything without looking at the data. Microsoft data???
Agree w/Bjorn — good idea to have a couple Linux distros alongside Windoz (I have Puppy and Mint). They’re free & have secure download repositories for about any programs you need.
The problem with Windows 10 is, not that it isn’t ready, is that it tracks you every which it can. At one time, Microsoft mocked Google for all the tracking they do; now Microsoft has made Windows do what Google does. If I want to thwart Google or Facebook, I just don’t use them. What can I do when my operating system tracks me? Just because something doesn’t cost money doesn’t mean it is free. Do you really think a publicly traded multi-billion dollar corporation would give away an expensive piece of software because they like you?
If you do get Windows 10, be sure to read up on and then turn off all tracking. This includes turning off Cortana, Bing search, and telemetry. A program called O&O ShutUp10 will help. Also, be sure to download a proper start menu, such as Classic Shell.
How odd.
Upgrading to Win 10 x64 was painless here compared to previous upgrades: no need to reinstall all applications. A pleasant first.
After the last updates patches, runs absolutely solid on all our systems.
Now no hardware or software issues and better UI organization than Win 8.1 x64.
A separate issue from Bill Gates beliefs regarding AGW with which I do not agree.
My own view being so-called AGW is the worst example of cargo cult junk pseudoscience in the history of science to-date.
Sorry to hear your news, Patrick. I too did the Windows 10 upgrade. It destroyed my computer in the sense that it failed to completely install and left me on the DOS prompt page stuck in an eternal loop I could never escape. Had to buy a new computer, which runs Windows 10. I have to say, so far, it’s not a bad operating system. That free upgrade stuff might have been in fact a murderous Trojan Horse. I can’t believe I fell for it.
My firm IT upgraded us to Windoze 11 – so I did too at home (need to match work so our IT can help me at home when I’m on the network, and sometimes even when I’m not). Dunno what I’ll do when I have to retire and no longer have the free help.
I still like M$ DOS 3.2
It’s been downhill ever since. The hardware speedups can’t keep up with the bloat ware slowdowns.
g
Upgraded both my PCs to win 10 from win 7. Both went perfectly, didn’t have to reinstall anything. Everything runs faster too.
I don’t know what kind of weird failures you guys are encountering. I upgraded my machines from 7 to 10 and they are definitely working better, faster, cleaner, using less RAM, and don’t need an aftermarket menu to work like 7.
Windows 10 is a great workstation platform, the Win10 team is committed to fixing any audio or video issues for the apps I most use, and so far I have encountered none (I saw a BSOD once, when my ancient 560Ti failed randomly last month, but that’s hardly an OS issue).
I have an i7-4790K @ 4GHz, Asus Z97-A, 16Gb RAM, a GeForce GTX960 with 2Gb and 3 monitors, the OS is on a 240Gb SSHD, and data is on about 10 HDs. Solid, middle of the road machine.
Bill Gates never knew a customer he didn’t want to rip off.
Bill can probably organise camps where you can be re-educated and learn to love “Windows”!
… or they will sue everybody who doesn’t go to Windows 10 under the RICO statutes
It’s always a ‘problem’ when YOU live under “representative democracy”.
The warmists that scream loudest largely live in comfortable, western representative democracies. A good standard of living and freedom of speech. Anyone in the USA or UK who says they don’t have it should go live for 5 years in China, Egypt, Iran, Burundi and all that jazz…………….then come back and report to us – if you are out of jail that is. 😉
Speaking of “education”:
http://ukraine.usembassy.gov/events/techcamp-2013-kyiv.html
US State Department-Microsoft public-private monopolistic partnership for a better world. What could possibly go wrong?
Why are we discussing his business activities? It’s his his ridiculous statements on climate that should be our concern.
Yes. If “bringing math skills to the table” is a prerequisite, why are HIS so poor? Maybe he should stick to his zeros and ones . . .
Because, George, Bill Gates has proven himself to be anything but honest and law-abiding in his business dealings. That character flaw apparently carries over to his statements on climate, which are just more devious, self-serving garbage.
You should know the Gates is a High School graduate who DROPPED OUT OF HARVARD (where he played Poker instead of studying) and then started M$ where he finagled the biggest Jack Pot in history. He has the IQ but not any sort of education. He epitomes the Dunning-Kruger effect. His money insulates him from reality and also enables his arrogance. As far as I can tell everything he has dabbled in his eleemosynary quest has turned to dross likewise his education efforts.
Dan Kurt
Actually Windows is the problem. It always was and still is basically the McDonalds OS. Cyber junk food. And Bill Gates was the creep who made his billions selling the trashcode to the world. I’ll take a rain check on pretty much anything that weasel says.
I find it hilarious that Bill Gates, who made his fortune by Pirating CPM Basic and claiming it as his own work and then charging Customers for every mistake made in the Software (Please buy the next Upgrade), should be calling for more Government Funding. Like that has worked in the past! It’s no wonder that back in the early DOS days, Microsoft Software was compared to buying a car without the back wheels and complaining about the dragging sound – Oh, Rear Wheels come with Version 1.02 and then after buying Version !.02, your car is discovered to have No Brakes, which coincidentally comes with Version 1,1!
You remember CPM? That was back in S-100 days. Almost 40 years ago.
Yes “M Simon”, my first “PC” was a hand built IMSAI 8080 S-100 machine. I used an old Western Electric W-30 as my Input – Output device. Stored Programs on paper Tape. Designed after the older Altai 8800, the S-100 bus was the mainstay of early Homebrew Computing.
Sorry for the Typo – Altair 8800
He remains a thief. A very successful, very rich thief.
“who made his fortune by Pirating CPM Basic and claiming it as his own work ”
You seem to have mixed up a couple of stories here.
I’m not aware of a claim that he pirated CP/M BASIC. He wrote BASIC for the Altair 8800 before CP/M existed. Although he is said to have stolen computer time on Harvard’s PDP-10 for that development, I’m not aware of anyone saying he stole the code. Microsoft did have a nice BASIC for CP/M, but I’ve never before seen anyone claim he stole it. He did get in a legendary kerfuffle with those who were passing around pirated copies of his Altair BASIC.
Microsoft did buy what became MS-DOS from a third party who had developed it based on the CP/M documentation. From what I’ve seen in detailed discussions online, claims that it was a pirate port of CP/M look to be mistaken. No links because this was many years ago.
I still use CP/M and occasionally use Microsoft’s CP/M BASIC. I highly recommend both; they’re not obsolete until something better comes along.
re: Bill Gates and BASIC
It’s an interesting point.
In 1964, John G. Kemeny and Thomas E. Kurtz designed the original BASIC language at Dartmouth College in New Hampshire. […]The designers of the language decided to make the compiler available free of charge so that the language would become widespread.
[…]
One of the first BASICs to appear was Tiny BASIC, a simple BASIC variant designed by Dennis Allison at the urging of Bob Albrecht of the Homebrew Computer Club. He had seen BASIC on minicomputers and felt it would be the perfect match for new machines like the MITS Altair 8800. How to design and implement a stripped-down version of an interpreter for the BASIC language was covered in articles by Allison in the first three quarterly issues of the People’s Computer Company newsletter published in 1975 and implementations with source code published in Dr. Dobb’s Journal of Tiny BASIC Calisthenics & Orthodontia: Running Light Without Overbyte. Versions were written by Li-Chen Wang and Tom Pittman.
In 1975 MITS released Altair BASIC, developed by Bill Gates and Paul Allen as the company Micro-Soft, which eventually grew into corporate giant Microsoft. The first Altair version was co-written by Gates, Allen, and Monte Davidoff.
So, probably not too much original work by Gates, Allen, and Davidoff.
Here is how MS/DOS came to be.
GAtes’ mom was on the IBM board. When the company needed a programming language for their PC project, she suggested they contact her son and his colleagues, which IBM did, acquiring rights to their version of Basic.
Microsoft had never written an operating system, so Gates suggested that IBM investigate an OS called CP/M (Control Program for Microcomputers), written by Gary Kildall of Digital Research. Kindall had his Ph.D. in computers and had written the most successful operating system of the time, selling over 600,000 copies of CP/M, his operating system set the standard at that time. (I used it on my Kay-Pro.)
IBM tried to contact Gary Kildall for a meeting in SF, but he was out of town. Its executives did meet with Mrs. Kildall, who refused to sign a non-disclosure agreement.
IBM soon returned to Gates and gave Microsoft a contract to write a new operating system, which would eventually wipe out Kildall’s CP/M.
The “Microsoft Disk Operating System” or MS-DOS was based on Microsoft’s purchase of QDOS, the “Quick and Dirty Operating System”, written by Tim Paterson of Seattle Computer Products, for their prototype Intel 8086 based computer.
However, ironically, QDOS was based (or copied from, as some historians feel) on Kildall’s CP/M. Paterson had bought a CP/M manual and used it as the basis to write his operating system in six weeks. QDOS differed enough (although trivially) from CP/M to be considered legally a different product. IBM had deep enough pockets in any case probably to have won an infringement case, if they had needed to protect their product. Microsoft bought the rights to QDOS for $50,000, keeping the IBM and Microsoft deal a secret from Paterson and his company, Seattle Computer Products.
Please permit me to correct my prior statement.
Bill’s mom wasn’t on the IBM board. The IBM chairman was on the board of United Way with Mrs. Gates. That was the connection that led to the crony capitalist, monopolist, socialist scumbag Bill making his ill-gotten gains.
Steve P
November 4, 2015 at 2:33 pm
re: Bill Gates and BASIC
Source for italicized text was Wikipedia article on BASIC.
“So, probably not too much original work by Gates, Allen, and Davidoff.”
Try this bit, from the Wikipedia TRS-80 page in the section about its BASIC:
Level I Basic was based on Li-Chen Wang’s free Tiny BASIC, additional functions added by Radio Shack….
Level I BASIC was not tokenized—reserved words were stored literally. In order to maximize the code that could be crammed into 4K of memory users could enter abbreviations for reserved words. For example, writing “P.” instead of “PRINT” thus saving 3 bytes.
Level II BASIC was licensed from Microsoft. It was a cut-down version of the 16 KB Extended BASIC,..
Not stated explicitly is that Level II BASIC *was* tokenized.
I’ve used both Level I and Level II BASIC on the TRS-80. There is a world of difference between the two. Level II BASIC is similar to Microsoft’s CP/M BASIC that I still use occasionally.
A glib statement that Gates couldn’t have done any original work because source to Tiny BASIC was available is evidence of nothing.
“A glib statement that Gates couldn’t have done any original work because source to Tiny BASIC was available is evidence of nothing.”
Well, in my view, everything is always evidence of something, but I didn’t base my assessment of Gates’ work merely on the availability of the Tiny BASIC source in that time frame.
Your comment overlooks the rest of the material I quoted, which begins with the decisive fact that the original work on BASIC was done In 1964, by John G. Kemeny and Thomas E. Kurtz.
What Gates et all did is more precisely defined, I think, as a port, and as I see it, that’s not really original work; it’s an implementation, or adaptation.
In software engineering, porting is the process of adapting software so that an executable program can be created for a computing environment that is different from the one for which it was originally designed (e.g. different CPU, operating system, or third party library).
— Wikipedia
Now understand I’m not necessarily trying to diminish what Gates and Allen accomplished, and considering what they had to work with, it was a remarkable achievement. Others may have recognized the potential of the new microprocessor, but only Gates had the balls to get on the horn with MITS.
I’ve used several versions of BASIC beginning with Applesoft on the Apple II+ and continuing with several DOS flavors up through Quick BASIC. I could tangle spaghetti with the best of ’em, but all the BASIC pastas had a somewhat different flavor, and syntax.
What Gates has said here about representative democracy is not that original either. Rich elites have been saying much the same thing for a long time.
I am Ctrl-Alt-Del, I am IE under Windows 10 because Edge does not support extensions.
I don’t know what you all are complaining about. Windows 10 is a nice OS that for my 3 computers, runs nicely. HP hardware on the other hand, I have had no end of problem with my 2 HP computers from a hardware standpoint.
@Jeff:
>Windows 10 is a nice OS…
I’ve been running GNU/Linux machines for so long, I have no idea how to use Windows at all.
There are so many things I would miss if I had to downgrade to Windows. So… I really don’t know how all you Windows people get by without things like:
-a built in compiler.
-man pages.
-a built in database.
-localhost:631
-ssh
-and a package system which contains a massive number of applications all available for install at the touch a button.
The problem in this case is not Windows 8 or the Windows 10 upgrade. The problem is that Bill Gates is from the Seattle area and has never left for more than brief periods. The Seattle area is the “world” that Bill Gates grew up in and continues to live in. He has been running in the same social circles his entire “adult” life. The Seattle elite by most measures is more liberal than even the San Francisco elite. And they do believe very strongly that they know best.
Because he is clever and a billionaire people assume that Bill Gates would have insight in areas outside his area of expertise. We live near Seattle and have heard the stuff that Mr. Gates was parroting over and over. When we hear the same from Mr. Gates it confirms that he likely has never been a true innovator… someone able to see beyond the limitations of the world view he was indoctrinated in to.
If Gates was to actually take a hard look at the data and conclude that it does not support the AGW theory then maybe we could conclude that it is also possible for Microsoft to do something other than lumber along in a predictable evolutionary manner.
To quote the line from “Fiddler on the Roof”
“When you’re rich, they think you really know…”
One of the best pieces of advice I got as a young man was from a wealthy old lady.
“Hunny, you need to stop admiring us wealthy types. When you get to be my age, you realize that knowing the virtues of compound interest and rolling over your dividends doesn’t mean I know anything about anything else except maybe how to make a good martini.”
I get it now. Didn’t get it then.
“””””….. “If you’re not bringing math skills to the problem,” he said with a sort of amused asperity, “then representative democracy is a problem.” What follows is a condensed transcript of his remarks, …..”””””
Well now we know that he is just a very rich idiot.
But no, I don’t begrudge him one brass razoo of the rich part.
But since ALL of mathematics is ‘fictional’ ; meaning it is not real, then there are no solutions to clean energy availability to be found in the imaginative art of mathematics.
The Physical Universe contains nothing besides humans (as far as we know) that is aware of, capable of sensing or responding to, or taking any action whatsoever, in response to the output of some “math skills” exercise.
Sorry Bill; no energy solutions there I am afraid; you blew it.
G
Agreed.
My guess is that Bill Gates approaches this as a computer science problem. Computers may be deterministic, but the underlying physics is not (nonlinear dynamics, quantum mechanics, etc). Even if modeling deterministic differential equations, numerical methods are not so easy. Finite differences are often only conditionally stable. Floating point math is sometimes tricky (divide two complex numbers anyone?). And we haven’t even gotten to weather (pun) the model has the correct physics, chemistry, biology, … and whether it has been calibrated and validated well enough for its purposes.
The big mistake Microsoft made was in not ditching Vista. The rest is basically just Vista with ever deeper layers of gaffertape. We are still stuck with the legacy of Vista in so may ways, especially the self-referring junctions that get backups stuck in a loop.
Now, now… let’s not beat up on the wimpy wonk. He’s just trying to protect his turf against any future competition so we’ll be stuck with his only. Oh…and he’s trying to make sure that any “ladder” that helped him get from his garage to billionaire is pulled out of reach of any who might wish to follow. He’s no “mentor”, just “mental” in the derogatory sense, like all true leftists must be to embrace contradictory beliefs.
He is a mercantilist. In short: Capitalism for him, Socialism for everyone else.
Yes, a complete hypocrite.
And a very dangerous hypocrite. He has the money to buy a few thousand lefties on the cheap and enough money to destroy any conservative in his way.
All this for a man who made billions in a country which provided him the opportunity he now wants to deny others.
Leonard writes: “All this for a man who made billions in a country which provided him the opportunity he now wants to deny others.”
I believe this practice is called regulatory capture Leonard and it’s old as the hills. It’s the “I got mine” syndrome but it only afflicts people who really don’t have theirs. If you already have what you want, you aren’t concerned about someone else getting what they want. From this it should be apparent that Mr. Gates suffers from an incurable sense of inadequacy and insecurity. It would be sad if it happened to a nicer guy, but Bill is a little bit of a prat in real life.
I’m confused. I thought that’s how it has always worked.
“””””…..
dbstealey
November 4, 2015 at 1:32 pm
So George, …..”””””
Well db, the average citizen could at least have the common sense to not compound the felony, by voting for the same varmint twice, as many supposably smart people did.
And Just watch the same folks do it again in 2016, and give us another dynastic scoundrel, just so they can say they voted for the first dynastic scoundrel.
I fear for my Country, and for our descendants, who must pay the bills.
g
I agree, George. But even the immense problem of paying the bills fades when we see how the constitution and Bill of Rights is being trashed.
Anyway, this is a real problem:
http://36.media.tumblr.com/ef2c2049eef3eb6eb4e6432ae7f408a0/tumblr_nx6ysq157I1rhnukoo1_1280.jpg
Or … also socialism for him if his company gets into trouble. You know, like the General Motors bailout, which then proceeded to ship its factories overseas once it received US Govt funds.
Technocratic Authoritarian is probably a better term. It’s kind of like elevating yourself into a divine pantheon whilst still admitting that you’re mortal – but more divine that the average mortal of course. This is why representative democracy is such a plague for people with his mindset, because it suggests that the lower mortals have some kind of group intelligence that he should be made to submit to or be bound by popular decision.
Representative “democracy” is a huge problem for us in sweden. We suffer under massive carbon taxes just to point out one consequence of being ruled by “representatives” who are appointed not by the people but by party leaders. Gasoline is 7$ per gallon in sweden. Why dont the people get to vote on legislation, direct democracy? Sure I know “why”, we would vote wrong. We already have in sweden the elite of morons deciding for us what is best that Bill Gates want to rule the planet. The past 20 years or so they have ruined a perfectly good country with insane immigration policy, gender bender philosophy and anti manufacturing policies. Direct democracy is the only idea that can save sweden from becoming a failed state like greece.
Agree. Switzerland is the only genuine democracy in the world and power is de-centrallized – as it should be among a free people.
You’ve described a Constitutional Republic, which is the same thing the US has. For some reason I thought Sweden was a parliamentary monarchy, ala Britain?
I don’t know about direct democracy in Switzerland, I believe Antonia may be incorrect on that point, I’ve always thought Switzerland was also a Constitutional Republic divided into Cantons? They come closer to direct democracy than any other country I know of in their (always entertaining) use of referendum, meaning democracy is more reactive than proactive in the sense the Federal government makes law with participation by the Cantons, but the people can overturn the law after it’s made through referendum? I only lived in Switzerland for a short time and I wasn’t interested in politics then, but that was the impression I got.
Personally I favor the idea of direct Constitutional democracy over a pure representative democracy because it’s just too difficult to “buy” a direct democracy, you have to convince the entire electorate. In a more perfect world (of my thinking), we’d have direct democracy (enabled by the advanced communications systems now at our disposal) coupled with the ability to assign proxies on issues we chose to, as we do in corporate elections. As long as I can chose to assign my proxy at will and at any time for the duration of my choosing and that proxy is revocable at any time I chose, I can vote the issues I feel important to me or freely chose a representative on maters I consider unimportant or outside my field of expertise. It would be very difficult to corrupt a system like that.
Writes Bartleby:
Better by far “reactive than proactive.”
Better King Log than King Stork.
And yes, I meant “choose” not “chose” in most of that. The “o” key on my keyboard needs special attention; it’s nearly reached its end of life…
And how is Southern Sweden particularly Swedish women coping with the refugee/migrant crisis since I have read some very alarming stories regarding the increase in rapes.
I wonder how Swedes might have voted on this migrant policy had it been put to the people.
Bjorn you have an easy life in Sweden petrol in Euros 1.38 per litre whereas in the UK we are paying 1.51 per litre and now we rarely grumble because before the price drop it was really high.
David you are paying for a liter what we are paying for the gallon in the Southeast US right now. (At least until the EPA kills all energy production for their institutional religious views.)
Bartleby: I wonder about a system of multiple proxies. I want person A to vote for me on issues of immigration, person B to vote for me on issues of tax policy, person C and so on.
Pick a person who I feel is knowledgeable in and has the time follow issues regarding a particular topic.
Since no one person is an expert in everything.
Of course, as you say, the proxies could be revoked at any time.
Democracy in any form has an intrinsic problem: (Paraphrasing Ben Franklin, I think) “When the people learn they can vote themselves money, it is over.” Buying votes is so much easier than working for them.
James: That’s why I would limit voting to only those who are net taxpayers.
Define “net taxpayer” please.
“””””…..
Antonia
November 3, 2015 at 9:48 pm
Agree. Switzerland is the only genuine democracy in the world and power is de-centrallized – as it should be among a free people. …..””””
genuine democracy is another name for anarchy.
The USA is not a democracy. It is a Constitutional Republic. We do use Democratic processes to elect our representatives, and senators, and the States select the President via the Electoral College process.
Article IV, section 4 of the US Constitution says in part : ” The United States shall guarantee to every State in the union, a Republican form of government, and shall protect each against invasion .”…or words close to that.
Note it tells Washington what they MUST do; unlike Article I section 8 which tells the Congress the 17 things they may do.
g
Note; that does not mean anything about the so-called “Republican” party, which is just Democrat Lite.
So George,
What can the average citicen do when the chief Administrato in the country refuses to do his duty regarding protecting the populace from foreign invasion?
Anything? Or is it BOHICA?
A net taxpayer is one who pays more in taxes than he/she receives in govt services. Everyone receives some govt services, even if it is just your share of police and defense spending.
Do you believe it’s remotely possible to quantify the amount of government service any person receives? And then put a dollar value on it?
And then only allow “net taxpayers” to vote?
Natural disaster in your area? “Sorry, ma’am. That tipped you over the line; no vote for you this year…”
Easy, divide govt spending on such services by the population. Assign that amount to each person.
Or we could just declare that anyone who receives a check from the govt can’t vote again for one year.
@MarkW
I did a ROM calculation once, and at the time it required every person over the age of 18 to pay $20,000 per year in taxes as their “fair share” and so the government didn’t run a deficit. Simply divide the budget by the over-18 demographic. People don’t realize how much the top 20% or so really pay.
More proof that this climate change fiasco has nothing to do with the climate !! It is the socialist elite trying to control the peons !!! Didn’t the world go through this already ??
Bill Gates a socialist? Now really … it may be news to some, but “socialist” is not shorthand for “everything and everyone I despise.” Neither is “librul.”
Gates is closer to being communists.
Exactly!
Exactly to the comment about socialist not equaling everyone I disagree with…
If so he is of the champagne variety.
Any true socialist or communist would give away all their wealth so that they had no more wealth than the average citizen. Until that happens, they are simply hypocrites espousing ‘do what I say, not what I do’.
Just because he made his money in a capitalist system, doesn’t make him a capitalist. It’s his views of what the system should be, that define him.
It may be a bit much to call Gates a socialist, but no one should ever expect business men as a group to be champions of free markets. There is no evidence that they are, and much evidence that many business men will gladly attempt to curry favor with coercive rulers in order to advance their personal interests. Lenin famously said that Capitalists would “sell us the rope we hang them with”.
Gates is largely a product of free enterprise, not a champion of it.
“The goal of socialism is communism.” – Vladimir Lenin
I feel it’s just top-down (elitist) vs bottom-up (egalitarian) , which is the immediate goal in this game . . Once that is clearly achieved, it’s immaterial what was payed lip-service to, by whom . . often just for our confusion and distraction I believe.
JohnKnight commented : …I feel it’s just top-down (elitist) vs bottom-up (egalitarian)…”
It’s both. That is the central theme from the book “And Not A Shot Is Fired” by one of the architects of the Communist takeover of Hungary. Remember? One of those ‘conspiracy theories’?
???
Oops…..Czechoslovakia, not Hungary. Brain fart. Make sense now? The author, Jan Kozak constantly referred to the “top down, bottom up” pressure exerted on influential people mainly through media control and peer pressure to conform. It was a grand plan of subversion successfully carried out behind the scenes to topple the incumbent government and replace it with Communists faithful to the Kremlin.
Yes, that helps, Mark . . I just meant actual/organic bottom-up. as opposed to a few “elites” having the vast majority of power, by law.
A ” net taxpayer ” is somebody who still has a job, if taxation were abolished.
If your pay check comes from the Federal Treasury, you ain’t a taxpayer.
And no; it is true that we do need some of you. Mostly what we need are those who carry something that goes bang, or boom. You are the ones that the Congress is authorized to collect taxes to pay for.
The sneak attack is that Article I Section 8, clause one also tells the Congress, they may collect taxes to pay for the National Debt.
So the 535 scoundrels put everything on the credit card, which the CIC gleefully signs up for, and then they use 1-8-1 to pay off the credit card; well that’s the theory, but they just never make a payment on the credit card.
g
“Representative Democracy is a Problem”
That’s the attitude of someone who is surrounded by sycophants telling him he’s the greatest brain EVAH!!
Gates was in the right place at the right time, and he’s fabulously wealthy as a result. But like lots of other lucky folks, he believes he knows what’s best for everyone else.
I really wish Gates would come here, and try to argue his climate nonsense. He would find out pretty fast that he may know how to sell software, but he doesn’t know jack about what makes the climate tick. He probably doesn’t even know that there are no measurements quantifying what he believes in.
His software is full of bugs and went from being useful to harrowing. I wish Microsoft had never existed.
In reality it was instrumental in rolling out the home PC, so one should not overlook what Microsoft help give the world. Whether it has now passed its sell by date, or benefits too much from a position of monopoly is a different matter
Microsoft is not, and never was a monopoly. Not even close. There have always been viable alternatives.
The fact that most people voluntarily choose MS over the others is not evidence that MS is a monopoly.
Mark
I beg to differ. In the home PC market, there is either Mac or Windows. Of course, there are other OS out there, but these are only used by people who have more than a basic knowledge of computing skills, and therefore outside the home PC market place.
Just go into the usual High Street stores. how many machines are sold without an OS, or say with Linux? Very far and few between. A Monopoly does not have to be the only player in town, and Microsoft is clearly a monopoly, and that is of course, how Mr Gates has made his money, and shed loads of it at that.
Richard: You don’t get to make up your own definitions of words.
As long as their are viable options, then Microsoft cannot be a monopoly.
Just because one of those options is more popular, doesn’t make Microsoft a monopoly.
You could buy computers without operating systems, you just couldn’t do it at the big box retailers.
Lazy consumers don’t make a monopoly either.
MarkW:
Lack of competition isn’t necessary to have a monopoly. Lack of VIABLE competition is sufficient.
When Ma Bell monopolized telephone service, you had plenty of choices… smoke signals, letters, ESP, telegrams…
IIRC the real sticking point regarding whether Microsoft engaged in monopolistic practices wasn’t the lack of competition so much as the issue of how vital Microsoft’s product category was to our economy, to businesses and to private individuals.
takeback: Which is why I specified that there were many viable alternatives to MS.
You may be confusing “viable” with “available and superior, but not economical or practical for businesses and the average private user to switch to.”
Viable in this context means what the definition above stated–It would cause no harm or loss of income to switch products. When business client market share is north of 80%; when most proprietary and commercial business software is written for your OS; when government regulators and clients all use a standard OS… you’re a monopoly.
———————-
Doesn’t really matter. This article demonstrates a serious flaw in the collective American psyche: we worship the wealthy. Why does Gates get any attention at all? Rich.
In your mind, any option that consumers do not chose, is by definition, not viable?
So, Bill Gates places himself ‘up there’ in the ‘Royalty’ class of society now, because he has become rich off the lower classes…Because he had some ingenuity and built himself an empire. That must certainly give him the integrity, intellectual and moral authority to look down upon the common man and decide that they do not have what it takes to be able to govern themselves.
Certainly, God must have looked down upon Mr. Gates and handed to him this inspiration…The innate superiority over the common man. To decide and proclaim his authority over us because of the superior station in life he currently finds himself in. If not for God, then by his immense personal appeal and intellectual prowess. That should be adequate reason for his consideration of himself as being superior to most of the rest of the common people and that the common man/woman do not have what it takes to govern themselves.
What an A**hole and narcissistic, enemy of freedom and the Constitution. This person should have everything the American people spent on his products returned to them and anything he has ever said about freedom or democracy questioned for the probable lies they were.
What a piece of shit Bill Gates is.
Dahlquist, your point about the regal pretensions of Gates and others of his ilk is very appropriate IMO.
I have mentioned before the powerful effect that the recent Magna Carta exhibition at Durham Cathedral had on me and others, the theme being the influence of that document down the centuries and across oceans.
One illustration referred to Charles I who said that between king and subjects there was an unbridgeable gulf. The role of subjects (you and me ) was to submit to the decisions made by those who ruled, without having any involvement in the decisions. The Commons thought otherwise, and until recent times their verdict gained universal acceptance in advanced societies.
Gates appears to want to turn the world back to before that chilly dawn of Jan 30 1649.
This rant shows the fundamental reason why death is designed into our DNA. Everyone eventually sees themselves as God. EVERYONE. Death is the mechanism that prevents powerful tyrants from being durably tyrannical. Bill Gates knows he is going to die soon, and thereby lose all of his influence. He is so megalomaniacal, he is desperately trying to design post humus durability and influence. It is the same for Ray Kutzweil and Larry Page. They seek to be immoral. Not by way of their children, but by way of their egos, their selves. I however refer you to Ozymandias.
In as much as it is human nature for powerful men to be tyrants, it is equally human nature for we critics to bring them down to earth. We are dust and unto dust we shall return.
I have limited my need for any microsoft products, google products etc. I even got rid of my cell phone.
People are much more interesting and warm compared to the gadgets designed by trans-humanist wackos.
Mike.
The Magna Carta is surely the most important and enlightened document concerning Government ever written. It opened the minds and eyes of many people… It’s concept led to the advancements we have, as a civilization, made to this day. And to think that there are still people who would claim tyranny as an acceptable form of governance these days.
I find that the more I hear about the beliefs of many on the left the more I believe that their minds are only half formed. All the freedoms, concern for their fellow man, love, peace, the environment, etc. that they pronounce as their core really boils down to ‘if you don’t believe as I do, you do not deserve my respect as a human, for only my beliefs are righteous’.
Okay, I should have spent a little more time on the formation of my thoughts while writing the previous, but I didn’t. Sorry. I hope you got the point.
On another issue, FOX News reported on the West Antarctic Ice Sheet story from NASA, which was written up as an article here on WUWT yesterday. It is a shame more of these reporters aren’t more informed on the science and issues of climate change and CAGW.
And what the hell is DAGW? New term? Dangerous, devastating, diabolical, disasterous, damaging?
dbstealey writes: “like lots of other lucky folks, he believes he knows what’s best for everyone else.”
Which, in a nutshell, suggests he learned absolutely nothing from his misadventures with the LANMGR. I mean, as long as MS-DOS was an island he couldn’t do too much damage, but putting Windows on the network was a crime.
I totally agree. Where is that man??? Come onto WUWT Billy Boy.
That’s right. The OLPC (one laptop per child) project was instructive. The idea was to make the cheapest laptop possible for the world’s poor, to get them into the information society and help break them out of poverty. It was to run linux. But Billy & MS persuaded them to add about $2 of extra components so he could sell them windows for a few dollars.
Just imagine it! Going to heaps of trouble so he could scrape a few bucks out of the pockets of desperately poor people without even a millionth of his wealth. What a morally dirty, stinking man!
Well, I don’t know about all that, but I do know WUWT is running a lot faster now.
Still a bit of a delay.
YAY !!!
Hey Bill, how about we start our new Socialist Utopia off by redistributing ALL your wealth to people like Bob Tisdale who actually know what they are talking about ??
+ as many billions Gates has ( just to even things out).
I think he is deluded into thinking his grand vision of the world is the only answer. Dangerous for a man with his resources. I do like his ability to enable health resources in third world countries though.
I wish he would add cheap energy to that, it would alleviate many of the health problems in the first place. ( he is a hypocrite)
Why did the article have to play the man and not the ball at the end? Casts doubt on everything else said before…. and it’s such a cheap shot.
I provided references Simon. If you think I’m wrong about something, please be more specific.
Eric,
If you think the points you have made earlier can stand on their merits, why do you need to write the stuff at the end? Give me a big profile businessman that has achieved close to what Gates has, without ruffling a few feathers somewhere along the line. Not possible I’d say.
The comments were good illustrations of Gates’ hypocrisy. When a man declares something is sinful he places his own record into the discussion.
Yep
Simon,
The man in this case is the ball. It’s about Bill Gates and his opinions. It is not about the merits of democracy.
Microsoft was founded on DOS, an operating system that Gates patched together from many other innovators’ ideas, then convinced IBM to adopt. Throughout its history, it has relied on buying good software others have written. Except for early Microsoft Word, Microsoft’s own software is largely a joke. Gates isn’t a good software engineer, isn’t particularly creative, isn’t particularly smart and has authoritarian tendencies. He’s just a lucky deceptive nerd who stumbled into a billion dollar career.
That’s how the article SHOULD have ended, Simon. There’s very little to admire about Gates.
And I believe that Gates’ father is/was a big time lawyer who knew how to get IBM to agree to a licensing agreement. [correct me if I am wrong. thanks]
“Microsoft was founded on DOS”
The way I remember it, Micro-Soft’s first product was a BASIC interpreter:
The idea that would spawn Microsoft germinated when Paul Allen showed Bill Gates the January 1, 1975 issue of Popular Electronics that demonstrated the Altair 8800. Allen and Gates saw potential to develop an implementation of the programming language BASIC for the system. Bill Gates called the creators of the new microcomputer, Micro Instrumentation and Telemetry Systems (MITS), offering to demonstrate the implementation in order to win a contract with the company. Allen and Gates had neither an interpreter nor an Altair system, yet in the eight weeks before the demo they developed an interpreter. When Allen flew to Albuquerque, New Mexico to meet with MITS, the interpreter worked and MITS agreed to distribute Altair BASIC. Allen and Gates left Boston, where Allen worked for Honeywell and Gates was enrolled in Harvard, moved to Albuquerque (where MITS was located), and co-founded Microsoft there. Revenues of the company totaled $16,005 by the end of 1976.
–Wikipedia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Microsoft
~
For users of Win 7 or 8 wanting to avoid auto-upgrade to Win 10, be sure to turn off auto update:
http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/turn-automatic-updating-on-off#turn-automatic-updating-on-off=windows-8
I now use Linux Mint 17.1 running from USB drive for my online work.
http://www.linuxmint.com/release.php?id=23
It’s not difficult to download the ISO, and install onto thumb drive using Universal USB installer.
http://www.pendrivelinux.com/universal-usb-installer-easy-as-1-2-3/
Your computer will have some start-up option to boot from other devices like DVD drive or USB drive, normally accessed at boot-up by selecting the appropriate key, F12 on my old, doggy Toshiba laptop.
For all other work not requiring the internet, I use a stand-alone tin box on the floor running Win XP.
I use M$ Word (to write), Excel (to cackleate and graph), and Powerpoint (to make picture presentations).
I do write, cackleate, and pitchers, in all three of those programs. And it drives me mad that each one of those programs has its own user interface.
I can do super and sub scripts in Word, but not in Excel or Powerpoint. Excel math is like trying to play a Berlioz Symphony on a tenor recorder, or transverse flute.
And It so happens that I hate the sound of a closed flute that only has odd harmonics.
Gates needs to fire the project managers for all three of those programs, (and probably their data base guy/gal too) and tell somebody to make the user interface the same for ALL of their programs.
g
Perhaps Simon, as Mr Gates is an American we are not talking football but American football. I understand that playing the ball comes second to playing the man in that game.
As an aside, I once upgraded a Windows box, from 3.11 to 98. The worst (or best) thing I ever did to a computer. It became totally unstable and virtually unusable. After installing Mandrake life improved out of sight and I’ve not looked back at home. The difficulty has become work computers which are invariably MS machines which I struggle to understand particularly after one of the frequent “upgrades”.
Richard, it is more correctly referred to as the ” Please don’t kick the ball ” game.
It is not like Rugby, where anybody is allowed to kick the ball any time he wants to; or like Aussie Rules, where you continue playing until somebody cold cocks the referee.
You are only allowed to kick the ball when you fail to move it otherwise, and then you kick it to the other team to see if they can move it. And you are only aloud to throw the ball to somebody who is off side.
G
Isn’t coal ash used in cement?
Also aerated concrete. Better thermal properties than brick.
Yes it is and I know it as fly ash.
Ash uses
Also good to mix with dirt for gardening.
Lew Skannen:
Yes, PF (i.e. pulverised fuel) power station fly ash has pozzolanic properties and, therefore, increases the bond strength of cement so adds to the strength of concrete.
Fly ash is cheaper than cement manufacture and costs little to mix with cement. Hence, a proportion of fly ash in cement reduces cost while increasing strength of concrete.
Many years ago while working at the UK’s Coal Research Establishment I developed a high strength brick by addition of FBC (fluidised bed combustion) ash to the clay prior to firing. The bricks were much, much stronger than standard bricks but were not wanted. A structure is designed using the official specification for minimum brick strength and bricks having more than the minimum strength makes no difference to the design.
Mixing the FBC ash with the clay had significant cost so increased the costs of bricks. Hence, a proportion of FBC ash in the bricks provided additional – and not wanted – strength to the bricks but increased the cost of the bricks.
Clearly, the market is more interested in cost than improved performance.
sarc on/ This seems to be understood by Bill Gates whose company provides products it ‘upgrades’ to reduce performance. sarc off/
Richard
And if you are a canoeist in to that strange sport where the contestants test/compete in “waterways” that are all man-made, with grades and, well I forget, are usually made with concrete loaded with fly ash.
Richard
If the bricks had been made thinner but higher (so not to be too heavy to handle), they may have been quicker to lay; less courses would have been required and this would have saved some of the on site building costs. Probably not sufficiently cost efficient, but it seems a shame that a better product was not brought to market, but then again there are always compromises with any design.
Richard Verney:
Thankyou for your comment.
You may be right: marketing is a mysterious art to me. I accepted what I was told by the Marketing Dept..
My real point was my cynical final paragraph. Gates is an expert at marketing: he repeatedly sells faulty products that purport to be ‘better’ than previous products but are not, and he has made a fortune doing it.
Richard
If the design was already finished, I can understand them not wanting to go back through the design and approval process all over again. If they were to merely replace regular bricks with your bricks on a 1 to 1 basis, it would be for no benefit. To get the benefit of your bricks they would have to redesign the building, and the cost of that could exceed the savings from your bricks.
Richard,
Perhaps a good use for your FBC- modded clay would be to mold and fire it as clay roof tiles, where lighter weight and additional resistance to hail would be a great benefit. Stronger, yet thinner/lighter tiles would mean less material used per tile, helping bring costs in line with conventional tiles. Further cost savings to the builder would result from a less robust roof support structure, due to lessened overall load.
There might even be price reductions to be had by rethinking and re- engineering the mixing process.
If the Brits don’t want the tiles, sell them to the Greeks, they like clay tile roofs. The Greeks wouldn’t compete against you, since they’ve lost the plot and don’t produce anything- just make sure to get paid up front.
Alan Robertson:
Thankyou for your suggestions. I developed the bricks as part of my employment by the NCB and, therefore, the technology is owned by the UK government (who owned the NCB).
I refer you to my answer to Richard Verney. I don’t understand marketing and accepted what I was told by the NCB Marketing Dept.. Please note that the NCB owned the London Brick Company so was the UK’s major brick manufacturer and, therefore, knew what bricks the market wanted.
And I again stress that my real point was the final paragraph in my original post. Gates is an expert at marketing: he repeatedly sells faulty products that purport to be ‘better’ than previous products but are not, and he has made a fortune doing it.
Richard
Everyone is equal, but the pigs are MORE equal.
A reason why Bill dropped out of college may be that he just didn’t like professors and grad students giving him assignments to do. He would rather be the person in control. I wonder how things changed when he was married. He did marry rather late in life.
dbstealey writes: “Gates was in the right place at the right time, and he’s fabulously wealthy as a result. But like lots of other lucky folks, he believes he knows what’s best for everyone else.”
Agree 100%, but little-known addendum to “right place at the right time”–Gates’ mother was at a fancy dinner or board meeting (forget which) and was seated next to a senior exec from IBM. She was the one who suggested to IBM that they take a look at MSFT software.
So Gates wasn’t just in the right place at the right time, he had the foresight to choose rich, well-connected parents…
Bill also pretty much ripped of the original version of what became MS-DOS from Seattle Computer Products, stating the $50,000 for the license fee was more than enough. This was AFTER Bill made a deal with MITS that MITS only owed the first $300,000 in royalties on MS-Basic, then Bill went after PerSci (the successor to MITS) to have that deal overturned. Another good one was that a small Chicago ISP had trademarked “Internet Explorer” before MS got into the browser business, then sued the ISP stating that “Internet Explorer” was too generic to be trademarked – this from a company that Trademarked “Word”.
An interesting aside to the SCP DOS case: A biography of Gary Kildahl, the creator of CP/M, claimed that Tim Paterson of SCP had copied CP/M when creating SCP’s DOS. Paterson sued for libel and his case was thrown out because he was a “public person”. Seems to me that Paterson is far less of a public person than Mikey Mann.
The one company which completely blindsided Microsoft in the future of computing is Google. They never saw it coming.
But Google just gave up on their big push for New Energy. Google finally came to understand that renewables just wont work. Maybe Mr. Gates did not see the memo.
Democracy is too old. We encourage you to upgrade to Autocracy. In fact, we are going to upgrade you whether you like it or not.
“A man is no less a slave because he is allowed to choose a new master once in a term of years.” ― Lysander Spooner
🙂 ++
Boy wonder would not be so rich if his mom did not sit on the board of IBM and suggest that her son had an OS. He did not but went out and “bought” DOS. A profiteer in every way. Now his billions make him smarter still.
Gates’ mother did not sit on the board of IBM – she was a close friend of the president of IBM’s mother. I agree with the rest of your comment.
I remain a dedicated Word Perfect user in protest against another atrocious Microsoft product – Word. I’ll spare you the rant about two weeks of my life lost trying to sort out the constantly self-renumbering footnotes – a phenomenon that occurred when I merged 12 chapters of a book I am editing for a publisher who insists on Word documents. Even after I managed to correct the footnote numbering for most chapters, when I went back they had become completely jumbled.
Another time I lost 2 complete days when my old computer died and I had to buy a new one with Windows 8, which would not work with my old files. I then had to remove that version and have Windows 7 installed.
I hope Gates encounters a purgatory (at the very least) where he has to endure all the agonies he has inflicted on those of us who are forced to use his products.
I think the government should spend $18 Billion to subsidize a replacement for Microsoft products which cost too much. Until then everyone should be entitled to 1 copy of each of their products free.
Why stop at using the government subsidies to those who are looking for a replacement to fossil fuels. Let’s do the same for overpriced software.
Those who own Microsoft stock don’t need the dividends just like the retired who depend on fossil fuel stock dividends.
sarc off.
Open Office (free) replaces all of MS office products, and there’s an open source operating system to replace Windows…also free.
Steve,
Free was not the only point, the issue is that he wants the government to subsidize putting another tax paying private enterprise out of business while he would object to the government doing the same for his company. Microsoft sells more than MS office .which is over priced.
If the DMCA was retroactively applied by 25 years Bill Gates would spend $350 Billion dollars in jail.
Gates is quoted as …. “If you’re not bringing math skills to the problem,”. Is this a putdown of skeptics of the AGW scare?
Mr Gates – Perhaps geology, earth science, climatology, physics, logic, commonsense…… are better suited to the problem.
“Tyrannies are democracies fully played out”. “Extreme freedom cannot be expected to lead to anything but extreme slavery.” Plato
“Dictatorship naturally arises out of democracy, and the most aggravated form of tyranny and slavery out of the most extreme liberty.” Plato
Two translations of the same quote I assume; but Sceptics be damned – we are approaching a “tipping point” but it has nothing to do with Climate Change – other than that climate change is the weapon of choice of the tyrannical to advance their cause.
Do you know the political environment that prompted Plato to write what he did? BTW, the US was founded as a Republic with heavy dose of Norse democratic heritage, not a Greek democracy.
Nonsense. The USA is a democratic Republic. Democracy is a form of Government. Republic is a form of State. Dont confuse the two
Grey Lensman. The US is not a democratic republic. It was designed as a representative republic to prevent majority rule. The larger states were not to impose their will on the smaller states. And yes it is a Republican from of government.
It’s a constitutional republic.
Grey Lensman, for goodness sake go do some reading. Start with the Federalist Papers (aka The Federalist) where Madison, Hamilton, and Jay argue for ratification of the Constitution. They write ardently in the first several essays about the dangers and pitfalls of democracy. They believed democracy ultimately resulted in mob rule and self destruction.
And most importantly, we are a republic, not a democracy. States voted for ratification of the Constitution. There was never any democratic vote held involving all of the individuals. It was their representatives, voting en masse as a state with one vote who determined to ratify or not to ratify. The Constitution formed a union of states and says very little about individual rights. That is why the anti-federalists demanded the Bill of Rights so as to protect the rights of individuals and the respective states from an over-reaching federal government. We are a representative republic that uses democratic processes. If you can’t understand this, then your education has been a failure.
Bill Gates isn’t interested in a representative democracy? What a shock. He supports Bloombergs war against the Second Amendment to the tune of millions. He wants the taxpayer to pony up for his pet projects? This is the guy that wouldn’t support his own fathers attempt to pass an income tax of 5 percent on top income earners in his home state of Washington. Typical Oligarch. Take away the rights of the average citizen and lower his standard of living to fill his own pocket.
The first thing to do in our brave new world is to confiscate all wealth of Buffet, Soros and Gates.
@ hunter, +1, then redistribute it. hey I’ll be second in line after you. But sadly I think with 7 billion people on the planet it would only be a few bucks.
Maybe so, but it will be much better spent by the 7 billion
Just throw your Windows shit out of the window and ignore this moron.
Use Tails or any other os designed to maintain your privacy.
@ JB how would I go about doing that? I am so naive about OS I haven’t got a clue.
@asybot – It’s easier than you probably think. I’m on the unfashionable side of 60 and use Tails from time to time just for a bit of privacy. Here’s an outline, but there is plenty more on what it is, how it works and how to use it on their homepage.
– 1. Go to the Tails homepage at https://tails.boum.org/ .
– 2. Download the ISO image (about 900 MB).
– 3. Burn the image to a DVD.
– 4. Boot PC from the DVD you just made. You’re in Tails!
Steps 1 & 2 are the same as anywhere, and if you’re unsure about 3 or 4 a quick search on (eg) How To Burn Image File To DVD will find a thousand ways of telling you (or ask the mods for my email ;-). At worst you stand to lose one or two discs wrongly burned while learning.
And I agree with JB anyhow, even without added privacy. I installed Linux Mint a year or so ago with no problems whatever, and it has worked perfectly (including installations and upgrades) ever since. It has been such a positive experience that now, for me, the Hell of Gates is just history. With these poisonous views of hos coming to light, I’m very glad to be having no more truck with him.
(Typo: “hos” –> “his”.)
SteveC: Do they have multiple images based on what type of hardware you have?
@Mark – They don’t seem to, though I’m not expert enough to be sure how they make it work. My guess is that they do it by having a good set of generic drivers (etc) and that that accounts for much of the 900 MB, as “live CDs” used to be, well, CD sized. But the latest version (out yesterday) boots nicely for me on a variety of salvaged PCs from the last ten years or so, however they do it.
There is a problem in developing countries with sanitation and illness spread via human shit.
Many people and organisations have made great strides over the years in demonstrating the utility of composting toilet systems in countries where people currently poop in a random location at the edge of a field. There are certainly still advances to be made.
But, Gates has no time for all that.
He has personally decided that what the developing world needs now – is a toilet that looks like a looks like a major pharmaceuticals plant.
Compost, Gates compost – you shit in a hole in the ground and you cover it over and return after a year.
The material that this produces can then be used quite safely as quality compost.
Keep It Simple Stupid. Gates appears to have turned into a Howard Hughes style obsessive ego-maniac:
http://www.wired.com/2015/01/omniprocessor/
yeah that stunt was a ripper, the winner was something that very few if any 3rd world towns could afford or set up
treating drycompost toilet materials by placing in a black plastic bag in the sun and allowing it to reach(easily most tropical especially etc areas) 50c in the sun for a few days
kills the nasties and speeds decomposition up, then you can still add it to compost and further process.
and there are a LOT of well made affordable dry compost loos for large volume use on markets now for a whole lot less money.
Yeah, some systems are better than others. Definitely open pits are no good, because they become a breeding place for maggots/flies. So, the system needs a sealed container and ideally some kind of flap.
Another idea involves a rotating drum. Slow rotation also helps to speed the composting process.
But the problems that really needed solving were invisible to Gates – because he has absolutely no familiarity with the situation in which ordinary developing world people find themselves. Living in poverty is hardly his area of expertise!!!
Here’s a nice simple rotating drum design for personal use.
Note the low number of moving parts. Always an advantage in a poor rural economy where repairs and replacements are prohibitively costly.
http://www.letsgogreen.com/how-composting-toilets-work.html
Those who grew up in a time and place where pit privies were/are common, can tell tales about their less favorable aspects, not the least of which was Halloween and ornery teenage boy pranksters, putting the “little house” at risk.
Clearly the only people that should be allowed to vote think just like me.
Absolutely, Bernie. Clearly the only people that should be allowed to vote think just like me. ;o)
Bill Gates [William Henry “Bill” Gates III (born October 28, 1955)] is certain to be suffering from Lewy Body Dementia but at this time has not had a professional clinical diagnosis. Likely, “that” is for a reason.
http://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/lewy-body-dementia/basics/definition/con-20025038
As for Bill Gates ability to predict the future in a field where he should have known better:
“Here’s the legend: at a computer trade show in 1981, Bill Gates supposedly uttered this statement, in defense of the just-introduced IBM PC’s 640KB usable RAM limit: ‘640K ought to be enough for anybody.’ ”
Of course he has persistently denied he ever said it – but then again ???
Back in ’81, 680K was more than enough.
I wrote a C program for NASA JSC that controlled a Sony U-matic video player, going through a tape cassette frame by frame, scanning for certain features, then writing the coordinates to a file. The whole program was around 48K.
I am pretty sure the bootstrap program used to boot IBM MVS in 1972 was the same as it was before MVS went to 31bit addressing (1990’s-ish).
My first desktop had 640K and a 20meg hard drive.
It ran everything I needed it to run.
Of course back then RAM was hideously expensive. I investigated buying the 360K upgrade so my computer could have 1meg of RAM. It was something like $400. In 1990 dollars.
RAM prices finally dropped below $100/meg sometime around 1998.
It takes a lot of money to drop out of Harvard. When the fortune Mr. Gates has made since is figured in, he is practically immune from any of the policies he or any other CAGW priest/fanatic promulgates.
Bill Gates wants whatever Bill Gates wants.
No rhyme, no reason, just irrational rants, (perfect word Eric).
Bill Gates has never tolerated criticism, no matter how constructive; he refuses compromise until he’s already lost a lot of money.
Bill Gates never minded using the ideas of others to steal their business. His software then included little dead ends for competitive software users.
According to Bill Gates, everyone was a software thief, yet he had no problem sponsoring free or downright cheap software deals to encourage users to ‘change’ suppliers. Those years of software wars between Microsoft, Borland, Lotus, Wordperfect and others were glory years for us users as it was easy to purchase new software inexpensively.
This was also the same period that Bill Gates railed about communistic thieves stealing his software and treating his proprietary software as common goods; all the while Microsoft grew larger and richer. Bill Gates became incredibly wealthy.
As Microsoft captured those software markets, free or inexpensive software disappeared with the competitors. Remaining free software opportunities are when Microsoft releases beta versions for saps to test and debug for Microsoft.
Oh yeah, Bill Gates believes we need to go Socialist. This week. Next week he’ll want something else and we will all be communist bastars.
For different reasons, I’m beginning to believe that representative democracy IS a problem. There are two problems with it:
– people can vote to take your stuff and give it to themselves.
– people are, in general, not that bright (you and I included from time to time I’m sure) and can be convinced to vote for things that are either bad for them, bad for their country, or both.
Of course, I don’t have any viable solutions. Just being a whiner.
Dear Mr Gates
I read your recent article in Atlantic. I have the following observations. I agree that many large organizations suffer from a malaise that tends to strangle innovation. I like the idea of smaller centers of excellence. Bring smart minds together and remove the obstacles so that they can pursue innovation. I also appreciate your 2B share for kicking it off.
I also observe that you have made up your mind concerning CAGW and have also made up your mind that it is reckless to conduct a worldwide climate experiment. I am a CAGW skeptic, but for the sake of finding common ground, I am open to your idea of finding cheaper, cleaner, reliable energy.
I emphasize the words cheaper, cleaner and reliable. It would be good to accomplish this goal.
Unlike you, I do not think it is necessary to make the current world suffer for an unproven risk. I do however agree that innovative energy would be useful to society. Please remove the sense of urgency from your plea. It scares people and mostly it scares the young and impressionable.
We could even have simultaneous tracks of research ongoing. By that I mean we could set up a very transparent and well designed center of excellence to pursue above reproach evidence collection concerning CAGW. By doing this simultaneously, we could keep an eye of the pulse of urgency. As it stands now, there are numerous flaw in the data that is being used to debate CAGW. This is silly and we should fix this once and for all. It would set an example to the world of how good, decision quality information is generated.
Please let me know your thoughts.
Thanks
Mr G
Please excuse the typos and grammar flaws.
I’ve got this stupid word replacer setup and it drives me crazy. Cant seem to turn it off. Maybe one of the centers for excellence can fix this nonsense.
Notice, Knute, that Bill Gates favors carbon taxes. So, he favors boosting the price of fossil fuels. Not exactly a level playing field, is it?
I’d like to bring mass to the table and accelerate it in the direction of this sociopathic slimeballl. The hoped for result, being a momentum conserving, inelastic collision with any unmentionable part of his anatomy. 😉
Gates is right, there are huge problems with representative democracy, in fact:
And one further problem is that there is no accountability for the actions made in public office. With power comes responsibility, and all those engaged in public office (including those seeking to influence public servants) should be held financially responsible for failed decisions that were negligently taken.
So for example, those putting forward policy that does not result in the reduction of CO2 should be held accountable for that policy since its fails on its primary objective. The movers and shakers should at least ensure that any policy implemented at least works towards the goals that under pin the policy.
Obviously NGO that have a scientific arm should be held accountable for the failed science that underpins their lobbying positions.
Being held accountable for their actions would at least make politicians (and their ilk) think carefully about their actions and the policies that they wish to introduce.
+1
If I had billions of dollars, my comments wouldn’t just disappear into the either, they would haunt me forever.
It ain’t so bad after all.
“Gates believes that by 2050, wealthy nations like China and the United States, the most prodigious belchers [sic] of greenhouse gases, must be adding no more carbon to the skies …”.
=======================
I don’t believe Gates said that, it must be something made up by James Bennet; Gates isn’t so stupid as to confuse carbon dioxide with visible soot pollution.
I meant ether, I spent 10 minutes looking for the right word and still got it wrong.
Grrr.
Ah, so that explains Windows 10.
Little Brother is watching, a size 12 ego in a size 3 soul.
My skin crawls when I see and hear people with more money than I placing me down at the bottom of the food chain because of this difference. If he had a hand in designing the atrocious Windows 10 then I place him several social orders below me!
And Windows 8 was even worse.
I know a lot of people who after installing Windows 9, went back to Windows 8.
Every one is super intelligent in certain areas of expertise. He is super intelligent in computer software and computer marketing. He is dumb on global warming/climate change and Co2. For some reason I think i am more intelligent than him about CO2 and “global warming” . I think that a lot of people posting here are more intelligent on this matter than him. Just sayin…
As my dear departed grandpa used to say: “he’s talking through his hat”.
Did they sit on their hats in your grandpa’s day?
Somebody tell him that neither oil, coal or gas emit “carbon”. I do not think anybody who does not know that in the year 2015 should part-take in this discussion.
+1
“If it was just about economics, if we had no global warming to think about, the slowly-but-surely pace of these transitions would be okay.” –Bill Gates
If I didn’t have that CO2 monster in the closet to think about, the one I’ve never seen but know is there, I wouldn’t have much to worry about, and everything would be okay.
The guy is used to working with fields f science where the science is well-done and reality-tested. In fact, he was a major player in the reality-testing of a lot of that science, and to his great benefit, he regularly found that it worked. Bill Gates is accustomed, for good reason, to trusting what is popularly reported as science.
His experience in a business where science dictates what will be done more than does the popular belief, suggests that technocracy, not democracy, is best. What I see in his statement is not that we should abandon democratic control of government, but that people should be “bringing math to the problem” because as he sees it, uninformed and uncritical voters are worse than useless. I actually agree with him. On the other hand, his experience in computer-science does not translates to climate-science so I don’t believe he’s adequately critical or informed.
His rational ignorance is shining through
I just bought a new mega PC with Windows 7! From Costco and upgraded the hard drive. I had to buy a gaming PC! Gamers know to stay away from untested downgrades. I skipped The abortion Viasta as well as 98 and 2000. NT was good at work… But I do like 7.
“I think dozens and dozens of approaches should be funded at the R&D level, and then people like myself, who can afford to take big risks with start-up companies, should—because of climate change—be willing to put some number of billions into the spin-offs that will come out of that government-funded activity.”
Let the government fund all the research and development, and when they come up with a discovery that looks promising, I will swoop down and market it. Then, with the help of subsidies or carbon taxes, I will make another huge fortune while saving the planet at the same time. Is that what Bill is saying?
He’s absolutely right, and the sooner the world comes to its senses and enthrones me as Emperor the better it will be for everyone.
When it comes to telling other people what to do, nobody has more experience than I do.
So I would be the logical choice. Stand aside peon.
“we want to give a little bit of money to the guy who thinks that taking sunlight and making oil directly out of sunlight will work.”
How would that oil be different from the oil we already have? Is there an oil that we can make from sunlight that doesn’t emit CO2 when it burns? Or is he talking about making oil to put on his salad?
Louis I think Roha was making a joke. Oil is from Plant mass, produced by ah,, sunlight. Unless I’m being to clever.
michael
“Louis I think Roha was making a joke.”
No, trying to get a job. Emperor of Earth would pay pretty well, don’t you think?
Don’t know about the pay, but I suspect the fringe benefits are pretty good.
@Mark & RoHa;
It usually doesn’t end well for tyrannical rulers – assassinations, beheadings, torn asunder, etc., but in general they have a blast while it lasts. If either one of you make it to ‘Emperor,’ don’t worry about a pension. Just sayin’.
For a guy who is worried about global warming, he looks like he could do with some time in the sunshine. Looking a bit pasty there Bill, you should get out of the office more and away from your computer…..(you might notice how nice it is outside)
Has anyone ever asked why setting up an ICT platform for Facebook makes Mark Zuckerberg ‘bigger than Governments’, ‘above the law’ etc etc?
Do you lot think that firefighters who gave their lives on 9/11 are less worthy Americans than Mark Zuckerberg, a geek from Harvard who could write a few lines of code?
How about military medical personnel rescuing fallen soldiers on battlefields??
How about folks who build you houses to keep you from dying of cold when the arctic air comes down as far south as Florida, Texas and the interior of California??
You lot need to learn that over-paid geeks who can write a few lines of code aren’t superior human beings, they’re superior specialists.
If Gates, Zuckerberg et al want to be politicians, well let them run.
But make sure you make them aware of quite how little they actually have done on this earth in comparison to the 500 million odd other Americans, most of whom struggle to get recognised at levels greater than $30k a year.
Put them in their place where they deserve to be.
Stop giving them political BJs.
None of them have done one thing in politics, and not one of them deserves to be above the law……
I agree with him – in some respects.
Politics is the only safety-critical career that you can enter with no education and no experience. The bar needs to be lifted for aspirants to any House of Representatives. — Tirtiary education plus fifteen years in designated industries. Or thirty years in a skilled industry. And no lawyers, because their entire profession is based upon dissembling.
Only then might representative democracy begin to crawl out of the mess that it has made.
Ralph
Quite right about Lawyers Ralf, they really have become destructive. What a waste of first class intellect.
Lawyers have been suspected of being the problem for generations. Bill (not this one) had Dick (not me) make a statement which I dare not quote, five spies and all that.
I’ve favored creating a minimum age for politicians. Somewhere around 50 should do.
I’m in favor of a minimum net worth for politicians. And they day they put their name on the ballot, 90% of it goes to the government.
That’s putting your money where your mouth is.
Writes ralfellis:
Oh, hardly.
To secure a genuinely representative democracy (whyever in hell would anyone WANT a “four wolves and a lamb dickering on what to have with dinner” democracy?), it would be far better to select a district’s U.S. representative by lot, the way veniremen (potential jurors) are selected from among a jurisdiction’s registered voters.
The qualifications have to be absolutely minimal, the better to ensure that the designated victim – who might likely have to be dragged away from his home and work (if he’s fortunate enough to have a job in our Obozo’d economy) under a two-year sentence of servitude in the House of Representatives – be genuinely reflective of the people living in his polity.
We accept the principle of conscription in the defense of our republic. Why not exercise that principle in governing it?
>>To secure a genuinely representative democracy
>>The qualifications have to be absolutely minimal
Interesting viewpoint. I would suggest that we try this first with airline pilots – and you can be the first aboard. And then we can progress to doctors – and you can be the first under the knife.
After that, you can come back and tell us whether your idea was good or not…..
Ralph
In response to the proposition that rather than impose the police power in civil society under the administration of megalomaniac popularity contest winners who succeed to their offices by deceit, delusion, and extortion, we have ralfellis putzing:
Of course, the electoral process is so effective at selecting for competence, probity, and responsibility, ain’t it?
Obozo, anyone?
Hm. Just give some thought to what THAT lying bastard represents….
Ralph:
Neither doctors nor airline pilots are supposed to be representative of society as a whole. By definition, they require uncommon skill and education.
ralfellis: Precisely what specialized skills to you believe politicians require? How many years of training does it take before you are qualified to be one?
The solution to a constant and reliable supply of electricity without using fossil fuels has existed for decades. It uses nuclear technologies, of which there are several variations, a couple of which have been developed and then shelved despite being demonstrably practical and safe. Constant and irrational fear mongering by the self same green elites is preventing the world from harnessing this source. It being more important to them to prevent economic development as a way of preventing supposed climate shifts than it is to improve the lot of the world’s poorer folk by making electricity available. This is criminal, so instead of slating democracy, Mr Gates should use his position to push even harder for an international effort to harness nuclear energy. I understand he in favour to a degree.
Slightly off topic.
Windows 8 was terrible. No-one liked it (save a tiny minority – but some people like auto-asphyxiation).
It should have led to the company going broke. But as Microsoft has such dominance in business software the system was adopted anyway.
This caused misery and lower efficiency for the whole planet. It delayed the global economic recovery.
Clearly, as market forces no longer work on this corporation, and as it monopolises vital infrastructure, it should not be left uncontrolled by the needs of the users.
Therefore Microsoft should be nationalised.
MCourtney
November 4, 2015 at 12:39 am
But as Microsoft has such dominance in business software the system was adopted anyway.”
“Business software” is really a little too “forgiving” IMO. There was no choice from about 1996 IMO. Non-compliance on license issues MILLIONS of $$$$’s if you look at the CBA in Aus, ~50,000 nodes. That’s HUNDREDS of millions…ANNUALLY!
interesting the nyk stock exchange runs?
LINUX
and chinas developed a Linux in chinese form to run all their govt and other pcs on..
to avoid the bugs n hacks, I believe Rusias also doing similar.
inc a new phone that isnt running the present android system.
I trialed Red Hat Linux and StarOffice for ANZ in about 2000. Worked a treat and was real easy to support. ANZ went M$.
The same thinking saved IBM’s butt many times.
As the old saying went, Nobody ever got fired for buying IBM.
I know of no companies that adopted Windows 8. Most major companies have teams that test new software before it is deployed. They work out all the bugs between software prior to rolling it out to the rest of the company. Even then they will often do staged rollouts.
My current company is planning to go to Windows 10 sometime next year, but we are still running XP.
ATheoK: MCourtney is a socialist. He tends to feel that way about most major companies.
MCourtney
What!? Why?
Is this some sort of test to see Microsoft can become even more bureaucratized, larger and less efficient or responsive? Nationalizing Microsoft will sure accomplish that.
Microsoft is the bureaucratized dinosaur nearly unresponsive corporation waiting to be extinguished at the next paradigm.
Now that’s an innovative idea.
Now that emerging nations want some payment back from the first world due to the carbon sins of their first adopters, they could take a leaf from India.
After independence India nationalised the railways.
There was no compensation.
This was done by a simple democratic act of the Indian people.
As a first step India and China could unilaterally set out a concordat that any Multinational
owned goods and services in their countries be vested in the State.
This would be a quick step to a world agreement on the redistribution of assets.
As the organiser of Microsoft believes in carbon induced climate change he could be the first to
secede.
If that is truly a photo of Bill Gates he does not look well.
‘Since brass, nor stone, nor earth, nor boundless sea,
But sad mortality o’ersways their power,
How with this rage shall beauty hold a plea,
Whose action is no stronger than a flower?
O how shall summer’s honey breath hold out
Against the wrackful siege of batt’ring days,
When rocks impregnable are not so stout,
Nor gates of steel so strong but time decays?’
Indira Gandhi had some apt thoughts on the Gates’ moral hazard of monopoly software slowing progress in the third world. A monopoly of science and technology maintained by price.
‘On the one hand the rich look askance at our continuing poverty, on the other they warn us against their own methods. We do not wish to impoverish the environment any further and yet we cannot for a moment forget the grim poverty of large numbers of people.
Are not poverty and need the greatest of polluters?………The environment cannot be improved in conditions of poverty. Nor can poverty be eradicated without the use of science and technology.’
‘Man and His World’
Address to the United nations Conference on Human Environment,Stockholm,14 June 1972
Start by giving every school age child access to reliable base load power, a laptop and free microsoft programming for five years.
Add that to a bank account.
Now that would lift them out of poverty.
“If you’re not bringing math skills to the problem,” he said with a sort of amused asperity, “then representative democracy is a problem.” Per Bill Gates
////
I wonder whether he is aware of the paper recently published by the French Society Of Mathematicians who recently concluded that this is all bunk.
Perhaps they, being specialised in math skills, know something more than Mr Gates.
Here’s the link to the French Société de Calcul Mathématique SA white paper to which you referred:
http://www.scmsa.eu/archives/SCM_Global_Warming_Summary_2015_09.pdf
The Bill has been whinging for decades. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_Letter_to_Hobbyists
I think he suffers from extreme white privilege, white guilt, all the psychotic manifestations that plague limousine liberals, and the realization that his Windoze empire has been replaced with mobile devices that don’t use his junk. He is also sliding into irrelevance because the government has replaced big money with troves of unmonitored tax dollars.
M$ have done what was always going to happen. You pay for a MP3 track now, for $2? Delete it by mistake, get a new player/phone, down load it again, at a price, at $2. Media rent. Content rent. Application rent. Times that by billions! (Cr)Apple iTunes should give you a hint as to what the future holds.
I can go buy a CD today. And I can keep using it. Tomorrow, you will not be able to do that. Every time you play, you pay.
THAT is the business model of the future.
anyone else running old adobe? 9.
if you do you can swap files to word if you have the cd loaded version installed
however..if you run the new adobe..even if you have office installed it insists on taking you to the cloud to translate to word for a FEE.
wtf?
I managed to load old adobe and now to even load old 9 they want registering to load.
this pc and whats in it will be staying as is till it blows up:-)
the entire cloud use pay scam is beyond belief.
same as storing data in the cloud
one good cme and…kiss it all goodbye.
And then to think that the “windows” system is a poor imitation of the much better Unix/Linux X-window system and the fact that it became dominant is purely and simple because of MS’s monopoly, not on merit. A little rich dictator with megalomanic character traits.
And thereby hangs a tale, Ed. Back in the ’80s IBM was developing its GUI for the new PC and Gates was still on Win 3.1 (or lower perhaps). IBM contracted Gates to build its GUI, which was called OS/2. It was miles ahead of anything else out there and performed well, being a true multi-tasker OS. However, for reasons unknown, IBM decided to get out of PCs and sold the OS/2 code back to Gates for $75k (if memory serves). From the ashes of OS/2 was formed Win 95. The rest is history…
IBM wanted ALL rights! It failed them in 1994.
OS/2 was a massive memory sucking hog that included many unfinished and undocumented bits of code. Plus OS/2 was delivered to customers with crude customer programs. OS/2 was designed much like a mainframe TSO system that any interaction with a program required a computer attention key pressed; e.g. enter. Think FocCalc if one has experience with it.
OS/2 had significant power, if the installation machine was up to the task. Multitasking required the newest Pentium processors available. User friendly, it was not. Plus OS/2 offered the wonderful experience for calling OS/2 support and having the tech support guys commiserate about a problem rather than offer a solution. “Well, if you figure it out, let us know.”
Not the Op system for getting normal desktop tasks done on. Fun to play on though, not games; exploring PC – Network links and observations, downloading some of the impressive cool OS/2 simulations, etc… OS/2 did have the capability for bringing the power of a workstation to ordinary computer users. Just a couple more updates might’ve made it usable.
IBM did not sell OS/2 to Microsoft, they continued to sell it for many years after the divorce. The reason they eventually dropped it was low market share. Here is a fairly detailed history: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/11/27/the_os_wars_os2_25years_old/
How can the system that came first, be the imitator?
They are both operating systems. They were designed for different markets with different needs. I’m very familiar with the cores of both Unix and Windows. They are completely different. The only thing they have in common is that they are both OS’s.
Ha! Perfect synchronicity; as I scrolled down these comments the page froze. Not unusual. Webpage now recovered (Windows 7, IE 11, everything fully updated). Here goes: I suppose that when Gates rented the 440 foot super yacht “Serene” last year for his holidays, he carefully emitted no discretionary C02. How he didn’t do that is anybody’s guess: Serene’s 8 x MTU 4000 engines must be more special than Bill, despite cumulatively consuming 1,454 litres of diesel per hour. And I guess his environmentally friendly Bombardier BD-700 Global Express private jet manages to scrub the CO2 produced from burning 3,789 pounds of fuel an hour in the cruise, in a special, “Carbon Friendly” way we mere mortals can only imagine. The rank hypocrisy is breath-taking. And no, I wont be downgrading to Windows 10 despite the W10 nag icon (thanks Bill, for that “update”) sitting here on my taskbar – stinking like the fungus covered turd it is.
I can solve Bill Gate’s problem
Just hand me $400trillion and then I’ll tell him to just “switch it off then on again”.
Bill has too much time on his hands. Next, he might start a free for all wrestling team
called FauxCatcher and his Momma will pay people to call him ‘coach”
How many failed predictions does is take before the current climate science is exposed as a fake? How much math does that take? Some of the people in charge shouldn’t be. Nobody made bill Gates anymore or any less special than me or the ability to reason. It’s always been that those who wish to gain control do so by some urgent need that only they can accomplish. In this case, it’s a made up need, with dire conquenceous if acted on. Does not improve the standard of living or improve anybody lives except for those who wish to become even richer. I suppose bill isn’t rich enough yet.
If it can’t predict, it isn’t science, Bill. Tell me which prediction has the IPCC been right about? Since 2000, which one? I can tell you NONE. They keep pushing the dates out and the same fear mongering language, may, could, and might. And you should be in charge? That’s why we have a representative government in the first place. I’m right and you’re wrong.
some transition
“in Asia alone this year power companies are building more than 500 coal-fired plants, with at least a thousand more on planning boards”
Reuters
On the bright side things must be going extremely well for the planet- roll on fossil fuels.
‘No poor countries by 2035’: Bill Gates annual letter says …
http://www.independent.co.uk › News › World › World Politics
17 Feb 2014 – Bill Gates has said there will be “almost no poor countries by 2035
Maybe he’s planning to run for President, and wants the backing of Steyer, Buffet, Soros, Rockefellers, Moore, Hewlett and Packard, Tides etc. when he drops his toupee in the ring…
industrial pollution of co2 at 1200 ppm, frightening-
https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=inside+greenhouse&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=0CAcQ_AUoAWoVChMI-6eYu8f2yAIVBloUCh1K8AAB&biw=1015&bih=674#tbm=isch&q=inside+industrial++greenhouse+flowers&imgrc=url2bpZe1HWP_M%3A
Cop21 will be a total failure……
http://www.foxnews.com/world/2015/11/03/paris-climate-summit-goals-patchwork-confusion/?intcmp=hplnws
Interesting – write it up as a new story, send it to Anthony. http://wattsupwiththat.com/submit-a-story/
Writing is definitely not my forte !! Maybe you can do it for everyone !!
Poor Bill is obviously suffering from a BIOS problem.
Ok, let’s bring math to the table; http://climatenerd.blogspot.no/
See Bill, – you don’t have a clue. You’re just another dishonest, “green” activists who doesn’t your self understand the math, the science and the logic of climate.
Another thing you also prove by your dishonesty, is that you ended up rich, had only to do with luck!
The only surprise in Gate’s comment is that he made it in public. We have a crony-cap system which is also called corporatism or fascism. “Regulatory Capture” is a feature of the system, not a bug.
Those who think they are at the top of the chain want to direct government without the input of the unwashed masses. After all, in a corporatist system the government is the senior partner in the system and the high and mighty seek to control the state and pull the levers of State. This is easier to do if there is only one guy in charge. Witness Italy in the 30s for example.
Gates thinks that if there was a dictatorship he would be listened to. Perhaps, but he could be shot just as easily. He better hope he does not get his wish.
~ Mark
http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-C8qCjaVicA4/TglvsGJ8J7I/AAAAAAAABOw/ndUsWPSbUQY/s1600/110704_cartoon_024_a15848_p465.gif
Goggle ComBank Patch…have a giggle
My son – the computer whizz – says that he will make my next computer a mac rather than put me into windows 10.
Good choice! Apple has always been way less trouble than Microsoft.
Mac is great for certain applications. Not so great for business applications. Microsoft has the business market, and many small business software programs are written only for MS operating systems. The providers won’t guarantee that their software will work if it is being run on an Apple machine, and they won’t support it either. It’s just too much hassle.
Less trouble, unless you want to do something useful.
Following your logic, there are lots of business systems that will run only on UNIX/Linux. Your argument for using Windows is quite weak. YMMV (your mileage may vary).
For the average home computer user I would almost always suggest Mac as the most troublefree option.
If you need to run certain software you may have to choose your OS accordingly. More and more software is being written for the web, and in particular for mobile devices. In that light, it is less likely that someone will need to run software that requires Windows.
Of the thousands of network nodes which my company installed and serviced over the years, less than two dozen were for Macs and those were all at publishing, or graphics businesses.
That’s the same kind of argument that says that 97% of scientists endorse CAGW.
This thread started with Dizzy Ringo saying that his next computer would be a Mac. That is likely to be the most trouble free option for him and for his son (who I’m guessing will be doing support).
I have one friend who blows my mind with the things he can make Windows do. Having said that, I am dismayed by the number Windows professionals who are clueless about anything that isn’t Windows.
CommieBob says:
“That’s the same kind of argument that says that 97% of scientists endorse CAGW.”
————————-
No, it isn’t- it’s not even close.
The “97% of scientists…” claim was essentially made- up from thin air and was meant to purposely sway the uninformed. What I stated was true and representative of the business world’s choice of computers. My anecdotal experience was not substantially different than what would be found in IT implementations nationwide, or even worldwide. There are many factors involved in this and in the end, the IBM/MS systems won out in the business world.
Your statement isn’t even true in the sense of the appeal to authority logical fallacy of the “97%” claim. One would be hard pressed to ascribe that sort of influence upon decision- making by the hard- nosed business and IT managers whom I’ve encountered over the years. Just as those few Mac installations were the right choice due to their graphics capabilities, so were the business IBMs.
Ps I’ve remembered one Mac install which wasn’t graphics related. The sons of a business founder had been wrangling for years with their father to get a computer, in order to help him in his emeritus position. The old fellow finally relented, but said that it had to be a Mac, because he’d heard they were easier to use. He’d been a WWII fighter pilot and was unquestionably courageous, yet he balked at the idea of learning how to use a computer. We’re all like that, to some extent.
Pss What I related about IBM/MS computers and the business world may no longer be true. I retired some years ago and have no idea what’s up these days and don’t care.
The trouble with your argument is that it has nothing to do with what I said.
The fact that 90% of desktops and laptops run some version of Windows has nothing to do with whether a Mac is a better choice for a particular user.
Anyone who doubts that Macs are more trouble free should google on
example result
Macs really are less of a pain in the anterior. The downside of Mac is that the hardware and software are more expensive.
If someone chooses Mac because it’s easier to use, that isn’t a character fault. That’s a consumer making a reasonable choice. Folks shouldn’t have to waste their time struggling with a crappy user interface. (My students used to swear that smoke actually issued from my ears when I got onto UI.)
While PC sales continue to crash, Mac is gaining market share, as the only company whose sales are growing.
My response had everything to do with what you said, to wit:
My original statement had nothing at all to do with which system is ostensibly superior, but anecdotally related that MS systems were/are the dominant PC in the business world. From that, you attributed the “97%” logical fallacy to my remarks and now you say…? You clearly made the “97%” statement and I clearly addressed that statement. How does that have “nothing to do with what [you] said?
BTW, you may find that I frequently describe aspects of human consciousness which I find to be both anomalous and representative of the way we all are. I’ve even done the same in at least one other post in this thread, regarding Mr. Bill Gates. My remarks have more or less been reports on my observations, yet you’ve ascribed two actions to me which are not extant- a claim of PC superiority by numbers deployed and an attribution of one man’s behavior as a character flaw. Those things are coming from your mind, not mine.
We’re obviously talking past each other.
No mention so far of RISC OS – an excellent OS which I drop into almost as soon as I switch on my laptop. Have to use Win 7 for browsing, though. Its seems to work fine with Firefox.
Geo,
Bill Gates Bets On Next-Gen Nuclear
http://www.forbes.com/2010/03/24/nuclear-power-innovation-technology-ecotech-bill-gates.html
He is right about Representative Democracy being a problem but not for the right reasons. After all, it is a misnomer and has devolved into an oligarchy in sheep’s clothing over the past couple decades.
Bill Gates was simply the lucky one – a bright guy in the right place at the right time.
But their is some mileage in his assertions about democracy. In the UK and (I suspect) much of the democratic western world, opinion is fed by the media to the masses, a large proportion of whom are ill educated, ill informed and often plain stupid.
There are very good arguments to restrict democratic rights to those who have the capability to make at least an intelligent judgement, even if it is not necessarily particularly well informed. A minimum level of broad educational attainment would be the measure, not money, position or privilege.
This makes good sense aside from the risk that if 30-50% of the population are disenfranchised, they could be wholly socially disruptive or even destructive.
We are therefore left with the unwelcome reality of the media, and the wealthy who can influence the media, making the rules!
Totally agree with you!
The problem is who gets to decide who knows enough to be allowed to vote.
The human tendency is to assume that anyone who agrees with you is smart, and those who don’t are dumb.
I like the idea of only letting people who are net taxpayers vote. If your income is derived from govt. You stay home on election day.
Unfortunately many of todays opinion leaders such as Bill Gates or Jeremy Corbyn in your home country, new leader of the Opposition labour party, an avowed Marxist in favour of national Socialism – reference intended – are expensively “educated” in private schools.
Mr Corbyn’s idyllic upbringing and public school education is described thus (you could probably just swap Bill for Jes and the bucolic greenery of Wiltshire for Seattle to get the same story)
Born in Chippenham, Wiltshire, he (Corbyn) spent his first five years in a five-bedroom detached house in half an acre of land in the picturesque village of Kington St Michael. The property was recently put on the market for $931,378.50 (£610,000).
The family moved to Shropshire when Corbyn’s father, David, a brilliant electrical engineer, changed jobs. They settled into Yew Tree Manor, a seven-bedroom house that was once part of the Duke of Sutherland’s Lilleshall estate. The house had two acres of land, outbuildings and a paddock.
Though Corbyn’s parents — his mother Norma was a scientist who retrained as a maths teacher — were long-standing members of the Labour Party, rather than send Jeremy (who had three older brothers, Edward, Andrew and Piers) to the local state school, they enrolled him in private school Castle House, where fees today cost more than $10,687.97 (£7,000) a year.
Corbyn and Gates have both been expensively “educated”and so they would be the perfect elites to direct and control the lives of us plebians and yet because of/or in spite of their educations, their priviledged upbringing and their financial independance they still hold statist views.
So I and I expect many others would strongly resist any attempts to restrict voting rights to “educated men” such as Corbyn or Gates.
And the trend of the haves raising their kids as semi gods will continue. Their power will increase as will the appeal to mass movements meant to assert their all knowingness.
All this knocking of Windows 10 and Mr Gates is exhibiting one problem.
There are simple ‘anyone can understand it’ explanations of warming ‘it is just like a greenhouse’ followed by simplistic ‘energy budget’ diagrams and maths – all based on incorrect assumptions. There is no similar easy to understand explanations of why these simplistic hypotheses and the assumptions they are based on are wrong. They are demonstrably wrong as none of the predictions made based on them has proven correct: and, unlike politics, validation of predictions based on hypotheses is a fundamental tenet of real science.
Perhaps a diagram showing that over 70% of the world covered in water ‘downwelling’ (sic) infrared has no effect as it doesn’t warm water. Then ask how many extra pico-seconds any infrared ‘scattered’ by CO2 will actually remain in the atmosphere and does that trivial delay count as a ‘warming’ effect. Then point out that temperature is actually not a measure of heat in the atmosphere and that due to enthalpy (the specific heat of air containing water vapor) the humid 70F evening air in Louisiana has almost double the heat energy of the 100F dry afternoon air in Arizona so all the temperature averaging maths results (are you listening Bill Gates) are not measuring trapped heat at all and may instead just be an indication of atmospheric humidity.
I feel dropping into calculus and arguing very detailed science is not the way to go. If it cannot be shown in ‘South Park’ style then the target audience (including those like Bill Gates) will switch off.
He reminds me of a James Bond villain a great deal of money, a misplaced sense of superiority and too much time on his hands.
Gates is not the first or only greenie to come out with the anti-democratic line. In Australia we had a would be politician Clive Hamilton (now a tenured academic) who stood for the Greens a couple of elections ago. Hamilton came out with the unprompted (self-revealing) statement that if the voters would not support strong anti- emissions policies it might be necessary to suspend democracy -no doubt so self- appointed worthy citizens such as he could take decisions in the interests of all -the line run by all autocrats and would be dictators over the centuries.
He followed this up with the anti -growth line that as economic growth went in parallel with emissions of CO2 then we should aim for a low to zero growth economy-pretty rich coming from him as a tenured academic who would go on being paid by those taxpayers still in a job.-nor did he explain how the nation was going to find work for the thousands of asylum seekers his Green party was in favour of allowing to enter the country aided by people smugglers in nearby South East Asia countries.
Thankfully the voters were less than impressed by this self serving nonsense and Hamilton did not get elected
My eyes — they burnnnnnn…..
For some reason, Bill Gates’s pontificating about global warming puts me in mind of the way Tom Wolfe defined an “intellectual”:
There’s a big market for rationalizing the centralization of power by (you guessed it) central authority itself.
The machine we typed our comments with has made micromanagement and centralization of authority the central theme of our time. THEY know better for us than we do for ourselves. Scientists, engineers, the educated are particularly susceptible to the allure of perfection and its hubris.
There are only two problems with representative democracy:
1/ It is not representative; and
2/ It is not democratic
The Swiss, with their referenda on major issues, have the right idea.
Another rich guy thinking he knows better than everyone else. Disgusting.
In the early days Gates became alarmed over the monsoon of bad press regarding his biz behavior and had an idea that giving away some of his $ to charities, etc might improve MS’s and his image. It was a successful marketing ploy. It took MS much, much longer to address their famous BSOD, apparently not on the front burner.
A GPF in MS or a Trap D in IBM. What did IBM do? Changed the OS so that it ignored Trap D events.
I know that creep bill gates really wanted to say “only carbon taxes will save us” which it will not.
I was looking in to getting windows 7 a while back ago to avoid the weird spying like 8 & 10 does, but I found out they are trying to sneak updates on windows 7 now to do what 8 & 10 does, so I am sticking with linux mint, If only more people would do that.
My Win7 has automatically downloaded 10’s OS. It sits quietly in the wings waiting to engulf my OS. I had a dual-boot WinXP/Linux Ubuntu for years, but tried that with Win7 and couldn’t get it to work for some reason.
another case in point, a man might be brilliant, but what makes him brilliant makes him blind.
I wonder why there is such a high correlation between becoming super rich from capitalism and free markets and later deciding capitalism and free markets must be curtailed for others?
In my fictional world, Bill Gates countered the Justice Department in the 90’s by enforcing piracy laws on federal bootleg copies of Windows. What a dream.
Obviously Gates does know anything about history. He may have lucked into a fortune because IBM failed to forecast the future well (Gates did not forecast well, he was just lucky IBM made mistakes). But, most relevant to this post is that virtually every prediction I have ever seen over the past 2 centuries about the future of energy, what kinds and how much, has been wrong, often VERY wrong!
Read “The Bottomless Well” by Peter Huber. A persuasive look at the evolution of energy use, past and likely future.
Gates of Heaven has found religion. Hallelujah!
Gates destroyed thousands of lives in India by testing a new vaccine on its’ poor
http://vactruth.com/2014/10/05/bill-gates-vaccine-crimes/
BS detector beeps.
Anti vax looney tunes don’t help AGW skeptics.
“Ignatz”
Where did you get the idea that sticking a label that says ‘vaccine’ on a vile, magically renders the contents safe to inject into everyone? Seriously, what is up with this blind trust in drug manufacturers, and governments, etc, such that people would act as though oner is insane for doubting the “incantation” magic really works? Creepy as all get out to me . .
JohnKnight:
“Vial.” Not “vile.”
Magic is not involved. Science is. It’s sad when people reject basic, fundamental, well-documented science regarding the effectiveness of vaccines (as well as the classes of individuals who should NOT take them.)
The inability of a small percentage of people to understand the concepts involved is why vaccinations are rightfully made mandatory where they can be. For the good of society. So that you aren’t allowed to harm others.
takebackthegreen,
“Magic is not involved. Science is.”
To me, when you treat science being “involved” as some sort of guarantee that anything labeled ‘vaccine’ is safe to inject into everyone, then you are treating science as magical. Would you advocate for government to have the legal authority to force everyone to ingest anything labeled a ‘pharmaceutical’, because science is involved in pharmaceuticals? Are those who find that approach unwise “pharma-nutters”, to your mind?
Sadly, this doesn’t seem likely to be a very productive discussion. You actually seem convinced that your ideas are more valid than 200+ years of research, rigorous experimentation and real-world results, including the eradication of smallpox, which killed an estimated 1 billion humans.
Believe what you wish.
takebackthegreen,
Well, if you won’t engage in a discussion, then naturally it can’t be productive.
“You actually seem convinced that your ideas are more valid than 200+ years of research, rigorous experimentation and real-world results…”
I know of little such rigorous experimentation, and I’ve looked for it. It’s just a myth (and an extremely profitable one for various corporations), as far as I can tell. That some vaccinations have been relatively safe and relatively effective seems true enough to me, but to extrapolate that out to a blanket endorsement of all things labeled ‘vaccine’ (in advance no less) is utterly unscientific to me.
And, you’re essentially treating governments as virtual Gods, it seems to me. Since when are all governments worthy of such trust/powers? Were they all worthy of it a hundred years ago? . . . Why didn’t the “involvement” of science render the German Government worthy of such trust/power once upon a time, one wonders . . Germany was arguably the most scientifically “involved” country in the world, but the magic did not work very well, did it?
Bill Gates has demonstrably superb skills at making money. Bill Gates is the prime investor in TerraPower, a firm developing nuclear power. Due to other’s superb skills, fracking has unleashed an ocean of natural gas, which has brought energy prices down, and will likely continue to do so for many years. For all of the positive attributes of nuclear power (an industry I worked in for 30 years), it is not inexpensive compared to NG. Ergo, Bill Gates is simply doing what he does best, making money (or at least trying to). He is using the sad fact that many people will equate his software/business success with overall superior capability (ie energy policy). This is an all to common and tired tactic used by many successful people (ie Hollywood, Politicians, etc). Unfortunately, it is also very effective. The key to ameliorating this strategy is to realize it is endemic. This lesson is also lost in the AGW debate.
See the article in Forbes, http://www.forbes.com/sites/jamesconca/2015/10/02/bill-gates-forges-nuclear-deal-with-china/, about Gates and Nuclear power. Connect the big dots.
I really don’t need a college dropout who oversaw the development and implementation of Windows 98, Windows 8, and Windows 10 to tell me what is wrong with the world. Microsoft and Bill Gates are what is wrong with the world. Plus, he’s an idiot for believing that 0.04% CO2 in the atmosphere is going to destroy a 5 billion year old planet.
Gates wasn’t involved with Windows 8 or 10, he had long left the company. Blame that mess on Steve Balmer.
Okay, true, you’re right, of course. I’m so used to Bill running the show that I forgot he mercifully left the company. So, yes, it’s now Balmer, but Windows 8 and 10 have Gates’s paw prints all over them. They stink as badly as Windows 98. Let’s not forget the great public Windows 98 premiere crash years ago. Sort of says it all for Microsoft.
Personally, I’d rather look to a small petrie dish of mold for advice on geopolitical matters rather than Bill.
Gates is still on the board of directors.
You forgot Windows ME, the worst OS ever.
The newest MS operating system combines windows CE, ME and NT. If Gates record of success with Geo-Engineering global climate matches his record with operating systems, Blue Screen of Death will take on a whole new meaning.
In my experience, that dubious distinction would fall on Windows Vista, but I never used Windows 98. I can’t recall any particular issues with Windows ME.
I ran ME on a Compaq Celeron 766 Mhz laptop for a couple years, and it was a decent little internet box for the time, but a dog. ‘Also ran ME on a Dell 866 for a several months before upgrading to XP later that year.
Bill Gates’ “answer” to a non-problem, instead of investigating it is to throw money at it; ours as well as his. And his answer to anyone doubting the “science” of manmade warming is an insulting, patronizing comment about “not bringing math skills to the problem”, showing both his arrogance and ignorance. What an egomaniacal prat.
Bill and Melinda Gates are trying to figure out how to give away not only their own money, but Warren Buffett’s as well.
Hint: Bill, if you are at all interested in the pursuit of truth, support WUWT.
Yay Linux.
$ uptime
09:32:40 up 227 days, 16:07, 7 users, load average: 0.11, 0.37, 0.52
It’s only 227 days because of some power failure a while back.
Linux does have its quirks – we fight with both Linux and Windows at work (though the fights are very different).
I use Windows for tax season.
If you Google the word Socialism you will be treated to a “thought provoking” snippet that reads – “Socialism: the radical idea of sharing.”
Isn’t that special?
Here is what it should say – “Socialism: the Pretentious Front of Totalitarianism.”
Nothing good will result from Socialist solutions.
‘640K software is all the memory anybody would ever need on a computer.’
Nuf said
Back then, Memory cost about $1/K. 640K was all anyone needed.
If you Google the word Socialism you will be treated to a “thought provoking” snippet which reads – “Socialism: the radical idea of sharing.”
Isn’t that special?
Here is what it should say – “Socialism: the Pretentious Front of Totalitarianism.”
Nothing good will result from Socialist solutions.
Freedom Monger:
You claim to be a “monger” of freedom.
Nobody can sell freedom
but totalitarians steal freedom
and socialists share freedom.
Nothing good comes from totalitarianism and much good comes from socialism.
I suspect you knew all of that.
Richard
I must disagree with your statement that “much good comes from Socialism.” Good cannot come from something that doesn’t really exist. Socialism is merely the Mirage of Totalitarianism. To say that good comes from Socialism is like saying good comes from unicorns.
Every Socialist solution is a system of Regulations, Obligations, and Dependencies. In other words, every Socialist solution involves the creation of a system of Pets and Slaves – and both Pets and Slaves are ruled by Masters; neither is Free. In the world of Wealth Redistribution the recipients become Dependent Pets, the tax payers become Obligated Slaves, and those who have the Authority to make the rules and dole out the booty become the Totalitarian Masters.
A call to implement a solution for AGW is precisely designed to institute a system of Pets and Slaves and Masters. The evidence is ubiquitous.
Anyone who believes in a Socialist Utopia is Analytically Incompetent.
Those who embrace Socialist solutions will never see the Light of Freedom, Justice, or Equality.
There will be no Freedom, there will be no Justice, and there will be no Equality without a Passionate Regard for the Sanctity of Human Life beginning at Conception.
The Winds of Change are stirring.
What about a passion for the sanctity of proper capitalization?
Freedom Monger:
You are delusional in your assertions about “pets” and “slaves”. But that is no surprise from someone who uses an alias that claims he/she sells freedom.
Come back when you have purchased a clue.
Richard
Oh wow, richardscourtney, you put me in my place with your Irrefutable Logic. I am no match for Immeasurable Intellect. Thank you, thank you for showing me the error of my ways. I will seek out psychiatric help for my baseless delusions as soon as possible.
Freedom Monger:
I am pleased that you are seeking treatment for your delusions and I hope it proves to be successful.
You have made the first step towards recovery by recognising your need for treatment so there is hope that you may recover.
Richard
Socialists don’t share freedom. Socialism is the theft of resources from the few so that it can be given to the many.
Taking by force is never sharing.
The only way socialism can work is by the implementation of totalitarianism. It may be subtle at first, but as the state grows, so does the openness of it’s totalitarian nature.
The reason for this is simple. People are not willing to give away the products of their labor. You have to have enough force to take from those who don’t want to give in order to give to those who don’t want to work.
PS: Nothing good comes from socialism. It produces poverty and death only.
MarkW:
I read your rant and I suggest that you ask Freedom Monger where he is seeking the treatment your rant proclaims that you also need.
Richard
One thing I like about socialists is their complete inability to believe that others won’t accept the notion that stealing from those who work hard in order to buy votes from those who don’t want to work, is the way to create true utopia on this planet.
Anyone else notice the similarity between socialists and warmists? They both respond to criticisms of their religion by declaring that anyone who doesn’t agree with them must be crazy.
richardscourtney.
“…socialists share freedom.”
So, you basically mean “saints”, when you use that word? . . Or there’s no way a socialist system can be employed by those who wish to subvert freedom? . . What?
MarkW:
You say;
“One thing I like about socialists is their complete inability to believe that others won’t accept the notion that stealing from those who work hard in order to buy votes from those who don’t want to work, is the way to create true utopia on this planet.”
I can play that game, too.
One thing I like about American right-wingers is their complete inability to believe that others won’t accept the notion that allowing homicidal maniacs to own assault rifles and shoot innocent children in schoolrooms, is the way to create true utopia on this planet.”
See how daft you behaviour is?
And, incidentally, to prevent you pretending the assertion you made is less silly than the one I have presented, I point out that in my country it was the right-wing Margaret Thatcher who bought votes with below-market-value sale of council houses which those who work hard had contributed to obtain.
Richard
JohnKnight:
You ask what I mean by the word “socialism”.
I mean the political philosophy of extreme individualism which Marx described as being ‘from each according to ability and to each according to need’.
It is off-topic here but I explained it in another WUWT thread here.
Richard
Richard: One big difference. It is self evident that the only way to implement socialism is to limit the freedom of people who don’t want to be socialists. The only way to fund socialism is to by taking from those who work, so that you can have enough money to pay for all the people who are voting to have other people’s money taken so that it can be given to them.
As to your absurd example, that has been dealt with so many times that only hopelessly clueless still cling to it. Banning guns does not stop evil people from doing evil things. Banning guns doesn’t even get guns away from evil people, for the simple reason that evil people ignore laws. It’s what they do.
The only people made who lose their guns are the law abiding. They weren’t the problem in the first place.
Thank you for once again demonstrating the complete inability of socialists to actually defend their peculiar religion, which explains why once again you have to result in insults.
Must really be sad to be you.
richardscourtney.
“You ask what I mean by the word “socialism”.
No, not really . . I asked about your “socialists share power” statement. It seems eminently obvious to me that socialists (even if saints) would only wish to “share power” if they truly believed distributed power is best for society. If they felt for instance that “experts” ought to decide who needs what from who, then they would naturally not want to “share” that power among everyone equally.
“I mean the political philosophy of extreme individualism which Marx described as being ‘from each according to ability and to each according to need’.”
If that’s extreme individualism to you, what is collectivism? . .
Frankly, I suspect you’re intentionally being obtuse.
MarkW and JohnKnight:
It would be helpful if you were to read the explanation I linked instead of spouting offensive misrepresentations that are only appropriate at a KKK meeting.
Richard
Oh MarkW, how can I get better if you keep reaffirming my delusions?
Reality, delusion? Who can tell the difference anymore.
Gates, a computer geek with way too much money who really does not know very much outside of his narrow field of geekism. To paraphrase a quote, some people are born rich, some achieve riches and some have richness thrust upon them. Unfortunately, his wealth and lack of more general knowledge, make him very dangerous. The world is over supplied with people seeking meaning in their lives by telling others what’s good for them with their heads wedged securely in their anal orifice.
Let’s extend that to other areas as well. Like computer operating systems. Ordinary people aren’t going to be able to produce a computer code? Please wait …. every time they come out with a new operating system, the old just doesn’t work, however, windows 95 is still extremely fast, never goes online…… oh, hey bill what degree did you have when you wrote the first operating system? What? you didn’t!! In the world you’re proposing, you weren’t qualified.
I’m sure IBM would be impressed. What are you going to do with 2k anyway? (way back when 2 that was a lot)…. windows hasn’t improved, Sloppy coding. What’s Bill afraid of? somebody will write a decent operating system
Bill Gates is a bright man. But he fails to grasp that when governments pick winners and losers, rather than free people in free markets and free elections, the results are usually filled with unintended consequences.
Take his example of fly ash from coal power stations. There are viable technical solutions. People cand and do force the companies to deal w ith it responsibly. But the drive to wind and solar has only produced vast wind farms and solar installations that have a 25 yr service life. Then the costs of those widely dispersed rusting hazards will be everywhere. Coal plants keep problems highly concentrated and can be dealt with without degrading the other 99.9% of the environment unlike a large rusting dispersed wind farm.
Gates desire for a national socialism (fascism) model is very representative of rich oligarchs going back to Henry Ford’s and The Kennedy Sr’s love of fascism.
The coyotes love all the dead birds under the wind farms, esp, the endangered ones – they are tastier. But, it is a green disposal system.
The buzzards come for the chopped dead geese, begets more dead buzzards. Sort of a metaphor for Washington DC.
“Even if you have a new energy source that costs the same as today’s and emits no CO2, it will be uncertain compared with what’s tried-and-true and already operating at unbelievable scale and has gotten through all the regulatory problems”
Thank you Bill, so now I expect you to strongly support nuclear power. But, please, explain me why nuclear is here since decades, and a lot of bureaucrats and green activists still boycott it in the US, from endless regulatory issues to endless protests (often on fabricated or fake issues).
Bill Gates is a problem. Lack of representative democracy is a problem.
States already tax gasoline something like 20cents on every gallon, why isn’t some of that directed to research and development? Well because its already gobbled up in developing politicos and state pensions pockets. Nothing stupendous will come from .gov research even if it does the impact will be negligible without private market investment. Gates just wants everybody else to pay for R&D then he and his buddies come along and reap the profits afterwards, paying for R&D himself is too risky.
oh that’s right, I forgot microsoft never does the R&D, lol!
Is that all? In the UK the tax is about half of the price. More than in France or Germany, and they aren’t oil producers.
In Italy, taxes are almost 60% of the retail price.
Well you guys have been in that boat since about the beginning of time as far as I can tell.
Talk about developing politicos pockets…
Perhaps he’s been working in computers so long that he’s deluded himself into thinking that computer models actually reflect reality.
Win10 and Acer are hardly compatible–upgrade at your own risk. Dual monitors work only in duplicate mode–not extension. Try extension and it quits working in duplicate too. Dilbert has been lampooning MS for decades. They have never been anything but EVIL. –AGF
As soon as this idiot can tell me where we can safely dispose of all those prius, leaf, and tesla batteries I’m not going to worry about natural coal ash.
PC still operating on Windows 7. When it operates. Mostly it sits silent while I use the iMac.
I don’t find anything all that surprising in Gates’ realization of his own superiority. After all, it’s a failing so mundane that it’s epidemic in “Occupy” encampments and most of those folks don’t have much in the way of accomplishments to point to as evidence of their superiority so Gates’ assumption of the same pose isn’t in the least unusual.
It’s the opposite I find interesting. Folks who, having climbed to the top of the economic heap don’t use that as a justification for realizing that their innate superiority in the field of wealth-creation is a justification for the sort of comic book conceits appropriate to the like of Lex Luther.
Bill Gates has feet of clay. One should read Daniel 2:32 and understand what that idiom actually means.
Well, he is perfectly right…
The first part of the sentence being: “If you’re not bringing math skills to the problem”…
Politicians are indeed terrible in math/science. They would sometimes even proudly say it.
So indirect democracy doesn’t work on these issues when politicians are worst than the average Joe in science.
But being unqualified is not a problem in itself…they’re supposed to ask for advice, expertise…Problem is that they’re also dishonest. We can almost always tell if a politician thinks that man-made global warming exists or not just by knowing from which party he’s from…Science has nothing to do with it for them, they’re all about politics.
Ok, that’s it. I will vote with my feet and leave Micro$oft asap.
Linux, here I come!
The new Microsoft campus also looks a lot like the death star. Is this just a coincidence?
Unnatural? What is the natural pace for innovation. How much government assistance was required to create the unnatural pace of cell phone innovation? Or was that natural innovation. Unnatural pace of innovation another meaningless term in climate politics.
Yeah like the switch to natural gas. Like fracking dramatically expanding our access to clean burning, inexpensive energy. Like internet commerce, My goodness without a substantial internet tax, internet commerce might never have occurred, right Bill?
Yes regressive taxes are all good. Wealthy do-gooders that have more money than they know what to do with always like making the low standard of living for the poor even lower. And nothing like a chance to reduce the standard of living for the middle class as well.
If Bill Gates was this stupid and insipid when he was trying to get his PC business going, he would be selling shoes today. However he probably has not become that stupid and just sees climate politics as a good way to get free money/favor from government.
This isn’t the first time that Bill Gates has fancied himself a futurist, as he has even written a book detailing his predictions for the future. I bought that book for $.50 at a garage sale, but found it unreadable- just tedious blather. If I still had the book, I’d check to see if any of his predictions have come about, but alas it went to the landfill, rather than burden some other soul with it at my own garage sale.
More to Mr. Gates recent pronouncements- he’s partially right, a push in basic research might bear fruit, but his call for extra taxation to pay for it all is deleterious to economic growth and the costs for the research could easily be made up from the egregious spending currently underway in support of Green schemes.
Stupidity annoys me and stupidity in high places can kill. That is what happened when environmentalists pushed through a ban on DDT. Millions dead from malaria because of their influence on public decision making. As to Gates, he just got lucky when his mother got to know the IBM chairman through a charity and learnt that IBM needed an operating system. Bill knew just how to get one: buy off a ready made software product that someone had just developed but did not know how to market. That piece of software became the original IBM DOS. The man who created it never got to share in the billions that Gates made from his invention. Talk of robber barons – their machinations never reached up to the level that Bill Gates did. He really is not too smart, though, just lucky. Looks like his luck has run out because he has acquired a true belief that carbon dioxide will cook us all. Give him a chance and he will squander his fortune on this worthless cause. If as a result we are forced to give up fossil fuels it is because his superstition’s nature is to take down the rest of the world with him. If it wasn’t for that I would let them cook in their own juices.
A happened to have access to a transcript from a meeting of the Gates Foundation:
Melinda: “So you mean that these people could be saved from deadly typhoid if they just had access to toilets?”
Advisor: “In our view, that is correct”.
Melinda: “This is terrible Bill, did you hear this? We have to do something…”
Bill: “O.K. but I don’t understand – why don’t poor people just download a toilet onto their 3-D printer?”
Bill Gates is a white-collar psychopath, mentioned as an example in Snakes in Suits – When Psychopaths Go to Work, by Paul Babiak, institutional psychologist and Robert Hare, who developed the PCL used in diagnosis. Gates has been sued by India for criminally negligent vaccine testing on on a vulnerable, uneducated and under-informed population. Gates’ polio vaccination has caused 47,500 deaths above the baseline from non-polio WHO, funded by him, categorizes these deaths as resulting from “non-polio paralysis” and declares Gate’s great success in India. His synthetic vaccines are killing twice the number as would have died from polio.
“In contradiction to the ideals of normal people, psychopaths feel breaking promises and agreements is normal behavior. Not only do they covet possessions and power and feel they have the right to them just because they exist and can take them, but they gain special pleasure in usurping and taking from others; what they can plagiarize, swindle, and extort are fruits far sweeter than those they can earn through honest labor.”
Psychopaths view people as objects whose only purpose is to fulfill their needs – democracy is an absurd concept to a psychopath.
globalresearch 10/13/14
salem-news 9/7/12
Why does ” Let them eat cake ” come to mind every time I hear a liberal elite speak ?
“If you’re not bringing math skills to the problem,”
Math skills are irrelevant to the problem. Critical thinking skills are relevant to the problem, and Bill Gates fails miserably.
Math skills are only irrelevant because they wouldn’t use those even if they had some. Their scientific “opinion” on anthropogenic climate change is purely a consequence of their party’s position on economy/energy/etc…
A bit like some here…total intellectual dishonesty.
How do we reconcile Bill’s statements?
Currently, for lack of a pipeline like Keystone or Northern Gateway, Canada’s oil sand bitumen petroleum is being delivered to refineries by rail. (via Canadian National Railway). Who is the biggest shareholder in CN? G22gle it . I dare ya. “CN largest shareholder”
Bill gates is worth 80 billion dollars. No one who is worth over 10 billion dollars should be allowed to suggest taxpayers pay for something they want done. It should be a law, the penalty for violating is public humiliation, all the major news agencies have to lead with the story of the multi-decabillionaire who wants to increase your taxes to pay for something they think we are all too dumb to know we need. At least Fox news would comply. If gates thinks 18 billion a year for research will do the job then he should spend 18 billion a year of his own money until his net worth is under 10 billion, Then he can talk. I can’t even fathom how someone could feel pinched for cash, like they can’t spend money on something they think is hugely important, if they have over 10 billion dollars. $10 million actually, but l’ll chalk that up to never having been a millionaire, so I’ll mulitply that by a thousand and call it $10 billion.
“progressive” ideology depends on an authoritarian government. So yeah, representative democracy is always a problem for them.
Regardless of whatever else might be said of him, Bill Gates played a big role in changing our world for the better. That he has once again proven his fallibility should serve as lesson to us all- none of us are immune to our own shortcomings, or to the misuse of our own gifts.
gates got the ibm system for some ferial praxis and paid 0.
The so called communists redeveloped the whole unix operating system in their spare time for young people with small money.
queer definition of communism.
Tragic such people think they ‘knew better’.
Hans
Bill, if you don’t like living in a “representative democracy” you can afford to MOVE yourself and your family somewhere where that isn’t a “problem.”
May I suggest Syria? Yemen and Libya have warm climates, too. And no democracy – representative or not – in sight.
Mr. Gates has always been on the far left scale of the political spectrum, though if you think Edward Snowden’s revelations of the NSA’s super surveillance state is shocking, research the Window’s 10 EULA (107 printed pages). Google Windows 10 & Spyware to reveal that installing and accepting the EULA grants Microsoft permission to access any data stored on your PC, including all directories created to store personal and private data! Mr. Gates is the new protagonist of George Orwell’s Big Brother scenario!
Gates could LEARN from the ‘small people’s ingenuity to cope with a live on the brink.
And had to pay his luxury climate swindle visions.
If socialism is so great Bill, why did Microsoft waste all those millions of shareholder dollars to fight the anti-trust cases world governments threw at you? Seems to me you were protecting your property, a very un-socialist thing to do…share and share alike ya know.
Actually, he has joined the growing ranks of the “I’ve made mine, now I want the door closed so no one else from the unwashed masses can join me.”
I’m sick of the hypocrisy.
Bill Gates obviously missed [1] and [2]. Why don’t these people read?
[1] http://www.thegwpf.org/content/uploads/2015/10/benefits1.pdf
[2] http://www.scmsa.eu/archives/SCM_RC_2015_08_24_EN.pdf
Dear Mr. Gates,
I find myself agreeing with you more than I possibly thought I could. The whole notion of a representative democracy is utterly absurd, particularly the notion that the common folk, unlike you, could possibly have a worth opinion.
Now unlike you, I’m not a billionaire. That triviality aside I do find that while I agree with you regarding the notion of representative democracy, I do differ from you in my stance on climate change and the ultimate impacts. I consider myself to be far more educated and unbiased on the subject than you would consider yourself. And since we’re really only basing this off personal opinion,in my mind, you lose. Why? Well because unlike your opinion even though I may not like what people vote for (cough*Obama*cough) I still respect the democratic process. Why don’t you?
That representative democracy enabled you to become a billionaire. WHAT A PITY!
Bill Gates Climate Rant: “Representative Democracy is a Problem”
It’s always is a problem when ‘democracy’ doesn’t agree with you. If everyone agreed, however, it wouldn’t be ‘democracy’ it would be another five year plan dictated by a committee.
We know full well how these things end.
Gates is a real arse hole in that he was once someone that would have failed miserably under some ‘non-democratic’ (Communist) system. Now he has Billions (earned from a ‘democratic’ sysetem) and so can join ‘The Club of Rome’ and wish for an end to democracy.
Fool thinks that, when the new revolution comes along, he won’t be put against a wall and shot. Can’t have success, Bill, under a Communist regime. Success must be eliminated, it gives ordinary idiots ideas.
The Bill Gates Paradox: he advocates coercive collectivizing, via involuntary taxes, of a large portion of the wealth from citizens; where he thinks the citizens are very highly intelligent and exceedingly resourceful in creating value that can be forced out of them. But, paradoxically, he denies that same general citizenry have sufficient intelligence to determine how the coercively collectivized (involuntarily taxed) money is spent (or whether it is spent at all) on climate / energy. He is irrational.
Actually, the ‘Bill Gates Paradox’ is merely a mimic of the 2000+ year old irrationality of Plato’s Philosopher King Paradox**
** Plato’s Philosopher King Paradox – Plato’s view is a philosopher king has access to knowledge of the higher true reality whereas the general citizens do not access to it; the general citizen’s only can have access to limited knowledge of a shadowed/ mirrored/ distorted world that true knowledge cannot be found in. The Philosopher King knows what to do with the products and services of the country’s subjects/ citizens but the subjects/ citizens can’t know what to do with their own products and services.
It’s an intellectual scam in both Gate’s Paradox and Plato’s Philosophic Paradox. I suggest one always be vigilant in watching out for such dual reality metaphysics and their necessary consequences in epistemology and in ethics and in politics. That intellectual scam is the vehicle to mandate the priority of someone’s higher (usually social) cause over the normal individual’s knowledge and values.
John
Bill, what we really need is a technology breakthrough to avoid massive policy failure and cost overrun as exemplified with expensive all electric vehicles for rich people as tax credit miners and costly rooftop solar that ignores the growing cost difference compared to utility scale solar with economies of scale. Ordinary tax payers should have a voice in speaking against tax policy fraud on such a massive scale and the obvious cases of DOE program channeling millions to renewable energy fraudsters among the competitive players. Also, ask yourself how many African kids could be helped with the $43 million wasted on a CNG filling station in Afghanistan. We need policy logic here, not excuses and perception plays.
Gates is just trying to insulate himself from the peasants with torches and pitchforks. One of the major political parties has always blamed rich people for all the world’s problems and from time to time threatens to take their wealth from them. One day this may actually start to happen, so now Gates can say “hey, wait, I’m really one of you I believe in global warming. I’m giving away much (but not nearly all) of my forturne. I contribute bigtime to Democrats. You don’t need to take my wealth; take the wealth from the Koch brothers and other rich conservatives, but not me, because I’m just a guy like you, just a million times richer.”
Bill gates also said this:
Quote by Bill Gates, Microsoft billionaire, and large CO2 producer: “The world today has 6.8 billion people…that’s headed up to about 9 billion. If we do a really great job on vaccines, health care, reproductive health services, we could lower that by perhaps 10 to 15 percent.”
Actually, taken in context, his reply is correct. Representative democracy is a problem if the only qualification for getting democratically elected is charisma and popularity. That’s not news to anybody. Well, except the uneducated and ignorant who vote based purely on charisma and popularity.
You first, Bill. You first.
It’s shocking how many powerful people in and out of government are now expressing support for a dictatorship.
Belief in imminent catastrophe is a moral slippery slope. If you truly believe (or pretend to believe) the world is on the brink of destruction, you can justify anything – what crime, what sacrifice of values could possibly be worse than the end of the world?
So Bill should go along with the idea that instead of people actually voting, I alone will determine the outcome of all elections. The problem is that even though Bill might like the idea, not everyone will want to go along with it.
Democracy already is a Dictatorship. Lobby groups, favours etc.,….. Sure the teams get changed occasionally and we get to vote the next “paid for” shill.
A new Federal law making it a felony, punishable for 10 years at Club Fed, for any person to be in possession of over $10M on New Years Eve, every year, to stop the 1% from all the hoarding that’s killing the economy would do a lot for all of us. “Spend it or lose it.” If you have so much you can’t spend it all, you have two choices 1) Give the excess away to who you choose. 2) Have it confiscated by the state and redistributed to those who have nothing. Buying weapons and war with it are forbidden.
Larry Butler proposes:
And, of course, the expenditures of such excesses will reliably go into contributions “buying access” to incumbents of public offices directly, as well as to non-distributive corporate political action committees. Such influence would be the natural object of these purchases, especially as this “new Federal law” would necessarily be enacted by the professional politicians comprising our republic’s governing class.
I really love the way fascists actually believe that they improve the economy by stealing from others.
Everything old becomes new again:
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/11/03/os2_returns_arca_noae/
My son gave me six little pictures of Bill Gates when I asked him to print some test tiles for me.
You’ll be happy to know he did not get in any trouble. But ever since then, Mr. Gates has been known as the “Prints of Darkness” in our house.
Remote-Controlled Contraceptive | MIT Technology Review
http://www.technologyreview.com/…/a-contraceptive...
MIT Technology Review
Jul 4, 2014 – … to be implanted under the skin of the buttocks, upper arm, or abdomen. … a visit by Bill Gates and his colleagues to Robert Langer’s MIT lab.
‘Remote control’ contraceptive chip available ‘by 2018 …
http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-28193720
BBC
Jul 7, 2014 – The chip is implanted under a woman’s skin, releasing a small dose of … The project has been backed by Bill Gates, and will be submitted for …
Bill Gates’ Temporary Sterilization Microchip In Beta Female …
http://www.globalresearch.ca/bill-gates-temporary-sterilization…/5460181
Jul 3, 2015 – The chip can be implanted into the hip, arms or beneath the back. … The institute’s Chip Foundation and Bill Gates’ foundation have been …
Contraceptive microchip: could it revolutionize global birth …
http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/279323.php
Medical News Today
Rating: 4.2 – 12 votes
Jul 7, 2015 – A tiny hormone-releasing microchip implanted under the skin, … MicroCHIPS, with the backing of Bill Gates, plan to submit the implant for …
My guess is that the technology being developed for this RFID is a kind of liquid crystal that responds to the hormones in the body and releases a poison. He is also behind the Common Core educational system.
To attribute wisdom to Mr. Gates that is proportionate to his wealth would be inappropriate.
With Obummer’s latest malfeasance on Western Hemisphere foreign policy, Mr Gates is free now to move his whole damn family and compound to Cuba where he can enjoy the benefits of 55 years of top-down directed social and economic solutions.
The hundreds of posts on this article emote an angry tone towards Mr Gates. Angry that he provides a shit product. Angry that he thinks he’s better than you. Angry that he’s using his wealth to be a proponent for saving the earth from CAGW.
Are you angry that he’s picked an unpopular position (at least at WUWT) or are you angry because he’s using his wealth to promote his view of the world ?
Couldn’t people just have a dim view of him, Luke? The anger part doesn’t seem necessary to have a negative view of someone, to me.
I personally think it’s despicable that the world’s ultimate Capitalist has turned out to be an active promoter of socialist ideals, and seemingly has never found a leftist cause that he couldn’t support.
I don’t have a problem with MS, they were never the monopoly that apple has turned out to be, and there have been viable alternatives for many years now.
I’m annoyed that he lives in a part of the world where he was able to have his talents recognized, grown and benefit significantly from them as a result. If Gates had been born in most parts of the world he would have lived a short undignified life as a subsistence farmer if he was lucky to survive a myriad of diseases that likely would have killed him at a young age. In other parts of the world he would have been recognized but his talent would have been expropriated by the state and he would have enjoyed little, if any, of the benefits himself.
I’m not stupid enough to think America is the only country in the world where Bill Gates could be the Bill Gates we see above… Far from it. I’m not American after all. But I do recognize that many of the values he is attacking are confined to a fairly small number of the worlds nations and are a big part of the reason he has the pedestal that he does.
It’s a bit like my father in law who is a huge proponent of eco-justice and supports our local eco-lynch mob with tons of financial support. He has two SUVs, a boat that burns about a liter of fuel a minute (he measured), a huge house and loves to jet around the world fishing and site seeing. On top of that he made his money in the auto industry. I quite like him but he has this odd inability to see all of the benefits that he has derived from a system he doesn’t like and actively works to rip down. At the same time he is certainly not interested in giving up his wealthy position.
I dislike it when people take the position that they should be the last one through the metaphorical door and proceed to spend their life atoning for some sort of guilt they have, not by giving up what they have and leading by example, but by slamming the door in the face of everyone coming after them. Gates is that mindset on steroids…. As an aside I like Windows 10, I’m an insider.
I do wish I could see the world as black and white as you do though. Life would be much easier.
What a wonderfully written post.
I’m not sure what I communicated to project my world as black and white though.
I’m full of internal bias and inconsistencies as are all humans. I posed my question because I’m not sure what people expect of the wealthy. I’m not positive, but I suspect that people at WUWT are pissed that Gates is funding CAGW, but would be okay with it if he funded something that was more consistent with THEIR priorities.
I take that as they think it okay for the wealthy to influence the world, as long as it’s influence they agree with ????
Knute commented: “…I take that as they think it okay for the wealthy to influence the world, as long as it’s influence they agree with ????”
No, it’s OK for the wealthy to influence the world as long as it doesn’t affect anyone negatively. It’s OK to spend your money raising people’s health standards so they can live longer/stronger lives but not if it selectively lowered other people’s health or lifestyle. While I believe Gates’ motives are altruistic from a monetary standpoint I think his head is bloated with “I can save the world with my money” syndrome and he doesn’t see the unintended consequences of his largess. Is it OK to eradicate polio in India if the cure kills more people from another disease? He needs to stick with raising water, sanitation, and shelter standards in third world countries. He’s an easy target to be a useful idiot for the cause.
Mark
Thanks for your opinion. It’s tricky isn’t it ?
It’s perhaps a reasonable point of view to want to give back to the world that gave you so much. And yet, the giver can become meddlesome.
Quite the challenge and opportunity all in one.
Knute (sorry about that “Luke” above),
“I take that as they think it okay for the wealthy to influence the world, as long as it’s influence they agree with ????”
To me it’s more like; as long as they don’t use their influence to undermine representative democracy . . as in, deprive the “common folk” of their rightful (in my case Constitutionally established) influence in the world. And that would go for non-wealthy people too.
I really don’t see what the problem with that is . . I’m rather fond of the idea of everyone having things like unalienable rights, and a say in their own governance . . aren’t you?
John
It’s a fascinating subject. If you have any kind of connection to humans, you tend to want to help them. It’s dare I say a natural instinct.
On the other hand, there are countless examples of people and groups that abuse that opportunity by imparting THEIR view of the world on the people they help.
As usual, imperfect humans helping other imperfect humans is going to be flawed. While Mr G has some rather annoying and potentially dangerous tendencies, his idea of fostering excellence is good. He just needs to let go of the need to control.
I might add, it’s a lesson so many of us have to learn irrespective of wealth.
Knute
To my mind, there is a factor that “we” have been conditioned to discount in all of this. There are a small number of people who biologically lack empathy/conscience, generally called psychopaths, and some who have become psycho/emotionally “crippled” in that realm, generally called sociopaths. I have come to believe those folks are responsible for vastly more misery and corruption in this world than their numbers alone might suggest.
I can’t tell if Mr Gates is in that “class”, but it wouldn’t surprise me if he was. For such, it is unlikely they can ever grasp the “superiority” of those who have and heed their “natural instincts” as you put it, and there is, I believe, a strong tendency to see themselves as “superior models”, and to act accordingly. Attempts at altruism can easily become attempts at control for them, which itself can seem as altruistic, given the low esteem they have for us “regular folks”.
To them, I believe it is very hard to understand why a great deal of control is unnecessary for fully functional humans, with our “inboard” self control systems, which they lack. In a “psychopath world”, such heavy duty controls would be necessary just to keep society going, and that “threat” is what those folks can grasp easily, I think. .
John
I think of most traits as bell curve in distribution thru the population. It’s a theory. I don’t have stats. I have a lifetime of observing a tremendous variety of individuals and cultural experiences so while anecdotal, I have observed that we can all be both the best and worst of human traits. I anecdotally observe this on both an individual basis and in the larger population set that I’ve experienced.
Is Gates displaying a hurtful towards many sense of control. Yes, it appears he has. Has he also displayed a generosity to be emulated. Yes, he does. For me, it’s a fascinating component of humanity.
I have also observed that wealth accentuates the good and bad of one’s personality. It doesn’t necessarily change a person, but it does amplify them.
We all need trusted objective observers. It’s harder for rich people because we suck up to them too much. It’s hard for a rich person to know who will give them non self serving feedback.
Disclaimer … the above is solely my personal opinion based on a lifetime of people who have run thru my circle.
Knute,
“I have observed that we can all be both the best and worst of human traits”
I don’t grasp the concept of being a human trait . . I suspect you mean we all sin, as the Book puts it, and there but for the grace of God and so on, which I can relate to and generally agree with . . but I still think psychopaths and sociopaths exist, and that they commit a disproportionate amount of mayhem and theft, out at the extreme of the bell curve, if you will.
The rest is kind of mysterious to me . . it looks like you’re trying to justify your own enslavement . . Count me out if that’s what you’re up to ; )
JohnKnight: Mayhem? Maybe. Theft? Absolutely not. It only takes one round of financial institution shenanigans to skew the bell curve forever.
John
I don’t equate it traits to sin. I’m aware of the concept. My opinion is that individuals are far more capable of the good and bad that they observe than they are aware of. I also agree that there are some individuals who display undesirable traits more often than others. My job is not to change them but instead maintain effective boundaries … manage myself.
Hope that clarifies.
takebackthegreen
“Theft? Absolutely not. It only takes one round of financial institution shenanigans to skew the bell curve forever.”
I’m not understanding why financial shenanigans are not theft, It’s nonsensical to me . .
JohnKnight: My point was that psychopaths and sociopaths aren’t responsible for the majority of theft in the world.
Unless you consider financial institution CEOs and Boards of Directors to BE sociopaths. I could be convinced of that…
Knute,
“I also agree that there are some individuals who display undesirable traits more often than others.”
Good, and what I’m suggesting is that we are being assaulted/concurred by psychopathic people, not a random selection of humans. Like a mafia/crime syndicate, not a random selection of humans, but a sort of self-selected association of criminals (gang). And that such gangs have been the cause of vast amounts of suffering, injustice, corruption, and so forth.
“My job is not to change them but instead maintain effective boundaries … manage myself.”
Good, but the class of people I’m talking about don’t give a rodent’s rear-end about such boundaries, and are intent on changing you (us) whether you like it or not . . Because they are “defective” in the “manage myself” sense (lacking real concern for the welfare of others), they are vulnerable to being recruited by “gangs” of like-minded people . . and hence in a large group doing things like destroying/corrupting civil society, undermining legitimate science, and enslaving you (us, everyone).
It’s not that I think “normal” folks are saints, they’re surely not, but that people without empathy/conscience are prone to becoming real monsters. And they can “self-select” into gangs/criminal organizations rather easily, and take over neighborhoods, cities, nations, and now I believe, the world.
And I believe we have been conditioned to assume it can’t happen, at least not among people with serious money and power (or university degrees ; ) . . intentionally/systematically, by just such people. The CAGW is not a big misunderstanding, not the byproduct of misguided environmentalism, or social justice fanatics, but an intentional deception perpetrated by “elite” criminals, I believe. The environmental;/social justice stuff is just cover, like bank robbers dressing as nuns to gain armed access without undue suspicion, basically.
I’ll speak plainly.
John, I agree that there is ‘something rotten in Denmark’.
In the US, UK, Canada, Aussieland and Germany both sides of the political aisle are in on it.
I’ve seen far too many punches pulled when one should have gone for the juglar and far too much distraction theatre being played out.
CAGW is a joke.
There are so many holes in the causative relationship between CO2 and CAGW that it’s stupidtalk.
As for temperature data, show me the raw data or prepare to be mocked and shamed.
What do the rulers of Oz want ?
Knute,
Thanks, I suspected it might be the . . . complicated speaking, that was making communication a bit difficult here.
“What do the rulers of Oz want ?”
Simply put; security, I believe. As long as “regular” folks are free to think and speak plainly, as you did, the rulers of Oz are in jeopardy of being deposed, exposed, and/or imprisoned. So they want totalitarian style government they control, naturally, and they want it worldwide, naturally.
John
I have to admit that if I was asleep for 50 years and woke up today, I’d be shocked at a bunch of things. You could be right. The degree of wealth that is in the hands of the upper tier is pretty amazing. http://www.wealthometer.com is a nifty little webpage that puts it in scale.
And yes, to pull off the degree of dishonesty that exists on numerous issues reminds me of protected rackets. It cuts across partisan lines and at times feels like a free for all.
But, I have no proof. No smoking gun that there is a master group orchestrating the takedown of free will.
Knute,
“But, I have no proof. No smoking gun that there is a master group orchestrating the takedown of free will.”
It seems to me you have mentioned several “smoking guns”, within your own mind/awareness, and those are/were smoking away in mine as well . . but being convinced of such a thing as we are discussing here, involved a great deal of consideration and researching into many tangential realms . . I had to see how it could have happened, how such a potential “master group” as you put it, could have been assembled and perpetuated itself long enough to succeed (this far).
The evidence was not hard to find, it’s staring us right in the face, I came to realize. The plethora of “secret societies” and an alphabet soup of “advisory” councils and panels (including the IPCC, and the UN in general), have histories. Those histories are intertwined in many ways, and can be traced back hundreds of years in many cases. And in those histories are people and their writings, which lay out a sort of grand plan, gradually refined and enhanced, that matches incredibly well with what we can see in reality now. A plan for bringing about a “new world order”.
In brief, the plan worked because it offered numerous ways to profit off of collusion with other participants, which is to say organized cheating. The proximity of final fruition was not essential to getting plenty of people with low “self management” traits to participate along the way, just the immediate benefits of being in a gang of criminals. It was basically the detection/realization that such a “class” of people exist, by some in that class, I believe, who described how to discretely recruit, mobilize and organize people like themselves. (As in, A-holes)
JohnKnight,
Yes, even Prof. Richard Lindzen wrote back in 2008 that there’s a conspiracy (see Sec. 2).
The Left decided long ago to make the U.S. media their target. That expanded into the takeover of the Boards of professional organizations, whom Lindzen identifies by name. It is a deliberate, organized effort that uses the 1st amendment to undermine the 1st, the 2nd, and all the rest…
“A potentially effective approach would be to change the incentive structure of science. The current support mechanisms for science is one where the solution of a scientific problem is rewarded by ending support.”
I’ve Read Lindzen’s work but never this link. Thanks DB. Solid stuff.
Science has becomes far more the “business” of science than the oddball pursuit of science.
It’s tough to have a successful business model if the end goal is to put yourself out of business.
The post WW2 love affair with science is coming to a head. It may take a fair amount of pain and suffering from misguided policies coupled with sold out scientists, but the pattern is a death spiral.
Science will come back in some regenesis of the scientific method … well .. because it’s the best flawed idea man has come up with to solve problems. It may even come back as a maturing function of artificial intelligence.
Quite the mess. Sometimes it feels like hyenas feasting on a dead animal.
And now I need to go back to my new happy experiment. I’m too old for a dog but like the company of a pet.
Training the new cat to act like a dog. Come, fetch, go for car rides, walks … appears to be working.
“And in those histories are people and their writings, which lay out a sort of grand plan, gradually refined and enhanced, that matches incredibly well with what we can see in reality now”
John
I definitely down with some good reading material. Especially stuff that connects dots.
Do you have a favorite book/manuscript ?
and please … no t.e lawrence 🙂
@Knute,
There is a discussion and documentation here
inre: Eugenics and other pieces of the puzzle:
https://chiefio.wordpress.com/t/t12/
Zeke
Thanks. While I know things like the real story of TDay and leanings of Wells and Shaw, I don’t allow my brain to accept that there is a continual and ever present mindset in the elite to actually “decrease the surplus population”. Perhaps I’m intellectually scared to make the connection between CAGW and eugenics.
I would much rather chalk it up to good old fashioned greed and corruption rather than some organized and flanking pursuit towards a control of masses.
I’m going fishing tomorrow and will dwell on it.
i very much appreciate the rekindling of things that I know that I have buried.
By all means don’t think about that while fishing. Enjoy your trip.
Knute,
For the most part I just kept connecting dots, on the Internet . . I don’t really know of a single book that lays it out, but I’m sure there must be some, this is not new with me by any means.
It seems to me that what we now face, became fairly recognizable about the time of the American Revolution, and Mr. Washington mentioned what he called the “Jacobins” and the “Illuminati”, infiltrating the Freemasons here. Much of the formative writings are couched in quasi-religious stuff, primarily Theosophy/Luciferian/New Age writings, which served both to provide some philosophical type cohesion, and to provide some cover for the antisocial nature of the “movement”. Kinda like the “social justice” clan does now.
Thanks John
I’ll keep searching. You’ve piqued my dormant awareness. Coincidentally, I recently had a disturbing encounter at church services. It was a who’s who of powerful people. I’m not a regular worshiper, but I went as a favor to a friend. It was the after service nature of the whispers among a couple of groups that actually gave me goosebumps. Could be nothing. Could be something. The queasy feeling lingers.
Great wealth and influence is coming together in a manner that I’ve never really seen in my lifetime. I wish I was a 300 year old person that new a better sense of larger trends.
CAGW is a smokescreen. A means to seduce the masses towards following something I cant put my finger on. The disenfranchised will get some of the crumbs that will be just enough to keep them coming along. The new power brokers will create greater control. If I follow the money thoroughly enough, I can figure it out. Unfortunately, the level of sophistication in hiding how the money comes in and to who it goes has reached new levels of skill.
It’s very twilight zonish.
“Realistically, we may not get more than a doubling in government funding of energy R&D—but I would love to see a tripling, to $18 billion a year from the U.S. government to fund basic research alone.”
He is right about this, in spades. Globally, trillions a year are spent on renewables junk. If even a fraction of this were diverted into research we might see a solution found that replaces fossil fuels anyway. In which case the climate argument becomes academic.
Bill Gates opening his mouth is a far more effective at convincing me to look at Linux then any amount of the usual pro-Linux commentators you find on message boards.
Bill Gates’ statements are offensive on so many levels, I don’t know where to start…
What an amazing economy and country we live in, blessed with freedom and opportunity, where people who can be so smart and clever in some areas such that they amass incredible fortunes, can nevertheless be so clueless and so wrong in other areas.
Why is it that these people always decry the freedoms that allowed them to rise to the heights that they have, but only after they have risen?
Representative Democracy is a major problem in the world today.
The Founding Fathers of the United States of America were extremely gifted individuals, and that is why they did not create a Representative Democracy in the United States of America. They created a Constitutional Republic with limited Democratic Process and Strong Checks and Balances.
Unfortunately, the Marxists have been chipping away at the constitutional, Limited Democratic Process and Strong Checks and Balances aspects for 160 years.
The only strange thing that I find about this degradation is that it has been the Republican party that has done the most to gut the protections of Americans. First with the Civil War and forced integration of the states, followed by the direct enfranchisement of of all males, The change to the Constitution from State Appointed Senators to popularly voted in Senators, to the income tax amendment and the right for women to vote.
It is really sickening to see how ruined the United States has become, with so much of the damage having been accomplished by the supposed conservative party.
One telling anecdote is that prior to the Civil War, the US was referred to as “these united States”.
After the Civil War the phrase had changed to “the United States”.
Before the emphasis was on the individual states that had joined in union.
After the emphasis was on the union.
PS: One of the two biggest mistakes that has been made in this country was the changing of the election of the senators from having them selected by state legislatures to having them be directly elected. Their purpose was to represent the states interests in Washington, the people already had a body that represented their interests. By making the senators elected by the people, you pretty much guaranteed that the states would wither away in importance, since now, everyone in Washington saw it in their interests to grow the power of the central govt.
The Civil War. In principal, that is, the authority of the States versus the authority of Washington, the South was right. In the issue, slavery, that brought it to a head, the South was dead wrong.
The result?
More authority to the elite to make us all slaves.
If Spoc had only added a line to the effect, “But they remain slaves.”
So they’re all going off the rails. And does anyone think Bill Gates is in it for the money?
Gates is in it for the control:
http://americandigest.org/sidelines/12096266_1129652527076514_4162494832249527775_n.jpg
“Windows 8 is so much better than Windows XP. You have hardware and programs that won’t work with Vista … er … Windows 7 …er…8? You don’t have a cell phone or a touch screen so you don’t need Windows 8, you say? No problem! We’ll end support for Windows XP. Now you you have a choice! We’ll even give you Windows 10 for free!! We know best.”
An AlaGorey.
What’s best for them, is best for us.
Embracing the first release of new SW is a fool’s game, unless you are buying a new computer loaded with it. Wait until
“Corporate” organizations tend to wait to get stability – Intel for example skipped Vista, then did a pilot run of 7 (for example, something like 50 computers, best done across different departments).
As for Microsoft being a monopoly, that’s a crock. Hypocritical yes, such as the boss of its travel operation whining when Microsoft was in a legal fight.
Many false claims about Microsoft, including:
– that they introduced Encarta then raised the price, reality is the opposite occurred
– that they fouled up software of a Seattle area company, reality is there was a defect in the company’s software (an outsider had to point that out, the complainer wasn’t competent to figure it out)
– that they paid too little for the surplus OS they expanded into DOS (the person who sold it too them publicly says he has not regrets, it was surplus to their needs and they could really use the money at the time).
I think you missed the point.
I wasn’t condemning actual advances in technology. Windows 8 may well be better for those with “smart phones” etc. I don’t have them. I don’t need the latest and greatest. To my right is a very good scanner that is now just taking up space because nothing later than XP supports it. I had programs I liked and knew how to use that won’t run in an OS past XP. Someone decided that their new OS is so much better than their old OS that I shouldn’t use those things anymore. Who benefits? Not me.
PS How long before their latest OS becomes a subscription service?
Bill’s a smart guy; it’s hard to see him falling for this kind of stuff. (And he certainly isn’t “out for control” – that’s peasant thinking about the prominent amongst us. He has all the control he needs – is his philanthropy for the purposes of control?)
Thinking about this some more, it occurred to me that maybe he’s trying to placate his wife. (This would also explain why he tends to go in opposite directions in practically every answer he gives.)
rw.
“…that’s peasant thinking about the prominent amongst us.”
The peasants were, by definition, correct, weren’t they?
Have you read any history at all?
The context of Gates talk is about next generation nuclear. He’s rumored to have invested $2 billion.
Machines and medicine designs are allowed patents which generally run 17 years…as opposed to copyrights which are 70+ years depending.
A fundamental problem with doing R&D in the nuclear sector is that the patents expire before you’ve managed to get regulatory approval and demonstrate at scale your 1st plant.
Another wealthy dufus brainwashed by the globalists. Take some courses in government, Bill. The problem is not with representative government, it is with the with the expansion of federal powers, and the dilution of state sovereignty and authority.
http://www.c2es.org/us-states-regions/regional-climate-initiatives/rggi
A taste of regional states bonding on CAGW initiatives. It’s a pretty detailed and decade long strategy. Gives good insight on how states align with regions to execute strategy.
when you consider the entire global warming myth is hitched upon the “BIG lie”.. the HUGE lie that carbon dioxide is a poison,repeated ad nauseum by all the PTB who will benefit from a global carbon tax starting with numero uno climatard Al Gore from Gore and Blood Inc.[what a spookily strange co-incidence. ey?] NOT] that purchased a CA. seaside home just months after predicting rising sea levels would flood homes built on beachside homes and businesses around the world from melting glaciers caused by global warming..talk about narcissism and hypocrisy..
..it should take any warm,breathing individual with a heartbeat/pulse,about 5 seconds [or less] to determine global warming is pure unaduterated bullshipt..what TPTB ARE doing,is making it unseasonably colder and wetter in some areas of the world, while making it unseasonably hotter and bone dry in others with chemtrails[California heading into its 7th year of exceptional drought would be a prime example] with their geoengineering-chemtrail-HAARP, heating up of the ionisphere,which stop the forming of cloud/low pressure moisture,while at the same time critically damaging the ozone layer program,..a EOTEAWKI program that Dane Wigington at geoengineeringwatch.org proves time and time again and again with photos,interviews with top climatolagists,and videotaped trips into the dying forests of California he is more familar with than just about anyone in California..according to Dane,and many other truth telling scientists as well,if chemtrailing/geo-engineering is not stopped soon,it will be TEOTWAWKI event ,as will GMO’s[the GMO jeanie CAN NOT be put back into the bottle now…eventually.. every plant on earth will be infected by GMO’s..its only a matter of time before the human specie will be unable to re-produce,and man’s reign on earth will be over,for all intensive purposes..going into bunkers WTSHTF whether it be a nuke attack or other catastrophic event, is a great place to hang out..[ until all is clear],,but what about when you emerge from your bunker/ hole to a dead earth/planet that is now unable to sustain life?..you simply CAN NOT continue to destroy/extinct specie after specie after specie with poison chemtrails be it aquatic life/species or wilderness life/species,and continue to destroy the chain of life..carbon dioxide is btw, a major part of the chain…duh…
.do these climate lunatics ever wonder what plants breathe? and then in turn give off in return? that would be CARBON DIOXIDE and oxygen respectively..the folks that made the Idiot box[TV] haven’t “dumbed down” the masses..they’ve turned them into brain dead imbeciles,with IQ’s equivalent to George W. Bush on a non-hangover “good day”….
Bill Gates is right. Representative Democracy doesn’t work very well.
Winston Churchill said (or is said to have said) “Democracy is the worst possible form of government, except for all the others…” Wise statement from the old warrior. Just learn to live with it.
Within the democratic system, Gates could use his money to buy votes. That’s what everyone else does these days, isn’t it.
Yes, and while he’s at it, Gates can help discared the 1st Amendment:
https://youtu.be/ozfaLzjjZyE