Gates belittles achievement at Harvard

Respect for what people have achieved and earned isn't very big at Harvard. Obligation, preferably enforced by government, is more popular. (Bias acknowledgment: I'm an MIT grad, even if Harvard issues my paycheck.) In his commencement speech on Thursday, Bill Gates confirmed this mindset. He told the graduating class: "But humanity’s greatest advances are not in its discoveries -- but in how those discoveries are applied to reduce inequity. Whether through democracy, strong public education, quality health care, or broad economic opportunity -- reducing inequity is the highest human achievement." His twin complaints are against economic freedom and insufficient government spending: "The market did not reward saving the lives of these children, and governments did not subsidize it."

He didn't mention that without the discoveries of science, the food production methods, distribution technology, and medicine that can help poor people wouldn't exist, or that continued advances make these things more affordable. He didn't mention that in the world's poorest countries, the problem isn't that the market doesn't reward those whose lives are at risk, but that there isn't a free market; these countries have either outright socialism or corrupt governments where law enforcement is just crime in uniform.

Positive achievements are something to be admired. But Gates said they incur a debt to the world at large: "When you consider what those of us here in this Yard have been given -- in talent, privilege, and opportunity – there is almost no limit to what the world has a right to expect from us." (Emphasis added) He backed that up with an appeal to guilt, telling the grads that "you likely also have an informed conscience that will torment you if you abandon these people whose lives you could change with very little effort."

Fortunately for themselves and for the world, there are many people who graduated this week who won't follow Gates' advice to "take on an issue -- a complex problem, a deep inequity, and become a specialist on it," but instead will become engineers, scientists, or business people, and will accomplish something creative and productive. Rather than attacking "inequity," they'll create more for themselves and for the world.

But when they find themselves being drained by power-hungry politicians, parasites on the legal system, and mindless activists who understand nothing but the slogans of their cause, they may remember Gates telling them "there is almost no limit to what the world has a right to expect from [them]," and not fight back as they should.

"Spy Act" is a Trojan horse

The House of Representatives has approved the Spy Act, an anti-spyware bill which goes well beyond what's normally considered spyware. This shouldn't be confused with the "I-Spy Act," a competing bill in the cute acronym contest. In an earlier blog entry, I expressed concerns about its technology-specific language. The problems haven't adequately been fixed. For example, the assumption that all software can accommodate a display and user response still remains.

Section 3 of the bill places notification requirements on "information collection programs" downloaded to users' computers. The bill doesn't exclude Web browsers as far as I can see, so it would require that every browser warn the user: "This program will collect and transmit information about you and will collect information about Web pages you access and use that information to display advertising on your computer. Do you accept?" The notice is further required to say what kinds of information are collected and for what purpose; a browser could only say that any type of information might be collected, for any purpose including serious crimes.

I'm not sure whether this requirement would also apply to individual pages containing JavaScript that collects information, but can't see any reason it wouldn't.

At first this notice would scare people. In a little while we'd learn to pay as little attention to it as to the air bag warnings on our car visors. Such a requirement has nothing to do with spyware, and would just mean more work to access the Internet. Worse, it would put people into the habit of signing off every time they saw such an alert, just as today they routinely accept license terms without reading them. Genuine spyware, prohibited by existing laws, might be able to trick bored users into authorizing it.

But the bill is "against spyware," so this Trojan horse may well become law. One Congressional proponent said this complicated legislation ought to be an automatic-passage bill," which should be a warning they're trying to sneak something through without careful examination.

Because there have been so many versions of the bill since 2004, only recently dated analysis is useful. I haven't been able to find any really good analyses. The closest I've found so far is "The Spy Act that loved me?" on CNet.