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Woz Compares the Cloud and PRISM To Communist Russia
An anonymous reader writes "Some journalists ran into Steve Wozniak at the airport and asked him about iOS 7 and PRISM, where he made an interesting comparison about how the US is becoming what it once feared most. In communist Russia 'you couldn't own anything, and now in the digital world you hardly own anything anymore (YouTube video). You've got subscritpions and you already said ok, ok, agree and you agree that every right in the world belongs to them and you got no rights and anything you put in the cloud, you don't even know,' says Woz. 'Ownership was what made America different than Russia.'"
Apparently SCOTUS just ruled that you can't patent 'natural' DNA.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
I suspect that the USSR was never so different from the way we were then as the propagandists would have us believe.
The people I know who lived under the Soviet regime vehemently disagree with such revisionism. For all its flaws and mistakes the U.S. was nothing like the Soviets, not even close, not even now.
Actually Russians in Soviet Russia could own a house and almost every other thing anybody could own in the West. Communism was/is about the ownerships of means of production (factories, land) and not pencils or cars. http://www.historians.org/projects/giroundtable/RussianAlly/RussianAlly9.htm
Communism in it's purist form as visioned by Karl Marx has never been implemented; he never really explained it either. But the way I read it, everyone would be equal; no rich, no poor and we all share things -- kind of like Open Source. It's actually not a bad thing if you like the Star Trek way of working not for money, but to better Humanity. It goes back to our Cave Man roots in a way.
But society has beat it into all of your heads that it's evil and wrong, which in the way the Soviet Union had implemented it -- It is. But like I said, it's never been implemented in it's true form and the Rich and Poor are too dug in to ever enact it. It's unfortunate because I wouldn't mind being truly equal and working to better ourselves instead of money.
Don't confuse leaving a group with leaving a territory.
Besides, it still doesn't work in the case of the USA. Wherever you are on the planet, you still must pay income taxes (at a minimum). It's costs over $400 in fees to renounce your citizenship. You essentially must buy your freedom.
Does killing tens of millions of your own citizens in forced collectivization, forced relocations, artificial famines and camps that worked their prisoners to death count for anything?
Are you talking about American Indians?
Communism in it's purist form as visioned by Karl Marx has never been implemented; he never really explained it either. But the way I read it, everyone would be equal; no rich, no poor and we all share things -- kind of like Open Source. It's actually not a bad thing if you like the Star Trek way of working not for money, but to better Humanity. It goes back to our Cave Man roots in a way.
Actually the closest implementation to Marx's vision was the Paris Commune that formed in the power vacuum of the early 1870s after the Prussians captured Napoleon III. After losing what was basically a mini-civil war to the Versailles government forces, everyone that was running the Commune was lined up against a wall & executed.