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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.'"
I'm not surprised to see that Woz has his head on straight enough to see that we've become what we feared. I can only hope that, despite the odds being against it, my countrymen will listen to this wise man. But history tells me that they'll ignore it, just like anything else they don't want to hear.
In SOVIET RUSSIA... erm...NSA AMERICA, the Internet logs onto YOU!
I agree with Woz. Nobody owns anything. Everything digitally is licensed. Even when you hold a physical copy in your hands it's on loan for 60$. You ever actually read a EULA? With the NSA spying on you on everything not only don't you own anything nothing is private anymore.. welcome to the new America! Welcome to the New World... I hope you enjoy your stay and by the way ignore that 4th amendment only the 2nd one kinda counts....
some people are a "glass half empty" some are "glass half full" i'm a "there is something in the glass be happy" person
Isn't that like a book proclaiming how bad literacy is?
It's not like Woz posted the clip. And I commend him for it, I couldn't have said it better myself. IMO the cloud is only good for things you want posted publicly.
Personally, I won't do online banking simply because the internet is an insecure form of communication, although I'll shop online with a credit card if necessary since the most it will cost is fifty bucks (and perhaps increased surveillance by the NSA if I buy the wrong book, like maybe 1984.)
Speaking of which, the NSA is cooking up more CYA lies for us. Is anybody stupid enough to believe anything the NSA says?
Free Martian Whores!
This is nothing new.
We live in a oligarchical collectivist police state where a banking cabal, central governments, the military industrial complex and megacorps control everything.
The little guy, the small business, freedom, liberty. Gone.
Welcome to wage slavery, plebeians. And you voted your captors in.
Legalize the constitution. Think for yourself question authority.
The microcomputer revolution that Woz was a significant contributor to was in part a movement against the "cloud" of that day, remote minicomputers and mainframes where your software and your data lived. One of the goals of the microcomputer revolution was to have your software and your data on your computer on your desk.
If we were to have a second revolution in the spirit of the preceding perhaps we would have our own "cloud" servers hosted on our own IP address at home, offering ubiquitous access to all of our computers and devices and syncing between them. Again, all your data being hosted on your server on your desk (or in the corner or the closet).
After all, here is a guy (who insists on using a juvenile nickname) who had the wool pulled over his eyes by perhaps one of the most successful psychopaths of this and the last century: Steve Jobs. Do you really think this guy is qualified? The analogy would be asking RMS for hygiene tips, or ESR for advice on your sex life.
It wasn't more than a few years ago that we had a comment from a guy who shared office with RMS, who insisted that RMS had excellent hygiene so I would suggest you stick to car analogies. As to Woz, he might be a bit naive but he is a great engineer and his heart is in the right place. I would love to have more friends with those qualities.
TCAP-Abort
Given the ruthless efficiency with which the PRISM system collected communications, I'd compare it more closely to the former East German (DDR) Stasi
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
It would have been more of a mistake if there was any hope his opponent would have been better on these issues. Frankly, the only reason any Republicans are speaking out against the NSA is because it's Obama's NSA. They were just as complicit as the rest of us when they rammed the Patriot Act through.
Have you learned that the next Republican will likely be no better? If not, then you haven't learned anything either.
Peter predicted that you would "deliberately forget" creation 2000 years ago...
lol yea. A plane ticket is whats stopping you from storming the white house. Continue ranting on forums instead of doing anything positive, worm.
I'll go a step further.. Is ANYbody stupid enough to believe anything this GOVERNMENT says??
Your entire rant is based on the premise that the Bush adminstration was so much better. They started the secret surveillance, but Obama gets the blame because he is still using it. Do you not see the cognitive dissonance here? I sure do.
The old Party oligarchs in Russia gave up on the disfunctional Marxist police state in favor of an overtly fascist police state so they could 1) become as wealthy as Western oligarchs, 2) flaunt it like Western oligarchs, and 3) give the masses a few more consumer shinies to keep them fairly passive, all with a nice facade of democracy.
Yeltsin set the stage, and Putin has made it a tour de force in how to re-brand oppression. "There is no such thing as a former Chekist", as Uncle Boris likes to say.
Russian has become more like the USA, and the USA becomes more like Russia.
New World Order, anyone?
Scruting the inscrutable for over 50 years.
That's because the surveillance is all fun and games until the government starts cracking down on tea partiers.
Then it's personal.
The only way this would ever work:
Non human servators.
As long as it is *required* for humans to work, and not optional, the "work for betterment of humanity" angle can never work.
Basically, we need soul-less, emotionless, and thankless machines to do those jobs that nobody wants to do.
Humans have to become "irrevelavent" to the maintenance and operation of the gears and cogs of mass production and infrastructure as anything other than the source of innovation. (That is to say, a mega plague could sweep the planet and extinct all human life, and the machines would continue on, repairing empty houses, growing food that won't be eaten, and maintaining themselves, each other, and all the physical social infrastructure. Human involvement is not necessary for "the system" to function.)
Until we have machines that fill this role, the proposal will never work, as cited.
When such machines DO become available, then there would no longer be a need for money, or wealth.
> How do you motivate people to do jobs that society needs done, but which everyone would prefer someone else do?
Robots. I am not joking. When we get to the point where all the crappy jobs can be done by robots we are going to have mass unemployment because lots of people will choose to do nothing instead of something higher up the food chain.
And I don't think that is such a bad thing. A life spent doing nothing is really no less meaningful than a life spent working a shit job, but it is a much less shitty life. As a society we should embrace the idea of getting to the point where everybody can afford to live idle lives, right now only the rich can do that.
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
The Republican House Speaker called Edward Snowden a traitor. It's a bipartisan police state we now have (this isn't the first time I've said that). I wouldn't doubt if I were on the no-fly list but I haven't been on a plane since you could smoke inflight.
I say Boehner's the traitor, Snowden's a patriot who gave everything but his life (and still may) for his fellow Americans.
If you're against Snowden you're against freedom. That's one brave kid.
Free Martian Whores!
Really the problem is energy. Given an unlimited (or close to) source of really cheap energy, everything else can be done. Water can be desalinized or otherwise cleaned, food can be grown in greenhouses or even mines and so on. The key to utopia is cheap endless energy and it is a lot easier putting solar energy stations in orbit then farms.
Of course this would never happen as our whole system depends on scarcity to the point that artificial barriers are put up to ensure plentiful things stay scarce.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_totalitarianism