They are recommending I watch something I never asked to see, they are endorsing those clips.
No, what you're suggesting is censorship.
I'm not, what I wrote should be clear: If you are providing search results, what turns up should be on the person searching. When you recommend something, you wear that recommendation. That's not about censorship, it's about responsibility. I know a terribly old-fashioned concept. Ever heard of it?
If I'm interested in hearing commentators talk about how Jussie Smollett might have staged a hoax, I don't want Youtube to start being creative and suggest to me CNN panels about how we need to believe Jussie and that this attack is a result of the President's rethoric.
Yes, You should be able to look for what you want to see, using some relatively transparent search algorithm. Not have things thrust in your face based on what the social media corporation (via whichever opaque algorithm they decide on or otherwise) thinks you should watch without owing up to it. But maybe this isn't obvious to you because the algorithms are already delivering the not-so-suppressed voices you want to hear?
Youtube's job is not to "guide my opinion" towards their selected narrative.
They already do, you may have noticed the recommend videos? The question is whether they will be made to take responsibility for guiding your opinion.
To adopt AC's metaphor from below, I'm not, as AC believed advocating these publishers saying "we just removed card from the catalog and stored book behind shelf of other books." I'm advocating making it very easy to find the card in the catalog you want to find. It's your responsibility what you look for.
If however the librarian picks a book off of the shelf slaps it on the desk in front of you and tells you "you really should read this," the librarian is vouching for the book.
If we did things your way, whate'd all be Flat Earthers
Obviously not. And wasn't there recently a study that showed that the rise in flat earth believers is primarily due to YouTube's recommendation algorithm? Ergo, if these algorithms are working as designed, they need a redesign.
Oh, so you recommend system where "it is not censored", we just removed card from the catalog and stored book behind shelf of other books.
But.. you can still find it...
Obviously not. Try reading the comment that the above was the erratum to.
The issue here is not telling people they aren't "allowed to be interested in something," the issue is about which messages particular social media companies should endorse via their recommendations. There's a gulf of difference between actively censoring arguably unsavoury messages, and guiding viewers eyes towards them.
If you are providing search results, what turns up should* be on the person searching. When you recommend something, you wear that recommendation. [*the commercial interests of the search providers notwithstanding].
are these images 'copyrighted' as that they are generated
That's an interesting legal-theoretical question and it might make a good topic for a law school essay.
As a matter of mere practice, however, given that no two runs of the program should produce identical faces, it seems unlikely that anyone would even think to look for a watermark (assuming there is one) or other identifying feature connecting the image to the the putative copyright holder. TLDR: You're unlikely to be caught.
Socialism creates a system in which everyone cares about the decisions that other people make.
It may indeed, but care cannot automatically be converted into mandating behaviours.
Socialized medicine, for example, takes everyone's money and spends it on the group's health costs. I, as a dedicated taxpayer, now care when idiots start smoking - I have to pay for their cancer care, and I feel cheated by the poor decisions of others. It is only natural, in this scenario, that I should feel that people should be prevented from smoking in order to eliminate this unfair burden upon me
Really good example. So what might happen is that pressure builds for anti-smoking policy, which causes a rapid decline in the rate of smoking and your concern that the health dollar is being misspent results in not only your own health, but the health of the public in general improving. This has been the experience in Australia, where we do have a first rate public health care system, which incidentally no politician, left or right, who hopes for election would dare threaten to remove.
the system has set me up to make decisions for what others do to their own bodies
Well democratic socialism (and I'm hoping the majority of socialists by now accept the need for democratic socialism) wouldn't allow you to make any actual decisionby yourself. It might indeed set you up to have an interest in what other people do with their bodies, and if you were joined by enough non-smokers who share your concern, your combined democratic power could affect the law, which may in turn constrain what other people do with their bodies, sure.
This is de facto slavery
And you were doing so well up to then... sad. No, de facto slavery is when you get others to work for your profit without reasonable recompense above their basic keep. This is much more like having laws against abortion when enough of the population decide women should be compelled by law to carry a pregnancy to term and force their view through the legislature.
As with all democratic systems what is perhaps required is some legal constraint on how far the law can impinge upon the autonomy of the individual (eg a Bill of Rights). Your interests in what others do may be increased in a socialised, but your ability to realise those interests to the detriment of others, as with any other exercise of power public or private under any other system, can be controlled by the application of law. That's what the Law is.
Yeah sure, but 74% of users don't realise their interests are tracked? I can believe 74% didn't know how to access that particular page, but seriously...
I hate to break it to you but Australia is mostly desert.
Not relevant. I'm addressing the claim that "[r]oughly 10 years ago a high profile Australian scientist did a TV interview and stated that it may never rain again in the Australian outback (sic)." Do you have any citation to prove that? (Also I think you'll find that "Sydney and the Warragamba catchment" has not been declared a desert at this stage.)
I'm only 44 years old...
So you still wet behind the ears, son. But also not relevant. How does the fact that your experience of Australian climatic conditions is less than mine establish the claim that "[r]oughly 10 years ago a high profile Australian scientist did a TV interview and stated that it may never rain again in the Australian outback (sic)?" [HINT: It doesn't.]
I can tell you right now that farmers have been complaining about droughts and floods continuously for as long as I've been alive.
Well no shit mate. That's not really surprising if, as is claimed, S.E. Australia were experiencing a continuous ratcheting up in frequency and severity of drought conditions. But guess what? That's still not relevant to the claim that "[r]oughly 10 years ago a high profile Australian scientist did a TV interview and stated that it may never rain again in the Australian outback (sic)!"
There's nothing more Australian than...
FFS sunshine, can you bottle it already? The issue here is that trying to pin that outrageous claim on Flannery is complete bullshit, and you know it. Nor is all your irrelevant blathering going to make it anything other than bullshit. End of story!
Roughly 10 years ago a high profile Australian scientist did a TV interview and stated that it may never rain again in the Australian outback [sic].
That's not actually the truth is it? (Though I'm liable to be convinced otherwise by a citation from a reliable source).
I'm presuming you are talking about Tim Flannery. Here is the transcript of that infamous TV interview. So here is what he actually said, that has widely been quoted as "it will never rain again":
... since 1998 particularly, we've seen just drought, drought, drought, and particularly regions like Sydney and the Warragamba catchment - if you look at the Warragamba catchment figures, since '98, the water has been in virtual freefall, and they've got about two years of supply left...
Well, you can't predict the future; that's one of the things that you learn fairly early on, but if I could just say, the general patterns that we're seeing in the global circulation models... are saying the same sort of thing that we're actually seeing on the ground....
We'll know probably within two or three years, I suppose, how this is going to play out, particularly for Sydney, because its water supply is limited to that sort of scale, but it is my fear that the new weather regime is going to be a much drier one, and while we may get the odd good rainfall event, they're going to be much less frequent than in the past, and we'll just be in a different climatic regime... the worst-case scenario for Sydney is that the climate that's existed for the last seven years continues for another two years. In that case, Sydney will be facing extreme difficulties with water...
So "roughly 10 years" later, how is the drought situation in Eastern Australia panning out... this even from the Murdoch press, speaks to its seriousness.
[T]he vaccine is of zero benefit to him because he has no cervix
Well... perhaps not zero benefit. He does have a throat I take it.
Which is in no way to disagree with your actual point, that this, and imo many other vaccines, ought to be freely available, where your argument should be irresistible.
Nobody can get beyond what you actually wrote, if you refuse to correct or clarify it.
... BREXIT... [Y]ou're going to need to finally figure out what is supposed to be in your Constitution and write it down so that all your rights can't be changed with a random 50%+1 poll.
That point, absent any further clarification, must reasonably be taken to be, that a written constitution would have protected against the possibility of Brexit. For the reasons I explained above, you were wrong.
In most of the world, regardless of civilised or not, slavery is not connected with race
A little tangential, and not directly pertinent to the use of master/slave terminology in tech but... I'm not too sure about that specific claim. Slavery is, at least connected with race in many instances. Historically, from the ancient world up to the African slave trade of the C18th, slavery was commonly imposed upon an ethnic other.
It is true that in some cultures slavery/freedom is governed, for example, by cast or by criminality, rather than by race, (or even under conditions of societal breakdown, imposed on seemingly random fellow "citizens,") but that seems more to be the exception. Slaves in Mesopotamia, Greece, Rome, Scandinavia were usually either directly prisoners of war or taken from colonised peoples. Today the quasi-slavery of Phillipino workers in the middle East, the capture of sub-Saharan refugees in North Africa continue this tradition. Nor should we assume that some of the modern African slavery, which appears on the surface to be taking place between same-race parties, is entirely devoid of ethnic considerations.
Race is perhaps not invariably a factor --most obviously in modern-day sex based human trafficking --but the fact that ethnicity is, across time and geography, so very often been used to demark citizen from slave, and most especially in economies where slavery was central to lawful production (ie. unlike the illegal sex trade) suggests that race division at least facilitates slavery. It is perhaps of psychological importance, allowing the masters more easily to dehumanise the slaves, or simply to remove the fear that they too may be reduced to the condition of slavery.
I do not want my peripheral subsystems being incited to rise up against their masters
In which case you should endorse this change of terminology... after all the worse that could happen after the name change is that your peripheral subsystems will be incited to rise up against the primary control system.;)
Your response doesn't address the points I was making.
So what were "the points" you were making, and what reasonable connection might be drawn between "a random 50%+1 poll" and the lack of a written constitution?
Instead, it is recycled pap that anybody in the UK could have recited 10 years ago
Obviously not. In 2008 none save legally astute clairvoyants might have commented specifically as to the legal significance of the 2016 Brexit vote.
You did not understand my comment.
If that be so, you plainly need to work on your written expression. Try a bit harder in your next comment, and also at least make the semblance of an attempt at a substantive rebuttal (i.e. play the ball). "You did not understand what my comment"... "just shows you didn't comprehend it"... deployed without even a hint as to what was misconstrued, or even some tangential engagement of the matter at hand, comes across as a rather desperate ad hominem I'm afraid. I'm sure you can do better.
[Y]ou're going to need to finally figure out what is supposed to be in your Constitution and write it down so that all your rights can't be changed with a random 50%+1 poll.
Unless that written constitution were to include an article specifically requiring European membership --which constitutes a great deal more than "figuring out" and "writing down" what the Law is --the existence, or not, of a written constitution is irrelevant. The "poll" was just that: it has nolegal significance and as such is not something which a constitution generally might affect. This was simply a political party running with an election promise, "we will poll you on this issue and do as you say." Since that party was thus elected to power; remains in power, and given the great expense of the exercise, and most importantly the perception (whatever the constitutional reality) of majority of the population that they expressed their democratic will, it is politically unthinkable to ignore the result. Politically unthinkable, not legally impossible.
Where 'correct' is newspeak for lying trough his suicidal teeth!
Instead of going dig back and digging up 2007 4th Assessment Report (the 5th AR was published in 2013, the 6th AR is due out next month), let's look at what the the IPCC Synthesis Report from 2014 has to say:
The increase of global mean surface temperature by the end of the 21st century (2081–2100) relative to 1986–2005 is
likely
to be 0.3C to 1.7C under RCP2.6, 1.1C to 2.6C under RCP4.5, 1.4C to 3.1C under RCP6.0 and 2.6C to 4.8C under
RCP8.5
9
.
The Arctic region will continue to warm more rapidly than the global mean.
So anywhere form 0.3C under the most optimistic to 4.8C in the worst case scenario. In point of fact the target of (no more than) 2C is what humanity is currently in the process of missing.
The write-up claims, the 3.5 degrees is the current projections by some unspecified researchers. There no "ifs" about that write-up's claims
If you want to split hairs like that, let's split them even finer!
SuperKendall didn't write that the summary claims that current projections of up to 3.5C exist. SuperKendall wrote that "the summary claims... likley heating will be... 3.5C" Which is something very, very different from what the words "If average global temperatures increase to 3.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels by the end of the century, as researchers currently project..." means. [And I've highlighted the IF "about that write-up's claims" (yes, it's not an IF about the existence of said projections, duh) for your benefit.]
Sorry, have to call you out on the German quote. Loosely translate[d], it says that "sausage tastes better when you don't watch it being made".
The quote was a reference, albeit somewhat obscure, to the fact that corporate hiring procedures, much like the writing of laws (or the manufacture of sausage), doesn't invite inspection. Or to be more precise, one's rose-coloured view of how such institutions function, doesn't survive witnessing their practice. As to the translation... werden die Worte "Gesetze sind wie Würste" nicht übersetzt, dann geht der Sinn dieses Spruches eigentlich verloren, oder?
Gesetze sind wie Würste, man sollte besser nicht dabei sein, wenn sie gemacht werden --Bismarck
If they were better qualified than the available men, then they would already be appointed to the boards without needing any legislation.
Riiiiiiiight!
Companies are not going to appoint less qualified people unless they're forced to...
What are you talking about? They clearly do!
Nor is this just a male/female thing either, among others, it's famously a "what school did you go to" thing as well. Maybe for the crucial technical jobs qualification win, but companies are full of humans making decision on a very human basis: first and foremost they decide in favour of "people-like-us". You cannot seriously believe that the better qualified guy has never lost out on a job to the better connected guy. (It's not what you know...)
Plus we are talking company boards here. How do you spell sinecure?
Of course social welfare programs are part of socialist systems.
Firstly, OP didn't write that they weren't or couldn't be, OP wrote "Welfare is not socialism," which is to say it's possible to distinguish between socialising the means of production (socialism) and wealth redistribution via taxation (social welfare). Plainly social welfare can exist in modern capitalist democracies.
Secondly, while it is true that social-democratic parties have eventually come to be seen as its champions, the modern welfare state was initially the creature of conservatives deployed explicitly as an anti-socialist measure. This was already so in the C19th, but took on increased significance after the Russian Revolution.
If social-democrats increasingly saw the value in pursuing the "crumbs off the capitalist's table" --and to be fair, redistribution via high taxation had seemed more effectively to provide the larger part of society with a better life than violent revolution --in the early post-war period most conservative parties around the world were more than willing accomplices. It was really only towards the end of the 1970s, as the Soviet Union was increasingly understood to be spent force and especially as any talk of "Revolution" in the West became increasingly fanciful, that conservatives began the move to call their welfare state back in. The modern welfare state, from that perspective, had amply served its purpose in protecting Western liberal-democracies [in which use, for the benefit esp. of our American friends, 'liberal' refers to private ownership and free markets] from the threat of socialism, and had thus outlived its purpose.
That is a lie, and you are a liar [newscientist.com].
Being able to count "nuclear fatalities" on one's fingers is hyperbole at best! As you source establishes, we can be fairly certain that there have been at least 43 deaths from the Chernobyl accident:
Two decades ago, John Gittus of the Royal Academy of Engineering told the UK government there could eventually be around 10,000 fatalities. Today, some – notably environmental groups – put the death toll well into six figures.
But that’s the extreme end of the estimates. “The only deaths that have been firmly established, either individually or statistically, are the 28 victims of acute radiation syndrome and 15 cases of fatal child thyroid cancer,” says Wade Allison of the University of Oxford. ... a 2006 study by Elisabeth Cardis of the International Agency for Research on Cancer in Lyon, France. This predicted that by 2065 Chernobyl will have caused about 16,000 cases of thyroid cancer and 25,000 cases of other cancers, compared with several hundred million cancer cases from other causes.
Agreement is unlikely any time soon.
That's more fingers than I have in any case, I don't know about OP.
Chernobyl killed/is killing at least 4,000 people [ourworldindata.org]
Against OP's more reasonable claim, that "[n]uclear is orders of magnitude safer than fossil fuels," this figure of 4,000, or indeed any other number, of potential deaths is fairly meaningless unless we also quantify deaths due to fossil fuel usage. The source you quote offers this assessment:
The potential risks of nuclear energy are real: in both Chernobyl and Fukushima, deaths occurred as a result of direct nuclear impacts, radiation exposure and psychological stress. Nonetheless, of the two largest nuclear disasters, the death toll was of the order of thousands to tens of thousands in one, and thousands in the latest. Arguably still too many, but far fewer than the millions who die every year from impacts of other conventional energy sources.
Fukushima will have killed at least 400 people due to radiation exposure...
Careful here! Your source reads: "The WHO project the number of deaths from low-level exposure to be close to zero, and up to 400 in upper estimates. It is not beyond possibility, and indeed looks increasingly likely, that there will be "close to zero" deaths due to radiation exposure. Paradoxically, the evacuated Fukushima residents will probably enjoy far lower mortality, especially from thyroid cancer, than normal, due to the extremely thorough screening (and relatively high treatability) to which this cohort is subject.
... not to mention the 1,600 who died due to the evacuation. You have to count those people, because they only had to be evacuated because it was a nuclear plant.
Well... This paper calculates the only 25% of those evacuated "had to be evacuated because it was a nuclear plant." OP might well argue in reply that three quarters of those deaths are the result of "you anti-nuke people just [not] get[ting] it," (aka misinformed overestimation of the danger of low-level exposure). So be careful with this one too.
Finally in terms of relative safety we need to take into account Kharecha and Hansen's study which suggests that "that despite the three major nuclear accidents the world has experienced, nuclear power prevented an average of over 1.8 million net [i.e. taking into account estimates of potential nuclear fatalities] deaths worldwide between 1971-2009."
You're also engaging in the logical fallacy of false dichotomy. Fossil fuels are also da
Doesn't his view of "if an idea of a society could reasonably be conceived, it's time had come" kind of contradict "He also, in communication with Russian radicals, dismissed the idea the Russia could stage a Socialist revolution [as they're not advanced enough]"?
Maybe it does, and maybe I ought to source what Marx actually wrote word for word in this regard before we convict him upon what I might be mis-remembering.;) Remembering that in Marx' view, ideas flow from the hard economic underpinnings ("material conditions") in which their possibility arises (and the idea of 'socialism' had admittedly "matured in the womb of" French not Russian "society"), this may be answered by reference to where it is, that such ideas fall on fertile ground. And it was here, as I noted above, that Lenin broke with Marx. For while Marx looked to the Americans to fashion a society founded on something other than the power of capital (good luck with that Karl!), Lenin took the notion of 'imperialism' (as touched upon by Marx) and ran with that: Viewing capitalism as a vast empire, it was not in its bastion, but instead at its "weakest links" that capitalism would break, that revolution was possible.**
This answer to your question, however, only raises another possible contradiction: that between Marxist Theory and Praxis. For if, as per the Preface, that "[n]o social order ever disappears before all the productive forces, for which there is room in it, have been developed; and [that] new higher relations of production never appear before the material conditions of their existence have matured in the womb of the old society," what room remains for activism? Why not sit back, feet up, and simply wait for the locomotive of history ineluctably to carry us to the promised land? But perhaps Marx' economic determinism has been read in a far stricter sense that he ever intended.
I'm still sticking to the idea of "market feudalism". A "social arrangement" of...
I certainly did not mean to dismiss it out of hand, it packs polemical punch if nothing else. That was just to stress that in context, Marx especially requires that capitalism, in contradistinction to feudalism, has "free labour" (i.e. unlike a 'serf', a 'worker' can be hired and fired, workers can by market forces be geographically relocated and that workers can be de- and re-skilled and thus employed in a variety of industries).
Certainly, at least the threat exists, that "the aristocracy of our monied corporations" (to quote a very different thinker and take your metaphor), may yet impose on us a world beset by barriers and such limited social mobility that most people are, as in feudalism, born into roles which allow no escape. Economic inequality, which had been falling in the decades following WWII is once again on the rise. This won't improve if we add into this the predictions of the gloomiest pundits of the effect of emergent AI and automation technologies: a first world where rates of >40% endemic unemployment, where a very few very wealthy people enjoy almost all the benefits of machine generated wealth, while most get by on UBI. Though I'm not entirely convinced that much of the concern isn't founded on vapourware, if this does begin to develop, we will perhaps be at one of those 'revolutionary' junctures where the old economic arrangements no longer suit new material conditions. For all his problems, Uncle Karl, may provide us with some insight yet.
But I don't believe in his locomotive steaming with scientific certainty on towards paradise, we need to make conscious effort to forge our future. And wouldn't it be nice in this context to have a Left which had its eyes on the big issues rather than engaging in the navel gazing victimology of personal identity, but I find myself on a soapbox, so I'd better stop now...
Footnote:
[**If history seemed to prove Lenin correct, I'd still like t
It emerges pretty clearly even just from the narrative in Chapter 1 of the Manifesto,:
The bourgeoisie, historically, has played a most revolutionary part.... The bourgeoisie, during its rule of scarce one hundred years, has created more massive and more colossal productive forces than have all preceding generations together. Subjection of Nature's forces to man, machinery, application of chemistry to industry and agriculture, steam-navigation, railways, electric telegraphs, clearing of whole continents for cultivation, canalisation of rivers, whole populations conjured out of the ground... But with the development of industry the proletariat not only increases in number; it becomes concentrated in greater masses, its strength grows, and it feels that strength more. The various interests and conditions of life within the ranks of the proletariat are more and more equalised, in proportion as machinery obliterates all distinctions of labour, and nearly everywhere reduces wages to the same low level.... What the bourgeoisie, therefore, produces, above all, is its own grave-diggers.
So if you assume that late-stage capitalism degrades from frontier entrepreneurship to what is essentially market feudalism where a small handful of companies control sectors of the economy and have walled themselves in with sufficient barriers to entry and regulatory capture, then is it fair to assume that Marx would argue we need a revolution to simply go BACK to captialism? Or would he argue that the wealth is there, so captialism has done it's job, so choo-choo it's socialism time?
Nice question. I'm not. by any means, a scholar of Marx, but I've read a little, so I'll attempt to field it.
Firstly, if you will allow me this platitude, Marx was a man of his time, responding to the world as he found it, so we cannot really know what \ he would have argued had he seen contemporary conditions. He clearly did advocate revolution towards capitalism where it didn't exist! So for example, and this would/does upset our contemporary 'post-colonialist,' he wrote in support of French colonialism in Nth Africa as being an advance over what he saw as the theocratic tribalism of the Barbary coast. (Sorry, I can't recall the reference, I believe it was in a letter he wrote someone). He also, in communication with Russian radicals, dismissed the idea the Russia could stage a Socialist revolution (which led Lenin to revise Marx with his theory of 'Imperialism,' thus Marxism-Leninism), arguing that it was really mainly the US and England who were near enough advanced to accomplish this.
But more directly to your question. I think though we need to be careful of the use of "market feudalism" here. By 'feudalism' we (historians, lawyers and probably Marx) would usually understand, as a kind of idealised model, the social arrangement where land is parcelled out by a superior Lord to his vassal Lords (eg. King -> Baron -> Lords), but otherwise that land is inalienable (cannot be bought or sold) and where the resident population (serfs) are bound to that land, unable simply to leave it (though escape routes like becoming a soldier existed in practice). Similarly in the towns (burghs), the burghers are constrained almost by birth to follow certain vocations, which are tightly restricted in size etc by the guild system (the spillage ending up in monasteries). For (non-aristocratic) women, of course, social position would be even more restricted.
Marx' insight was that each stage of economic development (which then created a particular kind of society and person), at first represented an advance of productive capacity over the previous, but that eventually the very aspects which originally recommended a system because "fetters on production" and thus change would ensue. If you like check out the
Yeah! It is well known that Communism is the declared enemy of Socialism. See National Socialism and how those people felt about commies.
Just as German Socialist politician Julius Leber how the Nazi's felt about Socialists.
Firstly the NSDAP was 'socialist' in the same way the that the Democratic Republic of Korea is 'democratic.' Don't be fooled by branding.
OK, it's not exactly that simple: there was the Strasserian tendency within the NSDAP which could be described as 'socialist', and certainly as 'anti-capitalist.' But remember Hitler personally objected to the inclusion of 'Sozialistische' in the name NSDAP, when the DAP re-branded. At that time, of course, Drexler not Hitler was the head of the party, so Hitler just had to work with the name he got. And it is also true the early DAP and NSDAP policy documents contained socialist-like and anti-capitalist points. However, all that changed once Hitler took over the party, and despite the 'S' being maintained, the party quickly became avowedly anti-Socialist, as Ernst Röhm, among others, was to discover to his peril.
Hitler also became a huge supporter of the giant German corporations, who of all the institutions of German society, were the only significant ones to escape Gleichschaltung (whereas 'Socialism' means, in the first instance, the socialisation of the "means of production"). Unlike the current Venezuelan regime, he knew better than to kill the proverbial goose. To call the Hitler-led NSDAP "Socialist" is simply wrong.
Secondly, far from Communism being the "declared enemy of Socialism," note that Communist Parties, where they have come to power, have generally set up "Socialist Republics." You may recall the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics centred around Russia, which was, throughout much of the C20th, a not insignificant state run by a nominally 'Communist' party. Why?
Because according to Marxist theory, Socialism was the transitional state required for the accomplishment of Communism. Thus a Capitalist revolution (from Feudalism) was necessary to establish modern productive forces and create both the wealth necessary to enable Socialism and the Communism to be born, and also to create the industrial working class, who would be humanity's saviour.
Socialism, for which Marx described the distribution of wealth as "to each according to their contribution," was supposed to be a state run by this working class (the 'universal' class, for owning nothing they did not have the interest in out competing any other concern, as capitalists were doomed to do), which was to pave the way for Communism, where humanity reached a social adulthood where the apparatus of the 'State' was no longer necessary, and the state simply faded away. The distribution in this stateless Communist society was instead to be "from each according to their ability, to each according to their needs" (ie. FOSS extended to all goods and services in society). And note needs also includes that which allows people to express their ability, so, to stretch out the FOSS conceit: society would see to it that software developers are supplied with hardware concomitant to their requirements as well as an lmitless supply of Mountain Dew and Krispy Kreme Doughnuts (or Peoples Dew and Peoples Doughnuts as they would then be called;).
In any case, I'm not entirely convinced Venezuela is on this ineluctable road to paradise.
And it is apparently from (scientific) Latin that the word enters the English language. Here's the OED's take:
Origin: A borrowing from Latin. Etymon: Latin octopus.
Etymology: < scientific Latin octopus (1758 or earlier in Linnaeus) < ancient Greek... ...
The plural form octopodes reflects the Greek plural; compare octopod n. The more frequent plural form octopi arises from apprehension of the final -us of the word as the grammatical ending of Latin second declension nouns; this apprehension is also reflected in compounds in octop- : see e.g. octopean adj., octopic adj., octopine adj., etc.
Fundamentally: circumvention of security is not an element of this offence as it has been drafted. (And for the record, I find this to be a peculiarly drafted law.) Perhaps you can point me to relevant curial authority which reads in that requirement? If not...
If it wasn't secured data then there is no basis for arresting the individual accessing the data.
Why not? He wasn't charged with accessing "secured data," he was charged with "obtaining" a "computer service" and doing so "fraudulently and without colour of right."
Reading the provision above, in ignorance of case law, it appears you need to show a) that the accused gained access to some service such as for example allowing him to retrieve data (such arguably as we are doing reading slashdot) AND b) he did so without any right to do so (which, I guess, might an implied right but which the practice of that department in issuing specific urls to specific clients strongly argues against in the present case) AND c) you have to demonstrate fraudulent behaviour (which is a very long stretch I should think). Iff all three evaluate to T, the actus reus is established. Breach of security is not an element that needs to be evaluated.
And to be clear as to what constitutes 'fraud' at common law, this from Osbornes:
fraud
The obtaining of material advantage, by unfair of wrongful means; it involves the making of a false representation knowingly, or without belief in its truth, or recklessly.
I do not know if 'fradulently' for the purposes of this provision has a different meaning at Canadian law (but I should be surprised if it is too different).
And my point is that once the "security" reaches are certain level of incompetence... it ceases to be security
Which is succinctly and rigorously captured by the phrase "inadequate security." I clearly understood your point, I simply question it's relevance. If, as you say there was no security, then why mention it?
On a different fact set, say especially where some social engineering was employed to by-pass a security measure, then the means by which security was breached might be relevant to help establish one of the elements (i.e. fraud). But that is not this case. So let's not mention "security" again.
"Effort" is a bit of a stretch description. A minor tweak to the URL hardly something that qualifies as effort. I've done that exact thing myself now and then and I'm hardly a genius hacker.
He wrote a script, it's effort, (as is manually tweaking). And of course I too go make minor tweaks to urls all the time --even as part of my paid employ (since I don't practise, but develop), so it MUST be effort.;) And isn't it precisely this, the suggestion that our innocent tweaking, might have been criminalised by some jurisdiction somewhere, what is drawing so much of the ire here?
And BTW, even if we were dealing with a circumvention offence, you would not need to be a "genius hacker" to be convicted, again a very trivial method of circumvention might suffice.
It's an analogy meant to illustrate the intent of a point
I'm sorry, I found the analogy poor and the point not to require illustration. I don't want to be unfriendly, but look... we both clearly have sufficient technical understanding to get the facts in and of themselves; any analogy really could serve only to disguise rather than illuminate them. Though they may be of pedagogic value (sometimes analogies really do provide valuable illumination), there are good reasons not to argue by analogy.
There has to be some measure of standard of care on the part of the people charged with keeping private data private.
One should certainly hope so! That however, is a separate issue and is to be resolved by (a) separate legal action(s), as between different parties.
Slashdot Mirror
Endorse ? Did you just use the word "Endorse"
Yes, look it's right there.
They are not endorsing anything.
They are recommending I watch something I never asked to see, they are endorsing those clips.
No, what you're suggesting is censorship.
I'm not, what I wrote should be clear: If you are providing search results, what turns up should be on the person searching. When you recommend something, you wear that recommendation. That's not about censorship, it's about responsibility. I know a terribly old-fashioned concept. Ever heard of it?
If I'm interested in hearing commentators talk about how Jussie Smollett might have staged a hoax, I don't want Youtube to start being creative and suggest to me CNN panels about how we need to believe Jussie and that this attack is a result of the President's rethoric.
Yes, You should be able to look for what you want to see, using some relatively transparent search algorithm. Not have things thrust in your face based on what the social media corporation (via whichever opaque algorithm they decide on or otherwise) thinks you should watch without owing up to it. But maybe this isn't obvious to you because the algorithms are already delivering the not-so-suppressed voices you want to hear?
Youtube's job is not to "guide my opinion" towards their selected narrative.
They already do, you may have noticed the recommend videos? The question is whether they will be made to take responsibility for guiding your opinion.
To adopt AC's metaphor from below, I'm not, as AC believed advocating these publishers saying "we just removed card from the catalog and stored book behind shelf of other books." I'm advocating making it very easy to find the card in the catalog you want to find. It's your responsibility what you look for.
If however the librarian picks a book off of the shelf slaps it on the desk in front of you and tells you "you really should read this," the librarian is vouching for the book.
If we did things your way, whate'd all be Flat Earthers
Obviously not. And wasn't there recently a study that showed that the rise in flat earth believers is primarily due to YouTube's recommendation algorithm? Ergo, if these algorithms are working as designed, they need a redesign.
Oh, so you recommend system where "it is not censored", we just removed card from the catalog and stored book behind shelf of other books. But .. you can still find it ...
Obviously not. Try reading the comment that the above was the erratum to.
Umm, soz ... suboptimal caffeine levels. Erratum:
There's a gulf of difference between actively censoring arguably unsavoury messages, and refraining from guiding viewers' eyes towards them.
The issue here is not telling people they aren't "allowed to be interested in something," the issue is about which messages particular social media companies should endorse via their recommendations. There's a gulf of difference between actively censoring arguably unsavoury messages, and guiding viewers eyes towards them.
If you are providing search results, what turns up should* be on the person searching. When you recommend something, you wear that recommendation. [*the commercial interests of the search providers notwithstanding].
are these images 'copyrighted' as that they are generated
That's an interesting legal-theoretical question and it might make a good topic for a law school essay.
As a matter of mere practice, however, given that no two runs of the program should produce identical faces, it seems unlikely that anyone would even think to look for a watermark (assuming there is one) or other identifying feature connecting the image to the the putative copyright holder. TLDR: You're unlikely to be caught.
Socialism creates a system in which everyone cares about the decisions that other people make.
It may indeed, but care cannot automatically be converted into mandating behaviours.
Socialized medicine, for example, takes everyone's money and spends it on the group's health costs. I, as a dedicated taxpayer, now care when idiots start smoking - I have to pay for their cancer care, and I feel cheated by the poor decisions of others. It is only natural, in this scenario, that I should feel that people should be prevented from smoking in order to eliminate this unfair burden upon me
Really good example. So what might happen is that pressure builds for anti-smoking policy, which causes a rapid decline in the rate of smoking and your concern that the health dollar is being misspent results in not only your own health, but the health of the public in general improving. This has been the experience in Australia, where we do have a first rate public health care system, which incidentally no politician, left or right, who hopes for election would dare threaten to remove.
the system has set me up to make decisions for what others do to their own bodies
Well democratic socialism (and I'm hoping the majority of socialists by now accept the need for democratic socialism) wouldn't allow you to make any actual decision by yourself. It might indeed set you up to have an interest in what other people do with their bodies, and if you were joined by enough non-smokers who share your concern, your combined democratic power could affect the law, which may in turn constrain what other people do with their bodies, sure.
This is de facto slavery
And you were doing so well up to then ... sad. No, de facto slavery is when you get others to work for your profit without reasonable recompense above their basic keep. This is much more like having laws against abortion when enough of the population decide women should be compelled by law to carry a pregnancy to term and force their view through the legislature.
As with all democratic systems what is perhaps required is some legal constraint on how far the law can impinge upon the autonomy of the individual (eg a Bill of Rights). Your interests in what others do may be increased in a socialised, but your ability to realise those interests to the detriment of others, as with any other exercise of power public or private under any other system, can be controlled by the application of law. That's what the Law is.
Yeah sure, but 74% of users don't realise their interests are tracked? I can believe 74% didn't know how to access that particular page, but seriously ...
I hate to break it to you but Australia is mostly desert.
Not relevant. I'm addressing the claim that "[r]oughly 10 years ago a high profile Australian scientist did a TV interview and stated that it may never rain again in the Australian outback (sic)." Do you have any citation to prove that? (Also I think you'll find that "Sydney and the Warragamba catchment" has not been declared a desert at this stage.)
I'm only 44 years old ...
So you still wet behind the ears, son. But also not relevant. How does the fact that your experience of Australian climatic conditions is less than mine establish the claim that "[r]oughly 10 years ago a high profile Australian scientist did a TV interview and stated that it may never rain again in the Australian outback (sic)?" [HINT: It doesn't.]
I can tell you right now that farmers have been complaining about droughts and floods continuously for as long as I've been alive.
Well no shit mate. That's not really surprising if, as is claimed, S.E. Australia were experiencing a continuous ratcheting up in frequency and severity of drought conditions. But guess what? That's still not relevant to the claim that "[r]oughly 10 years ago a high profile Australian scientist did a TV interview and stated that it may never rain again in the Australian outback (sic)!"
There's nothing more Australian than ...
FFS sunshine, can you bottle it already? The issue here is that trying to pin that outrageous claim on Flannery is complete bullshit, and you know it. Nor is all your irrelevant blathering going to make it anything other than bullshit . End of story!
Roughly 10 years ago a high profile Australian scientist did a TV interview and stated that it may never rain again in the Australian outback [sic].
That's not actually the truth is it? (Though I'm liable to be convinced otherwise by a citation from a reliable source).
I'm presuming you are talking about Tim Flannery. Here is the transcript of that infamous TV interview. So here is what he actually said, that has widely been quoted as "it will never rain again":
... since 1998 particularly, we've seen just drought, drought, drought, and particularly regions like Sydney and the Warragamba catchment - if you look at the Warragamba catchment figures, since '98, the water has been in virtual freefall, and they've got about two years of supply left ...
... are saying the same sort of thing that we're actually seeing on the ground. ...
... the worst-case scenario for Sydney is that the climate that's existed for the last seven years continues for another two years. In that case, Sydney will be facing extreme difficulties with water ...
Well, you can't predict the future; that's one of the things that you learn fairly early on, but if I could just say, the general patterns that we're seeing in the global circulation models
We'll know probably within two or three years, I suppose, how this is going to play out, particularly for Sydney, because its water supply is limited to that sort of scale, but it is my fear that the new weather regime is going to be a much drier one, and while we may get the odd good rainfall event, they're going to be much less frequent than in the past, and we'll just be in a different climatic regime
So "roughly 10 years" later, how is the drought situation in Eastern Australia panning out ... this even from the Murdoch press, speaks to its seriousness.
[T]he vaccine is of zero benefit to him because he has no cervix
Well ... perhaps not zero benefit. He does have a throat I take it.
Which is in no way to disagree with your actual point, that this, and imo many other vaccines, ought to be freely available, where your argument should be irresistible.
It's a pretty convincing hoax too. China has invested trillions into renewables and cleaner tech.
Well that's virtue signalling in its most literal, technical (signalling theory) meaning then.
Stop typing until you get there
Nobody can get beyond what you actually wrote, if you refuse to correct or clarify it.
... BREXIT ... [Y]ou're going to need to finally figure out what is supposed to be in your Constitution and write it down so that all your rights can't be changed with a random 50%+1 poll.
That point, absent any further clarification, must reasonably be taken to be, that a written constitution would have protected against the possibility of Brexit. For the reasons I explained above, you were wrong.
In most of the world, regardless of civilised or not, slavery is not connected with race
A little tangential, and not directly pertinent to the use of master/slave terminology in tech but ... I'm not too sure about that specific claim. Slavery is, at least connected with race in many instances. Historically, from the ancient world up to the African slave trade of the C18th, slavery was commonly imposed upon an ethnic other.
It is true that in some cultures slavery/freedom is governed, for example, by cast or by criminality, rather than by race, (or even under conditions of societal breakdown, imposed on seemingly random fellow "citizens,") but that seems more to be the exception. Slaves in Mesopotamia, Greece, Rome, Scandinavia were usually either directly prisoners of war or taken from colonised peoples. Today the quasi-slavery of Phillipino workers in the middle East, the capture of sub-Saharan refugees in North Africa continue this tradition. Nor should we assume that some of the modern African slavery, which appears on the surface to be taking place between same-race parties, is entirely devoid of ethnic considerations.
Race is perhaps not invariably a factor --most obviously in modern-day sex based human trafficking --but the fact that ethnicity is, across time and geography, so very often been used to demark citizen from slave, and most especially in economies where slavery was central to lawful production (ie. unlike the illegal sex trade) suggests that race division at least facilitates slavery. It is perhaps of psychological importance, allowing the masters more easily to dehumanise the slaves, or simply to remove the fear that they too may be reduced to the condition of slavery.
I do not want my peripheral subsystems being incited to rise up against their masters
In which case you should endorse this change of terminology ... after all the worse that could happen after the name change is that your peripheral subsystems will be incited to rise up against the primary control system. ;)
Your response doesn't address the points I was making.
So what were "the points" you were making, and what reasonable connection might be drawn between "a random 50%+1 poll" and the lack of a written constitution?
Instead, it is recycled pap that anybody in the UK could have recited 10 years ago
Obviously not. In 2008 none save legally astute clairvoyants might have commented specifically as to the legal significance of the 2016 Brexit vote.
You did not understand my comment.
If that be so, you plainly need to work on your written expression. Try a bit harder in your next comment, and also at least make the semblance of an attempt at a substantive rebuttal (i.e. play the ball). "You did not understand what my comment" ... "just shows you didn't comprehend it" ... deployed without even a hint as to what was misconstrued, or even some tangential engagement of the matter at hand, comes across as a rather desperate ad hominem I'm afraid. I'm sure you can do better.
[Y]ou're going to need to finally figure out what is supposed to be in your Constitution and write it down so that all your rights can't be changed with a random 50%+1 poll.
Unless that written constitution were to include an article specifically requiring European membership --which constitutes a great deal more than "figuring out" and "writing down" what the Law is --the existence, or not, of a written constitution is irrelevant. The "poll" was just that: it has no legal significance and as such is not something which a constitution generally might affect. This was simply a political party running with an election promise, "we will poll you on this issue and do as you say." Since that party was thus elected to power; remains in power, and given the great expense of the exercise, and most importantly the perception (whatever the constitutional reality) of majority of the population that they expressed their democratic will, it is politically unthinkable to ignore the result. Politically unthinkable, not legally impossible.
SuperKendall is correct ....
Where 'correct' is newspeak for lying trough his suicidal teeth!
Instead of going dig back and digging up 2007 4th Assessment Report (the 5th AR was published in 2013, the 6th AR is due out next month), let's look at what the the IPCC Synthesis Report from 2014 has to say:
The increase of global mean surface temperature by the end of the 21st century (2081–2100) relative to 1986–2005 is likely to be 0.3C to 1.7C under RCP2.6, 1.1C to 2.6C under RCP4.5, 1.4C to 3.1C under RCP6.0 and 2.6C to 4.8C under RCP8.5 9 . The Arctic region will continue to warm more rapidly than the global mean.
So anywhere form 0.3C under the most optimistic to 4.8C in the worst case scenario. In point of fact the target of (no more than) 2C is what humanity is currently in the process of missing.
The write-up claims, the 3.5 degrees is the current projections by some unspecified researchers. There no "ifs" about that write-up's claims
If you want to split hairs like that, let's split them even finer!
SuperKendall didn't write that the summary claims that current projections of up to 3.5C exist. SuperKendall wrote that "the summary claims ... likley heating will be ... 3.5C" Which is something very, very different from what the words "If average global temperatures increase to 3.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels by the end of the century, as researchers currently project ..." means. [And I've highlighted the IF "about that write-up's claims" (yes, it's not an IF about the existence of said projections, duh) for your benefit.]
So sorry Mi, no banana.
Sorry, have to call you out on the German quote.
Loosely translate[d], it says that "sausage tastes better when you don't watch it being made".
The quote was a reference, albeit somewhat obscure, to the fact that corporate hiring procedures, much like the writing of laws (or the manufacture of sausage), doesn't invite inspection. Or to be more precise, one's rose-coloured view of how such institutions function, doesn't survive witnessing their practice. As to the translation ... werden die Worte "Gesetze sind wie Würste" nicht übersetzt, dann geht der Sinn dieses Spruches eigentlich verloren, oder?
Gesetze sind wie Würste, man sollte besser nicht dabei sein, wenn sie gemacht werden
--Bismarck
If they were better qualified than the available men, then they would already be appointed to the boards without needing any legislation.
Riiiiiiiight!
Companies are not going to appoint less qualified people unless they're forced to ...
What are you talking about? They clearly do!
Nor is this just a male/female thing either, among others, it's famously a "what school did you go to" thing as well. Maybe for the crucial technical jobs qualification win, but companies are full of humans making decision on a very human basis: first and foremost they decide in favour of "people-like-us". You cannot seriously believe that the better qualified guy has never lost out on a job to the better connected guy. (It's not what you know ...)
Plus we are talking company boards here. How do you spell sinecure?
Of course social welfare programs are part of socialist systems.
Firstly, OP didn't write that they weren't or couldn't be, OP wrote "Welfare is not socialism," which is to say it's possible to distinguish between socialising the means of production (socialism) and wealth redistribution via taxation (social welfare). Plainly social welfare can exist in modern capitalist democracies.
Secondly, while it is true that social-democratic parties have eventually come to be seen as its champions, the modern welfare state was initially the creature of conservatives deployed explicitly as an anti-socialist measure. This was already so in the C19th, but took on increased significance after the Russian Revolution.
If social-democrats increasingly saw the value in pursuing the "crumbs off the capitalist's table" --and to be fair, redistribution via high taxation had seemed more effectively to provide the larger part of society with a better life than violent revolution --in the early post-war period most conservative parties around the world were more than willing accomplices. It was really only towards the end of the 1970s, as the Soviet Union was increasingly understood to be spent force and especially as any talk of "Revolution" in the West became increasingly fanciful, that conservatives began the move to call their welfare state back in. The modern welfare state, from that perspective, had amply served its purpose in protecting Western liberal-democracies [in which use, for the benefit esp. of our American friends, 'liberal' refers to private ownership and free markets] from the threat of socialism, and had thus outlived its purpose.
Welfare is not Socialism!
That is a lie, and you are a liar [newscientist.com].
Being able to count "nuclear fatalities" on one's fingers is hyperbole at best! As you source establishes, we can be fairly certain that there have been at least 43 deaths from the Chernobyl accident:
Two decades ago, John Gittus of the Royal Academy of Engineering told the UK government there could eventually be around 10,000 fatalities. Today, some – notably environmental groups – put the death toll well into six figures.
... a 2006 study by Elisabeth Cardis of the International Agency for Research on Cancer in Lyon, France. This predicted that by 2065 Chernobyl will have caused about 16,000 cases of thyroid cancer and 25,000 cases of other cancers, compared with several hundred million cancer cases from other causes.
But that’s the extreme end of the estimates. “The only deaths that have been firmly established, either individually or statistically, are the 28 victims of acute radiation syndrome and 15 cases of fatal child thyroid cancer,” says Wade Allison of the University of Oxford.
Agreement is unlikely any time soon.
That's more fingers than I have in any case, I don't know about OP.
Chernobyl killed/is killing at least 4,000 people [ourworldindata.org]
Against OP's more reasonable claim, that "[n]uclear is orders of magnitude safer than fossil fuels," this figure of 4,000, or indeed any other number, of potential deaths is fairly meaningless unless we also quantify deaths due to fossil fuel usage. The source you quote offers this assessment:
The potential risks of nuclear energy are real: in both Chernobyl and Fukushima, deaths occurred as a result of direct nuclear impacts, radiation exposure and psychological stress. Nonetheless, of the two largest nuclear disasters, the death toll was of the order of thousands to tens of thousands in one, and thousands in the latest. Arguably still too many, but far fewer than the millions who die every year from impacts of other conventional energy sources.
Fukushima will have killed at least 400 people due to radiation exposure ...
Careful here! Your source reads: "The WHO project the number of deaths from low-level exposure to be close to zero, and up to 400 in upper estimates. It is not beyond possibility, and indeed looks increasingly likely, that there will be "close to zero" deaths due to radiation exposure. Paradoxically, the evacuated Fukushima residents will probably enjoy far lower mortality, especially from thyroid cancer, than normal, due to the extremely thorough screening (and relatively high treatability) to which this cohort is subject.
Well ... This paper calculates the only 25% of those evacuated "had to be evacuated because it was a nuclear plant." OP might well argue in reply that three quarters of those deaths are the result of "you anti-nuke people just [not] get[ting] it," (aka misinformed overestimation of the danger of low-level exposure). So be careful with this one too.
Finally in terms of relative safety we need to take into account Kharecha and Hansen's study which suggests that "that despite the three major nuclear accidents the world has experienced, nuclear power prevented an average of over 1.8 million net [i.e. taking into account estimates of potential nuclear fatalities] deaths worldwide between 1971-2009."
You're also engaging in the logical fallacy of false dichotomy. Fossil fuels are also da
Doesn't his view of "if an idea of a society could reasonably be conceived, it's time had come" kind of contradict "He also, in communication with Russian radicals, dismissed the idea the Russia could stage a Socialist revolution [as they're not advanced enough]"?
Maybe it does, and maybe I ought to source what Marx actually wrote word for word in this regard before we convict him upon what I might be mis-remembering. ;) Remembering that in Marx' view, ideas flow from the hard economic underpinnings ("material conditions") in which their possibility arises (and the idea of 'socialism' had admittedly "matured in the womb of" French not Russian "society"), this may be answered by reference to where it is, that such ideas fall on fertile ground. And it was here, as I noted above, that Lenin broke with Marx. For while Marx looked to the Americans to fashion a society founded on something other than the power of capital (good luck with that Karl!), Lenin took the notion of 'imperialism' (as touched upon by Marx) and ran with that: Viewing capitalism as a vast empire, it was not in its bastion, but instead at its "weakest links" that capitalism would break, that revolution was possible.**
This answer to your question, however, only raises another possible contradiction: that between Marxist Theory and Praxis. For if, as per the Preface, that "[n]o social order ever disappears before all the productive forces, for which there is room in it, have been developed; and [that] new higher relations of production never appear before the material conditions of their existence have matured in the womb of the old society," what room remains for activism? Why not sit back, feet up, and simply wait for the locomotive of history ineluctably to carry us to the promised land? But perhaps Marx' economic determinism has been read in a far stricter sense that he ever intended.
I'm still sticking to the idea of "market feudalism". A "social arrangement" of ...
I certainly did not mean to dismiss it out of hand, it packs polemical punch if nothing else. That was just to stress that in context, Marx especially requires that capitalism, in contradistinction to feudalism, has "free labour" (i.e. unlike a 'serf', a 'worker' can be hired and fired, workers can by market forces be geographically relocated and that workers can be de- and re-skilled and thus employed in a variety of industries).
Certainly, at least the threat exists, that "the aristocracy of our monied corporations" (to quote a very different thinker and take your metaphor), may yet impose on us a world beset by barriers and such limited social mobility that most people are, as in feudalism, born into roles which allow no escape. Economic inequality, which had been falling in the decades following WWII is once again on the rise. This won't improve if we add into this the predictions of the gloomiest pundits of the effect of emergent AI and automation technologies: a first world where rates of >40% endemic unemployment, where a very few very wealthy people enjoy almost all the benefits of machine generated wealth, while most get by on UBI. Though I'm not entirely convinced that much of the concern isn't founded on vapourware, if this does begin to develop, we will perhaps be at one of those 'revolutionary' junctures where the old economic arrangements no longer suit new material conditions. For all his problems, Uncle Karl, may provide us with some insight yet.
But I don't believe in his locomotive steaming with scientific certainty on towards paradise, we need to make conscious effort to forge our future. And wouldn't it be nice in this context to have a Left which had its eyes on the big issues rather than engaging in the navel gazing victimology of personal identity, but I find myself on a soapbox, so I'd better stop now ...
Footnote:
[**If history seemed to prove Lenin correct, I'd still like t
Huh, I hadn't heard that one before.
It emerges pretty clearly even just from the narrative in Chapter 1 of the Manifesto,:
The bourgeoisie, historically, has played a most revolutionary part. ... The bourgeoisie, during its rule of scarce one hundred years, has created more massive and more colossal productive forces than have all preceding generations together. Subjection of Nature's forces to man, machinery, application of chemistry to industry and agriculture, steam-navigation, railways, electric telegraphs, clearing of whole continents for cultivation, canalisation of rivers, whole populations conjured out of the ground ... But with the development of industry the proletariat not only increases in number; it becomes concentrated in greater masses, its strength grows, and it feels that strength more. The various interests and conditions of life within the ranks of the proletariat are more and more equalised, in proportion as machinery obliterates all distinctions of labour, and nearly everywhere reduces wages to the same low level. ... What the bourgeoisie, therefore, produces, above all, is its own grave-diggers.
So if you assume that late-stage capitalism degrades from frontier entrepreneurship to what is essentially market feudalism where a small handful of companies control sectors of the economy and have walled themselves in with sufficient barriers to entry and regulatory capture, then is it fair to assume that Marx would argue we need a revolution to simply go BACK to captialism? Or would he argue that the wealth is there, so captialism has done it's job, so choo-choo it's socialism time?
Nice question. I'm not. by any means, a scholar of Marx, but I've read a little, so I'll attempt to field it.
Firstly, if you will allow me this platitude, Marx was a man of his time, responding to the world as he found it, so we cannot really know what \ he would have argued had he seen contemporary conditions. He clearly did advocate revolution towards capitalism where it didn't exist! So for example, and this would/does upset our contemporary 'post-colonialist,' he wrote in support of French colonialism in Nth Africa as being an advance over what he saw as the theocratic tribalism of the Barbary coast. (Sorry, I can't recall the reference, I believe it was in a letter he wrote someone). He also, in communication with Russian radicals, dismissed the idea the Russia could stage a Socialist revolution (which led Lenin to revise Marx with his theory of 'Imperialism,' thus Marxism-Leninism), arguing that it was really mainly the US and England who were near enough advanced to accomplish this.
But more directly to your question. I think though we need to be careful of the use of "market feudalism" here. By 'feudalism' we (historians, lawyers and probably Marx) would usually understand, as a kind of idealised model, the social arrangement where land is parcelled out by a superior Lord to his vassal Lords (eg. King -> Baron -> Lords), but otherwise that land is inalienable (cannot be bought or sold) and where the resident population (serfs) are bound to that land, unable simply to leave it (though escape routes like becoming a soldier existed in practice). Similarly in the towns (burghs), the burghers are constrained almost by birth to follow certain vocations, which are tightly restricted in size etc by the guild system (the spillage ending up in monasteries). For (non-aristocratic) women, of course, social position would be even more restricted.
Marx' insight was that each stage of economic development (which then created a particular kind of society and person), at first represented an advance of productive capacity over the previous, but that eventually the very aspects which originally recommended a system because "fetters on production" and thus change would ensue. If you like check out the
Yeah! It is well known that Communism is the declared enemy of Socialism. See National Socialism and how those people felt about commies.
Just as German Socialist politician Julius Leber how the Nazi's felt about Socialists.
Firstly the NSDAP was 'socialist' in the same way the that the Democratic Republic of Korea is 'democratic.' Don't be fooled by branding.
OK, it's not exactly that simple: there was the Strasserian tendency within the NSDAP which could be described as 'socialist', and certainly as 'anti-capitalist.' But remember Hitler personally objected to the inclusion of 'Sozialistische' in the name NSDAP, when the DAP re-branded. At that time, of course, Drexler not Hitler was the head of the party, so Hitler just had to work with the name he got. And it is also true the early DAP and NSDAP policy documents contained socialist-like and anti-capitalist points. However, all that changed once Hitler took over the party, and despite the 'S' being maintained, the party quickly became avowedly anti-Socialist, as Ernst Röhm, among others, was to discover to his peril.
Hitler also became a huge supporter of the giant German corporations, who of all the institutions of German society, were the only significant ones to escape Gleichschaltung (whereas 'Socialism' means, in the first instance, the socialisation of the "means of production"). Unlike the current Venezuelan regime, he knew better than to kill the proverbial goose. To call the Hitler-led NSDAP "Socialist" is simply wrong.
Secondly, far from Communism being the "declared enemy of Socialism," note that Communist Parties, where they have come to power, have generally set up "Socialist Republics." You may recall the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics centred around Russia, which was, throughout much of the C20th, a not insignificant state run by a nominally 'Communist' party. Why?
Because according to Marxist theory, Socialism was the transitional state required for the accomplishment of Communism. Thus a Capitalist revolution (from Feudalism) was necessary to establish modern productive forces and create both the wealth necessary to enable Socialism and the Communism to be born, and also to create the industrial working class, who would be humanity's saviour.
Socialism, for which Marx described the distribution of wealth as "to each according to their contribution," was supposed to be a state run by this working class (the 'universal' class, for owning nothing they did not have the interest in out competing any other concern, as capitalists were doomed to do), which was to pave the way for Communism, where humanity reached a social adulthood where the apparatus of the 'State' was no longer necessary, and the state simply faded away. The distribution in this stateless Communist society was instead to be "from each according to their ability, to each according to their needs" (ie. FOSS extended to all goods and services in society). And note needs also includes that which allows people to express their ability, so, to stretch out the FOSS conceit: society would see to it that software developers are supplied with hardware concomitant to their requirements as well as an lmitless supply of Mountain Dew and Krispy Kreme Doughnuts (or Peoples Dew and Peoples Doughnuts as they would then be called ;).
In any case, I'm not entirely convinced Venezuela is on this ineluctable road to paradise.
But in Latin, Octopuses ends in an "i"!
And it is apparently from (scientific) Latin that the word enters the English language. Here's the OED's take:
Origin: A borrowing from Latin. Etymon: Latin octopus. ...
...
Etymology: < scientific Latin octopus (1758 or earlier in Linnaeus) < ancient Greek
The plural form octopodes reflects the Greek plural; compare octopod n. The more frequent plural form octopi arises from apprehension of the final -us of the word as the grammatical ending of Latin second declension nouns; this apprehension is also reflected in compounds in octop- : see e.g. octopean adj., octopic adj., octopine adj., etc.
Fundamentally: circumvention of security is not an element of this offence as it has been drafted. (And for the record, I find this to be a peculiarly drafted law.) Perhaps you can point me to relevant curial authority which reads in that requirement? If not ...
If it wasn't secured data then there is no basis for arresting the individual accessing the data.
Why not? He wasn't charged with accessing "secured data," he was charged with "obtaining" a "computer service" and doing so "fraudulently and without colour of right."
Reading the provision above, in ignorance of case law, it appears you need to show a) that the accused gained access to some service such as for example allowing him to retrieve data (such arguably as we are doing reading slashdot) AND b) he did so without any right to do so (which, I guess, might an implied right but which the practice of that department in issuing specific urls to specific clients strongly argues against in the present case) AND c) you have to demonstrate fraudulent behaviour (which is a very long stretch I should think). Iff all three evaluate to T, the actus reus is established. Breach of security is not an element that needs to be evaluated.
And to be clear as to what constitutes 'fraud' at common law, this from Osbornes:
fraud
The obtaining of material advantage, by unfair of wrongful means; it involves the making of a false representation knowingly, or without belief in its truth, or recklessly.
I do not know if 'fradulently' for the purposes of this provision has a different meaning at Canadian law (but I should be surprised if it is too different).
And my point is that once the "security" reaches are certain level of incompetence ... it ceases to be security
Which is succinctly and rigorously captured by the phrase "inadequate security." I clearly understood your point, I simply question it's relevance. If, as you say there was no security, then why mention it?
On a different fact set, say especially where some social engineering was employed to by-pass a security measure, then the means by which security was breached might be relevant to help establish one of the elements (i.e. fraud). But that is not this case. So let's not mention "security" again.
"Effort" is a bit of a stretch description. A minor tweak to the URL hardly something that qualifies as effort. I've done that exact thing myself now and then and I'm hardly a genius hacker.
He wrote a script, it's effort, (as is manually tweaking). And of course I too go make minor tweaks to urls all the time --even as part of my paid employ (since I don't practise, but develop), so it MUST be effort. ;) And isn't it precisely this, the suggestion that our innocent tweaking, might have been criminalised by some jurisdiction somewhere, what is drawing so much of the ire here?
And BTW, even if we were dealing with a circumvention offence, you would not need to be a "genius hacker" to be convicted, again a very trivial method of circumvention might suffice.
It's an analogy meant to illustrate the intent of a point
I'm sorry, I found the analogy poor and the point not to require illustration. I don't want to be unfriendly, but look ... we both clearly have sufficient technical understanding to get the facts in and of themselves; any analogy really could serve only to disguise rather than illuminate them. Though they may be of pedagogic value (sometimes analogies really do provide valuable illumination), there are good reasons not to argue by analogy.
There has to be some measure of standard of care on the part of the people charged with keeping private data private.
One should certainly hope so! That however, is a separate issue and is to be resolved by (a) separate legal action(s), as between different parties.