Well, no. The first responsibility of a country is to it's own citizens.

No, it's not a nonsensical question. The whole premise of Communism is reliance on the worker, and protecting the worker (probably not the best choice of terminology but saves paragraphs of explanations) because the worker is the only way for bureaucrats to exist. Communism requires people to be busy at work, and if robots make people idle the system fails. No workers, no bureaucrats, no government.

FWIW, Marx did predict that the US would head down the path of fascism, though he called it out not in name but symptoms. His critique of capitalism calls out exactly what we see happening in "Capitalism" today. In Marx's Communism this could not happen because the Government controls everything.

Where Marx completely fails, is that he never takes human nature into consideration. Human nature has been the nemesis of pretty much every form of government and economics. This is why a huge target on the last several decades has been deregulation in the US, we actually had many protections by law until very recent times.

Wow, quite a distortion you came up with there. Granted, Marx did say some interesting things but the question should be why communism would allow companies to build machines that remove income from humans? For that matter, why is a "capitalist Republic" allowing it now? Obviously China is not a capitalist, we have similar issues in the US.

Those may be a bit philanthropic for most, but the only way that _should_ be happening is with fascism because companies are the government (and vice versa).

Both Capitalism and Communism are supposed to be about maintaining the work force, so guess where we all are today?

3DConexion, formerly Spacware/Spacetech and possibly a few other names have had advance 3D positioning devices since forever ago, replacing buttons and dials in CAD and CAE software. A thimble is not going to be more or less ergonomic. As with mice, I'm sure it's a personal preference so someone will like it better.The Spaceball however is designed for use with a relaxed hand and does much more than 3D positioning. Like zooming, centering, and what ever else you program the buttons to do

If you want to take "it's position" as the starting point I'll argue that the ergonomics is less than that of a Spaceball, and more in line with motion detecting devices that again we have had for well over a decade. The thimble won't be as useful in HFE, because open and closed hands are at least as important as position and rotation.

In short, this is a wheel that's already been invented. I don't see anything "novel" or even better than what we have had already. Maybe if fits a niche I'm not aware of or care much about.

The person you responded to said "UK", yes the laws are different there and last I heard you can be jailed in the UK for not unlocking what the cops tell you to unlock. Of course I don't live in the UK so that report I read may have been inaccurate or changed (but I don't believe so).

The line is obviously when a person takes actions that would lead to their talk becoming action, as was the facts in this case. (Read TFA's links)

For example, I disagree with the US putting the teenager in jail for claiming on Facebook that if he could he would shoot the President. That is was only talk, and not illegal in my opinion. The FBI may have ran some checks on the teen to make sure he was not plotting after making the statement, but the statement alone was not enough to jail him.

Now, if the teenager had went and purchased a gun and started performing illegal activities to track the location of the President, then we have conspiracy and the teen should have been put in jail.

If you don't see the line, you are intentionally not looking. The line exists, and it's pretty well drawn.

Which to me means that it was not reasonable to throw out the charges. Change them to something that allows watching.

If this was just a guy posting trash on Facebook I'd probably side with you. If you read the details of the case, you will find that this is not just someone ranting. This appears to be someone conspiring to commit rape, murder, and kidnapping.

Whether the primary web site has a disclaimer or not, does not change the fact that this goes beyond the simple act of writing about a sick fantasy. He offered to kidnap someone for 5,000.00. He went and found a recipe for chloroform, then built a pulley system to string up one of the people he was talking about kidnapping and murdering. He used a Police database illegally for the purpose of gathering personal information about the people he appeared to be conspiring against (it was more than 1). This goes well beyond simply discussing "unconventional thoughts".

Lets change the scenario a bit. If I was to claim I want to kill someone on Facebook, I'd be a person of interest but not doing anything illegal. When I go out and search for recipes for poisons, I'm still not illegal but I should be under watch, especially if the poison is generic household items which I may have on hand. Once I start illegally gathering personal information about the targets I claimed I want to kill, would I not be conspiring to commit murder? What if I owned a gun, would that be enough? (Remember that this person was a Cop and had a Gun, as well as a position of authority to abuse, and could have been legally stalking victims without anyone's knowledge on "patrols")

If you believe it's reasonable, would you want the guy as a neighbor? Invite them over over for dinner? If so, good for you. I'd prefer to see a person like this under watch and psychological monitoring at a minimum.

If Rush Limbaugh is swimming by I fully expect that people would want to be evacuated. Win win in my ever so humble opinion!

Hypothetical stuff causes hypothetical problems. Wow, I would have never thunk it! Let the paranoia.. er fun begin!

Before you claim troll show me where in the non-existent TFA (yes, I read this one) they come up with: 1) Their estimated "millions of tons". 2) How many "millions" are they claiming. 3) Why the only possible explanation is that fish are eating it (so now it's in your food). Nope, I'm not going to wait. They use a 1970 study that showed .1% of plastic washes into the ocean. This was the same time that we had TV commercials with American Indian's crying on TV because people on average were dumping their shit everywhere. We also had everyone pumping out CFCs for everything in a can.

I agree that "The Great Pacific Garbage Dump" is a huge problem, and know that the same problems exist in every ocean. Fantastic theories (or fantasy depending on your perspective) requires evidence, and there is none to back TFA. None of this addresses the real problems causing dumping (like greed and a lack of enforced regulation, or wars).

The last paragraph of TFA says it all. "We really don’t know what this plastic is doing.” So the point of the article telling people fish are eating the plastic is what exactly?

Nice straw man! Who here argued that any of those unethical practices are "okay"? Facebook's justification was not "We already manipulate people with media!" was it?

Would you agree that changing the size of a font or clickable image on your web site is different from changing content intended to create a particular emotional response based on the user logging in?

In other words, it's not the same as web site design, commercial or otherwise. Read the study, it was not just changing cosmetics or ergonomics. It was providing a specific list of content which was manipulated to insight a particular emotional response. We have no idea what these actually were, just that it happened.

Jerry sees in his Newsfeed: 1) top 10 reasons to hate your life. 2) suicide is painless 3) there is no God 4) another financial collapse is eminent 6) Fat people, a detriment to society.

Joe sees in his Newsfeed: 1) top 10 reasons to love life 2) suicide is immoral 4) Community Outreach 5) top 10 places to work 6) 5 easy work outs to lose unwanted pounds

Obviously Joe and Jerry expect the same Newsfeeds if they are signed up for the same stuff. Seeing the above for a few days, or other more nefarious topics, would definitely have impact on a middle aged single guy that is overweight and just divorced.

Again, NO! You don't perform content manipulation to trigger a response in web site design.

This is probably the most important consideration for people to understand. Do you really think that the people pulling the strings give a rats ass about individuals? To people like Zuckerberg, you are something to be exploited for whatever purpose they wish.

So now that we know that they have done this once, I simply wonder how many more experiments they have done without disclosure. I have a hard time believing this is the first, or the last.

As a first guess, the whole "timeline" feature that was forced on people a while back was probably a result of this experimentation. It is impossible to hold or read rational dialogue on Facebook main pages now, because they reorder by "popularity" and not by chronological order, or even relevancy.

Bullshit all the way around. This isn't about making a buck you dolt, look around at the world and see what it really is. Money is a type of power, and everything going on is about power. Knowledge is power, which is why you only get educated with knowledge that certain people want you to have.

Your gun owning straw man demonstrates how well it works. You are either completely oblivious to everything you just responded to, or you are a shill trying to divert the topic.

I'll never ague with people that want the blue pill, until they start trying to convince others that the blue pill is better.

Mostly this, but I believe it could have been worded differently for clarity.

1. Like all institutions that are impacting on the public, Facebook and Twitter are being, and have been used, for propaganda. Guiding opinion happens from the time a kid enters Public school though to graduating from a University. We don't like to admit it, because it's frightening when you investigate the scope with which people are being indoctrinated. Reality can be a bummer, but it is reality.

2. Just like with Television, there is a massive amount of social engineering with online media and content. How many "News" programs want you to "follow us on Twitter" and "Like us on Facebook"? All of them, and you will hear and see that phrase repeated over and over.

3. Use of institutions like Education and Social media for purposes of "Social Engineering" is Propaganda in it's purest form and insidious. This is much worse than bread and circuses alone, because it constantly provides an opinion that someone want's you to have without any dialogue or discussion on the impact or morality of the opinion. I.E. Iraq war, Syria, candidates for public offices, etc...

4. The fact that propaganda wars are waged against citizens happen is not new. It's been documented back as far as I can recall. Certain people owned Newspapers and provide an opinion. If a counter opinion is provided, it's generally squashed by ad hominem and when that doesn't work it simply won't be discussed on any mass media. This has been transferred to Radio, TV, and now Social media. The scale at which it's currently done is massive compared to when I was a kid.

Investigating and learning about the psychology being used is like taking the red pill. A whole new world opens up to you, and you can see how much propaganda is being generated.