Cuba Forms a CS Professional Society -- It's No ACM 43
lpress writes: The formation of the Unión de Informáticos de Cuba (UIC) was announced at a Havana conference and a 7,500 person teleconference (no mean feat in Cuba). My first reaction was "cool — like a Cuban ACM," but there are significant differences between ACM and UIC. For example, one must apply to the Ministry of Communication to be accepted into the UIC and the application form asks about membership in political organizations like the Communist Party or Young Communists League along with technical qualifications. A CS degree is required (sorry Bill Gates). UIC members must be Cuban, while ACM has chapters in 57 nations. ACM has student chapters, but they are less needed in Cuba, which has over 600 youth computer clubs where kids take classes and play games and promising students are tracked and channeled into technical schools.
Academy of Country Music (Score:4, Informative)
In case anyone is wondering, the poster is talking about the Academy of Country Music. Wikipedia says:
The Academy of Country Music (ACM) was founded in 1964 in Los Angeles, California as the Country & Western Music Academy. Among those involved in the founding was Eddie Miller and Tommy Wiggins, who joined Mickey Christensen and Chris Christensen. They wanted to promote country music in the western 13 states with the support of artist based on the West Coast. Artist such as Johnny Bond, Glen Campbell, Merle Haggard, Roger Mill, and many more influenced them. The ball finally started rolling in 1965 when a board of directors was formed to govern the Academy.
Re:Academy of Country Music (Score:4, Interesting)
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I'm facepalming a bit, seeing that these comments are being modded as "informative" and "insightful" instead of "funny". Maybe it's meta-humor, and you can give me a bit ole "whoosh".
Submitters and editors, how hard is it to remember to always define the first instance of an acronym? No matter how widely known you think it is, there are guaranteed to be people who don't know what it is.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
You really don't realize that American country music has always been the music of the proletariat? Do you know anything at all about the "Father of Country Music"?
https://youtu.be/Miy4io-rGo0 [youtu.be]
Or maybe something a little more recent:
https://youtu.be/VfiJEfBNRqg [youtu.be]
And yes, good old Kenny Chesney is singing "union made". Yes, country music has always been the music of the proletariat, even
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No, I didn't ignore that. It's why I wrote this:
"Yes, country music has always been the music of the proletariat, even with the "New Country" flag-waving "I believe in Amurka" mass-produced crapola that was sold to the yokels after 9/11."
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Sorry but even after reading the f*ing article, ACM is still a non-obvious acronym for those who weren't aware of it. It's unclear why ordinary Cubans should give 2 shits about conformity.
After a decade of reading Slashdot, I'd never heard of ACM.
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Sorry im not from America. None of my colleagues have ever mentioned the organisation thus it carries no prestige or noteworthiness in my country.
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Open Access (Score:5, Interesting)
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Are their journals open access? That seems like the communist way to do it
Communism has never been about "open access" or serving the people. It has always been about preserving the privileges of the elite, and enhancing class distinctions. In communist China, your hereditary class [wikipedia.org] is printed on you national ID card, and you can be denied access to housing, healthcare, public schools and even food, based on your class. 98% of the 30 million people that starved to death during the Great Leap Forward [wikipedia.org] had the "wrong" mark on their ID cards. The 7 million Ukrainians murdered duri
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Communism has never been about "open access" or serving the people. It has always been about preserving the privileges of the elite, and enhancing class distinctions.
So, communism it's like capitalism then?
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Actually yes, there have been. The USSR did genuinely start as communist, so did Vietnam. The USSR even tried to get rid of its legal system (as stipulated by Marx.) Just everything broke down within a few short years.
Another example of communism being implemented is the Icarians. They literally had a complete infrastructure, town, and all, handed to them at no cost. Yet they later fell apart anyways. Why? Because work eventually slowed down as the people lost motivation to work at all (they were literally
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So, communism it's like capitalism then?
Unlike communism, capitalism wasn't constructed. The fundamental principle behind capitalism is free markets, and free markets mean prices are governed by the forces of supply and demand. Any time where supply and demand doesn't figure into that, then it's not a free market (such as monopolies, for example) and thus is not capitalism.
Copyrights, by their nature, are not free market as far as that particular work is concerned. This, IMO, is why open source does so well: It eliminates the monopoly status give
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Bullshit.
These are constructed things.
At the end of the day, Capitalism comes from the observation "people own stuff", that is it. People owning stuff exists independent of "free markets", "supply and demand", and anything else. The rest of it is a belief system.
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...The top-down nature of communist societies actually makes corporatism easier, and equates non-conformity with treason
With the large and increasing income equality and the purchasing of Congress by corporate interests here in the United States, it would seem to follow in your logic that the United States is moving towards Communism.
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*All systems are open. Some systems are more open than others*
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It has always been about preserving the privileges of the elite, and enhancing class distinctions.
I don’t know how it works in China, but in my country that’s the job of freemasonry.
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I don’t know how it works in China, but in my country that’s the job of freemasonry.
The Freemasons are not "elite". Anyone can join, even Homer Simpson [wikia.com].
TTL Gates (Score:1)
This reminds me of the popular assumption that Cubans all have ancient old cars that they keep running with homebrew fixes.
Should we all be sending them our old TTL gates, to help them in keeping their computers up and running?
Overqualified (Score:1, Troll)
For example, one must apply to the Ministry of Communication to be accepted into the UIC and the application form asks about membership in political organizations like the Communist Party or Young Communists League along with technical qualifications
From the article: "... Stallman submitted his application without citing any formal association with the Communist Party, but instead described his pioneering work with the FSF and authorship of the GPL. Unexpectedly, however, his application was declined. Whe
in other news... (Score:2)
Highly-reasoned conlusion? It's no Tesla.
Re: in other news... (Score:2)
Re: in other news... (Score:1)
OK it may be no ACM, (Score:5, Funny)
Cuba is not the USA (Score:3)
Different country, different culture: Cuba is not the USA.
To grasp an idea on how Cuba can be suspicious about foreign influence, you have to imagine being embargoed for decades, with hundreds of assassination plots against your political leaders, and dozens of successful military coups in neighbor countries.
Tendentious summary (Score:5, Informative)
Shock horror! You don't become a member just by putting MUIC on your business cards! I bet that you don't get admitted to the ACM without applying either.
If the submitter (presumably the author of the blog from the second link) had actually read the two-week-old comments in the first linked page then they would see that this isn't true. A CS degree is sufficient, but not necessary: the statutes clearly say that membership is open to professionals in other areas "with experience in support activities for the IT sector". So basically that's about the same as e.g. the venerable British Computer Society.
I don't see any nationality requirements in the statutes. It just seems to be a standard national professional body. And it hasn't even formally come into existence yet, so how would it have tentacles spread across the globe?
The only thing which seems to be both accurate and potentially upsetting to some people is the political side: that the application form asks about membership of political organisations, and one of its objectives relates to defending the Revolution. But that's completely unsurprising to anyone who knows anything at all about Cuban society, and it's a bit rich that someone from a country which propagandises primary school children by making them recite a Pledge of Allegiance every day (have you seen George Takei talk on the Daily Show about having to do this in an internment camp for Japanese Americans?) should complain about it.
(If I've just fed a troll, then I apologise to the Internet at large).
toasters (Score:1)