but I don't know a single person who traveled elsewhere until early 90s.
Semyon Semyonovitch Gorbunkov -- remember him?:-) In the departure scene he says "I got the tour at work" - and that was a good laugh! Everyone knew that you don't get tours to Turkey at work, unless you work in Kremlin.
But IRL I also haven't known anyone who traveled beyond Warsaw Pact countries as a tourist. It would have been free money, considering that USD $1 was available for under a rouble and exchanged to approved travelers. To make good money you didn't even have to travel farther than the nearest Berezka.
In the USSR, an exit visa was needed for any country that wasn't "ideologically friendly"
Not quite correct. Exit visas were required for all countries, even for such close allies as Bulgaria. But you could get one by buying a tour if you had enough connections among party bosses. The common citizen was offered tours, of varying cost and quality, to domestic destinations.
Here. Gold plating prevents rust. In practice, Nickel and Chromium are better plating materials, but gold looks nicer. Life of a weapon in a rainforest is brutal and short.
Just a few comments, since your point of view is pretty clear.
The Russian voters clearly see Putin as having usurped power illegitimately. That's why they have taken to the streets despite Putin utilizing fascist tactics against them (and Kasparov).
You can easily find 1000, 10,000 and maybe even 100,000 people in any country that are not happy with the government. In the USA historically 1/2 of the country does not agree with the President. Yes, there were riots on occasion, but they hadn't reached the full rebellion because they were not externally supported and because their numbers were small. Change that and see what happens. Take over a city, for example. Will the US Army sit idly, or they will go full Fallujah on you? If your rebellion is so small that the police can take care of you you are not going anywhere. If you can stoke a sufficient fire you gain a lot of leverage. The UK police did not dare to intervene during London riots because it could set flame to the whole country. That did not happen only because rioters were not organized and had no political demands. Next time it can be different.
The Russian people tolerate Putin at the moment. Again they have to be put under intense pressure to rebel.
Russia is always full of people who are willing to rebel, against anything and anyone. This is not news. Putin made significant improvements in life of an average citizen. There are goods on shelves of stores. People are better off than they were under Yeltsin. People like Kasparov have an uphill battle now because Putin has a proven track record and they have none. But if Putin goes bad (much worse than he is now) then yes, he will lose power. That's why he has to tread lightly and collect good PR whenever it comes along.
the behavior of the US is still fairly largely dictated by the will of the people.
I wouldn't be so sure about the USA. Nobody wants troops stuck in Afghanistan, but they are. Nobody wants to build the victory mosque in NYC but the project was pushed ahead by politicians. Nobody wants to give free money to Egypt (or Israel, to that matter) but the money is sent. Nobody was in favor of TARP but it went through. Nobody wanted the government to buy half of GM but it did so regardless. Nobody wanted Obamacare but it was rammed through. I'm tired of typing now... those examples are endless. The will of people is summarily ignored at the congressman's level. Patricians with bluer blood never even see the commoners, and Free Speech Zones safely isolate the people from their lords and masters.
Russia (and Syria, and China etc) will not get better until there are proper free elections were divergent views get represented. This may be messy to begin with, and may not be the democracy you or I would choose, but it would truly be representative of the will of the Russian people
<style="Postal Dude">You don't say!</style>:-) Sure it will be messy, just like in 1917 and 1938 and in 1970s. Are you *sure* you want to experience that again? "With Lenin in the head and with Nagant in hand?" link
No political system can satisfy everyone. Monarchy whacks the unhappy with the authority of the king. Dictatorship does the same with a gun. Democracy does the same by allowing largely ineffectual "political process" through which one can change the law. But democracy is dependent on the free choice of unhappy people to NOT start a rebellion. The problem is that people quickly realize that this requirement is just a wishful thinking. Democracy cannot protect itself from undemocratic methods employed by some (even those as benign as black PR.) An evil overlord is free to gather supporters and take foreign money. In the end democracy falls, destroyed by a bunch of power-hungry hacks who found a way to game the system. In response the political system hardens itself with undemocratic methods. When was the last time an independent Presidentia
No-one who was a realistic opponent to Putin were even allowed to stand for election.
There are many opponents - anyone and his dog can sign up as one. However how many opponents do you know that would be on par with Putin, in terms of "good deeds" ? Zhirinovsky? Zyuganov? Yavlinski? Who?
You need to understand that the "street opposition" is deeply undemocratic. Instead of publishing their platform, setting up a party, explaining their beliefs and their plans, the street opposition depends on violent protests perpetrated by a handful of fanatics (if not by hired people.) Noone who is bypassing the functioning mechanisms of democracy can be a democrat. Russian parliament is large enough, why doesn't Casparov become a leader of his party and is elected? Because he has nothing to offer. His chances of democratic election are zero.
Kasparov is in opposition because he wants power. He has no platform other than "Putin, go away!" His goal is to plant his behind in the captain's chair and then proceed to rule as he sees fit. Why would I vote for him instead of Putin? Kasparov is a born dictator; he is already dictating people who should and who shouldn't be in power. Putin means stability and slow but gradual progress. Corruption is high on all levels of power, but I fail to see how this can be stopped, short of putting all current bureaucrats against the wall. They outnumber the police, and you can't watch everyone all the time. (Police is corrupt too.)
Recognize a man who will actually stop at nothing to retain power
Nobody in Russia would even lift a finger to stop him as long as he is a good czar. Your points about his way to power may or may not be correct, but they are irrelevant. The voters do not judge him on how he got there. They judge him on what he does up there. The current opinion is that he is doing better than most since Stalin's death. (Yes, there is a link.)
Hussein murdered colossal numbers of his people, particularly the Shia.
Yes; likely Saddam had very few admirers among the Shia. However the Shia started a rebellion per US instructions. What was Saddam supposed to do? What would you do in his place? Will you allow a handful of people - who put themselves above the law, armed themselves and started killing citizens of your country - to overturn the established law and order? Again, who is the democrat here? Will the US democracy simply fold if some two-bit anarchist decides to start a rebellion in the USA?
Anyway, Saddam was certainly a rough political operative. His political opponents were often murdered. However the Iraqi people did not seem to be against Saddam. This is because Saddam did not oppress them at that time. As I understand, Iraq is a patchwork country; what is bad for the goose may be irrelevant or even beneficial to the gander. With three major cultures (Shia, Sunni, Kurds) Saddam could oppress one and still have solid support from the other two.
wrong, the money is spent by the evil overlord on italian sports cars, gold-plated weapons, home theater, swimming pools etc.
Have you ever played Far Cry 2? It depicts really well the mansions and the palaces of those warlords that you speak about. Note: those palaces are dirty, rickety one- or two-story buildings.
Warlords do have access to some serious cash. But there is no way they can use that money in Africa. What do you do with a sports car on African roads? A jeep or a buggy are far better choices; at least they will last longer. Gold-plated weapons are at least useful when humidity is 100% all year round. Ferraris are not useful for anything until the warlord leaves Africa and buys himself a mansion in Italy.
The amazing thing is people don't see Putin as the dictator he is
Russian people do see Putin as a dictator. However he is a dictator by consent of the people. They keep him because his policies are in line with desires of most people. North Korean dictators' actions are against their people and they are hurting the country. Saddam Hussein's actions were neutral, modulo his sons. Pinochet's actions were bloody during the coup, but then he was accepted by the country for many years as a generally beneficial ruler. If you are given dictatorial powers in your country you could use them for good and for evil. It's entirely up to you what to do with those powers. You can assign a trillion dollars to space research, or you can assign the same trillion dollars to promote poverty and dependence on the government.
Now, if you want to ask why his policies are accepted, it's a completely different story. Voters want "a good czar" in power because he can make things happen. As voters saw in previous years, "democrats" are only concerned about stealing what is not nailed down. If voters vote them out they have to vote new thieves in. It's cheaper to feed one Czar than a thousand of lackeys. Besides, the Czar is there for a while, so he has to take care of the country. Lackeys are temporaries, they are content with stealing what they can and then escaping with the loot, to live somewhere in London, for example.
If a country is ruled by law then it would definitely arrest them if they did something against the law. Otherwise you are creating untouchable people ("Don't you know who I am?")
I wonder if UK LEOs are checking DNA of every Equadorian who leaves the premises. Assange's face could be changed into something else with common theatrical accessories. Two known embassy workers walk out, get into the car and go to the airport. They enter an Equadorian airplane (if Equador owns one.) Then they leave and return to the embassy (with a double.) Or only one leaves. There are always possibilities... As matter of fact, Assange only needs to exit the embassy and disappear among the crowd. If he is even minimally able to play someone else then the police will never find him. He can leave the UK on false documents, or on a trawler as a fisherman, or he can board a train to France, or get onto a private aircraft, or he can sail or swim to Ireland, for all I care:-)
It makes perfect sense when you realize the rape allegations are just an excuse.
One can fabricate a rape allegation without any rape, or even sex, within 100 miles. It's enough if the girl from the hotel room across the hallway says that you broke in and attacked her.
To prove an allegation is a different matter. If the investigator and the judge are honest you need to resort to DNA to fake the evidence. I wonder if CIA can collect a minute amount of DNA from a soda can and use PCR to produce more of the DNA of the target to be planted at the crime scene? But if your investigator and the judge are on your payroll you don't need to go that far.
For the sake of discussion only, let's assume that the U.S. does indeed intend to arrest, publicly humiliate, and then execute Assange for his role in Wikileaks; the Ecuadorean embassy believes this enough to grant asylum, after all. Why him, personally? Why not every member of his organization?
Because his role in the organization is easy to prove, and his involvement with publication of inconvenient facts is undeniable. Attacking the leader was always an accepted practice, in peace time and in war time. It is also the most beneficial practice. What is more humane, to slaughter 100,000 soldiers or to kill one dictator who sent them to war?
Diplomatic status is granted by the host country. Only the UK can give Assange diplomatic status.
Diplomatic status is granted to a citizen of a guest country by the guest country. It is then accepted - or not accepted - by the host country. If the status is not accepted then the rejected diplomat must either leave the host country (if he is already in) or not to come in the first place.
This would work fine for Assange. He gets citizenship and a temp job with the embassy. His diplomatic status will be rejected by the UK. Then all he has to do is to pack his bag and leave (usually within 72 hours, but he has no need to wait.)
A diplomat who is being expelled cannot be arrested by the host country. Otherwise it would be a damn convenient way for a host country to arrest any embassy worker. Nobody wants that; diplomats know too much, and modern truth serums are too good.
Politics, and diplomacy as its tool, is known as "the art of possible." This case is a good illustration. Without threatening with a predestined event, FO laid out the possibilities. If you do A we will do B. If you do C we will do D and will not do B. All paths are open until you step on one of them - and it is your choice.
Sending it to someone over a network or on, for example, flash drives purposely left in parking lots, would seem to be "conveying" it.
Possibly so. However then you only need to prove in court that developer A created and left a Flash drive with the software B to be inevitably collected by customer C.
This is necessary because, for example, the developer could simply discard the media with software that was never meant for distribution; you dived into that dumpster and got it. Or perhaps it was not the developer who dropped the Flash disk but a thief who was robbing the office that night.
GPL requires the developer to do certain things if he distributes the binary. However GPL also allows private use of the software without distributing. Internal use in a company is one example. You cannot steal the binary and then go to the court and demand sources. It does matter how you got the binary. If someone compiled a super-special tar and emailed its binary to a wrong address, intending to use it only privately, the recipient cannot demand the sources - even he factually received the binary.
Hiring a servant (a driver) full time will cost you about $100-120K per year, considering the overhead (employment taxes, health, etc.) This money can buy you a very expensive car, and that car will serve you not for one year but for ten, if not twenty.
If self-driving vehicles appear in dealerships, do you know what kind of "rich people" will be buying them? Old people who cannot drive anymore because of health problems. Not even mentioning younger disabled people - those will pay all they got plus some more because the alternative is to sit at home and wait for Thanatos to come.
These are free-form questions, usually, so it's hard to present them unchanged. For example, "Where were you born?" can be answered "In Athens" or "Athens" or "Athens, Greece" and so on. These answers are semantically equivalent, but hashes will be all different.
In put in my name and birthyear. None of the matches had anything to do with me. Fortunately, I am not depending upon Mormon theology
Unfortunately, Mormons depend on you putting your name and your year of birth into their form. Yet another piece of the puzzle fell into place... You work in Indianapolis, right?
You drill a hole in the asteroid and insert a nuclear device. Do not seal the hole. Explode the device. You get a volcano. Asteroid's material becomes the reaction mass (largely gases and small rocks.) Relatively small mass * relatively high speed = decent momentum. Repeat until satisfied. Call this project "Noiro."
Of course you are right, but I was playing with cards that I was given. If you only have two individuals (and two sets of genes) you get this problem regardless of what cells were or weren't frozen.
As matter of fact, a female does not even need anyone else to produce a child, as long as the society is sufficiently advanced medically to use parthenogenesis. When you have spaceships and aliens I have to assume a sufficient level of science. Modern level of biology already supports experimental parthenogenesis of humans in a lab.
So, however you put it, that alien is not responsible for the death of species. His action had no impact on the outcome, even though it helps with the dramatic effect of the story.
Some consider the last bit of the book controversial, and not fitting with the rest of the story. I found it to be different but it worked. You be the judge.
Deus ex machina, nothing else. You could stick it to Romeo and Juliet too, unchanged. Looks like a last minute addition for commercial reasons. People sometimes look at the last pages of the book to see how it ends. If it ends with "... and thus the last human in this universe ended his sorry existence" then you can bet that very few people will pick this book as an easy reading on an airplane.
It is dark, but at least protagonists are shown as people (or cyborgs,) each with their own character and desires and hopes. There is purpose in that madness. Pieces fit together, villains are villaining and do-gooders are do-gooding to the best (or worst) of their abilities.
Compare to Baxter's Titan. How about taking a bunch of angry social misfits who are patently crazy from day zero and launching them on a one-way trip to a faraway moon of a faraway planet, with no means of return and with no purpose in any of that?
ReactOS is a non-solution. You are still locked into using non-free Windows software. If you are concerned about backdoors, they may well be inside MS Office and inside Photoshop and inside every other program. Or how about rootkits that can patch a system DLL? Is ReactOS protected from such things if the latest Windows is not?
The correct solution would be to move to Linux because the OS is available in source, and majority of the software that is needed to run the government is also available in open source. There are also security additions (SELinux etc.) that allow you to further configure rights of applications.
But if you need non-free software for Windows, for example, you can always run it in a VM that runs with a host-only network connection. As long as you have the shared files set up correctly you can work in a VM with the same ease as you would do on the host. On top of that, backup/restore of a VM is as easy as copying a file.
Because paying people to derp about immortality for a few years will help us get out of the stone age.
But look at this from the position of an immortal being. Will you not say that those mortals are still in the stone age? Do you think that $5M is too much to pay? These monies can be given just as easily to another scientist who, for example, proposed to research the mating behavior of some extinct frogs.
Slashdot Mirror
but I don't know a single person who traveled elsewhere until early 90s.
Semyon Semyonovitch Gorbunkov -- remember him? :-) In the departure scene he says "I got the tour at work" - and that was a good laugh! Everyone knew that you don't get tours to Turkey at work, unless you work in Kremlin.
But IRL I also haven't known anyone who traveled beyond Warsaw Pact countries as a tourist. It would have been free money, considering that USD $1 was available for under a rouble and exchanged to approved travelers. To make good money you didn't even have to travel farther than the nearest Berezka.
In the USSR, an exit visa was needed for any country that wasn't "ideologically friendly"
Not quite correct. Exit visas were required for all countries, even for such close allies as Bulgaria. But you could get one by buying a tour if you had enough connections among party bosses. The common citizen was offered tours, of varying cost and quality, to domestic destinations.
Here. Gold plating prevents rust. In practice, Nickel and Chromium are better plating materials, but gold looks nicer. Life of a weapon in a rainforest is brutal and short.
Just a few comments, since your point of view is pretty clear.
The Russian voters clearly see Putin as having usurped power illegitimately. That's why they have taken to the streets despite Putin utilizing fascist tactics against them (and Kasparov).
You can easily find 1000, 10,000 and maybe even 100,000 people in any country that are not happy with the government. In the USA historically 1/2 of the country does not agree with the President. Yes, there were riots on occasion, but they hadn't reached the full rebellion because they were not externally supported and because their numbers were small. Change that and see what happens. Take over a city, for example. Will the US Army sit idly, or they will go full Fallujah on you? If your rebellion is so small that the police can take care of you you are not going anywhere. If you can stoke a sufficient fire you gain a lot of leverage. The UK police did not dare to intervene during London riots because it could set flame to the whole country. That did not happen only because rioters were not organized and had no political demands. Next time it can be different.
The Russian people tolerate Putin at the moment. Again they have to be put under intense pressure to rebel.
Russia is always full of people who are willing to rebel, against anything and anyone. This is not news. Putin made significant improvements in life of an average citizen. There are goods on shelves of stores. People are better off than they were under Yeltsin. People like Kasparov have an uphill battle now because Putin has a proven track record and they have none. But if Putin goes bad (much worse than he is now) then yes, he will lose power. That's why he has to tread lightly and collect good PR whenever it comes along.
the behavior of the US is still fairly largely dictated by the will of the people.
I wouldn't be so sure about the USA. Nobody wants troops stuck in Afghanistan, but they are. Nobody wants to build the victory mosque in NYC but the project was pushed ahead by politicians. Nobody wants to give free money to Egypt (or Israel, to that matter) but the money is sent. Nobody was in favor of TARP but it went through. Nobody wanted the government to buy half of GM but it did so regardless. Nobody wanted Obamacare but it was rammed through. I'm tired of typing now... those examples are endless. The will of people is summarily ignored at the congressman's level. Patricians with bluer blood never even see the commoners, and Free Speech Zones safely isolate the people from their lords and masters.
Russia (and Syria, and China etc) will not get better until there are proper free elections were divergent views get represented. This may be messy to begin with, and may not be the democracy you or I would choose, but it would truly be representative of the will of the Russian people
<style="Postal Dude">You don't say!</style> :-) Sure it will be messy, just like in 1917 and 1938 and in 1970s. Are you *sure* you want to experience that again? "With Lenin in the head and with Nagant in hand?" link
No political system can satisfy everyone. Monarchy whacks the unhappy with the authority of the king. Dictatorship does the same with a gun. Democracy does the same by allowing largely ineffectual "political process" through which one can change the law. But democracy is dependent on the free choice of unhappy people to NOT start a rebellion. The problem is that people quickly realize that this requirement is just a wishful thinking. Democracy cannot protect itself from undemocratic methods employed by some (even those as benign as black PR.) An evil overlord is free to gather supporters and take foreign money. In the end democracy falls, destroyed by a bunch of power-hungry hacks who found a way to game the system. In response the political system hardens itself with undemocratic methods. When was the last time an independent Presidentia
No-one who was a realistic opponent to Putin were even allowed to stand for election.
There are many opponents - anyone and his dog can sign up as one. However how many opponents do you know that would be on par with Putin, in terms of "good deeds" ? Zhirinovsky? Zyuganov? Yavlinski? Who?
You need to understand that the "street opposition" is deeply undemocratic. Instead of publishing their platform, setting up a party, explaining their beliefs and their plans, the street opposition depends on violent protests perpetrated by a handful of fanatics (if not by hired people.) Noone who is bypassing the functioning mechanisms of democracy can be a democrat. Russian parliament is large enough, why doesn't Casparov become a leader of his party and is elected? Because he has nothing to offer. His chances of democratic election are zero.
Kasparov is in opposition because he wants power. He has no platform other than "Putin, go away!" His goal is to plant his behind in the captain's chair and then proceed to rule as he sees fit. Why would I vote for him instead of Putin? Kasparov is a born dictator; he is already dictating people who should and who shouldn't be in power. Putin means stability and slow but gradual progress. Corruption is high on all levels of power, but I fail to see how this can be stopped, short of putting all current bureaucrats against the wall. They outnumber the police, and you can't watch everyone all the time. (Police is corrupt too.)
Recognize a man who will actually stop at nothing to retain power
Nobody in Russia would even lift a finger to stop him as long as he is a good czar. Your points about his way to power may or may not be correct, but they are irrelevant. The voters do not judge him on how he got there. They judge him on what he does up there. The current opinion is that he is doing better than most since Stalin's death. (Yes, there is a link.)
Hussein murdered colossal numbers of his people, particularly the Shia.
Yes; likely Saddam had very few admirers among the Shia. However the Shia started a rebellion per US instructions. What was Saddam supposed to do? What would you do in his place? Will you allow a handful of people - who put themselves above the law, armed themselves and started killing citizens of your country - to overturn the established law and order? Again, who is the democrat here? Will the US democracy simply fold if some two-bit anarchist decides to start a rebellion in the USA?
Anyway, Saddam was certainly a rough political operative. His political opponents were often murdered. However the Iraqi people did not seem to be against Saddam. This is because Saddam did not oppress them at that time. As I understand, Iraq is a patchwork country; what is bad for the goose may be irrelevant or even beneficial to the gander. With three major cultures (Shia, Sunni, Kurds) Saddam could oppress one and still have solid support from the other two.
wrong, the money is spent by the evil overlord on italian sports cars, gold-plated weapons, home theater, swimming pools etc.
Have you ever played Far Cry 2? It depicts really well the mansions and the palaces of those warlords that you speak about. Note: those palaces are dirty, rickety one- or two-story buildings.
Warlords do have access to some serious cash. But there is no way they can use that money in Africa. What do you do with a sports car on African roads? A jeep or a buggy are far better choices; at least they will last longer. Gold-plated weapons are at least useful when humidity is 100% all year round. Ferraris are not useful for anything until the warlord leaves Africa and buys himself a mansion in Italy.
The amazing thing is people don't see Putin as the dictator he is
Russian people do see Putin as a dictator. However he is a dictator by consent of the people. They keep him because his policies are in line with desires of most people. North Korean dictators' actions are against their people and they are hurting the country. Saddam Hussein's actions were neutral, modulo his sons. Pinochet's actions were bloody during the coup, but then he was accepted by the country for many years as a generally beneficial ruler. If you are given dictatorial powers in your country you could use them for good and for evil. It's entirely up to you what to do with those powers. You can assign a trillion dollars to space research, or you can assign the same trillion dollars to promote poverty and dependence on the government.
Now, if you want to ask why his policies are accepted, it's a completely different story. Voters want "a good czar" in power because he can make things happen. As voters saw in previous years, "democrats" are only concerned about stealing what is not nailed down. If voters vote them out they have to vote new thieves in. It's cheaper to feed one Czar than a thousand of lackeys. Besides, the Czar is there for a while, so he has to take care of the country. Lackeys are temporaries, they are content with stealing what they can and then escaping with the loot, to live somewhere in London, for example.
If a country is ruled by law then it would definitely arrest them if they did something against the law. Otherwise you are creating untouchable people ("Don't you know who I am?")
I wonder if UK LEOs are checking DNA of every Equadorian who leaves the premises. Assange's face could be changed into something else with common theatrical accessories. Two known embassy workers walk out, get into the car and go to the airport. They enter an Equadorian airplane (if Equador owns one.) Then they leave and return to the embassy (with a double.) Or only one leaves. There are always possibilities... As matter of fact, Assange only needs to exit the embassy and disappear among the crowd. If he is even minimally able to play someone else then the police will never find him. He can leave the UK on false documents, or on a trawler as a fisherman, or he can board a train to France, or get onto a private aircraft, or he can sail or swim to Ireland, for all I care :-)
It makes perfect sense when you realize the rape allegations are just an excuse.
One can fabricate a rape allegation without any rape, or even sex, within 100 miles. It's enough if the girl from the hotel room across the hallway says that you broke in and attacked her.
To prove an allegation is a different matter. If the investigator and the judge are honest you need to resort to DNA to fake the evidence. I wonder if CIA can collect a minute amount of DNA from a soda can and use PCR to produce more of the DNA of the target to be planted at the crime scene? But if your investigator and the judge are on your payroll you don't need to go that far.
For the sake of discussion only, let's assume that the U.S. does indeed intend to arrest, publicly humiliate, and then execute Assange for his role in Wikileaks; the Ecuadorean embassy believes this enough to grant asylum, after all. Why him, personally? Why not every member of his organization?
Because his role in the organization is easy to prove, and his involvement with publication of inconvenient facts is undeniable. Attacking the leader was always an accepted practice, in peace time and in war time. It is also the most beneficial practice. What is more humane, to slaughter 100,000 soldiers or to kill one dictator who sent them to war?
Diplomatic status is granted by the host country. Only the UK can give Assange diplomatic status.
Diplomatic status is granted to a citizen of a guest country by the guest country. It is then accepted - or not accepted - by the host country. If the status is not accepted then the rejected diplomat must either leave the host country (if he is already in) or not to come in the first place.
This would work fine for Assange. He gets citizenship and a temp job with the embassy. His diplomatic status will be rejected by the UK. Then all he has to do is to pack his bag and leave (usually within 72 hours, but he has no need to wait.)
A diplomat who is being expelled cannot be arrested by the host country. Otherwise it would be a damn convenient way for a host country to arrest any embassy worker. Nobody wants that; diplomats know too much, and modern truth serums are too good.
Diplomacy is never handled so crassly.
Politics, and diplomacy as its tool, is known as "the art of possible." This case is a good illustration. Without threatening with a predestined event, FO laid out the possibilities. If you do A we will do B. If you do C we will do D and will not do B. All paths are open until you step on one of them - and it is your choice.
Sending it to someone over a network or on, for example, flash drives purposely left in parking lots, would seem to be "conveying" it.
Possibly so. However then you only need to prove in court that developer A created and left a Flash drive with the software B to be inevitably collected by customer C.
This is necessary because, for example, the developer could simply discard the media with software that was never meant for distribution; you dived into that dumpster and got it. Or perhaps it was not the developer who dropped the Flash disk but a thief who was robbing the office that night.
GPL requires the developer to do certain things if he distributes the binary. However GPL also allows private use of the software without distributing. Internal use in a company is one example. You cannot steal the binary and then go to the court and demand sources. It does matter how you got the binary. If someone compiled a super-special tar and emailed its binary to a wrong address, intending to use it only privately, the recipient cannot demand the sources - even he factually received the binary.
Rich people hire people to drive them around.
Hiring a servant (a driver) full time will cost you about $100-120K per year, considering the overhead (employment taxes, health, etc.) This money can buy you a very expensive car, and that car will serve you not for one year but for ten, if not twenty.
If self-driving vehicles appear in dealerships, do you know what kind of "rich people" will be buying them? Old people who cannot drive anymore because of health problems. Not even mentioning younger disabled people - those will pay all they got plus some more because the alternative is to sit at home and wait for Thanatos to come.
Question 2: Why is six afraid of seven?
Because the seven samurai will deep-six pretty much anyone.
These are free-form questions, usually, so it's hard to present them unchanged. For example, "Where were you born?" can be answered "In Athens" or "Athens" or "Athens, Greece" and so on. These answers are semantically equivalent, but hashes will be all different.
In put in my name and birthyear. None of the matches had anything to do with me. Fortunately, I am not depending upon Mormon theology
Unfortunately, Mormons depend on you putting your name and your year of birth into their form. Yet another piece of the puzzle fell into place... You work in Indianapolis, right?
You drill a hole in the asteroid and insert a nuclear device. Do not seal the hole. Explode the device. You get a volcano. Asteroid's material becomes the reaction mass (largely gases and small rocks.) Relatively small mass * relatively high speed = decent momentum. Repeat until satisfied. Call this project "Noiro."
Of course you are right, but I was playing with cards that I was given. If you only have two individuals (and two sets of genes) you get this problem regardless of what cells were or weren't frozen.
As matter of fact, a female does not even need anyone else to produce a child, as long as the society is sufficiently advanced medically to use parthenogenesis. When you have spaceships and aliens I have to assume a sufficient level of science. Modern level of biology already supports experimental parthenogenesis of humans in a lab.
So, however you put it, that alien is not responsible for the death of species. His action had no impact on the outcome, even though it helps with the dramatic effect of the story.
The alien then has to live with the knowledge that he had rendered an intelligent species extinct.
Only because neither the alien nor the grieving woman were intelligent enough to promptly use a refrigerator.
Some consider the last bit of the book controversial, and not fitting with the rest of the story. I found it to be different but it worked. You be the judge.
Deus ex machina, nothing else. You could stick it to Romeo and Juliet too, unchanged. Looks like a last minute addition for commercial reasons. People sometimes look at the last pages of the book to see how it ends. If it ends with "... and thus the last human in this universe ended his sorry existence" then you can bet that very few people will pick this book as an easy reading on an airplane.
It is dark, but at least protagonists are shown as people (or cyborgs,) each with their own character and desires and hopes. There is purpose in that madness. Pieces fit together, villains are villaining and do-gooders are do-gooding to the best (or worst) of their abilities.
Compare to Baxter's Titan. How about taking a bunch of angry social misfits who are patently crazy from day zero and launching them on a one-way trip to a faraway moon of a faraway planet, with no means of return and with no purpose in any of that?
ReactOS is a non-solution. You are still locked into using non-free Windows software. If you are concerned about backdoors, they may well be inside MS Office and inside Photoshop and inside every other program. Or how about rootkits that can patch a system DLL? Is ReactOS protected from such things if the latest Windows is not?
The correct solution would be to move to Linux because the OS is available in source, and majority of the software that is needed to run the government is also available in open source. There are also security additions (SELinux etc.) that allow you to further configure rights of applications.
But if you need non-free software for Windows, for example, you can always run it in a VM that runs with a host-only network connection. As long as you have the shared files set up correctly you can work in a VM with the same ease as you would do on the host. On top of that, backup/restore of a VM is as easy as copying a file.
Because paying people to derp about immortality for a few years will help us get out of the stone age.
But look at this from the position of an immortal being. Will you not say that those mortals are still in the stone age? Do you think that $5M is too much to pay? These monies can be given just as easily to another scientist who, for example, proposed to research the mating behavior of some extinct frogs.