If you check Russian history books, they only fought defensive wars yet somehow kept rapidly expanding their territory. Being provoked is a new trend from 2008.
Yanukovych's de facto removal from office was a coup.
His own party has voted against him after he tried to sell Ukraine to Mr Putin. A coup is something of much smaller scale, not result of a massive nation wide protest.
And some part of the population in Crimea wants them there.
Some population in Kaliningrad wants Germans there. Some population in Kuril islands wants Japanese there. Some population in Siberia wants Chinese there.
And oh, some population in USA wants Russian there too. Shall they?
So, an "invasion"? Not clear.
That's what illegally sending troops into foreign country is.
As for "an existential fight in the west", it's doubtful that Putin wants to absorb all of Ukraine.
There is no doubt he wants as much of it, as he can grasp. He claimed USSR collapse to be a "big tragedy" and from time to time whines about territories lost by collapse of russian Empire back in 1918.
Keep in mind that Ukraine is a synthetic state, based on the "Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic" set up by the USSR...which was created with a bunch of ethnic Russians exactly to keep Ukrainian nationalism in check.
The biggest country in Europe with 44 million citizens (about 80% of them Ukrainians and "whopping" 17% Russians) is "synthetic" eh? Are you Russian, my friend? Because I've only heard BS like that coming from pro-Putin Russians.
Most western government thoughts were actually "oh, how do we spin it to continue business as usual with Russia".
Tagliavini commission was created, and as it included 2 German "experts" who had upfront declared Russia had right to invade, so it was clear what kind of task was assigned to them, (thank you Ms Merkel) Commission has come to surprising conclusions, that Georgian government did not have right to defend it's own people on its own territory (which was bombed by heavy artillery on daily bases), yet Russia had right to defend it's "peacekeepers", (even though there is no evidence that any attack on Russian "peacekeepers" whatsoever has been carried out by Georgians), but just overreacted a bit. (on top of it 2 Georgian peacekeepers were killed on 6th of Aug 2008, somehow neither that did justify actions of the Georgian government (it was actually a mixed Russia-Georgian peacekeeping operation))
Now, Russia is AGAIN getting premium treatment, for just being aggressive. You can clearly see that in most messages (and even journalist comments) in the West. Oh, there are interests, you know. Old USSR junk that is even remotely usable only vs former USSR republics absolutely has to be stationed in the Ukraine. Oh and there are Russians on the peninsula. And oh, there are interests of Putin there. Oh dare not make him angry, or it is all your fault.
I recall a guy called Chamberlain had similar, as well as extremely successful, approach to aggressors about 70 years ago.
Google didn't just ban Google Maps on iOS. Apple wanted more features, Google wanted to have more prominent branding in return, Apple didn't want to give that.
So they chose poor user experience just not to say "oh it's google's map apps" more prominently.
For how long does Apple ask to confirm permissions when they are requested? Wasn't it like Apple users didn't even know what an app can and can not access?
And there goes false safety feeling. Remember the Dolphin browser "calling home" to report sites visited by the users? 1) It affected both Android and iOS 2) It was discovered by Andorid users, (and Android is indeed more open)
I don't see any serious issues with Android asking user to confirm permissions, when they are actually exercised by the app. That whole article sounds more like a unfortunate marketing message by Android chief.
iPhones are like 15% market share worldwide, iPads quickly heading into that direction. They might have sweetest part of the pie, but it's still strange to hear about "controlling position". If anyone is in such position in that market, it's google.
Nobody can spy on entire internet. All they could do is archive the data and have the ability to find out what was going on in particular place of interest, if needed.
Argument about secret service/police mistakes is moot, since there is only about surveillance, not about what you need to actually arrest people.
I'm actually working on transnational projects where UK/DE mixed crew outperforming eastern colleagues was so obvious, that management has given up on the idea.
Anyway, if servers would need to be physically located in EU, they will have to have EU crew to support them.
Someone else will decide that and if your phone was at the wrong place at the wrong time and someone misread or misinterpreted some data you're going to be the guy on the floor with assault rifles pointed at your back and your family screaming around you.
But such mistakes can happen regadless of surveillance being legal or illegal.
Oh, right, because we're not voting any representatives of ideologies that have shown no such restraint into power in Europe. Oh, wait... Because: a) they don't have any chance to get into power b) if they do get that far, they can change constitution and make all that legal anyway
They do protect corporation interests, no doubt (extending "copyright" to 100 years just because rights on Elvis' songs expire, US supreme court allowing EULAs to prohibit class suits), but what does that have to do with secret services?
Living in Germany, Snowden leaks didn't bother me much (and as I've heard from "Piraten Partei" member, most voters don't care either). I'm of no interests to secret services whatsoever and if checking my emails helps them fight some !@@#ers, I don't mind. Intent DOES matter to me and I do not think that any government in western democracies would dare misuse this power for oppressing people.
From US perspective, I can understand you guys are worried about some of the surveillance being unconstitutional, but when law is breached at that level, it's like breaking UN laws, there is no authority to punish you.
To my knowledge, US (and, actually Israel) is present at German Exchange Points (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_exchange_point) so this move is more of a gesture, rather than actual protection.
Nevertheless Merkel's move is good for EU, already because it would create more jobs in Europe, so I welcome it.
Compare Steam's prices (and DRM) to GOG's, which has lower prices and NO DRM, and uh, I'm not that sure about "abuse". I'm delighted for no-DRM STALKER trilogy going for 14.99$ on GOG.
I'm not German, learned it when I was in mid 20th and I have no problem whatsoever pronouncing (or reading) it. There are words I struggle with (e.g. Eichhörnchen) but these are none of them.
Also take into account that being long doesn't necessarily mean being complex, long German words are often combined out of very frequently used words, which are easy to recognize.
What you've cited are actually 4 words. Verbraucher-zentralle Bundes-verband.
AMDs own CPUs would run circles around Jaguar, single core performance is not the point of that CPU. Although its cores are weak, it has 8 of them (running on a faster RAM that PCs get) and while PC game developers might not care, console developers suddenly do.
Fact remains that even moderate PCs today outperform both the PS4 and Xbox One at a similar price point.
I'm not quite sure about that. PS4 has a GPU that is between AMD 7850 / 7870, when building your PC you'd pay 150+ Euro for the GPU alone.
Despite "common knowledge" that "PCs are faster", at least if we can trust Valve's statistics (about a third of their PC users run games on an integrated GPU!), no it isn't. 7870 is a good mid range GPU these days even in PC world. One could argue about underwhelming CPU part , but 8Gb GDDR5 and software written to use most of it's 8 cores makes up for it.
Germans in WW2 where always outnumbered. They started the war being sure they are the better fighters (if you check most battles, including the largest tank battle of the WW2) and they were indeed. Check the losses (typical in that war): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/B...
USSR lost 4 times more people and 7 times more tanks while defending. (normally it's the attacker that takes more casualties, since it needs to breach prepared positions). Germans were outnumbered 2 to 1, yet they were attacking.
Entire campaign was adventurous from the very beginning, yet they were not far from succeeding.
Slashdot Mirror
If you check Russian history books, they only fought defensive wars yet somehow kept rapidly expanding their territory.
Being provoked is a new trend from 2008.
And is as legitimate as it gets.
Yanukovych's de facto removal from office was a coup.
His own party has voted against him after he tried to sell Ukraine to Mr Putin.
A coup is something of much smaller scale, not result of a massive nation wide protest.
And some part of the population in Crimea wants them there.
Some population in Kaliningrad wants Germans there.
Some population in Kuril islands wants Japanese there.
Some population in Siberia wants Chinese there.
And oh, some population in USA wants Russian there too. Shall they?
So, an "invasion"? Not clear.
That's what illegally sending troops into foreign country is.
As for "an existential fight in the west", it's doubtful that Putin wants to absorb all of Ukraine.
There is no doubt he wants as much of it, as he can grasp. He claimed USSR collapse to be a "big tragedy" and from time to time whines about territories lost by collapse of russian Empire back in 1918.
Keep in mind that Ukraine is a synthetic state, based on the "Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic" set up by the USSR...which was created with a bunch of ethnic Russians exactly to keep Ukrainian nationalism in check.
The biggest country in Europe with 44 million citizens (about 80% of them Ukrainians and "whopping" 17% Russians) is "synthetic" eh?
Are you Russian, my friend? Because I've only heard BS like that coming from pro-Putin Russians.
And it is apparent if you simply take a look at the map.
Quite a bit of it is in eastern Ukraine, where Russians are a minority.
Nudity in public, that is?
In my naive world developers already had control over pricing.
Most western government thoughts were actually "oh, how do we spin it to continue business as usual with Russia".
Tagliavini commission was created, and as it included 2 German "experts" who had upfront declared Russia had right to invade, so it was clear what kind of task was assigned to them, (thank you Ms Merkel)
Commission has come to surprising conclusions, that Georgian government did not have right to defend it's own people on its own territory (which was bombed by heavy artillery on daily bases), yet Russia had right to defend it's "peacekeepers", (even though there is no evidence that any attack on Russian "peacekeepers" whatsoever has been carried out by Georgians), but just overreacted a bit. (on top of it 2 Georgian peacekeepers were killed on 6th of Aug 2008, somehow neither that did justify actions of the Georgian government (it was actually a mixed Russia-Georgian peacekeeping operation))
Now, Russia is AGAIN getting premium treatment, for just being aggressive. You can clearly see that in most messages (and even journalist comments) in the West.
Oh, there are interests, you know. Old USSR junk that is even remotely usable only vs former USSR republics absolutely has to be stationed in the Ukraine. Oh and there are Russians on the peninsula. And oh, there are interests of Putin there. Oh dare not make him angry, or it is all your fault.
I recall a guy called Chamberlain had similar, as well as extremely successful, approach to aggressors about 70 years ago.
Top Android phones had prices on par of Apple's, please stop repeating that myth.
There are things which I don't like about Android (app permissions being the worst thing), but iOS's dull grid of icon UI is years behind it.
Google didn't just ban Google Maps on iOS.
Apple wanted more features, Google wanted to have more prominent branding in return, Apple didn't want to give that.
So they chose poor user experience just not to say "oh it's google's map apps" more prominently.
For how long does Apple ask to confirm permissions when they are requested? Wasn't it like Apple users didn't even know what an app can and can not access?
And there goes false safety feeling. Remember the Dolphin browser "calling home" to report sites visited by the users?
1) It affected both Android and iOS
2) It was discovered by Andorid users, (and Android is indeed more open)
I don't see any serious issues with Android asking user to confirm permissions, when they are actually exercised by the app. That whole article sounds more like a unfortunate marketing message by Android chief.
Shouldn't he had won the actual court battle, to set a precedent?
iPhones are like 15% market share worldwide, iPads quickly heading into that direction.
They might have sweetest part of the pie, but it's still strange to hear about "controlling position".
If anyone is in such position in that market, it's google.
I hope you were sarcastic.
Nobody can spy on entire internet.
All they could do is archive the data and have the ability to find out what was going on in particular place of interest, if needed.
Argument about secret service/police mistakes is moot, since there is only about surveillance, not about what you need to actually arrest people.
And what if you dial a wrong number and all of it is official? (i.e. court authorized it)
I'm actually working on transnational projects where UK/DE mixed crew outperforming eastern colleagues was so obvious, that management has given up on the idea.
Anyway, if servers would need to be physically located in EU, they will have to have EU crew to support them.
Someone else will decide that and if your phone was at the wrong place at the wrong time and someone misread or misinterpreted some data you're going to be the guy on the floor with assault rifles pointed at your back and your family screaming around you.
But such mistakes can happen regadless of surveillance being legal or illegal.
Oh, right, because we're not voting any representatives of ideologies that have shown no such restraint into power in Europe. Oh, wait...
Because:
a) they don't have any chance to get into power
b) if they do get that far, they can change constitution and make all that legal anyway
They do protect corporation interests, no doubt (extending "copyright" to 100 years just because rights on Elvis' songs expire, US supreme court allowing EULAs to prohibit class suits), but what does that have to do with secret services?
Living in Germany, Snowden leaks didn't bother me much (and as I've heard from "Piraten Partei" member, most voters don't care either). I'm of no interests to secret services whatsoever and if checking my emails helps them fight some !@@#ers, I don't mind.
Intent DOES matter to me and I do not think that any government in western democracies would dare misuse this power for oppressing people.
From US perspective, I can understand you guys are worried about some of the surveillance being unconstitutional, but when law is breached at that level, it's like breaking UN laws, there is no authority to punish you.
To my knowledge, US (and, actually Israel) is present at German Exchange Points (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_exchange_point) so this move is more of a gesture, rather than actual protection.
Nevertheless Merkel's move is good for EU, already because it would create more jobs in Europe, so I welcome it.
Compare Steam's prices (and DRM) to GOG's, which has lower prices and NO DRM, and uh, I'm not that sure about "abuse".
I'm delighted for no-DRM STALKER trilogy going for 14.99$ on GOG.
I'm not German, learned it when I was in mid 20th and I have no problem whatsoever pronouncing (or reading) it.
There are words I struggle with (e.g. Eichhörnchen) but these are none of them.
Also take into account that being long doesn't necessarily mean being complex, long German words are often combined out of very frequently used words, which are easy to recognize.
What you've cited are actually 4 words. Verbraucher-zentralle Bundes-verband.
If AMD GPU prices are inflated there sure must be a card from competitors, that is faster yet costs less.
Care to name it?
http://www.geek.com/games/tomb...
AMDs own CPUs would run circles around Jaguar, single core performance is not the point of that CPU.
Although its cores are weak, it has 8 of them (running on a faster RAM that PCs get) and while PC game developers might not care, console developers suddenly do.
Fact remains that even moderate PCs today outperform both the PS4 and Xbox One at a similar price point.
I'm not quite sure about that.
PS4 has a GPU that is between AMD 7850 / 7870, when building your PC you'd pay 150+ Euro for the GPU alone.
Despite "common knowledge" that "PCs are faster", at least if we can trust Valve's statistics (about a third of their PC users run games on an integrated GPU!), no it isn't.
7870 is a good mid range GPU these days even in PC world.
One could argue about underwhelming CPU part , but 8Gb GDDR5 and software written to use most of it's 8 cores makes up for it.
Germans in WW2 where always outnumbered.
They started the war being sure they are the better fighters (if you check most battles, including the largest tank battle of the WW2) and they were indeed.
Check the losses (typical in that war):
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/B...
USSR lost 4 times more people and 7 times more tanks while defending. (normally it's the attacker that takes more casualties, since it needs to breach prepared positions). Germans were outnumbered 2 to 1, yet they were attacking.
Entire campaign was adventurous from the very beginning, yet they were not far from succeeding.