Heck, half of government propaganda this day is basically "common folk" telling just how awesome they live, and thanking Putin personally for that. It's literally down to the same level as that old joke about summer having come, and how we should be thankful to CPSU for that.
Which of the two gatherings?
I don't specially like either of the sides. Indeed, on the one side we have "the winter is gone, the summer has come, thanks ot the Party for that". But in the same time, on the other side we have "we'll destroy all the world of violence up to its basement and after that..." without announcing the plans of what will come after that.
Essentially, it's a battle of stability vs. chaos. But don't forget that in the real life there's no stability and no chaos in their pure forms.
Both of the sides need to seek for a compromise. If they come to terms with each other, it will be a win-win situation. If they do not, the lose-lose.
Why not? Britain during WW2 genuinely did for Churchill.
I see your point. We live in the time which is perceived to be immeasurably more cynical, whereas the 1940s tend to be romanticized. Like, those were the ugly times, but we used to have heroes. Yet, we can't know if that's the truth or just our perceptions.
Rather, a lot of people at each side make claims that their opponents are being paid for their activities. That in fact signifies only the deterioration of the quality of political discussions, and the propaganda mode prevailing over the thinking mode.
Of course, no sane people (outside of the North Korea) "express admiration for the glorious leader". It's a hyperbole.
It's a big mistake to believe that pro-Putin commenters are paid for. Having a score of pro-Putin comments of my own, I believe I can outline that mindset for you. 1) The tone of the political commentaries in Russia is radically different from that in the United States. While Vladimir Putin is ranked among the top politicians in today's Russia, opinions of many people on him would diverge, precisely because there's an ongoing discussion in the society about Putin, and people are exposed to a wide range of ideas. Now, what happens when a Russian average Ivan visits the website of some American newspaper? Imagine if you have opened some Russian newspaper and read there that President Obama is the evil, corrupt, a cause of manslaughter? You snorted and opened other newspaper. And read there the same stuff in a different wording. Then you have opened 10 Russian newspapers, to find only a little difference in their reporting on Obama. How soon will you break up and start writing pro-Obama comments? 2) The more important issue is, that as a Prime Minister or a President, Mr. Putin is an embodiment of the Russian state. People feel that attacks on Mr. Putin are not personal, but directed against the Russian Government. If there was a different politician with a similar set of ideas (quite popular in the society), the coverage of Russia would not change to the better. So, people who support Putin in the comments of Western resources may not even support Putin as a Russian politician -- but they effectively try to support the Russian state.
I live in Russia.
I think, there's no problem with bloggers and activists receiving money, as long as they report their sources of income to the public. I think that the monetary support of some bloggers by the Nashi group is a response to the American aid programs (National Endowment for Democracy) to all sorts of activists in Russia. Essentially, the problem is not with the money -- the problem is with transparency and accountability. If I read some person's blog, I would like to know if he or she receives American or Russian money.
For those Americans who do not understand what's wrong with the activities of the National Endowment for Democracy (and similar structures) in Russia, let me say, that there's nothing similar to the Foreign Agents Registration Act in the Russian legislature. The NED is not accountable to me, a citizen of Russia. So, yes, I view it as a security threat.
Implementing the Foreign Agents Registration Act in Russia would take a lot of effort, but I believe it's the only possible way in the end. But as long as we do not have that law, I cannot feel outrageos about the Nashi support of some bloggers.
As a slashdotter from Russia, I feel a great curiosity towards the Occupy Wall Street. It shows the U.S. that foreigners like me weren't able to see yet.
Other than curiosity, I feel some sadness, as we have two socialist parties in Russia, that get all pro-Socialism votes. What the Occupy Wall Street strives to achieve is a smaller part of our political system, that used to be a greater part once ago. That's why Occupy Wall Street makes me to think about our past, present and future.
AFAIC this is clearly monopoly control over the networks and trust me on this: this monopoly is completely government supported. There were many laws passed in Russia in the recent years to make sure there is as little available competition as possible.
Another expert in Russia?
There's no monopoly on that market, with the "big three" mobile phone companies (each of those providing internet access as well): Beeline, Megafon, MTS.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Mobile_phone_companies_of_Russia
In such circumstances, you could only speak of a cartel agreement, but that's not clear given the article mentions only one mobile ISP.
I'm a reader of Slashdot from Russia, and so, I would love if Slashdot would welcome comments coming from people speaking in different languages, especially the Russian. It could be implemented as a bilingual pre-moderated thread, opened simultaneously at two websites -- namely, slashdot.org and some Russian resource. Readers of Slashdot would see the thread in English, readers of the Russian resource would see the same thread in Russian. The hard job of providing translations into the both languages would be done by a team of translators.
Of course, it doesn't have to be the option supported all the time, but having one bilingual thread possibly each week or each month would be very fun for the both resources involved.
As of your Russian counterpart in such a project, I suggest you to work with Inoforum.ru. You can contact administration of Inoforum using the contacts listed at the bottom of the page:
http://inoforum.ru/proektu_nuzhny
(Well, that page is in Russian, hope it won't be a problem.)
If you like the idea, contact the Inoforum administration (Skype is preferable -- exchanging emails may take for too long). Remember that intentions come first -- technical issues are discussed and solved later.
You will possibly wonder what connection I have with Inoforum -- well, I am one of Inoforum volunteers (known as "filatovev"), and I have stayed in contact with the Inoforum administration for at least the last year. So, this is not an official invitation -- but a friendly invitation indeed. I believe that you can find the common ground with the Inoforum administration.
Best regards and have fun,
Evgeny.
p.s.
Just to prove my identity: my contributions to Inoforum.ru as a volunteer scout/translator "filatovev" are listed below:
http://inoforum.ru/user/?puser=85586/http://inoforum.ru/user/?puser=39859/
*Shrugs*. Assange can ask for political asylum in China or Russia. May be, if things get really tough, he would consider such a move. More likely, he would be allowed to live somewhere in Western Europe, doing what he is doing now.
You didn't get me correctly. There's a very thin edge which separates your personal and social responsibilities, and you need to know it.
If I ever have to deal with secret documents, I would make sure that I won't become a source of any leakage. However, I won't police over my colleagues and friends as well.
Don't forget, that unveiling secret information is a crime. I would _never_ do such a thing myself. On the other hand, there are laws of moral. There can be a difference between spreading blueprints of an h-bomb and exposing war crimes.
It's very dangerous to refuse of the laws of the society and follow the laws of the moral, because you are entering uncharted land. On the other hand, if you dare to do that, you shouldn't be too stupid to get caught.
Wampus, I can see it the following way: Assange would have the closed key. So, only he would be able to upload documents to the encrypted network.
That means, it would be a system with multiple peers and a single superuser (Assange). That would guarantee there would be no child pr0n.
Why does Assange necessarily need to be present physically anywhere? Why wouldn't he adopt a new identity, change his name, face and papillary lines? All what he needs to do is to maintain the work of the online service, and he could do that from any place in the world where ISPs exist. Period.
By the way, what's the big deal about WikiLeaks servers? WikiLeaks could be redesigned as a distributed P2P network, where each usual user would therefore voluntarily take a small part of responsibility by providing HDD space and CPU capacity. Each participant of "Distributed P2P Wikileaks" would act like a gate into the Wikileaks for every interested outside person. There must be some system of distributed information storage, like Read-Solomon codes or open-key cryptography, so the contents of each single PC in that network would prove to be just some random information if taken over by the police, etc.
Yet, if you remember results of opinion polls prior to the last elections, they matched the official results of the elections closely enough.
For me, it's a strong argument saying that voting makes sense.
Personally, I am a strong opponent of unconstitutional coup -- I believe it would only make things worse. One of the major goal of democracy is to make the transfer of power bloodless. While any sort of a coup paves a way to a civil war.
Okey, so what do you propose? Vote for the Socialists or vote for the Communists? Leader of the Russian socialists (S. Mironov) organizes meetings with bloggers, etc, and overall it looks like there are at least several reasonable people in that party.
Don't be fooled by the article. The Baikal environmentalists are confronting not the interests of the government, but interests of the enterprise owner, a person in the top 100 Forbes list.
Read Russians' comments, and see who are they blaming.
http://tinyurl.com/25658g4
Overall, dudes, try to speak with the people in Russia, rather than reading about them in your national press. You'll see that real Russians are all but not their depictions in the New York Times articles.
Nothing in the article that I saw indicated that Microsoft is initiating or exacerbating any of this.
"In southwestern Russia, the Interior Ministry declared in an official document that its investigation of a human rights advocate for software piracy was begun ''based on an application'' from a lawyer for Microsoft."
Slashdot Mirror
Did you see the videos from the Feb 4 gathering?
Heck, half of government propaganda this day is basically "common folk" telling just how awesome they live, and thanking Putin personally for that. It's literally down to the same level as that old joke about summer having come, and how we should be thankful to CPSU for that.
Which of the two gatherings?
I don't specially like either of the sides. Indeed, on the one side we have "the winter is gone, the summer has come, thanks ot the Party for that". But in the same time, on the other side we have "we'll destroy all the world of violence up to its basement and after that..." without announcing the plans of what will come after that.
Essentially, it's a battle of stability vs. chaos. But don't forget that in the real life there's no stability and no chaos in their pure forms.
Both of the sides need to seek for a compromise. If they come to terms with each other, it will be a win-win situation. If they do not, the lose-lose.
Why not? Britain during WW2 genuinely did for Churchill.
I see your point. We live in the time which is perceived to be immeasurably more cynical, whereas the 1940s tend to be romanticized. Like, those were the ugly times, but we used to have heroes. Yet, we can't know if that's the truth or just our perceptions.
Rather, a lot of people at each side make claims that their opponents are being paid for their activities. That in fact signifies only the deterioration of the quality of political discussions, and the propaganda mode prevailing over the thinking mode. Of course, no sane people (outside of the North Korea) "express admiration for the glorious leader". It's a hyperbole.
It's a big mistake to believe that pro-Putin commenters are paid for. Having a score of pro-Putin comments of my own, I believe I can outline that mindset for you. 1) The tone of the political commentaries in Russia is radically different from that in the United States. While Vladimir Putin is ranked among the top politicians in today's Russia, opinions of many people on him would diverge, precisely because there's an ongoing discussion in the society about Putin, and people are exposed to a wide range of ideas. Now, what happens when a Russian average Ivan visits the website of some American newspaper? Imagine if you have opened some Russian newspaper and read there that President Obama is the evil, corrupt, a cause of manslaughter? You snorted and opened other newspaper. And read there the same stuff in a different wording. Then you have opened 10 Russian newspapers, to find only a little difference in their reporting on Obama. How soon will you break up and start writing pro-Obama comments? 2) The more important issue is, that as a Prime Minister or a President, Mr. Putin is an embodiment of the Russian state. People feel that attacks on Mr. Putin are not personal, but directed against the Russian Government. If there was a different politician with a similar set of ideas (quite popular in the society), the coverage of Russia would not change to the better. So, people who support Putin in the comments of Western resources may not even support Putin as a Russian politician -- but they effectively try to support the Russian state.
"However, as a Russian, I do object to paying Russian taxpayers' money for that." Write to the President's blog about it.
Yep. What a blessing that you live in the free and prosperous United States, which has no problems of its own!
Agreed. But why to care about being "green" once you are out of the Earth atmosphere?
Or LOX and liquid hydrogen.
I live in Russia. I think, there's no problem with bloggers and activists receiving money, as long as they report their sources of income to the public. I think that the monetary support of some bloggers by the Nashi group is a response to the American aid programs (National Endowment for Democracy) to all sorts of activists in Russia. Essentially, the problem is not with the money -- the problem is with transparency and accountability. If I read some person's blog, I would like to know if he or she receives American or Russian money. For those Americans who do not understand what's wrong with the activities of the National Endowment for Democracy (and similar structures) in Russia, let me say, that there's nothing similar to the Foreign Agents Registration Act in the Russian legislature. The NED is not accountable to me, a citizen of Russia. So, yes, I view it as a security threat. Implementing the Foreign Agents Registration Act in Russia would take a lot of effort, but I believe it's the only possible way in the end. But as long as we do not have that law, I cannot feel outrageos about the Nashi support of some bloggers.
Is it a top secret information that Skype uses XMPP/Jabber protocol for text messaging?
As a slashdotter from Russia, I feel a great curiosity towards the Occupy Wall Street. It shows the U.S. that foreigners like me weren't able to see yet. Other than curiosity, I feel some sadness, as we have two socialist parties in Russia, that get all pro-Socialism votes. What the Occupy Wall Street strives to achieve is a smaller part of our political system, that used to be a greater part once ago. That's why Occupy Wall Street makes me to think about our past, present and future.
AFAIC this is clearly monopoly control over the networks and trust me on this: this monopoly is completely government supported. There were many laws passed in Russia in the recent years to make sure there is as little available competition as possible.
Another expert in Russia? There's no monopoly on that market, with the "big three" mobile phone companies (each of those providing internet access as well): Beeline, Megafon, MTS. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Mobile_phone_companies_of_Russia In such circumstances, you could only speak of a cartel agreement, but that's not clear given the article mentions only one mobile ISP.
I'm a reader of Slashdot from Russia, and so, I would love if Slashdot would welcome comments coming from people speaking in different languages, especially the Russian. It could be implemented as a bilingual pre-moderated thread, opened simultaneously at two websites -- namely, slashdot.org and some Russian resource. Readers of Slashdot would see the thread in English, readers of the Russian resource would see the same thread in Russian. The hard job of providing translations into the both languages would be done by a team of translators. Of course, it doesn't have to be the option supported all the time, but having one bilingual thread possibly each week or each month would be very fun for the both resources involved. As of your Russian counterpart in such a project, I suggest you to work with Inoforum.ru. You can contact administration of Inoforum using the contacts listed at the bottom of the page: http://inoforum.ru/proektu_nuzhny (Well, that page is in Russian, hope it won't be a problem.) If you like the idea, contact the Inoforum administration (Skype is preferable -- exchanging emails may take for too long). Remember that intentions come first -- technical issues are discussed and solved later. You will possibly wonder what connection I have with Inoforum -- well, I am one of Inoforum volunteers (known as "filatovev"), and I have stayed in contact with the Inoforum administration for at least the last year. So, this is not an official invitation -- but a friendly invitation indeed. I believe that you can find the common ground with the Inoforum administration. Best regards and have fun, Evgeny. p.s. Just to prove my identity: my contributions to Inoforum.ru as a volunteer scout/translator "filatovev" are listed below: http://inoforum.ru/user/?puser=85586/ http://inoforum.ru/user/?puser=39859/
Why not to use a $20 webcamera and a laptop to navigate the ship, instead of looking with your own eyes?
*Shrugs*. Assange can ask for political asylum in China or Russia. May be, if things get really tough, he would consider such a move. More likely, he would be allowed to live somewhere in Western Europe, doing what he is doing now.
Your point is that Assange had every right to do what he did.
I just did not view it from that angle.
By the way, you can speak of the "rights" only when they are guaranteed by a respective social structure.
Which social structure could protect Assange's rights? His native nation? The Pirate party? Slashdot forum?..
You didn't get me correctly. There's a very thin edge which separates your personal and social responsibilities, and you need to know it.
If I ever have to deal with secret documents, I would make sure that I won't become a source of any leakage. However, I won't police over my colleagues and friends as well.
Don't forget, that unveiling secret information is a crime. I would _never_ do such a thing myself. On the other hand, there are laws of moral. There can be a difference between spreading blueprints of an h-bomb and exposing war crimes.
It's very dangerous to refuse of the laws of the society and follow the laws of the moral, because you are entering uncharted land. On the other hand, if you dare to do that, you shouldn't be too stupid to get caught.
Wampus, I can see it the following way: Assange would have the closed key. So, only he would be able to upload documents to the encrypted network. That means, it would be a system with multiple peers and a single superuser (Assange). That would guarantee there would be no child pr0n.
Why does Assange necessarily need to be present physically anywhere? Why wouldn't he adopt a new identity, change his name, face and papillary lines? All what he needs to do is to maintain the work of the online service, and he could do that from any place in the world where ISPs exist. Period.
By the way, what's the big deal about WikiLeaks servers? WikiLeaks could be redesigned as a distributed P2P network, where each usual user would therefore voluntarily take a small part of responsibility by providing HDD space and CPU capacity. Each participant of "Distributed P2P Wikileaks" would act like a gate into the Wikileaks for every interested outside person. There must be some system of distributed information storage, like Read-Solomon codes or open-key cryptography, so the contents of each single PC in that network would prove to be just some random information if taken over by the police, etc.
Yet, if you remember results of opinion polls prior to the last elections, they matched the official results of the elections closely enough. For me, it's a strong argument saying that voting makes sense. Personally, I am a strong opponent of unconstitutional coup -- I believe it would only make things worse. One of the major goal of democracy is to make the transfer of power bloodless. While any sort of a coup paves a way to a civil war.
Okey, so what do you propose? Vote for the Socialists or vote for the Communists? Leader of the Russian socialists (S. Mironov) organizes meetings with bloggers, etc, and overall it looks like there are at least several reasonable people in that party.
Well, in fact, you know, it isn't supposed to be the government of the top 100 riches, but the government of the people.
Don't be fooled by the article. The Baikal environmentalists are confronting not the interests of the government, but interests of the enterprise owner, a person in the top 100 Forbes list. Read Russians' comments, and see who are they blaming. http://tinyurl.com/25658g4 Overall, dudes, try to speak with the people in Russia, rather than reading about them in your national press. You'll see that real Russians are all but not their depictions in the New York Times articles.
Nothing in the article that I saw indicated that Microsoft is initiating or exacerbating any of this.
"In southwestern Russia, the Interior Ministry declared in an official document that its investigation of a human rights advocate for software piracy was begun ''based on an application'' from a lawyer for Microsoft."