This economic crisis can be comparable to the fever that occurred after annexing significant piece of land in a prime location. If Russia will survive it, they will be stronger, meaner, richer, better diversified. Russia for more than a decade have been preparing for this scenario.
Occupied Crimea and Donbass represent an area of approximately 42 thousand square meters and had a population of approximately 6 million people (actual number will be lower due to the war). The area is larger than Switzerland and population is comparable to Austria. The Crimea is a prime sub-tropic location, a desirable trophy to Russia who has abundance of land in cold climate. Crimean peninsula is surrounded by sea and has significant untapped oil and gas reserves. To summarized, this is an incredibly valuable piece of land and Russia will not give it up at any cost even if they need to wage a nuclear war.
For Russia adding Switzerland size country economic crisis is an incredibly low price to pay. Russians have stashed away significant foreign currency reserves and have been waiting for this precise reaction from the west.
It is time for the west to impose a reverse Iron curtain on Russia so that Russians could enjoy and continue their relationship with China and North Korea.
West lost the moment Russia wiped their arse with 1994 Budapest memorandum which had to guarantee territorial integrity of Ukraine.
Clearly Uber will be sued once in a while for price gouging, tactics as old as world.
Rather than treating it as a future potential liability they want to send a message now to the future uberzealous seekers of the fairness: look, the price gouging is our patent protected right, secured by the laws.
If someone had a gun on September 11, 2001 perhaps the history would be different. In Soviet Russia all pilots were armed, and rightly so.
I travel and every day I see pocket knifes, souvenir knifes being stolen at the checkpoints. The other day my credit card size stainless steel multi-tool (ruler, screwdriver, wrench and a 2 centimeter cutting edge) has been confiscated because it had a less than one inch "blade". Yikes.
Every single day passengers bring bottles of whiskey and other alcohol in the glass bottles, which is essentially a ceramic blade/knife, if the bottle is broken. Heck, you can buy alcohol in the airplane.
I have interviewed several airport security directors and directors supplying security solutions. All of them, in private, agreed that this is a security theater.
If Sony keeps doing it, their documents will be forever alive in the form of magnet links, formerly torrent file sharing technology.
They do have the the army of trained lawyers to harass mass audiences, except that newspapers have seen much badder boys coming to them with the threats.
Now, assuming Sony documents will survive, will be available for everyone, and will be commented, how exactly SONY will know which newspaper has caused an actual harm?
I think that their litigation budget will be fully depleted for several years in the future.
Why it is a burden of the tax payer not only to pay taxes, which are used for the systems for human and property databases, but, also, burdened with the need to have the old copy of the database record?
Papers are the relict from medieval and industrial, pre-computer and internet era.
Currently one only needs to identify himself and that should be enough data for any cop to pull all the databases and photos of the individual that is being detained.
Somehow it is always the additional burden on the taxpayers that are always imposed and very rarely, if ever, bureaucratic requirements are eliminated.
Abolish plastic driver's license ID, paper insurance and paper registration.
Once one start using, one needs to continue doing.
The same thing with those kangaroo courts. They will stick to whatever "their legal opinions" are, because the moment you stop all predecessors will be questioned. They have to remember that Nurnberg defense, "we just followed orders" does not work all the times. They KNOW what they are doing and, rest assured, they do not have clean conscience and do sleep well even if they say they do.
Expect this to be election issue. Rand Paul's maximalistic approach will earn a lot of political capital, and Hillary Clinton will look like a big sister from 1984 Apple commercial. Perhaps this thing along will win former Obama's voters.
One would be a fool to believe that anything in substance will change even when Rand Paul will stop renewal, but at least there will be a debate.
AdBlock is clearly doing something right, and for every google action there will be equal and opposite reaction.
If internet is called an ecosystem, then we, the small fish, have every right to the cloak of invisibility.
The big fish forgot that the the right to spy should be consented. Of course, there are certain type of fish that does not give a damn and use all kind fishing tools, starting from targeted baits, evolving to infections and ending to the 100% filtering.
If AdBlock will be drifted to playing both sides against each other, get the funding from both marketing companies as well as from the small fry being fished, alternatives will appear.
The next time wrist band activity will be used as an evidence that someone does not go out and I lives only a passive live, that someone can buy a cat.
Use that wristband as cat's collar. In fact cat and sedentary people are almost indistinguishable, from computer's point of view.
So, what is next? Surveillance cameras corroborating that the disabled owner is truly sitting home. 365/24/7 surveillance and records prior to the potential insurance accident just to prove that in the past the owner was active and outdoorsy person?
There a reason certain speech is protected. Popular speech does not need protection.
Argument that the word is not black and white is as accurate that statistically you are 10,459,000 times more likely to die from cancer or heart disease than will end up assaulted by the taxi driver.
The are a lot of control freaks on this site, and nobody is calling to ban them.
Police needs to be disbanded when policeman makes a violent crime. Army needs to be disbanded when army people kill a person. The medical profession and regulations need to be disbanded, when malpractice occurs, for it takes only one mistake to cause harm. All the regulations need to be disbanded, because they do not make the crime disappear. Most of the males need to be aborted, using the same logic, for all the males are statistically potential rapists. The remaining pool for the purposes of procreation should be kept all locked in the "Male camps" and used during scheduled conjugal visits.
In a most populous country with more than 1 billion people, statistically there will be all kind of mishaps, accidents and crimes. It is unavoidable.
If truly rapes and strangers are an issue, then most of the progress would be achieved in eliminating this type of crime closing all the night clubs and bar. Also the night life is when a lot of crime happens, it is safer if all the people would be under curfew during the dark hours.
Trains have more than 150 years of history of operations and the typical issues that the regular people hear about the trains is cost to tax payers. Remember the LIRR (Long Island Railway) scandal where 80% of retirees chose to be disabled and are drawing disability pensions http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L... , section "Pension and disability fraud scandal".
Railroad companies know how to handle snow and and dirt.
However, everyone here should talk to their friend policeman, fireman or ambulance worker and ask them what they think about railroads. They will tell you that the most frustrating thing about the railways is the suicides. Those (and I appologize for my language here) pussies who do not want to die home alone using tried and proven methods, without causing stres. Upon Rairoad suicide attempt, railway schedules gets disrupted, tens of thousands of commuters get stranded, service people need to collect remnants of people who leave the world in a "spectacular" way.
As such, rather than using superpowerful lasers to zap the leaves and dirts, it is a much better idea to rotate them by a 90 degree angle and to fry all those attention seekers. Lasers will cause pain and will give time to the attempters to change their mind.
All of this would not be necessary, if existing laws would be enforced the way they were intended to. What is here not to understand "... secure in their persons, houses, papers and effects".
The moment you start slicing and dicing and qualifying, the next moment another interpretation will be drafted that allows to bypass any new law.
The truth is people were spied all the times, but when it became easier to do so due to the technologies and the scale of spying became difficult to hide, then the new laws were carved out, "while the freedoms are protected".
Key lesson: calling the the laws in a manner opposite to what it does.
Patriot act is not patriotic.
Affordable care is not affordable to most of the working people.
FBI backdoor ban, will put more resources on another secret agency which is not banned.
There was a time Iran was an ally to USA.Iran is still an ally, but due to the interests of certain groups they are not allowed to be official ally and have to be in a role of the bad ones.
What would the country do if you realize, one day, that all your critical systems are infected/stuxneted by known and unkown malware?
On NSA website, NSA states about their values: " We will protect national security interests by adhering to the highest standards of behavior".
So how NSA would be able to explain to a child that computer virus and malware represent the highest standard of behavior.
It is probably the same as stealing money on the street from slightly overweight person and telling him/her, that you need to lose weight anyway and that the robber cares about you. If questioned, street robber will counter stating that the victim should be thankful, because in other streets (countries) you could be shot for even questioning.
Is vulnerable and weakened by NSA encryption is also "highest standard of behavior", dear beavers from NSA?
It was about keeping him (and others for that matter) in line. And making example of him being grounded, cuffed, locked, deported, tried and all of it televised.
These were US agencies that have funded creation of TOR; CIA and NSA, you name it.
Obviously, the decision has been made that if encryption and anonymity cannot be controlled, then it needs to be led, and there are many ways to stay on top: a) controlled nodes b) code flaws
Toyota is currently considered as one of the best companies and great strategic planners. Pioneers too. I did follow the development of this innovation and it is worth saying that Toyota has invested billions of dollars into this project. The same way they have invested in gas-hybrid prototype currently known as Prius.
There will be Hydrogen energy skeptics, the same way there was a reasonable skepticism towards electric cars. Most of the skeptic comments coming from the opponents of electric cars are actually, valid. Such as electric cars are being charged with the coal burned electricity.
The key risk will be mentioned that Hydrogen is extremely volatile and combustive. BMW has developed hydrogen powered cars long time ago. Toyota has actually solved the issue by developing fuel cell. Fuel cell basically is a sponge of certain minerals which chemically absorbs hydrogen so that it is not that volatile.
I am taking a risk and predicting that in ten and fifteen years there will be marketed systems that will convert photovoltaic energy to hydrogen, which will be used to fill Hydrogen cars.
Do not listen too seriously to those who say that there will be no hydrogen refill stations. A decade ago there were not too many electricity recharge stations (though you could recharge your car home). I am sure Toyota has a plan in their sleeve to be in the hydrogen business.
While former criticism for current EV cars was valid, there will be valid complains for Hydrogen cars, let's not forget the key thing: competition is actually a good thing. Embrace it, because even if you are driving a gas car, hydrogen cars will keep the price of gas down due to lower oil demand. Win-win.
However I doubt that I would like my colleagues and Linkedin business contacts to know about my: racing hamster, gunpowder musket and jedi religion hobbies.
There is a reason people keep certain professional distance at work, distance about personal and private life.
As an employer I would like to know how many children, how many husbands my new prospective employee has, something that is not even an option at Linkedin.
In order to get information on specific request, police now needs to submit requests, fill paperwork, get approvals. Too much red tape! Police also wants easy access to all the data.
When police does get data using "black channels", they need to waste time to find (or make up) some sort of flaws or errors so that to present that flaw as a reason why data was identified and collected to begin with. It is just damn too complicated. More importantly, even police officers need to go through dozens of all kind of certifications, because only certified specialists can handle the evidence.
For example, police officers have to go through period "trainings" to use radar and alcohol tester. Using computer will also need to be certified, because a good attorney can defend in court that the data was not handled by certified specialist.
Internet ID, fortified with fingerprinting, face and eye retina scan will surely make CRMP work easier and would reduce administrative burden, eh?
Every time you leave an electronic imprint, such as the image of your face, tagged with your ID, it goes to the DATABASE.
People live with the understanding of intelligence gathering of the middle of last century. There has to be a building, it has to belong to some agency, the information is accumulated to the the files.
Everything is now gathered in DATABASES, accessible to all the thousands of agencies and is being analyzed and will be analyzed in the future to figure out relationships between elements of the database records.
While Florida is not the most attractive and friendly place to do business, but it surely beats California, which has for several years been elected as the worst place to do business, in the same bucket with New York and New Jersey.
Florida has no income tax, climate is subtropical and, more importantly, Florida is giving additional tax incentives to move jobs to Florida.
My own employer has opened office in Tampa and relocated 250 jobs from NJ; that is probably only the beginning.
Privacy is dead? At the minimum, photons can have their privacy.
Look at the topic the other way: the world that we know does rely on the privacy of quantum unpredictability, the idea that the photon spin cannot be snooped without altering it. The same world that you know without privacy in what quantum particles are doing would be behaving very differently, no need to explain if one has some familiarity with quantum mechanics.
This particular Fentanyle has been manufactured and supplied by one pharmaceutical manufacturer in Kaunas, Lithuania, albeit prior to 1991. There were investigative journalists who have covered this topic exhaustively, in details several years ago.
Fentanyle has been used in Nord Ost operation and it was not a success. Hundreds of hostages died from overdose and Russians do not like to bring this instance of heavy handed handling of situation.
They can do this until they get another legal spank once again. Who is Google anyway to decide the "public interest"? Since when the public interest trumps the private interest and how and why Google self-appointed to be the judge and the jury to decide what is relevant or what is not?
Slashdot Mirror
This economic crisis can be comparable to the fever that occurred after annexing significant piece of land in a prime location. If Russia will survive it, they will be stronger, meaner, richer, better diversified. Russia for more than a decade have been preparing for this scenario.
Occupied Crimea and Donbass represent an area of approximately 42 thousand square meters and had a population of approximately 6 million people (actual number will be lower due to the war). The area is larger than Switzerland and population is comparable to Austria. The Crimea is a prime sub-tropic location, a desirable trophy to Russia who has abundance of land in cold climate. Crimean peninsula is surrounded by sea and has significant untapped oil and gas reserves. To summarized, this is an incredibly valuable piece of land and Russia will not give it up at any cost even if they need to wage a nuclear war.
For Russia adding Switzerland size country economic crisis is an incredibly low price to pay. Russians have stashed away significant foreign currency reserves and have been waiting for this precise reaction from the west.
It is time for the west to impose a reverse Iron curtain on Russia so that Russians could enjoy and continue their relationship with China and North Korea.
West lost the moment Russia wiped their arse with 1994 Budapest memorandum which had to guarantee territorial integrity of Ukraine.
Clearly Uber will be sued once in a while for price gouging, tactics as old as world.
Rather than treating it as a future potential liability they want to send a message now to the future uberzealous seekers of the fairness: look, the price gouging is our patent protected right, secured by the laws.
Making a lemonade from lemons at its finest.
If someone had a gun on September 11, 2001 perhaps the history would be different. In Soviet Russia all pilots were armed, and rightly so.
I travel and every day I see pocket knifes, souvenir knifes being stolen at the checkpoints. The other day my credit card size stainless steel multi-tool (ruler, screwdriver, wrench and a 2 centimeter cutting edge) has been confiscated because it had a less than one inch "blade". Yikes.
Every single day passengers bring bottles of whiskey and other alcohol in the glass bottles, which is essentially a ceramic blade/knife, if the bottle is broken. Heck, you can buy alcohol in the airplane.
I have interviewed several airport security directors and directors supplying security solutions. All of them, in private, agreed that this is a security theater.
If Sony keeps doing it, their documents will be forever alive in the form of magnet links, formerly torrent file sharing technology.
They do have the the army of trained lawyers to harass mass audiences, except that newspapers have seen much badder boys coming to them with the threats.
Now, assuming Sony documents will survive, will be available for everyone, and will be commented, how exactly SONY will know which newspaper has caused an actual harm?
I think that their litigation budget will be fully depleted for several years in the future.
Why it is a burden of the tax payer not only to pay taxes, which are used for the systems for human and property databases, but, also, burdened with the need to have the old copy of the database record?
Papers are the relict from medieval and industrial, pre-computer and internet era.
Currently one only needs to identify himself and that should be enough data for any cop to pull all the databases and photos of the individual that is being detained.
Somehow it is always the additional burden on the taxpayers that are always imposed and very rarely, if ever, bureaucratic requirements are eliminated.
Abolish plastic driver's license ID, paper insurance and paper registration.
Once one start using, one needs to continue doing.
The same thing with those kangaroo courts. They will stick to whatever "their legal opinions" are, because the moment you stop all predecessors will be questioned. They have to remember that Nurnberg defense, "we just followed orders" does not work all the times. They KNOW what they are doing and, rest assured, they do not have clean conscience and do sleep well even if they say they do.
Expect this to be election issue. Rand Paul's maximalistic approach will earn a lot of political capital, and Hillary Clinton will look like a big sister from 1984 Apple commercial. Perhaps this thing along will win former Obama's voters.
One would be a fool to believe that anything in substance will change even when Rand Paul will stop renewal, but at least there will be a debate.
AdBlock is clearly doing something right, and for every google action there will be equal and opposite reaction.
If internet is called an ecosystem, then we, the small fish, have every right to the cloak of invisibility.
The big fish forgot that the the right to spy should be consented. Of course, there are certain type of fish that does not give a damn and use all kind fishing tools, starting from targeted baits, evolving to infections and ending to the 100% filtering.
If AdBlock will be drifted to playing both sides against each other, get the funding from both marketing companies as well as from the small fry being fished, alternatives will appear.
The next time wrist band activity will be used as an evidence that someone does not go out and I lives only a passive live, that someone can buy a cat.
Use that wristband as cat's collar. In fact cat and sedentary people are almost indistinguishable, from computer's point of view.
So, what is next? Surveillance cameras corroborating that the disabled owner is truly sitting home. 365/24/7 surveillance and records prior to the potential insurance accident just to prove that in the past the owner was active and outdoorsy person?
There a reason certain speech is protected. Popular speech does not need protection.
Argument that the word is not black and white is as accurate that statistically you are 10,459,000 times more likely to die from cancer or heart disease than will end up assaulted by the taxi driver.
The are a lot of control freaks on this site, and nobody is calling to ban them.
Police needs to be disbanded when policeman makes a violent crime.
Army needs to be disbanded when army people kill a person.
The medical profession and regulations need to be disbanded, when malpractice occurs, for it takes only one mistake to cause harm.
All the regulations need to be disbanded, because they do not make the crime disappear.
Most of the males need to be aborted, using the same logic, for all the males are statistically potential rapists. The remaining pool for the purposes of procreation should be kept all locked in the "Male camps" and used during scheduled conjugal visits.
In a most populous country with more than 1 billion people, statistically there will be all kind of mishaps, accidents and crimes. It is unavoidable.
If truly rapes and strangers are an issue, then most of the progress would be achieved in eliminating this type of crime closing all the night clubs and bar.
Also the night life is when a lot of crime happens, it is safer if all the people would be under curfew during the dark hours.
Trains have more than 150 years of history of operations and the typical issues that the regular people hear about the trains is cost to tax payers. Remember the LIRR (Long Island Railway) scandal where 80% of retirees chose to be disabled and are drawing disability pensions http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L... , section "Pension and disability fraud scandal".
Railroad companies know how to handle snow and and dirt.
However, everyone here should talk to their friend policeman, fireman or ambulance worker and ask them what they think about railroads. They will tell you that the most frustrating thing about the railways is the suicides. Those (and I appologize for my language here) pussies who do not want to die home alone using tried and proven methods, without causing stres. Upon Rairoad suicide attempt, railway schedules gets disrupted, tens of thousands of commuters get stranded, service people need to collect remnants of people who leave the world in a "spectacular" way.
As such, rather than using superpowerful lasers to zap the leaves and dirts, it is a much better idea to rotate them by a 90 degree angle and to fry all those attention seekers. Lasers will cause pain and will give time to the attempters to change their mind.
All of this would not be necessary, if existing laws would be enforced the way they were intended to. What is here not to understand " ... secure in their persons, houses, papers and effects".
The moment you start slicing and dicing and qualifying, the next moment another interpretation will be drafted that allows to bypass any new law.
The truth is people were spied all the times, but when it became easier to do so due to the technologies and the scale of spying became difficult to hide, then the new laws were carved out, "while the freedoms are protected".
Key lesson: calling the the laws in a manner opposite to what it does.
Patriot act is not patriotic.
Affordable care is not affordable to most of the working people.
FBI backdoor ban, will put more resources on another secret agency which is not banned.
Why FBI, why DHS, why not all of them?
There was a time Iran was an ally to USA.Iran is still an ally, but due to the interests of certain groups they are not allowed to be official ally and have to be in a role of the bad ones.
What would the country do if you realize, one day, that all your critical systems are infected/stuxneted by known and unkown malware?
On NSA website, NSA states about their values: " We will protect national security interests by adhering to the highest standards of behavior".
So how NSA would be able to explain to a child that computer virus and malware represent the highest standard of behavior.
It is probably the same as stealing money on the street from slightly overweight person and telling him/her, that you need to lose weight anyway and that the robber cares about you. If questioned, street robber will counter stating that the victim should be thankful, because in other streets (countries) you could be shot for even questioning.
Is vulnerable and weakened by NSA encryption is also "highest standard of behavior", dear beavers from NSA?
It was about keeping him (and others for that matter) in line. And making example of him being grounded, cuffed, locked, deported, tried and all of it televised.
If you let one disobey, more of those will appear, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v...
Either way, system win. Assange's statue of limitations ends in 2022, which is, what, 10 years being locked in one room?
If he does survive, he will be an example for others. Actually he already was an example, which keeps giving.
If a crafty person prints $20 bill on the printer, he is a criminal and a counterfeiter.
When central banks create money by simply changing the numbers in the computer, it is called quantitative easy.
Oh, wait. We are being told that cash is getting unpopular, and paying with electronic means is so hot right now.
These were US agencies that have funded creation of TOR; CIA and NSA, you name it.
Obviously, the decision has been made that if encryption and anonymity cannot be controlled, then it needs to be led, and there are many ways to stay on top:
a) controlled nodes b) code flaws
Toyota is currently considered as one of the best companies and great strategic planners. Pioneers too. I did follow the development of this innovation and it is worth saying that Toyota has invested billions of dollars into this project. The same way they have invested in gas-hybrid prototype currently known as Prius.
There will be Hydrogen energy skeptics, the same way there was a reasonable skepticism towards electric cars. Most of the skeptic comments coming from the opponents of electric cars are actually, valid. Such as electric cars are being charged with the coal burned electricity.
The key risk will be mentioned that Hydrogen is extremely volatile and combustive. BMW has developed hydrogen powered cars long time ago. Toyota has actually solved the issue by developing fuel cell. Fuel cell basically is a sponge of certain minerals which chemically absorbs hydrogen so that it is not that volatile.
I am taking a risk and predicting that in ten and fifteen years there will be marketed systems that will convert photovoltaic energy to hydrogen, which will be used to fill Hydrogen cars.
Do not listen too seriously to those who say that there will be no hydrogen refill stations. A decade ago there were not too many electricity recharge stations (though you could recharge your car home). I am sure Toyota has a plan in their sleeve to be in the hydrogen business.
While former criticism for current EV cars was valid, there will be valid complains for Hydrogen cars, let's not forget the key thing: competition is actually a good thing. Embrace it, because even if you are driving a gas car, hydrogen cars will keep the price of gas down due to lower oil demand. Win-win.
However I doubt that I would like my colleagues and Linkedin business contacts to know about my: racing hamster, gunpowder musket and jedi religion hobbies.
There is a reason people keep certain professional distance at work, distance about personal and private life.
As an employer I would like to know how many children, how many husbands my new prospective employee has, something that is not even an option at Linkedin.
In order to get information on specific request, police now needs to submit requests, fill paperwork, get approvals. Too much red tape! Police also wants easy access to all the data.
When police does get data using "black channels", they need to waste time to find (or make up) some sort of flaws or errors so that to present that flaw as a reason why data was identified and collected to begin with. It is just damn too complicated. More importantly, even police officers need to go through dozens of all kind of certifications, because only certified specialists can handle the evidence.
For example, police officers have to go through period "trainings" to use radar and alcohol tester. Using computer will also need to be certified, because a good attorney can defend in court that the data was not handled by certified specialist.
Internet ID, fortified with fingerprinting, face and eye retina scan will surely make CRMP work easier and would reduce administrative burden, eh?
Every time you leave an electronic imprint, such as the image of your face, tagged with your ID, it goes to the DATABASE.
People live with the understanding of intelligence gathering of the middle of last century. There has to be a building, it has to belong to some agency, the information is accumulated to the the files.
Everything is now gathered in DATABASES, accessible to all the thousands of agencies and is being analyzed and will be analyzed in the future to figure out relationships between elements of the database records.
While Florida is not the most attractive and friendly place to do business, but it surely beats California, which has for several years been elected as the worst place to do business, in the same bucket with New York and New Jersey.
Florida has no income tax, climate is subtropical and, more importantly, Florida is giving additional tax incentives to move jobs to Florida.
My own employer has opened office in Tampa and relocated 250 jobs from NJ; that is probably only the beginning.
Privacy is dead? At the minimum, photons can have their privacy.
Look at the topic the other way: the world that we know does rely on the privacy of quantum unpredictability, the idea that the photon spin cannot be snooped without altering it. The same world that you know without privacy in what quantum particles are doing would be behaving very differently, no need to explain if one has some familiarity with quantum mechanics.
The mysterious gas is Fentanyle, in gaseus form, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/F... .Fentanyle is 100 times more potent than morphine
This particular Fentanyle has been manufactured and supplied by one pharmaceutical manufacturer in Kaunas, Lithuania, albeit prior to 1991. There were investigative journalists who have covered this topic exhaustively, in details several years ago.
Fentanyle has been used in Nord Ost operation and it was not a success. Hundreds of hostages died from overdose and Russians do not like to bring this instance of heavy handed handling of situation.
They can do this until they get another legal spank once again. Who is Google anyway to decide the "public interest"? Since when the public interest trumps the private interest and how and why Google self-appointed to be the judge and the jury to decide what is relevant or what is not?