...will be a life sentence for trespassing, so Bush can send all war protesters into prison.
The problem is not about what is legal or illegal. I just went >=67mph on a highway with 65mph speed limit a few hours ago. And did the same yesterday. And day before yesterday. And so did everyone who was on that highway at the moment. And so did, at some point everyone I know, who has a car. Guess what did anyone do about that. And guess why.
There is a shitload of things that are illegal, but don't deserve punishment, or that warrant only minor inconvenience to match their consequences. And when they get elevated from their deserved status of "minor bullshit" to "Great Crimes That Land You Forever In Prison", it is just as unnatural as, say, if a punishment for the murder of a bald person suddenly got limited to a $70 fine.
There are already a lot of things where "justice" is distorted beyond anything that can be seen as sane, "child porn" being one of the most prominent examples (yes, it's bad, but not at the extent that seeing a photo of a naked underage girl getting the same sentence as for killing and eating her). But at least this is caused by a dominant religion, and religions are built on overblown fear. "PIRATE" (do all stupid laws have to spell something?) act merely protects corporations at the extent that no living (or dead) being can ever afford. Not to mention that the same corporations can easily protect themselves from "pirates" by STOPPING OVERCHARGING THEIR CUSTOMERS.
What is screwed up, no matter how I look at it. This is a kind of law that makes the idea of "illegal" moot -- if it's so easy to pass a law that contradicts to spirit and letter of the rest of the laws, what kind of credibility does the law have behind itself? Can I, please, buy a law that Bank of America has to pay me $50M every year? Would it be more or less difficult than robbing them?
Then the system JUST MIGHT happpen to not be vulnerable to whatever the attacker uses. Firewalls are not an excuse for neglecting security on the hosts behind them.
1. Should NOT contain any attack analysis. The only attack that any security software not in the hands of security researcher has a legitimate reason to "analyze" is an attack that already succeeded, and the user is recovering from the destruction caused by it. Announcing "prevented" attacks or modifying the host's response to "suspicious" data is at least a useless toy, and at most a target for a real attack (though most often it's in the middle, a nuisance that reduces the reliability). Keep it simple, stupid!
2. Should be separated from the host that it protect by at least a virtual machine and (better) be on a separate device. Then the worst that can happen in the case of a firewall compromise is that the firewall will stop performing its functions. Running a "firewall" on the "firewalled" host is an equivalent of a person hiring himself as a bodyguard.
3. If running on the "protected" host, it should be passive, and merely prevent other software running on that host from receiving packets from the Internet even if that software listens on the ports that the author believes, should not be opened. Still, calling this a "firewall" stretches the definition way too far.
The original meaning of a firewall is a wall in the building that prevents fire from spreading when the building is already on fire, and firewall acts as a barrier for spreading it. It does not make a building non-flammable, and its design expects a building to contain flammable material, yet it prevents damage from spreading. A network firewall does something pretty close to this, it expect vulnerable hosts to be on either of its side, and merely reduces the probability of successful attack from "external" to "internal" network, yet being relatively simple, it is impossible or difficult to attack. Having a "firewall" full of "flammable" bells and whistles, and in the middle of a system that it assumes to be vulnerable is a very, very wrong kind of design.
Some tell about 400.000 dead, other about half million.
I am sure, I was counted among those "dead" (I lived about 90km from the power plant, and there are only few millions of people within the that radius).
Dad says that those figures rised very high and so far death rate is 80.000-120.000 but it will be more because people will die within next 50-70 years
Most of the people who are reading this sentence will be dead within the next 50-70 years. This is how dangerous it is.
The literal translation is "We will show you the Kuzka's mother". It's an expression that is not nearly as hostile as "We will destroy you" and "We will bury you" translations that Americans are familiar with. The closest translation would be "We will show you", and it was related to the competition in economy -- Hruschev's slogan "Catch up and outrun the US" certainly was related to this, and its abbreviation was used as a brand name at the time.
Despite taking part in the creation of Russian ICBM building program and other Cold War era hostile moves, Hruschev was by far the least aggressive USSR leader.
Of course, all this is unrelated to the fact that the events the original article describes are completely fictional and could not possibly happen for an obvious reason that even now pipelines require custom-made software to operate, leave alone early 80's.
...and it's a far cry from "passwords are secret, so they can be called security through obscurity, too".
First of all, this system uses plaintext authentication with a constant, short key. And it's impossible to encrypt -- "knocks" should be sent unencrypted. If there is any encryption over them, it means, you already have tunnel/VPN, and therefore authenticated already -- "knocks" won't change anything because anyone not on the same VPN can't see the target port anyway. So, once used over an insecure network (say, wireless network with none or weak encryption), "port knocking" is compromised until the key change.
Second, "port knocking", if implemented for a service that has its own authentication scheme already, and does not have a backdoor or security hole by itself, merely adds to the length of the password -- and it doesn't add much. If one is going to use brute force against an ssh server (what is kinda insane already), he will not be stopped by a trivial brute-forcing the sequence of packets. And as opposed to any part of the "real" password, attacker will be immediately notified about the success of his attempt. The only justifiable use of "port knocking" is to prevent the access to POTENTIALLY INSECURE service, however whatever it can do, can be better done with a secure-authenticated proxy or tunnel -- and with no danger of opening it for others.
Third, it does not send the whole password over an established session -- what means, one can fake the request from another host, and there will be no way to distinguish between those packets and "real" connection attempts. This means, anyone can insert his own connections in the middle of someone else's sequence, preventing him from accessing the system. In fact, the amount of resources necessary to make the service completely unusable for any known client is miniscule, and such an attack is difficult to trace without an access to many routers in the way of the "fake" packets. If the users of "port knocking" will try to prevent this, and ignore non-matching packets, then any host will be eventually "opened" by sending requests to all ports in a sequence.
Fourth, each packet from a new IP address establishes a knocking sequence that should be stored somewhere. Deliberately creating sequences from many random addresses will be an equivalent of SYN flood (actually the "knocking" packets _will_ be SYNs, though it's not the same mechanism), however since the content of the packet is discarded, there is no way to use SYN cookies that prevent regular SYN floods. "Knocking" will have shorter sequence lifetime than TCP, however it will be easy to consume enough of resources given the ease of sending "knocking" packets.
Fifth, the widespread use of port knocking will certainly be noticed by attackers, and cause them to "knock" on nonexistent or unavailable hosts like there is no tomorrow. Sooner or later they will need more bandwidth than they have, and will delegate this task to worms and viruses, and in the end no one will be more secure while the amount of traffic over the Internet will increase to truly ridiculous levels.
This all means that it is a "security through obscurity" scheme that becomes less useful after being disclosed (as it already is), and truly worthless if attackers expect to see it.
Yeah, right. This is why Buran was launched on Energiya rocket, a kind of heavy vehicle that US never even planned to build.
Buran is likely based on some leaked design, rejected or not. However it's pretty evident that it was superior to Shuttle, and US space program would be in a better shape now if some of decisions used in Buran were implemented in Shuttle. Russians, of course, were of a lesser opinion about both Shuttle and Buran, and found the whole thing too expensive and inefficient to continue, at least at the state of the design in 80's. US continued with Shuttle. I still wonder if Energiya heavy rocket, or something similar, will be resurrected -- it certainly looks like a good solution for building larger space stations.
Tell your good friend that Alex Belits, another Russian who is now in US after leaving Belarus/former USSR in 1993 called him a liar and a shill for American proprganda machine.
I remember the life in USSR in 70's and 80's pretty well, and it certainly was far from "poverty". Certainly far from poverty compared to US in 70's and early 80's unless one judges the life in US based on Hollywood movies, and life in USSR based on American propaganda's horror stories. Of course, someone who left USSR in 80's most likely has an ax to grind against Communists, and there could be valid reasons for this -- USSR Communists at that time were almost as corrupt as US Republicans are now. However it's a poor reason for inventing stuff or being a parrot for his new American "leaders" and "masters".
And rotary phone has three-letter "menu items" associated with the digits. Not to mention radio tuning with "linear menu" of stations, multimeters with large number of positions for a single knob, and loads and loads of other devices that implement the same idea in all its versions -- none of them considered worthy to be patented.
Now suddenly there is a trivial variation, and it's patentable while the rest of things weren't? This is just ridiculous.
I just want to know, how the HECK is this thing going to make money for VIA or Apex? It has enough "asshole technology" to limit its usability to the level that unless nice people at Apex kindly allowed you to play a particular game, it won't run it at all, however PC games give no revenue to the hardware makers -- just the opposite, Apex has to make installer/uninstaller scripts for them. At its $400 price it is barely below similarly-specced PCs, so I guess, there is some slim profit margin in that, considering that all chips are VIA.
But the problem is, it competes with small PCs made mostly from... VIA's chips! VIA sells the same parts, probably at the same or higher profit, to PC makers, and those produce small "media/games" PCs for a bit higher price and infinitely higher flexibility. So VIA gets an inflexible product squeezed between traditional consoles ($100-$200 price range) and cheap gaming-capable PCs ($400-$600 price range), and to add insult to the stupid situation, the latter, that they are so busy undercutting, is also their best client.
If VIA just wanted to undercut the PCs it could just produce a fully-functional PC, price it at $400-$500, and enjoy the results. But with $400 thing that costs almost as much as an equivalent $500 PC, but does much less (not to mention, can't be upgraded to be able to meet new games' requirements in a few years), they just can't get enough users that buy that thing instead of either cheaper console, or a PC.
So finnish history books lie, as well as books in our museums?
All history books lie -- or they would not drastically differ between all countries that ever had wars with each other. It's just people should be aware that a lot of stuff in the history courses can be propaganda, and see a difference between documented facts and some rather creative interpretations, omissions, etc. I have seen more than enough of those in USSR, post-USSR Russia, Belarus, US, etc. So every time one sees "We, the proud people of Southeast Lower Yellowshirtia, were for the whole our history oppressed by being a part of Great Turbania, and the great leader Twohole Button founded his national liberation movement, liberated out land, given us freedom, and started glorious days of the Button Republic history", he should take with a grain of salt -- especially if Turbanian history books mention that Twohole Button happened to work for Imperial Security Department (the example is fictional, I have nothing against people wearing the mentioned articles of clothes).
Think living under russian rule where your own language is under pressure and and people are forced to russian language.
I am Jewish by origin, was born in Belarus (then part of USSR), and my native language is Russian, so cry me a river.
Well Germans where loved in baltic states because USSR conquered them first, and CURRENT generation of people where told by their parents and grand parents those stories in their time. And they remeber Germans as the GOOD people. So you can guess if they remember Germans as good people in WWII how bad the USSR was!
I was there, and I know precisely how USSR was. The Nazi could be remembered as "good people" only by someone who is blinded by hatred toward Russians -- what some people in Baltic countries were at the time. And one has to remember that Nazi considered everything Northern European to be far above other nations on their pyramid of nations that they wanted to build.
If you are interested why Finnish is not relative to Common languages its just that russians practicly wiped out all the other languages in our language group, and they where MAJORITY in their areas before russians did. [In the 1800's Finnish scientist mapped the their relative languages during period where russians where trying to show their tolerance to minorities AFTER the slaughter in Warsaw.]
Again, cry me a river. Languages get pushed aside and disappear when any massive move of the population happens, however it rarely means people actually being killed, or even forced to use other languages. I lived in Belarus, and the first thing local nationalist nuts did after getting power was attempts to switch to then-barely-used Belarus language, including schools. Schools almost halted because teachers didn't know the language, people got pissed enough that soon Communists got back in power, what remains until now -- and one of the reason was that nationalists were the only organized opposition to them, and nationalists happened to be worse.
The article makes an origami boulder of a statement -- everything is jumbled together, poor explanations, incomplete statements, real problems, unrelated facts... only to come to conclusion that is nothing but a wild guess.
I don't know about trotsky doctrine I just know they build roads to strategic places in order to get to finnish border and THAT was build long before, they prepared for major offensive support structure in karelia long before WWII... The baltic states was long part of russians defensive plans, peter the great had its eyes on norther norway to get good atlantic harbors, and THAT strategy was part OF stalins doctrine too.
Huh? Before Peter Russia had no ports with any access to Atlantic Ocean at all, so taking the northwest and founding St.Petersburg provided such an access through Baltic Sea, for the first time in many centuries of being for all practical purposes a landlocked country. One may question if such a goal would be "legal" in modern times, however in the 17th century a country with no access to the sea could just as well be located in the middle of a desert, and St. Petersburg was vital to the development of Russia. Sweden, Holland and Norway were at that point way too strong to even think attacking them, and Swedes went as far south as Ukraine (then part of the Russian Empire) when they had a war with Russia. But Russian expansion to the northwest ended quickly ather the goal of getting and securing the sea access was achieved. What would Russians gain by attacking anything in Scandinavia, I have no idea, and I guess, neither did Peter the Great (and all Czars after him) nor Stalin (and all USSR leaders after him).
Belorussia and Ukraine was NON willingly joined to USSR it was just because red army was there, when USSR joined, and Ukraine was violently resisting the becoming part of USSR, actually they where in rebellion against russia couple of times BEFORE!
Yeah, right. Every piece of every country gets its share of nationalists and separatists when any kind of war hits it, and there is an opportunity to snatch a piece of land while the big guys are too busy fighting. This does not change the fact that both countries were a part of Russian Empire before USSR was formed, and the full Czar's title for many centuries read "...of Great, Small and White Russia..." (what meant Russia, Ukraine and Belarus). Civil war of 1918-22 was a great opportunity for local rebels and gangs to fight for "independence" of their stomping grounds under nationalistic slogans, however their claim to power was orders of magnitude less than one of Communists. When this kind of nationalists succeed, we see shining examples of democracy in action such as Serbia, Bosnia, Croatia, Chechnya, Georgia (one that is not a US state), 70% of Africa, and other world-famous shitholes, filled with either violent gangs, or hopelessly corrupt oppressive regimes depending on the local traditions and amounts of resources available. And the worst happens when the real aggressor (such as Nazi or US) comes -- nationalists suddenly become humble and obedient servants of the new rulers, fighting against their own people, whose "independence" was their proclaimed goal.
And this I talk about ENDING of WWI when USSR was formed, at that point they where expansionist.
Parse error. If you mean that USSR did not keep its obligations to Germany that it taken in the pre-WWII peace pact, then duh -- it's rather hard to keep the peace pact when other participant attacked you. The Baltic states' claim for independence at that point was very thin, considering that when they weren't Russian/USSR they were occupied by Germany. And Finland at that time still had nothing to do with USSR.
Leaving baltic states in WWI when they separated from russia. They got them back by threats in WWII.
Do you mean Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, or Finland (that actually separated, and later fought a war, before WWII)? As for threats, there never was a time in or between WWI and WWII when any small country in Eastern Europe was not subject to threats, either from USSR or from Germany. Of course, it was Germany that actually attacked and conquered all of them shortly after that, and hardly Russia or USS
Actually the USSR was preparing for expansion before WWII.
If you mean, Trotsky's doctrine, it was rather unpopular even then -- at the extent that Trotsky was exiled and assassinated.
And the war with Finland, and crabbing of baltic states was already planned ahead.
At the extent of only doing it as a part of poorly planned, but obviously defensive on USSR part treaty with Nazi Germany? The same treaty that was promprly broken by Nazi, who had found that the Western border of USSR was very poorly defended, leave alone prepared for anything offensive.
Europe after WWII was out of question due the nuke problem. China had too much population to deal with,
and middle east would of gotten them full scale war against Nato. So what they could of done?
I mean they didn't wan't to get a full scale war against nuclear states and wanted to expand anyway. Their hands where pretty much tied up. Their navy was not as capable for non nuclear warfare as NATO so getting a naval assault on small country was not an option. It was simple.
[the rest of the "evil russians planned to conquer the Earth" factless rant skipped]
That's a nice piece of fiction. Too bad, it has nothing to do with reality. If not for other reasons then simply because any such expansion at that point would be impractical -- they would get worse land and less resources than what they already had trouble handling in Siberia.
Finlands,baltic states, belorussians and Ukranian s separation was part of a peace deal between russia and germany , and the war that formed USSR got two of those states back.
Belorussia and Ukraine were a part of USSR before and after WWII. Not to mention that they (and Poland for some time, too) were a part of Russian Empire for centuries many before USSR.
One because it was base operations of the other fraction and other just because... The smaller states was left intact, just because the internal image would of hurt if they wouldn't shown that they kept their words, until the controlling system was build up.
What "smaller" states (who is smaller than Belarus, Lithuania, Latvia or Estonia in that region)? Many people in Eastern European countries were pissed at USSR for installing and supporting Communist governments there immediately after WWII, however there was no further expansion. And USSR in its turn was pissed at Yugoslavia and China that, despite being "Socialist" and rulled by "Communists", had almost nothing in common with USSR at that point, yet the whole situation remained peaceful.
The USSR wouldn't have survived without proxy-armies battling its expansion?
What armies and what expansion? Since USSR was founded, Finland separated from it, and the only army that actually fought for USSR Communists was their own (sometimes "helping" governments that didn't ask them, though that was quite rare, and limited to the immediate neighbors). USSR had its sphere of influence, but for the whole its history it didn't do anything to expand it, with the exception of WWII when it became inevitable. Its economy was closed, it could get no benefit from trying to be a robber baron, so its military policy was defensive (and shut up about Afghanistan already, it shared the border with USSR, and was massively messed with by some very hostile groups of people -- not that the situation changed much since then). "Support" of Iraq and other "allies" in the Middle East and Africa was a drain on the USSR, and even now those countries owe huge amounts of money to Russia, that they have no intention to pay back.
US on the other hand, did everything that you accuse USSR for -- supported foreign wars, created proxy armies, expanded its military presence to pretty much everything from Japan to Germany to Cuba, not to mention that its involvement with other countries always ended up providing benefits for American big businesses at everyone else's expense.
I have a long list of things I blame Communists/former USSR government/current Russian government for, but the things you have mentioned just aren't there, and to put it simply, you are ignorant about history.
Slashdot Mirror
And most of them fail within the first year.
...will be a life sentence for trespassing, so Bush can send all war protesters into prison.
The problem is not about what is legal or illegal. I just went >=67mph on a highway with 65mph speed limit a few hours ago. And did the same yesterday. And day before yesterday. And so did everyone who was on that highway at the moment. And so did, at some point everyone I know, who has a car. Guess what did anyone do about that. And guess why.
There is a shitload of things that are illegal, but don't deserve punishment, or that warrant only minor inconvenience to match their consequences. And when they get elevated from their deserved status of "minor bullshit" to "Great Crimes That Land You Forever In Prison", it is just as unnatural as, say, if a punishment for the murder of a bald person suddenly got limited to a $70 fine.
There are already a lot of things where "justice" is distorted beyond anything that can be seen as sane, "child porn" being one of the most prominent examples (yes, it's bad, but not at the extent that seeing a photo of a naked underage girl getting the same sentence as for killing and eating her). But at least this is caused by a dominant religion, and religions are built on overblown fear. "PIRATE" (do all stupid laws have to spell something?) act merely protects corporations at the extent that no living (or dead) being can ever afford. Not to mention that the same corporations can easily protect themselves from "pirates" by STOPPING OVERCHARGING THEIR CUSTOMERS.
What is screwed up, no matter how I look at it. This is a kind of law that makes the idea of "illegal" moot -- if it's so easy to pass a law that contradicts to spirit and letter of the rest of the laws, what kind of credibility does the law have behind itself? Can I, please, buy a law that Bank of America has to pay me $50M every year? Would it be more or less difficult than robbing them?
Then the system JUST MIGHT happpen to not be vulnerable to whatever the attacker uses. Firewalls are not an excuse for neglecting security on the hosts behind them.
...anything that is called a "firewall":
1. Should NOT contain any attack analysis. The only attack that any security software not in the hands of security researcher has a legitimate reason to "analyze" is an attack that already succeeded, and the user is recovering from the destruction caused by it. Announcing "prevented" attacks or modifying the host's response to "suspicious" data is at least a useless toy, and at most a target for a real attack (though most often it's in the middle, a nuisance that reduces the reliability). Keep it simple, stupid!
2. Should be separated from the host that it protect by at least a virtual machine and (better) be on a separate device. Then the worst that can happen in the case of a firewall compromise is that the firewall will stop performing its functions. Running a "firewall" on the "firewalled" host is an equivalent of a person hiring himself as a bodyguard.
3. If running on the "protected" host, it should be passive, and merely prevent other software running on that host from receiving packets from the Internet even if that software listens on the ports that the author believes, should not be opened. Still, calling this a "firewall" stretches the definition way too far.
The original meaning of a firewall is a wall in the building that prevents fire from spreading when the building is already on fire, and firewall acts as a barrier for spreading it. It does not make a building non-flammable, and its design expects a building to contain flammable material, yet it prevents damage from spreading. A network firewall does something pretty close to this, it expect vulnerable hosts to be on either of its side, and merely reduces the probability of successful attack from "external" to "internal" network, yet being relatively simple, it is impossible or difficult to attack. Having a "firewall" full of "flammable" bells and whistles, and in the middle of a system that it assumes to be vulnerable is a very, very wrong kind of design.
I guess, if this submarine will tie logs into window frames, and drag them around under water...
"Darl is not acting in a manner befitting a moron"?
I strongly disagree.
My bad, they are not.
They are the same company.
1. Crack cocaine distribution.
2. Extortion of lunch money from minors.
3. Consulting for Mcdonalds.
4. Stealing underpants.
Some tell about 400.000 dead, other about half million.
I am sure, I was counted among those "dead" (I lived about 90km from the power plant, and there are only few millions of people within the that radius).
Dad says that those figures rised very high and so far death rate is 80.000-120.000 but it will be more because people will die within next 50-70 years
Most of the people who are reading this sentence will be dead within the next 50-70 years. This is how dangerous it is.
The literal translation is "We will show you the Kuzka's mother". It's an expression that is not nearly as hostile as "We will destroy you" and "We will bury you" translations that Americans are familiar with. The closest translation would be "We will show you", and it was related to the competition in economy -- Hruschev's slogan "Catch up and outrun the US" certainly was related to this, and its abbreviation was used as a brand name at the time.
Despite taking part in the creation of Russian ICBM building program and other Cold War era hostile moves, Hruschev was by far the least aggressive USSR leader.
Of course, all this is unrelated to the fact that the events the original article describes are completely fictional and could not possibly happen for an obvious reason that even now pipelines require custom-made software to operate, leave alone early 80's.
The greatest threat to your liberty is death -- because you certainly can't use any kind of liberty when you are dead.
I just hope, the government is not going to declare the "war on Death" or work on the development of immortal citizens any soon.
...and it's a far cry from "passwords are secret, so they can be called security through obscurity, too".
First of all, this system uses plaintext authentication with a constant, short key. And it's impossible to encrypt -- "knocks" should be sent unencrypted. If there is any encryption over them, it means, you already have tunnel/VPN, and therefore authenticated already -- "knocks" won't change anything because anyone not on the same VPN can't see the target port anyway. So, once used over an insecure network (say, wireless network with none or weak encryption), "port knocking" is compromised until the key change.
Second, "port knocking", if implemented for a service that has its own authentication scheme already, and does not have a backdoor or security hole by itself, merely adds to the length of the password -- and it doesn't add much. If one is going to use brute force against an ssh server (what is kinda insane already), he will not be stopped by a trivial brute-forcing the sequence of packets. And as opposed to any part of the "real" password, attacker will be immediately notified about the success of his attempt. The only justifiable use of "port knocking" is to prevent the access to POTENTIALLY INSECURE service, however whatever it can do, can be better done with a secure-authenticated proxy or tunnel -- and with no danger of opening it for others.
Third, it does not send the whole password over an established session -- what means, one can fake the request from another host, and there will be no way to distinguish between those packets and "real" connection attempts. This means, anyone can insert his own connections in the middle of someone else's sequence, preventing him from accessing the system. In fact, the amount of resources necessary to make the service completely unusable for any known client is miniscule, and such an attack is difficult to trace without an access to many routers in the way of the "fake" packets. If the users of "port knocking" will try to prevent this, and ignore non-matching packets, then any host will be eventually "opened" by sending requests to all ports in a sequence.
Fourth, each packet from a new IP address establishes a knocking sequence that should be stored somewhere. Deliberately creating sequences from many random addresses will be an equivalent of SYN flood (actually the "knocking" packets _will_ be SYNs, though it's not the same mechanism), however since the content of the packet is discarded, there is no way to use SYN cookies that prevent regular SYN floods. "Knocking" will have shorter sequence lifetime than TCP, however it will be easy to consume enough of resources given the ease of sending "knocking" packets.
Fifth, the widespread use of port knocking will certainly be noticed by attackers, and cause them to "knock" on nonexistent or unavailable hosts like there is no tomorrow. Sooner or later they will need more bandwidth than they have, and will delegate this task to worms and viruses, and in the end no one will be more secure while the amount of traffic over the Internet will increase to truly ridiculous levels.
This all means that it is a "security through obscurity" scheme that becomes less useful after being disclosed (as it already is), and truly worthless if attackers expect to see it.
Yeah, right. This is why Buran was launched on Energiya rocket, a kind of heavy vehicle that US never even planned to build.
Buran is likely based on some leaked design, rejected or not. However it's pretty evident that it was superior to Shuttle, and US space program would be in a better shape now if some of decisions used in Buran were implemented in Shuttle. Russians, of course, were of a lesser opinion about both Shuttle and Buran, and found the whole thing too expensive and inefficient to continue, at least at the state of the design in 80's. US continued with Shuttle. I still wonder if Energiya heavy rocket, or something similar, will be resurrected -- it certainly looks like a good solution for building larger space stations.
Tell your good friend that Alex Belits, another Russian who is now in US after leaving Belarus/former USSR in 1993 called him a liar and a shill for American proprganda machine.
I remember the life in USSR in 70's and 80's pretty well, and it certainly was far from "poverty". Certainly far from poverty compared to US in 70's and early 80's unless one judges the life in US based on Hollywood movies, and life in USSR based on American propaganda's horror stories. Of course, someone who left USSR in 80's most likely has an ax to grind against Communists, and there could be valid reasons for this -- USSR Communists at that time were almost as corrupt as US Republicans are now. However it's a poor reason for inventing stuff or being a parrot for his new American "leaders" and "masters".
And rotary phone has three-letter "menu items" associated with the digits. Not to mention radio tuning with "linear menu" of stations, multimeters with large number of positions for a single knob, and loads and loads of other devices that implement the same idea in all its versions -- none of them considered worthy to be patented.
Now suddenly there is a trivial variation, and it's patentable while the rest of things weren't? This is just ridiculous.
Rotary phone.
I just want to know, how the HECK is this thing going to make money for VIA or Apex? It has enough "asshole technology" to limit its usability to the level that unless nice people at Apex kindly allowed you to play a particular game, it won't run it at all, however PC games give no revenue to the hardware makers -- just the opposite, Apex has to make installer/uninstaller scripts for them. At its $400 price it is barely below similarly-specced PCs, so I guess, there is some slim profit margin in that, considering that all chips are VIA.
But the problem is, it competes with small PCs made mostly from... VIA's chips! VIA sells the same parts, probably at the same or higher profit, to PC makers, and those produce small "media/games" PCs for a bit higher price and infinitely higher flexibility. So VIA gets an inflexible product squeezed between traditional consoles ($100-$200 price range) and cheap gaming-capable PCs ($400-$600 price range), and to add insult to the stupid situation, the latter, that they are so busy undercutting, is also their best client.
If VIA just wanted to undercut the PCs it could just produce a fully-functional PC, price it at $400-$500, and enjoy the results. But with $400 thing that costs almost as much as an equivalent $500 PC, but does much less (not to mention, can't be upgraded to be able to meet new games' requirements in a few years), they just can't get enough users that buy that thing instead of either cheaper console, or a PC.
So why bother?
I just hope, at some point in histoey Godwin Law will be extended to American Republicans. I am not sure if I will be alive then though...
slashdot.kids.us
Natalie Portman, in a swimsuit and petrified.
Hot grits all over my face.
Imagine this in a sandbox.
So finnish history books lie, as well as books in our museums?
All history books lie -- or they would not drastically differ between all countries that ever had wars with each other. It's just people should be aware that a lot of stuff in the history courses can be propaganda, and see a difference between documented facts and some rather creative interpretations, omissions, etc. I have seen more than enough of those in USSR, post-USSR Russia, Belarus, US, etc. So every time one sees "We, the proud people of Southeast Lower Yellowshirtia, were for the whole our history oppressed by being a part of Great Turbania, and the great leader Twohole Button founded his national liberation movement, liberated out land, given us freedom, and started glorious days of the Button Republic history", he should take with a grain of salt -- especially if Turbanian history books mention that Twohole Button happened to work for Imperial Security Department (the example is fictional, I have nothing against people wearing the mentioned articles of clothes).
Think living under russian rule where your own language is under pressure and and people are forced to russian language.
I am Jewish by origin, was born in Belarus (then part of USSR), and my native language is Russian, so cry me a river.
Well Germans where loved in baltic states because USSR conquered them first, and CURRENT generation of people where told by their parents and grand parents those stories in their time. And they remeber Germans as the GOOD people. So you can guess if they remember Germans as good people in WWII how bad the USSR was!
I was there, and I know precisely how USSR was. The Nazi could be remembered as "good people" only by someone who is blinded by hatred toward Russians -- what some people in Baltic countries were at the time. And one has to remember that Nazi considered everything Northern European to be far above other nations on their pyramid of nations that they wanted to build.
If you are interested why Finnish is not relative to Common languages its just that russians practicly wiped out all the other languages in our language group, and they where MAJORITY in their areas before russians did. [In the 1800's Finnish scientist mapped the their relative languages during period where russians where trying to show their tolerance to minorities AFTER the slaughter in Warsaw.]
Again, cry me a river. Languages get pushed aside and disappear when any massive move of the population happens, however it rarely means people actually being killed, or even forced to use other languages. I lived in Belarus, and the first thing local nationalist nuts did after getting power was attempts to switch to then-barely-used Belarus language, including schools. Schools almost halted because teachers didn't know the language, people got pissed enough that soon Communists got back in power, what remains until now -- and one of the reason was that nationalists were the only organized opposition to them, and nationalists happened to be worse.
The article makes an origami boulder of a statement -- everything is jumbled together, poor explanations, incomplete statements, real problems, unrelated facts... only to come to conclusion that is nothing but a wild guess.
I don't know about trotsky doctrine I just know they build roads to strategic places in order to get to finnish border and THAT was build long before, they prepared for major offensive support structure in karelia long before WWII... The baltic states was long part of russians defensive plans, peter the great had its eyes on norther norway to get good atlantic harbors, and THAT strategy was part OF stalins doctrine too.
Huh? Before Peter Russia had no ports with any access to Atlantic Ocean at all, so taking the northwest and founding St.Petersburg provided such an access through Baltic Sea, for the first time in many centuries of being for all practical purposes a landlocked country. One may question if such a goal would be "legal" in modern times, however in the 17th century a country with no access to the sea could just as well be located in the middle of a desert, and St. Petersburg was vital to the development of Russia. Sweden, Holland and Norway were at that point way too strong to even think attacking them, and Swedes went as far south as Ukraine (then part of the Russian Empire) when they had a war with Russia. But Russian expansion to the northwest ended quickly ather the goal of getting and securing the sea access was achieved. What would Russians gain by attacking anything in Scandinavia, I have no idea, and I guess, neither did Peter the Great (and all Czars after him) nor Stalin (and all USSR leaders after him).
Belorussia and Ukraine was NON willingly joined to USSR it was just because red army was there, when USSR joined, and Ukraine was violently resisting the becoming part of USSR, actually they where in rebellion against russia couple of times BEFORE!
Yeah, right. Every piece of every country gets its share of nationalists and separatists when any kind of war hits it, and there is an opportunity to snatch a piece of land while the big guys are too busy fighting. This does not change the fact that both countries were a part of Russian Empire before USSR was formed, and the full Czar's title for many centuries read "...of Great, Small and White Russia..." (what meant Russia, Ukraine and Belarus). Civil war of 1918-22 was a great opportunity for local rebels and gangs to fight for "independence" of their stomping grounds under nationalistic slogans, however their claim to power was orders of magnitude less than one of Communists. When this kind of nationalists succeed, we see shining examples of democracy in action such as Serbia, Bosnia, Croatia, Chechnya, Georgia (one that is not a US state), 70% of Africa, and other world-famous shitholes, filled with either violent gangs, or hopelessly corrupt oppressive regimes depending on the local traditions and amounts of resources available. And the worst happens when the real aggressor (such as Nazi or US) comes -- nationalists suddenly become humble and obedient servants of the new rulers, fighting against their own people, whose "independence" was their proclaimed goal.
And this I talk about ENDING of WWI when USSR was formed, at that point they where expansionist.
Parse error. If you mean that USSR did not keep its obligations to Germany that it taken in the pre-WWII peace pact, then duh -- it's rather hard to keep the peace pact when other participant attacked you. The Baltic states' claim for independence at that point was very thin, considering that when they weren't Russian/USSR they were occupied by Germany. And Finland at that time still had nothing to do with USSR.
Leaving baltic states in WWI when they separated from russia. They got them back by threats in WWII.
Do you mean Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, or Finland (that actually separated, and later fought a war, before WWII)? As for threats, there never was a time in or between WWI and WWII when any small country in Eastern Europe was not subject to threats, either from USSR or from Germany. Of course, it was Germany that actually attacked and conquered all of them shortly after that, and hardly Russia or USS
Actually the USSR was preparing for expansion before WWII.
If you mean, Trotsky's doctrine, it was rather unpopular even then -- at the extent that Trotsky was exiled and assassinated.
And the war with Finland, and crabbing of baltic states was already planned ahead.
At the extent of only doing it as a part of poorly planned, but obviously defensive on USSR part treaty with Nazi Germany? The same treaty that was promprly broken by Nazi, who had found that the Western border of USSR was very poorly defended, leave alone prepared for anything offensive.
Europe after WWII was out of question due the nuke problem. China had too much population to deal with, and middle east would of gotten them full scale war against Nato. So what they could of done? I mean they didn't wan't to get a full scale war against nuclear states and wanted to expand anyway. Their hands where pretty much tied up. Their navy was not as capable for non nuclear warfare as NATO so getting a naval assault on small country was not an option. It was simple.
[the rest of the "evil russians planned to conquer the Earth" factless rant skipped]
That's a nice piece of fiction. Too bad, it has nothing to do with reality. If not for other reasons then simply because any such expansion at that point would be impractical -- they would get worse land and less resources than what they already had trouble handling in Siberia.
Finlands,baltic states, belorussians and Ukranian s separation was part of a peace deal between russia and germany , and the war that formed USSR got two of those states back.
Belorussia and Ukraine were a part of USSR before and after WWII. Not to mention that they (and Poland for some time, too) were a part of Russian Empire for centuries many before USSR.
One because it was base operations of the other fraction and other just because... The smaller states was left intact, just because the internal image would of hurt if they wouldn't shown that they kept their words, until the controlling system was build up.
What "smaller" states (who is smaller than Belarus, Lithuania, Latvia or Estonia in that region)? Many people in Eastern European countries were pissed at USSR for installing and supporting Communist governments there immediately after WWII, however there was no further expansion. And USSR in its turn was pissed at Yugoslavia and China that, despite being "Socialist" and rulled by "Communists", had almost nothing in common with USSR at that point, yet the whole situation remained peaceful.
The USSR wouldn't have survived without proxy-armies battling its expansion?
What armies and what expansion? Since USSR was founded, Finland separated from it, and the only army that actually fought for USSR Communists was their own (sometimes "helping" governments that didn't ask them, though that was quite rare, and limited to the immediate neighbors). USSR had its sphere of influence, but for the whole its history it didn't do anything to expand it, with the exception of WWII when it became inevitable. Its economy was closed, it could get no benefit from trying to be a robber baron, so its military policy was defensive (and shut up about Afghanistan already, it shared the border with USSR, and was massively messed with by some very hostile groups of people -- not that the situation changed much since then). "Support" of Iraq and other "allies" in the Middle East and Africa was a drain on the USSR, and even now those countries owe huge amounts of money to Russia, that they have no intention to pay back.
US on the other hand, did everything that you accuse USSR for -- supported foreign wars, created proxy armies, expanded its military presence to pretty much everything from Japan to Germany to Cuba, not to mention that its involvement with other countries always ended up providing benefits for American big businesses at everyone else's expense.
I have a long list of things I blame Communists/former USSR government/current Russian government for, but the things you have mentioned just aren't there, and to put it simply, you are ignorant about history.