The response against Russia has been so weak that I am completely shocked that today Putin gave the order to pull back from the Ukrainian border.
Two things:
1) No sign of troops moving, so this order may be a sham meant to distract.
2) Putin has accomplished pretty much all his objectives already (he's annexed Crimea, he's pretty much annexed the eastern half of Ukraine, he's made it clear to Europe that HE controls their natural gas supply.
And on top of that, he's made it clear to the rest of eastern Europe that NATO probably won't do anything other than bluster when he starts making more territorial demands. I'm predicting Latvia next - it's a toofer, in that he gets Latvia and cuts Estonia's land borders with everyone else....
How exactly does this work, in terms of jurisdiction? Is this a case for the ICC? WTO?
It looks like the purpose of this whole business is to say "Look! Over there! A Unicorn!" to the crowd of people looking at (and saying rude things about) the NSA.
Now, they'll be able to say "See! Other people do this too, so it's okay."
Big problem is that they're pointing at a group that, in general, they use as the "villain", and saying "See, they're doing it too", which makes either the USA look villainous (they're calling someone a villain for doing what we do), or the Chinese look virtuous (the Chinese are doing what we're doing, and it's okay when we do it, right?).
Either way, I expect this to quietly fade away without much fanfare, because they have absolutely no way of doing anything other than "viewing with alarm" about this.
An agency with no oversight, who's "requests" cannot be questioned openly without charges of treason, has the power to do anything they want to anyone they want.
Several things:
1) "whose". Illiteracy doesn't actually make your arguments better.
2) Treason is defined by the Constitution. Article 3, Section 3. Learn it, love it, live it. There's a reason why people don't get charged with treason all that often. Note that Snowden did NOT get charged with treason. Do you really think anyone at Cisco can be charged with treason if they can't charge Snowden with it?
3) thank you for agreeing with me. They have no legal power to do so, though they can PRETEND they do by phrasing requests as orders. Alas, ignoring them doesn't actually get you in trouble.
Considering that the article you're referring to doesn't even IMPLY that they "bought" Congress, merely that they would like Congress to do them a favour....
Note that if they'd "bought" Congress, they'd not be having to publicly ASK for a tax holiday - they could just quietly get the tax holiday inserted into some completely unrelated bill so noone would notice.
Note also that the laws you seem to think they "bought" actually predate the existence of Cisco (actually, they predate the computer industry), so the notion that Cisco "bought Congress off" decades before Cisco was even formed is...interesting. Stupid, but interesting.
That IS, in fact, what espionage agencies are for, after all - spying on people in foreign countries.
Oddly enough, the NSA's MANDATE is "foreign signals intelligence". Note that word "foreign" - it's important.
Also oddly, EVERY OTHER spy agency on the planet spies on *gasp* FOREIGNERS! For values of foreigner specific to the agency in question. The French espionage apparatus does not consider Frenchmen to be "foreign", the Russian one does not consider Russians to be "foreign", etc.
Why does NSA have to do this? Can't they just order Cisco to install this in their factory?
Actually, no. They can ASK Cisco to do this, but they have no legal power to order them to do this.
Now, they may quietly PRETEND they have the legal power to order this, and phrase their request as an order. But they really can't do much if Cisco ignores them.
Full benefit retirement age for social security used to be 65 across the board, but is now 67 for those born after 1937.
Umm, no.
SSA retirement age is 67 if born 1960 or later.
It is 66 if born between 1943 and 1954.
Between 1955 and 1959, it oozes from 66 to 67, two months at a time.
Note that there are SSA bonuses for delaying your benefits to age 70. Arguably, that makes age 70 "full benefit retirement age", and everything earlier "reduced benefits".
Expecting eight constitutional amendments to be passed to make her agenda work is ridiculous.
Since 1800, we've managed less than one per decade. She needs a minimum of one per year to carry out the platform she was running on.
Which essentially means that Congress would have to approve the eight amendments within the first year of her term, to give even a minute chance of them passing before she retired.
Unless the Green Party managed a 2/3 majority of both houses of Congress (which wasn't in the cards, no matter what), that wasn't going to happen. It probably wouldn't have happened if the Green Party DID have a 2/3 majority of both Houses.
And that still requires 38 State legislatures to approve each of those Amendments. Which probably wouldn't have happened without 38 State Legislatures having a significant Green Party majority, plus 38 Green Party governors.
Again, not going to happen.
I can forgive a politician for trying to be optimistic. I won't forgive one for thinking "if you wish upon a star..." which is essentially what she was doing....
Is being technology literate a requirement to be a lobbyist for the cable companies?
Well, apparently, being literate isn't a requirement to talk about technological literacy. Note that "technology" is a NOUN, and cannot be used to modify another noun (literacy in this case).
In any case, if you don't have to be literate, I see no reason why he has to be literate (technologically or otherwise).
Bandwidth, in networking, is a measure of the amount of data transfered per time unit. The Comcast exec is predicting a transfer cap, i.e. a maximum quantity of data.
No, the Comcast exec is predicting a bandwidth cap.
Or do you seriously believe that his 300 GB cap is a LIFETIME cap? Much more likely it's a monthly cap.
And 300GB/month is a measure of a quantity of data (300GB) per time unit (month).
In my case the two ISPs offer the same slow speeds at the exact same high price.
Coincidence?
No.
But perfectly understandable. If the one cut its rates, the other would pretty much be forced to reduce its rate the same amount or go out of business.
Remember, the stable state in any competitive business is offering essentially the same thing as your competition at the same prices. Any change in either service or price produces a period of instability that ends when everyone is offering essentially the same thing at the same price again.
Galileo's peer review came a few hundred years too late.
Alas, the myth that Galileo got in trouble with the Church for his heliocentric opinions persists to this day.
Two things to note:
1) note that the developer of heliocentrism was a churchman, as well as a scientist.
2) what really got Galileo in trouble was calling the Pope a simpleton in a book he wrote about heliocentrism. Good rule of thumb - NEVER call the Pope names when you are living in a place he rules.
For that matter, calling pretty much any secular ruler an idiot put you in grave danger at that time if you were well enough known that people would pay attention to what you say.
Really? None of the cars in my household are less than ten years old. Actually, come to that, we haven't even made a car payment in the last ten years.
The cars all work fine, though two of them are getting up toward 150K miles. We'll have to replace those in four or five years, probably.
EIGHT Constitutional Amendments in her platform??? That alone was enough to convince me she was a lunatic.
There would be no debate over Keystone XL, for example, or the coal industry. Both would be completely out of business by now, and we'd be well on the way to reducing our global environmental impact.
So, you think we'd be in good shape if we had eliminated the coal industry over the last 16 months, eh?
Somehow, I think not, since, even if we had wanted to, we couldn't replace that much of our power generation equipment that quickly.
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Alas, the precedent was set a long time ago in Nuremberg. They established quite clearly that "just following orders" wasn't an acceptable excuse.
Two things:
1) No sign of troops moving, so this order may be a sham meant to distract.
2) Putin has accomplished pretty much all his objectives already (he's annexed Crimea, he's pretty much annexed the eastern half of Ukraine, he's made it clear to Europe that HE controls their natural gas supply.
And on top of that, he's made it clear to the rest of eastern Europe that NATO probably won't do anything other than bluster when he starts making more territorial demands. I'm predicting Latvia next - it's a toofer, in that he gets Latvia and cuts Estonia's land borders with everyone else....
It looks like the purpose of this whole business is to say "Look! Over there! A Unicorn!" to the crowd of people looking at (and saying rude things about) the NSA.
Now, they'll be able to say "See! Other people do this too, so it's okay."
Big problem is that they're pointing at a group that, in general, they use as the "villain", and saying "See, they're doing it too", which makes either the USA look villainous (they're calling someone a villain for doing what we do), or the Chinese look virtuous (the Chinese are doing what we're doing, and it's okay when we do it, right?).
Either way, I expect this to quietly fade away without much fanfare, because they have absolutely no way of doing anything other than "viewing with alarm" about this.
Several things:
1) "whose". Illiteracy doesn't actually make your arguments better.
2) Treason is defined by the Constitution. Article 3, Section 3. Learn it, love it, live it. There's a reason why people don't get charged with treason all that often. Note that Snowden did NOT get charged with treason. Do you really think anyone at Cisco can be charged with treason if they can't charge Snowden with it?
3) thank you for agreeing with me. They have no legal power to do so, though they can PRETEND they do by phrasing requests as orders. Alas, ignoring them doesn't actually get you in trouble.
Considering that the article you're referring to doesn't even IMPLY that they "bought" Congress, merely that they would like Congress to do them a favour....
Note that if they'd "bought" Congress, they'd not be having to publicly ASK for a tax holiday - they could just quietly get the tax holiday inserted into some completely unrelated bill so noone would notice.
Note also that the laws you seem to think they "bought" actually predate the existence of Cisco (actually, they predate the computer industry), so the notion that Cisco "bought Congress off" decades before Cisco was even formed is...interesting. Stupid, but interesting.
Pretty much.
That IS, in fact, what espionage agencies are for, after all - spying on people in foreign countries.
Oddly enough, the NSA's MANDATE is "foreign signals intelligence". Note that word "foreign" - it's important.
Also oddly, EVERY OTHER spy agency on the planet spies on *gasp* FOREIGNERS! For values of foreigner specific to the agency in question. The French espionage apparatus does not consider Frenchmen to be "foreign", the Russian one does not consider Russians to be "foreign", etc.
Actually, no. They can ASK Cisco to do this, but they have no legal power to order them to do this.
Now, they may quietly PRETEND they have the legal power to order this, and phrase their request as an order. But they really can't do much if Cisco ignores them.
Just curious - do you think that the 50% who are morons includes those who can't spell "where"?
No, that is $133 million per mission.
$75 million is correct for $1.2 billion for 16 missions.
So you'd prefer it if they converted the circumference from feet to square feet, then from square feet to square decimeters?
I'll bite. What's your native language? To a native speaker of English, that would have been "should necessarily be seen".
But attaching the tense to the "to be" isn't totally out of bounds in some languages. I think.
So, what language did you grow up thinking in?
So, why exactly would we want to decrypt the adversary that captured some encrypted communications?
Umm, no.
SSA retirement age is 67 if born 1960 or later.
It is 66 if born between 1943 and 1954.
Between 1955 and 1959, it oozes from 66 to 67, two months at a time.
Note that there are SSA bonuses for delaying your benefits to age 70. Arguably, that makes age 70 "full benefit retirement age", and everything earlier "reduced benefits".
Patents are prescribed by the Constitution, making Federal regulations regarding same perfectly reasonable and correct.
Thank you, Tao. I was wondering what the point of texting 911 was. You've provided more than enough reason for the service to exist....
Expecting eight constitutional amendments to be passed to make her agenda work is ridiculous.
Since 1800, we've managed less than one per decade. She needs a minimum of one per year to carry out the platform she was running on.
Which essentially means that Congress would have to approve the eight amendments within the first year of her term, to give even a minute chance of them passing before she retired.
Unless the Green Party managed a 2/3 majority of both houses of Congress (which wasn't in the cards, no matter what), that wasn't going to happen. It probably wouldn't have happened if the Green Party DID have a 2/3 majority of both Houses.
And that still requires 38 State legislatures to approve each of those Amendments. Which probably wouldn't have happened without 38 State Legislatures having a significant Green Party majority, plus 38 Green Party governors.
Again, not going to happen.
I can forgive a politician for trying to be optimistic. I won't forgive one for thinking "if you wish upon a star..." which is essentially what she was doing....
Well, apparently, being literate isn't a requirement to talk about technological literacy. Note that "technology" is a NOUN, and cannot be used to modify another noun (literacy in this case).
In any case, if you don't have to be literate, I see no reason why he has to be literate (technologically or otherwise).
No, the Comcast exec is predicting a bandwidth cap.
Or do you seriously believe that his 300 GB cap is a LIFETIME cap? Much more likely it's a monthly cap.
And 300GB/month is a measure of a quantity of data (300GB) per time unit (month).
Okay, so work to amend the Constitution to remove the Second Amendment, if that's the way you feel.
But don't pretend it doesn't exist, just because you believe it is pointless.
No.
But perfectly understandable. If the one cut its rates, the other would pretty much be forced to reduce its rate the same amount or go out of business.
Remember, the stable state in any competitive business is offering essentially the same thing as your competition at the same prices. Any change in either service or price produces a period of instability that ends when everyone is offering essentially the same thing at the same price again.
Alas, the myth that Galileo got in trouble with the Church for his heliocentric opinions persists to this day.
Two things to note:
1) note that the developer of heliocentrism was a churchman, as well as a scientist.
2) what really got Galileo in trouble was calling the Pope a simpleton in a book he wrote about heliocentrism. Good rule of thumb - NEVER call the Pope names when you are living in a place he rules.
For that matter, calling pretty much any secular ruler an idiot put you in grave danger at that time if you were well enough known that people would pay attention to what you say.
It's called Differential GPS. I used to work with this back in the days of Selective Availability.
And it was way more accurate than "a few feet". Try "a few inches", given a base station nearby.
Really? None of the cars in my household are less than ten years old. Actually, come to that, we haven't even made a car payment in the last ten years.
The cars all work fine, though two of them are getting up toward 150K miles. We'll have to replace those in four or five years, probably.
Re: Jill Stein...
EIGHT Constitutional Amendments in her platform??? That alone was enough to convince me she was a lunatic.
So, you think we'd be in good shape if we had eliminated the coal industry over the last 16 months, eh?
Somehow, I think not, since, even if we had wanted to, we couldn't replace that much of our power generation equipment that quickly.
A long time ago, I was on a submarine. We had a ship's library. It fit into a locker that was slightly smaller than a typical file cabinet drawer.