As a matter of fact, I was pretty much making your conclusion as to the apparent inappropriateness of the solution. However, in addition, my users aren't stupid, but they also are not familiar with the idea of participating, nor particularly fascinated by it. I believe this goes deeper than just general resistance to a particular technology (although the "it's not the same as it used to be" complaint is common). No Drupal theming or more extensive coding which would probably be required here to reduce stuff on the screen would make them switch mindsets from "having a guy who puts stuff on the web" to actually going there themselves and doing it. It's just way out there conceptually, and "if it's not happening without ever clicking on anything, I'm not doing it". I was surprised to run into this, as these people DO surf. It's the input part that locks them up, although it's essentually a few clicks away -- people who use CMSes all day are just way more used to the whole concept.
Disagreements on what exactly constitutes a clean and navigable UI link to this. There is a certain orthodoxy about what you expect to see on a community site, and apparently they never hang out on them, while I outright expect a certain format. Consequently, what I find easy on the eyes is not for them, and consequently, they prefer something like.. uh.. I'd love to give you a link, but I don't want to offend that site's current webmaster by guiding hordes of slashdotters to laugh at it;-)
Also, on the web, users seem to lose all ability let the system guide themselves. If you put a flashing big red link that reads ADD NEW POST, they won't find it. It's unbelievable. The tinymce configuration is a case in point.. by "minimal" configuration I mean it has essentially got buttons for bullet lists, headers and links. Now, provided they start using the editor (which is bad because it looks different from Word or Outlook or plain text box) I am quite sure someone will eventually commplain that they want nice colors and different font sizes and whatnot, but they must also come free.. no more buttons!
I am probably going to give in on the registration issue. The logic was that we have a rather tightly knit core for the community, and identifying posters is a good thing, in particular if I am going to add some modules later that further make me want my users to have firm identities in the system. Probably planning for that is premature at the moment.
I am not getting paid to do this, mind you. They wanted to get rid of the old crufty working setup because it was old and crufty, they got my idea of it, and for as long as I suppose I'm the one still doing most of the work, yeah, I WILL work to my own convenience;) Wouldn't mind slowly winning them over though. This is certainly an experiment, and one that revealed a much larger mismatch in the worlds we psychologically inhabit than I ever through possible... but I WILL try to gently prod them into understanding the related concepts because I have faith in them not being stupid, and because the mindset simply has to change in ways that accommodate the new possibilities... no PHPTemplating is going to fix that for them.
It doesn't really work that way. Us techies tend to have this idealized view of things that if you just give your users the tools, they will happily update their pages and create content by themselves. I am the webmaster of a small association I'm a member of, and I recently set up Drupal for us to replace the rather crappy static pages we used to have.
It was probably the biggest mistake I've ever made. I feel the new site is clean, functional, well-organized and gives us wonderful new tools... they feel it is confusing, intimidating and unwelcoming. It's almost as if they have never seen a blog-style community webpage before. When I made it a requirement that comment-posters need to be registered users, commenting stopped dead in its tracks. My users are completely unable to look at what is in front of them on the page, in order to figure out how to post a simple comment in the forums (granted, Drupal is somewhat more confusing in this regard than other CMSes).
It is completely unreasonable to expect of these people that they would actually post an article, even though I've got a minimally set up tinymce holding their hand. They do use word processors and email clients, but for some reason, the very concept of a CMS is so alien that they just lock up and refuse to see that it's nothing particularly different from what they do with computers in general. It must be because "it's on the web" so it must be something newfangled and difficult...
Being a webmaster in particular in a small organization is a secure position for a long time, but it is true that in larger information systems you do need a team these days running the shop.
You're missing a really important option... the ship with the psychotic computer that tries to kill you by locking you out so that you won't interfere with the success of the mission..
It's sort of weird to see American lefties coming up with weird ideas that would go totally overboard even here in notorious commie Europe. I don't think anyone here would suggest that there has to be some kind of a vague fairness criterion to fill for all speech that is transmitted in media.. that would neuter most speech that tries to say anything of value. An important quality of public discussion is the ability to take a side, so that your argument may then be countered on its merits.
I am a big fan of the concept of a quality public broadcaster that seeks diversity and is open enough to serve as a conduit for all sorts of views and positions, and also transparent enough so that its functioning can be scrutinized. And no, it doesn't lead to a "state-controlled media", unless "OMG they gave a leftist politician some airtime!" counts as such. The so-called independent actors are also still there to take money from corporations and right-wingers so that the propaganda and other programming suitable for their viewership (reality TV comes to mind) is still perfectly well available.
Just don't tell her you'd drive her so wild it would be impossible to measure your speed and location at the same time as you'd probably be somewhere near the Planck scale in size...
Another interesting pick-up line would be "want to get entangled tonight?"
Every few years, it seems, we've had another comet that was supposed to be "best comet of the century!!!", and all my life, they've been fizzling. A couple have been OK, but there's been a dearth of really bright, visible comets since before I was born.
Well.. both Hyakutake and Hale-Bopp were really, really impressive. So either you're really young or you indeed have a lot of light pollution around. I am lucky to live in an area where I can get completely away from civilization's lights and those two comets are something I'll remember all my life...
For some reason all US cars these days look like something you'd rather go to war with than take a ride to the grocery store in. They all look like tanks. Heavy armored look, narrow windows that minimize exposure to enemy fire... no wonder they don't sell in Europe. Have people become so militarized and indoctrinated with the idea that "life is war" that their psyche actually wants cars like this?
I mean, at least in a crash you can try being in the bigger vehicle so that you're less likely to die while the other participant hopefully does, instead of both of you being in lighter vehicles which would maybe injure both but less severely... that would be for Socialist sissies!
Is there any research as to whether there is a corresponding influence on a person's way of driving when they choose to drive something that tries to look as intimidating as possible?
I believe you are exaggerating the problems... a mass transit system should easily be able to provide economies of scale, and I can't see how it would fail to do so, be it public or private in implementation -- although I am pretty sure a public system will be able to coordinate things such as schedules better. A bus simply transports more people than a car. The commuting sort of traffic the article talks about should be just about perfect for it, too, as people tend to work mostly from 8-16 or so and in, say, hour-long blocks, and move between workplace and suburbs, so they aren't just going around random routes. Traffic patterns can be identified, and then capacity allocated accordingly. If you are a statistical outlier, it is good to remember nobody makes you NOT use a car, and if you do, you'll be happier as hopefully a greater proportion of people will not be sharing the road with you.
At least in Helsinki the public transportation is good enough to seriously make people consider whether owning a car is worth it, and a lot people don't. I for one appreciate the fact that there is no need to build the city to accomodate an inordinate number of cars... it makes the place much more comfortable. I'm pretty sure even all the huge roads and parking lots just simply increase the distance you'll be driving over, making the case for a car stronger.. otherwise you might be using a bicycle or... imagine it.. walk;)
... would of course be some form of mass transportation, but for some reason this seems to be too Socialist a solution for most Americans to swallow..;)
I am not going to get all excited about cheap space flight before someone demonstrates to me a pretty much completely revolutionary propulsion system. Do that, and the rest is easy. Despite all these fancy scale models that fly up a few hundred meters, we still have physics to contend with when trying to get to orbit, and it is setting really tough limits... using current technologies, orbital flight is simply not going to happen with anything lesser than conventional huge rocket stacks.
Using a single-piece design for the spacecraft isn't helping, as you're lifting the whole thing up all the way instead of just the tip of your stack while the rest gets dropped behind during ascent. And isn't tail-first powered landing horribly inefficient as you need to burn fuel even during that... and transport that fuel, too, up there?
Let's build the space elevator instead and then construct nuclear-powered interplanetary spacecraft in orbit...
Right. I replace integers with my own implementations all the time, as the rules of math tend to be so subjective... also (1+2)/5 is so much clearer as new Integer("1").plus(new Integer("2")).divide(new Integer("5"))...
This is more death of free media. If the only FTA transmissions you can get are either state-sponsored or state-supported, how can you reliably get news?
Actually, European public broadcasters are held in quite a high regard when it comes to such integrity. They tend to be always rated tops in their respective countries when the public is polled which news source they consider most reliable. Unless of course you're a raving right-winger, in which case you're probably pissed off that they don't resemble FOX in the US. It always keeps amusing me that media in the US always make the point of reminding the audience that some news source is "state-sponsored" while not making the such distinction systematically for whatever other forms of media... while being the most bought off outlets in general themselves.
The BBC, for example, is quite legendary, and even though I am not British, I prefer it as my foreign news source to anything that private sector America has to offer. At home, I find that our local Finnish Broadcasting Company delivers the most objective point of view with relevant commentaries. The better of the commercial channels' news services still tends to slip into half-truths and tends to be selective in what they give air time to. The worse one is pure entertainment and not worth your time. Sometimes you don't want your news being selected for you simply based on what "sells" (or what they think sells). A well-rounded world-view forms only when you are exposed to occasionally "boring" issues that are not of immediate concern to you personally.
An open public broadcaster with employers forming a statistically representative sample of politics at large (meaning that at least you're not selected against if you're not right-wing) and proper oversight has produced something that people actually take civic pride and interest in, and I think that is a great thing. You are correct though in stating that sources need to be checked against each other, so there need to be several. Personally, I just find that I always end up checking the reality as it is from somewhere else than your "free" media. There have been, of course, counterexamples and we could start discussing Finlandization and the FBC, but it's good we no longer live in those days...
I just graduated as well with a fairly theoretical CS Master's degree, and have rather dismal work experience on my CV. Currently I feel like that despite my "advanced age" compared to some other people in the field, I am actually very much out there and useless to an employer who would want me to actually know something of immediate practical value. Unfortunately, I don't feel like I am good enough or like "school" enough to pursue a research career, so the alternatives are trying to get into industry or start something of my own.
One of the reasons why the situation is as it is, is that I genuinely don't find programming all that fascinating. During my studies, I always just abandoned all of my hobby projects immediately after I had figured out how to implement the (algorithmically) tricky parts. The practicalities involved are often messy and time-consuming, and I had better things to do with my time than do something uninspired.
On the other hand, I don't regret my studies at all despite feeling outright incompetent about the day-to-day grind of software design and development. "Real" CS degree people -- in particular in the algorithmic fundamentals, and advanced applications -- are more rare than you'd think these days, because all these fancy "new media" -related vocational programmes sucked in everyone during the bubble. Although most software developed these days do not try to solve fancy algorithmic problems from scratch, I'm pretty sure I'll find my niche as someone who is able to recognize and tackle these issues when they arise. A proper CS degree gives you the background you'll need to go to the library and find the solution to your problem there, and I think this is the greatest asset I have. Then I just need some code monkeys to implement my ideas;-)
Better yet, these skills don't age... I don't think Turing's work, say, is going to be rendered obsolete anytime in the near future. It's quite different from being "certified" in some tool du jour. Picking up those skills shouldn't be an issue if you've graduated with a degree; you just need to get your hands dirty. Sorry, but it seems to me that even with an academic background it's tough avoiding real work one doesn't always enjoy;-)
Frankly, any university with a CS program worth anything will have students take a linear algebra course in math as the first thing. It's a good weed-out-the-weak excercise early on, gets you up to speed with university level mathematics, and the stuff in itself comes in handy, for example in computer graphics. Being good at manipulating matrices has a lot of use in algorithmics too.
Please, try to impress me about Stanford some other way once you've progressed further;-)
But in order for you to make informed decisions as a concerned parent, you will need to also know the impact various factors will (probably) have on a child... so having this sort of research is helpful. Of course, the best way to judge is to observe the particular child.
You're making the Nietzschean assumption that the he indeed is an übermensch who arbitrarily sets one's own values -- essentially does what one pleases and is proud of it. He apparently does not believe that all morality is completely relative to the individual, and wishes some guidance as to how to apply some moral principles and/or logic to come to some more objective conclusion. Sure, he is very light on details and it is therefore really difficult to help resolve this, but just because strict axioms tend to have counter-examples, it doesn't mean that there were not some measure of objective truth to the world, and that we couldn't seek to gain understanding through discussion...
Or, other would-be critics of Putin, and, in a perverse way, to impress the Russians. There is a deep nationalist streak in Russians, and they like their "Czar", whatever he may be called at any point in history, as long as he's perceived as strong... sad to say, I am sure a worryingly large percentage of the rank-and-file Russians feel a warm fuzzy feeling when they see "their country" being able to pull this off despite the low points of the 90s and perceived weakness before the West.
I don't really think Putin cares much about "defectors", if you mean people who just leave the country. Criticism doesn't really matter as long as it happens somewhere else. Critics living abroad can easily be just painted unpatriotic and anti-Russian -- "love it or leave it".
Litvinenko of course was ex-KGB though, so he potentially knows too much.
This sort of creeps me out. Soon we'll have some utilitarian computer deciding upon the most desireable allocation of resources, which essentially won't be much different from some totalitarian planned economy in nature -- just that this one will be "perfect". You will not be able to fight its choices in any way, because if you did, you'd find yourself out of "investment" pretty quickly. There will be no room for any kind of altruistic humanity either, as this will be, well, inefficient...
I can already hear the Libertarians wetting their pants...
Slashdot Mirror
Are you by any chance related to Ned Flanders?
As a matter of fact, I was pretty much making your conclusion as to the apparent inappropriateness of the solution. However, in addition, my users aren't stupid, but they also are not familiar with the idea of participating, nor particularly fascinated by it. I believe this goes deeper than just general resistance to a particular technology (although the "it's not the same as it used to be" complaint is common). No Drupal theming or more extensive coding which would probably be required here to reduce stuff on the screen would make them switch mindsets from "having a guy who puts stuff on the web" to actually going there themselves and doing it. It's just way out there conceptually, and "if it's not happening without ever clicking on anything, I'm not doing it". I was surprised to run into this, as these people DO surf. It's the input part that locks them up, although it's essentually a few clicks away -- people who use CMSes all day are just way more used to the whole concept.
Disagreements on what exactly constitutes a clean and navigable UI link to this. There is a certain orthodoxy about what you expect to see on a community site, and apparently they never hang out on them, while I outright expect a certain format. Consequently, what I find easy on the eyes is not for them, and consequently, they prefer something like.. uh.. I'd love to give you a link, but I don't want to offend that site's current webmaster by guiding hordes of slashdotters to laugh at it ;-)
Also, on the web, users seem to lose all ability let the system guide themselves. If you put a flashing big red link that reads ADD NEW POST, they won't find it. It's unbelievable. The tinymce configuration is a case in point.. by "minimal" configuration I mean it has essentially got buttons for bullet lists, headers and links. Now, provided they start using the editor (which is bad because it looks different from Word or Outlook or plain text box) I am quite sure someone will eventually commplain that they want nice colors and different font sizes and whatnot, but they must also come free.. no more buttons!
I am probably going to give in on the registration issue. The logic was that we have a rather tightly knit core for the community, and identifying posters is a good thing, in particular if I am going to add some modules later that further make me want my users to have firm identities in the system. Probably planning for that is premature at the moment.
I am not getting paid to do this, mind you. They wanted to get rid of the old crufty working setup because it was old and crufty, they got my idea of it, and for as long as I suppose I'm the one still doing most of the work, yeah, I WILL work to my own convenience ;) Wouldn't mind slowly winning them over though. This is certainly an experiment, and one that revealed a much larger mismatch in the worlds we psychologically inhabit than I ever through possible... but I WILL try to gently prod them into understanding the related concepts because I have faith in them not being stupid, and because the mindset simply has to change in ways that accommodate the new possibilities... no PHPTemplating is going to fix that for them.
It doesn't really work that way. Us techies tend to have this idealized view of things that if you just give your users the tools, they will happily update their pages and create content by themselves. I am the webmaster of a small association I'm a member of, and I recently set up Drupal for us to replace the rather crappy static pages we used to have.
It was probably the biggest mistake I've ever made. I feel the new site is clean, functional, well-organized and gives us wonderful new tools... they feel it is confusing, intimidating and unwelcoming. It's almost as if they have never seen a blog-style community webpage before. When I made it a requirement that comment-posters need to be registered users, commenting stopped dead in its tracks. My users are completely unable to look at what is in front of them on the page, in order to figure out how to post a simple comment in the forums (granted, Drupal is somewhat more confusing in this regard than other CMSes).
It is completely unreasonable to expect of these people that they would actually post an article, even though I've got a minimally set up tinymce holding their hand. They do use word processors and email clients, but for some reason, the very concept of a CMS is so alien that they just lock up and refuse to see that it's nothing particularly different from what they do with computers in general. It must be because "it's on the web" so it must be something newfangled and difficult...
Being a webmaster in particular in a small organization is a secure position for a long time, but it is true that in larger information systems you do need a team these days running the shop.
Premature optimization is the root of all evil. Your . is a 0-dimensional space. Looks like the Nobel belongs to ME ;-)
You're missing a really important option... the ship with the psychotic computer that tries to kill you by locking you out so that you won't interfere with the success of the mission..
It's sort of weird to see American lefties coming up with weird ideas that would go totally overboard even here in notorious commie Europe. I don't think anyone here would suggest that there has to be some kind of a vague fairness criterion to fill for all speech that is transmitted in media.. that would neuter most speech that tries to say anything of value. An important quality of public discussion is the ability to take a side, so that your argument may then be countered on its merits.
I am a big fan of the concept of a quality public broadcaster that seeks diversity and is open enough to serve as a conduit for all sorts of views and positions, and also transparent enough so that its functioning can be scrutinized. And no, it doesn't lead to a "state-controlled media", unless "OMG they gave a leftist politician some airtime!" counts as such. The so-called independent actors are also still there to take money from corporations and right-wingers so that the propaganda and other programming suitable for their viewership (reality TV comes to mind) is still perfectly well available.
Just don't tell her you'd drive her so wild it would be impossible to measure your speed and location at the same time as you'd probably be somewhere near the Planck scale in size...
Another interesting pick-up line would be "want to get entangled tonight?"
Every few years, it seems, we've had another comet that was supposed to be "best comet of the century!!!", and all my life, they've been fizzling. A couple have been OK, but there's been a dearth of really bright, visible comets since before I was born.
Well.. both Hyakutake and Hale-Bopp were really, really impressive. So either you're really young or you indeed have a lot of light pollution around. I am lucky to live in an area where I can get completely away from civilization's lights and those two comets are something I'll remember all my life...
For some reason all US cars these days look like something you'd rather go to war with than take a ride to the grocery store in. They all look like tanks. Heavy armored look, narrow windows that minimize exposure to enemy fire... no wonder they don't sell in Europe. Have people become so militarized and indoctrinated with the idea that "life is war" that their psyche actually wants cars like this?
I mean, at least in a crash you can try being in the bigger vehicle so that you're less likely to die while the other participant hopefully does, instead of both of you being in lighter vehicles which would maybe injure both but less severely... that would be for Socialist sissies!
Is there any research as to whether there is a corresponding influence on a person's way of driving when they choose to drive something that tries to look as intimidating as possible?
Finally a reason to actually print out my pr0n collection!!
I believe you are exaggerating the problems... a mass transit system should easily be able to provide economies of scale, and I can't see how it would fail to do so, be it public or private in implementation -- although I am pretty sure a public system will be able to coordinate things such as schedules better. A bus simply transports more people than a car. The commuting sort of traffic the article talks about should be just about perfect for it, too, as people tend to work mostly from 8-16 or so and in, say, hour-long blocks, and move between workplace and suburbs, so they aren't just going around random routes. Traffic patterns can be identified, and then capacity allocated accordingly. If you are a statistical outlier, it is good to remember nobody makes you NOT use a car, and if you do, you'll be happier as hopefully a greater proportion of people will not be sharing the road with you.
;)
At least in Helsinki the public transportation is good enough to seriously make people consider whether owning a car is worth it, and a lot people don't. I for one appreciate the fact that there is no need to build the city to accomodate an inordinate number of cars... it makes the place much more comfortable. I'm pretty sure even all the huge roads and parking lots just simply increase the distance you'll be driving over, making the case for a car stronger.. otherwise you might be using a bicycle or... imagine it.. walk
... would of course be some form of mass transportation, but for some reason this seems to be too Socialist a solution for most Americans to swallow.. ;)
I am not going to get all excited about cheap space flight before someone demonstrates to me a pretty much completely revolutionary propulsion system. Do that, and the rest is easy. Despite all these fancy scale models that fly up a few hundred meters, we still have physics to contend with when trying to get to orbit, and it is setting really tough limits ... using current technologies, orbital flight is simply not going to happen with anything lesser than conventional huge rocket stacks.
Using a single-piece design for the spacecraft isn't helping, as you're lifting the whole thing up all the way instead of just the tip of your stack while the rest gets dropped behind during ascent. And isn't tail-first powered landing horribly inefficient as you need to burn fuel even during that... and transport that fuel, too, up there?
Let's build the space elevator instead and then construct nuclear-powered interplanetary spacecraft in orbit...
Well, you COULD possibly interface it with a Wiimote...
All that brown squirting just brings to mind a certain lady in a bathtub... now that's an image that'll ruin Zune for you forever.
Right. I replace integers with my own implementations all the time, as the rules of math tend to be so subjective... also (1+2)/5 is so much clearer as new Integer("1").plus(new Integer("2")).divide(new Integer("5"))...
This is more death of free media. If the only FTA transmissions you can get are either state-sponsored or state-supported, how can you reliably get news?
Actually, European public broadcasters are held in quite a high regard when it comes to such integrity. They tend to be always rated tops in their respective countries when the public is polled which news source they consider most reliable. Unless of course you're a raving right-winger, in which case you're probably pissed off that they don't resemble FOX in the US. It always keeps amusing me that media in the US always make the point of reminding the audience that some news source is "state-sponsored" while not making the such distinction systematically for whatever other forms of media... while being the most bought off outlets in general themselves.
The BBC, for example, is quite legendary, and even though I am not British, I prefer it as my foreign news source to anything that private sector America has to offer. At home, I find that our local Finnish Broadcasting Company delivers the most objective point of view with relevant commentaries. The better of the commercial channels' news services still tends to slip into half-truths and tends to be selective in what they give air time to. The worse one is pure entertainment and not worth your time. Sometimes you don't want your news being selected for you simply based on what "sells" (or what they think sells). A well-rounded world-view forms only when you are exposed to occasionally "boring" issues that are not of immediate concern to you personally.
An open public broadcaster with employers forming a statistically representative sample of politics at large (meaning that at least you're not selected against if you're not right-wing) and proper oversight has produced something that people actually take civic pride and interest in, and I think that is a great thing. You are correct though in stating that sources need to be checked against each other, so there need to be several. Personally, I just find that I always end up checking the reality as it is from somewhere else than your "free" media. There have been, of course, counterexamples and we could start discussing Finlandization and the FBC, but it's good we no longer live in those days...
I just graduated as well with a fairly theoretical CS Master's degree, and have rather dismal work experience on my CV. Currently I feel like that despite my "advanced age" compared to some other people in the field, I am actually very much out there and useless to an employer who would want me to actually know something of immediate practical value. Unfortunately, I don't feel like I am good enough or like "school" enough to pursue a research career, so the alternatives are trying to get into industry or start something of my own.
;-)
;-)
One of the reasons why the situation is as it is, is that I genuinely don't find programming all that fascinating. During my studies, I always just abandoned all of my hobby projects immediately after I had figured out how to implement the (algorithmically) tricky parts. The practicalities involved are often messy and time-consuming, and I had better things to do with my time than do something uninspired.
On the other hand, I don't regret my studies at all despite feeling outright incompetent about the day-to-day grind of software design and development. "Real" CS degree people -- in particular in the algorithmic fundamentals, and advanced applications -- are more rare than you'd think these days, because all these fancy "new media" -related vocational programmes sucked in everyone during the bubble. Although most software developed these days do not try to solve fancy algorithmic problems from scratch, I'm pretty sure I'll find my niche as someone who is able to recognize and tackle these issues when they arise. A proper CS degree gives you the background you'll need to go to the library and find the solution to your problem there, and I think this is the greatest asset I have. Then I just need some code monkeys to implement my ideas
Better yet, these skills don't age... I don't think Turing's work, say, is going to be rendered obsolete anytime in the near future. It's quite different from being "certified" in some tool du jour. Picking up those skills shouldn't be an issue if you've graduated with a degree; you just need to get your hands dirty. Sorry, but it seems to me that even with an academic background it's tough avoiding real work one doesn't always enjoy
Ok, that does it, I just modded you down!
Frankly, any university with a CS program worth anything will have students take a linear algebra course in math as the first thing. It's a good weed-out-the-weak excercise early on, gets you up to speed with university level mathematics, and the stuff in itself comes in handy, for example in computer graphics. Being good at manipulating matrices has a lot of use in algorithmics too.
;-)
Please, try to impress me about Stanford some other way once you've progressed further
But in order for you to make informed decisions as a concerned parent, you will need to also know the impact various factors will (probably) have on a child... so having this sort of research is helpful. Of course, the best way to judge is to observe the particular child.
You're making the Nietzschean assumption that the he indeed is an übermensch who arbitrarily sets one's own values -- essentially does what one pleases and is proud of it. He apparently does not believe that all morality is completely relative to the individual, and wishes some guidance as to how to apply some moral principles and/or logic to come to some more objective conclusion. Sure, he is very light on details and it is therefore really difficult to help resolve this, but just because strict axioms tend to have counter-examples, it doesn't mean that there were not some measure of objective truth to the world, and that we couldn't seek to gain understanding through discussion...
Or, other would-be critics of Putin, and, in a perverse way, to impress the Russians. There is a deep nationalist streak in Russians, and they like their "Czar", whatever he may be called at any point in history, as long as he's perceived as strong... sad to say, I am sure a worryingly large percentage of the rank-and-file Russians feel a warm fuzzy feeling when they see "their country" being able to pull this off despite the low points of the 90s and perceived weakness before the West.
I don't really think Putin cares much about "defectors", if you mean people who just leave the country. Criticism doesn't really matter as long as it happens somewhere else. Critics living abroad can easily be just painted unpatriotic and anti-Russian -- "love it or leave it".
Litvinenko of course was ex-KGB though, so he potentially knows too much.
And what is the motive there? Breaking Russia-West ties, thus making sure Putin has to move back closer to Russia's old allies?
This sort of creeps me out. Soon we'll have some utilitarian computer deciding upon the most desireable allocation of resources, which essentially won't be much different from some totalitarian planned economy in nature -- just that this one will be "perfect". You will not be able to fight its choices in any way, because if you did, you'd find yourself out of "investment" pretty quickly. There will be no room for any kind of altruistic humanity either, as this will be, well, inefficient...
I can already hear the Libertarians wetting their pants...