Here is a newsletter from Stratfor I've received recently, I just fully agree with what it says.
===================== Russia's Interest in Litvinenko By George Friedman
The recent death of a former Russian intelligence agent, Alexander Litvinenko, apparently after being poisoned with polonium-210, raises three interesting questions. First: Was he poisoned by the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB), the successor to the KGB? Second: If so, what were they trying to achieve? Third: Why were they using polonium-210, instead of other poisons the KGB used in the past? In short, the question is, what in the world is going on?
Litvinenko would seem to have cut a traditional figure in Russian and Soviet history, at least on the surface. The first part of his life was spent as a functionary of the state. Then, for reasons that are not altogether clear, he became an exile and a strident critic of the state he had served. He published two books that made explosive allegations about the FSB and President Vladimir Putin, and he recently had been investigating the shooting death of a Russian journalist, Anna Politkovskaya, who also was a critic of the Putin government. Clearly, he was intent on stirring up trouble for Moscow.
Russian and Soviet tradition on this is clear: Turncoats like Litvinenko must be dealt with, for two reasons. First, they represent an ongoing embarrassment to the state. And second, if they are permitted to continue with their criticisms, they will encourage other dissidents -- making it appear that, having once worked for the FSB, you can settle safely in a city like London and hurl thunderbolts at the motherland with impunity. The state must demonstrate that this will not be permitted -- that turncoats will be dealt with no matter what the circumstances.
The death of Litvinenko, then, certainly makes sense from a political perspective. But it is the perspective of the old Soviet Union -- not of the new Russia that many believed was being born, slowly and painfully, with economic opening some 15 years ago. This does not mean, however, that the killing would not serve a purpose for the Russian administration, in the current geopolitical context.
For years, we have been forecasting and following the transformation of Russia under Vladimir Putin. Putin became president of Russia to reverse the catastrophe of the Yeltsin years. Under communism, Russia led an empire that was relatively poor but enormously powerful in the international system. After the fall of communism, Russia lost its empire, stopped being enormously powerful, and became even poorer than before. Though Westerners celebrated the fall of communism and the Soviet Union, these turned out to be, for most Russians, a catastrophe with few mitigating tradeoffs.
Obviously, the new Russia was of enormous benefit to a small class of entrepreneurs, led by what became known as the oligarchs. These men appeared to be the cutting edge of capitalism in Russia. They were nothing of the sort. They were simply people who knew how to game the chaos of the fall of communism, figuring out how to reverse Soviet expropriation with private expropriation. The ability to turn state property into their own property represented free enterprise only to the most superficial or cynical viewers.
The West was filled with both in the 1990s. Many academics and journalists saw the process going on in Russia as the painful birth of a new liberal democracy. Western financial interests saw it as a tremendous opportunity to tap into the enormous value of a collapsing empire. The critical thing is that the creation of value, the justification of capitalism, was not what was going on. Rather, the expropriation of existing value was the name of the game. Bankers loved it, analysts misunderstood it and the Russians were crushed by it.
It was this kind of chaos into which Putin stepped when he became president, and which he has slowly, inexorably, been bringing to heel for several years. This is the context in which Litvi
that would be very ill-conceived by both the West and pro-West population in Russia (actually, a significant part of it, if not the majority).
I'm wondering what makes you think that "pro-West population" in Russia is a majority. Actually, the most part of Russians don't give a hoot about West. A large part is very suspicious about any action West takes - especially remembering how West supported Eltsin regime.. which was hated by almost everyone, how "West" bombed Serbes, who share the religion with Russians - I doubt CNN shown massive protests against Yugoslavia invasion which took place here and all the hatred towards US and Eltsin (who has "betrayed our brothers") the whole story caused. And it still burns. Only very little fraction of "intelligincia" is pro-West now.. but noone gives a real hoot about them either.
This Litvinenko story is not aimed at someone at the West, I doubt western reaction really concerned anyone while making the decision. It is clear message to possible dissidents like Litvinenko himself - "traitors will be dealt with". That's why everything is so blatantly obvious here - noone should doubt who did it and why.
I've got news for you - TV is not necessary for your life. I'm not plugged in to a cable/satellite TV or whatever.. I actually don't watch TV at all. I simply don't have it. What's the point? It just sucks out your time, money, brainwashes you. There are books, sports, even computer games if you're lazy today. There are some good movies - but you don't have to watch them on TV, you could just buy DVD if you suppose some movie worthy. You don't _need_ TV that much.
Geez... Males are not supposed to be "sensitive". We're supposed to be active, violent, agressive creatures by the nature itself, take risks etc. This is the whole purpose and the effect of testosterone. We just need to learn to live in peace with the beast inside, learn to control the aggressiveness and turn it to the way of creating, studying, expanding, doing business - this is just the other side of agression. I prefer martial arts classes for this, others may prefer video games.. whatever. Otherwise you can just castrate your boys and be done with that - but this is what today American culture tries to do anyway.
Yes, but having a real orgazm is like installing Gentoo on your laptop and after making some strange moves finding out that everything (networking, sound, hibernation) suddenly works!
If you set up a web server, you should also take into account that some, for example, PHP application can be hacked. phpBB, mambo.. should I name quite a few? When I set up a web server, I always consider that its user ("apache", "www") may run some code on a system - since everyone have access to the web server. I wouldn't like it if someone, who's found a phpBB exploit, would get a root on the server in 30 minutes after that.
In your example this would rather mean that your jewelry is not kept in safe in a house which could be visited by guests at any time, but simply put on the table. Not exactly the best idea. And I don't think it's funny.
"Organized crime"? Oh, no. I know such guys - not in person, but I've had "talks" with them online - they are surprisingly blunt with us, russian security specialists and webmasters. They are mostly young (17-25) russians, living in exUSSR republics (Estonia, Ukraine), usually jobless - or even if they have a job, an income is usually very low. They are just geeks who have chosen a dark side of the Force.
The difference is that in China they block results by goverment requests. In US, they do the same by requests of private companies. I'm not sure which is worse.
Only official edonkey2000 client is not updated anymore - but does anyone really care? I've never used it, for instance. eMule, eMule+, Shareaza, MLdonkey and other clients still exist and being actively developed. The ed2k network is fully operational and has all the stuff it had before. So again - why should anyone care about the "official client"?
An estimated 20 million Russians are murdered in the Soviet Union during Stalin's reign
I doubt this number even comes close to truth. The whole population of the USSR was about 140 millions then. If 20 millions were murdered by Stalin regime, it would mean that every 7th citizen has been murdered. Every family here would remember losses. I didn't meet any family who lost relatives in "gulags". 20 millions are our wartime losses during WW2, so you are probably just messed some things up in your calculations (or someone else did it for you) - and every family, including mine, has memories about those who went to war and didn't return.
...or just install FasterFox extension - it will allow you to modify RAM amount it uses for cache. I run FF 1.5RC here for several hours (yes, on Windows XP - I didn't even check it memory footprint on Linux since it simply doesn't bother me) - it uses 44MB of RAM which, I guess, is ok for me.
Rational thinking is by order of magnitudes slower than emotional thinking. Even more, the whole process of thinking is based on emotions - read the paper on emotional decisions. In a nutshell, we make emotional decisions first and *then* we rationalize them. If you remove the fear from the sets of emotions, you will seriously change the way the given person thinks. Getting rid of a fear is a bad, *bad* thing.
That's not even funny. Check the dependencies for quake4.exe. It does depend on opengl32.dll. The executable has a lot of references to glXXX functions inside. There are no D3D references or dependencies. Is it enough for you to figure out which API it uses?
You'd better not leave your credit card information on your HD in unencrypted form. For Windows users, there is a nice small and free (open source) utility, called KeyNote, available from http://www.tranglos.com/free/index.html
Very nice notebook with a good encryption support - just something one needs to keep sensitive information. I'm using it for about 2 years.
...since nothing is as simple as it seems in Russia (that early capitalism, you know). There are quite a number of sites which allow downloading music in Russia - another one, which I'm using, is mp3spy.ru - they have a deal with my ADSL provider, tochka.ru, which is the biggest one in Moscow. Tochka.ru is a daughter company of MGTS, Moscow telephone monopolists - that's why mp3spy.ru can be quite certain about its future. This legal move could be just an attempt to shut down a competition - all that allofmp3 needed is just a big guy behind its shoulders.
Actually, ADSL is available in a lot of cities in Russia. Novgorod, Rostov, Krasnodar, Stavropol - that only those I know for sure. I bet Novosibirsk, being the "Capital of Siberia" and a big scientific canter, has it as well. This market in Russia grows extremely fast today, just like the cell phone market.
Slashdot Mirror
In this world, my friend, you are much more likely to be thrown in a jail for *not* being an idiot.
Here is a newsletter from Stratfor I've received recently, I just fully agree with what it says.
=====================
Russia's Interest in Litvinenko
By George Friedman
The recent death of a former Russian intelligence agent, Alexander Litvinenko, apparently after being poisoned with polonium-210, raises three interesting questions. First: Was he poisoned by the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB), the successor to the KGB? Second: If so, what were they trying to achieve? Third: Why were they using polonium-210, instead of other poisons the KGB used in the past? In short, the question is, what in the world is going on?
Litvinenko would seem to have cut a traditional figure in Russian and Soviet history, at least on the surface. The first part of his life was spent as a functionary of the state. Then, for reasons that are not altogether clear, he became an exile and a strident critic of the state he had served. He published two books that made explosive allegations about the FSB and President Vladimir Putin, and he recently had been investigating the shooting death of a Russian journalist, Anna Politkovskaya, who also was a critic of the Putin government. Clearly, he was intent on stirring up trouble for Moscow.
Russian and Soviet tradition on this is clear: Turncoats like Litvinenko must be dealt with, for two reasons. First, they represent an ongoing embarrassment to the state. And second, if they are permitted to continue with their criticisms, they will encourage other dissidents -- making it appear that, having once worked for the FSB, you can settle safely in a city like London and hurl thunderbolts at the motherland with impunity. The state must demonstrate that this will not be permitted -- that turncoats will be dealt with no matter what the circumstances.
The death of Litvinenko, then, certainly makes sense from a political perspective. But it is the perspective of the old Soviet Union -- not of the new Russia that many believed was being born, slowly and painfully, with economic opening some 15 years ago. This does not mean, however, that the killing would not serve a purpose for the Russian administration, in the current geopolitical context.
For years, we have been forecasting and following the transformation of Russia under Vladimir Putin. Putin became president of Russia to reverse the catastrophe of the Yeltsin years. Under communism, Russia led an empire that was relatively poor but enormously powerful in the international system. After the fall of communism, Russia lost its empire, stopped being enormously powerful, and became even poorer than before. Though Westerners celebrated the fall of communism and the Soviet Union, these turned out to be, for most Russians, a catastrophe with few mitigating tradeoffs.
Obviously, the new Russia was of enormous benefit to a small class of entrepreneurs, led by what became known as the oligarchs. These men appeared to be the cutting edge of capitalism in Russia. They were nothing of the sort. They were simply people who knew how to game the chaos of the fall of communism, figuring out how to reverse Soviet expropriation with private expropriation. The ability to turn state property into their own property represented free enterprise only to the most superficial or cynical viewers.
The West was filled with both in the 1990s. Many academics and journalists saw the process going on in Russia as the painful birth of a new liberal democracy. Western financial interests saw it as a tremendous opportunity to tap into the enormous value of a collapsing empire. The critical thing is that the creation of value, the justification of capitalism, was not what was going on. Rather, the expropriation of existing value was the name of the game. Bankers loved it, analysts misunderstood it and the Russians were crushed by it.
It was this kind of chaos into which Putin stepped when he became president, and which he has slowly, inexorably, been bringing to heel for several years. This is the context in which Litvi
that would be very ill-conceived by both the West and pro-West population in Russia (actually, a significant part of it, if not the majority).
I'm wondering what makes you think that "pro-West population" in Russia is a majority. Actually, the most part of Russians don't give a hoot about West. A large part is very suspicious about any action West takes - especially remembering how West supported Eltsin regime.. which was hated by almost everyone, how "West" bombed Serbes, who share the religion with Russians - I doubt CNN shown massive protests against Yugoslavia invasion which took place here and all the hatred towards US and Eltsin (who has "betrayed our brothers") the whole story caused. And it still burns. Only very little fraction of "intelligincia" is pro-West now.. but noone gives a real hoot about them either.
This Litvinenko story is not aimed at someone at the West, I doubt western reaction really concerned anyone while making the decision. It is clear message to possible dissidents like Litvinenko himself - "traitors will be dealt with". That's why everything is so blatantly obvious here - noone should doubt who did it and why.
Sure thing, everyone knows it - abiding the terms of contract doesn't make you evil, it makes you LAWFUL.
Guys,
I've got news for you - TV is not necessary for your life. I'm not plugged in to a cable/satellite TV or whatever.. I actually don't watch TV at all. I simply don't have it. What's the point? It just sucks out your time, money, brainwashes you. There are books, sports, even computer games if you're lazy today. There are some good movies - but you don't have to watch them on TV, you could just buy DVD if you suppose some movie worthy. You don't _need_ TV that much.
You can disable close widgets. I've figured out there should be the way to do that, checked and here you go
Go to about:config
Change the value of browser.tabs.closeButtons
1 - the usual look
0 - only the active tab has the close widget
2 - no close widgets.
Have fun
Geez... Males are not supposed to be "sensitive". We're supposed to be active, violent, agressive creatures by the nature itself, take risks etc. This is the whole purpose and the effect of testosterone. We just need to learn to live in peace with the beast inside, learn to control the aggressiveness and turn it to the way of creating, studying, expanding, doing business - this is just the other side of agression. I prefer martial arts classes for this, others may prefer video games.. whatever. Otherwise you can just castrate your boys and be done with that - but this is what today American culture tries to do anyway.
Yes, but having a real orgazm is like installing Gentoo on your laptop and after making some strange moves finding out that everything (networking, sound, hibernation) suddenly works!
If you set up a web server, you should also take into account that some, for example, PHP application can be hacked. phpBB, mambo.. should I name quite a few? When I set up a web server, I always consider that its user ("apache", "www") may run some code on a system - since everyone have access to the web server. I wouldn't like it if someone, who's found a phpBB exploit, would get a root on the server in 30 minutes after that.
In your example this would rather mean that your jewelry is not kept in safe in a house which could be visited by guests at any time, but simply put on the table. Not exactly the best idea. And I don't think it's funny.
"Organized crime"? Oh, no. I know such guys - not in person, but I've had "talks" with them online - they are surprisingly blunt with us, russian security specialists and webmasters. They are mostly young (17-25) russians, living in exUSSR republics (Estonia, Ukraine), usually jobless - or even if they have a job, an income is usually very low. They are just geeks who have chosen a dark side of the Force.
Google filters search results in US as well. Just read this statement:
http://www.google.com/dmca.html
The difference is that in China they block results by goverment requests. In US, they do the same by requests of private companies. I'm not sure which is worse.
Strange. I've used both eMule+ and MLDonkey - they both have Overnet support
Only official edonkey2000 client is not updated anymore - but does anyone really care? I've never used it, for instance. eMule, eMule+, Shareaza, MLdonkey and other clients still exist and being actively developed. The ed2k network is fully operational and has all the stuff it had before. So again - why should anyone care about the "official client"?
An estimated 20 million Russians are murdered in the Soviet Union during Stalin's reign
I doubt this number even comes close to truth. The whole population of the USSR was about 140 millions then. If 20 millions were murdered by Stalin regime, it would mean that every 7th citizen has been murdered. Every family here would remember losses. I didn't meet any family who lost relatives in "gulags". 20 millions are our wartime losses during WW2, so you are probably just messed some things up in your calculations (or someone else did it for you) - and every family, including mine, has memories about those who went to war and didn't return.
>Is that in megabytes? kilobytes? bytes?
Kilobytes.
By default FF decides itself how much RAM it uses. You can limit the RAM cache either in user.js - add the following string
...or just install FasterFox extension - it will allow you to modify RAM amount it uses for cache. I run FF 1.5RC here for several hours (yes, on Windows XP - I didn't even check it memory footprint on Linux since it simply doesn't bother me) - it uses 44MB of RAM which, I guess, is ok for me.
user_pref("browser.cache.memory.capacity", 10240);
Rational thinking is by order of magnitudes slower than emotional thinking. Even more, the whole process of thinking is based on emotions - read the paper on emotional decisions. In a nutshell, we make emotional decisions first and *then* we rationalize them. If you remove the fear from the sets of emotions, you will seriously change the way the given person thinks. Getting rid of a fear is a bad, *bad* thing.
That's not even funny. Check the dependencies for quake4.exe. It does depend on opengl32.dll. The executable has a lot of references to glXXX functions inside. There are no D3D references or dependencies. Is it enough for you to figure out which API it uses?
Just buy a DVD player which allows you to skip the "unskippable" parts - most BBK devices have this feature, for example.
Are they just trying to make Longhorn more appealing to Chinese officials?
You'd better not leave your credit card information on your HD in unencrypted form. For Windows users, there is a nice small and free (open source) utility, called KeyNote, available from http://www.tranglos.com/free/index.html
Very nice notebook with a good encryption support - just something one needs to keep sensitive information. I'm using it for about 2 years.
It was in 1971, with Soyuz-11. Therefore, Russian space program runs for more than 30 years without lethal accidents.
So how can you get a whole bunch of dumb small things doing something smart?
Hey, isn't the democracy based on the same assumption - if you put together a bunch of dump small things, they will make a good choice?
...since nothing is as simple as it seems in Russia (that early capitalism, you know). There are quite a number of sites which allow downloading music in Russia - another one, which I'm using, is mp3spy.ru - they have a deal with my ADSL provider, tochka.ru, which is the biggest one in Moscow. Tochka.ru is a daughter company of MGTS, Moscow telephone monopolists - that's why mp3spy.ru can be quite certain about its future. This legal move could be just an attempt to shut down a competition - all that allofmp3 needed is just a big guy behind its shoulders.
Actually, ADSL is available in a lot of cities in Russia. Novgorod, Rostov, Krasnodar, Stavropol - that only those I know for sure. I bet Novosibirsk, being the "Capital of Siberia" and a big scientific canter, has it as well. This market in Russia grows extremely fast today, just like the cell phone market.