a highly skilled player in a small ship can beat a less skilled player in a large ship
Not at all surprising if you consider that making a good fit for a small ship may require far more skill points and money than an idiotic fit for a big ship. There is no point in flying around in a giant metal vat when you haven't reached the skill levels necessary to fit it with the proper guns and armor. Unless you want to be a killmail statistic, of course.
Because Russia's Federal Anti-monopoly Service (FAS) has broad powers that go far beyond regulating monopolies. For example, FAS are also responsible for regulating advertisements, foreign investments, government purchases, etc.
IMHO, the Service's name is a bit of a misnomer; it should have been called something like the "Federal Economic Regulatory Service".
There is no "Covert Hacking" column in the raw data. There is a "Warrantless Hacking" column, though - I'm assuming that's the same thing (arriving at a consistent naming scheme is yet another area that the authors fail at). And there is no data for North Korea or Belarus in the "Warrantless Hacking" column, just like in all other columns.
In any case, I fail to see how the concept of covert/warrantless hacking is even relevant to North Korea: there is nothing in the country to hack, since virtually no North Koreans have personal PCs.
So, if you download their XLS raw data, and add up their scores, the worst 6 nations are:
1. China, with a score of 3.47 2. UK (Englad/Wales), with a score of 3.18 3. US and Singapore (tied for 3rd place), with a score of 3.12 5. France and Germany (tied for 5th place), with a score of 3.06
And as for Israel and Russia -- they are tied for 11th place, with a score of 2.82
Quite different from the top offenders list in the PDF, eh? It gets worse: North Korea and Belarus (in the top 5 according to the PDF) are not even mentioned anywhere in the raw data XLS... So not only did these "experts" pull their data out of their asses, but they managed to fail at adding up their own funny numbers!
Did you actually read #3? strfry() is a joke function, an silly Easter egg that had been included in Glibc since time immemorial and unfortunately cannot be removed for fear of breaking compatibility.
Anyone with half a brain can see that fixing "bugs" in ancient Easter eggs is a waste of developers' time. If I were in Ulrich Drepper's position, my response would be similar to his, but with more insults.
Considering the above, the reply proposes to "harmonize Russian normative regulations with international law, including the Civil Code and a number of federal laws". Among the other proposed measures are the development of a list of prescriptions to ensure the compatibility between government IT systems, pilot projects for switching government agencies to open-source software, the creation of a repository of such software, and legislation to counteract monopolies in government IT purchases.
Ilya Ponomarev, chairman of the Duma technology development subcommittee, has not received the reply so far, but agreed to comment on the text that is in CNews' possession. "All of the Ministry's proposals on the one hand are directly listed in our letter, and on the other hand contradict the argument given in the reply", the deputy says. "I can only welcome the creation of a repository for domestic open-source software, if it will be created. At the moment there does not exist such a repository."
The MP is is sure that the Ministry of Communications does not want to engage in investment activities in the IT sector, but simply wants fo stimulate them within the framework of economic liberalism. "All successful large-scale high-tech projects have been completed with the indirect participation of the state. The Internet, Unix -- these are all indirect results of government programs. We will not succeed purely by market stimulation measures, such a development is possible only given an established market, and we do not have one," Ponomarev told CNews. "I am happy that the Ministry has realized the necessity of legislative initiatives, and I await Ministry representatives to present their proposals to our committee. If the Ministry of Communications does not want to deal with the national software platform, we can partner with other government agencies."
Deputy Ilya Ponomarev's letter to President Medvedev about the creation of a "national software platform" was redirected to the Ministry of Communications. According to CNews sources, the Ministry's reply letter to the deputy supports the orientation towards domestic and open-source software, but criticizes the deputy's main point - Ponomarev's "national software platform" proposal.
The authors of the reply (CNews has obtained a copy) agree that "supporting domestic developers is of strategic importance" and "stimulating the creation and use of open-source software is one of the government's priorities in the area of IT policy". However, they argue against the creation of a national software platform, believing that such a measure will not be a solution for the domestic IT sector's problems. The ministry writes that "the creation of such a combination of operating systems, software tools, software applications and open standards will not give a return to the economy and society".
The text directly mentions the high cost and risk of the project from the corruptibility point of view, due to the uncertainty of the criteria for project success. The authors also see a danger in the separation between the domestic and world IT industries that would result from the choice of such a development policy.
The Ministry of Communications proposes an orientation towards the possibilities that are enabled by the open-source model of software development. It proposed to direct the nation's limited resources towards the development and modification of "world leading solutions in cooperation with the world's best specialists".
Suppose you are right, and that some of these criminals are sharing the results of their keylogging with a crooked FSB officer.
What possible benefit would the FSB guy get from this information? What's he going to do with 10,000 passwords from random IP addresses from all over the country? Print them out, use them as a wall decoration?
What the FSB guy needs is the password for ONE specific account for ONE specific person - say, the email address of a prominent businessman or an opposition figure. Rather than going through a phisher and hoping that after N years, somewhere in the results the right password would turn up, it would make much more sense for the FSB guy to go through the usual channels (enter the premises and install a hardware keylogger, make the ISP log the suspect's packets, and so forth).
The official name of the company is ZAO Begun. However, "ZAO" is simply the Russian abbreviation for "proprietary joint stock company"; in the West, an equivalent formal corporate name would probably be "Begun Pty Ltd."
In any case, the summary uses "Google" instead of "Google, Inc."; and "Rambler Media" instead of "Rambler Media, Ltd." Seems rather odd that of the 3 corporations mentioned, only Begun was listed with its full official (though miscapitalized) name.
If a town or a street got renamed during the Soviet period, after 1992 its name was in most cases restored to the pre-revolutionary version. However, if the street was built during the Soviet period, of course it would not get renamed, since it never had a pre-Soviet name in the first place. Renaming a street just because its name is no longer politically fashionable is akin to rewriting history, no better than what the Soviets were doing.
First: I use Comcast. Over the past 3 years, I've replaced wireless routers 2 times (in 2 different homes). The only thing I needed to do to set up a new router was to power-cycle the cable modem; I did not need to change the router's MAC address.
Second: in any case, even if you use some ghetto ISP that tracks router MAC addresses, the external MAC (what the cable modem sees) and the internal wireless MAC (what the wardrivers see) are different and completely independent. You can easily change one without changing the other.
You want an opinion on Russian actions in Georgia?
1. Sending troops to protect the Ossetians from the Georgian blitzkrieg: good, necessary and just.
2. Failing to prevent the angry South Ossetian hordes from burning and looting Georgian villages once the Georgian army was kicked out of the neighborhood: very, very bad. Many Russian officers did try to stop the looting, but they should have been prepared for it from the very beginning.
3. Keeping the war limited mostly to military infrastructure and the northern areas of the country: good.
4. Keeping troops stationed in Georgia proper: illegal, bad in the long run, but on military grounds necessary in the short run.
5. Recognizing South Ossetia and Abkhazia as independent: questionable, but hardly unusual in our post-East Timor, post-Kosovo world.
Where in the article does it say that the murderers were "under direct orders from the Kremlin"? As far as I can make out, these were local cops who acted under the orders of the provincial governor Zyazikov - the main target of Yevloyev's criticisms.
Please explain WTF does the murder of a provincial governor's critic has to do with Russian tanks in Eastern Europe? Your argument is sort of like saying that a lynching in some Deep South hellhole will lead to a US invasion of Canada.
You are correct. He was eliminated for his views on the Ingushetian provincial government - specifically, for his views on Ingushetia's governor Zyazikov, whose policies have brought the province to the brink (some say over the brink) of civil war. It is a great mystery just why the Kremlin continues to support Ingushetia's current administration.
Sometimes, the federal government has to give its support to a competent, but thuggish, local administration in order to restore order and peace (see Chechnya for an example). But if the thuggish local administration is failing to do its job, why the hell is it still being propped up?
Georgia's gamble was that whatever the outcome of the war in Ossetia, the border issue would finally get settled. At that point, there would be no more legal justifications for Germany to keep Georgia out of NATO. And once Georgia is in NATO, Russia would think twice before invading.
Really, think, what were the possible outcomes from Georgia's decision to invade Ossetia on August 7?
1. Most probable - everything goes according to plan. Georgian blitzkrieg succeeds, Ossetia surrenders within 1-2 days. Russia perhaps wants to intervene, but can't gets its troops into place fast enough to make any difference. Abkhazia caves in after seeing the might of Georgian arms and the Ossetian civilians massacred in Tskhinvali. Georgia regains its rebellious provinces and joins NATO.
2. Less probable - Russia manages to mobilize some of its forces in time, intervenes, and takes over South Ossetia. Georgia loses the war, Russia loses whatever it has left of its reputation. In the peace talks, the status of South Ossetia and Abkhazia is finally settled - either as independent nations, parts of Russia, or parts of a federal Georgia. Either way, Georgia's borders are no longer in doubt, and it can finally join NATO and the Western world.
3. Even less probable - Russia does not intervene, but the Ossetians successfully resist the invasion on their own; the result is a long, bloody mountain war. Thanks to Georgia's overwhelming advantage in manpower and technology (Georgia has been spending over 10% of its GDP on its armed forces), this scenario appeared to be quite improbable.
4. Nearly impossible - Russia intervenes, and goes on to conquer all of Georgia. This scenario would be quite unlikely because a. Georgia is economically worthless to Russia, and the occupation would inevitably result in a very long, bloody and expensive guerilla war (something that Russia has experienced in Afghanistan and Chechnya, and doesn't want to repeat); and b. the international community would not allow Russia to actually annex one of its neighbors. At the very least, Russia will face crippling trade sanctions from its most important foreign trading partners.
As you can see, the most probable outcomes are, in the long run, advantageous to Georgia and disadvantageous to RUssia.
No, Russia was not planning this for years - primarily because this war significantly weakens Russia's position. Russia's main goal is to keep Georgia out of NATO. To do so, all it had to do was sponsor the Ossetian and Abkhazian independence movements (nations with unrecognized de-facto independent provinces are not allowed to be NATO members). But now that Russia has sent an army brigade into South Ossetia, the Ossetian independence movement no longer looks genuine (some Western observers have compared it to a Russian land-grab), and as a result, there is now a good chance that Georgia will be let into NATO. Given that starting this war would make it much harder to achieve Russia's foreign policy goals, do you really think Russia would have wanted to start it?
The invasion of Ossetia was a very shrewd move on Georgia's part. Massive military retaliation was the least bad of several bad response moves that Russia had at its disposal.
The report about the pipeline attack is almost certainly Georgian propaganda (unless it's simply unsubstantiated rumors) - and it looks like the British journos fell for it. But hey, in this modern world of journalism 2.0, who cares about truth and fact-checking, as long as you can get the pageviews?
...where astroturfing, sock-puppetry, slanted journalism and propaganda matters far more than the reality on the ground. Slashdot is a contested territory, and it looks like Georgia's propaganda troops have launched a first strike.
Not that I'm defending Russia here. The only reason Georgian astroturfers have overpowered the Russian ones on Slashdot is that the moronic Russian leadership, as usual, hasn't been investing enough resources in information warfare.
This may be hard for an American mind to grasp, but *there are no good guys here*.
Georgians are not good guys. Their goal is to militarily crush a national independence movement and to subjugate a people who hate the Georgians' guts. They've been planning this blitzkrieg operation for years (a nation doesn't increase its military spending by a factor of 30 if they aren't planning to invade somebody.) They cynically violated ceasefire terms, used massed artillery to bombard residential areas (killing ~1400 Ossetian civilians in one day), and were ethnically cleansing Ossetian villages. Now that their military effort has failed, they've launched a massive propaganda offensive to convince ignorant westerners that white is black and that a nation that launched an offensive war is somehow a victim.
But Russians ain't good guys either. Instead of trying to limit the killing, it looks like they are escalating the conflict by supporting the Abkhazians in Kodori. They are cynically using the excuse of protecting Ossetians from genocide to conduct a massive bombing campaign against Georgia's military infrastructure. And Russia has neither the desire nor the technological capability to limit collateral damage from its bombs.
What you are seeing is, essentially, a small bully being bullied by a bigger bully.
In Russia and other parts of the former Soviet Union, ICQ is basically the only instant messenging protocol. (A few tech-savvy Russians have started switching to Jabber, but even they still maintain ICQ accounts to talk to their less technically inclined friends.) Not having an ICQ number in Russia is sort of like not having an email address in the US; people will look at you funny.
It's not so much a difference between Russians and Americans as between old-fashioned and modern engineering practices.
Back in the old days: "We don't fully understand the physics of this thing, so let's make this part 5 times stronger than it has any reason to be, just in case shit goes seriously wrong."
*kaboom*
"Heh, good thing we had that margin of error!"
Modern engineering: "We can shave 0.37% off the cost of the final product by replacing this part with cheaper, lighter materials. The computer model tells us this is perfectly safe to do." *KABOOM*
"Oops, I guess our computer model didn't account for turbulence."
Do not ascribe to malice what can be more simply described by intellectual laziness and stupidity. Even slashdot stories about science, Linux and US politics frequently contain major mistakes and bullshit summaries; as long as the summary touches a few buttons (patents! civil liberties!, and so forth), the slashdot readership will lap it up. Naturally, slashdot submissions about more esoteric subjects (e.g. Russian politics) are held to an even lower standard.
Slashdot Mirror
a highly skilled player in a small ship can beat a less skilled player in a large ship
Not at all surprising if you consider that making a good fit for a small ship may require far more skill points and money than an idiotic fit for a big ship. There is no point in flying around in a giant metal vat when you haven't reached the skill levels necessary to fit it with the proper guns and armor. Unless you want to be a killmail statistic, of course.
Because Russia's Federal Anti-monopoly Service (FAS) has broad powers that go far beyond regulating monopolies. For example, FAS are also responsible for regulating advertisements, foreign investments, government purchases, etc.
IMHO, the Service's name is a bit of a misnomer; it should have been called something like the "Federal Economic Regulatory Service".
There is no "Covert Hacking" column in the raw data. There is a "Warrantless Hacking" column, though - I'm assuming that's the same thing (arriving at a consistent naming scheme is yet another area that the authors fail at). And there is no data for North Korea or Belarus in the "Warrantless Hacking" column, just like in all other columns.
In any case, I fail to see how the concept of covert/warrantless hacking is even relevant to North Korea: there is nothing in the country to hack, since virtually no North Koreans have personal PCs.
So, if you download their XLS raw data, and add up their scores, the worst 6 nations are:
1. China, with a score of 3.47
2. UK (Englad/Wales), with a score of 3.18
3. US and Singapore (tied for 3rd place), with a score of 3.12
5. France and Germany (tied for 5th place), with a score of 3.06
And as for Israel and Russia -- they are tied for 11th place, with a score of 2.82
Quite different from the top offenders list in the PDF, eh? It gets worse: North Korea and Belarus (in the top 5 according to the PDF) are not even mentioned anywhere in the raw data XLS... So not only did these "experts" pull their data out of their asses, but they managed to fail at adding up their own funny numbers!
Did you actually read #3? strfry() is a joke function, an silly Easter egg that had been included in Glibc since time immemorial and unfortunately cannot be removed for fear of breaking compatibility.
Anyone with half a brain can see that fixing "bugs" in ancient Easter eggs is a waste of developers' time. If I were in Ulrich Drepper's position, my response would be similar to his, but with more insults.
Considering the above, the reply proposes to "harmonize Russian normative regulations with international law, including the Civil Code and a number of federal laws". Among the other proposed measures are the development of a list of prescriptions to ensure the compatibility between government IT systems, pilot projects for switching government agencies to open-source software, the creation of a repository of such software, and legislation to counteract monopolies in government IT purchases.
Ilya Ponomarev, chairman of the Duma technology development subcommittee, has not received the reply so far, but agreed to comment on the text that is in CNews' possession. "All of the Ministry's proposals on the one hand are directly listed in our letter, and on the other hand contradict the argument given in the reply", the deputy says. "I can only welcome the creation of a repository for domestic open-source software, if it will be created. At the moment there does not exist such a repository."
The MP is is sure that the Ministry of Communications does not want to engage in investment activities in the IT sector, but simply wants fo stimulate them within the framework of economic liberalism. "All successful large-scale high-tech projects have been completed with the indirect participation of the state. The Internet, Unix -- these are all indirect results of government programs. We will not succeed purely by market stimulation measures, such a development is possible only given an established market, and we do not have one," Ponomarev told CNews. "I am happy that the Ministry has realized the necessity of legislative initiatives, and I await Ministry representatives to present their proposals to our committee. If the Ministry of Communications does not want to deal with the national software platform, we can partner with other government agencies."
There will be no "Russian Windows"
Deputy Ilya Ponomarev's letter to President Medvedev about the creation of a "national software platform" was redirected to the Ministry of Communications. According to CNews sources, the Ministry's reply letter to the deputy supports the orientation towards domestic and open-source software, but criticizes the deputy's main point - Ponomarev's "national software platform" proposal.
The authors of the reply (CNews has obtained a copy) agree that "supporting domestic developers is of strategic importance" and "stimulating the creation and use of open-source software is one of the government's priorities in the area of IT policy". However, they argue against the creation of a national software platform, believing that such a measure will not be a solution for the domestic IT sector's problems. The ministry writes that "the creation of such a combination of operating systems, software tools, software applications and open standards will not give a return to the economy and society".
The text directly mentions the high cost and risk of the project from the corruptibility point of view, due to the uncertainty of the criteria for project success. The authors also see a danger in the separation between the domestic and world IT industries that would result from the choice of such a development policy.
The Ministry of Communications proposes an orientation towards the possibilities that are enabled by the open-source model of software development. It proposed to direct the nation's limited resources towards the development and modification of "world leading solutions in cooperation with the world's best specialists".
Suppose you are right, and that some of these criminals are sharing the results of their keylogging with a crooked FSB officer.
What possible benefit would the FSB guy get from this information? What's he going to do with 10,000 passwords from random IP addresses from all over the country? Print them out, use them as a wall decoration?
What the FSB guy needs is the password for ONE specific account for ONE specific person - say, the email address of a prominent businessman or an opposition figure. Rather than going through a phisher and hoping that after N years, somewhere in the results the right password would turn up, it would make much more sense for the FSB guy to go through the usual channels (enter the premises and install a hardware keylogger, make the ISP log the suspect's packets, and so forth).
I believe I've just thought of a way we could solve this whole global warming thing I've been hearing about.
You mean, power the giant beach refrigerator by attaching a generator to the spinning corpse of old Sadi Carnot?
The official name of the company is ZAO Begun. However, "ZAO" is simply the Russian abbreviation for "proprietary joint stock company"; in the West, an equivalent formal corporate name would probably be "Begun Pty Ltd."
In any case, the summary uses "Google" instead of "Google, Inc."; and "Rambler Media" instead of "Rambler Media, Ltd." Seems rather odd that of the 3 corporations mentioned, only Begun was listed with its full official (though miscapitalized) name.
If a town or a street got renamed during the Soviet period, after 1992 its name was in most cases restored to the pre-revolutionary version. However, if the street was built during the Soviet period, of course it would not get renamed, since it never had a pre-Soviet name in the first place. Renaming a street just because its name is no longer politically fashionable is akin to rewriting history, no better than what the Soviets were doing.
First: I use Comcast. Over the past 3 years, I've replaced wireless routers 2 times (in 2 different homes). The only thing I needed to do to set up a new router was to power-cycle the cable modem; I did not need to change the router's MAC address.
Second: in any case, even if you use some ghetto ISP that tracks router MAC addresses, the external MAC (what the cable modem sees) and the internal wireless MAC (what the wardrivers see) are different and completely independent. You can easily change one without changing the other.
You want an opinion on Russian actions in Georgia?
1. Sending troops to protect the Ossetians from the Georgian blitzkrieg: good, necessary and just.
2. Failing to prevent the angry South Ossetian hordes from burning and looting Georgian villages once the Georgian army was kicked out of the neighborhood: very, very bad. Many Russian officers did try to stop the looting, but they should have been prepared for it from the very beginning.
3. Keeping the war limited mostly to military infrastructure and the northern areas of the country: good.
4. Keeping troops stationed in Georgia proper: illegal, bad in the long run, but on military grounds necessary in the short run.
5. Recognizing South Ossetia and Abkhazia as independent: questionable, but hardly unusual in our post-East Timor, post-Kosovo world.
Where in the article does it say that the murderers were "under direct orders from the Kremlin"? As far as I can make out, these were local cops who acted under the orders of the provincial governor Zyazikov - the main target of Yevloyev's criticisms.
Correction: an anti-Magas website. not anti-Kremlin website.
Please explain WTF does the murder of a provincial governor's critic has to do with Russian tanks in Eastern Europe? Your argument is sort of like saying that a lynching in some Deep South hellhole will lead to a US invasion of Canada.
You are correct. He was eliminated for his views on the Ingushetian provincial government - specifically, for his views on Ingushetia's governor Zyazikov, whose policies have brought the province to the brink (some say over the brink) of civil war. It is a great mystery just why the Kremlin continues to support Ingushetia's current administration.
Sometimes, the federal government has to give its support to a competent, but thuggish, local administration in order to restore order and peace (see Chechnya for an example). But if the thuggish local administration is failing to do its job, why the hell is it still being propped up?
Georgia's gamble was that whatever the outcome of the war in Ossetia, the border issue would finally get settled. At that point, there would be no more legal justifications for Germany to keep Georgia out of NATO. And once Georgia is in NATO, Russia would think twice before invading.
Really, think, what were the possible outcomes from Georgia's decision to invade Ossetia on August 7?
1. Most probable - everything goes according to plan. Georgian blitzkrieg succeeds, Ossetia surrenders within 1-2 days. Russia perhaps wants to intervene, but can't gets its troops into place fast enough to make any difference. Abkhazia caves in after seeing the might of Georgian arms and the Ossetian civilians massacred in Tskhinvali. Georgia regains its rebellious provinces and joins NATO.
2. Less probable - Russia manages to mobilize some of its forces in time, intervenes, and takes over South Ossetia. Georgia loses the war, Russia loses whatever it has left of its reputation. In the peace talks, the status of South Ossetia and Abkhazia is finally settled - either as independent nations, parts of Russia, or parts of a federal Georgia. Either way, Georgia's borders are no longer in doubt, and it can finally join NATO and the Western world.
3. Even less probable - Russia does not intervene, but the Ossetians successfully resist the invasion on their own; the result is a long, bloody mountain war. Thanks to Georgia's overwhelming advantage in manpower and technology (Georgia has been spending over 10% of its GDP on its armed forces), this scenario appeared to be quite improbable.
4. Nearly impossible - Russia intervenes, and goes on to conquer all of Georgia. This scenario would be quite unlikely because a. Georgia is economically worthless to Russia, and the occupation would inevitably result in a very long, bloody and expensive guerilla war (something that Russia has experienced in Afghanistan and Chechnya, and doesn't want to repeat); and b. the international community would not allow Russia to actually annex one of its neighbors. At the very least, Russia will face crippling trade sanctions from its most important foreign trading partners.
As you can see, the most probable outcomes are, in the long run, advantageous to Georgia and disadvantageous to RUssia.
No, Russia was not planning this for years - primarily because this war significantly weakens Russia's position. Russia's main goal is to keep Georgia out of NATO. To do so, all it had to do was sponsor the Ossetian and Abkhazian independence movements (nations with unrecognized de-facto independent provinces are not allowed to be NATO members). But now that Russia has sent an army brigade into South Ossetia, the Ossetian independence movement no longer looks genuine (some Western observers have compared it to a Russian land-grab), and as a result, there is now a good chance that Georgia will be let into NATO. Given that starting this war would make it much harder to achieve Russia's foreign policy goals, do you really think Russia would have wanted to start it?
The invasion of Ossetia was a very shrewd move on Georgia's part. Massive military retaliation was the least bad of several bad response moves that Russia had at its disposal.
The owners of the pipeline say it has not been bombed. See http://ca.news.yahoo.com/s/afp/080809/world/georgia_sossetia_russia_unrest_oil_bp
The report about the pipeline attack is almost certainly Georgian propaganda (unless it's simply unsubstantiated rumors) - and it looks like the British journos fell for it. But hey, in this modern world of journalism 2.0, who cares about truth and fact-checking, as long as you can get the pageviews?
...where astroturfing, sock-puppetry, slanted journalism and propaganda matters far more than the reality on the ground. Slashdot is a contested territory, and it looks like Georgia's propaganda troops have launched a first strike.
Not that I'm defending Russia here. The only reason Georgian astroturfers have overpowered the Russian ones on Slashdot is that the moronic Russian leadership, as usual, hasn't been investing enough resources in information warfare.
This may be hard for an American mind to grasp, but *there are no good guys here*.
Georgians are not good guys. Their goal is to militarily crush a national independence movement and to subjugate a people who hate the Georgians' guts. They've been planning this blitzkrieg operation for years (a nation doesn't increase its military spending by a factor of 30 if they aren't planning to invade somebody.) They cynically violated ceasefire terms, used massed artillery to bombard residential areas (killing ~1400 Ossetian civilians in one day), and were ethnically cleansing Ossetian villages. Now that their military effort has failed, they've launched a massive propaganda offensive to convince ignorant westerners that white is black and that a nation that launched an offensive war is somehow a victim.
But Russians ain't good guys either. Instead of trying to limit the killing, it looks like they are escalating the conflict by supporting the Abkhazians in Kodori. They are cynically using the excuse of protecting Ossetians from genocide to conduct a massive bombing campaign against Georgia's military infrastructure. And Russia has neither the desire nor the technological capability to limit collateral damage from its bombs.
What you are seeing is, essentially, a small bully being bullied by a bigger bully.
In Russia and other parts of the former Soviet Union, ICQ is basically the only instant messenging protocol. (A few tech-savvy Russians have started switching to Jabber, but even they still maintain ICQ accounts to talk to their less technically inclined friends.) Not having an ICQ number in Russia is sort of like not having an email address in the US; people will look at you funny.
Back in the old days: "We don't fully understand the physics of this thing, so let's make this part 5 times stronger than it has any reason to be, just in case shit goes seriously wrong."
*kaboom*
"Heh, good thing we had that margin of error!"
Modern engineering: "We can shave 0.37% off the cost of the final product by replacing this part with cheaper, lighter materials. The computer model tells us this is perfectly safe to do."
*KABOOM*
"Oops, I guess our computer model didn't account for turbulence."
Do not ascribe to malice what can be more simply described by intellectual laziness and stupidity. Even slashdot stories about science, Linux and US politics frequently contain major mistakes and bullshit summaries; as long as the summary touches a few buttons (patents! civil liberties!, and so forth), the slashdot readership will lap it up. Naturally, slashdot submissions about more esoteric subjects (e.g. Russian politics) are held to an even lower standard.