Yep, the exact same arguments were being made about the F-22 and Eurofighter. "Why do we need these high tech planes when all we're doing is bombing mud huts in Afghanistan?".
Those planes look like kind of a good idea now we have Russia flying within miles and sometimes literally outright breaching sovereign NATO airspace again with it's probing patrols in the Baltic, the North Sea, and English channel and with transponders off and no response to communications. We're also finding those mud huts are right in the middle of a high tech Syrian air defence network too.
So it's kind of a good thing we didn't listen to the naysayers and did decide to keep up with our 4.5th gen and 5th gen fighter programs after all.
Some people don't understand that you have a military that's prepared for what might happen, not what is happening or has happened in the past.
I used to think they were overpriced too, but apparently a couple of HS2 trains will cost as much as one of those aircraft carriers.
Now I can't figure out if the aircraft carriers are a fantastic bargain or the HS2 rolling stock is one of the biggest government orchestrated thefts from the public purse to private business in history.
I guess it depends on the role, if it's a ship whose job is wholly to protect say an aircraft carrier, then it has all it needs to just keep on doing that.
But yes, it doesn't mean ships whose job is to shell the living shit out of places from off the coast will have unlimited ammunition, it's true in a defensive capacity though.
And how do you propose to launch this EMP attack? EMP isn't a magical thing you can just conjure up and cast at someone like a wizard. Pretty much anything you could do to a hit a ship with an EMP would be no less difficult than just blowing up the ship with something explosive. EMP is only preferable if you then intend to send soldiers on bored the ship to seize it and retrieve if for yourself, but good fucking luck with that. I imagine the crew would scuttle it before you had chance.
Yes I am still using my Galaxy Nexus because performance-wise it's still entirely adequate, it can still run everything I need and it seems silly to blow a few hundred quid when there's literally nothing wrong with the existing device beyond poor software support.
Even if I did decide to replace it I really just do not know where to go. I can't stand the crap that Samsung and HTC et. al. throw on top and don't particularly like much of what they have to offer half the time anyway. Many of the cheaper manufacturers like ZTE et. al. offer crap OS support, but at least they're cheap so it's understandable. I've been burnt once by Google and just don't have enough faith to try again. I've been using and have defended Android since the HTC Magic was released in the UK. If my phone were to fail now, I think I'd probably jump ship, I doubt I'd switch to the iPhone because I hate the horrendously locked down and overpriced Apple ecosystem and don't frankly find their UI intuitive and productive (though it's most definitely feels nice). I never thought I'd say it but I think I'd have to give Windows Phone serious consideration. I've always liked Nokia's hardware at least, and if Android isn't a reliable platform then it almost seems worth putting up with Microsoft's OS.
And I know what the official Google line is on the Galaxy Nexus but I'm having a hard time buying it. I'm struggling to understand how a bug at the application layer affecting the browser cannot be fixed because of something to do with lower level firmware. I do not see why you even need the low level source code when you can still interface with the existing binaries you have for a general update in fact - this is something CM seems to have managed many a time quite successfully. It frankly sounds more like an excuse to not have to commit resources to supporting an older device because it would take just a little bit more effort than usual, and so how will I ever know if Google will make that arbitrary decision on the next device I buy from them? It's not my fault Google made a boneheaded decision so Google should've stumped up the cash to pay the extra staffing areas to work around that fault, it's not like it's a cash poor company. Good customer service is stumping up to fix or work around your screwups, not just saying "Ah, well, we fucked up, why don't you buy another of our products to replace it?". I don't think anything less than a contractual assurance that my phone would be supported for something like at least 3 years could pull me back to Google right now. It'd take a hell of a lot to heal the burn of the Galaxy Nexus.
But even beyond this I'm noticing Android becoming far less stable. Maps seems to crash incredibly regularly now, and Chrome does too. The on screen keyboard also seems to keel over now and again. Increased compartmentalisation of components into apps seems to have gone hand in hand with decreased stability. I see this not just on my Galaxy Nexus but on my 2012 Nexus 7, which at least has continued to see updates, but has also seen the widespread instability of Google applications.
I understand why Google is moving the way it is, to increase modularity of parts, and I think that's entirely sensible - as a developer and architect myself I'm a massive fan of modularity and do not like monolithic designs. I just don't like the quality of software I'm seeing come out of that, and I'm still a little peeved about getting screwed over the Galaxy Nexus.
I'm concerned that Google needs to start rethinking it's Android strategy to improve quality control, and to start rebuilding confidence in it for people like me who were early adopters, long time supporters, but who have also become victims of Google's failures also. If Google achieves this by giving a guarantee of future updates for a reasonable period, if stability improves, then within the next couple of years I'd probably buy a new Google phone, a new Google tablet, and also an Android smartwatch. Without any of that I'm likely to continue just sitting on wha
"This is the component that is riddled with security holes in 4.3 and earlier devices, but which Google can't update."
Why not? Google sold me my Galaxy Nexus, they wrote the software. No reason they couldn't update it, they just can't be arsed.
Which is a shame, because I bought a Google phone believing it'd mean I'd get 1st class update support from Google with the carriers cut out, but it turned out that Google is actually worse at supporting some of it's devices than even the likes of Samsung and HTC are.
It effectively means you can't rely on Android or Google if you want a platform that will remain secure, you could find yourself vulnerable with nowhere official to go after a mere 18 months.
Effectively the more warts a language has and/or the more poorly documented it is, the more questions that are bound to be asked about it, hence the more apparent popularity if you use SO as a metric.
So if companies like Microsoft and Oracle produce masses of great documentation for their respective technologies and provide entire sites of resources for them (such as www.asp.net or the MSDN developer forums) then they'll inherently see reduced "popularity" on SO.
Similarly some languages have a higher bar to entry, PHP and Javascript are both repeatedly sold as languages that beginners can start with, it should similarly be unsurprising therefore that more questions are asked about them than by people who have moved up the change to enterprise languages like C#, Java, and C++.
But I shouldn't complain too much, SO popularity whilst still blatantly flawed is still a far better metric than TIOBE whose methodology is just outright broken (they explain their methodology on their site, and even without high school statistics knowledge it shouldn't take more than 5 seconds to spot gaping holes in their methodology).
I'm still amazed no one's done an actual useful study on popularity and simply scraped data from job sites each month. It'd be nice to know what companies are actually asking for, and what they're paying. That is after all the only thing anyone really wants to know when they talk about popularity - how likely is it to get me a job, and how well is it likely to pay? Popularity doesn't matter beyond that as you just choose the best tool for the job regardless of how popular it is.
No on the contrary, I'm doing the opposite, I'm bringing the complexities of reality into your simplification.
"Regarding Russia's so-called aggression"
Sorry, I'm struggling to take you seriously. Even if you disagree on Eastern Ukraine being a de-facto Russian invasion now, even Russia itself admits the military units that locked down Crimea were Russian soldiers. How can you possibly believe this is anything other than aggression? Once you move your troops onto foreign soil, that's aggression. You can argue that the people their wanted it, but they weren't given the chance to tell us openly, there was no Scottish style referendum where the people were given the option without being asked at gunpoint.
As for NATO, it's worth keeping in mind that Russia was given the option to join and become part of it before criticising it, but Putin put the final nail in that coffin because he had other ideals about his own soviet empire.
I absolutely agree that the US funds lots of NGOs in foreign countries to pursue it's interests, for example, organisations pushing for greater democracy in Russia. You can argue that that's not right, that it shouldn't meddle. But compare and contrast to Russia, Russia is outright funding not NGOs, but GOs in Europe, such as France's far right National Front. Why is it bad when the US funds NGOs but okay for other nations to fund GOs?
"Also, if everything you know about a region or culture comes from the media, you should be extra careful when jumping to conclusions."
It comes from a number of sources, broad swathes of the media, through to having actually travelled widely around the world and experienced many cultures first hand.
This is why I firmly believe it's nonsense to keep criticising the US and to defend Russia, because whether you read the Western Media, the Middle Eastern Media, or even Asian, including Chinese media - they're all reporting that Russia is the aggressor, the only one that isn't is Russia itself.
Don't get me wrong, I recognise the US is guilty of many wrongs, Iraq 2003 should never have happened, and IS wouldn't be what it is now. More money could've been poured into Afghanistan infrastructure like schooling and so forth instead of a war in Iraq and Afghanistan wouldn't have seen the resurgent Taliban. It was easy from 2001 up until a couple of years ago to believe the US was the only problem in the world, the only real group of people with imperialist tendencies.
But I think the last few years have made that less clear, it's pretty clear the IS folks want to spread their own caliphate, it's pretty clear that Russia is continuing to expand it's territory outside it's own borders, not just with Crimea, but by also trying to annex parts of Georgia that want to be independent from both of them. This concerns me because whilst you may well be right about the US twisting countries to it's ways, it at least hands territory back after it thinks it's done that. Russia doesn't just invade, and try and push it's ideals, it just outright expands it's borders.
Similarly China (which I actually largely respect) is clearly trying to more forcefully expand it's claims in the South China seas, some of which is arguably justified, some not. I don't think it's a problem now, but it could be.
It's pretty clear that the US' reputation took a massive hit in the decade following 9/11, and it's pretty clear that because of that it's no longer the only bully in the playground.
I used to work for an engineering firm doing development, but prior to that my experience was in network administration. The IT department was managed by an engineer who had zero IT experience but took the job when the firm split from it's other half years before and the other half took all the IT staff, and all his staff were just people who had moved sideways. The net result was an IT department run wholly by amateurs wanting to be professionals.
Because I had real actual IT experience of a 10,000 user network from my previous job I tended to help them a lot, and I really didn't mind that, and they appreciated it.
But there were some things they just wouldn't get, security was one. I told them time and time again about the complete and utter lack of security and security policy and explained the risks. I was frankly laughed at by everyone in IT and even the directors and CEO I mentioned it to. I was told I was paranoid and being silly, and why would they ever be a hacking target, because it's not like they were drilling in the arctic or suing people for copyright infringement. All this was true despite the fact I'd set up a firewall around my net facing dev servers even if they weren't going to properly defend the rest of the company and I provided them IDS logs showing many probes from countries such as China and a number of South American countries like Colombia and Argentina, where they were also active and had an office.
It's a shame because they actually had a proper R&D department and had some genuinely unique data, designs and techniques for the field in question, I left there about 7 years ago, and in the time since I'm aware that they repeatedly became loss making, in part because of the recession, but primarily because it turns out a company in China started doing everything they could do cheaper and had to have had all their data. This didn't particularly surprise me because they had on a number of occasions had problems with Chinese sales staff probing for more information than necessary when visiting the UK offices - it seemed pretty clear someone in China was interested in entering that industry, and probes on my dev servers from China were more prolific than anything I'd seen before and since. They have now been consumed by a German company and asset stripped for the remaining useful bits of IP, but are gone as an individual company - a good hundred or so jobs were lost.
This is the greatest example I've witnessed personally where IT security and ignoring the risks due to naivety led to tragic consequences. It's possible they wouldn't have survived the prolonged downturn regardless, but it's pretty clear that espionage accelerated their end.
But what do you do? If they don't listen to the warnings and advice I don't see how you can help them. There was an attempt to shift the responsibility onto me ("You write the security document and implement the procedures if you think we need them"), of writing the security policy, implementing all the measures, but I wasn't there for that, I'd moved into development precisely because I wanted to get out of that and whilst I said I'd be happy to train and review I wasn't willing to let it become my full time job - I didn't see why I should be forced into a job I hated because IT didn't want to do the job they were supposed to be doing, hence why I left.
It's a shame that so many places learn the lesson too late, or not at all in some cases (e.g. Sony).
This isn't going to end well for Uber, in Europe this is going to result in numerous flagrant breaches of data protection law.
For starters, companies cannot transfer data about you without your permission - if Uber drivers are classed as independent contractors and are passing data about you as an individual to Uber without your authorisation then this is clearly illegal in the UK. If Uber is then allowing other drivers to see that information that has been registered as a review about you then there is a further breach.
That's before you get into the whole potential libel aspect of it too of course and that Uber drivers are going to have to be able to potentially prove each and every one of their statements in court.
If a passenger is abusive, or violent towards you then there's a proper avenue for dealing with that, and it's not mob justice, it's the police. It's what they're there for.
The problem with letting a country do whatever it wants as long as it's not impacting anyone else is that sometimes, eventually it does.
The West let Germany do whatever it wanted in the 1930s as long as it wasn't impacting anyone else, and it was great, until it did. Similarly the last 15 years has seen the West leaving Russia alone, and look what happened, it invaded Georgia and has now invaded Ukraine.
You need not just to know that they're not currently impacting anyone else, but confidence to believe that they wont be impacting anyone else in the future. Politics isn't black and white, you can't assume that because a country is keeping to itself now that it always will.
You seem so incredibly caught up in your bile towards her that you're imagining things that just aren't there.
I do not believe she was universally loved, and it doesn't matter that there were parties over their death, because there were also parties celebrating her life and massive support for a state funeral too. Obviously some people loved her, obviously some hated her.
Yes, she did a hell of a lot wrong, there's no question about that. But to pretend she did not a single thing right? Celebrating her death? That's just stupid, that's naive zealotry, that's hatred beyond reason, and again, yes, that makes you as nasty as she ever was.
I don't really care that you're Scottish for what it's worth, and yes, of course the NHS is better run up there, we're paying for it for you because apparently you eventually realised that you indeed can't look after yourselves without us continuing to prop you up.
Actually, it's newsworthy because there was a reasonable amount of evidence showing that their space program was simply an ICBM program by another name.
What makes this stand out, is that it was only a couple of weeks ago that they said they were shutting down their space program, and the world was relieved, because the threat of an Iranian ICBM/Nuclear program whether real or imagined was off the table.
Whether it's true or not, this puts it back on the table, and that brings back the risks of instability.
Pipex most definitely did cap, so I'm guessing the real issue is that you never hit them, or never used the protocols that got throttled down to modem speeds when you hit them. A quick internet search will confirm this as there are a number of posts on the topic from about 10 years ago.
Agreed, she wasn't choice of the century. But pretending that not a single thing whatsoever that she did was a good idea? That's more spiteful than Thatcher herself ever was at least.
So, are you saying it's a bad thing? What's your point? Should IS be allowed to spread all the propaganda it wants and the West not be allowed to counter it because propaganda is bad (but only if the West does it) or what?
Reminds me a bit of Lost. Seemed like a great series at first but it's pretty clear based on the ending they'd dug a hole they had no idea how to get out of so made some shit ending about being in limbo or whatever.
It was so blatant because most things were never even explained by the ending they chose, the ending they chose merely answered (badly) the main plot line, but completely failed to factor in and explain countless side plots, and so was largely just completely broken.
At least in this case he has some guidelines as to how it should all play out though, that's something. Lost basically felt like a really desperate live improvisation.
I don't mean to bring up Thatcher or talk negatively of the EU because I'm extremely pro-EU and am relatively neutral on Thatcher.
But if Thatcher's government was visionary on one thing it was technology, not only did they push computers in schools which I fondly remember as a kid and is a large part of why I do what I do and like what I like today but her government also wanted to roll out fibre and replace copper way back in the 1980s but was actually blocked by the EU because BT had at that point become a private entity.
I don't want to get caught up in the politics of Thatcher, the EU and privatisation as I know these are incredibly divisive subjects and my feelings on the issue in this case run wholly counter to my feelings in general (I'm extremely pro-EU and hate euroscepticism with a passion because it's short-sighted and isolationist, and I believe public utilities should always be publicly run) but I find this to be a fascinating twist in history. A missed opportunity that I would've loved any government ever since whether Labour, Tory, or coalition to have attempted to revive.
It's one case where EU law sadly genuinely prevented the UK being first class and completely ahead of it's time in a particular area of technology and left us much worse off for it.
Back when ADSL rolled out, and people only got 512kbps, there were no limits. You could literally download constantly at maximum speed for the entire month.
Then along came ADSL Max and people got bumped to 1 - 2mbps. Suddenly caps started getting introduced, so low that your speed had gone up but the amount you could download had literally declined by several orders of magnitude.
So whilst with the advent of basic FTTC unlimited has once again become the norm, don't count on currently unlimited bandwidth meaning perpetually unlimited bandwidth. It wouldn't be the first time in the UK that increases in speed have seemingly paradoxically meant decreases in the amount of data you're actually allowed to download. That's exactly what happened last time.
I can't tell if you don't understand vaccines or what, but you're still failing to expand on why you have a problem with flu vaccines?
They still provide herd immunity, they still make your immune system stronger in general making it better able to cope with other illnesses.
You've still failed to explain why any of that is a problem. Better hygiene doesn't make you more resistant to illness, it just delays the inevitable.
Given that the flu can be spread not simply by touch but by bodily fluids from coughing and sneezing I don't really understand why you think hygeine fixes the problem and yet flu vaccines are useless.
Again, there's no downside to them, they make you more resistant to it and other illnesses and protect others, so what exactly is the problem given that there's no real downside?
It's amazing how many Americans have this absurd view that UK internet is somehow universally centred.
There are three censorship tools in the UK:
1) The IWF watch list, this is a list of verified child porn sites. It's wholly optional for ISPs to implement and a few don't, but most do.
2) Porn filters. These exist only on a handful of ISPs that try to appeal to people who actually like the idea of a nanny state. Even here though they are wholly optional, and the vast majority of ISPs don't even offer them.
3) Website blocking through the courts. These are only applicable to the largest ISPs because it's recognised that the cost of implementing blocks for smaller ISPs would be too much of a problem.
So there is such thing as wholly uncensored internet in the UK if you really really want that. Most people are happy with censorship simply being child porn sites that in two decades of internet access you'll never even accidentally visit because even US companies like Google have purged them from their indexes.
If you want no filtering in the UK then you can absolutely have that. So if you think the fact that there is optional censorship in the UK is somehow too much of a trade-off for absolutely terrible internet access then more fool you.
I've seen more site blocking in my life as a UK citizen because of the US than because of anything to do with censorship here in the UK - ICE domain seizures and US led raids have taken down sites I've noticed. So much for land of the free - not only is your internet access censored, but your government censors it for the rest of us outside the US as well.
Slashdot Mirror
Yep, the exact same arguments were being made about the F-22 and Eurofighter. "Why do we need these high tech planes when all we're doing is bombing mud huts in Afghanistan?".
Those planes look like kind of a good idea now we have Russia flying within miles and sometimes literally outright breaching sovereign NATO airspace again with it's probing patrols in the Baltic, the North Sea, and English channel and with transponders off and no response to communications. We're also finding those mud huts are right in the middle of a high tech Syrian air defence network too.
So it's kind of a good thing we didn't listen to the naysayers and did decide to keep up with our 4.5th gen and 5th gen fighter programs after all.
Some people don't understand that you have a military that's prepared for what might happen, not what is happening or has happened in the past.
I used to think they were overpriced too, but apparently a couple of HS2 trains will cost as much as one of those aircraft carriers.
Now I can't figure out if the aircraft carriers are a fantastic bargain or the HS2 rolling stock is one of the biggest government orchestrated thefts from the public purse to private business in history.
I guess it depends on the role, if it's a ship whose job is wholly to protect say an aircraft carrier, then it has all it needs to just keep on doing that.
But yes, it doesn't mean ships whose job is to shell the living shit out of places from off the coast will have unlimited ammunition, it's true in a defensive capacity though.
And how do you propose to launch this EMP attack? EMP isn't a magical thing you can just conjure up and cast at someone like a wizard. Pretty much anything you could do to a hit a ship with an EMP would be no less difficult than just blowing up the ship with something explosive. EMP is only preferable if you then intend to send soldiers on bored the ship to seize it and retrieve if for yourself, but good fucking luck with that. I imagine the crew would scuttle it before you had chance.
Yes I am still using my Galaxy Nexus because performance-wise it's still entirely adequate, it can still run everything I need and it seems silly to blow a few hundred quid when there's literally nothing wrong with the existing device beyond poor software support.
Even if I did decide to replace it I really just do not know where to go. I can't stand the crap that Samsung and HTC et. al. throw on top and don't particularly like much of what they have to offer half the time anyway. Many of the cheaper manufacturers like ZTE et. al. offer crap OS support, but at least they're cheap so it's understandable. I've been burnt once by Google and just don't have enough faith to try again. I've been using and have defended Android since the HTC Magic was released in the UK. If my phone were to fail now, I think I'd probably jump ship, I doubt I'd switch to the iPhone because I hate the horrendously locked down and overpriced Apple ecosystem and don't frankly find their UI intuitive and productive (though it's most definitely feels nice). I never thought I'd say it but I think I'd have to give Windows Phone serious consideration. I've always liked Nokia's hardware at least, and if Android isn't a reliable platform then it almost seems worth putting up with Microsoft's OS.
And I know what the official Google line is on the Galaxy Nexus but I'm having a hard time buying it. I'm struggling to understand how a bug at the application layer affecting the browser cannot be fixed because of something to do with lower level firmware. I do not see why you even need the low level source code when you can still interface with the existing binaries you have for a general update in fact - this is something CM seems to have managed many a time quite successfully. It frankly sounds more like an excuse to not have to commit resources to supporting an older device because it would take just a little bit more effort than usual, and so how will I ever know if Google will make that arbitrary decision on the next device I buy from them? It's not my fault Google made a boneheaded decision so Google should've stumped up the cash to pay the extra staffing areas to work around that fault, it's not like it's a cash poor company. Good customer service is stumping up to fix or work around your screwups, not just saying "Ah, well, we fucked up, why don't you buy another of our products to replace it?". I don't think anything less than a contractual assurance that my phone would be supported for something like at least 3 years could pull me back to Google right now. It'd take a hell of a lot to heal the burn of the Galaxy Nexus.
But even beyond this I'm noticing Android becoming far less stable. Maps seems to crash incredibly regularly now, and Chrome does too. The on screen keyboard also seems to keel over now and again. Increased compartmentalisation of components into apps seems to have gone hand in hand with decreased stability. I see this not just on my Galaxy Nexus but on my 2012 Nexus 7, which at least has continued to see updates, but has also seen the widespread instability of Google applications.
I understand why Google is moving the way it is, to increase modularity of parts, and I think that's entirely sensible - as a developer and architect myself I'm a massive fan of modularity and do not like monolithic designs. I just don't like the quality of software I'm seeing come out of that, and I'm still a little peeved about getting screwed over the Galaxy Nexus.
I'm concerned that Google needs to start rethinking it's Android strategy to improve quality control, and to start rebuilding confidence in it for people like me who were early adopters, long time supporters, but who have also become victims of Google's failures also. If Google achieves this by giving a guarantee of future updates for a reasonable period, if stability improves, then within the next couple of years I'd probably buy a new Google phone, a new Google tablet, and also an Android smartwatch. Without any of that I'm likely to continue just sitting on wha
"This is the component that is riddled with security holes in 4.3 and earlier devices, but which Google can't update."
Why not? Google sold me my Galaxy Nexus, they wrote the software. No reason they couldn't update it, they just can't be arsed.
Which is a shame, because I bought a Google phone believing it'd mean I'd get 1st class update support from Google with the carriers cut out, but it turned out that Google is actually worse at supporting some of it's devices than even the likes of Samsung and HTC are.
It effectively means you can't rely on Android or Google if you want a platform that will remain secure, you could find yourself vulnerable with nowhere official to go after a mere 18 months.
Yes it was:
http://arstechnica.com/tech-po...
Pay more attention next time.
I think this is the SO distortion effect.
Effectively the more warts a language has and/or the more poorly documented it is, the more questions that are bound to be asked about it, hence the more apparent popularity if you use SO as a metric.
So if companies like Microsoft and Oracle produce masses of great documentation for their respective technologies and provide entire sites of resources for them (such as www.asp.net or the MSDN developer forums) then they'll inherently see reduced "popularity" on SO.
Similarly some languages have a higher bar to entry, PHP and Javascript are both repeatedly sold as languages that beginners can start with, it should similarly be unsurprising therefore that more questions are asked about them than by people who have moved up the change to enterprise languages like C#, Java, and C++.
But I shouldn't complain too much, SO popularity whilst still blatantly flawed is still a far better metric than TIOBE whose methodology is just outright broken (they explain their methodology on their site, and even without high school statistics knowledge it shouldn't take more than 5 seconds to spot gaping holes in their methodology).
I'm still amazed no one's done an actual useful study on popularity and simply scraped data from job sites each month. It'd be nice to know what companies are actually asking for, and what they're paying. That is after all the only thing anyone really wants to know when they talk about popularity - how likely is it to get me a job, and how well is it likely to pay? Popularity doesn't matter beyond that as you just choose the best tool for the job regardless of how popular it is.
"You're waaay oversimplifying events here."
No on the contrary, I'm doing the opposite, I'm bringing the complexities of reality into your simplification.
"Regarding Russia's so-called aggression"
Sorry, I'm struggling to take you seriously. Even if you disagree on Eastern Ukraine being a de-facto Russian invasion now, even Russia itself admits the military units that locked down Crimea were Russian soldiers. How can you possibly believe this is anything other than aggression? Once you move your troops onto foreign soil, that's aggression. You can argue that the people their wanted it, but they weren't given the chance to tell us openly, there was no Scottish style referendum where the people were given the option without being asked at gunpoint.
As for NATO, it's worth keeping in mind that Russia was given the option to join and become part of it before criticising it, but Putin put the final nail in that coffin because he had other ideals about his own soviet empire.
I absolutely agree that the US funds lots of NGOs in foreign countries to pursue it's interests, for example, organisations pushing for greater democracy in Russia. You can argue that that's not right, that it shouldn't meddle. But compare and contrast to Russia, Russia is outright funding not NGOs, but GOs in Europe, such as France's far right National Front. Why is it bad when the US funds NGOs but okay for other nations to fund GOs?
"Also, if everything you know about a region or culture comes from the media, you should be extra careful when jumping to conclusions."
It comes from a number of sources, broad swathes of the media, through to having actually travelled widely around the world and experienced many cultures first hand.
This is why I firmly believe it's nonsense to keep criticising the US and to defend Russia, because whether you read the Western Media, the Middle Eastern Media, or even Asian, including Chinese media - they're all reporting that Russia is the aggressor, the only one that isn't is Russia itself.
Don't get me wrong, I recognise the US is guilty of many wrongs, Iraq 2003 should never have happened, and IS wouldn't be what it is now. More money could've been poured into Afghanistan infrastructure like schooling and so forth instead of a war in Iraq and Afghanistan wouldn't have seen the resurgent Taliban. It was easy from 2001 up until a couple of years ago to believe the US was the only problem in the world, the only real group of people with imperialist tendencies.
But I think the last few years have made that less clear, it's pretty clear the IS folks want to spread their own caliphate, it's pretty clear that Russia is continuing to expand it's territory outside it's own borders, not just with Crimea, but by also trying to annex parts of Georgia that want to be independent from both of them. This concerns me because whilst you may well be right about the US twisting countries to it's ways, it at least hands territory back after it thinks it's done that. Russia doesn't just invade, and try and push it's ideals, it just outright expands it's borders.
Similarly China (which I actually largely respect) is clearly trying to more forcefully expand it's claims in the South China seas, some of which is arguably justified, some not. I don't think it's a problem now, but it could be.
It's pretty clear that the US' reputation took a massive hit in the decade following 9/11, and it's pretty clear that because of that it's no longer the only bully in the playground.
Yep, it's amazing how many just don't get it.
I used to work for an engineering firm doing development, but prior to that my experience was in network administration. The IT department was managed by an engineer who had zero IT experience but took the job when the firm split from it's other half years before and the other half took all the IT staff, and all his staff were just people who had moved sideways. The net result was an IT department run wholly by amateurs wanting to be professionals.
Because I had real actual IT experience of a 10,000 user network from my previous job I tended to help them a lot, and I really didn't mind that, and they appreciated it.
But there were some things they just wouldn't get, security was one. I told them time and time again about the complete and utter lack of security and security policy and explained the risks. I was frankly laughed at by everyone in IT and even the directors and CEO I mentioned it to. I was told I was paranoid and being silly, and why would they ever be a hacking target, because it's not like they were drilling in the arctic or suing people for copyright infringement. All this was true despite the fact I'd set up a firewall around my net facing dev servers even if they weren't going to properly defend the rest of the company and I provided them IDS logs showing many probes from countries such as China and a number of South American countries like Colombia and Argentina, where they were also active and had an office.
It's a shame because they actually had a proper R&D department and had some genuinely unique data, designs and techniques for the field in question, I left there about 7 years ago, and in the time since I'm aware that they repeatedly became loss making, in part because of the recession, but primarily because it turns out a company in China started doing everything they could do cheaper and had to have had all their data. This didn't particularly surprise me because they had on a number of occasions had problems with Chinese sales staff probing for more information than necessary when visiting the UK offices - it seemed pretty clear someone in China was interested in entering that industry, and probes on my dev servers from China were more prolific than anything I'd seen before and since. They have now been consumed by a German company and asset stripped for the remaining useful bits of IP, but are gone as an individual company - a good hundred or so jobs were lost.
This is the greatest example I've witnessed personally where IT security and ignoring the risks due to naivety led to tragic consequences. It's possible they wouldn't have survived the prolonged downturn regardless, but it's pretty clear that espionage accelerated their end.
But what do you do? If they don't listen to the warnings and advice I don't see how you can help them. There was an attempt to shift the responsibility onto me ("You write the security document and implement the procedures if you think we need them"), of writing the security policy, implementing all the measures, but I wasn't there for that, I'd moved into development precisely because I wanted to get out of that and whilst I said I'd be happy to train and review I wasn't willing to let it become my full time job - I didn't see why I should be forced into a job I hated because IT didn't want to do the job they were supposed to be doing, hence why I left.
It's a shame that so many places learn the lesson too late, or not at all in some cases (e.g. Sony).
This isn't going to end well for Uber, in Europe this is going to result in numerous flagrant breaches of data protection law.
For starters, companies cannot transfer data about you without your permission - if Uber drivers are classed as independent contractors and are passing data about you as an individual to Uber without your authorisation then this is clearly illegal in the UK. If Uber is then allowing other drivers to see that information that has been registered as a review about you then there is a further breach.
That's before you get into the whole potential libel aspect of it too of course and that Uber drivers are going to have to be able to potentially prove each and every one of their statements in court.
If a passenger is abusive, or violent towards you then there's a proper avenue for dealing with that, and it's not mob justice, it's the police. It's what they're there for.
The problem with letting a country do whatever it wants as long as it's not impacting anyone else is that sometimes, eventually it does.
The West let Germany do whatever it wanted in the 1930s as long as it wasn't impacting anyone else, and it was great, until it did. Similarly the last 15 years has seen the West leaving Russia alone, and look what happened, it invaded Georgia and has now invaded Ukraine.
You need not just to know that they're not currently impacting anyone else, but confidence to believe that they wont be impacting anyone else in the future. Politics isn't black and white, you can't assume that because a country is keeping to itself now that it always will.
I don't know if the payouts had much of an impact, but the earthquake itself did:
http://business.time.com/2011/...
You seem so incredibly caught up in your bile towards her that you're imagining things that just aren't there.
I do not believe she was universally loved, and it doesn't matter that there were parties over their death, because there were also parties celebrating her life and massive support for a state funeral too. Obviously some people loved her, obviously some hated her.
Yes, she did a hell of a lot wrong, there's no question about that. But to pretend she did not a single thing right? Celebrating her death? That's just stupid, that's naive zealotry, that's hatred beyond reason, and again, yes, that makes you as nasty as she ever was.
I don't really care that you're Scottish for what it's worth, and yes, of course the NHS is better run up there, we're paying for it for you because apparently you eventually realised that you indeed can't look after yourselves without us continuing to prop you up.
Actually, it's newsworthy because there was a reasonable amount of evidence showing that their space program was simply an ICBM program by another name.
What makes this stand out, is that it was only a couple of weeks ago that they said they were shutting down their space program, and the world was relieved, because the threat of an Iranian ICBM/Nuclear program whether real or imagined was off the table.
Whether it's true or not, this puts it back on the table, and that brings back the risks of instability.
Pipex most definitely did cap, so I'm guessing the real issue is that you never hit them, or never used the protocols that got throttled down to modem speeds when you hit them. A quick internet search will confirm this as there are a number of posts on the topic from about 10 years ago.
Agreed, she wasn't choice of the century. But pretending that not a single thing whatsoever that she did was a good idea? That's more spiteful than Thatcher herself ever was at least.
So, are you saying it's a bad thing? What's your point? Should IS be allowed to spread all the propaganda it wants and the West not be allowed to counter it because propaganda is bad (but only if the West does it) or what?
Yes, she was so universally bad that she was elected 3 times!
What ISPs have you been with over the last 15 years?
Reminds me a bit of Lost. Seemed like a great series at first but it's pretty clear based on the ending they'd dug a hole they had no idea how to get out of so made some shit ending about being in limbo or whatever.
It was so blatant because most things were never even explained by the ending they chose, the ending they chose merely answered (badly) the main plot line, but completely failed to factor in and explain countless side plots, and so was largely just completely broken.
At least in this case he has some guidelines as to how it should all play out though, that's something. Lost basically felt like a really desperate live improvisation.
I don't mean to bring up Thatcher or talk negatively of the EU because I'm extremely pro-EU and am relatively neutral on Thatcher.
But if Thatcher's government was visionary on one thing it was technology, not only did they push computers in schools which I fondly remember as a kid and is a large part of why I do what I do and like what I like today but her government also wanted to roll out fibre and replace copper way back in the 1980s but was actually blocked by the EU because BT had at that point become a private entity.
I don't want to get caught up in the politics of Thatcher, the EU and privatisation as I know these are incredibly divisive subjects and my feelings on the issue in this case run wholly counter to my feelings in general (I'm extremely pro-EU and hate euroscepticism with a passion because it's short-sighted and isolationist, and I believe public utilities should always be publicly run) but I find this to be a fascinating twist in history. A missed opportunity that I would've loved any government ever since whether Labour, Tory, or coalition to have attempted to revive.
It's one case where EU law sadly genuinely prevented the UK being first class and completely ahead of it's time in a particular area of technology and left us much worse off for it.
Yeah, but this is how it was with ADSL too.
Back when ADSL rolled out, and people only got 512kbps, there were no limits. You could literally download constantly at maximum speed for the entire month.
Then along came ADSL Max and people got bumped to 1 - 2mbps. Suddenly caps started getting introduced, so low that your speed had gone up but the amount you could download had literally declined by several orders of magnitude.
So whilst with the advent of basic FTTC unlimited has once again become the norm, don't count on currently unlimited bandwidth meaning perpetually unlimited bandwidth. It wouldn't be the first time in the UK that increases in speed have seemingly paradoxically meant decreases in the amount of data you're actually allowed to download. That's exactly what happened last time.
I can't tell if you don't understand vaccines or what, but you're still failing to expand on why you have a problem with flu vaccines?
They still provide herd immunity, they still make your immune system stronger in general making it better able to cope with other illnesses.
You've still failed to explain why any of that is a problem. Better hygiene doesn't make you more resistant to illness, it just delays the inevitable.
Given that the flu can be spread not simply by touch but by bodily fluids from coughing and sneezing I don't really understand why you think hygeine fixes the problem and yet flu vaccines are useless.
Again, there's no downside to them, they make you more resistant to it and other illnesses and protect others, so what exactly is the problem given that there's no real downside?
It's amazing how many Americans have this absurd view that UK internet is somehow universally centred.
There are three censorship tools in the UK:
1) The IWF watch list, this is a list of verified child porn sites. It's wholly optional for ISPs to implement and a few don't, but most do.
2) Porn filters. These exist only on a handful of ISPs that try to appeal to people who actually like the idea of a nanny state. Even here though they are wholly optional, and the vast majority of ISPs don't even offer them.
3) Website blocking through the courts. These are only applicable to the largest ISPs because it's recognised that the cost of implementing blocks for smaller ISPs would be too much of a problem.
So there is such thing as wholly uncensored internet in the UK if you really really want that. Most people are happy with censorship simply being child porn sites that in two decades of internet access you'll never even accidentally visit because even US companies like Google have purged them from their indexes.
If you want no filtering in the UK then you can absolutely have that. So if you think the fact that there is optional censorship in the UK is somehow too much of a trade-off for absolutely terrible internet access then more fool you.
I've seen more site blocking in my life as a UK citizen because of the US than because of anything to do with censorship here in the UK - ICE domain seizures and US led raids have taken down sites I've noticed. So much for land of the free - not only is your internet access censored, but your government censors it for the rest of us outside the US as well.