FatLittleMonkey is correct, the Ukraine has many Buk SAM systems. The one that allegedly shot down MH-17, however, appears at the present time to be a Russian-supplied and crewed loaner to the separatists they are backing.

Not that a Ukrainian error of identification would have been any more or less tragic, although it's less plausible since the separatists are not operating any air assets that I'm aware of so the Ukrainians are much more likely to be very conservative with regard to their anti-air grid.

It's important to note: At this stage it is clear that neither the Russians, nor the separatists, intended to shoot down a civilian airliner. They were targeting military assets. That point should be remembered. It's not like Putin's on his dark throne, cackling away at all of this. In fact I suspect he's currently having his men find and quietly dispose of whoever ordered the missile launch.

That doesn't change the fact that the Russians are clearly supplying the separatists with weapons and trained crews, and that in war people die, including people who had no horse in the race at all. Supplying rebels with state-of-the-air medium range anti-aircraft systems is a significant escalation of the previous conflict which has, as we've seen, the potential to cause all kinds of misery for third parties.

> shot down a Ukrainian fighter

I'm seeing this a lot. Minor point of order: The craft that was shot down was an SU-25 Frogfoot (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sukhoi_Su-25), which is a ground attack aircraft; the Eastern Bloc equivalent of the A-10 "Warthog" Thunderbolt II (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fairchild_Republic_A-10_Thunderbolt_II).

I agree with the broader point though that it seems clear that whoever was operating the Buk SAM system was aiming for Ukrainian air assets, based on their previous actions, but they dun goofed and shot down a civilian aircraft.

At this particular point in time, it does not seem to be a deliberate action. The fact that the agencies involved (Russia for supplying the expensive, specialist equipment with crew trained in its use; Russian-backed Separatists for ordering the anti-air action) are going to great lengths to attempt to cover up their involvement speaks volumes in support of this conjecture.

Some things might, like serials. Means you can just read through.

Fellow author here. The problem is, it requires Prime, and the payment is only a borrow. Expect the borrow rate to increase. Of course, that's fine if Amazon increases the pool accordingly; they might treat Kindle Unlimited as a loss-leader and just accept that some people will read 50 books a month and accept the loss, or recoup it on those who buy subscriptions but never read anything.

Prime just isn't worth it for me, because it requires KDP Select, which is essentially Amazon exclusivity. I make about equal amounts between Amazon, Google Play, and Apple. Last month I did particularly well on Google Play and it doubled my Amazon revenue. This month, due to a Bookbub promotion on my best selling novel, Amazon's equal to Google Play + Apple. But that's rare.

Even if Kindle Unlimited takes off and doubles my Amazon sales, I'll still lose money, and exclusivity always makes me nervous. Back in 2012, when I started publishing, I was exclusive and it meant heart-attacks every time Amazon did something messed up like de-activate my product page, or put me in the wrong category, or ranking problems, or whatever.

I might give it a shot with some of my smaller series such as my paranormal romance serial, or my fantasy novel, but I'm not going to put my cash-cow into Amazon exclusivity without something more than Kindle Unlimited behind it.

Kindle author here (and other platforms too).

The book is genuinely DRM free. The .mobi file format, which is what Amazon uses, is well documented by FOSS projects such as Calibre. You can transcode your DRM free .mobi files into .epub (which is just a .zip with HTML in it), into PDFs, Word documents, even plain text.

All of my books are DRM free for this reason (and many are also free-as-in-beer).

I'm not really sure why this whole thing is offensive.

My Mum had sex. At least once because, you know, I'm here. This much should be clear. And if she wanted to have sex with you too? Well, she's a grown woman, she can do whatever she wants. Hell, I hope that at age 60 I'm still getting some as well, especially from people who are around a third my age.

I mean, really. That's some high grade success there. Having earth-shattering sex with nubile young 20-something's when you're 60. That's hardly an insult.

I love my Mum a lot. I want her to be happy. If that means having all the crazy sex she wants, by all means. She can. I'm not going to judge her.

And another thing... what does that say about you? "Yeah bro, I had intercourse with a 60 year old woman! Fuck yeah!". I mean, by all means, if that's what you're into then whatever mate, go for your life. Some people like that. It's fine. Some people are into having sex with blowup dolls. That's weird but if it's their thing, then I'm cool with it. They tend to brag about it a lot less though.

Honestly, the most offensive thing about that is the waterbed. Those things are a piece of shit.

... making waves.

Glory to Arstotzka.

Where's my mod points. This.

I write books for a living (see sig). I've published 7 novels and 20-ish short stories/novellas, whatever.

My gut feeling is that if you paid for anything I wrote, you can resell it, as long as you do it once and delete the original. Yes, I know there is no way I can enforce this, but I also don't really give a shit.

Most authors do not feel this way and I'm not really sure why. I suspect it's because there's a feeling that most people won't do this and will just be reselling books en-masse for their own profit. Obviously, this is bad. If anyone can take a book I wrote and sell hundreds of copies for their own gain, well, that's not good for me. I wrote it, only I can sell it in that manner. If you bought a copy, you can re-sell it, but only that copy. It makes sense to me.

Opposition to re-selling of purchased ebooks (once, and with full transferal of the right to read the ebook) is quite prevalent amongst the author community, but I feel that this fails, largely, to take into account that there are hundreds if not thousands of ebook piracy sites where almost all of our for-pay work is available for free with no such restrictions. Yet I still sell thousands of dollars of books a month.

Accordingly, I still feel confident that I can sell books, for profit, mainly because I price aggressively, and sites like Google Play/Amazon/etc are convenient and people are happy to pay a few bucks for convenience.

If your readers are your enemy you've already lost.

Fucking this.

Does your average voyage contain a zip-lock bag big enough to house a body?

Weight is a huge concern for space voyages. It's something like $10,000 a pound. Quite a lot for a even a simple bag that doesn't have a dual, or tri, purpose.

I know nuclear submarines don't have airtight bags big enough to hold a body and they're much more free with what they can bring aboard. I was reading an article about one where a guy, what do you know, had a heart attack and died while they were submerged for a long duration. They ended up having a "feast" as a wake, because they cleared out one of the food freezers and chucked him in there.

It's actually not about that. It's about not having a corpse up in space.

Seriously. A dead body is a significant biohazard and in the cramped, oxygen rich, closed-system environment of a spaceship having a corpse floating around is a serious biohazard. That thing's not going to stay in one piece; it's going to rot, break up, liquefy, and all in zero gravity.

If the crew starts breathing in dead guy, they too are in a lot of trouble.

These ships don't have a morgue or any way to properly dispose of a body. Although the idea of a "burial in space" is appealing, by simply casting the body out into the void, the problem is that this has its own problems. Assuming the vehicle's crew are capable of spacewalks, and they may not be, it's an unplanned excursion which takes up a surprising amount of resources, most notably time. Sure, the body would burn up for most vehicles -- the shuttle sees a temperature of around 1500 C for 15 to 20 minutes which I'm confident would do the job -- but it's a non-trivial exercise. They can't just open the window and toss 'em out.

Then there are the side effects, on crew morale least of all (the types of people picked for these missions tend to be hardy, very pragmatic folk who understand the risks and more than intelligent enough to realise this event was completely unavoidable and they're in no danger), but to the ground crew morale (who often feel extremely protective of the crew and are often, it's said, more nervous and frightened than the actual crew themselves), and to the broader space program in general.

There's also the broader financial implications. Training astronauts is EXPENSIVE. Research on keeping them alive, especially if such research can lead to other medical breakthroughs, is money well spent. Sure, that one guy is never going to fly into space again, but the ground crew for any mission is vast and tends to include other former astronauts. If he dies up there, we lose his experience and skills set, which we've paid a lot of good money for.

> militant godbothering atheist

What? That makes no sense. It's like saying militant beef-eating vegetarian.

> Just imagine it: Some child asks Mr Jones in science class in some primary school full of 8 year olds whether God made the world. Jones gives a diplomatic answer. Little Johnny goes home and tells his parents. The next thing Jones hears is that he is now on a disciplinary charge for "teaching Creationism".

Yes. That is exactly what should happen.

If some child asks Mr Jones in science class in a primary school full of 8 year olds whether God made the world, Jones should say, "The verifiable, testable evidence suggests that this is not the case. See here and here and here. Some people believe that a supernatural being, such as God, Vishnu, or Ra did create the world -- they are entitled to their beliefs, but those beliefs do not stand up to scientific rigor."

This is the only reasonable position for a science teacher, in class, to take.

Imagine, for a moment, if some other part of the school curriculum was able to be influence by the religious beliefs of the teachers. Let me give a few examples:

History student: "Mr Jones, is it true that horses were introduced to North America in the 16th century?"
Mormon Mr Jones: "Horses were always in North America, as documented by Nephi in 590 B.C."

English student: "Mr Jones, is it I before E, except after C, or is that rule not taught anymore?"
Muslim Mr Jones: "Actually, Arabic words have holy power and a special relationship with Allah. It is the most holy language and you should write in that instead."

Maths student: "Mr Jones, if the train leaves at 5:30pm, heads west, and goes for months, won't it just circle the world?"
Hindu Mr Jones: "No, of course not. The Earth is flat, as told by NARASINGA PURANA. If you go too far west, you will fall off."

You think it's fine to let other religions do as you want Christianity to do? Let a teacher's religious viewpoints influence what they teach? That's insane.

> This is the intention. This is the design purpose of the law; to permit malicious local atheists to harass church schools.

No. It's not. The purpose is to stop lying for Jesus, where Christians -- slowly but surely confronted with the evidence that their worldview is a fiction -- resort to either deluding themselves ("I choose not to accept the evidence"), or worse, resort to indoctrination of children in order to validate their life-long beliefs.

> And why do people even want to teach Creationism? Because of all the atheists who did trolling tours of the bible belt sneering, "Science proves your religion is a lie! Har har!"

People want to teach Creationism because fundamental, Biblical literalists realized that if they didn't convince people that the Bible is real when they were children and highly susceptible to manipulation, they wouldn't accept it as adults because the tale is, frankly, ludicrous.

The cornerstones of Creationism are:

- Science and evidence are lies/conspiracies/not to be trusted.
- Faith -- believing in something in spite of evidence -- is a virtue and superior to believing in things because of evidence.
- Never change your point of view for any reason, no matter how overwhelming the evidence to the contrary.
- Because we don't know everything, this is justification to prove anything wrong. Except God.

> No society is well served by making ideologically-based denunciations possible.

Science isn't an ideology. It's a search for facts. It makes no moral judgements, no pronouncements, and has no dogma. It is simply facts.

> No society is well-served by trying to prevent members of the world's largest religion - which created our society - from running schools and teaching in them.

Here's a perfect example of why teaching Creationism in schools is wrong.

My initial reply to this question was: "The world's largest religion? You mean Islam, right?"

And then I thought -- no. I don't know that for sure. I should check that. So I googled it. Yep, Christianity is the world's largest religion. So what did I do then?

I changed my position in light of the evidence presented to me.

The truth is not a popularity contest. Even if the facts make you feel uncomfortable -- I, like many others, don't like being wrong -- the facts stand. They are what they are. I may not like Christianity being the dominant religion on this planet. I might love it. I might hate it. I might despise it with all my being and try, with everything I have, to undermine and destroy it at every turn.

None of that changes the fact of the matter, which is that Christianity is the dominant religion on this planet.

The evidence strongly suggets that the Earth was not created 6,000-10,000 years ago by a God. This is fact. It, too, many make people feel uncomfortable -- but the fact stands. The Earth is billions of years old. You might not like this. You might hate it.

It doesn't matter. It is fact.

Creationists don't care about facts. They don't want to know the truth. They just want to create more Christians, either through lying for Jesus or deluding themselves that they'll "eventually" be proven right, even if that has to happen after they die.

> The real story in UK schools is that Moslems are trying to hijack the schools in order to indoctrinate suicide bombers. So the government rushes into action and passes a law ... against the Christians. It's appalling.

I think it's hilarious how badly Christians are reacting to the idea that Muslims are infiltrating schools and influencing kids, indoctrinating them into a religion. They hate it because IT IS EXACTLY WHAT THEY WANT TO DO, just for a different religion.

So they're really just jealous that Muslims are doing it better.

> become so intensely fanatical with their faith-based beliefs, which they force upon everyone, that you actually can't reason with them.

Funny words for someone who, no matter how many times they're told that the Earth is receiving energy from the Sun, continues to say it's a closed system in a vain effort to twist an engineering simplification into a validation of a religious viewpoint.