To the Russians....absolutely. The point of hostages is to prevent authorities from storming the building. The Russians tend to respond to this by saying: "Doesn't matter, we'll kill everyone if we have to, but we will make damned sure we kill you..."

Makes hostage taking much less effective as a tactic.

The Russians/USSR did the same thing to Arabs during the 70's/80's when taking hostages was the fad...

So the story goes, some Soviet Diplomats were kidnapped in Lebanon. The Soviets send in an Alpha team, find the kidnappers families and start sending them pieces of those family members in boxes. Shortly thereafter the hostages are released and no group in the middle east has bothered to fuck the Russians again...

As a developer it's been a problem developing for Android. It's one of the reasons why at work we charge more to develop android versions of apps usually as we'll only QA test against Nexus devices. If our clients want QA on any additional handsets basically increase the development costs by 50% per device. Usually if clients add any other devices it's will be Samsung, but we charge QA per model on Android devices. So Galaxy S4, S5, Note could double the price we charge for an Android app vs. iOS.

Personally I no longer develop apps for Android. I used to, but Android apps were less than 25% of my revenue and accounted for about 90% of my support requests. In particular "App crashes on startup" and on a handset I've never heard of before. Especially problematic seemed to be the number of prepaid android devices. Their OS's never seem to be kept current or running some tweaks that may cause compatibility issues for whatever reasons.

The same thing happened to me. I'd been buying my own health insurance since I sold my company in 2011. It cost me $83 per month. I'm in my early 30's and healthy. Only time I used it was for a sinus infection and annual check ups. Deductible was $3500 with max out of pocket of $11,000. Office co-pay's were $30, $50 for urgent care and drug coverage worked well enough for me. My last antibiotics cost me $20 co-pay. Then I was informed last fall my plan was not "ACA" compliant and would be cancelled at the end of last year.

So I went shopping on the exchange. The closest plan to what I had was a silver package. It was $280 a month. 3x what I was paying. That was more than I wanted to pay. So I looked at a "Bronze" plan. Still $156 a month and eventually what I selected. It had a $6000 a year deductible and $17,000 max out of pocket per year.

Then I actually had to use it for an Urgent care visit. Under my old plan, Urgent care was a $50 visit. Well it was $90 co-pay under my new plan. I was prescribed the same antibiotics as the previous time. Cost: $45 co-pay instead of $20.

Fortunately I got married and now on my Wife's company plan (although they're likely to pay the fine as it will be cheaper than providing insurance so not sure for how much longer). It was about the same as my bronze plan (~$180 per month to add me). But coverage is a hell of a lot better.

It has nothing to do with the technology. And the law governing copyright and broadcast rights has been pretty clear for a long time. It would be no different than my neighbor on the hill that gets great OTA reception capturing those broadcasts, running a cable down to my house and charging me to "watch" signals he captured. He wouldn't have the rights to transmit that copyrighted broadcast/telecast unless he went to the networks and got a written agreement.

Or let's say he has a big radio antenna and can get radio broadcasts from say KMOX, then retransmits that signal to an FM frequency of his choosing. (Yes I know FCC licensing and all that, but let's ignore that and just look at the fact that the technology doesn't matter) He'd need a license from KMOX to retransmit their copyrighted broadcasts. Ever listen to a baseball game, especially on the Radio? Somewhere around the 5th to 7th inning I grew up with Jack Buck or Mike Shannon saying: "This broadcast is presented by the authority of Major League Baseball and the St. Louis Cardinals, LLC. Accounts and descriptions of the game may not be retransmitted or broadcast without prior written consent of the St. Louis Cardinals, LLC. And there is a such thing as the "Cardinals Radio Network" in which smaller stations away from KMOX retransmit KMOX's broadcast of the game on their local FM or AM frequency. But they have a license to do so.

Aereo is no different. You are just replacing radio waves with the internet. Technology for delivery is different, but the legalities are the same. That's why the Justice is saying that it shouldn't have a chilling effect on technology. If Aereo had a license or got a license from the broadcasters to carry their stream over the internet, then no harm no foul.

"retransmit" means exactly that. Previously it was via radio waves, but now it's through the internet. Technology changed, but the spirit of the law did not. Whether it goes through the air or over a "series of tubes" is irrelevant: it's still retransmitting without a license from the copyright holders.

Cable companies pay a license per subscriber. Netflix pays a license for streaming rights as does Amazon. That's why they are allowed to show copyrighted materials. Aereo apparently did not.

More at the Cable companies have agreed to pay the broadcasters for a per subscriber fee to license those broadcasts. Apparently Aereo was not. Netflix has reached an agreement with content providers to provider broadcast over the internet and has the rights to do so.

Aereo apparently did not.

Now if you stream netflix to your computer, then say put a webcam in front to record and then stream to people via a 3rd party site, then you'd be publically broadcasting.

When you watch netflix on your device over wifi you are simply consuming...

Yes, but your cable company has a license from the content providers to transmit those channels to you. My understanding is that Aereo did not.

Now the Russians always had a greater heavy lift capacity when it game to rocket engines. Also seemed to be able to put things into orbit more accurately. But when it came down to military aircraft after 1970 it's been a different story.

Last I checked the F-15 is 104 to 0 against primarily MIG's. In fact I don't think an American fighter has been shot down in Air to Air Combat since Vietnam.

My wife and I just left sprint literally 2 weeks ago for T-Mobile for the same reasons. We can afford to buy the phones outright and only pay for monthly service. We get two lines for the price of her old sprint plan on T-mobile.

Not sure how I feel about this...

My wife just replaced her Samsung Galaxy with a google Nexus. Worlds of difference between her old galaxy S3 and the Nexus 5 in terms of performance. Plus there is a lack of "little" things that annoyed her on the Galaxy.

Until it becomes a hassle. Example, I just got a new phone last week and didn't have a chance to update my google authenticator app to the new device. It was a vacation so the computer stayed at home. I ordered tickets online at went to print at the hotel only to realize I couldn't access my gmail account to print. I was still able to goto Will Call to pick up the tickets, but it still meant waiting in line for 15 minutes, something we had hoped to skip by purchasing online.

Sorry, no succession. The South tried that once 150 years ago. I didn't end well for them.

Which usually goes back to local law enforcement, or at least a portion of that, but not in all states. There are cities here in Missouri where the local governments made up most of the revenue from traffic violations. A couple cities were famous for this until the state passed some laws prohibiting them from doing this.

Nebraska, I believe, collects all traffic fines revenue and then doles that money out to the schools instead of police departments. Doesn't matter if it's a local cop or a state trooper who pulls you over and issues you the citation, the money goes to the state to prevent what occurred in Missouri.

They have no legal power? The average person commits what, 23 Felonies a day. They just pick one, make it stick, and get you to play ball. If you still refuse, well I suggest looking up what happened to Qwest's CEO when he refused to play ball.

Last couple years forced me to rethink a few things. I live in the suburbs of a moderate sized city, but have several hundred acres of farmland a couple hundred miles south with a place to stay, well water, septic system, small wind turbine, solar cells, and 100 acres of woods with a wood burning furnace + stove. Have the wind turbine and solar cells because I'm only down there about 1 month a year to look over the farming operations (we rent it out). So we sell most the electricity we generate back to the coop. Then at harvest time, we usually break even when it comes to running the motors for irrigation and driers in the bins.

I have the guns from my grandfather, a double barrel 12ga goose gun, a .22 Stevens single shot rifle, 1903 Springfield, a M1911, and a Walther PP trophy gun from WWII plus I have a AR, 2 9mm pistols for CCW (same model), a Mosin Nagant, a .38 revolver, and a .40S&W pistol. I figured the common thought of "Keep standard calibers and you'll be able to find ammo" was a good one. I used to keep enough ammo around to load magazines once. Basically enough that if I wanted to run to the range and didn't have time to stop off at the store to pick up ammo I could. The most I kept around was about a brick of .22 that would last me a year.

Well when the craziness happened after Sandy Hook the only thing I could find regularly was .40S&W and 30-06 Springfield. I sold one of my AR's during that time for nearly 3x what I paid for it. I kept the money in a savings account and recently bought a second safe for ammo. In the past few months I've probably bought enough ammo to be on a watch list as I've stocked up on 3000 rounds of 5.56, 3000 rounds of 9mm, 1000 rounds of .40, 250 rounds of .45ACP, 880 rounds of 7.62x54r, 300 rounds of .38, and 200 rounds of 30-06. And I intend on keeping this supply as reserve and not to shoot. If .22LR ever comes back into stock (hoarders are the main problem right now), I'll probably stock up of 5,000 - 10,000 rounds of that over time. (buy a brick a week for a couple months).

Five years ago I wouldn't have done that.