Because languages work differently and, inevitably, a language's features allow for methods of expression not found in languages lacking these features.

I agree word gender is arbitrary for most non-living things, and in German the genders can give me nightmares. But most Indo-European languages have gender and I can't really say that English is better off not having it (though it sure is simpler).

Then again, English is a pretty strange Indo-European language. It has a lot of complexity where it doesn't really add anything, like the plethora of irregular verbs, or the many words that end with the letter e for historical reasons, despite it not being pronounced for centuries. And in other areas, the simpler rules of English come at the cost of expressive ability. Almost non-existent verb conjugation makes things simple, but it also requires 3 words to say "we will run" as opposed to a heavily conjugated verb like "correremos".

Only korabl' (ship) is masculine. Yahta (yacht), lodka (boat) and several other words are feminine, and sudno (ship, synonym of kobabl' in common usage though not in nautical terminology) is neuter.

It is related to the case. I'm reading Russian sources, but the English TFA says as much.

Basically, in 2010, the Russian FSKN (a law enforcement organization specifically fighting drugs) initiated criminal proceedings on allegation of drug contraband in poppy seeds. FSKN experts concluded that the shipment does constitute a shipment of drugs. Zelenina, as an expert witness, said that the particular shipment did not have intentionally added narcotic compounds, and that small amounts of those substances were present because it is in fact impossible to eliminate them entirely from poppy seeds. And now she's jailed on charges of being party to a contraband shipment of drugs. Interestingly, I read that a new legal standard adopted in Russia in 2005 specifies that poppy seeds must be completely free of these narcotic traces, which is a technological impossibility and thus poppy is now only imported and not grown.

Fun thing is that there's another section in Russian law that allows people to be charged for making deliberately false expert witness statements - but she was not charged with that. The punishment for false statements is considerably lower than for drug contraband.

This is actually old news (she's been in jail for a month) but is cropping up again because her appeal is being heard.

Guys, please make sure next time that your default controls are at least functional :)

5 minutes after launching the game, I'm in the tutorial mission. After learning to target the other ships, I'm told to bank my Viper to align with the drone - only banking is not assigned to anything in a keyboard/mouse setup and I need to fix that myself. Or maybe this is one of those games that are supposed to be played with another input device.

I played the first BtRL demo release when it came out, and I was very impressed. I am not a fan of that gameplay genre, but the demo did a great job at capturing the BSG atmosphere and having dialogue that really fit in with the series. The soundtrack was also good, mixing newly written bits with BSG sounds.

Looking forward to downloading this.

You seem to know what you're talking about, so I'll ask - what's your take on supercapacitors? Are the problems with them surmountable to the point where they could be expected to replace typical consumer batteries?

Others have already made good points here.

Satellites and space stuff? Launch systems as we know them are largely the work of von Braun's team. Nazi tech!

Computers? The Z3 was not a particularly elegant machine, but it was the first programmable Turing-complete computer. Back in 1941. A good thing for the war that the Nazi leadership denied funding to upgrade the machine.

How about jet aircraft? The He 178 was the first one to fly. Designed by whom? Oh yeah, Nazis.

The StG 44 assault rifle made by the same damn Nazis was a new designed that influenced both the AK47 and M16. Speaking of weapons, the first military night vision device? Yep, also used by the Nazis and developed in Germany. Or how about their engineers making the first proper radar?

Things aren't as simple as saying the Nazis were horrible and lost the war, thus they provided no useful legacy. They had brilliant engineers and more than a few modern technologies contain innovations developed by Germany during that time. And that's not even considering the innovations that were later developed in the USA but by scientists brought over in Operation Paperclip.

I can relate. I lived in Latvia until a year ago, and while that's a Western country by now, it's also one with much lower income levels than the "proper" Western countries, besides, the whole free market thing is kinda new there.

Thinking about the previous 10 years or so, I think I had seen people with Macs something like 3 or 4 times total. Most people I talked to didn't even know Macs existed, although starting in 2005-2006 I met a fair amount of people who had heard of Linux as an alternative option. After moving to Sweden, I literally saw more Macs being used on my first day than I had seen in Latvia, ever.

Also puts me in an interesting position where I'm a knowledgable computer geek and have used many OSes, but not OS X. The last time I used a Mac was with Mac OS 8, and even that was brief. I think I should just install a Hackintosh at home one weekend because I am curious to play with OS X, to see how it works and whether I'll find it as easy as it's supposed to be.

Oh, and if anyone is curious to the reason why Macs are essentially non-existent in Latvia, it's simple - prices. Macs there cost as much as anywhere else, which in terms of Latvian incomes places them firmly in the luxury item category (especially until a few years ago). Together with the essentially ubiquitous piracy among privately owned computers, it makes the idea of buying a Mac very strange. Case in point, with iPads. Having just checked the prices, an iPad 3 with 16 GB Wi-Fi only in Latvia costs 339 lats, the same with 4G costs 425 lats (not including data plan). MacBooks start at 895 lats. The average monthly income in 2011 after taxes for those employed in Latvia was 330 lats (about 600 USD at today's rate). Puts things into perspective.

That is completely against the Russian approach, which is fairly direct in style. If the opposition figures running those sites reside in Russia, then the regular Russian police and FSB will be dealing with them - arrests, searches, the usual deal, like you can see with the recent treatment of opposition figures. Skipping an opportunity to go after the authors while using SVR to disturb the sites with propaganda doesn't really fit into the modus operandi of the Russian authorities.

Yep, as an European, I don't get why I should pay such a tax. I pay for my own broadband connection, and while I agree that everyone should have access to the Internet, it's already available for free at libraries that are funded by my taxes anyway. So I don't get the point of a general "broadband tax".

Link to story: http://www.kommersant.ru/doc/2009256

Interesting moments are as follows. There are three projects for which software has been requested. One is for "researching the methods of intelligence in Internet centers and regional segments of social networks", another is for "researching the unofficial methods of management on the Internet", and finally work on "methods for advancing special information in social networks". So essentially, it's figuring out how to make certain information popular on social networks, and figuring out the dynamics and largely emergent social structures within these networks. These are designed to work together, ultimately with the bots capable of "massive dissemination of information in specified social networks using existing user accounts, with the goal of forming the public opinion".

Given that the SVR is behind this, it's likely that the intent, at least originally, is to use this abroad, not within Russia. The article says so and quotes a source saying ex-USSR countries would be the first target. That bit certainly looks realistic given the geopolitical situation there, with Russia essentially being in a state of low-key information warfare versus some former Soviet states.

Yep, on that note.

Being born in the USSR and growing up in ex-USSR, and being exposed to US-centric culture through the Internet, I've seen a fair amount of both. And it saddens me to see how Yuri Gagarin is mostly hailed as a Soviet/Russian hero and achievement, with Neil Armstrong being hailed as an American hero. Space travel is the single most spectacular thing achieved by mankind. Gagarin and Armstrong, as the first to fly in space and to walk on another celestial body, are heroes for all of humanity and should be remembered as such. What they did was - figuratively and literally - above countries and national borders. And the next person to join their league will be whoever first walks on Mars.

With Armstrong's death now, there's a sad feeling of manned space exploration being essentially over. I'm not alone among the geeky population to be fascinated and captivated by space travel, but I've recognized for a while now that the romantic visions are not going to come true anytime soon. 8 years from the first human in space to the first human on the Moon (with space programs that were competing, not cooperating), and nothing for the last 40 years. Just as the development of some areas, computers first and foremost, exceeded everyone's wildest dreams, space travel turned out to be far less impressive. The best we can expect for the next 2-3 decades at least is a Mars landing (largely by a country wanting to signal its might), and a small research outpost on the Moon.

So that's going on a rant, but Armstrong's death is sad in more ways than one.

Because what you say is fucking bullshit. The KDE team only had the balls around 4.3 to state that it's not for the general public. With 4.0, they used the "for developers" excuse in some blogs, like Aaron Siego's, mailing lists as a response to complaints, but never in the most visible places.

The 4.0 release announcement mentions nowhere that it's for developers. It reads just like the announcement of any major version. The main page of kde.org featured a prominent link to downloading the latest 4.0. It was handled in exactly the same way as major version releases are handled. 4.1. did better, explicitly mentioning early adopters in the announcement. 4.2. said it's okay for the "majority of end users"

It was a complete fuck-up. The quality of KDE 4.0 was in no way RC-like, it was like an early beta. The team did not admit this in the high-profile pages and announcements, and they tried to pull some stupid shit by messing with widely adopted conventions of version numbering.

And their idiotic "KDE 4.0 is not KDE4". Of course it didn't help that several distributions essentially bought into this being a complete product, and offered KDE 4 as a normal (or default) end-user option with 4.2 or even 4.1.