Again, you make a statement like: "Putin's actions to date in many areas have shown him look after himself first" where you don't support it by any evidence and the statement itself is patently untrue and then you make further assumptions based on that. One would almost think you have a vested interest in spreading some sort of propaganda on this site.

If something, everyone, who was actually affected by Putin's action in his country, or nearly everyone (85-90%) actually thinks that Putin has acted in the interest of the country first and they fully support his actions during the last 15 years. Putin in regards to Snowden has followed both Russian and International law to deal with this situation. He is not a tyrant, there are laws in the country that govern what can be done and those were followed. The fact that you fail to grasp even this much says that you are either intentionally lying to promote some point or that you don't understand the situation enough to even make a point.

It does not matter what I do believe and that is precisely the point I was making. We can only judge by actions taken. The fact that you continue argue your assumptions means you've failed to grasp the point.

This subscribes to a cynical one sided view of the world. In regards to Snowden, we only have assumptions on Putin's behavior toward him, while we do have evidence on Obama's behavior towards him. What you do here, is condemn someone based on assumptions, in order to try to protect or justify actions of someone else, who's already done harm. As for the second set of assumptions, we've had a reverse case like that which you advocate with a country similar to Germany, the UK. So there is actual evidence that this is not a preferred scenario for the concerned party.

I wish, Sir, you stopped living in a fantasy world of conclusions reached based on assumptions and joined us in evidence based reality.

Probably because the images are data and databases do data manipulation and normalization in correct design. We usually offload CPU heavy data transformations or impossible to do data transformations into application layer, but that is a break in the design forced on you by constraints. If I said that database converts all integers into INT4 on insert, or all strings into sanitized strings or all XML into JSON format, you would not say a word. Converting images is the same thing.

It is. We all here have 15 years of experience with Microsoft as the Devil and this makes it hard to ever trust them again. Because we did trust them and trust them again and again and again and every single freaking time, they've done something so horrible to break this trust that our very souls have felt like burning in hell.

What do you mean FREE country?

Actually, that is the problem. You can only get let's say ABC, TBS, HBO and FOX. And only some of the shows. If the show is from NBC it will be on Hulu and thats ads only or if the networks don't select the show from their catalog, well it is not there. They decide. Their content right? Well I don't like to be forced into a platform to watch my content. I don't like to be said, this show is only on Amazon Prime and that is not on Apple TV so you gotta go and get another gizmo to watch this. I'd like the networks to decided whether or not they make their content available and what is the price. Then let all the delivery services compete based on their various models. They can present the content to me and the price + whatever delivery fee they charge and let me decide if I pay it or not. Maybe I will like Comcast's Xfinity, maybe I will like Apple TV. Who knows? But I don't like the content to be tied to a particular delivery mechanism. That is something that should be illegal at the very least in case of monopolies like Comcast, etc.

To rent a car from Hertz with camera in it, one has to BE bananas.

I got used to the fact that people like you will say absolutely anything that suits them in an argument, regardless of the veracity or the ability to actually source their claims.

I'm sorry, I forgot forbes.com is a Russian organization. Let me apologize here deeply.

That is not true. Both Lybia and Syria were conflicts started by the US involvement in the region and their support for the rebels (who in both cases became ISIS) in attempt to try to oust the uncomfortable regimes of Gaddafi and Assad. Our overt involvement may have started much later, but our covert involvement that initiated the conflicts was done way prior to that.

Both conflicts are more recent, so you have to play them out in your analysis. Estimate what is going to happen in the next 8 years to compare the real scale of those conflicts. I think you might lack information in this case. Mostly because US media are completely ignoring Syria and Lybia or near to. There was a great reason why Obama could have been impeached on Lybia, but the Republicans were just helping him cover up the real problems by endless Benghazi hearings about nothing.

You really want to compare? Afghanistan is comparable to Lybia in terms of destruction and terrorist breeding ground creation. Syria is well comparable to Iraq in terms of deaths, suffering, civilian casualties, refugees, etc. The amount of bombing in Belgrade was quite substantial as well. I would not discount it.

Democrats start just as many wars. Clinton has Kosovo, Obama has Lybia and Syria. They all start wars. I see no signs of US being fatigued by war. The Sweden intelligence agency has made a report, accusing the US military, state department or intelligence services to be involved in creating 27 out of 29 of the conflicts that happened during last 30 years.

You create a false narrative here. Putin's approval rating was steadily holding above 63% ever since he took office and shot up to 85% several times during his tenure for prolonged times, every time he was seen to defend Russian interests in the world. US or EU politicians usually don't have such good ratings. Here is an article with 2000-2013 chart.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/ma...

Putin does not need "victory" in Ukraine. He has already achieved victory by standing up for Russia. On the contrary, nobody wants to take the mess that is Ukraine that Russia has actually supported for years by several billion dollar a year in cheap gas and by allowing over 3 million of Ukrainian men to work in Russia and send remittances home. And by buying their manufactured products as only country in the world, preserving the Ukrainian industry. If we isolate Ukraine from Russia we should be prepared to replace Russia in all three of these roles or Ukraine will be at it worse than before we got involved.