It's not your computer, it's your cell phone.

Speak for yourself, please!
It might be a phone for you, for me, it's my portable, pocket-computer.
Please do elaborate on what cap you're talking about, but if I want to saturate LTE (which I'm not using, btw), I'll saturate LTE from my own pocket (no pun intended); with or without a jailbreak.

they get a hitcount over 3000

It's 3000 unique visitors.

"The draft introduced the definition of a popular blogger as someone whose internet page attracts at least 3,000 readers every day (earlier this week the authorities announced that these should be unique visitors, not just page hits) [...]"

And

Individuals who violate the law can be fined between 10,000 and 30,000 rubles (US$285-$855) and in cases when popular blogs are maintained by legal entities fines can reach 500,000 rubles ($14,285)."

Source: http://rt.com/politics/177248-...
I'm not saying that I agree with their line, but what was the last ruling on slander or defamation in the US? I think it was more than USD 855.
Also, after what happened with the US backed NGOs trying to influence public opinion around the former USSR resulting in color revolutions (and, arguably, what's happening in the Ukraine now,) I'd have probably done the same to protect my national interests.

because I can totally annoy you with it

Job well done! I'd like to get back at you some day ; )

The pool.ntp.org project is a big virtual cluster of timeservers providing reliable easy to use NTP service for millions of clients. [...] All Pool Servers 3810

They already have lasers, have you been living under a rock, or behind the moon?

And, if you forgot, the original laser sharks were created during the American civil war.

Who is going to keep thousands of fully charged 1000lb batteries all around the nation so you can visit your site of the day?

Why, the gas stations, of course. They gotta make use of all that infrastructure that they already have somehow, and with the downward slope of the demand for gas, (and depending on what the next mainstream is going to be, since it could as easily be LPG), they'll have little choice.

antediluvian FM-synthesis sound card

Roland was teh siht!

Otherwise it would have simply said, "Vote B to remain a part of Ukraine".

Well, that's what it meant, except with more autonomy (e.g. with the ability to keep Russian as an official language inside Crimea).
Huffington Post has a pretty one-sided narrative of the events from what I've read in recent months. They also miss a lot of information.

Not that I can do anything about it except yammer on message boards.

Dito... :-/

The benefit is through a partnership with Arizona State University's online studies program. [emphasis added]

Really? Wow. Great, but WTF?
They get free online courses? These are only a google (or itunes U) search away regardless of this partnership.

I.e. " Do you want to be part of russia, or not part of Ukraine".

Huh? The 1992 constitution of Crimea sees it as an autonomous republic of Ukraine. Maybe You, I or both of us are misunderstanding something here.

Regarding the Russian passports, I guess it has something to do with dual citizenships, i.e.:

[...] if [a Ukrainian] citizen acquired citizenship of (was naturalized by) another country, then in legal relations with Ukraine, the person is recognized as a citizen of Ukraine only. Thus, presently, according to the legislation of Ukraine dual citizenship is not prohibited, but also is not recognized [...]

It's also pretty much plausible and conceivable that the passport was used only for ID purposes and they had lists of eligible voters beforehand (at least that's the way it works in Germany: you just have to present a valid ID and be on the list).

And, re: "beating non russian looking voters", regardless of whether it actually happened (source?), there were not too many of those:

where they now form ~ 12% minority

(Crimean Tatars & ethnic groups in Crimea).

I'm not a jingoist. America (and any major power) is going to have black marks on it's record.

Agreed.
What I'm really trying to achieve here, is to cut through the thick fog of propaganda (from all sides) and get at the core of the issue (i.e. discrimination of a large part of the population by a (then) unelected government).
If I put myself in their shoes, I can totally understand the wish to distance themselves from a seemingly oppressive regime (not everyone welcomes their new overlords as we do here on /.), and being a semi-autonomous region (e.g. unlike Kosovo), they made use of their right to do so.

In addition, there were international observers present during the referendum.
And, as a last one, (internal Russian politics notwithstanding,) this is long but raises some interesting points: http://original.antiwar.com/ju...