For as long as Putin and his cronies are in power, the U.S. and the rest of the western world should offer any law-abiding Russian citizen who wants to leave an automatic green card, work permit, etc. We cannot realistically or morally change Russia from the outside. The most powerful weapon against fanaticism would be allowing regular law-abiding Russians to vote with their feet. We could always use some more scientists and engineers anyway...

Most of this thing is just common sense technological progress. If Apple didn't come up with it, someone else inevitably would have. There wasn't any spark of genius required.

rocks ... doesn't it.

This is what you wanted right?

Seriously, if you come here to talk about how this isn't a fundamental bitcoin problem, you deserve to have your noise smacked with newspaper like a dog.

The only 'benefit' bitcoin has is that its unregulated and not as well watched by the government ... which means its easy for people to just steal your money and lie about it ... I'm sorry, its easy for someone to setup an exchange and let someone else steal the coins from the 'hot wallet', whatever the fuck that is.

Before you open your mouth to defend bitcoin ....

THIS WHAT WE'VE BEEN TELLING YOUR STUPID DUMB ASSES ABOUT, NOW SHUT THE FUCK UP, ITS A SHITTY IDEA.

I got the feeling that Czechoslovakia didn't feel all that liberated. Nor Hungary, Romania, Poland or Yugoslavia. Swapping one mad bastard for another isn't liberation.

I recently checked Reddit's /r/bitcoin, to see how the True Believers were taking the latest developments. To hear them say it, Bitcoin has already recovered off its lows, which mean everything is fine and all this bad news is just FUD spread by haters. Bitcoin believers truly live in their own universe.

Secondly, the guy responsible, a 29 year old banker who was literally asleep when it all went down, insists that the virtual money was in the account and it was set to autopay. People close to this suggest the word for this is "bullshit", but it has been "petitioned" -- a claim by a player that the server screwed up. This isn't without precident, as the game is currently limping about with it standings system broken. Standings is basically Eve's IFF system. Right now, nobody in the game can tell friend from foe. Needless to say, it's a massive issue. So it's possible they farked up, but unlikely.

Can we just fess up and admit that SteamOS is an effort predicated on a personal beef Gabe Newell has with Microsoft and especially the fact that Windows 8 included it's own store and that store was not Steam. The story is well documented and the whole industry is going to blow a lot of money on development just to satisfy one man's ego.

All islamic terrorists - therefore pretty much all of the violent ones - hate us for not being Muslim, full stop.

How is that a "pretty valid reason"?

Any other reason they claim to hate us for doesn't ever stop the hate when we address it.

Yeah, I don't see why there's so much shock. "US ally assists US spy agency in spying." Wow. My flabber is truly gasted.

Yes, because it would have been a much better proposition to start churning out more disposable Android phones in an already over saturated market. At least wp8 gives them some market differential.

For all Its faults, the NSA is more of a flawed character than an evil one. It does have a particular job to do, the job it's supposed to do is a worthwhile one, and for the most part "our"* criticism of it has to do with its methods, not its mandate. We do, actually, want to know what foreign governments are up to, especially in terms of what those governments might be planning that severely affects America's interests. We do, actually, want our government to know what terrorists are up to, as part of a combined good faith effort to counter-act them.