You still missed the point, sorry :)

What I was saying is that your premise - "if he crashes the economy his country is no longer a threat to the world" - is incorrect. For one thing, it's always tempting to "fix" the crashed economy by going to war. But even if it doesn't actually fix it, it can be that last "okay, if we're going down, you're going down with us" sort of gesture. Yes, a country with a ruined economy won't be able to wage a protracted war, but it doesn't need to do so to make others hurt, and the bombs and the missiles won't magically disappear. Nor will the manpower - and said manpower is only going to be more desperate and therefore (with the right coaching) more angry.

Now, as to why I believe that such a war would work to bolster inner popularity. The trick, of course, is to present it in such a manner that the war is declared on you. Russian TV has already been quite successful at spinning things that way about Ukraine - a recent poll showed that 94% of Russians get their news primarily from TV channels (all of which are now state-run or indirectly state-controlled), and 75% believe that its coverage is truthful and objective. Only 25% believe that "propaganda" is an apt description for what they're seeing.

So, really, all Putin needs to do to escalate to war is to keep provoking the West, and then blowing up any responses as something big. And heck, there are tried and proven methods to get a decent casus belli when the time comes - see Mainila incident for an example. After all the crazy conspiracy theories that are eagerly accepted for granted in Russia (by the population, not by politicians!) just to be able to preserve the "we are the good guys" mentality... something like that would be swallowed very easily.

And yes, the "patriotic" fervor in Russia today is such that, with the right sugar-coating, the population will happily swallow the war pill. If they are explained that all economic woes are due to Western shenanigans (and the occasional spy/saboteur - for the sake of some public circus).

Hell, they are already clamoring for war, seemingly more so than the government itself. Did you see #PutinVvediVoiska ("Putin, move the armed forces in!" [to Ukraine]) Twitter hashtag? It's only growing in popularity as more sanctions come in. Then there's another thing where people are mocking the sanctions themselves - that is also going pretty strong.

I figured you'd follow the links and actually take some time to learn about the topic, so I don't think it's disingenuous of me to have left things where I did. Had you taken the time to read through the links, it would be apparent that the everyday sort of corporate management arrangement you're painting it as is not at all representative of the reality here, and that the police force is run not just by the Corporation, but also by the corporations. To quote from near the top of the page that you'd have reached with my link:

Well now, that sounds interesting, doesn't it? To provide more details from the link that the OP gave earlier:

Which is to say that businesses control about 32,000 votes compared to the residents' 7,000, with the larger businesses getting more votes on account of their having more employees. Those elections dictate who gets elected to the Common Council, and the Common Council is the body that has authority over the police force.

So, in a very real sense, the entrenched corporations have direct control over the elections, allowing them to put the people they want in power. Suggesting otherwise is to deny the obvious.

Ah, thank you. I knew the rule for "words ending in s" but failed to apply it in the case where the letters before s were NULL...

No, like so-called "pirates." Modifying the content of the site and redistributing it is copyright infringement.

Is it MARVELous this SHIELD?

No matter how stupid Apple was to fall for this, and how much they disregarded good practice, this is still definitely fraud.

Why wouldn't they call the police?

No kidding, any system which comes down to "I have a number, trust me" is pretty flawed.

Obviously, Apple was doing something wrong since they're on the hook for it, but you'd really think there would have to be some validation inherent to this.

This sounds like it boiled down to "declined, declined, declined, OK, go ahead". That's crazy.

So what they're doing is infringing the copyright of the allegedly-copyright-infringing website by modifying and redistributing it.

The hypocrisy is think with this one!

But that's the problem with this system: as long as the number of digits is correct, the override code itself doesn't matter.

Who the hell came up with that idea?

That's no security in any meaningful sense of the word.

I'm betting some lobbyist made it so that the banks didn't really need to do anything concrete, just look like they were.

If that's all that's required, the banks deserve to be getting ripped off.

You're right. But the fact that it is literally governed by a corporation does.

You're correct that the matches are not objective, though that really doesn't matter in the end. If I say, "I'll make my best guess," and then knowingly provide you with the choice that is as far away from my actual best guess as possible, there's nothing subjective about the fact that I've intentionally misled you. My guesses may be subjective, but you were expecting my best one, and instead got my worst one. That's a lie.

Indeed it hasn't, because the correct corrections would have been to write "I have VMs that run..." and to capitalize Windows since it's a proper noun.

Do the DHS seriously believe they have any credibility in this area?

At this point, I assume if they find any exploits they'll keep them secret and use them themselves.

Sorry guys, but once you became the enforcement arm for copyright, you lost all credibility.

No. ESPESCIALLY for free games. Why add copy protection to free stuff anyway? It's free to begin with! No one needs or wants to "pirate" it. Unless of course you need a "pirated" copy of the game to keep the negative SecuROM effects from your system.

This is the difference between "free as in beer" and "free as in speech" / copyleft. In the former case, maybe the company offered the program "free" for a limited time or "free" to a certain group of people or "free" as long as some other particular condition were met, and would object to people distributing the program outside of those conditions.

I'm not saying it's a legitimate reason -- far from it; SecuROM is malware and everyone who conspired to produce or distribute it should be in federal prison-- but it is a "reason."