Of course, you can capture the actual GSM radio transmission off the air. There's no way to stop that. However, that GSM transmission will not be readable, since it is encrypted. You can decrypt it without provider's help, but that will take a considerable amount of time and computing power. In order to decipher it immediately, you will definitely need provider's cooperation. So, the answer is that it is impossible to perform real-time monitoring of GSM conversations without the provider's help. GSM is absolutely secure in that regard. It is not clear what Lukashenko meant by what he said. Did they monitor her phone in real-time? If so, then it immediately means that they had access to internal provider's information. If they were only able to do it later, then it is possible that they actually deciphered the communications without provider's participation.

Belarus has moved to modern European hardware at least 20 years ago. In fact, most of the post-Soviet space has communication infrastructure that is incomparably more advanced than what is currently used in the USA. It is actually dumbfounding how archaic the US communications are compared to Europe.

The fate of the actual flying Buran is rather well-documented, as well as the fate of the second flight-capable vehicle. What you see in those pictures is neither. This is probably one of the full-scale mock ups, which is known to have ended up in an amusement park.

I mean I understand that certain people are clueless and therefore can be convinced to believe anything. And there are certain people who prefer deluding themselves even though they know that their delusions are just that - delusions. However, anyone who ever worked with Windows knows that IE is indeed a part of Windows. There's no debate about that and there has never been. Just because the user can switch from one version of IE to another doesn't in any way contradict the claim. It simply proves that the IE, as a system component, is designed properly and very professionally, i.e. with a sufficient level of decoupling and interface abstraction. I understand that this very fact has been a significant source of inferiority complex attacks for the followers of certain of other OS-es, developed by certain half-illiterate crowd of various "c00l hack0rz". So they will undoubtedly try to pervert its meaning. But that doesn't change the reality, at least for those who prefer to live in connection with it.

Yes. Except that it did not have the huge sales numbers of Zune.

... will be discovered at the scene of a car accident.

Yeah, but at the same time you have never been able to use these Linux machines for anything useful besides standing around and not getting infected. I, on the other hand, ran many Windows machines, all actually used, all actually connected the the Web (meaning: network card _works_, not just waits for a Linux driver to finally arive) without a single one of them ever having any antivirus software, and I never had any viruses on them.

You mean in 1997-1999 there were many applications that required admin rights? I don't think there's a single such aplication today. Nobody runs Windows under admin rights today.

I have to admit: the black-PR attack on Windows Vista was orchestrated perfectly. It's that perfection that makes is worth being included into the annals of the history of unscrupulous PR. Numerous well paid off "honest and professional" bloggers, thousands of "concerned citizens" registering tens of thousands of IDs on various Internet forums, tirelessly reporting piles of insurmountable "problems" with Vista... And, of course, millions of lemmings that believed the BS, took it, swallowed it, ran with it and eventually overwhelmed Microsoft's ability to withstand the attack. Perfect. I don't know who I should blame at Microsoft, but how they didn't see that coming I just can't understand. Someone at MS was literally asleep at the wheel. Now, the situation is different. Firstly, the very lemmings who believed that Vista was somehow flawed, now are happily using it, while understanding, if only subconsciously, that they were BS-ed by a well-paid-for black-PR campaign. Secondly, with Windows 7, Microsoft is much wiser. The Microsoft's own PR department did a very good job this time to make the new Windows a hit long before it became available. Bashing it into the ground is going to be quite a challenge. There's not even a slightest doubt that the very same people who were paid to bash Vista last time are paid even better this time to do the job on Windows 7. But apparently, this time they just missed the right moment, and just can't gain enough momentum to get the ball rolling. And now we even know a name of one of these outfits. "Rescuecom" they say. I wonder how many other similar outfits that "Josh Kaplan" is a president of were/are out there and what other services they offer. Although this one doesn't appear to be a top dog, since this specific attempt ("just wait a bit", "risky", "tough economic times") is rather lame and pathetic. Let's wait for the more creative ones to pop up. And they should be very creative to succeed this time, so it is going to be a very interesting battle.

Huh? You mist be what, 11-12 years old, if you don't get the simple fact that in an article like that there's no need to mention Linux explicitly... :)

Very primitive. They call it "hacked" in the summary, but once you get to read the actual article it turns out that those "various" methods actually boild down to: 1) social engineering attacks, 2) DDoS attacks, i.e. the attack methods have absolutely nothing to do with Xbox software/hardware itself. Also note the "creative" use of words: they call Xbox a "top target" trying to create an impression that it is the #1 target, the "topmost" target, while in reality this is not even remotely the case. They use the word "top" under the excuse that it can be used to mean "popular", knowing perfectly well that well-linuxed trolls will understand (or, more precisely, misunderstand) it correctly. What would be more interesting, is to find out who is paying for these articles.

Apparently, it is that time of the month again. Despite the well-established fact that 95% of all computer-related fraud originates in the USA, they still keep pushing the mandatoty "Eastern Europe" BS. I wonder how much of the taxpayers money is spent on cooking such propaganda stories?

One can argue that reflectors were left there by Soviet Lunokhod rovers, or, more precisely, the rovers are themselves reflectors.

Firstly, the specification of C anf C++ standard library is governed by the corresponding standard commitee. Microsoft has absolutely no authority to "banish" anything from neither C nor C++. They can deprecate it in their .NET code, C# etc., but it has absolutely no relevance to C and C++ languages. So, why would the author of the original question direct it to "advanced C and C++" programmers is beyond me. In general, C and C++ programmers will never know about this "interesting" development.

Secondly, the tryly unsafe and useless functions in the C standard library are the functions like "gets", which offer absolutely no protection agains buffer overflow, regardless of how careful the develoiper is. Functions like 'memcpy', on the other hand, offer sufficient protection to a qualified developer. There's absolutely no sentiment against these functions in C/C++ community and there is absolutely no possiblity of these functions to get deprecated as long as C language exists.

Obviously, the entire post was crafted with one and only purpose in mind: to make a trollish statement about "nonbelievers who view death as the end of existence, the annihilation of consciousness and the self". The rest was added for the sole purpose to make the trolling less obvious.