I agree that Russia is an oligarchy (and so is the US, and Europe, btw, we simply don't call our plutocrats "oligarchs"), but you have to get some things straight. Like the IMF, the Ukraine had the alternative of *either* cooperating with Russia, and continuing to get money from Moscow, or cooperate with the EU and get money from the IMF (with the usual strings of privatization, deregulation, and generally screwing the people over attached, see Greece, et al). Yanukovich in the end decided that it would be in the interests of the Ukraine to continue trade with Russia rather than go along with EU demands of "us or them" (and the opinion polls I have seen seem to indicate that the Ukranian people were not too keen on the EU agreement either in the end, I guess the example of Greece must have scared them). This is when the "Euromaidan" protests started, supported by both US and EU politicians who enthusiastically came in person and egged the protests on, the fact that they were sharing stage and shaking hands with Svoboda and the Right Sector did not seem to bother them. Once the coup was fully realized, the new government (surprise surprise) signed the deal with the EU as well as the IMF, despite not being an elected government. It bans political parties which are seen as being too "pro-russia" (such as the communist party), includes representatives of both Svoboda and Right Sector, but none from the eastern part of the country where the majority of the population lives. Western media calls it "democracy"...

I kept getting "lameness filter" so I had to split my post into multiple posts. Slashdot: FIX BUG!

Continued from below:

If and when workers gain control of the state, then and only then may it be called a socialist state in any way shape or form. Note however that neither socialism nor a "communist" society requires that the means of production be in the ownership of the state. A society where the means of production is controlled by cooperatives for instance is as much socialism as is ownership by a worker-controlled state, as is the syndicalist ideal of local union organizations taking control of the means of production, or the collectivist ideal of abandoning both state and private ownership of the means of production. There are as many variations of socialism as there are forms where the working class can take control of the means of production, as well as combinations thereof.

Despite what Americans (and all of us who consume US media) have been told all their lives, capitalism and democracy are in no way compatible, and you see it every day in your own country, I see it every day in my country, we see it all over the world, yet this myth seems to persist. Capital is power, when a few control that capital, they have disproportionate economic power, and thus political power, no matter how many campaign financing laws or similar you adopt. The simple act of owning the means of production means that capitalists can, if they wish, force society to adopt certain policies under threat of loosing the essential goods which their factories produce. This is why economic democracy is required for political democracy to ever be realized.

The whole point of socialism, and certainly of a communist society (which is a bit of a utopian goal) is that the means of production should be controlled by the working class. If a state owns the means of production, but the working class is not in control of that state, it is simply another form of capitalism called "state capitalism", there is as much of a disconnect between workers and traditional capitalists as there is between workers and a large state capitalist. Instead of traditional capitalists exploiting the labour of the working class, the people at the top of the state bueracracy is. There is a common misconception, especially among those who have been exposed to too much of American mass media, that "capitalism" simply means free markets. Rather, it is a description of a society where a minority owns the majority of the means of production, if this is achieved through free markets, state controlled markets, privately (monopoly) controlled markets, or what have you does not really matter, it's still capitalism because of the ownership and thereby power-structure.

I largely agree with your post, but really what you're saying about Sweden is woefully incorrect. There have been many highly publicized cases of obvious rape where the perpetrators have been acquitted with the motivation that it wasn't "obvious" enough that the victim was not in on it. Enough so that there is debate about enacting new laws to deal with the problem. I admire what Assange has done for the world, but don't take his characterization of Sweden to be the truth without doing some research of your own.

While I agree that it's nice to distribute the code that generated your results, this is hardly the only way for other researchers to know how to go from data to results.. This is the entire purpose of the published paper, to describe what you did, in words and math, sometimes in psuedo-code.

Exactly what I was going to post. If you don't take care of how you're using Tor, it will probably do more to flag you as "interesting" for the authorities to investigate further than protect your anonymity.

Not a Tor user, btw, if the NSA is listening. ;)

I have many choices, but I don't really see why anyone would have this need of having a choice between 300 different providers which are all trying to screw you over in order to maximize profits for their owners, rather than one provider which has a democractic mandate to benefit citizens rather than owners. The electric market is a natural monopoly, whoever owns the grid calls the shots. In my city, the local grid was sold off by "free market"-worshipping liberals like yourself years ago, the result is not pretty.

That's actually about what I use, I used about 160 kWh in October. Live alone in a 43 m2 one bedroom apartment, 42" flat screen TV, desktop computer with dual screens, tablet, phone, refrigerator and freezer, combination of LED and CFL lights, occasionally used stove and oven (mostly microwave, unfortunately). District heating, so that doesn't factor in to the equation. I don't see how people can use so much electricity use unless they heat they're running electric heating or AC.

Well, speed of light between relay stations at least, you'll have to wait for the telegraph operators to forward your message at each station, so the lag would still be terrible.

Why would you "look like a douche" by driving an electric car?

Or, you know, you could make sure everyone has the *right* to paid maternity (or paternity) leave, as in most of the world... That you have to depend on the goodwill of your employer in cases like this is mindboggingly insane.

Ugh.. Would you please stop sounding like a typical American rube? I'm a socialist and I can guarantee you that Obama ain't one. What is so hard about looking up the definition of the terms you're using before spouting them off as some kind of nonsensical insult?

Also - spelling, grammars and general coherence would go a long way towards making your argument for you.

This is not necessarily for bank operations, at least in Sweden, it can be used to log in to the bank but the banks have their own primary authentication methods that can in turn be used to obtain a bankid. Bankid is used for things like the tax authority.

If I remember correctly - isn't Tesla essentially doing what you're suggesting with the Model S? I believe they update OTA, so it can certainly be done.

In Sweden ours is called BankID but I don't think it's the same vendor (the actual program I believe is called Nexus Personal), it's not in Java but is a native plugin, or a mobile app as that's how I'm using it, so much more convenient.
You would think they could cooperate and build a common system for stuff like this, especially with nations as small as ours.