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Comment De-americanization has officially began (Score 5, Insightful) 206

Will be somewhat off-topic but still (somewhat) related.

De-americanization has officially began when Russia signed gas deal with China bypassing dollar. This process started long ago but with this deal it's now official. Things seem to speed up since then. Germany Verizon thing is just another domino piece falling. Regardless of what Americans think of it, I see it as a good thing. Aside from taking (most of the) world of american hegemony, ending of US imperial project can benefit Americans themselves - granted that their (incompetent and incredibly corrupt) government manages to transition from imperial power to ordinary (but better managed) country in orderly way (that is, without inciting WW3).

Message to fellow Americans: you're still one of the most progressive folks in the world (yet NOT the most ones), it's just your fucked up government that sucks, causes mayhem (Ukraine being the last manifestation of this) and blocks your potential. It's time to abandon your imperial/global hegemony policies - you can prosper pretty damn well in a multipolar world (much better than most of the rest). It all depends on you. BUT there are few things to do. You need to bring your fucked-up out-of-control government back in control, forget about american exceptionalism and learn to live in (competitive) multipolar world (ie. do not solve all problem using military or inciting civil wars).

Comment Ask Github folks to implement alternative (Score 1) 62

I've just looked at github 'release' feature and I see that they implement it without much effort if they choose to. User can add release notes to particular tag and add binaries to download. Missing things: some summary page with releases, RSS/Atom feeds, tags for projects (eg. Java, Monitoring, CRM, Perl etc.) and versions (eg. Beta, Stable, Minor etc.), screenshots. My perception is that this can be fairly natural extension to their current feature set, fairly easy to implement. At least some of these features are not crucial and can be implemented separately. Lack of money from such features might be the only obstacle. I'm now writing 'feature request' e-mail to their support and I encourage everyone interested to do the same. Inform them that freshmeat.net is now dead and specify features you would like to have. Let's see how they'll react.

Comment Re:Freecode/Freshmeat replacement? Simple? (Score 2) 62

I used to publish releases of my software on freecode.com, so I'm quite angry about this. Actually, every time I've published release on freecode.com, traffic to my project site increased substantially, so I conclude 'lack of traffic' is a bunch of lies spewed by Dice corporate drones and real purpose is just to kill it off and block independent developers.

Freshmeat did one thing and did it well. Now I cannot find alternative sites that would do this in similiar way - so called 'alternatives' are either ad-ridden to the point of being useless or are not maintained on regular basis. If anyone knows similar and useful site, please let me know.

I would ask Dice if they would donate freshmeat.net domain name to a group of people interested in recreating something like this. It would expose their intentions quite clearly. Should they refuse -> they're interested in killing off this site regardless of costs/utility/users/etc. (and this would implicate that their 'lack of traffic' is propably a lie).

Maybe asking some well managed companies like Github if they're interested in filling this market niche would be another solution.

Anyway, if there is enough people interested in recreating such index, I'm ready to donate some of my time and effort (granted that no company is interested in this and no real alternatives do exist).

Comment Another joke from US gov (Score 1) 165

Given how "moral" and "just" US govt is when pursuing such atrocities as Obama's drone campaign, funding and arming islamist fundamentalists in Syria, supporting and funding neo-nazis in Ukraine, murdering millions of people all over Middle East etc., I'd rather have anything but military robots with US government "ethics" onboard. They just want fully autonomous killing machines without human conscience standing in the way. Maybe they're running out of drone operators eager to blindly follow murdering orders, so cowardly psychopaths from Washington want machines to take orders to kill and don't want anyone to see results of their actions, not even soldiers on the ground or drone operators.

You see, if some sick fuck in Armani suit wants to kill somebody standing in his way (or corporation employing said crook), he can now fill the form in his nice office, that will be processed as ordinary "business process" and will end up being automatically loaded into some drone flying above his target. No messy pictures, no one complaining, just some fancy form tapped into computer and voila, problem solved !

I can't find words how disgusting it is.

Comment Why only Americans are of concern ? (Score 3, Insightful) 310

The saddest thing of this fiasco is that it applies only to Americans. (Un-)People of other nations are of no concern whatsoever. Obama can bomb the hell out of them and no one cares - at least in the US it not discussed at all. This looks pretty much like taken straight from nazi playbook. It emphasizes hipocrisy of all Americans proud of being "the greatest democracy in the world" (which it isn't).

Comment Nope (Score 1) 551

I see no meaningful similiarities. This is just warmongering western media spewing propaganda without mentioning who started this mess by staging a coup that has gone out of control (hint: leaked conversation between Victoria Nuland and Geoffrey Pyatt - hear this with caution, famous 'F the EU' is least important part of this conversation). I also recommend considering geopolitical context of this situation - Russia could not afford NOT responding to this as NATO bases in Ukraine could pose direct strategic threat to them of the same magnitude that missiles in Cuba posed to the US of A. This is also conveniently overlooked by western media.

Having said that, I view Crimea annexation as some kind of act of aggression, yet compared this to "liberations" conducted by the US (which usualy end up in massacres and drastic atrocities) it was (almost) bloodless. This makes very bad publicity for western warmongers, especialy neocons who look like war criminals by comparison (and in fact some of them are). Maybe this is the reason of recent media frenzy over Crimea issue.

Putin's way to achieve his goals seems to be mostly political (with some military support). First steps after Crimea annexation were to set up conditions for as fast growth of crimean economy as possible. They'll now be governed by russian laws (that are way less intrusive than ukrainian laws). Additional laws are being passed to ease conducting business in Crimea. Crimean firms don't have to pay taxes until the end of 2014. After that they'll have standard russian 13% flat tax (which is quite low compared to other countries in Europe). Russians also pledged to invest 5bn EUR into infrastructure of Crimea. My guess is Putin is trying to make a template for other post-soviet republics that will look easier to achieve and possibly more attractive than joining the EU. Just compare this to how well Greece is doing today under Troika dictate. The same results are not guaranteed anywhere else (first ones have the best bargain), yet it will give others something to thinks, especially in countries that went through color revolutions (all of which failed miserably). This stands in stark contrast contrast with how West (especially US) conducts their politics in other countries, which in most cases boils down to either staging a coup (Ukraine), funding insurgents waging a civil war (Syria, Libia) or bombing the hell out of (perceived) opponent (Iraq, Libia).

I'm trying to guess what Putin will do next but I don't believe in "invade The Free World" myth spewed by western media. With Ukraine descending into chaos, neo-nazis from Svoboda (originaly: Social-National Party of Ukraine - I'm not joking!) in key positions in ukrainian government (deputy PM, defence ministry, security services), ukrainian military mostly NOT obeying their orders (and rightfuly so - should they obey we'd already have civil war), Party of Regions (still having most popular support) being outlawed by force, gangs stopping busses, beating and robbing anyone with russian passport, Putin could just sit there and wait until this whole thing breaks down and people revolt once again and this time request joining Russia in order to improve their miserable life conditions. The other thing he can do is to annex other eastern regions of Ukraine the same way Crimea was annexed and leave Western Ukraine to Europe with all debts, troubles and nationalist gangsters roaming around. He propably doesn't want deal with those troubles when someone else can.

I'm truly asamed of my country politicians (hello from Poland!) who helped creating this mess. Should they not stage this coup, or at least enforce treaties they've signed with Yanukovych in February, Ukraine could go in orderly fashion into elections and - with sufficient monitoring - Ukrainians would elect whoever has popular support. Instead, our politicians are now spreading anti-russian hysteria and supporting ukrainian nationalists praising Stepan Bandera (the man responsible for murdering of some 200 thousands Poles in Ukraine in 1940s). Even taking photos with red-black flags of Bandera movement beind. My perception is polish politicians now act contrary to interests of Poland. Whomever they working for, whoever orders are they taking (um, Washington?) it will cause billions of dollars of losses as Russia will propably retaliate with even higher gas prices (we're already paying one of highest prices thanks to idiocy of polish politicians in the past), and with even more restrictions for polish companies trading with Russia. Even as our financial situation is not pretty, our politicians seem to not give a shit about this - maybe they hope for covering those losses by stealing remaining half of our pensions (as first half they stole several months ago).

Comment Who cares (Score 3, Informative) 76

Thank tho Snowden we now know that Cisco is even worse in that regard. So the only thing one can choose is who will be sucking one's data - US or China. There best way to keep networks safe is to roll one's own equipment (eg. PC-based with OpenBSD or something, sourced from local vendor) but it has its own limitations.

Comment "War in Iraq is given by God" - S. Palin (Score 1, Interesting) 665

Wake up folks. We still treat those creationist fanatics as silly curiosities and ignore fact that they are danger. They're real deal folks. In a system where legislation is bought and paid for, someone is putting gobs of money to push this crap down our throats. They are clearly trying to blur distinction between someone's beliefs and verifiable facts. This is power game. Maybe they see how much power do radical islamist clerics wield over undereducated, poor middle eastern people and they're trying to play the same book - and it seems to work almost as well in poor regions of USofA. Think of all those mega-churches and shady characters behind these, trying to put their their fingers whenever power is (army in particular). If we don't stop those fucks, they'll destroy everyone standing in their way using the same terrorist methods Saudis are using today in Syria or Chechenya. Future fascism will born in the US and use Holy Cross as its emblem the same way nazis were using swastika. Instead of just laughing at it, we should stop it in its tracks at all costs - in order to save both us and (honest parts of) Christianty. And no, corporate estabullshitment won't help us. Corporations will be as happy profiting from this as they were happy profiting from nazis in 1930-s.

Comment Re:Why? (Score 2) 578

Because each Olympic event is funded by hosting country taxpayers ? Either everyone can film and publish taxpayer-funded Olympics coverage or Olympics Comittee acquires private sponsors and tightly controls who can and who cannot cover Olympic Games. Currently we have the worst of worlds which drives me to a conclusion that Olympic Games is a giant racket (which - by the way - helped bankrupting several countries already).

Comment But even this was proven to be lie. (Score 1) 199

(from TFA) It turned out that some things have been removed manually, including some Open Source software and people involved did this knowing that WB has absolutely no copyrights. So they lied to court that "it was done by computer" and now they argue they have right to censor works they don't have copyright rights without penalties. I don't have to stress how bad it would be if they set such precedent and defend it in courts. It's pretty much like going back to feudal times.

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