I was recently watching 'moscow on the hudson' and thinking to myself, wow, we have not exactly switched sides, but we have become much more like the old dreaded russia than we ever thought we'd become.

If the DOJ makes a promise in a legal contract, it will have to follow that contract.

no one who has been paying attention the last few decades will believe this.

the US does not even follow its own laws. lets start with that quaint old paper, the constitution. its against the C to spy on citizens without cause. yet, they do it, they are bold about it and they show no signs of changing. each day, they break major laws doing this.

that should be enough for you to mistrust the government and how it applies its laws.

its a salad bar situation; they pick and choose what favors them and only follow what gives them the edge.

the US is a has-been. world-wide, we are a laughing stock. I HATE THAT, as I was born and raised here, but I do realize that we've lost all credibility and it will be a very long time coming before it returns.

like other have guessed, he's very likely NOT seriously thinking of returning.

but, there may be something to be gained by ACTING like you are willing to return, to see what deals the gov is willing to make.

all info you get is useful. whatever they disclose, could be useful, now or later.

I'm 99% sure he has no plans to return. he's smart and there's something else he's got in mind, out of this. dollars to borscht, I would bet on it.

fwiw, do you think any of the 5 eyes (uk, oz, etc) would give him a fair trial?

no such luck!

any time you piss off the spymasters this much, you won't usually live very long, or have a good life. he ran for his life, very literally.

there cannot be a fair trail because you insulted the king and the king is very very mad at you.

to be fair, the women I've met from russia and ukraine were amazing knock-out beauties!

for some reason, I get a lot of 'you might know this person' on linked-in and they often are women from ukraine (more so than russia, for some reason). 95 times out of a 100, they are model-quality in their looks.

so, being in that region of the world could have its good points... ;)

shill detected!

"damage he did"...

you just gave youself away. the US did damage. he just reported it!

another one for the old killfile. thanks for IDing yourself as a stupid government shill.

we can clearly see who is being paid to write dissenting posts, here. its not hard.

he knew enough to be well aware of the fact that the government will not play fair, no matter what.

the fact that you THINK the gov would play fair speaks badly about you. or, exposes your agenda as a shill.

well, another shill to add to my 'sponsored morons' list. welcome!

I'm thinking that the US is simply wearing him down. they can wait, they have time. but he's living in a kind of prison right now, anyway. his freedom is highly restricted. plus, well, russia is a shit-hole. who in their right mind would want to STAY there if you've known and grown up with better?

still, I would never trust this 'agreement'. the US has a hard-on for fucking him over and there will be NO fair trail, you can bet on that.

the US makes up its own rules and it would take an extremely lucky person to walk out of such a situation alive, in one piece and not be always watching over your shoulder.

his life is mostly over, as it is. really sad to have to say that, but living in the US will always be a 'look over your shoulder' kind of life. he will be hunted the rest of his life, if not by government thugs, then by CITIZEN thugs who think they are being 'patriotic' (dammit!).

there is no good move for him. I wish him the best, he's my ultimate hero, but I don't see this ending well at all ;(

so few projects are REALLY collaborations, that old horse gets trotted out far too often.

in my 25+ years in software, I don't know of any single time that I've collaborated, NEEDING or even benefiting from an open office with all the noise and distractions it brings.

if we want to brainstorm, we go into a conf room, whiteboard, take notes and then go back and do our brainwork.

if you talk to me, I get annoyed. I'm deep in concentration. each time you bug me, you break my concentration.

what's so hard to GET about this?

anyone who supports OO is looking for a party at work, not doing real work. I'm 100% convinced about that. the reason every HR says that OO is 'great' is that 'new/young employees think it makes the work environment more like a dorm, which they relate to'. yeah, that gives the real reason right there; youngsters want that dorm feel. us old neckbeards just want to work in peace and not be distracted by every stupid thing someone wants to spout up about. socializing is needed, but go do that at the water cooler or break room. leave the work area QUIET, please!

what is the make-up of the US, these days? and actually, by area of the country, since it varies to much by region.

here in the bay area, whites are not the majority anymore. take a walk down cupertino or santa clara or san jose. its asian and indian, mostly. take a walk thru a silicon valley company; the managers (some) may be white but almost all the workers are from asian countries (counting india in that grouping).

when I would have lunch talks with a group of internationals, both contractors and employees, at the bay area companies - I would often ask them what they think of the mass surveillance that we are now seeing in the US, the fear and FUD from the government about 'terrorism' and they usually have NO PROBLEM with how the government acts, in fact, they want MORE government pressure and involvement 'to keep us all safe'. they have no point of reference of what it was like to grow up here, in schools and societal life, to be brought up with the notion that 'the evil commies' were the ones to ask 'papers please!' and restrict your travel, assume you did bad things unless proven otherwise, where neighbors spied on each other, no one trusted each other and the government was to be feared, not trusted.

what we learned in school, all those decades ago, the foreigners who now work and live here, have no experience with. their own home countries sucked so much worse, they were happy and glad to get a new chance here in the 'land of opportunity' and most still see it that way, even after being here a long time (ie, a decade or less).

and so, if you go by silicon valley populations, the stereotypical 'white guy' almost does not exist anymore. walk the bay area streets and you find mostly asians, and they don't have the same feeling about what made america great compared to someone who was born and raised here.

those born and raised here are pissed off and ready for a revinvation (maybe not revolution but certainly not a warming over of what we already have; we want a re-do!). but those from other lands will not be joining us in any such fight. they are not going to make waves, they are not going to 'bite the hand' and they are ok with how things are. its actually good for them, right now, with all the h1b friendly companies out there.

so, even if mr. white guy is pissed off, there just are not enough of them to even matter, anymore! and it shrinks every year, as more h1b's enter the country.

america, in the bay area at least, has lost a lot of what made it great; the knowledge of what the US was really about. generally you do have to grow up here to know, at the deepest level, what we are about and what we are supposed to be about. but as those who grow up here become the minority, our voice shrinks and we become irrelevant.

note, this is also an unspoken goal of the hi1b-IT-isation of america. sort of like gerrymandering.

A fucking drunk chimp could do as good of a job as most corporate CEOs.

agreed.

we had one as a president of the US for 2 terms. and half the country still thought 'things were fine'.

the value of leadership is HIGHLY over-rated. the workers are still the ones who do the real work, in ANY corporation.

not sure about flickr 'going strong'. I joined flickr when it first came out and most of the people I 'knew' back then are no longer active on flickr and their updates have stopped years ago.

each time flickr changes their site, it breaks stuff, features get dropped that were useful and stupid things get added that are of NO value at all.

I did have a paid membership to flickr but I had that just 1 year, flickr started to suck and I let the paid thing lapse. now, I post a few photos a year instead of the dozens per month that I used to post.

(and no, I have not gone to FB or the other sites. I don't have a FB account and never will.) flickr was my only 'social networking' site, if you can call it that, but all my friends have gotton fed up with yahoo and left!

excuse me??? spam filter works on yahoo?

ha!

I get nothing BUT 'indian tv' and 'indian flix' and other stupid spam. uhm, I'm not indian and don't speak the language, don't know the people and actually, don't even watch (broadcast) tv anymore. marking them as spam never stops them. clearly its spam but yahoo won't stop them from appearing in my yahoo inbox. I've given up on yahoo mail and only check it a few times a year. (it takes about that long to load those stupid web pages, too, even with adblock!)

so, what level of manager are you?

first line, middle mgmt or maybe c-level?

you are clearly not a working stiff like most of us, here...

I worked at both sun and sgi (that you mentioned in your list) and neither one required us to be at our desks. I was telecommuting about 99% of the time (even though my office was about 10mi from where I live, all my co-workers were 'remote' and all our meetings were on the phone, so there was no real reason to 'be' there). I stayed there 5 years and had a great time, did good work and enjoyed being at sun. well, up until oracle bought them and all hell broke loose...

at sgi, same kind of deal; I was allowed to work from home as-needed and sgi was a 'very online' company back in the 90's. before it was trendy, in fact.

so, not sure which bay area you worked at, but I've been here over 25 years and I know what the silicon valley culture is all about. and it used to be pretty open and flexible. it was the 'california way' (I moved from boston, so I knew the east coast 'uptight' way as well as the more relaxed calif way.)