This is very much oversimplifying the part of Medvedev in this story (as well as the story in general).

This whole mess started when an FSB official (head of their department of information and telecommunication security), in the course of an official meeting, brought up GMail, Hotmail and Skype as an example of a "security problem" due to impossibility of wiretaps (as servers are outside the country, and HTTPS ensures secure connection to them from within), and suggested a ban (neither TFS nor TFA mention this!).

Shortly after, an official from president Medvedev's administration stated that the ban - and, more broadly, the whole idea that foreign-hosted services are a "security issue" - is a personal opinion of that particular FSB person, and does not represent the official position of that organization nor government as a whole.

Shortly after that, prime minister Putin's press secretary stated that this is incorrect, and the position is the official position of FSB, that it is well-argued and reasonable, and that Putin takes it with all due consideration.

So basically it's more of the same thing that we've seen before. Whether it's a genuine power struggle between president and prime minister (the elections are less than a year away), or whether they're playing out a scripted "good cop / bad cop" in preparation for the same, is yet to be seen.

NSA probably does have access to GMail etc storage (even if Google doesn't know that), but they aren't proposing to ban, say, gmx.de, on the grounds that they have no means of accessing the storage there, nor intercept user communication over HTTPS. Nor will they complain if you host your own mail server and use secure protocols to communicate. Neither TFS nor TFA explain it, but what really made the whole thing so shocking is that FSB blokes have called for banning GMail, Skype etc in Russia unless some means of access are provided. In other words, they want government-mandated backends to all forms of communication, and to ban anything that can't be wiretapped. It should also be noted that the use of strong crypto by organizations (rather than private individuals) is heavily regulated in Russia, with most activity requiring special certification. Using foreign-hosted systems is seen as a workaround for the law.

There is, actually, just not in Russia.

It's not particularly similar, aside from that both now and then ruling elites cling to power at all costs. However, the social and economical structure they impose on society is vastly different.

It's even technically incorrect. For example, KGB was also responsible for foreign intelligence, which FSB does not do.

Let me guess, you're an MBA.

What's wrong with the way (ANSI) JOIN works? It's practically right out of relational algebra. As an aside, the term "NoSQL" has very little to do with SQL-as-language, and really is about relational vs other. Some "NoSQL" solutions provide SQL as a query language for their datasets, and there are some relational databases out there that don't use SQL as a query language, but would not count as "NoSQL".

What do you mean by "can't change the fonts"? It's Options -> Under the Hood -> Web Content -> Customize Fonts for me here (Chrome 10 / Win7). Did they remove it in 11?

The "war" has lasted a week, with a grand total of 160 military and 60 civilian deaths on Georgian side (and about 1000 wounded). The amount of damage from that was very limited on both sides of the conflict - and that was more than 2 years ago by now.

The practice of stealing wires (not just copper - anything goes) is widespread across the entire ex-USSR, and by no means limited to "abandoned" or "unused" wires - I mean, seriously, how exactly do you expect this woman to figure out if it's "abandoned" or not?

Any such copper on Georgian territory would then be owned by the Georgia - i.e. state property, not no-one's property.

What's curious is that I have heard that exact joke (albeit in a different language) about Arab tanks, in the aftermath of Yom Kippur War.

... and Jews and other undesirables rounded up and sent to Germany for gassing.

Soviets had that choice also - in fact, their choice was much worse as they weren't treated as "fellow Europeans" by Germans - and yet they chose differently. Largely thanks to that choice, French did not have to endure Wermacht officers for long.

My problem with GNOME 3 is that it does put you into the driver's seat alright - that of a train on a single track.

Well, there is RMS. Or is it idolatry? ~