Are you saying you are a Russian citizen? Or just a Russian apologist? Well, if your livelihood is being impinged by the rest of the world reacting to your dictator invading other countries and lying about it, maybe you should get some balls and speak out against Putin instead of just attacking US sanctions, etc.

Gotta say my Russian friends and coworkers are all pretty embarrassed and against Putin at this point. I guess being in the US they are not scared of imprisonment.

Business and state are clearly highly linked in Russia (Putin claims he is worth what, $200k but he's probably the richest man in the world based on stock in plundered /"privatized" Russian utilities, etc), but not in the US. Wackjob conspiracy theorists like to say this without any real evidence, but it's a pointless trite answer that rarely spurs any useful discussion.

Freezing billions of dollars of Russian capital is a weird way of stimulating cash flow.

And is it any coincidence that those countries that make up most of the US increase in arms sales are the same Arab nations (Saudi Arabia, UAE, Jordan, Kuwait) that now have the balls (or the firepower) to stand up to ISIS and join the offensive today against one of the most evil and barbaric militias of the last few decades?

And economic foreign policy that led directly to allied military action - one that the Republicans have been clamoring for twice as much as the Democrats? I'm sure Fox News will find a way to turn it all into a negative but at least they'll have to get creative.

But anyway, for some reason I'm going to take with a grain of salt a random slashdot poster's explanation of what comes up in US cabinet meetings.

No, that's exactly what I said and meant. *Obviously* the sanctions or threat thereof were the direct cause! That part of your comment doesn't really even make any sense.

Uh yeah, that's no different from any other investment. Ever heard of a short sale? But obviously many more investors are bearish here so their economy has plummeted. Again no insight here...

No, there is ONE big reason Western Europe hasn't come down harder (and they have actually put up a fair amount of sanctions as well, just not enough to make Russia respond in a way that causes a major depression there) - Russian natural gas. The balancing act is to make sanctions mild enough for Russia to continue supplying gas while still causing a noticeable punitive effect on their economy. Right now US & Euoipe is doing a half decent job at that - several of the Russians I know are getting pretty annoyed at Putin because it's affecting their or their family's daily life a lot more than some proxy war in Ukraine.

Except China (what we were talking about) has mostly worked exactly the *opposite* way.

Yeah, really? Did you have a chat with "Exxon" over coffee about this? See - this is the kind of silliness that I was talking about. Hyperbolic conspiracy statements without any actual facts.

Thanks for the conspiracy theorist angle, it's trendy but obviously complete bullshit. If you think borders don't matter look at what's happening in Russia right night. Their President has gone bat shit insane in the name of Nationalism and their "borderless" companies, exchange, and currently has taken a nose dive due to resulting sanctions.

And really, your post is basically arguing opposite points at once. Does the Chinese government have the power to affect an "international" public company? Or is there no concept of "national" companies and investing has no borders?

You don't know anything about it, do you?

Basically if you buy "Alibaba" stock you actually bought stock in a Cayman Islands holding company that is somehow related to the actual Chinese company, since China does not allow foreigners to own stock in Chinese companies. It was a weird/complicated enough arrangement that apparently the Hong Kong stock exchange declined to offer it, and the NYSE was the second choice. It's unlikely of course, but if the Chinese government wanted to "close the loophole" investors could be out $20B+ in a day.

So, no, it's not conceptually the same thing at all...

Real bug, hypothetical exploit, of course. I guarantee you almost every piece of software you use has at least one exploitable bug (and every OS has dozens), but their exploit is obviously hypothetical and unlikely.

Who cares? It was real, not hypothetical. Sorry, but that makes all the difference *in practice* (being the definition of not hypothetical ;)

Never remotely said that and I don't think it's true, anyway. Google surely collects orders or magnitude more of your personal data than Apple, and overall they are VERY good at protecting it (luckily for all of us!) But if you want to start quoting iOS vulnerabilities it's trivial to find Android vulnerabilities as well. My point is a bunch of anecdotes doesn't make an argument.

And *Android* sure as hell isn't a good example of best security practices. Or I guess you could say Apple's draconian approach to locking down their hardware and evaluating submitted apps in fact does result in a lot less distributed malware. Is that Google's "fault"? Not sure I'd call it that, Android is intentionally more open just like a desktop OS is more open. There are a LOT of pluses to that, but security and malware prevention may not be one of them...

Apple doesn't read your emails, messages, or web browsing. And you can opt out of the rest - very easily as you have just shown, thanks!

Try to opt out of Google tracking. Mostly impossible, and where it is possible it's insanely confusing. Good luck...

Not only that, when Apple added support to limit tracking from Safari, Google figured out a hack to bypass it that actually got them fined...

In contrast, Apple has a Safari Privacy preference that by default blocks cookies "from third parties and advertisers," a setting that Google bypassed to collect data across the pages a user visited in order to serve more relevant ads, earning it a $22.5 million slap on the wrist it paid without admitting any wrongdoing.

Apple responded to this by closing the loophole (access to UDID) and adding a specific "ad identifier" that you are free to disable or reset.

You don't seem very technical. Have you ever developed any software, let alone Android or iOS apps? I'm guessing not, or you would already know these things...

Well first, you quoted "The Blaze" which makes your entire point suspect. But beyond that, did you actually READ the post you quoted? It's a hypothetical issue from February - can you cite a specific example where it was exploited?

And seriously, I have no loyalty to Apple or Google, but cherry picking is not a good argument, it's easy to do the same with Google, and in this case there is definitely confirmed malware...

Google's Doubleclick ad servers exposed millions of computers to malware

Wow, a post on /. of which I almost entirely agree! Rare moment ;)

I also agree they're arrogant (in a different way from how Apple is also arrogant). Not sure why. I'd guess they're used to being the darling of the tech industry when they still believed in "don't be evil."

Anecdote when working on a Chromecast app:

One of the Google "support" engineers (i.e. no one actually BUILDING the product, he was glorified QA) came to our office to "help" with integration/certification. On taking a lunch break with us he was shocked we wouldn't pay for his meal, and said "well, next time we should do this at at my office, we get free food!" (emphasis not added, that was his actual tone). All the while he's saying this to people who have worked for *real* startups and can tell he was probably Google employee number 30,000 (and this of course was just one example - he was unbelievably arrogant in every interaction...)

Can I reiterate enough how little shit I give about free lunch? Free lunch at a company of 50,000 employees is not a "perk", it's part of a "compensation package." But as you said, Google still tries to preserve their image of "the world's biggest startup". In some areas that is still serving them well, and in others it REALLY isn't.

Holy shit how clueless are you? They give you a free application BECAUSE you are the product. If you are getting it for free by fucking DEFINITION you are not their customer! We're talking business definitions and you are writing like you are in Jr High...

I know this will make no difference, but: http://www.apple.com/privacy/

Apple does not use your personal information or track your email content or web browsing to target ads. Their CEO has publicly stated it. Are you saying he's lying? Why would he, there is no upside and it would be trivially easy to prove him wrong if he lied.

Citation? No, because there is none, Apple doesn't "sell your info", you are just making this shit up.

Until you do the slightest amount of research into these things YOU have no business talking about it. All of your posts are either made up or quoted conventional trolls without a single actual verifiable fact to back them up.

Eh, your points are valid but I consider them all part of the holistic fuck up that was Google's NFC solution.

It's amazing how Google can innovate technology and then completely and utterly blow its introduction. Chromecast is another great example. They had the chance to take over the streaming hardware & software market but they put out a beta-quality device, completely shit the bed on the launch, and then just practically abandoned it. Now they have given everyone else plenty of chance to catch up - there will be dozens of similar devices that do more and do it better coming out soon.

Not sure all of the reasons that this keeps happening, but I have seen first hand one big one is arrogance. Apple is arrogant, but they still actively reach out and try to make relationships and deals with as many companies as they can before launching a product. Google puts out something and expects everyone to come begging to them to use it.

Yes, intentionally failing to be a competitor in order to try to sue for anti-trust regulation is an awesome strategy.

No. It's that and the fact that they only released the feature after lining up a shit-ton of major retailers and banks to support it, as well as a near frictionless method of using it (w/ iTunes and Passbook, etc) and marketing to back it all up. The NFC part of it is practically incidental to the feature as a whole.

Sadly the Google NFC implementation will eventually be seen as the irrelevant version, even though it came out 2 years before Apple's... because they totally fucked up the UI, launch, and marketing, things Apple has nailed.

Yes, in a way that's true: though technically they didn't try as hard because they don't read every email you send and receive to target those ads, etc.

And if Apple is a "one product wonder company" (which is kind of silly) Google is just as much a one-product wonder company, since ads are almost all of their revenue. The rest of their apps are just ways to target ads better. Again, not that I fault them for that, as they are more or less upfront about it and offer a ton of value for free. Different business models, both highly successful. Only an anti-Apple troll like you would think there is fundamentally different about their basic goal of making money as a for-profit company.