And If its not the children... its the catch all of terrorism. At the height of the cold war, faced with thousands of nuclear weapons, the government didn't peer into everyone snail mail. We used to condemn the communists for mass surveillance. Now the NSA and FBI are getting into game.. Someone needs to reacquaint the government with this little thing called the Constitution. Hopefully one of these days someone will organize a big march in Washington to shame the politicians and bureaucrats that have been supporting this sort of behavior.

Mice everywhere squeak with joy. "We're number 1. We're number 1. We win the prize" Oh wait a sec...

Gates has a valid point. Taxing corporations takes money away from job creation and innovation. Most people don't realize that countries like Sweden have both solid industry and social services precisely because they have a very low corporate tax rate mixed with a high person income tax rate. (thus encouraging capital investment while simultaneously addressing extreme inequality) On the other hand, corporations currently use their lower tax to do things that amount to consumption rather than capital investment. For example if the CEO wants' a private jet to fly to Hawaii instead buying it with their own taxable salary, they'll put on the tab of the company as a "business expense". Want to hide personal capital gains? Just keep the funds in an executive company investment plan. Ideally corporations should face zero tax and consumption should be the target -- but in practice in most instances because of these loopholes taxing corporations too little hurts the public coffers even further. If we want to change that a review of the tax code to close these loopholes must be the first step. Not sure how Sweden manages it but it would be a good thing to take a close look. https://sweden.se/society/why-... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

Addendum: Data protection also includes protecting one's data from prying eyes of corporation and government organizations that forget the human right to privacy. Mass surveillance is a human rights violation even if its being done against another country. End industrial scale back doors. Period. This would require open sourcing windows already. (not the same thing as free) The NSA , by proxy politicians, seem intent on destroying American technology jobs (since no one with half a brain stem would trust American tech to protect their data at this point) . Ergo - companies have to put the power to protect data in the hands of users. Encryption should be on the client side. Updates should be from servers were the code being updated is visible to everyone. Code should be compiled locally before first use. (and checksums validated). There should be no way for a company to update a remote computer without user agreement. This by extension makes it harder for government to do so. Its still not foolproof (since the KGB... uhmmm... NSA... is sneaking things into firmware and probably even hardware but MS should be at least doing its part. Tech companies like MS (Apple, Google, etcl) need to top taking orders on data sharing from a government that has clearly overreached. Combine efforts to show corporations can also be a force for good political change too. Taking this stuff to court until laws exists make it legal for manufacturers to produce protects that make it impossible to spy out of the box. If the spooks, fbi, et al.. want to gather intelligence, do it the way they used to do it. Physical infiltration. Leg work. Human resources. We are not here to serve the government. The government is here to serve us. I'd rather have criminals and terrorist get away with it more often than a Orwellian surveillance state. Cries about "the childen" and "terrorism" aren't justification to take our freedoms away.

Data protection. One reason why MS has lost its appeal isn't just because of the rise of mobile. Its because MS has stopped innovating in useful ways around the OS. Bringing back the start menu and windowing of store apps is great but really represent fixes rather than enhancements. Major GUI tweaks are mostly gimmicky at this juncture. Most typical users spend their time using apps not switching between them.

A windows file system that deals with bitrot, provides quick system restores, and bulletproof data recovery is long overdue. If ZFS and Btrfs can exist in the Linux world with a small budget, I'm sure the largest software company in the world can pull off a nextgen file system too. Protecting data on PCs is still ad-hoc, Most consumer users can't be bothered to automate their backups even with existing utilities in Windows. They do silly things like back up manually to USB keys... occasionally. The vast majority don't have secondary drives.

PCs should just do data protection right out of the box without user input. Ideally the OS should even encourage the existence of secondary drive with a notification upon first use. (scold the manufacturer as inferior product for not putting it in with a warning... your data isn't safe) Sell Windows with cloud backups as a built-in feature (with opt in question during initial use). Hook customers in with free backups for first year.

Add more robust virus and spyware protection. Create a far better firewall (something like peerblock's list system baked into the system). Make it easier to clean out the system of unwanted apps... without having to reinstall everything again. Windows store is a step in the right direction but it shouldn't mimic Apple's and Android's Orwellian control freak model (that also sucks up the profits of app developers) Reverse the model. Apps that are installed in windows instantly also become store apps aligned to their personal account. This way anyone can install anything on their system and immediately have a full system recovery even if the hardware dies. Get the job done.

With the rise of mobile, at this juncture Microsoft is no longer in a monopoly position. The DOJ should allow it to add security and data stability features to the desktop without having a cow. If competing companies don't like it, tough. Free enterprise. Either do it better or get out of the way of those that can.

"which probably made the species-jump through contact with infected blood while handling bush meat"

There is of course another, rather unholy, possibility for the cross-species jump.

This might be useful for transporting animal life but not humans. A astronaut coming out of a long term induced coma would have severe muscle atrophy. There is also extreme risk that an astronaut would stay in coma (with no medical facilities to deal with any complications) Makes for good science fiction but highly impractical any time soon.

A better approach to long space trips... one way travel. It greatly lightens the mass of the spacecraft. In addition, break up the mission. First send automated ships with supplies, habitat and tools. Then send colonists not tourists. If Mars colonies get big enough, they will eventually have the capacity to be build launch facilities of their own. These could be used both for a return to earth and missions deeper into the solar system.

The first few colonists to Mars will be responsible for setting up self-sustainable facilities that can be expanded using local resources. After that's done the chief Mars colonist requirement will be to be youth and fertility. The cheapest way, by far, to get humans on Mars: make them there.

Ukrainian ultra natioanlist extremists (which do not represent all Ukrainians) started this fight by violently overthrowing a pro-Russian government in lew of elections (backed by the US I might add). Despite ridiculous attempts to paint them as "victims', anyone that's been following their policies post violent overthrow with regards to minorities knows they are bordering on fascism. This is precisely why Russians stepped in. All Russia is doing is defending interests against a group of violent thugs that finally figured out why dialog and electioins are preferable to violence is a method towards political change. There is always some out there that can fight back.

The question is who is the aggressor here? Lets not forget the US helped violently overthrow a pro-Russian Ukrainan government leading up to this situation.

What you say is true but someone truly objective doesn't only say the truths that suit them and omit the rest. Ukraine was a democratic (albeit corrupt) country right up to the moment the US helped violently overthrow a pro-Russian government. US media constantly leaving out that "minor" point only further illustrates that there is very real propaganda in US as well. Media has become so centralized in the US that they are now basically all in bed with US government (also see invasion of Iraq for non-existent WMDs). When news starts to be about going "rah rah " rather than reporting objectively on situations-- it ceases to be news and becomes nationalist propaganda.

An objective assessment (rather the BS they feed us on the news). The narrative that Russia is the bad guy in this instance is American establishment propaganda. The long pattern of bigotry towards Russians post cold war has more to do with the fact Russia is one of the few countries in the world the US cant bully militarily to get what it wants than anything to do with democracy. Long forgotten by US policians and media moguls in bed with them --- the US started this Ukrainian mess by helping violently overthrow a democratically elected pro-Russian Ukrainian government last year. When the US undermines democratic rule to push its interests it loses moral high ground. What did everyone think Russia was going to do after those Ukrainian fascists took over. Sit back and watch as Russians in the Ukraine get persecuted. Anyone that knows anything about the current ultra nationalist Ukrainian government (that is not a synonym for all Ukrainians) would understand they are far closer to fascism than Russia is. Putin is a dirtbag is some respects (e.g. he oppresses gay people) but in this particular issue he;s not int he wrong. Ukrainian ultra nationalists brought this on themselves when they overthrew Ukrainians that were pro-Russian. They could have just waited for elections to elect another government instead of resorting to guns. Once some faction does that, then other factions also gain a right to use force in self-defense.

Good observation. That hypocrisy has always bugged me. The British government under troll Cameron is clearly anti-EU -- but then calls for unity in Britain! While some people in Britain have begun to identify themselves as purely British (as opposed to using British in a geographic sense) the funny thing about the situation even Cameron himself isn't British. Even the Queen of Gotha herself is of mostly ethnic German ancestry. The term British people came into widespread use after the union of Scotland and England in the 18th century --- neither of which have anything to do with the original Britons (the closest they have to actual descendents are to the Welsh and Cornish). The modern British identity is based on revisionist history. While there is such a thing as British islands in a geographic sense there is no such thing as a British people. Its an invented ethnic group built on assimilation of actual ethnic groups.

Kudos to the Scottish people for wanting to get rid of nukes in a principled fashion. As for an unprincipled British government (which is not the same as the British people), they should be constantly reminded by the media, human rights groups, and foreign diplomats NPT is not about just about preventing nukes in countries that don't currently have them. It's about getting nukes entirely.. If the countries that hypocritically continue to have nukes don't get rid of them, every nation that is part of NPT should eventually withdraw and start planning their own nuclear arsenals to act as a deterrent against countries with WMDs. (the BS argument that government's currently with WMDs use to justify having them 20 years post cold war). Perhaps if more nukes are pointed at the capital cites of nations currently with nukes, the governments of those nations will once again remember that they too are bound by NPT.

My understanding is according to the modern alleged "Macedonians" (former Yugoslav republic) ancient Macedonians, founders of the Hellenistic period, were not Greeks but actually Slavic. Does this mean Greece now gets dibs on Yuri Gagarin?