> Just because a corrupt judge signs off on it, doesn't make it legal.

Actually, when a judge signs off on it, like it or not, the warrant by definition becomes legal.

I hereby revoke my consent.

Oh shut your mouth stupid Americans, ask Kiev to release the confiscated ATC record and explain why MH17 deviated over 500km from its usual flight path? And why was is requested to drop from 35000ft to 33000ft before it got hit?

Vladimir, is that you? Would you care to offer any sort of citation for the claims you have made?

The United States has abandoned its manned space exploration capabilities, relying on another semi-derelict cold-war era launch setup, provided by a country it's on the brink of war with (Russia), preferring to funnel almost unlimited funds to anti-terrorism and Orwellian surveillance programs instead...

I'm was born during the cold war. Tensions between the US and the USSR weren't ideal by any means, but at least when I was a kid, we looked forward to a bright future of scientific achievements and space exploration. Now all I look forward to is reaching retirement age with some money on the side that's still worth something despite the inflation, hoping that WW3 and the religious crazies don't overwhelm the world before I kick the bucket.

Sad, sad world...

These resources are all being managed today, there already are priorities for CPU, QoS for network bandwidth, ionice and quotas for storage and so on with a lot of specialization in each. He wants to build some kind of comprehensive resource management framework where everything from CPU time, memory, storage, network bandwidth etc. is being prioritized. It sounds extremely academic to me, particularly when I read the line:

Besides, resource management isn't something that happens only on this level, for example if I have an SQL server then clearly who gets priority there matters, these are order transactions that should have millisecond latency and here's the consolidated monthly report we need by noon tomorrow. Load balancers, cache servers, read-only slaves, thread pools, TCP congestion logic, it's like you took something that you can write a whole library about and said "we need a framework for it". Good luck writing a framework that can balance anything in any situation, yes I suppose that from a galaxy away it might look like everything is a resource and we have consumers who need prioritization but the specifics of the situation matter a lot. Which is why there are many, many specialized systems that all do their specialized kind of resource management.

No they don't, they gobble down the latest "rushed to the frontpage two minutes before the competition" and after being fed clickbait by clickbait that's wildly misleding they keep coming back for more. You're confusing it with that they want it two seconds after it happened, which is another thing entirely.

The first Transformers movie made $700 million. "Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen" made $830 million, "Transformers: Dark of the Moon" grossed over a billion dollars and "Transformers: Age of Extinction" is 75% there after two weeks. Reality disagrees with you.

No, most people mainstream because they want to since it involves the least effort. I could certainly find something I like better but a pizza from the popular pizza shop down on the corner will probably be fine. Those clothes I wear might not be a fashion statement but they work well enough. My car is certainly mainstream and it has its conveniences when it comes to service, repair, parts and resale market. Tried and true and not on the bleeding edge of anything. Maybe I could find one better or simpler or lower priced or lower on maintenance but at the risk of ending up with something I eventually won't like.

Like everyone I've got a few things I really care deeply about, like what parts my computer have and the other 95% I don't really care, I just want a product that's decent and will work for me unless I have some sort of special needs. Like what brand of tooth paste I use, I barely remember it well enough to pick up the same tube next time and I certainly don't care - it's not brand loyalty it's brand apathy. There's a few I don't like the taste of so there's "lemons" in the market and I can't really say I know what the improvements would be. It's not like I'm going to start reading toothpaste reviews to pick the best one.

Since ICBMs predate GPS by several decades and the US has a massive submarine launch capability I doubt taking out the satellites would affect the US counter-strike much. What worries China is the US rocket shield technology, they say it's against "rogue states" but who is to say what it's really capable of. If the US strikes first are they able to retaliate? Do they have any submarines capable if the ICBMs fail? Doubtful. Take out the satellites and you're back to MAD - if the US can nuke China then China wants to be sure they can nuke the US.

US has been and is pushing for a level of military superiority where they can't be harmed, where people thousands of miles away push buttons and drones fire on the enemy without anyone at the US side at risk. That's a very comfortable position for the US of course, but very uncomfortable position for everyone else. What's the deterrent from using this aggressively and excessively when there's no personal losses to waging war? If way, way more than three thousand die in Iraq or Afghanistan, well then that was necessary to secure American lives after 9/11. Their lives never count as much as our lives.

Which is pretty much exactly what VISA does when I want to pay with my NOK in USD. I don't have to find an ATM, withdraw cash and deliver US bills and that's generally what we mean by "Do you accept VISA?". If I can hand over Bitcoins and they handle the conversion it means they accept Bitcoins. Just like you in some third world tourist destinations can pay with US dollars, they'll just keep it until they can exchange it for local money. Sure, it's not a native Bitcoin economy but it is on the way to using Bitcoin as any other foreign currency which is a big step up.

Large companies don't have the same kinds of issues small companies have. For one they're likely to do net exchange after they've paid off all expenses in that currency and large volumes get better rates very close to the interbank rate. I know my bank charges the interbank rate + 1.75% for foreign exchange, that's fine if we're talking about small sums but if I was buying say a $400,000 vacation home abroad I sure wouldn't be paying $7000 in fees. There are services that specialize in this, but the average person doesn't need them.

What I meant was, you can train yourself to like healthy foods, to the point of craving them. Me, just eating one small burger from McDonald's makes me sick now.

As for exercising, it make you feel good. It really does. It's a real buzz after an mere half hour of cycling or swimming.

And then, in the grand scheme of things, when your health is good, you generally feel good too.

Staying healthy makes you feel good, but it does so in the medium to long run, and it takes a bit of effort to get going. Chocolate provides immediate, short-term and effortless pleasure. But it's not good for you. Don't you think it's worth investing a little effort for a few months to train yourself to enjoy a healthy lifestyle, so that you can feel good all the time afterward?

Too bad healthy food tastes and/or feels like shit and excercise is frustrating, wholly unpleasant and time-consuming :/

Yet those of use who exercise and eat healthy seem to lead a happier life. With so much frustration and time wasting, it's a strange thing isn't it?

Maybe you should give it a go some day. You might end up liking your veggies and feeling good exercising...

And yet each year we set a new record on total emissions because there's a bigger population who wants a higher standard of living. Looking at Trends in global CO2 emissions 2013 report (pdf) on page 50 you can see that the emissions in industrialized nations are down around 20-25% per capita from 1990-2012 through greener technology but a lot of that is lost in population growth and the low hanging fruit is gone. For developing countries all the arrows point upwards, even if we assume China will level out at EU levels (almost there) and not US levels (about double) there's still India and another few billion people who'll also want the standard of modern living.

Currently the best guess is that world population will peak at a little over 9 billion people (this is mostly a fill-up of elderly, the number of children is not growing anymore) and if we assume the world average CO2 per capita will approach the EU average then we're still looking at a 25% increase from population growth and 50% from higher standard of living for a total of 1.25*1.5-1 = 87.5% above today's level. Unless there's a huge breakthrough in green energy it's almost inevitable that CO2 emissions will continue to increase massively, considering what's politically realistic. I don't suppose saying "stay poor, so you don't pollute like we do" will fly very far and genocide even less so.

Create a new BitCoin account, transfer some funds there and claim "I don't know whose account that is and I don't remember why I sent money there" and you've got a weak plausible deniability, I mean it's not like I have to keep track of my cash that way, just because I was given a $20 bill with serial number 1234567 from the bank it doesn't prove anything when it shows up in some drug dealer's roll of cash. Or for that matter, that a $20 bill once used to buy drugs is now in my hands. Money kept in secret must be used in secret though, if you pay with then openly it'll expose your shadow account and all the money paid from it as yours all along.

Terrorism is a hit and run business, if they're trying to cease and hold control over territory it's a civil war. Popular support is not a prerequisite, armed factions that clash in warlike combat while the general population suffers is more the norm rather than the exception. That one or both sides get external help too. Of course it doesn't exclude the possibility that those waging war also do terrorism, but taking control of buildings and raising flags isn't it.

Well if the idea was to start a fire he overdid it, what's left of Nokia - at least the mobile division Microsoft bought - is nothing but a smoldering, burned out husk. Despite burning all other sales to the ground Windows Phone still only has about 3% market share and meanwhile Android has covered 80%+ of the market by units and makes money by volume, Apple with their high ASP (average selling price) and margin still do good on revenue while Microsoft is even deeper in no man's land than before.

I doubt Microsoft wanted to buy Nokia, but at this point they were really in danger of losing their one and only remaining hardware partner so it was either that or flunk out of the phone market entirely. Which would pretty much kill the vision they're selling with Windows across the board on phones and tablet/laptop convertibles. That the market isn't buying it yet - and IMHO never - is one thing, but it's what the stock holders are buying into and if Microsoft had to wave the white flag the stock price would tank.

I don't think Microsoft will do well as a hardware company and I don't really understand where all the synergy is supposed to come from, true they have the XBone division but apart from die shrinks they offer a new model maybe twice a decade. If they don't stay on top of all the latest screen, CPU, GPU, broadband, wireless, GPS, camera, sensor, SoC technology and so on then outdated phones don't sell worth shit. And the software to support it is also all mobile specific, what's left to chop?