Which legal rights? The constitution of Ukraine only allows such a partition after a nation wide referendum. Russia signed an agreement where they guaranteed to respect the territorial integrity of Ukraine. It is all a bunch of bullshit. They did not even bother making it a puppet state. They just steamrolled into it.

Do you honestly believe even if the voting was conducted properly that the people voting in that referendum did not feel coerced into it by the presence of Russian military forces during the voting procedure? Fact is Stalin agreed after WWII to let the people of the nations 'liberated' from Nazi Germany have free elections. He basically rigged all the elections to ensure the local Communist parties would win. This is a repeat of the same thing. Putin rigs elections in Russia and mocks the Russian constitution by doing a tag team alternation with Medvedev. Do you seriously think he would not do the same in Crimea?

If this was true I could have a 100 year mortgage with really low % of income and end up dying and never owning the damned house in the first place.

Just because the government is illegitimate is no justification to proceed to a land grab.

Merely coincidentally the Russian areas of interest include not only the Sevastopol naval base but also the Kharkiv Tank Factory. I wonder if they will also invade Kiev just to get the Antonov manufacturing plant as well.

The proper way to handle that was not via a land grab where they carve up pieces of Ukraine for themselves. For one there were no actual violent actions taken. If there were there are other way to engage in 'peacekeeping' other than this.

This article is cute considering I was playing The Republia Times yesterday.

I thought that guy in the Guardian recently had his computer, with the rest of the files he had, apprehended by British security forces who promptly destroyed all the remaining evidence. Oh right there it is. They 'voluntarily' destroyed the hard drives in front of the security forces.

Sadat I can sort of understand. He did sign the Egypt-Israel Peace Treaty (then got assassinated by someone who did not like it). The other guys (Peres, Arafat) signed the Oslo accords which might be horrible in several regards but at least they enshrined some sort of autonomy for the Palestinian Arabs. de Klerk released Mandela and allowed the ANC to run for elections. Kissinger... uh... perhaps the visit of Nixon to China and reopening that connection. I am not quite sure what he's supposed to have done.

Obama was total nonsense. Was it because they believed his campaign promises of withdrawing from Iraq, Afghanistan, and closing Guantanamo? They need to wait and see before they give it to someone next time.

There are more people using Huawei telecoms hardware than just the Chinese government. I guess you think we should not discuss Cisco or Siemens SCADA vulnerabilities either.

A couple decades back a blue collar worker could buy a house on 3 years salary. Can you do that today?

I also think a bracelet makes more sense as a form factor than a phone. ASUS had a conceptual design like that.

It took less than three decades. However after 9/11 laptop and cellphone use on airplanes was banned. I remember at one point Iridium mentioned airplane communications for plane travelers as a possible market.

The limiting factor was the size of a pocket. The form factor is the same calculators have used for yonks. Now, it may be that someone makes a smartwatch but do you have any reason to believe those will be more successful in the long term than calculator watches turned out to be?

Smartphones are general purpose computers in a portable format. I doubt they will be replaced or displaced any time soon. Personal computers did not totally replace mainframes either. They just have a larger market. In the case of a smartwatch the problems are how to conduct input and output given the small size. Aside from sci-fiesque projections of virtual displays into thin air what else can you do?

For whatever unfathomable reason Microsoft decided to make Winsock use the BSD socket API *but* you need to use Windows specific error handling mechanisms, Windows specific constants, initialization and shutdown functions, etc.

It is called Realpolitik. It was probably invented by Cardinal Richelieu who joined the Thirty Years War in Europe, of Protestants vs Catholics, by siding with the Protestants despite being a Catholic priest himself because he was not interested in the Spanish Habsburg Empire gaining dominion in Europe.