I think that for things to to truly change, Russia needs to undergo the same experience that Germany had, basically. It has to very explicitly, clearly and unambiguously denounce its past actions, and the imperial ideology behind them. This never happened so far, not even in 1993 - it was always token nods and apologies, but always with "... but" tackled at the end. We had gulags, but we crushed the Nazis, that sort of thing.

So long as that remains, it keeps being used again and again as a basis of nationalist revival once the country gets strong enough that it can assert itself, and the populace thinks that they don't get the respect they are due as a nation. Witness the present arrangement, where pro-Novorossiya and anti-Ukraine rhetoric is heavily grounded in WW2 symbolism and cast as "fight against fascism" - even while many of the militia units fighting in Donbass openly use Nazi symbols themselves, and engage in rather vitriolic nationalist talk (my favorite is when they start going on about the "Jewish fascist junta", with revelations like Poroshenko's true last name being Valtzman etc). They don't see the contradiction at all, which just goes to reinforce that the Soviet/Russian cult of WW2 victory is fundamentally imperialist in nature, rather than anti-fascist - it's about Russia winning over a strong enemy, not about good guys winning over the bad guys. Or, from another perspective, it's a world view when Russia is fundamentally where the good guys are, and so anyone opposing is bad guys by definition. This can justify a lot of things.

I don't think there's much likelihood of this kind of thing happening, though. The only way it could happen is if Russia starts WW3, is defeated and occupied, and forced by the victors to undergo a process similar to de-Nazification in Germany, and similar purges in Japan. I think that all of these are rather unlikely.

There's actually quite a lot of incremental improvements at the kernel level since Vista. These things do accumulate.

I didn't make any proposals - merely stated an objective fact. Historical track record has shown time and again that Russia is inherently a land hungry empire, and will expand unless and until stopped by force. Hence, any countries bordering Russia always have to contend with the fact that they may be the potential next target for that expansion. This is doubly true for any country that has been previously occupied, because of all the drivel along the lines of "this land is ours because it is washed by the blood of Russian soldier".

Oh, and I am not Ukrainian.

So the question that was asked wasn't whether it is Russian territory or not, but whether they were willing to send their children die to "return" it. I don't think you can reasonably make any conclusions from this. Especially given that a popular attitude in Russia today seems to be that Ukraine is a failed state in the making, and once it fails for good, Russia can just come in and pick up the pieces that it lays claim on (generally speaking, this is everything except for the parts that were in Austria-Hungary before WW1 - Lvov etc).

The attitude towards Ukrainians, as a nation, is that they're a "brother people" (though the notion that they're not a distinct nation is also popular). It doesn't necessarily extend towards recognition of their national sovereignty.

I have no idea where you've got the "popular retelling" from. I'm Russian, so I've heard about the Battle of the Ice a lot (it is a cultural icon, that much is true) - and that's the first time I hear about "weight of Russian corpses breaking the ice".

Yes. It also includes those who campaigned for Prohibition, for example.

In any case, the original point of contention higher up the thread was whether "SJW" describes a real group of people or not. Seems like you're in agreement that it does.

It also abolished the National Origins formula - do you want that back, too?

If consciousness is a well-defined physical phenomenon, it can, and eventually will, be replicated.

The problem is that no-one has a clear definition of consciousness beyond that of "I'm conscious" (which obviously makes it hard to generalize in any meaningful way).

Even if it is, what makes you believe that "natural intelligence" is anything different? For all we know, it's just a larger collection of IF/THEN statements.

Why do you arbitrarily assume that "a general curiosity for life" is a hard requirement for AI or artificial consciousness?

The conflict with Russia will never truly end. Even if Ukraine can take back all the lands that it has lost, and expel all Russian troops and sympathizers among the local populace, there will always be a looming threat of a repeat so long as Russia exists as the state that is inherently imperial, land-gathering in nature.

If you mean the Battle of the Ice, there's nothing in the mainstream historiography about it that involves "weight of Russian corpses" or anything like that. Quite the opposite, the ice supposedly cracked under the weight of heavily armored Teuton knights, when they were trying to flee across the lake.

Thing is, a historical perspective on this that has always been present in Russia, and that has been enjoying a very strong resurgence lately, is that Ukraine is Russian soil.

Yes. And if you have the GUID for 8.1 in the manifest, then you'll get back 8.1.

Basically, the OS will never again tell you the version number that you did not explicitly declare that you know how to handle (via your app manifest).

The change in kernel version was long overdue - if you compare XP to Vista, and then Vista to 8.1, the latter is just as much of a gap.