Wow I knew Russia was shit but I had no idea that it was so shit that it didn't even invent it's own country and had to rely on the Ukraine to do that.

But wait, if Russia was born in the Ukraine, then shouldn't the Ukrainians be ruling you guys rather than vice versa? Perhaps you should hand your country back to them if it's theirs.

I don't really understand what type of warped mentality your grand dictator Vladolf Putler has bred into you to think that it's okay for you to tell the US and other countries to keep out of your business, but not okay for others to tell you to keep the fuck out of the Ukraine, but I have to ask, do you really not see the irony in that?

P.S. I just turned on Russia Today and the Keiser report was on and they were ranting about the US for blaming everything, if you don't care about the US why is the US the only thing your state sponsored propaganda channel rants on about?

"So on the US/UK side, how is that Iraqi thing working out? Or Libya? Or all the military interventions in Latin America? Or Iran?"

What does it matter? wrongdoings by either of those countries doesn't magically make Russia right or what it does acceptable.

But regardless, how are things working out? Iraq's a fuck up, Libya is at least in control of it's own destiny and not ruled by dictatorship, I don't think anything interesting has happened in Latin America for many decades now, and Iran is growing up and becoming a more positive contributor to the world after successful sanctions and a subsequent change of leadership.

"How about shooting down of that Iranian passenger jet going to Dubai in 1988 by US military ship? 290 dead, but of course US does not even acknowledge wrongdoing."

Why do you go back to 1988? In 1988 the soviet union, KGB, and stasi still existed. If you want to go back that far then Russia with the USSR looks even worse again, it had even just come to the end of it's own misguided war in Afghanistan. Even China was just about to commit the Tianamen square massacre. I don't really know what your point is, that somehow a single wrongdoing by the US in 1988 justifies Russian wrongdoing now? Why not compare like for like? is that convenient for your pro-Russian views? None of it makes what the US did right, but nothing the US did wrong makes what Russia is doing in the here and now right either.

"Putin isn't doing anything more than the US has always been doing."

Yes he is, the US has always given territory back in modern history, it's not outright annexed foreign states in breach of international nuclear agreements. Similarly the US hasn't been marking houses of minorities. This is really the point - anything the US has done wrong still pales in comparison to the things Putin and his cronies are doing, especially in modern times. I absolutely hate the NSA's spying programs and think they're wholly unacceptable, but I'd rather be victim of the NSA doing that than have my home country annexed.

"Seriously, apply your standard to everyone equally for a change."

No I am, that's exactly the point. You however are not, you're cherry picking historical events to try and justify even worse modern events.

"You must be under influence of something. If you weren't, you would know that if it weren't for Putin, you'd have your soldiers in the middle of a civil war in Syria, or worse."

Or maybe unlike you I'm just educated? Whilst Putin's folks were already in Syria training the Syrians and helping defend their military port there the West gave not a fuck what Putin thought and quite rightly so. What actually stopped Obama's intended assault on Syria was the fact that the British people opposed it, the British parliament hence voted against it, and Obama was left isolated. It's a shame the Russian people weren't as mature about Ukraine and couldn't make Putin similarly back off from the idea. Unlike Russia (whose soldiers are in the middle of a few civil wars - Georgia, Ukraine, Syria) we, the UK, are not in the middle of a civil war in Syria precisely because we didn't want to be and so voted against it. I personally wrote to my MP to get him to vote against Syrian action and he did.

"Get your head out of your ass to get a better perspective on events around the world."

I have, which is why I know what I'm on about, whereas you seem to be parroting "OMG 1988 IRANIAN AIRLINER, THAT MAKES MASS MURDER BY PUTIN OKAY FOREVER!". Which is one of the most stupid arguments ever.

If you read my posting history back over the years you'll see I'm a staunch critic of the US and my own country, the UK where it's justified. It's just a shame there aren't more Russians like me that can't criticise their own country when it matters and only attack others when it's right to do so. Whilst there are a few, most of them seem caught up in Putin's populist nationalism, as it seems, do you.

He isn't me. But it's pretty obvious you're making a fool of yourself by further proving my point, obviously other people think so too and in your blindness to the fact you're just making it worse.

Keep posting, keep proving my point, please. It's funny to watch, just like the show.

"Conveniently you neglect US financial backing of the uprising"

Oh you mean the payments to NGOs? something the US is open and transparent about and that every country engages in? Companies contribute money to NGOs covering everything from AIDs awareness to democracy. A payment to an NGO promoting democracy and civil liberties doesn't however translate to widespread funding of some massive protest however. I mean what, you think the US paid those protests to be there? the millions of them? What did they pay a dollar a protester? why would they even bother for so little, it must've been more, why doesn't the figure tally with the NGO contributions that are freely and publicly available? You'd need far more than that to make half a country rise up.

"leaked tapes showing state department employees essentially planning the replacement government"

Yes, that's what state departments do, they discuss who they'd most prominently like to see take over after a popular uprising, and they'll use their influence to try and stop extremists taking power. It's responsible diplomacy. It's not like they had control or the file say however, which is what you're implying - in fact, they were annoyed that Svoboda had any representatives at all which highlights precisely the fact that they didn't have any kind of actual control.

"and also the tape stating that the snipers firing on the maidan fired on *both* sides.. for starters"

Yep, that was the problem. Yanukovych's elite police force, the Berkut tried to provoke a greater confrontation by shooting the standard police force (that was being impartial and just doing their job) and the protesters. Some of these Berkut guys were filmed turning up in East Ukraine to fight with Putin's guys afterwards when Yanukovych fled. Others were captured and arrested.

"Dig deeper. Things are not so cut and dried."

I have, that's the point. You're just parroting headlines that have long been dug into in greater detail. You need to read into more depth yourself.

"No, it doesn't -- but then I'm a Financial Times reader."

No you're not:

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/a09e...

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/93de...

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/1d6a...

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/a1dc...

The FT covers pretty much everything I mentioned. Why? Precisely because it's not propaganda.

I'll give you a hint: When it's straight from the horses mouth, it's not propaganda. e.g. when Putin admits it was his soldiers in Crimea all along and hence that he was breaching the Geneva convention by earlier claiming they were civilians that's not propaganda, it's a statement of fact.

When you say you're a techie what do you mean exactly? A techie for the FSB or some bottom of the rung helpdesk monkey? Either way you've clearly got some degree of bias if you confuse fact as propaganda, or just aren't smart enough to do anything techie that actually matters. I can see why you posted AC, I wouldn't want to embarass myself with such a stupid post as yours either.

"Ok, so would you have an issue with "universal jurisdiction" if the Met did this, because its exactly the same..."

Yes I have a problem with universal jurisdiction regardless, but thus far the met doesn't seem to have quite the habit the City of London police do in just randomly turning up on the doorsteps of other police authorities to waste their time for the City of London police's interest. This is even more pertinent given that the whole reason the current government insisted we have elected police chiefs was to give us even more say in local police authorities priorities. What's the point in that if City of London police can just turn up in Yorkshire and demand police in Yorkshire help them with their waste of time copyright investigations? It benefits Yorkshire less than police from Yorkshire going to the City to arrest bankers guilty of criminal negligence and outright fraud would but when's the last time you saw say West Yorkshire, or South Yorkshire police forces sticking their nose into the city? If Cameron wants more localism then the City of London police need to fuck off and stick to crimes in their square mile - their problems are not the priority for the rest of us, we've got more important things to deal with than copyright infringement like rape, burglary and so on and so forth.

"As for oversight, did you miss the part of my post where I say that the CoL Police answers to HMIC, just like the Met and every other police force in the UK?"

I don't care who they answer to if they're not being held to the same standard which they most definitely appear not to be.

"And id love for you to back up your claims about them being corrupt - its easy to throw accusations around, but I see no proof offered by you."

What, you mean something like this? -

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/new...

I can't tell if you've just missed the barrage of stories over the years of City of London police corruption or if you're vehemently defending them because you have some vested interest in them, but either way it's disturbing that you couldn't do a simple search on the issue. One might wonder why a police force that covers little more than a square mile, has been so embroiled in corruption scandals that it's got a whole website dedicated to it:

http://www.cityoflondonpolicec...

Far larger police organisations with far more staff covering far bigger areas do not have anywhere near the levels of corruption and corruption accusations that the City of London police have, so your defence of them is misguided, it's very clearly obvious that something is wrotten in the City of London police force.

"Your post is nothing more than more bullwhip regarding this particular police force."

Right back at you, I've provided my evidence, I'd ask you to provide yours, but given that that's impossible precisely because your arguments are in fact bullshit then I guess we'll have to leave it there. I'd be intrigued to know why you're so keen to defend them, not that I expect honest disclosure from you.

Nothing's proving Russia right when there's a wall of evil doings proving the counter. Snowden is one of the few things they can genuinely cling on to.

For all of the US' wrongs there's nothing changing the fact that Russia is an evil empire, well, that's a lie, it's not an empire any more thank god, it just wants to be, but it's still evil.

Let's just look at a few of the things they've done this year alone, let's start near the beginning of the year where the scene is that there is a popular uprising against Russian influenced Yanukovych, during these protests a number of key protesters were abducted by men with accents from Russia itself, some were left to die but managed to live to tell the tale:

http://www.rferl.org/content/u...

http://www.rferl.org/content/u...

Others weren't quite so lucky:

http://www.reddit.com/r/worldn...

The uprising was eventually successful, in response, Russia sent in breach of the Geneva convention soldiers into Crimea posing as civilians and annexed the territory, despite the fact that only a few weeks prior it was clear that there was nothing like majority support for joining Russia:

http://www.cityam.com/blog/139...

Coupled with the unverifiable "poll" and the followon fuckup by Russian bureaucrats in posting the actual results that show there was actually no majority support for joining Russia it became fairly obvious it was an illegal annexation of foreign territory. Of course, it didn't stop there. The Crimean Tatar population that did not want to join Russia have since been treated like Jews in Nazi Germany circa 1939 with their houses being marked:

http://www.turkishpress.com/ne...

Other Tatars have simply been disappeared by death squads:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/maga...

The rest of them? Well, they just get silenced and beaten:

http://www.themoscowtimes.com/...

If this sort of thing doesn't send chills down your spine as to how close it is to the way the Nazis operated then there's something wrong with you.

Since then of course there's been the case of Russian separatists in Eastern Ukraine, the debate goes on about whether they're genuinely Ukrainians that want to join Russia, or whether they're simply Russian special forces, or a mix of both, but either way, what's not in dispute is the following and that Russia wholeheartedly supports them:

- They admitted having Buk and shooting down MH17 believing it was a Ukrainian military transport:

http://www.reuters.com/article...

http://www.themalaysianinsider...

- They've been abducting, torturing, and parading civilians:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/new...

- They've admitted to carrying out summary executions:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/worl...

- And they've been preventing all males from leaving the warzones they've been part of the parcel in creating

Now, the usual response from Putin lovers would be to say "Oh you're quoting biased media like Fox News!", unfortunately, as is clear above, these reports aren't coming from Fox News, they're coming from everything from US, European, Turkish, Qatari, Malaysian and even Russian, sources.

Fact is, Russia is probably one of the single most evil nations on earth right now. Holding Snowden up isn't going to magically change that for them unless they rapidly reverse course in so many other ways. The things I pointed above have happened in merely the last 8 months alone and relate only to the Ukraine. God only knows how far Vladolf Putler will have managed to go in the final 4 months of the year.

"The reason the City of London Police are doing this a lot is because they are highly specialised in economic crime detection, investigation and enforcement, so combating criminal level copyright infringement is in fact one of their specialities."

Yet they missed all the genuinely criminal bankers on their front door step, you know, libor, exchange rate manipulation and many others?

City of London police should be sticking to the City of London yet they're sticking their nose in everywhere as if they have some form of universal jurisdiction. Similarly they have consistently avoided investigation over many legitimate claims of corruption.

Whatever their supposed status, one things for sure and that's that they're more corrupt than any other police force in the UK by a long shot, and no one seems to be able to touch them for it to sort the problem.

They really need moving under the met where there is at least some degree of oversight, even if it's a long way from perfect. Right now I can see exactly why people call them a private police force - because that's exactly how they act and are treated.

Okay, I can see you're getting angry at you're inability to grasp either the point or the irony and are flying off on weird tangents about judging you or something.

It was exactly my point that the show doesn't represent you, nor does it try to, and nor does it have to to fit some arbitrary definition of geek or nerd. Again, it merely picks some traits and runs with them and whether you feel those traits are necessary or sufficient or not to fulfil your definition of geek/nerd just doesn't matter - it fills most other people's which is precisely why it has such high ratings. This is probably a good thing because your apparent trait of flying off the handle with insults over something inane is something that most definitely would make the show shitty.

You obviously really hate the show for some irrational reason as evidenced by your outburst, but again I guess that's up to you. Quite why you still feel the need to stretch the arguments though is rather odd - I too frankly saw geek and nerd as positive labels, the difference is I really don't give a shit if others start wanting to label themselves with those terms or not or start to judge whether they have some arbitrary right to or not because I'm just not that much of a drama queen.

Perhaps if you get over yourself you'll also rediscover your sense of humour.

Makes people think they understand what exactly? What a "true" geek is?

You seem to have decided that your personal arbitrary definition of what a geek or nerd is is the only possible definition and that all others are false. You're implicitly declaring that you're right and everyone else is wrong because you're smarter than them. Exactly like Sheldon would.

In reality geeks/nerds are a broad wide ranging group of people with many different traits. The number of traits is such that to fit every single combination into the show such that every geek/nerd is precisely represented such that people like you could find the one that exactly represents your subset of defining geeky/nerdy traits would result in a combinatorial explosion of cast members. Given therefore that that's not a realistic proposition, they've done the next best thing - they've built a handful of characters taking the traits they feel they can best work with and make work and have built the show around them. The fact is, that whilst none of the characters may represent exactly you, they do represent people with a selection of common geeky/nerdy traits. I can't relate to all of them, but I can certainly relate sometimes to some of the traits each and every one of them exhibit. So maybe by your arbitrary definition I'm not a geek or not a nerd either, and that's fine, it doesn't matter, the show isn't written based on your personal definition. It's written based on the definition and traits that most people would quite validly see as geeky or nerdy.

So it doesn't really matter than you don't find the show funny, that's a different argument, it's got nothing to do with whether the show does a good job of representing geeks/nerds or not. If you don't then fine, that's just the way it is, but you can't somehow twist your inability to see it as funny into some greater argument about how it does a poor job of representing geeks or nerds.

Perhaps consider that my point closes off your options, because your argument was based on a flawed premise of arbitrary personal definition in the first place.

This is exactly what's great about The Big Bang theory, and especially discussions on Slashdot about it, there are always a bunch of geeks who will sit and say they don't relate to it and it doesn't represent "proper" geeks, all the while completely oblivious to the fact they're sounding exactly like Sheldon hence disproving their own theory that it's not representative. If you sat Sheldon down in front of a show like the Big Bang Theory this is probably exactly what he'd say:

"That wouldn't be my argument against it. My argument is that it's not a good show. I don't find the characters relateable. I don't think it's particularly funny. It seems like someone took a very bland, unoriginal sitcom and attached a geek gimmick to try to make it interesting, but in my mind it fails. It's not interesting, and the geek gimmick doesn't really work. "

It's like a kind of circular ignorance of what makes the show great. I'd say that contrary to your assertion people watching Big Bang Theory exactly understand geeks and nerds, because when they think of Sheldon and what he'd have to say about it, they'd imagine exactly the sort of holier than thou, no true geek (aka no true Scotsman) argument you've made.

"How hard can it be to be replace Ballmer? Vista, Zune, Media Center and Metro. Half of them really bad, the other two (Zune and MCE) were abandonned."

Look, as much as I hate to defend Ballmer this is a ridiculously one sided list, because there was also XBox 360, server products (Windows Server, SQL Server), massive growth in use of their development tools (C# is now almost the de-facto language for indie development through Unity, XNA/MonoGame and so forth), and Windows releases like Windows 7 that were widely praised.

Microsoft's profits continued to increase quite substantially under Ballmer for a reason. Sure they've not done so well with those sexy headline grabbing consumer products like Apple and Google have, but they're still a behemoth in their own right.

They even have a version of Office for iOS now, so I'd be skeptical of the suggestion that Office licensing will decrease, I think the opposite will happen - it's still the best option out there.

I'm pretty sure being able to enjoy your freedom, privacy, and family is very much part of private life. What an obscure definition of a common term you choose to resort to try and dodge the fact you were clearly making shit up and pretending you knew more about Russia than you really did.

Meh, disagree. It was worth it for Mario 3D World, Lego City Undercover, Pikmin 3, and Mario Kart 8 alone. Those four games are far more varied and interesting than anything that's come out for my X1 to date.

Honestly, the X1 line up isn't even great up until Christmas. Dead Rising 3 was about the only great game so far that is unique to the platform and I don't see anything better on the PS4.

Glad I bought mine even with the dearth of games, because as few games as there are they're all 95%+ score deserving games rather than the ~70% mediocre tosh you get on other platforms and that's coming from someone whose very much the opposite of the casual gamer market - I love FPS games but BF with it's bugs and CoD were both complete and utter shit this time around.

"in Ukraine, for instance, you could potentially partition the land since you have a rather clear line dividing east and west over language and political views"

Not in the slightest bit true. Even in Crimea which Russian annexed there was less than 50% (I believe it was 41%) support to join Russia before Putin ran his own rigged poll. In Eastern Ukraine support is even lower, the majority still want to be part of Ukraine, so if you split it off on the whining of a handful of Russian separatists then you'd be in no better a position.

"If you look at population statistics from that era, you find that Palestinians outnumbered Jews virtually everywhere."

But that's the problem, people like you insist on cherry picking a completely arbitrary point in time and go hey, I'm right! but you're ignoring the many earlier points in history where even Jewish and Christian folk were the majority - the Jews originally expelled by Palestines such that they were the majority at the point in time that you cherry picked.

This is actually similar to Ukraine, right now Putin is moving Russians into Crimea so that he can claim that Crimea can't ever become Ukrainian again because hey look, a Russian majority now live there!

You can't just take an arbitrary point in time to suit your agenda. If you want to be objective you could argue that given that Judaism is a far older religion than both Christianity and Islam that surely by definition it takes precedence in the region? But despite it's objectivity as a measure I'm not sure where exactly it would get us - even if you used an objective measure it's not going to change the fact people are fighting there and now. Whatever metric you use to try and justify who should and shouldn't be there people will still fight for their own interests.

Picking arbitrary points in time as you have to provide worthless justification doesn't help anyone. Why is your claim of 1946 more worthwhile than a claim from 2006 where Jews are the majority. You're saying we don't get back 2000 years, but why are you saying we go back 70 years? why 70? why not 90? why not 5? why not 10? why not 100? why not 1000? why not 2000?

The fact you've picked 70 odd (well, nearly 80) years is arbitrary, but you've picked it because you have a predetermined bias in support of one group over the other - you might as well have cut your post short and just said "I support the Palestinian claim" because everything else you said tells us absolutely nothing of value beyond that - it's just dressing to try and make it look like you're posting something other than personal opinion, which you're obviously not.