I think this is the most missed part by the general public. There's too little focus on what is probably the biggest issue, politicians' ability to control intelligence bureaus.

Consider for a moment one of the best aspects of having functional dragnet surveillance in democratic society with need to get re-elected and at least partially functioning anti-corruption legislation. Dragnet surveillance means that you have the ability to unseat and discredit any politician at any time when you need to. You can't overuse this ability for obvious reasons, but you most certainly can influence all of them to support you to a significant extent. Even if they are actually against you.

As noted, you are indeed naive in your assumption that acceptability of ripping people off is universal in all cultures.

QED.

At this point, I think many are overlooking one important part of the whole dragnet surveillance.

They have compromising material on EVERYONE. The amount of surveillance they ensures it. That means it doesn't matter which politician gets into position of importance and power, because they have blackmail material on him/her. There's no such thing as a human being who's interested in power who doesn't have significant skeletons in his/her closet.

That's why it's pointless to point fingers at leaders at this point. They are part of the problem, but most definitely not the source of it, and haven't been for a while.

Except that at its best, Stasi had to employ massive amount of people and it still couldn't only keep an eye on about every seventh citizen and some key people abroad. That's it.

US already keeps an eye on every single one of its citizens, and most of the people around the globe, with additional more rigorous checks done against those it puts on various "watch lists".

Between the dragnet surveillance, extraordinary rendition, targeted killing campaigns, "advanced interrogation techniques" and highest incarceration rate in the world, Eastern Germans were like little inexperienced trainees in comparison to US when it comes to surveillance and control of its population.

The problem is that if you have something that government finds worth torturing over on your drive, you're boned regardless.

Very few people have the sufficient stress and pain tolerance to be able to not divulge the password to the files for extended period of torture by best professionals in the world.

Clearly because I don't come from a culture where ripping people off is considered not only socially acceptable, but actually encouraged, I'm naive.

Or perhaps you're naive in assuming that us people in the Nordics need to be as careful shopping at home as we are when we shop in a country with culture like yours.

Apparently they actually started making it for Linux? Until very recently, Pale Moon has been windows only, and only some months ago that unofficial Linux builds started coming out from third parties.

This suggests that Firefox dug itself into a hole so deep that there was enough demand for Pale Moon on Linux to make guys who build the browser specifically optimized for Windows to make a Linux version as well. Wow. Well done Mozilla.

Wikimedia.

Pale Moon on windows.

Seamonkey sorta kinda on linux, unless you want to build Pale Moon yourself for it.

Wouldn't know. Haven't ever used checks (we use direct bank payments around here), and if it says "money back guaranteed" then it usually means it. At least as far as I've ever ran into it when shopping. Never had problems getting my money back.

Not going to even bother with the sex jokes. Judging from your sayings, you come from US, and talking to you puritans about healthy sex life is like talking to a somali about woman's right not to be mutilated.

I believe it for a very simple reason. In most cases it will say so in site's TOS that they will not keep it should I tell them not to do so.

I find it very hard to believe that a site selling me goods would take a risk of getting hit by a contract breach and all the negative PR that would follow it just to keep my credit card information on file.

Untick "keep my credit card information for future payments". In vast majority of the cases, that means company doesn't keep your info after payment has been received.

Has it ever occurred to you that of that many people living in Donetsk, your friendly propaganda machine could only handpick a few videos of this discontent as in comparison to far wider support that was shown in thousands upon thousands actively participating in setting up the original independence polls? Not voting for it mind you, SETTING THE THING UP.

Has it ever occurred to you that sheer mathematics of this dictate that reality is the exact opposite as your propaganda suggests, and that quoting a small minority, similar to quoting Tatar minority in Crimea is not dissimilar to quoting, for example, native Indian population quotes about US and Canada?

Has it ever occurred to you that if the reality in Eastern Ukraine was anything like what your propaganda machine is telling you, then judging by your infamous communist leader, Ukraine is massively against current leadership?

Welcome to slashdot. Where we are generally not as bad as average citizenry in terms of applied mathematics.

Entire middle scene. Start to finish. The elderly people that come for the food and water. The woman accusing everyone around. Everyone looking scared that someone will act. Old man lashing out and instantly getting subdued at Ukrainians soldier making a thinly veiled threat about "lives lost to capture your city".

That is how Vietnamese villagers behaved when US troops entered them. How people behaved when Nazi German SS troops came to look for Jews. And so on.

I'll just give it a rest. It's fairly obvious that you will not be bothered to even consider that world may not be fully evil and criminal on Russian side, and fully good and righteous on yours. You are in good company. Quite a few invested pundits in Europe and a whole lot more of the militaristic people in US share your world view. It's an easy view to take, it doesn't require you to think about reality and makes it really easy to feel superior.

In the same way it was really easy for nazis to feel superior. Ideology of inherent superiority does indeed make one completely insensitive to both suffering of demonized population (compare: gulags, concentration camps) as well as inherently supportive of the most insane suggestions and propaganda, as long as they feature the demonized population and leader in proper evil position (examples: Iraq invasion).

Did GCHQ run out of ability to create new sock puppet accounts on slashdot or something?