It's far more easy for Russia to conduct airstrikes in Syria, than it is for US, et al.

The simple reason why it's much more easy for Russia to conduct aerial strikes in Syria, than it is for the West, is that for Russia/Syria, both IS/ISIL/ISIS and the so-called rebels are enemies, whereas the West wants to strike only IS/ISIL/ISIS, and wants to preserve the extremists/terrorists who are opposed to the Syrian President.

As a consequence, the West has to take extreme care when conducting aerial bombing/strikes in Syria. In contrast, Russia, in coordination with the Syrian Arab Army, can strike anywhere where there is armed opposition to the legitimate Syrian government - whether it's from IS/ISIL/ISIS or from the terrorist rebels financed and supported by the West.

Wide rift between Russia and Ukraine is not good for both the countries - it is exactly what the West wanted in the first place

Ukraine has banned Russian airlines [another link], and Russia has reciprocated the measure by banning Ukrainian airlines [another link]. Score settled, right? Wrong. If we look at the broader picture from the above, it is the #1 SSR of the USSR fighting with the #2. Fellow Slav people have become thirsty for the blood of each other. And in this whole process, the real victor is West. Both Russia and Ukraine are losers, as are other SSRs of the USSR. This wide rift between Russia and Ukraine is exactly what the West wanted always, in order to weaken both of these nations, and especially West's perennial target - Russia. West wants to divide Russia and Ukraine on the lines of what Britain did to India and Pakistan [a FB post by me; alternative link].

The West wants to, first of all, break cultural, emotional and legendary historical ties between Russia and Ukraine by distancing these two peoples. Incidents such as Russians walking out when Poroshenko spoke, Ukrainians walking out when Putin spoke, Ukraine banning Russian movies/news channels/TV shows, etc., are, to put in simple words, not good at all. Banning flights, barring trade, imposing sanctions on each other, etc., will together have the effect of creating a rigid wall between these great nations, weakening both of them. Exactly the kind of thing that the West wants to do to Slav people - especially Russians.

UPDATE [OCT'15]: New developments here and here.

UPDATE [NOV'15]: More new developments here and here. Thiese tit-for-tat steps by Russia and Ukraine will, in the end, only strengthen the West and help its nefarious long-term goals.

UPDATE [DEC'15]: More worrying development here [Westernization of Soviet Union's legendary Antonov An-124]. And more Westernization of other Antonov aircraft [at the behest of Western puppet Petro Poroshenko]. Plus frequent and many tussles over An-70.

UPDATE [JAN'16]: The move by Petro "Puppet" Poroshenko to replace Russian language with English is yet another sign of the dangerous rift between fellow Slav people, orchestrated from Washington. This Westernization of Ukraine will weaken the Slav people as a whole.

•  Ukraine not participating in regional events held in Russian territory [link]

Why did China and India order several aircraft and helicopters, respectively, from the US and not Russia?

China/Chinese airlines recently ordered 300 aircraft from Boeing [including both narrowbody and widebody planes], while India ordered several Boeing military helicopters. At this point one is forced to wonder - why did China order 300 passenger planes from the US - it's biggest adversary - and not from Russia, especially when the latter needs all the help it can get at this point? In the case of India, the decision to get even closer to the US is more understandable - shrewd Boeing officials most likely paid bribes to the guys responsible for making the decision, and the Americans thus won the lucrative Indian order.

But what about China? Why didn't China instead order Russia's 21st century airliner, the Irkut MS-21 [MC-21]? If immediate deliveries are a concern, then with such a large order, China could've ordered a mix of Boeing and Russian planes, especially when the MS-21 is expected to be a comfortable, efficient, modern and safe airliner on a par with contemporary Western narrowbody planes. This is hard to understand. China could've single-handedly propped up Russia's legendary but needy civil aviation industry and would've surely secured a two-way win-win deal for both the countries in the process.

I'm pretty confident that if Boeing's Completion Center was a strong attraction for China, Russia's UAC would've also been happy to setup a similar center in China for the MS-21, if it had been promised a 100+ or 150+ order for the plane from Chinese airlines and also the flexibility to export.

Why didn't China help Russia in this time of need?

[UPDATE]: Even more curiously, why does Iran have plans to buy several Airbus/Boeing planes? Why doesn't Iran buy planes from its friend/savior Russia instead [Superjet 100, MC-21, Il-96, etc.]?

[UPDATE]: I just realized that I have little right to complain and protest about China/India/Iran not purchasing Russian passenger aircraft, when top Russian airlines [example, another example, and another] themselves prefer and operate Airbus and Boeing planes. Sigh!

[UPDATE]: China just placed a massive order with Airbus and with Airbus Helicopters. Sigh.

[UPDATE]: And indeed, Iran confirmed plans to buy 114 Airbus aircraft soon. Nothing Russian. Sigh. What's more, this WSJ article says that "Iran keen to re-establish ties with Boeing".

[UPDATE]: And Iran "invites" Boeing for "talks". Sigh.

Update [21-May-19]: The China-US trade war is in full swing currently, and US is punching China with its full might, yet China still won't use its buying power / market power to severely hurt Boeing and give a much-needed boost to the only credible challenger to the Western duopoly - the Irkut MC-21. Sigh!

Update [1.10.21]: These days there's much ongoing talk about the US choking China's C919 program by blocking / delaying American components. What I don't understand is, why wasn't this scenario anticipated earlier by the Chinese? After the ZTE saga, it should've been obvious. Even more so after the strangulation of Huawei. And it isn't like there aren't alternatives - Japan, South Korea, Turkey, Germany, Italy, Spain, France, Russia, China itself, etc. The de-risking of C919's components should've been done right from day 1. Hopefully the CR929 will be protected from these issues.

Hillary Clinton probably deliberately left a harmless subset of all emails on her server for the FBI to recover and publicize

Hillary Clinton and her IT guys aren't fools. They surely know what shredding is. She and/or her advisors probably anticipated that her private server would eventually be confiscated with the intent to recover deleted data, thus exposing all her corrupt/horrendous thoughts and acts performed in both private and government capacity. She wants to give the public the impression that the emails she deleted were indeed of personal nature and did not contain any classified/secret/vulgar information, in line with her claims.

An effective way to achieve this is to first shred all personal and ugly emails from that server, and later to deliberately leave recoverable copies of some harmless personal emails for the FBI. The public - sheep as it always it - will wrongly assume that all deleted emails were recovered by the FBI, and when nothing objectionable or ugly is found in the recovered stuff, Hillary will get a clean chit in the court of public opinion.

Masterstroke by the poisonous bitch!

What if Amazon makes a full-blown entry into the advertising business, like Google

Today I wondered something - Amazon is already a powerhouse in online selling. It knows its customers' tastes. It knows the pulse of the public. It knows what sells and what doesn't. What if Amazon entered the online ads business too, just like Google? Amazon would not only show you targeted ads, it would also take you to Amazon's websites to complete the transaction [Google currently only serves ads, but doesn't allow/host actual transactions itself]. The prospect of Amazon offering advertising and retailing businesses in a combined form looks so powerful, it's almost scary.

A nation learning aircraft manufacturing by experimenting with a military aircraft is an example of consequentialism/utilitarianism

Think of China's Xian Y-20, a military transport aircraft. China isn't an expert in aircraft manufacturing, so it can experiment with this more safely, and with a lower-risk approach by first doing a military plane [fighter or tanker or transport]. In blunt words, this means that even if China initially loses a few of these military birds, the media/public uproar will be significantly lower owing to these being military planes, compared to if these had been regular civilian ones carrying fare-paying passengers. The news "10 PLAAF soldiers have perished in a Y-20 military transport plane crash." sounds far less alarming to the media/public/world than the news "An Air China Y-20 regional airliner has disintegrated during flight, with all 75 passengers presumed dead.".

All of this might sound unethical and wrong, but is very practical and this is how the world works, no matter how much we try to escape it or deny it. The key point here is that military planes are a sort of safer sandbox for Chinese - or any other - engineers to hone their design/manufacturing skills. Putting young men on crude, unforgiving and untested machines does seem unethical, and of course there will be casualties, and post these initial casualties and post skill development, the engineers will be ready to start designing and building planes for regular commercial flights, an area that's far more under the scanner of the media/public.

And since military planes usually carry far lower number of souls than civilian ones, this approach to learning aircraft manufacturing is fundamentally just another example of consequentialist morality, or utilitarianism.

Western media purposely doesn't report devilish statements made by prominent Western officials, think tanks, etc.

ALSO SEE OID 192Z.

The proof the claim in the title of this post are these two screenshots from Google:

Only Russian news outlets [Sputnik, RT, etc.] have reported on this newsworthy story. It is not a coincidence that no Western news outlet has reported this, let alone express outrage.

BlackBerry Assistant, Cortana, Google Now, Siri, etc., will provide significant boost to NSA's spying obsession

These 4 and other Cloud-based voice control services will provide valuable voice samples fodder to the NSA's voice-matching software [assuming the NSA will be able to intercept these samples as they're sent to the Cloud for processing], giving it a boost in recognizing people far more accurately. NSA will now be able to match requests/searches made through these services with intercepted phone calls, and thus draw further context about an individual. Cool.

Kaspersky Internet Security 2015's user interface does not inspire confidence

Anti-malware software shouldn't just protect computer systems from hacking/malware/phishing; the suites should also make the owner/user feel confident. The latter requires that psychology be addressed. Previous versions of KIS have boasted confidence-boosting user interfaces which clearly and boldly tell you - the user - that you are protected. Not anymore. KIS 2015, apparently in the interest of minimalism/simplicity, eschews the bold interfaces found in previous versions in favor of a rather bland and uninspiring design. Not good, even if the underlying protection technologies are the best ever!

KIS 2015:

Older versions:

Update [Jan'15]: Screenshot below is from F-Secure Internet Security 2014. It shows that the suite contains several distinct protection modules, all of which work in parallel to protect the system/user. Such a list of modules provides confidence to the user that, despite the minimal interface of this product, there are multiple technologies at work in the background.

BlackBerry should work to establish its BB10 operating system on smart TVs

Time is quickly running out for BlackBerry. Network effect is deeply at play in the smartphone market, to the disadvantage of BlackBerry [irrespective of how good BB10 OS itself is]. One opportunity, however, that is ripe for exploitation is the still-evolving market for "smart TVs", the ones that increasingly resemble computers and smartphones, yet remain essentially TVs.

No software platform or manufacturer is a leader in this still-emerging space. BB should act fast and partner with a solid TV-maker to launch a range of BB10-powered smart TVs. The lack of applications for BB10 OS doesn't hurt BB in this market [at least not yet]. BB10 is a solid OS and its spread into the smart TVs market will bring benefits to BB10 on smartphones as well [increased developer awareness, increased application development, increased consumer familiarity with BB10, etc.].