Design patents are an abuse of patent law.
4,036 karma · joined August 27, 2011
It was probably the largest theft in our lifetime and whether you call eventually turning that into assets in western countries laundering or not is arguing semantics.
Ill gotten gains get converted into more diversified and more respectable assets.
Basically these men (and their predecessors) stole a country, the fact that that gives them access to mechanisms that ordinary criminals can not afford does not place them morally above them at all in my opinion.
This period is sometimes referred to as the rape of Russia, but that makes it sound like it is over, which is far from the truth.
indeed.
> These transactions are extremely traceable.
Sure they are.
But the source of the original fortune behind all this is pretty murky and money laundering does not stop at the first stage.
Think of it as onion routing, going further and further into the legitimate world until those that handle the money have no way of proving or even knowing that the original source wasn't legit. It's all about provenance.
> It is equally ridiculous to propose the goal is to get money out of Russia.
Are you familiar with the name Berezovsky?
( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boris_Berezovsky_%28businessman... )
You can go down as fast as up in Russia, and it doesn't take all that much to cause a fall from grace.
Spreading your assets in multiple countries seems like a good idea in an environment that volatile.
> How does investing in startups make that any easier?
It's a great way to ensure yourself future income and influence, surely one or more of them will pay back big time.
> If the money can get to a startup in the US, ipso facto it can get out of Russia, to any other investment.
Sure, but that won't get you in on the ground floor of a bunch of companies that will likely be very important in the near future. The return on investment in terms of influence could be enormous, it's a risk worth taking.
Better than buying standard oil or microsoft for an equivalent amount of money.
And if it is monopoly money to them anyway, why not buy that nearly free lottery ticket?
Europe definitely didn't believe it was a hoax, in fact there were lots of people working at attempting powered flight.
That does not diminish the accomplishments of the Wright brothers in any way, but to make it seem as though Europe did not believe powered flight was possible is not true.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aviation_history
The time was simply ripe, lots of the bits and pieces had been developed by those that had gone before, such as Lilienthal (who built some pretty amazing gliders) and many others.
Dramatized:
Sensors can lie, equipment can break. Your software may have no better idea of the true situation than the pilot.
In the end it is a judgment call and if you limit the ability of those judgment calls to a bunch of software then you are saying that those in a different time and place have a better idea of what to do than those with their feet in the dirt.
It looks like in this case someone made the wrong judgment call. False positives in warning systems in commercial aircraft are happening with some regularity, in the end the pilot has final say.
If it is higher than 6.6L/100km then I'm going up, less is down.
If you don't have a fuel consumption indicator then that will not work but lots of cars have them these days and I think using them as a level is a useful unintended application.
Thank you.
The hard part is always to find places that will take large amounts of money, no questions asked and that have a gambling element in it which could explain large returns in a plausible way, and in a way that will stay.
That's why casinos are very popular, ditto with antique dealerships, the real estate sector and financial services such as banking.
It's really not that much of a stretch of the imagination to use venture capital as another money laundering setup, essentially it has all the elements of a casino, large amounts of money go in, lots of it disappears and some relatively small bets pay off huge.
Another reason for making 'silly bets' is to diversify whatever the cost, because being the owner of former state enterprises and a bunch of mines always has a risk of nationalization, silicon valley investments have returns in hard currency and on top of that are unlikely to ever be taken away at the whim of some ruler.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alisher_Usmanov has an interesting profile and if that's Milners main source of capital there are definitely some pointed questions that should be asked. This is not who you want to be indirectly involved with your startup, assuming that it is true and that this guy really is the power behind the investments Milner is making.
Pecunia non olet but some money is better refused than accepted, 'success' on the back of stealing from the people of the former Soviet Union is not something to be proud of.
Macaroni somehow doesn't cut it.
And from what I've seen of it SiliconValley is not much prone to that. So why is it different with Milner?
Really, Apple telling Google to concentrate on services is like Google telling Apple to concentrate on hardware.
Google was iirc at some point involved in developing a little phone operating system that competed directly with one of Apple's cash cows. Naturally it would be great for Apple if google forgot about phones, Android and whatever else would cause them to one day run in to Apple in the marketplace.
If google would concentrate on search then that would be great news for Apple indeed.
Android is not a service, Chrome is not a service.
Search, YouTube and Plus are services.
Would you accept one of these without verifying that it has indeed not been redeemed. How do you know that your coin is the only coin with that particular code in it without redeeming it?
That's a possibility.
Now what algorithm do you propose to use?
Only for insecure managers.