10 Thoughts for March 30, 2014

1. Russia is going to centralize credit card processing after US sanctions meant that Visa, MC and others could no longer process credit transactions in Russia.  In the future, Russians will be handing over complete financial and personal information directly to the Russian government, therefore.  Fear the KGB FSB.
2. If Russia supports self-determination, will they support Tatars in their move for autonomy?  The opposition to this comes from Tatars who don't want to acknowledge Crimea as a part of Russia.  But let's say they find their way towards autonomy, will Russia allow the Tatars to later seek secession from Russia and rejoin Ukraine?  Imagine if the Tatars found a way to join with Ukrainian Orthodox to take a good chunk of Crimea; Ukraine could eventually take back part of Crimea by using Russia's own arguments: threats to natives, support for self-determination, etc.
3. Interestingly, Russian media states that there is no buildup on the border, though what they've left out is that Russia has blocked journalists from actually seeing the border and Russia had previously blocked OSCE observers from going to Russian-speaking areas in Ukraine, and shots had been previously fired at OSCE observers, stopping them from entering Ukraine.  This is the actual quote from OSCE: "During the three visits, thirty OSCE pS sent 56 unarmed military and civilian personnel to Ukraine. The group attempted to visit Crimea several times, but was unable to move beyond checkpoints at the administrative border, however, based on the observations made of the military activity the group stated that it is not able to dispel military concerns in Crimea."  Then of course, if Russian forces aren't massed up near the border, how can they be conducting military exercises, as Russian officials have said, along the border?  Oops!
4. All about the Russian propaganda machine.  Quixotically ironic: Russians believe that the West supports Nazis in Ukraine, yet as people within and without Russia have noted, Putin's actions remarkably mirror that of Hitler's annexation of Sudetenland.
5. So let's get some unpleasant stuff out of the way.  Here's what I got wrong in the last two weeks: Jared Allen didn't end up at Seattle; defying logic, the extrapolated data shows that MH370 crashed in the ocean somewhere southwest of Australia.
6. Speaking of the NFL, it would be interesting to see if OT Charles Brown ends up playing for Pete Carroll as he did when at USC.  It wouldn't surprise me if Carroll gave DeSean Jackson a 1-year deal, with Golden Tate gone -- remember that he played against Carroll when he was at Cal.
7. Blackberry is toast.  Hmm...Blackberry toast.
1. Q4-2014 = 3.4M (-21% from prev q) phone sales
2. Q3-2014 = 4.3M (-27%)
3. Q2-2014 = 5.9M (-13%)
4. Q1-2014 = 6.8M (+12%)
5. Q4-2013 = 6.0M (-13%)
6. Q3-2013 = 6.9M (-6.8%)
7. Q2-2013 = 7.4M (-5.1%)
8. Q1-2013 = 7.8M (-30%)
8. Microsoft did an about-face on the sanctity of its users' privacy, following the blowback from their unilateral decision to search a user's Hotmail records without law enforcement involvement.  One week ago they said, "We will not conduct a search of customer email and other services unless the circumstances would justify a court order, if one were available."  Yesterday they wrote, "Effective immediately, if we receive information indicating that someone is using our services to traffic in stolen intellectual or physical property from Microsoft, we will not inspect a customer's private content ourselves. Instead, we will refer the matter to law enforcement if further action is required."
9. Speaking of Microsoft, they're eventually coming out with an Android tablet app for Office, which will push Google hard to speed up development and make Drive much more robust with higher-end capabilities.
10. I checked out Cover Oregon's online website again.  It has changed quite a few times over the last six months.  The new process now provides for online application, but only via fillable PDF and only on IE, which means that they're manually transferring data.  No offense, but Cover Oregon folks need only look at Moda Health and Kaiser to realize that they should have been using IT from these companies to build Cover Oregon's website.