Seventy years ago today, Poland suffered invasion. Today, the United States shut down its Eastern European missile defense program. This act could mean one of two things:

1. A giant middle-finger to Poland and other nations like Czech Republic; to simply let them twist in the wind if or when Russia decides to roll on in.

2. A bargaining chip with Russia; Something we can diplomatically point to as “See? We lowered this defense because we trust you. Help us kick ass militarily/economically/etc against Iran/Korea/China.”

I don’t know if I can give our administration credit for the second scenario, but it certainly is easier to swallow even if it’s not entirely easy to digest. If the second situation holds, it has likely already been used for negotiation for under-the-table dealings with Russia. What would we have to gain from weakening our position on pure speculation? Maybe that’s why I don’t feel comfortable giving this administration credit: I can imagine it being so poor at diplomacy to try it to see if it worked.

Surely I can’t be the first one to note that software piracy isn’t completely cost-free, can I? I won’t go too in-depth here, but computers don’t run on fairy dust, they run on electricity. Delicious electricity. As for myself, my computer has a 650 Watt power supply and I pay 14 cents per Kilowatt-hour of electricity. This means that if I run my computer for one hour, I pay the electric company:

(650 Watts / 1000 [1 Kilowatt]) * $0.14 = 9.1 cents

Another way to conceptualize this with easier math, is if I have a 1000 Watt (1 Kilowatt) computer, and I run it for 1 hour, it costs me 14 cents. So, if I were to download a 5 GB file through unscrupulous means – which, for the most part have abysmal transfer rates unless you pay for other, faster, services (another can of worms to this line of reasoning) – for 500 hours, it would cost me about $45 versus, the $30-$35 cost of going to the store and picking it up legitimately. Piracy is more expensive than acquiring software through legitimate means to the end-user (pirate). The money just goes to a different place. I’d prefer actors or musicians getting a fraction of a penny for my purchase than the power company getting my dime.

Now, this whole argument goes out the window if you download in the background casually, and only when you would be using the computer anyway. At which point, the extra cost of piracy to you, the pirate, is zero. Understand though, that you are still using your computer to do… whatever it is you use it for, and you still pay the electric company.

You dirty pirate.