Comrade, You Are So Not Getting a Dell 600
theodp writes "At the World Economic Forum, Michael Dell's pitch to help Russia with its computers got the cold-as-Siberia shoulder from Prime Minister Vladimir Putin. 'We don't need help,' shot back Putin. 'We are not invalids. We don't have limited mental capacity' (video — rant starts at 1:24). 'Our programmers are some of the best in the world,' Putin continued. 'No one would contest that here — not even our Indian colleagues.'"
In Soviet Russia (Score:4, Funny)
Re:In Soviet Russia (Score:5, Interesting)
Actually, ex-soviet computer scientists apparently where not happy with the former governments choice to use non-soviet produced computers and protocols. They felt that it dampened the ability for them to make their own technologies.
Check out the history of Soviet computer technology on wikipedia sometime, its interesting. Most of it cuts off in the 60s and 70s and then they just started using IBMs and stuff.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_computer_hardware_in_communist_countries [wikipedia.org]
What I mean by cut off is that they mostly just started using processors from the free world instead of making their own.
Re:In Soviet Russia (Score:5, Funny)
It's just as well. They can configure the OS scheduler to divide time equally between all processes.
Re:In Soviet Russia (Score:5, Funny)
Unless, of course, the owner of a process is a Party official.
Re:In Soviet Russia (Score:5, Funny)
Re:In Soviet Russia (Score:5, Funny)
It's just as well. They can configure the OS scheduler to divide time equally between all processes.
Except for the colonel of course, he always seems to get more than the normal process.
Re:In Soviet Russia (Score:5, Funny)
"Except for the colonel of course, he always seems to get more than the normal process."
That's because some processes are more equal than others.
All scedulers are commies (Score:5, Funny)
"From each according to his ability, to each according to his need" describes schedulers more accurately. Dividing the time up equally would be like .... oh, I dunno, something about a Ferrari and hot grits ...
Comment removed (Score:4, Funny)
Re:In Soviet Russia (Score:4, Interesting)
A visitor to the USSR brought home a Soviet clone of the Apple II, which they called IIRC a "Blaht," which means apple in Russian. He wrote an article about it for Byte.
It was a pretty clunky, unreliable device. It was kind of disappointing that the Soviets couldn't clone a western computer cheaply, something that gave the Taiwanese and Koreans no trouble.
One theory was that the Soviets could equal western technology when they made it a top military priority, but not otherwise.
Loren Graham, the MIT professor who probably knows more about Soviet science than any American, said that the Russians had the "blackboard theory": anything you could do with a blackboard and chalk, they could do. But when they actually had to build something, they had trouble. This was ironic for an ideology built on materialism.
But give them credit -- they did have the first satellite in space, the first man in space, and the first woman in space. The Moscow Institute of Cardiology developed the precursor of what would turn out to be tissue plasminogen activator, which is used today to treat people with heart attacks and strokes. Graham said that one thing they did well was their education system. They educated more chemists than anybody else in the world.
Re:In Soviet Russia (Score:5, Insightful)
Not Invented Here slows down a lot more progress then it helps.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Not Invented Here slows down a lot more progress then it helps.
Maybe in the short term, but in the long term when you are talking about a whole society inventing things. The USSR, having different needs and different mindsets, may have come up with unique technologies that where not tried here. For instance, what if they would have gone the trinary route instead of binary, or if they had made their first computers more like the ideas behind the thinking machine from MIT. I think then you wouldn't be saying that it was a waste of time because their technology would sh
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
-1, 0, 1?
Re:In Soviet Russia (Score:5, Funny)
-1, 0, 1?
And of course, FILE_NOT_FOUND.
Re:In Soviet Russia (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm pretty sure that was meant as an example only. The point being that GroupThink can hold us back. One of the arguments for capitalism is that you have N people all trying to find the best way to solve a problem, being rewarded when they do -- we're betting that it's more efficient in the long run to waste resources in the short term exploring different options and seeing which ones survive. When you see a whole group of players "give up" in a sense, and use the existing solution, you've got to be worried that there was some innovation there that just won't happen anytime soon now -- and if the idea is instilled that you should always go with the short-term efficiency of using off-the-shelf solutions, then you've got a long-term problem to deal with: entire generations raised to go with COTS rather than innovating. The bet here is that in the long term, it's more profitable to at least have some trained R&D people than an entire population of "users", dependent on others, and you can't have that without sometimes saying "no" to the salespeople.
Re:In Soviet Russia (Score:5, Informative)
USSR _did_ have successful computers using ternary math: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Setun [wikipedia.org]
Unfortunately, it was abandoned in favor of copying foreign binary computers :(
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Secondly. Who is to say that "corporate theft and spying", or rather, the less rhetoric and hate filled "acquired by means other than inventing", is wrong? Most of the world did/does this. Not only that, but many developing nations are required to do this, else they would fall further behind the rest of the "honest" world.
Thirdly. Did you really
Re:In Soviet Russia (Score:4, Insightful)
When has it ever been about intelligence when Politics or politicians are involved?
And Michael Looked Back (Score:5, Funny)
and said "Well ... ok then."
Re:And Michael Looked Back (Score:5, Insightful)
Of course, Putin is actually also correct to be worried. The 90s was full of foreign consultants coming over to Moscow and giving unbelievably bad advice that lead to premature loosening of all controls and a kleptocratic oligarchy shortly after that.
Now imagine that combined with a foreign profit seeking company offering to do the helping. I'm not entirely surprised Putin reacted as you would if Bill Gates came over to your FOSS startup and asked if you'd like an MS sales team to give you some free help and advice. Quite how naive do we assume Putin to be here? Russia isn't some failed state that cannot run it's own programs and make it's own choices. Authoritarian, yes, but competent at it.
Re:And Michael Looked Back (Score:5, Insightful)
Beware of Greeks bearing gifts.
Re:And Michael Looked Back (Score:5, Funny)
Beware of geeks bearing gifts.
Fixed that for you.
Re:And Michael Looked Back (Score:5, Funny)
Re:And Michael Looked Back (Score:4, Interesting)
Don't give them too much credit. Now that the petrodollar tap has been turned off, Putin is terrified of any real decline in standard of living. Like China, authoritarianism works on a population accustomed to it and enjoying a rapidly rising standard of living. Manufacturing brought this to China, and oil exports (and some raw materials exports) brought this to Russia.
With the collapse in oil prices and raw materials demand, Putin is in a tough spot. His currency sucks and they've wasted a ton of money trying to defend the ruble, pissing away a lot of their foreign currency reserves in the process. The stock exchange has been closed down a number of days due to declines.
If a bad global economy wasn't enough, the little tete-a-tete they had with Georgia made a lot of nervous investors even more nervous and they pulled a lot of resources out of Russia fearing all the usual problems that come with a nationalist thug like Putin.
We've seen what the USSR could accomplish as a go-it-alone economy, and it wasn't enough. Having a nominally capitalist system will help, but Putin needs to stop with the saber rattling and the blind nationalism.
Re:And Michael Looked Back (Score:5, Insightful)
It's not just nationalism. It's hubris. That has been a part of Russia's collective psyche for at least the past 100 years. They're not going to let anyone tell them what to do, and they balk at receiving help from anyone - it's a sign of weakness. They have a strong "us and them" [washprofile.org] mentality which has not faded away one bit since the end of Communism.
I can't really fault Russians or Putin for that, other countries are loud and proud of themselves [usa-patriotism.com] and can also be a bit protectionist [dw-world.de] from time to time. But in Putin's case, it could be incredibly self-destructive, although I would bet that his people will support him even if it means economic disaster.
I'll probably get modded troll for that second paragraph, but just remember, in post-Soviet Russia, troll mods YOU.
Re:And Michael Looked Back (Score:5, Funny)
It's not just nationalism. It's hubris. That has been a part of Russia's collective psyche for at least the past 100 years. They're not going to let anyone tell them what to do, and they balk at receiving help from anyone - it's a sign of weakness.
Russians are Klingons. They are belligerent and drunk all the time, use brute force whenever possible, would rather die that surrender. Yet somehow they are a spacefaring society that always ends up saving the day with their cargo ships and scrapped together heaps. It defies logic.
Never, ever. (Score:5, Funny)
Re:And Michael Looked Back (Score:5, Insightful)
This is surely incorrect. The USSR functioned for almost seven decades. The people of the Ukraine clearly had a falling standard of living as Stalin starved them but failed to successfully revolt or change the system. Likewise in China, the cultural revolution was not something associated with a huge rise in living standards but Communism survived. Or the Castros in Cuba after the fall of the USSR and resultant drop in subsidy. Or Afghanistan moving from Soviet subsidy to Taliban control. Or the long reign of Pinochet in Chile. Or, indeed, the continued existence of Zimbabwe as a state.
I would suggest that authoritarianism does not require a rise in living standards to keep on going, and indeed I would suggest that a perception of danger and mass insecurity in the face of either economic or military threat is what often creates it in hard times. If you are American you have surely just lived through a period where the political utility of the perceptual emergency was clear.
Re:And Michael Looked Back (Score:4, Interesting)
Agreed. Capitalism is the system that requires a steadily rising standard of living to survive. Authoritarian states are created and thrive when standards of living are low.
In fact, if a Capitalist states endures a falling standard of living for long enough, it will often end up being replaced by force with an authoritarian controlled economy.
Re:And Michael Looked Back (Score:4, Funny)
You mean when shove comes to Putch? [wikipedia.org]
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Quite. I can see why Putin's nationalist bluster about not needing the outside world might appeal to Joe Vodkabottle types in the sticks in Russia, but I'm surprised it appeals here on /.
If an American President had said it, you'd be mocking him.
Re:And Michael Looked Back (Score:4, Insightful)
We have so far seen what a large communist economy can accomplish in USSR. We have seen what a minimally capitalist Russia can do. But from the way Putin has been moving, he is not planning to stop there. It seems like he wants to be a monopoly player in any sector Russia has the power to do it. He is playing a game of chess with eastern Europe as his chessboard when it comes to oil pipelines. Attacking Georgia was a case of sacrificing a pawn to make a move on the queen - The BTC [wikipedia.org] pipeline is the pipeline that will break Russia's monopoly on gas and Russia just made a move on it.
The same thing goes for any natural resources, Aluminium to Manganese -- Russia lets the oligarchs consolidate the industry with no regards to monopoly issues and at the last minute captures them back from them (or gets enough power to control the exports). You can't fault Russia for lack of extreme capitalism.
That said, it works for natural resources, but lack of protection for entrepreneurs has been a disaster in all other fields. Their productivity is actually falling in most sectors and they have been able to export limited number of branded products. If I were Putin, I would have asked for help in developing entrepreneurial culture,
Re:And Michael Looked Back (Score:5, Insightful)
Actually I think China and Russia have always been authoritarian apart from a few brief interregnums. Like the joke about women who date nice guys only when they are 'between bastards', China and Russia only have reformist governments when they are between tyrants. Typically those reformist governments collapse under attack from multiple would be tyrants. One tyrant wins and things go back to normal.
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Authoritarian, yes, but competent at it.
Bollocks. Competent at being authoritarian, yes, as you'd expect from a bunch of Chekists.
Oil production (output) has fallen since the re-nationalisation by Putin and his cronies, and now that oil prices have fallen, the dependance of the Russian economy on commodity exports, and - shock - foreign investment has been revealed.
Make no mistake, they're in big truoble just like the other major world economies.
Re:And Michael Looked Back (Score:4, Insightful)
If this state is shared with the other large economies, it would fail to support your argument that the Russian government is not in fact reasonably competent. Other than that I would have to infer that you are claiming that all governments are incompetent. While I appreciate that this is a popular position for the Norquist/Libeterian crowd, I do not agree.
Re:And Michael Looked Back (Score:5, Insightful)
While I appreciate that this is a popular position for the Norquist/Libeterian crowd, I do not agree.
Well, never though of myself as a Libertarian...
To clarify my thoughts; well, all G7 Govs. seem to have dropped the economic ball - in some way or another - in recent times, so we may, I suggest, reasonably claim that they're all incompetent in that regard.
Let's turn to the main point, to whit Putin. He has ruthlessly and systematically concentrated power just as much as any Tzar, (to be fair, so have others - think Burlusconi, Chavez...) I suggest it is therefore reasonable to assign the current condition of the Russian economy and state pretty much to him.
Now, do you seriously suggest that those two things are in good shape? Major western economies are in the toilet, for sure, but on all other criteria (democracy, corruption, life expectancy...) we're way ahead. My concern is that the signs are not good for progress in Rusia on ANY front.
Re:And Michael Looked Back (Score:5, Insightful)
Now, do you seriously suggest that those two things are in good shape? Major western economies are in the toilet, for sure, but on all other criteria (democracy, corruption, life expectancy...) we're way ahead. My concern is that the signs are not good for progress in Rusia on ANY front.
I would agree that the West is indeed ahead on all fronts (including economically, in fact) but it is important to bear in mind the legacy that Putin came into power with. It is not entirely propaganda that makes people compare him positively to Yeltsin, I would say. The Russian body politic looks at Putin and compares him to Gorbachev's dismantling of the USSR and Yeltsin's disposal of the assets of the state for pennies on the dollar and loss of societal control. It is therefore not surprising that a program of controlling the oligarchs and bringing them under Kremlin control is popular. The Russian economy was starting to diversify, but was indeed focussed in energy. I think it is however fair to say that the economy did better under Putin than under any Russian leadership for at least a generation.
In terms of democracy, it is of course going backwards. I am however not entirely sure that's not what Russians as a body politic (which is very different from the urban intelligentsia) actually wants. It's a problem. I would also say that in a country where Stalin almost won a greatest Russian poll (while being Georgian, oddly enough) Putin's centralisation of power is not only not as big as any Tzar's but actually quite restrained. The rule of Stalin was essentially that of a Communist Tzar, and he killed millions.
The counterargument is that Putin's air force almost bombed me in Gori, Georgia. I was however mildly amused by this.
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If price fell, it's good management to cut down production.
At least the Russian government is smart enough to steal money making industries as opposed to the US which bails out money losing businesses.
Re:And Michael Looked Back (Score:5, Informative)
They did not cut production. During 2008, a time of record high oil prices, in case you have forgotten, production fell by nearly 1%.
Historically, major increases in production had been achieved with the investment and expertise of western companies, working with Russian (OK kleptocratic) private organisations.
Putin then threw them all out / locked 'em all up. (By the way, where the money goes now is fairly obscure...Gazprom, for example, has subsidiaries in such oil-rich nations as the Caymen Islands, Cyprus...)
Surprise, surprise, production then fell. Was not reduced, just damn fell. Reminds me of, well, Venezuela, for example?
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/southamerica/venezuela/3183417/Venezuelas-oil-output-slumps-under-Hugo-Chavez.html [telegraph.co.uk]
A failed state? (Score:3, Insightful)
From
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Russia [wikipedia.org]
Lower birth rates and higher death rates reduced Russia's population at a 0.5% annual rate, or about 750,000 to 800,000 people per year during the late 1990s and most of the 2000s. The UN warned that Russia's 2005 population of about 143 million could fall by a third by 2050.
From
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/state [merriam-webster.com]
State: 5 a: a politically organized body of people usually occupy
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
If the advice of foreign consultants was so bad - why has it worked fine for the other members of the Eastern bloc? If the fault is of the foreigners coming up telling Russia what to do, then how did Poland end up democratic and prosperous while Russia is autocratic and at the whim of oil/gas prices?
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I guess that is cause for him to worry. After all, the only person allowed to be kleptocratic oligarch is him!
The Cold War Called ... (Score:4, Insightful)
"We don't need help. We are not invalids. We don't have limited mental capacity. Our programmers are some of the best in the world. No one would contest that here -- not even our Indian colleagues."
Failure to address the real issues (corruption, economy, etc) plaguing your society? Check.
Playing up a sense of extreme national pride, isolation and bullheadedness? Double check.
Burning a bridge? Triple check.
Putin, you would have made a fine leader during the Cold War for either side.
Re:The Cold War Called ... (Score:5, Insightful)
Not going back far enough. The Russian fear of being perceived as backass country folk goes all the way back to the Tsars. Russia really wanted to be counted among European nobility, but could never really cut it, so they are hyper-sensitive to anything indicating that they are not up-to-date/cutting edge. AFAIK, "nekulturny" (literally, uncultured) is still the highest insult you can throw at a Russian.
Re:The Cold War Called ... (Score:4, Funny)
Not a shoe?
Re:The Cold War Called ... (Score:4, Funny)
Not a shoe?
Not a chair?
Oh right, this is Dell, not Microsoft.
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Well, you're wrong (I'm Russian, BTW).
Russians are not very hypersensitive about _everything_. Only about things in which Russia was the best :)
All engineers here realize that USSR was far behind in electronics/computing - "Soviet microcomputers are the biggest microcomputers in the world!"
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The problem is that their culture and everything else is diametrically backwards from the rest of the western world. Someone reading Russian literature will notice the extreme difference from western, same with lots of other things. a couple of my Russian friends were able to crack the encryption on a Home automation systems software encryption in literally minutes. It would have taken me days to do it. They try to explain it to me but you have to "think Russian", as they put it to me, to understand it
Re:The Cold War Called ... (Score:5, Informative)
AFAIK, "nekulturny" (literally, uncultured) is still the highest insult you can throw at a Russian.
I see that you've read Heinlein. However, that particular thing that he wrote wasn't true then, much less now.
Depending on the social class, the highest insult you can throw at a Russian is probably either "intelligent" (as in belonging to intelligentsia) when directed by a prole against someone he perceives as a smartass, or "bydlo" (this is a Polish loanword that literally means "cattle", and figuratively someone who lives to eat and copulate, and nothing above that) when it is the other way around.
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Ahh, but now you bring up the second Russian socio-political hangup from Tsarist times - fear of being invaded, of having their territory taken away, of being manipulated. they hav
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Failure to address the real issues (corruption, economy, etc) plaguing your society? Check.
Playing up a sense of extreme national pride, isolation and bullheadedness? Double check.
Burning a bridge? Triple check.
Putin, you would have made a fine leader during the Cold War for either side.
I'm sorry - what country are you talking about, because quite few fit into this profile.
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Full of shit you are, young Jedi (Score:4, Insightful)
1. Putin has been addressing the economy pretty darn well. There was pretty dramatic GDP growth during his tenure.
2. While corruption is still high, it is MUCH lower than it was during Yeltsin years. Oligarchs don't open the doors in Kremlin with their foot anymore. The guy who tried to buy up enough of the parliament to pass his own laws (Khodorkovsky) is in the prison, where he will remain for a long time. Needless to say, the Russian people have much less sympathy to him that those who don't know what he's really in the prison for.
3. It's about time Russia asserted itself internationally. For nearly a decade and a half, Russia did exactly as IMF and Washington DC told it. Needless to say, neither of the two had Russia's interests in mind.
4. Putin was merely putting Dell in his place. Just because you got a ticket to Davos doesn't mean you're entitled to any kind of preferential treatment from the government. Dell is just "screwdriver assembly" company. There are plenty of those in Russia.
Questions?
Re:Full of shit you are, young Jedi (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Full of shit you are, young Jedi (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm sure $150/bbl oil had nothing to do with it.
You have any room in that prison? There's a few US oligarchs who probably deserve a stay there.
OK, so oil prices went up (Score:5, Informative)
Coincidentally oil prices went way up shortly after Bush jr was elected, and went way down after he left. In the interim Iran, Russia, and a number of other countries made out really, really well. The economic gains were very much due to oil prices and very little due to anything Putin did. Still better than Bush's economic plan that involved claiming deficit spending as a GDP increase, giving money to rich people is NOT Keynesian, making them work for it is.
Putin has basically done a Lenin so far. He has taken power completely so he can help his friends and persecute his enemies. He has said a lot, especially about Russians being a great people and Russia being a superpower. He has not done a whole lot.
Note: Reagan gets credit for a lot, but he was sort of all over the place as pres. Lower taxes, raise taxes, lower spending, raise spending, whatever. As for ending "communism," or, more accurately the Stalinist dictatorship (Lenin ENDED any semblance of communism in Russia, and started a totalitarian dictatorship, Stalin took over after a few years and continued for decades), it ended when Gorbachev told the East German leadership they could not shoot protesters, and if they did he would not send out the army to support them; the tyrants started picking up their gold and planning their luxurious retirements instantly.
Oh well, at least Putin has less secret police and executions than Lenin did...
Re:Full of shit you are, young Jedi (Score:5, Insightful)
1) Putin did not address the economy well. Rising commodity prices addressed the Russian economy. No structural problems were addressed, and until they are, Russia will falter every time commodity prices go down. What happened to the scientific prowess of the Soviet Union? Putin has not restored that. Russia is not a leader in any high-tech industries, despite what Putin thinks.
3) Putin is asserting Russia's interests in a typically moronic Russian manner. That is to say, he is trying to set Russia up as a Great Power and an ideological competitor to the West. But it doesn't have the population, resources, or technology to do this, so all it is doing is spending its money wastefully on these vanity projects. I mean, take something like selling missiles to Syria. It gains Russia almost nothing (some small money in arms sales and close ties with an country that still leaves Russia without any real leverage in the Middle East), but Russia pursues it because it is a poke in the eye to America. Much of Russia's policy seems more geared towards annoying the US (to prove that Russia can do what it wants) than doing anything useful for Russia.
Let me put it this way. In 20 years, China and India will be rich and fully integrated into the global system. Russia, which 20 years ago was far ahead of both, will likely not be. For that, Putin needs to answer.
4) What Dell said is standard business/political talk. It's a polite way of asking, "Is there anything we can invest in that would make both of us rich?" That's why politicians go on foreign trips trying to drum up business from investors, and why countries fly their own investors overseas to meet with foreign countries to solidify relations. Even if there are no specific opportunities for Dell right now, it is incredibly stupid for Putin to respond this one. It just sends a message to foreign investors that they are not wanted in Russia (a message already sent by Putin's actions to seize foreign investments in Russia's oil). How does eliminating foreign investment help the Russian people?
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
3. It's about time Russia asserted itself internationally. For nearly a decade and a half, Russia did exactly as IMF and Washington DC told it. Needless to say, neither of the two had Russia's interests in mind.
Questions?
Yes, I have questions. Do not change the subject by talking about what America does. What I want to know from you, since you seem to think you are an expert is... How does this "reassertion" benefit non-Russians?
Is there more to this reassertion than simply supporting noxious dictators (ie. Sudan, Cuba) and stealing territory from other countries (ie. Georgia)?
I'm not going to deny that Russia benefited little from doing what it was told to do, mostly because President Bush was too idiotic to underst
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It's no coincidence that oil prices tripled during his stay in the office. Now they're back down, and we'll see how long that GDP growth will last.
While corruption is still high, it is MUCH lower than it was during Yeltsin years. Oligarchs don't open the doors in Kremlin with their foot anymore. The guy who tried to buy up enough of the parliament to pass his own laws (Khodorkovsky) is in the prison, where he will remain for a long time. Needless to say, the Russian people have much less sympathy to him that those who don't know what he's really in the prison for.
I won't even comment on Khodorkovsky - anyone who knows enough about the case knows that it was a case of political persecution, pure and simple. Even if you go by the official version, he was charged with tax evasion, not "buying the parliament".
Anyway,
Re:The Cold War Called ... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Speaking of God-like personae...
He Must Be Like Putin [youtube.com]
Re:Obama hype (Score:5, Insightful)
The thing that you need to worry about is the God like persona that the media is painting Obama with. He may wind up being a good or even a great president, but no one is going to be able to live up to the hype that is being heaped upon him.
Ah, in my best 3rd-grade impersonation I can muster...He started it.
Seriously, you can blame the media up to a point, but the media didn't make over 500 campaign promises. He did. Let's see if he can merely live up to his own hype.
Re:The Cold War Called ... (Score:4, Insightful)
Bush is gone...
But his mess isn't.
and when does it become the next guy's mess? (Score:3, Insightful)
because I am curious.
I would say two years in, because 9/11 wasn't Bush's mess either, he just got stuck with it.
Re:The Cold War Called ... (Score:5, Funny)
Exactly! Everything in history is the fault of the DemocRAT party.
It's not as if $7.5T of the $10.5T debt was run up under Republican presidents. It's not like $5T was run up under Bush while his party had control of the House, Senate, Supreme Court, and Federal courts. It was the LIEberals!
It's all the fault of TAX and SPEND Democrats who.. uh.. had a surplus when they were last in office? Uh. No it HAS to be Clinton's fault, otherwise there might be some flaw in my world view. That's impossible, because I'm a Conservative!
Er, yeah. Clinton fucked a chubby intern. That's what caused this mess. If he hadn't done that, Alan Greenspan would never have left interest rates criminally low for too long. In 2004, the SEC would never have raised the leverage limit from 12:1 to 30:1 (making a 3% decline in asset values wipe our your company).
And whatever wasn't the fault of Clinton was CARTER's fault. That damn CRA, which passed in 1977. It broke the economy 30 years later because it forced the GSEs to make loans to black people (a.k.a. the lazy poor who are only poor because they are irresponsible and they drive Cadillacs and have cable TV that they buy with their welfare checks which they don't deserve) even though the mess extends far beyond subprime mortgages and that private, non-GSE mortgages account for 3/4 of the problem. It's the fault of Clinton, Carter, Fannie, and Freddie. All LIEberals.
(I'm not racist. My church once had a black guy in it. I just think all black people are lazy. But that's not racism. Read the "Bell Curve", a fine scholarly work.)
And, anyway, Bush's tax cuts worked as promised. His tax cuts created the same number of jobs in eight years as Clinton created in thirteen months! They are why we located all those WMDs and why the fundamentals of our economy are strong. It was TOO MUCH REGULATION that caused the problems that are purely psychological. There's no problem with the economy, except for all the problems with it, which are ONLY the fault of DemocRATs.
Also, the media is liberal. Like Joe Scarborough. I mean, it's not like liberal MSNBC would put a Conservative congressman on TV for three hours a day. (Shout out to Lori Klausutis!)
Yup. I can't believe how quickly the LIEberals on Slashdot forget the details of history.
I'm a small government, free market Conservative who wants Sarah Palin to be Dictator for Life. She gives me star-bursts in my pants.
--
Did I get that right? I think that's the current Conservative orthodoxy. It's certainly got all the wonderfully truthy proclamations I've heard from Conservatives THIS FUCKING WEEK.
Re:The Cold War Called ... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:The Cold War Called ... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:The Cold War Called ... (Score:5, Insightful)
Last night npr had a story [npr.org] about Obama's huge stimulus plan being the first real test of Keynesianism, and how conservatives (they quoted somebody from the Cato Institute) hated it.
I thought, Huh? It was Reagan who ushered in the modern era of huge government spending to juice the economy. Both Bushes did it too, with Jr taking it to new heights.
The main difference I see with Obama is that less of the money will go to the military-industrial complex and tax cuts for the rich, and more into infrastructure and services that benefit greater number of people. I think that's potentially good, but doesn't change the fact that the federal budget deficit is downright terrifying and unsustainable.
As for Reagan breaking up the Soviet Union, give me a break. Communism never works, with or without Reagan. It was Clinton who was smart enough to reap the peace dividend by closing bases and bring a govt. surplus, which Reagan never would have done.
Re:The Cold War Called ... (Score:5, Insightful)
Obama is that less of the money will go to the military-industrial complex and tax cuts for the rich, and more into infrastructure and services that benefit greater number of people. I think that's potentially good, but doesn't change the fact that the federal budget deficit is downright terrifying and unsustainable.
I have no argument that Bush (and both GOP/Democrat congresses) spent way too much, but the current "Stimulus/Recovery/Whatever-the-hell" bill is good money after bad. A significant portion of the money goes into Medicaid, Medicare, and "state-aid".
Cover state budget holes, and state legislatures will spend the money on something else. Meanwhile, the federal budget gets a new, higher, $1 trillion dollar deficit a year floor.
You want Keynesian Stimulus? Spend $200-400 billion on infrastructure. You want Reagan Stimulus? Spend $200-400 on infrastructure, and another $200-400 on pro-business tax cuts.
The current bill is neither of those things, pays a small amount towards national 'capital' assets, and borrows a vast amount of money to fill structural holes in state budgets.
*shrug*
I don't think you can stimulate the economy, or fix long-term structural budgetary problems, by kicking funding for schools, healthcare, and other transfer payments down the road 2 years (which is *exactly* what this bill does). So; Pell Grants get $20 billion for 2009-2010? What about 2011? Not only does the shortfall get bigger, but then we have to cope with the additional interest on the borrowed money to fill today's budgetary hole.
I'm all for targeted tax cuts that increase future tax revenue (capital gains taxes). I'm all for infrastructure funding that either reduces future budgetary needs (energy efficiency can do that), or increases economic activity (better ports, internet, and highways ->more business->bigger tax base).
But if we spend/borrow $1 trillion, and don't get a significant amount of long term growth out of it, we're just digging a deeper hole, and that's exactly what the big O is planning to do.
I've told other people, and I'll post it on Slashdot, for which I'll get ridiculed. Unless there are some dramatic sunset provisions in this bill, or the economy starts magically growing at 4-5% a year, people will remember the days of Bush as "The Good Old Days", when budget deficits were no more than a few hundred billion, and the national debt was under $20 trillion. When spending $600 billion on a war over 5 years was considered profligate waste.
We've pole-vaulted over the $1 trillion dollar per-year deficit level, and we don't even have anything cool to show for it (like, I dunno, space factors, a city on the moon, or Nuclear Fusion).
Re:The Cold War Called ... (Score:5, Informative)
the federal budget deficit is downright terrifying and unsustainable.
Unsustainable, yes, but at the current interest rate they are paying, they'd be silly NOT to borrow. Now, that is all starting to change... yesterday they had to pay out more interest than expected to sell some 5-year treasuries. I expect that this will only get worse, so borrowing is about to get expensive.
As for Reagan breaking up the Soviet Union, give me a break. Communism never works, with or without Reagan. It was Clinton who was smart enough to reap the peace dividend by closing bases and bring a govt. surplus, which Reagan never would have done.
It's about being the right guy at the right time in history. Clinton NEVER would have won the election in 1980... and I doubt Governor Reagan would have won post-Cold War. Reagan almost certainly hastened the fall of the USSR, even if a fall was inevitable in the end. Also, Bush the first started reaping the peace dividends... Clinton carried this on. Bush I inherited about $480 billion (in constant dollars) and left Clinton with about $400 billion, so he knocked off about 16%. Clinton inherited the $400 billion and left with $345 billion, so he brought it down another 14% but in 8 years. Granted he had to deal with Republicans and a blowjob (in that order) the last couple of years, but you still have to give Bush I some credit.
If both do it, I prefer the one that does openly (Score:4, Insightful)
Obama is different, one might say? Well, he doesn't seem particularly interested in cutting spending, so far. He's trying to get Republican/Conservative support on basically a spending bill (the "stimulus" plan). I haven't seen him pushing democrats to cut spending yet.
I didn't see the republicans pushing for smaller government recently.
There was a lot of big talk, but the government spending and debt kept getting bigger, and bigger, and bigger.
Real World Experience (Score:4, Insightful)
"Our programmers are some of the best in the world,"
Of course - after all, those viruses don't program themselves, now do they?
Re:Real World Experience (Score:5, Interesting)
Exactly. Most of the best Russian programmers are currently either making botnets or breaking DRM. During the late stages of the Cold War, they spent most of their time buying or stealing code from the West. A fact that the CIA once exploited to cause one of the largest non-nuclear man made explosions [builderau.com.au].
While you might like the DRM breakers, nothing here is much to get excited about.
dude, (Score:5, Funny)
you're getting a polonium 210!
Russian Computing (Score:5, Funny)
Our botnets span the globe! Our shadowy hosting providers are without peer! Our ability to ddos former republics who move monuments is second to none...
"Best" (Score:4, Insightful)
> Our programmers are some of the best in the world
Yes. Just look at how they dominate the malware industry. And nobody is better at herding bots.
Re:"Best" (Score:5, Insightful)
> Just look at how they dominate the malware industry. And nobody is better at herding bots.
That is one good example. They have lots of skilled people in a hellhole economy. And sending hard currency they don't have (mostly because of corrupt politicians like Putin it must be said) to buy stuff they could do themselves with labor so underutilized they accept the low returns of the malware industry out of desperation is do dumb even Putin gets it.
And I can totally understand why they wouldn't want a Dell. If they want Chinese made crap they have China's number, why would they want to cut the US in on the action just to get a Dell sticker on the box?
Re:"Best" (Score:5, Insightful)
Eastern european programmers do tend to dominate things like the Top Coder and Google Code Jam competitions (although a Chinese guy won the latter last year), so there's certainly plenty of talent there. Let's not also forget that they've got things like the unmanned Progress ISS supply ship that we're totally dependent on - something that neither the US, Europe nor anywhere else has to offer.
Re:"Best" (Score:4, Insightful)
Short answer: You have no idea what you are talking about.
Long answer:
Performance is independent of reliability or cost. And though Soyuz and Progress may be cheaper per launch - when you compare the costs of the multiple launches required to replace a single Shuttle flight, all the sudden they aren't a bargain anymore. The last numbers I saw indicated it would take nearly 18 launches of Soyuz and Progress to partially replace a single Shuttle flight. I say partially because Soyuz/Progress cannot support spacewalks, cannot return cargo/tools/handling equipment, and cannot deliver equipment much larger than a medium sized suitcase.
You want to compare Soyuz and Shuttle reliability? Let's do, let's compare 95 odd Soyuz flights to 120 odd Shuttle flights...
Fatal Accidents
Non fatal accidents
It's not a pretty picture - and it gets worse when you consider the Progress collision with MIR, something Shuttle has never done...
Ares will have to be a poor performer indeed to even approach the Soyuz record.
I didn't say it was currently obsolete, I said it will be obsolete. Currently it is obsolescent.
So what? That doesn't change the fact that ATV's performance (cargo capacity) is far higher.
Being reliable doesn't mean it isn't obsolescent and approaching obsolescence.
Care to cite a Japanese spacecraft design exhibiting this characteristic? Meanwhile, we can discuss how Soyuz has steadily lost capability in its evolution from general purpose orbiter to hyper specialized space station taxi. Then there is Progress, which has made some progress. Then there is Shuttle - which has new computers, a new flight control system, a new display system, new solid rocket motors, new SSME's (increasing thrust), a new external tank that increases payload to orbit by many tons.
It was a very mild rebuke (Score:5, Informative)
Did anyone actually watch the clip? It appeared to me that Putin gave a very mild rebuke to Dell, and then went on to do just as much marketing of Russian IT :-) It was not a big "F-You Dell, F-you The West" like the headlines imply.
Re:It was a very mild rebuke (Score:5, Insightful)
No, it was more like "when are you going to start treating us as equals?"
Re:It was a very mild rebuke (Score:5, Informative)
Yes, it seemed mild to me too, so I transcribed TFV, in the interests of honesty and fairness. (I'm not a sympathizer of any sort!)
Here's the transcript:
People with limited capacities should be helped. Pensioners should be helped. Developing countries should be helped. And help must not only be simply in the form of giving the money, perpetuating the circle of poverty. Why negotiations at the WTO (?) are at an impasse? Because rich countries cannot meet the needs of the developing economies...let's be frank about it and open... One must look for a compromise, speaking of Russia and our partners in Europe, our partners in Europe and the United States and Indonesia... one needs fully fledged equal partnership. In many respects, our economies are complementary. Indeed, we've managed to achieve a lot in developing informatization, as we say of our society. A few years ago, imagine a village in Siberia with a computer system and internet access. We did it. We made it. We have a government program for that. In every school, I stress, every Russian school has both computer rooms and internet access. In the Far East, in the Far North, everywhere. This movement of IT in the society will continue as dictated by both the development of economy and society... No one would ever think of doubting opportunities of information offered by (the) internet as an open source for information and for opinion sharing. You may like something, you may not like something. But complete freedom is the word here. Speaking of the intentions of the State, we have a program, a federal program - it is called Electronic Russia. We intend to continue this individual program in cooperation with our partners, and it is great pleasure that we will accept, as we have done before, investments into this sector and will continue developing our own products and presenting them to the global market. Many companies of Russia are major operators of the cellular services in a number of the developed economies of the world and we will continue facilitating such experts in the future. We have quite a few coinciding interests in these and in this area of course we will find a few more. Many companies (I will not name them) work in these areas. Of course, it doesn't only deal with hardware, as they say, but also and most importantly with intellectual products, the software, Here we have a few things to offer to the market, and I am grateful to you for this allusion. Traditionally, we have a very strong school of mathematics in Russia, and our programmers are among the best in the world, no doubt about it, and nobody would contest it here, even our Indian colleagues. I would say, let's do [with] the job. Thank you.
Nice slap down (Score:5, Insightful)
In Putin's defense, he was slapping down a marketing pitch. The linked article gets it wrong on a subtle but significant detail: Mr. Dell didn't ask "If" Dell could help, he asked "How" Dell could help.
Who can blame Putin for being offended by the implication that Russia needed Mr. Dell's help? So he let him have it with both barrels, much as any of us might react to an unwanted and annoying telemarketer, if they gave us a similarly arrogant pitch.
And by the way, shouldn't the lame jokes be changed to start with "In post-Soviet Russia"?
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
There's a huge difference between declining assistance and going off on a childish diatribe because a businessman offered his services to you. Putin seems to be playing up to the state-owned press in Russia which lionizes everything he does.
Re:Nice slap down (Score:4, Insightful)
Possibly, but I'd direct you to Robert Heinlein's essays on how to deal with Russians and the Russian system, "Pravda Means Truth" and "Inside Intourist", both in Expanded Universe. These were written based on personal experience travelling inside Russia, with his wife learning Russian fluently enough to talk to people there without needing a translator. They provide quite a bit of insight into why Putin reacts the way he does.
Dell needs a class in international business (Score:5, Insightful)
Summary is a bit off (Score:5, Insightful)
Putin wasn't reacting to Dell offering computers so much as Dell suggesting that Russia had a problem with technical talent that needed addressing, which *is* obviously absurd! Even if Russia did have a problem developing IT talent, the solution isn't a big order of Dell computers, even if Dell honestly thinks it is.
TopCoder (Score:5, Interesting)
1 Russian Federation 2930.06
2 China 2843.33
3 Poland 2842.79
4 Ukraine 2557.06
5 Japan 2483.83
6 Canada 2426.56
7 United States 2320.98
8 Slovakia 2291.73
9 South Korea 2226.98
10 Belarus 2206.81
Let's just hope the next war isn't fought with robots.
Re:TopCoder (Score:5, Informative)
Any reason why the results are like that? I'm curious on why eastern europeans do so well. Better/different education system?
I think it's mostly strong emphasis on math and other hard sciences starting with high school, and the system of "advanced" (but still public/free) schools for bright students (you usually have to pass some fairly hard exams to get in) with even more emphasis. I've studied in two such schools in my last 4 years of school studies - we had about 8 hours of math and 4 hours of physics each week, and in the last two years math involved solving cubic and quadratic equations, dealing with derivatives, integrals and logarithms, functional analysis, stereometry (solid geometry) and so on. It helps to set the right frame of mind.'
That said, IT & CS education in Russia is still crappy, and mostly non-existent. I've yet to see any university offering a CS course, and IT/IS ones usually involve outdated technologies and incompetent teachers. All good Russian programmers I know are entirely self-taught when it comes to programming itself - most have engineering or math degree otherwise.
Re:TopCoder (Score:5, Informative)
That's not what I hear from friends at work who migrated from Russia to, on their words, "any country on the west that would accept me"
I am myself a Russian who migrated from Russia to "any country that would accept me" - which is Canada for now. What I told in my previous post was my personal experience, not hearsay.
It's all about need. Those eastern european kids really need to win these competitions. They can't afford to be "normal" because the job market for normal people was always a great mess at Russia.
That's just not true. First of all, regarding the job market - for software developers in particular, it's actually very good in Russia (or was until the crisis hit) - too few skilled people, too many opened positions. In my last 3 years of working in Moscow, I always knew that, at any given moment, I could walk out of my job and find a new one within 2 weeks. I've got salary which was several times larger than the average in the country. I've seen other people progress from junior to lead developer within 2 years because there were not enough properly experienced devs to fill all the lead positions. And that's not one particular company - that's the whole Moscow IT job market. Of course, Russia isn't just Moscow, but in practice most bright guys who can (and it doesn't take much) move to Moscow anyway because that's where the jobs are.
As for why the kids want to win competitions... I participated in some of the local/regional Russian ones myself at school, and it wasn't about getting job offers at all. It was because taking part in one was expected of all the bright students, and because winning one could help getting into a better university later on (they're free, even the better ones, but the exams are hard, and this could help). And yes, of course, merely the feeling of being the smartest kid on the block is worth a lot - but that's only if the culture you grew up in fosters that, which it does in Russia for some kids (not all of them, not by a long shot - but I think we still do better than USA with their overemphasis on physical sports in school).
Proper translation of Putin's statement... (Score:5, Informative)
Here [russiatoday.com].
âoeYou know, the trick is we're not someone in need of help. We're not invalids. Help is something that you should give to poor people, to people with limited capacities, to pensioners, to developing countries... As for Russia and our partners in Europe, in the United States, in some Asian countries, there should be a partnership of equals.â
Bright Side (Score:3, Funny)
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Programmers? (Score:5, Insightful)
Swell.
Your understanding of the situation reminds me of Bush looking at his polls.
Putin, not big on technology, took Dell's question as an insult, and retorted with a prideful display. Nothing more than that.
Chances of Dell selling much into Russia? Poorer-- although it would be a great counter-culture way to insult Putin. For that alone, an offset may have been made so as to prevent Dell from having to file an 8K (for downward trend warning due to sales-geek faux pas).
Don't go in to politics.
Re:Programmers? (Score:4, Interesting)
I'm not entirely convinced that you are 100% correct here. Recent tech spats with Russia et al include MS and piracy in Russian schools, OSS software directives, and several minor stories I seem to remember about the Russian government pulling away from outsiders. I'm pretty certain that after the cold war they have more reason to not want 'help' than any of us might imagine. My point is I don't think this is an isolated incidence of over reaction. I think it fits with an overall plan for IT infrastructure for government, as far as I can tell.
In truth, after RefFlag Linux and some other efforts around the globe, I've been waiting for Russia et al to announce something that more or less tells Redmond to get stuffed. By way of guilt by association reasoning, if Putin and Russia manage to thumb their noses at North American software/hardware manufacturers, it's nearly certain that many others will follow suit. I suspect there are a lot of politics involved though... and that causes me curiosity.
Re:It may be a misconseption on my part but... (Score:5, Informative)
In India, we have thousands (literally) of kids graduating with computer engineering degrees every year. Now, the thing is, a lot of these degrees are pretty useless since the college/university that issued them is basically a money making machine, and nothing else.
However, there are a bunch of good places that produce very good engineers. The Indian Institutes of Technology are the most well known, but there are some others that are equally good (some of the top Regional Enginnering Colleges, and so on)
I think it boils down to numbers. Say we have 30,000 comp sci grads every year. Now say 60 percent of them are hacks who know nothing much and are only good for repetitive code work and stuff like that. 20 percent will be quite good, easily as competent as a good programmer in the US or wherever. 10 percent will be skilled at code and other stuff like management, the types who end up heading into upper management, 8 percent will be very good, and 2 percent will be fantastic.
The 2 percent mostly heads off to MIT, or CMU, or $TOPSCHOOL to do an MS or a Phd, but that still leaves a pretty substantial number of good people.
Now, when you realize that 30,000 is a low estimate, since the acutal figure is 175,000 (source: http://www.timesascent.co.in/index.aspx?Page=article§id=2&contentid=20080930200809301249051997b5b53a [timesascent.co.in], and http://www.rediff.com/money/2006/jun/09bspec.htm [rediff.com] ) you begin to see that while we do have a huge number of terrible programmers, we have a pretty good talent pool too. It's all about the numbers!
Re:It may be a misconseption on my part but... (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm sure there are good Indian programmers. I'm also relatively certain that most of them are here on student visas, working on their grad school degrees. Those not in school most likely expect the same level of pay as their American counterparts. Never forget that you get what you pay for.
Re:Prideful Putin ? (Score:5, Interesting)
He's got a point. Building computers is simply not a terrifically difficult business.
I was in St. Petersburg (Putin's hometown) a few months ago visiting in-laws, and I helped them pick out their first computer from a local vendor. What they got was a pretty nice machine for the money. The selection was good. A fine consumer experience, overall.
Do they need a foreign corporation in that market locally? Would they benefit immensely from that? Not really.