No doubt things were bad in Russia, but the Bolsheviks were not the ones with the solutions. There were lots of pro-democracy and moderate socialists who on the rise before the Bolsheviks seized power. Those were the ones who could have turned Russia's industrial revolution into a good thing, but Lenin (and later Stalin) basically had them killed and exiled. To say that the Bolsheviks were the champions of workers welfare is just crazy. :)

Sorry if my post came across as a 'Youre a commie!' type of comment. :)

However, they were extremely stern taskmasters. What do you think happened to people who did not work, worked less, or decided they wanted to quite their job and do something different? I'll give you a hint: It was a hell of a lot worse than getting fired or making less money which is what happens when you skip work in the USA. When you completely remove incentives to excel the only way anything gets done is if you punish people who do not do what you tell them. Basically they treated workers like slaves.

However, you are correct that they won over working class Russians in the beginning with wild promises that they could not possibly have kept.

Yeah, those extra two hours a day are really killing me. :) There are plenty of places in the United States willing to hire you to work part time or less than 8 hours a day. You just wont make as much as someone willing to do 8-10 hours a day. Call me crazy, but that seems fair to me. I am sure Lenin and Stalin would have disagreed with me though.

I prefer living in a country where the government allows me to make that choice rather than telling people how to live through legislation.

Amazing how defenses of Bolshevik economics get modded up in spite of how truly horrible it was to actually live in an economy like that. I would rather work in a country where you can actually earn something for a full days work than one where the government comes in and mandates that noone is allowed to work more than 8 hours. I work probably 9-10 hours a day, but at least I get something out of it. And I would not have in the old 'Workers Paradise'.

You know the funny thing about this whole discussion is that the OS linked to in the article is not the first. Integrity from Green Hills Software was proven correct a while ago. It is popular for safety critical stuff like flight controls for airplanes and is one of the dominant players in that niche.

http://www.informationweek.com/blog/main/archives/2008/11/green_hills_sof.html

And what is truly amusing about following this argument, is that Integrity is written in C. :)

The truth is you dont need to be really competent to be a PC repairman. 95% of problems can be solved with either "reinstall windows" or "try replacing part X and see if it works". Anything more complicated than that is going to require time, effort and expertise that exceeds the cost of the computer. So there is no point of hiring expensive people with high levels of skill to begin with.

Not quite from the article, but from an article linked to by it at the bottom of the story:

"...Inside one of the documents copied to the memory stick was a text file containing passwords for Facebook, Hotmail, eBay and a NatWest bank account.

Once the technician had discovered this information, he opened a web browser on the laptop and attempted to log into the back account for around five minutes.

The only reason he was unsuccessful was because the details were fake....."

+5 Gullible. :) It is very unlikely that they realized it wasnt a legit customer. If they had realized they were being watched they probably would have been on their best behaviour. That sounds more like an excuse than anything. More likely is that they were afraid the customer would go someplace else and get it fixed without needing a new motherboard thus discovering that Evnova's advice was bad. So they broke the motherboard on purpose to make their claim that a new motherboard was needed more credible and likely to be confirmed by the next shop.

It is not news. I work for an embedded software company and we have operating systems that boot in well under a second. Its not a big deal. Really. Its just a pleasant side effect of the fact that a lot of embedded operating systems don't really have to do a whole lot on boot.

Parent is correct, it is almost universally agreed by reputable economists that the great depression was caused by DEFLATION and the fed keeping rates too high. (not inflation and cheap money as the poorly informed grandparent claims) Additionally, grandparent made the ridiculous claim that recessions are worsened by wasteful spending when in fact they are the result of underutilization of resources, even wasteful spending helps end them. I guess this is more of a computer nerd than finance nerd site, but really, the guy contradicted very basic economics in several places and got modded +5, thats nuts. :)

Eh, not quite. The colonists were already angry about the high tea import tax. The fact that the crown decided that everyone should have to pay it except the favored British East India Company is what sent the colonists over the edge. The anger was rooted in the high taxes, they just took it out on the only guys who didnt have to pay tax.

My first thought was that if you start using words like "all OSes" then that includes smaller OSes that are mathematically provably correct and used in the safety critical industry. For example: http://www.informationweek.com/blog/main/archives/2008/11/green_hills_sof.html

I dont see Apple/MS/Linux/any other huge OS putting out proofs of their OSes correctness anytime soon.

Saddam Hussein was a bad guy for sure, but that whole shredder thing was a classic example of an inflammatory story that is later proved false in the run up to a war.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2004/feb/25/iraq.iraqandthemedia

You are correct that Apple is not in the same position, but their behaviour is worse than that of MS. They try to lock people into their hardware if they want to use Apple's OS, once upon a time MS was considered the 'good guys' by some because they let you run whatever hardware you wanted. Apple tries to lock you into their little itunes/iwhatever combo.

When you get right down to it, the fact that Apple is not an abusive monopoly isn't for lack of trying, they just haven't been as successful as MS.

Your posting history says otherwise. :)