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Russia To Develop a National Operating System
Elektroschock writes "According to Russian media, the Russian Government is going to develop a National Operating System (Google translation; Russian original) to lower its dependencies on foreign software technology licensing. The Russian plan will base its efforts on Linux and expects a worldwide impact. Microsoft is also involved in the roundtable process that led to the recommendation. The Chinese government successfully lowered its Microsoft licensing costs through an early investment in a national Linux distribution. I wonder if other large markets, such as the European Union, will also develop their own Linux distributions or join in the Russian initiative."
System operates YOU!
In Russia, system boots you!
I never thought Russia to be that big into licensing and copyrights.
Out of modpoints but really liked a post? 1BDkF6TtmmeZ3yqXbz9yhdYVqRYnwFoXDj
...installed by the FSB or whatever it is the KGB is calling itself these days, honest tovarishch.
Isn't their National Operating System called Communism?
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
Russia to make national distribution... Red Flag beat you to that game..
"Ahh! Arrogance and stupidity in the same package, how efficient of you!" --Londo Molari
Cool
EU politiacians don't understand (or don't want to) the importance, the strategy and the economics of an EU-wide open-source policy!
Private interests are more important by far!
Maybe Computers will never be as intelligent as Humans.
For sure they won't ever become so stupid. [VR-1988]
In Soviet Russia, National Operating System develops YOU!
Taking guns away from the 99% gives the 1% 100% of the power.
adhere to the GPL and return their changes back to the community?
Operating System uses you!
In Soviet Russia, "rm -rf /" deletes you! :)
THE HONOUR OF THE KNIGHTS - CC Licensed Sci-Fi Novel
If it detects you making unfavorable comments about Putin it send your address off to a mailing center where they send you a free "gift" package of Polonium-laced tea (Earl Gray, of course, to increase the chance of computer geeks drinking it).
Rules of Conduct:
#1 - The DM is always right.
#2 - If the DM is wrong, see rule #1
... who will there be to pirate it?
so microsoft was like, we recommend you stop pirating windows and go to linux, please. kthxbai.
seems like MS is tired of russian piracy to the point they aren't even trying to make money there anymore.
this will probably also help diminish russia's impact on trojans/backdoors in windows. fewer pirated software downloads will be distributed/infected by russia. MS probably sees this as a win-win.
even fewer of those viruses/botnets will be written by russian programmers if a majority of them don't even have/use the platform.
Very interesting. A lot of FOSS uses the GPL as a tool to prevent closed-source, copyright-dependent companies from freeriding on the FOSS and contributing nothing. Of course, the GPL can't really be enforced against a state actor.
So, what to do about a state that takes GPL software, modifies it, redistributes it, maybe even charges for it?
"We reject as false the choice between our safety and our ideals." --The American President (20.1.2009)
In Soviet Russia, operating system designs Soviet Russia.
Rules of Conduct:
#1 - The DM is always right.
#2 - If the DM is wrong, see rule #1
Nasa and the military are cooperating with Microsoft on the next generation of ICBM. With Chair-based warheads.
Seems like reinventing the wheel here.
Why any country would voluntarily base their national security on imported, closed-source, non-free software is beyond my reasoning. If a country wants to control its infrastructure, it must use free software. Same goes for us computers users, too, of course, but the stakes are much higher for a sovereign nation.
Looks like President Medvedev of Russia and President Obama of the United States have something in common.
Can this drive additional innovation ?
I also doubt that the EU will develop their own as the specification dev. will get atuck in some subcommittee for 5 years, and only result in recommendations for the main committee to consider the review for implementation pending EU ministry approval, which will come from the findings of some other subcommittee blah blah blah...
My guess is the Russians will make a national OS, and it will be wired directly into Putin's brain.
The EU will sit around and do nothing for a very long time, and then when TSHTF, they'll hire some Germans to work 24/7 for a month and it will be awesome, if austere.
The USA, will continue with its Free Market Religion, and will be passed by, because the rest of the world figured out it doesn't always work.
RS
Shoes for Industry. Shoes for the Dead.
What the article actually says, is that some members of Russian parliament are just _proposing_ to develop a national OS. M$ representatives, on the other hand, say that it is not a national OS which Russia need, but to make use the technologies which are already exist. so, don't get excited just yet - there are many things they talk about in Russia.
overlords... will it run lin... in soviet russ...
[ERROR MEME OVERL- NO CARRIER
"Yes, comrades, we're developing our own operating system!"
"Isn't it just Linux with a few custom utilities in Cyrillic?"
"Yes, but it will be different, it will be a National Operating System!"
"Except that it the overwhelming majority of the code is written by people all over the world."
"Here, comrade, have a polonium cookie."
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Will it be written in C..C..C Plus?
The pirates are going to add DRM and try to sell the new OS
Copyright etc. is a form of planned economy: "Ppl won't create the *correct number of books/movies/etc. unless the government 'incentivizes' the production thereof by enforcing the creators' exclusive rights to copy/modify/etc." *where "correct" is determined by said government...
My turnips listen for the soft cry of your love
This is a national linux distribution. The net result is that Microsoft loses more customers, that's significant, but it's not like Russia is coming up with something from scratch. If they run with Open Office on this distro, that will also be significant. The whole idea of trying to divorce themselves from dependence upon western software is also interesting.
Kwisatz Haderach
Sell the spice to CHOAM
This Mahdi took Shaddam's Throne
1). If they will completely rewrite their kernel as much as they rewrite their Constitution.
2). If they will simply steal ideas from the West, change them a bit and call them their own.
3). If all kernels are created equal.
4). If they will follow the GNU and open source and provide their changes to the OSS community.
Respect the Constitution
I sincerely think (and do hope) EU won't join in this. Especially in the light of recent events around the gas, who would be crazy enough to jump into another dependency on that country?
:: There is no light at the end of a tunnel. There is a tunnel after a tunnel : Thom Y.
I hope that the software will be as reliable as the Soyuz craft.
In your country opperating system reports on crash, in Soviet Russia crash reports on you.
In the not too distant future, next Sunday A.D.
Seriously, not being dependent on foreign companies for critical national technological infrastructure is in the strategic national interests of every nation on earth. If you are a foreign nation, how do you know that the OS you are getting from $OS_Vendor doesn't have 'wiretaps', back-doors, remote kill switches, or other secrets in the software which $OS_Vendor, or the nation to which $OS_Vendor is based out of, can use to cripple you? Another problem is, that $OS_Vendor could simply stop providing you with necessary patches to update known problems and vulnerabilities in the OS.
One possible solution would be, if you are using a closed-source vendor, to require that vendor to provide the government with buildable source code, which could be reviewed by your own Computer Scientists, then built by your government, and distributed throughout the nation. This also allows your developers to provide your nation with patches and support if you are cut off from support from $OS_Vendor. That is not true Open-Source, but that is still, effectively, a "National Operating System". Open Source is one step better though, because you have, potentially, a lot larger base of people that are reviewing the code. That whole Eric Raymond thing to the effect that with sufficiently many eyes, all bugs are shallow.
Just saying that some foreign leader that is not well liked has something in common with another leader is sort of mis-leading, because there will often be many things in common between good leaders and bad leaders - what's important often isn't the similarities, but the differences.
Damn, I can't think of a good car analogy.
Iran has already created a National Operating System saying that it shortens time to train younger researchers.
For me I just hope to be able to juggle in Russia one day.
If they know anything, they should know their queue structures... bool empty() - Returns True if empty, False if Full, and for 50,000 rubles you can insure that it always returns True!
int size() - When value exceeds 5 digits, FSB Process appears and imprisons all additional data to shorten queue length.
In Russian stack structures, they will not follow LIFO. Instead it will be Last In achieves resource starvation, First In gets out first. Reverse Polish Notation will hereby be called Forward Russian Notation.
Senate Arm Chairs Communitte....
Previously: "Linux... Toward the Sunrise..." Now: "Linux... Toward the-- No, now, part of Every Sunrise"
Yes, I cannot think of anything more comforting in regards to my virtual privacy and security than to use an OS developed in the former Soviet Union!
Hopefully the RBN will have its brand all over it.
Hey maybe Obama can outsource all of our federal IT software to this new system and China can then do the maintenance and licensing.
http://i105.photobucket.com/albums/m237/Omzawy/LINUX-2.jpg
I think this ia great move to sure up the Russian economy. The govt can now commodize the Mafia spam/bot nets and sell cycles off to the highest bigger for scams and dubious online pharmacies.
In Soviet Russia.... wait for it wait for it System Operates YOU!
The headline reads: 'Microsoft is also involved in the roundtable process that led to the recommendation.'
A quote from the (translated) article is: 'The Russian office of Microsoft believes that it is not needed at all: "Russia does not need a national OS."'
Surprise, surprise...
Posting AC since modded here.
The article says that this is an idea, raised by some random people and it is only being organized and will be later offered to president Medvedev as a proposition. Calling it a fact, as the summary did, is so yellow press it hurts.
Don't worry, be happy!
I'm sorry to say you're right.
According to Alexandr S. m in the Gulag islands, this was a favorite method.
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
Will it support Starforce???
Oh I wonder if they are using this to reduce the pricing of MS licenses or if they really thought about it? If they really thought about it, they could just translate every out of english into russian and recompile everything. That the US uses MS Windows is the biggest reason for Russia to chose to use anything else. Preferably they want a domestic Russian company being MS or IBM. They don't want to clone windows or linux. They want their own Russian developed thing.
I'd be mixed. I think that's something that Russia, China, India and the EU should each push for themselves. They should each produce a national open source OS/suite of programs for their respective countries. Think this is sort of like the space race except more easily viewable by citizens that hey this is how we are ahead of them.
This is more along the lines of hey our citizens have a better X than you. Well, currently the world can say that they've bought a version of Windows or work on a linux thing. If your country has thousands of IT grads that you need to give busy work to, what better long term project than a national OS + apps? It's not like they'll just tell them to work on a national open source health information database + clients. ;)
"Look this joke is very simple. If it doesn't make sense when you reverse it, you're doing it wrong. If we reverse your joke we get: You operate system."
;)
system operate You: get we joke your reverse we if wrong it doing, you're it reverse you when sense make doesn't it. If simple very is joke this Look.
I still don't get it?
There are 10 kinds of people in the world... those who understand binary and those who don't.
...that I would ever run an O/S designed and built inside Russia. That is just a ridiculous proposition.
There is just not enough trust.
... DasBuntu, RedUshanka, Soviedora, FreeKGB?
//Nothing to see here, please move along.
Soviet microcircuits are the largest microcircuits in the world!
I can totally see why Russia would want to have this happen... at least their own distro for use internally within the Russian government.
A top to bottom review of the Linux kernel from another group of developers with a completely different interests, backgrounds, and motivations than other major contributors to Linux would also be a very good thing for the development of Linux as a whole. I wish Russia the best on getting this accomplished, and I hope that their success is huge.
It isn't like the American government doesn't do this too. The NSA (National Security Agency... aka the USA cyber spys) has their own distro for most of the reasons I've listed above, and has nearly continuous recruitment going on at college campuses for CS graduates. The Red Flag distro (Chinese) is another national distro that has been done for more than just pressuring Microsoft into lowering the price of Windows.
Frankly, I see Microsoft's involvement here as a red herring and something to ignore for this discussion.
All of their submarine sonar systems will belt out the Soviet national anthem.
Pardus is a linux distribution developed by Turkish National Science Foundation. It uses its own packaging system and recently government gave money to add support for more languages. It is gaining more market in Turkey by the way, as some state offices are migrating to it. http://www.pardus.org.tr/eng/index.html
New in version 1.0:
Core tools
==========
- Genuine disadvantage: Reports all your personal details to the FSB offering great benefits.
- Internet Exporter 7: Export your entire internet history to the FSB personal backup centre.
- News Hunter: Seeks out the latest news sources in a killer way.
- Polonium Anti-spyware: Works on even retired threats.
- Policy editor: Push through policies on YOUR agenda, no questions asked.
- Defragmenter: Crush those bad clusters that dare try and break away.
Games
=====
- Roulette: Gun adapter included. By signing up to Genuing Disadvantage, if you fit the bill, this game comes with additional levels of difficulty.
- South Ossetian Invaders: Take down those who dare try and take their territory back.
- PutinOS chess: Enjoy the opportunity to beat Garry Kasparov. With a baton.
Really, I can't wait.
This is disappointing given that Russian strength is in mathematics due to the same phenomenon that drove their launch vehicles to exceptional performance:
A lag in micro electronics development.
Basically, Russians had to be more intelligent with their algorithms than the West due to their inferior hardware. This puts them in a position to be superior software architects who should not be taking their lead from the West -- not even from Finland as much as I respect Linux.
Seastead this.
void doit(char *subject, char *verb, char *object)
{
printk("In Russia, the %s %s %s!\n", object, verb, subject);
}
Ninnle Labs have been in touch with Russian officials and a deal has been struck to work together on appropriately modifying the Ninnle source code to fit the Russian requirements. Microsoft, as one might expect, is not particularly pleased at this latest development.
funny... I had no idea that China had their own linux distro. What? does it come without a web browser, iptables you cant change, and sample perl brute force dictionary attack scripts?
people on ludes should not drive
in the Russian national sport called popil babla.
...command line executes you!
Have gnu, will travel.
I understand the desire for countries to have their own systems software; there's a lot of benefits you wouldn't get from just slapping some fonts and custom admin tools on top of an existing distribution. But if they're going to go this route, isn't anyone willing to be a bit more creative than tweaking Linux? Is that really the best we can do?
Given the massive market forces on normal capitalist enterprises, I understand why Linux is so attractive; it's sort of a least-common-denominator effect, combined with being at least reasonably accessible (mostly C, no too-obscure extensions, &c). But governments (any of them, regardless of what the rest of the economic system looks like) are not normal capitalist enterprises. If the intent is to produce something worthwhile, stimulate a local software industry, and be secure in your result, couldn't Russia (or China, or the US, or EU, or Germany, or any number of other sufficiently large governments) work on something that actually advances the state of software, rather than a nationalized/localized version of a modern rehash of 30+ year old ideas?
i speak for myself and those who like what i say.
Wow, another distro. Just what we need.
Wow, another expensive black hole for taxes. Just what we need.
Slow news day?
The reminds of an old joke about the Soviet Union. In an effort to compete with the technology of the west they we're undertaking the development of the worlds biggest micro-chip.
Do you think countries that don't have their own automobile, airplane, computer, food industry are sacrificing some weird notion of security?
Hell yes. For example, America doesn't have any energy production to speak of. As we've seen in grisly detail on the 6:00 news, there's a price to pay. Many African nations don't grow their own food, and instead are dependent on American aid. There's a price to pay. We don't make our own electronics here in America anymore, and instead are dependent on cheap Chinese crap. The real bill on that hasn't arrived yet, but you can bet your dumb anonymous ass that there's gonna be a price.
Please read up on basic economics.
"Basic economics" got us into this damn mess.
Hey, I finally got my first freak! Took you long enough!
better dead than re^H^H open source.
I have inside knowledge of their file system.
Here is a screenshot of the file system in action. You can be assured of no fragmentation.
A computer once beat me at chess, but it was no match for me at kick boxing. Emo Philips
You might want to consider reading beyond basic economics...
Software(and, to an extent, high complexity hardware like ASICs) are special cases because the gap in transparency between source and binary is quite high, and because, with the complexity of software, there is a huge amount of room to hide potential nasties(or not bother to hide them, as with most DRM schemes). With most other commodities, by contrast, the finished product can't hide much of anything nearly as easily.
Food can be tainted, vehicles can be faulty or low quality; but the ability to build in really subtle backdoors is more or less absent. You can poison food; but that will be immediately obvious. Can you make food that is perfectly palatable until a control signal is propagated to make it toxic?(Incidentally, with biotech, you probably will be able to do this sooner or later, expect Monsanto to try, and then food will join software as an issue) You can with software. Can you make a mechanical device that will break on remote command? You can with software.
What need could they possibly have to make ANOTHER distro? It would be incredibly easy for them to officially endorse an existing one. Here I'll do it for you. We officially endorse slackware. There, I just saved you millions of rubles. Okay, you can owe me.
Since they're basing it on open source, but not necessarily releasing it as such, it seems that they could implement any kind of orwellian controls, such as undroppable firewalls/net nannies, back doors, "phone home" apps that make it easier to spy on people, etc...
This is all speculation, but have we seen anything similar from China's operating system?
Why any country would voluntarily base their national security on imported, closed-source, non-free software is beyond my reasoning.
This comment, not so true:
If a country wants to control its infrastructure, it must use free software. Same goes for us computers users, too, of course, but the stakes are much higher for a sovereign nation.
Why must the software be free? The question is not "free" versus "unfree". The question is, can the Russians trust their OS?
Certainly they can't trust Windows -- or any other closed foreign OS.
I assume it's in the Russian interest to develop their own closed-source domestic OS. How else can the silovoki hide their backdoors in the national infrastructure?
-kgj
It seems ./ is getting dumber by the day. Here's an article about a new operating system and all people talk about is copyright. So if the retards are reading /., who is reading the PC Magazine?
"Microsoft is also involved in the roundtable process that led to the recommendation." Sounds about right, I bet it went something like this. Microsoft: Saaaaay, instead of running your country on bootlegs of our product, why don't you develop your own.
I will not be pushed, filed, stamped, indexed, briefed, debriefed or numbered. My life is my own.
but it suffered from a fatal error
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
What the fuck?
Why don't they just use some GNU/Linux?
Is there anything in TFA to explain this?
Hell they could label Ubuntu russian...
Am i not getting something here?
FurHat Linux
Technologically backwards once-sorta-big Nation releases YA rebranded Debian distro. Film at eleven.
Russian OS. Rubbish. 99.9% of that OS will have been built developers all over the world.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
Polonium Linux. Use it or die. Dosvidanya, comrade.
I like them better before the MiltonFriedmanites looted the place through the World Bank. Before the leaders were ideological, paranoid killers. Now the leaders are capitalistic mobbed up killers with golden toilets and the new KGB back on board with polonium-laced tea.
Will this give Russian programmers something productive to do instead of developing the next generation of botnet?
You never expect irony, do you?
Want to be a professional wrestler? Visit www.iyfwrestling.com
@iyfwrestling
We already have Asianux, will there now be a Euronux?
This is about promoting independence, not saving money (though that's probably a secondary goal).
Yah, but what will this new Linux distribution be called?
SNOS - Soviet National Operation System
I work in a windows shop... but we have a standard install on our computers. Our internal Windows distribution... we even have a version control system for it.
At home, I begin with Ubuntu's distro, then add and remove packages from outside Ubuntu's control... creating my own "distro".
Essentially, they are doing the same thing that they would do anyway if they used redhat or ubuntu. They will start with an existing distro and review packages as they are released and decide if they would like to deploy them to their users. They will tweak the default settings, and maybe try and make it conform to some ideals that are important to them. Sure they could do it and still call it a customized Ubuntu or Redhat install. But it's just easier to give it a name and manage it from the top... like my shop does with our windows machines.
Sometimes the best solution is to stop wasting time looking for an easy solution.
No, it was not hacking... It was a power spike. Or something like that.
Yeah, but will Europe be smart enough to develop their own, too? Otherwise when the Russia shuts down the software pipeline through the Ukraine they'll all be staring at blank screens. There's got to be a nerdier way of making a joke about "Russix | Europe" having Ukrainian dependencies, but I don't have time to figure it out.
...it's all about opportunity cost, time value of money, etc.
At the level of nations, actual money means very little... [it's all just printed anyway, and everyone knows that]. It's all about the productivity of the people (and their resilience to various taxes); it's also the public image and perception.
"If anything can go wrong, it will." - Murphy
... every developer gets a job, but each one will do it real half-assed.
Hey at least it will probably be able to play media as it will have all the popular codecs installed. Sheesh, how hard is that?
Maybe it's all an arms based exercise. If they develop ways to attack Windows then they won't be affected by their own attacks.
Anyone want to create some more fear out there?
-The menus will contain every feature ever planned for RusOS, but none of the ones that are actually implemented.
-During times of heavy load, the scheduler will block all processes from using the CPU, to prevent deadlock.
-Users of RusOS will frequently and loudly proclaim how horrible it is, and will angrily chastise you if you agree with them.
Being a computer scientist means you tell people how computers should work, not that you know how they actually work.
Forget command prompts; to hell with GUIs. This OS is going to have the first Tetris-based user interface.
The original Russian article does *NOT* say that Russia "is going to" create a linux-based system. It just says that an IT group sent a letter to the president saying that he should support it.
That's a pretty big leap.
Sanja Byelkin http://dev.mysql.com/tech-resources/interviews/sanja.html and Sergey Brin http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sergey_Brin did create Russian OS already.
At the level of nations, actual money means very little... [it's all just printed anyway, and everyone knows that].
Not to be overly picky, but this hasn't been true for several decades. Most of the money I've ever had has never been printed. It has existed only in electronic form. My paycheck (and my wife's) gets deposited electronically. I write a check or use a credit/debit card, and the money is transferred between banks in the form of data packets, with no physical money ever being involved.
So far, I haven't heard of much analysis of this fact by economists. Yes, it does get mentioned occasionally. But I'd think this should be making a lot of people nervous. After all, money can now be created or destroyed by editing an entry in a database. A bank can loan you money by simply adding a number to the balance of one of your accounts. If they're honest, they'll also subtract the same number from some other account, but we've been learning that the people running many banks are far from honest.
Of course, all this does sorta reinforce your main point, that actual money means very little. It's just ones and zeroes on some computer's disk drive. Some computer owned by someone other than you. Regulated by regulators that more and more don't believe in regulation or proper accounting practices.
Those who do study history are doomed to stand helplessly by while everyone else repeats it.
On a related note, what drives home the decline of Britain is when I compare old footage (or even fictional stuff from television shows) of statesmen being driven around. In the past, hell, only 50 years ago, it was always Rollers or Bentleys or Rovers -- all British-made cars, it went without saying. Nowadays those brands are all foreign; even the Queen rides in a German car (a gift Bentley). And all the way down, from the politicians to the policemen it's American or Japanese cars. Sure, some are still often made there -- the Vauxhalls, for instance, but it's a foreign company pulling the strings and making the profits.
Windows opens you!
For example, America doesn't have any energy production to speak of.
Actually, the US is 70% or more self-sufficient in overall energy - see:
http://www.cera.com/aspx/cda/public1/news/articles/newsArticleDetails.aspx?CID=8560
Every communist country loves Linux.
RMS must be proud.
...on the shelf beside all the other great Russian software I own. With all the Russian furniture, electronics, vehicles, and other products I've purchased, I'm in danger of becoming an all-Russian household. Combined with their awesome entertainment exports and their domination in popular music, plus their nearly complete lock as the language of hip urban slang I'm sure they'll have no problem at all making their Russian version of linux become a worldwide success.
Don't worry, it will run worse than Windows ME, cost more than an individual copy of Vista, take more time to set up than Linux, and will work with less stuff than Mac Os 9. But it will be Russian... which means it probably won't even work that well.
Truly new Soviet Russia will be workers paradise all over again! Except this time their just skipping even pretending that it's a workers paradise.
Seriously, comrade
Great article, thx for the link!
Hey, I finally got my first freak! Took you long enough!
The EU certainly won't develop its own distribution. Apart from the fact that most distributions are geared toward western civilizations like Europe, Linux itself and many other components have their core team of developers based in the EU.
Slashdot is not your personal advertising space (especially not for random, offtopic youtube videos). This is the second post I've read with that damn juggling link in a day.
It will be named PinkOS.
slashdot: where everyone yells sarcastic metaphors to themselves to understand the issue
"Basic economics" (BE) didn't get us into this mess. Old school thinking got us into this mess (everyone should be able to afford a house). BE would have never let us get more into debt trying to hold up debt ridden businesses. Or let us pay more for houses and company assets than they are worth.
Interdependency between entities, whether they be countries, states, cities, businesses, or even families has shown over and over again to be the best we have. It isn't ideal, but better than the alternatives that humans have come up with so far.
If being completely self reliant and self sustaining is so great, why isn't it adopted to the very core of our societies? Why do I have to depend on a baker, farmer, car maker, or even family? If we are so interdependent on all these things in our personal lives, the majority of which are anonymous and hidden (alluding to the invisible hand), what makes countries so different?
Ironically, the royal family has been a foreign brand longer than their cars have...
Why don't they just contribute funding or developers to existing distributions and what not?
1&1 - Cheap domain and web hosting.
The goverment it too rich/stupid to consider free open source software.
So MS has started working on controlling the US nuclear arsenal? Mmm, well MS typically needs 3 yrs to get a release out, so since it is 2009, that would means 2012. Just in time for the aztec prediction of the world ending. Well at least now we know.
Seriously, MS controlled nukes. Who didn't just shit themselves?
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
FYI: EU is importing ONLY 20% of it's natural gas needs from Russia, but look at what happened in the near past because of those 20%...
But Linux sux balls, I mean, don't they plan on using any decent software? all the stuff that comes with most Linux distro's is far from what one would remotely call decent, and when compared against the software both commercially and freely available for Windows, it just pails into insignificance.
Open source is a good idea, but from what I've seen, in practice it just doesn't stack up against the closed source commercial products.
yea.... they are both n*ggers :)
Is it too much to ask that people look at the links?
Oh, right, this is slashdot. Even reading the fine article is gauche.
the System Operates YOU!
for those unable to read Russian directly (clearly a minority :-) the article says "Russian IT-community proposed to develop the OS". Heck there is a big difference between "proposed" and "got the money to do it".
I would not immediately and necessarily trust the publisher (cnews.ru) either.
From what I've seen so far (admittedly not much but nevertheless) Medvedev - the Russian Pres - appears everywhere including the cnews.ru article - with a Mac. Apple type a guy. Apple? I thought PC won long ago; are they still in business?