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Comrade, You Are So Not Getting a Dell
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.'"
the State tells you what it needs...
and said "Well ... ok then."
"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.
My work here is dung.
"Our programmers are some of the best in the world,"
Of course - after all, those viruses don't program themselves, now do they?
"As God is my witness, I thought turkeys could fly." A. Carlson
Pride goeth before a fall.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
you're getting a polonium 210!
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
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...
You made Polonium Putin mad!
Aren't quite a few of the major botnets and viruses coming out of Russia? I don't think Dell or anyone else is questioning that there are some good anf talented programmers who come out of Russia; just that those good programmers aren't working for the government and they might want to hire some consultants for which Dell would be happy to provide at a good price if they can get a Dell on very desk in the Kremlin.
On a side note, why does he bring up that they have good programmers given that Dell is primarly a hardware company simply looking for a government contract?
Forgive my spelling from time to time. I'm often posting during short breaks.
It weighs in at 350 lbs and is bigger than a kaypro.
They hope to have it scaled down in the next 5-year plan.
like a man refusing to ask for directions.
'Honey, we're fine, I know where we are, the main road has to intersect this one eventually, I'm not an idiot.'
Meanwhile dueling banjos are heard...
"I only speak the truth"
Karma: null(Mostly affected by an unassigned variable)
> 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.
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
I watched most of the video before I got utterly bored. It wasn't much of a rant. It wasn't much of anything. Don't any of these talking heads have useful work to do at home?
I hope their programmers are a lot better than their translators. Or was Putin's original Russian as rambling and incoherent? Reminded me of the rare times when Bush would talk at length without having written it out ahead of time.
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.
The media spun this as if it makes Dell look bad. It doesn't. It actually makes Putin look insecure because he felt the need to lash out like that.
A slashdotter who didn't build his own computer is like a Jedi who didn't build his own lightsaber.
Heck, Russia was the nation that granted us Tetris!
In Soviet Russia, block rotates you!
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"?
You really hit Putin's raw nerves here. Outside their country their mafia tactics are practically worthless (granted, some actual mafia tactics and the one or other radioactive sushi bar here and there) so they have little to be proud of. The Russians have let their game slide and now they are in a desperate economic state.
... he's very close to actually falling over it. You can't keep your economy running only with gas extortion and MP3 sites.
I would have taken Putin by the word 20 years ago and they probably would have blasted IBM out of the country with some Lada-type Diesel computer made from scrap metal and old nuclear reactors. But today. Not so sure anymore. What kind of sensible person would actually install a Russian operating system (let alone entire hardware solution)? We know they write spyware, so do the Americans but does that bother us? No. Because at least the Americans hide their stuff at all costs. Russians are just too straight forward. "I don't like, I kill you.", "I want information, I break your legs, then encryption."
The course that Putin is sailing right now leads to the edge of the world and from his point of view
In Soviet Russia, polonium 210 gets you. (said without a trace of irony)
My blog
"not even our Indian colleagues."
Am I the only one who thinks that even if there may be some good programers among them, most of the indians programmers are cheap labor like the chinese in manufacturing, they work long hours doing a so-so job without having much qualifications nor having to think much about the problems? This is based on what I've heard since I haven't worked with indians myself.
Where is ESR and his guns when you need 'em?
My blog
Maybe Putin meant to say that Russians were the best Delphi programmers in the world, which is probably true.
Unfortunately no one gives a crap about Delphi.
bezumetz, begletz dorogi net.. ti vidish neverni svet...
Not that I agree with him, but I understand Putin's response. Look at it from Putin's POV: Putin is a very strong nationalist. And just about every country, not least Russia, tends to be quite sensitive to American condescension or arrogance, real or perceived. So when Dell says, in what would be an okay-ish remark between Americans, 'how can we help you', it's easily felt as condescending in foreign eyes. Especially Russian ones and especially Putin's. Add to that the cultural factor of Russian temperament and you get what Putin said. Dell probably should have phrased it in a more neutral manner. For instance, he could have been more generalized and simply ask "How can the IT sector in Russia be expanded to better utilize the reserves of talent there?" Or something similar. By his response, you'll find out if there's a role for you or not. So simply by dropping the 'How can we help' bit, you avoid the implication that they _need_ help (even if they do, nobody really wants to be told that by someone else) and the further implication that 'we' are the only ones who can do so.
Slightly different account here.
Reminds me of this whole Ahmadinejad "Wiping Israel from the map" translation flap.
Once an incorrect translation takes hold it is pretty much impossible to correct.
Yes, best in the world at illegally creating a government-sanctioned (but never acknowledged), botnet of ungodly proportions.
So what exactly do the other 99% of Russians know about PCs? Not much, based on my dealings with thousands of Russians every year.
Let them eat Dells!
When the foot seeks the place of the head, the line is crossed. Know your place. Keep your place. Be a shoe.
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.
Highly recommend this amusing article on mistranslations.
According to the TopCoder algorithm competition stats:
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.
Here.
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
Liberal? Conservative? Compare perspectives at Left-Right
Russian to English translation was mediocre (at least for the bits I could hear Putin say), so I wonder whether Dell's question had similarly poor translation and Putin didn't get the real meaning of what was asked.
I can see how his question could be translated to mean that Russian IT still sucks and needs help.
What comrade Putin says is that Soviet Russia produces some of the best cracks, viruses, hacks, worms, backdoors, keygenerators and hacking utilities in the world. Besides, it's all in cyrillic and nobody except soviet russians understand it anyway. :-)
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?
...help pitches YOU! ...programming talent has YOU! ...botnets control YOU! ...malware writes YOU! ...Windows boxes infect YOU!
Hm, I wonder what Polonium tastes like, because right now my Pepsi
From
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Russia
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
State: 5 a: a politically organized body of people usually occupying a definite territory
If you need a body of people to be a state,
the I'd say that Russia is on its way to failure.
Russia - Where Russians go to die
-- The Onion
He says limited capacity, and the whole tone of the comment is completely different from what's discussed here.
Pretty pathetic that you link to a video but obviously none of the /. readers don't UNDERSTAND the video.
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.
Beware of geeks bearing gifts.
Really, how could you miss that joke. Hand in your slashdot ID and go have some sex you traitor! You are not one of us, you probably even talk to girls!
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
I do not pretend to know Dell, at all, and I have been active in computing since mainframes.
Historically, Russians have significant technology skills, and they lack nothing.
Mr. Dell has nothing Russians (or I) need that they could not provide themselves, if they so wished. Maybe not the newest, maybe not in scale or quantity, but others would be more than happy to trade for these gaps.
Whenever TIME Magazine elects someone as Man of the year, his popularity goes to the crapper.
It happened to Hitler, George W.Bush, Web 2.0 (You) and now Putín.
... aren't part of this story, but they really ought to be.
sig has been sent away for a few small repairs...
Dell isn't known for developing any significant technology. It is just another giant system integrator. What kind of "help" Dell can offer to Russia? The know how of getting customers' money before production?
I wouldn't fault someone to sense a certain "look down" attitude in Dell's offer.
When I listened to Michael Dell's question, it was a bit mixed up in the use of pronouns. It sounded like he wanted to approach it from the IT point of view but included Dell in the forefront of his speech. Thus when he said we, I think he meant that as we in IT, not we as in Dell.
When the translator probably heard quickly what Dell said, and given only a fraction of a second to translate and the inaccuracy of translating any language, it got screwed up.
Apparently you do not ask yourself what the quality is of the coders who wrote the software that could be so easily exploited to be botted. If russian hackers are crap then what does that say about the coders from Redmond?
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
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.
You insensitive clod!
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...
You got me into this! You were the ideologue! I'm only a poor assassin! - Twenty evocations, Bruce Sterling
I agree with you. Americans yet have to learn how to treat others in equal terms. That's why US is seen as an arrogant guy in other's views. Everyone love their own country just like Americans do. And being rich is by no means a reason to assume right to advice others.
Mike is going to need to start selling the acres and acres of land in Kauai that he owns. Land that used to be public. Maybe it's time he gave it back.
Tetris...
He could have rested his case there.. :-)
Actually, Dell started his question with something like "Oh I was very surprised to hear from a person like you that you are against too much government intervention into economy" and then proceeded "now how could we help Russia with IT?"
So what kind of answer he expected if he started his question with a kind of insult?
Work for the fucking RBN!
They are good, they just are in the service of the mob.
Great, Mr Vladimir!
NO SIG
At least Putin wouldn't have to deal with their shitty customer support...
King James Bible:
"Pride goeth before destruction, and an haughty spirit before a fall."
Rich And Stupid is not so bad as Working For Rich And Stupid.
If a rant is a calmly delivered, if mildly peeved, response where you demand respect as an equal from another who, due to translational problems, appears to be treating you as a child, then what I'm writing right here is the Magna Carta.
He doesn't want a Dell. Big whoop. Neither do I. I'm sick of their crappy support. I get more friendly support calls from friends with Dells than any other machine combined.
--
Toro
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.
You can't take the sky from me...
Lol, when people cold call me I tell them to go fuck themselves. If it is a woman I tell her she is a malodorous cunt and should die giving birth to the Antichrist and if it is a man I tell him I hope his prostrate is filled with writhing-gnawing worms and the next time he voids it in his wife's mouth they consume all the flesh from her skull.
Once, when a persistent salesman came to the office and attempted to hoodwink his way past the front desk he called the police because we were lampooning him so bad. The police were not as amused. I however could not stop laughing.
An Education is the Font of All Liberty
Everything here in Russia is way better than in the west! We have about the best infrastru[NO CARRIER]
"How can I help you" is a classic sales technique. Much like a magician's misdirection, the goal is to keep the victim thinking about what YOU want them thinking about.
I'm sure Dell was trying to get Putin to do his convincing for him, and didn't expect the question to be interpreted differently by a mind that developed in a different culture.
"We don't have limited mental capacity"
He's just doing an amazing simulation.
Putin's rhetoric is pretty empty considering that Russia cannot make its own consumer desktop microprocessors and has no domestic operating system. Russia cannot make it own hard drives or RAM, or many other basic computer components. Dell doesn't make those either, but accusing others of idiocy when you cannot even make a x86 CPU is pretty dumb.
A NYC lawyer blogs. http://www.chuangblog.com/
I know that most Slashdotters's geopolitical awareness starts and ends with the same Yakob Smirnoff non-joke they've been repeating since birth, but, get a fuckin' clue.
Under capitalism, we have exploitation of man by man, but under communism, it is just the opposite.
However arrogant and egotistical you might think Putin is, Michael Dell is worse. I thought how Putin responded was restrained by comparison to what I would have said in the same situation. The larger context illuminates just how bigoted were Dell's comments. What a putz.
As an American socialist, Dell's attitude and values exemplify why I despise the American economic system as it is, and by extension our political system, since the same selfish arrogant egotistical bigoted putzes move freely back and forth between the two.
"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 ...
Give a man a fish and you have fed him for today. Teach a man to fish, and he'll say "WHERE'S MY FISH, YOU IDIOT?"
Constantly claiming that the government is useless and unable to affect the economy, unless it is a government you don't like in which case a natural financial bubble can be blamed on them, even if the politician in question did all what he could to have a sane economy (balancing the budget).
But hey, revisionism is fun, so keep enjoying it.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
and a correlated reduction in debt.
The way to get out is to print (no, not borrow) money. Reducing the deficit, paying off the national debt, reducing personal or corporate debt will all cause a recession under the existing monetary system because it nukes the equivalent amount of credit.
It's all fairly simple once you understand that 95% of US money is credit and realise that growth == inflation == credit and debt.
Deleted
I think the difference between top schools, average schools, and poor schools in India is way more pronounced than in the US, and the US is already fairly unbalanced compared to say, the system here in Canada (OK, here Waterloo is way above the others for CS/eng, but the worst places are not too bad; in the US top tier vs State is often pretty ridiculous). I have an Indian friend who keeps going on about how great Indian schools are, but his tech knowledge is pretty feeble. From his anecdotes his classes were all memorize, regurgitate, forget, repeat. All rote, no real learning. I know some really good Indian/Pakistani/ guys, but they generally finished up their schooling in Singapore/Europe/US/Canada.
In contrast most of the Russian people I know who were educated in Russia seriously know their stuff in various fields. It is a bit biased as in many cases there was competition to leave, so you don't see the underachievers, (sort of like how foreign exchange students tend to be likable extroverts because likeable extroverts tend to become foreign exchange students), but even so.
1 billion Indians, 300 million Americans, 650 million literate Indians, 297 million literate Americans, and the numbers get closer as you go toward higher education. Offshoring companies tend to claim lots of stuff, but if you read the company interviews as opposed to the marketing you see "we had all these Ph.ds trying to replace part-time aspiring actors for English/writing jobs at 25% of salary and yet we failed to deliver on all our contracts; not one successful project."
I'm not trying to knock Indians but infrastructure counts for something. And offshore companies have really had the marketing going *sigh*.
You got me into this! You were the ideologue! I'm only a poor assassin! - Twenty evocations, Bruce Sterling
Who needs Dell or Intel when you have Open Sparc?
I hope this helps the revolution.
Yours In Socialism,
Kilgore Trout
If the trailware doesn't kill you, the ionizing radiation will.
If you listened to the whole thing, it seemed pretty clear that Russia under Putin is still very much a controlled economy (I realize I am likely stating the obvious to a lot of people and to those I apologize). Dell's statement was in fact fairly demeaning, and if Putin wanted to tell him to F***-off, to a large extent I do not blame him.
There has been much discussion on this article also though, that Russia is unwilling to buy technology that they do not manufacture. However, later in the interview Putin states quite the opposite. As I recall in reference was to tariffs, he admits to having tariffs on goods competing with Russian manufacturers that are still developing, but not having tariffs on the very high tech they do not have to allow these sectors to develop.
He is also fairly frank Russian problems regarding issues with distribution and available capital.
Putin may be a hair-breadth from an old-fashioned USSR dictator, none the less, he's one of the sharpest. He is likely no friend of ours, and his astuteness makes it all the more problematic.
Well, if the bare Geeks were women, that would be ok.
"Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I'm not sure about the universe." Albert Einstein
Cheap shots at Bush are tired and old.
People are still taking cheap shots at Clinton, but I don't hear you complaining about that. Why does Bush deserve special treatment?
The thing that you need to worry about is the God like persona that the media is painting Obama with.
No, the thing we need to worry about is the state of our country. Obama is a big boy; he can handle his own image. Bush is also a big boy; he can handle criticism. Our responsibility is to recognize what went wrong in the past and make sure it doesn't happen again.
You're right, and I would criticize Bush II for not pushing for smaller government, less spending, etc. I don't criticize him for spending where government SHOULD spend.
On the other hand, we appear to want to spend more on a lot more programs now. It was bad enough with the spending by republicans; it appears that it will be worse with the spending by democrats.
There was a lot of big talk by Obama and democrats, too. But post-election, I have heard very little about "cutting spending." New cars for government employees doesn't exactly sound like "cutting unnecessary spending."
I will criticize republicans or democrats, I don't care. Right now, though, republicans are voting against spending, and I give them credit for that. Democrats, overwhelmingly, are for it, pushing for it, EXCITED about the government, gov't spending, and debt getting bigger. And their version of "bipartisan" means "republicans have to vote for this, too, but we're not changing anything in it." So, I'll criticize them for that.
Openly, you say? Didn't Obama, for example (I know, Obama != Congress), very much stress the problem of the spending the last 8 years? In his first week or so in office, has he done anything about it? Not really, but he sure is pushing other things (including abortion stuff). IMO, what you push for when you are first given the power to push shows where your real priorities are. Openly? Yeah, openly now, but he wasn't necessarily elected on a policy of "I want to spend more on unreformed government programs." At least, that's not the message I got.
Reasoning like this is weak and has nothing to do with the actual argument of who produces the best engineers.
Having worked for and with Eastern European/Formerly Soviet satellite State people, the story goes that Education was thought to be the Great Way Forward for their society. The result was a society with many more legitimately educated people with few opportunities.
I generally agree with this notion as the ones I have met that migrated to the U.S. are pretty damn smart. Furthermore, some of the best OCR software I've *ever* seen is out of a Russian software company. Abbyy.com
Anecdotal evidence to be sure.
The point being, let's get the discussion back on track by modding down political history comments filled with American propaganda.
http://www.maxineudall.com/2010/02/should-economists-be-sued-for-malpractice.html
pictures or it didn't happen...
http://englishrussia.com/images/unique/1.jpg
"Kill 'em all and let Root sort 'em out"
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/4394002
Then in the 80's as the KGB was attempting to steal technology, the CIA slipped them some "modified" hardware and software. Much hilarity ensued. Once the Soviets got wise, they couldn't trust the reliability of their own weapons.
A decent sentiment Putin would be served well by:
It takes a man to suffer ignorance and smile.
Be yourself, no matter what they say.
-- Sting
"What in the name of Fats Waller is that?"
"A four-foot prune."
Clearly Putin just doesn't want his country to suffer on the phone for five hours with Dell's outsourced Indian technical support lines.
At least, communists stopped called cybernetics a "burgeois pseudoscience" http://www.economicexpert.com/a/Bourgeois:pseudoscience.html
I'm not insane. My mother had me tested.
That would be funny to see. Just be prepared to Dodge the flying chair.
have let their game slide and now they are in a desperate economic state
They're not the only ones who let their game slide and have ended up in a desperate economic state. I know of a country which fought a war for oil only see their energy costs go through the roof, sending their economy into a recession and destroying the gains made by the middle class in the last decade. Currently, this country has the odd distinction that for most part, their children have a lower standard of living than their parents. To make matters worse, their current President is planning to increase the federal deficit even more - offering cash bonuses to those who fomented the crisis in the first place.
The society for a thought-free internet welcomes you.
I agree with what your premise, but one of your quotes was never uttered:
http://www.guncite.com/gun_control_gcbogus.html
Convert FLACs to a portable format with FlacSquisher
"Our programmers are some of the best in the world."
Yeah, at writing computer viruses and helping criminals commit identity theft. And Dell wants to help that shit country? That's like donating an OC-48 backbone to Nigeria.
If the translation we heard was any indication, Putin might have been reacting to anything in a lousy or insulting translation of Mr. Dell's remarks.
but the media didn't make over 500 campaign promises. He did.
Making him different than every other presidential candidate because...
Your country is dissolving, internal strife is increasing. Your countries move away from communism should have included through people in power from the previous regime out.
We know the people there are smart, but sometimes a little help is need. Someone wanting to help with a piece of infrastructure is a good thing.
I want to see Russia succeed, but spurning people and become m,ore isolationist will not help your country in the long run.
It will of course allow you to create imaginary enemies so you can gain more power over your people, but the real challenge is being a global player and dominate others through open competition.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
He's off to a fair (6 and 1) start. Track it here http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/promises/
Everyone hates me because I'm paranoid.
I read somewhere (long ago) that the ternary system is more efficient because it is the closest to base 'e' (2.71...), the most efficient numbering system for calculations.
Slashdot entertains. Windows pays the mortgage.
Never, ever underestimate the awesome destructive power of a drunk, belligerent, brute-force-loving, pissed-off engineer...
He put his boots up on the table and made a face. "The sig," he smirked. "You can waste your life in search of the sig."
It was bad enough with the spending by republicans; it appears that it will be worse with the spending by democrats.
History does not support this.
It is very simple: go look at any graph of the US debt. Look at where it goes up, look at where it goes down, and look at who was President.
He's right. No one writes viruses and trojans like the Russia.
"Poland" was not a typo but I genuinely thought Russia had a higher pop. Apparently not. My bad.
It's rare that you're presented with a knob whose only two positions are Make History and Flee Your Glorious Destiny.
Look, majority of our infrastucture runs on russian software: OpenVZ/Virtuozzo virtualization, nginx web server, php-fpm russian patches ... And it pumps out about 10 times the pages pure american technology would on the same hardware. I say more power to the Russians, they know how to squeeze everything from poor old hardware. Maybe that's why they don't need newer machines from Dell ;)
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.
The Canadian banks are solvent, we had years (decade?) of balanced federal budgets (and many provincial ones), and our house prices have only slightly cooled (~10%) with no large scale defaults.
Our economy is slowing, but it's mostly a side effect of the US since >75% of our exports go to the US. That can be construed as a problem (though ~25% of US exports come to us), but being middle of the road saved our bacon this time around.
Capitalism and wanting more is fine, but the "irrational exuberance" that occurs in the US can just look plain silly at times from this side of the border.
You can keep critizing Putin and his policies but that's not exactly what he said I'm blaming translators, these idiots must be fired after creating this media mess. I listened to his reply to Dell's question (my native language is Russian) and I must say that although he was a bit arrogant while saying that Russian programmers are the best he simpl1y said that Russia is not interested in commoditized computer hardware and he wants to invest more into software projects.
Hey look, it's an AC flinging personal attacks. What a refreshing turn for slashdot.
It's one thing for Americans to have a leader that allows torture. It's another thing to have a leader that personally committed torture.
Ok.
Like this one?
Their best coders didn't even make it into the top 10.
Doesn't it make you feel good to know that our freedoms are protected by politicans, lawyers and journalists.
Davos' offer of "help"--delivered no doubt with sparkling visions of new markets dancing before his eyes--was surely not intended as a patronizing, unfavorable assessment of Russia's technological prowess. It reads like standard, feelgood, let's-be-friends sales jargon, akin to "Now, what do I have to do to get you into this '92 Toyota Tercel today?"
People in the U.S. are accustomed to tuning out and toning down this kind of sales pitch, but Russia's nascent capitalistic culture seems much more direct, even brutal in certain respects. Putin probably doesn't have much of a frame of reference for all this Dale Carnegie happy crap.
So, while it's plausible that Putin simply took it the wrong way, who knows? He's no idiot--maybe he intentionally misinterpreted Davos as a signal that Russia intends to take advantage of the United States' weakened economic situation as an opportunity to change the rules of the game.
Hmmm... that is a half truth.
On one hand, Indian IT companies rock the world. There are very few Russian IT companies beyond Russia.
Second Russians make kaspersky. Indians make Quick Heal.
QuickHeal beats Kaspersky in many areas...
Both have built super computers...
Skill-wise in sheer ingenuity, Russians win.
Skill-wise in knowing packaged software and developing corporate applications, Indians win.
"Doing what i can, with what i have." ~ Burt Gummer
'Our programmers are some of the best in the world,'
From what I can tell, they write some of the best virii and keyloggers out there, hands down.
If people want to have a slave morality [wikipedia.org] hawking whatever and however the masters at the call center want them to than they can go fuck themselves with a rusty chainsaw.
An Education is the Font of All Liberty
It was bad enough with the spending by republicans; it appears that it will be worse with the spending by democrats.
There was a lot of big talk by Obama and democrats, too. But post-election, I have heard very little about "cutting spending." New cars for government employees doesn't exactly sound like "cutting unnecessary spending."
Is that new-car money spent from the car-maker saving money pushed by Bush, by any chance?
"republicans have to vote for this, too, but we're not changing anything in it." So, I'll criticize them for that.
They have changed things in it to accommodate republicans, so you're full of shit.
In his first week or so in office, has he done anything about it? Not really, but he sure is pushing other things (including abortion stuff).
He's reinstating logic in sexual health policies. Good for him, the religious nuts had a strangelhold on policy long enough to do some real damage.
IMO, what you push for when you are first given the power to push shows where your real priorities are.
Stopping torture: YAY!
You can't take the sky from me...
They invented Tetris!
Guys, this whole story, in my opinion, is the result of a bad translation and even worse interpretation by journalists.
I'm a native Russian speaker, and know English enough to claim I fully understand Dell's words. The first result on Google for "putin dell" search (an article from CNN, http://money.cnn.com/2009/01/28/news/companies/dell.davos.fortune/) cuts Putin's words in half - exactly where he was putting the context to his reply. The (Putin's) intonation means a lot in this particular case. Words, I guess, were too unexpected for interpretors, so they've failed to translate the phrase properly and caused much of this misunderstanding.
He never says "We don't have limited mental capacity" according to the video you linked to, he says (according to translation on your video) "we do not have limited capacity's" examples given were old people and developing countries (debatable if Russia is one of these admittedly)
What are you, a kid? Santa didn't bring all the gifts in your christmas list, so now you cry to mama.
Kids are easy to control. Give them some candy and tell them santa is late because ms. santa is giving him a blowjob, and they'll be happy. No?
Drawing up targets with detailed and transparent plans on how to reach them, yet assuming they'll need to be changed, postponed or even discarded along the way is a sign of _GOOD MANAGEMENT_. What you've had thus far is like the PHB kind of management.
How has it worked for you guys thus far?
Grow up.
Learn to deal with the Real World, not Fantasy Land.
- These characters were randomly selected.
In Soviet Russia, you don't get Dell!
If you think that the Soviet revolution did not result in an improvement in living standards you must only be thinking of the minority middle classes, who, it is true, suffered a fall in their own lifestyle. The peasants on the other hand, received a proper education for the first time and were able to progress if they had the ability and will. During the Soviet era, the majority of presidents and prime ministers came from lowly origins, from the bottom of the pile to the top.
In contrast, in the US, the land of opportunity, although a lot of effort goes into highlighting the poor background of a select few presidents, in fact, the majority were born into relatively wealthy families - where they were not rich themselves, they were surrounded by rich supporters who influenced policy. Obama is no different.
I'm not defending the Soviet Union in all its aspects, but providing an education for the people was an achievement, and the majority of the poor did benefit.
Of course, the middle classes got a bit fed up with that over time, and slowly worked together to bring the whole thing down. Now it's back as it should be - the few living off the backs of the many.
..this will be the only post with a score lower than 5, unless...
"Honeeey I'm 127.0.0.1"
I saw stuff like that at Digital Research when I worked there. Character mode displays of file drawers that popped open and displays folder tab labels and such. Around GEM time or so.
Arianne-5
...I prefer thinkpads anyway.
Remember, this is the same group of people that implemented base10 computer systems.
We all know how well that worked out for them.
I am not sure what's that special that Dell can offer to HELP Russia, or any other country? Does Dell have any extraordinary intellectual property, technology, innovation that can "help" better than any other commodity computer put together anywhere in the world?
...
Grow up.
Learn to deal with the Real World, not Fantasy Land.
Ah, perhaps if we didn't have a certain group of completely ignorant individuals who actually think they don't have to work anymore, now that "da man" is in office?
Yeah, you were saying about Fantasyland? Curious as how we didn't exactly have the same reaction over campaign promises over the last couple of centuries...
...invalids help *YOU*
If you're American, congratulations on being a citizen of the second space-faring country. Guess which country was first?
The biggest reason Russia may be behind in some IT fields has nothing to do with the capability of the professionals in Russia and everything to do with the tariffs imposed on IT related products such as computers and other types of electronics.
In response to Putin's critics...
The best thing that happened to the non raw material dependent economy of Russia was the 1998 monetary crisis. Unfortunately, as many posters have pointed out Russia's heavy reliance upon oil and gas exports in recent years has undone much of the competitive gains made by Russian business that survived that crisis.
I'm not a huge Putin fan, but Russia did heavily invest in infrastructure such as roads and communication lines through out the country during his tenure as president.
He looks like Lenin, having power trumps doing meaningful stuff with power.
You got me into this! You were the ideologue! I'm only a poor assassin! - Twenty evocations, Bruce Sterling
It depends on the clone. Some clone probably where of really bad quality.
Meanwhile, the Bulgarian Pravetz serie earned quite a popularity in the eastern block in the eighties.
So probably the visitor just did find the best brand of clones.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
It's all made in Asia anyways.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
You are mistaken about the role of the government. The main function of the government is not to do the commerce by itself, but to create an environment that is friendly to all businesses - Russian, American, whatever. The correct answer Dell was expecting should sound like this: "We welcome all foreign businesses and non-profit organizations to do business in Russia. If you can find customers inside our country, good for you".