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.'"

Comments

It was a very mild rebuke

[MykePagan]

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

[Darth Cider]

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.

Proper translation of Putin's statement...

[Anonymusing]

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

Re:It may be a misconseption on my part but...

[Puchku]

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&sectid=2&contentid=20080930200809301249051997b5b53a, and http://www.rediff.com/money/2006/jun/09bspec.htm ) 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:In Soviet Russia

[Cyberax]

USSR _did_ have successful computers using ternary math: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Setun

Unfortunately, it was abandoned in favor of copying foreign binary computers :(

Re:The Cold War Called ...

[shutdown -p now]

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.