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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
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...
> 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.
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.
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"?
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.
---- Teach Peace. It's Cheaper Than War.
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.
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.
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
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.
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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?
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, 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!
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.
I've worked with a few H1-B's, and that's generally the impression I got. We had one guy who had a CS Masters from some Indian university, but after 6 months of trying, he still couldn't write a simple text processing app. At another job, we had hired a Crystal Reports 'expert' to create some reports that none of the staff had time for. For a couple of days the guy would ask how to make the numbers round down, rather than just rounding off. On the second day I took pity on him and showed him the joys of the Floor function. I had never programmed anything in CR, but I knew that there had to be a floor operator in there somewhere.
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.
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.
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.
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
At least Putin wouldn't have to deal with their shitty customer support...
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...
"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?"
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."