Mississippi will arrest you for seeing a crime happening and not reporting it
As we know, the police can arrest anyone for any reason at any time, and if you don't like it (or remember your rights, hardly the safe option these days) they will tase you until you change your mind or die, whichever comes first.
A very different question, though, is how to prove that you saw anything to begin with, and even if you did it's unclear if you understood it as a crime. There is only a small list of obvious crimes that everyone knows (murder, for example.) However if two guys are pummeling each other in the side street, is it a crime or not? If two men at 11pm carry boxes out of a house and load them into a truck do I witness some theft or it's just two brothers, homeowners, preparing for an early trip next morning?
If you report the men with the truck to the police and they are in fact thieves, and gone by then, the police will probably arrest you instead (they seem to always arrest whoever reports the crime, makes their life easier by having a suspect early on.) Or if the thieves are not yet gone, and caught, they will make a note of you, and make sure to do something nasty to you when they are free on bail (something nasty means "slice your belly open", "set fire to your house", "rape your daughter" or something along these lines.) The court will make sure that their bail is set low, since they haven't killed anyone [yet] [as far as this court knows.]
Or if those two are not thieves, but are roughed up by the police, do you think they'll love you for what you did? That'd be one neat way to make friends in the neighborhood. You might as well sell your house and leave town.
See, there are lots of people who *could* fly a plane.
Flying a plane is not difficult. Safe landing of it is.
There are LOTS of people who could remove an appendix [...] that aren't "doctors".
Pure BS. Even if one out of 10,000 untrained people can *find* an appendix, the chance of removing it without causing peritonitis or any other infection is about zero. How many people regularly practice stitches with catgut, using curved needles held with tools, on a living tissue that will heal afterward?
Doctors from other countries come to the US and, despite having 10+ years experience get to do their residency and chase "real" doctors around for a few years.
Many foreign doctors are just as good, if not better, than locally trained physicians. But they are all doctors - trained for many years in knowing every single bone in human body, every single nerve, every single blood or lymph vessel. They can remove an appendix without opening all your belly up because they *know* where they need to work, and they saw it done by teachers, and then they did it themselves, under careful supervision.
If you have the option of having your buddy, a car mechanic, operate on your appendix, vs. the option of just overdosing on morphine and passing away in peace, the latter is probably better for both of you.
Fortunately, you are not limited to two online identities (the real and the pen name.) You can have as many as you want, and use them in proper spheres. You can be one on/., another on music forums, yet another on car enthusiasts' forums, and yet another, the real one, for official use. This will allow you to separate your technical opinions from your political or musical interests, and to prevent cross-contamination of your opinion on Urusei Yatsura with your comments about Ron Paul, for example.
The great thing about the internet is that people *can* find you
Sure, they can find someone known as foobar123 on Ford forums just as easy as otaku456 on manga forums. Nobody needs to know more, unless you choose to tell someone.
"job security" has always been an illusion
Still there is no good reason to be a witness against yourself. In many cases if the real name of the poster is not known, it will remain not known (unless there is a really serious, legal or security-related need to find that out.) Besides, how does it matter to me what your real name is? Your name is whatever you tell me, and that's all I want to know. It's not like I'm planning to send you snail mail, for example. Your real name is of no use to me.
An ass is an ass, and no company wants to employ somebody like that.
In 99.999% of cases that person is bad at home and just as bad at work. If you can find someone who is Dr. Jekyll at work and Mr. Hyde at home, he is an exceptional actor. There are people like that, especially among criminals, but that's not what we are talking about here. If such a criminal is working as your cashier you won't hear a single bad word about him until he steals everything you have; he'd be excellent at work and at home until that last moment.
Of course, you can argue about moral standards, but if your company doesn't share your own moral standards, then maybe you shouldn't be working there to begin with.
Of course, it implies that you have to sacrifice your job just so you can openly display something that the company - an amorphous, amoral, collective entity - has no need to know to begin with. Sounds like a bad deal to me, in terms of gain vs. reward. When I work for someone I sell my labor, not my soul.
If you have a garage full of brand new stereos in boxes and you aren't running a business yes it is suspicous and if a cop sees them he has the right to inquire
Today the separation between working for someone and running your own business is almost gone. I can work for someone from 9 to 5, then come home and sell antique stereos (or whatever, Wii if you wish) through Ebay. There is no law against this, and only IRS should know. If a police officer sees my garage full of boxes he is welcome to ask, and even to buy. But I owe him nothing else, and I can't see him getting a search warrant only because I have a pile of merchandise. (As long as zoning requirements are met.)
The grandparent mentioned a glider, which usually has no engine. It would be probably better to say that the airspeed relates to the amount of energy that the vehicle has access to. That energy can be potential (a brick hanging high in the sky) or kinetic (a meteor hitting your spaceship at 10% of the light speed) or both.
House Judiciary Committee John Conyers (D-MI) and Intellectual Property Subcommittee Chairman Howard Berman (D-CA) introduced legislation to change the penalties for copyright violations
Now I understand what John Conyers had in mind when he explained that "impeachment will distract the Congress from other, more important work". This is the law that is obviously needed far more than the impeachment.
The terrorist act in Beslan was done after the war, to reignite it - which it failed to do. There still are a couple of terrorist acts per year in the region, but not much can be done about that, and the restoration of rule of law in Chechnya will take care of them eventually.
Do not deliver an incoming email until a fee has been paid to your account. For example, send 1 cent to account 12345678, get a receipt (a long number) and add it to the email (x-paid-by:) You can check with your bank, and if this number is correct then you accept. Zombies won't have enough cash to pay for spam; with 1 cent per email most people only need $1 in their email account, because two-way conversations balance both accounts.
The politicians do not fear you. At the end of the day you vill be given two choices for every office, and good luck telling them apart. Vote for RP (or DK), at least it will feel good; but neither of them can win without massive support of the establishment, and they are too dangerous to the establishment.
I am pretty sure that the Berlin wall was working the other way around. The Berlin wall wasn't to keep people out, it was to keep people in.
True, but it doesn't matter. The wall stopped people from crossing. In the Mexican case the wall simply has to have guns on the other side. Or on both:-(
It's defeatism, though I read other comments that an action only needs to be prepared and not yet executed... but consider fates of many of the escapees from the USSR (1917 - 1990). They could only leave, even if that (leaving was a super-privileged option, not everyone could.) Do you think any of them could, say, pick up some placards and march on the Red Square, in 1980? They'd be instantly put into a psychiatric clinic, and in this case - for a good reason of being patently insane.
The USSR had to hide their dissidents because the Party built up the image of a country free of discontent. Any single protest would be highly visible. So it had to follow up, and remove anyone who was not conforming. The USA is in a different, smarter position - the country is proud of letting anyone (especially idiots) to march, speak and otherwise protest anything at all - then protests about things that matter are diluted in a sea of protests that are totally irrelevant, and nobody pays attention to any of them.
I wonder what complications I might have experienced had I been traveling to or from the U.S. at the same time
You'd only need to prove on the spot (beyond any doubt in minds of our brave border guards) that you are not *that* person, never was him, and never will be. While coming up with faultless explanations that your audience can obviously comprehend, you will of course understand that the officials will face severe punishment if they let a wrong man go, but no punishment whatsoever if they detain you for a small period of time (a few days, or weeks - who counts among friends?) While being duly incarcerated, you will be expected to come up with even better evidence of your peaceful nature (unfortunately luxuries like a telephone may be limited, down to being not allowed at all - what if you are a terr'ist?)
I would imagine it would be like writing a piece of software for say, Windows, ready to be deployed and then the customer says "Sorry, I want that in Linux".
If your customer has a good reason for such a change (like in this case) then I would estimate what it would take (money, time, people, etc.) to do the conversion. I definitely will not dismiss the possibility out of hand.
There is a very high limit on practicality when the other option is to scrap the $1B, perfectly good hardware. In management terms, "do what you need to launch it on any vehicle available."
Besides, a Shuttle launch costs about $400M, but a Proton launch costs from $100M to $200M, and Ariane 5 launch costs about $200M. That's a lot of cash that is suddenly freed up to spend on refitting the payload.
I own one book that offers code samples and allows to use them - but only after you apply for, and the author grants you, a written permission (a license) to do so. Some other books that I have offer the samples with no further ado.
In case of the OP, his best move, IMO, is to treat the whole issue as Someone's Else Problem and forget that he ever looked into this. I assume that the OP is not tasked with due diligence work, otherwise he wouldn't be asking/. And if so, his Web research is nothing but an unauthorized web browsing, a waste of time at the least and an attempt to hurt the company if seen in the worst light possible.
You must approach the problem scientifically. Every country has young people, this is not unique to France. But we do not see young Canadians, or young Americans, or young Chinese "destroying things" regardless of how much they may want to do so. What is the reason that in France (or Holland) young people feel free to do what they want, kill people for fun, and have government negotiators coming and begging them to stop, or else they will beg some more?
Any proper government, in my opinion, should bring in the army on the very first day of such events. Then put the survivors on trial. Honest citizens of France deserve protection from any enemy, foreign or domestic.
The religion of those youths is not important as such, however if it is shown that 0.001% of the rioters are Buddhists and the rest belong to some other religion, then it is a common factor that no sociologist may discard. It's a data point, and such a correlation must be explained (even if it has nothing to do with the riots.)
He was apparently sentenced to five days in jail, meaning he won't be able to do very much campaigning, nor will the other candidates for parliament who were arrested.
As popular wisdom says, "can't do the time - don't do the crime." Besides, he got the absolute minimum punishment; one can get more for just being drunk in public. Besides, only Kasparov remains under arrest, other organizers have been freed and can campaign. The organizer who signs the papers carries personal responsibility for the event, that's why Kasparov is where he is - he signed on the dotted line.
Also, how can you generalise in such ways, saying that Russians despise Kasparov specifically?
Inside sources (such as ability to read the whole.ru domain.)
But on the subject of your question, there was time when a certain group of people (dissidents, promoters of human rights, some writers, etc.) promoted democracy a tad too much. When Yeltsin gave them power, and the right to execute on their dream, they failed miserably, and it ended in 1998 IIRC with a default on foreign debts and with a war in Chechnya. Many Russians learned their lesson there and then. Note that not all dissidents belong to this group, some behaved very honorably. And not only dissidents joined the fray - some new names did that too, like one Eduard Limonov, neo-fascist, or Vladimir Zhirinovsky, anti-Semite and a chauvinist. They have their own parties now, all hail democracy. In any case, many early dissidents thoroughly discredited themselves, and the country stabilized only when serious people came to power (after Yeltsin).
Do you work for Putin? I'm seriously asking.
No, but that's immaterial. With 75% approval three out of four Russians will tell you why Putin is a reasonable leader (not a $deity, mind you - just reasonable, considering the choices.) Method of Monte-Carlo in reverse, if you wish. As I said, people like stability, and 6% annual growth of GDP during Putin's years is a good thing - everyone can count their own money. When a Russian buys a new car he knows who made it possible (hint: it's not Yeltsin, and not Yavlinsky.)
MS and Intel did try to join the OLPC, and Negroponte sent them away. Slashdot discussed the issue, and it was said that MS is not well positioned to participate in such a small project, and besides Windows is way too large physically for a small laptop. Negroponte's decision was accepted on technical (Windows is too big) and political (Windows is not free) basis. However I do not recall any bashing since Windows is what it is, and not much Bill Gates can do about that.
But even before that Wintel did nothing at all, when OLPC was only being thought about. Slashdot at that time concluded that there is not much value in this market for such big players. Since many/. contributors subscribe to the theory of capitalism, Wintel was not accused of doing nothing; in fact, doing anything of the sort would be a financial blunder and violation of the responsibility before shareholders. This area is for charities and non-profits who can sell the notebooks almost at cost.
The current debacle is exactly about big players entering a small market not with intent to help, but with an intent to squash the small guy and then quit alltogether (or raise prices after the competitor is gone.)
when this starts to undermine the safety of people who are under the protection of other governments, I draw the line
And it is reasonable. However note that the previous style of democracy under Yeltsin, in 1990's, was very chaotic and very unpredictable. With Putin at least you know where he stands, and you know that the country is stable. This is quite valuable (unless, of course, it's somehow in your interest to foment unrest in a country which has nuclear weapons.)
The main point, however, is that I would be very concerned about talking with Russian emigrants about their experience under Putin. I would be afraid I might put their lives at risk.
I wouldn't worry about that - as long as they don't seriously work on a violent revolt against the elected government, as Berezovsky does. He is still very much alive, by the way, even though you'd think he would become another Trotsky. And of those who plot to overthrow the government and actually do something bad to that end... does the name Osama ring a bell? The USA killed a lot of people in many countries recently chasing him, including countries that the USA is not at war with.
One thing the sellers of the OLPC need to point out is that this is meant to teach computer concepts, while the Wintel machines are made to promote lock-in. They sellers should then point out the problems with lock-in.
I think this will fly so high over the heads of their customers they won't be even able to see it without a telescope. They don't even know most of the words that you are using.
One of the big pushes behind Linux is that it "runs fast on old hardware"
The government official would then say "I thought we are buying NEW hardware, not old - isn't it so?" and look at you suspiciously. We are talking about multi-million government contracts here, they can't be done the same way you'd ask a neighbor if he wants to sign up for a newspaper delivery.
OLPC competes against standard Linux.
I think OLPC does not do that; OLPC is an improved Casio organizer, if you remember those from 1990's, or a PSP with a keyboard. It is a computer with a limited functionality out of the box, and just fast enough to run the minimalistic things that it comes with, and to run Python as a modern version of Basic. By using very optimized software the OLPC team managed to get good run time and low cost. But by no means it is a computer as most people would understand it. It is more like a fancy programmable calculator, only for [younger] children.
Let's face it, the GIMP isn't for everyone. The MS Paint crowd 1st and foremost wants a SIMPLE paint program.
A personal anecdote of three days ago. A customer comes and says "you installed GIMP for me a while ago, how do I change the brightness and contrast of a photo?" I come, look - and to my surprise I can't find it anywhere in menus! Minutes go by, I am still looking. At home I use the latest GIMP, and it had it moved from the Image menu to Colors menu, but in the version that the person had it was just nowhere. I installed Paint.Net for him, and that was the end of GIMP as far as this customer is concerned: the word "Adjustments" in the menu bar of Paint.Net says it all, and it looks like Photoshop (which this customer was somewhat familiar with.)
If a number of distros offered an "OLPC mode" that emulated operation of an OLPC as much as possible, that would help sell mainstream Linux.
No, they need to be specifically optimized to the hardware. I have and use Linux (2.6.x kernels) that boots up within 10 seconds on a slow (200 MHz) ARM, but a generic SuSE would probably need a few hours, and a few GB of HDD (which isn't there) to fully load into KDE. The optimal distribution for the OLPC already exists, and it is shipped with OLPC.
Indeed only two, since the Kennedy clan is not as powerful as it used to be.
But you are right, of course; and even if a president or two happen to have no family ties to the clan, they still have even stronger ties to the establishment that selected and installed them. Popular opinion does not matter. Everyone I know hates Hillary; but somehow she is the leader... it can happen only when the decision is made privately, among people who matter. We aren't them.
Well, I do not believe that Putin ordered any of those assassinations. It's too stupid, and even a child could have predicted the fallout from them. My bet is that it was done to hurt Putin, and there are plenty of parties with such an interest. Besides, Litvinenko's story is so much spy vs. spy I don't even want to consider for how many secret services he may have worked at the same time. And the use of Polonium is totally ridiculous; if any secret service wanted him dead he'd be hit with a brick over the head, and robbed of all his cash, and nobody would even notice [in London.]
Now, you propose to elevate China and punish Russia. But be careful here, China is not your lap dog - not any more than Russia is. I think China made it known just a few days ago, in HK - you surely remember? If I were to choose from the US's position, I would rather choose Russia as a preferred partner. Why? Simply because Russia is self-sufficient, primarily in energy; what it needs (manufactured goods) can be easily imported from many eager sellers. China does not have enough oil or gas even today. So the energy war will have to happen at some point, in some form, and it is safer to pick a partner that has what you need, rather than a partner that needs what you also need.
And finally about this Kasparov thing - Russians despise him specifically, and many more of the "democratic" crowd of 1990's because they had a chance (a whole decade!) to show what they are worth, and they did, all the nothing of it. However in this specific case Kasparov is arrested as a repeat offender, probably for inciting a riot - what he did is he tried to lead the 1,500 protesters from the agreed upon and approved path to elsewhere, blocking traffic and basically breaking the law. You can read and watch YouTube here or read here, and in many other places. It is expected that the judge will sentence Kasparov to standard 15 days (cleaning the streets, for example) - this is a typical low-end punishment for small offenses. He is not going to Siberia yet.
Slashdot Mirror
As we know, the police can arrest anyone for any reason at any time, and if you don't like it (or remember your rights, hardly the safe option these days) they will tase you until you change your mind or die, whichever comes first.
A very different question, though, is how to prove that you saw anything to begin with, and even if you did it's unclear if you understood it as a crime. There is only a small list of obvious crimes that everyone knows (murder, for example.) However if two guys are pummeling each other in the side street, is it a crime or not? If two men at 11pm carry boxes out of a house and load them into a truck do I witness some theft or it's just two brothers, homeowners, preparing for an early trip next morning?
If you report the men with the truck to the police and they are in fact thieves, and gone by then, the police will probably arrest you instead (they seem to always arrest whoever reports the crime, makes their life easier by having a suspect early on.) Or if the thieves are not yet gone, and caught, they will make a note of you, and make sure to do something nasty to you when they are free on bail (something nasty means "slice your belly open", "set fire to your house", "rape your daughter" or something along these lines.) The court will make sure that their bail is set low, since they haven't killed anyone [yet] [as far as this court knows.]
Or if those two are not thieves, but are roughed up by the police, do you think they'll love you for what you did? That'd be one neat way to make friends in the neighborhood. You might as well sell your house and leave town.
Flying a plane is not difficult. Safe landing of it is.
There are LOTS of people who could remove an appendix [...] that aren't "doctors".
Pure BS. Even if one out of 10,000 untrained people can *find* an appendix, the chance of removing it without causing peritonitis or any other infection is about zero. How many people regularly practice stitches with catgut, using curved needles held with tools, on a living tissue that will heal afterward?
Doctors from other countries come to the US and, despite having 10+ years experience get to do their residency and chase "real" doctors around for a few years.
Many foreign doctors are just as good, if not better, than locally trained physicians. But they are all doctors - trained for many years in knowing every single bone in human body, every single nerve, every single blood or lymph vessel. They can remove an appendix without opening all your belly up because they *know* where they need to work, and they saw it done by teachers, and then they did it themselves, under careful supervision.
If you have the option of having your buddy, a car mechanic, operate on your appendix, vs. the option of just overdosing on morphine and passing away in peace, the latter is probably better for both of you.
Fortunately, you are not limited to two online identities (the real and the pen name.) You can have as many as you want, and use them in proper spheres. You can be one on /., another on music forums, yet another on car enthusiasts' forums, and yet another, the real one, for official use. This will allow you to separate your technical opinions from your political or musical interests, and to prevent cross-contamination of your opinion on Urusei Yatsura with your comments about Ron Paul, for example.
The great thing about the internet is that people *can* find you
Sure, they can find someone known as foobar123 on Ford forums just as easy as otaku456 on manga forums. Nobody needs to know more, unless you choose to tell someone.
"job security" has always been an illusion
Still there is no good reason to be a witness against yourself. In many cases if the real name of the poster is not known, it will remain not known (unless there is a really serious, legal or security-related need to find that out.) Besides, how does it matter to me what your real name is? Your name is whatever you tell me, and that's all I want to know. It's not like I'm planning to send you snail mail, for example. Your real name is of no use to me.
An ass is an ass, and no company wants to employ somebody like that.
In 99.999% of cases that person is bad at home and just as bad at work. If you can find someone who is Dr. Jekyll at work and Mr. Hyde at home, he is an exceptional actor. There are people like that, especially among criminals, but that's not what we are talking about here. If such a criminal is working as your cashier you won't hear a single bad word about him until he steals everything you have; he'd be excellent at work and at home until that last moment.
Of course, you can argue about moral standards, but if your company doesn't share your own moral standards, then maybe you shouldn't be working there to begin with.
Of course, it implies that you have to sacrifice your job just so you can openly display something that the company - an amorphous, amoral, collective entity - has no need to know to begin with. Sounds like a bad deal to me, in terms of gain vs. reward. When I work for someone I sell my labor, not my soul.
Today the separation between working for someone and running your own business is almost gone. I can work for someone from 9 to 5, then come home and sell antique stereos (or whatever, Wii if you wish) through Ebay. There is no law against this, and only IRS should know. If a police officer sees my garage full of boxes he is welcome to ask, and even to buy. But I owe him nothing else, and I can't see him getting a search warrant only because I have a pile of merchandise. (As long as zoning requirements are met.)
The grandparent mentioned a glider, which usually has no engine. It would be probably better to say that the airspeed relates to the amount of energy that the vehicle has access to. That energy can be potential (a brick hanging high in the sky) or kinetic (a meteor hitting your spaceship at 10% of the light speed) or both.
Now I understand what John Conyers had in mind when he explained that "impeachment will distract the Congress from other, more important work". This is the law that is obviously needed far more than the impeachment.
The terrorist act in Beslan was done after the war, to reignite it - which it failed to do. There still are a couple of terrorist acts per year in the region, but not much can be done about that, and the restoration of rule of law in Chechnya will take care of them eventually.
Vote for Giuliani and get both options!
It only means that you "last heard" some time around 2002. But it's almost 2008. Wake up and read more.
Do not deliver an incoming email until a fee has been paid to your account. For example, send 1 cent to account 12345678, get a receipt (a long number) and add it to the email (x-paid-by:) You can check with your bank, and if this number is correct then you accept. Zombies won't have enough cash to pay for spam; with 1 cent per email most people only need $1 in their email account, because two-way conversations balance both accounts.
The politicians do not fear you. At the end of the day you vill be given two choices for every office, and good luck telling them apart. Vote for RP (or DK), at least it will feel good; but neither of them can win without massive support of the establishment, and they are too dangerous to the establishment.
True, but it doesn't matter. The wall stopped people from crossing. In the Mexican case the wall simply has to have guns on the other side. Or on both :-(
The USSR had to hide their dissidents because the Party built up the image of a country free of discontent. Any single protest would be highly visible. So it had to follow up, and remove anyone who was not conforming. The USA is in a different, smarter position - the country is proud of letting anyone (especially idiots) to march, speak and otherwise protest anything at all - then protests about things that matter are diluted in a sea of protests that are totally irrelevant, and nobody pays attention to any of them.
You'd only need to prove on the spot (beyond any doubt in minds of our brave border guards) that you are not *that* person, never was him, and never will be. While coming up with faultless explanations that your audience can obviously comprehend, you will of course understand that the officials will face severe punishment if they let a wrong man go, but no punishment whatsoever if they detain you for a small period of time (a few days, or weeks - who counts among friends?) While being duly incarcerated, you will be expected to come up with even better evidence of your peaceful nature (unfortunately luxuries like a telephone may be limited, down to being not allowed at all - what if you are a terr'ist?)
If your customer has a good reason for such a change (like in this case) then I would estimate what it would take (money, time, people, etc.) to do the conversion. I definitely will not dismiss the possibility out of hand.
There is a very high limit on practicality when the other option is to scrap the $1B, perfectly good hardware. In management terms, "do what you need to launch it on any vehicle available."
Besides, a Shuttle launch costs about $400M, but a Proton launch costs from $100M to $200M, and Ariane 5 launch costs about $200M. That's a lot of cash that is suddenly freed up to spend on refitting the payload.
I own one book that offers code samples and allows to use them - but only after you apply for, and the author grants you, a written permission (a license) to do so. Some other books that I have offer the samples with no further ado.
In case of the OP, his best move, IMO, is to treat the whole issue as Someone's Else Problem and forget that he ever looked into this. I assume that the OP is not tasked with due diligence work, otherwise he wouldn't be asking /. And if so, his Web research is nothing but an unauthorized web browsing, a waste of time at the least and an attempt to hurt the company if seen in the worst light possible.
You must approach the problem scientifically. Every country has young people, this is not unique to France. But we do not see young Canadians, or young Americans, or young Chinese "destroying things" regardless of how much they may want to do so. What is the reason that in France (or Holland) young people feel free to do what they want, kill people for fun, and have government negotiators coming and begging them to stop, or else they will beg some more?
Any proper government, in my opinion, should bring in the army on the very first day of such events. Then put the survivors on trial. Honest citizens of France deserve protection from any enemy, foreign or domestic.
The religion of those youths is not important as such, however if it is shown that 0.001% of the rioters are Buddhists and the rest belong to some other religion, then it is a common factor that no sociologist may discard. It's a data point, and such a correlation must be explained (even if it has nothing to do with the riots.)
As popular wisdom says, "can't do the time - don't do the crime." Besides, he got the absolute minimum punishment; one can get more for just being drunk in public. Besides, only Kasparov remains under arrest, other organizers have been freed and can campaign. The organizer who signs the papers carries personal responsibility for the event, that's why Kasparov is where he is - he signed on the dotted line.
Also, how can you generalise in such ways, saying that Russians despise Kasparov specifically?
Inside sources (such as ability to read the whole .ru domain.)
But on the subject of your question, there was time when a certain group of people (dissidents, promoters of human rights, some writers, etc.) promoted democracy a tad too much. When Yeltsin gave them power, and the right to execute on their dream, they failed miserably, and it ended in 1998 IIRC with a default on foreign debts and with a war in Chechnya. Many Russians learned their lesson there and then. Note that not all dissidents belong to this group, some behaved very honorably. And not only dissidents joined the fray - some new names did that too, like one Eduard Limonov, neo-fascist, or Vladimir Zhirinovsky, anti-Semite and a chauvinist. They have their own parties now, all hail democracy. In any case, many early dissidents thoroughly discredited themselves, and the country stabilized only when serious people came to power (after Yeltsin).
Do you work for Putin? I'm seriously asking.
No, but that's immaterial. With 75% approval three out of four Russians will tell you why Putin is a reasonable leader (not a $deity, mind you - just reasonable, considering the choices.) Method of Monte-Carlo in reverse, if you wish. As I said, people like stability, and 6% annual growth of GDP during Putin's years is a good thing - everyone can count their own money. When a Russian buys a new car he knows who made it possible (hint: it's not Yeltsin, and not Yavlinsky.)
But even before that Wintel did nothing at all, when OLPC was only being thought about. Slashdot at that time concluded that there is not much value in this market for such big players. Since many /. contributors subscribe to the theory of capitalism, Wintel was not accused of doing nothing; in fact, doing anything of the sort would be a financial blunder and violation of the responsibility before shareholders. This area is for charities and non-profits who can sell the notebooks almost at cost.
The current debacle is exactly about big players entering a small market not with intent to help, but with an intent to squash the small guy and then quit alltogether (or raise prices after the competitor is gone.)
And it is reasonable. However note that the previous style of democracy under Yeltsin, in 1990's, was very chaotic and very unpredictable. With Putin at least you know where he stands, and you know that the country is stable. This is quite valuable (unless, of course, it's somehow in your interest to foment unrest in a country which has nuclear weapons.)
The main point, however, is that I would be very concerned about talking with Russian emigrants about their experience under Putin. I would be afraid I might put their lives at risk.
I wouldn't worry about that - as long as they don't seriously work on a violent revolt against the elected government, as Berezovsky does. He is still very much alive, by the way, even though you'd think he would become another Trotsky. And of those who plot to overthrow the government and actually do something bad to that end ... does the name Osama ring a bell? The USA killed a lot of people in many countries recently chasing him, including countries that the USA is not at war with.
I think this will fly so high over the heads of their customers they won't be even able to see it without a telescope. They don't even know most of the words that you are using.
One of the big pushes behind Linux is that it "runs fast on old hardware"
The government official would then say "I thought we are buying NEW hardware, not old - isn't it so?" and look at you suspiciously. We are talking about multi-million government contracts here, they can't be done the same way you'd ask a neighbor if he wants to sign up for a newspaper delivery.
OLPC competes against standard Linux.
I think OLPC does not do that; OLPC is an improved Casio organizer, if you remember those from 1990's, or a PSP with a keyboard. It is a computer with a limited functionality out of the box, and just fast enough to run the minimalistic things that it comes with, and to run Python as a modern version of Basic. By using very optimized software the OLPC team managed to get good run time and low cost. But by no means it is a computer as most people would understand it. It is more like a fancy programmable calculator, only for [younger] children.
Let's face it, the GIMP isn't for everyone. The MS Paint crowd 1st and foremost wants a SIMPLE paint program.
A personal anecdote of three days ago. A customer comes and says "you installed GIMP for me a while ago, how do I change the brightness and contrast of a photo?" I come, look - and to my surprise I can't find it anywhere in menus! Minutes go by, I am still looking. At home I use the latest GIMP, and it had it moved from the Image menu to Colors menu, but in the version that the person had it was just nowhere. I installed Paint.Net for him, and that was the end of GIMP as far as this customer is concerned: the word "Adjustments" in the menu bar of Paint.Net says it all, and it looks like Photoshop (which this customer was somewhat familiar with.)
If a number of distros offered an "OLPC mode" that emulated operation of an OLPC as much as possible, that would help sell mainstream Linux.
No, they need to be specifically optimized to the hardware. I have and use Linux (2.6.x kernels) that boots up within 10 seconds on a slow (200 MHz) ARM, but a generic SuSE would probably need a few hours, and a few GB of HDD (which isn't there) to fully load into KDE. The optimal distribution for the OLPC already exists, and it is shipped with OLPC.
But you are right, of course; and even if a president or two happen to have no family ties to the clan, they still have even stronger ties to the establishment that selected and installed them. Popular opinion does not matter. Everyone I know hates Hillary; but somehow she is the leader... it can happen only when the decision is made privately, among people who matter. We aren't them.
Now, you propose to elevate China and punish Russia. But be careful here, China is not your lap dog - not any more than Russia is. I think China made it known just a few days ago, in HK - you surely remember? If I were to choose from the US's position, I would rather choose Russia as a preferred partner. Why? Simply because Russia is self-sufficient, primarily in energy; what it needs (manufactured goods) can be easily imported from many eager sellers. China does not have enough oil or gas even today. So the energy war will have to happen at some point, in some form, and it is safer to pick a partner that has what you need, rather than a partner that needs what you also need.
And finally about this Kasparov thing - Russians despise him specifically, and many more of the "democratic" crowd of 1990's because they had a chance (a whole decade!) to show what they are worth, and they did, all the nothing of it. However in this specific case Kasparov is arrested as a repeat offender, probably for inciting a riot - what he did is he tried to lead the 1,500 protesters from the agreed upon and approved path to elsewhere, blocking traffic and basically breaking the law. You can read and watch YouTube here or read here, and in many other places. It is expected that the judge will sentence Kasparov to standard 15 days (cleaning the streets, for example) - this is a typical low-end punishment for small offenses. He is not going to Siberia yet.