Let me guess, the OP works in the IT department of a publicly funded research institute?
Used to get requests all the time from scientist who suddenly realized they needed to get their old data off 5 1/2" disks (or even older formats).
They didnt seem to understand that keeping these things in boxes next to a magnto resonator for the last 10 years didnt do much good for the data stored therein.
Still, the punch card programs still were in ok condition.... just no way of reading them.
Perhaps going a little OT (!= Outer Thetan) here but hey this is/.
Worked for a science institute but not being a scientist i can take a laid back view and offer an independent viewpoint.
Firstly, Scientists need money. To live as well as perform their actual science. For a long time now there has been a shift in funding from individuals and organizations who are interested in promoting science to organizations that are simply looking to create patents so they can live off the back of the researcher work.
The scientists are totally caught up in this. They need to get the money, so they tend to do 'trendy' science for which they can get funding (this is a generalization of course) and the most important, their research MUST work. In other words they have a theory, and then will perform the same experiment 100 times until they get results that fit their theories (really, ive seen this happen and even had it admitted to me over a pint). Then they publish (the more well read journal the better) and everyone is happy.... until the next person comes along and tries to duplicate the earlier work or build upon it because they have a theory that us built upon the previous theory.... that is only correct 1/100 times.
They are all so desperate for money to recognition, that real science is becoming a thing of the past.
Sorry forgot one point... you have a foreign language? If so, make sure you let them know on your CV. It is a world market out there.
Have you considered applying for jobs in other countries. I can tell you from personal experience that people willing to work in different countries always get a second look from people filtering CVs (unless it is a computer doing it) and raises the curiosity and interest of reviewers. Plus once you get the job you will be viewed as a special resource... trust me on this, been there, done that, got the t-shit.
As a project manager and coordinator for a software hours certainly i dont undervalue my QA people and praise their work highly... but still, i understand your desire to become a developer.
Personally forget internships, its just slave labour. You need to get out there and sell yourself. So what if the advertisement says 3-5 years experience required? Show them you have experience with QA which means you have good experience of reviewing bad code and fixing bugs and this has helped your own development skills increase...
What have you been doing all these years with your programming skills anyway? Been letting them atrophify (how do you spell this damn word?)? I presume you have been developing things at home, making the odd contribution to small projects etc???? If so, you can claim this as some form of experience and show this.
Learn how to get interviews. This is a real skill that can only benefit you. If your resume is crap you will never get an interview. Dont go crazy on buzz words.... i see too many buzz words on a CV/Resume and i throw it in the bin. Focus on achivements and your strong points. If you can get an interview then you stand a chance. At the interview take some (good) examples of code (there should be one technical guy on the interview panel otherwise be scared). If they will allow, fire up something you have developed on a computer. Tell them you are ready to sit down to a technical exam to prove your expertise. Dont look desparate but show willing.
Hell, there are more advices than i can fit in a slashdot post but i can tell you 100% that if you dont apply just because all adverts demand x,y,z then youll never get a job.
Let me break it down further with regards to adverts:
Essential = We really want these but if a good candidate appears we will let some of these slip.
Desired = We know nobody in the world has these skills except for the last chap that is quiiting the company but we thought we would request anyway.
Other = What the hell, some extra buzz words cant hurt.
As someone who has been involved in many recruitment exercises i can tell you i'd rather take a person lacking the essential experience who is willing and hard working (and a dev with QA skills is just pure gold!) rather than someone who has experience but does not look like a team player or is too arrogant etc. Plus probably get the inexperienced guy a little cheaper as well:-0
Last point, and sorry for going on and on... Why go for masters? You got a degree and this got you nowhere in the end... what for to get another degree to achieve what? I had the same problem when i left university. Degrees mean you can pass exams, not do good work. Start somewhere small and build up.
It can probably be shown that the average IQ of the average Slashdot reader is somewhere far in excess of 100.... however, when they post on Slashdot they suffer a temporary rapid decrease in IQ to the level of a caveman (hmmm... temporary devolution anyone?).
On topic - it was mentioned that due to the large population of earth our genes are not being mixed so well... however, i would disagree because of increased travel and mobility of populations.
For example, i am 100% british (meaning i probably have german, french, scottish, irish, viking ancestors) and my wife is 25% Korean, 25% Russian, 50% Estonian, and there is definitely some Polish in there as well. As we have two kids their genes are therefore made up from an even crazier mix from their parents diverse backgrounds.
In addition to the points raised about life expectancy in the old days being much shorter i call bullshit on the whole article.
If there is a reason for slowing or stopping of evolution it is because we no longer need to evolve. Evolution is a response to external pressures and natural selection. These days we change our environment to suit us and have been doing this for many centuries.
As for the creationists, in the words of Bill Hicks: "You ever notice how people who believe in creationism look really unevolved?".
Well, as my wife is a teacher here i understand this very well. Teachers are poorly paid, but i wouldn't use the words forced here.
The main problem here is that most teachers are now so used to accepting bribes to give pass marks and do assignments for the richer students that they are pretty much caught in a trap. They cannot get better paid work outside the academic system than they can when comparing how much they can rake in with bribes by staying where they are.
To compare: Teacher in our city: between 2k and 8k per month depending on bonuses etc... but with bribes they can easily earn 10 times as much. Unskilled brain dead woman working on meat counter at supermarket: 16k per month.
Accepted that teachers generally dont want to become workers in a supermarket for the rest of their life.
Hmmm, not sure you were going about this the right way. The bribes are usually around 50% of the import/export tax. As the import/export taxes are pretty high its usually a lot cheaper to play the game and pay the officials a backhander to let you through.
You cant complain about the high import/export taxes as you should check what these are before trying to setup an operation in a country (or else buy your systems in the country from the market).
On the other hand if you try and play the game and don't know what you are doing then you are going to get burnt. Guessing the person who was "negotiating" with the customs officials was not a native or not have much experience of life in Russia.
Here is an example, recently they changed the direction of a one way street in our city and not noticing this i went the wrong way down it being used to it being the other direction. Who was waiting for me at the other end but our friendly neighborhood road police officer? Now ive been in the country 5 years but still not experienced at dealing with the corruption here and if i had been alone in the car i would probably had to pay around 1000 roubles for him to let me go without an official penalty which probably would have been a lot more. Fortunately my wife was with me who is a native and basically she "negotiated" a much lower price of 150 roubles because she has a few connections who could make his life problematic if he tried to screw us.
Im not condoning the corruption in this country, just advising you either need to know how to deal with it or stay away from it and pay the official prices which are usually very high.
While our law enforcement here in Russia are underpaid and perhaps not the most up-to-date and certainly there is corruption (especially our Road Police - bloody parasites - sorry, personal grudge) some of them do try hard. And in our city only last year a group of US police came over for a month or so to study Russian law enforcement techniques. Im sure this was legal studying, not "How to accept a bribe" and "Best way to hide the prisoners bruises".
And as for all the FSB bashing.... take a close look at some of the history of groups like the CIA and FBI in the US and Mossad and MI5 in the UK... they arent exactly white as angels... lots of bad things done in the name of national security.
I am i pirate. I buy pirated games, copy them, download them, etc.
Why?
Reason 1:
Because i cannot get the games in my language. I live in Russia (the land of the free) and my Russian is simply not good enough to buy games in this language. Very occasionally a publisher will release a multilingual version of the game over here but this is rare, and when i see such, and im interested in the game, i may buy it.
Otherwise, i have no choice, i must buy the pirated version from some guys who sell on the street or get from other sources.... and they naturally sell these with English because they are converted from the English into Russian so contain both languages.
Reason 2:
I have children. Small ones. With sticky fingers. Who like to play with CD drawers and bite disks, and stand on disks, and throw disks into the toilet.
Given this, i have to keep my disks in a safe place. When the disk is in the drive (because the game publisher demands i do this to play), and im happily playing, i may get distracted by the wife, or one of the kids needs something, and i leave the computer. You can guarantee within 1 second the other kid will have opened the CD drawer and started to play frisbee with the disk.
Conclusion:
I am a pirate because i have to be. On those rare occasions i can buy a game in english that i want, i still have to go and d/l a No-CD crack which criminalizes me again.
Funnily enough, when i lived in the UK and didnt have kids, most of my games were originals. Sometimes i would buy the original after playing the pirated version, because i do believe in supporting those who create these games.
PS: I know i can order over the internet games but not only would i incur quite large postage costs, but also to do this i would need a credit card, and i really dont like having these tools of Satan about my person.
Oh dear.... that sounds like the US agenda, not to mention the book of the same name.
Still, i am in agreement. We dont know how long this little blue ball we live on will be around... cosmic accidents do happen.
Better if we spread as far as possible regardless of the cost.
Didnt you hear? MS are not a monopoly. Look... there is Apple, and there is RedHat, and Ubuntu, etc. MS use this approach every time someone says they are a monopoly. As i recall Ms even invested in Apple when it was going through bad times to ensure they had a competitor to point to.
However, good point, im sure there must be something in the law about this sort of tactic.
Would be great if everyone did start demanding XP at $3 a license. It would probably push their sales figures through the roof!
My suggestion would be to let all the other users in the dorm who is the cause of the problem and explain to them that the reason they cant download their pr0n is because of this user.
Sit back and wait for the screams to die down. Then go and have a word with the offending user (if they are still alive).
Ok, im not a geologist or any other sort of -ist but....
If i understand correctly (and maybe im talking crap) geothermal energy is created by the difference in temparature between point A and point B. So, i know where there is lots of heat relative to the surface temperatue of the planet.... deep underground. The closer to the core of the earth the hotter it gets. I dont know how deep you have to go to get a significant rise but maybe we should be investigating drilling techniques to get down to that lovely warm core (erm, without creating a mini-volcano of course).
Another idea (again no idea if it will work) is one i came across in a sci-fi book called Siva by Walt and Leight Richmond (i think). It suggests using the electrical potential difference between the planet surface and the ionisphere. The theory being if you float a baloon up to the ionosphere with a wire trailing all the way back to the ground the electricity would have a path to flow down and you could tap it. Although this has 2 possible problems: 1) A short circuit between the ionosphere and the earth (think fuses - kaboom) 2) What happens when (if?) the ionosphere runs out of charge.... maybe this would be worse than global warming.
Yeah, my wife explained the term when i got home. She laughed quite a bit and said its worth a try. My experience is the FSB do like to keep tabs on foreigners in the country and as i have experienced they can be quite helpful. So in a way, they are a kinda 'roof'.
Lived in russia (not Moscow or St Petersburg) now for just over 6 months.
I still havnt seen a single legal copy of anything apart from Night Watch (big Russian blockbuster film... totally strange plot but enjoyed it anyway).
When i buy games here (not really bought much music) they are usually on decent quality disks. Sometimes not, youve just got to learn which sellers to go to. Customer service is fantastic. You go up, ask for something. 90% of the time they do, or if they dont one of their mates will have it.. you should see them running around. Went and asked for UK version of X2: The threat. Guy ran around like crazy for 10 mins. Couldnt find it. Said come back tomorrow and the next day it was waiting for me. Most of the games/applications cost (in my city... cant say about moscow) between 60-160 roubles, which translates as roughly £1.20-3.20 or $2-5.5. This is an acceptable price for Russians. Read on one post that average salary is $240/month. I believe most people here are (officially) on less than that. Basic wage for a nurse here is around $50-$100/month. My mother-in-law as head of her department at the university is on $200/month. Of course everyone is on the take and generally supplement their incomes in various ways. The most obvious example is the road police. They will pull you for anything and everything. You can even get fined for having a dirty car or so ive heard. Anyway, they get a decent wage compared to many but the actual money they make is very good because you have a choice. Pay the official fine (and spend a day in a queue at the police headquarters - which is out on the edge of the city) or give them 50-100 roubles and go on your way. Obviously most people give the police money. Been pulled 3 times now. First was for parking in a no-parking zone (the no-parking signs are quite hard to spot sometimes... i think its deliberate). Was still new to russia and didnt understand they system and got robbed for 500 roubles. Next time was just a random passport/licence check, no fine. Next time they claimed i wasnt wearing a seatbelt. Now knowing how to behave i indignatly annouced that "... i am english... we always wear our seatbelts!!" And they let me go without a fine. The policeman still tried to get 10 roubles out of me but couldnt find a reason. Fortunatly i had washed the car recently:-)
One thing to note is that the wife and I left the UK because we couldnt afford to live there. The cost of living is stupid. One of the richest countries in the world? My left bum cheek!! One of the most expensive more like. Both me and the wife had good jobs but by the end of each month we were scratching around for money. And dont even get me started on house prices. Because my wife is Russian and didnt have extended leave to remain they wouldnt take her income into consideration for a mortgage and on my wage alone (just to reiterate... it was a good wage) i could just about afford a one bedroom flat in a crappy part of town. At least here in Russia i have a good job which keeps our heads above water and a nice flat in the center of town. Ok, my car is a Lada but if youve drove on russian roads you will know if you have a foreign car the repair bills will kill you financially.
Ok, got slightly off topic there but back to the main point. Russian people cant afford full price CDs/DVDs. If piracy in russia was somehow obliterated it wouldnt help sales of originals one bit. Who could afford to buy them?
On the point about free trade (notice how companies are all for free trade when it benefits them, and run to the courts crying when they are big fat monopolies and rely on trade restrictions keeping their profits)... oops wandering again... If the company can afford to sell CDs for example $5 in China but charge $15 in the US then its blatantly obvious that they are ripping off those closer to home. Im sure that a lot of people on/. are aware that music and games in the UK cost on average twice what they cost in the US.
Come the revoloution (what revoloution?) im sure the RIAA and MPAA will be the first against the wall....
Slashdot Mirror
Let me guess, the OP works in the IT department of a publicly funded research institute?
Used to get requests all the time from scientist who suddenly realized they needed to get their old data off 5 1/2" disks (or even older formats).
They didnt seem to understand that keeping these things in boxes next to a magnto resonator for the last 10 years didnt do much good for the data stored therein.
Still, the punch card programs still were in ok condition.... just no way of reading them.
Wang-tek? No, i really don't want to know what sort of interface cards they make!
Stop talking about stuff that you have no idea about.
Ahem! This IS slashdot. People here reserve the right to say what they like about subjects they have no idea about.
... Why would anyone engage in sexual activity before marriage is completely beyond me...
It's called "try before you buy". I used to be a big fan of this before i finally chose the model that fit me. :-)
Mod parent up... this is exactly why they have these things.
News Headlines: Ballimer caught having sex with sheep
Microsoft PR: This is against our code of conduct and Ballimer will soon be getting shafted... erm, sacked.
Perhaps going a little OT (!= Outer Thetan) here but hey this is /.
Worked for a science institute but not being a scientist i can take a laid back view and offer an independent viewpoint.
Firstly, Scientists need money. To live as well as perform their actual science. For a long time now there has been a shift in funding from individuals and organizations who are interested in promoting science to organizations that are simply looking to create patents so they can live off the back of the researcher work.
The scientists are totally caught up in this. They need to get the money, so they tend to do 'trendy' science for which they can get funding (this is a generalization of course) and the most important, their research MUST work. In other words they have a theory, and then will perform the same experiment 100 times until they get results that fit their theories (really, ive seen this happen and even had it admitted to me over a pint). Then they publish (the more well read journal the better) and everyone is happy.... until the next person comes along and tries to duplicate the earlier work or build upon it because they have a theory that us built upon the previous theory .... that is only correct 1/100 times.
They are all so desperate for money to recognition, that real science is becoming a thing of the past.
Sorry forgot one point... you have a foreign language? If so, make sure you let them know on your CV. It is a world market out there.
Have you considered applying for jobs in other countries. I can tell you from personal experience that people willing to work in different countries always get a second look from people filtering CVs (unless it is a computer doing it) and raises the curiosity and interest of reviewers. Plus once you get the job you will be viewed as a special resource... trust me on this, been there, done that, got the t-shit.
As a project manager and coordinator for a software hours certainly i dont undervalue my QA people and praise their work highly... but still, i understand your desire to become a developer.
Personally forget internships, its just slave labour. You need to get out there and sell yourself. So what if the advertisement says 3-5 years experience required? Show them you have experience with QA which means you have good experience of reviewing bad code and fixing bugs and this has helped your own development skills increase...
What have you been doing all these years with your programming skills anyway? Been letting them atrophify (how do you spell this damn word?)? I presume you have been developing things at home, making the odd contribution to small projects etc???? If so, you can claim this as some form of experience and show this.
Learn how to get interviews. This is a real skill that can only benefit you. If your resume is crap you will never get an interview. Dont go crazy on buzz words.... i see too many buzz words on a CV/Resume and i throw it in the bin. Focus on achivements and your strong points. If you can get an interview then you stand a chance. At the interview take some (good) examples of code (there should be one technical guy on the interview panel otherwise be scared). If they will allow, fire up something you have developed on a computer. Tell them you are ready to sit down to a technical exam to prove your expertise. Dont look desparate but show willing.
Hell, there are more advices than i can fit in a slashdot post but i can tell you 100% that if you dont apply just because all adverts demand x,y,z then youll never get a job.
Let me break it down further with regards to adverts:
Essential = We really want these but if a good candidate appears we will let some of these slip.
Desired = We know nobody in the world has these skills except for the last chap that is quiiting the company but we thought we would request anyway.
Other = What the hell, some extra buzz words cant hurt.
As someone who has been involved in many recruitment exercises i can tell you i'd rather take a person lacking the essential experience who is willing and hard working (and a dev with QA skills is just pure gold!) rather than someone who has experience but does not look like a team player or is too arrogant etc. Plus probably get the inexperienced guy a little cheaper as well :-0
Last point, and sorry for going on and on...
Why go for masters? You got a degree and this got you nowhere in the end... what for to get another degree to achieve what? I had the same problem when i left university. Degrees mean you can pass exams, not do good work. Start somewhere small and build up.
It can probably be shown that the average IQ of the average Slashdot reader is somewhere far in excess of 100.... however, when they post on Slashdot they suffer a temporary rapid decrease in IQ to the level of a caveman (hmmm... temporary devolution anyone?).
On topic - it was mentioned that due to the large population of earth our genes are not being mixed so well... however, i would disagree because of increased travel and mobility of populations.
For example, i am 100% british (meaning i probably have german, french, scottish, irish, viking ancestors) and my wife is 25% Korean, 25% Russian, 50% Estonian, and there is definitely some Polish in there as well. As we have two kids their genes are therefore made up from an even crazier mix from their parents diverse backgrounds.
In addition to the points raised about life expectancy in the old days being much shorter i call bullshit on the whole article.
If there is a reason for slowing or stopping of evolution it is because we no longer need to evolve. Evolution is a response to external pressures and natural selection. These days we change our environment to suit us and have been doing this for many centuries.
As for the creationists, in the words of Bill Hicks: "You ever notice how people who believe in creationism look really unevolved?".
Well, as my wife is a teacher here i understand this very well. Teachers are poorly paid, but i wouldn't use the words forced here.
The main problem here is that most teachers are now so used to accepting bribes to give pass marks and do assignments for the richer students that they are pretty much caught in a trap. They cannot get better paid work outside the academic system than they can when comparing how much they can rake in with bribes by staying where they are.
To compare:
Teacher in our city: between 2k and 8k per month depending on bonuses etc... but with bribes they can easily earn 10 times as much.
Unskilled brain dead woman working on meat counter at supermarket: 16k per month.
Accepted that teachers generally dont want to become workers in a supermarket for the rest of their life.
Hmmm, not sure you were going about this the right way. The bribes are usually around 50% of the import/export tax. As the import/export taxes are pretty high its usually a lot cheaper to play the game and pay the officials a backhander to let you through.
You cant complain about the high import/export taxes as you should check what these are before trying to setup an operation in a country (or else buy your systems in the country from the market).
On the other hand if you try and play the game and don't know what you are doing then you are going to get burnt. Guessing the person who was "negotiating" with the customs officials was not a native or not have much experience of life in Russia.
Here is an example, recently they changed the direction of a one way street in our city and not noticing this i went the wrong way down it being used to it being the other direction. Who was waiting for me at the other end but our friendly neighborhood road police officer? Now ive been in the country 5 years but still not experienced at dealing with the corruption here and if i had been alone in the car i would probably had to pay around 1000 roubles for him to let me go without an official penalty which probably would have been a lot more. Fortunately my wife was with me who is a native and basically she "negotiated" a much lower price of 150 roubles because she has a few connections who could make his life problematic if he tried to screw us.
Im not condoning the corruption in this country, just advising you either need to know how to deal with it or stay away from it and pay the official prices which are usually very high.
While our law enforcement here in Russia are underpaid and perhaps not the most up-to-date and certainly there is corruption (especially our Road Police - bloody parasites - sorry, personal grudge) some of them do try hard. And in our city only last year a group of US police came over for a month or so to study Russian law enforcement techniques. Im sure this was legal studying, not "How to accept a bribe" and "Best way to hide the prisoners bruises". And as for all the FSB bashing.... take a close look at some of the history of groups like the CIA and FBI in the US and Mossad and MI5 in the UK... they arent exactly white as angels... lots of bad things done in the name of national security.
Thats it, im going to have bad dreams for weeks now.
I am i pirate. I buy pirated games, copy them, download them, etc. Why? Reason 1: Because i cannot get the games in my language. I live in Russia (the land of the free) and my Russian is simply not good enough to buy games in this language. Very occasionally a publisher will release a multilingual version of the game over here but this is rare, and when i see such, and im interested in the game, i may buy it. Otherwise, i have no choice, i must buy the pirated version from some guys who sell on the street or get from other sources.... and they naturally sell these with English because they are converted from the English into Russian so contain both languages. Reason 2: I have children. Small ones. With sticky fingers. Who like to play with CD drawers and bite disks, and stand on disks, and throw disks into the toilet. Given this, i have to keep my disks in a safe place. When the disk is in the drive (because the game publisher demands i do this to play), and im happily playing, i may get distracted by the wife, or one of the kids needs something, and i leave the computer. You can guarantee within 1 second the other kid will have opened the CD drawer and started to play frisbee with the disk. Conclusion: I am a pirate because i have to be. On those rare occasions i can buy a game in english that i want, i still have to go and d/l a No-CD crack which criminalizes me again. Funnily enough, when i lived in the UK and didnt have kids, most of my games were originals. Sometimes i would buy the original after playing the pirated version, because i do believe in supporting those who create these games. PS: I know i can order over the internet games but not only would i incur quite large postage costs, but also to do this i would need a credit card, and i really dont like having these tools of Satan about my person.
Oh dear.... that sounds like the US agenda, not to mention the book of the same name. Still, i am in agreement. We dont know how long this little blue ball we live on will be around... cosmic accidents do happen. Better if we spread as far as possible regardless of the cost.
Didnt you hear? MS are not a monopoly. Look... there is Apple, and there is RedHat, and Ubuntu, etc. MS use this approach every time someone says they are a monopoly. As i recall Ms even invested in Apple when it was going through bad times to ensure they had a competitor to point to. However, good point, im sure there must be something in the law about this sort of tactic. Would be great if everyone did start demanding XP at $3 a license. It would probably push their sales figures through the roof!
My suggestion would be to let all the other users in the dorm who is the cause of the problem and explain to them that the reason they cant download their pr0n is because of this user. Sit back and wait for the screams to die down. Then go and have a word with the offending user (if they are still alive).
Ok, im not a geologist or any other sort of -ist but....
If i understand correctly (and maybe im talking crap) geothermal energy is created by the difference in temparature between point A and point B. So, i know where there is lots of heat relative to the surface temperatue of the planet.... deep underground. The closer to the core of the earth the hotter it gets. I dont know how deep you have to go to get a significant rise but maybe we should be investigating drilling techniques to get down to that lovely warm core (erm, without creating a mini-volcano of course).
Another idea (again no idea if it will work) is one i came across in a sci-fi book called Siva by Walt and Leight Richmond (i think). It suggests using the electrical potential difference between the planet surface and the ionisphere. The theory being if you float a baloon up to the ionosphere with a wire trailing all the way back to the ground the electricity would have a path to flow down and you could tap it. Although this has 2 possible problems:
1) A short circuit between the ionosphere and the earth (think fuses - kaboom)
2) What happens when (if?) the ionosphere runs out of charge.... maybe this would be worse than global warming.
Yeah, my wife explained the term when i got home. She laughed quite a bit and said its worth a try. My experience is the FSB do like to keep tabs on foreigners in the country and as i have experienced they can be quite helpful. So in a way, they are a kinda 'roof'.
Havnt heard the phrase "calling my roof". Please, enlighten me.
Lived in russia (not Moscow or St Petersburg) now for just over 6 months.
:-)
/. are aware that music and games in the UK cost on average twice what they cost in the US.
I still havnt seen a single legal copy of anything apart from Night Watch (big Russian blockbuster film... totally strange plot but enjoyed it anyway).
When i buy games here (not really bought much music) they are usually on decent quality disks. Sometimes not, youve just got to learn which sellers to go to. Customer service is fantastic. You go up, ask for something. 90% of the time they do, or if they dont one of their mates will have it.. you should see them running around. Went and asked for UK version of X2: The threat. Guy ran around like crazy for 10 mins. Couldnt find it. Said come back tomorrow and the next day it was waiting for me. Most of the games/applications cost (in my city... cant say about moscow) between 60-160 roubles, which translates as roughly £1.20-3.20 or $2-5.5. This is an acceptable price for Russians. Read on one post that average salary is $240/month. I believe most people here are (officially) on less than that. Basic wage for a nurse here is around $50-$100/month. My mother-in-law as head of her department at the university is on $200/month. Of course everyone is on the take and generally supplement their incomes in various ways. The most obvious example is the road police. They will pull you for anything and everything. You can even get fined for having a dirty car or so ive heard. Anyway, they get a decent wage compared to many but the actual money they make is very good because you have a choice. Pay the official fine (and spend a day in a queue at the police headquarters - which is out on the edge of the city) or give them 50-100 roubles and go on your way. Obviously most people give the police money. Been pulled 3 times now. First was for parking in a no-parking zone (the no-parking signs are quite hard to spot sometimes... i think its deliberate). Was still new to russia and didnt understand they system and got robbed for 500 roubles. Next time was just a random passport/licence check, no fine. Next time they claimed i wasnt wearing a seatbelt. Now knowing how to behave i indignatly annouced that "... i am english... we always wear our seatbelts!!" And they let me go without a fine. The policeman still tried to get 10 roubles out of me but couldnt find a reason. Fortunatly i had washed the car recently
One thing to note is that the wife and I left the UK because we couldnt afford to live there. The cost of living is stupid. One of the richest countries in the world? My left bum cheek!! One of the most expensive more like. Both me and the wife had good jobs but by the end of each month we were scratching around for money. And dont even get me started on house prices. Because my wife is Russian and didnt have extended leave to remain they wouldnt take her income into consideration for a mortgage and on my wage alone (just to reiterate... it was a good wage) i could just about afford a one bedroom flat in a crappy part of town. At least here in Russia i have a good job which keeps our heads above water and a nice flat in the center of town. Ok, my car is a Lada but if youve drove on russian roads you will know if you have a foreign car the repair bills will kill you financially.
Ok, got slightly off topic there but back to the main point. Russian people cant afford full price CDs/DVDs. If piracy in russia was somehow obliterated it wouldnt help sales of originals one bit. Who could afford to buy them?
On the point about free trade (notice how companies are all for free trade when it benefits them, and run to the courts crying when they are big fat monopolies and rely on trade restrictions keeping their profits)... oops wandering again... If the company can afford to sell CDs for example $5 in China but charge $15 in the US then its blatantly obvious that they are ripping off those closer to home. Im sure that a lot of people on
Come the revoloution (what revoloution?) im sure the RIAA and MPAA will be the first against the wall....