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[smjjames]

*arrives, meddles randomly, and leaves just as abruptly*

[mainiac]

And with a single off-hand comment, an American Internet poster started a process that would lead to the de-unification of Germany by 2017.

I always suspected I'd be most famous for making insensitive comments.

[Sergarr]

Speaking about "outputs lower then market value of inputs"

Russia will soon mass-produce its own 10kg heavy, 4*800mhz, 1 hour battery, $3000(yes, three thousand dollars) worth laptop.  Cool, isn't it?

It's unimaginably cool. People were very recently legitimately saying that Russia would be unable to produce it's own computers at all.

This sounds remarkably like Communist economics. The Trabi was an outdated piece of shit, but it was YOUR piece of crap.

The whole point of globalization is to figure out what you have a competitive comparative advantage in and do that thing. Computer manufacturing is not Russia's competitive advantage. (computer hacking, on the other hand...)

Our own computers have the (potential, if they're assembled from home-made parts) advantage of 100% certainly not having foreign hardware spy-thingies (like programs or backdoors or whatnot) inserted into them. I'd imagine that could be useful in some applications (like military electronical stuff), even if it costs quite a lot more than normal computers.

[mainiac]

My own computers have the advantage of 100% certainty of not having foreign spy-thingies in them because I know what my computer components and software are...

[MarcAFK]

Military hardware is generally assembled by a homegrown company, usually overpriced, underpowered, several generations obsolete (due to the weapons system it's used in being from the 70's or whatever) and should be thoroughly understood by those handling the components.
Raytheon might use Korean computer chips, but you can bet that they thoroughly understand the capabilities it has, they wouldn't use anything that could suddenly take in instructions through Bluetooth or whatever to redirect or disable the missile.
However they would never use chinese components, why? Not because of spying but for much simpler reasons, during a war you don't want your supplier to cut you off.

[Frumple]

Our own computers have the (potential, if they're assembled from home-made parts) advantage of 100% certainly not having foreign hardware spy-thingies (like programs or backdoors or whatnot) inserted into them.

Can see how that'd be a concern for military or whatev', but for civilian machines... shouldn't you guys be more worried about domestic hardware tampering?

From what I understand, that's more likely to be a thing just in general. Foreign powers are usually only really interested in spying on a few specific targets -- do sometimes try a sort of wide-net thing, but logistics wise it's pretty iffy for 'em -- but domestic ones are a lot more likely to be interested in and capable of spying on people in general. And considering the background of who's at the head over there...

[Sergarr]

Our own computers have the (potential, if they're assembled from home-made parts) advantage of 100% certainly not having foreign hardware spy-thingies (like programs or backdoors or whatnot) inserted into them.

Can see how that'd be a concern for military or whatev', but for civilian machines... shouldn't you guys be more worried about domestic hardware tampering?

From what I understand, that's more likely to be a thing just in general. Foreign powers are usually only really interested in spying on a few specific targets -- do sometimes try a sort of wide-net thing, but logistics wise it's pretty iffy for 'em -- but domestic ones are a lot more likely to be interested in and capable of spying on people in general. And considering the background of who's at the head over there...

I don't think our government is interested in spying after people at all. There's just no incentive to do so, when all people who are worth being spied upon already tell all their secrets on openly viewed social networks.

Why would you even want to spy after people in general?

[Ukrainian Ranger]

Our own computers have the (potential, if they're assembled from home-made parts) advantage of 100% certainly not having foreign hardware spy-thingies (like programs or backdoors or whatnot) inserted into them. I'd imagine that could be useful in some applications (like military electronical stuff), even if it costs quite a lot more than normal computers.

Heh. What a nice explanation to waste budget money.

I am rather sure that those laptops and other "Elbrus" CPU based computers will find their way into Russian schools, universities, offices of state owned companies...

Import substitution\keeping taxpayer money in the country and more stuff like this. (Real motivation is giving budget money to yet another Putin's friend)

[Sheb]

Yeah, that seems to be the business plans: rely on government mandate to force a vastly inferior product on institutional actors.

Although before we mock them too much, it's worth remembering that industrialization through protection sometime do work (Toyota took 20 years to become a good automaker for exemple). I really recommend Joe Studewell's "How Asia Works" for more on this. But I don't see this working here, for some reasons.

[MarcAFK]

I recommend reading that book about Toyota I haven't, can't remember it's name but basicly it details the drastic change of mindset that turned the company around and vastly increased production in a fairly short time.
See also http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toyota_Production_System

[Helgoland]

Yeah, that seems to be the business plans: rely on government mandate to force a vastly inferior product on institutional actors.

Although before we mock them too much, it's worth remembering that industrialization through protection sometime do work (Toyota took 20 years to become a good automaker for exemple). I really recommend Joe Studewell's "How Asia Works" for more on this. But I don't see this working here, for some reasons.

One of the books you recommended to me, "Bad Samaritans"*, has a couple examples as well - as is to be expected from a book about developing countries, I guess.
In general you need a leadership that is truly interested in developing a country's independent industries for these measures to work, though, and I guess that's where this plan will fail.



*Not a good book, really - the style consists mainly of redundancies, there were a couple intellectual dishonesties even I could spot, there's a strong 'us vs them' mentality in the background at all times... But it raises some very interesting points, mainly about how and by which priorities markets find optimal solutions.



EDIT: HYPEHYPEHYPEHYPEHYPE
'Merkel pushes for radical reform of the Euro. A German-French secret plan ZEIT has obtained access to includes a closer coordination of economic policies. Changes to the Parliament are also included.'
Link in German.

[Sheb]

While I agree the style wasn't great, I'm curious what those intellectual dishonesties you speak of were.

[Helgoland]

The one thing I remember was that the economic downturn in Mexico was cited to be a consequence of failed development policies. There was no mention at all of the country effectively being in a state of civil war.

There were a couple things like that: Nothing big, and nothing that took away from the message, but it still gave the impression that the author very much had an agenda.

[Sergarr]

http://www.welt.de/politik/ausland/article141707165/Erdogan-schwaermt-von-der-Eroberung-Jerusalems.html

Apparently Erdogan wants to conquer Jerusalem.

[LordSlowpoke]

ankara is going to get nuked next month, it seems

rip ankara

i'll be salty if they touch istanbul though