moscow after the elections

fraud during russian elections 2011

This night votes on election in "Russian Parliament" ("Duma") are counted. There is one of many interesting articles which was written by journalist who participated in fraud. It was almost uncovered advertisement with proposal to vote several times in several districts. This is a short quotation from the article:
 "Each of as have to vote on seven districts. Thus, on the 4th of December only in Horoshevo-Mnevnoki district for United Russia was unduly inserted 3080 votes: (40 people x 11 votes x 7 districts)"

http://www.lenta.ru/articles/2011/12/04/carousel/

Linux in school (Russian way)

 Russia needs National Operating System! How long has Russian government been doing buzz around it? For two, thee years? New names appeared to fight for a tender for "National" OS. Even french company Mandriva is now making Russian Linux.
  Recently my old teacher asked me to visit school because starting January this year Linux comes to school. Russian Alt Linux is unusable nightmare so two classes will be equipped with Ubuntu 11.04. (Can't wait to build centralized control with cfengine or something). Notice there is no ready educational programs and no educational software, no photoshop. Only pascal, openoffice and web. All this is just for the change itself.
 But this is not the end of a story. Interactive smart boards (http://shittech.com) was also supplied to the school. You know, this is a white board with a projector and cameras and it's like interactive screen. A part of them, to be more precise model v280 doesn't work under Ubuntu 10.04 LTS, despite the fact smart tech claims to support it.
Here are the IDs of build in cameras:

Bus 001 Device 011: ID 0b8c:b000 SMART Technologies Inc.
Bus 001 Device 010: ID 0b8c:b000 SMART Technologies Inc.
Bus 001 Device 009: ID 0b8c:000e SMART Technologies Inc.
Bus 001 Device 008: ID 05e3:0608 Genesys Logic, Inc. USB-2.0 4-Port HUB

Even more funny the open source camera app Cheese successfully get the picture from them!
Smart tech control center stayed blind. No, it found the devices, but was unable to communicate with them. A SMART tech software deb package looks shitty from perspective of experienced Linux user. All the binaries are like this  .HardwareTroubleShooter_elf

Needless to say there is no reseller support of this Sh*t in Russia and official support washes it's hand out of it. How sweet! Then again nobody is responsible and no sign of

The last but not the least. A big fat warning in Russian for others who will be googling for a solution.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

SMART board v280 не завелась под Ubuntu 10.04 LTS, 2.6.32-25-generic с использованием Notebook software v 10.2 sp2
! Тех. поддержка поддержку не оказывает, даже англоязычная на info@smarttech.com. На support@smarttech.com они вобще мой тикет "потеряли", хотя пришло автоматическое подтверждение! Другие модели досок могут работать, но прекомпелированные модули ядер есть только для Ubuntu 10.04 и Suse 11.3. Короче, будете связываться, связывайтесь на свой страх и риск.

why to hate summer in Russia

Summer has just started, but cold water has been already cut off for maintenance.
 - So what? - one of my fellow-country man would ask. - They do it every summer and this is just a beginning.
 - Year, you are right. But why those dicks glued warning after they did it? Humidity is like in Japan.
 - Because it's Russia. Say you are lucky because it's only for tree days.
 - Right... One thing to love winter in Siberia for is that nobody digs anything.

old news: moscow government promotes Apple in schools

 As a result of some tenders moscow school will be (or already are?) supplied with ~7000 MacBook Desktops and 200 Mac mini as servers with resulting cost 400 millions rubles. I'm not sure if is this a laughing or a crying matter for several reasons. Firsly, consider a permanent buzz about so called "National Platform" based on Linux. Secondly, the very fact of this tender is yet another reason to think about wide spread corruption. And third thing... just look at this photo and you will get whom our government expects to see on election in recent years...

http://habrahabr.ru/blogs/it-infrastructure/110123/
http://newsit.es/moscow-schools-follow-google-and-promote-usage-of-apple/