face

I think it's relevant to point out that this is not a news article written by a reporter; it is an opinion piece written by someone who has a very specific viewpoint.

This is not ad hominem, I am not claiming anything about the correctness of his claims. However, I think it is important to distinguish this from the other numerous WSJ pieces on the situation of nuclear plants in Japan right now.

Perhaps you are thinking of a "Relational Database"?

Why this is being downmodded is beyond me.

Edit: seriously, the parent's explanation is reasonable, well stated and relevant to the discussion.

And are those all of the things that were built, created in the USSR at the time? To the extent that it allows you to claim that "The Soviet Union was quite literally built on slave labor?" Were they even a fraction of a percent?

You seem to be pointing out that the GULAGs existed and are providing sources for this fact. I'm not really disputing the existence of the labor camps. Let me ask you this, do you know anyone who lived in the USSR, who worked in the USSR and who was not a convict in a labor camp? I know lots. Are you saying that they do not count?

If it's the famine in Ukraine [1] that you are talking about, absolutely. But, are you saying that it was done as part of industrialization?

My great grandfather was one of the peasants you describe (his land was taken away). Although the state use of land was inefficient, it was not the continual famine that you imply. Food shortages occurred, but, they occurred under the Tsars as well. The industrialization that occurred pre and post WWII in the USSR seems pretty undeniable though.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holodomor

Heh, I've heard that argument before, my family and everyone I knew was "elite" somehow. No, we were certainly not. Or are you saying my problem is being Jewish?

Sergei Brin, who you mention, was his family also shot? If you applied for the paperwork properly you were allowed to leave.

Saying something very contrary to the establishment always had consequences (and still has, even in the US). Under Stalin, the consequences were lethal. At other times, plenty of people disagreed with the establishment and were just fine. My problem with your original statement was that it was very much a blanket statement. It applied to some parts of USSR's history and less to others.

In USSR, I recall propaganda that said that everyone in the US was racist and that blacks were uniformly mistreated. Of course, the reality is that there was slavery, there was the civil rights movement and that now things are different. Broad statements like that smack of propaganda.

So, it's fine to jail millions, as long as they're people who sell or smoke pot and not people who you consider important?

Wikipedia says the Great Purges had over a million and a half victims, with close to seven hundred thousand shot.

This was in the 1930s under Stalin. USSR has more history than that; when I lived there, no one I knew was shot, no one was exiled; nor was anyone afraid of being shot or exiled (I can tell you what they were afraid of, though). My great grandmother's generation certainly remembered those times though.

Your statement plays on the perception that I have seen in the US that the USSR was this terrible place and all of its citizens hated it. I don't know if you are from the US, so, I will not make any assumptions. I can tell you that the propaganda machine here in the US is at least as good as it was in the USSR.

In the 80s, I went on field trips to learn how to plant vegetables. This was hardly slave labor.

In the 90s in the US, I had to spend 40 hours "campaigning" for candidates, if I wanted to graduate highschool. I wouldn't really call that slave labor, but, I certainly learned a lot more by planting sprouts.

The US jails far more people today than the USSR ever managed to. It seems to be working out okay for us.

Totalitarian societies have existed for thousands of years in Europe. Socialism seems to be pretty popular in the US (Medicare, SS) and seems to be working out okay in EU.

Can you back your claims up? In particular, say, the Trans-Siberian railroad? Its construction began in 1891, two decades before the formation of the USSR [1].

While certainly prisoners were used in its construction, saying that it was "built with slave labor" is somewhat disingenuous. Perhaps you are saying that parts of it were built using prisoners, who were not paid for their services? If so, that is certainly the case.

1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trans-Siberian_Railway#Construc...

Are these reports from first hand experience or can you site your sources?

In particular, I'm curious how you'll back up the "but a notable part of it was due to decreasing the number of people as well," considering USSR's population grew during the period you are describing [1].

1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_the_Soviet_Unio...

Amazing that the propaganda campaign has been so successful that people make idiotic statements like that.

This sort of propaganda bullshit is popular in the US. That's like saying the US was built on slave and prison labor.

Sure, they contributed, but, at what scale?

The Soviet Union shot you and your family if you tried to leave? Huh, that didn't happen to me or my family. Or any other person I know. I guess it's popular to spout bullshit like that though.

I'm glad that there are at least some people on HN who still understand the type of company Microsoft really is.

Kind of like how I cannot watch netflix on my linux machine, despite mono and moonlight?

So does everyone. Now they'll use less of it.

I've never had those problems that you mention with Chrome or Firefox. On the other hand, I've had a lot of fun cleaning up Vundo and other malware due to the use of IE.

They remain on top due to anti-competitive and monopolistic business practices (for which they were convicted of), as well as other business tactics such numerous Linux/FOSS FUD, patent trolling, etc. Certainly not due to the quality of their products (which I have the misfortune of having to use a lot of). One hopes that in the end, open and superior products will prevail.

I have met some of their engineers. There is a lot of bureaucracy and politics. There is innovation (microsoft research is great), but, considering their resources, it is not really all that impressive. I've met some sharp developers, but, also a lot of very mediocre software engineers that are cogs in a giant machine.

I agree with the rest of your point entirely.

An Xbox 360 has a 3.2GHz Xenon (three cores) and 512Mbs of ram [1]. Saying that it has the power of a supercomputer is a bit of a stretch (by about three orders of magnitude, #500 on the top500 list has five thousand cores [2]).

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xbox_360

[2] http://www.top500.org

* edit: formatting

Not to mention that usually the second part is left out, where he actually warns people that Google might be legally obligated to provide some information to the authorities.

This is just a few quotations taken out of context. It seems that it's been particularly popular to do this with Schmidt lately; I wonder why that is.

I do not think he is arguing against property rights. I think that forms of anarchy allow for property rights and other individual liberties.

The difference is, Azure locks you into a closed platform.