kutakbash's comments

kutakbash | 12 years ago | on: About Ukraine

>Lots of them were banished from the island by Russian Empire.

You either use this as a very politically loaded term for Stalinist Soviet Union (which is a problem with your post on its own right), or you are wrong.

>- But russians usually don't remember Dagestan(Russia) or the Chechen Republic(Russia) where the number of russians is less than 5%. Or Belgium with german speaking people .

Russia and Belgium, unlike Ukraine, aren't nation states. Russia is a multi-ethnic country, which is stated in its constitution.

> Ukrainian regions were a part of the Russian Empire for quite a long time. Why would they not join Russia?

Why should they?

>- Crimea is an autonomy, but even now russians stimulated by pro-Russia politicians say that they want Ukraine to be a federation. Do they know what is the difference between autonomy and federation?

So some Russians say one thing, other Russians say different things, so what? I tell you that there is a great deal of difference between unitary state with some autonomies and federation (which is obvious really, think Spain and USA).

>If you look at the Russian Imperial Census of 1897 you will see that people living in the eastern part of modern Ukraine were 80-90% ukrainian speaking. And now if you go to the country area of eastern regions you will see lots of ukrainian speaking people.

How is the census of 1897 related? You wouldn't say parts of Far East and Siberia, which were predominantly Ukrainian-speaking then should be parts of Ukraine now?

>There were 3 man-made famine in Ukrainian SSR conducted by Soviet regime and lots of repressions killed more ukrainians than ukrainians died during the 2 World War.

Oh, now 3 man-made famines specifically designed to destroy Ukrainian nation, great. What do you think of people of Lower Volga, North Caucasus and Siberia who perished of famine of 1932-1933? I guess you prefer not to notice their existence because they don't serve your political goals of the day.

>And now guess what Stalin does? He invites russians to the industrial western part of Ukraine. This region required a work force at that time.

Yeah, I guess it's also Stalin (a Georgian btw) who put all the iron ore and coal there, just to extinguish all the Ukrainians so when Ukraine becomes independent there are less Ukrainian-speaking people there? What a prophet, wasn't he? Or should he just ignore industrial potential of Eastern Ukraine whatsoever?

This is a really telling example of Russia-directed scare-mongering, I feel uneasy about it, as a Russian.

kutakbash | 12 years ago | on: About Ukraine

>countries crying for help

That's a huge stretch. The 'cry for help' isn't unanimous by very far.

kutakbash | 12 years ago | on: About Ukraine

>starts to eat more money for social subsidies than it produces

>Crimea has been always unprofitable even with its lucrative tourism industry

Not a marker of anything, there are only a few oblasts in Ukraine that are profitable (taxes - government spending), until very recently none of them were in the Western part of the country. This may be not the best way to judge contribution of different parts of the country into the economy. If you give a look at exports structure (http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/13/Ukraine_E...), you can clearly see that it is dominated by products of exclusively Eastern industries.

kutakbash | 12 years ago | on: About Ukraine

Do you guys consider federalisation as an option? Ukraine seems like a sufficiently big and diverse country for that. It sure as hell won't resolve the problem of which trade block to join though.

kutakbash | 12 years ago | on: Why Russians Are Not Smiling (2011)

Probably no unrelated people at all were executed or imprisoned in 1917 or 1905. Even for the most frantic career revolutionaries it wasn't uncommon to flee from the deportation and live illegally in Russia or to emigrate.

I don't think what you are describing is in any way specific to Russian Revolution and Civil War. If reasoning like that is justified, you can 'prove' the same thing about any society that lived through a social calamity.

kutakbash | 12 years ago | on: Why Russians Are Not Smiling (2011)

That's so very simplistic though. You by no means kept your head low in 1905, and 1917 since those were years of revolutions, the later two pretty successful, which brought freedoms unmatched in that time. In what other army was an order compared to Order #1 of 1917 in act? What other nation decriminalized homosexuality in 1917? There were select few to allow women to vote as early as 1917 and none at all to admit women to general workforce as equals. In what other nation had organs directly elected by workers and soldiers (eg peasants) ruled the country at least for one day? Of course it was all very short-lived (not without involvement of armies of certain 'freedom loving' nations), but this one event so utterly debunks this theory of 'keeping your head low'. And even then, 'in 1800's and earlier' were very different times, when people 'kept their head low' pretty much anywhere in the world.

kutakbash | 12 years ago | on: Why Russians Are Not Smiling (2011)

I am talking about people who immigrated as adults. The way he talks about his experience in Russia cues that he belongs to that group. His post may be too harsh, but it is certainly not in the same league with truly ignorant knee-jerk comments about gulag.

kutakbash | 12 years ago | on: Why Russians Are Not Smiling (2011)

>"serious people are the rulers, because if you do stupid crazy things you are dead" over thousands of years that forge a culture.

This is the pinnacle of all the BS political mythology in this thread. Stalin and his best friend Rasputin would so totally impale you for smiling.

kutakbash | 12 years ago | on: Why Russians Are Not Smiling (2011)

That's pretty interesting and bears some ramifications. Like the fact that Americans might have been not a smiling bunch before dentistry became widely accessible (this might have happened not too long ago). Or that before advent of cariogenic foodstuffs (eg in Middle Ages and antiquity) people tended to smile more. I wonder if it is any true.

kutakbash | 12 years ago | on: Why Russians Are Not Smiling (2011)

You mean people in America don't feel this way about street preachers? Even the kind that walks around with a sign and shouts REPENT! and all?

> I could give a $100 bill to a cashier at the grocery store without getting in trouble.

You mean you literally handed her a 100 dollar bill? That's not her fault, you should exchange your money. Imagine someone trying to pay with hrivnas in 7-11.

kutakbash | 12 years ago | on: Why Russians Are Not Smiling (2011)

So somehow before 1930s people trusted one another better? I believe it seriously lacks evidence. What about people in Western Europe who don't smile all that much really?

Is this some knee-jerk reaction or something? Russia-gulag and all? For a foreigner it is permissible, not so much for a Russian. I think we need to overgrow this if nice things are to be had.

kutakbash | 12 years ago | on: How to Tango with Django: A Python Django Tutorial

>they're more utilities for managing multiple framework instances. Still, you're likely to find tutorials that use them as a de facto standard, which only adds to noob confusion.

That sounds more like a problem of php. Tools like composer should be more widespread and when they are switching to virtualenv probably isn't going to be so much of a hassle.

kutakbash | 12 years ago | on: Poll: Where are you currently living?

I'd say this whole regional distinctions thing is utterly mythologized and politically motivated. It's more like branding than anything tangible. No one wants to be associated with the less well off parts of the world and some want to add flair of objectivity to their purely political claims. Like current Russian and Kazakhstani govts pushing all things 'Euroasian', or German strategists inventing Mitteleuropa back then.

kutakbash | 12 years ago | on: On Hacking

I guess typical solution is to come up with a new word with desired meaning. This way 'programmers' became 'developers' and 'system administrators' are becoming 'dev ops'.

kutakbash | 12 years ago | on: Poll: Where are you currently living?

>Southern North America (eg. Mexico)

>Northern part of South America

>Souther part of South America

Looks needlessly fragmented and imprecise. What is 'Southern part of South America'? Cono Sur? Then Brazilians from Minas Gerais and Porto Alegre are in different groups? Was that the intention? Why 'Southern North America' and not Central America? Where does Caribbean belong? Middle Asia (say, Kazakhstan)? Is Spain Western Europe or Southern Europe? Is Czech Republic Eastern Europe or Western Europe (since you don't offer 'Central Europe' as an option and some Czechs may be unhappy with identifying as Eastern Europeans)? Is Estonia in Eastern Europe? It damn well is in Eastern Europe, but some Estonians identify Estonia as Scandinavian.

Next time you guys should use some well established scheme such as this one http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Nations_geoscheme and just link to it in the post so no one is confused.

kutakbash | 12 years ago | on: The Russia Left Behind

>Почему? Все просто: ты зарабатываешь в Москве 50 тысяч рублей и снимаешь квартиру за 30. Так зачем там жить, когда в родном городе ты сможешь зарабатывать столько же, только жизнь будет спокойнее?

Сразу видно москвича. Проблема с регионами не в том, что там доходы ниже (хотя они объективно ниже), а в том, что в регионах нету множества работ. Это важно, если ты не программер / дизайнер на удаленке и не водитель троллейбуса. Не в любом российском милионнике можно найти софтверную контору, которая занимается чем-то кроме аутсорса. В российских стотысячниках в этой области нет вообще ничего, кроме сопровождения одинесок и сборки визиток на джумле.

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