Thursday, November 23, 2006

Software bugs lead to deaths from alcohol poisoning.

We all know that software bugs are annoying and sometimes dangerous. When you are in Russia, software bugs can harm your health or cause your death.

This year is the worst of almost 20 years for Russian alcoholics. Our government has decided to put in some order to the alcohol market, centralize and computerize it. The idea was to develop a computer database to store all the operations performed between players on the alcohol market. It’s aim is to stop cheap illegal alcohol products circulating here. What we get when our government tries to make something ordered? Right. Even more disorder.

The computer database was full of bugs. Actually, legal alcohol manufactures, importers and intermediaries were unable to operate. The database was down almost all the time during summer. Unfortunately by that time the law prohibiting alcohol operations that are not reflected in this database was already in action. There was almost no alcohol at shops. It was a perfect situation for criminal alcohol market to grow. And it did.

What is the criminal alcohol like? It is produced from spirit that is not intended to be used by humans as a drink. It’s a poison. Today we almost have an epidemic of alcohol poisoning. Large amount of the poisoned people are pensioners. I saw an interview with one woman suffering from toxic hepatitis caused by illegal alcohol. Correspondent asked her «Did you know that this is dangerous alcohol?» - «Yes» - «Why did you drink it?» - «It’s cheap».

What can I say. Russian people still combine extreme genius with extreme stupidity.

2 comments:

Tim Newman said...

I noticed the alcohol shortage in Russia when I was there in the summer. I thought it was caused by a shortage of the new-style duty labels. Firstly the cafes in St. Petersburg ran out of wine, so everyone drank beer. Then that ran out, so everyone drank vodka. This was in the same month that the St. Petersburg authorities launched an effort to get people to cut down on drinking vodka by banning its sale from shops after 10pm. Joined up government, eh?

Kyle and Svet Keeton said...

Very sad that people need to drink so bad they do not care if they die, This is a problem in America also. Lots of bootlegged liquor as we call it.

Sad but true

Kyle