Пока "физики" строили искусственный интеллект, а "лирики" спорили о том, сможет ли он оценить пение жаворонка, юристы сделали свое дело. В США на компьютер уже можно законно возложить ответственность, а в России - свалить на него свою безответственность.

State Duma deputy Viktor Alksnis has followed the trend and opened an account on LiveJournal.com. One of the well known Russian LJ-users Timofei Shevyakov ('tarlith' on LJ) posted a comment to deputy's blog swearing him with unprintable words. Alksnis reminded him about the legal responsibility for disrespect to a government representative but the flame grew even more obscene. Then Viktor Alksins continued posting disclaimers and publicly appealing to establish the law that would "protect authorities from being insulted on the Web". After all his LiveJournal account was hacked and later suspended. Now he posts about his campaign against Timofei Shevyakov on v-alksnis2.livejournal.com. He has also addressed Russia's General Prosecutor to sew his legal and political opponent (such direct queryis deputies' and some other government officials exclusive right). This case also attracts much attention considering average Russian web user anonymity. Although it has been used so far as a shield by those who go online for illegal abusive actions, the recent lawsuits shows government's growing interest to control the Internet sphere in Russia.

Speaking to press at the opening of the Financial Supermarket expo last week, a represantative of the Federal Antimonopoly Service (FAS) claimed most online ads of financial products to be illegal. "They just can't put all the details of the offer into a banner or text ad, as required by the Federal Law On Advertising, she explained. Further on Mar,6 FAS officials said they plan to fully examine banks' advertising on the web on how it meets legal requirements. As we reported earlier, last year Russian financial business spent $11,3 mln on online advertising with 70% of this money spent by twenty banks.

New technopark for software developers will be built by 2012 in Moscow suburb. Project planning starts this year. Technopark will occupy 2,150,000 m² near Glazgovo village and will provide jobs for 10,000 professionals. The budget on technopark's construction reaches 15,8 bln rubles. One fifth of that money provided by Russia's government, the rest is commercial investment. As we reported, last year the government also announced that by 2010 technoparks would appear near Moscow, St.Petersbourg, Tumen, Nizhniy Novgorod, Kaluga, Novosibirsk and in Tatarstan. Some of those projects have been already launched, like technopark in Petergoff (St.Petersbourg region). Foreign investors such as Boeing are very interested in this project.

Comstar-United TeleSystems announced the commercial launch of Wi-Fi Internet in the Moscow subway. At present Comstar-UTS provides Wi-Fi services in the three heavily trafficked underground stations – “Okhotny’ Ryad”, “Teatral’naya” and “Ploschad’ Revolyutsii”. There are twenty one hot-spots covering an area of two square kilometers, which includes waiting halls, passages, escalators and entrance halls. Tunnels in between stations are not yet covered by this network. At this stage the network capacity allows the simultaneous access of 48 users at a speed of 128 Kbit/s. According to Comnews.ru, Comstar's underground Wi-Fi network at the moment includes 130 hot-spots. Earlier the provider announced it would have the subway network launched by the end of 2006 with 22 hot-spots allowing simultaneous access of 400 users. Further the company plans to cover all interchange stations in the Moscow metro and launch similar services in St. Petersburg, where the Wi-Fi network is already undergoing tests at two stations.

First Vice Prime Minister of Russia Dmitry Medvedev has shown much involvement answering the questions of web users during his online press-conference. To answer a funny question about 'hypertextual fidonet' the minister has registered himself in Fidonet and gave a detailed comment. He liked Fidonet for it is less commercialised than Internet. He also admitted that the lack of hyperlinks in their usual form is quite a problem, so the 'hypertextual fidonet' would be an important step.

Also he flatters web users speaking padonki slang. Actually he got into it last year during president Vladimir Putin's online conference. Foreign journalists mixed up his name with a popular questions about 'medved' (padonki's word for 'bear' and a famous meme). At his own conference Medvedev told the story of another meme, "Learn Albanian!" ('albanian' corresponds to Russian language in general or the padonki slang in particular), to answer the provocative question about whether Albanian will be studied at Russian schools.

First vice prime minister said nothing about how soon the brodband Internet would be available somewhere in Russia except Moscow and St.Peterbourg. Although he emphasized that the national project 'Internet at school' is not supposed to use dial-up anyhow. Dmitry Medvedev also spoke about proprietary software problem saying it's necessary to switch to open source both to fight piracy and to correspond to European trends.