Studying Russian language and culture

I have an impression on the personal level sincere and acute Russophobia (not to be mixed with Russophobia as a official line ) can be a compensation mechanism (classic Adorno). I am not talking here about ideological prostitution typical for Western MSM journalists. In this sense it is not that different from other national bigotry and the fact the USA and, especially, Great Britain MSM serves as an Incubator of hatred toward Russia tells something very important about the US/GB government.

But there are also "sincere" Russophobes. I suspect the latter have a personality of sectants/fanatics in a very deep sense of this word. Or like Eric Hoffer called them "True Believers" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_True_Believer).

For though ours is a godless age, it is the very opposite of irreligious. The true believer is everywhere on the march, and both by converting and antagonizing he is shaping the world in his own image. And whether we are to line up with him or against him, it is well that we should know all we can concerning his nature and potentialities.

Most Russophobes are "Russophobes for hire" who profiting personally from Russophobia nonsense they spew. In a way sincere Russophob's are almost extinct minority (but still can be found among Ukrainian nationalists ;-).  At the same time there a legion of "Russophobes for money".  While most often they simply reflect an editorial policy of particular MSM unit, an interesting thing is that often those people who are far from the sharpest tools from the box. As a result they are pushed in a niche that is still available and gives them the ability to earn living, albeit in   such a disgusting way. That also include prominent members of Russian fifth column (Beresovski and Belkovski are good examples here). In a way we can view it as a survival tactic of people with mediocre talent in conditions of high competition. Similar displacement into obscure niches can be observed for mediocre people in other professions.

As Pyotr Romanov noted

Ability to write about Russophobia dispassionatly is similar to the ability to maintain dignity when somebody  unexpectedly poor a dirty water all over your head.  However, as far as possible, try to talk about this phenomenon, no offense. We will not resent the fact that the "Russian, according to British press - the most stupid in the world." Usmehnemsya the argument that the "war against Napoleon won the non-Russian, and lice." We will not discuss with the Japanese man in the street, which feels an antipathy to us, among other things because all the cold storms come on the street it from Russia. Forget about the Finns, who, according to Western opinion polls, do not love us more than any foreigners. And this at a time when, according to domestic opinion polls, that the Finns have the highest Russian sympathies. What to do: love evil. In short, keep yourself in hand. It is better to remember the words of George Nathaniel Curzon Marquis, Viceroy of India and at the time the British Foreign Minister: "Every Englishman comes to Russia asRussophobe, and left as a Russophile" This means that the basis of antipathy towards the Russian lie ignorance and myths. Partly born of life itself, partly by skillful professionals employed by our political opponents: there is such a thing as information warfare. And this is not limited to the Soviet period, but can be traced since ancient times. The disappearance of the Soviet Union did not affect  Russophobia much. "New Thinking", which Gorbachev dreamed about never materialize. From the historical standpoint we can talk about ethnophobia.

We can give multiple examples, but even from what has been said above, it is clear that the problem is  multifaceted and deeply ingrained in the mind of official Western mentality.

Thus we should not deceive ourselves - any countermeasure is only palliative. Russophobia glow can be reduced, but to end it might be impossible as is the case with other ethnophoibias.

NEWS CONTENTS

• 20200311 : Saudi's budget requires $85//bbl and flooding the market on no demand is stupid. ( Mar 11, 2020 , www.moonofalabama.org )
• 20191001 : Being a woman in programming in the Soviet Union Vicki Boykis ( Oct 01, 2019 , veekaybee.github.io )
• 20180917 : Simone Biles and Williams Sisters Latest Target of Russian Hackers ( Sep 17, 2018 , www.nytimes.com )
• 20180916 : After the iron curtain fell, there was a big demand for Russian-trained programmers because they could program in a very efficient and light manner that didn't demand too much of the hardware, if I remember correctly ( Aug 01, 2018 , turcopolier.typepad.com )
• 20180916 : Selected matches ( youtube.com )
• 20180110 : F>rancofonia ( Jan 10, 2018 , www.rottentomatoes.com )
• 20171225 : Amazon.com The Perfect Storm George Clooney, Mark Wahlberg, Diane Lane, William Fichtner Amazon Digital Services LLC ( Dec 25, 2017 , www.amazon.com )
• 20170402 : Yevgeny Yevtushenko, Poet Who Stirred a Generation of Soviets, Dies at 83 ( Apr 02, 2017 , www.nytimes.com )
• 20170331 : The Healing Power of Tetris Classic Video Game May Treat Trauma and Addiction ( Mar 31, 2017 , sputniknews.com )
• 20170331 : Russian electronic libraries ( Russian electronic libraries, )
• 20170331 : Russia Is Not Enemy Number One ( Russia Is Not Enemy Number One, )
• 20170331 : DAVIS Double-talk with Russia by Maj. Daniel L. Davis ( Washington Times )
• 20170331 : Russia Russian Brain Drain Leaves Future In Doubt (Part 1) by Francesca Mereu ( Russia Russian 'Brain Drain' Leaves Future In Doubt (Part 1), )
• 20031114 : Google puts coders to the test ( Google puts coders to the test, Nov 14, 2003 )
• 20031114 : Three short notes on Russian Crypto History ( )
• 20031114 : Tetris is Hard, Even to Approximate ( Tetris is Hard, Even to Approximate, )
• 20031114 : The Anatomy of a Search Engine by Sergey Brin and Lawrence Page ( The Anatomy of a Search Engine, )

Old News ;-)

[Mar 11, 2020] Saudi's budget requires $85//bbl and flooding the market on no demand is stupid.

Mar 11, 2020 | www.moonofalabama.org

Likklemore , Mar 10 2020 19:38 utc | 13

Posted by: Michael Droy | Mar 10 2020 18:34 utc | 8

" Oil. Saudi has 92 years of reserves.

No. There is no independent third party certification letter with respect to the balance of the kingdom's proven oil equivalent reserves. Could be near 40 years and that figure is with heaping generosity.

Poor Matt:
Twilight in the Dessert by Matt Simmons
he was found in his swimming pool. Tut, tut.

With tiny production costs, doubling output at half the price makes sense.

if you think they can, I have two acres of oceanfront at a fair deal --- priced in cents.

Saudi's budget requires $85//bbl and flooding the market on no demand is stupid.

---

karlof1 , Mar 10 2020 20:22 utc | 18

Can't completely agree with Tyler Durden here on his wide-ranging postulation, "Putin Launches 'War On US Shale' After Dumping MbS & Breaking Up OPEC+" mainly because it consists of too much speculation and not enough on facts and statements of those involved in the decisions. The Bloomberg story on which this is mostly based is almost 100% speculation. IMO, this is yet another attempt to bash Russia for the massive mistakes made by the Outlaw US Empire--for years, fracking's been known as a Ponzi Scheme to those closely watching, and it was already set to implode. This Sputnik article calls the Bloomberg item Bantha Pudu and offers a completely different explanation that looks at Saudi behavior which all the Western BigLie Media outlets omitted from their coverage.

Additional opinions and analyses were provided in this Sputnik article that tend to back the analysis from the previous article. But with the internal turmoil within Saudi over what's clearly an ongoing power struggle surly contributed to Saudi's choices. As with almost all reports coming from the West about anything Russian or Chinese, they must be treated with much skepticism. This makes at least the third time lowering the price of oil through increased production aimed to harm Russia and is likely the genuine reason at work again.

As for the Outlaw US Empire's fracking corps, we shall see if today's rebound is merely a dead cat bounce, as it's now close to impossible to further hide their Enron Accounting as their bonds descend to Junk status.

J Swift , Mar 10 2020 21:06 utc | 31

karlof1 @ 18

Alexander Mercouris at the Duran also recently posted his take, saying he felt the oil market meltdown was almost entirely the doing of MbS. Essentially he posits that MbS was getting more and more panicky, and Russia was in effect so preoccupied with the antics of Erdogan that they weren't paying MbS the attention he thought he deserved...and it isn't impossible that there was indeed a CIA plot to take him out. At any rate, Mercouris believes he was basically just firing one across the bow of Russia to get their attention, but of course by taking a demanding tone with Putin he almost guaranteed that he would receive the lesson in manners for which the Russians are becoming more and more well known. Mercouris feels after letting him sweat it a bit to learn his lesson, they will work out something with the Saudis, but their return demands may be stiff.

While I do tend to agree this was probably all precipitated by MbS and his mental instability, I can easily see the Russians long-range planning having long known that this day--for one reason or another-- would eventually come, and deciding to bask in the glow for just a bit more than Mercouris anticipates. After all, US fracked gas prices will now be massively greater than Russia can provide its gas for, which with Merkle on the ropes anyway Putin might feel is a very good time to send the Germans a reminder of what they risk if they don't consummate the Nordstream 2 project. And after the years of illegal sanctions, it must feel very good to be in Russia's position, where they know they can weather the storm far better than their antagonists. So while I don't think this was Russia's doing, I can easily see them taking their sweet time to come to a new deal, and even then at a price level that will keep the Saudis and US frackers on their back foot...and maybe try to put more distance between MbS and the US, too.

Peter AU1 , Mar 10 2020 22:17 utc | 39

Regarding Putin and MBS on the oil. Who funds and supports HTS al qaeda in Idlib. I am guessing the Saudi's have a big input there. Reports some time back that the drones AQ was using to attack the Russian airbase used high tech US components.

Tuyzentfloot , Mar 10 2020 22:23 utc | 41

I recall ex UK ambassador Peter Ford saying somewhere last year that the Saudis were outspent by an order of magnitude by Qatar in Syria. That Qatar is funding like 80% of it all. Things may have shifted a bit since.

Abe , Mar 10 2020 23:58 utc | 51

Regarding KSA and their oil gamble - if I were Houthi strategist, I would wait for a while for KSA to get knee deep into this experiment, then launch missile attack on their biggest refineries and pipes. With one salvo whole KSA statehood could be shattered. Sweet sweet revenge and guarantee not to get oppressed by KSA genocidal maniacs in future.

ARN , Mar 11 2020 0:43 utc | 57

and regarding how much oil is left in Saudi even here they are calling them liers..

"the Kingdom will desperately need another primary energy source in the relatively near future because it has nowhere near the amount of oil remaining that it has stated since the early 1970s"

https://oilprice.com/Geopolitics/International/The-Great-Saudi-Shale-Swindle.html

[Oct 01, 2019] Being a woman in programming in the Soviet Union Vicki Boykis

Oct 01, 2019 | veekaybee.github.io

In 1976, after eight years in the Soviet education system, I graduated the equivalent of middle school. Afterwards, I could choose to go for two more years, which would earn me a high school diploma, and then do three years of college, which would get me a diploma in "higher education."

Or, I could go for the equivalent of a blend of an associate and bachelor's degree, with an emphasis on vocational skills. This option took four years.

I went with the second option, mainly because it was common knowledge in the Soviet Union at the time that there was a restrictive quota for Jews applying to the five-year college program, which almost certainly meant that I, as a Jew, wouldn't get in. I didn't want to risk it.

My best friend at the time proposed that we take the entrance exams to attend Nizhniy Novgorod Industrial and Economic College. (At that time, it was known as Gorky Industrial and Economic College - the city, originally named for famous poet Maxim Gorky, was renamed in the 1990s after the fall of the Soviet Union.)

They had a program called "Programming for high-speed computing machines." Since I got good grades in math and geometry, this looked like I'd be able to get in. It also didn't hurt that my aunt, a very good seamstress and dressmaker, sewed several dresses specifically for the school's chief accountant, who was involved in enrollment decisions. So I got in.

What's interesting is that from the almost sixty students accepted into the program that year, all of them were female. It was the same for the class before us, and for the class after us. Later, after I started working the Soviet Union, and even in the United States in the early 1990s, I understood that this was a trend. I'd say that 70% of the programmers I encountered in the IT industry were female. The males were mostly in middle and upper management.

My mom's code notebook, with her name and "Macroassembler" on it.

We started what would be considered our major concentration courses during the second year. Along with programming, there were a lot of related classes: "Computing Appliances and Their Organization", "Electro Technology", "Algorithms of Numerical Methods," and a lot of math that included integral and differential calculations. But programming was the main course, and we spent the most hours on it.

Notes on programming - Heading is "Directives (Commands) for job control implementation", covering the ABRT command

In the programming classes, we studied programming the "dry" way: using paper, pencil and eraser. In fact, this method was so important that students who forgot their pencils were sent to the main office to ask for one. It was extremely embarrassing, and we learned quickly not to forget them.

Paper and pencil code for opening a file in Macroassembler

Every semester we would take a new programming language to learn. We learned Algol, Fortran,and PL/1. We would learn from simplest commands to loop organization, function and sub-function programming, multi-dimensional array processing, and more.

After mastering the basics, we would take exams, which were logical computing tasks to code in this specific language.

At some point midway through the program, our school bought the very first physical computer I ever saw : the Nairi. The programming language was AP, which was one of the few computer languages with Russian keywords.

Then, we started taking labs. It was terrifying experience. You had to type your program in entering device which basically was a typewriter connected to a huge computer. The programs looked like step-by-step instructions, and if you made even one mistake you had to start all over again. To code a solution for a linear algebraic equation usually would take 10 - 12 steps.

Program output in Macroassembler ("I was so creative with my program names," jokes my mom.)

Our teacher used to go for one week of "practice work and curriculum development," to a serious IT shop with more advanced machines every once in a while. At that time, the heavy computing power was in the ES Series, produced by Soviet bloc countries.

These machines were clones of the IBM 360. They worked with punch cards and punch tapes. She would bring back tons of papers with printed code and debugging comments for us to learn in classroom.

After two and half years of rigorous study using pencil and paper, we had six months of practice. Most of the time it was one of several scientific research institutes existed in Nizhny Novgorod. I went to an institute that was oriented towards the auto industry.

I graduate with title "Programmer-Technician". Most of the girls from my class took computer operator jobs, but I did not want to settle. I continued my education at Lobachevsky State University , named after Lobachevsky , the famous Russian mathematician. Since I was taking evening classes, it took me six years to graduate.

I wrote a lot about my first college because now looking back I realize that this is where I really learned to code and developed my programming skills. At the State University, we took a huge amount of unnecessary courses. The only useful one was professional English. After this course I could read technical documentation in English without issues.

My final university degree was equivalent to a US master's in Computer Science. The actual major was called "Computational Mathematics and Cybernetics".

In total I worked for about seven years in the USSR as computer programmer, from 1982 to 1989. Technology changed rapidly, even there. I started out writing programs on special blanks for punch card machines using a Russian version of Assembler. To maximize performance, we would leave stacks of our punch cards for nightly processing.

After a couple years, we got terminals with keyboards. First they were installed in the same room where main computer was. Initially, there were not enough terminals and "machine time" was evenly divided between all of the programmers during the day.

Then, the terminals started to appear in the same room where programmers were. The displays were small, with black background and green font. We were now working in the terminal.

The languages were also changing. I switched to C and had to get hands-on training. I did not know then, but I picked profession where things are constantly moving. The most I've ever worked with the same software was for about three years.

... ... ...

[Sep 17, 2018] Simone Biles and Williams Sisters Latest Target of Russian Hackers

Notable quotes:

"... The real question is why these athletes are given a pass on taking banned substances especially since if you look at the emails posted it seems like in a few cases they got a letter after the fact from their doctors, and the Russians weren't given that option. Double standard? ..."

"... Come on... they are all using illegal substances, Americans, Russians, Chinese and so on. ..."

"... For sake of argument people should understand that there is no way to definitively identify the perpetrators of these intrusions. It is not much of a stretch to imagine mischievous spoofing of Russians by other parties trying to stir the pot. ..."

"... Isn't the whole point of banning performance enhancing drugs not to give athletes an edge over others. Regardless if she had a doctor's note that says she's allowed to take it, she'll have an advantage over her. Just exposes a loophole in the system, one that Americans' exploited. ..."

Sep 17, 2018 | www.nytimes.com

The hackers published documents this week showing that Ms. Biles, who won four gold medals in gymnastics at the Rio Olympics last month, and the Williams sisters received medical exemptions to use banned drugs.

The antidoping agency confirmed the authenticity of the documents...

... ... ...

WADA said its management system was infiltrated through the so-called "spearphishing" of email accounts, in which attackers send tailored emails to authorized users to convince them to click on malicious links or attachments that give attackers a toehold onto their machines.

... ... ...

The hackers said Tuesday that they planned to release the medical records of additional athletes from around the world in coming days.

"This is just the tip of the iceberg," a statement posted to the Fancy Bears site said. "Today's sport is truly contaminated while the world is unaware of the large number of American doping athletes."

Connie, NY | Sept. 14, 2016

Times Pick

The banned substances are mentioned on other sites. The real question is why these athletes are given a pass on taking banned substances especially since if you look at the emails posted it seems like in a few cases they got a letter after the fact from their doctors, and the Russians weren't given that option. Double standard?

Watchful Eye, FL|Sept. 14, 2016

Times Pick

A reasonable point, but if these drugs are for legitimate medical reasons why not make it known that they are being used. These competitions are of the most public nature and huge money is involved. Seems there is a transparency deficit.

Gabriel, Calarasi|Sept. 14, 2016

Times Pick

We should change the name of the Olympic Games to ILLympic Games, considering the fact that most athletes suffer from "illnesses" which require the use of illegal substances. The handicap nowadays is to be healthy. Come on... they are all using illegal substances, Americans, Russians, Chinese and so on.

You want a clean sport? You can't have it, natural human abilities are too limited. It's so simple to stop athletes from doping, No drugs in your system, no exemptions, and that's that.

Howard, Washington Crossing|Sept. 14, 2016

Times Pick
There should be no exceptions. If an athlete has to take a banned substance, then that athlete should not compete. Period. The hackers have exposed three instances of American hypocrisy. Attack the hypocrisy -- not the hackers.

Billy , up in the woods down by the river | Sept. 13, 2016

Times Pick

For sake of argument people should understand that there is no way to definitively identify the perpetrators of these intrusions. It is not much of a stretch to imagine mischievous spoofing of Russians by other parties trying to stir the pot.

We are at war with other nations and groups that have the wherewithal to use whatever software tools that exist. Such as Russian software tools. Russian digital fingerprints do not prove that Russians are doing this. That part of this narrative is speculation.

Conversly if the Russians wanted to cover their tracks they could use Chinese software and spoof them without any problem.

I smell a propaganda campaign and a bunch of unnamed security "experts" claiming to know something that they don't actually know.

There is a strong whiff of something else at play here.

Nick Wright, Halifax, Nova Scotia | Sept. 13, 2016

Times Pick

This is disturbing news. The lack of transparency surrounding exemptions for banned substances that would get any non-exempted athlete disqualified or sanctioned--or worse, stripped of a medal--raises serious questions as to whether those who were exempted benefited unfairly in competition. There is no legitimate way to dismiss them.

Many try to dismiss them on the basis that the US exemptions were officially approved, whereas Russian doping was clandestine. However, there are other ways to cheat on a significant scale.

1. SELF INTEREST As we know, money talks, and big money shouts and twists arms. How do we know that WADA and/or other Olympic agencies haven't been corrupted in favor of US athletes? We don't, and this revelation demands that WADA account for its actions, if not a full investigation to see if there was any favoritism.

2. GEOPOLITICS Russia has been under concerted economic, political and diplomatic attack by NATO countries over the past few years. The Olympics is the premier forum for playing out big-power rivalry without bloodshed. I would not be surprised to learn that Olympic governance agencies were successfully pressured to single out Russia in their pursuit and exposure of cheating.

As to the hacking: as with everything else, when it happens to a person or institution we don't like, we give at least tacit approval, but when it happens to us or anyone or thing we value, it's deplorable.

LostinNH , NH | Sept. 13, 2016

Times Pick
My question is, why didn't Maria Sharapova ask for and get the medical clearance she needed for her heart meds just as the Williams sisters did for whatever ails them? Did she not ask? She claims she did not know a longtime drug she was taken was banned on 1/1/2016 eventho she was given notice months in advance and has MDs, trainers, managers, agents and a coach to warn her.

In articles printed earlier this year, some athletes and pundits did not believe she did not know because of the notice each tennis player gets and all the professional that work with and for her. Yet, Maria is smart enough to know she will get tested and would be caught. A very confusing situation.

Jason, Boston, MA|Sept. 13, 2016

Times Pick

NYT, if you aren't willing or able to give any details on the specifics of each case, why name individual athletes at all? What drugs did they take? Why were they given an exemption? Was there clear medical need or does it have the whiff of favoritism and corruption? Without any of that information, you are just spreading rumors, implying foul play, and smearing successful athletes without real evidence.

Jack Wells, Orlando|Sept. 14, 2016

Times Pick

No matter who is responsible for the hack, the data reveal a double standard: one for Russia and another for everyone else. I don't know how much influence the US has over the IOC in this matter, but it's clear, based on this story, that there is anti-Russian bias among the decision makers.

This should be a wake-up call for the athletic community, but I'm afraid that because of so much Western antagonism towards Russia these days that nothing will come of it.

It might be useful to remember that these Olympic participants are athletes, not politicians or spies. It's not 1966 anymore.

abo, Paris|Sept. 13, 2016

"Victimizing a young woman of 19 is as weak as it gets."

Oh right, the West just tried to ban the entire Russian team from the Paralympics. *That* was weak and pathetic. Your "young woman of 19" knew exactly what she was doing.

Tom, Melbourne|Sept. 13, 2016

Isn't the whole point of banning performance enhancing drugs not to give athletes an edge over others. Regardless if she had a doctor's note that says she's allowed to take it, she'll have an advantage over her. Just exposes a loophole in the system, one that Americans' exploited.

AS, AL|Sept. 13, 2016

We don't know if Ms. Biles has ADHD or not, but we do know that the "condition" is scandalously over-diagnosed in the US of A. The florid over-prescription of stimulants is driven by Big Pharm greed.

The drugs themselves are quite popular in the secondary black market for two major reasons -- one being the "rush" and the other being that they are indeed "performance enhancers", as many students facing an all-nighter know.

I had not realized how corrupted the Olympics were -- and by extension the US participation.

These drugs have no place in Olympic competition-- even if you have "real" ADHD, they still confer an unfair competitive advantage. Pretty clever propaganda on the part of Fancy Bear -- but then, as they used to say in the Cold War, nobody ever said Ivan was stupid.

[Sep 16, 2018] After the iron curtain fell, there was a big demand for Russian-trained programmers because they could program in a very efficient and light manner that didn't demand too much of the hardware, if I remember correctly

Notable quotes:

"... It's a bit of chicken-and-egg problem, though. Russia, throughout 20th century, had problem with developing small, effective hardware, so their programmers learned how to code to take maximum advantage of what they had, with their technological deficiency in one field giving rise to superiority in another. ..."

"... Russian tech ppl should always be viewed with certain amount of awe and respect...although they are hardly good on everything. ..."

"... Soviet university training in "cybernetics" as it was called in the late 1980s involved two years of programming on blackboards before the students even touched an actual computer. ..."

"... I recall flowcharting entirely on paper before committing a program to punched cards. ..."

Aug 01, 2018 | turcopolier.typepad.com

---

Bill Herschel • 2 days ago ,

Very, very slightly off-topic.

Much has been made, including in this post, of the excellent organization of Russian forces and Russian military technology.

I have been re-investigating an open-source relational database system known as PosgreSQL (variously), and I remember finding perhaps a decade ago a very useful whole text search feature of this system which I vaguely remember was written by a Russian and, for that reason, mildly distrusted by me.

Come to find out that the principle developers and maintainers of PostgreSQL are Russian. OMG. Double OMG, because the reason I chose it in the first place is that it is the best non-proprietary RDBS out there and today is supported on Google Cloud, AWS, etc.

The US has met an equal or conceivably a superior, case closed. Trump's thoroughly odd behavior with Putin is just one but a very obvious one example of this.

Of course, Trump's nationalistic blather is creating a "base" of people who believe in the godliness of the US. They are in for a very serious disappointment.

kao_hsien_chih Bill Herschel • a day ago ,

After the iron curtain fell, there was a big demand for Russian-trained programmers because they could program in a very efficient and "light" manner that didn't demand too much of the hardware, if I remember correctly.

It's a bit of chicken-and-egg problem, though. Russia, throughout 20th century, had problem with developing small, effective hardware, so their programmers learned how to code to take maximum advantage of what they had, with their technological deficiency in one field giving rise to superiority in another.

Russia has plenty of very skilled, very well-trained folks and their science and math education is, in a way, more fundamentally and soundly grounded on the foundational stuff than US (based on my personal interactions anyways).

Russian tech ppl should always be viewed with certain amount of awe and respect...although they are hardly good on everything.

TTG kao_hsien_chih • a day ago ,

Well said. Soviet university training in "cybernetics" as it was called in the late 1980s involved two years of programming on blackboards before the students even touched an actual computer.

It gave the students an understanding of how computers works down to the bit flipping level. Imagine trying to fuzz code in your head.

FarNorthSolitude TTG • a day ago ,

I recall flowcharting entirely on paper before committing a program to punched cards. I used to do hex and octal math in my head as part of debugging core dumps. Ah, the glory days.

Honeywell once made a military computer that was 10 bit. That stumped me for a while, as everything was 8 or 16 bit back then.

kao_hsien_chih FarNorthSolitude • 10 hours ago ,

That used to be fairly common in the civilian sector (in US) too: computing time was expensive, so you had to make sure that the stuff worked flawlessly before it was committed.

No opportunity to seeing things go wrong and do things over like much of how things happen nowadays. Russians, with their hardware limitations/shortages, I imagine must have been much more thorough than US programmers were back in the old days, and you could only get there by being very thoroughly grounded n the basics.

[Sep 16, 2018] Selected matches

youtube.com

• 大坂なおみ vs セリーナ・ウィリアムズ 2-0 ハイライト 08-09-2018 ファイナルアメリカンオープン - YouTube
• 大坂なおみ vs セリーナ・ウィリアムズ 2-0 ハイライト 08-09-2018 ファイナルアメリカンオープン - YouTube
• Osaka vs Sharapova Full Highlights - BNP Paribas Open 2018 - Round of 128 - YouTube
• Halep vs Osaka Full Highlights - BNP Paribas Open 2018 - Semi-final - YouTube
• Osaka vs Kasatkina Full Highlights - BNP Paribas Open 2018 - Final - YouTube
• Osaka vs Svitolina Full Highlights - Miami Open 2018 - Round of 64 - YouTube
• Brady vs Osaka Full Highlights - Charleston 2018 - Round 1 - YouTube
• Görges vs Osaka Full Highlights - Charleston 2018 - Round 3 - YouTube
• Serena Williams VS Maria Sharapova 2016 AO QF(Full) - YouTube
• US Open 2013 - Финал - Сирена Уильямс -- Виктория Азаренка - YouTube
• Серена Уильямс vs Ана Иванович 4-й круг Открытого Чемпионата Австралии 2014. - YouTube
• Williams vs Kasatkina Full Highlights - BNP Paribas Open 2018 - Semi-final - YouTube
• 2018 French Open, Round of 16, Kasatkina vs Wozniacki - YouTube
• 2018 French Open, Round of 16, Kasatkina vs Wozniacki - YouTube

[Jan 10, 2018] F>rancofonia

'Francofonia': Venice Review Russian director Aleksander Sokurov tells the story of the Louvre under German occupation.

Jan 10, 2018 | www.rottentomatoes.com

A tour of the Louvre serves as a meditation on art. The film also explores how the museum avoided being plundered during the Nazi occupation of France, and depicts the ghost of Napoleon wandering among the exhibits. Directed by Alexander Sokurov.

[Dec 25, 2017] Amazon.com The Perfect Storm George Clooney, Mark Wahlberg, Diane Lane, William Fichtner Amazon Digital Services LLC

Dec 25, 2017 | www.amazon.com

[Apr 02, 2017] Yevgeny Yevtushenko, Poet Who Stirred a Generation of Soviets, Dies at 83

Leaving Russia was the real death of the poet... Physical death just came much later.

Notable quotes:

"... Some critics had doubts about his sincerity as a foe of tyranny. Some called him a sellout. ..."

"... The exiled poet Joseph Brodsky once said of Mr. Yevtushenko, "He throws stones only in directions that are officially sanctioned and approved." ..."

Apr 02, 2017 | www.nytimes.com

... But it was as a tall, athletic young Siberian with a spirit both hauntingly poetic and fiercely political that he established his name in 20th-century literature. He was the best known of a small group of rebel poets and writers who brought hope to a young generation with poetry that took on totalitarian leaders, ideological zealots and timid bureaucrats. Among the others were Andrei Voznesensky , Robert Rozhdestvensky and Bella Akhmadulina, Mr. Yevtushenko's first wife.

But Mr. Yevtushenko did so working mostly within the system, taking care not to join the ranks of outright literary dissidents. By stopping short of the line between defiance and resistance, he enjoyed a measure of official approval that more daring dissidents came to resent.

While they were subjected to exile or labor camps, Mr. Yevtushenko was given state awards, his books were regularly published, and he was allowed to travel abroad, becoming an international literary superstar.

Some critics had doubts about his sincerity as a foe of tyranny. Some called him a sellout. A few enemies even suggested that he was merely posing as a protester to serve the security police or the Communist authorities. The exiled poet Joseph Brodsky once said of Mr. Yevtushenko, "He throws stones only in directions that are officially sanctioned and approved."

... ... ...

He preferred Oklahoma to New York. "In some provincial cities you can find the real soul of a country," he told The New York Times in 2003. "I like the craziness of New York, but New York is really not America. It's all humanity in one drop. Tulsa is very American." He called Tulsa "the bellybutton of world culture."

[Mar 31, 2017] The Healing Power of Tetris Classic Video Game May Treat Trauma and Addiction

Notable quotes:

"... The healing potential of Tetris has long been theorized with some seriousness. A 2010 study conducted by the University of Oxford suggested the game could interrupt memory processing immediately after a traumatic experience. ..."

"... The team believes this suggests 20 minutes of Tetris can cut trauma flashbacks by around 62 percent, and conclude the brief intervention "offered a low-intensity means" of substantially improving the mental health of those who have experienced psychological trauma. ..."

Mar 31, 2017 | sputniknews.com

Computer games are oft blamed for ruining juvenile minds, destroying attention spans and stunting social development, but two studies have suggested playing they could actually have a highly beneficial impact on human minds, particularly for individuals suffering from traumatic memories and addictions of various stripes. Tetris is a classic tile-matching puzzle game, originally designed and programed by Russian game designer Alexey Pajitnov - its name is a portmanteau of the Greek numerical prefix tetra, and tennis, Pajitnov's favorite sport. Released on June 6, 1984, it was the first entertainment software to be exported from the USSR to the US. It has been adapted for a great many gaming devices in its nigh on four decade existence, but is perhaps most commonly associated with the Nintendo Game Boy - it is frequently hailed as having "made" the Game Boy, and vice versa.

Now, two academic papers have suggested Tetris can suppress traumatic memories and addiction. In the former case, Tetris could mean painful memories are less likely to resurface as intrusive, distressing flashbacks, which means the game could be used to prevent and treat post-traumatic stress disorder, depression, complicated grief, and other mental health issues. In the latter, for those struggling with cravings or addiction, Tetris can diminish the intensity of cravings and help game players fight off dependencies.

The healing potential of Tetris has long been theorized with some seriousness. A 2010 study conducted by the University of Oxford suggested the game could interrupt memory processing immediately after a traumatic experience.

That experiment relied solely on study participants who were "traumatized" by watching footage of fatal accidents and other gory clips to reach its conclusions - in this study , researchers tested Tetris therapy on victims of real-life accidents.

In all, 71 patients that arrived in an Oxford hospital emergency department within six hours of being involved in a traffic accident were enrolled in the study, with every case meeting the medical criteria of a "traumatic event" - each participant had "experienced, witnessed, or was confronted with" an event or events that involved actual or threatened death or serious injury.

Of the 71, 37 were randomly chosen to play around 20 minutes of Tetris while at the hospital. The remaining 34 merely logged their activity while they were in the hospital, recording actions such as reading, texting, getting care, chatting, or completing a crossword puzzle.

© AP Photo/ Mark Lennihan This May 22, 2009, shows the puzzle video game Tetris at Barcade in the Brooklyn section of New York.

A week later, the group that played Tetris reported they, on average, were hit with an intrusive, disturbing flashback 8.7 times during the week, while the activity-logging group reported an average of 23.3 upsetting flashbacks. The team believes this suggests 20 minutes of Tetris can cut trauma flashbacks by around 62 percent, and conclude the brief intervention "offered a low-intensity means" of substantially improving the mental health of those who have experienced psychological trauma. They suspect other tasks with "high visuospatial demands" are likely to have the same effect too, specifically suggesting drawing and the game Candy Crush, arguably Tetris' modern equivalent, as alternatives.

© RIA Novosti. Sergey Elkin Tetris Therapy

Conversely, when they checked back with the participants a month later, they didn't note any statistically significant differences in the overall mental health of the two groups - although the authors suggest this could be attributable to the small, short-term design of the study. Larger trials involving more subjects and regular Tetris sessions could shed more light on the potential long-term effects of brick bashing.

Another study conducted by English and Australian researchers likewise reports Tetris can stifle cravings for addictive substances such as nicotine, alcohol, and drugs, as well as other vices, such as food and sex.

The study followed 31 undergraduate volunteers who carried around iPods for a week, and filled out surveys seven times daily about their cravings. Fifteen also got to play three minutes of Tetris after the surveys, before reporting on their cravings again. When the week was up, the researchers found Tetris consistently reduced craving strength by 13.9 percent, or around a fifth. The authors explain this may be sufficient for people to ignore those cravings, and avoid their vice altogether.

The researchers again hypothesize the game's ability to seize visual and spatial processing in the brain is key to the health benefits of Tetris - after all, addiction and cravings are frequently driven by visual fantasies of that drink, drug, substance or otherwise.

As ever, more studies, with larger sample sizes, are still necessary to truly assess Tetris' psychological benefits - although perhaps uniquely for an experimental treatment, it's perfectly safe for individuals to try at home, without the supervision of trained professionals.

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Russia Is Not Enemy Number One

Russia Is Not Public Enemy Number One

In response to Barack Obama's unintended public candor about his greater post-election flexibility on missile defense negotiations with Russia, Mitt Romney reflexively declared in an interview with CNN that Russia is the United States' "number one geopolitical foe," adding that Russia "always stands up for the world's worst actors."

However, Romney is pandering to the gallery for the election rather than looking at the facts of recently improved U.S.-Russian relations. And it is significant that more than two decades after the Berlin Wall fell, and despite the improved bilateral relations, American politicians can still demagogue the issue by dredging up the American public's lingering fear of Russia from the Cold War.

Recently, the Russians, contrary to Romney's implication, have helped the U.S. pressure Iran on its nuclear program. Also, the Russians have provided an important alternative supply route for U.S. supplies going into Afghanistan, which recently has become even more vital since Pakistan closed its supply line during a dispute over the American killing of Pakistani soldiers. Furthermore, Russia's entry into the World Trade Organization will bind it to rules of open world commerce. Finally, and most important, the U.S. and Russia agreed to significant bilateral cuts in long-range strategic nuclear warheads, which makes the world safer because together the Americans and Russians hold 95% of the planet's nuclear weapons.

Are there still issues between the two nations? Yes. But in the post–Cold War world, the American view has often been "it's my way or the highway." American politicians, like Romney, often characterize any Russian deviation from American desires as enemy-like behavior. Yet, after 9/11, George W. Bush declared that any nation not for America was against it. By those standards, Russia, also fearing Islamist radicalism in its own country and on its borders, came down firmly in the U.S. camp.

And improved U.S.-Russian relations have occurred despite the broken American promise not to extend eastward a NATO alliance hostile to Russia in exchange for a united Germany after the East Bloc collapsed. Also, after the country of Georgia started a war with Russia, the Western media seemed to forget this fact, as Russia was condemned for its limited invasion and withdrawal from that country.

The U.S. and Russia have also disagreed on the repression by Syria, a Russian ally, of a pro-democracy rebellion. The Russians are leery of supporting U.N. Security Council resolutions condemning or sanctioning Syria because they fell victim to a U.S. bait-and-switch during the recent war on Libya. Rhetorically, the United States and the West wanted a U.N. resolution giving legitimacy to a bombing campaign to protect the Libyan opposition from Moammar Gadhafi's threatened onslaught. Yet the air campaign went far beyond the objective of that resolution and ousted Gadhafi from power. In addition, the Russians are probably right about economic sanctions: they probably will not motivate Syria to stop the oppression but instead will likely cause more Syrians to rally around the autocratic regime in defiance of external pressure.

As for U.S. missile defense, it is an unneeded, expensive, and ineffective system that is an unnecessary irritant to U.S.-Russian relations. Although American missile defense sounds, well, defensive, it destabilizes the nuclear balance because countries fear that their nuclear deterrent forces could be nullified. Although the United States says that the system, based in Europe, is directed against the threat of Iranian missiles, the Russians fear that it could be expanded to attempt to nullify their nuclear deterrent force. Joseph Cirincione of the Ploughshares Fund summed it up best on PBS: "The president is building a missile-defense system that doesn't work against an Iranian threat that doesn't yet exist with money we don't really have."

Finally, because the United States feels that Vladimir Putin has lower democratic standards for ruling Russia than the U.S. would like, America likely will continue to be suspicious of Russia because it is not in the category of "liberal democracies." But that is far from being America's number-one foe, as candidate Romney claims in harking back to Cold War rhetoric.

There are many issues on which the United States and Russia can cooperate. The U.S. can drop the outdated Cold War Jackson-Vanik law inhibiting the normalizing of trade relations; if it doesn't, U.S. companies can be discriminated against when Russia enters the WTO. If America at last agrees to such normalization, then the U.S. and Russia can more fully develop their commercial relationship, which would raise the cost of any future bilateral conflict. They can also continue to cooperate in negotiations to dissuade Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons. Lastly, the U.S. could trade unneeded missile defense and further reductions in long-range strategic nuclear warheads for cuts in short-range tactical nuclear weapons, which Russia has many more of than does the U.S. The Russians might take this deal to get rid of missile defense and because their deployable strategic warheads will decay down past the recently negotiated START limit of 1,500 warheads.

So instead of claiming that Russia is Public Enemy Number One, perhaps Romney should avoid inflaming the most important bilateral relationship the United States has in the world; the only other nuclear superpower in the world is still Russia. Instead, realistically, he and the United States should look on Russia as an important country with its own interests and security needs, which might not always coincide with those of the United States. That is why we have negotiations. They are superior to irresponsible campaign rhetoric.

DAVIS Double-talk with Russia by Maj. Daniel L. Davis

Washington Times

According to the consensus of Western media, the Russian government seeks to weaken the West, desires to resurrect a new version of the Soviet Union, and tramples on the freedoms of its own people. By contrast, the United States stands for freedom, peace and prosperity for all nations. Regarding the situation in Georgia, the Russians are the aggressors - much like Hitler when he took Czechoslovakia in 1938 - and we simply seek to defend the weak. The only problem with this view of things is that it grossly misrepresents the complicated truth. If this distortion is not quickly rectified, our own actions could unwittingly contribute to a grave crisis - if not war - between the United States and Russia.

By perpetuating the myth that every action taken by the Russian Federation is driven by an irrational lust for power and antagonism toward the United States, while all our actions are right, just, and reasonable, we work against our own self interest. The unpleasant fact of the matter is that American foreign policy and diplomacy over the past two decades has contributed to the trouble we find ourselves in today, and if not reversed quickly - and I mean reversed, not simply altered - the United States may one day find itself facing the possibility of being involved in a major war; a war that should never be fought.

Since the West's condemnation of Russian actions in Georgia, Moscow has threatened Poland over the latter's decision to host missile interceptors on their soil, has threatened Ukraine against joining NATO, has promised to give sophisticated anti-air missile defense capabilities to Iran, has agreed to military cooperation and sales to Venezuela, and openly discussed the possibility of using Cuba as a refueling stop for its long range bombers. No American would dispute that these things run counter to American national interests. But when we protest to Moscow our complaints fall on deaf ears. We have lost the ability to influence Russian policies, partially as a result of our own double standards.

We argue that Russia ought not sell weapons abroad, but we are the world's leader of such sales; we tell Russia they should not do business with Iran while we provide military advisors to Georgia; we tell Russia under no circumstances can they have any military presence in Cuba, but we dismissively tell Russia they have nothing to say about our expanding a military alliance to their very borders. Any rational person, who was neither Russian nor American, would view this situation as a farcical double standard. And yet the bulk of American foreign affairs pundits and former governmental officials defend these positions as being perfectly reasonable.

The tragedy of the situation is that such actions are viewed as imperialistic by much of the rest of the world, and after decades of this behavior, has resulted in the loss of American influence abroad, even among our friends and allies, as our word is no longer trusted. It is of critical importance to the future health and benefit of the United States that we reverse this situation immediately.

Had we not diplomatically bludgeoned Russia into submission on virtually every important issue over the nearly two decades since the dissolution of the USSR, Russia would almost certainly now be more willing to work with us internationally on matters of mutual national interest. If carried too far, this deteriorating relationship - where politicians from both countries condemn the actions of the other as immoral and unjust - could one day result in a miscalculation involving a red line; such miscalculations have resulted in unintended war many times throughout history. I can say without reservation that a war between the United States and Russia would have no winners; all would lose and potentially hundreds of thousands (or more) could be killed.

For the benefit of the United States, for our ability to influence the actions of our friends and competitors throughout the world on matters of real significance, and to give our people the best chance of living in a world of peace, American foreign policy and diplomacy must immediately change course and begin to treat others with genuine respect, recognize others have legitimate security interests and cease this counter productive penchant for double standards. Our children will forever condemn us if our hubris were to result in a war that should never have been fought, requiring them to spend the rest of their lives trying to rebuild what our foolish pride destroyed.

Army Maj. Daniel L. Davis, a cavalry officer, fought in Desert Storm and served in Afghanistan.

Russia Russian 'Brain Drain' Leaves Future In Doubt (Part 1) By Francesca Mereu

Russia's scientific establishment -- once among the world's best -- has been reduced to a skeleton of its former self, living off crumbs from the federal budget. The post-Soviet decade saw tens of thousands of science professionals leaving the country for better opportunities abroad, and more than a million scientists leaving the profession for other jobs within Russia. In the first of a two-part series on the state of Russian science today, RFE/RL looks at the problem of "brain drain."

Moscow, 30 July 2002 (RFE/RL) -- After the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991, Russia inherited nearly all of the Soviet era's scientific resources. But the Russian research establishment, like many other sectors of Russian society, was hit hard by the economic crisis that followed the collapse of the communist system.

According to a research project conducted by Harvard University history-of-science professor Loren Graham, the past decade of transition has seen Russian government funding for research and development drop from about 1 percent of gross domestic product (GDP) to less than one-third of 1 percent. In Soviet times, this figure never dropped below 2 percent. This, combined with the steady decline in GDP figures over the past 10 years, amounts to a bleak picture for science, once the keystone of Soviet glory.

Further emphasizing the decline of Russian science is the steady outflow, or "brain drain," of science professionals seeking opportunities abroad. The Harvard study indicates that Russia has lost between 10,000 and 30,000 scientists since 1991. Other estimates put the number far higher, at some 200,000.

Aleksandr Karasik is a professor at the Moscow Engineering Institute and a laser-technology researcher at the Moscow General Physics Institute. He said that nearly all of his former colleagues are now working abroad. "The outflow [of personnel] in science is really noticeable [in Russia]. For example, I used to be the head of a leading lab for nonlinear fiber optics. Now 90 percent of my [former] lab employees are working abroad: in the United States, in Mexico, and other countries," Karasik said.

The situation is even more dire when one looks at the problem of "internal brain drain," where science professionals remain in Russia but give up their vocation to pursue better ways of making money. Recent estimates in Russia suggest that as many as 1.5 million scientists -- researchers and technicians -- have left their jobs over the past decade.

Petr Zverev is the head of the Laser Department at the General Physics Institute. Now in his 40s, Zverev said nearly all of his university colleagues have changed their profession during the past 10 years. "If we take the group of 20 people with whom I graduated from the Moscow Physics Institute, now only five of them work in the science sector. Others are working in the banking sector or do business. Among those five [still working in science], only two of them are working in Russia. The other three have emigrated to other countries," Zverev said.

Low salaries are one factor driving scientists away from the field. Scientists' wages during the Soviet era were considerably higher than average. By 1997, however, their salaries had dropped to 30 percent below average, and since then have dropped even further. Now, scientists' salaries rank 10th out of 11 employment categories in Russia, ranking above only those working in arts and culture.

In practical terms, this means even those professors who work as department heads and maintain impressive research and publishing schedules may earn as little as $100 a month. Postdoctoral researchers may earn only $60 a month.

Olga Zharenova is a researcher with the Center for Political Information and the coauthor of a book on brain drain in Russian science. She said depleted government coffers mean not only low salaries for scientists but also little or no resources for new equipment. This, as much as anything, she said, is driving Russian scientists abroad. "The problem of money [for salaries] is not the most important one [for scientists]. The most important thing for them is to make progress with their research. [This is the reason why] the lack of modern equipment and technology is tragic for them," Zharenova said.

In the Soviet era, where the national interest was focused on advancing the country's space and military-industrial sectors, scientists were provided with the most modern technology and equipment available. But now, Zharenova said, Russian scientists are often struggling to conduct research with equipment that is upwards of 15 years old.

Karasik said buying his lab a modern laser system would cost about $100,000 -- "money we wouldn't even dream of," he added.

The combination of poor salaries and impoverished research budgets has, not surprisingly, turned many of Russia's best and brightest students away from science. The average age of Russia's scientists today is between 50 and 55 years, compared to the West, where it is 45. This, Karasik said, is another big problem. "The main problem is that now you don't have young people coming to work in science. The best-qualified groups we prepare [at the institute] usually leave after they get their degree. They either go abroad or they just give up working in science and start doing something else. You can understand them. Science isn't prestigious anymore. [Scientists] earn next to nothing, and [young people] can easily earn more just by selling telephones," Karasik said.

The situation, Karasik added, is only likely to get worse. Although the number of students enrolling in scientific institutes is still high, many are looking only to get an inexpensive, high-quality education they can then take abroad. But as the last generation of Soviet-era professors ages and retires, Karasik said, there will be no one to take their place.

The Kremlin appears to be addressing the problem. Gadzhimet Safaralev, deputy head of the State Duma Committee for Education and Science, said Russian President Vladimir Putin is aware of the crisis facing the scientific community. In the past two years, researchers received all the funds allocated to them in the budget. Moreover, budgets are once again on the rise. In 2000, funding for science increased by almost 39 percent, and Russia now spends some $1.3 billion on science annually. The numbers are expected to increase even further in the 2003 budget.

But such improvements still fall dramatically short of science budgets elsewhere. The United States, for example, spends some $652 billion annually on research and development.

Earlier this month, a group of scientists held a demonstration in Moscow asking the government to honor a 1996 law stipulating that at least 4 percent of federal budget funds be directed at research and development. The Finance Ministry said this target will be realistic only by 2010, a time many Russian scientists say will be too late.

Safaralev said it is difficult to argue for higher science expenditures at a time when Russia is facing economic crises in a number of crucial sectors. But he said even now many scientific institutes can improve their economic standing by renting out space to commercial firms. He also said scientific institutes enjoy considerable tax breaks from the state. "There is a lot of tax relief. On the whole, if you calculate how much academic institutions get, it is much more than 40 billion rubles [some $1.3 billion]. In real terms, the financing for science turns out to be 56 billion rubles [some $1.8 billion]. But a simple scientist doesn't know about this," Safaralev said.

But Karasik said he feels the government is not truly interested in improving the situation. "It is unclear how the problem is going to be solved in the near future. I feel that the government is not interested in [solving] it. It seems to me that, on the one hand, [authorities] want to keep the country's [former scientific] prestige alive and [don't want] science to be destroyed. But on the other hand, you don't see any concrete changes that make you think the situation is going to change for the better in the near future. We're going to lose forever the rich scientific potential we amassed over many years," Karasik said.

Both Karasik and Zverev say their research has survived during the past 10 years thanks to help from foreign foundations. Since 1991, foreign organizations have provided more than $4 billion to research and development. U.S. billionaire and philanthropist George Soros has personally donated some $130 million. The Harvard University study on Russian science indicates that currently nearly 17 percent of research-and-development work in Russian science is funded from abroad. At some of the country's most prestigious institutes, that number rises to between 25 and 50 percent.

Russian science funds are doing their part as well. But scientists say they themselves are limited in the amount of support they can provide -- often it is only enough to cover the cost of a single computer. For now, dedicated scientists like Zverev and Karasik spend a few months of every year working abroad at foreign research centers in order to make ends meet at home.

(This is Part 1 in a two-part series.)

[Nov 14, 2003] Google puts coders to the test

Third was Eugene Vasilchenko, who earned his master's degree in computer science from the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology. Fourth was Tomasz Czajka, from Warsaw, Poland.

Google puts coders to the test
25-YEAR-OLD OUTPROGRAMS 5,000 OTHERS
By Matt Marshall
Mercury News

Turns out the Europeans can beat the best of Silicon Valley.

Jimmy Mardell, 25, of Stockholm, Sweden, was announced the winner Friday of Google's second annual Code Jam. He beat out more than 5,000 of the world's top programmers who signed up to compete in Google's contest to solve coding problems on deadline.

The announcement Friday came in a small, crowded room at Google's Mountain View headquarters where 25 finalists anxiously awaited the word. They'd battled in a two-hour final of four rounds, and all of them wanted to be Chief Geek.

The day went to the skinny young guys in jeans who left chocolate wrappers atop their computers.

Mardell, wearing a big smile, playfully flexed his arm muscles to loud applause. He received a large white envelope, purportedly containing his $10,000 prize, from Alan Eustace, Google's vice president of research and systems engineering. Might it also have contained a Google job offer?

Mardell hadn't opened it yet, but said he's happy at his new job in Sweden working for Elucidon, an information retrieval company. ``In a slight way, Google is a competitor,'' he said.

Someone handed him a glass of champagne, but the congratulations didn't last long: The crowd rushed by him, jockeying for position to read the solution to the final question of the round -- which no one had solved -- freshly displayed on a computer screen.

Second place went to Canada's Christopher Hendrie, 27, a computer scientist at a company called Bioinformatics Solutions. He'll spend his $5,000 check on gadgets for his KLR 650 motorbike, he said.

Third was Eugene Vasilchenko, who earned his master's degree in computer science from the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology. Fourth was Tomasz Czajka, from Warsaw, Poland.

Eustace said there were no women in the group of 25 finalists. But he noted that the company hired two top female programmers last year, as ranked on the popular TopCoder Web site, which organizes competitions for coders, and hosted Google's. Google did not permit its employees to compete.

Mardell is ranked fifth on TopCoder, and his victory Friday was sweet because he beat TopCoder's top ranked coder and several others. He'd met many of them online, few in person. By hosting the gathering, Google surely boosted its ``geek cred.''

``Google's on the very short list of companies I'd work for,'' said Steve Newman, 36, of Portola Valley, who placed fifth and led the Bay Area's participants.

In coding, like at the horse races, you can have good and bad days, the contestants said. ``One mistake and you're out,'' says Urs Hoelzle, Google fellow and former vice president of engineering, who helped conceive of the idea as a potential recruiting tool.

Thomas Rokicki, 40, director of technology at Sunnyvale's Instantis, was the oldest finalist. He faced long odds, competing against the young ``savants,'' he said. So he took a risk, trying the hardest problem first to gain more points. The gamble failed, and he tumbled to around 20th. Still, he insisted that coding skill doesn't decline with age. It's just that older folks get rusty with lack of practice. Besides, he'd almost cracked the toughest problem: ``If I'd had five to 10 minutes more minutes, I'd be the one sitting up there with a big smile and a check in my hand,'' he said.

Three short notes on Russian Crypto History

• russ1
• russ2
• russ3.kript
• russ4.kript

Tetris is Hard, Even to Approximate

Authors: Erik D. Demaine, Susan Hohenberger, David Liben-Nowell
Comments: 56 pages, 11 figures
Report-no: MIT-LCS-TR-865
Subj-class: Computational Complexity; Computational Geometry; Discrete Mathematics
ACM-class: F.1.3; F.2.2; G.2.1; K.8.0

In the popular computer game of Tetris, the player is given a sequence of tetromino pieces and must pack them into a rectangular gameboard initially occupied by a given configuration of filled squares; any completely filled row of the gameboard is cleared and all pieces above it drop by one row. We prove that in the offline version of Tetris, it is NP-complete to maximize the number of cleared rows, maximize the number of tetrises (quadruples of rows simultaneously filled and cleared), minimize the maximum height of an occupied square, or maximize the number of pieces placed before the game ends. We furthermore show the extreme inapproximability of the first and last of these objectives to within a factor of p^(1-epsilon), when given a sequence of p pieces, and the inapproximability of the third objective to within a factor of (2 - epsilon), for any epsilon>0. Our results hold under several variations on the rules of Tetris, including different models of rotation, limitations on player agility, and restricted piece sets.

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• Notes on Virus Paranoya (Russian translation by Constantin E. Climentieff aka DrMad). Original English version is here
• SourceForge russian - Foundry -- several projects including jedit
• Tetris News Pajitnov's version of Tetris creation. Pajitnov moved to the USA in 1991. Compare with Vadim Gerasimov's account which I consider is more accurate... The Pajitnov's company was sometimes pretty aggressive in enforcing Tetris trademark and that damaged Pajitnov's reputation among developers. See song.li ... it's about the ego
  

  By ALEX PHAM, [email protected]

  One of the first games played on the personal computer also happens to be one of the most enduring games of all time.

  Introduced in 1984, "Tetris" has sold 50 million licensed copies. New versions of the game are being released by THQ Inc. for next-generation consoles and, of course, the PC.

  What gives the game such longevity? "Tetris" is easy to play but difficult to master, taunting players for hours at a time.

  Despite changes in the game's graphics, the core game play is essentially identical to the original version created by Alexey Pajitnov to run on a Russian computer on a black and white screen using only text-based shapes. Pajitnov was a scientist with the Computer Center of the Academy of Sciences in Moscow when he began making puzzle games as a way to test new computers.

  His first game involved seven shapes built from four square blocks, giving rise to the name "Tetris" that comes from the Greek word tetra, meaning four. The shapes fall from the top of the screen--players rotate them as they fall to fit with the changing grid, below.

  Although the game has achieved spectacular sales, Pajitnov did not begin receiving royalties until 1996. Before that, the money went to the Academy, his former employer, and the Soviet Ministry of Commerce. To remedy that, Pajitnov and Henk Rogers established a company, now called Blue Planet Software Inc., to develop and license all "Tetris"-related products.

  These days, Pajitnov, 46, is designing puzzle games for Microsoft Corp.

  Q: What made "Tetris" such a popular game?

  Nobody knows. That's the biggest secret. There are several theories. One is that it appeals to the human need to have order and harmony. You have a random, chaotic situation, and your mission is to create order. The other theory that all your achievements, the blocks you arranged, disappear as soon as they're lined up. So what you have in front of your eyes is all your awful mistakes. It makes you want to fix it all the time. But again, nobody really knows.

  Q: What did the original game look like?

  Imagine you have black and white screen, no color, no sound. The field is dotted with asterisks. The squares are created by using square brackets. Imagine working with "Tetris" in text mode only, where you're working only with letters and numbers. But if you look at it, you will immediately recognize the game.

  Q: How has "Tetris" evolved?

  There were several steps in its life. The first was my own design. I designed the game for a very old Russian computer called the Electronic 60. There weren't graphics, so in order to draw a square, I used two square brackets. That was the first version. Then the game was published in the U.S. for the first time in 1988 by Spectrum HoloByte. The big step, however, was with the Game Boy version in 1989. For many years, that was the best possible version of "Tetris." It was very well balanced. The rules included everything I really wanted. The squares were soft-dropped, not hard dropped so you could see the blocks as they fell. That was a pleasant small detail that makes the game more controllable. You'd be amazed how small details are very important to players. The next major improvement came with "The Next Tetris," published three years ago on PC and PlayStation. This version introduced the "cascade" effect, or a chain reaction that occurred like an avalanche when you completed a row. This created an unbelievably good feeling for the player. It's one of the best feelings in gaming you could imagine.

  Q: How involved are you with the development of "Tetris" now?

  I am still involved in the design. Really, though, there are lots of designers and developers who did many of the improvements in "Tetris." My role is very modest. All the new versions for "Tetris" were designed by Henk Rogers and other Blue Planet Software designers.

  Q: How could you possibly improve "Tetris?"

  In the newest version that will come out this fall, we have six types of puzzles. Each version is for a different audience. For example, we have a puzzle called "Hotline." This game will be good for beginners and for players with a short fuse--people without patience who want feedback right away. Then there is "Squaretris." That's where you can make other configurations. This version is a little more strategic. People who like to think will really enjoy it. The fact that we have such variety is very good. It will keep up the feeling of novelty.

  Q: Are three-dimensional puzzle games necessarily better than two-dimensional games?

  I am a professional designer. So all my managers asked me for 3-D. I know 3-D is very fashionable now. It looks very good on the screen. But our brains haven't adapted. People have problems with 3-D. Look at Rubic's Cube. It's three by three by three, like a tick-tack-toe cube. But it's extremely difficult for a regular person. That's why if you want to do a 3-D puzzle, you should be really cautious. The best achievements are in two-and-a-half-dimensional puzzles. Take a regular 2-D puzzle, and put it on an interesting surface. It looks good, but the level of complication of the puzzle remains reasonable. Switching to full 3-D is no problem technically. The main problem is that people won't be able to play them. Basically that's what happened with "Tetris." In 1990, there were two puzzle games, "Blockout," which was a fully 3-D game, and "Welltris," a 2-D game. "Welltris" was one of the top 10 games in 1990. "Blockout" wasn't.

  Q: What makes a good puzzle game?

  Every game is a very complicated product. For me, it's like a movie. The idea is the most important thing, what kind of mechanics are in the game. The second thing is the balance. It should have rules simple enough to be understandable, but the game should still be challenging. From a designer's point of view, this is the most complicated thing. Graphics and sound have become more and more important. In early years, we didn't hear about this stuff at all, and now it's one of the critical things. The rest is just small professional secrets.

  Q: Do you have any advice for a budding game designer?

  Just sit down and do it. The good designer comes with his game and says what's wrong with it.

  Q: Where do you draw your inspiration?

  Different designers have different sources of inspiration. Myself, I usually start with a traditional puzzle. If you come to my office at work, you will see it is full of toys--wire frames, jigsaws, pyramids, and lots of toys with interesting shapes. I work with them all, and I like to solve them.

The Anatomy of a Search Engine by Sergey Brin and Lawrence Page

In this paper, we present Google, a prototype of a large-scale search engine which makes heavy use of the structure present in hypertext. Google is designed to crawl and index the Web efficiently and produce much more satisfying search results than existing systems. The prototype with a full text and hyperlink database of at least 24 million pages is available at http://google.stanford.edu/ To engineer a search engine is a challenging task. Search engines index tens to hundreds of millions of web pages involving a comparable number of distinct terms. They answer tens of millions of queries every day. Despite the importance of large-scale search engines on the web, very little academic research has been done on them. Furthermore, due to rapid advance in technology and web proliferation, creating a web search engine today is very different from three years ago. This paper provides an in-depth description of our large-scale web search engine -- the first such detailed public description we know of to date. Apart from the problems of scaling traditional search techniques to data of this magnitude, there are new technical challenges involved with using the additional information present in hypertext to produce better search results. This paper addresses this question of how to build a practical large-scale system which can exploit the additional information present in hypertext. Also we look at the problem of how to effectively deal with uncontrolled hypertext collections where anyone can publish anything they want.