Archive for March, 2014

My independent view on Ukraine-Crimea Russia VS Western World crisis

Wednesday, March 19th, 2014

Crimea_New_member-of-Russia-Emblem
I've been following what is happening in Ukraine over the last 6 months and I see with pain this poor brotherly Slavonic country is being literally destroyed by Radicals. It is obvious that the Revolution in Ukraine looks very similar to Revolution in Egypt, the War in Syria and obviously doesn't happen by itself but was financed by foreign forces to serve someone's interests. I known that in Ukraine people live poor, but even after the change in power it is less likely that they will start living better.

In my view Ukraine's people got infected by European Union's external appearance for prosperity and freedom. Such an outlook is just on the surface and everyone who lives in EU knows that well. It is my understanding that the European Union is based on fairy tales for freedom, friendship of nations based on economy. EU sets itself on rules and regulations and vague words combined with economic factors. With the crisis appearing one after another in country members of EU (Greece, Slovenia, Cyprus, Spain etc.) it is obvious that the EU is artificial union and not working well. Many country who belong to EU for some years already have seen that and even some like England want out of the European Union. With this in mind it is fully unclear to me why Ukrainians want and think that membership in EU will solve there economic problems … on the contrary once they join the EU, they will have to fulfill thousands of rules and regulations which will destroy there local country economy and will make them put out all country money out of the country into the pockets of Western Nations. Same nation genocide scenario was executed in Bulgaria and give "good satisfactory fruits". By the rules and regulations on Bulgaria our local economy was destroyed making our contry market completely dependent on other Western country market for daily products and external Western business investments. The failure of Bulgaria as a concurent on EU market run the wheel of EU economy, opening a new space for new investments and trade. Same happened with Romania and most likely will happen also with EU's newest member Croatia very soon.

Ukraine is a brotherly nation to Russia and even historically this two nations share very similar faith. Of course the two nations differ but the similarities and even the language makes them brotherly nations. Ukraine was part of Russian Empire and is called Ukraine (from the word end part of Russia). Historically Ukrainian were known as "MaloRus", Russians were known as "Rus" and Belarusian as (White Rus).
Currently in Ukraine live 8,334,100 Ethical Russians (17% of Ukraine's population), the highest density of Russians is in Crimea with 58 % of Ethnic Russians.

Of course the economic crisis in Ukraine as every Crisis is not only a Crisis of material goods but a Crisis of spirituality. Big part of Ukrainian Church separated from Russian Orthodox Church and are not in canonical unity with rest of Orthodox Churches. Besides that the number of Uniats (Orthodox Christian who are under the rule of the Roman Pope) seem to be growing over the last years there. After the fall of USSR, the number of protestants and other Christian sects in Ukraine also has grown. The decay of Russian Orthodox Church diocese in Ukraine set a space for more and more religious spiritual divisions which affected the material country realm. Talking about religion it is worthy to mention a very curious and not much known fact is that current Prime Minister Oleksandr Turchynov (who took place of Viktor Yanukovych) is protestant pastor. The other key actor of the Ukrainian Revolution is Arseniy Yatsenyuk who is not even Urainian but Ethic Ukrainian Jew.

Concerning Crimea historically give birth to Kievan Rus (and so to say is like mother land of all Russians as we known them), from year 1783 to 1917 was a territory part of Russian Empire, then from 1922 to 1991 it was part of Soviet Union, from 1991 to 1998, Crimea was autonomous Republic. Crimea is well known from history where Russian Empire fought with French Empire in Crimean War (1853-1856). It is no strange why Russia wants Crimea so hard as they have historically fought for this land and over the last few centuries it was Russian teritory. It will be no strange either if Crimea becomes a reason for another war …

So Who is right Russia or the Western World (European Union / United States)?
For me from the facts it is more than clear that neither the Euroepan Union nor United States share a close history / language / culture with Crimea, neither ever this was their territory. Meaning Westerners doesn't have the right to escalate the situation by putting oil in the fire, but should better keep silent and let Ukraine Russia and Crimea solve their problem alone (in a peaceful way). But why Europeans and Americans try to intervene? Well simple economically European Union has more interest to have a new Member country membering ~ 45 millions and a nice tourist destination Crimea than to have a member with 3 million less, and US's influence on world by having a western oriented Ukraine will raise. This is the reason why they make so much noise and don't want to accept the referendum in Crimea for unification with Russia, because they have politic interests there.

Ukrainians was mislead to believe the fight for Ukraine is a nation heroism, where in reality what is happening in Ukraine is just serving biggest countries interests. The bad thing is what is happening there is a good reason for emerge of national war and we know from history such a small conflicts combined with a world economic crisis led to World War I and World War II. I don't say that such a war will emerge but I think Western World should be careful to not provoke a war in Europe through recognizing Crimea's people decision to become part of Russia.

Fix temporary DNS problems on Windows – ipconfig /flushdns

Monday, March 17th, 2014

fix temporary dns issues ipconfig /fush
My internet connection is coming router over a strange Belarusian ADSL modem "Промсвязь". This device serves as ADSL modem and a Wireless Router.
promsviaz_belarusian_adsl_and_wifi_modem

Periodically I'm experiencing issues with DNS, where there is internet but DNS resolving stops woring even though in ipconfig /all I can see DNS settings are proper:

C:\Users\hipo> ipconfig /all

...
Wireless LAN adapter Wireless Network Connection:

   Connection-specific DNS Suffix  . :
   Description . . . . . . . . . . . : Intel(R) Centrino(R) Ultimate-N 6300 AGN
   Physical Address. . . . . . . . . : 3C-A9-F4-4C-E7-98
   DHCP Enabled. . . . . . . . . . . : Yes
   Autoconfiguration Enabled . . . . : Yes
   Link-local IPv6 Address . . . . . : fe80::5d2f:97b8:9e1a:2b13%63(Preferred)
   IPv4 Address. . . . . . . . . . . : 192.168.100.2(Preferred)
   Subnet Mask . . . . . . . . . . . : 255.255.255.0
   Lease Obtained. . . . . . . . . . : March 17, 2014 16:57:40 PM
   Lease Expires . . . . . . . . . . : March 18, 2014 16:57:40 PM
   Default Gateway . . . . . . . . . : 192.168.100.1
   DHCP Server . . . . . . . . . . . : 192.168.100.1
   DHCPv6 IAID . . . . . . . . . . . : 1094494708
   DHCPv6 Client DUID. . . . . . . . : 00-01-00-01-19-CB-1A-5D-A4-5D-36-5A-EB-84

   DNS Servers . . . . . . . . . . . : 8.8.8.8
                                       192.168.100.1
                                       8.8.4.4

   NetBIOS over Tcpip. . . . . . . . : Enabled

 

The fix to situation is to Restart Promsvijazy and restart my Notebook. As this fix takes a lot of time I found another "work around". Make Windows Flush its DNS servers (forget old DNS servers and re-assign them again)

C:\Users\hipo> ipconfig /flushdns

Windows IP Configuration Successfully flushed the DNS Resolver Cache.


 

Other useful commands to make connection re-initiate completely are:

ipconfig /renew

Renews all Adapter settings (Lan, Wiki, PPP etc.) – re-assign IPs / re-initiate connections and

ipconfig /release

Releases any established connection

IQ world rank by country and which are the smartest nations

Friday, March 14th, 2014

IQ_world_rank_by_country_world_distribution_of_intelligence
In a home conversation with my wife who is Belarusian and comparison between Bulgarian and Belarusian nation, the interesting question arised – Which nation is Smarter Bulgarian or Belarusian?

This little conversation pushed me to intriguing question What is the IQ World rank if compared by country? Since a moment of my life I'm trying to constantly prove to myself I'm smart enough. For years my motivation was to increase my IQ. I had periods when studied hard history, philosophy and literature then I had periods to put all my efforts in music and mysticism then there was my fascination about IT and informatics and hacking, I had periods with profound interest in Biology and neourosciences, then of course psychology and social sciences and since last 10 years as I belived in God, I'm deeply interested in world religions and more particularly in Christniaty. All this is connected with my previous IQ (Intelligence Quotient) and my desire to develop my IQ. I'm quite aware that IQ statistics can never be 100% reliable as there is deviation (standard error) and its a very general way to find out about a person psychology. But anyways it is among the few methods to compare people's intelligence… I've done an IQ test in distant 2008 and I scored about 118 out of 180  – meaning my  IQ level is a little bit above average. The IQ conversation triggered my curiousity so I decided to check if my current IQ has changed over the last 6 years. Here is results from test I took March, 2013 on free-iqtest.net

IQ Test
IQtest just prooved, my IQ kept almost same, still a little bit above avarage.
Further on, I did investgation online to see if I can prove to my wife the thesis Bulgarians overall IQ is higher than Belarusian. I googled for IQ world rank by Country
Here is what I found ;

 

Nations Intelligence as sorted by Country

Rank
——–

Country
———————–

%
————-

1

Singapore

108

2

South Korea

106

3

Japan

105

4

Italy

102

5

Iceland

101

5

Mongolia

101

6

Switzerland

101

7

Austria

100

7

China

100

7

Luxembourg

100

7

Netherlands

100

7

Norway

100

7

United Kingdom

100

8

Belgium

99

8

Canada

99

8

Estonia

99

8

Finland

99

8

Germany

99

8

New Zealand

99

8

Poland

99

8

Sweden

99

9

Andorra

98

9

Australia

98

9

Czech Republic

98

9

Denmark

98

9

France

98

9

Hungary

98

9

Latvia

98

9

Spain

98

9

United States

98

10

Belarus

97

10

Malta

97

10

Russia

97

10

Ukraine

97

11

Moldova

96

11

Slovakia

96

11

Slovenia

96

11

Uruguay

96

12

Israel

95

12

Portugal

95

13

Armenia

94

13

Georgia

94

13

Kazakhstan

94

13

Romania

94

13

Vietnam

94

14

Argentina

93

14

Bulgaria

93

15

Greece

92

15

Ireland

92

15

Malaysia

92

16

Brunei

91

16

Cambodia

91

16

Cyprus

91

16

FYROM

91

16

Lithuania

91

16

Sierra Leone

91

16

Thailand

91

17

Albania

90

17

Bosnia and Herzegovina

90

17

Chile

90

17

Croatia

90

17

Kyrgyzstan

90

17

Turkey

90

18

Cook Islands

89

18

Costa Rica

89

18

Laos

89

18

Mauritius

89

18

Serbia

89

18

Suriname

89

19

Ecuador

88

19

Mexico

88

19

Samoa

88

20

Azerbaijan

87

20

Bolivia

87

20

Brazil

87

20

Guyana

87

20

Indonesia

87

20

Iraq

87

20

Myanmar (Burma)

87

20

Tajikistan

87

20

Turkmenistan

87

20

Uzbekistan

87

21

Kuwait

86

21

Philippines

86

21

Seychelles

86

21

Tonga

86

22

Cuba

85

22

Eritrea

85

22

Fiji

85

22

Kiribati

85

22

Peru

85

22

Trinidad and Tobago

85

22

Yemen

85

23

Afghanistan

84

23

Bahamas, The

84

23

Belize

84

23

Colombia

84

23

Iran

84

23

Jordan

84

23

Marshall Islands

84

23

Micronesia, Federated States of

84

23

Morocco

84

23

Nigeria

84

23

Pakistan

84

23

Panama

84

23

Paraguay

84

23

Saudi Arabia

84

23

Solomon Islands

84

23

Uganda

84

23

United Arab Emirates

84

23

Vanuatu

84

23

Venezuela

84

24

Algeria

83

24

Bahrain

83

24

Libya

83

24

Oman

83

24

Papua New Guinea

83

24

Syria

83

24

Tunisia

83

25

Bangladesh

82

25

Dominican Republic

82

25

India

82

25

Lebanon

82

25

Madagascar

82

25

Zimbabwe

82

26

Egypt

81

26

Honduras

81

26

Maldives

81

26

Nicaragua

81

27

Barbados

80

27

Bhutan

80

27

El Salvador

80

27

Kenya

80

28

Guatemala

79

28

Sri Lanka

79

28

Zambia

79

29

Congo, Democratic Republic of the

78

29

Nepal

78

29

Qatar

78

30

Comoros

77

30

South Africa

77

31

Cape Verde

76

31

Congo, Republic of the

76

31

Mauritania

76

31

Senegal

76

32

Mali

74

32

Namibia

74

33

Ghana

73

34

Tanzania

72

35

Central African Republic

71

35

Grenada

71

35

Jamaica

71

35

Saint Vincent and the Grenadines

71

35

Sudan

71

36

Antigua and Barbuda

70

36

Benin

70

36

Botswana

70

36

Rwanda

70

36

Togo

70

37

Burundi

69

37

Cote d'Ivoire

69

37

Ethiopia

69

37

Malawi

69

37

Niger

69

38

Angola

68

38

Burkina Faso

68

38

Chad

68

38

Djibouti

68

38

Somalia

68

38

Swaziland

68

39

Dominica

67

39

Guinea

67

39

Guinea-Bissau

67

39

Haiti

67

39

Lesotho

67

39

Liberia

67

39

Saint Kitts and Nevis

67

39

Sao Tome and Principe

67

40

Gambia, The

66

41

Cameroon

64

41

Gabon

64

41

Mozambique

64

42

Saint Lucia

62

43

Equatorial Guinea

59

 

North Korea

N/A

 

– Countries are ranked highest to lowest national IQ score.

Above statistics are taken from a work carried out earlier this decade by Richard Lynn, a British psychologist, and Tatu Vanhanen, a Finnish political scientist. To extract statistics they analized  IQ studies from 113 countries.  

For my surprise it appeared Belarusian (ranking 10th in the world) have generally higher IQ than Bulgarians (ordering 14th). Anyways being 14th in world IQ Ranking is not bad at all as we still rank in the top 20 smartest nations.

IQ is a relative way to measure intelligence, so I don't believe these statistics are revelant but they give some very general idea about world IQs.

I learned there are some claims that in more developed economies people have higher IQs than less developed. If we take in consideration above statistics its obvious such claims are dubious as you can see there are countries in top 5 countries with highest IQ, and surely Mongolia is not to be ordered in countries with high economic development.

There are plenty of other interesting researches like "Does IQ relates to people Income?", Does Religious people score higher than atheists? According to research done in U.S. Atheists score 6 IQ points higher than Religious people. However most "religous" people IQ tested were from protestant origin so results are relative (I'm sure Orthodox Christian would score higher 🙂 ). The IQ nation world ranks fail in a way that, a social, economic and historical factors are not counted. According to Gallups research, the world poorest people tend to be the most religious, a fact supporting well the saying of all saints who say that for saintly life people who preferred deliberately to live as poor people.

 

Saint Cyprian the Bulgarian – Metropolitan of Moscow and All Russians

Thursday, March 13th, 2014

Saint Cyprian the Bulgarian Metropolitan of Moscow and All Russians

Probably few Bulgarians and even less Russians have heard about Saint Cyprian the Bulgariana great saint who played a ey role in esblishment of nowadays Russian Orthodox Church.. I have learned about the living of the saint just recently. Cyprian (The Bulgarian) (c. 1336 – 16 September 1406) was Metropolitan of Kiev and All Rus' with the Metropolitan's residence in Moscow. (The official title was Metropolitan of Kiev and All Rus' until 1448, even though the metropolitans were in Vladimir-on-Kliazma and later Moscow since 1299.)

Saint Cyprian was a Clergyman of Bulgarian nationality, he lived for some time at Mount Athos. In 1373, the Patriarch of Constantinople Philotheus Kokkinos picked him for his devout lifestyle and excellent education and sent him to Lithuania and Muscovy on a mission to reconcile the princes of Lithuania and Tver with Metropolitan Alexius. In 1375, after the hostilities between Moscow and Lithuania had started all over again, the Lithuanian princes asked to appoint Cyprian their Metropolitan. Philotheus Kokkinos made Cyprian Metropolitan of Kiev, all Russia and Lithuania, so that he could unite both ecclesiastical provinces after the death of Alexius. In 1376 he was ordained as a bishop in Constantinople at the behest of the Lithuanian grand duke Algirdas and become Mitropolitan of Kiev. Because this ordination was not recognized by Moscow, he was driven out from Moscow on his first arival there and had to wait in Constantinople until he was officially recognized as Metropolitan. He became officially regognized metropolitan of "all Rus" by the Moscow Duke later in 1389.

His residence from there on was Moscow, although he visited Kiev and other Ukrainian eparchies regularly. In 1378, Metropolitan Alexius died. As a result of the ensuing skirmishes and intrigues, Cyprian became Metropolitan of Moscow in 1381. One year later, however, he fled from Moscow due to the approaching armies of Tokhtamysh. Subsequently, he was removed from Russia and replaced with Metropolitan Pimen (1382–1384). The latter was succeeded by Metropolitan Dionysius (1384–1385). In 1390, Cyprian was returned to Moscow by Vasili II, who he had always supported, and appointed Metropolitan of Moscow and All Russia. Cyprian is remembered as a wise and experienced church administrator who fought for the unity of the Russian church.

In fact, he is mainly responsible for uniting the Church in Russia and the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. He faced serious opposition during his metropolitanate; Dmitry Donskoy and his advisors were excommunicated for opposing Cyprian's efforts to take up his place in Moscow, and Novgorod the Great – especially Archbishops Aleksei and Ioann II – also opposed his efforts to adjudicate ecclesiastical cases there, which would have allowed him to gain the court fees from Novgorod during the time he sat in judgement there. St. Cyprian was an erudite person and oversaw the copying and creation of a number of important works, including the Troitskaia Chronicle (or Troitskaya letopis') and, probably, the Metropolitan Justice (also known as the Pravosudiye metropolich’ye or Правосудие митрополичье). He also rewrote the Life of Metropolitan Peter, originally written around 1327.

Under st. Cyprian's governance, a church "reform"  was made on how the iconostasis is build the called "high few raws of icons" on the Church Alter wall iconostasis so common nowadays in Russian Church is actually his invention.
He also corrected biblical books and translated a number of ecclesiastic works from Greek into Old Church Slavic.
A little known fact is Andrei Rublev was under St. Cyprian's spiritual guidance when he painted the most famous Russian icon (and the only canonical icon depicing) "The Holy Trinity".

Andrey_Rublev_The_old-testament-Holy_Trinity_icon made under spiritual guidance of Saint Cyprian the Bulgarian

St. Cyprian is buried in the Assumption Cathedral in the Moscow Kremlin. He was canonized by the Russian Orthodox Church in the 15th century. One curious fact is St. Kiprian Peak on Greenwich Island in the South Shetland Islands, Antarctica is named for Cyprian.

Here is a movie Saint Cyprian the Bulgarian (unfortunatelyin Bulgarian language)

:

Film about Saint Cyprian the Bulgarian – Metropolitan of Moscow and All Russians

Outlook Express hotkeys (short keys) list – Use your MS Outlook efficiently

Thursday, March 13th, 2014

I'm foced to use Microsoft Outlook Express daily for my daily work in Hewlett Packard. Thus I decided to learn the hotkeys to make my Mail use more efficient. Here are list of Outlook Express hotkeys, hopefully to be useful to others too:
 

Print the selected message –  Ctrl+P
Send and receive mail –  Ctrl+M
Delete a mail message - DEL or Ctrl+D
Open or post a new message –  Ctrl+N
Open the Address Book - Ctrl+SHIFT+B
Reply to the message author –  Ctrl+R
Reply to all –  Ctrl+Shitf+R, Ctrl+G (news only)
Refresh news message and headers –  F5
Forward a message - Ctrl+F
Find Text - F3
Find a message - CTRL+Shift+F
Close Message - ESC
Check Names - Ctrl+K, Alt+S
Go to your Inbox - Ctrl+I
Go to the next message in the list - Ctrl+> or Ctrl+SHIFT+>
Go to the previous message in the list - Ctrl+< or Ctrl+SHIFT+<
View properties of a selected message - ALT+ENTER
View the full source of the message - Ctrl+F3
Go to the next unread mail message - Ctrl+U
Go to the next unread news conversation - Ctrl+Shift+U
Go to a folder –  Ctrl+Y
Open a selected message – Ctrl+O or ENTER
Mark a message as read - Ctrl+ENTER or Ctrl+Q
Move between the Folders list (if on), message list, preview pane, and Contacts list (if on) - TAB
Mark all news messages as read - Ctrl+SHIFT+A
Check spelling – F7
Insert signature - Ctrl+SHIFT+S
Send (post) a message –  Ctrl+ENTER or ALT+S
Select all messages –  Ctrl+A

Enjoy 🙂

 

Windows batch read variable – equivalent of Linux read line command

Wednesday, March 12th, 2014

bat-file-icon-windows-read-variable
If you need to do some basic batch scripting sooner or later you will have to insert input from command line to a variable. In Linux this is done with read command, i.e.:
$ echo -n "Type a password for admin:";
$ read line;
$ echo $line;

So here is how to do the same if you need it for a Windows Batch (.BAT) file

C:\\Users\\> Set /p string='What do you want to ask?:'
'What do you want to ask?:'

This will define the string variable, to later print out the variable use:
> echo %string%
variable input output

Play Dune2 on Debian Linux with dosbox – Dune 2 Mother of all Real Time Strategy games

Saturday, March 1st, 2014

medium_1809-dune-ii-the-building-of-a-dynasty_one_of_best_games_ever_linux_windows.gif

Dune II: The Building of a Dynasty (known also as Dune II: Battle for Arrakis in Europe is a game that my generation will never forget. Dune 2 is the "first" computer Real Time Strategy (RTE) game of the genre of the Warcraft I and Warcraft II / III and later Command and Conquer – Red Aleart, Age of Empires I / II and Starcraft …

dune2-unit-destroyed

I've grown up with Dune2 and the little computer geek community in my school was absolutely crazy about playing it. Though not historically being the first Real Time Strategy game, this Lucas Inc. 
game give standards that for the whole RTE genre for years and will stay in history of Computer Games as one of best games of all times.

I've spend big part of my teenager years with my best friends playing Dune2 and the possibility nowadays to resurrect the memories of these young careless years is a blessing.  Younger computer enthusiasts and gamers probably never heard of Dune 2 and this is why I decided to place a little post here about this legendary game.

dune-2-tank-vehicle - one of best games computer games ever

Its worthy out of curiosity or for fun to play Dune 2 on modern OS be it Windows or Linux. Since Dune is DOS game, it is necessary to play it via DOS emulator i.e. – (DosBox). 
Here is how I run dune2 on my Debian Linux:

1. Install dosbox DOS emulator

apt-get install --yes dosbox

2. Download Dune2 game executable

You can download my mirror of dune2 here

Note that you will need unzip to uanrchive it, if you don't have it installed do so:

apt-get install --yes unzip

cd ~/Downloads/
wget https://www.pc-freak.net/files/dune-2.zip

3.  Unzip archive and create directory to mount it emulating 'C:\' drive

mkdir -p ~/.dos/Dune2
cd ~/.dos/Dune2

unzip ~/Downloads/dune-2.zip
 

4. Start dosbox and create permanent config for C: drive auto mount


dosbox

To make C:\ virtual drive automatically mounted you have to write a dosbox config from inside dbox console

config -writeconf /home/hipo/.dosbox.conf

My home dir is in /home/hipo, change this with your username /home/username

Then exit dosbox console with 'exit' command

To make dune2 game automatically mapped on Virtual C: drive:

echo "mount c /home/hipo/.dos" >> ~/.dosbox.conf

Further to make dosbox start each time with ~/.dosbox.conf add alias to your ~/.bashrc 

vim ~/.bashrc
echo "alias dosbox='dosbox -conf /home/hipo/.dosbox.conf'" >> ~/.bashrc
source ~/.bashrc

Then to run DUNE2 launch dosbox:

dosbox

and inside console type:

c:
cd Dune2
Dune2.exe

dune2-first-real-time-strategy-game-harkonen-screenshot

For the lazy ones who would like to test dune you can play dune 2 online on this website