Trains of Thought...

I love travelling by train. In my youth, I bought Interail passes for many years, and basically lived on trains for a month, wending my way slowly around Europe. More recently, I spent 36 hours on a train travelling from Italy through Austria, Czech Republic, Poland and Belarus (don't get me started on how I was dragged out of my carriage at gunpoint, at 5 o'clock in the morning, because I didn't have a transit visa for Belarus...)

But the big daddy, of course, is the Trans Siberian Railway. And now, thanks to those kind, but troublingly pervasive people at Google, I/you can travel that amazing journey without leaving home:

Moscow-Vladivostok: virtual journey on Google Maps

The great Trans Siberian Railway, the pride of Russia, goes across two continents, 12 regions and 87 cities. The joint project of Google and the Russian Railways lets you take a trip along the famous route and see Baikal, Khekhtsirsky range, Barguzin mountains, Yenisei river and many other picturesque places of Russia without leaving your house. During the trip, you can enjoy Russian classic literature, brilliant images and fascinating stories about the most attractive sites on the route. Let's go!

And when they say Russian classic literature, they mean classic literature *in Russian*; indeed, it's worth hopping aboard just for that.

Хорошо!

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Open Source Sent to Siberia

Russia is emerging as a real open source power-house, especially in the eduction sector. Here's some more good news, this time from Siberia:

За 2009 год школы Сибирского федерального округа должны перейти на "Пакет свободного программного обеспечения для образовательных учреждений", в основе которого лежит операционная система Linux. Об этом сообщил корр. "ТАСС-Сибирь" президент ассоциации "Информатизация образования Сибири" Виктор Корнеев. Более того, от популярной операционной системы Windows будут отказываться и бюджетные учреждения, однако в них процесс перехода на новое программное обеспечение затянется на ближайшие 5 лет.

Особо Виктор Дмитриевич отметил, что среди трех регионов России, в которых проводилась апробация этого программного обеспечения, был один регион СФО – Томская область. Именно здесь, наряду с подобными мероприятиями в Татарстане и Пермском крае, Областной центр развития образования проводил мероприятия по внедрению программного обеспечения на базе Linux во все школы Томской области. "А сегодня мы готовы перевести на эти программы все школы Сибирского федерального округа, причем сделать это в кратчайшие сроки – не более чем за один год. Единственное отличие от пилотного проекта в том, что упаковка будет несколько скромнее", - отмечает Виктор Корнеев, демонстрируя массивную запечатанную коробку, в которой находилось 4 вида программного обеспечения для разных типов компьютеров.

[Via Google Translate: During 2009 the School of the Siberian Federal District to move to "free software package for educational institutions", which is based on the operating system Linux. The statement was made by a correspondent. Moreover, from the popular Windows operating system will refuse, and budgetary institutions, but in the process of transition to new software is delayed for the next 5 years.

Especially Victor D. noted that among the three regions of Russia, in which the testing of the software, was one region SFD - Tomsk Oblast. It is here, along with similar activities in Tatarstan and the Perm region, the regional center for educational development activities conducted on the introduction of software based on Linux in all schools in the Tomsk region. "And today we are ready to transfer these programs to all schools in the Siberian Federal District, and to do so as soon as possible - no more than one year. The only difference from the pilot project in that the package will be slightly more modest," - noted Victor Korneev, demonstrating massive sealed box in which there were 4 types of software for different types of computers.]

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Words Fail Us

linguistics professor and author shares a personal selection from the thousands of languages on the brink of disappearing

How about if we all volunteered to learn an endangered language? - You can put me down for Ket:

Ket is the only Siberian language with a tone system where the pitch of the voice can give what sound like identical words quite different meanings. (Much like Chinese or Yoruba). To add to the difficulty for any westerner wishing to learn it, it also has extremely complicated word structure and grammar.