Andrey Vystavkin Blog

Recently, the minister of Education gathered the directors of 3 public and 3 private universities in order to setup a new trend of Cyprus education, which will bring more investments to the Educational system and create a promising basis for making Cyprus the centre of Mediterranean Education.
The news were quite positive: due to huge outflow of local students (55% in Cyprus vs. 3% in EU), the Educational system will get more subsidies in order to develop its infrastructure and increase the level of education.

Work Permit

Past:According to official permissions – foreign students are allowed to work, but most of the fields where you might be sent do not have anything in common with what you’ve been studying. For example, undergraduate BA student might be found in agricultural sector collecting olives.

Future: Now, the Ministry of Education is about to lobby the work permit equally for foreign students as well, as the solution for illegal residence, and working experience. We’ve been hearing these stories for long time, thus a big percentage of scepticism remains about the easiness of making this come true.

Research Centres and Grants

Past: in most of the cases, all the grants, exchange programmes were about the local students, – you weren’t simply told about these activities in the Uni to take part. The highest GPA wasn’t giving you the right of studying for free, comparing with local students.

Future: Concerning the recent news, foreign students will finally get the access for grant and exchange programmes as well, equally with the locals. The problem with campuses will be partially solved as well.

Language Problem

Past: (and Present), mainstream faculties are taught in English, but the other part of them remain in Greek. The opportunity of obtaining PhD degree is owned by the Public University of Cyprus, and of course in Greek. Master programmes are also limited by the number of disciplines, which cuts the time of students staying in Cyprus for obtaining their degrees.

Future: This issue will be solved by switching more faculties to English, and finally giving out the chance of Private Universities provide high degrees of education, like PhD, MsPhil, etc.

Overall

The newspapers, and TV discussing this story shown that the Ministry of Education at least realizes their long-run problems. Hopefully they’ll get at least 30% closer to what they’re planning to do, that will be enough to show all the financial opportunities in investing to Education then in just selling houses.

Heap Cyprus, Education, News

Just passed my driving test:

• Now I got wheels
• Now have to drink less.

Heap News, Personal

and now a study proves that “Mac people” indeed are more liberal and open-minded than average folks.

If you’re using PC, you’re conservative and close-minded average person living on this planet. The quote is a bit stupid, isn’t it?

Heap Holly wars, News, OS

I’ll try to make things short by quoting Richard Stallman:

Control over the use of one’s ideas really constitutes control over other people’s lives; and it is usually used to make their lives more difficult.

Watching these patent wars between Novell, Red Hat versus IP Innovation just makes me wondering: how hard will it be to distribute ideas in the world where everything is patented?

Links IT, Linux, News

So, what are the changes for the last year in Frederick?

• I’m on my 4th year, doing bachelor.
• To end up with 60 ECTS credits, I’d have to take 7 subjects in average this year
• Small amount of subjects added
• Price increas, so far up to 4200 CYP annually (if there’s no scholarships)
• Want to participate in Frederic Research Centre – easily, just catch needed supervisor!
• MSc in Information Technologies from Frederick will be launched by the next year.
• MSc in IT exists in FIT, but it’s provided by Herriot Watt University.

As you can see, nothing special so far added or changed, thus the hype slowly goes down with the fact that Frederick Institute of Technology (FIT) has become Frederick University Cyprus (FUC).

Blogging Frederick Institute, Frederick University, News, Personal, Thoughts

It’s been a while since these talks started. There have been a lot of “for” and “against” opinions concerning the creation of a particular operating system which can be called Russian.

On the 15th of September, in Sochi, the Academy of Information Technologies and Federal Bureau of Technical and Export Control authorized Mandriva Linux distro as a stable Linux version for corporate use.

As the result, Mandriva now can become a “standard” version of Operating System for governmental sectors in Russia.

Personally, I’ve never used it and can’t compare its functionality with other OS’es, but the worst nightmares of ROS didn’t appear to be true, like:

• Creating a brand new OS from scratch
• Upgrade MSVS distro of Linux

Will Mandriva be an only version of Linux distro used in government sector or not – that’s the question, but a good thing is that Linux is acknowledged as OS alternatives on government levels.

Measuring the level of Linux integration, a good example is a massive integration of Linux in China – project Red Flag Linux. Hopefully, this first step in Russia will make Open Source systems more popular then now.

Blogging Linux, News, OS, Personal, Thoughts