Per [link|http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2005/04/09/BUG9EC5LBI1.DTL| this article,
ensconced in the nasty Bizness section!] (to slather on insult to injury, lump youse guys in with Repos everywhere :(

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American universities fall way behind in programming
Weakest result for U.S. in 29-year history of international technology competition

Birgitta Forsberg, Chronicle Staff Writer

Saturday, April 9, 2005

American universities -- once the dominant force in the information technology world -- fell far down the ranks in a widely watched international computer programming contest held this week.

The University of Illinois tied for 17th place in the world finals of the Association for Computing Machinery International Collegiate Programming Contest. That's the weakest result for the United States in the 29-year history of the competition.

This year, the contest was held in Shanghai, where a home team, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, won. Two Russian institutions, Moscow State University and St. Petersburg Institute of Fine Mechanics and Optics, came in second and third. Canada saved North America's honor, as Ontario's University of Waterloo took the No. 4 spot.

In one problem, contestants were asked to calculate the minimum number of cellular base stations needed for a mobile phone to be moved from one city to another with no loss of reception. Competitors were given a map with cities, roads and base stations.

Another problem challenged contestants to determine how much sunlight a Shanghai apartment management company could promise tenants on April 6, 2005. The students were provided information when the sun rises and sets on that date, as well as a drawing of the buildings and apartments.

Asian and Eastern European schools have been scoring increasingly well in the world championship. A U.S. school hasn't won since 1997, when students at Harvey Mudd College proved best.

"After World War II, the U.S. was ahead, as all other countries were recovering from the war," said UC Berkeley computer scientist David Patterson, the association's president. "We had a head start and we were a leader by default. But now they have caught up with us."

Patterson noted that, in many high-scoring countries, governments are in the vanguard of technology research. In the 1970s and 1980s, he said, the Defense Department's research arm, DARPA, invested in academic research and supported work in industrial centers such as Xerox PARC and Bell Labs. That public/private cooperation helped develop the personal computer and the Internet.

"When there is more and more competition in the world, the U.S. government is spending less on research than before," he said.

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Jeez, gals n'guys - it looks as if the pretty Visual Stereo-mp3-assisted letUSdotheheavyliftingForYa GUI approach of the Major Marketer - Took Its Toll; has done to Programmers! what Power Punt has done to {already congenitally sub-standard} Suits.
Can 'synergy' have a negative slope? Yup.

Sorry.

(But then, physics doesn't get off the hook so well, either .. what with Super-Stringy \ufffdber-meta-'physics' currently leading at the Hog-in-trough funding sweepstakes.) Is it a Pandemic. Yet?

I guess it was like this for the thoughtful inhabitants.. when Pizzaro et al began burying Mayan temples under new Mausoleums for Mary and her gang. Ya lets primitives run One important branch of your kultur and pretty soon, that race to the bottom happens with Gusto; all the mob are, I meanI'mLike.. Big Smiles as they flagellate and then flay Hypatia, burn down the libraries and open up a {nother stolen Van-load of} beer. While stealing casks of fission products: must be valuable, if they put That many locks around them - let's see if it goes good with Vodka. Ooooh YEAH! - - -









Condolences. Really :(



'Course I reelyize that, Here we gots Outliers on that now forever flattened Gaussian
..and that Perl Monks (say) jes don't accept acolytes workin on Opalescent Visual 6-D Managers'-Perl, THE MOVIE scripts -- but, that other kind. So far..

And of course, today - most people think that Plagiarisin Billy ackshully WROTE that there Altair GW-Basic\ufffd\ufffd\ufffd\ufffd; never mind their also not ever caring to notice that the smarmy little creep also did his recompile on stolen machine time; probably including any candy bars, purses and paperclips lyin around .. too.