I have yet to understand why and I only have anecdotal evidence (including living in Ukraine), but there's something to those places that make them breed hackers.
One of my friend's mother worked at bulgarian shop that all they did was to translate Norton Commander into russian (basically hex editing here and there), and then it was sold on the russian market.
We had up to 1988-1989 a bulgarian company that was selling bootlegged games under their own name (yes I bought Karateka from them, and it worked on the bootlegged Pravetz-8C - a.k.a Apple ][/c).
But it doesn't stop there - you can (or at least back in the days) find people living in the same apartment building that were able to fix your TV, car, radio, etc. without calling technician.
My father regularly fixed TV sets of neighbors for no money (he's an ex military engineer - worked in radio-location)
But then it was something about russian, or eastern block made hardware - you take any plane, car, tank, radio, etc. - you can open it yourself and start hacking, replace parts, etc. - e.g. even the own-made products were meant to be hackable.
Now this is according to my father, who told me that it was much easier to fix russian produced military vehicles than anything else.
The I-fix-it culture was really thriving, and some thanks to the "communism" (there was never such thing), but lots of kids got free education since 1st grade in computer science, hardware, rocketry, train modeling. The magazines were so cheap (and printed out on cheap paper) - that you can buy dozen of them full with models, etc.
This is no longer the case (I've been living in USA since 1999, but visit my own Bulgaria almost every year).
I wish some of the days are back, but I knew that it was utopia we lived....
Well take it with a grain of salt, typing this while on vacation from my lovely Bulgaria :)
In college I wrote a major research paper on market-style exchanges on the factory floors of Eastern Europe, with the underlying point that you can never really purge all market forces, that "capitalism" is more descriptive than normative.
When I think back on it, well, I'm mostly ashamed for talking out of my ass about what other people actually experienced. It'd be great to hear more of your thoughts on it.
From my point, it was never communism - ahem the simple - produce as much as you can, take as much as you need
There was one difference - central planning - all prices were fixed and you can't find much variety in the store (2-3 types of bread, 2-3 types of feta cheese, etc.)
Another thing was the foreign currency - read about it here - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corecom
As a kid one of the best things were getting bananas/oranges for New Year, or getting some real dollars so you can buy kinder eggs/pezz/tobleron/etc from the Corecom stores (above). Although you might afford the money, there was no easy way to exchange them.
It was a 'meh' moment for me, when democracy came, and my favourite store (selling cake, soda drinks) start also selling kinder eggs - It was impossible for me to think that I can go and buy as much as I want with ... levas (our currency).
And as such they were no longer interesting :)
I had a happy childhood, maybe because I did not know anyone too rich, or too poor, and the choice was limited... okay maybe that was not the case... But looking at all old bulgarian kid movies, one can see kids roaming the streets without any danger (and it was so - It was normal for me to stroll around while I was 5 or 6 years old). This gets old, a a bit reddit-ish, and it's purely my experience and surely for other people it could've been totally different story.
Not correct. All men (and women) except those in a Yeshiva (religious school). As I understated it, they can post-pone their enlistment indefinitely.
I also understand this is a touchy subject in Israel right now.
Not exactly true. There are a few different computer groups, one of which requires only three years and it is nowhere near the level of sophistication of an average programmer (they are mostly responsible for the technological infrastructure of the army). The other programs require a degree beforehand (so they only go into the army at about 22) and then require 5 years of service. These are the people who create cool things. But let me say: even the things that they do are closer to things you can think about than what you would find in a sci-fi novel.
And the guy I started talking about now works for a pretty important anti-virus company , he's one of the most gifted hackers I've ever met.
There are plenty of job opportunities and the coders are relatively even more overpaid than in the West, so that's not the reason.
The real reason I believe is that people mostly can do this with impunity. There's very little being done for prevent or prosecute credit card fraud. In Ukraine and Russia CCs are still used very little, so this fraud hurts "the West" which is mostly seen as a good thing by the general population. Rampant piracy is practically encouraged for the same reason.
Of course this creates a barrier for doing legitimate business online. For example PayPal simply does not allow merchant accounts from Ukraine and Russia to reduce fraud. These countries are the safe haven for hosting illegal content etc. It would benefit local programmers to clean up the reputation of the country and to my great annoyance people just do not realize this. Crooks are accepted as keynote speakers at business conferences etc (they do make money, so what's the problem?)
+ a rigorous STEM curriculum
+ limited conventional job prospects
+ a social/business environment in which exploit-selling is a respectable profession
I'm slavic but I was raised in Sweden, visits with family in the balkans always leave me surprised at the strict education children go through.
Of course, my only perspective is from small country villages, not cities.
Or maybe it's just USA that's good at breeding anger and revenge-driven people all over the world. ;)
There's also the theory that they don't have as much to do, at least not as many distractions.