Greek mythology, body of stories concerning the gods, heroes, and rituals of the ancient Greeks. That the myths contained a considerable element of fiction was recognized by the more critical Greeks, such as the philosopher Plato in the 5th–4th century BCE. In general, however, in the popular piety of the Greeks, the myths were viewed as true accounts. Greek mythology has subsequently had extensive influence on the arts and literature of Western civilization, which fell heir to much of Greek culture. Although people of all countries, eras, and stages of civilization have developed myths that explain the existence and workings of natural phenomena, recount the deeds of gods or heroes, or seek to justify social or political institutions, the myths of the Greeks have remained unrivaled in the Western world as sources of imaginative and appealing ideas. Poets and artists from ancient times to the present have derived inspiration from Greek mythology and have discovered contemporary significance and relevance in Classical mythological themes.

Sources of Myths: The Homeric poems

The 5th-century-BCE Greek historian Herodotus remarked that Homer and Hesiod gave to the Olympian gods their familiar characteristics. Few today would accept this literally. In the first book of the Iliad, the son of Zeus and Leto is as instantly identifiable to the Greek reader by his patronymic as are the sons of Atreus. In both cases, the audience is expected to have knowledge of the myths that preceded their literary rendering.

Sources of Myths: The works of Hesoid

he fullest and most important source of myths about the origin of the gods is the Theogony of Hesiod (c. 700 BCE). The elaborate genealogies mentioned above are accompanied by folktales and etiological myths. The Works and Days shares some of these in the context of a farmer’s calendar and an extensive harangue on the subject of justice addressed to Hesiod’s possibly fictitious brother Perses.The Theogony declares the identities and alliances of the gods, while the Works and Days gives advice on the best way to succeed in a dangerous world, and Hesiod urges that the most reliable—though by no means certain—way is to be just.

Sources of Myths: Archaeological Discoveries

The discovery of the Mycenaean civilization by Heinrich Schliemann, a 19th-century German amateur archaeologist, and the discovery of the Minoan civilization in Crete by Sir Arthur Evans, a 20th-century English archaeologist, are essential to the 21st-century understanding of the development of myth and ritual in the Greek world. Geometric designs on pottery of the 8th century BCE depict scenes from the Trojan cycle, as well as the adventures of Heracles. The extreme formality of the style, however, renders much of the identification difficult, and there is no inscriptional evidence accompanying the designs to assist scholars in identification and interpretation. 

Forms of Myths: Religious Myths

Greek religious myths are concerned with gods or heroes in their more serious aspects or are connected with ritual. They include cosmogonical tales of the genesis of the gods and the world out of Chaos, the successions of divine rulers, and the internecine struggles that culminated in the supremacy of Zeus, the ruling god of Olympus (the mountain that was considered the home of the gods). They also include the long tale of Zeus’s amours with goddesses and mortal women, which usually resulted in the births of younger deities and heroes. Myths of Dionysus, on the other hand, demonstrate the hostility aroused by a novel faith. Some myths are closely associated with rituals, such as the account of the drowning of the infant Zeus’s cries by the Curetes, attendants of Zeus, clashing their weapons, or Hera’s annual restoration of her virginity by bathing in the spring Canathus.

Forms of Myths: Legends

Myths were viewed as embodying divine or timeless truths, whereas legends (or sagas) were quasi-historical. Hence, famous events in epics, such as the Trojan War, were generally regarded as having really happened, and heroes and heroines were believed to have actually lived. Earlier sagas, such as the voyage of the Argonauts, were accepted in a similar fashion. Most Greek legends were embellished with folktales and fiction, but some certainly contain a historical substratum. Such are the tales of more than one sack of Troy, which are supported by archaeological evidence, and the labors of Heracles, which might suggest Mycenaean feudalism. Again, the legend of the Minotaur (a being part human, part bull) could have arisen from exaggerated accounts of bull leaping in ancient Crete.

Forms of Myths: Folktales

Folktales, consisting of popular recurring themes and told for amusement, inevitably found their way into Greek myth. Such is the theme of lost persons—whether husband, wife, or child —found or recovered after long and exciting adventures. Journeys to the land of the dead were made by Orpheus (a hero who went to Hades to restore his dead wife, Eurydice, to the realm of the living), Heracles, Odysseus, and Theseus (the slayer of the Minotaur). The victory of the little man by means of cunning against impossible odds, the exploits of the superman (e.g., Heracles), or the long-delayed victory over enemies are still as popular with modern writers as they were with the Greeks.

The Jallianwala Bagh massacre, also known as the Amritsar massacre, took place on 13 April 1919. A large but peaceful crowd had gathered at the Jallianwala Bagh in Amritsar, Punjab to protest against the arrest of pro-Indian independence leaders Dr. Saifuddin Kitchlu and Dr. Satya Pal. In response to the public gathering, the British Brigadier-General Dyer surrounded the Bagh with his soldiers. The Jallianwala Bagh could only be exited on one side, as its other three sides were enclosed by buildings. After blocking the exit with his troops, he ordered them to shoot at the crowd, continuing to fire even as protestors tried to flee. The troops kept on firing until their ammunition was exhausted. At least 379 people were killed and over 1,200 other people were injured of whom 192 were seriously injured.

Responses polarized both the British and Indian peoples. Eminent author Rudyard Kipling declared at the time that Dyer “did his duty as he saw it”. This incident shocked Rabindranath Tagore (the first Indian and Asian Nobel laureate) to such an extent that he renounced his knighthood and stated that “such mass murderers aren’t worthy of giving any title to anyone”.

The massacre caused a re-evaluation by the British Army of its military role against civilians to minimal force whenever possible, although later British actions during the Mau Mau insurgencies in Kenya have led historian Huw Bennett to note that the new policy was not always carried out. The army was retrained and developed less violent tactics for crowd control.

The level of casual brutality, and lack of any accountability, stunned the entire nation, resulting in a wrenching loss of faith of the general Indian public in the intentions of the UK. The ineffective inquiry, together with the initial accolades for Dyer, fuelled great widespread anger against the British among the Indian populace, leading to the Non-cooperation movement of 1920–22. Some historians consider the episode a decisive step towards the end of British rule in India. Britain never formally apologised for the massacre but expressed “regret” in 2019.

On Sunday, 13 April 1919, Dyer, convinced a major insurrection could take place, banned all meetings. This notice was not widely disseminated, and many villagers gathered in the Bagh to celebrate the important Hindu and Sikh festival of Baisakhi, and peacefully protest the arrest and deportation of two national leaders, Satyapal and Saifuddin Kitchlew. Dyer and his troops entered the garden, blocking the main entrance behind them, took up position on a raised bank, and with no warning opened fire on the crowd for about ten minutes, directing their bullets largely towards the few open gates through which people were trying to flee, until the ammunition supply was almost exhausted. The following day Dyer stated in a report that “I have heard that between 200 and 300 of the crowd were killed. My party fired 1,650 rounds”.

At 9:00 on the morning of 13 April 1919, the traditional festival of Baisakhi. Reginald Dyer, the acting military commander for Amritsar and its environs, proceeded through the city with several city officials, announcing the implementation of a pass system to enter or leave Amritsar, a curfew beginning at 20:00 that night and a ban on all processions and public meetings of four or more persons. The proclamation was read and explained in English, Urdu, Hindi, and Punjabi, but few paid it any heed or appear to have learned of it later. Meanwhile, local police had received intelligence of the planned meeting in the Jallianwala Bagh through word of mouth and plainclothes detectives in the crowds. At 12:40, Dyer was informed of the meeting and returned to his base at around 13:30 to decide how to handle it.

By mid-afternoon, thousands of Indians had gathered in the Jallianwala Bagh (garden) near the Harmandir Sahib in Amritsar. Many who were present had earlier worshipped at the Golden Temple, and were passing through the Bagh on their way home. The Bagh was (and remains today) an open area of six to seven acres, roughly 200 yards by 200 yards in size, and surrounded on all sides by walls roughly 10 feet in height. Balconies of houses three to four stories tall overlooked the Bagh, and five narrow entrances opened onto it, several with lockable gates. During the rainy season, it was planted with crops, but served as a local meeting and recreation area for much of the year. In the center of the Bagh was a samadhi (cremation site) and a large well partly filled with water which measured about 20 feet in diameter.

Apart from pilgrims, Amritsar had filled up over the preceding days with farmers, traders, and merchants attending the annual Baisakhi horse and cattle fair. The city police closed the fair at 14:00 that afternoon, resulting in a large number of people drifting into the Jallianwala Bagh.

Dyer arranged for an aeroplane to overfly the Bagh and estimate the size of the crowd, that he reported was about 6,000, while the Hunter Commission estimates a crowd of 10,000 to 20,000 had assembled by the time of Dyer’s arrival. Colonel Dyer and Deputy Commissioner Irving, the senior civil authority for Amritsar, took no actions to prevent the crowd assembling, or to peacefully disperse the crowds. This would later be a serious criticism levelled at both Dyer and Irving.

An hour after the meeting began as scheduled at 17:30, Colonel Dyer arrived at the Bagh with a group of ninety soldiers from the Gurkha Rifles, the 54th Sikhs and the 59th Sind Rifles. Fifty of them were armed with .303 Lee–Enfield bolt-action rifles. It is not clear whether Dyer had specifically chosen troops from that ethnic group due to their proven loyalty to the British or that they were simply the Sikh and non-Sikh units most readily available. He had also brought two armoured cars armed with machine guns; however, the vehicles were left outside, as they were unable to enter the Bagh through the narrow entrances. The Jallianwala Bagh was surrounded on all sides by houses and buildings and had only five narrow entrances, most kept permanently locked. The main entrance was relatively wide, but was guarded heavily by the troops backed by the armoured vehicles.

Dyer, without warning the crowd to disperse, blocked the main exits. He stated later that this act “was not to disperse the meeting but to punish the Indians for disobedience.” Dyer ordered his troops to begin shooting toward the densest sections of the crowd in front of the available narrow exits, where panicked crowds were trying to leave the Bagh. Firing continued for approximately ten minutes. Cease-fire was ordered only when ammunition supplies were almost exhausted, after approximately 1,650 rounds were spent.

Apart from the many deaths directly from the shooting, a number of people died of crushing in the stampedes at the narrow gates or by jumping into the solitary well on the compound to escape the shooting. A plaque, placed at the site after independence, states that 120 bodies were removed from the well. The wounded could not be moved from where they had fallen, as a curfew was declared, and more who had been injured then died during the night.

A recursive algorithm calls itself which usually passes the return value as a parameter to the algorithm again. This parameter is the input while the return value is the output. Recursive algorithm is a method of simplification that divides the problem into sub-problems of the same nature. The result of one recursion is the input for the next recursion. The repletion is in the self-similar fashion. The algorithm calls itself with smaller input values and obtains the results by simply performing the operations on these smaller values. Generation of factorial, Fibonacci number series are the examples of recursive algorithms.

Properties

A recursive function can go infinite like a loop. To avoid infinite running of recursive function, there are two properties that a recursive function must have −
• Base criteria − There must be at least one base criteria or condition, such that, when this condition is met the function stops calling itself recursively.
• Progressive approach − The recursive calls should progress in such a way that each time a recursive call is made it comes closer to the base criteria.
Implementation

Many programming languages implement recursion by means of stacks. Generally, whenever a function (caller) calls another function (Calle) or itself as calle, the caller function transfers execution control to the Calle. This transfer process may also involve some data to be passed from the caller to the calle.
This implies, the caller function has to suspend its execution temporarily and resume later when the execution control returns from the calle function. Here, the caller function needs to start exactly from the point of execution where it puts itself on hold. It also needs the exact same data values it was working on. For this purpose, an activation record (or stack frame) is created for the caller function.

Russian Revolution popularly known as the Russian Revolution of 1917 was a set of two revolutions. 1) February Revolution (according to Julian calendar, otherwise in March for other nations). It overthrew the imperial government.

2) October Revolution (according to Julian calendar, otherwise November for other countries). This revolution placed Bolsheviks in power.

By 1917, the bond between the Czar and Russian population had been broken. Governmental corruption and inefficiency were rampant. Tsar’s reactionary policies of Dissolution of Duma (or the Russian parliament) spread dissatisfaction among public.

But it was government’s inefficient prosecution of World War 2 which led to making the revolution inevitable.

Causes

i) Autocratic Government and its defects

• Tsar was a despotic ruler. Nicholas II was called ” The Father of Nation”.
• All administrative decisions were taken by him despite the fact that a Parliament existed.
• He was the head of the Church, Commander of Army, etc.
• But the system was defective.

ii) Disability of Bureaucracy’s Army

• Most officers belonged to rich background. They favoured Czar.
• The poor and common men were neglected
• There were no proper facilities for Army.
• This created frustration.

iii) Social Dissatisfaction

• The society was divided into two categories-
  • The Haves
  • Have nots
• The Haves belonged to elite class, they occupied all administrative positions and favoured Despotism.
• Whereas the the category of Have nots contained all the poverty stricken men deprived of every advantage.

iv) Industrial Revolution

• Russia was an agricultural society.
• Industrialisation replaced labours and annual work.
• This increased further the already high unemployment percentage.
• Therefore the advancing economy contrasted with the miserable lives of workers.
• Meanwhile, the Communist ideology of Karl Marx started to spread.

v) Intellectual Revolution

• Idea of equality nitroduced through French Revolution.
• The Allied powers in the World War I propagated Democracy and Nationalism.
• Western Literature translated several important works and the youth was mad to realise that the root cause of backwardness was Autocracy of Tzar.

Later during the second phase of revolution, Lenin and Trotsky headed and overthrew Kerensky’s government.

Results of revolution

• Lenin became the Prime Minister
• March Revolution removed Czar and gave powers to middle class.
• November Revolution established the government fully supported by laborers.

The Ministry of Home Affairs has operationalised the national Helpline 155260 and Reporting Platform for preventing financial loss due to cyber fraud. The helpline was soft-launched on 1^st April.

The National Helpline and Reporting Platform provides a mechanism for persons cheated in cyber frauds to report such cases to prevent loss of their hard earned money.

Also, a National Cyber Security Strategy 2020 is being formulated by the Office of National Cyber Security Coordinator at the National Security Council Secretariat.

What is Cyber security?

• Cyber Security is protecting cyber space including critical information infrastructure from attack, damage, misuse and economic espionage.
• Critical Information Infrastructure: According to Section 70(1) of the Information Technology Act, CII is defined as a “computer resource, the incapacitation or destruction of which, shall have debilitating impact on national security, economy, public health or safety”.
• Cyber Fraud: It is the crime committed via a computer with the intent to corrupt another individual’s personal and financial information stored online. It is the most common type of fraud and individuals and organisations need to be vigilant and protect their information from fraudsters.

How does this help?

• The helpline has been made operational by the Indian Cyber Crime Coordination Centre (I4C), in coordination with the Reserve Bank of India, all major banks, payment banks, wallets and online merchants.
• The Citizen Financial Cyber Fraud Reporting and Management System has been developed by I4C to integrate Law Enforcement Agencies and Banks and Financial Intermediaries.
• The facility empowers both the banks and the police, by leveraging new-age technologies for sharing online fraud related information and taking action in almost real time.
• Since its soft launch, in a short span of two months, the helpline has assisted in saving more than Rs 1.85 crore.

What is I4C?

• I4C is Indian Cyber Crime Coordination Centre
• The scheme to set up I4C was approved in October 2018, to deal with all types of cybercrimes in a comprehensive and coordinated manner.
• It has seven components:
  • National Cyber Crime Threat Analytics Unit
  • National Cyber Crime Reporting Portal
  • National Cyber Crime Training Centre
  • Cyber Crime Ecosystem Management Unit
  • National Cyber Crime Research and Innovation Centre
  • National Cyber Crime Forensic Laboratory Ecosystem
  • Platform for Joint Cyber Crime Investigation Team.
• 15 States and Union Territories have given their consent to set up Regional Cyber Crime Coordination Centres.
• This state-of-the-art Centre is located in New Delhi.

What are other initiatives to tackle Cyber Crime?

• Draft Personal Data Protection Bill, 2018 (based on the recommendation of Justice BN Srikrishna Committee) to secure citizens data.
• Cyber Swachhta Kendra: The “Cyber Swachhta Kendra” (Botnet Cleaning and Malware Analysis Centre) is a part of the Government of India’s Digital India initiative under the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY).
• Indian Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT-IN): It is an organisation of the MeitY, with the objective of securing Indian cyberspace. It is the nodal agency which deals with cybersecurity threats like hacking and phishing.

Conclusion

Data is the new gold, it is very important that we protect our data from cyber fraudsters and cyber criminals. We have to stay aware and stay safe! But if we realise a data breach / cyber fraud / cyber crime, we have to report it immediately !

Remember ” A stitch in time saves nine! “

In October 1958, American Physicist Willy Higinbotham creates a tennis game called “Tennis for Two” on an oscilloscope and analog computer for public demonstration at Brookhaven National Laboratory. This was the world’s first video game and was a major inspiration behind the 1972 arcade game legend: Pong. With Pong came a boom of other successful video games including Pac-Man (1980) and Donkey Kong (1982) and a new industry was born.

In recent years besides consoles and arcades with the emergence of social networks, smartphones and tablets introduced new categories such as mobile and social games into the picture and now in 2021 the value of the video game industry in the United States was estimated to be $65.49 billion. But as tens of thousands of video game fans and creators shell out their dollars, a difficult truth about the gaming industry is beginning to emerge: what’s seen by outsiders as a fun, creative business is becoming psychologically and financially unbearable for those working in it.

“Every game you like is built on the backs of workers,” says Nathan Ortega, who thought he found his dream job when Telltale Games offered him a position as a community and video manager in 2015. Ortega was a Telltale enthusiast so it was an easy decision to pack up his stuff and relocate near the company’s headquarters in California. But he was soon so stressed out by work that he developed an ulcer and started coughing up blood. The dedication that goes into masterpieces of gaming is admirable. Whether it be designing, coding, producing, or even testing a game, it is clear that passion is abundant from people working “behind the screen”. While this euphoric hype is indeed an aspect of the gaming industry, more often than not the wave that pushes these passion-filled developers forward is harsh and ruinous, leaving nothing but a husk of what once was a spirited creator. Video game makers call it “crunch” – the process of working nights and weekends to hit a tight deadline. But unlike other professions that might muster employees to work overtime in the final stretches of a project, in game development it can be a permanent, and debilitating, way of life. In October 2020, Polish game developer CD Projekt Red, asked all of its employees to work six-day weeks in the lead-up to the November release of Cyberpunk 2077, one of the most anticipated games of the year. But the new policy was just the formalization of an informal code that has long existed at the studio. Various departments had already been working nights and weekends for weeks or months straight in order to meet deadlines, according to people who have worked there. Studio head Adam Badowski said he was aware that many employees had been testing their limits to bring the game to launch, efforts for which he was “immeasurably thankful!”

The “crunch” is a situation that has existed in the gaming industry for decades. Many other game developers have also cultivated reputations for running flat out. As the industry prepares for another big holiday season, workers are putting in long hours to finish their games in time. Few employees would object to putting in the occasional night or weekend, but crunch is a culture, an atmosphere, a state of mind. Countless horror stories have come out from ex-developers who know crunch is bad news. After a 70, 80, or even 90-hour work week, spending quality time with family becomes more of a challenge than a relief. An offset of these overworked developers not being able to take basic care of themselves is an inclination to abandon the industry.

Amid this turbulence, dozens of workers in the gaming business are calling for the industry to unionize. The turmoil presents them with both an opportunity and a challenge. On one hand, the instability can make it difficult to talk about unionization. Still, a recent survey conducted by the industry group International Game Developers Association found that 47% of workers said they would support a union at their company, while 26 % said they “maybe would.”

Video games are supposed to be an outlet to relieve stress and spark imagination and creativity, but they are instead being exploited by companies to squeeze money out of their employees. If crunch isn’t solved, this industry is doomed to failure.