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Linux for Asia: Asianux
kiwimate writes "Two Linux distributors (one each from China and Japan) are building a common Linux platform for Asian companies. Using Oracle software to create the product, which is dubbed "Asianux", they have declared they'll create a common kernel so that the two companies' offerings can interoperate with ease."
I guess that's better than Lasia. Not much better though.
...can be found on AsiaOSC.
There's a note on the front page there about a recent Mongolian Linux release, too.
The Army reading list
And there was us thinking Asia couldn't teach us anything about how to do IT, but then they turn out to have companies that actually agree on common standards at the outset!
was just too politically incorrect.
keystroke-logging lib_bigbrother.so.0 no doubt
Is this just a national pride thing designed as a big middle finger towards western development? Wouldn't they be better served if they helped make current distros better?
Aren't you tired of stupid questions?
Don't you mean GNU-ASIANUX? *Hrmmmph*
Sehr geehrter Toilettenbenutzer!
All linux distros have the same kernel: linux. You need more than a common kernel to get a high degree of interoperability.
"a quote" -me
Personally, I now use Mac OS X (after about 10 years of enthusiastic Linux use :-) but there are several reasons for non-U.S. companies to standardize on Linux and cooperate on region specific versions:
-Mark
And expecially for France, we will have Asterux.
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
Using Oracle software to create the product
More like "making use of Oracle's software development centre in Beijing"--its a kind of important distinction, otherwise I was wondering what Oracle IDE they were going to use, or database they were planning to build into the distro...
SO YOU'RE GOING TO DIE: The Comic for Dealing with Death
I bet they'll have new commands to use: keke, kekeke, kekekeke, kekekekekekekekekekeke^_^
After this is successful, this Oriental version of Linux will be combined with the one being developed for the Czech Republic.
We wish the new "Rice-Chex" project much success.
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
Hey, before you get all crazy, I learned it from South Park...
Let's just see how well the GPL does in these countries, especially in China where piracy is rampant, and there is no such thing as private property (it's the definition of Communism, get over it flamers). Human (property) rights have never been terribly important in Asia, maybe we'll have to send in Stallman and Theo to get pissy at them when they uber-up the Linux kernel and don't publish their changes.
-1 Flamebat, +1 Cynical, or +1 Prophetic? You decide.
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
I can't even imagine what a nightmare the command line would look like. I'm still figuring out the switches for fsck. Hard enough to do without contructing commands out of little pictures of houses, dancing guys and trees with lines through them.
will sweeping through the rest of Asia's IT, crushing foes in it's wake. Hordes of people are using it, you know. (Sorry).
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
...hidden underneath the ignorant ranting, which is that the GPL requires strong enforcement of licenses to function. It has nothing to do with Communism, piracy, or human rights. Countries like China simply don't have the legal infrastructure to deal with license violations. There are some indications that companies are getting away with GPL violations in the U.S.; how much easier will it be for them to do so in China, where the FSF has no legal representation?
From Womens Studies class back in college, I'm pretty sure that Oriental is not a desired term by Chinese Americans. We read several stories by Asian American women, who all objected to use of the word. I however am not one such person, so I can't state if it truley has negative conotations. I assume it would be like calling an African American a "colored person"
In the UK, "Asian" refers to ethnic groups from India, Pakistan, and the surrounding countries. People whose ethnic ancestry is from the Pacific rim countries, in particular those whose eyelids are characterized by an epicanthic fold, are termed "Oriential". The English-Chinese population doesn't appear to take offence at this terminology.
Likewise, "mixed race" (argh, hate that term) people in South Africa prefer to refer to themselves as "coloured" rather than "black". So let's remember that much of the terminology used to describe ethnicity or indeed skin pigmentation is very dependent on its cultural context.
Tubal-Cain smokes the white owl.
if the joke had something to do with punning a word on "nigger" or some such, people wouldn't find that so funny. so why is "chinx" a joke?
this may be a flame, but if so i think it's justified: dude, stfu. "chinx" isn't funny. even if you're chinese yourself, other readers don't know that. you're being racist, and you're encouraging racism. mod me down as much as you want.
There.
about literally seeing the roots of a language in the language I'm not quite sure what you mean by this. Written Chinese (and therefore written Japanese) originated as a pictographic language, as did the Greek character set. (The letter 'A' for instance, used to be an ox, which you can still see if you rotate the character counter clockwise and think of the two little legs as horns.) Both languages abstracted out the literal meaning of the pictures that they represented, but Chinese became ideographic (not pictographic) while the ancestor of the Greek character set ultimately became phonetic. Nothing is 'wrong' with either system they are equally expressive and cultures using both systems can attain high levels of literacy. However, it is quite difficult for someone using a phonetic system to learn an ideographic one.
An intelligent and knowledgable post, with one nit I'd like to pick:
However, it is quite difficult for someone using a phonetic system to learn an ideographic one.
Believe it or not, this is not true.
Readers of ideographic systems and readers of so-called "phonetic" systems like English actually read in the same way - first they try to match the abstract shape of a word, then they break it down into segments and try to match the sequence of segments, and they only become aware of the individual components if that fails.
For example, if you see the word "Slashdot", you probably recognise that as a single entity. If you don't know what Slashdot is, you're likely to see it as "Slash" and "dot", those being two entities you do recognise. A kid might say "Suh-ler-ah-suh-huh duh-oh-tuh" as they read it, but I doubt you do.
Likewise, a Chinese reader seeing a common ideographic compound will recognise it as a block. They will recognise a rarer compound as a sequence of familiar characters. Only when faced with a rare character will they actually notice the component parts of that character, and then they'll have to go and look it up - just like you, faced with an English word you don't know, will have to look that up.
The two systems are, in short, of comparable complexity. You only think Chinese is difficult because you think of the characters as ideographs rather than words.
Steve
I'd have to disagree. Sure, laughing at people's attempts to communicate in English is in bad taste, but these are people using English either for purely cosmetic reasons (i.e. because it is "cool"). They are also using it not in personal conversations, but for business.
I've seen this up close (I lived in Japan for many years), so I think it's a reasonable distinction, especially when so much advertising uses English, and very poor English at that.
(Disclaimer: I have a photo on engrish.com, the girl in the "spread beaver" T-shirt.)