I've been observing the growth of Vietnamese-language software for the past decade, and I have to say that open-source growth have been outpacing proprietary growth. In a country where the piracy rate tops 90%, major software companies don't see much incentive to support the Vietnamese language. With more than 80 million speakers, the Vietnamese language has about 8 times as many users as Swedish, a commonly supported language. The repertoire of open-source software supporting Vietnamese grew from virtually nothing in 2003 to support in most major Linux applications in 2009. This includes some of the most common Vietnamese-language keyboard drivers such as Unikey and even expanded to the fast-growing Vietnamese-language Wikipedia. At the same time, Vietnamese-language support among proprietary software barely grew; IE still doesn't have a Vietnamese-language version, and Word does not have a Vietnamese spellchecker. The only notable exception to this is Yahoo!, who has a dominant presence in the online market.
I just returned to the US last week from a month-long trip overseas. I brought my laptop along to store photos from my digital camera. The only time I had to remove my laptop from its case was at the airport (LAX) when leaving the US, when I had to put it through an X-ray machine. I didn't have to do it again when I returned (it still went through the X-ray machine). At no point was I asked about the contents of my laptop nor asked to turn it on. This was a marked improvement from 2 years ago, when I had to remove the laptop from its case and remove my shoes at every point in my journey (my trip had a connecting flight).
I saw I logged on 2 days ago. I realized that it was a link to malware or trojan but downloaded it and ran it anyway because I was running Ubuntu. It just gave an error saying it couldn't connect to the "photo server". Now that username is pushing an adult dating website.
Vietnamese is one of those "economically disadvantaged" languages that haven't received much attention in open-source programs until very recently, even with its 80 million+ users. Firefox support of Vietnamese was "in the works" for at least 5 years with not much to show for it. As recently as last year, I wasn't able to find anything installable from the Mozilla Foundation that supports Vietnamese. Meanwhile, Vietnamese language users rely on unofficial "patches" found elsewhere to enable support for their language.
You should read Isaac Asimov's story "Franchise" about this very election (2008). It's not about choosing a random candidate, but choosing a random voter.
I bought a Dell Linux laptop in July. A month later, my laptop ran into a problem (the wireless card stopped working). I called the Linux-only customer support line and was extremely satisfied with the result. The guy sounded like a knowledgeable Linux geek and walked me through the steps to diagnose my problem. We found the problem just before deciding to replace the card.
Two months later, I called again about a video card issue. It seemed that their customer support have deteriorated considerably. It sounded like they outsourced support to India, and the support drone was reading from a script. I tried explaining what I have tried but he still insists that I try those steps again. In the end, I gave up, and the issue is still unresolved.
The online survey was conducted Oct. 4-8, 2007, included 9,743 adult respondents nationwide In other words, a quarter of people already online say that the Internet can serve as a substitute for a significant other for some period of time. Gee, what a surprise.
I've had it up to here with Microsoft's automatic restart after a system update. Last night somebody was sending me a 1 GB file via Skype. It was halfway done when I went to bed. In the morning, my computer had restarted. All the transferred data was lost. As soon as I get my wireless card working in Ubuntu, I'm gonna wean off Windows forever.
To me, pidgin always evokes a sense of half-assedness. I know that they're going for "we can speak many languages", but to me, pidgin has a negative connotation. A person who speaks pidgin is not a professional, but usually a common laborer who only have informal exposure to a foreign language. Have you ever heard of "jack of all trades, master of none"?
Using wavelets to encode the data you can create a multi-resolutional streaming format. Meaning, you set the level of detail, and it strips off the unused data in real tim Looks like your comment is using the wavelets encoding.
The only reason MySpace users have stronger passwords is because they're required to. Try signing up to MySpace with a weak password (i.e. without numeric characters) and see what I mean. I signed up for MySpace for a throwaway account with an easy-to-remember password, but couldn't.
If the Chinese government wants its view to be represented, it should allow free access to Wikipedia from within China itself. That way, its people will do the censorship for it. Consider the case with the Vietnamese Wikipedia, which I'm currently a bureaucrat. At the beginning, its only participants are outside of Vietnam itself, and users from Vietnam created a made-in-Vietnam version of the encyclopedia for fear of "counterrevolutionary ideas". After featured in several articles in high-profile publications in Vietnam and even recommended by the government-funded encyclopedia, the encyclopedia saw a surge in registration and a noticable skewing of view. Now I'm even being accused by my family of being used by the government to spread their propaganda.
As a soon-to-be former Google Answers Researcher, I say no thanks. The questions there are bordering on idiocy and the answers are sometimes even less informed. If they're willing to pay for it, I'd be willing to put up with that, but working for free to a bunch of juveniles? Give me a break.
Although the last day to ask questions is today, us researchers have a month to answer the unanswered questions. Additionally, Google notified the researchers that it will share the ad revenues generated from the questions that we answered. The details haven't been worked out yet, but it should be a nice severance package for some researchers who urgently need it (some researcher's sole income is from Google Answers, such as the extremely popular pinkfreud-ga. What a horrible surprise when we're told that it would end with very short prior notice (2 days ago).
Sounds like burglary
on
Free Geek Robbed
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· Score: 3, Informative
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a nation of dudes with man purses
Don't forget the man bras.
I've been observing the growth of Vietnamese-language software for the past decade, and I have to say that open-source growth have been outpacing proprietary growth. In a country where the piracy rate tops 90%, major software companies don't see much incentive to support the Vietnamese language. With more than 80 million speakers, the Vietnamese language has about 8 times as many users as Swedish, a commonly supported language. The repertoire of open-source software supporting Vietnamese grew from virtually nothing in 2003 to support in most major Linux applications in 2009. This includes some of the most common Vietnamese-language keyboard drivers such as Unikey and even expanded to the fast-growing Vietnamese-language Wikipedia. At the same time, Vietnamese-language support among proprietary software barely grew; IE still doesn't have a Vietnamese-language version, and Word does not have a Vietnamese spellchecker. The only notable exception to this is Yahoo!, who has a dominant presence in the online market.
I just returned to the US last week from a month-long trip overseas. I brought my laptop along to store photos from my digital camera. The only time I had to remove my laptop from its case was at the airport (LAX) when leaving the US, when I had to put it through an X-ray machine. I didn't have to do it again when I returned (it still went through the X-ray machine). At no point was I asked about the contents of my laptop nor asked to turn it on. This was a marked improvement from 2 years ago, when I had to remove the laptop from its case and remove my shoes at every point in my journey (my trip had a connecting flight).
This is the country where the most well-known cultural hero is a robotic cat from the future who has an arsenal of privacy-invading tools.
I saw I logged on 2 days ago. I realized that it was a link to malware or trojan but downloaded it and ran it anyway because I was running Ubuntu. It just gave an error saying it couldn't connect to the "photo server". Now that username is pushing an adult dating website.
Vietnamese is one of those "economically disadvantaged" languages that haven't received much attention in open-source programs until very recently, even with its 80 million+ users. Firefox support of Vietnamese was "in the works" for at least 5 years with not much to show for it. As recently as last year, I wasn't able to find anything installable from the Mozilla Foundation that supports Vietnamese. Meanwhile, Vietnamese language users rely on unofficial "patches" found elsewhere to enable support for their language.
You should read Isaac Asimov's story "Franchise" about this very election (2008). It's not about choosing a random candidate, but choosing a random voter.
Nobody's going to bother using it until its quality is "good enough".
Its quality isn't going to improve if nobody uses it.
I bought a Dell Linux laptop in July. A month later, my laptop ran into a problem (the wireless card stopped working). I called the Linux-only customer support line and was extremely satisfied with the result. The guy sounded like a knowledgeable Linux geek and walked me through the steps to diagnose my problem. We found the problem just before deciding to replace the card.
Two months later, I called again about a video card issue. It seemed that their customer support have deteriorated considerably. It sounded like they outsourced support to India, and the support drone was reading from a script. I tried explaining what I have tried but he still insists that I try those steps again. In the end, I gave up, and the issue is still unresolved.
Congress can propose amendments, but only states can ratify it, either by the legislatures or by conventions.
They've already got those. Heck, these vending machines can even run away.
Google's been doing this for several years.
I've had it up to here with Microsoft's automatic restart after a system update. Last night somebody was sending me a 1 GB file via Skype. It was halfway done when I went to bed. In the morning, my computer had restarted. All the transferred data was lost. As soon as I get my wireless card working in Ubuntu, I'm gonna wean off Windows forever.
To me, pidgin always evokes a sense of half-assedness. I know that they're going for "we can speak many languages", but to me, pidgin has a negative connotation. A person who speaks pidgin is not a professional, but usually a common laborer who only have informal exposure to a foreign language. Have you ever heard of "jack of all trades, master of none"?
You need its new contextual spelling checker, by the looks of your post.
See this story.
In a country where a kid who got drunk and passed out on the railroad tracks can sue the railroad for losing his limbs, anything can happen.
The only reason MySpace users have stronger passwords is because they're required to. Try signing up to MySpace with a weak password (i.e. without numeric characters) and see what I mean. I signed up for MySpace for a throwaway account with an easy-to-remember password, but couldn't.
If the Chinese government wants its view to be represented, it should allow free access to Wikipedia from within China itself. That way, its people will do the censorship for it. Consider the case with the Vietnamese Wikipedia, which I'm currently a bureaucrat. At the beginning, its only participants are outside of Vietnam itself, and users from Vietnam created a made-in-Vietnam version of the encyclopedia for fear of "counterrevolutionary ideas". After featured in several articles in high-profile publications in Vietnam and even recommended by the government-funded encyclopedia, the encyclopedia saw a surge in registration and a noticable skewing of view. Now I'm even being accused by my family of being used by the government to spread their propaganda.
The Chinese Wikipedia has options to switch between traditional and simplified version of the article, done automatically. ~~~~
As a soon-to-be former Google Answers Researcher, I say no thanks. The questions there are bordering on idiocy and the answers are sometimes even less informed. If they're willing to pay for it, I'd be willing to put up with that, but working for free to a bunch of juveniles? Give me a break.
Although the last day to ask questions is today, us researchers have a month to answer the unanswered questions. Additionally, Google notified the researchers that it will share the ad revenues generated from the questions that we answered. The details haven't been worked out yet, but it should be a nice severance package for some researchers who urgently need it (some researcher's sole income is from Google Answers, such as the extremely popular pinkfreud-ga. What a horrible surprise when we're told that it would end with very short prior notice (2 days ago).
Burglarized, not robbed.