Wed, 10 Dec 2008
Ebooks and Copyright
Just a pointer to two interesting blog posts I have just read: Ted Ts'o discusses the ethical problem of wanting an e-book version of something which is out of print for a long time, and also has an interesting follow-up in which he discusses whether copyright is a matter of money (like most books or films) or control (like in some software, especially many copylefts like GPL). So what do you think about handling rights for the work which is abandoned for a long time, or simply which is not available in your local part of the timespace? And should rights for "static" work like books, music, films, photos, etc. be handled differently than rights for things which can be improved by further work of other people (like software)?
Tue, 09 Dec 2008
JLPT 3
After a year, I went again to Budapest, to undertake a next level of Japanese language exam. A month ago I tried to do a pre-exam test, from which I had 57 % (the limit for the exam itself is 60 %). So I hoped I would manage to gain those remaining 3 % in the last month by studying hard.
In the end, I am not sure. The real exam was definitely harder than a pre exam, and I have a worse feeling from it. However, I have managed to learn almost all the required vocabulary and Kanji, so in this part of the exam I have definitely improved. The listening sucked as always, though. Fortunately, listening is only a small part of the exam. And as for grammar, there was less questions where I was totally sure about the answer, so I only have to hope my partial guesses have been correct.
If I fail, nothing happens. After all, the expected study time for JLPT 3 is 300 hours (of which 150 are supposedly required for JLPT 4). So far I have studied the JLPT 3 textbook for maybe three months only, one hour a week, so I am not exactly expected to pass the exam with this amount of work (altought I spent a good amount of time studying vocabulary and kanji myself besides regular Japanese lessons).
The results are due in March, so we will see.
Mon, 08 Dec 2008
LOLCODE
The programming language of the day is named LOLCODE. Apparently it is a brand new, interesting, and expressive programming language, which (as we the Java fans hope) will soon replace Java and even C# everywhere. A short example of the contitional statement:
BOTH SAEM ANIMAL AN "CAT", O RLY? YA RLY, VISIBLE "J00 HAV A CAT" NO WAI, VISIBLE "J00 SUX" OIC
Do not forget to read the current specs. It even has a WTF? statement.