A search on Distrowatch for Korean linux distros returns 7 results, 5 of which have been discontinued. Of the two that are still active, one is AnNyung Linux, a localized Korean distro based on RedHat/CentOS 6 while the other is Asianux. Ticketmonster Korea (which was acquired by Living Social of the US one year ago) runs AnNyung Linux exclusively on its servers.
I remember back in 2005, the Korean word-processing software company Hancom came out with 'Asianux,' a Korean-localized version of RedHat, but that never really went anywhere. It was an outgrowth of previously discontinued efforts represented by Haansoft Linux (2004) and Hancom Linux (2002). Hancom doesn't really get open-source (it tried to charge business end-users of the 2 distros above), and even the .hwp binary file format for its word-processing files was closed until 2010 (but still many file streams in .hwp remain undocumented. There is a github project called pyhwp that is also available through pip, that is trying to reverse-engineer the .hwp format, however). I tried to download the latest v4 release of Asianux, but the page 404's after the images to download have been selected.
IMHO, Korea should follow the lead of Japanese and Chinese-community re-spins of popular and user-friendly distros like Ubuntu and Debian. Prime examples are the popular Deepin Linux (based on Ubuntu) created by Chinese users and Vine Linux (based on Debian Testing) created by Japanese users, both of which are active projects with recent releases in July and September 2012. Maybe I should use Remastersys to create my own localized Korean re-spin of either Ubuntu or Debian...it would be the first non-RedHat Korean localized linux in history!
고추먹고 맴맴
2012년 9월 11일 화요일
2012년 9월 10일 월요일
Bought a new Samsung SSD 128GB SATA III-- in America!
Samsung Electronics is a Korean company. I live in Korea. So it would have been much more convenient for me to buy a Samsung SSD in Korea (and more environmentally-friendly, too, as the SSD wouldn't have had to make a useless round-trip across the Pacific) rather than in the US. Then what made me buy the Samsung MZ-7PC128 (image front, back) from Amazon USA? Let me digress for a moment-- You probably know that Korean chaebols make popular export products like cars, flat-screen TV's, washing machines, laptop computers, DDR2/DDR3 memory chips, flash memory, camcorders, etc. Their prices are pretty reasonable, too, especially in major export markets like the US.
But for domestic Korean consumers, the prices of consumer electronics like smartphones, SSD's, notebook computers, tablets, etc. are anywhere from 30~100% higher than the same products overseas. In the case of automobiles, although the prices of domestic and export models are similar, their features differ markedly. For example, a Hyundai Genesis sedan selling for $40,000 in the US will sell for a comparable amount in S. Korea, but it won't have standard features like passenger-side airbags that are in the export model. I've also heard rumors that the steel sheeting used in domestic Korean cars is thinner than that used in export models.
So back to my SSD shopping experience...About a month ago, I was looking to buy a 128GB Samsung SSD in Korea. I found one, originally for W150,000 (which is about $133, although searching Auction Korea today I found the price has fallen to W138,360, apprx. $122.50). But you can imagine my dismay when I found that the exact same model was selling on Amazon for just $100 with free shipping within the US! So I asked a buddy of mine in the States to ship the Samsung SSD to me after getting it from Amazon. As the SSD is feather-light, my buddy mailed it via USPS airpak envelope-- total cost: $8.46. There are no Korean import duties for purchases valued under W150,000, so I paid $100 + $8.46 = $108.46 for a Samsung SSD 128 GB SATA III drive that would have originally cost me $133 in Korea. I saved $24.54, although I had to wait 7 days for the package to arrive in Seoul, Korea. Were the 18.45% savings worth it? Well, without shipping, I would've saved ($133-100)/133 = 24.8%, but it was still worth it to save almost $25. I'm sick of getting shafted by terrible domestic prices for Korean electronics.
This is one reason why all the laptops I've bought in S. Korea are non-Korean: ASUS, Acer, DELL, and Toshiba. Samsung and LG can count on loyal consumers blindly "buying Korean" which annoys me to no end even though I'm Korean, too... End of rant!
But for domestic Korean consumers, the prices of consumer electronics like smartphones, SSD's, notebook computers, tablets, etc. are anywhere from 30~100% higher than the same products overseas. In the case of automobiles, although the prices of domestic and export models are similar, their features differ markedly. For example, a Hyundai Genesis sedan selling for $40,000 in the US will sell for a comparable amount in S. Korea, but it won't have standard features like passenger-side airbags that are in the export model. I've also heard rumors that the steel sheeting used in domestic Korean cars is thinner than that used in export models.
So back to my SSD shopping experience...About a month ago, I was looking to buy a 128GB Samsung SSD in Korea. I found one, originally for W150,000 (which is about $133, although searching Auction Korea today I found the price has fallen to W138,360, apprx. $122.50). But you can imagine my dismay when I found that the exact same model was selling on Amazon for just $100 with free shipping within the US! So I asked a buddy of mine in the States to ship the Samsung SSD to me after getting it from Amazon. As the SSD is feather-light, my buddy mailed it via USPS airpak envelope-- total cost: $8.46. There are no Korean import duties for purchases valued under W150,000, so I paid $100 + $8.46 = $108.46 for a Samsung SSD 128 GB SATA III drive that would have originally cost me $133 in Korea. I saved $24.54, although I had to wait 7 days for the package to arrive in Seoul, Korea. Were the 18.45% savings worth it? Well, without shipping, I would've saved ($133-100)/133 = 24.8%, but it was still worth it to save almost $25. I'm sick of getting shafted by terrible domestic prices for Korean electronics.
This is one reason why all the laptops I've bought in S. Korea are non-Korean: ASUS, Acer, DELL, and Toshiba. Samsung and LG can count on loyal consumers blindly "buying Korean" which annoys me to no end even though I'm Korean, too... End of rant!
2012년 4월 1일 일요일
Manually upgrading Adobe Flash in Debian Linux
A couple of weeks ago after upgrading Chromium from 15.0.x to 16.0, Chromium complained of an 'outdated' Flash plugin. I thought that Chrome/Chromium came with its own version of Flash integrated with the browser, but perhaps that's only for Windows? Anyways, we went to the Adobe site for Korea and downloaded the latest flash tarball (they don't offer .deb package files, although they do have .rpm and .yum packages). We then extracted just libflashplayer.so and copied it to the following 2 locations:
After installation, you can check what version of flash you have installed by visiting Adobe's flash test page. The Debian repositories also has a package called flashplayer-mozilla that installs flashplayer, but the most recent version available in Debian Testing is flash 11.1.102.63-0 vs. 11.2.xxx available as a binary download from Adobe.
/usr/lib/mozilla/plugins
/usr/lib/iceweasel/plugins (this applies if you happen to have firefox/iceweasel installed)After installation, you can check what version of flash you have installed by visiting Adobe's flash test page. The Debian repositories also has a package called flashplayer-mozilla that installs flashplayer, but the most recent version available in Debian Testing is flash 11.1.102.63-0 vs. 11.2.xxx available as a binary download from Adobe.
2011년 10월 14일 금요일
Hooray, finally got around to installing R
After months of seeing others post R code to do cool analyses, (especially with quantmod, TTR, etc) I decided to install r-base and the R GUI frontend rstudio. After upgrading gcc from Debian Unstable (Sid) repos, installation of R packages from CRAN went without a hitch!
(My "hello world" moment for R with code cut-and-pasted from an R Blog)
(My "hello world" moment for R with code cut-and-pasted from an R Blog)
2011년 5월 1일 일요일
My Presentation on Practical Translation at the KLTI in Nov. 2010
I've been meaning to put it up for awhile, and finally got around to it today. It mainly talks about the use of technology in translation today...CAT (Computer-Assisted Translation) Tools, TM (translation memory), TDB (terminology databases), and the like.
You can see the presentation in full-screen here.
You can see the presentation in full-screen here.
2010년 12월 7일 화요일
글로웍스 (Gloworks ) KOSDAQ-listed stock 034600
On 2010-12-7, Gloworks recorded the #1 turnover of any equity on the KRX, trading 100,288,139 shares out of a total float of 171,602,880 shares. This is a turnover ratio of 58.44%, and they closed at 476 KRW (roughly $0.45) today, up 2.81%. I was curious about this company I had never heard before and visited their corporate site.
The company has a really interesting history. They used to be the music streaming service, "Bugs Music," which was famous (notorious) for providing foreign and domestic music tracks of almost all artists free of charge. Of course this was done without copyright, and after a settlement with domestic music firms about 3~4 years ago, the site changed over to a subscription/pay model. Due to the web-centric nature of music piracy in Korea and the weakness of domestic P2P alternatives (SoriBada was a popular domestic P2P network that was shut down by the courts and Korean record labels; it failed to gain traction in its legal, pay-format reincarnation) Bugs maintained its popularity and was able to survive as a subscriber-only service.
In 2007 they changed their name from Bugs Interactive to Gloworks and embarked on a totally different business model--hard asset investments in Mongolia and Kazahkstan!!! As of 2009, they began developing a gold mine in Mongolia as well as an apartment complex in Kazahkstan.
They are essentially a penny stock, and according to information from KOSCOM, most of the turnover is due to individual investors trading through 키움증권.
The company has a really interesting history. They used to be the music streaming service, "Bugs Music," which was famous (notorious) for providing foreign and domestic music tracks of almost all artists free of charge. Of course this was done without copyright, and after a settlement with domestic music firms about 3~4 years ago, the site changed over to a subscription/pay model. Due to the web-centric nature of music piracy in Korea and the weakness of domestic P2P alternatives (SoriBada was a popular domestic P2P network that was shut down by the courts and Korean record labels; it failed to gain traction in its legal, pay-format reincarnation) Bugs maintained its popularity and was able to survive as a subscriber-only service.
In 2007 they changed their name from Bugs Interactive to Gloworks and embarked on a totally different business model--hard asset investments in Mongolia and Kazahkstan!!! As of 2009, they began developing a gold mine in Mongolia as well as an apartment complex in Kazahkstan.
They are essentially a penny stock, and according to information from KOSCOM, most of the turnover is due to individual investors trading through 키움증권.
2010년 9월 11일 토요일
I'm so lazy
After starting this blog, I had lots of ideas for posts, and actually began a long and ambitious post about translating from Korean to English. Unfortunately, I tried to cover too many points and the article never got finished. So here I am with a blank blog and no readers. Boohoo. Here's to laziness! (and procrastination) But seriously, one day I will post up that article on the Korean translation industry...fo' sho'
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