A developer's blog

Source: literate.co.uk

My university organized many conferences, submitted quite a lot of papers, and I wonder if it is considered an academic institute, which translates to an .ac domain

http://www.hcmus.ac.vn

No it’s not :(

For those you don’t know the difference between .ac and .edu: .dot edu is an abbreviation for “education”, which means any entity with educational purpose could use this domain, including elementary schools, high schools, vocational colleges and I haven’t seen this but it’s a possibility: kindergartens. Dot ac, on the other hand, stands for “academic”, which means higher education institutes and research is their main function.

So… my university is in the same domain with naughty kids and hysterical teenagers :”( while entities that I never heard about has the “noble” .ac ~_~. It’s like .ac has a really high standard that even a university couldn’t meet!

Side note: in the United Kingdom and Japan it seems like nobody uses .edu, only .ac; perhaps they want to tell everyone in the world that they don’t allow idiots to enter any educational facilites! For the U.S, it’s always .edu and no .ac (they got the 1^st level domains already :P)

No, It’s not!

Source: The Google search above, now they are hiring poets for an IT research instute? :P

Try www.ac.vn

I couldn’t get what VNNIC was thinking allowing the allocation of that. Higher learning institutes got a 3^rd level domain while a SMS service bastard get the 2^nd level national domain!? What kind of planning is that? Or in Vietnam cell phones are used (more relevant to people) than brains? Sadly nothing could be done, ’cause if you ask them, they I’ll be like “Canadians did that too”.

Doubting that this “www” would be allocated like that somewhere else too, I tred www.edu.vn, name.vn, gov.vn, info.vn, biz.vn etc. Luckily, they are all pointed at dot.vn; so looks like the .ac is an “isolated case” and no one would be held responsible when those reporters find out :P

Who’s the most advanced

Yesterday I was searching for Russia’s prime minister’s duty and terms, I came across this article and wondered if Vietnam’s prime minister has a page. Sure, I added it to the article. Now some would say Vietnam is no less technology advanced than Thailand or Singapore ;), the parliament (or “national assembly” as it is translated) has a site too.

Well, you can’t get cocky yet, because the party’s general secretary doesn’t seem to know how to open an email account or write a blog, not even letting someone write the biography.

To compare with:

• Singapore: President – Prime minister – Parliament
• Thai: (Contitutional monarchy – no president) The cabinet – Parliament (being constructed) (note that I searched in English only, could be biased because those page may already be finished in Thai)

If you are thinking about some other language that have “simplified” before its name then no, Vietnam is not going to use that language as it official language, at least not in this year.

I recently read this article (For a side note: This site copies most of its content from blogs, and doesn’t ask for the author’s permission of course). I simply couldn’t get whatever it’s trying to tell me =)), so as a reflex I asked Google and found this. In short, the “program” and the “new language”, as they identified themselves, are going to change Vietnamese completely, so Vietnamese can be typed faster. They are first planned to be used in the Vietnamese computing society.

Completely impractical.

Vietnamese is a mixed language; it contained elements from both European and Asian roots. This “research” referred only one or two papers and end up creating a “better” language? Apparently its author has neither previous experience nor care to get some about constructed language. The idea of creating the “perfect” language, easier to write, easier to understand isn’t new. Some have tried and fail silently. If you live in Vietnam have you ever heard of “quốc tế ngữ”? Probably not. I’m not even sure which language that noun is referring to: Interlingua or Esperanto? Constructing a language and put it into wide use isn’t an easy problem. The two languages above have multiple contributors, even have their own lingual institute to research and introduce new principles into the language and still, they aren’t as success as they wanted.

What make that guy think one man is going to change history that easy, arrogance or ignorance?

Furthermore, Vietnamese is completely unorganized. There is no formal organization to regulate the use of new words yet (which have been hindering access to newest technologies for most Vietnamese, what would you call a blog or a shell in Vietnamese? =)). Vocabulary differentiates between regions to – North, South and the Central; even the pronunciation is different! (The “simplified” language claims it is based on pronunciation – which will make it easier to learn) Which region’s pronunciation is it using to simplify?

Well, to say how impractical it is, it may as well get 1^st prize for that competition. I’m not a judge for that matter.

Faster Vietnamese

Searching for the above, there seemed to be a similar effort before, but it doesn’t dream as big, its main purpose is to allow you to type unpunctuated Vietnamese faster  

Hmm, what a pity the author didn’t publish how this method was born, what’s its advantage, estimation of benefits etc. Otherwise more people would have been convinced to use and contribute to it. :/

Reading further into its rule:

Trăm năm trong cõi người ta            

Gõ phím:
       Tram nam trog coi nguj ta               

Bung ra →      Tram nam trong coi nguoi ta

Chữ tài chữ mệnh khéo là ghét nhau          

Gõ phím:        Chu tai chu meh keo la get nhau
         

Bung ra →      Chu tai chu menh kheo la ghet nhau

Trải qua một cuộc bể dâu                        

Gõ phím:        Trai qa mot cus be dau                       

Bung ra →      Trai qua mot cuoc be dau

Những điều trông thấy mà đau đớn lòng     

Gõ phím:        Nhug diw trog thay ma dau don log      

Bung ra →      Nhung dieu trong thay ma dau don long

Even though this method doesn’t seem to have wide usage, I can’t help notice similarities between this and the so-called “9x language”. Is there any chance those kids have seen their parent using this method but failed to learn properly and thus a new language is born? :))