ghinzdra Wrote:what difference do you make between RTK1 and KO2001 ? in both cases we are not talking about sampling (which would be pointless) , it covers the whole book . Except for the order of stroke (which is quickly dropped ) everything in the book is on the website .

If I had written the book, I'd be most interested in whether I can sell more copies or not. I think that this website being freely available helps to sell copies of RTK 1. The collection of sentences from KO, without an authentication process, might do the opposite. With your authentication process, if it's effective, it could be a sales booster so I reckon you should make your case to the writers.

And I also think that novels and manga are really good too. I'd imagine that most writers of these would be delighted to find out that foreigners are studying from them.

wrightak Wrote:...I think you're best bet is to have a sensible conversation with the writers of the books...

I agree 100% with wrightak on this. I think you should ask. I also think that if you are going to continue to discuss alternatives to asking, you probably shouldn't do it on this forum. These days even talking about copyright infringement seems to bring the wrath of someone.

dilandau23 Wrote:

wrightak Wrote:...I think you're best bet is to have a sensible conversation with the writers of the books...

I agree 100% with wrightak on this. I think you should ask. I also think that if you are going to continue to discuss alternatives to asking, you probably shouldn't do it on this forum. These days even talking about copyright infringement seems to bring the wrath of someone.

we re not talking about copyright infringemet but the best way to prevent it . Let's not reverse the way it works....We're talking about legal owner of a copy of the book who want to use it as much as they can with all the respect due to the copyright issue.
Concern is normal . Culpability is not .
Right now I'm waiting for answers of different people so let's stay calm :it's just a brainstorming. But once again copyrighted books are just A PART of the project , they are just a bait . As khatzu pointed out the real japanese , the japanese used by japanese for japanese , is way better than the gaijin friendly japanese . Ideally on the beginning people will come for copyrighted books and later they will exchange other kind of flashcards .

@HerrPetersen:
I'd be interested in working on Assimil Chinese. I have the first one in German. It would be great to find more people to work on this one. Else, I would be willing to work on this one as a private project.

Actually, I'm pretty sure that someone on this forum has already done the work for this one, but the search didn't give me any results. So it might have been a user from another forum.

@watashimo:
Great, I wrote you a personal note on the topic. It would be nice, if we could organize something.

wrightak Wrote:With your authentication process, if it's effective, it could be a sales booster so I reckon you should make your case to the writers.

This is definitely true im my case. I ordered the KO books a couple of days ago, something I don't reckon I would have done if it hadn't been for this forum and the possibility to not having to mine the entire content of the books myself.

I'm exactly the same, I bought both editions of 2001 Kanji Odyssey a few months ago when the project started, and if it weren't for the project I almost certainly wouldn't have bought them.

I bought the books after seeing the thread here as well. Heck, I even bought the CD!

Personally, I feel there is great value in mining the sentences from the book yourself.

That might be true for the random sentences you see in your environment that you want to learn, but it doesn't really apply to mining textbooks. I got through a big portion of part one from UBJG before I joined up with the project, and I can speak from experience that after a while inputting flashcards turns into an almost mechanical process. Outside of increasing my ability to sight-read kana, which I could of done by reading kana anywhere, I was getting nothing from it. I couldn't have even told you the English translation of a sentence I had just entered... <_<

Plus, it's tedious and I dun wanna D:

erlog Wrote:Personally, I feel there is great value in mining the sentences from the book yourself.

As stated, at about 30 sentences per hour just entering the sentences (not adding in definition and notes) that would be 50 hours for book 1 and another 50 for book 2. That's alot of tedium that will turn off a large number of the population.

That said, even if you're given the sentences, (kanji, kana and english), one will/should go through each one and add notes/definitions about each sentence. That in itself is just as beneficial if not more so than typing in all by one's self.

Assuming one's reviewing like I am, you're going to be WRITING out these sentences multiple times anyway. Any initial benefit you get by typing them in will be outweighed by then.

Best point is, you can still enter in the sentences yourself if you feel the need. There's just a resource out there that can compensate for those without that particular need.

So is this forum dead, or what? It seems like no one is being accepted into the groups, there hasn't really been a real post there in well over a week, and the UBJG stuff is still happening on the google group. So what's going on?

I guess it's just not catching on. I got accepted into JFE, but that was a long while back.

I applied for the KO2001 a few weeks ago and still haven't heard back.

Well nothing has been put on the forums yet, because I thought ghinzdra was talking to the book's authors or something. I'm a moderator of the UBJG part, but there's nothing there yet so if you want UBJG join the AJATT google group and send something to nukemarine to prove you have it. I'm not sure who is vetting the KO book owners, though.

The copyright debate you guys are having is easy to essentialize.

If we were all at a university and living in the same dorm, and I lent you my book and asked you help me to type it into my computer... there would be no issue whatsoever.

What's wrong with hiring someone to type for you? Now we are adding two complications: we want to exchange labor for labor (we all want the same thing typed in) *and* a new thing the copyright law has provided us no means for dealing with: the fact that we can be study buddies just the same as if we were all together in a dorm in real life -- but because we aren't in physical proximity it ends up that we have to "transmit the data" over the internet...

It comes down to morality vs technical law. The attempts to get people to prove they own a book shows a respect for the moral meaning of the law -- the person who created the works is compensated with book purchases. It's a pity there is currently no work around to technically implement this attempt to follow the moral purpose of the law.

In reality, everything we put up will eventually get passed around to those not willing to reward authors/publishing company for putting out such a great resource. Yeah, at 20 paying 20 bucks for a book seems excessive. At 30, I consider the merits of the action. We all go through this phase.

Anyway, we are taking the high road even if we don't have to. We may be breaking laws in certain countries, but we're following the spirit of intellectual property ownership. In a global world that the internet redefines, that becomes important.

Yeah, someone "could" just borrow a book and a friend's receipt, send a photo of that to prove ownership. However, that same person could borrow the file from a friend that got the file himself. Hell, he could photocopy the damn book. At least I have something that tells me "He has physical access to that book, here's a file that's derived from that book that he could create on his own". It feels morally right to me, so in a world with no real rules (the internet), that's the best I can do.

I refuse to live thinking everyone lives according to the lesser angels of their nature.

Yo, these questions are not simple to answer. Law an moral are not the same.
I dont know about you, but I live in a country that libraries are public and legal.

I don't know what shows you watched as a kid, Nukemarine, but I never saw anybody trying to tell kids that respecting intellectual property is moral. I'm not trying to make a statement either way, I just think this whole thing is a little funny, that's all.

In all honesty, copyright holds us back. I think the only reason Remembering the Kanji became so popular, was because it was so easy to pirate online. You search kanji or Japanese in a pirate search, you're probably going to at least see RTK several times or bundled with other stuff.

I will say that I mostly ignore copyright myself. But I don't pirate as an alternative to buying. Anything I do download is mostly because I want to see if it's worth it. If I happen to find a book that's good and I want to use, then I'm going to buy it. If the sentences for Understanding Basic Japanese Grammar were freely available, I would probably buy the book after using the sentences a little (assuming it was worth buying).

On the topic of the forum itself...

Like ghinzdra said in the first post, I think there is a real need for this kind of forum. But since he's gone and no one can really do anything with the forum he set up, we are still stuck at the original problem.

Does anyone know what the heck happened with ghinzdra? Maybe a long summer vacation away from everything?

I would be able to set up a similar site for everyone to use instead of the one ghinzdra set up. The thing is, this was all originally his plan and he went through the effort of actually setting this stuff up first and all, so I mean, I don't want it to be like I'm just trying to waltz in and take it out from under him.

At the same time, I have found all of these sentence projects to be one of the most valuable resources for my studying, and I don't know what I would be doing without them. Right now it's really difficult for people to get in on it, because the places set up for people to collaborate at aren't really usable!

What are thoughts on this? Maybe give him some more time? Has anyone actually been talking with ghinzdra? I feel like if I did go ahead and set something else up, he would return the next day

> What are thoughts on this? Maybe give him some more time? Has anyone actually been talking with ghinzdra? I feel like if I did go ahead and set something else up, he would return the next day


This happens to me all the time. When waiting for someone who's late, the moment I get out my phone to call, they show up. So... solution would be just to pretend to set something up and he'll show up..

Did you send a p.m./email to him?

abaddon Wrote:>Did you send a p.m./email to him?

You know, that's actually a good idea :p
I thought I remembered someone saying that he hasn't been responding to any emails, but I didn't SRS that piece of info, so I wouldn't trust my memory to it :p

Haha... good one.

abaddon Wrote:> What are thoughts on this? Maybe give him some more time? Has anyone actually been talking with ghinzdra? I feel like if I did go ahead and set something else up, he would return the next day


This happens to me all the time. When waiting for someone who's late, the moment I get out my phone to call, they show up. So... solution would be just to pretend to set something up and he'll show up..

Did you send a p.m./email to him?

I think he has been MIA for quite some time now. I have been reading for over two months now that people cant get added despite having bought the book. I though with the launch of the book things would have changed, but it hasnt.

I can't access the forum at all. I mean the page won't load. It doesn't matter what computer I use. I think the host may block IPs from Japan...

On the subject of the spreadsheets on google, I Emailed Giz about access and included a photo but if he's MIA this probably won't do me any good. Is there anybody else I can email for access to the Google docs? Thanks!