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Real World Anger Affecting MMOG Reality?
We reported late last week that FFXI was under a DDOS attack. The Japanese origin of the title may be the reason for the attack, as Ludonauts asks the question of whether chinese crackers may attacking the game because of political frustration. From the article: "Discussion on the Allakhazam forum points the attack at Chinese protesters angry about the deletion of references to Japanese war atrocities from history textbooks: the DDOS attacks began on April 9, the same day as the protests in China. In FFXI, this issue is linked to the question of 'gil-sellers,' players who farm in-game resources for real-world cash, who in FFXI are usually characterized as Chinese: many who are suspected of being gil-sellers have placed comments in their searchable information fields like 'Resisting all Japanese goods, long live the People's Republic of China.'" Commentary available from game girl advance, Broken Toys, and Terra Nova.
Isn't it obvious? Al Qaeda just loves playing Halo 2.
Especially when the article in question is just a copy/paste of the Terra Nova article, with only two typo-ridden sentences as commentary tacked on the end.
As for the DDOS attacks being linked to national unrest, it seems like a rather odd way to vent frustration and anger about the China/Japan situation. I can't imagine anyone in power noticing something as trivial as gameservers in the current situation, and the effect on the average Japanese user is slight at best.
While it's certainly possible that Chinese groups are behind the attacks, it's unlikely that the (over-maligned to begin with) RMTs are. The biggest companies are based out of Hong Kong, which due to its heavy trade involvement isn't seeing as heavy anti-Japanese sentiment; in any case, given that their dinner and bed rely on maintaining a brisk sales pace, bringing the game down would be counterproductive.
/sarcasm
Its humorous to see how a lot of posts here on /. seem to have this idea that the Chinese are seriously informed about what they're 'fighting' (read: rioting) for. China is still a Communist country with a censored press and is subjected to a censored internet (something few outsiders could probably comprehend). Regardless of what it looks like from the outside, people need to think of what the average Chinese citizen sees from the inside. Once you do that, its not TOO much more difficult to see why the Chinese would/are doing such things.
Japan is attempting to join the security council at the U.N. China is the only MAJOR U.N. player in Asia (Russia doesn't count since its focused domestically and to its southwest right now). Throw in political (North Korea), economic (U.N. sanctions on China for human rights issues to cut competition?) and historical (WWII fears) and you have a nasty case of mass backlash.
"only making the link because the game is Japanese."
In case you haven't noticed, that's pretty much how the rioters have been operating. They've been trashing Japanese cars, reguardless of who's driving them, and attacking Japanese factories, reguardless of who's working in them. You're trying to apply logic to mob mentality, and it just doesn't work that way.
...how globalizing the Internet can be. It can take localized conflicts and expand them to influence a much wider area.
This suggests that decentralization of popular services is even more important than ever before, both on a technical and social level. If someone has a monopoly on something that has a widely-spread fan base, and they give it a common address (DNS, IP, postal, conceptual, whatever), then individuals or groups from anywhere can disrupt that product everywhere.
I wonder how this is going to drive uptime-maintaining technology for MMORPGs. My impression is that existing systems aren't very good at failover. Virtualizing server systems and spreading them over clusters in a failover-compatible way would be a good start.
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If anyone wants further news about this, I found this to be interesting.
Basically, during the fall of one of the latter Chinese dynasties, protests against Japan were encouraged as the people had less faith in Confucianism and thus the emperor thought their anger against the Japanese could be used to rally national unity. In the same way, perhaps the current government's ideological grip is being lost as a communist economy is giving way to a much more open-market one and thus China again looks for a way to rally national unity.
Some could even argue that allowing for free forms of expression against the Japanese government could lessen desire for other, less desirable, open demonstrations (ala Tienaman Square).
-- Political fascism requires a Fuhrer.
Regardless of which its still ongoing and its still not just FFXI but other Japanese sites. It was a government mandated hacking the last time China used it against us in the Bosnian conflict, it wouldnt be a surprise if its a government mandated attack this time either. China is VERY smart when it comes to using technology to its advantage.
"Slashdot, where telling the truth is overrated but lying is insightful."
If this were any other country but the PROC, I might agree. Yet nobody protests in China without either government okay or being run over by a tank. You could remove "Japanese" and insert any other group or country into the mix. These individuals care less about the target and more about the act. The same thing is going on with FF11's servers. The people doing this have ulterior motives and the entire Japanese thing is just an excuse.
And the Japanese textbook issue has been a topic for almost a decade, as has Japan's desire to be a permanent member of the U.N. Security Council. These "protesters" are several years late in their rightous anger. It's just an excuse and a political ploy by China. Business as usual.
No penguins were harmed in the making of this post.
Two nights ago at dinner my 12 year old son asked me that, if the Chinese were so upset about missing accounts of Japanese atrocities against the Chinese in Japanese textbooks, were they (the Chinese) reporting their own atrocities against their own people in their own textbooks? A basic study of the events leading up to the Cultural Revolution, and on through the events at Tiananmen Square in 1989, provides plenty of material for writing about domestic Chinese atrocities.
While living in Taiwan in the late Eighties I had to spend a few hours in a cramped air raid shelter in downtown Taipei, because the authorities there felt that the Communists might use the protests at Tiananmen Square as an excuse to move against the student's supporters on Taiwan, and retake the island.
Got to keep the loonies on the path
Dude the Chinese government has been trying to put the screws down on this protest since it started. Their not allowing any print or television of the protests for fear that they'll become more widespread. And they're using police in riot gear to try to break up the protests. This isn't a political ploy, Japan is a huge trade partner with China, wtf would their government want to see this continue?
It's funny, I don't remember seeing any anti-Japan or anti-Western sentiment from the Chinese in FFXI.
Monday nights we have our usual "why the Chinese government sucks and all its officials must be tortured to death in public" seminars in Lower Jeuno. There's always active participation in these from all sides, although our friends from the PRC generally display a level of bloodlust towards their own rulers that we in the west find incomprehensible. We really think they enjoy being able to hear our accounts of what it's like living in a free society, though. They always promise to share the good news with their neighbours.
Wednesdays are "Free Tibet" nights. We march around Bastok for a couple of hours shouting slogans and demanding immediate Chinese withdrawal from Tibet. Turnout usually numbers in the thousands.
Fridays are "Support an independant Republic of China!" night. This is where we celebrate a free, independant Taiwan and look forward to the day where it's finally in a position to take-over the mainland. This generally involves leaflet campaigns on the airships and the boats between Mhaura and Selbina. There's nothing quite like a captive audience.
Saturdays and Sundays are generally too weighed down by the human rights symposia for any organised demonstrations.
Now... if only somebody sufficiently senior in the Chinese government can read this post, maybe we can finally get rid of all those damned gil-sellers. ^^
Two words: political leverage. "See how outraged our citizens are? You must be more conciliatory towards us!" If the Chinese wanted order, the tanks would roll and these rioters would be dead or rotting in jail. The PROC does not tolerate dissent that isn't wanted, so why would this dissent be tolerated? It's a play, and apparantly one many have fallen for.
No penguins were harmed in the making of this post.
All you said is true. But for one moment, do you think the general public in China, thought it was right thing to do during Tiananmen Square? It is not the government who stir up the uprising but the general public. As I mentioned in the above posting the government actually asked public to calm down and even ban protests in cities. Your son's concern is certainly 100% valid and legitimate. But because their government let Tiananmen Square happened and have not apologized for it, that DOES NOT JUSTIFY the Japanese twisted the history on the textbooks and tell their next generation that the war is about 'liberating asia'. They have the moral responsibilty to tell next-gen nothing but the truth. You son must have heard about holocaust, but does he know anything about what happened in China during WWII?
Two words: political leverage. "See how outraged our citizens are? You must be more conciliatory towards us!"
That's part of it. But the PROC isn't only trying to influence Japan and the "international community", but also their own citizens. By encouraging some pseudo-grassroots anti-Japan protests, they get more of their citizens angry at 70-year-old Japanese warcrimes.
That keeps them distracted from remembering the 40-year-old PROC peacecrimes, which coincidentally had 10,000 times as many victims as anything the Japanese did.
Quite funny to watch China accuse Japan of whitewashing history, when China has whitewashed its more recent, more local history to a much greater extent.