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China Cracks Down on Internet Cafes
China has increased restrictions on internet game cafes. They've clamped down on anti-government slogans or displays and are now barring teenagers from them completely. Gamasutra reports: "'With the development of the Internet, there has been some harmful and illegal content,' said Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Liu Jianchao. 'The Chinese government has adopted some management measures so as to limit the immoral and harmful content, especially for young people.' Chinese regulation of Internet content has become controversial in recent weeks due to popular search engine Google's acquiescence to Chinese censorship of its results in exchange for official license to operate in the country."
Looks like all the worries over a cold war between the aging US and up-and-coming China just fizzled out. It's like the Chinese had the enemy in their sights, pulled the hammer back, then just turned the gun around and blew their head right off.
Freedoms of religion, speech, and commerce mean nothing to the common Chinaman. Take away their Starcraft and you'll have instant civil war.
If anyone is still looking for a way to let someone skirt the blocks:
This looks like a typical proxy method, but NPR was running a story this morning on Circumventor - a way to gain access to blocked content by using an outside proxy.
I wish this were a "solution" but it's just another bathtub distillery.
The use of the guise of "protecting the children" to allow censorship is something that definitely belongs in YRO, and is very frightening.
/* Warning: heavy usage of vast right-wing conspiracy theories follows: */
It is eerie, blocking content for the purpose of "Protecting the children".... COPA anyone? If the government were censoring our access to information, and doing it well how would we ever know?
Hell, all these stories about the great firewall of china could be government introduced filler to distract us from the truth. While I don't understand why they would want to do this, I dont know why the would want to do it in china either.
I wonder how well known it is in china that censorship is going on. If it were a really well protected secret, tor could work, but if noone knows they need to use tor/what tor is, they will never get anywhere.
How many lunatics acctually belive that they are lunatics? If you had alzheimer's, and someone told you you did, then asked you the next day, would you know? I dont think i have alzheimer's, but for all I know, I do, and someone told me that yesterday.
Again, they are out of touch. Every Chinese I've spoken with doesn't give a damn about Taiwan. To them, they are just another country. The Chinese just want to live their life free from oppression. The Taiwan issue is only regarded as a government problem, not an issue with the Chinese citizens.
Here is the problem at heart. Capitalism is winning the hearts and minds of the Chinese over communism. As such, the CCP is very jealous and is grasping at straws to maintain power and control via micro-management solutions. Yes, the CCP is imploding.
Now excuse me while your captain obvious takes a break.
Life is not for the lazy.
It's an interesting question you bring up. If Blizzard or any other MMORPG developer was interested in eliminating Chinese Farmers (in China), the MoTD would be "Falun Gong, democracy, freedom of speech, and other misc. Western Ideals FTW."
Since they're not making any pro-democracy statments, I deduct therefore that Blizzard loves farmers.
Because I'm curious how a political subject could affect one of my sources of recreation? Well, damn me for not warming up the soap box 'n sandwich boards and instead focusing on a small niche issue that's of interest to vocal minority!
I do not know much about the farming industry but I think it is safe to say that the farming is not done in public (and probably expensive) internet cafes. Few gold farmers are freelance, most of them are working for somebody and getting paid for meeting a quota every day or week. If a farmer had to pay to use the machine they are at and pay for an account with subscription the whole process would not be nearly as profitable. And if the money in china is anything like the US, it would be hard to get any kind of bank account or paypal if you were underage. Since it is only teenagers being banned, I think it is safe to say that your gold will still be available.
Even if you're just a casual player of MMOs, the farmers have a seriously detrimental effect on your gameplay experience (unless 'u want buy gold'). The more gold they pump into the system, the higher prices go. If prices are higher, they can turn around and take more of that gold they just sold away from you in the form of epic items, and sell it back to you the next time you're hurting for cash. And believe me, they push aggressively for higher prices by buying up whole markets of goods. It seriously cramps my gaming experience.
In fact, casual players are the ones who are hurt the most by gold farmers. We will never have access to the raid-only items that hardcore players do.
Didn't know if someone out there had some more in-depth information on how things are going to be regulated or not, though. Never hurts to ask. Usually.
They are trying to keep a tight grip on everything while the world is changing around them. Already their system is more capitalistic than communistic in many respects- but it is a totalitarian capitalism. The Communist party has the power and they are afraid to let the reins of power go. Most Chinese in power have a few skeletons in their closets, and I feel many of them are worried that if they lost control, they would be arrested, tried, and executed.
I'm curious how China will look like in 20 years. I'm thinking they will either become the next United States or be involved in a bloody revolution. Maybe even both.
You are reading a copy of my copyrighted post.
ni hao
I keep hearing about them cracking down on internet cafes, but last time I visited they were just as plentiful.
Sure, some websites don't work (replaced by advertisements, funny, and says alot about modern China) and they have official licenses posted up, but atleast the internet works. And cheap too. For a few bucks you can surf all day.
My impression from outside of China is of a kind of dystopia where the information police patrol for thougth criminals. However, within China I never had any problem getting news and information about what is going on in the world. Infact, I usually feel way more out of touch with the rest of the world when I visit the US.
Some say he is made with ascii, others that he is eyeballed daily by millions. All we know is, he is known as the Sig
With the conditions that:
Well, now we have to play the odds. For this to affect gold farming, there needs to be a good percentage of gold farmers affected by this.
Now, to add all that up. First, we have 30% (total is down to 30%), then 50% (total is down to 15%), and finally 50% (total goes to 7.5%). Now, I'd like to think I was generous in my numbers, I'm sure you could get much better estimates from stat websites (not sure where), but I'm willing to bet that these're decent (except for the 30%, that's so people don't yell at me).
Come on, if that was an honest question, and you *do* recognize everything you said, why bother asking it? Just to link gold farmers in? Come on... don't lie.
Want to find other gamers to play board and role playing game
Excuse me, I have something I need to type in to Barrens General Chat right away...
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
but you have to start somewhere. I suppose one could start by understanding what liberty is in the first place, and no, I don't mean a dialect of BASIC. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberty_BASIC)