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China Bans Gold Farming
InformationWeek is reporting that the Chinese government has declared a ban on the sale of virtual goods for real currency. This move is poised to shut down a several billion yuan a year business that has been growing by leaps and bounds every year. "The trading of virtual currency for real cash employs hundreds of thousands of people worldwide and generates between $200 million and $1 billion annually, according to a 2008 survey conducted by Richard Heeks at the University of Manchester. He estimates that between 80% and 85% of gold farmers are based in China. [...] Game companies typically forbid gold farming but committed virtual currency traders find ways around such rules. Some game companies have recognized the futility of trying to ban the practice and have built virtual commerce into their game infrastructure."
Personally, I'm quite happy when oppressive people with power tighten their grip. It follows the law of tension: the harder it's wound, the more likely it is to snap.
Normally I would agree with you. But as a kid I watched tanks clear a square in China. As a result of this, the Red Cross would later report twenty five hundred people dead with seven to ten thousand wounded. The same government that dealt with those protests in that way is still in power today, twenty years later.
If that didn't do it, I don't see banning gold farming and regulating the internet doing it. The Chinese government is a new kind of oppression that has survived many attempts to move in the opposite direction. It must be a decision made simultaneously by billions of people to change this. If you're sitting their waiting for that tension to snap, you may be waiting a lot longer than you think.
My work here is dung.
This is still a hundred times better than working on a farm for a living. Life is hard in rural areas, and making any kind of living outside of farming is a huge step up from what your parents likely did. Even if the work is hard and demanding by our standards, people in the 'first world' live decadent soft lives that don't know what a real lifetime of work would look like if it slapped us in the face.
One reason might be that building an industry that is entirely reliant on the whims of a foreign company could leave them holding the bag for thousands of idiots who thought they had a job.
Nerd rage is the funniest rage.
I was having breakfast in Idaho City, Idaho around the time the Chinese government put down the Tianenmen Square protests. I overheard a guy at a nearby table say, "This wouldn't have happened if the Chinese were armed, I tell ya." I nearly laughed out loud, but I took a moment to really think about what he said. For the first time in my life, I understood the Second Amendment to the US Constitution.
The First Amendment is the first line of defense; the Second Amendment is the last.
Guns didnt help Jews, Poles, Gypsies, in WWII. An AK in every home didnt stop Sadaam from oppressing his own people. Its funny how people think a handgun or rifle works against a mechanized division.
Hitler's first move was to confiscate firearms from the Jews. Here is something I just googled up on the subject: http://www.stephenhalbrook.com/article-nazilaw.pdf
The first step of every modern tyrant is to confiscate firearms. (Note, this is not to say that everyone who wants to confiscate weapons is a tyrant). Mao, Stalin, Hitler, Castro, etc.
The point is not that a guy with a handgun is going to stop a tank. There are 2 points to make:
1) A crowd the size of the protests currently happening in Iran actually is something to be feared if they are armed.
2) A complete reliance on the state for one's protection creates a complacency and an orwellian love for "big brother". This point is more subtle than the first, but the more I study the issue, the more I realize how important it is. If a person is forced to rely entirely on the state (usually a police force) for his/her protection, this is not a good thing. Responsible gun ownership reminds one that even though good police protection is a wonderful thing, if there were no police, one would still be able to get along with one's life. This autonomy from the state is a good thing.
I'm sorry but all your talk of military formations and heavy weaponry suggest a level of open war that does not sit well with your talk of civilian apathy.
As for the distribution of civilian weaponry. The fact that not everyone is armed is made irrelevant by the fact that anyone could be. Hunting riffles are, with the right ammunition, capable of piercing body armor. Further, hunting riffles are often owned by people that hunt and can hit a moving target from a respectable distance. The civilian snipers will be defending and therefore have the terrain advantage. Given the wide variety of terrain types in this country, (compare Montana, Oregon, Nebraska, Florida, Virginia) local terrain knowledge will be enough of an advantage to nearly offset the disadvantage in training and equipment.
I have no doubt that civilian casualties will be higher than military casualties. But if the US military ever turned on the general population, the result would make the Vietnam War seem like a grade school shouting match.
My God! It's full of eval()'s.