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North Korean Flash Games For Export
linzeal writes: "Despite it being pretty-much closed off to the world, North Korea is the next boom place for IT and tech outsourcing, PC World has reported. Flash games are being developed there for outside publishers, largely thanks to the home-grown talent. Does this mean that the the cartoon company that makes The Simpsons might use North Korea as well? Well it looks like they already have started."
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Table-ized A.I.
What does it tell us about the business of software development when one of the world's foremost autocratic hellholes is seen as a good place to do it?
For bonus points, try to find a copy of Pulgarasi [wikipedia.org], a giant-monster film directed by a man who was by North Korean intelligence on the orders of Kim Jong-il, the director of said film.
Here ya go, for free, at google.
irony #1: a television whose wit is only possible in a country with freedom of expression, being drawn by cartoonists in a country where there are no freedoms at all. anyone north korean attempting a north korean version of the simpsons would be put to death
irony #2: a country so beholden to the almighty buck that it will export the production of everything to the cheapest place possible, relentlessly and continuously, until you are driven to places where things are so cheap because of adherence to communist ideology. capitalism's relentlessness includes ways to monetize and capitalize on artifacts of the the communist age. that's an irony china certainly has a lot of domestic experience with
there are about 20 other ironies. see them for yourself
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Flash games are EVIL!!!
One that hath name thou can not otter
communist ideology is incompatible with reality, much as libertarian ideology is incompatible with reality
attempting to make communism work in reality results in domination of society by cult of personalities. individuals who can do no wrong (while they do plenty wrong). attempting to make libertarianism work in reality results in domination of society by corporations. corporations who can do no wrong (while they do plenty wrong)
balance in all things. unfortunately, we must pay a mighty price in this world for the ideolgoical fools who go to the extremes of libertarianism and communism, when the middle way, the moderate way: capitalism with socialist safety nets, socialism with capitalist engines, the only really valid real world solutions to the paradox that is human selfishness and altruism
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
North Korea Flash Games Like: "Expel the Inspectors"- quickly hide your nuclear material and kick out inspectors before the time runs out! 30 levels of action packed hide and seek! And lets not forget "Battleship" Use your submarine fleet to take out Enemy South Korean vessels. Explore new lands, suppress your nation, defy sanctions. This action packed game will have you enacting the lifestyle of the leader of an "axis of evil" nation! **Please note these games may not function on your iPad.
the threat all of us faces is fundamentalism
not just the usual fundamentalism of religions: muslim fundamentalists, christian fundamentalist, jewish fundamentalists, although they of course continue doing the damage they have done for centuries
also, fundamentalisms of politics and commerce: free market fundamentalists, constitutional fundamentalists, brain dead partisans: a sort of fundamentalism of political party, etc
even other bogeymen can be recast as fundamentalism: racism, for example, is a form of racial fundamentalism
whenever you adhere to one aspect of human reality, and make it your only concern, to say that is solves all problems, you yourself, you have become the source of the problems in this world. because the truth is, the world is complex, and simplistic teachings about who and what we are always fail
unfortunately, this truth never stops certain assholes from continuing to tell us that simplistic teachings are the solutions to our problems (and thereby become the source of our problems)
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
"If you really look at Libertarianism, you'd see that corporations would lose a lot of the protections of assets and greater liability and fewer government handouts"
wow, this is an awesome form of libertarianism. so, dear libertarian, who is going to enforce this liability? answer: some form of centralized government bureaucracy... oops, we destroyed them
libertarians don't understand that when you weaken the government, there is only one power left in the room: corporations. at that point, nothing stops them from corrupting and controlling every remaining government function you hold dear
libertarians have plenty of things to hate in government. what they should do is work at REFORMING government, not destroying it
put it this way: make a list of every abuse of big government you despise and hate
now, take away that big government. what do you get?
reality: you get THE SAME LIST OF ABUSES, plus A WHOLE BUNCH OF NEW ONES, SOME FAR WORSE, being committed by corporations. that really is the truth. please recognize that
you NEED big government to hold the corporations in check. but to the extent that big government is entwined with corporations, WORK TO REMOVE THAT CORRUPTION. don't work to remove the only thing holding corporate power in check!
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
China might not be as free/open as some places, but comparing it to North Korea is a bit of a stretch.
China is authoritarian; some of the laws are strict by our standards, but if you obey them and mind your own business, you'll probably be left alone.
Westerners can visit China and go about on their own there without being chaperoned or harrassed. Chinese people can leave there if they want (and some do).
North Korea, on the other hand, is totalitarian -- it's basically a giant prison camp, almost impossible to get into or out of without making very special arrangements, and where you can be executed for making an overseas telephone call.
Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
The connection is this: An animation company that works on the simpsons is located in south korea. They have been working on a korean folk tale translated into a full length movie, and have been working with north korean animators for the feature.
There is nothing in the article that states (as the summary implies) that any of the simpsons is done in north korea, nor that there are any plans to do so.
Anyone know a better "news for nerds" site that doesn't have all the misleading headlines SlashDot has taken to lately?
I'm kind of sick of this sh!t.
Slashdot poster citing Wikipedia citing Fox News citing the South Korean Good Friends.
Quite.
As far as monitoring goes, the difference between NK and US ("the West") is that NK does it with people in the next room, and US does it with tech everywhere. NK is merely three decades out of date. I cannot enter the US without being interrogated (during which I must affirm that I'm not of certain political affiliations), photographed, retina scanned and fingerprinted; I can't communicate without my words being intercepted without warrant.
As far as prison camps regular and super-size and executions played out in the media all but at the point of filming the death proper, the US and its allies have quite a few of them - although mostly it makes prison camps of foreign territories. More people have suffered under US rule than the Kims could ever dream of. In the US, I am free to speak my mind as long as not enough people are listening, and the freedom of troublemakers is taken rather than their lives: that is the difference in the sophistication of oppression between US and NK.
People who protest in the United States usually seem to get arrested and beaten after they start smashing shop windows and cars (none of which belong to the government), so I would say they deserve what they get.
I'm just going to highlight this as pretty much reflecting the tone of your whole argument: "when a government I like takes away your freedom, it's surely because you were doing something bad".
In NK, you get arrested for whispering. In China, you get arrested for talking. In America, you get arrested for shouting. In each case, the government makes sure that not enough people hear you; it's just that some countries silence you earlier on, as they're not yet sophisticated enough to know the sweet spot which keeps people quiet enough while making them think they're free. The only reason I can say without significant repercussion what I'm saying right now in the West is that not enough people are listening to me.
What manner of strawman is this? Of course society is a compromise. This doesn't mean it has to be based on outright physical oppression of a majority and trickery to mollify the rest.
Every empire's justification has been "Society = compromise. Deal with it." applied with poor premises. You're rewording the white man's burden.
I've entered the US dozens of times, pre and post 9/11 and I've never been interrogated.
So you've never been asked whether you were a Nazi, whether you are a Communist, what your purpose is in the US, where you're staying, how you got to know those in the US you're meeting, etc.? I know some of these questions won't be asked to /everyone/, but some are on the standard ex-INS visa waiver form. Or maybe since this is usually done with checkboxes and a smiling man who mostly keeps his gun in his holster, you're misled into thinking an interrogation is just a friendly chat.
(Or maybe you're Canadian. They're exempted from most of this shit.)
You can however move around the US without handlers.
If a government can and does track activities without a warrant, why do you feel any more at ease that they don't have a human physically and ostensibly following you around? That's just a threatre of freedom.
Had you lived in the DPRK, being that critical of the DPRK would have resulted in the imprisonment of you, your family, your parents and grandparents.
I don't have evidence that all that would happen. The world suffers a lack of neutral reports about DPRK - it's like Cuban exile sites showing the "awful" condition of some Cuban buildings, each picture making me think "wow, that reminds me of X on the East Coast / Y in England".
But I did hit your link and stop reading at "the guide wouldn't allow you to keep your passport?" since you'd have to be the least travelled tourist in the world not to recognise the number of countries where the government directs hotels to hold your passport during your stay (and copy information).
try to draw an equivalency between north korea and the usa
it would be hilarious, if you weren't being so serious
the usa has committed plenty of crimes, and continues to do so, and you should castigate the usa for that
but dude: you fail at reality if you fail to see that north korea is well beyond the usa in the evil behavior department. really
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
I've traveled between the US, Middle East, Europe, Mexico and Canada numerous times and never have been asked if I was a Nazi/Communist/where I'm going/who I'm meeting when I come back to the US.
Even on direct flights between Tel Aviv to New York, Amsterdam to New York, Frankfort to Portland, never ever get those kinds of questions returning to the US or going into places like Tel Aviv. Worst grilling I got was Haifa to Greece by Israel on a ferry and Atlanta to Paris when I got to Paris CDG.
Look, I realize that if the government really wanted to, they could track you, but the reality of it is the US Federal Government doesn't, hell they didn't know where I was in the US for 8 years to give me a tax bill I didn't know about. If the IRS can't figure out where you are when you aren't even hiding from them, that doesn't really make me wonder about the all-seeing-eye of the Feds.
Sure, some countries will hold your passports, but when you travel in the United States no one is keeping track of your papers, you don't need internal passports in the US (unlike the DPRK), you don't need internal passports in Canada.
Last fall I traveled between the continental United States and Alaska, even past one of the most strategic places in the US, the Alaska Pipeline, no ID checks there, only ID checks were at the borders, as far as the US government was concerned I could have disappeared pretty much anywhere in that trip.
Now I live a km away from a major US military base, again no ID checks to be here.
That is impossible in the DPRK by any and all accounts of life there.
I've traveled between the US, Middle East, Europe, Mexico and Canada numerous times and never have been asked if I was a Nazi/Communist/where I'm going/who I'm meeting when I come back to the US.
You didn't "travel between", you were American, returning to US. Of course, immigration officials wouldn't try to kick you out from your own country, you moron.
Contrary to the popular belief, there indeed is no God.
Maybe it would be better if such hate speech was illegal,
No it wouldn't.
No it isn't.
"God hates fags" is like "magic unicorns hate puppies". Even Phelps knows it, and has indicated it's not he who hates but magic^WGod.
The right to come out with harmless (from the PoV of rocking the boat carrying the elite) nonsense is well recognised in US law, and is part of the distraction which enables the government to say "see! you are free! You can call Bush a moron! You can call blacks niggers! How can this not mean you are free???"