Slashdot Mirror
Rupert Murdoch Publishes North Korean Flash Games
eldavojohn writes "You might recall back in June when it was noted that North Korea was developing and exporting flash games. Now, the isolated nation state is apparently home to some game developers that are being published by a subsidiary of News Corp. (The games include Big Lebowski Bowling and Men In Black). Nosotek Joint Venture Company is treading on thin ice in the eyes of a few academics and specialists that claim the Fox News owner is 'working against US policy.' Concerns grow over the potential influx of cash, creating better programmers that are then leveraged into cyberwarfare capabilities. Nosotek said that 'training them to do games can't bring any harm.' The company asserts its innocence, though details on how much of the games were developed in North Korea are sparse. While one of the poorest nations in the world could clearly use the money, it remains to be seen if hardliner opponents like the United States will treat Nosotek (and parent company News Corp.) as if they're fostering the development of computer programmers inside the DPRK. The United Nations only stipulates that cash exchanged with companies in the DPRK cannot go to companies and businesses associated with military weaponry or the arms trade. Would you feel differently about Big Lebowski Bowling if you knew it was created in North Korea?"
A main problem with North Korea is their isolation. Whatever reduces isolation reduces the problem. So good for them and good for the rest of the world. Under this assumption, I'd be eager to buy stuff from them, rather than the opposite.
Murdoch owns one of the largest media empires in the world. Why wouldn't he work hand-in-hand with "the enemy"? Never mind the fact that Fox News has trounced the idea of speaking to dictators...but doing business with them is a-ok!
Living With a Nerd
Would you feel differently about Big Lebowski Bowling if you knew it was created in North Korea?
When the chinaman pisses on the rug at gamestart, do they insert a South Korean?
When the foot seeks the place of the head, the line is crossed. Know your place. Keep your place. Be a shoe.
The Dude abides.
The Dude abides.
....Juche?
Monstar L
Having coded ActionScript, I can say that the claim their programmers will be improving their skills with the experience is bollocks.
To prevent this day from getting worse, I'll just read ERROR as GOOD TH
Terrorist and AMERICA hater.
He is a traitor and must be dealt with severely.
I say we should find some backwards, barren, outoftheway continent with a bunch of freaky animals to send him to...but where?!? Where?!?
Does anybody know of such a place?
Frankly, I'm more concerned about News Corp than I am about North Korea.
Forget thrust, drag, lift and weight. Airplanes fly because of money.
Well, considering I feel that flash games are an idiotic waste of my time, this revelation doesn't change matters much.
If they decide to do Minesweeper #2.
Is it currently illegal for a US company to trade with North Korea?
Is it illegal for a multi-national which does business in the US to do so?
well based on the name and that it's flash based, I'm inclined to think that it sucks, horribly. So the answer is No, I wouldn't feel differently knowing that it came from NK because I don't beleve that will make the game any better
I run a bit of a North Korean news aggregation and info site. I posted a few weeks ago about a state-run newspaper site, uriminzokkiri.com, that hosts a number of North Korean made flash games you can play in your browser. Some of them are actually pretty fun! Links to the games, writeup and game descriptions can be found here: http://www.reasonableman.net/archives/250 The best part is, none of the corporate web blocking apps out there are restricting a North Korean website! :)
As is always the case with Rupert Murdoch, why be content just riling up people on one side of a conflict when you can just as easily be profiting from both side? He does this time and time again, yet people always seem surprised when he does it.
Would I buy a computer game knowing it came from North Korea?
Break the question down before you even think about answering it - how do I know if something has been programmed in, made in, assembled in, or had any other part of its production process in North Korea, or anywhere else for that matter? Where was Doom 3 programmed? Does it use code written by slave children in India who are force-fed C++ classes instead of their normal education, paid 1p a day and beaten regularly? I have *no* idea and no real way to prove either way. Thus singling out North Korea makes no sense.
If it is produced in North Korea, how do I *KNOW* what the funds it generates are used to support? Do you know what ID Software spent your $29.99 on? Maybe they sent it to a Gay & Lesbian support group, or funded investment in an African orange grove, or maybe they actually did use it to buy one of their employees a hand gun - you have NO idea. Thus singling out a particular company in North Korea based on accusations and vague connections makes no sense.
If it comes to my attention that a game is produced by a company who has other actions I disapprove of, will I stop buying the game? Well, I hate Sony. I disagree with most of their actions. Their involvement on a project might well kill it off in my mind. But it very much depends on their involvement and precisely which actions we're talking about, whether they affect my morals and whether or not that should be related to some other product they are producing. I disagree with Afghanistan growing opium, but does that mean I can't buy fruit from Afghanistan IN CASE some of the drug-money was used to sow the field in the first place? Or, surely, giving them an increased trade in other, more legitimate, goods will provide them an incentive to move away from growing opium? I have no idea. Thus singling out a particular game because of tenuous links to things I may not approve it by a single company in its production chain makes no sense.
Assuming we KNOW that this software was written in North Korea. Assume that we KNOW that every company along the line knew this. Assume that we KNOW that the North Korean's are then taking those "trained" programmers and using them to program nuclear missiles. Does that mean I'd not buy the game? Still unlikely. The production of the game didn't make them program nuclear missiles (or whatever), someone else did. At some point someone clearly crossed the boundary between making a flash game and funding cyberwarfare. That's the person who is the problem, that's the person who should be asked probing questions. That's the part that the government needs to step in and stop ALL trade with that country, not half-assed this company is "good", this company is "bad" because it employs "X" crap.
And I take offence at the tone of the submission. Trying to make me feel guilty by association is almost entirely racism. The article is trying to paint *all* North Korean activity (including programming a video game) as somehow evil. Would I buy it? If it was a good game that I was interested in, yes. Sadly I don't have an infinite lifetime in which to research every individual, company, funding source and country involved in the production of even a minor flash game. If you have a problem with North Korea, lobby for a blanket trade ban. Otherwise, please stop spreading such rampant discrimination because a newspaper company has a flash game on its website.
The dude would abide!
In A.D. 2010
Flash game was beginning.
America: What happen? ....
Slashdotter: Somebody set up us the bomb.
Operator: We get signal.
America: What!
Operator: Main screen turn on.
America: It's You!!
North Korea: How are you gentlemen!!
North Korea: All your base are belong to us.
North Korea: You are on the way to destruction.
America: What you say!!
North Korea: You have no chance to survive make your time.
North Korea: Ha Ha Ha Ha
Operator: Captain!!
America: Take off every 'Zig'!!
America: You know what you doing.
America: Move 'Zig'.
America: For great justice.
In commie Korea, games create you!
MEMO --
New ownership means new rules. Therefore:
- each bug found in production code, means a month of hard labor for the responsible engineers and their entire family
- no more internets for you!
- each comment in your code should contain a reference to our glorious leader
We hope these new rules will everyone more happy and more productive!
-- K. Jong Il, VP
noko
http://michaelsmith.id.au
sage
I'm Rocco. I'm the +5 Funny man.
Would you feel differently about Big Lebowski Bowling if you knew it was created in North Korea?"
How would you feel about Pocqhontas and the Lion King? In some fields, North Korea has surprising expertise.
What'll be interesting to me is what, if anything, Fox News has to say about this offshoring. I suspect that if one of the other media companies would do the same thing, there would be considerable outrage. In the case of one's parent company, well...
Not so sure about that. From what I can gather, most of the anger against the governments in Eastern Europe -- at least after the point where Stalin died and his ham-fisted brutal oppression was replaced by a more "big brother is watching you!" kind of approach -- had to do with shortages, queues to buy just about anything, etc. And to make it seem even worse, an illusion carefully maintained by western propaganda (e.g., Radio Free Europe) that basically the western world is a land of milk and honey where there is no poverty, no problems, everyone is happy, and generally it's freaking rapture on Earth.
But the point is, most people didn't care all that much about democracy or freedoms or such. Most except a few idealists were actually pretty ok with a sort of an implied "covenant" so to speak, that if you don't rock the boat too hard, the secret police will probably leave you alone. If you could give them enough food for their children and a decent life standard -- and maybe stop that propaganda machine, if you're now friends with their government and happy to let it manufacture your shoes and iPods -- I think most people could have lived just as happily without democracy or private initiative at all.
You also have to understand that after Stalin keeping them in line was more based on chilling effect than anything. Stalin's brutal purges and mass executions had been replaced with a more passive-aggressive game, where the government has a dossier on you somewhere, and it's unpredictable when, if or how it will bite you in the arse. Big brother knows if you're drinking with comrade Piotr, who swears at the government lots, and you don't know how you'll be shafted by that... maybe you'll get a one-way all-expenses-paid trip to Siberia, but maybe just your kids will never get promoted past a point, or maybe you'll just never get to travel abroad any more, or maybe nothing at all if you stop it now. That uncertainty actually seems to have worked better than the Pavlovian immediate repression that Stalin used.
The governments there also used agents provocateur big time. The more perverse implication wasn't even that that's how that dossier happens, but basically that you don't know who's one, who can you trust, and how hard a kick in the pants you can expect if you just join the first guy shaking a fist at the beloved president. If comrade Piotr can curse at communism so much and nobody did anything, hmm, maybe he's actually filing a report about your listening to him. It majorly prevented people from getting organized.
In fact it worked so well that even a major, vocal, anti-government critic like Sakharov didn't really need to be silenced. They only "exiled" him to another major and well supplied city, he still had a job, and other than a few "we're still watching you" shows of force by the police, really he was free to shoot his mouth some more. It didn't matter any more. People didn't rally around him anyway. They had been already conditioned that you don't join someone who's that vocal, because either he's an agent provocateur himself, or he's being watched and you don't flock around him like you don't flock in front of the Eye O' Sauron. Better stay out of that kind of spotlight.
My take is basically that if the USA and USSR had gotten over the Cold War (yeah, I know, unlikely) and started trading happily, and letting the Russians manufacture their Nike shoes and laptop batteries, and all, there wouldn't have been any changes at all. There would have been no need for the Glasnost, and no pent up frustration to blow.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
'“Most companies are still reluctant, which we think is unfortunate,” he said.'
Not really, why send people to a country known for arresting people and holding them until a former president swoops in and frees them? I bet that costs a pretty penny and I wouldn't want my business billed for it.
~~ Behold the flying cow with a rail gun! ~~
Please name one boycott / trade restriction that has worked. We (the USA) have been embargoing Cuba for almost 50 years, Iran for 30, North Korea for almost 60 years. We boycotted the People's Republic of China for some 25 years (and that was a real strict boycott, comparable to the current one against the North Korea). And, of course, our oil boycott of Japan in the early 1940's lead directly to Pearl Harbor.
After literally centuries of cumulative experience running boycotts and embargoes against various bad actors, have they ever served their purpose ? These are the foreign policy equivalent of the drug war - most people know that they are doing no good, but for some reason it is impossible to act rationally and admit it.
Fox News is a subsidiary of News Corp., but you know that. They won't mention it.
It would be funny if this is illegal and Murdoch and his corporations are brought up on charges of providing aid and comfort to the enemy. It would be very funny, but it won't happen.
I think every news network should trumpet this news. That the parent corporation of Fox News is doing business with .... Communists! And not the "good" communists in China, either, but the crazy, "We want to nuke the world," "our leader is a divinity to be worshipped," communists of North Korea.
Just be sure to wear the gold uniform when you beam down -- you know what happens when you wear the red one.
FOX has now been linked with North Korea and the Ground Zero Imam. They've clearly taken over Iraq's place in the Axis of Evil. When do we invade?
a lot of ins a lot of outs... a lot of wha-have-yous... a lot of strands... a lot of strands in the old duder's head.
and china too complicated - get your things done in north korea. just fair ...
I know many media companies have ringers on /. to catch news stories and push the corporate-propaganda. This /. topic has a few Fox-NK dogma propagandist.
The rulers of NK are very bad/evil. NK has a large border with China and a small border with Russia. IOFW+IMFO: NK is intentionally closed and oppressive, and dummy Fox-Rupert either lies or has an agenda to assert the rights of global-companies to have their own internationally recognized Fox-Rupert State Department.
IOW: It is a fyck US and EU, because NK has always been a China and Russia Proxy state.
Don't eat the Fox-Rupert BS-dogma.
Unaccountable leaders are masters, and unrepresented people are slaves. How do US and EU fare?
Always taking shots at Fox News. By the way, News Corp owns the Wall Street Journal; National Geographic Channel; IGN; and part of Hulu. IGN is way more notable than Fox News, never mind WSJ.
Support my political activism on Patreon.
Oh god, Rupert Murdoch among the moonbats at slashdot has now reached the same level of the "Illuminati" in the conspiracy nut circles.
Say what you want about the tenets of national socialism dude, at least it's an ethos.
rupert murdoch is basically the capitalist version of kim jong il, so why would he give a crap about any of this, as long as he gets the dollars
This is a joke. I am joking. Joke joke joke.
There were three Democrats on the FCC, Reed Hundt (chairman), James Quello, and Susan Ness. The two Republicans were Andrew Barrret and Rachelle Chong. So blaming Republicans for change in ownership rules is pretty silly, typical though. It seems that too many rely on ignorance to allow their views to be supported. After all, we know the Republicans had control of Congress then, but the fact remains, they did not have a majority on the FCC.
So if you want to blame Fox's ascendancy on anyone, put the blame on the party who held control over the governing organization that permitted the change.
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
http://www.linux.com/archive/articles/131059
Flash was the vulnerability used to crack em.
Not surprising that a scumbag like Rupert Murdock and North Korea are using flash.
Scary, exploits was the captcha.
Even a story clearly stating that News Corp. was directly funding the North Korean nuclear weapons program would have no effect on the average Fox viewer. Many wouldn't believe it and think it's a publicity stunt. Others wouldn't understand it. The ones that did believe it would think Murdoch is doing the right thing because he's helping to prepare North Korea to liberate us from the evils of the Obama administration. *sigh* I think I'm in a dark mood.
The real question is where is the Republican outrage that a US megacorp is dealing with a crazed nuke-happy communist regime?
Right-wing media outlets would be all over any "liberal" organization (US or otherwise) that would dare deal with North Korea, or even the relatively benign Cuba, the rationale being that any business run in a communist country is majority-owned by the government itself so paying them therefore directly aids and abets that government.
Hello? Republicans congresscritters and their supporters? Can I get some outrage here? Just a little bit?
so how many hacks / trojans are in the flash games they make?
Sorry for the harsh title, but this is a complete BS. I understand that western world would like to see it this way, but the truth cannot be further away.
The people who started the revolutions were always young people-students who were idealist about freedom. Than other idealist regime opponents joined them.
I can guarantee you, none of the guys standing at the place, waving with lit candles would risk being put in prison and his whole family being persecuted for their whole life, just because they wanted more sorts of toilet paper in the local market. That's complete bullshit, I know, I was there.
Would you feel differently about Big Lebowski Bowling if you knew it was created in North Korea?
Not really; however, knowing that Rupert Murdoch makes money from it certainly does.
Microsoft is a large corporation with many divisions. Sometimes these divisions operate with competing goals. That's the way most large companies are. And when Bill Gates was CEO, there was no way he could know everything that was going on in the company. Likewise, News Corp is a company. And there's no way the Murdoch keeps up with everything that every dept is doing. Putting his name in the title of this story (instead of "News Corp" or "Nosotek") is just flamebait.
Coder's Stone: The programming language quick ref for iPad
With unlicensed games based on movies like "The Big Lebowski" and "Men in Black" the MPAA is sure to invade with platoon after platoon of lawyers until North Korea completely backs down and turns over every piece of electronics that could possibly have been involved with creating the games or been touched by those who made the games. They may feel a bit of a conflict of interest about going after News Corp for their role, so they will probably settle out of court.
A-ha! So *this* is the real reason Steve Jobs won't allow Flash on the iPhone and iOS devices.
Kriston
Vice Travel Guide to North Korea: http://www.vbs.tv/watch/the-vice-guide-to-travel/vice-guide-to-north-korea-1-of-3
"don't bet on any right-wing tv or radio jocks under my employ will be talking or reporting on this subject! the bottom line says i'm not a hypocrite! " - r. murdoch
sanctions aren't working and we should invade?
Murdoch supporting north korea proves it.
I'm less upset and surprised about Fox's link to North Korea than I am about Fox having anything to do with the Big Lebowski. Is nothing sacred?
You may be correct that News Corp may be an Australian corporation, and by way of that, out of reach of US law against aid to enemies in war.
However, the Korean war never ended - it is simply at a truce, a cease-fire, so the countries involved can still be considered enemies. Indeed the North Korean government still considers much of the world as its enemy - including the government of South Korea.
If you look at the list of belligerents, you'll note that Australia is indeed listed as being on the same side of the conflict as the USA and South Korea, along with a whole bunch of other countries.
So it's not too far of a stretch to imagine the the US government (or Australian government) might suggest to News Corp that they knock it off.
The issue is further clouded by the joint ventures that have taken place between North and South Korea, but if anything those situations cast doubt that anything of substance will be produced. Generally these have been pawns for North Korea to use in negotiations, or as a way to import manufacturing technology or materials.
Putting moderation advice in your
Sim-Nuke
...
Missile Command
Border Defense (version of Tower Defense)
Whack-a-Dissident (version of Whack-a-Mole)
Great Leader (third person, role fantasy game)
In James Bond's film "Die Another Day", the villain is a media mogul that is actually a North Korean hidden agent.
__
Men with no respect for life must never be allowed to control the ultimate instruments of death.
GW Bu
The most polite way I can put it, Murdoch is a cunt.
...a boycott helped to end Apartheid.
... just as long as they don't piss on my rug.