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?"
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
Funny how there are two distinct ways of handling un-democratic countries. Either you trade with them to make them more democratic or you boycott them for not being democratic. You (A government + business) can't be wrong, either way. Very clever.
Some of my favourite people are from th US; Vonnegut, Chomsky, Bill Hicks.
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.
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?
Trade <snip> usually ends in quasi-slave labour and a few rich managers who exploit people and exert undemocratic influence on their government.
Fixed that for you.
I can tell you what did not work for us here in Spain. I'm not old enough to have lived through it, but I sure am to remember how things began to change in the yeas following the death of our dictator and our transition to democracy. Isolation does not work for anybody except, perhaps, for extraordinarily clever (and, more often than not, iron-fisted) dictators.
You can contend that trading with an undemocratic country can strengthen the dictator. I agree with that. However, the basic needs of the people of the country are more important than the dictator, or lack thereof. First thing is food, health, education, a future; once you have all that, you can go with lesser important details like democracy. Democracy and dictatorship are equally as good if people is starving, or just have no future. However, when people is fed, healthy and working, democracy will eventually find its way. Look at history for a number of examples. It will be slow, but sure.
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! :)
You'd just be encouraging them. The problem isn't that we're not trading with them. The problem is that somebody is providing Kim Jong Il with the luxury goods he desires. Buying these games is just a matter of profiteering plain and simple, the money is not going to get back to the people nor is this going to decrease the isolation of the North Korean people. It's just another way in which Rupert Murdoch profits on the suffering of others.
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.
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
It may not be as bad as the US paints it but its certainly a lot worse than the North Koreans paint it. Your "trip" to North Korea consists entirely of an agenda planned by the government specifically designed to show off the few good parts of North Korea and keep you as far away from ordinary North Koreans as possible. You are forced to bow to a statue of Kim Il Sung. If you go out wandering on your own or say something that could be considered critical of the North Korean government you will get kicked out of the country and your guide will be in for a LOT worse. No other country on the PLANET restricts travel this much. Obviously there is something really, REALLY wrong with North Korea.
It's obvious you have an anti-US sentiment but you shouldn't let that cloud your judgement of North Korea.They It's a really, REALLY shitty place for those not lucky enough to be born into a wealthy, well connected family(irony!). Famine killed at least 10% of the population in the 1990s, the # of refugees willing to risk their life to escape to China where they pretty much know they will be treated as a slave is staggering, so obviously that tells you how bad it is in North Korea.
Monstar L
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.
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?
Good luck in North Korea. Remember that you will be allowed to see will be strictly limited, and the North Korean government is well known to go to unusual lengths to present a good image outwards.
xkcd is not in the sudoers file. This incident will be reported.
The colonies?
GENERATION O98346: The first time you see this, copy it into your sig and remove a random number from the generation. T
Oh god, Rupert Murdoch among the moonbats at slashdot has now reached the same level of the "Illuminati" in the conspiracy nut circles.
You say that now, but North Korea cannot be allowed to acquire vector-based technology. Just think of the explosion gradients and cluster mouse over bombs they could launch.
You lefties are all the same, crying peace and progress until Kim Jong launches an ActionScript 2 - powered missile up your arse!! Then you'll be begging for Sean Hannity to come save your ass from the anti-aliased koreamen.
A little more about traveling to North Korea. I'm living in Asia currently and as it's close to me, I plan to take a trip there this winter. During my life living in many countries I've learnt that prejudices are just those - prejudices. People always give a shittier picture about something, and when you see it yourself it's just different. That's why it's like sitting on your computer all day long and commenting on things you have absolutely no idea about - most news are onesided, and most people tell you onesided stories with extra things that might not even be true. That's why you have to see and do it yourself to actually know anything.
How wonderful, will you get a chance to take pictures of their concentration ("reeducation") camps where tens of thousands of people (including their families for fuck's sake). If you do, please put them in facebook (and if you don't a facebook account, create one just for this occasion.)
Oh, I almost forgot, ask your Government/Military pre-approved tourist guide to take you North Korean farmers picking up grass to make soup because they literally have nothing else. Nothing makes a better souvenir than a picture of a emaciated person eating grass.
Hopefully, when we invent time travel, you might get a chance for a one-in-a-lifetime vacation: a trip back to Auschwitz-Birkenau and Sobibor. Who knows, you might get lucky and the administrators will time their gassing schedule to your arrival so that you can take a picture. Trip to the Bahamas or Hokkaido? Screw that!
ps. yeah, I went there and broke Godwin's Law, get over it.
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.
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?
History strongly suggests that you can only have the former when you have the last. Dictatorships have a tendency to channel all resources for the benefit of the dictator, leading to ordinary people starving. It happened in France, it's happening in North Korea now.
If you lack freedom, chances are that you'll soon lack everything else too.
Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.
No fuckwit, I don't watch Fox News, I actually read about the world and don't blindly say, "America lies all the time!". You know what, Fox News also complains about how bad life is in other countries where the reality is a lot different. As they say a broken clock is right twice a day. Fox News complains about how bad life is in Cuba, and yet in Cuba tourists can travel the country for themselves and you have a lot of INDEPENDENTLY verified information on the status of the country(which is not great, but not nearly as bad as a lot of other countries on the planet). Ditto for Iran, Iraq(before during and after the war) etc. Saddam actually let people into the country and they could move around with (general) impunity. The country was in better shape before than war than it was after it. You won't get that report on Fox News.
You CANNOT do that in North Korea, and I have read TONS of travel accounts(even the stuff on wikitravel) which concur, the only people that claim how wonderful North Korea is are either paid shills or just as fucktaded as you and are so convinced of how "evil" the west is that they will pretty much adopt any philosophy that opposes it, even if said philosophy is 1000000x worse than that of the west. North Korea suffered famine and still suffers severe food shortages, even the UN says that, but all but the most retarded of fuckwits, such as yourself, disagree.
Monstar L
Alright, I'll call your bluff on that. What are some historical examples of democracy finding its way when the people are fed, healthy, and working and why would it have been different if the people were not fed, healthy, and working?
Taiwan and South Korea are recent examples. This is happening today in places like Thailand and Iran. The recent riots in Bangkok and Tehran were not bread riots, they were about elections.
When the youth has risen in 1956, Hungary still had a ham fisted dictator (Rákosi and co.).
The Tianmen square thing was organized by students, who had lived abroad long enough to just forget where the invisible boundaries are.
Look, Hungary was governed in the last 8 years by the same people who cracked down the 1956 revolution. (And they were elected democraticly.)