I live in Beijing and rarely carry my passport for anything aside from a trip to the bank - but ALWAYS have a copy on me.
In three years the _one time_ I was stopped by an officer and asked for ID he was fine taking the number from a photocopy and understood my (poor) Chinese explaining I just dont want to lose the damn thing.
Same thing though with your housing permits - try not having one of those when the police come by for checks. I got a knock last week at 12:30 AM from two cops making the rounds in my building checking on listed foreigners - I have heard without the right housing permit it would have been much more than a 5 minute affair and more like a 5 day mess with my possible deportation.
Protip: carry a copy, leave the real one at home. If its that big of a mess they will gladly escort you there;)
Well I have been inside the birds nest for three events now and here are my experiences:
1st time - walked right through security. Got the magic wand treatment - they didnt take my lighter - kosher like Christmas
2nd time - Might as well have been going through a gestapo checkpoint. Literally took me five minutes of taking my entire wardrobe apart, checking my iphone, and harassing me to my obvious annoyance before I got through
3rd time - (Two nights ago) I beeped going through the metal detector - she gave me the magic wand (quite courteously) and waved me through (lighter still in my pocket)
The place is absolutely gorgeous, China will have it together and seems to be finding a middle ground to handle the huge influx they will be faced with.
And it will make sense. Its just different in a way you cant describe and it isnt as wrong and black and white as our sillly minds would like it to be. This society is a rich and diverse organism, even a laowai like myself is a part of that whole. And I dont fault the government for how they work.
It is capitalism, socialism, democracy and dictatorship all rolled into one.
With Chinese characteristics and for the goal of social harmony.
If you dont get those two jokes then you dont even have a glimpse of how one fifth of the world works.
Im trying to bang this out quickly before Chinese class (I live in Beijing) so forgive the hurry:
There is some site about Things White People Like on wordpress - and the whole site is blocked. Now using a proxy like StupidCensorship I can access the site - but somehow even through that there is something written on the TWPL: Asian Girls page that still gets blocked even through a proxy here!
That and wikipedia is always blocked but answers.com (which 99% of the time HAS the wiki article within) is not blocked.
Odd. That said its a wonderful place to live - the culture of being harassed by bored cops that exists in America is nonexistant out here. Just dont protest for Tibet and no one is going to mess with you generally....
I thought I would get a few years of use out of my username as XP was pretty new on the scene when I inexplicably 'lost' my old/. account and decided to create a new one - Had no idea that after all this time (6 years now?) XP would still be the OS I have to admin on a daily basis and that Windows 8 will probably come to fruition before that drastically changes.
Me? Ive been an Apple user since 1999 - bought stock when they were 'beleaguered' and held on through all the splits;) And my friends mostly have thinkpads that I have been installing ubuntu on to save them from viruses and malware problems.
MS is falling on hard times fast - but of course I dont count them out by any stretch.
Please please please for the love of god samzenpus stop posting all of this utterly retarded shit!
Please!
I dont want to ignore ALL your posts because you do seem to post good news stories on occasion as well but retarded shit like this just doesnt belong on slashdot.
These cutesy videos never get any replies, never get bumped up, and are frankly just embarrassingly bringing the quality of the site down.
I have been trying to go along with the firehose idea and open myself up to new content - but seriously I cant imagine anyone at the site clamoring for these types of 'stories.'
Growing up in the 80's that was always the anti-USSR propaganda we were given: "In evil Soviet Russia you have to show your papers to go anywhere - enjoy how free we are here in America®" Now it just makes me cringe everytime I see a story like this -
Somewhere in the last 6 years we really did lose it all......
I'm too busy playing in digital playground type games with open endings like GTA: San Andreas. Give me the 5 star code, a bicycle and 100 foot bunny hops and watch me go ET over the national Guard - the best games are the ones you come up with.
Mastering though? Certain courses and cars on Gran Turismo - and I lie about not _beating_ a game of late, recently I knocked out both Super Paper Mario and Godfather: Wii Edition in the last few weeks. And as I sit down to write this I just got done playing Wii bowling for a couple hours after work - I havent mastered it but I rolled a 238 with friends just now and had a much better time than I would have had making speed runs in a basement.
Which as the article states is the audience they are now going for.
I totally hear your sentiment, I was one of them too. Hell, I even picked up Zelda and was disgusted after spending 30 minutes to get a goddamned fishing rod and threw it out... But Tuesday night mahjong in Beijing with my far ranging expat crowd has now been replaced with Tuesday night Wii bowling league or Wario Whatever madness.... Laughing the whole time about how my bowling alley serves the finest wine and provides footwear par excellance;)
Have you actually played this thing? One of our friends just got back from a 4 week stint in the States and it was the first thing she mentioned. I cant even make the word of mouth marketing on this thing up.
I think I speak for a lot of people that would _love_ to see the AO rating go from "the dreaded" to the "hells yeah!" rating. I mean we all want these kinds of titles - we are growing up but dammit as much as I love nintendo I want my games to grow up with me. Honestly I cant figure out where the real problem is. Distributors refuse to carry it - why? I know the fact that Wal-Mart wont carry it is a real problem when you are looking at your bottom line - but thankfully they looked at a bottom line of zero and are deciding to go ahead.
What I could see this as doing for the future is this being remembered as that first title that said 'the hell with it' and went through with the AO rating and made the Nintendo/Sony/Microsoft's realize that there is a market here and it is worth expanding our definition of games. Take Two is an utter mess at this point - but that desperation is great for doing something crazy that just might work. Dont tone down the game - throw in those few bits you were scared would originally garner an AO rating and just sell the damn thing.
The pirate copy I bought in here in Beijing had these security features:
1. Plastic sleeve 2. No box 3. Burned CD with "Vista 32 Eng" written in Sharpie on the front.
And it works great. Even came with the guys phone number in case I had problems applying the validation hacks.
If youre going to buy a pirate version what do you care? I have seen the nicer versions (with fake box et. al.) but trust me, no one is fooling themselves into thinking that they are getting a $400 program for ten bucks.
But my even more ghetto pirate version only cost $5 and it came with Office 2007 as well (which employed the same counter measures);)
First off they have Wii's here freely available, no shortages as much as I think just a lack of customers. That is two fold: Nintendo obviosuly isnt advertising in China and the local shops arent advertising that they arebreaking a number of laws. Hell, it should be Microsoft complaining - the xbox 360 was hacked within weeks out here and a number of my friends now own one - and at $1.25 a game its not a bad deal at all.
I just got paid and was planning on picking up this "bundle" from a local shop we frequent: Nintendo Wii + mod chip + extra controller + 2-3 pirated games for 2500 RMB ($323.00). When I say a local shop that is a place I actually trust and can return things to - but haggling at some of the biggest shops in Beijing (The Silk Street if youve ever heard of it) that are total tourist traps still have Wii's +mod chips and the lot as well. And they will come down to that price if you can bargain them down, but dont expect to ever find them again if it doesnt work.
My only problem is I dont think ill ever get anything productive done again If I pick one up.
Sorry ahead of time, but the fact that you mentioned both RE4 and Kingdom Hearts 2 in the same post I had to pass this along.
Resident Evil 4 vs. Kingdom Hearts 2
If you havent seen it yet - enjoy. Ive seen it 20 times and I still get a laugh;)
Well with Nehalem I think this has to do something with the team they designed it with. From what I hear they have been working with a number of Israeli design firms and engineers (who are apparently really top-notch and forward thinking in advanced chip design) to produce, or at least influence, the next-next generation of intel chips.
Based on the very Hebrew sounding name I would think this is some of the fruition of that partnership....
The online potential of so many people really is big enough to get Microsoft into a territory where they had copied games the week after it came out.
I live in Beijing and before I ever saw a system they had the games copied and on sale for a dollar fifty. Now they are down to a dollar. No one will 'buy' a game - but xbox live accounts are a different matter. I guess in this case Microsoft has nothing to lose as they at least get the hardware sale which should be turning a profit by now plus a subscription in some cases. Its an interesting business decision - I guess this would make them the first entrant into the Chinese video game market while it was still viable like... ever. Ninendo sells some funky controller N64 based thing with games built in in department stores - and thats the single legit example I know of. Everything else video game related out here is 3rd party and likely somehow shady.
Oh, except World of Warcraft. They have an ad on every Coca-Cola can in China thats been running for like a year now. Why do you think there are so many gold farmers;) ?
"What, just because you're a Westerner, you deserve "get outta jail" cards for free?"
--------------
No, of course not - but too often it is the case in practice.
Yes it keeps foreigners coming in and spending their money whether it be investment dollars or tourism - but it also created A LOT of resentment from the people. A double edged sword at best.
A small practical example: when I moved here (Beijing) I was told that you are allowed to walk down the street with open containers of alcohol, so I did. Looking around over time however, I noticed that it was really only foreigners who did so. So although I have now learned that you cant - by law - walk down the street with an open beer since I know in practice that I can - and I still do.
Its the same with so many other things big and small - unless you are violent or really causing trouble any conversation you have with a policeman here is going to be him telling you in the universal language to fuck off.
A local friend told me that "In the west the law is a line and you are on side or the other; here the law is a circle and we are on the line itself."
I didnt really understand it - but he did, and that is the cultural difference;)
While you may enjoy some courtesies in day to day life and doing business The Law is generally not to be messed with. As is distributing dissent in whatever medium you may choose no matter where you come from. I wonder very much how this will affect western news agencies as well. I had heard of thes laws coming ont he books when I arrived but this is the first I have really heard since.
Honestly though I dont think it will change too much for ordinary Chinese. The culture of "not talking about it and just getting along" with more daily freedoms and a prosperous country seems to do them quite well - if you ask me or them.
Slashdot Mirror
I live in Beijing and rarely carry my passport for anything aside from a trip to the bank - but ALWAYS have a copy on me.
In three years the _one time_ I was stopped by an officer and asked for ID he was fine taking the number from a photocopy and understood my (poor) Chinese explaining I just dont want to lose the damn thing.
Same thing though with your housing permits - try not having one of those when the police come by for checks. I got a knock last week at 12:30 AM from two cops making the rounds in my building checking on listed foreigners - I have heard without the right housing permit it would have been much more than a 5 minute affair and more like a 5 day mess with my possible deportation.
Protip: carry a copy, leave the real one at home. If its that big of a mess they will gladly escort you there
Well I have been inside the birds nest for three events now and here are my experiences:
1st time - walked right through security. Got the magic wand treatment - they didnt take my lighter - kosher like Christmas
2nd time - Might as well have been going through a gestapo checkpoint. Literally took me five minutes of taking my entire wardrobe apart, checking my iphone, and harassing me to my obvious annoyance before I got through
3rd time - (Two nights ago) I beeped going through the metal detector - she gave me the magic wand (quite courteously) and waved me through (lighter still in my pocket)
The place is absolutely gorgeous, China will have it together and seems to be finding a middle ground to handle the huge influx they will be faced with.
If anyone is interested we came up with this game on 4chan last month.
Except we were playing it with Hitler. Without using countries it becomes a fun little game.
"Unholy (album) -> June 14th -> Anne Frank -> Hitler.
Its Godwins Law: The Game®
I hate to put it so bluntly but:
Try living here - for a while.
And it will make sense. Its just different in a way you cant describe and it isnt as wrong and black and white as our sillly minds would like it to be. This society is a rich and diverse organism, even a laowai like myself is a part of that whole. And I dont fault the government for how they work.
It is capitalism, socialism, democracy and dictatorship all rolled into one.
With Chinese characteristics and for the goal of social harmony.
If you dont get those two jokes then you dont even have a glimpse of how one fifth of the world works.
Im trying to bang this out quickly before Chinese class (I live in Beijing) so forgive the hurry:
There is some site about Things White People Like on wordpress - and the whole site is blocked. Now using a proxy like StupidCensorship I can access the site - but somehow even through that there is something written on the TWPL: Asian Girls page that still gets blocked even through a proxy here!
That and wikipedia is always blocked but answers.com (which 99% of the time HAS the wiki article within) is not blocked.
Odd. That said its a wonderful place to live - the culture of being harassed by bored cops that exists in America is nonexistant out here. Just dont protest for Tibet and no one is going to mess with you generally....
So have we decided 'yay or nay' if I need to adopt a new screen name?
;)
No, I think ill still be administering XP boxen for until 2010 at least
I thought I would get a few years of use out of my username as XP was pretty new on the scene when I inexplicably 'lost' my old /. account and decided to create a new one - Had no idea that after all this time (6 years now?) XP would still be the OS I have to admin on a daily basis and that Windows 8 will probably come to fruition before that drastically changes.
;) And my friends mostly have thinkpads that I have been installing ubuntu on to save them from viruses and malware problems.
Me? Ive been an Apple user since 1999 - bought stock when they were 'beleaguered' and held on through all the splits
MS is falling on hard times fast - but of course I dont count them out by any stretch.
Please please please for the love of god samzenpus stop posting all of this utterly retarded shit!
Please!
I dont want to ignore ALL your posts because you do seem to post good news stories on occasion as well but retarded shit like this just doesnt belong on slashdot.
These cutesy videos never get any replies, never get bumped up, and are frankly just embarrassingly bringing the quality of the site down.
I have been trying to go along with the firehose idea and open myself up to new content - but seriously I cant imagine anyone at the site clamoring for these types of 'stories.'
Because when you see it youll turn 360* and walk away!
Amirite?
Facebook is now dead for anyone who wants to have a semblance of cool.
;)
Just like myspace and friendster before it.
Wise choice dropping 224 million on them, Microsoft - couldve just put something in AARP mailers and saved some money
1,350 RMB?
Seriously will buy you six hundred and seventy five 22oz beers here!
I think you guys are selling him short - he has this totally figured out......
Wish I had mod points......
Growing up in the 80's that was always the anti-USSR propaganda we were given: "In evil Soviet Russia you have to show your papers to go anywhere - enjoy how free we are here in America®" Now it just makes me cringe everytime I see a story like this -
Somewhere in the last 6 years we really did lose it all......
I'm too busy playing in digital playground type games with open endings like GTA: San Andreas. Give me the 5 star code, a bicycle and 100 foot bunny hops and watch me go ET over the national Guard - the best games are the ones you come up with.
Mastering though? Certain courses and cars on Gran Turismo - and I lie about not _beating_ a game of late, recently I knocked out both Super Paper Mario and Godfather: Wii Edition in the last few weeks. And as I sit down to write this I just got done playing Wii bowling for a couple hours after work - I havent mastered it but I rolled a 238 with friends just now and had a much better time than I would have had making speed runs in a basement.
But thats just me.
That is a youtube video waiting to happen. Anyone got a few hundred million in venture capitol for that?
I bet I could get more views that Urge ever had users.....
-Doc
The "given up on it gamer"........
;)
Which as the article states is the audience they are now going for.
I totally hear your sentiment, I was one of them too. Hell, I even picked up Zelda and was disgusted after spending 30 minutes to get a goddamned fishing rod and threw it out... But Tuesday night mahjong in Beijing with my far ranging expat crowd has now been replaced with Tuesday night Wii bowling league or Wario Whatever madness.... Laughing the whole time about how my bowling alley serves the finest wine and provides footwear par excellance
Have you actually played this thing? One of our friends just got back from a 4 week stint in the States and it was the first thing she mentioned. I cant even make the word of mouth marketing on this thing up.
Sorry, im sold. This thing is Just Plain Fun -
Think of it....
I think I speak for a lot of people that would _love_ to see the AO rating go from "the dreaded" to the "hells yeah!" rating. I mean we all want these kinds of titles - we are growing up but dammit as much as I love nintendo I want my games to grow up with me. Honestly I cant figure out where the real problem is. Distributors refuse to carry it - why? I know the fact that Wal-Mart wont carry it is a real problem when you are looking at your bottom line - but thankfully they looked at a bottom line of zero and are deciding to go ahead.
What I could see this as doing for the future is this being remembered as that first title that said 'the hell with it' and went through with the AO rating and made the Nintendo/Sony/Microsoft's realize that there is a market here and it is worth expanding our definition of games. Take Two is an utter mess at this point - but that desperation is great for doing something crazy that just might work. Dont tone down the game - throw in those few bits you were scared would originally garner an AO rating and just sell the damn thing.
The pirate copy I bought in here in Beijing had these security features:
;)
1. Plastic sleeve
2. No box
3. Burned CD with "Vista 32 Eng" written in Sharpie on the front.
And it works great. Even came with the guys phone number in case I had problems applying the validation hacks.
If youre going to buy a pirate version what do you care? I have seen the nicer versions (with fake box et. al.) but trust me, no one is fooling themselves into thinking that they are getting a $400 program for ten bucks.
But my even more ghetto pirate version only cost $5 and it came with Office 2007 as well (which employed the same counter measures)
Lemme see if I can remember all this correctly -
First off they have Wii's here freely available, no shortages as much as I think just a lack of customers. That is two fold: Nintendo obviosuly isnt advertising in China and the local shops arent advertising that they arebreaking a number of laws. Hell, it should be Microsoft complaining - the xbox 360 was hacked within weeks out here and a number of my friends now own one - and at $1.25 a game its not a bad deal at all.
I just got paid and was planning on picking up this "bundle" from a local shop we frequent: Nintendo Wii + mod chip + extra controller + 2-3 pirated games for 2500 RMB ($323.00). When I say a local shop that is a place I actually trust and can return things to - but haggling at some of the biggest shops in Beijing (The Silk Street if youve ever heard of it) that are total tourist traps still have Wii's +mod chips and the lot as well. And they will come down to that price if you can bargain them down, but dont expect to ever find them again if it doesnt work.
My only problem is I dont think ill ever get anything productive done again If I pick one up.
Sorry ahead of time, but the fact that you mentioned both RE4 and Kingdom Hearts 2 in the same post I had to pass this along. Resident Evil 4 vs. Kingdom Hearts 2 If you havent seen it yet - enjoy. Ive seen it 20 times and I still get a laugh ;)
Well with Nehalem I think this has to do something with the team they designed it with. From what I hear they have been working with a number of Israeli design firms and engineers (who are apparently really top-notch and forward thinking in advanced chip design) to produce, or at least influence, the next-next generation of intel chips.
Based on the very Hebrew sounding name I would think this is some of the fruition of that partnership....
Just my conjecture though....
The online potential of so many people really is big enough to get Microsoft into a territory where they had copied games the week after it came out.
;) ?
I live in Beijing and before I ever saw a system they had the games copied and on sale for a dollar fifty. Now they are down to a dollar. No one will 'buy' a game - but xbox live accounts are a different matter. I guess in this case Microsoft has nothing to lose as they at least get the hardware sale which should be turning a profit by now plus a subscription in some cases. Its an interesting business decision - I guess this would make them the first entrant into the Chinese video game market while it was still viable like... ever. Ninendo sells some funky controller N64 based thing with games built in in department stores - and thats the single legit example I know of. Everything else video game related out here is 3rd party and likely somehow shady.
Oh, except World of Warcraft. They have an ad on every Coca-Cola can in China thats been running for like a year now. Why do you think there are so many gold farmers
Read the story tag line again -
;)
From the "We alreadty discovered meth dept."
I dont want to advocate drug use.... but it appears Taco and I thought the same thing when we read the headline
No, everyone in China knows things are blocked.
Honestly, im not sure who this news is for - they know, we know, the whole world knows.
I gotta admire the cahones on this guy though.
"The sky is not blue! China says so."
"What, just because you're a Westerner, you deserve "get outta jail" cards for free?"
;)
--------------
No, of course not - but too often it is the case in practice.
Yes it keeps foreigners coming in and spending their money whether it be investment dollars or tourism - but it also created A LOT of resentment from the people. A double edged sword at best.
A small practical example: when I moved here (Beijing) I was told that you are allowed to walk down the street with open containers of alcohol, so I did. Looking around over time however, I noticed that it was really only foreigners who did so. So although I have now learned that you cant - by law - walk down the street with an open beer since I know in practice that I can - and I still do.
Its the same with so many other things big and small - unless you are violent or really causing trouble any conversation you have with a policeman here is going to be him telling you in the universal language to fuck off.
A local friend told me that "In the west the law is a line and you are on side or the other; here the law is a circle and we are on the line itself."
I didnt really understand it - but he did, and that is the cultural difference
As a foreigner in China this is distressing.
While you may enjoy some courtesies in day to day life and doing business The Law is generally not to be messed with. As is distributing dissent in whatever medium you may choose no matter where you come from. I wonder very much how this will affect western news agencies as well. I had heard of thes laws coming ont he books when I arrived but this is the first I have really heard since.
Honestly though I dont think it will change too much for ordinary Chinese. The culture of "not talking about it and just getting along" with more daily freedoms and a prosperous country seems to do them quite well - if you ask me or them.