Well, close. I wouldn't technically call it a dictatorship because the power is spread out around various people and groups, including the Standing Committee, former members of the Standing Committee and the military. But you're on the right track. 1) China is communist only in name. 2) Even if they were fully communist, that's an economic system, not a political one per se.
The word that you and the grandparent poster is looking for is 'authoritarian.' BTW I lived in China for three and a half years and IMO they are getting the government they deserve. Freedom, truth, and Classical Liberal ideals are not high on their list of values.
"The Chinese are notoriously obvious liars when it comes to their government statements." It's not just the government, friend.
It's not racist to point out that a culture has flaws. What I think a lot of Westerners don't understand about China is that it's not just like this government was created in a vacuum; the corruption, lying, cheating and general lack of ethical and moral scruples are facets of modern Chinese culture that also happen to manifest themselves in their government.
Maybe it's because in a computer game no one ever gets into character and brings pathos to the role. Sure, the mechanics and special effects of computers are great, but nobody really gets emotionally attached to their character (beyond how much time they spend levelling up) and...the storytelling just isn't there.
Roleplay-enforced MUDs might be right up your alley.
For a fairly entertaining examination of this idea, someone might want to check out out Neal Stephenson's Baroque Cycle books. I've only gotten through the first (Quicksilver) but it takes place during Newton's lifetime and Newton himself is one of the more major characters, along with Leibnitz and other less famous "natural philosophers."
Yes, Mr. Kotick is one of the most hated people in the industry for good reason. Check out this extremely detailed and disturbing post on Teamliquid.net about how little he cares for his developers and the games produced by the studios under Activision.
Personally, I blame him for the deluge of bad decisions coming out of Blizzard regarding Starcraft II, including: -No LAN play -No cross-regional play -Fees for tournaments and a more centralized, locked-down system in Battle.net 2.0
Most or all of these features were available in the Starcraft, which was released in 1998! I expect some or all of the features that the community is clamoring for will be introduced eventually--for a subscription fee. Because that's all Kotick sees in the Starcraft community: a bunch of passive cows who are just begging to be milked of all their worth.
And the worst part is, I pre-ordered Starcraft II anyway. Sigh.
MAYBE, but in your country you walk a block to the local DVD store and choose from a selection of thousands of pirated DVDs, each selling for the equivalent of 1.25 USD per disc? That's what it's like living in any city in China. It's probably impossible to buy a NON-pirated DVD in China (I for one have never seen one!). Technically these shops are breaking the law, but the relevant laws are not enforced.
Another example of the higher level of piracy is Baidu's music search. Baidu is the Chinese equivalent of Google, and using mp3.baidu.com you can find pirated mp3s of pretty much every song you'd want to hear. They block some of the files if you are accessing it from a foreign IP address, though. Check this search I just did (from inside China). Can you imagine if Google had a site like this? It would be sued into oblivion (although blogsearch.google.com can get pretty close!)
Even on TV, pirating is rampant. Talk shows and reality shows often take their background music the soundtracks of popular films like the Lord of the Rings or Star Wars, and something tells me they aren't coughing up royalty checks for that.
I actually have been using it up to and through the latest version 5 update. It is better before but I'm still getting the same bugs (albeit more rarely now).
But look at this from the other angle: the browser is not cutting edge, it is mature and stable.
On my aging Mac, I started out with Safari, then switched to Firefox when Safari started getting buggy as hell for no apparent reason. A couple months back I switched to Chrome just for kicks, but after a while started noticing it wasn't as stable or bug-free as Firefox (specifically, Flash would die and my Youtube vids would have to be restarted, also when I have lots of tabs open some pages appear to be blank even though they have loaded and are supposed to display content on them). So I switched back to good ol' Firefox. Sure, maybe it's not the fastest, the sleekest, or the most advanced browser on the planet, but it's damned reliable and eminently useable!
If you'd actually read the article, you'd know why they consider it to be a next gen Apple phone (many parts inside branded APPLE, in a case designed to make it look like a 3G iPhone, behaves just like an iPhone when you connect it to a Mac, uses the Mac proprietary dock connector, etc, etc). Are you saying that everyone at Engadget had been fooled, or are you saying they are playing a late April Fools joke on us? Frankly I don't think either is very likely.
China may have a few "ooh aaah" projects, better cell phonse and more flat screen TVs, but after living here for 8 months, I don't agree with your conclusion. It isn't fair to cherry pick one or two examples, when they are unique and not characteristic of the average.
You mentioned the maglev train. Well that is nice and fancy, but how many Chinese cities have even regular metro systems? Beijing, Shanghai, Shenzhen, Xiang Gang and Chongqing, IIRC. How many US cities have metro systems? New York, Boston, DC, Atlanta, Baltimore, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Cleveland, Chicago, Philadelphia and Miami. Possibly more I'm forgetting.
So maybe the shiniest tech in Shanghai is impressive, but if you average it out with what the lack of technology in most places, I still think the US comes out ahead.
I'm living in China right now. I just asked my 23 year old Chinese girlfriend if most people know about the Tiananmen Square riots, and she said "everyone knows, but we don't know the details, like how many people were killed." From my (admittedly short) time living in China, my analysis of Chinese knowledge of their government's actions is this: I think Chinese hear the big stories, like how the Sichuan schools were poorly constructed. On the other hand, they don't hear about all the little things, like how the Chinese government recently gunned down five Uighur "terrorists", or how they sentenced someone who posted pictures of schools that fell in the earthquake to one year of forced labor without a trial, etc, etc.
Oh, and a lot of the ones I talk to know about proxies, but don't care enough--or are too lazy--to circumvent the firewall. I mean, if you'd never used Wikipedia, then Wikipedia being blocked isn't such a big deal, since you don't know what you're missing. (Wikipedia is just an example, as it has worked in China for a few months now I think.)
Or listen to a tonal language, like Chinese. I remember seeing in an introduction to a Mandarin textbook the different tones plotted out on a treble staff.
You can't copyright chord progressions, only melodies. Most famously, there have been dozens of jazz standards written that are based on the chord progression of Gershwin's "I've Got Rhythm". In fact, there's even a name for that form: "'Rhythm Changes".
It also might be related to the small size of Berklee. When I entered, there were about 3,200 undergrad students and virtually no graduate students, although I think now that total is closer to 4,000. Harvard is home to about 19,000 students overall.
Also, most students don't live on campus due to the school's modest campus size (if you can really call our random collection of buildings in the middle of a city a campus).
If you're aware of their doctored non-evidence, their misstatements of fact, their misstatements of law, their abuse of the federal judicial system, and their inappropriate tactics
Sorry, I honestly was not aware that they doctored evidence and lied in court. Do you have any relevant links that give examples of their treachery? Sounds like a good Sunday afternoon read to me;-)
However, I still stand by my statement that calling the RIAA a coward for not suing Harvard is like calling me a coward because I won't pick a fight with Bas Ruten.
If you're a laywer for the RIAA, you are not paid to be brave. You are paid to further the agenda of the recording industry. If they believe suing Harvard students would hinder rather than help their cause, well is that really being "cowardly" or is it being smart? Would suing Harvard be "brave" or would it be counterproductive to their goals?
I'm as disgusted with the RIAA's tactics as anyone, but this childish name calling is getting old. It seems like every day on the front page of Slashdot is some article title with an overblown ad hominem attack against persons, groups or companies that rub us the wrong way. C'mon, people. We're smart, educated and savvy, do we really need to stoop to this?
Maybe, but it doesn't seem to be an issue in Japan. Arcades foster competition and community, things that fighting games--especially technically demanding ones--need to be playable and fun.
Original 2D games are near non-existent these days, except for a few ones left on the DS
You're just wrong about that. 2D fighters are alive and well, with updates and completely new games coming out every year. I can name half a dozen current franchises off the top of my head. We're an undergroundcommunity in the US, but the games are much more mainstream in Japan, where the arcade scene hasn't died off.
Right--and don't forget about all the other great 2D fighters being released every year!!
Just this month, Arcana Heart was released for Japanese PS2s, and last month Guilty Gear XX: Accent Core was released domestically. King of Fighters XI was just released stateside and Neo Geo Battle Coliseum is to be released later this month.
It's kind of a shame that this deep, rewarding genre has been pushed aside here in the US. I think it's a due to a combination of factors, namely: how graphics-oriented gamers are, the fact that arcades are pretty much dead in this country, and that people don't want to have to spend hours and hours to get good at a game.
Slashdot Mirror
Well, close. I wouldn't technically call it a dictatorship because the power is spread out around various people and groups, including the Standing Committee, former members of the Standing Committee and the military. But you're on the right track. 1) China is communist only in name. 2) Even if they were fully communist, that's an economic system, not a political one per se. The word that you and the grandparent poster is looking for is 'authoritarian.' BTW I lived in China for three and a half years and IMO they are getting the government they deserve. Freedom, truth, and Classical Liberal ideals are not high on their list of values.
"The Chinese are notoriously obvious liars when it comes to their government statements." It's not just the government, friend.
It's not racist to point out that a culture has flaws. What I think a lot of Westerners don't understand about China is that it's not just like this government was created in a vacuum; the corruption, lying, cheating and general lack of ethical and moral scruples are facets of modern Chinese culture that also happen to manifest themselves in their government.
Maybe it's because in a computer game no one ever gets into character and brings pathos to the role. Sure, the mechanics and special effects of computers are great, but nobody really gets emotionally attached to their character (beyond how much time they spend levelling up) and...the storytelling just isn't there.
Roleplay-enforced MUDs might be right up your alley.
For a fairly entertaining examination of this idea, someone might want to check out out Neal Stephenson's Baroque Cycle books. I've only gotten through the first (Quicksilver) but it takes place during Newton's lifetime and Newton himself is one of the more major characters, along with Leibnitz and other less famous "natural philosophers."
Yes, Mr. Kotick is one of the most hated people in the industry for good reason. Check out this extremely detailed and disturbing post on Teamliquid.net about how little he cares for his developers and the games produced by the studios under Activision.
Personally, I blame him for the deluge of bad decisions coming out of Blizzard regarding Starcraft II, including:
-No LAN play
-No cross-regional play
-Fees for tournaments and a more centralized, locked-down system in Battle.net 2.0
Most or all of these features were available in the Starcraft, which was released in 1998! I expect some or all of the features that the community is clamoring for will be introduced eventually--for a subscription fee. Because that's all Kotick sees in the Starcraft community: a bunch of passive cows who are just begging to be milked of all their worth.
And the worst part is, I pre-ordered Starcraft II anyway. Sigh.
Since when does an ellipsis denote sarcasm or irony? It just seemed like you were trailing off.
South Korea doesn't even have nukes. That's North Korea. And even if they did have nukes, their "arch-enemy" is right across the border.
MAYBE, but in your country you walk a block to the local DVD store and choose from a selection of thousands of pirated DVDs, each selling for the equivalent of 1.25 USD per disc? That's what it's like living in any city in China. It's probably impossible to buy a NON-pirated DVD in China (I for one have never seen one!). Technically these shops are breaking the law, but the relevant laws are not enforced.
Another example of the higher level of piracy is Baidu's music search. Baidu is the Chinese equivalent of Google, and using mp3.baidu.com you can find pirated mp3s of pretty much every song you'd want to hear. They block some of the files if you are accessing it from a foreign IP address, though. Check this search I just did (from inside China). Can you imagine if Google had a site like this? It would be sued into oblivion (although blogsearch.google.com can get pretty close!)
Even on TV, pirating is rampant. Talk shows and reality shows often take their background music the soundtracks of popular films like the Lord of the Rings or Star Wars, and something tells me they aren't coughing up royalty checks for that.
I figured as much, and I still use Chrome for light browsing, but as I said, my computer is aging and it does have to swap to disk frequently. :-/
I actually have been using it up to and through the latest version 5 update. It is better before but I'm still getting the same bugs (albeit more rarely now).
But look at this from the other angle: the browser is not cutting edge, it is mature and stable.
On my aging Mac, I started out with Safari, then switched to Firefox when Safari started getting buggy as hell for no apparent reason. A couple months back I switched to Chrome just for kicks, but after a while started noticing it wasn't as stable or bug-free as Firefox (specifically, Flash would die and my Youtube vids would have to be restarted, also when I have lots of tabs open some pages appear to be blank even though they have loaded and are supposed to display content on them). So I switched back to good ol' Firefox. Sure, maybe it's not the fastest, the sleekest, or the most advanced browser on the planet, but it's damned reliable and eminently useable!
And I'm sorry for my rude reply; I was out of line.
You know, a 15 second Google search would have turned up the results: http://forums.battle.net/thread.html?topicId=24630623195&sid=5000
Good idea. Don't forget to tell them why you didn't buy it.
Here's a link to the developer's (Proper Games) contact page: http://www.proper-games.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=category&layout=blog&id=35&Itemid=55
And here's one to the publisher's (Capcom) contact page: https://shop.capcom.com/DRHM/servlet/ControllerServlet?Action=DisplayContactFormPage&SiteID=capcomus&Locale=en_US&Env=BASE&resid=S9FRGwoBAiMAAFFzqmEAAAAD&rests=1272009021063
If you'd actually read the article, you'd know why they consider it to be a next gen Apple phone (many parts inside branded APPLE, in a case designed to make it look like a 3G iPhone, behaves just like an iPhone when you connect it to a Mac, uses the Mac proprietary dock connector, etc, etc). Are you saying that everyone at Engadget had been fooled, or are you saying they are playing a late April Fools joke on us? Frankly I don't think either is very likely.
China may have a few "ooh aaah" projects, better cell phonse and more flat screen TVs, but after living here for 8 months, I don't agree with your conclusion. It isn't fair to cherry pick one or two examples, when they are unique and not characteristic of the average. You mentioned the maglev train. Well that is nice and fancy, but how many Chinese cities have even regular metro systems? Beijing, Shanghai, Shenzhen, Xiang Gang and Chongqing, IIRC. How many US cities have metro systems? New York, Boston, DC, Atlanta, Baltimore, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Cleveland, Chicago, Philadelphia and Miami. Possibly more I'm forgetting. So maybe the shiniest tech in Shanghai is impressive, but if you average it out with what the lack of technology in most places, I still think the US comes out ahead.
I'm living in China right now. I just asked my 23 year old Chinese girlfriend if most people know about the Tiananmen Square riots, and she said "everyone knows, but we don't know the details, like how many people were killed." From my (admittedly short) time living in China, my analysis of Chinese knowledge of their government's actions is this: I think Chinese hear the big stories, like how the Sichuan schools were poorly constructed. On the other hand, they don't hear about all the little things, like how the Chinese government recently gunned down five Uighur "terrorists", or how they sentenced someone who posted pictures of schools that fell in the earthquake to one year of forced labor without a trial, etc, etc.
Oh, and a lot of the ones I talk to know about proxies, but don't care enough--or are too lazy--to circumvent the firewall. I mean, if you'd never used Wikipedia, then Wikipedia being blocked isn't such a big deal, since you don't know what you're missing. (Wikipedia is just an example, as it has worked in China for a few months now I think.)
Or listen to a tonal language, like Chinese. I remember seeing in an introduction to a Mandarin textbook the different tones plotted out on a treble staff.
You can't copyright chord progressions, only melodies. Most famously, there have been dozens of jazz standards written that are based on the chord progression of Gershwin's "I've Got Rhythm". In fact, there's even a name for that form: "'Rhythm Changes".
It also might be related to the small size of Berklee. When I entered, there were about 3,200 undergrad students and virtually no graduate students, although I think now that total is closer to 4,000. Harvard is home to about 19,000 students overall.
Also, most students don't live on campus due to the school's modest campus size (if you can really call our random collection of buildings in the middle of a city a campus).
If you're aware of their doctored non-evidence, their misstatements of fact, their misstatements of law, their abuse of the federal judicial system, and their inappropriate tactics
;-)
Sorry, I honestly was not aware that they doctored evidence and lied in court. Do you have any relevant links that give examples of their treachery? Sounds like a good Sunday afternoon read to me
However, I still stand by my statement that calling the RIAA a coward for not suing Harvard is like calling me a coward because I won't pick a fight with Bas Ruten.
If you're a laywer for the RIAA, you are not paid to be brave. You are paid to further the agenda of the recording industry. If they believe suing Harvard students would hinder rather than help their cause, well is that really being "cowardly" or is it being smart? Would suing Harvard be "brave" or would it be counterproductive to their goals?
I'm as disgusted with the RIAA's tactics as anyone, but this childish name calling is getting old. It seems like every day on the front page of Slashdot is some article title with an overblown ad hominem attack against persons, groups or companies that rub us the wrong way. C'mon, people. We're smart, educated and savvy, do we really need to stoop to this?
Maybe, but it doesn't seem to be an issue in Japan. Arcades foster competition and community, things that fighting games--especially technically demanding ones--need to be playable and fun.
Original 2D games are near non-existent these days, except for a few ones left on the DS
You're just wrong about that. 2D fighters are alive and well, with updates and completely new games coming out every year. I can name half a dozen current franchises off the top of my head. We're an underground community in the US, but the games are much more mainstream in Japan, where the arcade scene hasn't died off.
Right--and don't forget about all the other great 2D fighters being released every year!!
Just this month, Arcana Heart was released for Japanese PS2s, and last month Guilty Gear XX: Accent Core was released domestically. King of Fighters XI was just released stateside and Neo Geo Battle Coliseum is to be released later this month.
It's kind of a shame that this deep, rewarding genre has been pushed aside here in the US. I think it's a due to a combination of factors, namely: how graphics-oriented gamers are, the fact that arcades are pretty much dead in this country, and that people don't want to have to spend hours and hours to get good at a game.