North Korean Flash Games For Export 211
linzeal writes: "Despite it being pretty-much closed off to the world, North Korea is the next boom place for IT and tech outsourcing, PC World has reported. Flash games are being developed there for outside publishers, largely thanks to the home-grown talent. Does this mean that the the cartoon company that makes The Simpsons might use North Korea as well? Well it looks like they already have started."
So... (Score:5, Insightful)
irony overload (Score:4, Insightful)
irony #1: a television whose wit is only possible in a country with freedom of expression, being drawn by cartoonists in a country where there are no freedoms at all. anyone north korean attempting a north korean version of the simpsons would be put to death
irony #2: a country so beholden to the almighty buck that it will export the production of everything to the cheapest place possible, relentlessly and continuously, until you are driven to places where things are so cheap because of adherence to communist ideology. capitalism's relentlessness includes ways to monetize and capitalize on artifacts of the the communist age. that's an irony china certainly has a lot of domestic experience with
there are about 20 other ironies. see them for yourself
Re:So... (Score:5, Insightful)
To answer your question, it says that amoral managers are willing to get in bed with the most evil of monsters if it means they can make money. If this is the next "logical step" then something is seriously wrong with this person's decision making process.
Re:irony overload (Score:3, Insightful)
Oh, of only Kim Jong-il would adhere to communist ideology...
Things are cheap there because of totalitarian oligarchy.
agreed (Score:5, Insightful)
communist ideology is incompatible with reality, much as libertarian ideology is incompatible with reality
attempting to make communism work in reality results in domination of society by cult of personalities. individuals who can do no wrong (while they do plenty wrong). attempting to make libertarianism work in reality results in domination of society by corporations. corporations who can do no wrong (while they do plenty wrong)
balance in all things. unfortunately, we must pay a mighty price in this world for the ideolgoical fools who go to the extremes of libertarianism and communism, when the middle way, the moderate way: capitalism with socialist safety nets, socialism with capitalist engines, the only really valid real world solutions to the paradox that is human selfishness and altruism
yup (Score:5, Insightful)
the threat all of us faces is fundamentalism
not just the usual fundamentalism of religions: muslim fundamentalists, christian fundamentalist, jewish fundamentalists, although they of course continue doing the damage they have done for centuries
also, fundamentalisms of politics and commerce: free market fundamentalists, constitutional fundamentalists, brain dead partisans: a sort of fundamentalism of political party, etc
even other bogeymen can be recast as fundamentalism: racism, for example, is a form of racial fundamentalism
whenever you adhere to one aspect of human reality, and make it your only concern, to say that is solves all problems, you yourself, you have become the source of the problems in this world. because the truth is, the world is complex, and simplistic teachings about who and what we are always fail
unfortunately, this truth never stops certain assholes from continuing to tell us that simplistic teachings are the solutions to our problems (and thereby become the source of our problems)
here comes the idjits (Score:3, Insightful)
"If you really look at Libertarianism, you'd see that corporations would lose a lot of the protections of assets and greater liability and fewer government handouts"
wow, this is an awesome form of libertarianism. so, dear libertarian, who is going to enforce this liability? answer: some form of centralized government bureaucracy... oops, we destroyed them
libertarians don't understand that when you weaken the government, there is only one power left in the room: corporations. at that point, nothing stops them from corrupting and controlling every remaining government function you hold dear
libertarians have plenty of things to hate in government. what they should do is work at REFORMING government, not destroying it
put it this way: make a list of every abuse of big government you despise and hate
now, take away that big government. what do you get?
reality: you get THE SAME LIST OF ABUSES, plus A WHOLE BUNCH OF NEW ONES, SOME FAR WORSE, being committed by corporations. that really is the truth. please recognize that
you NEED big government to hold the corporations in check. but to the extent that big government is entwined with corporations, WORK TO REMOVE THAT CORRUPTION. don't work to remove the only thing holding corporate power in check!
Re:A hellhole is not a tax dodge or investment opp (Score:3, Insightful)
Slashdot poster citing Wikipedia citing Fox News citing the South Korean Good Friends.
Quite.
As far as monitoring goes, the difference between NK and US ("the West") is that NK does it with people in the next room, and US does it with tech everywhere. NK is merely three decades out of date. I cannot enter the US without being interrogated (during which I must affirm that I'm not of certain political affiliations), photographed, retina scanned and fingerprinted; I can't communicate without my words being intercepted without warrant.
As far as prison camps regular and super-size and executions played out in the media all but at the point of filming the death proper, the US and its allies have quite a few of them - although mostly it makes prison camps of foreign territories. More people have suffered under US rule than the Kims could ever dream of. In the US, I am free to speak my mind as long as not enough people are listening, and the freedom of troublemakers is taken rather than their lives: that is the difference in the sophistication of oppression between US and NK.
Re:A hellhole is not a tax dodge or investment opp (Score:1, Insightful)
In the U.S. you get to write what you just wrote without being hunted down. I assume this is true because I see a constant stream of anti-U.S. sentiment coming from U.S. citizens, and I never hear about them disappearing, and I see the same ones repeat their same attacks on their nation.
Yes, the U.S. has done some wrong things, including their ongoing and pointless sanctions against Cuba (have sanctions EVER achieved anything but to make the populace more patriotic?), but I would much rather live in the U.S. than Cuba or North Korea. China on the other hand is a pretty decent place to live. I have lived in China, Korea, Australia, and New Zealand. The latter three of which I am free to say vitriolic things about the government and have people agree with me. In China, they tend to attack me and defend their government, even if they were previously saying the same things about their government previously. But not many dare to say anything negative on public record (e.g. in a Newspaper, on the radio, or under their real name on the Internet).
That being said, it doesn't bother me, because for the most part, Chinese citizens are treated pretty well, except those of Tibet and Xinjiang from time to time, but it's a lot better than the way the English (followed by Americans, Australians and New Zealanders) treated their natives (Native American tribes, Aborigines, and Maoris).
The main difference is that these days, the Native Americans, Aborigines and Maoris are free to voice their grievances without being hunted down and put into jail. The Maoris are a lot better off than the other two groups, mainly because by the time the English got around to conquering New Zealand (Colonizing! That's sugarcoating what really happened).
But these days the governments are actually trying to reduce the damage that was caused in the past, and do allow free speech. The Xinjiangese and Tibetans don't have that luxury.
Yes, the rights in the West are being eroded, but they are still far superior to that seen in places like Cuba and North Korea, and superior to that seen in China.
People who protest in the United States usually seem to get arrested and beaten after they start smashing shop windows and cars (none of which belong to the government), so I would say they deserve what they get.
People talk about natural rights, but unless there is a God, there only exist those rights which we fight for ourselves, or those that are given to us by our peers. But in reality, in a natural, and evolutionary sense, there is no such thing as a "right", which is simply a human concept. That being said, I do believe that we should all have these rights, I'm just saying that like ethics, and religion, they are a human creation. But it IS a human creation which I admire, and would fight to keep these rights for myself, those that I love, and my countrymen, if it came down to that.
Re:A hellhole is not a tax dodge or investment opp (Score:1, Insightful)
Alive with "a few minor perks" instead of dead from starvation sounds like progress to me. But what do I know, I'm just a greedy, evil, capitalist.
Re:yup (Score:1, Insightful)
So despite their claims to the contrary, true Xians are only those who you deem worthy of the name. All I can say is, Fuck You.
Re:A hellhole is not a tax dodge or investment opp (Score:3, Insightful)
What manner of strawman is this? Of course society is a compromise. This doesn't mean it has to be based on outright physical oppression of a majority and trickery to mollify the rest.
Every empire's justification has been "Society = compromise. Deal with it." applied with poor premises. You're rewording the white man's burden.
Re:So... (Score:3, Insightful)
The distinction might be more subtle than you make it to be...
Not only a less than stellar start (Jeju Uprising or Bodo League massacre; both easily exceeding the total number of victims of regime from my place (*) ), what about 1967 "spy ring"? Or generally imprisonments, tortures, protests beeing risky. Or Gwangju Massacre, as late as in 1980?
That's not shooting citizens or throwing them to jails? Were you under (mistaken, I assure you) impression that those weren't happening in waves also in "communist" regimes? (with times inbetween being relatively calm)
(*) I live in a place which, while now in the EU, was behind the Iron Curtain (a situation mostly forced upon us, but of course practically entirety of the regime was "local"). And I really don't see that much of a difference between the situation at my place and what seemed to be the case in South Korea; apart from official ideology / camp affiliation / economic path. Where it matters it seems to be at most a case of scope, without changing the essence much.
i knew someone would do it (Score:4, Insightful)
try to draw an equivalency between north korea and the usa
it would be hilarious, if you weren't being so serious
the usa has committed plenty of crimes, and continues to do so, and you should castigate the usa for that
but dude: you fail at reality if you fail to see that north korea is well beyond the usa in the evil behavior department. really
Re:A hellhole is not a tax dodge or investment opp (Score:3, Insightful)
I've traveled between the US, Middle East, Europe, Mexico and Canada numerous times and never have been asked if I was a Nazi/Communist/where I'm going/who I'm meeting when I come back to the US.
Even on direct flights between Tel Aviv to New York, Amsterdam to New York, Frankfort to Portland, never ever get those kinds of questions returning to the US or going into places like Tel Aviv. Worst grilling I got was Haifa to Greece by Israel on a ferry and Atlanta to Paris when I got to Paris CDG.
Look, I realize that if the government really wanted to, they could track you, but the reality of it is the US Federal Government doesn't, hell they didn't know where I was in the US for 8 years to give me a tax bill I didn't know about. If the IRS can't figure out where you are when you aren't even hiding from them, that doesn't really make me wonder about the all-seeing-eye of the Feds.
Sure, some countries will hold your passports, but when you travel in the United States no one is keeping track of your papers, you don't need internal passports in the US (unlike the DPRK), you don't need internal passports in Canada.
Last fall I traveled between the continental United States and Alaska, even past one of the most strategic places in the US, the Alaska Pipeline, no ID checks there, only ID checks were at the borders, as far as the US government was concerned I could have disappeared pretty much anywhere in that trip.
Now I live a km away from a major US military base, again no ID checks to be here.
That is impossible in the DPRK by any and all accounts of life there.