http://www.engadget.com/2007/04/10/china-s...-online-gaming/

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This is my favourite

Laugh my arse off

this's the best one i think

"I guess I better buy me some WoW gold before the prices go up "

business acumen

When some Brits complain about their employer, I'd say:
"Welcome to Captalism."

There's no paradise on earth, isn't it?


Captalists - well, they don't use this word just as we don't use communism they way they do - only care about profit. It's the government's responsibility to protect the vulnerable. The USAians are so brainwashed by the word "freedom", that they just let their government do whatever the capitalists want. Pathetic nation.

Ironically, the concept of freedom in its modern meaning was actually defined by the French. We all know too well that after 9-11 these American hepocrites like to deride the French as a nay-saying and surrendering nation. Coincidentally, they wanted to rename "French fries" as "Freedom fries". Ignorants, aren't they?


A similar discussion was on Slashdot yesterday. I'll try pick some comments next time.

On this matter, I think the masses in the West were deliberately mislead, just as we were mislead on the concept of Socialism in China. Rarely do I see someone giving such precise account of communism and the so-called "communist countries". I'd modify it "+1 informative" on Slashdot.
BTW, "Socialistic Dictatorships" does not describe China's political status anymore. Socialistic Authoriatarianism, maybe?


"Let's just give George W Bush and his friends their own planet," I'd say.


The good old "In Soviet Russia" joke gets new variants.

Here's mine:
In neo-conservatist America, potato assimilates you!

p.s. IPB seems not able to handle it when quotes in a post reache a certain number. I have to use a second post for the rest. Guess my quota today's going too quick...

Cat man, you are deviating from the original topics

What 'vulnerable' in this context, game-addicted kids?
First sight on the news, I feel it is a wise and quick win to help the gaming addicts. Then I think it is not quite right.
Doing so is undermining the fundamental freedom of choice/ HR (that is for human rights) by heavy hand nannying.

As government’s role it should focus on education, even it costs more and taking a longer time.

But as game makers/industry self-ruling regulation this is good move.

I cite this comment to support my argument



If a government assuming more rights/legislations like this, what we will end up is a bunch of citizen that cannot take responsibility for themselves.

The thought of a 30 years yelling “Mom~~~~~~, can I have ….”
is scary.

Seriously though, if you look at the arguments, you'll see this is exactly on topic. Just as the freedom of speech was used by Larry Flynt to fight in court against US government regulations that threatened his pornography business, the gaming industry are using anti-China/anti-communist sentiment to smear the good intention of the regulation.

I'm not saying the new regulation an effective move. To be honest, I don't have much confidence in it. In China, good intentions always succumb to the big climate. This is a sad truth. But I don't think the 3-hour gaming regulation should become another pretext for the West to attack China, because their reasoning is flawed.



Freedom of choice is a great notion in phylosophy. Sadly it never really existed in real life. There's a big difference between conceptually pure and morally pure. Being conceptually pure simplifies complex ideas and makes it accessible to everyone not just phylosophers. This is a good thing as it promotes thinking and spreads ideas. Being morally pure, however, is harmful. The world isn't black and white. To apply some simplistic moral standards on worldly affairs does not solve any real problem if not creating more problems. To me, preaching moral standards like this is only going to involve everyone in a blame game, i.e. mobilizing one group of people against another.

I'm not certain about what human right has been breached by THIS regulation. The foul-crying crowd in the West is making much ado about nothing (see quote below). Many Chinese have been deprived of human rights in more serious ways. Why don't we tackle those issues first?



The quote should've made it clear, hopefully. It's not a ban. It only tries to make MMO games less "sticky" to the kids. What the heck is it having to do with human rights?


I totally agree on this one. Our government has screwed it up big time on education unfortunately. Here's an excellent article about the systematic failure of Chinese education system.



No. I don't think there's enough pressure on the industry to force a self-regulation. This can be a goal in the future, but not going to work alone at present. Just have a look at the marware-ridden *mainstream* websites in China, you'll know there's no room for industrial self regulation. When honesty and trust system isn't in place, how do you expect such regulation to work?



Again, this is a dystopic view of so-called nanny state future, but not a relevant point here. I'm all for kids getting a sense of independence early in their lives. But there is no excuse for parents to shed responsibilities to their own children. NeutralTim's argument does not hold water in this case because the gaming regulation does not take away privileges of parenting. It addresses the problem by taking action on the industry. If irresponsible adults want to find an excuse for their poor parenting skill or lack of willingness to spend time with their kids, they always find one. It has nothing to do with gaming.

Just imagine a game-addict teenager who spend 12 hours a day with online gaming. How can s/he grow up to a responsible and independent citizen in the society? How?

Gosh, you are utmost eloquence, a master in debating.
I have to break your long post into a few smaller one for clarity sake.

In Flynt vs Ohio and Flynt vs People legal battles, Larry Flynt never lose a case on his pornography magazine business, in fact he had never been prosecuted & jailed on criminal charges of pornography magazine business. He did go into jail on other charges like desecration of the flag ( he wore an American flag as a diaper and jailed for 6 months).

I call it is the Constitution, Freedom of Speech and justice.

Use this argument to support 'good intention of the regulation' is very contradicted. What 'good' is in it if it violates the Constitution? the basic HR - freedom of choice. Helping people to behalf, a nanny state (we will come to that shortly)? Fixing a relative smaller social problem by violating the Constitution cann't be of any value.

What Chinese govt is doing is really the opposite of Larry Flynt cases.



agree in general, but 'attack' is a common theme in IT nerd's world (engadget, slashdot). They 'attack' anything, everything in sight. Called it 'West attack' is much overkilled, I say 'criticise’.

Nerd, as a stereotypical or archetypal designation, refers to somebody who passionately pursues intellectual or esoteric knowledge or pastimes rather than engaging in a social life, participating in organized sports, or other mainstream activities. The Merriam-Webster definition is an "unstylish, unattractive, or socially inept person; especially: one slavishly devoted to intellectual or academic pursuits." from wikipedia

I understood you are talking the pragmatic implementation of a law and the law itself in principle. These are two issues. Being the principle-the law- when it is legislated and established, it defines a set of conceptual rules that guides judiciary - a group of judges to apply the justices. So the law must be ‘conceptually pure’. Adapt the law to fit implementation is the wrong way around. In analogy, like buying a wok after and by the size of the fish you are going to cook.



The world isn't - so with laws we have judges and juries. But the law should define the boundary of B&W clearly.
Anyway, I cant see the relevance on this to the topic.


Freedom of choice.



HR breached, more critical things should be in higher priority I totally agree. There is not relevance to the PRATICULAR case �#8220; gaming rules we are talking about here. Even there is a relation, getting gaming rules right doesn’t need to be based on getting other HR aspects right. There is no correlation in terms of resource-legislation dependency.

will continue tomorrow, go to sleep now.

Thank you. I'm really flattered. And you're very good at creating topics and motivating people.
I do enjoy intellectual debates on such interesting topics, as long as we both keep our arguments to the point.



No problem. I'd like to keep some spare posts to spend elsewhere too.

Here's my response regarding your comment regarding human rights and freedom of choice. According to its Wikipedia entry, human rights commonly refer to the following


It's quite clear to me that there is no freedom of choice in commonly recognized human rights then. Although I'm not an expert in law and jurisdiction, I believe, even in such wider context, that freedom of choice is more of a pure conceptual term than of something applicable to specific case. The term is akin to the non-theological meaning of free will, but that's a different topic.

To make it unlikely a layman's assumption, I googled "freedom of choice law". Just a few items down the list there was a paper by John Garvey from Boston College Law School, called "Freedom of Choice in Constitutional Law". The abstract quoted:



A quick recap relevant to the case goes below:
Children do enjoy freedoms as expressed in the US Constitution. However, as they can not make choice for themselves, their surrogate, i.e. those closest to them - in the most common case, parents, are expected to choose on the kids behalf.

Note there are two important things even if we pretend the US Constitution also apply in China. The first, freedom of choice is not mentioned in explicit but implied by more general term "freedoms". The other notion is the surrogate having the right to choose on the child's behalf.

In other words, a child's constitutional rights - not human rights - is not violated if the parents don't let the kid play game. This is fair enough, but where is the state coming into play here?

We all know that the law in the UK used to forbid the sale of alcohol during certain hours of a day, and it's still in effect in Scotland. Does that violate a person's right to enjoy beer whenever s/he wants? No, because it only regulates the shops, not the consumer.

Similarly, the gaming regulation in questioin regulates the gaming industry, not the player. Also, it does not forbid game playing after 3 hours, according to the press article. It just removes (part of) the incentive of out-of-hour MMO game playing, i.e. game points. How is that oppressive to the Western critics?

Okay cat man I am back. I hope there are audience enjoy this debate and thought works in pursuit of 独立人格，自由思想。让我们用这个辩论来纪念王小波(十年祭)。 我还记得那时候爱看他在南方周末上的专栏。突闻他辞世噩耗...后来还打电话给花城出版社问他的时代三部曲什么时候出...一下就十年了。
年轻人们却越来越不善于独立思考。益发趋于集体无意识，人云易云...
我们有责任阿...

要不咱们去茶馆搞辩论周赛，影响一代人。
怎么也比abcd 的妓女回忆录要好吧

Before continue on what I left off first I thank you for finding out wiki definition on HR, (US) Constitutions



I agree 'Freedom of Choice' by its wording, it is a conceptual term, me too as a layman should not use it to overshadow the legal term 'Liberty'.
A little reading into this definition, I found Freedom of association,
which means is a Constitutional (legal) concept based on the premise that it is the right of free adults to mutually choose their associates for whatever purpose they see fit. This concept has been included in several national constitutions, including the United States Constitution, the European Convention on Human Rights, and Canada's Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

(Stop it, lets leave 中国国情 for now. We are talking a FACT - that a commonly recognised Constitutional (legal) concept (FACT) by most civilised, developed countries(FACT).)

'freedom of choice' is deeped embeded in the Constitutional Liberty.


To make it unlikely a layman's assumption, I googled "freedom of choice law". Just a few items down the list there was a paper by John Garvey from Boston College Law School, called "Freedom of Choice in Constitutional Law". The abstract quoted:



hold that thought, we will come to that tomorrow

这是个很好的提议。影响一代人什么的，不敢奢望，不过看英华人气大不如前，我也不忍心只当个自了汉。

辩论周赛的形式不错，议题把握和组织却很见功力。太冷的题目不会有太多人参与，热门话题又恐怕控制不住节奏，一周之内要决出优胜比较困难。更担心出现擦枪走火的情况。要是有人不守辩论规则，吵起来，怎么办？

何况，谁来当评判呢？诉诸投票很容易让感性压倒理性，不符合辩论的内在逻辑。尤其这是文字辩论，更注重摆事实讲道理，现场辩论的肢体语言和修辞都派不上用场。由评委决定比较合适，不过能平时能保持冷静客观的网友本来就不多，能拨冗筛选打分，维护游戏规则，还要耐得住参赛者骂的，恐怕非常难找。就算脾气修炼到家了，碰上观点相左的，一时见猎心喜，难保不会跳下场去插两句嘴。这样球员兼裁判，公正性就有问题了。

上面是我的疑虑。不过我这人性格比较完美主义，故而常常忽略知难行易的道理。想得多了，仅供参考。

另一个做法就是所谓转贴加评论的自由式。只要有人跟进，也能碰撞出思想的火花。很多人已经在做。所谓机会教育，往往事半功倍。问题在于，这种严肃点的帖子通常比较不容易抓住眼球。独立思考本来就是曲高和寡的事情，再加上很多时候转贴的都是大段的英文，按耐得住性子看的人就更少了。

瞻前顾后，不如坐而起行。要不你我就从这个题目做起，蛤蟆兄你看如何？