Buy WoW gold and support your Chinese overlords
It makes sense, in that inevitable gut-wrenching way, like when you first find out that poor people are selling their kidneys for cash: in China, prisoners are forced to farm gold in World of Warcraft in order to make some extra cash for their jailors.
Liu says he was one of scores of prisoners forced to play online games to build up credits that prison guards would then trade for real money. The 54-year-old, a former prison guard who was jailed for three years in 2004 for “illegally petitioning” the central government about corruption in his hometown, reckons the operation was even more lucrative than the physical labour that prisoners were also forced to do.
“Prison bosses made more money forcing inmates to play games than they do forcing people to do manual labour,” Liu told the Guardian. “There were 300 prisoners forced to play games. We worked 12-hour shifts in the camp. I heard them say they could earn 5,000-6,000rmb [£470-570] a day. We didn’t see any of the money. The computers were never turned off.”
Memories from his detention at Jixi re-education-through-labour camp in Heilongjiang province from 2004 still haunt Liu. As well as backbreaking mining toil, he carved chopsticks and toothpicks out of planks of wood until his hands were raw and assembled car seat covers that the prison exported to South Korea and Japan. He was also made to memorise communist literature to pay off his debt to society.
But it was the forced online gaming that was the most surreal part of his imprisonment. The hard slog may have been virtual, but the punishment for falling behind was real.
“If I couldn’t complete my work quota, they would punish me physically. They would make me stand with my hands raised in the air and after I returned to my dormitory they would beat me with plastic pipes. We kept playing until we could barely see things,” he said.
Later in the article, the writer notes that there are over 100,000 full-time gold farmers in China alone. I’m betting that Blizzard wishes they had seen this coming, and had planned some way to take a piece of the action (over and above their monthly user fee).
We’re on our way to San Diego today, so just a quickie, folks. See ya.
D.
Someone’s been reading my unpubbed book
For those of you who don’t know it, the critters in my SF novel are birds whose wings have devolved into arms and hands. I had in mind arms that look a lot more like bird legs than human arms, but I will take what I can get. Anyway, I think this is cool. Hat tip to my son; this came off one of his Mafia Scum forums.
Our story thus far
Well, I finished Book Five of George R. R. Martin’s Game of Thrones yesterday (A Feast for Crows), and I lasted all of one day before buying Book Six, which I think is called A Gaggle of Geese A Dance With Dragons. Those of you who have read these books know that Martin’s literary sprawl knows no bounds — I mean, this guy makes Neal Stephenson look terse — and Dance With Dragons with its 1000 pages represents another leap forward in page count . . . particularly when you consider that Books Five and Six are actually one book that Martin has separated into two contemporaneous groups of multiple story lines.
Surprisingly, it all works. Most of the time. I must confess that when Martin goes on and on about what’s emblazoned on this or that House’s shields and banners, my eyes glaze over, and I skip ahead, invoking Elmore Leonard’s dictum about leaving out what other people skip (since I can’t leave it out, I skip it). And some characters are too loathsome to waste much time on. I skim Sansa’s chapters, as I do Cersei’s. Regarding Cersei, I don’t mind evil witches, but I really really mind stupid evil witches.
Most pleasant surprise among the various story arcs: that Martin was able to rehabilitate Jaime’s character. I didn’t think it would be possible.
Most annoying aspect of having to wait maybe another six years for book seven: Martin left Arya in some bad straits at the end of Book Five, and it irritates the piss out of me that I’m going to have to wait forever to find out what happens to her. I mean, book six is 1000+ pages, and I am going to have to wait nearly until the end to find out what has become of her. I dreamed about this story arc, I was so irked.
Best thing about having Book Six in hand (on cell phone, to be exact): I can finally catch up with Tyrion’s story line. Us little guys need to stick together.
D.
Oh, and another thing . . .
Kenney’s been doing contests like mad, with decent prizes (sketches, watercolors0. I really ought to submit an entry. I want a watercolor!
D.
Roll call
I know I’ve been boring and you all have better things in your lives, plus the whole blog thing just ain’t as pop as it once was, but it still seems quiet around here.
Anyone out there?
D.
Guess what this is.
Your only clue is this image:
Is it a sea urchin? A tribble? Scrotum of the Red Howler Monkey?
Answer below the fold.
Vacation
I have a five-day vacation coming soon, and for once we have no obligations to either set of relatives. We could go anywhere.
The initial plan had been to go up north and visit with the folks at my old hospital, see my former employees, suck up some nice redwood- and/or saltwater-scented air, and do some tide-pooling, but I think Jake wants to see something different. I suggested Monterey (California, that is, home of the Monterey Bay Aquarium, Asilomar, and some fantastic tide-pools). But as really crappy luck would have it, the Mazda Raceway is hosting some sort of motorcycle race that weekend, and there’s no room in the inn. Asilomar is sold out, as is the HoJo which is more or less across the street.
Asilomar is really neat place to stay, incidentally. It’s a conference center nestled amongst pine trees, deer, sand dunes, and of course TIDE POOLS. None of the rooms have television, but in this age of high speed internet, who needs a television? In my former life as a grad student, we had our annual meetings at Asilomar. Many rooms have wood-burning fireplaces. Nothing as awesome as a pine-scented fire burning in your fireplace. Snap, crackle, pop. And they often have huge bonfires at night in their fire pit.
Damned motorcycle racers!
So we’ve decided upon San Diego instead. Jake loves aquariums, zoos, and museums, and San Diego has plenty of those. We’ll likely hit the aquarium at Scripps, some subset of the various tide pools, and perhaps the San Diego Zoo. Now we just gotta figure out where to stay and where to eat.
D.
Best free timesuck ever.
The Universe Sandbox takes just a couple of minutes to download and install, and then you are God. Give the Moon Saturn’s rings and see what happens to ’em. Give the Earth the mass of the Sun and see what happens to the solar system (I was shocked to see Mars getting ejected from the solar system within a few days’ time). Create your own solar system. Learn first-hand the basics of orbital mechanics.
And it’s free.
This reminded me a bit of an old simulation game, Sim Earth, that I played back in the early nineties. You could control many different parameters of early Earth, then let time scroll forward to see if life would or would not develop. Or (if I recall correctly) you could start with present-day Earth, monkey with the variables, and see how long it took to turn our world into a sterile ball of mud. Fun! The graphics sucked by modern standards, so I’ve often wished someone would take the bother to update it.
Universe Sandbox, for that matter, does not have the most amazing graphics . . . inasmuch as the universe is a drop-dead gorgeous place, so it would have been cool to capture that angle. Still, what do you expect for free? And you do get to play God, after all.
What I’ve been doing: working. Sleeping. And playing World of Warcraft all over again.
I’ve reinvented myself as a noob. There was a time when I wasn’t a WoW noob, but I’m definitely one now. Yesterday, I found a very kind and long-suffering Level 70 shaman to take me through Shadowfang Keep. I should have just followed along, staying out of his way and sucking up loot, but no. I had to help. And I got myself killed, and THEN I forgot that this shaman could have resurrected me, but I forgot that too. And when I finally got back to the dungeon, I got lost and he had to come back and lead me through all over again.
He was more than gentlemanly through the whole thing, but I felt like such a doofus. It made me remember why I like soloing so much.
D.