It's simultaneously creepy and heart-warming how much South Korea loves this game.

starcraft2 is a failure because blizzard created this game purely for south korea.
they did not want to upset south koreans by changing this game too much.
ffs the 1st ever official announcement was done in south korea!

even CnC advanced their gameplay so much.
starcraft2 is a failure.

>> ^Kevlar:

>> ^Gabe_b:
>> ^blankfist:
Viacom has an official statement on the matter, and it ain't pretty!
Watch here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQw4w9WgXcQ

Apparently the content of that video is far to valuable for us non-consumers in South Korea to view. Anyone care to summarize?

We're no strangers to love...
You know the rules, and so - do - I.
LOL, ok thx

>> ^Gabe_b:

>> ^blankfist:
Viacom has an official statement on the matter, and it ain't pretty!
Watch here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQw4w9WgXcQ

Apparently the content of that video is far to valuable for us non-consumers in South Korea to view. Anyone care to summarize?


We're no strangers to love...
You know the rules, and so - do - I.

>> ^blankfist:

Viacom has an official statement on the matter, and it ain't pretty!
Watch here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQw4w9WgXcQ


Apparently the content of that video is far too valuable for us non-consumers in South Korea to view. Anyone care to summarize?

South Korea....I guess that is an important detail....rad avatar btw....

In reply to this comment by Napalm:
WHICH Korea?!? This is the important question for god's sake.

I believe the correct term is "oriental".>> ^shagen454:
and ask, "where is the asian guy?" I thought it inoffensive enough ; just trying to make the situation less awkward and this kid responds, "what?" and I repeated and he replied "He's Korean." I didn't really give a shit to get into an argument about it considering Korea or South Korea is specified as East Asia. Did I really make a horrible mistake or was this kid just a total dick?

>> ^shagen454:
Oh man, the title of this video reminds me of some hipster guy (not that I have anything wrong with "cool" people or whatever label we need to give people who are culturally aware) that pissed me off yesterday. I go to a certain liquor store a couple of times a week and usually there is this korean guy who is the owner working. I went into the liquor store, see this young white kid working the register that I've never seen before. He was kind of awkward in the way that he was overly conscious that he was working in a shitty liquor store - so as he is bagging up my beer I try to make small talk and ask, "where is the asian guy?" I thought it inoffensive enough ; just trying to make the situation less awkward and this kid responds, "what?" and I repeated and he replied "He's Korean." I didn't really give a shit to get into an argument about it considering Korea or South Korea is specified as East Asia. Did I really make a horrible mistake or was this kid just a total dick?


Kid was probably just feeling awkward and blurted out the first thing he thought.

A mediocre translation attempt for anyone who cares :
"How do you do. I would like to show you taekwondo [debatable she does that bit super fast]
"Ready?" [Fighting sounds]
"One more time" [Fighting sounds]
"You also do Taekwondo" [Fighting sounds]
"You too do Taekwondo" [Fighting sounds]
"Then... "
[Counting one to ten while doing press ups]
"Could someone please give me some help?"
Second hand "What would you like me to do?"
"This ____ please" [Couldn't make out the verb ~_~. Could be "hold"]
"Certainly sir"
[More counting]
"Now, are you feeling well?"
"Now, in a moment the champion will arrive" [yay for konglish]
"So, champion has won the belt. What move did you do to win the champions belt?"
Second Hand: "What move did I do?"
"Yup" [Champion hand attacks Sansaengnim hand]
"No, no stop!!"
Second hand: "Cobra Twist!"
[After many listens the only word I can make out is "Animal", Doesn't seem to be a grammatical sentence as it has a noun at the end. so I'm gonna guess "Now I will fight this animal" :-/]
"No no, stop it"
Monster Hand: "Farewell"

Anyway, the language is Korean and the hand dude is supposed to be a taekwondo instructer rather than a karate sensei if you wanna add a tag. Taekwondo doesn't get much love.

As the grumpy hipster said to the shagen454 "[s]He's Korean"

Oh man, the title of this video reminds me of some hipster guy (not that I have anything wrong with "cool" people or whatever label we need to give people who are culturally aware) that pissed me off yesterday. I go to a certain liquor store a couple of times a week and usually there is this korean guy who is the owner working. I went into the liquor store, see this young white kid working the register that I've never seen before. He was kind of awkward in the way that he was overly conscious that he was working in a shitty liquor store - so as he is bagging up my beer I try to make small talk and ask, "where is the asian guy?" I thought it inoffensive enough ; just trying to make the situation less awkward and this kid responds, "what?" and I repeated and he replied "He's Korean." I didn't really give a shit to get into an argument about it considering Korea or South Korea is specified as East Asia. Did I really make a horrible mistake or was this kid just a total dick?

In the past year, Republicans have done everything in thier power to block health care that could cost in the upwards of one trillion US dollars over ten years. Conservatives, leave out the 'over ten years' part, since that would undermine their agenda. They had no problem with a defense budget of $640 billion for 2009, nor one for $670 billion for 2010. Also, they did not see any problem paying for the Iraq war's price tag of $3 trillion over six years (that's $500 billion/year). Go look it up, if you dont believe me.

When compared to the rest of the world, America pays more for national defense, then the next eight largest militaries in the world (Russia, Britain, France, Germany, Egypt, China, South Korea). When the 2009 bill came up about ten months ago, it sailed through the Senate & House without an ounce of debate or complaint from Republicans. But the moment, we start spending money on US Citizens, who are not defense contractors, they go ballistic!

Next time you talk to your republican congressman, ask him or her, where those WMD's we were suppose to find in Iraq are? You know, the whole reason why we went to Iraq and spent $3 trillion dollars over six years? I know, getting anything from a republican congressman beyond a wave from 80 feet, means you 'donating' $2+ million dollars to their re-election chest....

Here are the groups:

Group A
South Africa
Mexico
Uruguay
France

Group B
Argentina
Nigeria
South Korea
Greece

Group C
England
USA
Algeria
Slovenia

Group D
Germany
Australia
Serbia
Ghana

Group E
Holland
Denmark
Japan
Cameroon

Group F
Italy
Paraguay
New Zealand
Slovakia

Group G
Brazil
North Korea
Ivory Coast
Portugal

Group H
Spain
Switzerland
Honduras
Chile

First off, decimate means reduce by ten... as in the root 'deci'. At some point we decided it would be a good idea to completely ignore the history of the root and make up a newer, modern definition: to reduce completely. Revisionism.

Secondly, personal liberty isn't a made up mental frame to be used for controlling people. Sure the Republicans are now spouting 'Liberty' from every hilltop, and I think a majority of them use it to mean Anti-Democratic or in more isolated cases to mean "Give our country back, black man."

And, come on, dude. Democrats are afraid of Corporations? Seriously, you want me to believe that? If you cannot see how the Democrats and Republicans are cut from the same cloth, then neither I nor anyone else can reach you. Corporations don't fear Obama, especially when he's willing to bail them out. And if you ever have the curiosity, I beg that you look into the Center for Public Integrity at the campaign donations and see who gives to which party. Each big Corporation hedges its bets by giving to both parties.

And what of the military efforts? Obama cares more about how he'll be perceived than giving any credence to ending any war. The Neocons (read: Bill'O) clamor on that pulling out of the Middle East would mean the terrorist win, and Obama is now conflicted whether or not to pull out of Iraq and bolster more troops in Afghanistan. Spineless.

And even his Administration seems divided. Eventually they want 500,000 more troops. Hillary/Holbrook wants to put into place a North/South Korea military presence in Afghanistan for an indeterminate amount of time while we "spread democracy" there and nation build. Biden, however, wants to scale down the nation-building but wants to invade Pakistan. And what the fuck about the humanitarian crisis in Somalia?!

That aside, you're right, I am in favor of Capitalism over Socialism. Please don't confuse Capitalism with Corporatism. I mean working from Capital (or surplus) to create jobs and create wealth. I believe in a free market where private individuals can trade without government coercion. Socialism on the surface appears to be a system that is meant to help the people, but instead it powers the government, and even though you may disagree I still must point out how the National Socialist German Workers' Party really did a bang up job in Germany taking care of the people.

"We the people" doesn't mean democracy. No where in the Declaration nor the Constitution does it say word number one about a democracy. Not one. It does, however, say in Article 4 section 4 "The United States shall guarantee to every State in this Union a Republican Form of Government." (not to be confused with the current Republican Party) By saying "We the people" implies this to be a Democracy is like implying decimate means to reduce completely. It simply isn't true even if it's a widely accepted idea.

In reply to this comment by dystopianfuturetoday:

Alright, people. One of my best friends goes to the University of Pittsburgh and he was in the middle of the whole thing. Most of the "protesters" were just students curious about what was going on. He wrote this about it all:

"This note is for my friends who are not in Pittsburgh and have not yet been given a fairly comprehensive version of what has been going on here. If you have been seeing my wall posts, you'll know that something bad happened in Pittsburgh, but if you want my story, here it is...

On Thursday and Friday September 24-25, the G-20 World Leader's Summit occurred in Pittsburgh. The summit involved the leaders of the United States, Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, France, Germany, Indonesia, Italy, Japan, Mexico, the Netherlands, Russia, South Korea, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, Spain, Turkey, and the United Kingdom. The purpose of the summit is to have a forum for the major world leaders about the global economic crisis. Pittsburgh was chosen to be the location for the summit in order to highlight its economic recovery after the city's manufacturing industry collapsed about 40 years ago.

The G-20 is always met with protesters for various causes, including global warming awareness, socialism, peoples' rights in other countries, anti-free-trade, and anti-war, and anarchy. The city of Pittsburgh was required to bring in police forces from all regions of the state of Pennsylvania and other nearby states.

On the evening of the 24th, the summit began with a dinner in the Phipps Conservatory, a plant exhibition hall (really quite a nice place) just under a mile from my dorm in the borough of Oakland. The University cancelled classes after 4:00 PM that day in order to ensure that students did not have to be outside if they did not wish to. During the day of the 24th, several protests had been broken up by riot police. At about 7:00 PM a small protest began at the Schenley Plaza. (from this point on, I will be referring to locations on campus, please refer to the map I posted at:< http://photos-b.ak.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ak-snc1/hs209.snc1/7620_178174626232_559501232_4081545_8066324_n.jpg>)

I went there to investigate myself at about 8:00 PM. The protest itself was fairly small, only about a hundred or so people total, with only a handful of protesters. There was some live music and dancing, courtesy of the Hare Krishna. Despite the fact that the protest was fairly small and peaceful, there were several hundred police forming a perimeter around the plaza, which is under a quarter-mile from the Conservatory. All of the Police were in riot gear, which covered any form of identification they may have had; they were also all armed with lethal and non-lethal weapons.

Around 9:00, I decided to return to my dorm. At 10:15, I overheard someone saying that they saw fire on Forbes Avenue. I decided to go out and investigate. At this point, the street had been flooded by curious students, and would remain that way until the police removed them. Several dumpsters had been pushed into the intersection of Forbes and Atwood by anarchist protesters. The next intersection had a overturned dumpster with flaming garbage spilled on the street. Several shop windows had been broken by a protester from California, however the media initially implicated that it had been students who were responsible.

I reached the lawn of the Pitt Union, and at about 10:45 the police began to multiply rapidly. They also brought in several scary-looking trucks with large dish-shaped things on them. This turned out to be a Long-Range Acoustic Device (LRAD), which emits a loud, scary noise which is physically disabling within a certain radius. At 11:00 PM, the trucks began playing a pre-recorded message declaring that the people in the streets had become an "illegal gathering" and that the crowd was to disperse, or they could be subject to arrest or attack with "less lethal" weaponry (does that mean you're less dead when you get hit?)

At this, I decided to retreat to Forbes Hall. Other people were not fortunate enough to get out of there as quickly as I did, and became exposed to a hail of "OC" gas, rubber bullets, mace, LRAD blasts, and nightsticks. The University unfortunately decided to lock down the residence halls as the police approached, giving the retreating students nowhere to go to escape from the police. One of my friends was arrested while holding open the doors to the Litchfield Towers residence hall lobby so that escaping students had somewhere to go. She was dragged outside of the doorway, beaten to the ground, not given any rights, held for five hours, and released without any charge as of yet.

At the time, I was unaware of this, but I watched the police advance through the lower campus (residential area, mainly between Forbes and Fifth avenues) via the live feed on the local news. When I noticed that they were three blocks away from Forbes Hall, I went to the patio on the second floor of the hall (out of reach of anyone who didn't live there or have a friend there). At about midnight, the cops were in front of the hall, still chasing a small group of protesters despite being nearly a mile from the original protest ground and being practically at the end of the campus. Without any real warning, they threw several canisters of "OC" gas onto the patio. Unknown to me at the time, several also entered the lobby and threatened to mace several students who were unable to enter the hall due to the lockdown.

OC gas is for all intents and purposes the same as tear gas. When you inhale it, your lungs and throat itch and you can't do anything but cough. If it gets in your eyes, you become partially blind and it feels like your eyes are melting. I was several feet away from a grenade and was directly exposed to it for several seconds as my fellow students and I tried to escape. I ran to my bathroom on the sixth floor and flushed my eyes and choked for five minutes. The third floor had window open out of which the students had been looking, it was filled with gas, and the students living on the third floor became refugees for several hours while it cleared.

Shortly after passing Forbes hall, the police attack ended. They left Oakland with 42 arrests (most were let go that morning), and a large number of unfairly treated, assaulted, and pissed students. The university itself has yet to make any statement regarding Thursday night, but the Mayor of Pittsburgh and Chief of Police have stated that they are "proud of how well the police handled the situation". They are apparently not fans of students either.

I will save my personal commentary and descriptions of the aftermath for another note. However, here are a few links that you will find interesting.
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mNeD4rHUF4A> a compilation of student-made videos from 9/24.
The videos are of varying quality and contain some harsh language and violence. These will give you an idea of what the students here experienced (I know the person being dragged away at 2:35)
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p6aRrQz7224> This video was not taken by me, but it was taken from my vantage point when Forbes Hall was attacked
<http://www.pittnews.com/> Pitt's student newspaper, featuring independent coverage of the G-20 (and some rather good photography, the ones I took came out terribly)
<http://www.pittbriefly.com/> A blog on which many videos of the G-20 'riot' have been posted. Some of these cannot be found on Youtube.

Thank you for reading this,
......."

>> ^gtjwkq:
^ Mr. Megarchist, stop looking at Europe and look at Asia, there are currently many countries there enjoying a lot more economic freedom than we do right now

I too would encourage you to look at Asia.

China, Hong Kong, India, Taiwan, Japan, Singapore, South Korea, Thailand, and even places like Israel have publicly funded, compulsory health coverage (and in some, government-run health providers as well).

There's a lot of variation on coverage, privatization of health providers, and the specific policies within the government insurance programs vary quite a bit, but they all have national systems that provide care for everyone, regardless of means.

Don't believe me? Do some googling. I'd start with Wikipedia's page on Universal Health Care, the Asia section.

In terms of the peak population issue this : Your text to link... is pretty interesting. If you look at the change in birthrates in the just 8 years since the turn of the century, it's pretty astounding. An overwhelming majority of countries have had a reduction in fertility rates of a statistically significant percent. World fertility rates dropped 7.8%. In just 8 years! The wealthy developed Asian nations dropped drastically. Japan, already well below the rate of replacement in 200 dropped a further 15%. South Korea dropped 40%, while Taiwan's fertility rate almost halved. China is below the rate of replacement and dropping, while Indonesia is getting awfully close to 2.0 as well. The areas still showing significant growth are south Asia and Africa. Once these areas begin to develop to a greater degree, I'd assume there'd be a drop off in fertility rates there. So maybe 2040 peak population could come about without some horrible Madmax-ish battle for the last husk of corn.