As stated, but agreeing for emphasis:
These things are terrible.

Well played, Phikus.

Re: The torture question

I may be completely wrong on this, but my impression is that the average Chinese person on the street here would not object to the use of torture if any given source said it was in the name of national security or a war effort.

Pain about the Wavebird, but does anyone use the WII Classic Controller for anything anyway?

1. Spaced is one of the best television programs made, and everyone needs to see it. Everyone.

2. A more feature-rich version of the box set can be regularly found in the UK for 8 pounds. Sure, it'll be PAL encoded, but does that really matter for anyone surfing boingboing these days?

Also,

I'd like to redress my comment way back at #13. Apparently only English language news is left largely uncensored, while that in Chinese is still pretty much inaccessible. This thread inspired me to go digging and I found that more really is firewalled here than I had first thought. This greatly changes my opinion of the "Great Firewall", after living here for months.

@Tak #87:
Yeah, I don't really get it. The Chinese government seems to have a strange idea about what constitutes a good image of the country to visiting foreign nationals [here to view a sporting contest].

It's a pain, because all the good bars close early now, and the police having been clearing the (delicious, delicious, cheap) street food vendors off the streets. I don't really know what to do with myself anymore.

Well, jeez, thanks for the link to that boingboing, now I'm gonna be spending all of my money on stupid t-shirts.

This stuff looks promisingly useful, but I cringe at the thought of my keyboard ending up even remotely greasy afterwards.

As somebody currently living in China reading this article:

"I think the Great Firewall of China -- which intentionally excludes most of that democratizing information -- plays a role here."

Not really. It certainly has an impact on public organizing, but I am right now, for example, reading and commenting on this article and checking uncensored Chinese news headlines on the BBC.

"Do most Chinese believe in 'race'?
And yes, Chinese regularly use the word 'race', but they don't really use it in the same way westerners do. Chinese will call themselves a 'race'"

I would disagree with this, and say that Chinese believe in race pretty much exactly the way I have experienced it being dealt with in the US.

I can't tell to what extent this is a joke.

I started saying that quote to myself when I saw the picture on my friend's screen across the room, only to find I had been preempted! Well played, Brownlee.

Charlie come'a
Charlie come'a
Bubblegum

Is there some kind of juju on their store's servers preventing a digital copy being purchased outside of North America?

I've felt like I needed this game in my life since I was 12. Now that I'm 20, have money to spend, a computer to play it on, and some (some) free time (not to mention the prospect of playing with fellow boingers) I feel like it is finally time. However, I am in China right now. I'm assuming that's the reason it's giving me a problem message on my purchase, but maybe people have other ideas about what could be going wrong? (For the same location reason, I'm loathe to call the US 800 number it suggests for customer service).

Coolest house ever. Makes me want to become a loony architect.

It could be more than symbolic. The threat presented could dissuade or be used to mediate a possible declared state of emergency, which would postpone the election. It could happen.

"tactical understand"

I have never before felt so compelled to own an arty gadget thing in my life.

...anyone else play Red Alert 2?

I thought it was wonderful.

I think everyone else is being a little impatient.

I actually thought this was pretty great. The DLR vocals initially struck me as generally unusable.

I had to go through this flying back to the US from Germany last month. I keep a small studio's worth of sound recording equipment in my bag, so it was a major hassle. Of course to highlight the stupidity of the situation, two thirds of the way through rummaging around to pull out all of my cables the guard got tired and just told me to forget about it and continue on.
Terrorists take note: if you're too obnoxious to deal with in accordance to the TSA's guidelines, the rules don't apply.

I want one of those now; I hate headsets.