A developer's blog

Yes, I went out to see the you-know-what avatar. The hype is still so high that four months after its release you can’t infer immediately that the topic is about some internet forum anymore. Instead you have to think twice when someone asks you “did you see the avatar”? Even a person who had never been to a Cineplex, who had kept a record high time of abstaining from being influenced by marketing hype – like me had to come and see. Enjoying life is always the first priority :p

Avatar’s poster

I don’t want to curb my reader’s enthusiasm so soon, so the good news first: it’s good! It’s worth its 300 million funding, it’s worth your money, and if you’ve never seen a 3D film before; or have had sore eyes experiences from that old pure red / cyan glasses years ago; then this is a good time to step into the current film era. Even though I can’t say the 3D effect will bring your viewing experience to a whole new level, it’s worth trying!

The story is motivating, the action is timed just right: not too slow but not too fast either. Though it’s not that deep into the eons-old topic of love like Titanic (one of Cameroon’s previous works); it still brings you light-hearted moments in the form of subtle jokes, which I prefer to romantic scenes. I know a few people who is dying to be called skxawng too :p. Most people in the theater I was in burst into laugh when a kid from the back told his dad “Seeeee? They kissed”.

All that being said, life is not all pink; it doesn’t looks like magenta or cyan either, yet when you want to enjoy 3D in Vietnam you’ll have to accept it as such (that life is magenta and cyan) due to the projecting technology employed. Maybe that’s why the picture appears darker compared to DVDs. I’m a bit disappointed too because after 10 years in between of the 3D hypes I expected them to come up with something better, like circular polarization glasses. And they could have done a better job cleaning those glasses, I have a blur in my view the first time I tried the glasses on :(. Well, I guess I can’t really complain considering the ticket fee in Vietnam is still 3 times cheaper than in the US.

A few other reasons why 3D film isn’t perfect just yet (at least for Megastar’s current technology):

· Yes, you can see depth on the screen, but you can see depth on photos in the film too. For example the scene when Jake opened the refrigerator with an avatar’s photo stuck on to it. Maybe in the future photos will be in 3D too but for the present it looks more like an excessive application of 3D CGI.

· It’s a bit blurry when you tilt your head, but maybe it’s just what you will get sitting as near the screen as I am.

· The 3D effect let you feel the depth, but doesn’t allow your eyes to wander. It brings an artificial feel when you tried to focus on some object in the background but it’s still blurry. It’s jittering on scenes with fast action also; maybe due to the projector’s frame rate isn’t fast enough to cope with 3D projection’s requirement.

· The skin the big leopard-like creature attacking Jake from the first part of the film is just too glossy, a reminiscent of early 3D technology without texturing. It’s the only creature with such an attribute though; most others are pretty well modeled and rendered.

And finally, the 3D effect is the most enjoyable in outdoor close-up scenes, otherwise you’ll just forget it’s there fifteen minute into a dialog montage. But hey, isn’t the action the most important part of a sci-fi? :p

Though it’s not the ultimate cinematic experience those PR guy told you, I’m still glad I’ve had the chance to enjoy it (on the last day it’s shown here :”>).

Yup, that’s a word play: Britney Spears’ song – porcelain – and a country 8->. China wanted a piece of me, and even though I hate that deeply, I still don’t want any piece of China. :P

In Vietnam, you often got fed with stuffs like China launches spaceships, China’s economy model is righteous, China is a great place to study, and and China is well developed. Well, what else China has beside those pieces of achievements?

A picture is worth a thousand words, so photos come first…

Piece 1: In China, they invented time traveling in the last millennium

“Goo Goo Gai Pan” is the twelfth episode from the sixteenth season of The Simpsons, which originally aired on March 13, 2005. […] There is a plaque reading, “On this spot in 1989, nothing happened“, in Tiananmen Square [1]

It’s a pity that I can’t find this episode anywhere on the internet, but I figured that must be something like this :P

On the China-net (read on later), you can’t see this sign but it’s simply there

The following photo was never taken

So do these

The song “500 miles” doesn’t exists

A hundred tanks along the square,

One man stands and stops them there

Someday soon, the tide will turn, and I’ll be free

I’ll be free, I’ll be free, and I’ll come home to my country,

Someday soon the tide will turn and I’ll be free

The Polish built this monument for absolutely non-existent reason

Credit

Google agreed that nothing happened there too; and I don’t feel like blogging the long way through this matter, because to Vietnam, it has not happened either! Have a look at the National Encyclopedia: in 1651 it catch fire, in 1949 China’s declaration of independence was announced there, and after that nothing happened. And because nothing happened, Chinese could happily enjoy fireworks for the 2008 Olympics there.

Piece 2: In China, everyone work really hard for their country

The 2007 Chinese slave scandal (Chinese: 山西黑砖窑案; literally “Shanxi Black Brick Kiln Incident”) was a series of forced labor cases in Shanxi, China. Thousands of Chinese people including children had been forced to work as slaves in illegal brickyards, and tortured by the owners of the brickyards. As of June 2007, approximately 550 people have been rescued from such situations. […]

In June and July 2007, 570 people in Shanxi and Henan were freed by the Chinese government. Of those rescued, sixty-nine of them was children. In response, the Chinese government assembled a force of 35,000 police to check northern Chinese brickyards for slaves, sent dozens of brickyard supervisors to prison, punished ninety-five low level officials in Shanxi province for dereliction of duty, and sacked twenty-four. One brickyard foreman, Heng Tinghan, was sentenced to life in prison, and an employee of his, Zhao Tanbing, earned the death penalty for killing a mentally handicapped slave. However, no senior officials were held accountable. [Full article]

Piece 3: In China, even criminals made priceless contributions to others

To better understand the matter, you should know what Falun Gong is (if you already did, skip the following quote)

Li Hongzhi introduced the Falun Gong to the public in May 1992. During the early years he was granted several awards, by Chinese governmental organizations to encourage him to continue teaching the practice. From 1992 to the end of 1994 he traveled to most major Chinese cities to teach at the invitation of qigong organizations. Li’s lectures were organized by the China Qigong Science Research Society (CQSRS), an official government body which profited the most from the lecture fees. Li later began offering free lectures. After refusing a request to raise his tuition due to complaints from other qigong masters, Li withdrew from the CQSRS, stating that it only tried to make money off the qigong masters without doing any research on qigong. According to Falun Gong related sources , shortly following this some individuals from the CQSRS began spreading rumors about Li Hongzhi to the government, attempting to get the government to curtail Falun Gong’s growing popularity [Danny Schechter, Falun Gong's Challenge to China: Spiritual Practice or Evil Cult?, Akashic books: New York, 2001, p. 66]

The consecutive extermination

June 10, 1999 the Party established an extra-constitutional body charged with overseeing the persecution campaign, referred to as the “6-10 Office”. Agents were sent to every province, city, county, university, government department and state-owned business in China. In the Kilgour-Matas report, a Party official is quoted saying that in 1999, more than 3,000 officials of the 6-10 Office united at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing to discuss the campaign, where Li Lanqing. The then head of the 6-10 Office is said to have verbally announced the Party’s policy on Falun Gong, “defaming their reputations, bankrupting them financially and destroying them physically“. [Wikipedia]

And by physically they did things
that led to this investigation

It is alleged that Falun Gong practitioners are victims of live organ harvesting throughout China. The allegation is that organ harvesting is inflicted on unwilling Falun Gong practitioners at a wide variety of locations, pursuant to a systematic policy, in large numbers.

Organ harvesting is a step in organ transplants. The purpose of organ harvesting is to provide organs for transplants. Transplants do not necessarily have to take place in the same place as the location of the organ harvesting. The two locations are often different; organs harvested in one place are shipped to another place for transplanting.

The allegation is further that the organs are harvested from the practitioners while they are still alive. The practitioners are killed in the course of the organ harvesting operations or immediately thereafter. These operations are a form of murder.

Finally, we are told that the practitioners killed in this way are then cremated. There is no corpse left to examine to identify as the source of an organ transplant.

You can read on the report at the link above. I’m already so disgusted to quote anything else.

Piece 4: In China, unification and harmony between ethnic groups is vital

In recent years, many migrants from other parts of China have been moving into Lhasa and now own many of the city’s small businesses. Tibetans in Lhasa are also angered by the inflation that has caused the prices of food and consumer goods to increase. Residents were worried that a railway built to link Lhasa to other areas of China would increase the number of migrants in the city, but they accepted it because the government assured them that cheaper transportation would keep prices lower. However, as in other parts of the country, prices have continued to rise, creating resentment amongst the residents of Lhasa. The Tibetan youth complain about not having equal access to jobs and education.

In the process (you know which) to make sure those trivial matters doesn’t affect the country’s unification, they make this

According to a news source affiliated with a Tibetan exile group, People’s Armed Police have blocked off water, electricity, food and health facilities in Sera, Drepung and Ganden monasteries and others active in the demonstrations. As a consequence, monks are suffering starvation, and on March 25 one monk reportedly died from starvation at Ramoche Temple

On April 5, the Tibetan Centre for Human Rights and Democracy (TCHRD) stated that the Chinese authorities arrested over 2,300 Tibetans from various parts of Tibet. According to the Tibetan Government in Exile, more than 140 people were killed in the crackdown on recent unrest.

April 18, in an interview to Canadian journalists, it was reported that the Dalai Lama said according to him, since the beginning of the demonstrations with Tibet, at least 400 people were killed and out of the thousands of others arrested.

The Tibetan Centre for Human Rights and Democracy reported that a Tibetan woman, 38, who was involved in peaceful protests on 16 and 17 March 2008 in Ngaba County, died after she was tortured in Chinese prison. Following her release, the government hospital, that might have been influence of the local Chinese authorities, refused to admit her. [Source]

You may ask why the casualties are all from Tibetan affiliated sources. Well, you can’t get to find any Chinese source for the number because as usual as it is in China, nothing happened.

Initially, Chinese officials tried to contain information about the unrest and play down protests. According to The Guardian correspondent Tania Branigan, the government has blocked foreign broadcasters and websites and denied journalists access to areas of unrest. Video sharing websites like YouTube, the entire The Guardian website, portions of the Yahoo! portal, and sections of The Times website had been restricted. [News]

And even after that, in China, it’s still easier to count bodies in Gaza rather than Tibet (This seems to be a government affiliated site).

Piece 5: In China, the internet is free of those pesky foreigners

Ever since ancient time, Chinese have been considering themselves the only nation in the world, people living everywhere else are just feeble. That trace even migrated partly to Vietnamese – thiên hạ, which nowadays understood as “the world” was used to mention
mainland China specifically in the past.

To ensure that all the never happened above stays not happened, they blocked Wikipedia, Google, BlogSpot, YouTube, WordPress, Flickr, <your favorite website here>. “Who needs Wikipedia when I can build an encyclopedia that I can blow up at any time?”

Finally, when they have invented something to automatically block any site that do not hold it data inside China, China can step in to a new era of developments and develop secret technologies, publish to its citizens to help keep things in order and still nobody outside China would know.

“Oh, and to honor our superiority, maybe we should call it Shaina-pet, the ‘ok 4 pupilz” (I was about to write Chinanet, the network for people but I figured it would be hard to figure out how to spell that in Chinese ;)

<Popgun> at least 24 people have died in a fire in a chinese internet cafe

<Kuss> popgun, they were probably playing everquest, and didn't want to lose their shit

<Argent-> Popgun - how many terminals were pointed to the local fire department website?

<Popgun> they clicked onto elexa and self-immolated

<Popgun> if that were the case, they would probably welcome the conflagration

<Argent-> "De-ah hon-oh-ra-bo fiahman, we buhning up heah, prease send wa-tah, we no wanto stop praying evahquest."

<Kuss> oh my god

<Kuss> argent

<Kuss> that's hysterical

<Argent-> More negatives on my karmic burden.

<ln> I'd be offended by that if it weren't so funny

* ln gives Arg a token asian smack

<Popgun> they ghost of Chairman Mao will get you, argento

<Popgun> remember the trouble you had with Stalin? [IRC quote]

Piece 6: In China, you got paid using the internet responsibly

Chinese leaders seem aware that the internet – the only public forum where views can be freely expressed – needs close attention. China’s Communist Party leaders have long sought to sway public opinion by controlling what the media can report; that policy was extended to the internet, and many websites are blocked by a system sometimes dubbed the “great firewall of China”. […]

If you have searched for information on the matters above, you may have already noticed some sources overtly biased to the Chinese like this or this. Well, that’s not the only way you may get paid
using internet in China.

So instead of just trying to prevent people from having their say, the government is also attempting to change the way they think.

To do this, they use specially trained – and ideologically sound – internet commentators.

They have been dubbed the “50-cent party” because of how much they are reputed to be paid for each positive posting (50 Chinese cents; $0.07; £0.05). [BBC Story]

The result

A document released by the public security bureau in the city of Jiaozuo in Henan province boasts of the success of this approach.

It retells the story of one disgruntled citizen who posted an unfavorable comment about the police on a website after being punished for a traffic offence.

One of the bureau’s internet commentators reported this posting to the authorities within 10 minutes of it going up.

The bureau then began to spin, using more than 120 people to post their own comments that neatly shifted the debate.

“Twenty minutes later, most postings supported the police – in fact many internet users began to condemn the original commentator,” said the report.

Okay, I’m ok with the fact that they are too dumb to use the internet to find the facts instead of viewing porn. But it’s a whole pity when people in Africa doesn’t know what a computer is and in another part of the world, they have spare, living-lying-machine run by coins =))

Having known the Chinese’s ability to “adapt” to farming restrictions in Warcraft. I think there will soon be a 25-cent party, whose job is to post original comment for the above party to comment on; and they will have enough money to pay taxes, and then that money will be paid to the 50-cent-party-goers

…

No, I’m not going to talk about SMS monitoring, bird flu, SARS or melamine babies in this post, it’s too long already.

Now for the conclusion, you could have figured out why I don’t want to have any: I don’t want to be intoxicated having those pieces. I don’t want to sway my head among thousands of my fellows learning English so I could freely LOL watching Discovery channel’s Mad about English!