Month: February 2006

The Horrors of Rising Out of Poverty

At one time, organizations like WorldWatch said that countries such as China and India were doomed to poverty and starvation unless drastic action was taken to reduce the population of such countries. Instead, what has happened is that China and India are gradually pulling themselves out of poverty. Rather than be glad their doomsaying predictions did not come true, however, now WorldWatch and other warn that a wealthy China or India is even worse than poverty and hunger.

In a press release announcing publication of its 2006 State of the World, WorldWatch said,

“Rising demand for energy, food, and raw materials by 2.5 billion Chinese and Indians is already having ripple effects worldwide,” says WorldWatch President Christopher Flavin. “Meanwhile, record-shattering consumption levels in the U.S. and Europe leave little room for this projected Asian growth.” The resulting global resource squeeze is already evident in riots over rising oil prices in Indonesia, growing pressure on Brazil’s forests and fisheries, and the loss of manufacturing jobs in Central America.

Typical WorldWatch nonsense. Consider the Indonesian oil price riots. Presumably, WorldWatch is referring to disturbance that occurred in October 2005 when the government announced fuel price increases of 87 percent to 186 percent depending on the type of fuel.

But Indonesia’s fuel price problems have less to do with a global resource squeeze than a local excess of corruption and poor investment in that nation’s oil resources. Southeast Asia’s only OPEC member, Indonesia is forced to import oil because of the government’s longstanding mismanagement of its petroleum resources.

Those policies (or lack thereof) are then compounded by Indonesia’s tremendous outlay for fuel subsidies which artificially lowered the price of fuel for Indonesians. Indonesia spends up to 1/3rd of its total government budget on fuel subsidies.

Indonesia’s problem — like much of the poor in the Third World — is endemic mismanagement and corruption, not its increase in population and/or wealth.

Sources:

Indonesia clashes over fuel hike. The BBC, October 1, 2005.

China Releases Imprisoned Journalist After 5 Years

In early January, Chian released journalist Jiang Weiping after he served five years of a six year sentence for daring to publish details about official corruption in China.

In 2001, Jiang was sentenced to six years in jail for publishing details about alleged corruption by Liaoning provincial governor Bo Xilai as well as details of corruption by other officials. Bo, meanwhile, was promoted to commerce minister.

For his efforts, Jiang was charged with revealing state secrets and sentenced to eight years in jail, which was later reduced to six years.

According to the Committee to Protect Journalists, China currently imprisons more journalists than any other country in the world, with 32 journalists in jail in 2005.

Sources:

China frees corruption journalist. The BBC, January 4, 2006.

The Price of Integrity. Press Release, Committee to Protect Journalists, 2001.

Journalists In Prison. Committee to Protect Journalists, 2006.

China Revises Economic Growth Upward

In January, China’s National Statistic Bureau released a report revising its GDP growth for the past several years upward significantly.

The NSB reviseed upward GDP growht estimates for every year from 1993 to 2004 except for 1998. Based on the new figures, China’s economy grew an average of 9.9 percent annually from 1993-2004.

And these new figures may still understimate the growth of China’s GDP since it is so difficult to accurately measure much of China’s economic activity which occurs in cash transactions.

Despite all this growth, China has maintained a very low inflation rate.

After decades of mismanagement under Communist management, China’s economy today is the sixth largest in the world. Despite the huge population it has, however, its economy is still only about half the size of the United States.

Source:

China lifts annual growth figures. BBC, January 9, 2006.

HorrorClix

Although my action figure collecting has grown out of hand in recent months, one of the things I did manage to wean myself off of was collecting WizKids’ HeroClix. Not that I don’t have a few hundred neatly stacked in plastic compartments, but I gave up buying anymore a long time ago largely because I never found the time to play.

And just when I thought it was safe to go back into the water, WizKids announces HorrorClix,

WizKids Inc., who revolutionized miniatures gaming with the Mage Knight, MechWarrior and HeroClix collectible miniatures games (CMGs), announced today the next revolution in miniatures gaming: HorrorClix!

“HorrorClix places players firmly in the action, suspense and excitement of a horror movie,” said Jordan Weisman, WizKids CEO. “Players assemble teams of monsters from across the horror spectrum — including vampires, zombies and werewolves — and then protect the innocent, eat them or both in a delightful, gore-filled romp!” HorrorClix uses plot twist cards, a heavy emphasis on scenario play and new character cards to explode the boundaries of CMGs and the patented Clix system.

HorrorClix raises the bar for all miniatures games by shifting the game focus from hack-and-slash combat to inventive scenario- and story-based play. Additionally, it uses the combat dial to provide literally hundreds of tailor-made supernatural (and super-gruesome!) powers and abilities. Character cards flesh out each monster with fiction and detailed explanations of each creature’s capabilities, including mechanics never before seen in miniatures games!

That’s just not fair. Must. Have. Zombie. Army.

There’s a survey at WizKids’ sites seeking feedback on possible licensed properties for inclusion. Hmmm…Buffy-clix. Drool.

Kelly Applegate’s DRM E-Book Horror Story

Via Teleread (the best web site for coverage of e-book and related issues), I came across Kelly Applegate’s DRM horror story which basically recounts how she was screwed by actually bothering to pay for electronic editions of books back when Gemstar was running high,

As the ebooks had the ability to download, I continued
purchasing them. Then I bought a Nuvomedia Rocket EBook Pro. I loved
it. My library climbed to well over 500 purchased books and slowly I
got rid of my paper books except the “keepers”. (I would love to be
able to get those in electronic form because I prefer it but it is
way too expensive at this point.)

I have written to several authors about my delimma and many of them
have sent me unencrypted or in some cases replacement encrypted
ebooks to replace the ones I cannot either load on my ebook reader or
to enable me to read them on my computer with the new drive. The ones
that refused my request, I don’t bother with anymore.

At this point, I have invested a large amount of money in my
electronic library. I have been through the Gemstar fallout and they
still have MY books that I paid for that I can ONLY read on ONE ebook
reader (I have several). Because of the protections that have been
placed on the ebooks I purchased and not being able to read them on
the reader of my choice, I REFUSE to by any ebook that is protected.
And, I REFUSE to buy any ebook that I cannot get to load on my ebook
reader. I will contact a publisher before I purchase from them and
find out exactly what their books are made of. I, also, insist that I
be able to test drive the formats at their site because I have found
that often I order the HTML version of a book to convert to my reader
and it comes out with gibberish. So, I get another version and
convert it to HTML (Most often it is MS Reader converted to HTML)and
it is perfect for the reader. I have an Excel spreadsheet that I
maintain with the publishers and the formats I must purchase from
them to get the best copy readable on my ebook reader. A few
publishers have told me they will not replace ebooks and will not
accomodate me in any way. It’s their loss. I was going to buy 15
books from one of the sites that would not allow this so they lost a
chunk of change.

As I’ve said before it is pointless to buy an e-book unless you are able to convert it, one way or another, to a non-DRMed format such as HTML. Once you’ve got it in HTML, then you can convert it to pretty much any format you want. But if you don’t have it in HTML, you’re completely at the mercy of the DRM provider.

For example, Sony’s upcoming Reader looks like a decent e-book platform, but you’d be crazy to actually buy DRMed books in its native format given Sony’s history. Instead, wait to make sure it has decent tools to convert HTML files to its proprietary format, and then buy MS Reader books which are easily stripped of DRM and converted to HTML where they then should be easily convertible to a format that the Sony Reader can handle.

Yes, that is a bit more convenient, but a lot less convenient than ending up in the position that Applegate has found herself with hundreds of dollars spent on books that she cannot read except on the dead Gemstar platform.