StarCraft Cheating Scandal Rocks Korea 471
dotarray writes with this snippet: "The largest scandal in e-sports history is currently unfolding in Korea, with revelations that a number of current pro gamers are involved with match setups and illegal betting. While the gamers are unnamed at this point, the story is said to touch many A-list StarCraft celebrities, including sAviOr, Ja Mae Yoon, one of the best-known and most successful players of all time."
In a way it's nice.. (Score:2, Insightful)
It is nice to be part of a demographic that couldn't give a rat's ass about the whole thing, including MMOs and the surrounding scene.
When money is involved (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Who cares? (Score:5, Insightful)
Oh, I get it, you just wanted a first post and had nothing better to post than racism. Guess who looks stupid now?
Re:As long as it's not Boxer, I'm ok (Score:5, Insightful)
"You can't know criminals' names in Korea? Kind of weird."
It has it's positives i.e. vigilante justice and not getting ones life ruined if accused of a heinus crime (pedophelia, sexual assault, etc).
In america I find the fact they publish the names of sex offenders grotesque because rehabilitation and re-entering society to lead a normal life is impossible, this vigalante mob justice has never sat well with me.
Re:As long as it's not Boxer, I'm ok (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:A-list? What? (Score:5, Insightful)
Probably because his name is typically written in Hangul?
Re:How is this news? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:A-list? What? (Score:2, Insightful)
Speaking as a non-American... who the f**k is Lebron James???
Re:A-list? What? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:How is this news? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:A-list? What? (Score:2, Insightful)
Hello, and welcome to the world! Despite what the crappy Disney ride says, the world is a big place, where many people speak any languages and, shockingly, use different characters for writing.
Re:In a way it's nice.. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:As long as it's not Boxer, I'm ok (Score:4, Insightful)
It's a similar principle as in the West, where you generally can't release the names of suspected offenders (or victims) who are minors (or at least that's how it is here in Australia ... you often hear 'the offender's identity cannot be revealed because s/he was under 18 at the time of the crime). This applies to both those merely accused and awaiting trial, as well as those convicted (or for that matter, exonerated).
The Korean law just goes a step further and extends this protection to all people involved in criminal matters.
I kinda like the idea actually, although there are some obvious caveats. The general public certainly has no right to demonise someone accused of a crime before it's been proved. And even once they are convicted, it is not really the general public's business to know criminals' names, other than obviously those connected with the crime (victims/families etc). They will pay a penalty under the law (a fine, community service, jail time etc) ... but once that debt is paid they have a right to move back into society without being discriminated against for the rest of their lives. And keeping their name out of the media is one way to do that.
The counter-argument is made that people have a right to know if they are living near/employing/otherwise engaging with people who have been found guilty of serious crime (particularly sex offenders or murderers). And it's a good counter-argument. Perhaps we can draw a line and say "people convicted of the most serious crimes or those with no hope of rehabilitation can have their identities revealed, but for minor to moderate crimes, the criminals should remain anonymous". Either that or we toughen up sentencing so that serious criminals don't GET reintroduced into society in the first place ... then the whole argument becomes moot.
Re:e-sports? really? (Score:3, Insightful)
Is Chess a sport? What about Go?
If you said yes to both of those questions, why not any other game of strategy/tactics?
Re:As long as it's not Boxer, I'm ok (Score:5, Insightful)
I doubt they have an equivalent. Even in other ~Western~ countries there is often no equivalent of such a registry. It's one of those things I always found a bit odd about America actually.
Where I live, you either don't release a serious criminal who is going to have a tendency to re-offend, or tabs are kept on them in other ways (house confinement, surveillance, radio bracelets etc.). I mean sure, the people who live nearby to the to-be-released sex offender will be notified and have a right to object to/block the offender moving into that area. But that doesn't extend to the whole world being able to punch in a random address and see who's around.
I'm not American so I may have misinterpreted what the Registry actually does. If so I apologise. But my impression was that ~anyone~ can search for nearby offenders ~anywhere~, even if that location has nothing to do with them.
Re:A-list? What? (Score:1, Insightful)
As an American, I have no idea who that is either. Bad example, perhaps.
Re:Who cares? (Score:1, Insightful)
Actually, if I was betting on the outcome of a contest between two people, I would sure as hell care if they were fixing the outcome and I wouldn't say I am stupid.
If you were betting on the outcome of a contest, I'd say that you were stupid.
Re:Who cares? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:As long as it's not Boxer, I'm ok (Score:1, Insightful)
"Personally, if I have small kids and I move into a new neighborhood, the lists are invaluable."
No you feel like they are invaluable. It lets you find bad people who have been caught, not bad people.
It only leads to a false sense of safety.
Re:In a way it's nice.. (Score:3, Insightful)
Me, too. I really can't be assed about a multi-million-earning sportsman, regardless of the sport. Golf, soccer, football, basketball... none of these guys are any role model (eccept on how to rake in the dough). Fuck 'em. Together with the dumb celebrities of all kind. Fuck 'em all.
Re:How is this news? (Score:5, Insightful)
Actually I may be able to point out a reason why Koreans are having a shitfit. While I doubt anyone here is old enough to remember the quiz show scandals [wikipedia.org] that hit in the early days of TV here in the US, but it pretty much killed the format for decades after it turned out that the games of skill were basically just pro wrestling, with the outcome decided before the contest even began.
Now for those that don't know Pro Starcraft competitions [wikipedia.org] are BIG business in Korea, with folks buying merchandise and tuning in to their favorites, a lot like the quiz shows we had in the 50s. Now it may turn out that just like those quiz shows the games were rigged, only by the contestants themselves instead of the networks.
So I can understand why Koreans are seriously pissed. it would be like finding out the players were rigging our baseball and football games to win bets in Vegas. While it won't be a big deal to those of us here in the USA, to them it will probably cause as big a stink as our quiz show scandal did here back in the day. And of course you have to add the human element, as nobody likes to find out the athlete you're cheering for is a scumbag and rigging the games.
Re:A-list? What? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:and this relates to /. how? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:A-list? What? (Score:3, Insightful)
In my book, game shattering is even bigger than revolutionary.
Re:and this relates to /. how? (Score:1, Insightful)
Someone will be by to collect your nerd badge.
Throw that boomerang a little harder next time... (Score:3, Insightful)
Seriously, if you don't know who Lebron is you either don't know what the fuck basketball is, are just making shit up, or are a borderline retard.
Despite your grossly misplaced arrogance, you left out the most popular option: D: none of the above.
You are making some erroneous assumptions with that proclamation:
I/we actually give a rat's ass about basketball, USA sports, or any sports....NOT!!!
(BTW, I know what basketball is-I even used to play a lot of it-but have NEVER watched it, but I did not know who/what a 'Lebron' was. I was also wondering what Michael Jackson [MJ] had to do with basketball!)
Maybe I am 'just making shit up, but if by not knowing who Lebron Whoever is makes me a borderline retard, I can assuredly take comfort in the fact that you are truly over the line, and outstanding in that field.
BTW, who(or what) is a 'Beckham'? Another basketball player?
This thread is getting more confusing than getting struck on the head with a football bat.
Re:e-sports? really? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:When money is involved (Score:1, Insightful)
It has nothing to do with SC2. "The drama all started several years ago – in 2006 – and exploded properly in 2008". At that time the development of SC2 was just announced(May 2007).
One of the biggest questions is if Savior's loose to Bisu in their epic MSL final was because of bets. It was a 0:3 loose to a noname in the final of the second rated league.
And it's very interesting who else was involved because all current stars including Jaedong and Flash were already on the scene at that time.
Savior achievements:
http://www.teamliquid.net/tlpd/players/135_sAviOr/ [teamliquid.net]
Re:How is this news? (Score:4, Insightful)
Why is it any different than the "sport" of running into someone as hard as possible so another guy can throw a ball that is not even round for another guy to catch?
Any game that features a competitive element can be raised to the level of a sport if it attracts enough spectators that become interested in the outcome.
Blizzard worked very hard to tune the original SC (with help from players in Korea) to balance the 3 sides to enable it to be a stable enough base for a competitive sport (ie, there's no argument that the Terrans are better than the Zerg or the Protoss etc - they are evenly balanced). Some might say it's even more evenly balanced than a sport where the team with the most money can buy the championship (or at least make a very good go of it).
I realise your AC post was nothing but a troll, but I thought it was worth saying. I've never followed competitive Starcraft, but I can fully understand how people could.
Re:A-list? What? (Score:3, Insightful)
>Capitalization and punctuation don't vary that much across languages
WTF ?!?!?! Seriously dude... WTF ?!?!??!
Let's just look at the small sampling of languages I can read (to a lesser or greater extent). And keep in mind three of these are all languages that share a COMMON Origin (Ancient West Germanic) and one is essentially a dialect of the another split of a mere 300 years ago. That makes this a pretty skewed sample. Choose any two languages randomly and the differences will get MUCH bigger.
German: All nouns are capitalized.
English: Capitals are used only for the names of Deities, Persons and the first word of a sentence.
Afrikaans: Similar to English... oh unless the sentence starts with the non-specific article... then the SECOND word starts with a capital.
Dutch: Same as English (the Afrikaans exception does not exist in Dutch).
Portuguese: Fucked if I know... after several years, I STILL don't understand all of it.
How about the Apostrophe:
Dutch: Apostrophe is used to indicate missing letters.
German: Same as Dutch.
Afrikaans: Apostrophe indicates missing letters - but it's only allowed to be used for this when those letters are deliberately left out for an EXCEPTIONAL reason (such as accenting a quote or poetic freedom) and in the spelling of the Afrikaans word 'n (yes the word is an apostrophe and an small n but pronounced "uh" - derived from the Dutch word for "one").
Portuguese: There is no apostrophe as we think of it, thoug the ' symbols is used in the spelling of some words.
English: Used to indicate missing letters in (specifically in contractions) and to indicate possession. Moreover the rules on how it does both the above get very convoluted (especially where the uses overlap, as in a posessive contraction) and leads to continuous confusion among English speakers about the fact that it's, its and its' are three completely different words with exactly the same pronunciation (apparently we can easily tell them apart from context when LISTENING but when reading we have to create a stupid cosmetic difference to see which is which).
Now those are small differences between languages of relatively common origins... if I start telling you how it works in African languages (I speak two) you simply wouldn't BELIEVE me, it has the following in common with the above: Sweet blue fuck all.
That's despite the fact that no African language has a written language of their own and adopted a modified version of the English alphabet and punctuation to be able to write -they still had to change almost every rule just to make sense because their entire gramatical structure is radically different.
It gets even more bizarre when you consider languages that have a history of writing, but radically different origins from English, such as the Slavic and Asian languages.
In English a word with no vowels is unpronouncable. In Russian... that's about 3/4 of the dictionary. In Polish, it's more like 4/5...
See... I'm actually a non-native English speaker, who has a degree in English literature. I can read Shakespeare with ease and joy, and both speak and write English quite a bit better than most Britons (let alone Americans) and I had Linguistics as a second major.
And if there is one thing you learn very quickly when you study multiple languages on a professional level - it's that languages are as radically different as the cultures that produce them, reflect those cultures and become an extension of those cultures.
What you say smacks back to the so-called romantic theory of linguistics. Which was a very Platonic theory that believed there is some perfect language we're all born with, and all human languages are imperfect attempts to implement it.
The romantic theory is interesting in that it was the very first theory to ever exist in Linguistics... but it's also not actually been considered to have any basis in fact or reality for over 200 years now... hell even the Russian Orthodox theory of Linguistics have at least SOME provable reality to it and THAT came from 1916.
Current linguistic theory as it applies to your statement can be summarized as follows: you're an idiot.