Rook! I use Googer!

August 9, 2005 10:06 PM

Easier defrauding with unicode.Google China is a veritable treasure trove of warez; here's a handy guide to the cut n' paste unicode characters you will need to score that "evaluation" copy of Photoshop CS.
posted by jonson (20 comments total)

I'm not a pirate so I don't want to do follow this article's advice, but would you be downloading an English version if you were to do this?
posted by whoshotwho at 10:25 PM on August 9, 2005

MetaTalk. And hey look, it's not the first time jonson has used racist humor! Yay!
posted by SeizeTheDay at 10:32 PM on August 9, 2005

This is interesting, but more importantly, the title and the last tag are oh so funny.

Not.
posted by exlotuseater at 10:35 PM on August 9, 2005

Thank you for the informative post. (no sarcasm)
posted by Hicksu at 10:36 PM on August 9, 2005

racist humor? I believe my good name has been fully cleared of these egregious charges long ago.
posted by jonson at 10:42 PM on August 9, 2005

Jonson, do you still beat your wife?
posted by Rothko at 10:54 PM on August 9, 2005

Best of the Web indeed.
posted by WetherMan at 10:55 PM on August 9, 2005

id just like to peek in here and frown at the bigot then be on my way.
posted by Tryptophan-5ht at 11:12 PM on August 9, 2005

I used to want to learn how to say curse words in other languages. Being able to read "download", "serial", and "crack" are way more useful! Now if only someone would add "virus", "spyware", and "adware" to my Chinese reading vocabulary.
posted by CG at 12:36 AM on August 10, 2005

err, i'm not particularly OFFENDED, just genuinely confused. i mean... jonson doesn't think that simply switching his Rs with Ls and vice versa is funny on its own, does he? if anything, i think he's just guilty of having a terrible sense of humor.
posted by jimmy at 12:49 AM on August 10, 2005

I'm disappointed that I can't find 免费 Tibet.
posted by StephenV at 12:58 AM on August 10, 2005

Yep, I'd say you've succesfully been cleared of both egregious charges, jonson...

On a related note, I'd love to know if Mandarin speakers, or other languages with a tonal component, have a similar stereotype about non-native speakers with the inability to correctly distinguish and reproduce those sounds correctly?

Another thing I've been looking for for ages, but have never yet found: A website of people of various nationalities doing verbal-but-not-word-based impressions of other languages. I can do very, very bad impressions of Japanese, Mandarin, French, Italian and Spanish, not using words as such, but a vague and badly formed idea of what these languages typically sound like to me as a non-speaker - I'd love to hear the reverse of these, for some reason. I've managed to get French and Italian friends to do non verbal english impressions (surprisingly similar to the Charlie Brown's teacher's mwah-mwah noises ) , but they both knew English really well, so they're not quite uneducated enough for my purposes. Anway, it's a tough thing to google for.
posted by Jon Mitchell at 1:16 AM on August 10, 2005

How do you add foreign character support to Firefox, at the moment the Chinese characters appear as ??????
posted by bluefin at 2:07 AM on August 10, 2005

Interesting derail, Jon Mitchell!
posted by asok at 2:13 AM on August 10, 2005

So what are the Chinese characters for "wifebeater"?
posted by Joeforking at 2:20 AM on August 10, 2005

bluefin: you'll need a unicode font installed on your system.

I use system2000. Although I doubt it's the best of all options, it's not a big download and saves me from installing Arial Unicode.
posted by NinjaPirate at 2:25 AM on August 10, 2005

On a related note, I'd love to know if Mandarin speakers, or other languages with a tonal component, have a similar stereotype about non-native speakers with the inability to correctly distinguish and reproduce those sounds correctly?

Growing up on a diet of bad Asian television, my brothers and I quickly realized that the white guy in every Hong Kong kung-fu flick is always on the bad guy's side, and will all-too-earnestly pronounce the hero's imminent demise in some strange language only vaguely resembling Mandarin or Cantonese.

Right before he gets his ass kicked, of course.
posted by DaShiv at 2:27 AM on August 10, 2005

Jon Mitchell, there was an AskMe question about that a while back. I'm too lazy to find it for you.
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 3:04 AM on August 10, 2005

Stavros, did you mean this one?
posted by Narnia at 5:19 AM on August 10, 2005

Maybe this next remark belongs in MeTa, but while we're getting all properly sensitive about languages and cultures and such, does it bother anybody that this link is about techniques for finding software to pirate?

Not that I'm any paragon of virtue or anything, but I'm a little surprised to see this as an FPP.
posted by alumshubby at 5:32 AM on August 10, 2005