Monthly Archives: February 2021

February 11, 2021 · 05:27

A penny for your brain

On the side of the road was a car, it was near Buvika. The car was empty, yet next to the car was a blanket, on it a man, a woman and two children, a boy and a girl. They were having a nice lunch in the summer sun, basking in the sun. They were enjoying the weather and the food, it was a stop a they were on the road towards Molde. It would take a few more hours, so they would arrive in the early evening, yet in these white nights, there would be great visibility until long after they arrived. The parents were having a conversation, what about was unknown to Inge, but she was enjoying the view of the field towards the water. She got up and walked towards the Trondheim fjord. She was enjoying the view of the water, she looked for a few more minutes when she heard her father shout, she turned around waved and she walked back, yet as she had walked less than a dozen steps her foot gave way and her leg sunk into the grass. She got up and looked down, she saw two yellow coins, she picked up the coins, put them in her pocket and walked back. Her mother looked at her smudged light trousers. She shrugged “A small hole I stepped in”, and laughed. They got into the car and drove off, they ended up at their destination 4 hours later.

In the burrow was a man, he was a frightening man, he was a warrior with power and authority, as he felt his treasure leave the silent shout was almost deafening to any who could have heard it. He felt betrayed, he was stolen and he would have payback. The shield was broken and rotten, but the skull cleaver was comforting in his hand, he focussed and he felt the ground give way, and as this happened he moved up and forward, even now as the light dimmed, he felt the summer sun on his skin, and as he noticed looked to the south west, he saw a golden glow, that is where he had to go and he made one step after another.

It was not for many hours when he came up to a farm, he could feel life in there and he had no army, he stepped towards the farm, the door was there but he pushed the door into splinters and threw it into the house like it was nothing. He walked in and a woman looked around, this shield maiden screamed and he took notice, he pushed the skull cleaver into her chest, she never had a chance. A man came running in, he too was dispensed with, there was no other noise but the sound of horses and cattle. It was only one hour later when the warrior had two new soldiers, the man picked up a pickaxe, the woman picked up a hoe and they looked at the warrior, he never spoke but they followed as he made course into the fields towards the golden glow.

Well, I came up with the ‘draugar’ horror story a few nights ago and this was as good a time as any to add it, making it the foundation of movie number three in as many months. I was amazed just how much folklore there is on the Nordic Draugr, there was even more I never knew (who knew) and I have not used that part yet. A stage where we see the danger coming from the North, so with Covid from the east (and now from any direction), Draugr from the north. I wonder what we can throw against us from the west (perhaps a Trumped up demon) and optionally an Afreet from the south, not the worst day to do something about the population explosion, so far Covid-19 only killed a little less than 2.5 million, so we might as well write in a few more options. And let’s face it, when Wall Street does not have a few billion consumers to worry about, they might overhaul their greed driven numbers system.

Which is an essential thought when you consider that Microsoft bought Bethesda for $7,500,000,000, EA spend $2.5 billion on IP and that race will continue on an exceeding scale, so me throwing some free IP towards public domain on areas like movies, games and TV series is not the worst idea. So whilst two players have spend a combined $10 billion, I hand out IP to public domain and original decent game developers will get a shot at showing those two players that the power of original IP will trump bought IP, IP that is not original pretty much any day of the week.

I do have a hidden agenda, but it is not time for that yet and the idea of showing Microsoft the error of their way is a massively satisfying stage for any ego, even mine (which is not that big to begin with).

When players learn that solidified dreams cannot be set to currency, they might actually learn the one lesson they ignored for well over a decade, I will be there the laugh in the rafters, to that I have no doubt.

Leave a comment

Filed under Gaming, IT

Tagged as , , , , , , , , , ,

February 9, 2021 · 03:47

The marker, what is it?

We are always in a stage where it is about the price, as such the title ‘are video games too expensive?’ In the Guardian (at https://www.theguardian.com/games/2021/feb/08/are-video-games-too-expensive-assassins-creed-cyberpunk-2077) had my attention, I wonder what they are throwing at us this time, they being Luke Holland. He throws “With new consoles from Sony and Microsoft expected, a raft of video game publishers announced that the RRP of their new releases would increase for the first time since the mid-00s” at us and that seems fine. There is also the fact that most game dealers tend to lower that price off the bat, the makers have there day one discounts and it goes on. I get it. Luke is not wrong and through the article he gives a decent point of view, but some issues remain. It is not given with “While an extra £20 won’t break the bank for some, games might already be stretching what little disposable income many people have, particularly when twinned with the £250-£450 cost of the shiny new console on which to play them”, it is a fact, but there is more (there always is). He touches on it with “the cost of producing an AAA game – big-budget, big-studio, tentpole titles – is now akin to that of making a Hollywood blockbuster. Grand Theft Auto V, released in 2013, cost £195m in development and marketing” yet he dances around it by dangling Cyberpunks and the bugs in our faces, whilst he ignores the massive bug list that AC Valhalla had (the very first image in the story). So whilst we get “A Martin Scorsese film lumbers in at three hours long. Most narrative-led games clock in at 15-or-so hours – five whole Scorseses; a hundred quid’s worth of Marty”, yes but there we see it, the quality, quality is what separates them, Scorsese hands us sheer perfection, Ubisoft products have not done this for the better part of a decade, in addition a game like Cyberpunk is showing us innovation to a much larger degree even (if for now) it has bugs. Ubisoft has been treating us to more of the same for years and they still can’t get it right. That is the part that is missing in this. And the gem is given at the very last “Yes, £70 is a lot. But choose wisely and you’ll never, ever feel short-changed”, yes we agree, but the ‘choose wisely’ part has become tainted. Consider that IGN gave us ‘Update 1.1.0 will fix over 30 Quest, World Event, and Side Activity issues, many that would prevent players from proceeding due to glitches and problems’, they gave this TWO MONTHS after the game was released, so how come that we see scores (metacritic: 80-85) depending on what system, a game with that many bugs is given 70+? And when we see that per source Gamepro (65) to PC gamer (92), we should have issues with the ‘choose wisely part’, in opposition there is Watchdogs: Legion, they did get that part right and when we see metacritic reviews (66-74) we need to sit down and consider that we all have different tastes and the settings are not equally pressed, which is unfair to Ubisoft as well. 

This is where the shoes become an issue, we might think that £20  is not too big an issue, when you are in a stage where you might buy a lemon £20 is a lot, really it is. 

As we try to set a value per time range, we need to consider that art is not easily categorised, and a true video game is still a work of art, which is why I have been slapping Ubisoft all I can, as I feel that they forgot that part. They got parts right they got games right. Even now, I still see in my mind the sunrise in AC Origins, perhaps because it was the first real 4K game, perhaps it was the setting, but they got that part right, pretty much all of it, which is why I am so angry about AC Valhalla. I stayed away from it and until the price is set to below £10 I continue to do so. I got AC Odyssey at £10 at some point, and I still regret it, so I might not fall for that this time around, in this I have serious settings on finding a way to officially remove Ubisoft from the AAA developers list, but then I remember, they got Watchdogs: Legion right, they might pull it off again. 

In this we need to make one more sidestep, Luke gives us “December’s Cyberpunk 2077 – despite being unfinished, riddled with bugs and, on consoles, uglier than a pooing pug”, which is interesting as he did not give us that setting for AC Valhalla, did he? I get it, we all have style of games we like, as I was in the 70’s addicted to the original William Gibson’s Neuromancer, I remain faithful to the game, I keep it on my shelf and I wait until the fixes have come in to play beyond the introduction. We also seem to forget that Cyberpunk 2077 had grossed well over $600 million in digital sales alone as of the end of 2020. He can have that view, I never liked GTA5, I did not like GTA4, so I stayed away from the sequel, I get it plenty like it, but it is not for me, just like Skyrim is not the game for a lot of them. We all have different tastes. 

Yet the title of the article remains in my mind, it still does, you see the part that Luke skated away from is that Immortals Fenyx Rising is $39 in the US, the same game is $50 in Europe, $77 in Australia and $45 in the UK (all PS4 prices). And this has been going on for years, all whilst the prices are even worse when you buy a digital format game, it also impacts the value of the art but we do not see that here, or in Luke’s defence with “a hundred quid’s worth of Marty”, when a game is not set to a level stage we see the issues, especially when the Xbox store charges more for a digital copy than a store would for a physical one, even an Australian store. This has been going on for at least 5 years. Games are judged by markers, but the reviewers are using different markers on different stages and they all refer to them as ‘markers’, as such people are walking away because they can no longer tell the difference. In this the final remark (which is still wise) “But choose wisely and you’ll never, ever feel short-changed” loses ground. An overhaul of what reviews and what should be reviewed is set to corners that are blatantly disregarded and it required an overhaul for well over a decade, I know because in the beginning (1988-1999) I was a reviewer. I might never have been the best, but I was always fair on the games I reviewed and I kept to the games I liked. When you get 2 pages a month, you want to spend them on the games you like, nothing else. A flaw? Optionally, but I had to make the space count so I did it on the games I likes and other reviewers on the games they liked. 

And I will admit, reviewing has become a lot more complex. A game that was on the CBM64, Atari ST or PC286 does not compare what is out today, so in that consider Watchdogs: Legion (at https://www.bworldonline.com/it-could-have-been-transcendent-arts/), I for the most agree with the review and the 85% score is decent and well earned and the one issue that I have is seen in “perhaps due to the weight of its pledges, it never gets to reach its projected dazzling heights. It never stops being enjoyable, but the most demanding players will be bothered by a nagging feeling that it could have been not just better, but transcendent — that it’s just a few steps shy of greatness”, it sums up the failing of Ubisoft, games that could have been beyond ‘WOW!’ are merely ‘Nice!’ And many reviewers do not do half as good a job on reviews as Alexander O. Cuaycong and Anthony L. Cuaycong did. So whilst we give attention to ‘choose wisely’ we forget that gamers are getting overloaded with reviews on all kinds of digital formats, and they often can no longer separate the critical reviewer from the unquestioning followers and the blind hater, which is an actual problem that makes any gamer like they are getting played and suddenly that £20 makes a whole lot of difference. 

If enough people say that it is not a marker, it is a coffee stick. We will see that at some point some will stir their coffee with it, no matter where it was before. 

Leave a comment

Filed under Gaming, IT, Media

Tagged as , , , , , , , , ,

February 8, 2021 · 22:05

Setting sun of reality

There was a BBC story that struck a chord with me, it was about jobs and it is given to us by Andrea Murad. The article called ‘The computers rejecting your job application’ (at https://www.bbc.com/news/business-55932977) shows us new ways on how HR and recruiters are just a joke. Even as Andrea Murad (unintentionally) falsely gives us “Welcome to the fast-growing world of AI recruitment”, we see the initial failure, AI does not exist, not yet at least and that setting is the larger lie that HR’s and recruiters are spinning. As such whist we look at “While recruiters have been using AI for around the past decade, the technology has been greatly refined in recent years. And demand for it has risen strongly since the pandemic, thanks to its convenience and fast results at a time when staff may be off due to Covid-19” we get the following:

  1. AI does not exist.
  2. Demand for something that does not exist is a delusional lie.
  3. Convenience of what, something that does not exist?

The stage is slowly starting, you see games are games and these recruitment games are set to get rid of the ‘slow’ applications, then they look at the ones with the most errors and the most hesitations, you see everything is measured in these games. So even if the explanation is a little wobbly, as people are trying to figure things out, they get one shot. And that is not even close to the end.

So when we see “The questions, and your answers to them, are designed to evaluate several aspects of a jobseeker’s personality and intelligence, such as your risk tolerance and how quickly you respond to situations”, it is one that is loaded with issues, but the nice part is that it follows “Or as Pymetrics puts it, “to fairly and accurately measure cognitive and emotional attributes in only 25 minutes””, or as I put it, there is no fairly stage, you are set against others and the lower scores are basically cut off, a game does not measure emotional I attributes and any test that is set to seconds can never not now, not ever fairly measure emotions. I am not even touching cognitive, as I would see it, in the case of Pymetrics, it is like watching a slide ruler judge the precision of a calculator. It is the new way of HR divisions to set scores to the needs of bosses and it will backfire in the most disastrous of ways. 

This all gets to be worse when we look at “The audio of this is then converted into text, and an AI algorithm analyses it for key words, such as the use of “I” instead of “we” in response to questions about teamwork. The recruiting company can then choose to let HireVue’s system reject candidates without having a human double-check, or have the candidate moved on for a video interview with an actual recruiter”, it is a system where the older fail, they are not accustomed to zoom style interviews, a stage that is, as I personally see it, a way to legalise age discrimination. There is also the stage of the questions and how impersonal edged questions wash out even more people, people that would for the most be great candidates. And that is not all there are signs (unproven ones) that these systems are also used to categorise people, fake jobs and the creation of rainbow results, a fake version of something that does not even exist at present (AI that is).

Yet the article is still good, when we get to the latter part and we are given some issues by Prof Sandra Wachter, a senior research fellow in AI at Oxford University we see that there is a larger stage and the stage is debatable. It is seen in “All machine learning works in the same basic way – you go through a bunch of data, and find patterns and similarities. So in recruitment, looking at the successful candidates of the past is the data you have. Who were the chief executives in the past, who were the Oxford professors in the past?” In this we see the first issue ‘machine learning’ is a part of AI, it is NOT AI, and those relying on machine learning will lose a lot. To see this, I found an image by Daniel S. Christian, I believe it is incomplete, but it is a larger stage we see and optionally you will see how those claimants of AI are just wrong. You see the image misses, Datapoint Creation, category creation, new data comprehension and verification of data (new against old old), this is essential because if that I not done it is not AI, a person will always be in the mix to make calls making the data arbitrary and obsolete (read: useless) from the get go.

And all that is before we consider that those with a bad webcam will be judged unfairly, so the poor with indecent equipment will not be judged correctly against those with much better webcams, if that is not the case there can be no AI, because face recognition would be essential in emotional recognition, or not?

The worst part in all this is all these sources going on about ‘AI’, I wonder what kind of cool-aid they are drinking, it’s a set of fake values and as such the entire setting is fake, it is fake for all kinds of reasons, yet I personally feel it is so that these ‘wielders’ can indiscriminately discriminate the pool of applicants, it is merely my view on the matter, and there will be plenty of greed driven players calling my view foul, I will let you decide for yourself.

1 Comment

Filed under Law, Media, Science

Tagged as , , , , , , , ,

February 8, 2021 · 12:26

Evolution

We all have a setting that we want to switch off, I do too. Yet at this moment it is weirdly in overdrive. It is almost like it knows that the end is nigh, and if so, I need to make my 5G IP public, so that the next innovation wave will be a public domain driven one, inventions openly to be used for all. Yet we are not there yet. As such, I was watching a gameplay on Vampire Bloodlines 2 and my mind suddenly shifted to an old X-Men comic, in that we are confronted with a person named Tarot. That person can spring forth the tarot card revealed to him and make it a living entity. The comic book is decades old, but it crossed my mind as I was watching the game demo. I suddenly remembered the Vampire Jihad CCG and that is where the ideas started to cross. What if we do not always have the choice? We are trying to set the stage to what is the best solution, yet what happens if the player is limited to a CCG deck that he or she holds? So what happens when we are on a level and we see all the opposition, and the card we are offered is the Fool? It can be an area effect, or a selected effect, as such the meaning “having beginner’s luck, improvisation and believing in the universe” can be in a few ways, beginners luck implies we get get by this area unseen, things go bump at their end (beginners luck) and whenever the trot deck is used it needs time to recharge, also when we reshuffle again and again, luck runs out and bad luck falls upon us. The 22 cards are The Magician, The High Priestess, The Empress, The Emperor, The Hierophant, The Lovers, The Chariot, Strength, The Hermit, Wheel of Fortune, Justice, The Hanged Man, Death, Temperance, The Devil, The Tower, The Star, The Moon, The Sun, Judgement, The World, and The Fool. Yet they have two meanings normal and upside down, so 44 options, and all that randomised. It makes for a very different game. 

In this we can be a gunslinger, a sneak or an illusionist, but the cards are wild. We cannot predict what we will set to next and when we consider that they are powerful, merely relying on our skills might not get the job done, so when do we go one way and when the other? 

A stage no one has ever faced before, we all remember Spiderman, yet who remembered Tarot or Tarantula (Marvel characters), yet the comic world is so much larger, beyond DC (Mad Hatter) and Dark Horse comics (Hellboy, Ghost). Instead of focussing on the character, consider the abilities that the characters had, most might remember Cloak and Dagger, yet who remembers Mayhem from the original comics? When we think back to Infamous: Second Son, it starts magnificent, the smoke ability really gave a good start, it was the linearity that drove it back to average, a real shame. Yet the setting is not merely on where, and who, but how we adapt to a new setting we never had before (hence the Tarot Mention). We set the skill list and power ability to what we think is the best solution for our gameplay, but what happens when we do not get a choice? What happens when interaction becomes the wheel of fate for us? As far as I can tell no game does that, not now and not in the past, but does that not create a much more satisfying feeling when we grow beyond that? We do get the option to tweak, yet we are not given a choice of what the powers are, I stated it in a much earlier story towards a version of Infamous 3, what happens when the parents push the solution from them into us? From father and mother and a stage where the gender decides how much of mum or dad resides within us, Gregor Mendel gave that premise in 1845. Is it so wrong to use the classical greats to set the story to some part we cannot influence? How can we grow our comfort zone in gaming when we tend to rely on where our strength is? Especially when we are entering a stage where the game replay becomes much more important, we need to set a new stage on how it is played. If we are set to a location (London, Seattle, San Francisco, New York, Gotham, Metropolis), the one element we can influence and set outside of our reach is us, the player we control. We can in addition change the stage of what we can do by selecting through parentage what we can do and leave us to tweak the ability to the best of gameplay. We forgot the one rule that is natural, that is the inability to select what we are, we can merely shape ourselves to the best of what we have.

Look at the long list of games that are out there and you will find no titles that match this. When you consider that gaming will be set to $138,000,000,000 in this year alone, it will not be about those who make the best replica, it will be about true original gaming, they will take the larger slices, whether it is PC, consoles or a future setting of cloud gaming. 

I hope you had figured out that part, if not consider that the most anticipated games are some remakes of true originals, the rest are true original games. Some franchises will forever run, but some are running out of luck and options. I wonder who will fall to their knees in 2021 and 2022, because we need to realise that 2022 is as important as 2021 is, it gives view to what the developers think we want, it is a fair setting and some will make the cut, some will not but they all want a slice of that 138 billion and the most original games and most perfect games will get the bigger piece that is how it always was, and now that this cake is so big, they all want the largest slice, but it will be art designer that defines originality, not the business analyst. It is the simplest application of evolution, if the games do not truly evolve, the gamer will lose interest a lot sooner than the developer is ready for.

Leave a comment

Filed under Gaming

Tagged as , , , , , , ,

February 8, 2021 · 05:57

Colour the stage

I was almost asleep when an article in the Guardian passed my eyes. The article was from Feb 3, but I read it only now. This happens, there is only so much my eyes can deal with and this is one of those moments I am catching up, it is 05:15, as such I am still ahead of the curve. 

The article called ‘Amazon, Google and why you can’t just invent a blockbusting games developer’ is an excellent piece by Keith Stuart. There might be a few quotes in there, but I will try to avoid it as the article (at https://www.theguardian.com/games/2021/feb/03/amazon-google-and-why-you-cant-just-invent-a-blockbusting-games-developer) is a gem from start to finish. You need to read it. 

You see, we are looking who wins the Cloud gaming rush, but even I forgot the setting that is forgotten. I touched on it in the past and I did point out that Amazon is doing much better than expected against Giant Google, yet that is not enough. The lesson that Microsoft refused to learn is upon all three of them. In my view these three are staged in a mindset of ‘Business staging art’, which is the wrong setting. It is now and has always been ‘Art pushing business’, it is the one side that they all forgot (Nintendo and Sony as an exception). Art is the power over business, not the other way around and Ubisoft is learning that the hard way. They forgot the station they were in when they got their business executives push the thought ‘A new Assassins Creed every year’ that is when they lost the plot and if Google and Amazon do not learn that lesson quick enough they will be out of the race too. At present there are thoughts that Amazon is now in the lead. I cannot tell as I do not have certain links and connections, but those who voiced it have a decent case, Amazon might win this, a race I actually never saw. I thought that the people at Google were googly and artsy enough to see that, yet I could be wrong there.

So as cloud gaming is taking a slow stage towards the gaming of tomorrow, the stage is larger and it needs to be painted. Not by some painters R Us franchise, but by kids and dreamers who dream of tomorrow, who dream of what might be and then we see if the artsy people can guide these younglings into a frame of gaming, not the business executives on what looks cool, but art people on feels cool and what plays truly cool, a stage ignored too often and also pushed into silence by the wrong people. Keith makes mention in his article on the business stage of AAA game development, yet the business needs will be the collected data and cloud services and the art of gaming falls away. Just as Microsoft was blinkered into the Azure stage, we see Google and Amazon making similar if not too identical moves. Parts were seen almost a year ago in Forbes when they gave us ‘The Console War Is Over Because Sony Left Microsoft Behind From The Start’ (at https://www.forbes.com/sites/erikkain/2020/02/28/theres-never-really-been-a-console-war-because-playstation-left-xbox-behind-from-the-start/), a stage most saw coming a mile away. Only because Microsoft still doesn’t get it, they never did. Not for almost 7 years, they lost the plot and they had to answer to board members who never understood it in the first place. That is the stage that Google and Amazon face at present and the one getting it last (or not at all) will be the loser in this. To be honest I expected Google to win this, I did not expect Amazon Luna to be on par with Google but they were and if they can solve the software issue, they will be ahead of both Google and Microsoft which is a race result I would never have bet on a year ago, but there you have it.

So when we look back at a quote in the Forbes “the console war is over and Microsoft has moved on, leaving Sony in the dust”, we see the problem. It is a business quote, it is a cloud quote and it is a presumptive quote on what gamers need. Yet the gamer wants a good game, it does not matter where it is and they prefer to play on THEIR system. By making the cloud the axial and not the game Microsoft lost and it will lose bigger because cloud gaming requires a good connection which takes out well over 30% of Europe and well over 35% of the US, so these executives are running in a race with both hands tied behind their back, they will claim that their legs do the running, but the arms are required to keep balance, and without balance they do not stand much of a chance. Even now, as we see congestion after congestions, they keep on saying it is about cloud, but the stage of the cloud is the internet and the connections and they are not on par, 5G is too far away, so those with the options will look at cloud and there the games matter, so Microsoft is out of the race and it is now between Google and Amazon and the Amazon horse has now optionally an advantage.

So even as Forbes is setting the (wrong) stage by consoles and how Microsoft only has one console on that list in the top 10, the Xbox360 in 8th position. We forget that time was an issue, and in a short time Xbox 360 became an actual contender, after that the wrong people at Microsoft started to talk and others were told to listen, it gave folly to the Xbox One and more folly to what came after. All whilst Nintendo completed the Switch and that ended Microsoft. Now Microsoft is a mere distant third and if Amazon gets its game right, optionally Microsoft becomes 4th at that point the people will abandon that system. The titan that was created in 7 years was utterly destroyed 8 years later, and as I see it there will be no coming back from that. This saddens me, not because of Microsoft, but with Microsoft where it was Sony had to up its game and that is the part that matters. It is not about the PS5, it will be about the PS6 in 2028 and without Microsoft the difference between PS5 and PS6 might not be to the degree it should be. I look at the future and gamers, true gamers will look at the games that are dreamt up right now, the dreamers will require hardware that does not exist yet pushing consoles and optionally cloud systems, but any gaming cloud system set to the premise of business people will not have that much of a chance. 

I might be wrong, but so far in gaming I have been right a lot more than wrong, so I feel confident in my view of the matter.

Leave a comment

Filed under Gaming

Tagged as , , , , , , , , , ,

February 8, 2021 · 00:38

Hammer hits anvil

Yes, that is the foundation of an idea, the idea is voiced, in the ear, the hammer hits the anvil, the anvil vibrates the wires and the lightbulb in your brain lights up the room and the idea is born. The setting is the same for all, the only difference is that when the hammer hits the anvil, not everyones wires vibrate, and as a result in some people the lightbulb never lights up that room that is known as ‘skull space’, still my setting was that I did not come up with one idea, I came up with three. It is an idea that was someone else’s idea, but that foundation can still be used today and in a cloud space game setting.

Lets go back to 1984, George Orwell was making noises in regards to government oversight (of everyone) and in that same year Mike Singleton had an idea and created ‘the Lords of Midnight’, now even as the setting was nice, it was set to computers with a limit to 48KB (ZX Spectrum) and the 64KB that the Commodore had. Yet what happens when we take that idea and use the map of the UK (that island left of France) and set ourselves in a stage of riding, stealth and travel to collect the alliance of a minimum amount of keeps to secure the safety and unity of one region, each keep is in one county. The stage is all set, so to change it and make it a real challenge, the stages vary, the keep is not always in the same place (sometimes they are), and we aren’t always starting in the same place, so there will always be more than one option. The area is all in a stage where there is an enemy, not always visible, but as we align, we are given who is not our enemy and they will give the information of what is against us. A stage that is more alike the old days, when communication took days, not seconds. We need to adjust our way of thinking without removing the first person challenge. Even as it is based on that game, it will be a completely new game, it will be a larger setting based on the entire UK, all with optional awards (virtual diploma’s) of achievement and a retirement award. A game that shows time in a new setting if you like.

The setting of a cloud will allow a larger setting of randomisation, as the server does all the alignments, as such if 10 players play it, there is a chance that 2 players have close to the same setup, but not completely. A game where you need to do the work and not rely on some wiki solution where the one solution fits all. 

About a decade later someone made a game called Virus! It was an original game and even as it never made any headlines, I never forgot the originality. Yet in this day, what can we do to innovate? For example, a shooting game is one completed a game that has been completed, but it does not need to be like that. What if the opponents and the level of play is determined by a QR code? In the game Virus! It was Windows and your hard-drive, which in those days was innovative, yet today it does not work like that (or at least it should not). QR codes are everywhere and any level completed will be one we have already seen, yet what if we had on any mobile the option to save the code and use it to transfer the image to the cloud game? It does not matter whether it is a spaceship with an environment, a soldier with an urban or rural setting, it is about the fact that we are not in control and the maker cannot be creating levels again and again, and random generators tend to be less random than you think. Yet the setting of a QR code is out of our control and we can decide what every dot means, we merely are in the dark whether that dot is used. A game with almost infinite levels and a never ending stage of challenges, a lovely idea for any shooter with drive to compete.

Yes, I agree that it is in fact an iterative idea when we revisit an old idea, but the people seemingly forgot about the idea and as such it becomes a new ballgame. When we are given “Assassin’s Creed Valhalla – Known Issues [Updated Feb 5]”, in a stage when Ubisoft gave the laughingly statement that the game would be released days early and we see 3 months later that there are well over a dozen issues with impacts on a dozen missions that cannot continue, is it such a bad idea to look at the past when these kind of screw ups would never make the cut of publication?

And a lot could have been prevented from day one by properly testing a game. In this I tend to fall back to Skyrim, a game that has issues, no one denies it, but in all the years (since 11.11.11) that I have played it, I only witnessed 3-4 bugs myself on any console (Xbox360, PS3, Xbox One, PS4, PS5) and a dozen or so glitches, yet glitches do not break a game. And that was made almost 10 years ago. I think it is time to reconsider what we love to play and what maker consider to be a good game. When we consider the size of Skyrim, my only issue with the game (after playing it again and again at least 8 times, is that the missions are always the same, yet the openness of the game allows for a lot of exploring and doing things your way. But what gives when the QR code resets the opposition and changes what you face in every dungeon, crypt or hollow? 

And that gives me another idea, I reckon that there are a few nordic directors with a grasp of the dark side of tinsel town, and when you consider Troll Hunter (2010). I thought it was awesome, André Øvredal took a folktale and pushed it and us into another direction. I am certain that it can be done again. So, what happens when we take that part of Skyrim that is based on Nordic legends and create a new horror movie, but one that is close to the folktale of the Draugar “Draugar usually possessed superhuman strength, and was “generally hideous to look at”, bearing a necrotic black colour, and was associated with a “reek of decay” or more precisely inhabited haunts that often issued foul stench”. Lets not forget in the academic world where people hunt academic recognition, stupidity (read: shortsightedness) is found a dime a dozen and when we see the people’s admiration with the zombie apocalypse, the idea that it had already happened is not the weirdest idea to consider, so what happens when someone opens up the wrong thing (tomb or urn) in Malmo and before the authorities have any clue what actually is going on, the issue has spread to Norway, Denmark and Germany. So as we need to rely on folklore, folklore that is specific to Scandinavia, what will those do who have no knowledge? The military will merely grab bigger weapons, weapons that have some effect, but the stage is different, you can hunt cockroaches with a flamethrower, yet what happens when that roach is somewhat heat resistant? The option are nearly endless and it could make for an entertaining 2-3 hours with a box of popcorn. As you see, these AAA game designers are all about being cool and having hot items (riddled with bugs), I needed one salad to get three ideas on paper. I wonder what I will be able to think off with a decent cheese pizza (with extra oregano).

Have a great Monday!

Leave a comment

Filed under Gaming, movies

Tagged as , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

February 6, 2021 · 22:22

Number of states

We all have states, we all have considerations. There isn’t a person who does not enter that stage, the stage of the blame game. Now, I could blame the Saudi Crown prince for my poverty, they never did anything for me, but is that not the central part in all this? 

It started some time ago, yet the Al Jazeera article that starts with “Lawyers have filed an amended complaint in the US-based lawsuit against Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MBS) containing allegations about attempts to “lure” an ex-spymaster’s family to the Saudi consulate in Istanbul and summons for two alleged members of the “Tiger” hit squad”, the there are the allegations to ‘lure’, interesting as lure means “tempt (a person or animal) to do something or to go somewhere”, in this I wonder is it a crime, and there is a stage: ““Luring” is not a crime at the top of most people’s minds, but the law in Washington and other states does make luring a child or developmentally disabled person a felony”, as such is ex-Saudi intelligence officer Saad al-Jabri a child or a disabled person? In the second, what evidence is there that there is a direct connection between the attempted lure and Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MBS)? I am not stating that this is not the case, I actually do not know, so I am asking the question. And as we turn to the PDF (at https://www.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.dcd.220747/gov.uscourts.dcd.220747.66.1.pdf), we see a few things. The first is seen at [4], when we see “Fortunately, in the United States, justice is measured not by the might of one’s arms; what is lawful is measured not by the reach of one’s sword; and the law itself is not laggard when faced with a prince who, having directed the dismemberment of a prominent U.S. journalist overseas, also dispatched a team of hunters and killers into the United States and Canada to murder again.”, and I hereby demand that the accusers show evidence, evidence that holds up in court, in the pretrial the stage of ‘the dismemberment of a prominent U.S. journalist’, so at what stage was some journalist dismembered, what evidence is there that this ever happened?

Then at [5] we are treated to “The target of that attempted killing is Plaintiff Dr. Saad Aljabri”, at what stage did “attempts to “lure”” change into “attempted killing”? What evidence supports this?

So when the delusional man (Dr. Saad Aljabri) relies on “a longtime trusted partner of senior U.S. intelligence officials”, all whilst he no longer has value, it stands to reason that he uses his so called friends one more time to get a huge pay day. Something to hold him over until he passes away and as some of these people rely on the delusional stage of immortality, that pay day needs to be bigger and better.

At that point there is all kinds of emotions, and when we get to [11] we see “Defendant bin Salman has taken steps to lure Dr. Saad back to Saudi Arabia or to another jurisdiction where he could be more easily killed without consequences”, so what evidence is there that the Crown Prince was directly involved, also ‘where he could be more easily killed’ is an assumption that cannot be proven, not proven as an act and not proven towards any person. And this charade of laughing usage of the law, is set in 199 pages, the pages, I added in the link, the pages that Al Jazeera correctly added. It is like the second instalment of Blood and Oil, that fictional piece by Bradley Hope and Justin Scheck, to my amazement I have never seen so many organisations using fiction, allegations and innuendo to frame a person, in this case Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. Oh and before I forget, who was that prominent US journalist? Khashoggi was a columnist and an author. A columnist for the Washington Post, that does not make him a prominent US journalist, does it? 

And there is more the use of intentional ‘mis-statements’ like at [7] “Dr. Saad ledhelped to lead a team that saved hundreds” are emotional statements that have no bearing on the alleged case, a stage that is set to folly from the get go. 

So lets take a look at this respected person

  • He was dismissed from his governmental positions on 10 September 2015.
  • In September 2017, Saudi authorities sought Al Jabri’s arrest for corruption. 

I reckon that part is not illuminated in the brief, is it? In addition to this the number one laughing stage is that we are told “border agents at Toronto Pearson International Airport stopped the group and refused them entry into Canada”, so not only is it an alleged setting, it is an alleged setting that was allegedly staged in Canada, so why is it in an American court? This is about something else and it has nothing to do with Dr. Saad Aljabri, but with his American friends, perhaps they get a slice of that yummy settlement cake. Feel free to disagree and especially to oppose this, it is fair to do so, I am just saddened that the law, especially US law allows for such pieces of fiction to proceed. I would be happy to support anything to go to court if it was a lot less fictional, and let’s face it, consider that it was an attempted lure, a lot more facts on a brief that would be a lot less than 199 pages might have done the trick. I see so much fiction there, on so many pages, I wonder how the writer of that brief can live with him/her self. And in all this, when exactly did Canada become the 51st state?

1 Comment

Filed under Law, Media, Politics

Tagged as , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

February 5, 2021 · 22:42

Not a good thing

There are moments when I hate being right. For the most it is a nice feeling, but the stage where people lives go to shambles just so that I am right is not my forte. I have no issues getting Google’s own Papa Smurf (read: Sergey Brin) to buy my 5G IP, but he can easily afford it (he might just have enough in his wallet). Getting to a stage where millions of people pay an additional £6-£96 a month for energy is not my idea of fun, but the BBC (at https://www.bbc.com/news/business-55925514) gave us only two hours ago an article with loads of emotion, yet the two foundations are in the first £6-£96 a month more, so being on the wrong side of that scale will hurt in massive ways. And we see that it “affects 11 million households in England, Wales and Scotland who have never switched suppliers or whose discounted deals have expired”, so the hurt will come and come again and there is every indication that they will get hit again around August 2021. And beyond that we see “The cap for prepayment meter customers will go up by £87  to £1,156, affecting another four million customers”, a change that is about to hit 22% of all Britons. 

So now we get to the me being right thing, on December 3rd last year (or better stated a year ago) in the article ‘Trillion dollar Musk’ (at https://lawlordtobe.com/2020/12/03/trillion-dollar-musk/) I gave the readers “the UK has an increasing need for Scandinavian power and soon it cannot be met. I reckon that in the next 2-3 years that shortage will be close to systemic all over the EU” where we see the simplest application of price rises, and now we see the rise on a much larger scale than ever witnessed before. So now consider the average annual pensioner income £15,080. Now consider that 1%-6% more is given to the power company. It depends where they are, but the stage is now already getting to a dangerous close, a close that a lot cannot afford and that setting will continue all over Europe. I saw this coming but even I am a little amazed on how fast it is arriving at the front door of people. I expected that there were 2-3 years for people like Elon Musk to stop the cost from drowning people (making him rich at the very same time), there was a clear clarion prediction to the ‘Trillion dollar Musk’ setting and no space ride would be needed. Now that we are given “Citizens Advice said its research in December indicated that 2.1 million households were behind on their energy bills, a rise of 600,000 compared with before the pandemic”, we might point towards some corona event, but the truth is that overall power needs have been going up and up and beyond some point the power companies will have to pay for importing power and that side of the equation is not going away.  And with “Heating a poorly insulated home costs around £50 a month more than a decent home. If bills rise by £96, millions of households have two stark choices; stay cold or fall further into debt” the final piece falls into place, even as they all make it about heating (which is partially true), the overall use of electricity is off the scales, I stated them in ‘Dangerous conclusions’, which I wrote on December 16th (at https://lawlordtobe.com/2020/12/16/dangerous-conclusions/) and now that the stage is here, Eon Musk has a massive opportunity and soon enough it will grow into Europe as well, I wonder who will cash in before the half baked solutions stir their ugly heads.

Because the impact of that stage is not a good thing. 

1 Comment

Filed under Media, Science

Tagged as , , , , , ,

February 5, 2021 · 05:10

A Swift rescue

I was half asleep one moment and the next I wake up to ‘Theme park sues singer over Evermore album name’ (at https://www.bbc.com/news/entertainment-arts-55932164). So, in this setting, what are the rules? Well, one of them is “Common words and phrases can be trademarked if the person or company seeking the trademark can demonstrate that the phrase has acquired a distinctive secondary meaning apart from its original meaning. That secondary meaning must be one that identifies the phrase with a particular good or service”, the word has existed in an ecclesiastical sense for centuries. So the original word meant “always”, it is one of the words also at times we see it as ‘aways and forever’. So, the trade-marker must now show that it “identifies the phrase with a particular good or service”, and there we have the issue, Taylor Swift has a real identifiable service, the service of an entertainer/performer, as Evermore has “opened its doors officially to the public on September 29, 2018. In contrast to most theme parks, Evermore Park does not feature any major rides; instead, trained actors who portray fantasy characters are the main attraction”, and if I were a betting man, I would bet against the theme park. It’s creative director Josh Shipley, has called Evermore a “living theatrical park”, a park, not a CD, not a place where at all times a collection of songs can be listened to, a park. This was their way to get extra visibility. A bad choice as I see it. I reckon that if all the fans of Taylor Swift made a proper and polite complaint against this (at +1 801-796-2372) their phones will be blocked for weeks. In the second, did they sue the Australian band Evermore as well? Then there is Neil Diamond, who also had a song with that title. Now, that song was out for a while, so there can be no claim, the Australian band Evermore existed for some time as well, the list goes on. 

So for a theme park no one had heard of to use Taylor Swift to get visibility is one thing, would it not have been better to contact Taylor Swift to request the launch of her album at the park? No, the American will sue to get the upper hand for marketing. That is how I see it. And back to the law, the park was opened in 2018, so the stage of “one that identifies the phrase with a particular good or service”, that is not possible, because the theme park is not open forever and always, as their website states: ‘Evermore Park Is Currently Closed’, so they are not forever or always open, they are closed. As such the stage of “the trademark can demonstrate that the phrase has acquired a distinctive secondary meaning”, which will fail very distinctively and directly, but when they open and if you are a fan of Taylor Swift, please complain politely (at +1 801-796-2372). Oh and lastly, the CD has the ‘e’ in lowercase, the park has it as ‘E’ (uppercase), so the name is not enough, the word is not more alike than not, another setting to let the claim fail.

Well, that is my part done for the day and I am still feeling frisky for some humour, so let take a look at what types of mischief the Kremlin is up to, I cannot make fun of Josh Shipley and not make fun of President Putin, or can I? Ah, 05:00 the new day is starting, lets see what else I can do this morning.

Leave a comment

Filed under Law, Media

Tagged as , , ,

February 5, 2021 · 02:25

Am I the hypocrite?

It is a fair question and it has been asked before. You see, I hate hypocrisy to the largest extent. And thanks to the Australian Arms Control Coalition (AACC) there is now a larger chance that I will be able to sell the Chinese Chengdu J-20 to Saudi Arabia. The planes are around $100 million each and I will try to start with 6 planes, with a service setting and training that will add up to almost a billion, as such 3.75% of $1,000,000,000 is still 37,500,000, with the option of two more sales tracks it adds up to serious money. To be honest, I would have preferred to sell the BAE Typhoon, yet the idiots t the CAAT made an end to that and as I want my commission, I will sell Chinese goods if I so please, so not only did the CAAT and the AACC not achieve anything, they dislodged their governments for a billion in taxable goods, as such things will go from bd to worse rather quickly. And as the ACCC is so about “Instead of exporting arms and military equipment to Saudi Arabia and the UAE for use in Yemen, Australia, the US, and other nations should be pressing these governments to end their unlawful attacks in Yemen and hold those responsible to account” (at https://www.hrw.org/news/2021/02/04/australia-freeze-arms-sales-saudi-arabia-uae), we see the stupidity of Elaine Pearson, Australia director at Human Rights Watch in action. You see they have absolutely nothing to stop the Iranian/Houthi side of things, and they started this mess. So the entire she said/she said mess that both the CAAT and the AACC are revolving around, the stage where we see is thwarted and made useless because they are focussing on one side and no one has the balls (especially Elaine Pearson) to do something about the Iranian side of things and it will get hampered more as the EU does not want any anti-Iranian intervention, they are still in that delusional stage where they think that they can offer some kind of nuclear pact that no one will heed, especially the Iranians. 

And in a one sided setting, I still whole heartedly agree that Saudi Arabia has a right to defend itself, in this the attacks by Houthi forces on Saudi civilian targets should enable Saudi forces to strike back, and if you do not know about the attacks on Saudi targets, it will be because the bulk of the western media remained silent on it, probably a stakeholder issue.

And as I have to eat at some point, I see no issue selling the Saudi Airforce the Chinese Chengdu J-20. In the first we are not at war with China, in the second it will be delivered to an established government, I feel that I am in the clear. 

So when I see “especially those who have committed grave violations against children”, I wonder just how Archie Law can continue with a brain that much lacking in insight, breathing should be the challenge he is facing. Houthi forces in Yemen have been systematically depriving food from Yemeni children. This has been known for well over 6 months, headlines like ‘Houthi militias attack humanitarian organisations, block aid to Yemenis’ are not new or unique. A one sided stage against the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, it is time that those shortsighted voices are given a new level of opposition, as such I see no reason not to aid Saudi Arabia in acquiring the weapons they need to keep their nation safe. I reckon China will not object, especially if the end result is that they churn close to 9 billion from the EU, UK and US. I hope to get up to $2,000,000,000 in sales which will get me a nice retirement funds, but I am happy with just the one shipment (two is always better) and it gives me a larger stage to show just how shortsighted these people are. 

I know, I am slightly too angry, but that happens, we all have our short stages,, and mine is the hypocrisy of others. Just like that they are all about the actions against certain Chinese groups, yet the setting that Apple is accused of using slave labour is quickly silenced, I reckon that Apple and Nike are as advertisers too big for the newspapers to really take a look, it is my assumption that these two do not advertise on ABC, or am I wrong?

1 Comment

Filed under Finance, Media, Military, Politics

Tagged as , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,