Category Archives: IT

September 30, 2020 · 01:46

The race is on

It is like any race, it is not set to a state where we all set the marker, some set the marker and then changed the game, I admit, that we cannot blame them for becoming multibillionaire overnight, but it sets the race to a much larger degree now.

As GamesRadar gave us less than a day ago ‘Bethesda founder on Microsoft purchase: “What Microsoft owns, Sony cannot get”’ we see “If the strategy works, it will be a brilliant counter-move against Sony. Users from around the world will be the ultimate beneficiaries of this deal”, this is where Christopher Weaver is extremely wrong. There is a reason why I threw away my Microsoft console. Consider the I had both, the (what I personally call) betrayal by Microsoft towards its gamers, is a stage I cannot abide by, so as I set part of it in script a year ago in ‘An Intellectual Property example, Part 2’ (at https://lawlordtobe.com/2019/09/09/an-intellectual-property-example-part-2/) it is time to come to the aid of Sony, there is something about Microsoft buying its way to the top that I resent and they are doing it for very different reasons, not because they love gamers. Consider the amount involved, they want something else and Microsoft is not to be trusted. 

So the need to find or create a new RPG exclusive to Sony gamers, to upset the Microsoft act, shows that not only were they (partially) stupid, the fact that they do not hold the exclusive stage of RPG, Bethesda never did, but the act to force people into a path might seem brilliant, yet only if there is no alternative and there is. So there is now a need to attack both Fallout and the Elder Scrolls. Even if I am not their enemy, their new owner must be taught a lesson, ignoring gamers in the gaming industry is the most stupid thing one could ever do.

Fantasy

The game starts in a small city, we see a man at a well, he is merely looking around, wondering where he is. We get our first flashback. He is a young man walking out of a London Fish And Chips shop, he has a few coins left and drops them in a hat, stating ‘me last money, you’re welcome to it’, the man looks at him smiling drunk ‘bless you young man, bless you indeed’, the boy walks on, not seeing the mark on the mans hand was he waves at the boy, making him stumble into a wall and vanish. This same young man looks around, wearing a cheap jute outfit, no shoes he looks around still somewhat dazed and confused. 

As the game starts, we see two more flashbacks, the arrival of where he is now, brigands robbing him and the small farm where he got his clothes and some food. He thanked the farmer and left and entered this small town. Even as he is getting his bearings he needs to figure out what to do next. He had been watching the people and did get some grasp of what they were saying, it had been a day later and hunger is setting in, he has three options. There is a guild in one direction a house of worship in another direction and a building he does nt comprehend in a third one, he never sees people from there come into his direction.

Guild

As he walks towards the guild he is met with staring eyes, not distrustful, but staring. His attire is not that of a guild person, and as he is in front of the guild, he looks around and sets himself near the door, not too close as a beggar, wondering what will happen next. For an hour or so as he watches people entering and leaving. About three hours later a woman comes out offering him some bread. He accepts and bows curiously and whispers ‘Thank you’, she looks strange, like she is not sure what he is saying, he nods, smiles and slowly eats a small piece of bread. She nods and walks away, as he eats he feels stronger and better, the bread was good, he is still hesitant to enter the guild, yet a little later a man walks out towards him. He gestures him to follow and that is exactly what he does, following the man towards one end of town and following him inside his house as the door is held open. 

Trainee of furs
He is shown the basement, which is actually nice and warm and shown a corner with a small bed. The man points at the bed and points at what might be a toilet, he is given a small jar with water and some more bread. He nod and smiles, the man walks away. 

The next morning he is given much better clothes and he is shown a fur and given some sort of bone to flesh the pelt, he does the and does all the other ones, after which he is shown how to salt the pelt., the too he does, the day ends having prepared 25 pelts.

Houses of worship
As the man moves towards the worship house, he is met by a woman, she odd at him, almost like she sees that he os not what he seems to be, she invites him and offers a cup of warm drink, he accepts nods and takes a sip, it is like tea, but very sweet. She smiles and gives him another drink, this too is warm but a little bitter, not sweet at all, but oddly refreshing. She watches the two  drinks as they impact hm and she points towards the door, she walks there and gestures for him to follow. They walk through a corridor with art and into a small hall, where others are, they partially look at him but they return to their work, they seem to be scribes. She offers a book, the book is in a language he does not know, but he recognises the letters. He then gestures towards a piece of paper and some charcoal, she hands it to him and he writes the alphabet, and pronounces the letters, after which he sets down the numbers and refers to them, he also does some math which gives a response, he is gestured to follow and he is offered to a man, the man looks down on him, yet when he is offered the roll of parchment his impression changes. He gestures the man to follow and he does, he is taken to a room, where a bed is there is a table with some food and drink and he is left for the evening

House of coins
Here he sees something that is almost Babylonian, but it is a script that reflects numbers, as he is given a parchment he gets to do the numbers in the first day he gets to write down the numbers from 1 to 30, the day ends.

So here are the first two sets of level 1 for Sony (they get to use this), and as I go through the settings of the guilds and houses of worship (house of coins, house of speech and house of thought) we get a very different RPG, because the trainee of furs would soon be out of luck in the house of worship, yet they all have different paths and different outcomes. A stage the is not merely fantasy, but the stage that closely resembles the time before the renaissance yet after the treaty of Claremont, the world was mot malleable then. Well, even as the race is on, it took me less than an hour to come up with this part, so I hope that they are awake at Sony, because as I personally see it (and if we believe GamesRadar), Christopher Weaver set the tone and I merely opposed it by making a new RPG, we all have to unite towards Sony to make sure that the Microsofts of this world do not spoil gaming for us.

Perhaps tomorrow an opponent to Fallout, but I am not too fussed, Cyberpunk will take care of that part for me. 

Well, that is my cloud of creativity taken care of, for now that is.

 

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September 29, 2020 · 14:37

Lack of information

As I was browsing along, I saw a picture with the text ‘Why are we so misinformed?’, I did not read the article, but the question struck home. You see, we tend to ask questions when we need them, information tends to stop commercial traffic and getting justly informed is very very bad for commerce.

To comprehend this we need to take a look at the telecom drivers. In 2018 I needed a new phone, my Huawei P7 was on its final legs after 3 years and there would soon be no more updates, because that is how Android tends to work. More important, when your phone is 2 full versions behind, the setting is there to upgrade quickly or face other consequences. In this setting I was looking for an affordable phone the had 64GB Storage. You see, the current phone had 16GB and even as it was a massive upgrade from the previous one (with only 4GB), time would tell that 32GB would not do it and I was almost right. So I set out to look for a larger phone and would you know it, Telstra, Optus, Vodafone, none of them had ANYTHING that I could use, they merely had the models to keep the now people happy, but the tomorrow people would suffer. It is now 2020 and I am using a little over 34GB, as such what they had then would no longer suffice and that is AFTER I deleted Facebook, and I never use WhatsApp, Instagram or Pinterest, so the damage could be worse. The other phones were great contract captivators and to set a long term need some see the path of a little above board to hand the people what they think they need, not what they actually need, that is my translation and mobile phones are in a rough setting. Now the iPhone 11 will offer enough, as do some of the previous models, but $1800 is a little much for a lot of people, so there we are in a bit of a fix, for me it was fortunate that the Huawei Nova 3i offered what I needed, but I found it because I was looking intensely, not because people were informing me. Also, there was a Samsung 64GB, but none of the phone shops had it at the time, merely the 32GB. The addictive need of connection is seemingly required. It does not stop at mobile phones. The media has been protective of its advertisers and advertising opportunities since well before 2012, when I alerted them to a situation that would optionally bring pressure to millions of gamers, the news outlets ignored it, there were screenshots and there was evidence, but for them it mattered no, as I personally see it, the advertisement needs of Sony went first. 

As such, was there a lack of information, or were people optionally intentionally not looking in specific directions? I will let you be the judge of that, yet consider that even as mobile phones are the most visible ones, they are not the only ones and we will know in 7 weeks whether my setting (given yesterday) is a path that was exploited correctly. You see, how many news outlets, all crying and boasting US BS, on how far 5G is? When we look (at https://www.rcrwireless.com/20200911/5g/zain-completes-5g-network-deployment-saudi-arabia) and we see that Saudi Arabia finished the rollout of 5G to 38 cities, we see that we all are second to a Middle Eastern nation that embraced the 5G challenge rolling it out pretty much nationally. Scandinavia, Western Europe, the US, Canada, Australia, none of them are anywhere near that stage for at least a year, optionally 2 years. So what are we proud of? When we see a lack of information it also includes the screw ups that our political and business big wigs signed up for. So when we see Europe and in this case Ireland boasting “at launch it has about 35 per cent population coverage, but that will increase with the addition of 500 sites next year”, we see that they are not ready yet, they are a year away, and that whilst Saudi Arabia is 31 times bigger than Ireland and it was completed 2 weeks ago. Ireland is seemingly more ahead than anyone else in Europe and there is the kicker. You can only develop true 5G apps when the nation is ready and for the most none of them are, so when we see a lack of information, it is also because the information bringers have nothing to be proud of, and most importantly, no evidence against Huawei was ever brought, merely old farts in the intelligence community, all with links to others (big business) who are missing out and those people are really really sad (a lack of funds will do that).

So whilst I am applauding the question ‘Why are we so misinformed?’, we need to consider ‘What are we not allowed to know?’, a setting that favoured Sony in 2012, Microsoft multiple time and we can go in several directions when it is about 5G.

Have fun!

 

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September 29, 2020 · 01:30

The A-social network

That is a stage, it is a big stage and it does not care whether you live of whether you die. So let’s take this to a new level and start with a question: ‘When did you last cause the death of a person?’ I do not care whether it is you mum, your dad, your partner, your child. When did you cause their death? Too direct? Too Bad!

You see, we think that we are innocent, some are risk programmers into debt insolvency programs, yet there it is not about the people, it is about the business that needs maximisation. We pride ourself in compartmentalisation, yet in the end the programmer is just as efficient a murderer as the sniper is. When I look through the sight of a .308 rifle, the sight allows me to go for a target 450 metres away, an optimum distance, the silencer will make is silent enough so that anyone more than 4 metres away will not hear a thing and 450 metres away, a person falls to their knees, the chest wound is damaging enough to ensure that the target will be dead on arrival, even if it happens at the entrance of a hospital, for the target it is over. You think this is bad? 

The programmer writes the formula that sets a different strain of insolvency. It is a form of credit risk, as such we get “In the first resort, the risk is that of the lender and includes lost principal and interest, disruption to cash flows, and increased collection costs”, as such the credit firms hire programmers that can stretch the case to lower the risk to the lender, set the stage where there is an increased option to pay back at much higher cost. In that same way we see programs and risk assessments being created where the facilitators are not at risk, they are not to blame and they are not to be held accountable. 

So here comes Molly Russell and the BBC gives us ‘Molly Russell social media material ‘too difficult to look at’’, it starts with “The 14-year-old killed herself in 2017 after viewing graphic images of self harm and suicide on the platform”, so what ‘platform’ was that? How much was viewed and what time frame was in play? These are the first questions that rise straight from the bat. It is followed by “A pre-inquest hearing on Friday was told not all the material had been studied yet as it was too difficult for lawyers and police to look at for long”, basically at least two years later lawyers and police are unable to view what a 14 year old did, and this does not give us the hard questions? So whilst the article (optionally unintentionally) hides behind “The inquest will look at how algorithms used by social media giants to keep users on the platform may have contributed to her death”, the basic flaw is at the very basic level. How did this stuff get uploaded, why was it not flagged and hw many viewed it, in addition towards the small setting of who was the uploading party? So someone gave a 14 year old the settings and the access to materials that most adults find unwatchable and I think there are bigger questions in play. It is the line “He added certain parts of the material had been redacted and lawyers and police were trying to find out why”, as I personally see it, redaction happens when you need to hide issues and this becomes an increased issue with “the investigation was seeking the cooperation of Snapchat, WhatsApp, Pinterest, Facebook and Twitter, although until recently only Pinterest had co-operated fully”, as well as “Snapchat could not disclose data without an order from a US court, WhatsApp had deleted Molly’s account and Twitter was reluctant to handover material due to European data protection laws, the hearing was told”, On a personal footnote, Twitter has been on a slippery slope for some time, and the deletion by WhatsApp is one that is cause for additional questions. As I see it, these tech giants will work together to maximise profit, but in this, is the death of a person the danger that they cannot face, or will not face in light of the business setting of profit? Even as I am willing to accept the view of “Coroner Andrew Walker said “some or all” of those social media companies could be named as interested parties in the inquest as they would be “best placed” to give technical information for the case”, are they best placed or are we seeing with this case the setting where Social media is now the clear and present danger to the people for the case of extended profits into the largest margin available?

That is a direction you did not see, is it?

We have never seen social media as a clear and present danger, but in case of Molly Russell that might be exactly what we face and there is every indication that she is not the only case and it is possible that the redactions would optionally show that.

Yet in all this, the origin of the materials and how they were passed through social media remains a much larger issue. I wonder how much the inquest will consider that part. You see, for me, I do not care. I am sorry, the picture of the girl in the BBC article is lovely, she is pretty, but I do not care. It is cold, yet that is what it is. In Yemen well over 100,000 are dead and the world does not seem to care, as such, I need not care about one girl, but the setting, the setting I do care about. It is not for the one case, under 5G when the bulk of the people will get drowned in information and all kinds of movies, one girl will end up being between 8 and 20 people. The setting is larger, 5G will make it so ad if you doubt that, feel free to wait and watch the corpses go by.

Suddenly sniping seems such a humanitarian way to pass the time, does it not? 

We need to consider that one process influences another, as such the process is important, just like the processes risk assessors write to lower risk, the stage of what goes one way, also has the ability to go the other way. This translates into ‘What would keep Molly Russell with us?’ Now implies a very different thing, it sets the stage of a lot more. It is not merely who messaged Molly Russell, it becomes what else was send to Molly Russell on WhatsApp, so suddenly the deletion of her account does not seem that innocent, does it? It goes from bad to worse when you consider on how social media links and how links and usage is transferred. Like footprints the links go form one to the other and no one has a clue? It is in my personal view more likely that they all have a clue and for the most it is extremely profitable, Molly Russell is merely a casual situation of circumstance, so under 5G when it is not 1, but up to 20 times the victims, what will happen then?

I will let you consider that small fact, the setting where your children become the casualty of margins of profit, until death deletes the account, have a great day!

 

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September 28, 2020 · 22:41

When is a summit not a summit?

This is a more important question than you might gather. You see we accept the meaning of summit “a meeting between heads of government”, yet the entire virtual thing is not really a setting that most governments are happy with. Any summit allows for the high placed people to have a little tete-a-tete (A face-to-face meeting, or private conversation between two people). In such an event the Dutch King can assure people on clean water projects, all off the books. And plenty of people want them to be off the books. So when I see “Saudi Arabia will hold the scheduled G20 summit online on November 21 and 22” I wonder how effective it will be. And virtual meeting tend to spill, on a global level. In this, when I see “Summit organisers said on Monday they planned to build on the success of the virtual special G20 summit at the end of March and on the results of more than 100 virtual working groups and ministerial meetings”, these will all be on the books and the data would be leaked the moment it is received somewhere. Even as we agree on “The G20 brings together the leaders of both developed and developing countries from every continent”, in a v brutal setting, I doubt that this will be the case. And in this setting the stage we are given with “With its one-year chairmanship of the G20, Saudi Arabia wants to focus on issues such as women and climate protection. The originally planned in-person meeting in Riyadh would have been the first regular G20 summit in the Arab world”, I am actually somewhat doubtful if anything clear will be achieved. When we see “such as women and climate protection”, we accept that in some meetings people will not oppose certain actions when there is a personal conversation between two parties, yet one person in a digital setting is not willing to submit to a decision by himself when the other 19 listen and no agreement will end up becoming a case. As such for this summit, Covid-19 is perhaps the worst thing we could ever face. 

Yet the stage is one that could be powerful, but not for them. If Huawei had prepared correctly, there will be a chance that this is the first summit where it will be completely 5G indoors. You see to weeks ago ‘Zain completes 5G network deployment in Saudi Arabia’ implying that Saudi Arabia is one of the first nations ever to deploy 5G, moreover, the US is nowhere near that setting. This summit could be the first visibility of active 5G solutions, which would be also a first and it is happening in Saudi Arabia, all whilst Sweden in May only had “Sweden’s first 5G base stations in Stockholm, Gothenburg and Malmö”, whilst Denmark gives us “Denmark customers in several Danish cities are now enjoying the benefits of 5G connectivity as Ericsson’s rapid deployment of new 5G”, the list goes on, but in Saudi Arabia we see that Zain completes network deployment, as such there is optionally a need for Saudi Arabia to show off its 5G ability, making it the first nation to have any official stage where we see the power of 5G, the stage is that much bigger. And the people who set the stage on ‘we are going to be there too’ need to realise that they weren’t there, as I expected they are slow, slow by almost 1-2 years and that stage is evolving against those who wanted to play the anti-Huawei card, now they get to see first hand what it is to be second to Saudi Arabia. And it was not a small deployment, we can see that with “Zain KSA’s 5G network now covers 38 cities across the Kingdom” their deployment is a lot larger, it is not three cities in Sweden, or a few suburbs in Denmark and when you consider that only 17 cities in Saudi Arabia are over 200,000, we can see that this is the first true victory of Saudi Arabia over the west, the first time where we see that a lack of evidence and dragging ou heels is going to be the downfall of us. Politicians will make bombastic speeches on how for now 4G is good enough, but they know that they are spilling the BS as wide as they can. Saudi Arabia is now officially a 5G development platform location and as such we would most likely get to see what else is possible and it will be visible first in Saudi Arabia and China. So when is a summit not a summit? When it is a presentation platform, and there is every indication that we are in for a whole range of goodies pithing the next 8 weeks.

 

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September 26, 2020 · 21:34

About that news

Yup, we always have news, news we agree with and news we disagree with, this is not new, this is a mainstream setting. Yet this is not about news that is fake or false. Even if news is completely true, we might disagree because we do not like the subject, or because we differ on the facts that we know and accept. News becomes subjective and optionally not wrong, incorrect or false. It is a setting we all to some degree battle with. Pretty much all sport fans are in the setting when they read the news on Monday morning. So I had to consider a few things when I saw ‘Canada charges man for lying about joining ISIL’ (at https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2020/9/26/canada-mounties-charge-man-with-falsely-claiming-extremism). Now I have no real setting towards it, I do not understand why you would only join ISIL in the mind, but there you have it. On one side we can argue the only the truly unbalanced minds will join a terrorist organisation, implying that any person making it as a false claim is an optional mental health patient. One source, Isabella Frances Teti in 2016 via the presidential leadership academy at Penn State, gives us “ISIL’s ideology represents radical Salafi Islam, a strict, puritanical form of Sunni Islam” 

I do not judge, because I am not islamic, yet I feel that any person who truly believes in Sunni Islam would join the armies of either Saudi Arabia, Egypt, or Syria and from there protect Sunni Islam, I left Turkey out of the equation in light of the fact that they seem to side with Iran (a Shia nation) all the time. In addition, the I personally do not understand the stage of ‘radical Salafi Islam’, as such I feel a little lost, but I do know that going the path of terrorism is not a solution, so there is my view on the stage, yet was a news article and there are other considerations, the more important one comes next

In light of the data

Consider the we see “Police said the criminal charge against Chaudhry stems from ‘numerous’ media interviews in which he described travelling to Syria in 2016 to join ISIL”, so not only did it a little while for the police and intelligence players a while to catch on, this farce had been going on since 2016, so for 4 years we see that the players were not in the know, their intelligence is that flawed the they could not see through the lies? When we see “The Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) said in a statement on Friday the criminal charge against Shehroze Chaudhry stems from “numerous” media interviews in which he described travelling to Syria in 2016 to join the armed group and committing acts of “terrorism”” OK, I agree the there is another way to read this and it had not taken 4 years, yet the setting of ‘“numerous” media interviews’ makes me wonder how many interviews there were and how the information was vetted. From my point of view there is the stage on where Shehroze Chaundry joined, if it included travel from Canada, how was this investigated? So how should we read “charged with a criminal code offence of perpetrating a hoax related to terrorist activity”, as such can I be charged by virtually knocking up a desirable woman? (sorry Natascha McElhone) 

Now, I am not making light of the situation (my desire for Natasha McElhone is real), yet when we see how much is spend on terrorist intelligence and data gathering from 2001 onward, how come it took so long to get a complete picture? 

I understand why there is a charge, especially when I see “the RCMP takes these allegations very seriously, particularly when individuals, by their actions, cause the police to enter into investigations in which human and financial resources are invested and diverted from other ongoing priorities,″ said deGale, commander of an RCMP security enforcement team”, that makes sense, but the stage I see is the timeline between the claim and the discovery. As the article ‘hides’ behind ‘numerous’ as the stage of amount of interviews, which is merely a part in al this. A larger part is the fact that the boy is 25, if this started in 2016, it implies he was 21 at the point, so what travel papers, what modes of transportation and what settings of smuggle were used? How can any person be so in the know that 2-3 interviews would not have brought serious doubt into the mix? And even as I agree with the setting of “The RCMP said it collaborated with several other agencies during its investigation”, which is a proper setting for any investigation, I wonder at what point did Commander deGale become aware that this was not a blood soaking terrorist, but someone with a vivid imagination (which got me to Natasha McElhone), I admit there is nothing wrong with my imagination, other that in some spectral views (the intimate kind), it is massively disconnected from reality, and who does not have that at times?

I myself, would have started by looking into Shehroze Chaudhry’s religious past, talk to his imam on the views that Shehroze Chaudhry might have and if the imam could explain the stage of Chaundry moving towards a strict, puritanical form of Sunni Islam. Let’s be honest, this might hold water in the US, but Canada? The is the place where boys are born wearing hockey skates and where we hear “Darn, I forgot to close the kitchen door, everyone, there is a bear in the kitchen, lets get a pizza, dinner and the bear will be gone in 5 minutes”, I am not stating that strict Sunni Islam is out of the question, but there seemingly would not be any reason to join ISIL (as I personally see it). There was Islamic places of worship all over Canada, it does not mean that there is a strict Sunny Islam all over the place, but as I see it there are a few options before someone go’s towards ISIL, I got all this in 30 minutes, it is not that some results and data would not be shared, yet the timeline seems off (by a lot). 

Still, the stage of perpetrating a hoax towards being a terrorist could only happen in Canada, in the US that person would most likely be in a Black site until December 2037. I reckon Canada saved itself a few bills.

 

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September 25, 2020 · 18:27

The new disaster movie

Yup, we all have seen them, buildings on fire (Towering inferno), silly snappers with appetite (Jaws), Catching your stones (Deep Impact), shaking your love (Earthquake), warming up the neighbourhood (Dante’s Peak), or solving the greenhouse effect (The Day after tomorrow), yes we have more likely than not seen at least one of them, especially when we still have our 2012 diary set to that day in December. And we all love these movies, especially when it is a fight of man (or woman) against nature, the person becomes the automated underdog and we know the we really do not have a chance, especially those who remember Will Yun Lee in San Andreas. Nature is a bitch any given day of the week.

So what happens when we take the premise and really give you a nightmare scenario? The idea popped up when I was looking to the absolute lack of intelligence coming from the Oval Office. So when we got the quote “Well, we’ll have to see what happens. You know that. I’ve been complaining very strongly about the ballots. And the ballots are a disaster”, it was at that moment when I remember a situation in history, you might have heard of it, a guy named Nero and what he decided to do to Rome. It was at that moment when the mind started to think things through.
For your consideration

The setting is given to us in a stage where a person is opted to join Google and offers for sale all his 5G IP (let’s just pretend that is me, it is an ego thing) and it goes better than the main character ever considered. He is promptly paid the initial fee ($25,000,000 post taxation up front) and he hands over the IP, all of it and it is a winner, Google learns where they forgot to look and the main character gets a hell of a lot more than even he considered ($12B pre taxation), so as the IP becomes all Google, the main character heads for a nice early retirement with the largest golden parachute in history. Yet the people around him take notice, Russian organised crime, greed hungry bankers (a reference to HSBC) and they gang up on him, in this even American politicians and members of the CIA take care to snap up what they can and he ends up with nothing. This sets in motion a wave of rage never seen before and the silly criminals are all laughing, because they got the cash. But the creative mind goes to town and vows vengeance. He sets the stage with access to a larger NBC arsenal. Into the stage where he unleashes 13 nuclear sites, most of them near the spaces of the criminals, now suddenly everyone is crying like little bitches and how unfair it all is, but the main character is beyond caring, he sees the ultimate equaliser, it is loss, when the criminals and the corrupt are confronted with the loss of everything THEY care for, the need for a compromise by the criminals and politicians alike. He then sets on a larger binge, even as some think that they have a handle, he starts with the Nuclear bombing of Grand Coulee, Palo Verde, W. A. Parish, Monroe, Bath County, and Peach Bottom. These 6 changes the power options to the largest extent and no matter how great their protection was, having a 2 megaton bomb explode next to it renders such a place decently useless. At the same setting he sets of the 4 bombs near the goons responsible for being playing bad Santa to the main character, taking care of Chicago, San Francisco, San Antonio and Miami, the last to go off in Virginia setting the FBI and the CIA in a stage where they have nowhere to go. It is not the end, the Russian criminals are now in a stage where the law and a few hundred thousand Americans are hunting them down. As the rage in the main character goes on, we see the he had set the stage before the first nuclear bomb went off, where he had ‘liberated’ a few really nasty bedfellows. The bombs made reporting the issue a non-option, but as the nation is learning what had happened, the main character had seen everything taken away from him. He releases the diseases in Washington DC, Boston, Los Angeles and Jacksonville. The panic is now complete, as all plead for a compromise, we see the person put a gun towards his mouth, whispers ‘I will all see you soon’ whilst in the background a mustard gas bomb the size of a fuel bomb goes off, he swallows the barrel and pulls the trigger. We will vows that this will never be a reality, yet when we sit at home and we see ‘HSBC Stock Pummelled by Financial Crimes Report’ with the additional “hit by the fallout from revelations of the bank’s involvement in facilitating criminal activities” which happened three days ago. Crime and opportunity seekers tend to go after the people they think are weak, so what do you think happens when they go after the wrong person? This is not nature that you cannot stop, that opponent is still for the most predictable, it is the person that loses his or her mind, that person becomes unreasonable and unpredictable.

It becomes even more fun when we realise the HSBC was not alone, it is not. The Guardian reported three years ago ‘British banks handled vast sums of laundered Russian money’, am I still dreaming? Greed is like mother nature, it is predictable, and I do believe that insurmountable loss is the only thing the corrupt and the greed driven truly fear. The corrupt tend to think the it is for a greater good, you only have to blow away their children in front of a corrupt person to see their armour dent permanently. In that do you think that a person losing billions will listen to reason? Especially when government officials are involved? You might think that this will never happen, did you? But that is probably what you thought of banks as well. Greed has no limits, neither does rage and in this it tends to be a fight to behold, especially as unbridled rage equals a volcano or a meteorite that is on a path, neither of them ever wavers.

So yes, we can all agree with President Trump on “we’ll have to see what happens”, however do you want to be there when things go ballistic? I certainly don’t, but then this was merely a small movie idea, just like ‘How to assassinate a politician’, which I wrote about in ‘Sweden has it too’ (at https://lawlordtobe.com/2020/08/30/sweden-has-it-too/), I wonder if the people in the Critical Incident Analysis Group – CIAG (University of Virginia) the people who give us “But we are wrong about that. Mass shootings are not unstoppable, and there are people trying to stop them. They are not even inexplicable, because every time Trunk hears of one he understands why it happened and who did it”, I wonder where they were when Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold decided to throw a little party at the Columbine High School on April 20, 1999. 12 students and one teacher did not make it out and there is every indiction that the damage could have been much worse. So what happens when you push a person over the brink, a person that designed a solution the 114 thousand people at Google had not considered. Sundar Pichai might be one of the 100 most influential people n the planet, but no one will blame him for not considering everything. So when the person with the one original idea goes nuts, what will the impact be? I believe it could be the disaster movie of the decade, a step on the chessboard that none of the hundred think tanks in the US can consider, they are not ready for the parameters and in that meantime the most damage is incurred.

Well, that is my sense of humour satisfied, have a nice weekend and sweet dreams, don’t think too much of the power station near you, any of them have at least 4 flaws that they all forgot to report on.

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September 24, 2020 · 18:59

The stage of a game

We all have an idea, some have the idea of a life time, but I cannot make that claim, not because I do not have one, but because I have too many. Yes there is the call to make remasters (Knights of the Sky), there is the call to reinvent the wheel (System Shock by Nightdive Studios), or there is the need to take it to the next level, a next level that was not possible in the past, mainly because technology did not allow for it.

This is how I always saw Pirates (by Sid Meier), there was a chance where Black Flag was a nice tribute, but it was the dawn of PS4 and Xbox One and Ubisoft took a cowardly way to progress a franchise on a lack of factors. So as I initially played Black Flag, my mind went racing. And then I remembered another pirate game, a board game with additional bluff cards. So what happens, when w take the foundation of Black Flag and make it more towards the original the Sid Meier made? The map would be well over 20 times the size, a lot more like the actual map of the Caribbeans in those days, the game would not be some fruity assassin, it would be your version and you get to live the life of a cutthroat, a buccaneer, a privateer, it is up to you, to go from a small skiff to a full-grown galley or slave ship if you are good enough. You see, there is something totally awesome about the way the game Elite Dangerous is designed (by David Braben). There your life does not matter, the game does not care, nor should it and it is time to set that stage to RPG and a pirate RPG makes a lot of sense. You cannot always be a captain, you start as a simple sailor. And in this you could get to a rank if you are good enough. 

So how do we go about it, we tend to look towards the wars of adjustment, yet there are so many wars the were never on the radar, the Dutch independence wars (which took close to 80 years), the age of piracy and lets not forget the Sudan wars (Mahdist War 1881-1899), all places that seem to be forgotten. Who remembers the siege of Khartoum? Some are so set in a stage of winning, the we sometimes forget that half the fun is surviving, so how far will you get? The original siege went on from 13 March 1884 to 26 January 1885, so what happens when you are in charge, how long will you last? Games are so much about winning, the we forget the enduring is nothing less. To make it to the date or even past it would be a victory and a half. It is so American to be the victor the most of them do not understand ‘the Last Samurai’, it is not about winning, it is about not losing, or better stated, the way you live towards the final days matters more, we forgot about that part, didn’t we?

We can set any gaming stage, but it is how we play where we see if we measure up, not if we merely tap the mile poles in a game. I reckon that the achievements made us all a little complacent in games. We can go in any direction, a Hindenburg flight simulator, yet in there we will always come up short against the Microsoft flight simulator, it makes more sense for them to add the Hindenburg. Yet what happens when we turn the script? What happens when we set the stage to a simple thing, what if the player is a no one, yet his/her grandfather was Hades, Poseidon or Zeus? What happens when we map a place like Monte Carlo completely and get him to retrieve a relic that one of the 2,261 millionaires or 50 billionaires has. Is it in a house, is it on a boat or is it somewhere else (like a museum)? We can simplify any game for as much as we can, but in the end we need a healthy story and for the most Wars tend to do that (an unhealthy endeavour if ever there was one). I saw the need of a game on mines, and remembered some bomb defusing game on the CBM-64, so where to go from there? The stage of a game is important, because it sets a vested interest of the gamer, Ubisoft had the down to perfection in Assassins Creed 2 and Brotherhood and after the they lost the plot, they almost won it back in AC4 Black Flag and they definitely got it back in Origins. I would think the a Battlestar Galactica RPG is one the would be favourable with the BSG fans, but not much outside that, the same can be said for Babylon 5, the Star Trek fanbase is huge, so that tends to be a close win any given day of the week, but that does not guarantee a good game, the issue is seen when an idea with a small base entices a large following, that is the stage we all seek. CD Project Red did so with Witcher and seemingly is about to do it again with Cyberpunk 2077.  It is the setting the fuels the story, and the story is everything, I have always believed that, it is the power of an RPG. It is because of the that we see out the great stories (Tolkien), yet I wonder what happens when we try this with Herbert on a larger scale with Dune, not merely on Arrakis, why if all the other places become involved? Perhaps a visionary will see that option with the next Dune movie (2020). In this books have been the strongest source of inspiration, mainly because there are so many of them. Yet most of us go to the same source, why? I agree that it is appealing, but there are so many nations with alternatives. That is something we saw when someone created the Untitled Goose Game, brilliant t in its foundation, as such I wondered if someone had considered the same thing with a cat (Minoes, Annie M. G. Schmidt), a writer the has a following of millions in the Netherlands and Belgium. In that same setting, as Skyrim became such a hit, did anyone ever look towards the famous Spanish Comic books of the Mercenary by Segrelles? It has all the makings of a much larger game, a stage where some are set not in multiple games, but one game with a season pass and several DLC’s.

Then there is the comic hero Rork, by Andreas, or even the Trigan Empire by Don Lawrence. I remember growing up to these stories and the stories of Ravian (Valerian), I am a little surprised that the Trigan Empire never made it to the silver screen or the computer, Don Lawrence has a flair for imagery and the computer always needs this. So what is the stage of a game that will be set next? The is the question and the is where players like Sony and Google/Apple will find themselves. Microsoft might be acquiring the brands (Bethesda), yet they do not have the stage alone and the next innovator might be just around the corner. For me, the idea that the $7,500,000,000 lemon the Microsoft acquired (not Bethesda mind you) would backfire largely and loudly and the would be OK with me.

As I personally see it, Microsoft pissed of true gamers and that group of people doesn’t pull punches when they play with their idols, we do not fault Bethesda in any of this, but aligning with Microsoft was not the best idea, as some say, you are only as good as your next game and Bethesda had plenty of winners, but what is next? We look not merely to the stage of the game, but to the next stage of gaming and I believe that they are too often hiding behind terms like ‘hype worthy games’, yet that is a setting from the mind of a marketing department, they predict that people who play games, will think this is a hype. Yet true hypes come from games the are on the edge of what is possible in gaming, the Witcher 3 is the perfect example there. Cyberpunk is also on the stage, neither of them are Microsoft games. Yet it was brilliant to buy Bethesda, but the also means that those who do not love the Microsoft console will look to the borders and see what else is possible, optionally setting the stage for the $7,500,000,000 lemon, not because of Bethesda, but because gamers have a lack of trust in Microsoft and the fact that some had the numbers that only 1 out of 3 considered the new Microsoft console, the gives me the impression that Microsoft has a much larger problem and buying software houses will not solve it, making visionary games do and the is the lesson Microsoft has not learned. They opened the door for Sony to look what else is out there, what else could become an exclusive and the is where Sony will win and gamers will win. Because it is on the edge of possible gaming where new gamers will be born, new games will be born and at the end of my life I see that there are options coming towards gamers, games the will create new gamers, it will create new creativity and new thinking through gaming and this is a good thing. The simple truth is the there is real gaming beyond Ubisoft and Microsoft, true gaming is never soft, it is challenging and the is where we need to look, we need to look where they are not looking. That is how I got most my IP in several fields. Not by being some bullet point presenter like all the others, but by looking in a direction they decided not to bother looking. That is how most revolutionary IP is created, and it is funny as this is the way Microsoft and Ubisoft started, to look where no was. Too bad they forgot about the part of the equation and I reckon the Sony is waking up to that lesson at present.

 

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September 23, 2020 · 21:58

The power of push

Yup, push is by far the greatest power in levelling the playing field. So when I heard that Bethesda had joined the Microsoft farm. From a tactical point of view, it was a brilliant move, the research a few weeks ago showed that merely 1 in three would select a Microsoft system, 1 in 3 is set to 3 in 9, but now there is every chance that the purchase might give Microsoft a shift towards 4-5 in 9, this is an important shift. We might see that it is a shift that cannot be avoided, but I see it as the opportunity to add to the power of Sony. You see, every RPG game is the same, there is land and there is a story, but what happens when we change that? What happens when the map is not defined by the story? What happens when we set it in two different dimensions? So what happens when the story has a localisation part? What if the map is wherever we need it to be, and we add the story on top? What if we can add the story to the map wherever it is? There is off course the need to transfer the map of the world into a playable map (which is not initially possible), yet the segregation of the two is a first step in a much larger frame, a frame that RPG games have not considered in the past. Yet it is only one of two parts, the second part is the revitalisation of the maps we play on. Yet what happens when the actions of a first game transfer to the second game? I am not talking about merely a change to an area because of actions (Fable), but the stage where the castle we add in the first game will be there in the second game as an existing location. At present, games are designed retroactively to avoid issues (Harry Potter), yet what options come alive when we embrace them? I thought in the direction before, but not to this degree. So consider the stage in a land, as we play the first game we offer quests we offer choices and so forth, but what happens that even beyond what we see in Mass Effect, the impact is not merely people, what happens, when we add and destroy locations, so the second game has the added/removed parts? We have seen shadows of this in games, but not to this extent, it is a larger stage of the accountability of the player. We accept that some will choose to only add locations, but in all this we forget that any RPG can have two sides, so what happens to the power core of any land, when there is no destruction? Bethesda did that quite nicely to leave us the options to save or destroy Megaton, but the is merely a fraction of what is possible, in that game the trade routes and the surrounding locations were not impacting by a shifted economy. So what happens when (in Fallout 4) the vaults become power villages? Each with an economy? That was in the back of my mind as I was looking at the Ultima setting, but that game is not alone. Yet there is no good example, because it has never been done to this degree before and it opens up all kinds of new settings and options in RPG gaming. 

In all this we need to thank Bethesda, no matter what reasons they had (the number 7,500,000,000) is a pretty nice reason, the station is now a larger setting, all kinds of needs to see a larger RPG change and even as Microsoft has the lead with its (as some say) 23 first person studio’s, it was a guy like me on a sofa who came up with the idea that no one ever brought to a game, not to this degree and that is where 23 studio’s came up short and Sony has the option to make a change to gaming, a larger change and that is what they have always done, I wonder how they will do it this time. I hope that we get to teach Microsoft another lesson, they have already been inclined to the fact that not listening to their gamers comes at a cost (only 1 out of 3 decided to buy the next Xbox), but there is every chance they get to learn that money does not solve everything, if you do not have the grasp of those who can create, you have nothing.

The power of push tends to hand a lending hand, but this time not to Microsoft.

 

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September 22, 2020 · 03:16

The house of RPG

Yup, the news only just hit the walls of the internet and a new stage is already underway. This is not about slamming Bethesda, they made a decision and I reckon that 7 billion plus is a nice looking bandaid, but now the house is falling over, because the stage of gaming is set into another realm. Do you think that Sony will like the age of dependancy of Microsoft? So as Bethesda becomes a Microsoft institution, Sony will have to look in other directions. Yes there are good RPG’s out there. There is the Witcher and Cyberpunk is about to arrive, yet the stage is largely untapped and now we see that there is a larger need for an exclusive option for Sony. Lucky for them there might be an option. Richard Garriott created the Ultima series in the early 80’s, yet it was in 1985 that Ultima IV: Quest of the avatar was born. It would take RPG’s to new heights, heights that would not be equalled for well over a decade. Now consider a first person RPG (like Skyrim) with its own rules, its own places, and a storyline that can surpass most RPG games out there. On a map that would be close to 6,000% larger than Skyrim. The map of Britannia (Ultima 1-9) was almost completely designed by the time Ultima 4 was there and the game only got better. The stage would add new dimensions to RPG gaming, something that could be done again in a 1st person setting. It would add new directions in gaming from the original setting, something that had not been done for some time. And then there is the story. Even now I see new stages in shrines and stones that the original never allowed for. There is the stage to combine Ultima 4 and 5 in a much larger setting in sequence in one game. It implies a gaming size that surpasses most RPG’s in hours and way the game is played. The Ultima series set a larger stage with the use of ships and that could remain, so there would be more in the game and more challenges. The largest is to stay original to the Ultima formula and not be swayed towards more of the same. A game that becomes a journey, a journey that we have not seen before and in this Bethesda opened the door by becoming part of Microsoft. I hope that they will remain on the Sony systems, but there is every indication that Microsoft will take a time advantage and use Bethesda games to push people towards their console. That move makes sense because there are plenty of Elder Scrolls and Fallout fans, but that also means that Sony now has the task to protect its core gamers by offering an exclusive brand of their own and that is where we see the value of Richard Garriott optionally go through the roof. I believe that for Richard Microsoft buying Bethesda might seem like the opportunity of a lifetime. No matter how Bethesda phrases it, they are quoted to have stated “all future Bethesda games will release on both Xbox and PC, but their appearance on other consoles will be determined on a “game by game basis”” this is what I would call a dicey setting for Sony, but not all is lost, they could look towards what was and redesign it to the new. Ultima is one of the most likely franchises and the stage is much larger than you think. Microsoft has paid over $7 billion for Bethesda (actually they bought Zenimax Media, the parent of Bethesda), it is a clever move, but if Sony counters it with new RPG, that price might be a little sour, especially if the RPG marketshare brittles away from Bethesda. Microsoft ends up in a stage where the overpaid for a brand that is well worth it, but as Sony counters what was not set to value, the value of Zenimax media will take a bit of a dive. So not only is there an alternative, my mind has already seen the optional design for an adjusted RPG game that would be every bit as satisfying as the original, more so when you consider that the original was never first person, but in my mind I added a stage that the Elder Scrolls never possessed. It is not merely good news for Richard Garriott, it would also be great news for Iolo, Jaana, Julia, Dupre, Geoffrey, Mariah, Katrina and Shamino. They can dust off the weapons they hung up in 1992. And the world would optionally see them back into action as early as 2022 if Sony gets a deal with Richard Garriott sober rather than later, because Microsoft was sly in getting the deal, but was it a clever move? I am not so sure about that. If we are to believe some market research results, only one in three opted for Microsoft, the rest went the way of Sony. I had issues with the results as it was against two systems and Nintendo was left outside the choice, I believe that the Microsoft numbers are not that great to begin with, but that is pure speculation from my side. Will I be proven correctly? 

I actually do not know, but the Bethesda move has set a level of shock on me, that is true enough, yet I have made up my mind, I will not get the Xbox, and if that leaves me without future fallout and elder scrolls games, so be it, yet it took me no more than an hour to set an optional new stage of Ultima, so there is always an option, there will always be RPG, the question becomes will Bethesda be part of that? I actually do not know, there is too much unknown at present.

 

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