Tag Archives: IP

Supporting Sony and Amazon

There is a time when it is not about the dough (aka money), there is a time when it is about the principle of protecting the game and the gamer. And when it is supported by a civic duty to kick Microsoft in the mouth (for civic duty and personal pleasure) the money issue does not add up to much. You see, we can toss and turn over. Few coins now, but when gaming is slaughtered by Microsoft, what does that add up to in the end? 

So in support of what I wrote yesterday in ‘At it again’ I have decided that all gaming idea’s on my site are now free to use for both Sony and Amazon. I do hope that they will give me a bonus if the 50,000,000 consoles for Amazon becomes a reality, but that is not out of bounds is it? So I already created the foundation of an entirely new RPG (as I wrote earlier), so now I need to come up with an idea for something to counter Blizzard. I reckon that the Activision problem will solve itself soon enough.

This is seen in a few articles like ‘CoD Vanguard players expose ‘pay to win’ Double Barrel Blueprint after nerfs’, as well as ‘Call of Duty Acknowledges Problems With Warzone and Vanguard’, a setting that shows that with “The publisher released a statement on the official Call of Duty Twitter account, acknowledging the struggles these games have had, and its intention to move things in the right direction. Activision plans to fix as many of these issues as quickly as it can”, this indicates that the troubles brewing are not resolved, more important, they have been going on for some time and that tends to be disastrous. Even as game makers ‘hide’ behind ‘best selling in the US’ we see another flavour of “most powerful console”, which was done away easily enough by Nintendo and its “weakest of all consoles” to bash it, surpass it in sales in almost half the time. Now with Microsoft buying software houses for a total of $37,000,000,000 (most of it for Blizzard and Activision), we are introduced to “The bigger worry is that Sony is no match against its far-larger rival as gamers look beyond consoles” (source: Reuters), yet but the statement is not correctly given, is it? With “as gamers look beyond consoles”, we see the article catering to Microsoft and its advertisement budget, but the truth is that gamers always look beyond consoles, they look for the best gaming experience and so far Microsoft has disappointed too much and too often, as did Ubisoft, as did a few others. Looking beyond consoles makes sense, there is a case for both the Google Stadia and Amazon Luna, but Google does not develop games. As such the Amazon Luna has the better advantage and handing them (as well as Sony) free access to my IP works for me as a gamer and works for gamers in total. And I have always been protective of gamers. Not to mention that there is a surprisingly satisfying feeling if my RPG idea gains traction, when Microsoft Paid $7,500,000,000 for Bethesda, only to see that Sony and Amazon can bring a new competitive RPG at a fraction of the cost, not to mention the undisclosed option for Amazon to sell an additional 50,000,000 (or more) consoles on an idea Microsoft never saw coming in the first place. The idea to surpass Microsoft left, right and centre on their shortsightedness is massively satisfying and as I am considering now a Diablo like game where the stage is a combined Gauntlet like game, as well as a first person action slice and dice game, we see (in the earliest stage) that they got an additional lemon at $27,000,000,000. A stage that makes me laugh. Microsoft has the ‘lets throw money against the shortcomings we have’ and I countered it by handing over IP to Sony and Amazon that is new, fresh and optionally grows to be the equal of what they paid for at top dollar. It might not make me rich (never a priority to me), but I can fall asleep with the biggest grin knowing I pulled the carpet from under the feet of one of the biggest software companies on the planet. 

So when we look at “Microsoft will be looking to gradually lure PlayStation gamers to its own console with new content down the line.” We see subterfuge. And I feel 98.3245% certain (roughly) that my creativity can trump their subterfuge. So when we see the two parts namely “the huge bet on Activision signals the company is serious about building a virtual world beyond a console or device”, as well as “Sony is doubling down on games exclusive to PlayStation. It may have the air of a David and Goliath match-up, but Microsoft looks to be on a whole other level.” We see the courtesan move towards advertisement. Consoles have for the longest time aimed for exclusives, the Sony exclusives have proven to be exquisite masterpieces again and again. You see, THEY might tell you that gamers want “a virtual world beyond a console or device”, yet it is not gaming, it is a world of cheats, cheating and hacks and in that world there is a larger benefit for the maker to set the ‘pay to win’ environment by selling weapons and other micro transactions to fill the war-chest of its board of directors. At some point (sooner than anyone expects) the gamer will have had enough and dump these games. With the Sony games, with gaming on a console, the only cheat you get is on yourself.  But that part will not make the media, will it? Gamers will too often feel the need to chill and play the story, enjoy the world they are in, a setting that the Microsoft games will not offer. They will make lofty promises like “Activision has announced the worst punishment yet. In short, if you’re caught cheating in Call of Duty: Vanguard, you can be banned from every CoD game in the franchise.” A statement made in
November 2021. This in response to “Numerous players reported running into blatant cheaters on Vanguard on the very first day of the release.” And no one is asking the question why cheating was made so easy, so easy that it was ready on the first day of release. But I cannot find any media asking that part, and then the response ‘you can be banned’, not ‘you will be banned’, a subtle but unmistakingly difference that they are considering action, not promising that action will be taken and when the gamers get a few more of those issues, they will walk away. A good spending of 27 billion. So whilst we cannot deny that there will be a desire for virtual world combat, until you deal with the cheaters that world will be as appealing as a tax form. In this with the cheater active from day one, it seems to me that a lot more fixing is required. Darn and I was having so much fun surpassing Microsoft with creativity, all whilst common sense might defeat them before that. Because in the end it will be common sense. The common sense that gamers want to have fun, they want to exchange blows on an honest field so that s gamers they feel enabled and the last time I checked in a game filed with cheaters no one feels enabled, merely insulted and attacked on a false premise. 

So I do not disagree with Reuters on “Microsoft looks to be on a whole other level”, especially when that is set to the stage that the Microsoft level is an inferior one. Now, you are free to disagree, but consider if you go into a virtual world and there are a dozen cheaters waiting for you, how much fun will you have as a gamer? Not that much I reckon.

Enjoy the day! I am going to mull the new Diablo station a little more, the idea is taking form, but I do know it will not be easy to offer a Diablo alternative, that franchise is a really solid one. 

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After a fact to begin a fact

Yes, nice and cryptic. Not intentionally, but that is how I roll. But before I get into that, I promised to give something tomorrow, but as it is about 0:01, tomorrow is now. So here goes. As I was (trying to) being clever, I considered that any off looking equipment will get caught soon. It shouldn’t but that is no guarantee. So I needed the valve to disappear. Now, one thing I learned that security staff tends to be lazy. Perhaps technically unobserving is a better term, they are not stupid, so something that looks off will get noticed quickly, unless it looks the same. So I can be as clever as I can, but the valve might get noticed. So as I was considering options I remembered the colour picker app. An Android app that uses the camera to scan a colour and translate it to an RGB tint. So there was a solution, but there is no way we can have all these colours in stock, so I created an adjusted primer spray paint. Primer is white, so I added the design of a dial at the bottom (see below).

Now we can pick the colour, adjust the 10 scale Red-Yellow-Blue-Black dials and insert the pigment, a few good shakes (5-15 seconds) and the colour is ready. Now we apply the paint and the device and its band will look as painted as the pipes are and now, the chance of overlooking is massively larger. So that part was solved and I created a new piece of IP in the process. So spray-paint makers might find this approach an interesting twist. Instead of 187.4 colours, you have one article and let the user fix what they need. No hassle, no ‘not in stock’ issues. All in a days work.

Anyway, what set all this off is that I was day dreaming (at 22:00). And suddenly I had an idea towards the Exhaurire Vitam concept, how it all started. How Anubis and Hades meet each other. All because of a young girl (9) who gets abducted by molesters and her Dachshund (which I affectionately name Kransky) ends up in nowhere land, right in front of the one person that the molesters would never have wanted involved and the carnage is one they will remember for all days. These is a lot more, but let’s not quench your thirst too much at present. 

So as Anubis owes Hades and he repays by offering a gift that is useless to him, but he knows that it will benefit Hades, so he repays in this way and opens a door that will shiver and shake New Orleans in ways you might have read earlier. A setting I never thought of, I never contemplated it. It merely came to me, that and the rest of the settings are weird, close to a dozen pieces of new IP, no idea where it is coming from and when it does not impact my IP (5G, TV, selected IP) I will make it Public domain, perhaps I can actually restart some economies making me more electable then whatever is in political office at present. Yet, feel free to ask Meng Po for an opinion and a cup of soup, it’s free. 

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Freeware vision

Yes, it is time to give something away. The story I have here appeared in my mind today and as I am already upgrading two scripts and adding to a third, I am stretched too thin. As such I am putting it here and whomever want to use it, feel free to do so. The story is inspired by a book I read in secondary school. It was written by the Dutch Journalist Marga Minco called ‘The Bitter Herb’ which she wrote in 1954. I had the book on my exam list and I had to recite parts of the book and explain the book on my Dutch oral exam. For some reason the story played in the back of my mind as I was tinkering on something else.

Act 1
There is a programmer, a simple guy. Works hard does his job and delivers. He does so for years and at one time he is made redundant. He applies for jobs, he programs at home to keep his mind sharp and on day, he gets an idea, he programs it and he works it and it becomes a program. It is now 4 years since he was made redundant. He goes to a few companies and presents a mock up and one of the companies informs him that they are interested in buying the program. It is on route to that meeting that his former boss bumps into him, trying to convince him to come back, he turns him down and walks on. It is less than 5 minutes later that he is intercepted by goons and taken to a location. The goons beat him up until he signs the idea over. He them goes to court, it does not take long but the papers are set against him and the case is thrown out.

Act 2
He moves to another place, works and now has a decent income, he programs in other areas and he is making a decent income. He sees newspapers on a new venture making millions. He there sees his former boss, a third person that looks like the judge he faced and a second person who he does not know, but the article stated that he was from the firm interested in his invention. His blood starts to boil, his anger turns to rage. It is that night that he is intercepted (again) by a Russian group of people. They beat him up until he signs papers, he is knocked unconscious and the darkness seeps in. The next morning he walks on the street, beaten and he sees the Russian, laughing offering him a drink. He walks over and states “Watch the news prostitutski, soon you will wish you were dead instead of burying your loved ones” with that he walks away towards the train station.

Act 3
It is now three years later, a man walks on the street. It is a careful stride. He looks around and he moves into a bus with an elongates backpack. He sits in the back until he gets to a location just out of town. He gets off the bus, and takes a small walk. He goes towards the waterline and he looks around, there is no one there. He opens the backpack and assembles a long range rifle and adds the silencer. He looks at the scope, he uses a distance pointer. It states 486 meters. He looks through the scope adjusts as he was taught. He sees the scene, a girl 13-14 years. He sees the man, the judge and all the wealth that is around him, and as the girl blows out the candles he pulls the trigger, her chest erupts, causing instant death. The man carefully disassembles the riffle and he leaves the area. We see a new field a new street, a new stage. The man walks into an apartment building. He had taken time to get familiar. He walks up and at the top floor and removes the lock, he superglues a lock to one eye of the lock holes and when he closes the lid it will look just like there was a lock there. He moves slowly to the edge. He sees the window and there we see him setting up the rifle again. It is the second man, the man from the firm. We see him next to his pregnant wife, they are smiling and they are entertaining. He looks breath in and pulls the trigger, her head blows to the back, instant death and as such, the baby dies too. The man is in utter fear and screams, all the people in there start to scream, but the man does not care and walks away. He moves to another location and uses a burner phone. “Hello? Andy here”, he answers simple “Two dead, one to go. I will see you soon!”, he does not listen to the screams and the pleas. He ends the call and destroys the phone. He moves back to the other town, where the Russians got to him. There he does not dally. He walks up to one of the mans houses, they are in the back of an expensive house. The Russian states “Our benefactor. Welcome!” It was the last thing he would state, the man takes out a gun with silencer and kills all five, he leaves no one alive and leaves. 

It is not long thereafter when Russians catch up to him, they grab him, hit him and blindfold him. They take him to a boat and sail off. One Russian states. We do not care why you did it, you should always share what you have and we do not care for your tactics. They add weights to his ankles and throw him overboard. The man drowns soon thereafter.

Act 4
The man is in a dark place, it all looks black and grayscales. He walks on and what is not a man walks up to him. Hello, you are welcome here. I saw your stage of vengeance and have an option for you. For all the dead you set in the right pit, for all the people that advance as demons, you will get a bonus. That or you get thrown into the pits, but I believe you could be more. So what will it be. The man thinks for a moment and agrees. 

It is now some time later, but time moves differently in the place he is in. The people are brought in and the man does as good a job as he could. He got his share of bonus and at times got nothing, the rules are clear and strict. It is that day when a new group of people come in and he does the same routine, the same story and the same route. His people go into pits one and two, this time he halts and he notices one person, the Russian boss who dumped him in the sea, he grabs him. The Russian does not beg, does not plea and suddenly the Russian recognises him “You?”, the man looks at him and states “You are worth less then nothing to me, but if you survive, you will make me rich”. He goes towards the third pit “survive or die” and throws the Russian in. He then looks at the people. You have no value, your value come if you survive. The people shudder in fear as the see wave after wave attacking the Russian. They are dragged along to the first two pits and thrown in. The man who was robbed again and again was now deciding the hell of the people who robbed him and people just like them. He now only awaits the arrival of his former boss and the universe would once again make sense. 

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The racing brain

It happens to some of us, the brain shifts into overdrive and will not stop. For me it happened this morning as I was contemplating a few things I saw on YouTube. There are so many expectations, so many people heckling non released products that I wonder where they are coning from. Is their expectation of games that low? I heckled Ubisoft (for good reason) but I also gave them credit when credit was due (and they did several good things). So as we see the next batch of comic book heroes games, I wonder what happened to the old classics. Now I am not stating that they need to be remastered but they could be revamped into a new coat. So let’s take a gander on some of these

1. Commandos
This game was awesome, especially 1 and 2. But instead of doing the same thing again, we could consider redoing the game based on Miss Peregrine’s home for peculiar children (by Ransom Riggs) and make the game more accessible for the younger players. Maps where you can release the birds that create the time loops and those you can visit to gain more peculiar children. 

2. Suspended
Basing an existing game in a new jacket on a book is not new, it has been done before. Does that make it a bad idea? I do not believe it to be the case, yet how many games are based on a game? When I grasp back to my first week with the CBM-64, I ended up buying three games. The Microsoft Flight Simulator, the very first one with 4 maps and a manual that looked like a novel ($199), the second game was Loderunner (I never stopped loving the original) and the third is todays discussion ‘Suspended’ by Infocom. It was one of the hardest games I ever played in those days and I was unaware that it was one of the hardest games to do, even by Infocom standards. But the setting is actually decently unique, so what happens when you control Iris, Whiz, Waldo, Auda, Poet, and Sensa? What happens when you see what they see? What happens when you take control of a global management system? What happens when the earthquake comes and you have to get things back to some level of normal? Not an easy task is it? 

3. Knights of the Sky
There has been an avid following of Flight Simulators, there is no denying this and those who want to go up against Microsoft, good luck. One does not cross near perfection, yet that does not mean that there aren’t stages where we can become active. In 1990 Microprose did a swell job of introducing WW1 to the gamers and there was a stage where we would welcome the simplicity of a Sopwith Camel. The game also allowed you to choice either the Germans or one of the Allies, a setting that was pretty unheard of and I do get it, there is nothing novel about the resolution of the CBM-Amiga, yet this on a PS5 would be a lot different, that and the fact that the PS5 disc could contain the entire WW1 map from France to Germany as well as have the updates in place for every year of that war. 

We are so overwhelmed by console shooters of mach speed vehicles, we forgot the reality of WW1 where the maximum speed was no more than 180km/hour. It is not specifically the game and stage, it is the realisation that we look at making things fast, we forget that there is still a load of thrill and suspense in a stage where things were not as fast as they could be. In this there is a whole league of Flight Simulators out there that are often forgotten. Yet, we should avoid to redo the same wheel. Knights of the Sky is 30 years old, so it feels that the stage can now be shown more like it was. There are some remakes and some of them are finding their way into the Apple store, we can now get arcade precision and even better graphics on a tablet and it is a great idea, the more people and game developers are exposed to those titles, the larger the chance of an actual new and innovative game will be set upon us all. Even as games like Midwinter are now surpassed by what Ubisoft offers in Far Cry 3+, 

4. Manhunter New York
Even if the location is not important and should consist of a new location, the game spoke to the imagination of gamers, even now in Abandonware the game scores 4.9/5, high praise and the stage of the story has options. One of the games that Sierra on Line would produce in the 80’s and the ten years that followed it. King’s Quest, Space Quest, Manhunter, Police Quest, and Leisure suit Larry, all games that spoke to the imagination of the gamers and what is important here? The story, the story pulled the gamer in and even as we not have more graphic games, more direct control and several other active elements, the stories were often not equalled and that is a shame, the stories were good (for the era), so why do we see a lack of stories in too many games? 

I mentioned before that one of my very first games was Suspended (Infocom), they also made Starcrossed that I saw much later in my gaming days. It would be surpassed by ‘Rendez Vouz with Rama’ and that made sense, the CBM-64 is no match for a decent PC with a CDROM drive. And now? That is beside the point that games like Wishbringer (1985) are seemingly forgotten. This is important, because we all (me included) seem to steer to the games that tickle us, but there is a whole generation behind us that is forgotten, a stage of gaming younglings that  seem to get pushed into the Epic foundations of Fortnite, why is that? There are decades of games out there that could see a new coat, a new interface a graphic world and a stage that parents have no issues with for the gaming not blood driven youthful masses. It matters because it is the one place that is almost completely owned by Nintendo, kids go there because there is no alternative and it seems to me that Sony (Amazon too) need to wake up to that small gemstone of information. 

The stage is filled with options that are ignored, forgotten and discarded, but there were real treasures there and the makers need to consider that these abandoned IP could use a new paint, some additional bells and whistles and it will fuel the imagination of the gamers of tomorrow. Most of them are at present getting trained to become the Navy Seal graduating class of 2029. There is more to life (yes, I will admit to this). 

And this is all based on forgotten and/or discarded IP. And whilst I am typing this, I wonder what happens when we add to the stage with new IP? IP set to younger players, and a stage is given where the player is given their chance towards immortality. To do this the player will have to set traps in tombs (a cross between Infocom: Infidel and Dungeon keeper), the longer the sarcophagus is not transgressed upon, the larger the time reward gets to be. So consider a stage where you get to ‘design’ traps in graves and pyramids and the longer they stay out, the more power you get and the larger the reward ends up being. The stage is not that simple. You see, you design the traps in the time they are build, yet over time technology advances, so you need to go old school there. And every time you redo this, you get the chance to improve on what was and create a new level of protection, just an idea that popped into my head. 

You see that new IP is easily created, but to make it worthy for a game is not stated here, it requires the creative soul to design it. And am I wrong? Consider that Magnetic Scrolls is releasing remastered versions of their games 30 years after initial release. I reckon that they are seeing what I was seeing as well. There is a $135,000,000,000 spending on games on an annual foundation. Why should you not gain some from that granary? It is open season and when you are in lockdown you can stare at the ceiling or find a way to grab some of that cash, it is up to you.

Enjoy Sunday!

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Pushing envelopes without a stamp

Yes, we all have moments where we are in a stage that is not quite the ‘Eureka!’ Point, but it pushes us, we feel that there is more and even if we do not see the complete road, we can see that there is are side streets that could be profitable for the soul (money is optional). I just had another of these moments. I was watching some ‘Harry Potter collector’ video on Youtube. It was a nice video and this one was about a Butter-beer place in New York. Something hit me, something was nagging in the back of my mind and it suddenly dawned on me. I set part of that route in ‘The other path’ (at https://lawlordtobe.com/2021/05/20/the-other-path/) a story I wrote on May 20th this year on new IP I was considering and exploring.  It was not complete and there were gaps, but the foundation was there, then the Butter-beer place showed up and I saw the Harry Potter newspapers on tables and my mind went into ‘wonder mode’. So what if places all over the world had a setting where the table was also the information provider? The table was not some monitor or TV, but in conjunction with the IP I created became an information provider that could be personalised in many ways. Setting aside languages, colouring and size, we had an information provider that could be nearly EVERYWHERE. And it would not be expensive. It would allow new channel creators, new information bases and whilst the ACCC is so much about their friends, their friends would be removed from the equation. I came up with the framework that makes a person like Rupert Murdoch obsolete. He became obsolete as his age surpassed the age of Egyptian mummies. Just like George Randolph Hearst became obsolete, time caught up, it is merely that simple. So now I am in a stage where I can give the bird to all the self inflated Rupert Murdoch wannabe’s on the planet and I gladly do, the bulletpoint managers who were clueless and I am setting the stage for all independent developers to become the next big thing.
All you need is in these two stories, if you are clever enough you could there without ever buying a stamp. If you are clever enough, you will be in a stage to get a great advantage, I leave it up to you and after a year someone big can buy you out for a lot of cash. I do not care, I have close to half a dozen other IP ready, there is only so many roads one person can walk at the same time and when the technology comes and some will realise that I wrote about it first, they will all want a piece of something that is public domain, the greedy never learn and now the innovative players will pass them by giving them the finger. Justice come in strides and exposes the wannabe’s as the losers they always were.

A stage found in a place that was open to the public, it tends to be that simple at times. 

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Powers that were

Consider the stage we are in now and the stage we were in once. We were driven by stories, stories with a centre of truth, but what that truth was, we might never know. Even now as we try to set the new stage to the current state we know about, we are almost desperate to see ourselves better than we are. So what if we go back?

In the age of Ancient times there were the gods, the Greek gods for one. They once made weapons of immense power, Devine weapons. Not because they were simply better to anything we hd then, but because they had an element that is not available now, it never was. The tinkerer (smith) in that company was Hephaestus, he had enough for 5 weapons, 5 choices imbued with that one element making the weapon  hundred times more powerful than anything available at that time. One already existed, the hammer of Hephaestus. It is the weakest of them all, but it already existed. A hammer that can hit any object in exact precision in angle and power. It could also hit another person with the strength of a thousand sledgehammers, it allowed Hephaestus to do what needed to be done. The five weapons were tremendous and Christianity borrowed from these ideas, but they were never theirs and whatever they claimed was nowhere near as powerful. So when we hear speak people about weapons of power, do they know what they mean? The third most powerful weapon is supposed to be the trident of Poseidon, the most powerful one is the bolt of Zeus and the stories seem to collaborate that, but why? Because he is king of the gods? The second most powerful one is the one you might not expect, it is the bident of Hades. Yet why are these weapons so powerful? A man named Erich von Daniken looked into this for years and wrote a massive amount of books on the subject. He started in 1968, I became aware on his books somewhere in the 70’s, in total he sold well over 60 million books spanning over 30 languages. Even as some people (to some degree me too) thinks he goes over the deep end, there is something to be said on this and my book (still writing it) touches on that part. So when the Ancient Greek gods came here (after they made a mess in Persia, now Iran), they had technological advantages, for reasons not that much, but they did. 

They brought the secrets of Celestrium, and more important, they allegedly had access to terahertz radiation devices , a substance we are only now considering to have medical implications. In 2019 Joo-Hiuk Son, Seung Jae Oh, and  Hwayeong Cheon found that ”Terahertz radiation has significant potential in medical diagnosis and treatment because its frequency range corresponds to the characteristic energy of bio molecular motion. Advantageously, terahertz-specific low energy does not cause the ionisation of biomolecules” We can speculate on how healing that source is, but it would seem that. Person in those days could not be hurt by arrows, spears and swords. Yes, this is off the deep end, but we are finally looking at the stories and that is not the only part, the same application on observation and identity safety goes on a much longer road, and we have not even scratched the surface. 

It is George Alexander Gazis who wrote “Homer and the Poetics of Hades”, he gives us Hades as a place of darkness, where even the gods cannot see, and from this he concludes that “Hades remains impenetrable even to the omnipresent Muses”, a point never made in the poem. “In this sense,” he adds, “life and death are equated with seeing and been seen or not seeing and been invisible”; hence, the negative epithets characterising Hades. But this is a common conceptual metaphor, and death is also presented as a journey.” Hades has a landscape as well, and it is shut in by gates, features Gazis does not explore and why would he? Yet now we know that the application of TeraHertz technology would have setbacks, It was not bout the dark, it was about what non-TeraHertz technology would not be able to see at that point, not for 4000 years. 

Is this all speculation? Yes it is, but so are the writings of Homer and Aristotle, we merely accept them as they are old, I wonder what they never considered because no one would in those days, and until recently no one had reason to, yet the clues were always n front of everyone, and I am merely speculating, yet if someone looked at specific maps of what is now Iran, if they were able to look at rock pressures, someone might notice an almost perfect square with sides that were about 3500 metres each side. Did anyone make any connection to the this sizeable amount of pressure and the Ancient Greeks? So what is this about?

As I stated, it is all speculation, but I am taking another gander at the classical writings and the paths no one walked on, because we only now start to get access to the technology that alters the view we now have and that is also a setting we need to have for all new IP, games, movies and TV series. Most of the writings point towards Hades and how he is the weakest of the brothers. Now we see an optional path where he is the loner, the most secretive and optionally right behind Zeus in strength. Does that not alter the perception of a lot of writings? And when we see that some of these speculations do have an acceptable setting of alleged truth, what happens after that? In a factual life we need to get evidence, but the creative IP has a few additional paths at their convenience and they merely need to be original. 

The powers that were can imbue the powers that want to be, they only need to grasp what is readily available out there. 

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The choices made for us

Yes, that happens. It happens all the time. We vote and the elected people make choices for us. We support charities and that allows them to save who they think are important. These are choices that happen, to some degree with our consent. In the other hand we are confronted with choices made FOR us, without permission and without consent. And there the problem starts, we cannot make all our decisions and all our choices, in this we also set a larger stage that we can never control, and that is where the issues begin. 

In the first stage we see ‘Covid misinformation on Facebook is killing people’, the article by the BBC (at https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-57870778) gives us “The White House has been increasing pressure on social media companies to tackle disinformation”, which is nice, but utterly useless. As I see (as a Republican) that there can never be freedom of speech without accepting the accountability of what we say. To put it mildly, I wrote ‘The accountability act – 2015’ On June 4th 2012, almost 10 years ago I saw the solution that all the high and mighty lawyers are steering clear from. My thoughts never became reality, and you might wonder why not? When we see today at the BBC “Earlier on Friday, White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki said Facebook and other platforms were not doing enough to combat misinformation about vaccines”, I am stating that people like Jen Psaki are wording the thoughts of people who are at times too stupid for everyones good. We need to accept that solutions like Facebook are mere publishers here, the people uploading their views are to be held responsible for what they say, but politicians for well over a decade refused to do so. I get it that there should be freedom of speech and freedom of expression, but in that same setting those freedoms need to be enriched with  accountability. 

In the second stage we see ‘Under the skin of OnlyFans’, also by the BBC (at https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-57269939). There we see “Soon Tina was making $2,000 (£1,450) a month and able to rent her own flat. But in January, a hacker seized control of her account, blackmailed her for $150 and uploaded streams of IS terror videos”, as such we see “one of the million content creators on OnlyFans”, yet how much is revealed on the terrorist that resorted to blackmails. So the BBC and others are all about the OnlyFans part, but only (in passing) the BBC mentions blackmail and terrorism. So how much is there on that hacker and has that person been arrested yet? We can optionally see that Tina takes accountability for HER material, but who holds the terrorist accountable? 

Then there is level three, which comes from the Dutch NOS. There we see (at https://nos.nl/nieuwsuur/artikel/2389685-zo-opereert-de-digitale-maffia) ‘This is how the Digital Mafia operates’. The articles gives us “We were able to listen in on a piece of negotiation between a Dutch security company and a hacked company. The online criminals are so professional that the negotiators work in team services. They even seem to use scripts during the negotiation – as if you were calling a customer service”, they even give a video on how a ransomware kill chain is operated by seven different groups, and the US president Joe Biden is all about blaming social media, instead of hunting down these digital criminals with optional targeted kill orders. 

As I personally see it, our freedom has been given away hiding behind ‘freedom of speech’ posters, and the freedom of expression for digital criminals is to get every penny they can get. No one is held accountable for their actions. A choice made FOR us, against us and in opposition of our safety and freedoms. 

So how does that sit with you?

Yes, we might see one side of the table, all whilst the other side is covered with a table cloth. And the Dutch version matters, in this age, after criminals executed the crime journalist Peter R. De Vries the public might get angry enough to force the issue and that gives us a new stage, the dozens of criminals feeling safe in the Netherlands might suddenly lose that freedom of action because of the acts of a person allegedly acting for (or in response) Ridouan Taghi. I reckon that it will take time to ascertain one or the other, but the public does not wait, they will act in loud response and that might be just the coin toss a few people are hoping for and especially the digital crime circles dreads, they are all about white collar crimes, all whilst the response is well above their heads and others will respond in kind, even criminals will react, all to push the limelight away from them. This is the response we get to have in a world of ‘freedom of speech’ without accountability.

In a world where no one wants to pay the bill for what they caused. This might be most visible on Covid and disinformation, but soon enough the Trumpists (drummers as well) and others will see the consequence of action without accepting the liability attached to it. Even now as life in the US becomes close to unliveable, we see that politicians are allowing QAnon speakers to take the limelight. You think the age of Donald Trump is over? Think again, as long as there is a lack of accountability is continuing this wave keeps on going on. 

And the opposition? That is easy, it will not take too long, but the intelligent people could pick up their IP and take it to Canada, the UK and the EU, when that happens and the US Credit card is considered too overdrawn, the stage of life in the US will soon change and not due to a heatwave. In 2021 $15 billion in drugs patents will expire, the year after $36 billion more, and over the next 5 years the US will see well over $20 billion in technology patents expire and now consider that an estimated $25 billion in patents move somewhere else, an economy with an immediate write-off that goes optionally beyond $100 billion lost. Now consider what happens to your credibility when your collateral is diminished by 100 billion? The US might need a new song, one that is different from blaming big tech, they are keeping the US economy alive. All drenched in choices made for us, made for us all. Yet how many of them were made FOR us? And this is not merely about the US, when they go under so does Japan and soon thereafter the EU as well. Do you still think that freedom of speech is the real saviour? It is a one sided coin of a larger stage that ignores the other side of that very same coin. 

Good luck!

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A quarter of a century later

There is a side in me that yearns for all the old games, the games that emphasised on fun. Don’t get me wrong I love some of the games that are new Ratchet and Clank, Aragami, Sniper Ghost warrior, AC Origins, God of War and there are several others. Yet there are moments that I am driven towards the old games. Portal (the interactive novel), Millennium 2.2, Mass Effect, Masters of Orion and lately I have been thinking back to the game Ascendancy, a game 25 years old, yet it was an amazing forward thinking game in those days and I wonder why it was never released as a remaster, or even to some degree overhauled for today’s systems. If Cloud gaming is the wave, then these players need all the fun games that they can get and so far it seems awfully quiet. In part this is to be understood, as I stated in the past, until there is a proper 5G in place Cloud gaming is optionally nice to have, but without 5G it will not go anywhere fast, if even at all. Yet to get a library of good games, you need to start now to have a decent calibre of offers when it matters. And it is important to cover the foundations, in this (with no attack on that player) to rely on Ubisoft to cover your bets is massively stupid. No matter how good the coming games are, when the next game is as glitched and as buggy as AC Valhalla, you endanger your hardware. The ages of CBM-64, Atari ST and CBM Amiga have created some of the most amazing gaming journeys, a lot of it is no longer protected IP and using that foundation to create gams will be a great start in having a larger library, moreover, these games have some limitations, and even when upgraded, they might not take that much on the download. The difference between two streamers, one with Ubisoft and one with Ubisoft and half a dozen original and optionally exclusive games will give us that the one with the exclusive games will win, when the hardware is too close together, the one with the large exclusive (providing the are good) wins. We saw this in PlayStation 2 versus Xbox, Playstation 3 versus Xbox360 and PlayStation 4 versus Xbox One and that list goes on, Playstation won every time and only in the Xbox 360 age did Microsoft catch up to a decent degree, only to lose it again in the Xbox One age. In streaming Google Stadia, Amazon Luna and Netflix it will be the games that decide on the winner, giving Google at present a distinct disadvantage over Amazon Luna. Netflix is one boasting its arrival, yet nothing is known, so they are an unknown for now. 

So as we consider Ascendancy, a game I enjoyed for years, the stage has one weakness, the AI in the game was overly bad and that requires an upgrade, but that is the only large part, and even then the game scored 90%+ on several formats, A score Ubisoft had not seen since Tom Clancy’s Splinter Cell Chaos Theory (2005), Which is not entirely fair, Metacritic gave AC Origins a score of 81, I myself thought it was worth somewhere between 88%-93%. And as I replay the game, my score remains. The game has one flaw, or perhaps a wrong choice, but that is all and my view is not important. The fact that there is a massive limit to really good games is why the streamers need to open their search and they need to make sure that they have a decent library of games. Both Nintendo and Sony showed that it was essential one is number one and the other one surpassed the most powerful system in the world with the weakest system around. I believe that the evidence is clearly out there. As such games like Ascendancy can grow a larger base, especially if the game makers take care in what was and what could be. So far I have seen that option (or opportunity) with half a dozen games, a few movies and a TV series (self made), but in all this, the staggering push for ‘new and cheap IP’ by the makers, all whilst one corner away, there is a pile of good IP, all ready to be chiseled up into fabulous remasters and that is before you realise that a lot of these games come from an age before the gamers of today were born. Now, I do not know if there is IP on the following two titles, but the Dreamcast also gave us two titles that were just too much fun and great looking, they can even stand up to todays games on PSX4 and Xbox One.

The titles were Wacky Races and Fur Fighters. By the way, the PSX2 version of Fur Fighters is a joke, but the Dreamcast version was amazing, why it was forgotten we might never know but that stage could reinvent itself with cloud gaming. With 4 players in that arena, the one with the great games, great exclusive games mind you will take the cake and they will win that race, and when you consider that being number one in that race will grab you more players and more visibility from the moment you are that number one, that is how you win a race, wacky or not. So I will look and see what Amazon, Google and Netflix are up to (I am already disregarding Microsoft, as they seemingly have an Azure preference of taste), there is no way to tell how this ends, but in this the Verge gave us a few months ago ‘Google is shutting down its in-house Stadia game development studios, which is a choice, but it is one that could serve both Amazon and Netflix to a degree that could bank them pole position. Time will tell.

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Big Oil in the family

We all have moments where we look at the sky and roll our eyes. Today was my moment when I was treated (by the Guardian) to ‘Big oil and gas kept a dirty secret for decades. Now they may pay the price’, in this I start with “Was it really a secret?” You see, we all want to blame someone else for the problems we helped create. And  when the (what I reverently call) the stupid people are bringing about “An unprecedented wave of lawsuits, filed by cities and states across the US, aim to hold the oil and gas industry to account for the environmental devastation caused by fossil fuels – and covering up what they knew along the way”. You see that is is merely one element of stupid. I gave light to ‘Uniform Nameless Entitlement Perforation’ on December 10th 2020 (at https://lawlordtobe.com/2020/12/10/uniform-nameless-entitlement-perforation/), I emphasised on a report by European Environmental Agency (EEA) where. We see that 147 industrial plants create 50% of the pollution, the media seemingly ignored the report I have not see the media go out and bash the nations for these 147 plants, we even had a joke (read: BBC article) by Tim McGrath on how the “Global ‘elite’ will need to slash high-carbon lifestyles”, so how stupid do people need to get?

In case you forgot

This reflects on the now when we see (at https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/jun/30/climate-crimes-oil-and-gas-environment) “Coastal cities struggling to keep rising sea levels at bay, midwestern states watching “mega-rains” destroy crops and homes, and fishing communities losing catches to warming waters, are now demanding the oil conglomerates pay damages and take urgent action to reduce further harm from burning fossil fuels”, just when you think that Americans can no longer become any more stupid, we get the next iteration of ‘stupid is as stupid does. Statista shows us that in 1975 the US requires 1.747 BILLION kilowatt hours a year, this went up again and again until that number was well over doubled in 2005 (3.8B KwH), then it roughly stays the same. There was one spike in 2018, yet one source gives us “From 2003 to 2012, weather-related outages doubled”, I personally believe it is not all weather related. I believe that energy delivery hit a saturation point around 2005. This is why the last decade has so many of these failings and outages. Consider that it was not merely oil and gas, it was energy, the underlying need that drives this. If you doubt this you need but to read the entire ENRON scandal papers to get a clue on how it has always about greed and not about big oil and gas. When I see ‘Big Oil and gas’ I personally think it tends to be a hidden jab towards the Middle East. There have been carbon neutral solutions for almost two decades. Yes, they were expensive in the beginning, but how much effort was made to push this? It is about profit margins, it is about cheap and it is about exploitation. Oil and gas check most marks, but are they to blame? We can ignore settings like “In the early 1990s, Kenneth Lay helped to initiate the selling of electricity at market prices and, soon after, Congress approved legislation deregulating the sale of natural gas” that was almost 30 years ago, so how was electricity created? How do we get energy? And why is Congress not in the same accusation dock? Until the late 80’s the idea of Electricity at market prices was a lull and instead of protecting that part, it was left to the needy and the greedy.

So when they have another go at ‘Big Oil’ (to be honest, I have no idea what they are talking about), consider that the drive to have your own car started in the 50’s. Forbes gave us in 2020 ‘Traffic Congestion Costs U.S. Cities Billions Of Dollars Every Year’, which is fine, but that too relies on fuel, so when they gave us “New York had the highest economic losses out of any major U.S. city with congesting costing it $11 billion last year. Los Angeles lost $8.2 billion while Chicago suffered the third-worst impact at $7.6 billion.” And how much fuel is wasted in that setting? Do you want to blame ‘big oil’ for that too? This is a case that will go nowhere, the only thing it enforces is something I will touch on a little later. You see, when we saw the messages on how companies had enough of California, they vacated and left, Texas is such a much better place (it actually might be), and Forbes again gave us in February ‘Texas Energy Crisis Is An Epic Resilience And Leadership Failure, yet how much consideration are we seeing when we get sources feeding us “There are several reasons tech companies shave been moving to Texas – lower housing costs, lower tax rates, less regulations have made it easier for companies to operate in Texas. There is already an abundance of technical talent all over Texas. Any company moving here can tap into a well-experienced talent pool. There is also a well-educated stream of new talent graduating from top schools like Texas, Rice, University of Houston, and Texas A&M.” I am not debating the act, I am fine with the action taken, but when you consider that the following companies moved to Texas, how much of a drain on energy in other places will that give you and when you see the sudden spike in some places requiring a lot more energy, all whilst the other places are not diminishing their offer, because people will always need power, how is ‘Big Oil’ to blame? So lets take a loot at that list and most names moved less then 2 year ago (or are about to move)
Guideline, Contango, Done, Carbon Neutral Energy, Tailift Material Handling, Estrada Hinojosa,  GBS Enterprises, Wedgewood, Verdant Chemical, Ranchland Food, Drive Shack, Invzbl,Markaaz, XR Masters, Elevate Brands, Harmonate, Einride, Green Dot, NRG Energy, Caterpillar,Flex Logix, Leaf Telecommunications, Katapult, Wayfair, Ribbon Communications, BSU Inc, Avetta, First Foundation, 5G LLC, TaskUs, BlockCap, Element Critical, City Shoppe, CrowdStreet, Lalamove, NinjaRMM, Gilad & Gilad, MDC Vacuum, FERA Diagnostics, Roboze, Leadr, SupplyHouse.com, Eleiko, Firehawk Aerospace, International Trademark Association, ZP Better Together, Precision Global Consulting, Loop Insurance, QSAM Biosciences, AHV, Dominion Aesthetics, Sage Integration, Quali, Samsung, Truelytics, Alpha Paw, Sentry Kiosk, ProtectAll, Optimal Elite Management, Ametrine, Digital Realty, Amazing Magnets, Lion Real Estate Group, NeuraLink, Maddox Defense, DZS Inc, The Boring Company, Oracle, Hewlett Packard Enterprise,Tesla, Optym, Longevity Partners, Iron Ox, Palantir, 8VC, Bonchon, Titans of CNC, Saleen Performance Parts, CBRE, Slync.io, Baronte Securities, Omnigo Software, Incora, Vio Security, JDR Cable Systems, FileTrail, Sonim Technologies, Murphy Oil Corp, Buff City Soap, Origin Clear, QuestionPro, SignEasy, Sense, Astura, Charles Schwab, Splunk,  Bill.com, Chip 1 Exchange, McKesson, and Lonza. This is not a complete list and I am not considering (at present) which ones are doing it for all kinds of tax hypes. Now consider how many people will move as well. I get it, California is expensive, but how will this change that represents the population of more than one large city impact the power needs in Texas that is already has it fair share of brownouts, and that is just for starters, how many gas and oil energy producing plants will Texas get? Is ‘Big oil’ to blame, or do they merely offer a commodity that EVERYONE needs? Consider that a powerful computer required a 200 Watt power unit in 1997, today it is 600Watt or even higher. There were roughly 51 million units sold last year alone. I cannot state how the division on laptop and desktop is, but the need for energy is unrelentingly large, how large? Consider all the staff moving to Texas and consider how many more energy issues Texas has in the next two years, that is your marker and ‘Big Oil’ had nothing to do with this. 

So when we reconsider “wave of lawsuits, filed by cities and states across the US”, how many of these claimants voted against wind farms, against solar power and against nuclear power? They did it for all kinds of reasons and we get it, some are expensive and you do not want your children to go to school glowing in the dark (yet in winter that is a case for less accidents), but in all this blaming ‘Big Oil’ is just too ludicrous to mention. So as for a promise earlier in this article. When the US goes on with silly and stupid court cases, how long until the owners of IP and Patents will consider the US to be too dangerous to remain in? Consider that the US has an IP value of $21,000,000,000,000 (trillion), it represents almost 90% of the S&P 500 value, so what do you think happens when a massive slice of that moves to Asia or the Middle East, optionally to Europe? I reckon that over 70% of Wall Street executives are on a floor above the 30th and there is every chance that well over 40% of them will do a (at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cEpKcBkkVMY); now consider the stage of blaming the wrong  party. I am not stating that any of the energy delivering components are innocent, yet we are all guilty, in almost every nation. We remained silent when energy prices remained the same (somehow), we have known about alternatives and most people never pushed their politicians, we have known about the dangers of erosion for decades and we see pollution report after report, yet nothing is done. We are all to blame and putting ‘Big Oil and Gas’ in the dock will never ever go anywhere, I reckon that Kenneth Lay set the charter for that. When we realise that we allowed a utility to become profit driven which we clearly get from ‘the selling of electricity at market prices’, we changed a whole range of processes and now that we see the impact we should not cry, we should look into the mirror for blame.

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Choices and Wisdom

We all have all kinds of wisdom, what we learned in school and that what as further tempered by work and eduction. Then there is the wisdom we get over time, from the things we have enjoyed doing, or loved doing for decades. No this is not some weird way to tell others that we are all well grown gynaecologists (without a medical education we really are not), yet some events, like photography, music, filming, gaming, reading. These are skills that develop over time. Some will never be great writers, but they grow a knowledge that allows them to recognise good and great pieces of writing, some will see great movies and TV series from the early beginnings, some will recognise a really great game. We all grow such skills, some faster and more complete than others. And here is where I am now. With Keno Diastima I am now at an impasse. I completed the thoughts on the cliffhanger on season 3, and as I see it, it will be one that will make jaws drop all over the field, yet what next? Try to get into season 4? Or end the story with a wide open ending? For some reason the second one is appealing to me. I haven’t thought of where to go in season 4, that is true enough, but in all that the setting of an open ending is appealing. It lets the viewer imagine what would be next. I personally never liked the American approach to finalise everything. The setting is that in the first finalisation is overrated, in the second it is that life is never complete, if we finalise we cannot perfect, if we cannot perfect we can grow, we can become better, the finalised people are mediocre or will never know the perfection they could have been headed to. It is like a lot of Ubisoft games, they are below par. 

Am I correct?
Well, the balance of probability states me to be correct, yet in opposition, we see God of War 4, Ratchet and Clank Rifts apart, Miles Morales. The PS5 is showing a whole host of games that ended up close to perfect, all whilst Ubisoft showed us games that were mediocre between 70% and 80%. So we have two stations, one showing me that I am right, one making it debatable and I am in the middle trying to make a choice. In all this I am wondering what to do. Even as I saw another side of some of the settings that I designed, as I see more and more evolutions in the IP I created, I also see that anything can be improved on, Keno Diastima is no exception. And in this yes, there is more to explore, but the appeal of finishing a story on a high is weirdly appealing. I wonder if J. Michael Straczynski faced this at the end of season 4 of Babylon 5? 

So how should I go about it? I am asking this of myself. Perhaps in a few days I see the light and a larger idea opens up, but it is not a guarantee. And within me the struggle continues shall I move forward, or not? It is a stage of wondering, not a stage of fear. Not a stage where we see ‘US lawmakers have introduced five bills aimed at limiting the power held by Big Tech companies’, bills that were designed out of fear, because overhauling the tax laws to fit all was too dangerous, powerful friends would be out in the cold and demonising a few is preferable, not unlike the Nazi’s who demonised the gypsies, the jews and a few others, remember that? How did that end? So when you see “The bills were drafted after a 16-month investigation into the powers of Amazon, Apple, Google and Facebook” consider that a law on 4 is discrimination, an overhauled tax law including the 4 is the right direction. I have said that for the better part of 2 decades, yet we see an investigation of 16 months. How is there any level of equilibrium? How is there balance on al fronts when 4 are demonised? So when will they limit Netflix and Disney plus to give ‘equal’ way to the others? It is the beginning of dead people trying to live a little longer. Soon America will see a larger setting, soon they will claim the union of patents and IP into the economy, because it will be best for all the people, a limitation of 5 is preferable over the denying to nearly all, and the US still has no plan to avoid overspending by trillions on an annual basis. So whilst I look at the optional ending of a great ride, they are merely looking at the continuation of a mediocre ride and there is the rub, there is the flaw. We see it in movies, TV, games, books and software, yet we do not catch on, life is unpredictable. Those who wield choices to their end are all about staying in power, even though they do not contribute and they are scared, China is on their heels to surpass them technological and economical, a twofold loss. So whilst CNBC gives us ‘U.S.-China relations are ‘still deteriorating,’ says former U.S. ambassador’, we need to consider that the US overplayed itself economically in well over a decade and whilst they needed to strap expenses, they refused to do so, they entered a road of iteration, all whilst a nation without true innovation has no place to go, but to become a following sheep and the innovations by Huawei are proof of that, Apple, IBM, Microsoft all iterative, all whilst I designed more original IP by myself then all of them together. And that is separate from the ideas on movies, TV series and games I came up with, and that is besides the additions to existing games. 

I feel happy in some way and sad that several government are so scared and so dependent on the US that it is almost scary that the media (from a multitude of sources) are merely copy and pasting some news. Consider ‘Romanian president signs bill into law to ban Huawei from 5G’, as well as ‘‘No concrete proof’ of espionage: Malaysia on verge of Huawei 5G deal. For me the issue is that the US and others have NEVER EVER shown evidence that Huawei equipment was used for espionage. In opposition the equipment in use (Cisco for example) allows for example allows for all kinds of sneaky acquisition of data. The sources via Solarwinds are proof of other larger flaws, Huawei equipment is not needed. When you consider that and we see the US accusations, as well as copied accusations by others, all whilst no evidence was ever produced. The Verge gave us “There is no hard evidence to support this notion, and some of the reasons put forward for this notion are weak. For example, the background of the chairmen of Huawei. Huawei founder Mr. Ren Zhengfei once served in the People’s Liberation Army. As we know, serving in the army was one way of getting out of poverty for people in the countryside, which is where Mr. Ren is from. His time in the army was a short one and he was not in any important position”, as well as “Any supposedly safe Chinese product is one firmware update away from being an insecure Chinese product”. The second one is optional, but that applies to all American hardware as well, but the media is not giving us that part, are they? The media did (to the largest extent) avoid for the longest time to look into the Cisco flaw(s), even as Cisco informed their customers close to immediately. So what is wisdom? I am not sure if I am the right person to state that, but I do feel that limiting 5 players whilst they were not illegally acting is wrong on several levels and all whilst the IP and patent stage remains open, as such I will make a case for my IP to be placed in either the UK or Canada. They seem the safest place and when other figure out what I have figured out and the IP and patents of the Fortune 500 end up being registered in these two locations over the US, you will see that I am correct and the US will find them self in something close to a Wall Street free fall soon thereafter. 

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