Tag Archives: Lotus

Xenophobia express

That might be the weirdest dream I have ever had and it will make sense in the end. I wasn’t myself. In my dream a secretary was looking at me (resembling Sarah Rafferty an awful lot) and looking whether I had lost it, and by the impression of it, I seemingly had. It is about a motorcycle (plus extras). The bike is outside of my affordability range. It is the ultimate jolty for nerds, who do not appreciate comfort with a healthy mix of NSA toys and a fetish for the alien movies. The price can easily afford you 3 DB12 Aston Martins completely individually customized with all the trimmings it can deliver. This is nothing short of a bike at the cost of an entire host of cars. There were three parts. The bike, the backpack and the drives. The backpack is the ‘operating’ system of the bike. Consider a flat moving box, you know the prefab setting. You fold the box into shape and push in the sides and you have a box. This is a lot more eloquent. This is a backpack, you shape the outside and move the top and bottom and you have a backpack. It is all connected looking weird. But the top inside of the box is the mattering set, set to your back, that side is a mesh of all kinds of connections to you and the bike and at the bottom there is like an old-fashioned drive, almost like a VHS looking like a commodore drive, with logo and all, but I had never seen that logo before. The drive will contain two of three tapes, the original drives will be copied to you, they will never be originally inserted, so you have a ‘home drive’ that copies the two versions of the ‘tapes’ you need. It is not that simple it is like a DAT tape the size of a VHS. The second tape is to record everything you see and I do mean everything. The bike is the big deal (as it usually is). It is unremarkable ugly. The parts are like square shaped mirrors, in some kind lexan kind of plexiglass. A weird kind of polycarbonate, extremely heat resistant. And when you sit on the bike, the seat is extremely comfortable, it just doesn’t look like anything you want to be seen in driving. The only not transparent setting is the fuel tank and the tires, but the fuel tank has the same lexan duffel bag style fabric made from connected scale plates (best way to describe it) and you really look like an overpriced dork on that thing. But then you switch on the bike and thing change. The transparency parts become less transparent and the bike transforms its look into an Alien (the Ridley Scott kind) and the bike becomes a hungry super bike, as you sit down the backpack connects to the seat with a magnetic seal and the flat-wire instructs the bike what it needs and all the recording devices are connected. 

The drive was super smooth almost no sound at all and the helmet you put on (made from the same polycarbonate will shout alien on the outside and the inside you see a whole range of monitors the edge of the visor. It is recording everything, you, the bike and the environment. 

I went on the smoothest ride I have ever experienced (and I sat in a Lotus in the late 70’s as a passenger) it was nothing I could describe. As the tarmac ran under me at 250 km per hour, no bumps were registered. And from what I could see I was sitting on an alien racing towards nowhere I have ever been. As the drive ended, I stopped in front of Sarah Rafferty (I have no idea what she was doing here) and she proclaimed that it was the craziest thing she had ever seen. I couldn’t disagree. This was not some Google car recording the way they went. It was an NSA version recording everything and everyone. Then I suddenly realised that anyone seeing the alien were wondering what they saw. As I see it, their mental blocks never went up, as the brain tries to record what it sees and it does so faster with absent mental blocks. I think that this contraption records everyone and what they were thinking and that would require an amazing lot of data. And when people do that in the evening less mental blocks are up as to get as much dates they can in their environment. I might have seen a hardware setting from things to come, but it was the weirdest dream I have had in over half a century, no doubt about that. 

Putting it here making me write out what I saw (in part) gets me to relive it and even now some parts are fleeting away. It seems that more parts are required, but I have no idea if they are still to come. The entire Xeno bike is still a vague blur to me, and as I try to make sense of it, the bike is presenting itself, the driver is a mere spectator on that bike. A new concept in biking as I see it. So as my mind figures it out, it is about the spectators around the bike. There was something else. The speed indicator changes color as I was riding. The closer to green, the more it was recording, or better stating, the closer to green and the less information was lost in the recording (I think) and these huge DAT tapes could only record 2 hours and it does hold a lot more than audio data and visual data. The one look I saw was that it had three recording heads, which I have never seen before on any recording device. 

I need coffee and egg and sausage at this time and it is still only just before 04:00 in the morning. 4 hours until breakfast. How on earth will I manage that.

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This is the way to London Town

That as the first thought that came to mind. The idea that Microsoft is done for. 

See-saw, sacaradown,
Which is the way to London Town?
One foot up, and one foot down,
That is the way to London Town.

It is 2005, I become the proud owner of the Xbox 360, it is late in the year and I am happy. I saw what Bethesda is about to bring with Oblivion and I am happy. Gaming is at an all time high. I keep it next to me PS2, the PS3 is not there yet and Microsoft has an edge and they play it well, they become a new force to be reckoned with and I am happy. You see, Sony became better with Microsoft nipping at its heels and all gamers prosper because of it. 12 year later and what was once great is diminished to mediocrity. The Xbox One is released in 2013, I get mine in 2015. It is nice to have next to the PS4, but merely that nice. In 12 years Microsoft threw out of the window what it had, stupid people in the board room, stupid people agreeing with everything and getting nowhere. Sony is now the only titan in the sky, there is still Nintendo, but like Apple it has its slightly peculiar journey and that is fine. It is protective of the family as a gaming cluster and it does its part well. In 2017 Microsoft scratches its throat proclaiming it is releasing the most powerful console in the world and some fall for it. The limitations are a joke and moreover the weakest console of them all (Nintendo Switch) surpasses them in a little over a year. 

In the meantime, the Sony fans get the PS5 in November 2020, yes three years later but the impact is visible, it breaks record and the games are beyond anything we have seen. It shows their PS4 (pro) to be limiting but only to the games played. 

Whatever games Microsoft spins does not add up to anything near what Sony brings

Spiderman Miles Morales (2020)
Ratchet and Clank (2021)
Returnal (2021)
Horizon Forbidden West (2022)
God of War Ragnarok (2022)

Five exclusives and Microsoft has nothing to oppose it, it launches another Halo and it gets a mere 80%, it is like watching the spin of Ubisoft. What was once great is now at best mediocre and they feel certain because they bought Bethesda and Blizzard and that is not getting the people round. It is the stage of stale yoghurt with a decent chance of poisoning. There is nothing that gives Microsoft the value it requires. We see “Xbox beats PlayStation when it comes to backwards compatibility, which is a feature that lets you play games from older consoles. Xbox Series X can play games dating back to the Xbox 360, which was released in 2005. PlayStation 5 can play PS4 titles, but gamers can’t play PS3 titles they own with the latest console.” They rely on 15 year old games to safe their hide. The PS3 has 4 titles that would be nice to play again. 4 out of….. (you see my point). God of War 3, Arkham City (both rereleased on PS4), Skyrim (rereleased on PS5) and Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots the only game I can no longer play. And with a 94% rating there is plenty of reason wanting to play it once more. One game and the rest is around the corner, as such Microsoft misses out again. There are of course more games, but I am focussing on exclusives. The fact that most PS4 games be played on PS5 is left in the corner. 

Microsoft got it wrong to this degree and they think that all is good, the marketing spin continues and they have no clue that they are a ship that is taking on water more and more. And do not get me wrong, I am not happy about this. It is because Microsoft was once close to a top position Sony opened up all engines and gave us the PS5 and we rejoiced. But I feel that the PS6 might not be the push forward. In the meantime I focussed on IP that will change the game, I am actually making sure that Microsoft cannot get to it, I am handing it to the Kingdom Of Saudi Arabia at a reduced price giving them billions, I am willing to give up on a dream to prevent Microsoft fouling my IP. If we are not able to do this, then money controls us instead of we controlling money. Microsoft spin has no place here and I do not want them near my IP. 

There are two sides to the song and story. The great games live forever and Microsoft forgot that making new games and screwing up franchises. Thinking that a TV series solves it and with the 71% rating it shows how wrong they got that too. Consoles and Tablets two markets they wrecked and they give marketing the responsibility to safe it. Now their office market is starting to dwindle they are getting outmanoeuvred by Google, Apple and Adobe. Players that could not get close to Microsoft 20 years ago and now Microsoft is merely left with a spreadsheet, which they got from Lotus (basically). In 20 years Microsoft went from Titan to Tyrion Lannister, who talks a good talk and is smart, but this merely amounts to Microsoft marketing and they do deserve credit, but it might be their only division that does. And their Azure solution? It lost to an online bookshop (Amazon) and that loss is merely increasing as some sources claim. I honestly do not know enough to make that assessment, but Azure has a Microsoft logo, so I do not trust it right of the bat, the other divisions make sure of that. 

As I personally see it Microsoft is done for, it will merely take a few years for the carcass to start rotting and the first few years that rot will be masked as innovation as Microsoft is adding small to its divisions according to some alleged marketing people. In my lifetime I saw Microsoft grow from a simple company to a behemoth and after that dwindle to irrelevancy in the near future. I wonder what they will try to pull of with their partnership with Tencent. We will know soon enough.

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