Tag Archives: Microsoft

Human rights versus?

That is at times the question. Don’t get me wrong, human rights is a good thing and we need to take heed, but hat happens when it stops life in other ways? In this case the setting is against Microsoft and here I do not oppose Microsoft, that is folly in some cases and this is one. It all started when early this morning I got ‘Saudi Arabia: Microsoft Should Suspend Data Center Plans’ via some newspaper (at https://www.hrw.org/news/2023/05/23/saudi-arabia-microsoft-should-suspend-data-center-plans). Why? Saudi Arabia is a nation and it is entitled to have its data centres. The text that is part is “Microsoft should suspend its plans to invest in a new cloud data center in Saudi Arabia until it can demonstrate how it will mitigate potential rights abuses, 18 human right groups said today. There is an enormous risk that Saudi authorities may obtain access to data stored in Microsoft’s cloud data center, thus posing unique and direct threats to human rights and privacy, the human rights groups said.” Really? Corporate America and governmental America have been treading all over EVERYONES privacy and rights for years, so where are those warnings? In other news. I personally do not care, you see Tencent with news (at https://www.yicaiglobal.com/news/20230510-05-tencent-takes-steps-toward-chinas-biggest-data-center) gives us ‘Tencent Takes Steps Toward China’s Biggest Data Center’ and I feel certain that they are ready to step in and setup a Data Center for the Saudi government in Saudi Arabia as well, just a few more billion in revenue for China. This is simple, plain and out in the open. Tencent is hoping for more options in Saudi Arabia and the UAE and the Human Rights groups are handing this to them. A nation that is now almost a week from financial collapse needs whatever it can get and losing jobs and revenue to China is not helping, especially after the clambake that Governor Ron DeSantis arranged and that is costing Florida thousands of jobs and a million in revenue, so making Microsoft lose billions as well does not help (but it does aid my prediction that Microsoft will collapse, or implode in 2026). As such, when we see “Microsoft needs to conduct a thorough human rights due diligence process and publicly detail how it will mitigate the potential adverse human rights impacts associated with Saudi Arabia hosting the data center”, we need to realise that Microsoft needs to keep its head above water, it needs to deal with governments and it needs to deal with them and sell stuff. For those Humane jokes, how many from Cambridge Analytics are in prison? How many people from the ECHELON system have been prosecuted? How many privacy laws did they break? The list of questions go on and this anti-Saudi rhetoric is quite simply a joke. Is Saudi Arabia perfect? No, it is not, no nation is, but there are bigger fish to fry. Iran and Pakistan are merely two on that list and then there are the Russian transgressions. How much visibility did they push on that front? The larger folly is not what they do now, but what options would open with Microsoft for a dialogue for diplomatic conversations is one (not all but at least one) and that too will aid to what they refer to as human rights. But that part is not nice enough, too long a track, but now, if this falls through Tencent technologies will step in and take that revenue too. This is seen with “At least 10,000 servers are functioning smoothly and all the cooling equipment is installed, Wang added. Upon completion, the number of servers should reach 800,000, and the computing power should be 10 times that of the world’s most powerful supercomputing center. The Yangtze River Delta hub will provide cloud computing services to the public, including instant messaging, image processing, and medical insurance payments. Moreover, the center supports Tencent’s ChatGPT-like HunyanAide project, per Wang.” Do you think Saudi Arabia (UAE too) is ready for that kind of data center power? How many jobs will the US and US consultants lose and how many will China gain? Did you think of that and that is when you realise how the HR groups are in China, how massively did these HR groups shoot themselves in the foot? 

It might seem like a cheap joke, yet at present these human rights groups are a much bigger danger than Russia has been in the last three decades, that is something to mull over I reckon.

Have a nice day and it is now less than 60 hours until the end of the weekend. 

Advertisement

Leave a comment

Filed under Finance, Politics, Science

The balancing scales

This story comes from two different directions, not too different, but there is no real link between the two (it will make sense, I promise). I (and millions with me) saw the Sony Showcase 2023. To be honest, I was a little disappointed. I do not think that this is on Sony, it is on me and to illustrate that, I will have to make a few sidesteps. In the first, you all know how I loathe Microsoft, they did this themselves (and their customer care with them) but we need to acknowledge and accept that Sony is now better because of Microsoft not in spite off. Sony grew to new heights as they were at each others throats. As they were battling for supremacy the gamers in both camps got a much better console and we all rejoiced. The issue (as I personally see it) is that the same needs to happen to games, driving games and gaming to new heights.  This is one and for me the most important reason to hope that Starfield, a Microsoft exclusive will become a 90%+ game. It will up the ante for Sony (and optionally Amazon Luna too). The show started with Fairgame$ a multi gamer experience which (even if it was not) smelled a lot like Ubisoft, all smooth, all overwhelming, but the real deal? We will have to wait and see. Helldivers 2 was very Starship Troopers, Phantom Blade 0 looked like an upgraded Sekiro and Towers of Aghasba had a Zelda feel to it. The games were nice, they were very turbo. They had their good moments too, or at least moments I lived for and I am not stating that all games need to be set to me, but when you saw that Telescope looking like the telescope from Alien (more futuristic), what did you think? Then we get some foam game that was clearly based upon Nintendo Splatoon, a turbo edition. This happens and I am happy for the PS5 people who get to have a go at this game, but all this is iteration and gaming, real good gaming gets offered innovation, we need that to evolve gaming and that is one of the reasons why I hope that Starfield is the game every gamers waits for. I had my moments, I loved Spiderman 2, I saw the new parts and they looked good, they really do, but is it innovation? I feel uncertain, there were more games. I can’t wait to get my hands on Alan Wake 2, it seems to be a winner, but seems is the operative word, it is gameplay we need and we saw little of that (apart from Spiderman 2). Yet the story behind this is that we need actual innovation in gaming on every console and this time around Microsoft seemingly gets to have first dibs on that, but we will know for sure in September. 

This links to the second part of it. I am replaying AC Origins and now I got to the curse of the pharaoh which is graphically a new height. Yet here my mind wandered, I had played it before and I cherished it. I took a sidestep to Valerian and Laureline (in Dutch: Ravian), I grew up with that comic as well with the Trigan Empire and things started to blend, started to mingle. So what if this game is not an assassins game and you cannot climb, hide or anything. Almost like Everybody’s Gone to the Rapture, but now with a much larger stealth part, no killing. The idea floated in my mind when I saw the Star Trek Voyager episode Displaced in season 3. So what happens when we get to the two worlds Aaru and Aten. So when we get there we know nothing, we get to live lives, we get to walk around and we get to missions, but not in the usual ways. We need to be part of, or hear conversations to open this story and both worlds will have a dozen story lines. No Sekmet scorpions or Cobra’s. You think it is boring, but this is not a game for everyone, it is one where the story is everything and Ubisoft has shown that it can create good stories.  

This interacts when we doe in one world, we wake up in the other and vice vera, so you need to die at times (it is a hassle, but so is life). As such we get to learn that this is a prison and we need to learn why we are prisoners (a little The Status Civilization by Robert Sheckley where we get to see versions of stagnation and conformity) and for this the ancient civilisations were great. Life was simple and the mind is much easier observed and classified when it does the simple things. Yet how to set this in gaming? Ubisoft had its device, but what happens when the world is the device? What happens when the wold is not part of the mind, but the mind has to adhere to that world? No matter how complex we are, the mind controls is and as such we are shown new iterations and that could lead to innovations. But in this the story is everything.

We can speculate and ejaculate all over innovation, yet unless we are holding it in our hands (sorry, no pun intended) we have no idea what innovation looks like, the mind will not fill in the blanks, our wills do and that is why Google and Amazon missed out (at least twice already) So how do we get about to find the next innovator in gaming? Well we can dump all the BI people stating they have no clue and rely on the artsy people to dream the new game. Perhaps one with tech savvy skills, because art only gets us so far, tech does the rest, not Business Intelligence. 

This is my view and there will be people telling me I am wrong here. I will let you decide. For now, I want the new iteration of System Shock. Mainly because how the initial game made me feel, just like Mass Effect 1 ten years later. I miss that feeling to some degree, which I personally believe is the reason that some remaster are great reminders.

Enjoy the day.

Leave a comment

Filed under Gaming, Science

Fair is the way

To start this off, I am a Sony guy. I have loved my PlayStation one through five and that is it. I am done with Xbox, Microsoft blew its own death march and that is that for me. Still, I do believe in fairness, Microsoft will have its own glorious days, it has had them in the past and it will have them in the future. As such its exclusive massive failure called Redfall does not help it much. Yet this is also another matter, as such when I saw ‘I regret to inform you that the Starfield review discourse has already begun’ I was somewhat offended. You see, no matter what it is a title and it does not matter who brought it, or that it is an Xbox exclusive. It should be judged fairly. 

So as I read “Speaking on the XboxEra podcast over the weekend, leaker Nick Baker suggested that “it doesn’t matter if Starfield is great – I’m already convinced that no-one wants to give Starfield high review scores.” Baker’s thesis is that ‘low’ scores ranging from 7-8.5 out of 10 would be handed down to spin up a news cycle about Xbox’s continued difficulties over recent years.” I got angry. I do not believe that real reviewers (I was one from 1986 through to 1999) would do that. There are two kinds of reviewers. The real reviewers like Eurogamer, and a few like them and there are sycophants internet wannabe influencers who think that dissing one side will bring the other side to them. The real reviewers like Eurogamer and IGN will give you the real deal, others will not. As for the other part I read “But Baker isn’t the only one already focusing on Starfield and its eventual review scores. A recent Forbes article suggests that the Metacritic scores attached to the rest of Bethesda’s catalogue (skirting awkwardly around Fallout 76’s 55%) are more than enough evidence that Starfield is on track for a similar appraisal.” I had to pause, did this  Nick Baker have a case? I for one do not know. I saw the trailer and it blew me away. I was happy for Xbox gamers as they seemingly had a winner for their system. And lets face it Xbox needs a win, especially if it is an exclusive. I haven’t seen anything since, but mostly I wasn’t looking. Why stare at a game you will never play? And the other side is that the game is not finished. It isn’t due until September, September 6th is slightly more precise. So there is well over 3 months to go, and if that date is correct the gold master will be announced in about 8 weeks. As such, how can any clear review be out there? No one gets to see a real version before the gold master as such there should not now, not be any review with a meta score. The trailer is not a reason for any review, but if there was, the trailer I saw makes this a 90% game. I had not felt these gaming butterflies since the Mass Effect 1 trailer and that was in 2006, they had another trailer for the sequel which was in March 2009 and it blew our socks off, moreover Mass Effect 2 is still up to this date one of the best tactical shooters in history, it was THAT good. 

As such I am willing to wait until the real Starfield rears its exclusive head and I will be seeing an actual gameplay on YouTube knowing I will never buy it as I will never get an Xbox, still there are over 18 million Xbox gamers around the world, and why should they not have an amazing gaming journey? I know it is merely half of the PS5 population, but that is a marketing problem for Bethesda, they need not market where they are not. What they need worry about is getting a fair shake and they are entitled to a fair shake, no matter what orchestra they blow from. I believe that above all other things.

Have a great day.

Leave a comment

Filed under Gaming, Media

A weekend of revelations

Yup, this happens. However, before I go there, I need to take you on a little trip. It all started in January 2022. I set the design for a new Watchdogs game and I wrote about it in ‘Looky Looky’ which I published in February 2022 (at https://lawlordtobe.com/2022/02/13/looky-looky/) it was the second time I made mention of it (I could not find the first one). Yet at times reality catches up with gaming. That much was clear when I saw ‘Google’s ‘translation glasses’ were actually at I/O 2023, and right in front of our eyes’ (at https://www.zdnet.com/article/googles-translation-glasses-were-actually-at-io-2023-and-right-in-front-of-our-eyes/), my gaming idea was ahead of reality by almost a year, which is not a bad marker to have. It also shows that I had a much better grasp of the IoT world than some proclaim I have (which is nice too). Here we are one step away from pictogram deciphering. So as we are given “unlike Google Glass, this new concept, which didn’t have a name at the time (and still doesn’t), demonstrated the practicality of digital overlays, promoting the idea of real-time language translation as you were conversing with another person.” The nice side effect is that my approach to Augmented Reality is now close to completion. Yes, Google might have the glasses, but I have at least three more options and they are all about to become Public Domain, which might not make me rich, but it shows I was right all along. In addition to this it will bump my other IP, as well as the 5G plus plans I had. Which is still wishful thinking, but with more and more of my early writings becoming reality, it shows I was on the right track all along.

The side effects are nothing to be sneered at. I get that, but a dozen greed driven fuckers poisoning the well aren’t nice either and I will turn all my IP public domain before I let some fat fuck come at me with the “let me help you matey”, that person has no idea what a ‘mate’ is, all greed driven, all bullet point driven and utterly clueless in nearly all IT manners.

So as we realise “Twelve months have passed and the popularity of AR has now been replaced by another acronym: AI, shifting most of Google and the tech industry’s focus more toward artificial intelligence and machine learning and further away from metaverses and, I guess, glasses that help you transcribe language in real time.” We see that at Google, there is an equal distorted sense. They might have mentioned AI 143 times as ZDNet counted, but AI is not real. AR on the other hand is here now and it could have much larger repercussions for retail and malls. I wrote about that a few times over and even as Gucci and partners are on track, a lot is not and that was the larger stage for Google. 144,000 malls with many well over 100 shops. And that was also the profit setting. Do once and distribute to well over 10,000 malls at a time. It does depend on the amount of malls a shop is in, but the message is clear. AR is the direct future and will have an evolution over a few other matters. 

The second revelation (for me) was given by something called the Verdict (at https://www.verdict.co.uk/sap-google-cloud-team-up/) there we see mention of SAP and Google teaming up. Unless you have larger BI involvement you might miss it. Yet the stage of these two working together is a much bigger hit then you think. With SAP Dashboard and Google statistics there is a new field growing and it is there for everyone, which is the start of decline for Microsoft. A company that is now the focal point of PHAAS, and as I saw today the howling laughter of people trying to install their Office365 only to learn that their subscription ended in 1968.

I initially thought it was a direct attack to a person I knew, but it is happening all over the place. Microsoft has serious issues and all whilst they are trying to acquire gaming firms for 68 billion more. Yes, that is the place to go! As such Google already had a clear advantage, but now with the SAP link all corporations that are above small businesses, Google will have something more to offer and SAP as well. A stage that was in the making and when Adobe joins that team the disaster moment for Microsoft is pretty much complete. I cannot tell how this unfolds, but the larger stage is Microsoft dropping the ball all over the place and now that we have Google and SAP picking it up, the losses for Microsoft will increase and within a year they will be massive and as such the small firms dumping Office365 and joining the Google family will pick up more and more. Now however it will not merely be Google, SAP solutions will be all over the place hindering IBM Watson growth as well. There was a large slice of the pie for whom IBM Watson was just too big, to cumbersome, but as I see it SAP has that under new management. And as IBM Watson goes, so do all the blue settings (Azure) that Microsoft was hoping for, it is almost pathetic how that translates into ‘wishful thinking of unrequited love’ (me howling with laughter now).

Yes this is quite the revelation weekend for me. I should consider another gaming IP for Amazon Luna and Sony. There is something rewarding to kicking a corporation when it is on its knees thinking it was too good for anyone else. The joy of being mean (not a synonym for average). 

Enjoy the weekend. I am, that much is a given today.

Leave a comment

Filed under Finance, Gaming, IT, Science

Spend, spend, spend

Yes, that can be seen as spending three times over. We are of course referring to the debilitating debt the US has and now it is about to cost them a lot, in the larger stage this has had my attention for some time, but today three articles brought it to the top (yet again). The first one comes from the CBC (at https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/debt-ceiling-us-scrap-1.6836090) where we see ‘The U.S. debt limit is again stoking fears across the globe. Why not just scrap the thing?’ There are of course several answers to that part, but it is ““I don’t think there’s any reason to have it exist anymore,” said Douglas Holtz-Eakin, former director of the Congressional Budget Office, who is the current president of the right-wing think-tank American Action Forum.” I think that Douglas has been sniffing the alternative Gatorade. You see, if there was no reason to have credit limits, I would take out a $50M loan with my IP as collateral and move to Dubai. Have a nice one floor apartment and live of the rest with $300K a month at my disposal until the day I die. The reality is that we all have credit limits and most of us have a credit limit that is in the basement. As such nations and governments have limits as well. It is the idea that Americans think they do not have one, but that is a false assumption. It might have had a delusional ring of truth when they were a super power and when they had all the innovations, but they first off shored the knowledge they had because the board of directors had more bonus options, but they are now either retired or mostly dead. Now India has that power, now Saudi Arabia is the innovative player and now China is about to become the one true superpower. All negative things for the US, but this is what they wanted and they shunned Saudi Arabia too often and now they lose them as an ally as well. The one player that really has all the cash is shunned. Well done America! In the mean time spending went on and it was catered to by people who have close to no ash in the first place. Now the Fortune 100 have less American companies and several of them have a spin on what they really own. The largest players who really have things are Google, IBM, Amazon and Adobe. The rest are wannabe collapsing entities. There is Netflix, but they will be in turmoil for at least a year and there is no way to tell how they are pulling through. Facebook is under the gun and they are about to lose another segment, in the meantime Meta is nowhere near ready. 

So off to article two, this is Reuters (at https://www.reuters.com/markets/us-debt-standoff-overshadows-g7-finance-leaders-meeting-2023-05-11/) giving us ‘US debt standoff overshadows G7 finance leaders’ meeting’, which could be true. You see, Japan is in deep waters, optionally too deep, but that requires financial knowledge I do not have, what I think is the case, is that they are too deep in debt and when the US goes, so does Japan. The 7 nations are Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the United Kingdom and the United States. Italy and France are already in deep waters, in part of the overspending my Mario Draghi, in part of a slowing economy. The UK has its own set of troubles which basically leaves Canada and they cannot hold the fort by themselves but that is the group that is in some kind of meeting and the conversation to raise the debt ceiling is a farce, they all know that the US is fighting of shadows of their former selves all alone, all because no one was willing to do something about overspending and they are decades too late in overhauling their tax systems. All these small issues line up to a setting where there is soon an America defaulting on ALL their loans, bonds collapse and that also pushes Japan over the edge. The Reuters article also gives us “U.S.-China tensions also cloud the outlook for the global economy that is already under pressure from signs of weakness in the world’s second-largest economy China.” This is a stage that I find debatable, from my point of view (optionally not a correct one), the Chinese economy is already surpassing America and now that they have the stage for the Middle East with larger venues into Saudi Arabia, they surpass America. The fact that Saudi Oil can now be bought with Yuan is the one push America never needed and never really could handle. With Saudi Arabia about to launch their own version (in English) of Al Jazeera will mean that advertisers have an alternative to Fox and CNN and when that channel branches out to Indonesia, Egypt, Bangladesh and India, the numbers will vastly surpass 500,000,000 viewers. In this I didn’t even consider Pakistan at present. As such where do you think Advertiser will go? America pushed the wrong buttons for years and now their birds are roosting in other nests. The third is also Reuters (at https://www.reuters.com/markets/us/yellen-warns-us-default-would-threaten-global-economy-undermine-us-leadership-2023-05-11/) giving us ‘Yellen warns US default would threaten global economy, undermine its leadership’ where we see “U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen on Thursday urged Congress to raise the $31.4 trillion federal debt limit and avert an unprecedented default that would trigger a global economic downturn and risk undermining U.S. global economic leadership” in this I personally believe that the US hasn’t been a real economic leader for some time. It started just before the age of Trump as the US learned that they could no longer afford the things they were doing and now these accounts are all coming up empty all at the same time. So at the end we are given “Yellen said Republican brinkmanship on the issue amounted to a “crisis of our own making” and that just the threat of a default could lead to a downgrade of the U.S. government’s credit rating, as occurred during a debt ceiling fight in 2011.” I personally feel that this is totally bogus, the issue was overspending and both sides of the isle were doing that and both sides were doing that. In addition they alienated the one player who was loaded, the rich relative was made a pariah and that didn’t sit well with that relative. This is why I approached them with my IP. I feel better when someone with the cash pays for my IP than the fakers who have a maximised credit card, implying I would be without cash for too long whilst they walk away with my multi billion dollar IP. I will not allow Microsoft anywhere near it, as such I would have no issues selling it to Tencent Technologies (with a few attached clauses mind you). And I have reason. A clear solution that could have given Google and/or Amazon billions was shunned by them giving me the excuse to go wherever I needed to go to get my golden retirement. And they connect. You see, they are all about contracting economies, all whilst innovation will go where there was no one and in my case in several cases there was no one, only in one case there was someone (Gucci), but they are only on one side of one IP I had and I had several other venues connected to it, optionally to android phones as well. And you see that same issue here. We see ‘raise the debt ceiling’ whilst 4 presidents did not stop overspending, it was not an issue and now as they lose tens of billions in industries that are all headed for China, they are all up in arms with “Yellen wants G7 debate on restricting investment to China”, just like the Huawei issue and we never were EVER given any evidence regarding Huawei. That is the effect of a bully who lost whatever innovation they had to players who were truly innovative and now they are running out of time, they are running out of fairway and they have nothing left. Two elemental parts were ignored for too long the first was overhauling their tax system, the second was overspending and in 2011 the point of no return was reached, both Democrats and Republicans worked together in making that happen and China merely waited for it to collapse and that is now about to happen. Will there be another raise? I cannot tell, but this is not enough, after this one another one will come and that is how this game is being played, almost like bluffing in Omaha poker, the issue is that bluffing is too dangerous and can often fall flat, for someone to think that they can bluff for this long is a new level of delusion. 

No matter what, we are about to find out how much longer the US can play that game and they returns to the stage of tax the rich, another delusional setting, which by the way works out well for Monaco, the Bahamas and Dubai to name but three where the retiring rich could go to actually enjoy their cash. 

Enjoy your day unless you have a PacWest Bank account, at that point you are decently screwed at present.

Leave a comment

Filed under Finance, Media, Politics

New IP on the fly

I got here a few hours ago. The setting starts with a rerun of Heroes season 1. I hadn’t seen it for a while, as such rewatching it was a good idea. Whilst watching it a few cogs started to turn. And for clarity this is all free for Sony and Amazon Luna developers (lets screw over Microsoft one more time). You see, in the beginning of the PS4 there was Infamous Second Son. 

I gave that good leaning towards average. Now, this needs explanation. The first is the start of the game which is amazing, the story is from beginning to end really good and Seattle was a great idea. The graphics were good leaning towards great, so why the score? There were a few issues. 

In the first the game is massively linear, you don’t realise it, but it takes steam out of a game that could have been great. In the second the linearity is numbing after a while. The third is the second part here you acquire the neon power is so powerful that you will rely on it until the end of the game. It was an awesome power, but the linearity of the game will allow you to maximise that power from the start. The side missions (the red and blue tasks) are in one area and it is the same repetition on every island. They didn’t take 3 (or 6) tasks on every area, no one per area. And the last part is the concrete power is never explored, it is merely there and when you get it, you have enough points to maximise it right of the bat and you never get to explore with that power new options in the city. It all makes or a bland end result. To add insult to injury, I did the Expert version in one go, something I normally never get to do, making it too easy overall. 

This nagged me when I was watching Heroes, the cogs starting to turn and this is what I came up with.

Infamous: Teams
Let the title not confuse you, it is a one player game, but I decided to take a twist in another direction, fuelling replay option again and again. In this version you control 6 people, but one at a time. We can set powers later and we could take a grasp at powers later, this is about the idea. You play one at the time and you only get to select the gender of the first character. There are three man and three women. The first one you select gender, but the system will assign one of the three to you in the first part. You learn the skill and you enhance the skill, but here is the kicker. There are a dozen places where you enter a place, or enter a location and you see on the screen something happen that involves a super powered being/mutant and that is the moment you switch to that next person. There is one setting, if you start with one gender, the next person will be the other gender (story related) and that drives us to to settings. The stories are separate but to some degree created by the system, as such we could play new games for a while and the story is unlikely the same story. The second is good and evil. You get a choice to once select that in the first character. The good will hug, or connect the heads, evil will push their fingers into the skull of the other and syphon the power killing the person. My version of Petrelli versus Sylar. It is then that the game changes. You create a sort of copy of THEIR powers whilst it also enhances YOUR powers. The good will deprive the powers leaving the person a normal, whilst the evil part kills the other making you more wanted. In case of the good there is a second setting, there is not always a choice, as such in one case a car (or elevator) pushes them together, on another case she gives him a passionate hug pushing her powers into him and so on and the nice part is that we can design a dozen ways and you will get different events per game. Linearity and expected thresholds are now avoided, something most games do not have. The idea is that as a team both get more powerful, as such there is no gain immediately grabbing the power of the other one. If we relate this to Second son, we would enhance smoke with video, not merely have two powers. In the beginning smoke will become faster and more powerful, yet after the merge with video, there would a static smoke and EMP smoke, but now in a setting with 6 new powers and that is when the mix becomes interesting. When power one becomes a second tier, the third power will be different again. Now you have a whole new range of issues and it will affect how you play the game. The video power allowed for invisibility, but in the game you seldom used it. I want to change that and with these 6 new powers It is the challenge to find a balance of stealth and full on clobbering (sorry thing). I have not decided on a location, but I feel driven to make it Amsterdam (I made at least one other game Amsterdam too). Because Amsterdam has its canals, there is a water element through the city (freeze, fish take your pick). 

With the power mix above I show how it works to some degree, the second adds green (blue and yellow) but the third is orange making brown (orange and green). This gives a new setting, you see the third influences the second and adds power, but in that random setting the game when a new game is played could play out a lot different. Especially when we add mental or passive powers. No game (as far as I can tell) has ever done this before. And whilst Amsterdam had my first preference, the location is not set in stone, I merely wanted a place that was not used before giving the international players a new place to explore.

The story of Second Son was pretty good, but we will need a new story, we actually need 6 new stories and that is the rub too, one of the 6 is the main character, but the others have their stories and they mix. A new challenge not seen before to this degree. And this is the 4th game I put online, whilst Microsoft spending billions currently has nothing to show for it, actually they do. According to Forbes, Redfall is in the top 15 worst reviewed games. So how many billions did they spend on that company? Evil laughter starts now and I will put more ideas here, good times for Amazon Luna and Sony, not that much for Microsoft, but that is how the cookie crumbles. 

Enjoy the day.

Leave a comment

Filed under Gaming, IT

Indecisive and on the fence

I was on the fence for part of the day. You see, I saw (by chance) a review of a game names Redfall and it was bad, like burning down your house whilst making French fries is a good day, it was THAT bad. Initially I ignored it, because haters will be haters. I hate Microsoft, but I go by evidence, not merely my gut feeling or my emotions. So a little later I got to be curious, you see the game was supposed to be released a day ago and I dumped my Xbox One and it is an exclusive, so I couldn’t tell. As such I looked a few reviews and they were all reviews of a really bad game. It now nagged at me and Forbes (at https://www.forbes.com/sites/paultassi/2023/05/03/redfalls-failure-is-microsofts-failure/) completed the cycle. There we see ‘Redfall’s Failure Is Microsoft’s Failure’ with “Redfall reviews are in, and they are terrible. What could have and should have been another hit from Arkane, maker of the excellent Dishonored, Prey and Deathloop, is instead what may be the worst AAA release in recent memory” and it does not end there. We also get “two hours in, I understand the poor reviews and do not understand the handful of good ones. This is a deeply, strangely bad game, so much so that I truly don’t understand how it was released at all in this state” and that is the start of a collapsing firm forced to focus outside of their comfort zone and the fun part (for me) is that it was acquired by Microsoft for billions. So we are on track to make that wannabe company collapse by December 2026. I added my IP for developers exclusively for Sony and Amazon could help, but the larger stage is that Microsoft is more and more becoming its own worst enemy. Yet, I do not rely on that alone. Handing some of my IP to Tencent Technologies will help. Sony is making them sweat but I cannot rely on Amazon with its Luna, as such Tencent technologies is required to make streaming technologies a failure for Microsoft too. So whilst we mull “we are left with now-goofy-sounding tweets from Phil Spencer announcing last year’s delay, saying that they will release these “great games when they are ready.” Redfall was not ready. And given what’s here, I’m not sure it ever was going to be.” I personally feel they were not, but they did something else, something worse. It was tactically sounds, it really was, but they upset the gaming community. They took away the little freedom gamers had and now we are all driven to make Microsoft fail, whether it is via Amazon, or we will engage with new players like Tencent Technology and add to the spice of Sony, but Microsoft will pay and now it becomes even better, they now have a massive failure for a mere $7,000,000,000 not a bad deal (well for Phil Spencer it is) and that is not the end of the bad news. As Tencent accepts my idea they will create an almost overnight growth towards a $5 billion a year market and they will surpass the Microsoft setting with 50 million subscriptions in the first phase, how far it will go, I honestly cannot tell, but when the dust settles we will enter 2026 with Microsoft dead last in the console war and in the streaming war and that was merely the beginning. They lost the tablets war already, they will lose ‘their’ edge war and ChapGPT will not aid them, a loser on nearly every front. That is what happens when you piss of gamers. To be honest I never had any inkling of interest in doing what I do now, but Microsoft made me in their own warped way and Bethesda because of it will lose too. They will soon have contenders in fields they were never contested before and this failure (Redfall) will hurt them more than they realise.

Leave a comment

Filed under Finance, Gaming, Media, Science

Slapping a giant

Yup, that’s me, but not in the way that we saw in comic books. This is real. I set up the setting for Microsoft to lose out a few times. And with Amazon staying asleep at the wheel, the option is now with Tencent technologies in one direction, but there are a few more directions to consider. So now it is time to take care of Bethesda, or hat was Bethesda, it is now Microsoft. I saw the claims that it might come to PS5, it might not, yet the reality is that this is stalling technique. It is not the first time that Microsoft did this. They made similar settings in the 90’s. As such some developers out there will have the option to grow in amazing ways. You see, it is time to create two new games. The first is already on my blog. Search for “lawlordtobe + RPG” and you will get most of it immediately. There is one condition, the simple fact that the game will be made for PS5 and Amazon Luna only, optionally later on Tencent, but that is still some time away. You see Microsoft paid 23 billion for Bethesda, as such making them bleed is a nice present for messing with gamers. 

The RPG game
A lot of it is already on this blog, yet I considered a few more items. One setting is that you could get a lot more out of a new era. Between 1568 and 1748 the Dutch had over a dozen wars which involved Spain, Germany, Portugal, England, Sweden and Austria. It would also involve the Golden age of the Netherlands. People like Rembrandt would show the world what the Dutch were capable of. 

My issue here comes from a setting in the Ezio collection. Ubisoft was great in those days and I just replayed these games learning that they are still massively good. But there are issues, nothing against Ubisoft on those titles. But the setting of Brotherhood gives the stage a much larger setting when you apply those graphics to Dutch settings and adjust it for the 17th and 18th century. When we consider that outfits were merely cosmetic, that could alter. You see someone in German garbs would be massively distrusted, but not in Germany. The same for the Spanish but not the French. Outfits matter and that gave me the idea to have tailors with several layers. Three levels of tailor and you could help these tailors out to gain a level. They could only gain ONE level, as such choices become important. Yet a level two tailor would not talk to you until you are dressed as a level 2 person (and live in that city, or have fame). The same for weapons and in some places you cannot walk with a sword, but you could have a dagger. All things that were assumed in Assassins Creed, but now the systems are powerful enough to deal with it (the Xbox 360 and PS3 could not). It allows for new kinds of stealth. Yet line of sight is important, but so is minimal distance and unless you are correctly attired you get all the attention that you never wanted. Also there was no ‘police’ or protection in every corner. There were a lot more in high society places but that was about it. Still the police was not the worst opponent. Cutthroats were that and now we have an entirely new kind of stealth. When we apply that to an RPG it becomes a challenge, no doubt about that. And when you apply this to cities in the Netherlands it matters. You see, the big places were Utrecht, Deventer, Zwolle, Kampen, Haarlem, Leiden, and Amsterdam. The Hague would not get its city rights until 1800. 

Yet this setting towards an RPG would create a new era of gaming. Like the other settings I mentioned you get to have the first two games with similar mechanics, merely a totally different side towards gaming. The Dutch side is often ignored because of its size, yet they had a war that lasted 80 years, in those days that spanned 5-6 generations, then Napoleon made a mess of things and that setting reflects into a nice setting to RPG gaming with optional stealth settings. 

As we start the game we get an choice of three

The initial option is Killer, Soldier and Thief. Each with strengths, but there are three more. You can grow in both sides, so the thief can also become a Brigand or a robber (they are not the same and as you can grow to lets say 5 degrees in the first choice, you can only grow 3 degrees in the second and third options. It allows for a lot more playability. But a good RPG game will have limitations. For example, the Thief will never be allowed in the Merchant guild, as such he cannot grow shops, but he can steal art and become really wealthy that way. The brigand has opportunity there as a smuggler, the robber does not. It is that interaction of styles that allows for the play style a person prefers, or they can really leave their comfort zone and do the opposite. The thief robber and brigand will have much better stealth options than the other styles, the soldier side will have better weapon skills and the killer will be equal if not better with some weapons and have better stealth than the soldier, but less resistance to attacks. That is merely one side. The Dutch had the golden age and as such they had all kinds of art and in those days it was very cheap (by our standards). As the Bethesda games have their own niche, the time to create a new niche becomes important. From a Bethesda point of view the time is right, no matter what they claim, they have time restrictions and Microsoft is making it harder for them and there is the option for the new developer and when you get it right with Sony, you get a new hardcore fan group with up to 32 million fans, no matter what some Microsoft driven guru states. This game was played before and you will have to stick to your guns. The options are clear. Are you a real developer or a wannabe? These ideas are free for exclusive Sony and Amazon Luna developers. 

I talked about one side and gave you another. Yer when you do the search I stated at the beginning you get a lot more and it all fits together in a few ways. When we connect the points you see so much more and you got it without investing time or money. As I stated before, lets collapse Microsoft before December 2026. Lets show Ubisoft that the claim of every year an Assassins Creed game is a BI setting and not an art setting. Is a game business intelligence of art? I see it as art with added mathematics (at times). Let’s teach some of them a lesson by yanking away their markets and in case of Microsoft, who just (apparently) lost their Blizzard/Activision deal. Lets show them that messing with gamers and yanking away gaming pleasure for $7,500,000,000 comes at a price, one they never counted on. The shareholders meeting of Microsoft could end up being massive fun in 2024/2025.

Leave a comment

Filed under Uncategorized

Blocked or deserted?

That is where I felt I am. I have been bending over backwards to get season 4 of Kenos Diastima started or moving. In part is was a new cast to set in motion, in part it is the setting to connect throughout the story two very different parts, but I always go back to the foundation. The end of season 3 was an open ending. I reckon it would be the ending people like Terry Gilliam would reflect on with ‘Nice!’ And in his case nice would be a huge compliment. Still, I tried and I am coming up short. So I was retracing my steps. I avoided the first script, because that is locked at present, things need to happen before I continue. The second script is where I got to and stayed at. The script ‘How to assassinate a politician’ was my answer to certain people offending Islam. So I am putting it here, so that someone at Al Saudiya could do something with it. 

Prologue
In Dammam a man and a woman are sitting in front of the TV. It gives them the news and that a Dutch Politician named Geert Wilders is revived a Prophet Mohammad cartoon competition, both are angry and outraged on the insult to Islam and they talk about it for some time. She is the teacher at the Girls First High School in Dammam, whilst he is a teacher at the Boys Education College. It is the net morning that they have decided to hold a writing competition. They both asked if the news was seen and that starts the essay of the day. In English they have to write an essay on how to punish such an insult to Islam and the students are told that they will be competing against the other school and the two best essays go into the finals. The children start writing.

We hear narrations of children’s voices with parts of their essay. 

The winners are announced at the end of the day and both winners will get personal speech training from their teachers, so that they can present the story as good as possible. The winners are Ibrahim and Saad for the boys, for the girls they are Ayasha and Nura.

Story One, Ibrahim
The mans walks through the street of the Netherlands (set in Amsterdam), he sees the people walk, the cars ride and long boats in the canal. He looks at the street signs and the trees, he is not used to trees and he admires them for a moment. He looks like a prince like the prince in Aladdin with a face like a young Sylvester Stallone, with a large moustache. He walks through the street and sees Geert Wilders. He pulls out a machine gun (like in First blood) and he shots the street, the cars and Geert Wilders. Then with his blinking red eye he looks at the street and it states (0 faithful hurt, from Terminator 2). He walks over to the body of Geert Wilders and states, thou shalt not insult islam infidel. He then walks away, and as he walks away his weapon vanishes, as does his outfit, he suddenly no longer looks like Aladdin, now he looks like Ibrahim and Ibrahim walks straight over to a Turkish kebab shop. He orders a kebab whilst he sees policeman running all over the street looking for a man who no longer exists.

Story Two, Ayasha
We see the view from a person’s point of view, we think it is Ayasha, but we cannot tell. The person walks the streets of Amsterdam, we see him turn right into a smaller street and we watch as Geert Wilders walks out of a door. The person walks and wherever he steps we see grass grow, we see flowers erupt and the chirping of birds. We see Geert Wilders take a long look at what approaches him and he falls to his knees in tears. We hear him state “Forgive me” and the light increases and his head explodes. The person is suddenly gone and whilst policemen are blocking the streets, the people see a street covered in grass and flowers and one person with an exploding head, no one can tell who he was.

Story Three, Saad.
This starts somewhere in Egypt. Saad is watching a pyramid and makes calculations. He measures every part of his journey and at some point he starts digging. He digs for hours and then he stops. He has found a crate. He opens a crate and he finds an ancient oil lamp. He cleans it with alcohol and as he cleans it, the writing becomes clear. The text issues a warning. “Here is imprisoned the Afreet Apep, do not break the seal” the boy opens the seal and a serpent comes out, no larger than a worm. ‘What is thou wish’. The boy clever as he was. ‘The man Geert Wilders, an infidel insults our faith, for your freedom you will kill him, you will never harm any islamic person and this freedom is yours’. The serpent nods and whispers ‘As you wish’ and bites the boy. The serpent continues. The poison will make you sick, but it will not kill you, as you heal you will hear the voices of scorpions and snakes, they will never harm you and now you can keep your family equally safe. He snake slithers away. It made a long journey and in The Hague in a house, Geert Wilders takes his coat of and sits on a sofa. As he sits and reads papers he has no clue that he is surrounded by snakes and scorpions. The scream wakes up the neighbours. When the police walks into his apartment they see it overrun by snakes and scorpions and in the middle of a room, unrecognised with poisons is the body of Geert Wilders.

Story Four, Nura
In the softness of the desert, in a well to the north of Dammam is a secret. Its secret was well hidden by clerics. But her grandfather was a cleric, he was killed in Iraq whilst attending a sermon. His death weight heavily on her and she has never forgotten the pain. She carefully walks into the den that was sealed and she chisels away on the wall. She gets into a room that holds a cage with a despicable creature, after centuries he no longer has a real body. The creature is skin a bones. The creature looks at her and she speaks ‘Can you understand me?’ The creature nods. She continues ‘If you go north past the seas you will get to the old christian places. Do you know them? The creature nods again. Under no condition are you ever to come back. What you do there is your business, but one thing you must achieve. The creature looks at her. In this bag and she hold up the bag is water, some bread, some meat, a map and a photograph. That person resides in a place called Wassenaar a part of The Hague. When you get into that country you can do whatever you need to to regain strength, but this person must be taught never to insult islam again. Humble him, make him your slave, it is up to you. Do you accept. The creature nodded. Nura opens the cage and the creature slowly walks out, and grabs clumsily the bag, he has a sip of water and a bite of food. She then hands the creature a parcel of beef, he accepts and walks a few more steps. He notices that it is dark outside, he climbs the wall of the well avoiding the waters and leaves. Nura leaves the place to go to bed and dream of these people insulting the prophet with a terrible fate. In the meantime the ghoul regains strength and by the time he is in Belgium centuries of captivity are undone, he is again the ghoul he one was and he has no issues getting anywhere. When he gets to the address he casually walks in, Geert notices him and asks him what he is doing in his house. Geert merely hears ‘Never insult the prophet’, the Ghoul grabs his hand and bites it clean off. Geert Wilders screams and dis of blood loss. The ghouls seeks out the nearest cemetery and decides to feast on the corpses of the non-believers. He never believed, he was too old, but the delight of rotten flesh was never forgotten and now it lies fresh in his memory.

Story Five
A man walks through the streets of The Hague, he walks slow with a staff. He is Arabic and he hears how he is called Gandalf and sometimes Saruman. The names mean nothing to him. He walks from Mosque An-Nour into the city. Looking at the streets and the people. Whilst walking he knocks over the boombox of a person and when it falls it breaks. The man is all apologetic, the cleaning man shrugs. ‘These things happen, not to worry’ the man curiously bows to the man and apologises again and walks away. It is later when the man returns holding a box, the cleaning man  looks at the box. ‘For the damage I caused’ the man states, he bows and walks away. The cleaning man opens the box, only to see a new Sony boombox. He smiles. It is much better than the one he has and he slowly walks towards his work. The man cleans in a Dutch government building and he cleans the corridors and offices. It is well paid work and he is happy to do it, he can send more money to his family then he thought and that makes him happy. Whilst he is cleaning he notices a man with white hairs and two security people following him. He sees them every day. The man ignores him and goes into the men’s room. The cleaning man is in an office when suddenly his boombox becomes very loud. It takes him a second to come to the cart and he lowers the volume. He shrugs at the security people. ‘New radio’ he states and the security people smile. He continues his route only to hear shouting a few minutes later. 

Saruman/Gandalf is standing in a room. Across the street from a governmental toilet. His stick and water flask have been transformed into rifle, the angle was perfect, the flask was high powered air and the scope showed him more accurately what he is aiming for. It is a man with white hair in a toilet. He takes aim and he presses a button that maximises the boombox volume, he can even hear that radio and pulls the trigger. Straight in the head, the politician is dead before he realises what hit him and the man quickly disassembles the rifle, the cane is a cane again and he walks out towards the train station. On route he sees a water dispenser, he is about to fill the bottle. He hears ‘Stop!’ He looks around and a policeman takes the water bottle. The man points at the water fountain. ‘Yuck’ he states and signals a man in the shop behind him. The man hands him a bottle of water. The policeman fills the bottle and hands the water to the man. He nods, the policeman takes the few remaining sips from the water bottle and walks away. The man walks off to the strain station.

Epilogue

In a room with two people we see a window, in the background we see Azadi Tower. The first man speaks ‘Are the Dutch blaming the Saudi’s?’ The second person nods and says ‘Just as we expected’ we might not have a school, but we can act against infidels. Both man smile and drink their coffee

The end

I came up with that story in a little over an hour. I had some delays with the fourth story as it was too similar to the third one. The fifth story evolves between the four stories, with the hit happening after the fourth story is finished. I think it is nice to be creative and it was done as until that moment I never knew that making an image of the prophet was a taboo (or unacceptable). We were never told too much about islam in primary school and what we were told about the Crusades were too much of a lie. Anyway, this was my response. I hope you liked it, Geert Wilders might not, but I kind of don’t care about that part.

Have a lovely day, and let’s see what we can do to Microsoft tomorrow.

Leave a comment

Filed under Politics, Stories

Who is the enemy of my enemy?

That is a question I have been contemplating for a few hours now. You see, you might have seen the names Elon Musk and Microsoft. You might have seen that Microsoft is not advertising somewhere and you might have seen that Elon Musk is suing Microsoft for using Twitter Data.

One article is seen at Sky News (at https://news.sky.com/story/elon-musk-threatens-to-sue-microsoft-claiming-it-used-twitter-data-without-permission-12861615) giving us ‘Elon Musk threatens to sue Microsoft claiming it used Twitter data without permission’ where we see “Microsoft has indicated that its service will still support Meta’s Facebook and Instagram.” This is when my mind started to spin the elements and the information available to me. You see, my IP would in a small way hurt Facebook and to a larger degree hurt Microsoft. So what happens when I sell it to Elon Musk? It is not his area, but what happens when $5 billion a year is added to his revenue and as the solution grows (and revenue) it takes more away from Microsoft and Facebook? I know that this would happen, but until now I merely saw it as a side effect, but what happens when it is handed to their enemy and he decides to get creative. His connection to the Kingdom Holding Company would aid both him and the solution. This would give rise to Prince Al-Waleed bin Talal to increase its activities in this area and that also mildly negatively impact Facebook as well. It is a thought worth considering. You see, the solution I devised does have limited advertising options, but it does have some, the idea that Facebook and Microsoft lose these people will not impact them a lot, because in the end I reckon it is merely about 10% at best, but there is an upside. These two players need to show growth to their shareholders and that loss of 10% would over time limit and partially diminish those options. It is not much in overall, but when you consider Windows 11, gaming and Facebook advertising, when they all report a total of 10% less shareholders get jumpy and they have been exploiting these streams for too long. As such my solution is gaining power as people are losing all that advertising on their screens and even as they have some in their (what I call) advertising tomes, their advertising is set to a specific place, one that they would have to seek out and they will, people always need things.  As such I created three tomes. The first is all, the second is localised and the third is personal and there is a strength in that. You see, we were all overwhelmed with the Facebook push and we all forgot about places like Yellow Pages, but there was a strength in Yellow pages and no one properly adjusted that view to the digital age, not even the Yellow pages themselves and that is where the strength for over 5 nations lies and that is when the power of Facebook et al start to slowly diminish. You can claim to serve all, or you could properly serve some. That is where Microsoft will fall flat and if I get to serve them their guts before 2026 (a personal prediction) I need to make sure that bad times get to their shores. Yes, they will spin it but loss is loss and shareholders tend to lose their grit a lot sooner, especially when ‘profit percentages’ aren’t met and there was another side to selling my solution, and perhaps Elon Musk would see that benefit to a much larger extent, especially to his other ventures as well. In the end I do not mind selling it to Elon Musk, my IP still gains the strength it would (and the annual commission) and as long as Microsoft doesn’t get it, its fine by me. Although the idea that Microsoft is creating an optional client for my solution is an unexpected turn in more than one way. I say whatever gets the job done, but that is not exactly true, there is more to it. I merely never saw Elon Musk in this area, but he tends to go in all kinds of places and whilst he could set the marker between himself and Prince Al-Waleed bin Talal to fetch billions a year could be a choice for him and whilst he creates a new sea of clients and waves of future revenue he can watch that ship grow to fruition. I’ll be at the dock getting my sales fee and get a mere sliver from that boat as it sails the sea of prosperity. The idea that we both get to see that Junk (also a type of boat) called Microsoft and see it sinking in the distance is merely icing on the cake. And when that happens, I need to get a decent bottle of bubbly celebrating it happened, but that decent bottle is not cheap and as such I need to sell my solutions. Doesn’t a funeral parlour sing that one mans death is another mans revenue? OK, it might have been something like it. 

Still, I like where this is going. Microsoft might not care, might remain in denial and spin it all, but the walls are closing for them, I am merely happy to move that moment along a little faster if possible.

Enjoy the day.

Leave a comment

Filed under Finance, IT, Science