Tag Archives: Sony

December 16, 2020 · 04:41

A political stage of nowhere

Less than an hour ago the BBC gave us ‘EU reveals plan to regulate Big Tech’, apart from the discriminatory nature of the stage, are they doing anything else than merely fuelling their own gravy train? Consider the news from last July, there we were given ‘Apple has €13bn Irish tax bill overturned’, a case that started in 2016, had Apple and the government of Ireland in a twist, when you consider “The Irish government – which had also appealed against the ruling – said it had “always been clear” Apple received no special treatment”, I am on the fence, and in this the European Commission wasted 4 years in going nowhere, in the light of that revelation, can we even trust the approach the EU has? When we look at the first option, we see ‘Online harms law to let regulator block apps in UK’, this means an almost immediate blocking of Twitter, Facebook, WhatsApp and a few more. Local laws have been ‘accomodating’ to large corporations for such a long time, that social media is caught in the middle (and yes they benefitted too), so they re now pushing for changes that end privacy, because that is a conclusion. If we hunt down the perpetrators, we need to coat the materials in identity revealing codes, in addition, the EU government will have to adjust laws to make the poster responsible for what they post and that will lead to all kinds of privacy adjustments (that does not worry me), yet when insurance companies will use that setting to see transgressions on social media and they demand adjustment by handing over the posted evidence, how long until people like Margrethe Vestager start realising that they were clueless from the start? The BBC article gives us “The law would give local officials a way to ask Airbnb and other apps to hand over information or remove listings”, which now puts some players on the dark-web and the chaos (and organised crime involvement) merely increases. For example, when we see “not use data gathered via their main service to launch a product that will compete with other established businesses”, how will that be proven and tested? By handing all data over to the government? How many frivolous cases will that grave train launch? How is it impossible to stop advantage seekers a stage where they use Margrethe Vestager and her gang of idiots to do the bidding of (optionally) organised crime?

Even though I spoke of the Accountability Act, a legal direction that could thwart a few issues from the start in June 2012, 8 years later and this group is hardly even on the track of resolving anything, only to get their grubby greedy fingers on data, the new currency. And in this, the tech companies have their own games to play as Facebook shows with “Apple controls an entire ecosystem from device to app store and apps, and uses this power to harm developers and consumers, as well as large platforms like Facebook”, what Apple does, IBM did for decades, what Apple does Microsoft did for decades, so where is that train station? So even as we see “And they may influence other regulators – in the US and elsewhere – which are also planning to introduce new restrictions of their own” we also need to realise that after a decade, the local and EU laws have done little to nothing to hold the poster of information to criminal account, it seems to me a massive oversight. And in all this there is no view that the EU will wisen up any day soon. 

So as I see it, this will soon become a political stage that goes nowhere and in all this these layers merely want their fingers on the data, the currency that they do not have. How is that in any way acceptable?

Oh and when we see the blocking of apps and localisation, how long until people find an alternative? An alternative that the EU, the UK and the US have no insight over? Will they block apps that interact with data centres in China, Saudi Arabia and optionally other locations too? I raised it in other ways in ‘There is more beneath the sand’ in 2019 as well as some issues in 2018, a setting that was almost two years ago, as such is it not amazing that we see a shortsighted approach to this issue, whilst I gave the option EIGHT YEARS AGO and the laws are still not ready? They are ready to get the data from Google, Facebook, Apple, Amazon and Microsoft, as such when the trial goes wrong, hw will these people be compensated for the loss of uniquely owned data, data that they collected over the decades? Will the stupid people (Margrethe Vestager et al) compensate per kilobyte? How about $25,000,000 per kilobyte? Perhaps we should double that? What will be the price and in this, we should demand that Margrethe Vestager and her teams will be criminally liable for those losses, or will the gravy train decide that it is a little too complex to hold one station to order, and let face it, that gravy train has 27 stops to make, all with their own local needs, their local incomes and their local digital wannabe’s.

When a setting like that goes nowhere, you better believe that there is someone behind the curtain pulling strings for their own enriching needs, that is how it always has been, as such, let me give you the smallest example from January 2020, there we see “‘DIGITAL CROSS-BORDER COOPERATION IN CRIMINAL JUSTICE’ CONFERENCE”, with the nice quote “The e-Evidence Project led by the European Commission, DG Justice and Consumers, provides for the e-Evidence Digital Exchange System that manages the European Investigation Order/Mutual Legal Assistance procedures/instruments (e-Forms, business logic, statistics, log, etc.) on European level. The Reference Implementation Portal is the front-end portal of the e-Evidence Digital Exchange System and is also provided by the EC”, yet this is only step one. In all this we can also include the EC (at https://ec.europa.eu/home-affairs/what-we-do/policies/cybercrime/e-evidence_en), where we see: “However, present-day solutions too often prove unsatisfactory, bringing investigations to a halt”, I get it, you will say, will this not resolve it? Well, consider “provide legal certainty for businesses and service providers: whereas today law enforcement authorities often depend on the good will of service providers to hand them the evidence they need, in the future, applying the same rules for access to all service providers will improve legal certainty and clarity”, in this we need to look in detail at ‘provide legal certainty’, which at present under privacy laws is a no-no, and the poster cannot be identified and cannot (and will not) be held to account. As well as ‘applying the same rules for access to all service providers’, still the poster remains out of reach and the local and EU laws have done NOTHING for over a decade to change that, as such, when we consider this, why should Google, Facebook, Apple, Amazon and Microsoft suffer the consequences, in addition we see the absence of IBM, why is that? Does it not have data collection software, it has data centres, it has cloud solutions, so why are they absent?

And in light of earlier this year, as we were told ‘Google starts appeal against £2bn shopping fine’, how will that end? The law remains untested in too many aspects, in this the entire data stage is way too soon and in that the blowback will be enormous, all whilst the EU (UK too) is unable to do anything about data driven organised crime, other than blame state operators Russia and China, consider the Sony Hack of 2011, I was with the point of view by Kurt Stammberger (before I even knew about Kurt Stammberger), North Korea lacks infrastructure and a whole deed of other parts. I also questioned the data, like “former hacker Hector Monsegur, who once hacked into Sony, explained to CBS News that exfiltrating one or one hundred terabytes of data “without anyone noticing” would have taken months or years, not weeks”, I even considered an applied use of the Cisco routers at Sony to do just that, all issues that North Korea just could not do and in that environment, when we see these levels of doubt and when we get “After a private briefing lasting three hours, the FBI formally rejected Norse’s alternative assessment”, which might be valid, but when we see a setting where it takes three hours to get the FBI up to speed, can we even trust the EU to have a clue? Even their own former director of German Intelligence, gave us recently that they did not fully comprehend Huawei 5G equipment, and they will investigate the data owners, al before the posters of the messages are properly dealt with? I think not!

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December 11, 2020 · 20:54

A weird vindication

Yup, we all face vindication at some point, it can be ‘I told you so’, it can be ‘Yup, I watched it and it went exactly as I expected’, and it can be ‘You should have listened to me’, To be honest, I hope at times it is almost never the third one, there will ALWAYS be an exception, but the third one is laced in arrogance and I personally think that it is laced to deeply in arrogance, as such I tend to side with the first two sentiments. 

Now, this day started weird. I woke up from a slumber. We all have those moments at times, in this instance I had  sort of waking dream, so I cannot say what kind of dream it was, it might be a movie script, yet the setting was a little too surreal. It was in the Netherlands, apparently the Dutch Military Police (they also guard the royal family) had set a parameter where the non used royal houses were used as stash locations. They were instructed to investigate a reporter who had found a snippet of that setting and they decided to smear his career in several ways as to take focus away from those locations. They involved the foreign office to muddy the waters. It was a small group of less than a dozen agents, but the stage was sullied by VEVAK as one of its agents performed a ‘service’ once and they had an inside scoop on technology that was stored in one of the locations. As the foreign office operative was smearing the reporter, VEVAK had altered the information to the smallest degree, but it woke up Mossad and as they started to look into the matters the reporter as well as well as the crooked military police agent were all in their  alleged private hell and as Mossad as played in a few ways the criminal police officers had no place to go but towards handing over the technology to Iran. Anyway that is when I woke up, and I saw that I missed out on the first hour of the Game Awards 2020. 

So why is this vindication? The Last of Us part 2 (7 wins), Ghosts of Tsushima (1 win), Final Fantasy 7 remake (1 win), 9 wins, all Sony exclusives, that is what I mean with Microsoft being off their game by a massive amount, there were more non-Microsoft wins (Animal Crossings) as such the weakest console got the award when the most powerful console did not. Microsoft did win the   Sim/Strategy Game Award and the Flight Simulator that they have left no surprise, it is BEYOND amazing, fair is fair. But that is one title, in this game award show Microsoft was a larger absent force, to get to the top layer you have to up the game to a much larger degree, Sony did, Microsoft to a larger degree did not, the absence of Ubisoft needs to be noticed too, there is a larger stage and both Ubisoft and Microsoft are no longer in the centre of it, the fact that Microsoft got mentioned (in light of Sims) is fair but it is one in a stage where they used to be a contender to a much larger field, fo me this is an ‘I told you so’ event. 

The exclusives matter, if they rock the field they rock gaming, and this year is a sore point for both Ubisoft and Microsoft. I wonder what will happen next year. CD Projekt Red has fixing to do, yet they could end up taking some of the awards, There are a few more players, but the stage is shifting and in this there is a larger push for Sony to rule the complete center stage. The 9 awards are a clear indication of that. It was always hard for any fight between two Sony titles, as such there is a little surprise that Ghosts of Tsushima only got one, but the competition was fierce and The Last of Us part 2 was a price fighter here. No matter who of the two won, the players and the gamers in the end they won, especially if they had both games. So as we are about to enter Saturday I will continue on the RPG I was working on, still haven’t worked out the new levelling system, well actually perhaps in part I have, but I need to think through whether it will not become too chaotic. In gaming chaos is fine, in programming a little less so, it allows for too many bugs and glitches to creep in. Innovation is cool, but the path towards it, often enough, less so. 

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December 1, 2020 · 21:36

Post Scuttle-but 5

Yup, rumours, we all see them, we all hear them and sometimes they are true. So as we consider the digital media need to get people to click, we see a tidal wave of PS5 issues all over the internet. Things like ‘Reports of PS5 ‘Stick Drift’ Surface Weeks After Launch’, ‘DualSense Controllers Are Already Suffering From Drift, Apparently’ and it goes on. Now, rumours are not new and perhaps they are true, in some cases. I had issues with my Switch controller after a year, it was the left one, but I am not a standard user. I agree that these things happen. I never had issues on my CBM64 (after I bought a proper stick), never had an issue on the PS2, PS3, GameCube, Xbox, Xbox 360 or Xbox One. Yet the proper gaming sites do not give me that news, Eurogamer did have in October ‘Class-action lawsuit against Microsoft for alleged Xbox One controller “stick drift” now includes the Elite Series 2’, in this case with Eurogamer I will give them the benefit of the doubt, they are a decent place for gaming news and ‘class action’ does not mean that there is larger validity, it is merely a legal setting and as I stated, none of my Xbox systems EVER had a controller problem. Like many I had the red rings of death, but Microsoft sorted it out in a decent way. Will the PS5 go that way? I have absolutely no way of knowing, but the controller is comfortable, it works well and it shines nicely. It might happen, it might not, but the sites making these proclamations are not sites I trust. They all want you to click on them, so I did and whilst some might have an optional case, the fact that they added ‘Apparently’ in the headline is some form of doubt on their part. So why is it a case? We seek out the positive and negative and the digital funds stations all love a ‘click bitch’, as such they flame and they exploit, and whilst some of the ACTUAL gaming sites give us plenty of goods, they also tend to give the bad news when it is out there and confirmable. I did notice that the day I set up the PS5, a controller driver was updated. Was that. Solution for an issue I never faced? Possible, we might never know, or I might see the same issue soon enough. The fact that a size 7 controller (Nintendo Switch) had an actual malfunction dealing with the stress factors of my size 11 hands is fair enough, the fact that it was able to keep up for a year is a good thing. In light of all that, will my PS5 hamper and give errors? Possible, but so far my PS1, PS2, PS3 and PS4pro never had issues, my PS4 did, but at my own silly stupid hands, not the fault of Sony. We all face these moments in time. My PS4 controller had an issue, but t my own hands, and only after 7 years of intensive use, and I mean INTENSIVE! As I see it Microsoft, Nintendo and Sony brought me controllers that for the most, outlived the console. This is worthy of mentioning. Now, I never got any of the Elite controllers, so I am reserving judgement, yet if that thing is anywhere near the other controllers, we are in good hands. So, back to the Eurogamer article (at https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2020-10-11-class-action-lawsuit-against-microsoft-for-alleged-xbox-one-controller-stick-drift-has-been-updated-to-include-the-elite-series-2) here we see “the updated paperwork now adds seven additional plaintiffs and asks that the case goes before a jury, as well as appending more detail about the alleged defect”, as such we are given “Microsoft does not disclose to consumers that the Xbox controllers are defective, causing the joystick component to fail. Members of the general public have the right to know the latent defects with the Xbox controller components”, so this might be the case, yet before I bash Microsoft (yet again), I feel that it is important to take notice of a few facts. It is a year old, pretty much sold out everywhere, and overall there were complaints to which Windows Central gave the consumers “Microsoft has acknowledged the problem and is investigating”, this does not invalidate the class action, the wording seems to imply that Microsoft made (yet again) a stupid mistake. The claimants might have something to complain about, yet the number of Elite 2 controllers is in the wind, so this impacts dozens of controllers out of a batch of thousands. As such Microsoft optionally faces a minor issue, but they face one non-the-less. This also impacts Sony, who seemingly sold 2 PS5’s for every Xbox, and a 2:1 stage is nice for Sony, who apparently is out of stock until the end of next month. That is a good setting to have, and one I expected. Microsoft is missing out yet again and they merely did this to themselves. Although, tactically, by buying Bethesda, they do have  larger advantage, as the Bethesda fanbase is in the millions. Still, overall, as there are no new Bethesda games (at present), Microsoft will see an increase, will it meet the 3.3 million that Piers Morgan apparently stated is something I put a question mark to. I reckon that it barely will make the 3 million mark and when congestion hits (when, not if), the digital versions (both Sony and Microsoft) will hit a snag and in that Sony might overcome it a little faster, this is speculation, but the amount of system updates (between Sony and Microsoft) gives Sony the advantage. Microsoft had too many of them, and they had them too large (by my consideration).

Still, the systems are a decent match to one another, and yes, I am not ignoring the Verge who gave us ‘Why is the PS5 outperforming the ‘World’s mot powerful console’?’ (at https://www.theverge.com/21718936/xbox-series-x-ps5-performance-game-comparison). Here we see “With the Xbox Series X capable of 12 teraflops of GPU performance vs. 10.28 teraflops on the PS5, most onlookers expected there to be a small gap between the consoles. Microsoft’s next-gen Xbox also has higher levels of memory bandwidth and more compute units, but Sony offers developers less compute units running at a variable (and higher) clock rate to extract better performance out of the PS5”, as well as “the Xbox Series X version of Valhalla includes a lot of screen tearing and regular dips below 60fps. The PS5 version appears to run a lot more smoothly. Variable fresh rates do make up for this screen tearing on the Xbox Series X”, which I reckon when we see all the Xbox AC Valhalla advertisement, is funny as hell (or is that hela?) Anyway, the stage we see is littered with rumours and it is important for gamers that you check EVERYTHING you hear with a proper gaming site and for the most, if 2-3 decent gaming sites do not mention it, dump the gossip where it needs to be, in the trashcan. As such, when we consider everything, you can expect plenty of games having patch after patch after patch.

So feel free to get whatever console you want, but be certain to check decent gaming sites on the console you want, and ‘decent’ gaming sites  exist, there are however less than a dozen really good ones. 

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November 28, 2020 · 21:39

8 missed opportunities

Yup, we all miss things at time, You, me, we all do. At times it is for the simple reason that we were unaware of issues (or opportunities), at times it is because we cannot get bothered. This latter part is not that simple. We cannot get bothered, because we lack certain skills, which is fair enough, and there is the stage where a person does not understand the opportunity missed, which is also fair enough. There is no blame in either case, now consider Google, they have been at it for a year trying to flog their console to the world, Sony taught them long ago that the power of a console is games. They did and proved that on their PS1, PS2, PS3, PS4, PR4pro and they will do it again on the PS5. So when I see Google waste options on the Google Stadia, several with optional micro transactions, I wonder what they are up to. A person can miss some signs, to miss 8 opportunities takes effort, even for a team it takes effort to miss that much, so what gives?

There is an optional chance that in 2021 the Amazon Luna could surpass the Google Stadia especially if their teams waste opportunity, I wonder if that will happen. Apple Arcade will continue regardless, it almost fuels itself and these so called AAA developers (Ubisoft, Bethesda, EA et al) will flog their games that are on every system, but the power of a console is finding something their that none of the others have, Sony explained that to them, didn’t they?

As such I wonder what Google is up to and if they are taking their Google Stadia seriously, it is not a shame if they do not, but that takes them out of the race soon enough. Luna, the Amazon Luna will love that, Apple will like it too, but they have other concerns soon enough. So, we will leave them alone. As I see it, Google optionally missed 8 opportunities, 8 times they could have had something the others did not, I wonder why that is. 

So as we consider the stage, I saw that someone rejected (or abandoned) their option, as such I see opportunity. Then there is the stage where I had a small go in one direction and I see transgression from concept to optional design stage and there is the stage where we see a rejected idea that could be redesigned into something workable. All stages that go somewhere, will they go towards a finished product? That is not for me to state, I merely see the development of what could be, that is at present all I can do. Oh and that I before we consider a stage that we never looked at, it seems an unworthy jab, and it is not meant to be as such, but who knows the lists of games of Microprose? Covert Action, Knights of the Sky, Silent Service, Masters of Orion, 4 titles, often overlooked, but games to make a difference for players, a long term difference to a large number of players over time. Now, I am not aware of the rights and where they are, yet who investigated this? Were these titles investigated? The list goes on and on, and there are two elements to consider

  1. Reinventing the wheel is often easier (as well as cheaper if there is no locked IP)
  2. These games are 30 years old, they can be made better, more inviting and optionally keep people entertained longer. 

We look at what is cool, we look at what is now, but the Google Stadia cannot compete with the PS4, PS5 or these new Microsoft consoles. So they cannot rely on things that are out there too. But they can make a difference and get a larger advantage over Amazon Luna and Apple Arcade, yet it seems that they are at present not doing that, I wonder why.

It is not the stage where they have a lot of time, the moment Luna or Apple get traction, that might  become the end of Google Stadia, is that what they are aiming for, if so, they are doing a decent job of it. 

The fact that my mind redesigned three games in a day and Google shows us the same list for Google Stadia games, oh and that is before you consider the congestion on 4G, it might not matter in the cities, but all over the EU and commonwealth (the US too), rural players will get massive amounts of internet congestion, when you realise that Google Stadia will see an expected larger issue with Cyberpunk 2077, Watchdogs: Legion, AC Valhalla, Destiny 2, Red Dead Redemption 2, Fr Cry 6, AC: Odyssey, Division 2 and a few more, so when we take non metropolitan France, non metropolitan Germany, non Metropolitan Italy, and several US *and Canadian) states out of the equation, it does not leave the Google Stadia a lot to work with, they needed to set a very different focus, especially as they knew the congestion issues would be a much larger part of the equation. I merely wonder why there was no adjustment made on day zero, as such this was a decently clear setting on November 18th, 2019, Covid merely enhanced that flaw, so why were there no visible actions taken? I understand that some of the games are not the high killer resolution, but a game you can play still beats a game that is stopped through congestion, and when we consider that Fallout Shelter has well over 150,000,000 downloads, as such over the last 3 years well over 100,000,000 played the game, does it make sense that the Google stage should not be limited to the high resolution games? I have played Fallout Shelter on EVERY system I own, it was never dull on any of them. As such I hope that Google takes a page out of the Sony bible and takes a look at the Nintendo Bible, neither is regarded as gospel, but they are the ruling systems, so ignoring their views is a bigger no-no than you imagine. 

I wonder what happens when Google misses 11 opportunities, will there be cake? They say that 11 is a karmic number and as I see it, some spiritual awakening and awareness would not go amiss at 1600 Amphitheatre Parkway, Mountain view. Yet, that is merely my view on the stage of missed opportunities.

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November 26, 2020 · 01:42

Eureka, sort of

I just had an idea, it woke me up, in light of the main story of the game I have been designing in my mind, I suddenly had a setting that has never been done to this degree before. There is the optional discussion on what drives a main story and what drives the side quests, yet what happens when they are related. My good friend and trusted adversary (Dante Alighieri) had given me an idea before, but I never thought it through, this time I did. As such, what if Greed, Gluttony, Violence, Fraud and Treachery are the foundation of the main quest in one side, and the stories are set around these 5 items, yet there are also the other settings, for the artisans, we rely on norse mythology, Alfheim, the bright elves where the skills of pottery (agility are maximised), Jotunheim, the realm of giants where strength is maximised and Hela where the necro spear of Hela is worshipped. 

A setting where norse mythology is not copied, but it is the foundation of the three warrior sides, an overlap of Greek, Celtic and Viking lore, to shape each of the three worlds and the three story lines giving a stage where a player has several story lines to follow, but they need to be scripted as main storylines, not side quests to follow from point A to B. Each part of the tory might have up to 5 missions and linked to that one side quest (which opens up another story), in that setting the people will replay the game again and again, optionally at some point merely to see all the stories, but in a stage where we see a larger story behind the 5 stories (partially) emerge. As I see it, in all of RPG history this has not happened, as such any exclusive Sony developer (who can use this freely) we see an optional first in open world RPG. Some will say, but we saw this here, and that part there and they would optionally be right to some degree, but none of the games has ever linked the stories to a larger whole, that would be the new part and that would guide the player to a stage of exploration and subtle pushing in one direction, whilst not demanding the player goes that way, they are optional routes and whether the person does the optional path will lead to one way, the other route to route B to a similar but not the same mission. As far as I can tell, this was never done before and it pushes ‘the story is everything’ to a much larger degree. It is not where we go, it is how we. Get there that fuels the sweetness of porridge, and as such we see an optional third progression, it is a little wing to the makers of the term ‘Would you kindly’, yet it is not a prerequisite. I is a larger stage, like learning to cook, we did it all in Skyrim, but now it becomes essential. You can play Skyrim without ever eating a bite, in this game food is more than a source of energy, it becomes a source of support to strength, agility and/or magic. So having food and the right ingredients will be a much larger part of you, and lets be fair, in what universe did you ever conquer the evil mother-in-law without a bite to eat? 

All considerations, all stages that implement a much larger storyline, it is like a collection of stories, like we see in the movies Into the woods, the league of extraordinary gentlemen or even the movie van Helsing (2004), a stage I merely a stage if you call it that, others will refer to it as a podium or a floor of commerce, it is your action that decides how far you can take each in the same space at the same time.

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November 25, 2020 · 17:57

RPG Arms race

Yes, I had not forgotten my promise, so before I start resetting the Saudi Airforce from the American options to either the BAE Typhoon or the Chinese Chengdu J-20, all whilst bagging myself a rather nice (and large) commission, I have a promise to keep. It took me a whilst, yet when Bethesda made the Elder Scrolls, they had the alone stage for Fantasy RPG and they grew it rather nicely, close to perfection. Yet I am no ones second fiddle, as such I thought it would be nice to change the game. In the setting where you are a ranged ‘fighter’, or a stealth type, I decided on the Indonesian blowpipe. It has the benefit of stealth, speed, some distance (not overly large) poison dart options and a few more, as such the blowpipe would be in, there is the Trisula (Indonesian version of the Japanese Sai), the Gollocks, yet they also have swords and spears, so there is a whole range of new weapons giving the RPG lover a new set of discoveries to make in how to best give the realisation of mortality to your enemies. And as I was taking a look at the weapons, I came to the conclusion, that as I spread the power of magic, the same could be done to the weapons. Even as we might like all weapons (some people do), giving them the power of one (agility for the blowpipe) removes strength for the sword and spear. It is a little more natural that way. Stealth still has knives and blades, but that person would be less in other weapons, the other way as well, those adapts and better in swords and spears are lousy in the precision of the blowpipe, they can still use knives for stealth parts, but not much more, the stage to reply is set. As I set the stage of magic and weapons, the third need would be there.
The support of the craft of artisan. The agile are good at pottery, but slow and less able to be the armorer or blacksmith, the blacksmith would be less of an alchemist and pottery person, item can always be bought and the fighter can still be a good alchemist in nearly every way, yet the division pushes a person to become passable and average n all directions, or set towards excellence in one or optionally two directions. Too many RPG’s are about inclusions, the ‘you can be all approach’, yet as I have stated towards Ubisoft for the longest time, a game that states it pleases everyone, in the end will please no one. That setting set a larger stage, a stage where you can reply the game, optionally multiple times and face the stage where you see new things at least twice over, it makes for longer joy in a game. 

And all whilst doing this, I got the inside idea of yet another game, based on a golden oldie. It was done by Melbourne House in 1985, yet not unlike the older version, you have to grow your skills, go to places and unlock abilities and unlock moves. So what happens when the stage is not all, but you get one night to do it, you get 5 hours until the final showdown where you are the challenger, and every time you play the game, the powers are somewhere else, so no running to the 6 points to get the max character, you get a stage where the skills you acquire are the skills you have for the final fight, yet the stage is not who presses the button faster, it is more like Nioh, a tactical challenge, we keep on forgetting that the old games have actual diamonds in the rough (sorry Disney), actual gems that can shine, even now on the PS5 can bring joy to millions of Playstation gamers (as such all ideas are always free for Sony Playstation exclusive games). 

So as I finished the ideas of fighting, artisans and magic, it is time to think of a storyline, a main story where we need to set a new level of adaptability, because if you are in one place in one chosen group, you will not face the same story, so what happens when the main storyline is not one story, but there are 5 for you to find? How to go about that part? I can tell you one thing, that has never been done before, I wonder why not?

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November 20, 2020 · 03:46

What was the past

It is something we all face, we see what we had and we miss it. Consider NCIS, an awesome series, and when we were introduced to Agent Fornell, I remembered Joe Spano, he was young innocent, wearing a bowtie and being the psychiatrist at Hill Street blues station. I miss that series at times. I know time moves on and we got Blue Bloods now, yet Hill Street Blues struck a chord in 1981, others did less so, it is hard to explain, because it sounds negative on the series that are out now, but the reality is that something got lost in TV series in the last 10 years. There are series that spring outside the equation, series like NCIS, the Magicians, Lucifer, Fortitude, American Horror Story, but the equation is very unbalanced. When you are trying to figure out how that happened, do not worry, it is simple. In 2019, the number of original scripted television series in the United States hit 532. It is almost 450% up from 1981. Hollywood is so much towards creating amount and less about creating quality, which is why the series I mentioned and a few more stand out. I keep n hearing mentions of Game of Thrones, but not much more, one show takes the cake and that used to be different. Discussions were going on regarding Hill Street Blues, Dallas, Dynasty, Bergerac, Tatort, and a few more. Yet nowadays, the amount of series crossing our eyes increases, yet it seems that nothing between the ear sticks. That tends to be quality, not quantity. There is a reason why a series like NCIS has been around for 18 seasons. Yet at times I still think of the old Hill Street blues station. And each nation had its own quality shows. Germany brought us Tatort and Derrick, the UK gave us Bergerac, the Avengers, Hammer house of horrors, and the list from other nations goes on. But now it seemingly needs to be American, whilst overall (with a few exceptions) the quality is not fantastic, not bad, just not great. And I do believe it is not the cast, not the team and not the writers. It seems to be the pressures to create on too limited a schedule with repetitive ideas again and again.

Why is that?
It is no secret, Hollywood is all about return on investment, but that circle becomes virtual and fictive when quality goes down. There is a need to make money and we get that, I am not against the idea of making money, but what do you think when 2019 had 532 series, all needing originality, all needing ideas and only so many writers with actual original ideas around. It didn’t require rocket science, it was a simple equation. So how long does it take for the Hollywoodians to figure out that there is a limit to quality series that can be produced? You might think that I am talking out of my (non-mouth), but the setting of Netflix handing over $18 billion in the last year for IP should get us to ask questions. Netflix’s 2019 costs to buy, produce and license content will be $15 billion. And when you considered they made a little over $20 billion in 2019, it seems that I am wrong, but am I? Consider how long this pattern can continue? No one denies that you have to spend to make money. Yet, how is the equation correct? And 

Netflix is merely one of several stations, so when this model implodes, we will see Netflix, HBO, Stan, Apple, Amazon and Disney, all spending billions, all whilst the people will have to make choices and we get that, as such some will survive, some will not, we all get that. Yet at that point, what happens to HBO, Stan, Disney, Apple, Amazon and Netflix? Where will you be? 

Differential
I need to set a separation here, we have the money side and the creation side. Yet the money side  will hinder, impair, and optionally drive the creation side, even though the negative sides are only looked at after things go wrong. I believe that continuation can only exist if the quality is of the highest caliber and I personally believe that this is not possible when you create 532 series in a year. At some point something has to give and that is before we consider that there are really good series out there and no one denies that they are good. Yet consider that in 2009 Joss Whedon created an amazing series called the Dollhouse, not merely a good series, it set the tone on serious matters and was cut off after two seasons. He also lost the tone on Firefly, yet that one is still around, after 17 years, now seen as a cult classic. Out of the 532 series, what else will we lose out on, because they are the silent victims, scrapped because the moment was wrong, the analyst did not get what mattered and as such the makers lose out. This setting is important, because with 532 titles that group will increase, too little time, too much to miss out on.

Creation cut short for reasons not within the stage of an audience. Streaming makes this a much smaller factor, but it still will not make it zero. Yes streaming will be important to give good series a larger chance, but in all that the numbers are not adding up, not when you consider what Netflix as one provider sets their cost at and all the other streamers with their own costs as well. Soon it will change again, yet not for the reasons you considered before. You see streamers have one larger station, and internet congestion will hit them too, especially in light of the issues hitting the internet. And we will see places all over the world get a earful of fibre-to-the-node (FTTN) and fibre-to-the-premises (FTTP), and int he end we will rely on all kind of matters, but we forgot that streaming is not alone, there are PC’s for gaming, there are computers for FaceTime, there are computers for work from home, gamers and now with PS5 and the new Xbox it will increase, there are ‘digital editions’ consoles without 4K drives and they all have to download. And they will need to do so a lot more than before on the Xbox One and PS4. The stage is not on the gamers, but we have already seen the news on YouTube and Netflix throttling down, so how can the growth rate continue when the internet is clearly becoming the weakest chain in that link? In March the Guardian reported ‘Disney+ streaming service to launch in UK with lower bandwidth’, so there you are, your new 4K TV so that you can admire Baby Yoda in the Mandalorian, and the service can merely give you 1080 resolution. That is the reality and it is not getting any better until 2023, so can you consider the issues that streaming has and cannot deliver? It is not merely the amount of series, it is the stage where we cannot see their full potential and the UK is not alone, these elements are showing up all over the Commonwealth, al over the EU and the US is also not absent of issues. It was a stage I saw coming in 2018, yet they all declared me a fool, now they say it is a complex issue. Well it is not, it is the issue that was clearly out in the open, ignored by too many. Even now we see the blame game continue n other fields, how long has the PS5 been sold out? How long did we know that this was a setting of hundreds of thousands per nation and we get ‘The UK’s biggest game retailer blames PS5 size for launch delivery delays’, really? The size was known for months, the amount of systems were known for months. Too many people are reacting at the 11th hour, in systems, on the internet and with the ISP’s. Who will they blame when streaming is cut down again? When do the people get the next news from ISP’s that there are issues? Oh, wait, that moment passed already. When we are treated to “Possibly the most common form of buffering occurs when your internet speed is too slow to download the amount of data needed”, as well as “You need at least 25 Mbps for 4K streaming video on your computer or Ultra HD enabled devices”, yet on a global scale and especially outside of metropolitan area that issue is becoming an issue in streaming. So as Net Neutrality is back on the political table in the US, it becomes a massively larger issue to face. This all is not the fault of the streamers, lets be clear about that part, they are a factor, but not the cause, like the blame game couriers, here the ISP’s should have been ready to a much larger degree and we cannot blame them for the covid lockdowns, yet the setting of bandwidth limits has been known for some time, at least a year and that was also out in the open, as such the stage we see will be a larger issue and that I merely a fraction of the station that I see, the math does not add up, it was clear for a much longer time and so far too many parties are aligned to ignore that part. We see solution A, option B and everyone dances around the overwhelming lack of bandwidth.

Consider that Saudi Arabia has a 5G internet that is 750% faster than anything the US has, did anyone consider the weird setting in that regard? And the interesting part is that no one is asking the questions that matters, how come that Saudi Arabia of all places has an internet is so much faster? It is a much larger setting and the people are seemingly kept blind, which is fine by me, but when you lose out on HD episodes of NCIS, American Horror Show season 10, Superman & Lois (2021), or A Discovery of Witches season 2 (2021)? When the throttling continues or increases, what happens to streaming? What happens to net neutrality? Did anyone consider that part of the equation when they saw the $15,000,000,000 bill that Netflix had for 2019? There was a reason why sacking Huawei was a really bad idea and others will soon catch up on that idea. I have no issues with an alternative being found, but none have the capabilities at present and they are unlikely to have them until 2022, should you doubt that? Take a look at how abysmal the USA has its 5G at present, look at how fast streaming is in rural USA, you see the US is a lot more than the 25 large cities and plenty of people live outside these places, should they not be able to stream at the max? When we see that discrimination is the prejudicial treatment of different categories of people, as is the streaming of rural versus metropolitans discrimination or not? Consider that for a moment. So let’s not wait until the 11th hour, let’s make sure that the right people look to the right places quickly, the term sooner rather than later cannot apply, we are already 2 years too late for that. It is the technology side, with the finance and creativity, too many forgot about the technology side of it and now it starts calling foul, it cannot deliver more.

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November 17, 2020 · 17:20

Cursed by choice

It is a setting some will remember, some fondly, some less so. It is a state where you have too much options. Let me try to explain this, for example, your iPod you find after a year and you see hundreds of songs you have not heard for some time, but you cannot decide, or perhaps a choice of 5 RPG games and you have select one to play. The inability to seek between good options if you want.

It is a setting the reflects on to situations. The first is the one, the only, the musk (Elon to insiders). BBC reports “Tesla’s share price surged about 14% in New York following the news it was being added to the index. Given Mr Musk’s 20% stake in Tesla his net worth rose to $117.5bn, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. His wealth has jumped $90bn this year as Tesla’s share price has continued to rise”, I look at the setting differently, some say he has the Midas gene, he can anything he touches to gold, I reckon like Steve Jobs and a few others, he has the ability to turn generic outliers into commercial successes. We can go from the fact he knows what is useful, we can go with he knows where to push, who to push and how much to push. We can look at it in different ways, but in basic “Tesla’s share price surged about 14% in New York following the news it was being added to the index. Given Mr Musk’s 20% stake in Tesla his net worth rose to $117.5bn, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. His wealth has jumped $90bn this year as Tesla’s share price has continued to rise”, and that is before he realises (perhaps he already knows) that he is optionally sitting on an additional $1.2 trillion (meaning $1,200 billion) and the wired has seemingly no caught on, I had a few ideas in support of that, but the IP is already his, so why bother, he will figure it out. And that is before he goes to space, there he might make a few coins more. 

It is one setting and the opposing view is seen when we look at the lovely youthful youngling known as Taylor Swift. That BBC view (at https://www.bbc.com/news/entertainment-arts-54969396) gives us “Writing on Twitter Swift said it was “the second time my music had been sold without my knowledge””, here we want to answer in anger, yet the article also gives us “Swift signed a deal with record label Big Machine in 2004 granting them ownership of the master recordings to her first six albums in exchange for a cash advance to kick-start her career”, as such if there is no clause with a mandatory first option to buy back, I wonder if Scooter Braun did anything wrong. The news gives us that she signed over ownership on her first 6 albums, so I understand that she is not happy, but did Scooter do anything wrong? She is not the first, I learned a lot later in life that Paul McCartney has lost ownership of Beatles songs. I actually never knew that. And he is not alone, as such, and especially as we know and have seen that Taylor is very intelligent, why she learned her lesson the hard way. As one is cursed by many options, the other one was forced by a lack of options. The most dangerous part in all this is doing something expecting them to act in another, when we see “US entertainment magazine Variety first reported on Monday that Braun had sold the rights – known as masters – to an investment fund. It said the deal is thought to be worth more than $300 million (£227m)”, I wonder how much the songs were bought for, as such still, one third of a billion is a whole lot of money, I would not sell my IP for that (I would set it to a percentage of the patent value), yet overall I could be tempted. And there is a setting switch, it is about awareness, how many people in the music industry have a real grasp of IP and what it is worth nowadays. Games, movie, TV series, they are all in need of music and there is so much one can compose, it was perhaps one of Ubisoft most brilliant moments in all this, get well known songs or well known artists to support the IP, Imagine Dragons is perhaps one of the more known artists, it propelled the game, not merely the graphics, the music was a large part of it and Ubisoft was exceedingly clever there, they might not own the IP, but they knew a good deal when it was there and musicians need to catch up, especially in this age of Netflix and streaming. Now this is not an attack on Taylor Swift, this might have been her only option, yet the stage remains, what kind of legal advice did she get? I do not know, I am merely asking. So when I see (according to the BBC) “When his company, Ithaca Holdings, paid $300m to acquire Swift’s former record label last year, Swift saw it as an act of aggression that “stripped me of my life’s work”. She accused Braun – who also manages Ariana Grande, Justin Bieber and Demi Lovato – of “incessant, manipulative bullying”” we see a lot of emotion, but the stage is did Scooter Braun do anything wrong or illegal? We might say immoral and unethical but neither is a crime according to law and that is the setting we need to see and perhaps Taylor should have appealed to Elon Musk who has well over 3,000 times what she apparently needed, it is merely food for thought, although, I reckon that Elon gets a dozen of these attempts to contact an hour, and optionally when he figures out where his optional missing $1.2T is even more.

Such is life!
There are two groups cursed by choice, one group has too many, the other has (far) too few. Which one do you belong in? And what makes you think that you are in one or the other, because that contemplation tends to be a solution in itself at times.

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November 11, 2020 · 00:40

A,B,C,…..D?

We all have ways to promote the thinking pattern within ourselves, we all have our way to get about it, I am no exception. Yet, today is a weird day, I am overwhelmed with a thought and a sensation from the 60s. I was a wee young lad (a little piss ant is more like it), I was never a saint, especially when I was young. And in all this we all had our own ways to deal with ourselves, again, I am not exception. 

The sensation that bugs me today is something that has been in the back of my mind for a while. It is like a nuisance that keeps on bugging me and I do not exactly know why. It is a drink, in the Netherlands it was for a small time (in the 60s) decently wanted. The bottle was long and slim, with a light blue lid, it contained some form of a tangerine drink. That drink has been on my mind for a while now, and I miss it, but until recently it’s been nagging me and I do not know why. I looked up a few things and I noticed that there is no decent tangerine liquor. The drink I used to have was a lemonade, basically tangerine juice, settled with a third ingredient like water, still water. So why was it on my mind so strongly?

I had been considering a lot more from that era, mostly TV series, it was all before the house of Pong set up its shrine (a manhunter New York joke). And then it hit me, it was 1968, the Dutch TV series ‘De Fabeltjeskrant’ created by Leen Valkenier started, the UK got it later titled ‘The Daily Fable’, the setting had connections to the fables of Jean de La Fontaine, Aesop, and others. No matter how simple it was then, it was close to unequalled until it ended in 1989 after well over 1600 episodes, a gem too many had forgotten about, The adventures narrated by Mr Owl, with Miss Stork, 

Mr. Cunningham the Fox, Mr. Crow, Boris the Wolf, Bert and Fred Beaver, Zippy the Hare,Shelly the Tortoise, Miss Ant, Gerald the Pigeon, Milord the Horse, Harold the, George the Guinea Pig in the British version, Mumbles the Mole, Myra the Hamster, Greta the Cow, and Zaza the Zebra. There were more characters, but I stopped watching when I grew a little older, yet consider the simple fact that this series ran for over 1600 episodes and consider all the old tales as well as the tales of Grimm and others, what a treasure trove it could be, even today, we are all looking at the hi-tech series, but there is a reason that Tim Burton struck gold with the Nightmare before Christmas, stop motion animation is still an art that can move all the senses we have and we forgot about that tiny detail. We seemingly forgot about the situation where what was is still good, but how to embrace it? The fair part is that children do not mind, they embrace the story, the interactions, the inclusion, it is the inclusion that tends to take the cake, but it is merely one of a few factors and to be around for 22 years, that matters, that shows that you have a winner. So can it be relaunched? That is the question we need to face. E can remaster it, it can be remade, but in the same way? It is like the original Mass Effect, these gems are close to timeless, in 15 years when we have the Playstation 6 and the Zbox (or XboxX), a game like Mass Effect will still have a value that equals its weight in gold, so TV series too will have their moment and the IP and its owner sees a new life where none was expected. It is the showing of a real visionary, a game like Mass Effect (the original trilogy) is truly one of those. 

So whilst my mind focussed on a tangerine smell and a faint taste of what was, the reason was lingering in the back of my mind and the Daily Fable is not the only thing from those days. Netflix is investing a little over $17 billion in this year alone, but on how much actual IP? What if a fraction could get them several series that could give them a much larger offering of series? As the workflow comes back (after another lockdown), we see that there is a need for materials that will be there for the younger and the not so young viewers. 

It is about series, games, streaming and non streaming. It is all directed via IP, but it is not the only option, there is a whole league of games that lost their IP protection years ago, the same for TV series and the clever mind is one that looks in the past and find the troves most forgot about.  A setting we need to take another look at. So consider on what Netflix is spending and then add the billions that DisneyPlus is spending and see what some can get at a mere farthing per pound, a setting too enticing to ignore, but the will be the name of the game soon enough. 

It links to an old joke, what is the difference between a bookkeeper and an accountant? A zookeeper has a $10 note and hands you 10 $1 coins, an accountant squeezes the $10 note until it gives up 11 $1 coins. We can laugh at the or realise that the Netflix has an optional $1,700,000,000 around, all because not the right accountant took a look at the $10 notes. We can laugh at the joke, or we can consider that there are parts none of them looked at, why is that? Or better stated, where are the gemstones? You already saw one, let me give you one more, it was a Swedish series called ‘Den vita stenen’, a series based on a 1965 award winning book. In a collection of nations, a mere 2 options and that is before you realise that France, Germany, Norway, Estonia, Netherlands, Belgium and Spain. They all have the gemstones no-one noticed or they forgot the impact they had focussing on a local market tends to have that impact and the time goes short, soon more than one will catch on and when they get it done it will be too late for them.

Such is life, as such, did you get to point D? If so, is it a square, a rectangle, a trapezium or a parallelogram? All options and none are the same.

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November 7, 2020 · 23:25

A cloud-less future

Yup, it happens, it is not intentional and it will happen to us all. This started for me as I was listening to my iPod, I am enjoying a band called The Sweet, a British band I really liked in the 70’s. So listening to their greatest hits was something I had not done for a long time, yet for some reasons somewhere between Ballroom Blitz and Blockbuster cogs started to turn, it was that time of the day again as I was setting my creative cap on, you see, I had the idea for the MD net drive in the early 90’s when I saw one of the first Mini Disc drives. Consider that this small disk had the option to store an entire CD, in a time that a Bernoulli drive with a disc 20 times that size could only story up to 90 MB. I talked to Sony about it, but they waved the idea away, it would never catch on. Little did they realise just how long they ended up to be. Yet these idea’s are giving me the thought of a new generation of devices. 

Consider the iPad, iPod, Mobile phone, they all have items that you use all over, they all have a setting that is almost transparent, perhaps even trans parent. Now consider that we might rely on the cloud in some cases, but that cloud will soon become less and less reliable. Even now, the last week I have had all kinds of congestion issues with YouTube, friends in the UK have had other data related items, nothing major, there was no loss, but there was also no clear connection, things went bump into the night (and next morning).

Now consider how small an NVME SSD drive is now, a 1 TB drive fit into my hand, so what happens when we look at the KingstonSSD drive that is a mere 42 mm large? They will get smaller, but for now it is small enough, and 240GB is small enough to be an ejectable drive tht can go from device to device. Your music inserted in whatever device you need it to be. Yes, the cloud does this too, but how long until the cloud costs more than you bargained for? What happens when the congestion increases, net neutrality is off the beaten track through Service Level Agreements that you either sign up for (for a fee) or lose? 

Now is the time to have alternatives, if only to avoid the lack of 5G in France and Germany or perhaps the fact that 5G in the US is only 13% of the speed of 5G in Saudi Arabia, you think it will not hit you at some point? You’re dreaming, the question is will it affect you, for the most there is little doubt, it will not hinder you, but there is every chance that it will aggravate you, when the 3rd or 4th song stagnates, freezes or just stops, your mood is gone. This is what happened to you with CD’s and it will hit you again. Yet the setting is not so bad, we can void it all at the beginning of the station. What if these factors would never hit you? 

There is no doubt that there will be an option to have a NVME port. Perhaps a MNVME (Mobile NVME) port, even now we see the Orico GV100 512GB NVMe Portable External SSD, which is the size of a USB stick, it is 3.78 inch long, but almost 1/3 is for the key holder, so that thing can already be smaller, and it is $179, in consideration a 2TB drive for the PS4 is $97, so there is room to manoeuvre and when these drives become popular, prices go down. 

Yet the foundation is that we need all kinds of devices, that all link to one drive, a drive we have on us. Soon it will have crypto parts, biometrics data and we keep it on us, a validation for all kinds of matters. We have no option but to move in this direction, several factors will push us, some good, some required and some because it is just a form of laziness. Consider that the drive has the 2 Netflix movies you downloaded last night, so you can enjoy whatever you binge on the train to work? It is destined to happen, and some of the companies are most likely already looking into this, I predict ted in 2012 (after seeing a stack of patents by Samsung and Apple) that the stage of mobile devices was changing. The hardwire became more transparent and nondescript (fitting multiple directions), it was the software that was pushing a direction, yet in all this the data (your music, your movies, your games) remains open to direction and I reckon that the setting of mobile name will deal with that direction, some will be generic, some will be branded. It is the generic part that has the highest stage of usage, because people do not believe in one direction, they embrace the freedom of choice, there are plenty who all really on Apple, but Apple will take care of that part, it is portable and mobile data that will set in the third wave. Why?

Because the people think that others will take care of it, just like they did when Google created search (and they latched on for a free ride) and now they are all crying like little bitches: “boo hoo hoo, Google is so nasty”, to them I tell, go cry me a river, you get ahead of the curve or you stop being part of the process and when the data part is very soon coming up for debate, it is those who allow for larger portability that will get the podium, not some Azure service agent, giving you some version of “Get Started With Free Credit To Try Any Combination Of Azure Services. Build Your Next Idea”, yes but it is still set to the Azure Frame (Apple and Amazon having their standards), it is those who allow for a larger frame of open choice, they will win, because data requires open stages (a copy me, I want to travel) idea, whilst others have one system, one cloud and when you get conflicts these salespeople stop talking when you get to the part that is not inherently theirs, it makes them no money. 

It is there where we see a the stage where a billion people will want to move and as some business types will sell their children for a slice of that cake, what do you think your value will be when you are the one holding that cake? And all that I even before governments get clued in on what data they are missing out of. 

There will always be need of a cloud, there are however more and more moments when the cloud is overrated and more of a hindrance, that is where mobile data will become a key player in the hardware that people will buy. It will be a consumers market where the buyer decide where they want to go, not the seller telling the buyer where they need to go, that is the frame in 3-5 years.

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