Tag Archives: Youtube

June 15, 2015 · 00:18

As the heart thumps

We are only two days away from the E3, those who are into gaming will wonder ‘what will we see next?’ We all feel that way, yet lately, the more I see of Elite: Dangerous, the more I await its arrival on PS4. For now it is a Microsoft exclusive. I remember the day I became ‘dangerous’ I had been playing it for quite some time. Consider the screen below. This was the screen we drooled about. It was on a C-64 and it was ‘da bomb’ in those days!

Lave

So many hours, at first jumping short distances, hoping no one would attack me, but after my first pulse laser, I got to be cocky (and got killed in the process). Now we see the next gen pics, one is the PC, the other is as I was told the Xbox One edition (this is not a cut scene, this is actual game view). If you think that ‘it is all about the resolution’ then you are quite frankly a nob (or a dweeb). I have been and will remain a Sony fan (I still love my Xbox 360), there is no denying that this game is beyond amazing!

XB1_1

Most information on the XB1 edition so far, I got from YouTube. As I played the original and have had decades of gaming experience (which is why I knew the flaws Microsoft is fixing now, were a solid known issue for me 6 months before the system was released, and not all have been fixed by the way). Now, most gamers will be the Mario kind, or the Grand Theft Auto kind. This game might not appeal to either, yet, I feel that the flight simulator and Role Playing Game kind will truly love this game, and we are in for a lot more heart elevation than just this game!

To get a good initial look of the game then watch this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=grIGMs3Kj4k. The man talks clear but waffles a little in the beginning. He is going through it all clearly, so bear with his explanation, because it is worth it! If need be, skip the movie to 4:45, now you see the first glimpse on how a mere idea in 1984, becomes something truly amazing when the computers catch up to the imagination of an individual, in this case the imagination of David Braben and Ian Bell.

This is not a 30 hour game, this is a game that will keep you busy for many months, if not years to get it all to a worthy level, but let that not stop you, because as you evolve from one ship to the next one, you will be able to transport more goods, have better protection and go hunt criminals. The openness of the game that was, was already impressive, the size of the new edition is beyond anything you can imagine. We are talking a few million times larger than the original. For those who like the idea of space exploration, this is one of two games to get.

What is amazing is not just what it looks like now, it is the fact on how the navigation systems from 1984 are still at the core of what is now, it was the most innovative look and now, this view is the centre of aligning your ship and weapons systems towards your enemies. And it does not just ‘seem’ to be the best, as you watch the game on YouTube you can see how fluent the controls seem to be, especially as we consider the response from Blitz ‘Oops! We’re going the wrong way’ moments later it is all back to normal.

The other game to get is ‘No Man’s sky’, but that one I will leave alone, because, too many people are hyping this game, based on the same materials most saw (YouTube and so on). So we will wait for actual release date information.

What is interesting is that leaking information is not just limited to the political branch of the media, it seems that Dishonored 2 information has leaked. Dishonored was the stealth game on 360/PS3/PC, which had open levels and had a steampunk look to it all. The interesting part is that there was no set way to do the game, stealth or kill everyone, you got to choose. Another interesting part was hat when I replayed it on the 360 a while after I completed it, I found in more than one level another way to get the game done, which is awesome, because that gives a clean ‘open level’ approach, something that I am a big fan of. There is still question whether it comes and whether it is a leak or a ‘miscommunication’ but gamers live for these moments, because Dishonored 2 was not in the open pipeline and a fan will get overly enthusiastic when a sequel arrives of a game he is a fan of.

At this point, the Bethesda conference is only 12 hours away! 12 hours until the Fallout 4 trailer will get additional support and information to those who love that game (that would be me). 12 hours after that the show takes off for thousands of gaming fans! There will be joy, there will be tears and there will be outrage. The latter part might be a bit much for Ubisoft, but there is no way to tell how they will fix previous blunders and how they will appease the deserting population they have experienced. Time will tell and on that part I will not speculate at present! I still feel that they could turn it around and rebuild what they had lost, it just takes one truly visionary person (often not found in a board of directors).

Ubisoft does its presentation 20 hours after Bethesda, Bethesda has a 12 hour leap on Microsoft too, so whatever news they bring will get unadulterated limelight for the better part of a day. The rumours are ripe and some state there will be more than just Fallout 4 and Doom, but again, they are just rumours and Fallout 4 is pretty massive sized news, especially as it comes out this year, so that means within the next 6 months.

So why more on games? You see, games are getting to be a much more important part in the lives of people, many of them not into gaming at all. Gaming is now a major player for Trademarks and let’s take a look at patents!

You see, IP Australia tells us “Software inventions must be industrially applied. Software that is merely a procedure for solving a given type of mathematical problem is not patentable”, yet when we look at the The Copyright Act 1968 (Cth) we see the following “Under the Act an article is industrially applied when, with the consent of the copyright owner, fifty or more items are made from it, which we see in section 77, 17. If the design is not able to be registered, for example because it is not new and original, it will still lose copyright protection once it is commercialised section 77“, now we get to the part that matters: “By registering a design under the Designs Act 2003 (Cth), for example a design for a kettle, the owner obtains a monopoly in that design but, unlike with copyright, the protection is only for a maximum of ten years and not for the life of the owner. With copyright the owner does not obtain a monopoly. If two people independently prepare a drawing of a kettle neither infringes copyright in the other’s drawing. The registration of a design gives the owner a monopoly in that design and the owner can prevent another applying the design, or any fraudulent or obvious imitation of it, to any article in respect of which the design is registered [see s 71(1)]”

This jewel comes from the Legal Commission of South Australia (at http://www.lawhandbook.sa.gov.au/ch11s12.php).

New we get back to the gem, the jewel of gaming, Elite. I mentioned that navigational part of the game, which is the kettle. Was it registered, is it protected? Let’s not forget that ‘it will still lose copyright protection once it is commercialised [s 77]’, which gets us to the need for protection for these games and the growing powers of trademarks and Patents. Yet, trying to get a Trade Mark or Patent after you gone public is another matter, so what legal protection did these new makers prepare?

Consider the uniqueness of the Elite navigation display, how protected is it? You might think that this is a joke, but it is not. A new game will cost between 20-150 million dollars, so you need to get it right and make sure you have your protection in place. Even though larger productions are less likely to fear Trade Marks or Patent infringement (usually they fear industrial espionage), but having the protection just makes your case stronger. So here is the Crux for some of the new Law firms. If you take time to visit the E3, how many products are in need for protection? Who has actually done the full scope of this? IP is an evolving market, the protection required will increase with every iteration of the game. You see, the gaming industry has arrived in the location, the hardware industry was in 1998. Now that makers will return to an annual release of a game, an iteration of the original, the game will also face the danger of a ‘white’ version. A look that is similar (but not ‘looks alike’) that provides the gameplay the gamer would like. You see, no matter how their marketing division brings it, Assassins Creed 2, AC Brotherhood, AC Revelations, AC3 and AC Black Flag are in many parts similar, as such, game makers have had 5-7 years to catch up, 3-5 years for those who waited for the second one to become a hit. As such, in light of the fact that re-engineering can usually be done in 40% of the timeframe, the need for legal protection will increase almost exponentially. Do you think that no one else is now thinking of a ‘new’ GTA5? The game brought in a billion dollars, so YES! There is someone trying to flog of a new game offering a similar game. It only takes one innovative part for the original to feel the pain of losing a market share. There is however a change, you see, some still feel the following description: “Obtaining a patent is a long, tedious, and expensive process, that it can be challenged by the examiners and later by others in court“. Yet the Patent Cooperation Treaty (PCT), which is internationally accepted, has an international patent, which does not have the same threshold patents used to have, which means filing is easier and most important cheaper!

If we look at the definitions in section 39.1 of the PCT treaty, we see :”(vi) computer programs to the extent that the International Searching Authority is not equipped to search prior art concerning such programs“, yet is that not a failing of the organisation? The fact that a billion in revenue cannot be protected, is perhaps slightly ludicrous. Again, in Robert Bosch v Siemens we see: “However, it is not to be inferred from these rules that searches or examinations in the software field are to be ruled out in international authorities. On the contrary, it seems to the board that according to the PCT searches and, if applicable, examinations of this type can and may very well (perhaps even should) be carried out if the competent authority is appropriately equipped“.

So, the victims remain as international authorities are ‘trying’ to get equipped? There is enough here to see a needed evolution that not unlike Torts will go on a case to case bases. The case on Sega v Fox Interactive, Electronic Arts, and Radical Entertainment regarding a US Patent, which was settled for an undisclosed amount. There the core of the infringement was the navigation system, the copied one was ‘too’ similar.

The core of gaming is expected to exceed 80 billion in 2015, that target is already likely to be exceeded, so as we see that gaming is now expected to overtake BI Intelligence market revenue by 1300% (yes thirteen hundred), we can surely see the short path we have in view as the need for software patents are required to strengthen an iterative market. Even though there will be some protection in Trade Marks as the branding of a game is too similar, consider the quote “if the novel elements are functional, the item cannot be copyrighted: although it might be eligible for patent protection“, which takes us back to Elite as a first example. Its navigation is quite unique, I have not ever seen it anywhere else to that extend and now as the larger masses go to play, such protection is more and more an issue. Take into consideration that the affordability of patents are now a fact, giving an option to patent, until opposed (which still needs to be decided), we have enough to see the change in the gaming industry, IP is taking a foothold, so when you follow the E3, see how often you hear the term, ‘our new IP’, because that part will take centre stage as per last year. So where are you now in all this?

More interesting, which law firms are considering evolving their portfolio with the gaming industry, which is only an $80 billion market for now!

 

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May 11, 2015 · 15:53

Another online danger

It seems that we the consumers are soon in danger of being left out in the offline cold. You might not realise it, you might not even worry, but your money, your payments online are finite!

You see, not only are the events of last week troubling (not the UK election mind you), the consequence of allowing this to move forward unanswered could be a costly one.

With online presence there is the additional danger of non-online absence.

For this I will emphasize it with one example. The game is from Enix and the title is ‘Order of War: Challenge‘, if you had bought it from Steam, then you have a possible issue, because the game has been wiped of your account. Now, this is not a massive issue of today, this is an issue from the sheer point of view called ‘You paid for it!’ and now it is no more and you can never play it again. An important fact is that this issue played in 2013, so you might wonder what gives!

That is an excellent question. I for one would not care too much for Steam, I never did. Yet the issue of yesterday is now quickly progressing towards issues out today and even more important those who are out tomorrow and after that. This goes far beyond the wiping of a ‘Silent Hill Playable Demo’. Some changes are made because the circumstances changes, which is fair enough. That is not the true issue (even though the Silent Hill fans who missed out would be miffed).

The issue is found in the mobile and console games out now and more important those released after tomorrow.

Let me give you an example.

The mobile/Tables environment has a game called ‘Dungeon Keeper’. Many of those who loved that game when it was originally released on the PC went nuts the moment that game reappeared. Yet, in hindsight this new game was a massive failure on many levels. The game had actually destroyed the image the masterful game maker Peter Molyneux had built. The game is now all about delaying events and forcing people to make very expensive purchases online in the form of Gems. As micro transactions go, this game is the one example why micro transactions should be illegal. A nice view is given at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GpdoBwezFVA. Yet compared to the pc edition of the second game (at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6DJmS7prcmE), the mobile game is horrendous.

Now we have an additional side, I cannot tell when this happened, but several people (including me) have only had access to the game once in the last two weeks, there have been ongoing server connection issues. In light of the issues that have been mentioned in the past there is now a matter for other cause. You see, if there is an issue with a game, if you had purchased enough gems, the issue at hand is not just that you are forced to a server, the fact that the server is no longer there and the player can no longer play gives weight to the question whether there should be legal consequences for those eager to sell a micro transaction relying game. Can something offered as ‘freemium’ but will only work smoothly when purchases be made, should that game be allowed to be non-functional?  Should the makers not offer an offline side to the game? That is at the foundation of what is wrong. The danger of consumers paying for something that can be removed as soon as the exploiters no longer consider the product to be viable and it stops working for various reasons.

What are those reasons?

Well Dungeon Keeper is a first example. The fact that a server is down is one thing, the fact that the server cannot be reached for two weeks is an entirely other matter. Which leads us to the question, should games that only have online server options be allowed? Beyond that, when gameplay is removed, are those who paid for additional gaming experience be entitled to credit vouchers?

This is the loaded question because basically it is payment for a service, which should be regarded as temporary, however, was that clearly communicated to those buying the service? Now we have ourselves a different video game altogether!

You see, this part will be a growing issue as people are dependent on downloads and could storage of games that are not played on a daily basis. There is the added consideration that these providers never did anything wrong as they might have specified that in the terms of service, yet who reads them? This is not a business agreement, or isn’t it?

Let me move on (for now to another example).

Now we have (or better states we used to have) the PlayStation 3. It has the option of PSN and PlayStation Home. PlayStation Home was discontinued, but what about those people who have spent money for years on the locations there? There had always been an implied assumption that there would be PlayStation Home in PS4. Clearly implied is not correct, too many sources stated most options in silence. Then when the PS4 came it was initially incomplete and in 2014 the verdict was final, no PlayStation Home on the PS4. And recently PlayStation Home was also removed from the PlayStation 3. There was no fault here, there was never any clear agreement that PlayStation Home was to be ported to the PS4, but to lose it on PS3 would never be an acceptable option to those who like it.

I thought it was a cool place, it was partially useless, yet it had the option of being a playful marketing tool. Trailers, unlockable extra’s for games and so on, there were even a few decent games in that environment. Because it had channels so that people could chat, it was something that is out there that would forever be an option. Now it seems that Sony is mostly rejecting the social media, or it is partially doing that. PlayStation home is not the only place, the profiles are a second part, but here we are forced online and in an almost ‘anti-social network’ situation.

This is where the wheels come off the wagon, you see there is another side to all this!

This all links to the previous as there is a real danger that someone at some point will deactivate a service, then what? There is currently an uneven, unequal and a dangerous push to force people online. There is now a second part that has massive consequences for gamers on a global scale. I have made references with the TPP (Trans Pacific Partnership) before, and it seems that several other sources are now on the bandwagon regarding the dangers here, gaming is only one aspect (and not even close to the biggest one, but because of the global setting of gamers a lot easier to spot). It is not just the ‘profile’ issue, that is the least of it all, but it is a driving force around it. More important, the cost of being ‘online’ could soon be another matter altogether.

It would be too simple to state that the TPP is just a bad consequence of a group of utterly incompetent politicians, mostly staying presently at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, but that would be not entirely correct either. You see, their inadequacies resulted in a group of industrials to change the premise on Digital Rights Management (DRM) on a massive scale. For the most, I have mixed feelings. I believe that it is perfectly legit for a corporation to protect their product from being illegally copied. Now, the internet providers (ISP’s) are all about bandwidth, so as such, they like people who copy movies, they love it even better when people copy Blu-rays, because 100,000,000 people going for 2-3 blu-rays every night is a massive amount of bandwidth. There is to the smaller extent that a DRM is all about setting up who can legally use something and who cannot, but that seems to be the smallest tip of the iceberg.

An article in the Sydney Morning Herald gives us ‘http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/politicalnews/trans-pacific-partnership-will-push-medicine-prices-up-review-finds-20150303-13sxty.html‘. This is not entirely correct, but not wrong either. If we take this quote “The leaked treaty text also reveals new American and Japanese proposals designed to enhance the ability of pharmaceutical manufacturers to extend and widen their patents on drugs and medicines“, it is the word ‘extend’ that is the issue. Because some pharmaceuticals are all about prolonging, we see more and more new patent additions to give any drug a longer exclusivity, which means that generic medication will be less and less of an option. There is in addition the quote “Jeffrey Bleich, accused Australian consumers of habitually stealing copyrighted content and of being some of the worst offenders with amongst the highest piracy rates … in the world“, that statement makes Jeffrey Bleich an idiot to some degree (not the worst he’s ever been called), because his peers in the Netherlands, Denmark and Sweden say exactly the same and he should properly investigate these matters before making those statements.

Now, he was not being too bright (or massively misinformed) and a mere voicer for large corporations, which is to some degree his job I reckon, but he could have been a smudge more thoughtful in that regard. You see, the American side has been utterly stupid for a long time. Because it was always American first, then ‘whomever is left’! We have seen that in Movies, Music and games. Although music not as much. It started in the mid 80’s when Greed took over and American corporations were utterly clueless on global corporate actions from day one. I am not just talking about Games, or movies (even though they are the most visible ones). No the utter consumer disrespect shown by Ashton-Tate, IBM, Lotus Development Corporation, Oracle, Novell and Adobe was beyond belief in those days. You would actually look forward to meeting with Macromedia, WordPerfect and Corel to see that humanity in IT was an option. Now many of them changed tunes over time, the movie and games industry stayed behind for a long time, it is only recently that the US is seeing that the money of their blockbusters are coming from outside the US in some cases in excess of 75%. Now we have ourselves a ballgame! Now we see the shift some are making, but in other ways.

You see, there is a reason why some people have an aversion to buying a game at 40%-70% more. In my early days, I had no options, a game advertised in the American magazines at $19.95 would cost me $69, that’s a not so nice 300%, so America changed the environment from the very beginning. Even today, Australian gamers will pay 40%-70% more for a new game. Now, we will see casual mention on how it is all about shipping. Well guess again. PSN (PS4) was offering games on day one in a shop for $89, On Amazon it was $59 and guess what, the download in Australia was priced at $99.

How do these elements link?

There are two parts. First the quote by Julian Assange “The TPP has developed in secret an unaccountable supranational court for multinationals to sue states. This system is a challenge to parliamentary and judicial sovereignty. Similar tribunals have already been shown to chill the adoption of sane environmental protection, public health and public transport policies“. It is actually not that far a stretch, you only need to consider the legal disagreements between Apple and Samsung to see the dangers here.

After which the following claim is made “The leaked text shows that this agreement is more about corporate power than “free trade”. Investor-state dispute settlement is really a form of corporate sovereignty“. That part can be found here (at https://wikileaks.org/tpp-investment/WikiLeaks-TPP-Investment-Chapter/page-1.html).

Basically, in there you can find the issue “where foreign firms can ‘sue’ states and obtain taxpayer compensation for ‘expected future profits’“, this now reverts back to the earlier mention of games, movies and especially music. A false dimension of revenue has been maintained by corporate ‘baboons’, claiming ‘loss of revenue’. Relying on incomplete information from Napster, Kazaa and a few others players in the peer to peer networking solution. They basically went on the premise, one download means one sale lost. I believe that this was never a reality. People might download and listed, but would never have bought the bulk of it in the first case. That same premise of certain lacks is seen when we see the quote “Attorney-General George Brandis has signalled his intention to introduce more stringent copyright laws to crack down on online piracy“. In that regard the attorney general does not seem to strike too high on the academic scale of logic (on any given day for that matter). I posted an article on September 10th 2014 called ‘Changing topics?‘, in there the issue is better shown, you see it is not just about copyright, because that could have been dealt with quite easily. It was about Malcolm Turnbull’s anti-piracy forum. You see, if copyright was truly the issue, which would have been easy. But in that event the words ‘revenue‘ and ‘bandwidth‘ were very much skated around. Telstra was extremely cautious (and eager) to steer clear of that because in the case of Telstra, monitoring bandwidth, people actually stopping copying movies will cost Telstra billions! Now we see the consequence!

You see, America is figuring out that it cannot deal with its own ISP’s and they definitely cannot deal with the others like Telstra, Tele 2, Com Hem, KPN, TDC and a few others. They are doing it stepwise and the TPP will give them some options. Now back to that term that is laughingly referred to as ‘expected future profits‘.

One source states: “Losses to Video Game Makers Due to Piracy: $8.1 Billion“, based on what numbers? ISP’s state they cannot monitor. Then we get “Pirated Software Impact to Businesses: $63 Billion“. Again on what premise and how?

Well the first one gives us: “Video game piracy of hand-held games leads to the loss of about $8.1 Billion a year, as losses due to pirating of Sony PSP and Nintendo DS games between 2004 and 2009 lead to worldwide losses of nearly $42 Billion“. Here we see an interesting side. These are only two consoles. More important, these consoles have again and again limited legitimate access to games released in US and Japan again and again. So is this truly about piracy, or is the decision as seen here “Monster Hunter 3rd is the best-selling PSP game ever in Japan with 4,780,000 copies sold. Its PS3 HD remaster sold an excellent 500,000 copies as well, yet neither version is scheduled for an international release“. By the way, is the maker not guilty of discrimination? Let me be frank, I will not and have never condoned pirated games. I believe in getting a game and playing the original (I rarely buy games, so when I do, I will go for the VIP options that an original game brings). So, is this about piracy, or about segregation?

That part is harder to prove in the business case. The source “Business Software Alliance, “2011 BSA Global Software Piracy Study,” May 2012” is an issue. I cannot be certain how they got to $63 billion, but with so many illegal versions of Office, that number seems a lot more plausible. It is funny that there, US and China are the biggest transgressors representing a little less than one third of the entire lost stack. The UK is set at 1.9 billion and Australia less than a billion, yet how were these numbers achieved, through ‘rough’ estimation perhaps?

Now we get to the monkey’s banana moment “Losses due to Music Piracy: $12.5 Billion“, which is stated “According to the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA)“, yes, they wanted the number to be as high as possible, because it made bad productions and louse representatives look a little better. In addition, some of these numbers cannot be decently vouched for in any way, shape or form. It boils down to well over 500 million CD’s, in a numbers game that number on a population of 7 billion seems small, but here is the kicker, that same source had the following, which I found illuminating: “In a survey of over 6,000 people in Finland between the ages of 7 to 84, researchers found that on average each person who downloaded pirated content online had about 2,900 pirated music files and 90 pirated movie files. The researchers who conducted the study believes that downloaders have more music files is due to the ease of downloading pirated music. According to the study, downloading movie files require faster internet speeds, more digital storage space, as well as a higher technological ability to playback movies“.

The term ‘each person’ now becomes really interesting, because 90 movies boils down to 360 Gb, and 2900 songs come to an rough (very rough) estimation of 14.5 Gb. A person downloading that much would be visible on the ISP counter. You see, you buy bandwidth monthly and downloading this much, as well as watching online and perhaps stuff they no longer have, you are looking at $80 a month, however, only 6 years ago, I paid $70 for 25Gb. you see how the picture changes? That is centre here. By the way, if you think that 25 Gb is little, consider that I have only hit that maximum once during my entire contract with my ISP and that was because on a Friday my system decided to update Windows 7, Office 2013 and my Adobe Master collection, which was quite the resource drain that evening.

Your online presence is now a danger in more than one way. In the first more and more ‘providers’ are forcing us to save on the cloud, forcing us using bandwidth. Now, I understand the first download, but many systems are now gearing towards less memory and more reliant on cloud drives. Which was my issue with the Microsoft Xbox One even before that system was launched.  Are those not streamed services? More important, my issue there was that once a service is disconnected, would we just lose it all overnight? Consider your movie and TV series collection. What happens when your old versions of Star Trek, Dexter and Game of Thrones are discontinued?

In addition, if online presence is essential for our services to run, how will that be monitored? I only need to refer to the Sony hack, to give you a first fright that certain owned items could be lost by a mere scripted command. Again, a situation the consumer is not ready and not prepared for. Now, in the case of PlayStation Home, there is some understanding that certain services will be lost, could a local copy have solved it? (I am asking, not telling). There are unresolved issues, mainly because the new technologies move so fast and to be quite honest, some considerations are new, we never had to make them before. We the consumer must accept that some parts are lost to us at some point. Yes, I loved HERO on the Atari 2600, but to expect that game to function 30 years later is not that realistic either. In that regard, we have attached to software (especially games) to the same extent we hold onto a book. They are not the same, which is a simple reality.

But the dangers of online remain, or do they? In that regard, the issues I raise are mostly about time. We see the failing of a game and losing out on what we spend within a year totally unacceptable, yet in that same notion, we should find peace in the notion that nothing lasts, it is all a mere matter of time. Yet, there we see a partial solution, we cannot realistically expect the provider to give ‘eternal’ support, but is a local version (no servers) after a while, or before the service is pulled a possible solution? That I have yet to see and it is not that far-fetched, because in the end, with the amounts of products and the change of IP, that part is slowly but certainly becoming an essential step to consider, especially in light for the business model of any software corporation. Consider you the player with your game of Halo, or Gears of War. I reckon that at some point, you will accept that online mode falls away, but how would you feel is the single player option falls away too, especially if you still have the console or PC to run it on?

A gaming dimension that will fall away at some point, but are we ready to let go of those moments? Now consider that your console/PC can no longer link to the service, even though you have the original disc. In the new DRM, it is entirely possible that no online verification means no playing the game. This is the certainty that we face and the TPP will push us there a lot faster than you realise. Should you doubt any of the last part, then consider the site gog.com. It holds some of the most brilliant games ever created (sold at very low prices), people still revere these games and many of them (especially the original dungeon keeper) will find a place in the heart of gamers. Moreover, several of these would make fine console games when adapted (higher graphics in most cases). I believe that the MSDOS Dungeon Keeper could be a hit 3DS game (like many other games on that site), even today.

Gaming is not about the latest game (decent graphics and sound aside) it is about joy and the games on that site are most pure joy to play.

Now you might all think that this is about games and many of you readers do not care about games, but now consider that same step when you look at your Office 365 account and the fact that you are pushed away from a version that works perfect for you (like the nightmare Office 2007 users faced in the past). There is an abundance of programs that offer a similar scary outlook.

Now translate this to collections you do care about. Your music, your TV shows, perhaps even your digital books. Do not take the word of those stating that it will not happen, because it will, it has happened in the past, it is happening now and it will happen in the future. The DVD and book on your shelf are a touchable item, that part is (if you treat them properly) secure, something online can be lost by merely removing a server or damaging its data. If someone states that this can never happen, then look at Sony, they experienced that event first hand.

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March 10, 2015 · 22:48

Dante’s Greek tragedy

There are two issues currently in play, one is a local one that gives all kinds of ‘human rights’ vibes and I will get to that in the next instance. This one is all about Greece. There are more than two views. The first view is the one we see in the Guardian. The title “’Talk less and do more’, Greek PM urges finance minister Yanis Varoufakis” (at http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/mar/08/talk-less-and-do-more-greek-pm-urges-finance-minister-yanis-varoufakis), seems apt, but the Greek PM needs to realise that he wanted a rock star, the visibility, the game. Did he forget that he needs to SHOW results? Guess what, I reckon that he did just that, because after the victory speech, when he needs to get the ball going, the Greek people might start to catch on that the only decent path Alexis Tsipras has is the one that Antonis Samaras had been on in the first place. The second story comes from the BBC called “Greece told to ‘stop wasting time’ over debt deal” (at http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-31793145), the two important quotes are “European creditors want to approve a detailed list of reforms before they release any loans to Greece” and “But, so far, Greece has only outlined a broad range of intended changes“.

This links back to the event where a ‘rock star’ is the Greek governments CFO.

The Dutch news (NOS) gives us “Grieken uiterlijk woensdag in gesprek met trojka”, meaning that the Greeks will talk to troika (IMF, EEC and the ECB) within the next 48 hours. Here is as I see it, where the ‘rock star’ will have to ‘earn’ his keep. You see, whatever deal the current government wants to achieve, if they do not make actual commitments, the money ends, Grexit becomes a reality and the Greek way of life will be the first civilisation that became extinct twice. It’s a whole new world!

Still, we must all realise and accept that Grexit is an extreme, one that bankers on a global level are trying to prevent as the consequences for many players will become the realisation that the Dutch SNS bank faced. When the idea ‘too big to fail‘ is replaced with ‘screw that, you’re done!‘ we see another mesh of consequences.

There is another side to all this. If we look at several sources, in this case the quote comes from Al Jazeera we see: “Varoufakis said in an interview to Italy’s Corriere de la Sera newspaper that if the creditors do not eventually approve the reforms, his government could call new elections or a referendum“, which get us to the wasting time part. You see, reforms were ALWAYS at the centre of it all and as such, from the moment they got elected, it was up to Alexis Tsipras and Yanis Varoufakis to lock themselves up in their office and work on actual possible solutions, even though in my mind, that path was (even though too harshly) walked by Antonis Samaras. You see, in all this, the non taxation, the Greeks with Swiss bank accounts and the lowering of revenue as a whole was the issue no one was willing to address at any time. Add to that previous irresponsible players with bond billions leaving repayment to the successors of government had no solution ever. It all viewed like an episode of comedy capers with the people at large taking the word of a junkie stating ‘trust me’, whilst the junk pointed at a highly mobile fence stating ‘he’ll check the numbers next week’ then the masses at large are surprised that the fence moved on, the junkie partied to death and no one is willing to foot the bill. And this seems to be a government based view.

At the heart is the fact that Greece could be seen as stumbling towards her end directly through inaction. Whilst plans could be presented in 48 hours, what happens when that is accepted and 94 days later a referendum rejects those? What then? Are we held to a new version of the Divine Comedy by Dantris Alighierakis in three parts, EEC, ECB and IMF? EEC is the part that could give us:

Greece enters the realm of indecisiveness

  • Here, the economists sigh as well, but not nearly as loudly or painfully as the tax payers
  • Suddenly, Greece sees a fire break up the darkness. The fire is the glow of a luminous castle and Jeroen Dijsselbloem is there.

And Greece enters the circle of Desire

  • She’s Pheme, a Greek girl and, in terms of blood, something like a princess. During her life, she was forced into a loveless political marriage. However, she fell in love with her husband’s younger brother and had an affair with his credit card. When the husband discovered her spending spree, he foreclosed them both, but ignored the unpaid invoices.
  • Greek, stirred to the deepest fibres of its soul stirred to the extreme by their emotion, sleeps it off and ignores it

And Greece enter the circle of Hunger

  • Greece incites political strife between the EEC and IMF. First the EEC will win a battle and drive the IMF out. But then the IMF will return with the help of the ECB and crushes the EEC, eventually driving many of them into destitution and deadly depression. Greece rallies as the other parties ignore reason so that Greece can continue “spending, ignoring and inaction”

I can go on but I might get way to close to replacing comic banter with plagiarism here, the message is clear, as we see the unfolding of another Greek tragedy, the people will be caught in the middle by inactive politicians, as they rely on their comfortable futures from those they need to deal with and a theatre is evolving where those getting the money are playing a game where the Greek people are left out in the cold. I wonder if Dante Alighieri ever envisioned that his epic work could end up being a metaphor for reality, I feel certain he did not.

Yet, as we look at the elements, will a serious deal be struck? Politicians must remain positive, but between the proposed plan and the actual implementation of it, years will pass, which means that money will be released on an academic whim that might not ever have been a reality. So are we watching the news, or are we watching a newscast presenting an episode of the Punch and Judy show?

This is at the heart of the matter. It also strikes on the next article that takes a harsh look on Human rights, refugees and the UN no less. Because we see the glittering neon presentation on how certain nations are ‘inhumane’, but those making the allegations (living on 6 figure incomes and higher) are very aware that the drive that propels forward humanitarian causes is defiled by the bulk of large corporations that have achieved non taxed status, which means that the coffers of governments are no longer able to foot bills. This links to Greece again as certain implied allegations (at http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/features/2015/03/greece-outlines-radical-immigration-reforms-150302083444990.html), now we see the quote “Within Greece, Syriza intends to provide alternatives to detention to tens of thousands of asylum seekers and refugees, such as open shelters, assisted voluntary returns, and integration programmes“, the reality is that there is no viable way to get integration programs started, in addition, the Greek unemployment rate is around 25%, so one in four is without a job, so how do you think an integration program will work? Greece had to act on many levels to their ‘immigration’ process, whilst they all know that these people would go on towards ‘wealthier’ and ‘healthier’ waters, like Italy and Western Europe, see Reuters video (at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eC12vbuWKds), so as there is a report of change towards ‘open’ reception places, where do you think these undocumented people will go to after they have been there for a day or two (catching their breath). This part is all innuendo, but that is at the core. We understand that we need facts, but as we see another Reuters article (at http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/03/10/us-eurozone-greece-varoufakis-idUSKBN0M60MN20150310), where we see the title ‘Varoufakis unsettles Germans with admission Greece won’t repay debts‘ with the quotes ““Clever people in Brussels, in Frankfurt and in Berlin knew back in May 2010 that Greece would never pay back its debts. But they acted as if Greece wasn’t bankrupt, as if it just didn’t have enough liquid funds,” Varoufakis told the documentary”, with the added quote “It was unclear when the program was recorded“. Really? Are you the reader that dim, to believe that little line?

Any digital recording has properties, like ‘date filmed’ and ‘last date edited’ as well as who filmed it and so on. They are known as Meta tags, and now we see a lack of clarity in facts? This article less than 6 hours old is nothing less than an introduction to a dance of letting Greece (partially) off the hook, with the possibility that Jeroen Dijsselbloem end up eating some humble pie in public on failing to resolve the Greek ‘issue’. No one wants to hold Greece to account at present (least of all Greece) and all this is a new iteration for those on high incomes to remain to keep the status quo a little longer. The article was written by Madeline Chambers, most important it was edited by Noah Barkin. I am curious to what EXACTLY was edited, what will become part of a managed bad news cycle this time? I get that Reuters will wait for actual facts, as they are a news agency, so as such, the editing might be extremely valid. What is also a fact is that the truth is that less clever people were also aware that Greece could never pay its debt, but what is not acceptable is that we see a European rock tour by Greek Finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis whilst the newly elected government is another one that could end up being the next one in a line of several elected Greek governments that end up never doing anything serious to tackle a failed Greek tax collection system, a failure that has been around for way too long now.

 

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January 10, 2015 · 11:11

Comprehension

Yesterday has been a weird day for France, unlike here in Sydney; they had their dealings with terrorists. You see, I remain in the mindset that what happened in martin Place last month was a crazy person with a gun, the fact that he was a Muslim makes little difference. He was a mental health case with deadly intent, it got him killed, but only after he killed some of his victims. France is an entirely different kettle of fish. Here is the YouTube link:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LBGVwZyXYlQ (in French with English subtitles), I normally would not add something like this, but it is important to see the difference. This is not some hostage situation asking for a flag, this is almost military precision, it is direct, clean (pardon the expression), kill and get out! A policeman was on the scene and was executed without any consideration.

Here you see directly what Israel has faced on a daily basis; this is what the direct hatred of Jews looks like. Even though this is against a satirical cartoonist, the hatred of these extremists’ remains the same. The Guardian has an article by Jonathan Freedland that covers several parts of what bothers me. The article ‘Charlie Hebdo: first they came for the cartoonists, then they came for the Jews‘ (at http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/jan/09/charlie-hebdo-cartoonists-paris-killers-fascist-death-cult) gives us a few views. The quote: “They hated the cartoons, we say. Free speech was the target, we declare. They wanted to silence satire and gag dissent“, this was not unlike my view. I find satire enjoyable, but when you touch religion (any religion), some people tend to get a little off the balanced sane side. Some get abusive, some get a little violent, yet as far as I know, none will act to this degree (although opposites in the India – Pakistan debates might not agree with me). No matter what I think or believe, Charlie Hebdo was in a place with free speech and he was entitled to it. The best comparison I heard was from an American Journalist describing Charlie Hebdo as the French version of ‘the Onion’.

When we see the following two quotes we get to the real stuff: “Then on Friday, a siege at a kosher supermarket, four hostages confirmed dead, the murderers apparently linked to those behind Wednesday’s carnage” and “Perhaps the murderers are bent on killing people not only for what they do, but for who they are“, this is at the centre of a lot of issues behind the objections against allowing Palestine into the UN and other places. I and many others have no hatred for Palestinians however, we will not accept Hamas to be allowed at any table for the terrorist organisation that they are. And so long as Palestine will not disavow Hamas and as long as Hamas calls the shots, there is no future for Palestine as I see it. This is at the heart of the matter, so when you think of these poor poor Palestinians, watch the uncensored shooting in Paris and now realise that this is what Israel faced for many years now, with added rockets and nail bombs!

The next part is actually at the centre to what we tend to feel and also how our civilised minds should be feeling. “For Muslims, that has meant spelling out that these killers speak only for themselves. Note the speed with which a delegation of 20 imams visited the Charlie Hebdo offices, branding the gunmen “criminals, barbarians, satans” and, crucially, “not Muslims”“, this makes sense in regards to the next part “Of course they should not have to do it. The finger-wagging demand that Muslims condemn acts of terror committed by jihadist cultists is odious: it tacitly assumes that Muslims support such horror unless they explicitly say otherwise“, this makes sense. Perhaps we all remember the atrocities of the Ku Klux Klan (KKK) and white power groups against African Americans. We distance ourselves as Christians, because their acts are not those of Christians at all. They are at the centre of some agenda of hate that the boggles the usual civilised mind. Some cannot grasp the small mindedness of it. Yes, we all hate at times and we hate enough to kill, maim or harm, but that comes in defence of a rational against us, or our family when it is harmed. To blatantly hate is not within our power (it should not be), I will go one further, children when they are born do not have the capacity to hate; it is the one dark side that gets taught to us, which makes it so inexplicable to some.

Now we get to the parts that I do not completely agree with (even though what is stated is not wrong) “Wednesday’s deaths brought a loud chorus insisting that Charlie Hebdo was vulnerable because it had been left out on a limb. That was down, they said, to the cowardice of the rest of the press, lacking the guts to do what the French magazine had done“. The press has been many things (cowardly to some extent as well), when the press (globally generically speaking) started to cater to advertisers and circulation, many papers started to cater to the emotional reader “Flight MH370 ‘suicide mission’” (The Daily Telegraph, March 2014) and “Death Cult CBD Attack” (The Daily Telegraph, December 2014). It is only one of several papers, the public gets misinformed too often, too much innuendo. “Andrew and the under-age ‘sex slave’” from The Daily Mail, implying the Duke of York is just the most recent of revenue claiming headlines. When you rely on income in this way, we see the newspapers as they no longer are, they are no longer informing the people, hopefully setting their minds to a more informed stable position, we are left with groups of people getting angry on implied innuendo. It makes for revenue (but becomes non-informative). So how about we make it a little more clear? How about tax offices change that glossy magazines are not tax deductible as they do not qualify as ‘researchable materials’? The ATO states “Newspapers and magazines, you can claim a deduction for that part of the cost of newspapers and magazines that relates to your using them in researching a topic as an employee journalist“. When we remove glossy magazines and add the Daily Telegraph and sort minded groups on that list, perhaps they will clean up their act?

So as non-violent Muslims fear repercussions for emotional responses, we in general have a duty to shield them, but in my mind we have an equal need to hunt down these extremists. We need to become a lot less tolerant of hate crimes like we are seeing in Paris this week, but they must be held against the real threat, not the threat that some papers perceive to instil. So this is where my view slightly differed from Jonathan Freedland. The French issue should wake us up in other ways too. Not only should we regard the hate attacks Israel has been under for a long time, we need to notice that walk softly and ‘try to reason’ will not work. The policeman had little option but to talk the man into not shooting him, it did not work! I feel for his family, and for the family of other victims, but you all need to wake up now, terrorists are real, they are not some deranged Sheik with delusions of grandeur wanting a ‘Shadada’ flag in a chocolate shop. They are people with guns, with a tactical mind that tells them to kill that what they hate without hesitation or remorse, so as you keep on crying on ‘your’ privacy, whilst posting your ‘nightly’ achievements on Facebook, remember that limiting those who hunt these extremists, might get you or someone you know killed at some point.

Yet Jonathan’s gem is at the very end “Theirs is a dirty little war, a handful of wicked fanatics against the rest of us. And they must lose“, I could not have said it better myself, but with that comprehension comes a change to all our minds, not to our hearts! Our hearts must never embrace the acts and the violence needed; our minds must however accept that some need to do what they do to stop these people, preferably before innocent lives are lost. It must happen everywhere and it needed to start yesterday. So, as you ponder these ‘lost souls’ as they go Jihad in Syria, then also quickly realise that these people come back with the skill, the intent and the reasoning of the extremists that you saw in the YouTube video, so if you are a parent and you wave your hand to your little boy or girl as they go to school, you should realise that they might leave the house the last time that day. What are you willing to do to keep them safe?

I am not trying to quell you into emotion like the press so often does; I need you to comprehend what must be done by professionals to keep you and your family safe. Think it through and cast your vote! You need not act, you are not trained and not qualified to suddenly emotionally react to these extremists. Only the calm mind will know what to do and they must be given the option to win and to make sure that extremists lose, or we lose it all!

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October 21, 2014 · 11:16

You might not like it

This morning I got confronted with an article so in my face it literally made me stagger. This article came from the brilliance of a YouTube element called ‘Veritasium’, it was all about the dangers of Facebook, moreover, the dangers of actual investing in Facebook. Of course the hilarious part that I read this on Facebook, so we see a slightly additional view when we consider winking at social media. Yet, before I start we must not forget to show divine humour by emulating the platypus. If Pig Latin is a reconstructed language and we see the Dutch expression of Fisherman’s Latin as ‘catching that really big fish’, is Veritasium a new elemental truth or a truth in mere reconstructed elemental words?

The article is about the concept of buying ‘likes’. The link is here (at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oVfHeWTKjag) and I can tell you now that it is worth seeing from beginning to end. The movie takes 9 minutes and it gives you the low down on buying likes and more important the dangers of pushing your visibility.

Now it is best for the reader to see the video, because the speaker does so in a very eloquent way and the only way to get his point across is to quote his entire article, which no longer makes this MY article.

I have seen these issues before, why do we need to ‘like’ things? I do, there are a few likes on my list, I see some advertisement on Facebook and as such, I have no real issue with the advertisement part. It is the price for a free Facebook. Yet, why would you want to pay for more likes? It seems that apart from it costing you money, the video shows that paying for likes is ultimately bad for business. This is only the top of the equation.

The video is calling into question other issues too. The fact that one issue made them shed 83,000,000 fake accounts, one might wonder how many fakes there really are on Facebook. The second is that the linked algorithm is also in question. If we consider the data linked here, then we see a different issue, which links them all.

  1. How are bought likes regarded, especially in the approach towards a percentage of linked advertisements through connected friends?
  2. How can we get actual advertisement pushing flagged towards an engaging audience (which shows growth and possible commitment), while we know that bought likes will never be engaging likes.
  3. How is the data cleaned to show a better mapping of audience versus engagement as well as geography versus interest?

The last point is not just linked over the two issues, we see in the video that there are profiles in the system that are there to like ‘everything’, not in a Zen way, but in a way to mask fake accounts, which gives another matter regarding the algorithms and how they could likely be fooled by those who understand the system.

Yet this is not just about Facebook, we should now also look at the medium that gave us this treasure, namely YouTube. You see, YouTube is all about creating hypes, vibes and types. It is the last of these three that have been a worry for some time and there is no indication that this will stop anytime soon. So, what happened? It started a few months ago, I was looking for a game trailer and there it was right in front of me, the movie Silent Hill. Now, as I am between apartments, I have no access to my DVD collection, so watching this one was heaps fun. I was just a little upset that a Blu-ray was never released of this movie. So, as the month progressed I started to dig into this phenomenon as this seems to be a copyright violation. As I started to dig deeper into this, I noticed a league of movies, some extremely recent all watchable. Even 2014 movies like Godzilla and the new X-Men movies were on YouTube. Now, there is at times a massive drop in quality and 1-2 were clearly filmed in a cinema, but the movies are there. But it is not all that clear. In some cases there are hundreds of copies yet none of them have a movie, they just have a link to click on, or the weird text ‘this movie was deleted by YouTube’ (if that is so, why is the file and the entry still there), so YouTube is used in a growing league of non-trusting reasons. Yet, is the approach for marketing or criminal reasons? That is also the issue, because it tends to skew the people who go there and the reason why they went there. I can very much understand that there are scores of Bollywood movies there, but are they any less a case of copyright infringements?

How does the YouTube issue relate to the Facebook issue? It seems to me that the second is an automated form of getting people to do for the click farm so that they go undetected for a lot longer. Consider the effort it takes to add 100 copies of a film, people might want to see and they all go to a link (for implied free download), we now have a person losing possibly up to 15 seconds, whilst they at that point are facilitating the work of a click farm. The farm remains less detected, whilst the farm gets 100% of the revenue from the click. Now consider that when these movies come out over tens of millions will try a few links, so these farms get all those attempts for a mere 100 uploads, it seems like this is easy money. So as we consider that Google, Yahoo, MSN and others are now trying to battle these farms more and more, yet the fact that YouTube (a Google child) seems to have kept the backdoor open, should be a massive issue, because this puppy tends to go straight to Facebook and Google+, which leaves the impression that people were mopping the floor whilst the tap remains running. So nobody is going anywhere fast.

As such my question now becomes, how anyone can proclaim that keeping the status quo in these matters is nothing less than running backwards on a highway patrolled by blind drivers. So, here is the kicker, how come Google has been unsuccessful to stop such levels of copyright infringement? In my view there are two options, they either are unwilling or unable to do so, unable means that they are not clever enough and that their system of facilitation is there to keep them non-accountable, if it is unwilling, then we see another version where their lives (Facebook and Google) revolves around bandwidth, which gives us the old Telco revenue issue. It is all about the money!

You might not like that reality, but it is a reality we all helped create. What a difference an algorithm makes!

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October 17, 2014 · 10:37

About them copyrights

It’s all good and fine to get through the day, to read on how it is all ‘sooo’ virtual, so available. Yet, in the end, is this ‘the truth’? Consider when we see the article, again the Guardian (at http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/oct/15/taylor-swift-uk-itunes-out-of-the-woods), so we could say how it sucks to be Taylor Swift at this point. You see, when you use the ‘excuse’ “due to a new strategy my record label is working on in the UK“, we can safely assume that this is about something else. Likely commission, possibly ‘better’ kickbacks, or better margins, yet overall the fans will suffer and they are now looking at other means like uploaded records to get their music.

I wrote about such events in ‘The real issue here!‘ where I stated “So, almost 20% end up buying the discs (implying 80% will not)“, I had written about such issues in gaming, in movies and as Taylor Swift will soon learn in music too.

By playing for tougher deals, you end up losing a lot. And in this case, as I see it Team Swift only have themselves to blame. Just like the gamers of day old were ignored by the US at large, music fans will not tolerate delays on such events. That is the drawback of the digital age. When you offer it NOW, you better offer it to all. So when we see the quote “Out of the Woods is likely to be available for at least some of Swift’s fans in the UK soon, then. But many will have turned to other means to hear the track: for example, there are already a number of uploads of its audio to YouTube“, you better believe that fans will find another avenue. In the end, her real fans will buy it one way or the other, yet Taylor lost out on a vibe that could have gotten her a few hundred thousand, perhaps even a million additional downloads. She will miss out on that one this time.

So is this fair to Taylor? Does that matter? When you decide on a strategy that leaves one out, that one will either find an alternative or will move on to something else. Such is life. In gaming, when this happened in the 80’s, people had no choice but to copy or wait for outrageous prices. So, those with copied games got to play it, those who had no contacts ended up waiting in excess of one year. The digital age now has given us the option to get it ANYWHERE fast, usually at a base price and often as fast as day one. In the age where product outstrips demand by a lot, the digital age becomes a different field. An opportunity missed is a chance lost, not delayed. Music is exactly that to a massive group (the Taylor Swift fans will always buy), but that leaves a large group missed and it loses out to potential new fans, but is that a given?

No it is not, yet we see that the digital wave tends to attract the curious, those who get one song and then learn that the music is interesting to seek out more. Through Audio Galaxy in 2000-2001, I got to know the Corrs, Bond, and a few others. Now, I have almost all their albums, which I bought in the record store, it started with one simple song. That market relies on the new waves of songs, not anticipated waiting.

So, is this me changing my view on copyright? Not entirely, when a movie comes out, one should buy it. I have no issues with buying a movie or watching it in the cinema, so when I decide to buy a game, movie or album, when it is released, I expect it to be released. When we get an alleged form of discrimination where the consumer is discriminated against, should such injustice not be fought? I am not talking about a simple delay like we tend to see it in games, where movies tend to be out in the US one moment, and a few weeks later the rest sees it. That part I have no real issue with. Yet, in the case of Star Wars Episode 1, where the movie was released in May in many places, it would take 5 months until it was released in the Netherlands, for a movie like that, such a delay was just unheard of and as such an illegal download of the movie was circulating within a few days. Many would still see it on the big screen, but not all. Evidence of such events have been seen for decades, so why would the team of Taylor Swift be this ‘uninformed’ (ignorant might be a better word) in thinking that the fans would accept it, and beyond that the rest would just ‘wait’ for a girl named Taylor Swift?

Some might, most will not.

And if you want to consider alternatives, then think of the time, the line and the timeline. Our world is changing, it is less about the product that is convenient for us, it is more and more when it becomes convenient for them, not us (cinema and TV marketing has been all about that for far too long). We could read it as a form of maximised profit, yet overall it is about marketable momentum. That is seen as we see at present that ‘analysts’ already are stating that they predict ‘Star Wars: Episode 7’ will make $1.2 Billion at the Global Box Office. The movie is nowhere near release and these predictions are already made. As we see that this movie is coming out in 2015 as a summer release, so much can go wrong! And we are already been ‘tailored’ to fit a 6 week gap.

People are still in a financial depressed era. Even though it is now starting to pick up, the longevity of our economy is currently not a given, with the Tesco issues still  in play in a hardy way, there is a real issue in the UK, even though there unemployment is now down to 6%, yet overall the cost of living is still rising faster than most of the incomes correct for, so as such, income is still not in the level that we see where people en mass (especially those with family) can just go to the cinema. The last movie to really make it was Avatar in 2009; it was a unique wave not unlike Titanic, they are still the first two movies in the all-time box office records. So, at present SW7 is already ‘anticipated’ as one of the top 6 movies of all time. That, whilst the first Avengers movie, making 1.5 billion, took the cake in 2012 and the anticipation of the second movie is extremely high on many minds. Beyond that there will be Fantastic Four, Pan (with Hugh Jackman) and at least three additional movies are on the list for the summer of 2015. Now consider that until the economy is truly repaired families might have the option to see two of these movies. What are the chances that they choose Star Wars? There is no denying that Star Wars will be very high on the list of many, but then so are the Avengers. That is if nothing else happens, like new games, new records and shifting time lines.

So as we see the escalations of ‘needs’ and ‘options’, we will see a change on how people perceive copyright and translate this into the ‘right to copy’, welcome to the new economy of those who cannot afford it!

So as we see what team Swift thought would be and what Team analyst expects it to be. I would state that the truth is nowhere in the middle, and that the truth is revolving around two points of flexible perception, whilst a placement of either is not a given either positive or negative, but what will be, is not linearly in the middle of what would be and that what is expected to be, that what is, is not a given ever in marketable approaches!

But what ‘might be’, requires us to take another look at what we see that is currently done to us. As we are all reduced to ‘product to purchase’ and no longer regarded as ‘consumers to buy’, we see a changing market of expected anticipation.

Is this a negative evolution of marketable industries?

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July 21, 2014 · 11:11

A political triptych

Whenever I see a trilogy I remember my first introduction to something in three parts. They were the works of Hieronymus Bosch. My earliest recollection of them was seeing his work with my own eyes when I was around 12 years old, making ‘triptych’ the most expensive word in my vocabulary in those early years. The events that have been at the centre of our lives lately seem to reflect the chaos we see in these famous triptychs.

First there is the issue I described earlier this week in ‘Here come the Drums!’. Russia has had an opportunity to throw ‘its’ image in several ways. Not because of me or because of the image it needs to have, but because of the image that it could have regardless of what the US claimed it to be. I was wrong! Whether Putin is as stupid as the US makes him out to be, or whether his advisers are working on self-serving needs is something only historians can decide upon. The fact that we see massive amounts of evidence that the local Donetsk population is giving the internet, the initial view (at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7fjpB5gw3iM) was nothing compared towards the anger we see clips where people are going through the debris (at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XGzcHd118mM). There were additional clips on how people were cheering on downing a plane and other issues of utter disrespect, which seems to have been removed from YouTube and seem too outrageous to add to this blog.

I should also revisit the comparison that I made with the question: ‘A lawyer walks into an insane asylum and hands an inmate a gun, who then kills the Warden of that place. Who is to blame?‘, I still feel it is relevant. The question was who supplied the BUK system, was it Russian, or was it captured? You see, in BOTH cases the international authorities should have been alerted to the dangers the area brought. It was the leaked conversation that angered many (including me). “Nikolay Kozitsin: That means they were carrying spies. They shouldn’t be f_cking flying. There is a war going on“, this baboon, or better stated, this baboon on Lysergic acid diethylamide is an army commander?

The fact that it was at an altitude of 30,000 feet should have been an indication that it could have been non-military. The events that follow, to the massive acts of disrespect and legal transgressions should have been a clear indicator that Russia should have stepped away from all this seems abundantly clear. Head my words, I am not stating that Russia had done anything wrong, the mere fact that it did not speak out loudly towards this transgression tarnishes them on (an undeserved) equal footing as Commander Nikolay Kozitsin. President Putin should have seen that one coming a mile away. This is nothing compared to the stupidity by Sky News shown on the Guardian (at http://www.theguardian.com/media/2014/jul/20/sky-news-presenter-brazier-mh17-luggage-crash), where Colin Brazier shows himself to be more ignorant then a first year Journalism student. His actions were met with outrage by fellow presenters Jacqui Oatley and Shelagh Fogarty. There is one correction that must be made, the initial information I had, was that the Data Flight Recorders (black boxes) were on route to Russia, whilst the information I currently have is that they had only recently been taken to Donetsk (at http://www.smh.com.au/world/mh17-black-boxes-under-rebel-watch-in-donetsk-according-to-separatist-leader-20140721-zv4lg.html). It seems only correct that I alter that part here.

There is another side to all this, as we see (at http://www.smh.com.au/world/john-kerry-says-us-has-enormous-amounts-of-evidence-linking-russia-with-mh17-disaster-20140721-zv4mz.html) that the MH17 disaster is linked to Russia, there are still questions that give worry to this. Yes, I agree that in my view Russia bares definite responsibility, not just by the possible SAM delivery (as the original is still in question), but the fact that the pro-Russian separatists were not stricken down in a verbal lashing from the Kremlin to give full cooperation, which is a much heavier transgression. Consider that these ‘pro-Russians’ would not listen, accept, or heed the words from Moscow; does that not make them simple terrorists? If that would be the case, how could Russia consider not distancing themselves from this disaster from the very first moment the events took place? If Russia is in league with these terrorists, then was the downing of MH17 not a clear act of war?

Is at the centre of it all?

Consider the financial situation the USA is currently facing, it is broke, which means it has no way to feed the war industry, which gives Moscow a distinctive advantage, if we accept that neither wants to go nuclear any day soon, then the acts of ‘sanctions’ is pretty much the biggest artillery the west can muster at present, even as we continue to see the results of acts within Donetsk. It is harder to tell whether I am right or wrong (I could be either), yet the inactions in Syria and now Eastern Ukraine seems to show a lack of directive from all NATO parties (not just the US). This all gives shape to the art on the left side of the Triptych.

The next issue is the one I also briefly touched upon, it is the escalating issues in Gaza, where it seems more and more clear that Israel has had enough of the threat Hamas has made over the last few years and the loss of support that Hamas is enjoying, as well as the US no longer having a clear and powerful hold over the region on an economic base is also a cause for Hamas to wonder whether their approach to issues would ever have worked to begin with. Now that Egypt is distancing itself more and more from Hamas, they are now hoping for a resolution through Qatar, where they seem to hope that the UN will be able to find options with the help of Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani. The Sheik is a diplomatic force to be reckoned with, as a Sandhurst graduate, which is regarded as the finest military officer’s education in the world. The only issue that would remain is whether Hamas is in any way entitled to such distinctive representation. In one way, it might actually result in actual cease fire talks between Hamas and Israel; it is however also one of the final straws Hamas has left, if they decide to break that truce in any way, the results could not just end Hamas, it might actually end the options for any Palestinian Gaza. It could result in the biggest poker hand the Middle East has seen in a few decades. That and the option that progress could be in result will only emphasize the amounts of power lost to the US (who was utterly unable to make any headway here). It will also strengthen Qatarian influence over a larger portion of the Middle East, which could be exactly why Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani might consider to assist in the matter as well as the motto he trained under ‘Serve to Lead‘. Achieving that might just leave the Academy General’s bursting with pride (the General who was leading the academy when the Sheik was a student there). If we go back to the Triptych, then this would be right side of the Triptych. So what is at the centre?

These two sides are linked to a much larger painting in the middle. It is without a doubt the economic sides we have seen overwhelming the left and the right side. It is not the economy of missile systems (which might be an implied reference), but it is the economic powers that are too scared to lose it all in a war, which is of course the smallest of reasons to consider war over, but it is a factor none the less. More important, it is the diminished economic power of the US that is centre on all this. It would be unfair to just refer to the US here, but the bulk of the EEC is in a worse shape than the US currently is, so that is why the US is still the central element in all this. Their inability to get control of their overspending is a massive reason for the ‘blame’ towards the US. But let us not forget that the UK is not without blame either. In its current shape (especially the massive debt) the UK is also lacking in power to set for the ‘demanding’ (or better stated ‘intensely requesting’) image that should be given towards Eastern Ukraine and Israel/Hamas in these matters. Even if we give the proper weight to the Guardian article on the GDP of the United Kingdom (at http://www.theguardian.com/business/2014/jul/20/gdp-surpass-pre-financial-crisis-level), the headline ‘GDP to surpass pre-financial crisis levels‘ is just an indicator and even though I admit that the UK is still getting back on the horse, the issue ‘ignored’ for now is that Gross Domestic Product is no real indicator of better times, only for now that this seems to indicate good times for the ‘rich’. People in the UK are still on massive levels of debt and that is not likely to change any day soon. There is still a shortage on jobs and those who do have a job are inclined to go along with outrageous amounts of legalised slave labour. Freedom comes at a price, or better stated, when big business rules (or massively influences) the actions of government, we see an unbalanced view on life and every inch they do not claim will come at another cost.

Here we see the elements of a triptych by Hieronymus Bosch. Either of the famous three of his triptychs could apply to the chaotic mess we are all facing. In the end there is enough imagery to debate which one is the best depiction. The economic sector would argue that we are in the triptych ‘The Garden of Earthly Delights‘, whilst the people under the pressures of this economy will counter that their fate is shown by the triptych ‘The Last Judgment‘. The view also reinforces the views outsiders have towards the entire economy. Partaking in it will always be better than watching the result on the outside looking in, because those on the outside will never get to partake in the game at all.

2014 might end up being a very decisive year for many of us!

 

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