I while back a good friend asked if I could take a while and play his little game that was initially released
for Xbox. Fine. I dont own an Xbox, being a ps3 guy, but since he wanted me to test the windowsversion, I
figured I could do that. I like games, and I like to find odd things in them so I said yes. He gave me a nice
little download link and I almost expected to be rick-rolled but lo and behold, a file was downloaded.
I extracted the file and ran the setup file, accepted to sell my soul to the devil (AKA EULA) and off we went.
So, this was the game “Smooth operators – Call center chaos”.
Now, keep in mind that I have been working in the call-center world for quite sometime, so the
irony of it all was not really lost to me, in fact, it made me smile. So, I started a new call center
and named it after one of my workplaces. I chose normal as mode since with these types of games,
regardless of how good you think you are, you will hit bumps in the road that might send you
down into the ditch. What you get when you enter the game is a nice little lobby with a pleasant
hostess who likes to give you good and useful tips every morning that you pop into work.
Ok, ok.. so she isn’t some high resolution “Pussy Galore” but still… Jill does take her
job seriously. You also have 20000 cash to play around with.
From the start, you get 1 client, who has different demands in InBound calls (IB),
OutBound calls (OB(Also known as the much hated and dreaded Telemarketers))
and BackOffice (BO) wich takes care of the administrative side of things.
What you need to do is build a call center that can handle pretty much everything
that gets thrown at you.
So, you need to build a workingenvironment wich house at least these three types
of workers, and dont you forget about amenities such as cafeteria or toilets, because
yes, its a game, but you are “playing” employer, and you cant really expect your
workers to go a full day without taking a leak or a snack.
With that in mind, I set up to build the best call center ever, one that everyone wanted
to work at, who takes care of the employers and who actually rewards good deeds……and
fell flat. Turns out there is a huuuuuuge economics factor to take into considerations and
damn you to bankruptcy if you dont.
Now, as you progress, you also get new features, such as project managers wich helps you
develop your site, aswell as funny little pom-pom swinging coaches that tries to urge your
slav… err minio.. oups workers to do better and also account managers that tries to get you
more clients and help that type of contacts. This makes for a challenging situation with
very complex economics that you have to balance out to be able to get the best callcenter
possible.
Now, I used to play SimCity, SimHospital, Themepark and all those games back in the day
and they where easy, most of the time. This game seems to be designed to be a challenge.
A challenge that once you try to accept, will keep nagging at you wich makes you spend
hours on end, trying to balance it all out, getting people to do their best and whatnot.
You want a game that actually demands that you have a brain and not just good hand to eye
coordination? This game is for you.
My hat is off for Andreas Heydeck Games you made me very happy, and my social life unhappy..
and I dont mind.
I find myself at one of the playlands in our city and suddenly it strikes me…
I actually like to hear the sounds that I currently have around me. The pneumatics from the rides, e running of small feets and the happy screams and laughter that actually echoes in here.
I mean, if I was at home, this screaming and running would pretty much reduce me to a grouch at any given second, but here… here it makes me smile. My kids are happily climbing away at e huuuuge set that is here, I see them at tremendous speeds sliding down the slides and their shrill screams gets mixed in with the other childrens outbursts of purer joy at playing.
I can now see why sometimes older persons sits around playgrounds because it is a way of remembering your own past, the time when you had limitless energy and you could spend it recklessly, just because you would have the same abundancy of energy the next day.
For some odd reason I find I could actually go here just to see, hear and take part of the kids playing, although in a passive way. the same thought also brings with it another one, one that is a lot less pleasant. I am a man, and a man sitting in one of these places, without kids is almost sure to make the parent radar use a damn foghorn to send warningsignals. “That guy is a pervert and wants to take my kids”
To an extent, I think i would join in on that thought, beacuse what if that guy is sitting there have the same feeling of inner happiness at just watching the kids play with the same feeling of nostalgic joy that I now feel?
When did the world turn out this way? That we, as parents are afraid to let our kids out of sight on the playgrounds, with the absolute certainty that something bad will happen the second they are alone? It really is sad that it has come to this.
Well, I cant really speak for the rest of you, but, I will try to let my children play as much as they can, and if someone is watching them play, smiling the same way as I am now, I will try to remember
this day, while at the same time, keeping an eagle-eye out.
I ran into an interresting piece of thought this morning. Or rather, one of the people I follow on twitter
pointed me in the right direction. One half of the dynamic duo that is Penn & Teller pointed me to
a youtube video, here is the actual tweet:
And me being the youtube junkie that I am, of course followed the link and was instantly awarded
with someone creating a stunning piece of art, inspired by Penn & Teller’s trick “Shadows”.
Now, I generally like to read the posters intentions for a video, because that can make the video
worth more and most of all, mean more then simply taking up some of my time. I think it is called
“Food for thought” and this video actually had a couple of thoughts that I couldnt help think about.
First off, here is the video:
And here is the posters cause and thoughts about the video:
I was reading through an Art discussion forum a couple of days ago, and came across the usual “Digital Art vs Traditional Art” topic. And while both sides had good arguments, one point really grabbed my attention and made me think:
“Traditional Art will always have more value over Digital because it is a one-of-a-kind piece. A digital piece can be easily reproduced and printed hundreds of times and used for anything (T-shirts, signs, posters etc.). It’s just data and pixels on a screen.”
I agree with the statement that a traditional piece is a truly one of a kind item. You can scan it and photograph it all you want, but It’s real. It exists in a solid form, It can also be destroyed and lost forever, whether it’s by a house fire, or a glass of water accidentally being spilled over it. But so can digital art. If not handled correctly, the document can become corrupt or lost in a hard drive crash.
I wondered, how could I make a digital painting (that is data and pixels on a screen) truly a “one of a kind”?
I’ll paint a digital picture, print one single copy, then erase it completely off my hard drive!
So this film and the one print sitting on my desk is all that remains of the painting. No pixels, no data. Just a single hard-copy of the painting.
The image no longer exists, so I suppose the entire video is the art piece now. It hurt me a little to destroy it, but do you think the (physical copy) painting has more value and artistic merit now that it is truly a “one of a kind”?
(To the author of the video, please note that I retained all your links as a small token to show my respect)
My thoughts in the matter really isn’t rocket science. The value of art, regardless of form for me is the effort
that the creator actually put into the art. Art in itself is supposed to touch you and stir thoughts and emotions
and regardless of form, or way of distribution, should be appreciated. But this also leads us into a speculation
on how to assess value on our own thoughts, because well, paint, canvas, painbrushes and such do cost money
but so do software licenses, wich albeit reusable, has a higher purchasing cost.
The creator of the Teller portrait has also the single existing copy of this image, since the file is deleted
and the only copies that remains are worse quality snapshots like mine. So how is the original valued?
Is it valued the same as a traditional artwork? Most likely not yet, but how about in a few years? Probably
still not as much. It is, as you may surmise, a paper with ink or laser toner spewed out over it. But the
effort remains the same, wouldn’t you agree?
And as an afterthought. First off to Mr Penn Jillet and Mr Teller. Whatever you guys do, you will have me
as a fan, ever since the day you ran over Teller with a truck and showed how it was done.
To the creator of the video: Wouldnt Blue Man Group’s “Shadows part II” work wonders with this vid?
Mediacorporations want to make money. It is that easy, and I can see where that is coming from
of course, and piracy is a big issue for them as they represent a downloaded media file with a
lost sale. Now most of us know that this is not true, that you downloaded the file doesn’t automatically
mean that you wanted to purchase it just to see/listen to it. It has also been established that
media pirates are willing to pay for media in various ways if it has easy distribution.
(Look at spotify will you).
I saw a retweet from @janlindgren to the following image:
And the idea in general is sound, no doubt about it, but there are some things there that even I can see
as not being plausible, for instance to include boxart and extra content and similar issues.
So I gave the idea a few thoughts and a few minutes of my time and came up with this:
So what is that then?
Well, it is an application that can simplify distribution of movies and tv-shows.
You can easily choose the categories you wish to browse, you can choose resolution
and for those of us that has extreme bandwidth, stream both dvd quality and hd quality,
You have the ability to gift media to another person, you can sync to a device
or pherhaps to itunes for you apple-eaters. You can either stream the file through
the application (would make it pretty good for tablets and similar devices) or
download the actual file.
You can also order a physical disc and THERE is where the extra content should be stored.
Include special features like “how was it made”, extra box art, etc etc in these discs to make
purchasing the physical thing a viable option, also you can have the standard order X discs, pick
one or two extra for as a bonus.
Now how should it work. Well, to tell you the truth, I haven’t given that as much thought as I
would like, the quick thought that entered my mind would be that each file that you purchase
should in some way be branded with a unique “tag” for lack of a better word that would
be hidden from the users, only viewable from the mediacorporation and this should be embedded
somewhere in the file. No tracking software, no DRM, just a simple encrypted ID that in no other
way alters the file, making the removal of it redundant (if you can move the file as you wish between your
different devices, what’s the point of breaking it up just to get rid of some text, right?)
So that once you buy this movie, it is a file that you “own” so to speak.
Tether this ID to a string that combines creditcard number and one more factor like
social security number or similar. (means it can be crosschecked with card issuer)
So, lets say a file ends up on a file sharing network. Media company snags the file, reads
the user tag and promptly ban this user from further purchases and from using the network.
Now then, make this application in different formats, so it can be used directly on devices, for
Android, iOS, windows phone, Windows for pc, mac OS X and Linux and also for consoles like
PS3 and Xbox360. Do you see the market impact this has the potential to have?
So what you would do is instead of trying to battle piracy with methods that obviously doesn’t
work, causing disturbances and public hatred towards you, learn from them. Create a platform
that is fast, userfriendly and without hindrance for the paying user and you will see an increase
in generated money from people.
Of course there will always be freeloaders, there always has been, there always will be, but
once again, look at spotify. Music download has drastically gone down since the start of it.
Now, I am not sure how to pull all this together. I have to admit that is a bit beyond my
abilities, but isn’t this something that you, personally, might like to see and try? I know I would
Now, I am no Apple fan by any stretch of the road, but read this out fully before
you mac addicts burst up in flames.
========================================================
iTunes is a vampire/leech/whatever bad description you can think of.
It has been stated by record companies aswell as artists, the self same companies
are also bashing spotify, however, they themselves own a majority in spotify.
It seems that the record companies really are scared that they are becoming
obsolete and that people are starting to realize it. Here’s a little thing about
those comments of “leeches” and similar that the record companies probably
doesnt want you to read, since reading may be caused by independent thought.
Ok, I can see that the artists that create a song wants to generate
a revenue stream. I dont begrudge them a revenue, but it is not something
that can be considered a “right” that just because you made a song,
you will make money of it. Let me give you a case in point:
The swedish edition of Absolute music 66 consists of the following lineup:
1. Born this way – Lady Gaga
2. In the club – Danny Saucedo
3. Just the way you are – Bruno Mars
4. Leaving home – Nicke Borg
5. Oh my God! – Moniker
6. Indestructible – Robyn
7. Price tag – Jessie J
8. F***in perfect – Pink
9. Like a prayer – Jay Smith
10. White light moment – Tove Styrke
11. Idiot – Lena Philipsson
12. 25 – Oskar Linnros
13. What the hell – Avril Lavigne
14. Heart and I – Robbie Williams
15. Loca – Shakira feat Dizzee Rascal
16. Are you leaving – Erik Hassle
17. Alive – Linda Pritchard
18. Desperados – Pernilla Andersson
19. The king – Playtones
20. 7 days and 7 nights – Brolle
21. I’m in love – Sanna Nielsen
22. E de fel på mej – Linda Bengtzing
23. Spring för livet – Sara Varga
24. Popular – Eric Saade
25. S&M – Rihanna
26. Me and my drum – Swingfly feat Christoffer Hiding
27. My heart is refusing me – Loreen
28. Hold it against me – Britney Spears
29. Higher – Taio Cruz feat Travie McCoy
30. Yeah 3x – Chris Brown
31. Dance alone – Love Generation
32. Baksmälla – Petter & September
33. Blow – Kesha
34. Just can’t get enough – Black Eyed Peas
35. Rocketeer – Far East Movement feat Ryan Tedder
36. I just had sex – Lonely Island feat Akon
37. More – Usher
38. Turn around – Flo Rida
39. Please don’t go – Mike Posner
40. Invincible – Tinie Tempah feat Invincible
41. Follow me home – Killabite
42. Animal – Neon Trees
43. The hunter – Melody Club
44. Like suicide – Christian Walz
45. I’m so happy – Salem Al Fakir feat Josephine Bornebusch
46. Jag vet vilken dy hon varit i – Håkan Hellström
It’s 46 songs, not bad you say, but take a look at the lineup again,
how many of these are songs that you actually would like to have in
your collection? For me, there are 1 song (maybe 2 if i stretch it)
and I will push it, its “Lonely Island Feut Akon – I just had sex”
But if I buy this cd, I will be paying off both Håkan Hellström
(in my eyes, a swedish version of the plague) and Britney Spears
(The american version of the plague) aswell as Salem Al Fakir. Nothing
personal about him, but …. no, i wont even start because I wouldn’t be
able to stop.
Now the price for this setup is as follows: (note that I am not a record
company executive, so I cant tell if these are actual numbers or not.)
Lets assume for simplicity that the artists on the disc will share what
the price is for the disc, IE not calculating store profit, cost for
packaging etc etc etc.
The CD in itself is 159 SEK, estimates to roughly 18-20 dollars.
There are 46 tracks. So, 159 divided by 46 is 3.45andalotomoredecimals.
So each artist is entitled to 3.45 per song. Some of these have dual
artists, so then divide 3.45 into with two (you have a calculator on your
computer, you do the math here) 3.45 ish or half of that per song…
3.45 is about 53 cent or thereabouts.
Now lets bring in the price for shipping, subract VAT (moms) and also,
the cut for the record companies and I am pretty damn sure that the take
would be a lot smaller, probably around half or even a third of those 53
cent so we are below 25 cent per sold disc per artist. And they think
iTunes is a leech? I dont know how much iTunes takes to list a song, but
I pretty much guess that at 99 cent per song, the artist will earn more per
sold song then these “collection CDs”
So .. since the price of this collection CD is about the same as a standard
one artist full length CD, it is still the same equation when you take in
effect that I mostly do not want ALL songs on a disc, there are 1 or 2 that
I really want. So, I have to by 12 pieces of what I consider to be crap
to get those songs. Not bloody likely. I would then rather listen to the
song through youtube or spotify, but guess what …. that is getting restricted
so, I am relegated to using iTunes or piracy, or if the device I choose
to listen to has streaming capabilities, spotify.
Now who is the leech? Itunes, or the record companies?
Att ladda ner ca 2800 låter är numera jämställbart med
en barnvåldtäkt eller brutal misshandel .
Detta har nu ifpi fastslagit tillsammans med tingsrätten
i och med domen mot en 60-årig man i uppsala idag.
Detta gör att de av oss som har laddat ner mer
än X antal filmer med andra ord kommer att tilldelas samma
straff som någon dömd för dråp eller liknande
enligt samma straffskala.
Detta ger också polisen (Jag vet, dom gör bara sitt jobb… eller
nej förresten, jag ska förklara det sedan.)
rätt att kräva ut uppgifter angående ett IP nummer av leverantörer.
I förlängningen innebär detta att FRA och IFPI tillsammans kommer
att trängas i våra internet-rör och avlyssna trafik för
att sedan stämma var och varannan liten finnig tonåring som
helt enkelt vill se om en film kan vara intressant innan
dom besöker biografen.
Varför gör polisen inte sitt jobb då?
Eller snarare, varför tycker inte jag det?
Jo, för att svenska staten helt enkelt svänger efter
företagens pipa och låter sig styras av en gammalmodig
organisation med föråldrade distribueringskanaler och
panik då de ser att det går att sprida kultur genom
andra kanaler än deras egna.
Monetära organisationer tvingar med lobbyisters samarbete
polisen att gå deras ärenden och ta resurser från brott
som faktiskt har reella offer, och dessutom att få en sådan
straffsatts på ett brott som skulle kunna klassas som spridandet
av kultur. Ska vi hårddra det till att kräva att alla olika
avbilder av Mona Lisa ska brännas eftersom någon annan
äger rättigheterna.. Oj, förlåt mig. Leonardo har varit
död i mer än 75 år, men ni fattar poängen.
Hela systemet med lagstiftningen kring fildelning är
rutten och genomsyrad av finansierade intressen som
styr debatten åt än det ena eller än det andra hållet
och rättsväsendet som i mångt och mycket inte förstår
vad det innebär nickar snällt med mössan i handen
och hoppas att mer pengar kommer att skjutas till.
Jag skulle dock vilja veta om vi alla är lika inför lagen.
Enligt LAGEN själv är vi det. Per Gessle delade ut 9000 låtar,
lite styvt 3 ggr så mycket som mannen i uppsala, och erkände
det med, men är det någon här som har härt att Gessle har
suttit 4-6 år i finkan? För med tanke på mängden
så måste ju brottet klassas som grovt, inte sant?
Men vänta nu. Han är en artist. Han får fildela eftersom
skivbolaget inte vill bli av med en kassako…vääääänta
nu. Hur var det med lika inför LAGEN
Vissa kommer nu att debattera om att “brottet” begicks
för länge sedan. Jo, de kan måhända stämma, men lagen
om fildelning fanns redan PÅ PLATS NÄR DETTA SKEDDE
men ingen anmälan har formellt gjorts av skivbolaget
trots att GESSLE HAR ERKÄNT både för bolaget OCH för
media. Så, är man artist i ett stort skivbolags stall
så är man tydligen exkluderad lagen.
Betyder det att om jag börjar tillhöra jobba på trafikverket
att jag kan ha fri fart och ignorera kamerorna, eftersom
vägarna är trafikverkets “skötebarn”? (dumt och kanske galet exempel
men det är det bästa jag kommer på med så kort varsel)
Jag skulle vilja ha en prövning.
En LIKA INFÖR LAGEN prövning. Där artister och skivbolagsfolk
SAMT styrande politiker som röstade igenom fildelningslagen
får sin lagringsmedia kontrollerad av såväl MPAA, IFPI samt
BSA (Sök på Google om ni inte vet vilka det är) och att straff
utmäts till var och en enligt samma straffsats som mannen
i uppsala. Helvete, varför begränsa sig. Vi kan lika gärna
ta ALLAS datorer SAMT stänga av alla domäner. För vi har
ju redan fått veta att det är olagligt att länka med hjälp
av HTML, PHP, ASP samt annat scriptspråk.
Till de som röstade igenom fildelningslagen har jag följande
att säga:
Ni säger att den som har rent mjöl i påsen har inget att dölja.
Seså. Öppna era påsar (datorer) och visa det rena mjölet.
