It sounds great. Bitcoin, the new currency free from the stress of banks. The principle is very tempting, especially in the current climate of bank troubles. The reality is a little more of a pain.
See, the thing about bitcoin is, if you take a bit of care, you can have your bitcoin account on your very own computer, with all the account details securely backed up. That's the appeal right?
So...
Why is the bitcoin market becoming flooded by people wanting to make money out of processing bitcoins in exactly the same way as exchanging any other currency?
Fundamentally, all you need to do is give someone your bitcoin receive address (it's a long jumble of letters and numbers), and they can directly transfer money to your very own wallet. It's the electronic equivalent of "Here's some cash", "Thank you".
Many in the bitcoin community will tell you this is a VERY BAD IDEA. For two reasons as far as I can see:
First, it's possible for anyone to scan the bitcoin network history and see exactly how much money has been paid in to that bitcoin account.
Yes ... but .. Do I care? For one thing, who is going to bother to do that? Fine. Let's assume we don't want snooping. All I have to do is click one single button in my bitcoin wallet software, and hey! A brand new code I can give people. It pays to the same wallet of mine and it's not linked to the old one. So... If you're worried. Just change the code you give out once in a while maybe?
The next reason is to do with transaction safety. In theory, some clever con artist can keep scanning the network, see a bitcoin payment and claim they are the one that made that payment. The argument is, that if you give out a new payment address every single time, then you've tied the transaction back to the one person you thought was paying you. Yup. True. But for those of us not handling a lot of transactions, it's honestly not that big an issue. It's an argument to say "If you're doing something weird, or expecting a bit of trouble, give them a new payment number".
Anyway. Having scared the pants off you if you DARE NOT do these things ... Guess what? You can use merchant services at a very reasonable % or two of each and every transaction.
I'm calling bullshit on this one. This is people basically making money out of a need that doesn't exist for a lot of people to safely use bitcoin.
It gets better ...
If you go down the "Ok I'll use a cheap bitcoin merchant" route, virtually all the ones I've come across want you to open a bitcoin eWallet on either their website or one they are linked to.
Woah there Mr. I've got my wallet thanks. It's right here. On my computer.
And that's where you hit a major crunch with virtually the entire bitcoin community being created at the moment.
It is virtually impossible to buy bitcoin directly to your own wallet, and it's virtually impossible to receive bitcoin via online merchant services direct to your wallet.
To be fair. Once you've got bitcoin in to a wallet somewhere, it is usually free to transfer it to another bitcoin account. Note the usually though. Some do charge even for that.
Then we come to buying bitcoin, and ohhhh man is this one a pain?!
It just ain't easy. The main reason is. Nobody trusts anybody. Which is fair enough. If someone waves a credit card at you and buys bitcoin, they can then cancel the transaction via the credit card company leaving you stuffed. I also know that some companies like PayPal will delete your account if they find you using paypal to sell bitcoin. So there are genuine restrictions.
One way it could be done is Escrow. Escrow is a system where exchange is held until conditions are met. A lot of people do want to just buy some bitcoins with a credit card. The only way round it is let them specify the buy order in their currency. That money then goes on hold until no further claim can be made on it, and only then does it get exchanged for bitcoins at the time it clears. I've got a feeling though that you can cancel a credit card purchase up to 28 days later? Might be 14. But who is going to gamble like that? "Here's £500, whatever the exchange rate is for bitcoin in 14 days time, I'll have that much". Banks eh? They ruin everything.
This tends to lead you to international wire transfer or direct bank transfer. Fair enough. But the problem there is fees. There can be a fixed fee at either end of the transaction. There seem to be losses in currency exchange before you even get to the bitcoin if you're buying from an outfit outside of your home currency, and of course the bitcoin exchange itself will want to take a cut.
Sadly, as a result, it's not actually worth bothering with bitcoin for small amounts. It's not the sort of thing you can put in a few quid and pay for something on a one off. You'd quite frankly be crazy and end up paying an eyebrow raising bunch of fees in the process.
So .. I guess my pearls of wisdom are:
A lot of people are trying to scrape a few bitcoins out of anyone they can. Check your options and avoid them if you possibly can.
If you want to "play with bitcoin" you have to start with a fair whack of cash.
It all seems a bit disappointing given the potential. But then given the barriers to getting normal currency in and out of bitcoin for casual use, it's perhaps even more impressive how fast it seems to be taking off at the moment.
30 Mar 2013
27 Mar 2013
Global Warming
From Twitter
David Davies @davidtcdavies 9:50 PM (27th March 2013)
"Where's the global warming? Maybe govt shud create tax breaks for high carbon industries. Cheap bills, jobs & warmth (if greens r correct)"
David Davies. The man here showing zero reasoning skills is Conservative MP for Monmouth and Chair of the Welsh Affairs Committee.
Why is he a moron?
Well let me explain to him and all the other "I'm cold, global warming must be bollocks" idiots.
Warming something is adding energy. Global warming is energy being added to the atmosphere and oceans of the planet at faster than historic averages / normals.
When you heat something up, you make it more chaotic. The little particles go bounce bounce bounce. That's what heat is. Tiny little atoms and molecules going ping ping ping all over the place extra fast.
When you heat up the entire globe, the same thing happens. The overall average temperature goes up and you get resulting chaos in the weather patterns. What does this mean?
This means you can get abnormally short or long periods of a certain weather pattern. You can have hotter weather or colder weather. The earth really doesn't care about the 10 mile radius around your house that much. It's busy with all this extra energy going ping ping ping around the atmosphere. So sorry brains of Monmouth, cold weather ALSO happens because of global warming.
I really wish they'd called it Global Entropy, because then moron's like David Davis might understand. I could be wrong. They might just stare at the word "Entropy" and look puzzled.
Warmth = Entropy.
Unusual weather = Entropy.
Got it?
Great now what the hell are you doing in a position of power and responsibility with an IQ of 12?
Digs a little deeper: This guy left school at 18, and was raised by the intellectual elite of British Steel (before the Tories helped it vanish), and the Territorial Army. His life funded by his "Something for nothing" family shipping company. He also makes the grade of Special Constable for the transport police. If you ever wondered how smart some of our police are? Here's a prime idiot.
When your political system is staffed by people who had their entire life funded by bank of mum & dad, and don't have a clue about further education or any reasoning ability you have a problem. David Davies you are the weakest link. I wish you would say goodbye.
David Davies @davidtcdavies 9:50 PM (27th March 2013)
"Where's the global warming? Maybe govt shud create tax breaks for high carbon industries. Cheap bills, jobs & warmth (if greens r correct)"
David Davies. The man here showing zero reasoning skills is Conservative MP for Monmouth and Chair of the Welsh Affairs Committee.
Why is he a moron?
Well let me explain to him and all the other "I'm cold, global warming must be bollocks" idiots.
Warming something is adding energy. Global warming is energy being added to the atmosphere and oceans of the planet at faster than historic averages / normals.
When you heat something up, you make it more chaotic. The little particles go bounce bounce bounce. That's what heat is. Tiny little atoms and molecules going ping ping ping all over the place extra fast.
When you heat up the entire globe, the same thing happens. The overall average temperature goes up and you get resulting chaos in the weather patterns. What does this mean?
This means you can get abnormally short or long periods of a certain weather pattern. You can have hotter weather or colder weather. The earth really doesn't care about the 10 mile radius around your house that much. It's busy with all this extra energy going ping ping ping around the atmosphere. So sorry brains of Monmouth, cold weather ALSO happens because of global warming.
I really wish they'd called it Global Entropy, because then moron's like David Davis might understand. I could be wrong. They might just stare at the word "Entropy" and look puzzled.
Warmth = Entropy.
Unusual weather = Entropy.
Got it?
Great now what the hell are you doing in a position of power and responsibility with an IQ of 12?
Digs a little deeper: This guy left school at 18, and was raised by the intellectual elite of British Steel (before the Tories helped it vanish), and the Territorial Army. His life funded by his "Something for nothing" family shipping company. He also makes the grade of Special Constable for the transport police. If you ever wondered how smart some of our police are? Here's a prime idiot.
When your political system is staffed by people who had their entire life funded by bank of mum & dad, and don't have a clue about further education or any reasoning ability you have a problem. David Davies you are the weakest link. I wish you would say goodbye.
18 Mar 2013
My Education Problem
Is pretty simple.
I have a daughter making her way through primary school.
She hates it. It's the most boring thing that could ever happen to her.
So chats are had and what kinds of things they ask her to do ... and the things they stop her from doing start to come out. Aim being of course to guide the bored child back on the righteous path of a good education.
Turns out, it's not that easy.
Her playtime is boring. Why? Well they aren't allowed any toys or books during playtime. They basically get turfed out on to a field and .. that's it. Double checks. No books at all? Nope. Not even small toys to play with? Nope. Oh. Yeah. That could be really very boring then. Fair point.
Maths. Her key source of boredom. Has taken the time out to insist they learn times tables. I can get on board with this one. This is actually useful. I can explain why! But ... Aside from times tables and how to tell the time ..? It seems they are teaching her how to pass a mensa test. It's very abstract pattern spotting. Which has a place if you then go on and point out patterns in times tables and how it can be a shortcut if you remember a few good ones, but ... this isn't about that. It's about passing assessment tests, which seem largely to be based on subsets of mensa tests. You know what? That is really boring! Fair point.
So it's a bit tricky. I agree with her summary. It is needlessly boring with zero redeeming features. I can't even get her to enthuse about play time. In fact I'm just glad I'm not a kid these days.
What makes me shake my head though is the way education has become a way of getting kids to pass various tests for school ranking tables. That didn't have to be a terrible thing. But here's what it seems to me has happened:
In the office:
How do we test intelligence at all these key stages?
We use a generalised form of intelligence testing, a bit like modified IQ tests!
Brilliant. Then we can change curriculum but general reasoning ability should still be applicable!
But ... In the school:
They want us to test the kids. We can't mess this up.
What do the tests look like?
Abstract reasoning mainly.
Right. Let's teach the kids how to answer abstract reasoning tests.
Did anyone spot the point at which educating children with useful (and therefore engaging) information to equip them for the future fell by the way side? Various people point fingers at each other. Nothing happens. Another generation of kids appears. They are either very good at abstract reasoning tests and not much else, or got so switched off by the process that they learned the bare minimum they could get away with. Ever see that "Young dumb and living off Mum" program? That's really not a good advert for the end products of the education system.
I don't blame the teachers. It looks to me like a yet another bureaucracy problem.
The other thing this illustrates from my little world view is "Iterative problem growth". I need to think of a snappier title. What happens is that the system is loaded, if a school fails to get good grades it tends to get bad ratings, less funding and heads for a spiral of doom. So the pressure really is on to get good grades for the kids. However. Every school in an area is in competition. So the schools that focus the most on "How to pass the next test" are going to win ... unless every other school bends school day a little more towards "How to pass the next test" as well. Let that sort of weighted system run for a few years and what do you get? A system highly specialised in getting good school reports. The original aim of education, providing a broad, applicable, enjoyable curriculum for our children, becomes a side issue. We get idiots or some very sharp brains adapted to completing tests. (Hey, I'll go out on a limb, some very sharp brains probably drop out as soon as possible as well, and I can't blame them).
Well there you go. That's my theory.
Weird thing is. Why I write this blog? I only started this one since getting back in to Twitter. Twitter is fine for snippits of information. Absolutely horrible for conversation & debate. I sort of blog here when I get frustrated with Twitter. Fun huh? I still get the same number of readers (roughly zero), but at least I'm not sat wondering how to squeeze concepts in to tweets. Heigh ho.
I have a daughter making her way through primary school.
She hates it. It's the most boring thing that could ever happen to her.
So chats are had and what kinds of things they ask her to do ... and the things they stop her from doing start to come out. Aim being of course to guide the bored child back on the righteous path of a good education.
Turns out, it's not that easy.
Her playtime is boring. Why? Well they aren't allowed any toys or books during playtime. They basically get turfed out on to a field and .. that's it. Double checks. No books at all? Nope. Not even small toys to play with? Nope. Oh. Yeah. That could be really very boring then. Fair point.
Maths. Her key source of boredom. Has taken the time out to insist they learn times tables. I can get on board with this one. This is actually useful. I can explain why! But ... Aside from times tables and how to tell the time ..? It seems they are teaching her how to pass a mensa test. It's very abstract pattern spotting. Which has a place if you then go on and point out patterns in times tables and how it can be a shortcut if you remember a few good ones, but ... this isn't about that. It's about passing assessment tests, which seem largely to be based on subsets of mensa tests. You know what? That is really boring! Fair point.
So it's a bit tricky. I agree with her summary. It is needlessly boring with zero redeeming features. I can't even get her to enthuse about play time. In fact I'm just glad I'm not a kid these days.
What makes me shake my head though is the way education has become a way of getting kids to pass various tests for school ranking tables. That didn't have to be a terrible thing. But here's what it seems to me has happened:
In the office:
How do we test intelligence at all these key stages?
We use a generalised form of intelligence testing, a bit like modified IQ tests!
Brilliant. Then we can change curriculum but general reasoning ability should still be applicable!
But ... In the school:
They want us to test the kids. We can't mess this up.
What do the tests look like?
Abstract reasoning mainly.
Right. Let's teach the kids how to answer abstract reasoning tests.
Did anyone spot the point at which educating children with useful (and therefore engaging) information to equip them for the future fell by the way side? Various people point fingers at each other. Nothing happens. Another generation of kids appears. They are either very good at abstract reasoning tests and not much else, or got so switched off by the process that they learned the bare minimum they could get away with. Ever see that "Young dumb and living off Mum" program? That's really not a good advert for the end products of the education system.
I don't blame the teachers. It looks to me like a yet another bureaucracy problem.
The other thing this illustrates from my little world view is "Iterative problem growth". I need to think of a snappier title. What happens is that the system is loaded, if a school fails to get good grades it tends to get bad ratings, less funding and heads for a spiral of doom. So the pressure really is on to get good grades for the kids. However. Every school in an area is in competition. So the schools that focus the most on "How to pass the next test" are going to win ... unless every other school bends school day a little more towards "How to pass the next test" as well. Let that sort of weighted system run for a few years and what do you get? A system highly specialised in getting good school reports. The original aim of education, providing a broad, applicable, enjoyable curriculum for our children, becomes a side issue. We get idiots or some very sharp brains adapted to completing tests. (Hey, I'll go out on a limb, some very sharp brains probably drop out as soon as possible as well, and I can't blame them).
Well there you go. That's my theory.
Weird thing is. Why I write this blog? I only started this one since getting back in to Twitter. Twitter is fine for snippits of information. Absolutely horrible for conversation & debate. I sort of blog here when I get frustrated with Twitter. Fun huh? I still get the same number of readers (roughly zero), but at least I'm not sat wondering how to squeeze concepts in to tweets. Heigh ho.
Petrol & Cyprus
Let me explain why the Cyprus thing has me spooked a bit.
As of tonight (early Monday morning, a good 7 hours+ before most main markets open up), EURUSD has fallen around 120pips on open. On twitter I'm seeing a bizarre few lines on banter about the Cyprus deposit snatch. A surprising number of people take the "It's only a few %" line. I'm not going to argue that point here. A more significant sample of the fiscal heads I follow are talking exclusively about "calming the markets". Which is understandable. But not why I'm a bit worried.
Here we go...
In the UK recently, we had a petrol shortage. The funny thing was, there was no shortage of petrol. I don't pretend to understand the social mechanism that went on behind this. But simply the fear that there might be a petrol shortage was enough to prompt everyone to buy petrol, and that caused a petrol shortage. As it turned out, the tanker driver strike never happened. There was no need at all for the shortage to happen by logical, reasonable standards.
It seems to me a lot of fiscal heads are doing what I did with the petrol shortage. Looked at quite logically ... "What's the fuss about?", or at worst, how to calm the markets in the next week or so. But that's not the problem with bank runs and petrol shortages.
You don't need need an actual risk of loss for people to take money out of the bank. All you need is a certain critical mass of people to do it for whatever reasons they may have, even if wrong. Like petrol queues, people see and hear of the withdrawals, so they do the same.
That's the angle that's got me a bit worried on this one. I don't see the powers that be factoring in what a mass of people and a mild bit of panic can snowball in to. Maybe I'm reading it wrong. Maybe they are safe in the knowledge that they can quell any public momentum via media control and running cash between banks behind the scenes. I don't know. But it looks very risky to me.
As of tonight (early Monday morning, a good 7 hours+ before most main markets open up), EURUSD has fallen around 120pips on open. On twitter I'm seeing a bizarre few lines on banter about the Cyprus deposit snatch. A surprising number of people take the "It's only a few %" line. I'm not going to argue that point here. A more significant sample of the fiscal heads I follow are talking exclusively about "calming the markets". Which is understandable. But not why I'm a bit worried.
Here we go...
In the UK recently, we had a petrol shortage. The funny thing was, there was no shortage of petrol. I don't pretend to understand the social mechanism that went on behind this. But simply the fear that there might be a petrol shortage was enough to prompt everyone to buy petrol, and that caused a petrol shortage. As it turned out, the tanker driver strike never happened. There was no need at all for the shortage to happen by logical, reasonable standards.
It seems to me a lot of fiscal heads are doing what I did with the petrol shortage. Looked at quite logically ... "What's the fuss about?", or at worst, how to calm the markets in the next week or so. But that's not the problem with bank runs and petrol shortages.
You don't need need an actual risk of loss for people to take money out of the bank. All you need is a certain critical mass of people to do it for whatever reasons they may have, even if wrong. Like petrol queues, people see and hear of the withdrawals, so they do the same.
That's the angle that's got me a bit worried on this one. I don't see the powers that be factoring in what a mass of people and a mild bit of panic can snowball in to. Maybe I'm reading it wrong. Maybe they are safe in the knowledge that they can quell any public momentum via media control and running cash between banks behind the scenes. I don't know. But it looks very risky to me.
13 Mar 2013
Diversion
Yeah enough thinky stuff.
Game review time!
This thing called DayZ came to my attention.
It's utterly geek friendly. By that I mean a bit of tech knowledge may help even before you launch it.
So what the hell is it?
It's a fairly brutal multi-player game. You're a "survivor" with incredibly basic equipment (depends on the server you log on to, but the standard issue is basic). You're in a world full of zombies. You need food, drink, warmth, and you need to survive, so you need bandages and weapons.
Why am I bothering to write about it? Well it's a "mod" a modification of a game called Arma 2. Arma 2 is a strange game in itself, aiming to be a very realistic modern military simulator. It manages on a lot points. A single bullet will kill you, pretty much instantly. Your storage space is based on your pockets, tool-belt and backpack. It's very limited. You can catch infections, or more rapidly just bleed to death if you can't bandage yourself up fast enough. Pain makes your vision blur and shake. Broken bones stop you moving. Blood loss slowly blurs the entire world in to grey as the pain pounds away. You can forget "I've got 40,000 hit points and a codpiece of non-damage" here.
There's your feel of the game. Now back to the tech bit. It's geek heaven. You can't even run it with just Arma 2 installed. You need a whole mission pack of extras to bolt on to Arma 2 first. Even then, you're best off downloading a further add on called "DayZ Commander" to browse the 6,000+ listed servers and find one right for you, and then download even more maps and variations to play. Once you're in the game the tech assault doesn't end. This isn't your standard GUI. It's not going to hold your hand and tell you what this does to that. It feels like the entire keyboard is configured to do something weird with any key at all, and what you do with your mouse to get things to happen is perplexing to begin with. Think steep learning curve. It makes sense once you get the hang of it, but initially it's a case of "I have no idea how to do anything".
It's worth adding in here that the graphics are up there in the "really very good" category. If anything it relies on blur filters and light contrasts a fair bit, but actually that doesn't harm it at all, and blends with the visual damage from bleeding and throbbing pain. At times it's almost artistic, but it's always very easy to feel you are there. The quality of daylight changes, night time is nicely gothic, the rain really does get you down, and you can see the sun glare slowly fade as you emerge from cover in to bright sunlight again. Lets just say that it's immersive enough. You can moan that you can't get in to more buildings, but that's about it. They still look nice from outside.
So what some genius did was plonk that sort of simulation, in to zombie apocalypse land. The result is fairly intense! To give you an idea, apparently the average life span of a "survivor" is slightly over one hour.
But ... around about your 5th or 6th life time in DayZ, you start to get a bit of a grip on how to survive, (the lessons are fairly brutal), and here's why it has a bit of a cult status. It's not actually the zombies that are the most dangerous things in DayZ. It's the other players. Here the game pings in to a new kind of multi-player environment. There is no dungeon to team up on. You can either fight together or against each other. The rewards for taking down a well equipped player are tempting. You can spend hours or even days scavenging for the same results. On the other hand, your survival rate as a duo at least are hugely enhanced. Blood transfusions can only be made by another player, and that can be a life line. Mentally though, you're still thinking it's another mouth to feed and they better pull some weight. There's not even any moral compass added by the game designers here. This is it. You're a survivor in a world full of zombies, there are other people around sometimes, how do you deal with it?
The whole basic need vs greed morality debate suddenly hits you right between the eyes. How nice are you actually? Given you have to survive in a world full of zombies. How much do you trust other people? Suddenly that "Where are you? Let's meet up." in conversation isn't as simple as it looked.
To add to that mental pressure, this is a game with one life. You start a game, you can log out and back in on the same character with the same equipment right back where you logged out ... until you die. Then you have to start again from zero. That doesn't sound so bad if you're only surviving an hour or so anyway. It becomes a major mental factor when you've managed to survive for a week.
I'm not sure I've managed to get it across in this little review, but this is one hell of a brutal strange little sub-genre of game in all kinds of ways. It seems to bring out the best and worst in people.
So there's your basic review. Insanely hard to get in to. But actually .. something quite special if you ever do. A total departure from immortal, hand holding, user friendly, "which guild are you in?" online games.
But wait up .. something else I noticed. I know many players just treat DayZ like any other game. But I noticed something that reminded me of William Gibson going on. I really do need to be in the right frame of mind to log in to DayZ. It grows when you are in the game. You pause, gather yourself and then plan ahead the next scavenge, open the doors and cautiously look around. Time to move on again... It's the game that finally has me "jacked" in to it. From log on to log out, I'm in DayZ, and that little realisation, is why I bothered to write this blog post.
Game review time!
This thing called DayZ came to my attention.
It's utterly geek friendly. By that I mean a bit of tech knowledge may help even before you launch it.
So what the hell is it?
It's a fairly brutal multi-player game. You're a "survivor" with incredibly basic equipment (depends on the server you log on to, but the standard issue is basic). You're in a world full of zombies. You need food, drink, warmth, and you need to survive, so you need bandages and weapons.
Why am I bothering to write about it? Well it's a "mod" a modification of a game called Arma 2. Arma 2 is a strange game in itself, aiming to be a very realistic modern military simulator. It manages on a lot points. A single bullet will kill you, pretty much instantly. Your storage space is based on your pockets, tool-belt and backpack. It's very limited. You can catch infections, or more rapidly just bleed to death if you can't bandage yourself up fast enough. Pain makes your vision blur and shake. Broken bones stop you moving. Blood loss slowly blurs the entire world in to grey as the pain pounds away. You can forget "I've got 40,000 hit points and a codpiece of non-damage" here.
There's your feel of the game. Now back to the tech bit. It's geek heaven. You can't even run it with just Arma 2 installed. You need a whole mission pack of extras to bolt on to Arma 2 first. Even then, you're best off downloading a further add on called "DayZ Commander" to browse the 6,000+ listed servers and find one right for you, and then download even more maps and variations to play. Once you're in the game the tech assault doesn't end. This isn't your standard GUI. It's not going to hold your hand and tell you what this does to that. It feels like the entire keyboard is configured to do something weird with any key at all, and what you do with your mouse to get things to happen is perplexing to begin with. Think steep learning curve. It makes sense once you get the hang of it, but initially it's a case of "I have no idea how to do anything".
It's worth adding in here that the graphics are up there in the "really very good" category. If anything it relies on blur filters and light contrasts a fair bit, but actually that doesn't harm it at all, and blends with the visual damage from bleeding and throbbing pain. At times it's almost artistic, but it's always very easy to feel you are there. The quality of daylight changes, night time is nicely gothic, the rain really does get you down, and you can see the sun glare slowly fade as you emerge from cover in to bright sunlight again. Lets just say that it's immersive enough. You can moan that you can't get in to more buildings, but that's about it. They still look nice from outside.
So what some genius did was plonk that sort of simulation, in to zombie apocalypse land. The result is fairly intense! To give you an idea, apparently the average life span of a "survivor" is slightly over one hour.
But ... around about your 5th or 6th life time in DayZ, you start to get a bit of a grip on how to survive, (the lessons are fairly brutal), and here's why it has a bit of a cult status. It's not actually the zombies that are the most dangerous things in DayZ. It's the other players. Here the game pings in to a new kind of multi-player environment. There is no dungeon to team up on. You can either fight together or against each other. The rewards for taking down a well equipped player are tempting. You can spend hours or even days scavenging for the same results. On the other hand, your survival rate as a duo at least are hugely enhanced. Blood transfusions can only be made by another player, and that can be a life line. Mentally though, you're still thinking it's another mouth to feed and they better pull some weight. There's not even any moral compass added by the game designers here. This is it. You're a survivor in a world full of zombies, there are other people around sometimes, how do you deal with it?
The whole basic need vs greed morality debate suddenly hits you right between the eyes. How nice are you actually? Given you have to survive in a world full of zombies. How much do you trust other people? Suddenly that "Where are you? Let's meet up." in conversation isn't as simple as it looked.
To add to that mental pressure, this is a game with one life. You start a game, you can log out and back in on the same character with the same equipment right back where you logged out ... until you die. Then you have to start again from zero. That doesn't sound so bad if you're only surviving an hour or so anyway. It becomes a major mental factor when you've managed to survive for a week.
I'm not sure I've managed to get it across in this little review, but this is one hell of a brutal strange little sub-genre of game in all kinds of ways. It seems to bring out the best and worst in people.
So there's your basic review. Insanely hard to get in to. But actually .. something quite special if you ever do. A total departure from immortal, hand holding, user friendly, "which guild are you in?" online games.
But wait up .. something else I noticed. I know many players just treat DayZ like any other game. But I noticed something that reminded me of William Gibson going on. I really do need to be in the right frame of mind to log in to DayZ. It grows when you are in the game. You pause, gather yourself and then plan ahead the next scavenge, open the doors and cautiously look around. Time to move on again... It's the game that finally has me "jacked" in to it. From log on to log out, I'm in DayZ, and that little realisation, is why I bothered to write this blog post.
5 Mar 2013
Why so glum?
More thoughts that don't fit in tweets.
This one to do with a certain sense of gloom. You see, many people have this optimistic view that things are improving. I'm not sure what to call it exactly, but it's a pervading wish in society. "America is over the worst", "Europe is fixed", "Next year growth will return". That sort of thing. I guess it's fair enough to wish for the best.
But the problem I see is that there's virtually no drive or will for anything to actually change, and the causes of the problems that are popular to blame are wildly wrong. The Occupy movement had basically the right idea, but that largely (for now at least) has been beaten back and stalled. Other than that, you're very hard pressed to find even an activist movement, let alone a political party willing to take on the real problems.
And what pray tell do I think they are?
I think the system of wealth and how it runs our entire lives is perhaps workable in theory, but horribly flawed in it's current state. One of the manifestations of the current problem is in a curve of opportunity that comes with wealth. Lets concentrate on this one for now, because I think it helps explain why we seem to be on a hockey stick curve of doom.
If you're in the lower, middle, even low high end salary brackets these days, your money is largely tracked, identified, taxed and there's little you can do about it. You're in the bracket that can't afford legal tax avoidance. Or. If you can to some small degree, you're talking about a few thousand saved, enough to give you a smile maybe, but not enough to materially alter your overall financial position. You also can't afford to speculate on the markets to any real degree. Again, it's possible, but because the amounts that can be risked are fairly small, the amounts that can be made are also fairly small, and because you can't afford off shore accountants and brokers, the gains are going to get noticed and taxed.
At a certain point though, you're out of the woods. You can afford to offload all your tax affairs to experts in the dark arts of tax avoidance, and you can afford to pay the sums involved in setting up such schemes as a small blip compared to the quantities saved. You can also afford to speculate on the markets, you don't have to do it. Your broker will happily take that on for you, and unless you've picked a duff broker and tax accountant, you're pretty much home and dry.
The point is, at a certain point, wealth has been allowed to snowball wealth. Not just for individuals, for corporations as well. In the UK and USA you can find large corporations paying zero tax despite good earnings for the year in question. You can even find them being paid by the tax man just for having the grace to be in business and having good accountants.
You can muddle along with that sort of thing going on up to a certain point, but after a while, you begin to notice that far too much of the profit in just about everything is getting sucked out by those who can afford to squirrel it away and avoid the tax, or invest it to make yet more money to help pay for the money that's tucked away off shore.
This is just one aspect. The ability past a certain point for wealth to magically become almost untaxable because you can afford all the dodges and cheats available to you, and the benefit out weighs the costs. There are more. The culture of gouging as much money as possible out of any public expenditure is another, but that's another story.
So when you're looking at the world and wondering where has all the money gone? It's up there folks. At the top. In huge quantities. And it ain't trickling down.
If anyone can point me at a potentially viable political party willing to tackle even this one basic problem? I'd love to hear about them. All the serious political parties that I know about are funded by those exact same rich corporations and individuals. If you think they are willingly going to give any of that up you're just plain crazy. It's easier to let a few thousand commit suicide from austerity measures than even admit there's a huge wealth distribution problem.
You think I'm exaggerating?
See if this helps you picture the problem more clearly...
When is that going to change?
Well. I'd say it'll take civil wars, even international wars, financial collapse, mass poverty, and a huge depression to even begin to redistribute the wealth. I don't particularly want any of that to happen. It's just that's the only way I can see any of the current system changing in any meaningful way. Until then? Get used to things getting slowly worse, because nobody in power or close to getting power wants to do anything about it at all.
Hey. It's only human lives that get messed up and considerably shortened in the meantime. Don't be so glum. Us humans seem to love taking what could be a perfectly enjoyable lifetime and screwing it up for as many people as possible. It's how we do business. It's normal.
This one to do with a certain sense of gloom. You see, many people have this optimistic view that things are improving. I'm not sure what to call it exactly, but it's a pervading wish in society. "America is over the worst", "Europe is fixed", "Next year growth will return". That sort of thing. I guess it's fair enough to wish for the best.
But the problem I see is that there's virtually no drive or will for anything to actually change, and the causes of the problems that are popular to blame are wildly wrong. The Occupy movement had basically the right idea, but that largely (for now at least) has been beaten back and stalled. Other than that, you're very hard pressed to find even an activist movement, let alone a political party willing to take on the real problems.
And what pray tell do I think they are?
I think the system of wealth and how it runs our entire lives is perhaps workable in theory, but horribly flawed in it's current state. One of the manifestations of the current problem is in a curve of opportunity that comes with wealth. Lets concentrate on this one for now, because I think it helps explain why we seem to be on a hockey stick curve of doom.
If you're in the lower, middle, even low high end salary brackets these days, your money is largely tracked, identified, taxed and there's little you can do about it. You're in the bracket that can't afford legal tax avoidance. Or. If you can to some small degree, you're talking about a few thousand saved, enough to give you a smile maybe, but not enough to materially alter your overall financial position. You also can't afford to speculate on the markets to any real degree. Again, it's possible, but because the amounts that can be risked are fairly small, the amounts that can be made are also fairly small, and because you can't afford off shore accountants and brokers, the gains are going to get noticed and taxed.
At a certain point though, you're out of the woods. You can afford to offload all your tax affairs to experts in the dark arts of tax avoidance, and you can afford to pay the sums involved in setting up such schemes as a small blip compared to the quantities saved. You can also afford to speculate on the markets, you don't have to do it. Your broker will happily take that on for you, and unless you've picked a duff broker and tax accountant, you're pretty much home and dry.
The point is, at a certain point, wealth has been allowed to snowball wealth. Not just for individuals, for corporations as well. In the UK and USA you can find large corporations paying zero tax despite good earnings for the year in question. You can even find them being paid by the tax man just for having the grace to be in business and having good accountants.
You can muddle along with that sort of thing going on up to a certain point, but after a while, you begin to notice that far too much of the profit in just about everything is getting sucked out by those who can afford to squirrel it away and avoid the tax, or invest it to make yet more money to help pay for the money that's tucked away off shore.
This is just one aspect. The ability past a certain point for wealth to magically become almost untaxable because you can afford all the dodges and cheats available to you, and the benefit out weighs the costs. There are more. The culture of gouging as much money as possible out of any public expenditure is another, but that's another story.
So when you're looking at the world and wondering where has all the money gone? It's up there folks. At the top. In huge quantities. And it ain't trickling down.
If anyone can point me at a potentially viable political party willing to tackle even this one basic problem? I'd love to hear about them. All the serious political parties that I know about are funded by those exact same rich corporations and individuals. If you think they are willingly going to give any of that up you're just plain crazy. It's easier to let a few thousand commit suicide from austerity measures than even admit there's a huge wealth distribution problem.
You think I'm exaggerating?
See if this helps you picture the problem more clearly...
When is that going to change?
Well. I'd say it'll take civil wars, even international wars, financial collapse, mass poverty, and a huge depression to even begin to redistribute the wealth. I don't particularly want any of that to happen. It's just that's the only way I can see any of the current system changing in any meaningful way. Until then? Get used to things getting slowly worse, because nobody in power or close to getting power wants to do anything about it at all.
Hey. It's only human lives that get messed up and considerably shortened in the meantime. Don't be so glum. Us humans seem to love taking what could be a perfectly enjoyable lifetime and screwing it up for as many people as possible. It's how we do business. It's normal.
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