So i found it interesting how when I finally did manage to access facebok and the internet via a friend's laptop I was prompted to identify and verify my identity to ensure i was the owner of the account, I was taken through a few steps.
Firstly of course i had to do a image verification code, which i did with ease.
Ok now for the interesting part, the 2nd part i had 2 options to either enter a code which will be messaged to my phone or to identify my friends via their photos on facebook.
Here's the list.
1st, Andrew Yeo
2nd, Eric Jr Tan
3rd, Tariful Islam
4th, Cathy Maggots ( Esther ) <- at this point i couldn't help but lol at this secretly in my head, i don't really know how they choose these friends but looking at the trend, i figured it could probably be related to the amount of interaction you have with that person on facebook, profile views, messages, posts, pictures tagged etc. So to see Esther there is kind of a big surprise to me, since I haven't posted any messages on her wall for a good 5 months or so and neither have i sent her any messages of that sort on facebook, totally 0 intera ction with her aside from the oh so few* times i look at her profile to check on whatever updates she has.
5th, Dian
So yeah, this is probably the only interesting piece of information I have to share about today.
I'm extremely tired and the contacts are stinging my eyes. I want to get home and get some sleep but i'm at a friend's house using their internet and checking on what's happening.fac
Thursday, November 11, 2010
ashamed
1st day of my holidays in the Philippines and so far I'm not enjoying myself at all. Couldn't get any sleep on the flight from Singapore to Manila i was constantly worried about being over luggage and kept imagining the endless possibilities of possible unfortunates that could happen.
Thankfully the over luggage problem did not really became a problem. I had McDonald's for breakfast, pancakes and sausages. Ate my first non halal food at ( beef sausage ), in front of my mum and my brother. With Hari Raya Haji around the corner (17th November) I really do deserve to die.
Trip back to my place from the Airport was long, I kept trying to find a comfortable position in the car to sleep. The journey felt endless and i kept waking up to check on where we are. Recalling back memories of familiar roads.
Oh i almost forgot i did bought myself a carton of lucky strike cigarettes and Marlboro Black Menthol. Spent $43 for those 2 packs, sort of felt like it was probably a bad idea to buy so much ciggs to smoke in just 2 months or maybe less.
No internet, No Internet.
Thankfully the over luggage problem did not really became a problem. I had McDonald's for breakfast, pancakes and sausages. Ate my first non halal food at ( beef sausage ), in front of my mum and my brother. With Hari Raya Haji around the corner (17th November) I really do deserve to die.
Trip back to my place from the Airport was long, I kept trying to find a comfortable position in the car to sleep. The journey felt endless and i kept waking up to check on where we are. Recalling back memories of familiar roads.
Oh i almost forgot i did bought myself a carton of lucky strike cigarettes and Marlboro Black Menthol. Spent $43 for those 2 packs, sort of felt like it was probably a bad idea to buy so much ciggs to smoke in just 2 months or maybe less.
No internet, No Internet.
Wednesday, November 10, 2010
The economic literacy of the average person is appalling. Try this experiment.
In fact this will probably even apply to most of you.
Go up to a random person, and ask them in two minutes (or a paragraph or two) or less to explain what caused the financial crisis to the best of their abilities. Keep in mind the Financial Crisis is probably the single most important event to occur in our generation along with the collapse of the Soviet Union & 9/11.
The second test, which is even more depressing, is to ask someone exactly who the United States debt is (primarily) owed to and when will they have to pay it back. People literally believe the States owe money to China like your deadbeat gambling addicted father owes money to Tony Soprano.
Me and one of my buddies were asking random people this on Friday night at a bar and it was just pathetic. A simple question:
What caused the Financial Crisis?
"It was the War in Iraq. The fucking Americans should have never gone there"
"George W. Bush and Dick Cheney needed to steal money from people to fund the war"
"The investment banker took everyone's money and kept it for themselves instead of investing it like they said they were doing"
There needs to be a serious movement to increase the knowledge and teaching of economics in public schools. People are so fucking stupid. You'd laugh at someone who didn't know what gravity was, or couldn't find Africa on a map, or didn't know the Earth rotated around the Sun, or couldn't do basic multiplication or who fought in WWII on which side... but ask someone why the Central Bank sets an interest rate and you might as well be asking them explain why string theory operates in 11-dimensional space.
Ok I'll do #1 as short as I can. Keep in mind it's not like I expect anyone to provide this comprehensive of an answer, the point is to just at least get a general idea that the person knows what's going on. You don't have to know astrophysics to understand that the Earth rotates around the sun.
So what caused the Financial Crisis?
Low interest rates prompted investors (individuals, pension funds, government funds, etc) from around the world to seek new avenues in which to invest their money. This demand for new sources led to the creation of CDOs, collateralized debt obligations, which is a pool created by investment banks backed by various amounts of debt: a bunch of debt is collected, divided up into tiny slices and investors can buy one of these slices (say someone owes you $500 at 8% interest, well me and my friends will buy that debt & immediately pay you the equivalent of $500 @ 2%... you immediately make a profit, and we all have 6% growth assured for the length of the loan).
Mortgage based CDOs became very successful so demand was very high as low interest rates made investors desperate for returns. Pensions funds & the like pressed investment banks for more CDOs -> investment banks pressed banks for more mortgages -> banks pressed mortgage firms for more mortgages. Naturally this leads to a loosening of lending standards (sub-prime mortgages), because the person selling the mortgage doesn't have to worry about actually collecting the debt. However, all the risk models everyone had on mortgages was based on past data when lending standards were rigorous, which led to credit agencies underestimating the risk of default on the mortgages and hence underestimating the risk of investing in the CDO (the models also failed to account for a fall in real estate prices).
Long story short, one day the house of cards instantly fell apart. People started defaulting on their mortgages & real estate prices stopped rising. People owned more on their houses than it was worth & stopped paying. More people defaulted. The value of the CDOs tanked. Investors didn't want them anymore and now all these firms; investment firms, banks & mortgage firms were stuck with these mortgages they had only acquired because they were expecting to sell them into a CDO. So all at once, investors lost tons of money, and ibanks & banks defaulted because they were stuck with these toxic mortgages they could no longer sell to someone else.
( sometime in the future i will need this ) tag. tag tag tag
Go up to a random person, and ask them in two minutes (or a paragraph or two) or less to explain what caused the financial crisis to the best of their abilities. Keep in mind the Financial Crisis is probably the single most important event to occur in our generation along with the collapse of the Soviet Union & 9/11.
The second test, which is even more depressing, is to ask someone exactly who the United States debt is (primarily) owed to and when will they have to pay it back. People literally believe the States owe money to China like your deadbeat gambling addicted father owes money to Tony Soprano.
Me and one of my buddies were asking random people this on Friday night at a bar and it was just pathetic. A simple question:
What caused the Financial Crisis?
"It was the War in Iraq. The fucking Americans should have never gone there"
"George W. Bush and Dick Cheney needed to steal money from people to fund the war"
"The investment banker took everyone's money and kept it for themselves instead of investing it like they said they were doing"
There needs to be a serious movement to increase the knowledge and teaching of economics in public schools. People are so fucking stupid. You'd laugh at someone who didn't know what gravity was, or couldn't find Africa on a map, or didn't know the Earth rotated around the Sun, or couldn't do basic multiplication or who fought in WWII on which side... but ask someone why the Central Bank sets an interest rate and you might as well be asking them explain why string theory operates in 11-dimensional space.
Ok I'll do #1 as short as I can. Keep in mind it's not like I expect anyone to provide this comprehensive of an answer, the point is to just at least get a general idea that the person knows what's going on. You don't have to know astrophysics to understand that the Earth rotates around the sun.
So what caused the Financial Crisis?
Low interest rates prompted investors (individuals, pension funds, government funds, etc) from around the world to seek new avenues in which to invest their money. This demand for new sources led to the creation of CDOs, collateralized debt obligations, which is a pool created by investment banks backed by various amounts of debt: a bunch of debt is collected, divided up into tiny slices and investors can buy one of these slices (say someone owes you $500 at 8% interest, well me and my friends will buy that debt & immediately pay you the equivalent of $500 @ 2%... you immediately make a profit, and we all have 6% growth assured for the length of the loan).
Mortgage based CDOs became very successful so demand was very high as low interest rates made investors desperate for returns. Pensions funds & the like pressed investment banks for more CDOs -> investment banks pressed banks for more mortgages -> banks pressed mortgage firms for more mortgages. Naturally this leads to a loosening of lending standards (sub-prime mortgages), because the person selling the mortgage doesn't have to worry about actually collecting the debt. However, all the risk models everyone had on mortgages was based on past data when lending standards were rigorous, which led to credit agencies underestimating the risk of default on the mortgages and hence underestimating the risk of investing in the CDO (the models also failed to account for a fall in real estate prices).
Long story short, one day the house of cards instantly fell apart. People started defaulting on their mortgages & real estate prices stopped rising. People owned more on their houses than it was worth & stopped paying. More people defaulted. The value of the CDOs tanked. Investors didn't want them anymore and now all these firms; investment firms, banks & mortgage firms were stuck with these mortgages they had only acquired because they were expecting to sell them into a CDO. So all at once, investors lost tons of money, and ibanks & banks defaulted because they were stuck with these toxic mortgages they could no longer sell to someone else.
( sometime in the future i will need this ) tag. tag tag tag
Monday, November 8, 2010
I just bought a $25 imaginary horse
Over the past few hours, I have come to the realization that I have purchased a $25 imaginary space horse. To be honest, I do not regret my horse purchase. I do not have horse remorse. What I have gleaned, however, is a keen understanding of the nature of video games moving forward, in particular the massively multiplayer genre.
World of Warcraft is not new to the world of microtransactions, or in this case, macrotransactions. I do not believe anyone considers $25 to be a microtransaction, which seems like a healthy bit of cash. A few thoughts came to my mind. First, we now have the Blizzard price list for all sorts of purchased add-on content and the range of money we will be shelling out in the future. Pets are $10; mounts are $25. The celestial horse's success yesterday proved beyond a doubt that the $25 pricetag was not a deterrent for many purchasers, as the queue pushed over 100,000 people at times in the U.S. store alone. Early sales were estimated to be in the 400,000 area, with more climbing steadily. This horse is a hit.
My second thought was how drastically the dynamic has changed for Blizzard and why, potentially, it has changed. This past year showed a stagnation in the number of accounts created for World of Warcraft, leaving Blizzard with the same number to tell shareholders at their next meeting a year later. With new ways to monetize the player base other than the number of accounts, Blizzard has essentially given shareholders the go on holding onto increasingly valuable Activision Blizzard stock and to expect wonderful new profit generators. New ways to monetize existing subscriber bases are always being explored, and the Celestial Steed has cemented the pet and mount store as one of the absolutely critical endeavors.
This is only the beginning for macrotransactions in World of Warcraft. As long as the items up for sale do not give another player an advantage and stay purely cosmetic (with the exception of the race change, which has the potential to alter balance), I am confident Blizzard will provide some compelling additions to the already mind-blowingly successful pet and mount store.
What do you think about the Celestial Steed and what it represents? $25 seems to be a sweet spot if the sales are to be believed, but what do you think?
World of Warcraft is not new to the world of microtransactions, or in this case, macrotransactions. I do not believe anyone considers $25 to be a microtransaction, which seems like a healthy bit of cash. A few thoughts came to my mind. First, we now have the Blizzard price list for all sorts of purchased add-on content and the range of money we will be shelling out in the future. Pets are $10; mounts are $25. The celestial horse's success yesterday proved beyond a doubt that the $25 pricetag was not a deterrent for many purchasers, as the queue pushed over 100,000 people at times in the U.S. store alone. Early sales were estimated to be in the 400,000 area, with more climbing steadily. This horse is a hit.
My second thought was how drastically the dynamic has changed for Blizzard and why, potentially, it has changed. This past year showed a stagnation in the number of accounts created for World of Warcraft, leaving Blizzard with the same number to tell shareholders at their next meeting a year later. With new ways to monetize the player base other than the number of accounts, Blizzard has essentially given shareholders the go on holding onto increasingly valuable Activision Blizzard stock and to expect wonderful new profit generators. New ways to monetize existing subscriber bases are always being explored, and the Celestial Steed has cemented the pet and mount store as one of the absolutely critical endeavors.
This is only the beginning for macrotransactions in World of Warcraft. As long as the items up for sale do not give another player an advantage and stay purely cosmetic (with the exception of the race change, which has the potential to alter balance), I am confident Blizzard will provide some compelling additions to the already mind-blowingly successful pet and mount store.
What do you think about the Celestial Steed and what it represents? $25 seems to be a sweet spot if the sales are to be believed, but what do you think?
manly
perhaps im being too vain here, but i couldn't resist the temptation to take a picture of those bazookas. Initially i wanted to capture the vein that was popping on my biceps but my iphone's camera isn't that powerful enough, (or the vein isn't that visible enough)
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)