JetFable’s Gamer Writer’s Block

Here are more new concept arts from Yan. I personally think they are great, really fitting the theme of the story.

What’s new this week is I finally accepted another job offer. One that takes me on a somewhat different career path. But my motto is still I dont quite give a damn about my career as long as it pays the bills. What I really care about is what I have talked about in this blog, developing a kick-ass game and writing a even more kick-ass story. Changing job brought me to a discussion of motivation with a good friend of mine. She said she thinks I am a totally unmotivated individual. She thinks that I am not interested to do anything at all. I do agree that I give off that vibe constantly becuase I am very easy-going and I often sound very lazy and I often complaing about going to work and driving in traffic but I just realize that the vibe the I give off totally overrides every accomplishment I have and things I actually do. Sometimes you think that people know you well, but in fact, they don’t. And I start to realize people who don’t read my blog probably don’t know me at all. She argues that most people she knows are more career-oriented and seem much more motivated than I am, and I said but if they don’t make much more money than I do how do you justify their motivation? I really expect seriously career-motivated people to have started a few companies and become CEO by my age (hay look at the facebook guy!), or they should have failed by trying. I think the kind of motivation she felt that other people had, were all superficial, there are people who are motivated to go to a new club or do a new sports or go drink new wine every weekend, but I am the kind that likes to stay home and finish a few more books or finish playing GTA. I guess I don’t sound very motivated, and I do feel that I have much less motivation than much more succesful people than I am, but I think I have done more than the regular person, even though that may not be good enough. But seriously, we are all trying to be happy, if being lazy make you happy, your motivation is to get the most by doing the least, and that is your motivation, who is there to judge you?

On a second note, did Amazon.com crash Friday morning because of pre-ordring of MGS bundle? I was quite motivated to get the bundle (talking about my lack of motivation for everything else). The deal started at 10 pacific time, I got to work and logged in and 10:10 and could not get the deal, and constant refreshing after that caused Amazon to crash for 2 hours straight later. Did I participate in brining down the house? Is that poor load balancing on their end (should they not hire me instead)? Is it simple coincidence or has the world underestimated the number of MGS fanatics? But at the end of the day, I did not get my hands of MGS and PS3. But today, I seem more excited at the 3G Iphone. Until next time, JF out.

Its long overdue for a new entry. I wrote most of this in my head when I was driving this morning, zigzagging through traffic, it’s insane how slow people drives, and it never ceases to amaze me, in any case, I am so busy that hopefully I can type this all up in 5 min. I discussed with my friend at length about what made anyone a tech moron, so he are my criterias. Before anyone read it, I am assuming you actually listen to an MP3 player instead of CD, you search Wikipiedia instead of Encylopedia Britanica, you never read the map and yellow pages because those information is already on the Internet. If you still do any of the above and are not above 50 years old, please fast forward to the line where it says you are a moron. Here we are, the things that you know/do to make you not a tech dummy, in order or importance.

1) You have some sort of Online storage for important data. A good place would be Yahoo Briefcase (or Flickr for photos). This reminds me of a conversation many years ago about when my house is burning down (now that Southern California is burning), what would I want to save (other than my own awesome arse) first, is it photos (memories) or is it important documents like passports. The importance of online storage is you never have to save anything. If you are a writer because don’t only have 1 copy of your manuscript in 1 computer, and viola, you know what happens. Yes, your life is stored online, it should be. One day we should be able to die in a car crash and download ourselves into a new body.

2) You use firefox instead of IE. I know, it doesnt come with your computer. But really it takes 2 secs to download and install it, and even grabs all your bookmarks from IE. Forget how much better firefox is than IE security wise, firefox has all sorts of interesting plug-ins that checks yahoo and gmail, FTP, google bookmarks that stores your links online, forget the days (what was it, 8 years ago?) when I was icq-ing myself links from my work to home computer. Better yet, if your computer crash, firefox remembers everything.

3) You use RSS feeds to view your articles from your favorite sites. RSS is very useful, and you can use that on your my.yahoo page (or yahoo mail) or google documents. Forget about checking a site every 5 minutes and hoping that someone won’t update it (I know, you got to do that here), it tells you when and where there is something new to read.

4) You have a media PC, and that means you have a computer connected directly to your TV, if not that you should have some streaming device to act as a in between (like Apple TV or xbox 360), but there is no reason for that, for it is very easy to stick your computer next to your TV and access it remotely from a laptop. Forget about paying for tivo, if you had cable, use your PC to record your shows, in fact forget about cable, forget about your DVD player, forget about going to blockbuster, download compressed video, which almost look just as good. My computer has been connected to my TV for almost 5 years? If you haven’t done so, you are 5 years late to the world of technology.

OK, if you haven’t done at least 3 things out of 4 things in the list, you are in fact a tech moron. But it is very easy to change that, you can learn how not to be one. One thing about asking whether you are a moron, is that by asking that question, you are showing some sort of remote intelligence that is lacking in the majority of human population. Enough said, on to the next thing.

Lets look at emerging technlogy in the Internet Space:

	Winner	Laggards
Search:	Google	Yahoo, Everything else
News:	Newser Beta	Yahoo News, and everything else
Finance:	Google Finance	Yahoo Finance
Mail:	Yahoo Beta	MSN Hotmail, Microsoft Outlook
IM:	MSN + live messenger plus	Yahoo Messenger, AOL / ICQ
Social:	Facebook	MySpace, Friendster, and everything else
Photo:	Flickr	Sony Imagestation, and All other photo sites
Shop:	Amazon Marketplace	Buy.com, yahoo auction, and all other sites
Map:	Google Map	MapQuest, Yahoo Map
Office:	Google Document	Microsoft Office

I am not going to talk about any of them, you just have to experience them on your own. I am still most impressed with Newser, proven to entrepreneurs that even when someone else is 10 years ahead of you, doing something differently, in a better way, wins…, and that is possible. Facebook is now valued at half of yahoo but has 30 times less revenue (is this a sign of bubble?), but I have many good things to say about Facebook, which I am not going to say it here, but the stickiness factor is there (read Tipping point), it makes us go back, not just that, it makes us want to develop applications on it. No doubt when Web 3.0 comes upon us, new leaders will once again emerge.

From someone else’s recommendation, I revisted this AOL music page, and I realized I was part of a team that helped develop early versions of this when I was a consultant there, but I never really used it (I always wonder why AOL still exists, among other things). It is actually a good way to listen to the top songs. And I became wasted on this song after listening to it 1000 times — Carrie Underwood’s Wasted. I love the song. Hay she is not bad looking too. Kelly Clarkson’s songs are terrible lately (and have you seen her recent pictures? Implosion: Trust me, you do not want to see her up close)

	Winner	Laggard
Somewhat cute chick American Idol turn Pop Star:	Carrie Underwood	Kelly Clarkson

While talking about technology, I will touch upon investment, I saw Google yesterday at exactly 666.66 when I came into the office, thought that was somewhat sarcastic. While their motto is to do no evil, Google is the only corporation in the position of power to take over everything that is humanity, whoever controls the flow of information, controls everything. No doubt in 20 or 30 years, Google will become so pwerful that it can track anyone and predict anyone’s move based on their browsing habbit, it can change human history on the fly, it will become, well the mother brain, and one day someone will deploy a EMP bomb to take it down, and take us into the dark ages, and a band of adventurers will challenge the mother brain… RPG style, I have gone off topic. On to investment, market is see-sawing, I now think the tech leaders (GOOG, RIMM. AMZN, AAPL) are over extended, no doubt they are still good for long-term hold (probably beat putting it in the bank, or under your grandma’s bed), new leaders are ascending, as per my last post a few weeks ago, my recommendations are still making new highs, FSLR and VMW (I keep saying VMW will get you a BMW, earnings out today!) are the new leaders, and contenders are SPWR (no dent today in the horrible market) and STP, speculative guesses: STV and IGE. My long time bottom recommendation NYX has finally reversed its course (from pathetic to rising steadily). One trading advice I have is, don’t gamble and always have cash reserves. If you don’t want to take a chance when earnings come out, sell half of your positions (Cramer teaches trading around your core position). I did that with Google (which turns out to be a bad move), that way either way the stock moves it goes in your benefit. If it goes down you can accumulate, if it goes up drastically, you can forget about it and move on to other things. Its good when you flip a coin and either side there’s something to your benefit. Buying an reverse index fund for short term seems to work quite well as hedging your positions (QID is the reverse of QQQQ and hedge against GOOG), so do that instead of ever shorting anything. If you did that right before goog earning, it becomes a win-win situation, the next day Nasdaq falls drastically but google is still up, your reverse index fund would make about 5%. Anyway, enough with the boring stuff.

I have so much I want to write about but so little time to do it, but if I don’t, well, you know, my brain expands exponentially and then at some point it implodes and I forget everything, literally everything, and this world ceases to exist as we know it, so I have to do another system flush, I hope that I get to flush at least once a week.

OK, I am going to brag about my power of foresight again. Here, these are today’s news: Wii confirmed to be only 1.5 times more powerful than the Gamecube, if thats even a generous number. You get what you paid for, and you know what you paid for won’t last. Here’s what I said last week. Forget people who say graphics don’t matter. These are poeple who refuse to embrace the future. And another of today’s news, Google tesing “My World” later for launch. My world is essentially something like 2nd Life, here’s what I said last month. In order to take over the future world, Google has to own the metaverse, Googleverse? The only thing to do is purchase something like 2nd Life, WOW, or create their own competition.

I read this book called the Secret accidentally. Accidentally meant well I was at someone’s house accidentally watching the pilot eipsode of Bionic Woman on cable, and accidentally I saw this book so I skimmed thru a few chapters while I was half-paying attention to the show. If I had to read during a TV show, it says a lot about the show, so I do not want to talk about it. As for the book, is a book I far from recommend it. In fact I here by declare war to anyone who believe in this load of crap. The person who got rich off this idea should die, and those who believe her should perish from my positive thinking. Read the Amazon Reviews here, yes the reviews are more entertaining than the book. What is it about, it is a self-help book that encourages positive thinking, by literally disregarding every physical law that make up this world. I’ll give a few examples here what the book said (and please do the world a favor and don’t buy the book). It doens’t matter what you eat, if you keep an image of what you want to look like, you can never get fat. So basically all the obese people who have problem don’t want to look thin, right? And people who goes on a diet / exercise is wasting time? Better yet, if you drive to the mall and have a positive thought about getting a parking space, viola, there will be one right there in front of you. People who gets frustrated not being able to find a space is because they carry with them negative energy. What a load of horse crap is this? If there are 10 spaces and 15 people looking to park, 5 people won’t be able to park, I think that is the basic law of the world. Sure I always say that our minds shape the universe. But it isn’t 1 person’s mind that shape the universe (though I’d like to believe that’s me), even in quantum physics, that 15 people searching for 10 parking spaces coverge to exist at that time, even if their minds created the mall and the parking spaces, their viewpoints still give them no free space, because you can’t violate the observer phenomenon — and that this universe must make sense according to the rules we know. The book gets better, it talks about the law of attraction, not the attraction you are thinking about, but the power to attract disaster onto themselves. It says that people who are on a plane crash all have negative thoughts to cause the plane crash. Should I stop talking about the book here? I can’t. Take Fate and random events out of the question, many events need to collide for an accident to happen (like turbulence, tornado), certainly not negative thoughts, even if I agree that negative thoughts tend to make a person more prone to bad things because they expect it, and not to mention, people who gets on a plane buys the ticket in advance, at different times. Even if you can prove that 90% of plane crash victoms are at that moment having their mid-life crisis, what about the rest of the 10%? Who can they blame it on but fate? Anyway, I will stop complaining about the damn book here. On to other things.

Damages, the best TV drama lately. I cannot rave about it anymore than I can, with awesome acting and a lot of twists, okay I am a sucker for twists. Glen Close is awesome in her role as a devious yet brilliant lawyer, and the protagonist of the movie (geez what’s her name?) well innocent and naive and her job and relationship with her mentor changes her. The relationship here reminds me somewhat of Devil Wearing Prada, of the mentor apprentice relationship but of course, without the dark twists. Damages isn’t anything like Unfair, but like Damages, in Unfair, the protagonist can trust nobody, basically everyone has an agenda of his/her own and there’s always a twist ending in a betrayal. The movie was just out, it isn’t anything as good as the TV show, but it’s worth watching, if it isn’t just for 篠原凉子, who is gorgeous for that particular role. The next show I like is Burn Notice, and it reminds me a lot of McGuyver, in many good ways.

I think I stopped thinking emotionally about the world at some point, but try to use economic standards and theory of evolution to explain everything. Its not like I have become and uncaring and emotionless human being, its just there is an answer for everything, pretty much everything, but sometimes the world hide it from us, and it does a very good job of it, so you have to stand and view the world as a economist / scientist / engineer / creative writer / free thinker / philosopher.

I thought about changing jobs, because I don’t think I am paid enough. I often say I am paid both too much and too little. I am not paid enough for what I can do, but I am quite overpaid for the amount of hours I spend on actual working. I had a discussion with friends the other time. The one thing you should learn in your first job, is that hard work don’t pay off. The right way to work is to work smart. People don’t get rewarded for their hardwork. Consultants go into another company and try to change the world, and you start to realize it doesn’t pay for you to want to finish 2 months of work in 1 month. Nobody wants you to do it. Your client don’t want you to be there because you improving things mean more corporate people are laid off or they have to spend less time on a task that would take them longer, and they want it to take longer. Your boss don’t want you to be quick because well you are charged by the hour and get paid 1/10 of it, and essentially if you don’t do crap for the whole day, your employers are more than happy to get 10x the amount of profit you don’t work for. The lesson here is if you work for somebody, your hardwork don’t pay off. The people who kiss ass gets promoted, and thats life. If you want to work hard, start a business on your own so your fate is entirely in your hands. Well I didn’t really want to talk about how I don’t try to work hard, but I am still good at what I do, so even when I do get paid sometimes just doing my own things, I can still get paid more not doing anything, that’s why we went to school. That leads me to talk about market value, getting a new job means evaluating your market value.

I think a job interview is very like a first date (though I hate the former more than the latter), you present an illusion of your own market value and try to make a fair trade. If you know anything about trading, is that trading is never fair, everyone may be happy but somebody is always better off. I think relationship can be broken down to this trading market value elements, okay I know, I am disregarding everything emotional about relationship and try to explain it with math, but math explains everything, the fact is that nobody wants to be with someone who they dont believe to be a fair trade. And by market value of a person, I take into accout Apperance (this counts more for females but its still somewhat a factor for guys), Education / Income level, and that is why we often improve ourselves, and go to school, or start a company, buy a new car, this is how society works. As time moves forward, market value of a person changes, and people become mismatched because they longer think it is a fair trade, like me with my current job, or people around me with their current situation / relationship. I see a guy who doesn’t want to get married because he says he is not financially ready, of course later he dumps the girl, because becamse successful, what was a fair trade before turns rotten, Girl leaves guy for another guy, or prospect of another guy, after she attends more school and go to work, same idea. Like I often go to a starbucks at my lunch hour, and the girls who serve me coffee know my name and what I order, and we chat sometimes, and they would ask me what I do for a living and other things, whatever I say seem to fascinate them (and yes they even ask me how much I make). And no, I am not interested in them, because, well, the market value just don’t match. And by that I meant their attractiveness don’t really compensate for their social status. Sure maybe there are some really hot waitress who think I am not a fair trade to them, because billionares want them as much as I do. Will I ever date a girl from a lower social status, yes, of course, but in order it to be fair, she has to be attractive, just like I can pretty much date a very averge looking college-educated individuals who can talk about many things with me. Thats the trade-off in life. I may sound cruel and shallow but in fact, thats really how the world works. You see non attractive guy with a very attractive girlfiend, they are rarely from the same social ladder, and the reverse apples to the old hag who marries the young handsome stud. What happens in Knocked Up doesnt really happen in real life, though its a good message to the average joe, but in the movie, I can see her getting knocked up happening because he was pretty funny, but I could not see the relationship sustaning becasue he’s basically the bottom feeder of society. In fact he could not afford to go anywhere they went. But what happens in SuperBad, is in fact realistic to a certain degree, which is also why I love the film so much. Yes in the movie, the geeks/nerds whatever you call them are of a lower social ladder than the hot girls (and yes thats how cruel the American Society is), and theres no way they could get them unless they level the playing field. In order to “level up” their class status, and offer a fair trade, they have to do what the higher class couldn’t get, by producing a fake ID and get alchohol while even the cool dudes could not, and McLovin here of course highly level up his charisma by faking to be a bad-ass hacker criminal. If you notice anything here its never really about their apperance but their place in the social heirachy of the world. Of course they got the girls just by being themselves at the end, but the underlying message of it all is that, well others don’t think you can provide something of a equal or higher market value, they are not going to spend the time to get to know the real you (they will not negotiate and trade with you). This is why we work hard (or I mean work smart) right? There is an answer to everything.

 

This is one of those random thoughts article which I usually dislike, because it lacks artistic unity, but hay, I can’t always stick to art, it is information that gives us power, and well, I got to unload my brain once in a while. Interesting new contenders in the web 2.0 space this week: Newser, which tumbnails news, and surprisingly, I really like it a lot. I am one of those multi-tasking gurus which are doing a million things at the same time, Newser enables me to read and sort out the news I want, in an organized way, while doing other things. Well as this is happening, Google is moving towards having user comments in their news, an idea already used in Slashdot, which I read religiously. The second contender to stealing away Google’s leftover lunch is Spock.com, a search engine that claims to be the google of people, yep you use it to search people (who needs privacy?). So far its very good, and most likely you’ve been indexed if you put in your full name in sites like Friendster and Linkedln. Spock is still in Beta and reminds me of Friendster, which didn’t always work (and failed because of it). It is worth trying out. If you sign in you can manage the entry under your own name, not unlike Wikipedia. As for whether these two companies will be sucessful when we move towards the Metaverse, who knows? But my bet is they are here to stay.

The stock market is going nuts this week, the subprime mess that Bush left us in is finally taking effect, worldwide. But I don’t think we will crash. We are ending this year higher is my guess. If we correct more, that’s more buying opportunity for your 401K account, tech and solar energies still leading the next bull market. A lot of people ask whether housing will crash? I am still waiting. But the fact is that, if you need one, you need one. And it will always be okay if you are in it for the long haul.

Interesting discussion in Freaknomics “Cut God Some Slack” blog about who buys the Religions are bad for you books. Those books generate a lot of controversy, and by looking at the 100 comments a day, you know that both sides of the fence buy these books, making them best sellers. And no, I have never read one, and most likely will never, because I already know what it says. The comments are entertaining to read, and I contributed my own as well. And this one is especially classic: A person asked me on a plane if I believed in God. I said no and he asked me why. I said it was like believing in my wife. He said how is that. I said, I don’t have one. He said,I see, you would almost have to have one first before you could believe in her wouldn’t you. I said right. Plus, even if I did have a wife, over time I might not want anyone to see me with her, if you know what I mean. He said I guess that goes for gods too. We just laughed and shook hands. So much for God in America!

Some other interesting discussions this week I have with my friends are: Well, do you need good language skill to make you a good actor? I still remember Kevin Costner in Robinhood (The prince of Theives?) who couldn’t even mimic an English accent, while everyone around him did. Well that’s not acting skills but language skills, but to me thats just not believable, though I am sure a lot of people don’t care. But if you can’t role-play the character you are in, how can you even be a decent actor? The best actors do have good language skills.

The second topic is, is saying “Women can’t drive” a sexest comment? And is it even true? I am not even going to comment on that, but well, statisically speaking, when you run into really slow drivers, or drivers who aren’t paying attention to the road, if you guess “women”, 75% of times you’ll be correct. Statiscs do speak for themselves. What makes men better drivers? Its very simple, video games. Video games give us better hand-eye coordination, and multi-tasking ability, and that’s very important in driving. Not to mention, most people who race, and know the car inside out, are men, and men drive women out on dates, so practice makes perfect. Men are constantly competing in all sorts of genetic traits for the women to select them as mate, well, while women just have to compete in beauty. This reminds me of this one time, that a woman almost hit my car, and she was on the cell phone, and didn’t even notice she almost hit me, while I dodged safely out of her way. This comes to my next question, are women drivers more dangerous on the cell-phone because they are worse muti-taskers? If you think about it, this is only probably true to a certain extent, because men simply talk less, or as my friend suggested, they have the ability to not pay attention to the woman they are talking to and pretend that they are, so which makes them better concetrated on the road. I remember, this once, during a conversation, my bluetooth got disconnected, so I searched for my handsfree, while changing lanes on the freeway, hook it back up on the phone, and voila, she’s still talking, and didn’t notice I was away for at least 30 sec, I repeated her last sentence into a question, and she thought I was paying attention. Hands down, men ARE better drivers, just because we are jerks.

New US drama I watched this week is Jericho (recommended by a friend), and hands down, its awesome. It’s what happend after Jack Bauer failed in preventing a terrorist attack, after the 10th time. Enough said.

Here’s an insightful article about how Chinese copy the Iphone, and I know, they claimed that the cardboard inside bun story is fake. Fake news, fake buns, same difference to me. They both smell fishy (Coverup!)

This Survey says 40 percent of PS3 owners knew that their console included Bluray, and thats equivalent to saying 100% of idiots in american didn’t know their heads contained a brain. It’s just sad. Another survey also said that people who download video over the internet (legitimately) are dissastisfied with the quality of interent video and they prefer going to blockbusters. They are also idiots (if you don’t know why, so are you). 

Someone said my blog is awesome, I cannot agree more. At least it isn’t depressing. I am generally a happy person, it is not that I can’t get depressed, but I think I am very used to compartmentalizing myself so nothing really devastates me (trust me, don’t attempt if you lack high IQ) , the only depression I get is a writer’s depression, that I am too lazy to find new ideas and too damn lazy to write, and too damn lazy to finalize my manuscript and too damn lazy to publish my work. For those who are depressed about life, I don’t understand why, life is full of interesting new things to investigate and look forward to. T Jefferson Parker, in his book The Fallen, wrote that in order for a man to be happy, there are 3 things: He must have someone he love, he must do the things he love, and he must have something to look forward to (hopefully these 3 things are not refering to the same -> person -> insert sexual joke here). Its very easy to achieve this, I think. You might think that the first one is out of your control, but it’s not, it doesn’t even require that person to love you back. And well, get a hobby, and look forward to something. If not, you can keep refreshing this page and hope that I won’t update my blog (yes I stole this from Tommy), and you may get your wish. Be happy.

 

 

Someone asked me to explain what Web 2.0 was to her a while ago, and those of you who still live in the stone ages, go look up the definition (I hope you know how), it got me wanting to write about where the web is going. I wrote Pillars of Memory almost 6 years ago, a novel that touches upon the future of the web, but that was years ago, and I used virtual reality as a device to tell my story, and it was by no means a visionary view of the future. So where is the Internet going next? I guess I will make some predictions here. I think we are very close to Web 3.0, whether we will call it that officially, well it isn’t up to me. 3.0 to me is the location web, which means the web will always know where I am. I log in at the office, I log in at home, the IPs are different. A search engine should be able to know instantly where I am and feed me locations that are in my vincinity. We should no longer need to input our address in a map search. We are very close to getting this done, maybe 2 years away at most. The next step of evolution, 4.0 is the semantic web, which I mentioned on the last article, where I carry all my personal data around with me at all times, we are probably about 5 years away from a world-wide implementation, maybe less, or maybe 3.0 and 4.0 will happen at the same time, because they are both necessary step to go to the early stages of the forseen Metaverse, as written by many Sci-Fi authors even from the 80s.

My vision of Metaverse 1.0 doesn’t necessary take place in a 3D engine like a MMORPG but I am sure that will happen, and it may happen concurrently. Metaverse 1.0 is simply a world-wide web where people are citizens with 1 identity. This will probably happen 6 to 7 years from now as we move towards an ubiquitous wi-fi environment (probably will happen first in Asia), this is when cell-phones are going away because we can rely only on wi-fi. Everyone will have a palm-device with them which I called E-pad in my novel, but currently the Iphone comes pretty close. I forsee a unique identity/username where each person must use to sign on the net, they may even eventually use this as identification in the real world. We no longer need to remember usernames and passwords because we will use our thumb print (probably also possibly a 2nd fingerprint or voice identification for more secure authentication) on our palm device to access anything. We no longer carry our credit cards because its tied into our universal username, we no longer carry identification. We have 1 single login to all different websites and we may no longer remain anonymous. Sure we can no longer post under false names in people’s blogs, we can’t post profanity under message boards or cheat people on the Ebay because we will be remembered of what we have done. This is the beginning of the Metaverse 1.0, where I go to buy a book in Amazon.com, and instantly I can look at who else is in the store, who is close to my location, and I can chat with the shoppers about the book I am going to buy, and I can sort out people who bought similar books I did, its almost like going to shop in the real world, except better, and I can buy my product with just a click, I no longer have to sign on to every different website and put in my information and remember my different usernames. Metaverse 1.0 is not yet a interconnecting world, where you can walk from the google homepage to amazon.com, but it interconnects the users, only if the choose to, of course when this is happening, we also realized how changed our society is. Because of the ubiquitous connectivity that we have and the palm device that we carry as our means of access, we are constantly carrying our information with us, our diaries, our music, our books, our games, our contacts, our memories, and essentially the entire human history. I called Google mankind’s Overmind (a hive brain like being that lives on the net), since we can instantly look up anything, our brain power, is freed up to do other things. That comes to Metaverse 2.0, as everyone envisioned, is where we are going 3D, where our browser become something like a 2nd Life or World of Warcraft Engine (by the time probably something else), but we will still want to be using 1.0 on our handheld device. Metaverse 3.0…, perhaps it will be like in Dennou Coil, where a part of the net is interposed upon the real world, and we can access it with special glasses, and we can get info on real-world locations and walk our virtual pets around. All this will happen before the total virtual reality immersion which jacks into our consciousness which a lot of Sci-Fi authors wrote about. How long do we have? 20 years? Maybe even less. The future, is Now.

Chinese people are known to many things, not just software. I have heard them making soy sauce from human hair, diluting milk to increase their profit margin, gold farming on MMO which I’ve often talked about… now they put cardboard in their buns (The exact compostion of cardboard and fatty meat is 60/40). After I read that, well it got me to research about how to pirate an egg, which was a rumor I heard from before. Here’s the exact step to create a counterfeit egg. I was pretty amazed. Inhumane, yes of course, but also ingenious. I am not sure if I should be proud to be Chinese or not, but to think that if we used some of that brain power to not gyp others (well usually ourselves — there’s a saying: Your brothers are usually the first to swindle you), we could create more useful inventions in the history of mankind.

I like to tell others I am always right. Well it’s mostly true. But others always like to argue with me, and they always lose because they have no basis for arguments, they simply cannot recall when I was wrong. not that I am never wrong, I usually admit my wrongness right away and only argue when I am right. I pick my battles so only the ones that I can win. In any case, a little more than 1 week has traversed since my last blog entry, but it seems that all my predicions are correct. I compared the iphone to the wii, and viola, today Nintendo’s CEO compared the Iphone to the Wii and say it has Wii-like staying power. I gave some stock predictions on my last blog, and I am just about 99% correct (it is in fact 100% but I don’t want to sound too conceited). NYX did bottom and then rose about 10 points, AKAM got into S&P 500 and rose about 3 pts, GOOG and AAPL made new highs yet again. Best yet, my solar picks all gave mind-boggling returns, FSLR reached 117 from 90s (looking like to be the next Google) when I recommended, STP broke 30s, TSL hit 70s from 50s. Anyway, I sound like a prophet of sorts but not really, if you study technology enough you should know which technology is here to stay and which will lead our future.

While Microsoft Windows maybe going away soon enough, the web is here to stay and its still at its beginning stages. Here’s an article where Tim Berners-Lee (the father of the internet) Discusses the Future of the Web, he talks about semantic web where we carry the data with us and share it across different web applications, and that is what we may call web 3.0 or eventually 4.0. The metaverse will also be an eventual point of the evolution of the web. I predict Google buying a company like Linden Lab (the makers of Second Life), but I think we are still at least 10 years away from that, so the semantic web will be here first. Now let anyone challenge me whether I will be right or wrong.

This is one of those times when I can’t think of a good title for my post, and the result is just a conglomeration of incoherent ramblings, and I hate that. I am a title person, I think titles should mean something, but I guess that should not distract me from writing the real stuff. In any case, does anyone not believe in Roswell? Does anyone not believe in aliens? Well if you don’t, you are an idiot. This article here says that one of the pilots’ document is now released (after his death) that he has witnessed an alien aircraft and their bodies. Believe it at your own peril. Like I said, all conspiracy theories come from somewhere. Have you seen the move Shooter? Not at all a bad movie. Have you played Metal Gear Solid? Do you still believe 911 is not orchestrated?

The iphone is out. I wasn’t too excited about it, it does cost an arm and a leg, and it doesn’t even have sim cards. It does look nice though. Many people compare Apple products to BMW. I think there’s some truth in it. They look great and don’t always work, but people will buy them anyways. After all, looks are everything, right? This person here has taken it apart and you can read what’s inside the iphone. Congratulations, he had just broken the most expensive toy in history (well, other than that robotic doll thingie under your bed). Did you know the mayor of Philidelphia went to line up for the iphone at 11 am, and then a few hours later, affronted by a journalist which asked him why he was wasting his time instead of solving the city’s problem, read the article here. Citizens of Phili, I feel sorry for you, not for the 200+ murders you have anually, but the idiot you have as a mayor. First of all, do mayors not have secretaries who do their chores for them (+ other stuff I bet)? I don’t think Arnold had to line up for an iphone. And then, well, at 9 pm the iphone was available everywhere, with no line. Yes, you are an idiot as well if you bought one on Ebay for two thosand dollars.

Blackberry maker, Research in Motion (RIMM) went crazy over the last few days on earnings and split news (I do not own any, though I wish I had a machine that could turn back time). Many people were bearish on it because they thought Apple would defeat them with the iphone. I think I have said it many times, they are not even in the same market. Corporate environments will continue to use the blackberry, while the younger hip generations who owns ipods and such may look towards the iphone. They may have one or the other, or both. I like to draw the parallel between the Wii and PS3/Xbox 360, those who buy the wii are causal players, not hardcore gamers. And I personally do not think Sony/Microsoft is competing directly with Nintendo. People may own both a 360 and a Wii, but they are not likley going to own both a PS3 and an Xbox 360. That says the same about Palm and the Blackberry, versus the iphone.

I really don’t like to talk about stocks at that much, just like I don’t like to talk about work. I think its boring, but then who knows, some people think I talk about games too much on my blog, but I think games are interesting, games reflect the real society. Stocks, they are just people’s empty speculations of the future. But I do belive in investment, even gambling a little, when you are young, you got to take risk. That, or you’d be like my dad, and you’d have no more risk to take. Here’s an interesting article about how the number #8 influences the chinese stock market. Its true, chinese people can be very superstitious. And you know what, stock prices are moved by people, its somewhat like a self-fulfilling prophecy. Speaking of which, the Freaknomics blog is a very interesting place to visit (other than here, that is), if you haven’t already read the book, you should make that your first priority (do that before passing on your genes).

Some people think I have very good stock picks, but it isn’t always true. I don’t really recommend people to buy anything, I just recommend people to buy in general, if you lost money, it ain’t my fault. I’ve had good picks and bad picks but I just tend to talk about the better picks, but if you really need stock advice, you can continue reading. Otheriwse you can reread this 6 months later to see if I am right. I think alternative energy will lead the next bull market. They have been running up nonstop for months and I have invested in some, like I said before, I wish I had invested more, or I figured out how to quantum travel back in time. If you want to buy alternative energy stocks, I’d go with the biggest solar, those include FSLR, SPWR, TSL, STP, JASO. Some of they are in china, some in the US, walmart has recently gone solar and SPWR owns part of the contract, do your own research. WWAT.OB is a good one to own because they do everything, penny stocks are not good otherwise, except this one (I have a little from 50 cents). Some of these stocks had run over 300% in the last 6 months, well, either you believe solar will take over or you don’t, but you can always wait for a pull-back before entry. I think all the other industries are played out if you want mind-boggling returns. I am still in GOOG and AAPL, and I believe they have more room to run. Google will eventually take over the internet space. You don’t need anything else, don’t buy those small startups and search engines, nothing else except maybe Akamai (AKAM) who speeds up the internet, or Divx, who plays high quality video over the internet. Well of all the stocks I picked from before, Divx performed the worst, but I believe all bad news had been accounted for. Riverbed (rvbd) is a pretty good performer (reseach if you want to know what they do), and of course Amazon.com (amzn), which surprised me with their increase (again, I don’t own any). Eventually, I believe 10 years from now, Amazon and Ebay will be one entity, that takes over every shopping and auction stuff on the net. Korean auction house Gmarket (GMKT) is also a good choice. Amzn has more room to run whether you believe it or not, but I personally will rather put my money in Solar power (as long as oil stays expensive). I am pretty much an all-tech person, in the financial side I own mastercard (MA) which is an excellent stock, ICE which is a future exchange which I think may have potential, and the NYSE exchange platform (NYX) which keeps bottoming and bottoming, this was once Crammer’s stock pick of the year and he basically screwed everyone (Yes, even me, but I do believe this has been manipulated down enough and has bottomed, truly). He also told everyone that solar is played out and he has been wrong for 2 months now. Do you believe in Ted Turner or do you believe in Crammer? Or do you believe in me? Let’s see what happens in 6 months.

As you all know, I can’t get away from writing for that long. It’s a mental disease, but at least it’s one of my better ones (yes I have a lot more). Someone once complained that my blog is devoid of pictures, so recently I’ve included more. It doesn’t in any way enlighten anyone who wants to read my words of wisdom, but I guess, it’s easier on the eyes. The theme today is virtual world, if you haven’t guessed already. As somewhat of a big gamer, I guess I still amaze myself that till this day I haven’t really touched an MMO, I guess it has something to do about being a writer. I’ve often believed that no good stories can be told on an online game, because no good story can come out of a world with more wanabe heroes than villains. But in any case, a virtual world is good for a lot of things, like conducting a job interview.

Read Wall Street Journal’s article here. Personally I hate job interviews, I usually don’t perform well at them, because I usually dont know crap about my craft. I am a writer not an engineer but all the interviews I have attended are enginnering related to a certain degree. I’m not sure how well a virtual job interview will work, I am not sure what the point of it is. I mean dressing up your avatar and than navigating it through the interview room, might as well do it in a chat room, without all the fancy graphics. I do believe it may work to a certain extent in tech-related jobs, as those candidates who did not know how to properly navigate an avatar are immediately crossed out as idiots, but then, how well does an avatar’s behavior reflect the real person’s. An avatar can’t really pick his nose and smell bad. Its like having your first date in 2nd life, does it really work? Sure it works if you never have to deal with that person in real life, but if you had to, just think about this, have you ever met someone that you disliked at first sight? I make split-second judgement on people all the time, you can’t exactly do that in a virtual world. When you’re hiring someone, their personal manner, attitude, quickness, humor, curiosity, and a few dozen other traits are really important, you get none of that online. But then I think it might work if you need to hire a brainy enginner that you don’t have to interact with much, usually how well they present themselves is indirectly proportional to how smart they actually are. In any case, I like the idea of telecommuting because I hate sitting through traffic everyday (idiots who drive to work, yes, you), and I certainly love the idea of working in a virtual office.

Well, there are people who log onto virtual worlds when they get back home from their day job, and there are people who work like a slave in the virtual world. This New York Times article interviewed a few chinese gold farmers who worked in terrible condition getting worse than minimal wage. It is an interesting read.

And a while ago I read about BBC’s article about Germany’s investigation into child pornography in Second Life. Sure advertising and selling child pornography (of real children) in a virtual environment is wrong, you get no argument from me. But what about sex with an underage avatar, turns out in Germany you can get 3 years jail time. I am talking about virtual sex (which isn’t sex) with an underage avatar (a child-lookalike thing which may be controlled by your grandma) gets you 3 years of real ass-raping in jail. Sure, pedophilia is really sick, but where do you draw the line? Is virtual rape really rape? I mean I can’t imagine anyone getting scarred emotionally from a virtual rape. I can’t even begin to describe what that is. Afterall, virtual death is not even remotely close to real death. I think whats fair is not real jail time, but virtual jail time.

Rockstar’s violent yet brilliant game Manhunt 2 been issued an AO rating and officially delayed maybe for eternity, since both Sony and Nintendo will not allow selling of an AO rating game. This reminds me of a message board posting about the first Manhunt, as some parents were disgruntled about Manhunt teaching kids that a plastic bag could kill someone (as Plastic bag is one of the execution method in the game). This is one of those times when I seriously doubt the average American intelligence. Not knowing that a plastic bag could kill is almost saying you didn’t know you needed oxygen to live. Yes, a bag could kill, but so can your mom’s bent-up dildo.

And finally, I want to talk about Denno Coil (電脳コイル), a science fiction anime that gets its idea from the matrix but yet manages to seperate itself from the rest of the crops. It talks about the advent of augmented reality (AR), somewhat a fusion of reality and virtual reality. Here everyone wears glasses to see and interact with the virtual world placed on top of the real world, resulting in a half real and half virtual internet city. Compared to all the matrix clones that I have watched during the past years, this feels like somewhat of a refreshing revelation, which I highly recommend. Well then, until next time.

 

Ever wonder what causes homosexuality? Here is a good clip from 60 minutes that explore that. Identical twins that grew up in the same home actually have opposite sexual orientation. I didn’t think that was possible until I saw it. It proves that is neither genetic or nurture (not directly anyway), but the degrees of hormones that the fetus is exposed to in the womb. Scientists performed hormones manipulation tests in mice fetus and they successfully created gay mice (well not really gay mice, but mice that lacked male characteristics)

And more things to add from my previous Rabbit Hole post, ever heard about the experiment where the human mind can affect a randomly generated set of numbers (0 or 1). I wonder if this actually work in the casino, and I highly doubt it, because there are many other minds affecting it, but if you keep on thinking 1 the machine will give you more 1 than 0. But it turns out, the experiment work even in reverse of time. Basically I create this set of numbers with the machines and lock it into a box without ever looking at it (is that the Pandora Box), then I give it to you, you think about 1 or 0. Then you open the box, and will get more of the number you thought. This further proves the observer effect and time is not really a straight flowing line, and it seems nothing is what it seems. Like I said, this page is not even here until u see it.

I rarely recommend any documentaries but here’s an interesting one: What the Bleep! Down the Rabbit Hole. It’s basically both a drama and documentary of quantum physics with a lot of flashy visulation for the laymen. I once said that this page doesn’t even exist until you visit it, and I talked about parallel worlds in time travel. Quantum physics explain all that, and its quite interesting if you’ve never heard such theories. A simple experiment of demonstrating how light going through a “double slit” experiment, proves that infinite possibilities exist, and nothing is real until we see it. You shoot electron particles through a double slit plate and you end up with an interferance pattern at the other end, which can only be produced by waves, an impossibilty deemed by classical physcis. In order to prove the improbable, probable, scientist sets up a camera in front of the slits trying to film the particle splitting in 2 direction, but when a camera is set up, the particle only goes through one slit and fails to generate a inteference pattern. This phenomenon is called the observer interference. The moral of the story, basically nothing is real when we’re not looking at it. We see the world the way it is because that’s the way we understand it, the same as if we were pixels living on a flat computer screen, we would not understand when 3D beings tell us they are watching us from above, because to us height is not in our dictionary, same analogy can be pointed to 4D beings who watch us from forward or backward in time, and can our mind understand such impossibilities? There was one experiment that suggested our brain signals actually travel back in time when we feel pain. In the experiment, a patient’s brain is opened up and connected to some electronic equipment, a doctor produced a reaction from knockig on the patient’s hand and get a instant signal from that part of the brain. Yet if the doctor were to generate that signal from that same part of the brain, the patient’s do not feel it until fractions of seconds later, and the show suggested the brain actually anticipated when the moment of the strike occurs, sent the signal of pain back in time so that we can feel it the moment it occurs. Have a headache yet? I know I did. Basically, what quantum theory says is that fundamental particles are empty of inherent existence and exist in an undefined state of potentialities. They have no inherent existence from their own side and do not become ‘real’ until a mind interacts with them and gives them meaning. Whenever and wherever there is no mind there is no meaning and no reality. I read somewhere that is similar to the teachings of Mahayana Buddhist (or the oracle in Matrix). The ultimate manifestation of quantum sunyata is when quantum theory is applied to the entire universe. According to some cosmologists, the universe began as a quantum fluctuation in the limitless Void (Hartle-Hawking hypothesis). The universe remained as a huge quantum superposition of all possible states until the first primordial mind observed it, causing it to collapse into one actuality (The Particpatory Anthropic Principle).