Letter Never Sent

I just read this article about how China is developing a mandatory system that prevents video game players from playing for more than 3 consecutive hours. This is going to change the entire industry if true since they are one of the fastest growing markets for video and online games. I suppose developers could simply make geographically different versions of the game, yet it will have quite an impact in many areas. Link.

In addition, seven of China’s largest online gaming firms pledged Tuesday to “sacrifice short-term revenues” to create a “healthy” environment for young internet users. Companies signing onto the “Beijing Accord” were Shanda, NetEase, The9, Optisp, Kingsoft, SINA, and Sohu. These seven companies also pledged to deploy the system when development is completed.

Development of the system is scheduled for completion at the end of September 2005. Internal testing is scheduled to last for one year, beginning in October of 2005. After internal testing, trial operations of the system will be held using the games “The Legend of Mir II” and “The World of Legend” operated by Shanda, “Westward Journey Online” and “Fantasy Westward Journey Online” operated by NetEase, “World of Warcraft” and “MU” operated by The9, “JX Online” and “First Myth Online” operated by Kingsoft, “The Legend of Mir 3G” operated by Optisp, “Lineage II” operated by SINA, and “Blade Online” operated by Sohu.

Compulsorily deployment of the new system is expected to begin for all massive multiplayer online role-playing games and casual games in China in late 2005 or early 2006.

Google just announced it would be introducing $4 billion worth of new shares into the market in order to raise capital for acquisitions while the stock price is still high. Of course, this has the unfortunate problem of diluting the share value of anyone who holds Google stock (I’m not one of them). This article makes several good points:

In a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission, the company said it would use some of the cash to make unspecified acquisitions, while the rest would be used for general corporate purposes. But it?s no secret that Google?s success has made it a target of large technology firms such as Yahoo and Microsoft, among others. And now the company is essentially admitting it needs more money to develop new products to fight off competition.

Also there was a good analysis of an appropriate valuation for the stock:

To look at Google, Damodaran fired up that same valuation model, which he designed specifically for valuing fast-growing firms. It employs a two-stage growth model that includes a single high-growth period followed by a stable growth period. (After all, no company can grow faster than the economy forever.) And it takes into account everything from operating leases that grant the use of equipment and other assets to future dilution from outstanding stock options. Using numbers from Google’s most recent quarterly financial report, Damodaran made several optimistic assumptions. He assumed revenues would climb 60% annually for the next three years before gradually declining to a stable growth rate of 4% a year after ten years (for a compounded average of 27% per year). He also assumed that pre-tax operating margins would decline gradually to 20% in ten years, from a current 32%, which is even more optimistic since that would yield operating income of almost $10 billion.

In the end, Damodaran’s analysis produced a value that’s far less than the current stock price. He figures Google is currently worth just $110 per share. And this assumes that the company will grow like gangbusters, taking in $49 billion in sales by mid-2015, compared with just $3.2 billion last year—an increase of some 1,400%.

For his part, Damodaran is baffled that anyone would pay close to $300 per share for Google. To justify paying this much, he says, you will need compounded revenue growth of about 40% a year, which would generate revenues of $135 billion and operating income of almost $30 billion in ten years. “If you believe this can happen, the stock is a good buy,” he says. “Is it possible? Sure. Is it likely? I don’t think so.”

The lucrative global business of taking advantage of lonely, gullible, and / or greedy Americans. MSNBC: ‘Nigerian scams’ keep evolving It bears repeating, but do not deal with anyone in or from Nigeria. Also, do not trust anyone you ‘meet’ on the Internet. When I worked at NCSoft, I used to discuss this with my coworkers, my contention being that online ‘relationships’ are inherently less real in some difficult to define way. Working at a video game company I was most certainly in the minority since most of the people I worked with had friends they spent time with only online. But I have seen it happen time after time, online friends betraying one another daily because of the ephemeral nature of online relationships. When I worked as a “Game Master” for Ultima Online I saw many cases where people would get scammed out of valuable items or entire accounts by people they thought of as close ‘friends’. People they ‘knew’ for months or years. This can happen in real life, too, but I would contend that real life presents greater obstacles to ill-doers in terms of detection and consequences. For one thing, in real life, it’s harder to pretend you’re of a different sex or age. Online you can be male, female, young, old, rich, poor, married, or single. Also, if you trick someone IRL (in real life, as we say) you are liable to get your butt kicked.

Macromedia Flash is fun. By fun I mean time-consuming and frustrating. But, no really, it is fun to mess around with. It just takes a long time to really make anything with it. It reminds me a lot of stop-motion animation, which I messed with during a brief spell almost ten years ago. If you want to make anything more than a couple minutes of action, you’re in for a lot of work. I worked on this little movie for an ex-coworker’s birthday for about 10-12 hours. Seriously. I don’t think I’m all that slow. I had about twenty something layers and the resulting .fla (Flash editable source) file was about 150 MB. You’re welcome to view the final result, which I think is funny, however be forewarned that it is full of inside jokes you could never be expected to understand.

I learned many Flash principles during this attempt. How to build a simple preloader, looping animation, and even some simple ActionScript.

If you’re a WordPress user and have a problem with comment spam you need to get the Link Right 2 Spam Plugin. Here’s how it works, which is actually very simple:

A simple WordPress 1.5 plugin that virtually eliminates comment spam. Prevents blind posting by adding a dynamic hidden field to the form and validating that field when posted. By default it logs all pertinent information to error_log so you can track the type and frequency of spam.

Since installing this plugin a couple months ago I have had zero spam comments! You can still spam my blog, but you’d have to be a human being until, and until they change the spam bots, that’s entirely too inefficient.

1. …you feel weird driving next to other cars when they don’t have wrench icons floating above them.
2. …you hear the endless thp-thp-thp of a helicopter in your head.
3. …you find yourself humming the theme music.
4. …you put off important stuff so you can play for just “a couple more rounds”, which turns into another two hours.
5. …your last three blog entries have been about playing BF2 as if that’s all you do.

A few bug fixes and some useful BF2 patch download mirrors available courtesy of digg.com.

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I got my first chance to play the Battlefield 2 Demo (download) last night after work. I noticed several big changes from Battlefield Vietnam and Battlefield, as well as the Desert Combat mod. Graphically they’ve added some bloom to the video to make everything have a slight haze, which adds to the realism of the game by making everything hazy as if you were outside in too much sunlight. Your field of vision is also affected by a concussion effect when you get hit by grenades or tank rounds. I spent about 30 minutes just using the anti-air weapons to kill planes. There is a neat radar lock where if a vehicle approaches you can lock onto its heat signature and launch heat-seeking anti-air missiles at it. The target can throw off some flares to prevent getting hit. It is very cool.