Monthly Archive for June, 2008

C U on the Battlefield?

Published on 24 June 2008 in gaming. 0 Comments

C U on the Battlefield – the phrase my old Battlefield clan uttered to wish eachother well. Those were the days – US versus Irakies in war-torn Berlin on DC_Final. A classic period of online PC games playing.

Things have changed since then though – I’ve taken to consoles for my online shooters, specifically COD4 on the PS3. BF has a history on the Sony platform, BF2: Modern Combat released on the PS2, but it was an abysmal conversion of the popular PC title. The coming of Battlefield: Bad Company to the PS3 in Europe yesterday has something to prove then. I’ll be getting it and I’ve already played the demo. In short, the single-player sucks but the online play is very reminiscent of the original BF1942 on the PC all those years ago. Gazala comes to mind, damn I can still hear the DC_Final mod theme tune blaring out it’s Arab rhythms. Ok so the latest effort mightn’t be a COD4 beater, but it takes me back to my own Golden Age of gaming, so it’s a worthy addition.

What I dislike intensely is this arse-sucking review from GameSpy.

Granted I don’t click through their daily email to the site everyday, but I hope this fluffy review isn’t typical of ‘independent’ thought on gaming today. The author practically apologises for Dice on graphics (admittedly the BF series was never at the forefront of shooter FX) and drones on and on about the single player plot. You’d think it was some kind of movie. And this in a series famed for one thing only – it’s online experience, where massive maps ensure the fight turns into a series of running private pitched battles, each one having an effect on the overall outcome of epic encounters.

Sigh – maybe it was just all a lot better when I was young…

All Roads Lead South?

Published on 18 June 2008 in Financial Markets. 0 Comments

Fund Managers

Todd Harrison

RBS

It’s difficult to argue

- Harrison for his part always likes to see both sides of the tape, but I think he’s worried this time he’s not being cautious, merely stating the obvious.

- The RBS analyst Bob Janjuah predicted the beginnings of the credit crunch.

- The accepted knowledge is to buy when things seem at their worst. This however assumes a nice clean bounce back. What we’re looking at here has been brewing since we were bought out (on credit) of the tech bubble and relied on the tiger economies to prop up a stagnant Developed world economy. In the long term, the West will in relative terms get poorer. The population is getting older, growth will no longer receive outside stimuli. Leading stocks do not as yet have the global presence to be immune from this inevitability.

How low can it go?

On another note, US crude inventories just declined for a 5th straight week – and the front month contract still managed to drop on the news. With the market saying recent buying towards the $140 mark didn’t come from trade buyers, it’s looking like another bubble is about to burst.

Update: Looks like the penny’s dropped in the savvy quarters. The diplomatic way of saying growth now for corporations lays outside US borders

Who to trust?

Published on 16 June 2008 in information media and international. 0 Comments

This is the Wikipedia generation. Peer information is often considered more reliable and trustworthy than the top-down message. It’s far from wishful thinking: studies showed that the survivors of the World Trade Center tended to be the ones who relied on peer rather than official information. It may be anathema to the cult of the imperial leader in politics or the boardrooms of media corporations, but it is the future.

source: ft.com [sub required]

Disregarding the horrendous ‘Wikipedia generation’ coining attempt, I was struck by how much the p2p concept has pervaded into the mainstream.  I had a look around the net on this topic, but nothing really worthwhile at first glance.  Sure, there’s observations regarding the crowd-source type news networks built up around digg, the mobile phone to net video sites.  These though chiefly focus on information distribution, not necessarily information quality and subsequently it’s trustworthiness (particularly in my experience of Digg anyway, but that’s an aside).

The world-wide ridiculing of the current US president is surely the best example of this challenge to supposed superiors.  Cynicism in the system is pretty much ingrained these days – or maybe a new hierarchy of trust is replacing the old political one, the question then is what the new one consists of.  If it is largely a movement to a kind of meritocratic new media – p2p information still requires publication after all – does it mean we get International subject experts or cross-border idealism?  Is it really merit, or simply a self-fulfilling meme galvanised by a crowd willing to act as sheep?

Epiphany of the masses

Published on 6 June 2008 in Financial Markets and international. 0 Comments

Markets took a tanking today. For what it’s worth, I made a killing over the last two days, a lot on the way up yesterday (quite promising data from everywhere else being overlooked in favour of further banking system woes) and a bit more today on the colossal way down (seen oil rise seemingly without effect and decided the market might wake up to it today).

Apparently the Israeli’s will be hitting Iran’s nuclear facilities soon. Presumably the US will follow? And us with them? Half joking, but wouldn’t be surprised.

I like this post

Edit: Seems the politico making the nuke claims isn’t in danger of getting to make the decision whether to attack Iran. But Oil still went shooting up. Apparently 2 million barrels/day of spare capacity could be ate up by disruption to any of the volatile oil states. Nigeria would still be the obvious concern

Nasdaq realtime for free

Published on 6 June 2008 in Financial Markets and Google. 0 Comments

I see Google has got it’s long trumpeted wish to show realtime stock quotes – from Nasdaq at least. Trouble is, everyone else gets it too, so it’s not quite deserving of the fanfare they probably imagined fit for the Robin Hood of the world’s information

$ 150k a month max. Well I’m not paying

24/06/08 Edit: NYSE stocks are now ‘realtime’ too