INFLUENCERS FULL VERSION from R+I creative on Vimeo.
I have to admit that I take this video with a grain of salt. There’s also something odd about juxtaposing Michael Jordan with Ghandi. Sure, they’re both iconic. But, I’m not sure that Jordan is really much of an “influencer” (in terms of being avant garde or an early adopter) except for the fact that he’s famous for being such a good athlete. Being influential because you’re ultra famous is actually pretty easy.
A friend of mine got caught up in a craigslist scam recently. I’ve heard of a number of craigslist scams, and feel like I have a good idea on warning signs, but this one was new to me.
My friend contacted someone about buying some furniture. The woman told her that the furniture was still available for sale. A little while later, the same woman contacted her again and said that someone else sent her an email about buying the furniture, but it went to her spam mail folder. She wanted to sell it to the first person since they replied to the ad first. But, the woman explained, she wanted to make it up to my friend. She worked at a dental office and a company was giving them teeth whitening samples for cheap – something like $4, which was 90% off the regular price. My friend could go to a website, punch in a special code and get the same 90% discount that their dental office workers are getting. So, my friend figured “why not?” She went out to the website, punched in the code and ordered them. A $4 charge showed up on her credit card. Then, a little while later, another $1.50 charge. My friend thought that was odd, but didn’t worry too much about it. Then, her bank contacted her because they had tried to withdraw hundreds of dollars out of her account, but the bank had put a hold on the transaction. My friend went back to the website, but it was gone.
Fortunately, it doesn’t sound like my friend lost any money, but her money was tied-up for a few days while the bank put a hold on it. (I don’t actually know why the bank wouldn’t let her access it. Maybe they were unsure of the status of the transaction.) The $1.50 charge was a test to see if they could pull more money from the account after the initial $4.
Yanko Tsvetkov put together a bunch of funny maps of European stereotypes.
Europe, according to the United States:
Europe, according to the Vatican:
Follow this link to see other maps: Europe according to the French, Europe according to the Germans, etc
[Via Fubiz]
This is an interesting little motion-graphics intro to a new TV show. The music is “Fresh Blood” by the Eels.
THE WALKING DEAD “Opening Titles” from Daniel Kanemoto on Vimeo.
This is a pretty cool picture of the USSR’s moon lander. (The USSR never ended up sending a man to the moon.) See more pictures and read more about it here, and read more about the Soviet LK Lander here.
The LK (Lunniy Korabl—”lunar craft”) was a Soviet lunar lander and counterpart of the American Lunar Module (LM). The LK was to have landed a single Soviet citizen on the Moon before the Americans. It completed development and was test flown successfully in Earth orbit, but never reached the Moon because the N1 rocket required to take it to the Moon was never successful.
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The success of Project Apollo in putting American astronauts on the Moon in 1969 meant that the United States won the Moon race, giving the deathblow to the Soviet moon program, although plans were drawn up until the early 1970s.
One of the things I’ve been working on lately is the tactical AI. I wanted the AI to be better at coordinating attacks. The image above shows pathway and timing information created by the AI. (The numbers in tenths of a turn, so “17” means “1.7 turns”.) In this image, an infantry is being picked up by a transport in about 1.7 turns, rides inside the transport until around turn 5.7 and then moves into enemy territory. The timing information is useful for coordinating multiple units – so that it’s better at bringing all its transports simultaneously, moving combat ships into the area to protect transports, etc.
A new article says that a US court has ruled that software publishers can prevent reselling software (i.e. used software). The ruling (if upheard) could allow publishers to kill the used games business. The whole “used games” and “used software” sales market has been opposed by a few companies. Some companies see used sales as undermining new sales, and while I don’t agree with their attempts to eliminate used-sales, I can understand why they would be irritated by the fact that GameStop makes a lot of money from used-game sales. Nearly half of GameStop’s profit comes from used-game sales. Because of their markups, GameStop earns 85% more money on the sale of a used game than a new one. At the same time, the publisher gets paid when a new game is sold, but not a used one.
Autodesk* has also tried for years to shut-down used sales of its software – including blocking eBay sales. The typical method for doing this in the software world is to give users a “licence”. When software is counted as a “licence” rather than a “sale”, it opens up more options for publishers to restrict what a user can do with that software. For example, they can sell the user a non-transferable licence (i.e. no software resales). On the other hand, if software is “sold”, then it falls into the legal structure of the “first sale doctrine” which means users can do things like resell their software. The first sale doctrine was originally setup a hundred years ago, and applied to things like books. Book publishers tried to shut-down used bookstores (for fear that used book sales were undermining new book sales), but courts handed down the “first sale doctrine” that said people can resell them. The main way that software “licences” are being challenged is by arguing that publishers are using “licence” as a legal ploy to restrict what users can do, when, in fact, it’s really a “sale” masquerading under the “licence” term.
I think there’s a certain logic to preventing used-game sales, I just don’t think it’s strong enough logic to convince me that users should not be allowed to resell their software or buy used software. I also think the act of shutting down used-sales creates a degree of dissatisfaction among users, and creates the idea that companies have too much control in their lives what they can do with their software. This unhappiness among users has to be weighed against the monetary benefit of eliminating used sales. While eliminating used sales might increase revenue in the short term, it might create longer-lasting resentment, as well. As we all know, CEOs of companies can be ridiculously short-sighted – either because everything is measured and rewarded on a short-term basis, or because they lack foresight. Based on that, I have very little faith in business leaders making the right long-term choice.
On a more positive note, it’s rumored that Steam will begin allowing users to sell their games back to Steam (at a reduced price, of course). Presumably, their logic is that players who can sell back bad games will be more willing to buy new ones (i.e. there is less risk involved since they can get back some of their money if they don’t like the game). Even if it doesn’t immediately result in more sales, it makes their customers happier which keeps them coming back. Funny how companies seem to be moving in opposite directions. Also, I don’t really expect used-game/software sales to disappear anytime soon. GameStop is bringing in $1 billion per year from used-game sales, so they’ll spend millions to block any disruption of the used-games market.
* Footnote: I have to admit that I’m not really a fan of Autodesk. They have a tendency to buy up their competitors (e.g. Maya and SoftImage), in an apparent attempt to prevent meaningful competition in the 3D Modeling world. This allows them to charge higher prices.
I was just at the coffeeshop, and about fifteen to twenty people came in for a meeting. I could sort of hear what they were talking about. Thought I’d check out what the group was, so I typed in the coffeeshop name, today’s date, and “meetup”. The first google result told me what their group was and linked to their website. It seems slightly creepy that I could quickly come up with so much information so quickly. Twenty years ago, this would’ve seemed unimaginable.
I just thought this was a pretty cool demonstration. It allows for the real-time removal of objects in a video. Admittedly, there are some glitches to it — the background needs to be fairly uniform, as you can see with the artifacts around 1:50 in the video. (See the Popular Science article here.)