What good have you done today?

Let’s look into what the game and it’s creator is all about.

For those who have not played or seen any gameplay of the game Minecraft it is a sandbox game created by Mojang AB, much inspired by crafting and creating a personal world out of an untouched land. The tabula rasa concept is often driving force behind all sandbox games and also in Minecraft.

The game start in a situation where you are all alone in a vast world and what to do is up to you and not the game. The only incitement the game do give which force the player to take action is the fact that the world is a safe place during the day but as soon as the darkness fall at night, monsters come out to play and they have the diabolical plan to kill you. Since the only quest the player have is to survive, imagination is ones closest ally.

Since early stage of the game there have been a presence from the community not only as quality assurance but also as requirement gatherers and specification writers. They contributed ideas and comments which the development team actively have taken into account and created a game people asked for. However; ideas which did not fit into the world was rejected and a reason was often given to why. Even though functionality was rejected it can still get into the game if it is picked up by modification developers which also at a early stage was welcomed. Instead of pulling the plug on modifications or trying to stop them, they looked into how to make them legit and to create a way of using the communities crowd knowledge for the product. Naturally the modification community have given the game an enormous amount of input and feature requests which will keep the product evolving for a long time. The community is what’s keeping the game alive, not the creator.

Now and then a truly innovative game hit the market that goes viral and the concept is praised by the communities. I see Minecraft in about the same category as Angry Birds, Lemmings or perhaps The Sims. It is a concept which will change the market and also show that there is a segment of players out there which are looking for something else then what is currently offered. There is always a new player segment out there, screaming for attention. The concept don’t even have to be unique, it just need to be in right time.

So why have Minecraft become such a force to recon with the last year and why is it mentioned in all from papers to news programs?

First of all we can not forget the kind of fairy tale the game is for it’s creator, Notch. It is a story about a developer who quit from his employer to instead do what he wanted to do in own force. On top of this we have a community driven game developed by a person with a very good feeling for how to handle a crowd project. Using the good ideas and keeping a close contact with the people who come up with them. Instead of pushing people away, saying;

– Good idea, give it yet another spin and return afterwards and we’ll see how it fit.

I do believe that Minecraft is here to stay long enough to build up a economic base for Mojang AB so that they can continue to develop good indie games for quite some years. I keep my fingers crossed for Scrolls which is Mojang’s new game. Can’t wait until I can try it.

A word of caution however; nothing is harder then to follow up on pure success. I keep my fingers crossed.

All images in this article are from within the game Minecraft by Mojang AB.

Germany have had a similar law as Sweden for about the same duration. What happend here was that the law created a new offspring of lawyers which specialized in canibalizing on the new market as henchemens of the movie industry. By sending out fierce threats of courts they demand a fee from about 1000 SEK (about €100) up to ten times that amout. By paying this fee stright away the suspected pirate can skip court and with this also a risk or a bigger fee together with a court order.

[...] if a person break a law they have accepted the consequence of doing so.

Let’s start by making something clear. I do not condone the use of force from a country in which a law has been broken, if a person break a law they have accepted the consequence of doing so. In this case however it is no longer the state that make this decision, instead it is the individual lawyer on behalf of a company which perform an act of violence (by using threat) to force a person to pay. You have a private company, which should help us by defending our rights, instead working with handing out threats since their masters are not honest enough to do accept how the law was written. One might wonder, is this the same path we will walk in Sweden?

According to Katrina Hebben who work out of an lawyers office involved in these questions called Baumgarten Brandt they do not yet hold any Swedish clients. The reason for this is that the law is written a bit different in Sweden then it is in Germany. Perhaps our law is not that bad after all? Perhaps it is not killing of our freedom but instead securing it in a situation where it easily could have gotten out of hands?

While the specialized lawyer firms stand tall behind the movie industry there is however yet another section of lawyers who due to this specialized in defending the persons who recieve the threats. Well, we all must be happy that the situation seem to generate jobs any way! The thing is however that a person which recieve a threat don’t have that much of a choice then to pay what is requested. A pirated movie for example is a fellony and since it is, the fee must be payed. I just hope that one of those letters don’t get to the elderly or the ones not technically knowing which have an hacked wifi which the neighbours use to download.

This is more money payed by pirates then the movie has made in Germany, dvd sales and cinama tickets combined.

But back to the main story, can the threat of court make pirates pay up enough to give back the investment of chaising them? Since the lawyers own fees quite often is held in the shadows all we can see is what money they get payed for they threats. The Swedish newspaper Sydsvenskan had the movie Antichrist by Lars von Trier as an example[1] (english translation). Upon contract from the movie company Zentropa more then 600 people has been threatened by Baumgarten Brandt and these 600 persons have combined payed about 5.5M SEK (about €550.000) to not go to court. This is more money payed by pirates then the movie has made in Germany, dvd sales and cinama tickets combined.

So the hunt for pirates is steaming ahead, all at the same time as the cinemas breaking new records[2] (english translation) for visiting people paying to see movies on the big screen while the rest of the media is continuing to report on the massive loss[3] of income caused by pirates.

I wonder if the industry had made the same amount of revenue if they actually looked into a substainable payment model and level where people could rent or buy movies online quick and easy. Looking at the massive increase in services the last year in video on demand, it is obvious for me that the ordinary movie watchers have been longing for this. Even the market itself have known for a long time what was happening[4][5][6]. I still belive that most people would pay for a movie if the price was right and the service was easy enough. From my end, when iTunes get a deal to be used (legally) in Europe I know that more people will find the service irresistable just as I have.

We all want to watch movies and if there is a simple service which can make it so that we don’t have to get out of the sofa to do so – we will use it. If there is no such service, piracy will just grow. As long as piracy grows, counter efforts do to.

Isn’t simple buisness mechanics beautiful?

Resources

1. http://www.sydsvenskan.se/kultur-och-nojen/article1339771/Hot-far-fildelare-att-betala.html
   English translation
2. http://www.sf.se/nyheter/nyhet/134463/Bio-fortsaetter-att-slaa-rekord
3. http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2010/04/us-government-finally-admits-most-piracy-estimates-are-bogus.ars
4. http://www.informationweek.com/news/internet/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=204805175
5. http://gigaom.com/video/netflix-the-future-is-streaming/
6. http://stairwellblog.com/2010/12/netflix-streaming-video-surpasses-direct-mail-dvds/

I own a HTC Hero which was delivered with a branded system using Android 1.5 as main operating system. At almost the same time it was released there was also a release of Android 1.6. Since then version 2.0 have emerged and the rumour is now of a soon to be released Android 2.1. At this time HTC have updated their branded version of the system and are today running their HTC Hero on – Android 1.5. They have not had the time or want to keep the device updated with the system as the later continued it’s life-cycle which is a shame I say. I still have to linger in the shadows with my old and grey version 1.5 in my phone when I see what shiny bits are out there in the updated version.

Ever since the iPhone was released every technology-magazine and their dog have written articles about what device is the iPhone-killer and listed the specifications for hardware and that it runs Android and what not. But it seem that most articles forget what it was that I think is one of the biggest aspects on why the iPhone did manage to get a wide range of people to cherish it like they do. It brings no fuzz, you run it and it works. If you need to update it then do so at the same time you synchronize it. And if there is a new version of the iPhone operating system released, then you can just grab it and continue the ride. No thoughts and discussions about whether this update is for my device or not. It simply is. And here the Android system lacks a bunch.

Last I heard was that my HTC Hero should receive it’s longed for update for Android now in the spring. Before that it was said to come for Christmas. Before that sometime in early December. Somewhat I’ve stopped to wait for this update. I guess it will come eventually.

I decided to start writing a journal about two years ago and as always I set out to find the best tools and applications which i could use to do this. I tried a lot of applications but always got stuck on how to use some specific functionality or why something did not work as intended. Quite soon I did realize that I was focusing more on the tool then the content and due to this I started to write in Google Documents using my Gmail-account. If this is good or bad is a completely different story but my main point here is that I choose a very simple tool with high availability to be able to write from all locations where I had a computer. I also decided to write without any formatting at all so that the text could be exported very easy by just copy and pasting. This so that if I did find a good tool later on I would not be facing a problem of compatibility.

When the tool was chosen I set up a goal to write a new post in my journal on a weekly basis at first. I tried to set out not to have a set agenda on what to write but just try to write to get that old writing-block out of my system. At first it was quite hard to get started but after just a new posts I got a feeling that the writing part really was not as hard as I thought it would be. As soon as one start writing down feelings and thoughts it becomes more or less an addiction to get it out of the system. And very fast I did realize that by writing it down I had a all new way of handling my own thoughts, almost like I was my own shrink trying to get an understanding on what was going on in my own life. I totally understand that my experience in all this writing is very personal and there is no set out course that it would be the same for anyone else. But hey, perhaps it will.

So as a conclusion I will list some of the best tips I would liked to see before I started and which might be of some use for anyone else going down the same route as myself. As with all new areas the most important thing is to keep it personal and do what feels best for you, not what other has done before.

1. Ignore tools and applications and start writing in just about anything. Notepad in Windows works as a charm as well as TextEdit on Mac. To increase the availability you can also use online word-processors as Google Documents or Soho.
2. Do not setup an agenda for what to write on, just write. If you do not have anything in your mind you want to write about, write about you not being able to write. Ignore if you might have written the same things before. Just write.
3. Never erase what you have written. Of course a spelling-error can be fixed while writing but after a post is written. Let it remain just as it is. By doing this you can revisit what you have written and see if you in any way change over time.
4. Show your journal for other people, or keep it private. It is all up to you and you should do just as you feel. For me the knowledge of my writing being strictly private lets me write about things I never would have discussed with another human being. I write for myself and myself alone.
5. Go back and read what you have read after some time and try to revisit old topics. Especially when you feel that you have a bit of writers-block in your head.
6. Last but not least I need to stress one point once more. Just write.

The photo used on the front-page for this article was taken by Markus Rödder, you can find his Flickr-page here.

According to WWF the global fishing fleets is about 250% larger then the oceans can sustainably support and for a bystander, these numbers seem to tell us something. If we take out more then what can grow back from the oceans, will they actually run out?

“Can the sea really let us eat sushi in these numbers?” – Caroline Bennett, Founder, Moshi Moshi sushi chain

Oceans are vast and huge and seem to hold an unlimited amount of life but the fact is that they are limited. There is a set amount of live fish in the oceans at every given moment in time. Based on this number there is a set number of fish that can be reproduced each year. This is quite basic facts which most people agree on.

In a time where a growing number of people is in starvation and we have a financial problem on our hands we need to start looking on what the impact will be of our decisions. As of today we have have an enormous waste in our fishing fleets trying to find premium animals. While fishing tuna with long lines we get turtles, birds and sharks as waste. While fishing cod using trawl we get everything coming in our way together with the cod. All this so called waste is just dumped back into the ocean as garbage when it actually is a surplus of the oceans total amount of life which we just kill and drop back. The oceans can of course handle decomposing live matter as it is a part of the natural way but in the same time it can not handle tons after tons of the same fish killed and dumped right back. Species will become extinct, and they will become extinct soon.

This dumping of unwanted fish is never the less the only problem we have today. The greatest error of them all is that if we sum up what we take out of the waters it exceeds what can be reproduced. We are killing the oceans, and doing it fast and industrious.

“It is true that fishermen feel an almost desperate need to catch as many fish as they can when they’re allowed to. That sense of desperation … can’t be an excuse for the policymakers of the world and this country to allow that to cause the universal collapse of fisheries.” – James Greenwood, former US Congressman

More information

• The end of the Line (movie)
  
• Are tuna stocks being overfished?
  
• Overfishing raises question over fish stocks
• Oro för hav tämda på fisk (Swedish)

So what can be done to halt this spiral of doom which we spin around in every day of our lives? As almost always when it come to ecology and people, all we have to do is become aware and to use our power as consumers. Avoid buying fish that is on the verge of being extinct and ask questions and raise the topic. And as always, if you can buy food produced nearby, it most likely is a good option.

Consumers have the power to change the market, we all just have to start asking questions.

THE SHOW that really got me going was ‘My Sweet Sixteen’ aired on MTV. For all of you who haven’t seen this show it is spoiled brats with bad parents throwing parties to show the world which douchebags they really are. The goal of the entire party is to spend as much money as possible and try to build up an image of a young person who would loose a leg to get their fifteen minutes of fame. Now you may say that the show is all free to watch and if I don’t like it I should just keep away and sure, I could. But I didn’t and now I’m here. It was just like when you are about to see something really awful. You know there will be bad dreams if you see it, but you can’t really turn your head either.

BACK TO THE EPISODE I was watching. This girl in the episode of the show was planning her party and was with her parents to a store to shop for a car. She picked one out but after hearing that it cost only about $40’000 she blew out of proportions and started to yell at her parents to pick a ‘more expensive car’. That’s right, she didn’t want a prettier car, a car of another color or even a cab. The only thing she wanted was a more expensive car and by refusing to give her this, the parents showed her that all they felt was utter hate and dispise of her. In her own words. And guess what – nobody want a screemy and spoiled teenage kid, so she freakin’ got it.

THAT WAS THE CUE for me to turn the tv off and go read a book instead. I have been raised to appreciate what I got and to do my best with what I have. I wonder how the kids of the newly rich of today will coop with the fact that real life someday catches on and everything is no longer all cuddly and fluffy. Who will take care of the brats when the stupid parents are no longer around?

ACCORDING TO a New York Times article the show reached 24 million viewers between the age 12 and 34 in the second quarter of 2008[1]. Now this is an amazing number of viewers one might think, another way of seeing it is that there is 24 million people out there with absolutly no brain. And for that last rant I sadly have no reference.

References:
[1] http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/23/arts/television/23mtv.html

Just when you thought that a big thing in the entire world like this might unite people and nations the US just gave the go-ahead for spending three million dollars on…

Death-rays!

So I guess that the so called crisis can’t be THAT bad.

Read more about the real-life super-villian-weapons-of-mass-destruction over at Techradar.

Holy freakin’ spagetti-monster the coffe in these machines taste like crude oil mixed with sewer-water. Usually one get used to the taste and therefore it works out fine to drink it but after a couple of weeks of good coffe (the one where there are actual coffe-beans involved in the making, not just something with a characteristic of coffe) it is almost undrinkable. If it was not for the fact that I don’t have anything else to drink around here, I would not have drunk it.

All in all the trip was truly amazing and it gave perspectives on both our western style of living and also memories of places I will never forget. I will publish a breakdown of the trip in the time to come but I will start with a general conclusion of the entire trip.

Our travel-route from Moscow in west to Beijing in east

First of all we chose to travel the path also known as the Trans-Mongolian railway. In short the railway bring you from Moscow, Russia to Beijing, China by traveling straight through Russia until one reach the Mongolian border where it takes a turn to the south and then pass through Mongolia (and the Gobi-desert) into China. Our main reason to chose this route instead of the route Moscow – Vladivostok was that we feelt that we wanted to incorporate Beijing in the trip to get a real taste of asia as well before returning back home.

As a guide we used the book ‘The Transsirberian railway’ from Lonely Planet which I have to say was good in some ways but did also really lack in content in quite alot of places. We have started to write a description of errors we encountered which we will send to the publisher and I would not really recommend the book for soon-to-be-travelers of the route until a new review of the book is released. The trip itself was booked with help from  a Swedish travel-agency where we got help filing for visas and tickets in the different countries. Much of the tickets could have been bought on location but due to the fact that they seem to be sold out now and then it can be much worth it to have the tickets already when leaving home.

Keep an eye out on the blog for the first part of the breakdown, Russia!