Out of the 3 talks given at the Gamers' Sympozium at EA Play '07, held at the Singapore Institute of Management (SIM) on 16 March 2007, this talk was the first and most interesting one. The second was by senior manager Jason Teo of the Media Development Authority's Community and International Relations department, discussing the direction Singapore is taking on gaming, and career opportunities, and the third was by Associate Professor Willy Susilo from the University of Wollongong discussing Multimedia and Game Development. We'll just talk about the first one. The following is a summary of Chris Ng's talk.
Chris discussed how with the usual way of things, a game went through creation, publishing/packaging, distribution, retail/publicity, and then purchase. With the boom of the Internet however, especially high speed access, games are experiencing a phenomenal leap from creation straight to purchase. He however, will be concentrating his scope, as mentioned in the title, on publishing/packaging and distribution.
So first after the game is presented by the creator or developer, the acceptance and negotiation occurs. One of the first things then done is localization for the various markets. We don't experience localization much in Singapore because the gaming market of youths and young adults speak proficient English. Places like Korea and Japan require localization, which is basically translation and the necessary language pack issues, to reach out to the market.
After that is the pre-press, comprising of package design and copy-writing, I'm guessing both the manuals and the text on the disc box. As an interesting note, Chris mentioned later about how consumers very ridiculously didn't take to the slick DVD cases of games on the PS2 and xBox because they felt that it wasn't worth their S$79.90 (US$49.90). Publishers solved this with the frankly insulting solution of 'mocking-up', which simply meant slipping the slim DVD case inside a thick fat preferably shiny and essentially empty box. Retarded? The consumers bought it.
Then there is the marketing, by building communities online. Not much of this was discussed but it ties in with the next point, which is advertising. Advertising is crucial in the gaming industry, because games have only 3-6 months shelf life. Games move very fast, because gamers want to be on par with others, if not with their direct community, then competitively against the rest of the world.
After that as the product moves on to distributors comes channel management, the pricing structure, coverage, and product visibility, basically the 'P's of marketing. Although as Chris said, it's not just the 5 Ps anymore. There are many many more P's now. Financial management is when the middlemen start saying that while they want to carry the products, they don't have enough capital to return the cost, that they need to have some units moving first before they can payback. That's where the credit system comes in to negotiate a balance.
Product sales, then product promotion, driving the products straight to the consumers. I asked the question why we don't see TV spots for game ads, and Chris answered that basically, calculated the costs, it was financially more sensible to just shoot it straight through the Net and gaming magazines. Less is gained than spent on TV advertising. Then after product promotion, technical support must be maintained.
An interesting question asked when the floor was opened was if the download model of distribution would work. Chris answered that certainly more and more people are looking towards it, and that the day will come to pass when it matures and people would start using it. For now though, he said, he feels that on a global scale the Internet isn't sufficiently penetrated, and that also they are still working the kinks out with the DRM issue, that it's better to stick to discs in that aspect. The question is, as privately posed by Kevin, aren't CDs and even DVDs a breeze to crack nowadays? The fact is that no matter how many walls you build around your structure, it takes only one genius to find and remove that one bolt that will send everything falling down like paper on a rainy day. And I assure you, that genius will always be there. Kevin felt that it was only fair, that a portion of the market buys the game and has access to full features, and another portion goes for piracy and gets... almost everything. With Warcraft III for example, pirate users have been provided with the Eurobattle.net server to play. So we still get to experience online gaming, but what we'll be missing is the higher standard found on the actual Battle.net. Eurobattle, anyone who plays knows (unless you're one yourself), has as many idiots, leavers, noobs, and spammers as good players. Not that Battle.net doesn't, but you'll find less there.
And finally the mindset has to change that, gaming is no more a leisure activity, but a lifestyle.
So that's it for the summary of this talk, Game Publishing and Distribution, given by Chris Ng, Asia-Pacific Head of Electronic Arts Publishing, at EA Play '07, held at the Singapore Institute of Management, on 16 March 2007. If you're interested in the games exhibition, stick around or check back, that would probably in my next couple of posts. Got videos of Burnout Revenge and Battlefield 2142, as well as pictures of Command and Conquer 3: Tiberium Wars.
This blog is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License.
Saturday, March 17, 2007
Friday, March 16, 2007
QotW7: Birds of a Feather Flock to Twitter
The thing about Twitter is that it has come to serve an unintended 
purpose. Originally it was just meant to tell your community what you activities you were engaging in – boring stuff at first glance. There are plenty of other ways to do that without having to sign up to a website, then log in and enter your activity information. And there’s that hassle of digging up your whole community from the whole pool of the Web, or inviting friends if you are all that serious about it.
As communities grew, people must have seen an interesting activity on someone else’s profile, or more accurately an activity of interest to them, and used their text box to enter a comment about their friend’s activity. One can imagine how fast that trend caught on – probably faster than you can say tweet. :)
It was the same with the COM125 class community. And by now, you might have deduced that I agree that Twitter is an online community, albeit an unintentional one. We all signed up for it as instructed, rather skeptical of the uses of such a site. Early birds (hurhur) sent invitations to their closer friends. And in just half a week, as the class community started to build up with more people signing up, it started to look more like a web-based messaging client than a what-I-am-doing-now site. Having discovered the code for replying (@[username]), we were joking and laughing about the most silly things, flooding newcomers with welcome messages, and even communicating discreetly during another class held in the computer lab. We have held discussions on what to do the next day, and input suggestions and instructions on how to complete assignments. We do that all the time on MSN Messenger, or should I say Windows Live Messenger now, but rarely with as many people at once, and such a sense of togetherness as felt on Twitter.
Wellman and Gulia in their paper Net Surfers Don’t Ride Alone identified a few researchers warning about the dangers of making affliations with strangers on the Web in a virtual community (1996). One thing about Twitter is that the virtual communities there are most likely to be communities where members know each other, with the exception of users with a more popular status such as Singaporean blogger mrbrown. The COM125 class community, of course, knows everyone else at the very least by face. So perhaps we get to know each other more, instead of the usual scenario of interacting with total strangers across the world. The activities of a gift community, like giving aid or reciprocation of help, as discussed by Kollock (1999), looks to be enhanced, as compared to a forum or community of strangers.
Fernback and Thompson commented that "communities seem more likely to be formed or reinforced when action is needed" (1995). With the, for lack of a better word, forced formation of our Twitter community, it seems that we have reversed the process and found ourselves a purpose, or indeed purposes, for the existence of our community. With this function that the Twitter users decided for themselves, namely that of using it as an asynchronous messaging service, Twitter has become a prime site for virtual communities. Technically, it could be considered an online community with its original function, but there is only so much fun in seeing what your friends are doing, and I doubt it would have taken off as it has if people had stuck to doing that.
References
Fernback, J. and Thompson, B. (1995, May). Virtual Communities: Abort, Retry, Failure? Retrieved March 15, 2007, from
http://www.rheingold.com/texts/techpolitix/VCcivil.html
Kollock, P. (1999). The Economies of Online Cooperation: Gifts and Public Goods in Cyberspace. Retrieved February 9 from http://www.sscnet.ucla.edu/soc/faculty/kollock/papers/economies.htm
Wellman, B, and Gulia, M. (1996, April). Net surfers don't ride alone. Retrieved March 15, 2007, from
http://www.acm.org/%7Eccp/references/wellman/wellman.html
purpose. Originally it was just meant to tell your community what you activities you were engaging in – boring stuff at first glance. There are plenty of other ways to do that without having to sign up to a website, then log in and enter your activity information. And there’s that hassle of digging up your whole community from the whole pool of the Web, or inviting friends if you are all that serious about it.As communities grew, people must have seen an interesting activity on someone else’s profile, or more accurately an activity of interest to them, and used their text box to enter a comment about their friend’s activity. One can imagine how fast that trend caught on – probably faster than you can say tweet. :)
It was the same with the COM125 class community. And by now, you might have deduced that I agree that Twitter is an online community, albeit an unintentional one. We all signed up for it as instructed, rather skeptical of the uses of such a site. Early birds (hurhur) sent invitations to their closer friends. And in just half a week, as the class community started to build up with more people signing up, it started to look more like a web-based messaging client than a what-I-am-doing-now site. Having discovered the code for replying (@[username]), we were joking and laughing about the most silly things, flooding newcomers with welcome messages, and even communicating discreetly during another class held in the computer lab. We have held discussions on what to do the next day, and input suggestions and instructions on how to complete assignments. We do that all the time on MSN Messenger, or should I say Windows Live Messenger now, but rarely with as many people at once, and such a sense of togetherness as felt on Twitter.
Wellman and Gulia in their paper Net Surfers Don’t Ride Alone identified a few researchers warning about the dangers of making affliations with strangers on the Web in a virtual community (1996). One thing about Twitter is that the virtual communities there are most likely to be communities where members know each other, with the exception of users with a more popular status such as Singaporean blogger mrbrown. The COM125 class community, of course, knows everyone else at the very least by face. So perhaps we get to know each other more, instead of the usual scenario of interacting with total strangers across the world. The activities of a gift community, like giving aid or reciprocation of help, as discussed by Kollock (1999), looks to be enhanced, as compared to a forum or community of strangers.
Fernback and Thompson commented that "communities seem more likely to be formed or reinforced when action is needed" (1995). With the, for lack of a better word, forced formation of our Twitter community, it seems that we have reversed the process and found ourselves a purpose, or indeed purposes, for the existence of our community. With this function that the Twitter users decided for themselves, namely that of using it as an asynchronous messaging service, Twitter has become a prime site for virtual communities. Technically, it could be considered an online community with its original function, but there is only so much fun in seeing what your friends are doing, and I doubt it would have taken off as it has if people had stuck to doing that.
References
Fernback, J. and Thompson, B. (1995, May). Virtual Communities: Abort, Retry, Failure? Retrieved March 15, 2007, from
http://www.rheingold.com/texts/techpolitix/VCcivil.html
Kollock, P. (1999). The Economies of Online Cooperation: Gifts and Public Goods in Cyberspace. Retrieved February 9 from http://www.sscnet.ucla.edu/soc/faculty/kollock/papers/economies.htm
Wellman, B, and Gulia, M. (1996, April). Net surfers don't ride alone. Retrieved March 15, 2007, from
http://www.acm.org/%7Eccp/references/wellman/wellman.html
Wednesday, March 14, 2007
Music Review: DIMMU BORGIR - In Sorte Diaboli
Dimmu Borgir's newest offering, In Sorte Diaboli, has been highly publicized as Dimmu Borgir's first concept album. According to Krv on Blabbermouth.net (Feb 14, 2007),
'In Sorte Diaboli' is DIMMU BORGIR's first concept album and a treatise on modern-day political and social abuses of organized religion. An epic tale set in medieval Europe, this first-person account of an acolyte is told through his own journal entries, depicting his personal struggle with the teachings of the church. Experiencing a life-altering epiphany, he abandons the church completely, and his spiritual victory is won through his rejection of the concept of god.
The promo was ripped, and released early Thursday morning. As expected a huge excited swarm descended upon it, allowing the download to be completed in less than 10 minutes. The promo did not include the North American bonus track, The Herectic Hammer.
So far, I've only seen one actual review of the album. Which makes me very reluctant to generalize, but I wonder if people are forcing themselves to think it was good.
As an aside, the review mentioned that many complained about the triggered drum sound on Puritanical Euphoric Misanthropia, but to me, both in terms of sound production and music composition, I think it was the best album they've produced. It sounds like Nick Barker really stretched the skin on the snare, because its crisp hard sound was orgasmic! As for the triggers, I have no problem with it, and I think it helped to bring the music together by accentuating the drums. I know all instruments are vital, but it somehow feels that the drums, in PEM at least, plays an extra important role in the success of the album.
I was disgusted by the apparent weakness of it all when I first listened to it. The great Dimmu Borgir + the uber great Hellhammer = this crap? All excitement ended after the second song, and that was only because for 10 seconds near the end of the second song Hellhammer showed his pedalling prowess by kicking up a double-pedal storm. And at 43min, this album is so short that commuting from one end of the island to the other was more than enough to finish the album (for our foreign friends and fiends, Singapore where I live is an island city. A complete ride from the first to last stop of our public train service's East-West line takes just about an hour). What happened to Death Cult's 1h5min timing, or PEM's 1h9min, or at least Stormblåst's 59.5min?
It started to get abit better as I gave it a couple more chances. Mustis did not disappoint with an introduction that is majestic, with a dark overshadow. It's really hard to believe that it was all done on keyboards - seems that no mixing expense is spared when it comes to perfecting orchestral ambience. But it still turned out that the initial verdict wasn't all that far from the truth either. Repetitive riffing and drumming made the album no more than background music useful for blocking ambient noise out when you need to concentrate.
Has this got something to do with Nick Barker leaving? Cradle of Filth fell after he left, Dimmu Borgir suffers after his departure...
Who will he destroy next? ;)
2/5 skulls for the effort and good intro. Come on Dimmu you can do better than this.
You have to. >:)
Monday, March 12, 2007
Movie Review: Hannibal Rising
3/5, or 6.5/10.
Since Hannibal Rising reveals the beginning of Hannibal Lecter's cannibalistic tendencies, people who have never watched a single Hannibal film, such as me, should be able to get it. And that indeed is what the people behind the scenes try to achieve, although it is clear the full impact of revelation will only be felt by those who have followed this cinematic series faithfully.
23-year-old French actor Gaspard Ulliel plays an equally young Hannibal. His performance per se was excellent, conveying a bitter hateful darkness in his smirking eyes. That said, the characteristic of the cold, cool killer, has become quite a stereotype in such thriller films (I don't understand why people put it under horror. There not one single jump scare, nor hair-raising moment. It's more gore, where people stare open-mouthed in speechless horror, but I believe the "horror" used in this sense carries a different meaning to that of the genre).
Gong Li, as usual I must say, is abit stiff. It's probably not her bad acting, that's probably her style. Not a very good style for an actress to have, but well, she keeps the show running nicely, complementing it at times.
That said about the two main characters, I find more flaws with the script, chiefly the slow pace. Even with someone taking their sweet sweet time to exact revenge, there could have been more action. Munich is a good example, although they didn't have all the time in the world like he did. The sub-climaxes had us cringing from the gore (not too sick but deliberately and gleefully slow), not sitting on the edge of our seats neglecting our popcorn. Another thing is they first show that his younger sister of 5 or 6 was killed and eaten to survive during the World War 2 when German soldiers hid in their house, thus, we infer, sparking off his fetish for human flesh. The whole show, however, seems to focus on him exacting revenge on the 4 soldiers who killed his sister for food, with cannibalism as more of a foreshadowing theme. I feel they weren't clear enough on which aspect they wanted to focus on, or if they had wanted to do both, they failed. Would have been better to concentrate on one if they couldn't handle both. If these two points have been fixed, or even just the pacing had been fixed, I believe this film could easily hit an 8.5 on my scale.
Pity. But it was a good attempt anyways.
Since Hannibal Rising reveals the beginning of Hannibal Lecter's cannibalistic tendencies, people who have never watched a single Hannibal film, such as me, should be able to get it. And that indeed is what the people behind the scenes try to achieve, although it is clear the full impact of revelation will only be felt by those who have followed this cinematic series faithfully.
23-year-old French actor Gaspard Ulliel plays an equally young Hannibal. His performance per se was excellent, conveying a bitter hateful darkness in his smirking eyes. That said, the characteristic of the cold, cool killer, has become quite a stereotype in such thriller films (I don't understand why people put it under horror. There not one single jump scare, nor hair-raising moment. It's more gore, where people stare open-mouthed in speechless horror, but I believe the "horror" used in this sense carries a different meaning to that of the genre).
Gong Li, as usual I must say, is abit stiff. It's probably not her bad acting, that's probably her style. Not a very good style for an actress to have, but well, she keeps the show running nicely, complementing it at times.
That said about the two main characters, I find more flaws with the script, chiefly the slow pace. Even with someone taking their sweet sweet time to exact revenge, there could have been more action. Munich is a good example, although they didn't have all the time in the world like he did. The sub-climaxes had us cringing from the gore (not too sick but deliberately and gleefully slow), not sitting on the edge of our seats neglecting our popcorn. Another thing is they first show that his younger sister of 5 or 6 was killed and eaten to survive during the World War 2 when German soldiers hid in their house, thus, we infer, sparking off his fetish for human flesh. The whole show, however, seems to focus on him exacting revenge on the 4 soldiers who killed his sister for food, with cannibalism as more of a foreshadowing theme. I feel they weren't clear enough on which aspect they wanted to focus on, or if they had wanted to do both, they failed. Would have been better to concentrate on one if they couldn't handle both. If these two points have been fixed, or even just the pacing had been fixed, I believe this film could easily hit an 8.5 on my scale.
Pity. But it was a good attempt anyways.
Software Review: f2ko's Audio/Video-To-Exe Converter
Kenny was the one who found this originally. How he did I'll never know. But this is one hell of a priceless gem made free for all on the Net.
Fatih Kodak, otherwise known as f2ko, has written several programs and put it up on his website, f2ko.de, for zero cost.
What turned out to be a last-minute savior (and a good quality one at that too) was this primitively simple-looking program, which either converts video or audio files into other formats, or an executable file, hence the name. And don't you ever let the blandness of the interface fool you into thinking it's some cheap program. Apart from several terms of use including prohibition of modification or even reverse engineering, the use of this product is virtually unlimited.
Formats supported include, taken straight from the website, "3gp, aac, ac3, exe, flac, flv, gif, mp2, mp3, mp4, mpc, mpg, nut, ogg, ra, rm, swf, vob, voc, wav, wma, wmv, wv,..etc.". You have at your hands the power to change any of the above formats into any other one. That's an amazing number of 171 combinations you could possibly play with!
The only thing I see missing here was pointed out by Ryan, which was the MKV format.
But here's the clincher - this program works STANDALONE, meaning there is absolutely no installation needed, and no registry values input into the system. It runs straight from wherever it is, saving a whole lot of time and electronic effort. What happens is the file downloaded from the website is an extracting executable, which just pulls the program out into the same folder, and we're ready to go. How nice is that? Just bring this application around in your thumbdrive - you'll make alot of new friends and possibly earn a couple of idolizers.
You may get the application from the link above in the second paragraph, which is the English version of the website (he's German). It's the first one on the list. Enjoy.
Oh. 5/5. And a bonus point for doing us all a hell of a huge favor.
Fatih Kodak, otherwise known as f2ko, has written several programs and put it up on his website, f2ko.de, for zero cost.
What turned out to be a last-minute savior (and a good quality one at that too) was this primitively simple-looking program, which either converts video or audio files into other formats, or an executable file, hence the name. And don't you ever let the blandness of the interface fool you into thinking it's some cheap program. Apart from several terms of use including prohibition of modification or even reverse engineering, the use of this product is virtually unlimited.
Formats supported include, taken straight from the website, "3gp, aac, ac3, exe, flac, flv, gif, mp2, mp3, mp4, mpc, mpg, nut, ogg, ra, rm, swf, vob, voc, wav, wma, wmv, wv,..etc.". You have at your hands the power to change any of the above formats into any other one. That's an amazing number of 171 combinations you could possibly play with!
The only thing I see missing here was pointed out by Ryan, which was the MKV format.
But here's the clincher - this program works STANDALONE, meaning there is absolutely no installation needed, and no registry values input into the system. It runs straight from wherever it is, saving a whole lot of time and electronic effort. What happens is the file downloaded from the website is an extracting executable, which just pulls the program out into the same folder, and we're ready to go. How nice is that? Just bring this application around in your thumbdrive - you'll make alot of new friends and possibly earn a couple of idolizers.
You may get the application from the link above in the second paragraph, which is the English version of the website (he's German). It's the first one on the list. Enjoy.
Oh. 5/5. And a bonus point for doing us all a hell of a huge favor.
Saturday, March 10, 2007
Trying to get back on track
This week in particular, I have been inexplicably tired out. I thought it was the exams and the stress and staying late, but exams are over (so is my life and probably future...) and I just woke up from a fitful doze-off in front of the computer.
As for these couple of weeks starting from the CNY week, I've also lost my blogging fingers. I see so many interesting things, take so many photos that would serve no other purpose than for commentary (or bitching) on my blog, transfer it out onto my computer. After I prove my own hypothesis right by successfully uploading a 3GP video clip onto Youtube, I bought a 1GB miniSD card, giving myself over an hour's worth of video recording time, or an equivalent capacity of 2000 over photos. But it's just not there anymore. And when I don't have the drive to blog, forcing myself to do so is, I kid you not, worse than forcing myself to get down to doing assignments.
Then again, seems I'm starting to get it back. Maybe my engine just requires a little revving.
I have been using the more efficient method of torrenting anime by series (torrent all Kanon eps, finish then torrent Ghost Hunt eps, etc.). This is particularly useful when you're a big time follower of multiple series, and experience a backlog in torrenting.
I'm not tooting my horn, but I follow 26 anime series, and although I enjoy doing it, the administration of keeping up with the latest episodes requires effort, and I think a bit of dedication. Some of you would know that I reformatted my computer around the beginning of this term and stupidly caused myself unnecessary trouble by having to set everything again, as well as somehow destroying the previous stability I had with the wireless connection system. As a result I only recently settled myself into a more familiar routine once more, as well as figured out the kinks of the system, and my torrents have been running at an acceptable speed.
Before, even with a backlog of 31 files, I would open the flood gates and turn all 31 files on at the same time. Then I discovered that if there were 31 running tasks, 5 of which were running at decent speeds and the rest of which were stagnant, turning off the stagnant tasks would dramatically increase the download speeds of the 5 active files. So recently I decided that rather than wait an eternity for 81 files to be watched at the same time, I'd rather clear the tasks series by series, so that I can have a heck of a time watching.
And have some sense of achievement.
Just to make the post not so long, I'll stop here. Photo posts coming up.
As for these couple of weeks starting from the CNY week, I've also lost my blogging fingers. I see so many interesting things, take so many photos that would serve no other purpose than for commentary (or bitching) on my blog, transfer it out onto my computer. After I prove my own hypothesis right by successfully uploading a 3GP video clip onto Youtube, I bought a 1GB miniSD card, giving myself over an hour's worth of video recording time, or an equivalent capacity of 2000 over photos. But it's just not there anymore. And when I don't have the drive to blog, forcing myself to do so is, I kid you not, worse than forcing myself to get down to doing assignments.
Then again, seems I'm starting to get it back. Maybe my engine just requires a little revving.
I have been using the more efficient method of torrenting anime by series (torrent all Kanon eps, finish then torrent Ghost Hunt eps, etc.). This is particularly useful when you're a big time follower of multiple series, and experience a backlog in torrenting.
I'm not tooting my horn, but I follow 26 anime series, and although I enjoy doing it, the administration of keeping up with the latest episodes requires effort, and I think a bit of dedication. Some of you would know that I reformatted my computer around the beginning of this term and stupidly caused myself unnecessary trouble by having to set everything again, as well as somehow destroying the previous stability I had with the wireless connection system. As a result I only recently settled myself into a more familiar routine once more, as well as figured out the kinks of the system, and my torrents have been running at an acceptable speed.
Before, even with a backlog of 31 files, I would open the flood gates and turn all 31 files on at the same time. Then I discovered that if there were 31 running tasks, 5 of which were running at decent speeds and the rest of which were stagnant, turning off the stagnant tasks would dramatically increase the download speeds of the 5 active files. So recently I decided that rather than wait an eternity for 81 files to be watched at the same time, I'd rather clear the tasks series by series, so that I can have a heck of a time watching.
And have some sense of achievement.
Just to make the post not so long, I'll stop here. Photo posts coming up.
Movie Review: Happily N'ever After
Sucks. Virtually no plot. Voice actors were unconvincing. Not even plain slapstick. Not even the CHILDREN were laughing in the theatre. Animation looked more like polished plastercine.
Don't waste your time. 0/5.
Don't waste your time. 0/5.
QotW6: Watching Each Other
Although my frequent use of the Internet started at a late age compared to my friends and peers, I nevertheless started at the age of 15 or 16. I was 7 years too young for a credit card, not to mention that working was just about the furthest thing from my mind then. Consequently, I’ve never been all that cautious about revealing my personal information on the Net, since there was no financially-related information to be stolen. The boundaries between personal information that can be revealed and personal information that must remain private fleshed itself out as I felt my way around the Net and gradually got used to the culture and environment.
I actually started my blog as a fad. I saw the success that my friend’s blog enjoyed from my class and his circle of friends, and since I prided myself on being able to write well (enough), I figured I’d just start one as well.
Blogger, like any decent interactive site, has a profile page for users to fill up, should they choose to, so that visitors can read more about the author, or more importantly, find a way to contact him, email address or otherwise. Anywhere I go, and anywhere I reveal personal information, I am not worried about physical privacy. I know I haven’t been hacking into CIA, so I cannot imagine anyone out of Singapore trying to find me. And interaction on my blog has led me to believe that hardly anyone outside of my circle of friends reads my blog anyway, more so because I know my content is specific to my current life. In 2004, I blogged about what went on in Victoria School, and in my class 4H. Since last year, most of my posts have something to do with UB-SIM. As such, I feel comfortable revealing more than my usual amount of personal information, since anyone who reads it are likely to already know those details anyway. For example in my Blogger profile page I reveal myself to be staying in Tampines, Singapore. Most of my friends know that, if not all. Anyone new to my blog who even bothers to read the profile page can contact me if they are interested to find out where I live, and I can then assess their intent in finding out my exact address.
Jeffrey Rosen, author of The Naked Crowd, writes that we are in an age where many are watching many, “even though no one knows precisely who is watching or being watched at any given time” (2004). As I begin to blog about a wider scope of subjects, I am gradually increasing my caution on revealing personal information, in anticipation of (hopefully) higher traffic to my blog and an increased range of audiences. Bob Sullivan’s comment that “a simple Google search can reveal what you think” (2006) rings a painful bell as I recall the flame war I recently engaged in as part of my flamers study. I carelessly neglected to create a pseudonym for myself and risked my own privacy. This was revealed to me when the flamer tried to one-up me by posting 10 links to my identity on the Net. It was true that half of those links were dead, remnants of my presence on Web 1.0, and that none were sensitive information that I particularly cared for, but still, I was severely reminded of the possible danger I had put myself in.
As I commented in my Bonus Mission post, we the users of the Web cannot afford to be careless about what we say, or in this case, reveal anymore. Everyone is watching everyone else’s move, and as Professor Alex Halavais commented in the article elaborating on the word he coined, panveillance, “there is the assumption that some form of the video is likely to find its way out onto the web” (2007). We should adopt that assumption with anything we put up on the Net in any medium, and think twice before we reveal anything on the, let’s face it, vicious Internet.
References
Rosen, J. (2004, July 19). The Naked Crowd. Retrieved March 10, 2007 from http://www.spiked-online.com/Printable/0000000CA5FF.htm
Sullivan, B. (2006, October 17). Privacy Lost: Does anybody care?. Retrieved March 10, 2007 from http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/15221095/print/1/displaymode/1098/
Halavais, A. (2007, March 1). Panveillance. Retrieved March 10, 2007 from http://alex.halavais.net/panveillance/
I actually started my blog as a fad. I saw the success that my friend’s blog enjoyed from my class and his circle of friends, and since I prided myself on being able to write well (enough), I figured I’d just start one as well.
Blogger, like any decent interactive site, has a profile page for users to fill up, should they choose to, so that visitors can read more about the author, or more importantly, find a way to contact him, email address or otherwise. Anywhere I go, and anywhere I reveal personal information, I am not worried about physical privacy. I know I haven’t been hacking into CIA, so I cannot imagine anyone out of Singapore trying to find me. And interaction on my blog has led me to believe that hardly anyone outside of my circle of friends reads my blog anyway, more so because I know my content is specific to my current life. In 2004, I blogged about what went on in Victoria School, and in my class 4H. Since last year, most of my posts have something to do with UB-SIM. As such, I feel comfortable revealing more than my usual amount of personal information, since anyone who reads it are likely to already know those details anyway. For example in my Blogger profile page I reveal myself to be staying in Tampines, Singapore. Most of my friends know that, if not all. Anyone new to my blog who even bothers to read the profile page can contact me if they are interested to find out where I live, and I can then assess their intent in finding out my exact address.
Jeffrey Rosen, author of The Naked Crowd, writes that we are in an age where many are watching many, “even though no one knows precisely who is watching or being watched at any given time” (2004). As I begin to blog about a wider scope of subjects, I am gradually increasing my caution on revealing personal information, in anticipation of (hopefully) higher traffic to my blog and an increased range of audiences. Bob Sullivan’s comment that “a simple Google search can reveal what you think” (2006) rings a painful bell as I recall the flame war I recently engaged in as part of my flamers study. I carelessly neglected to create a pseudonym for myself and risked my own privacy. This was revealed to me when the flamer tried to one-up me by posting 10 links to my identity on the Net. It was true that half of those links were dead, remnants of my presence on Web 1.0, and that none were sensitive information that I particularly cared for, but still, I was severely reminded of the possible danger I had put myself in.
As I commented in my Bonus Mission post, we the users of the Web cannot afford to be careless about what we say, or in this case, reveal anymore. Everyone is watching everyone else’s move, and as Professor Alex Halavais commented in the article elaborating on the word he coined, panveillance, “there is the assumption that some form of the video is likely to find its way out onto the web” (2007). We should adopt that assumption with anything we put up on the Net in any medium, and think twice before we reveal anything on the, let’s face it, vicious Internet.
References
Rosen, J. (2004, July 19). The Naked Crowd. Retrieved March 10, 2007 from http://www.spiked-online.com/Printable/0000000CA5FF.htm
Sullivan, B. (2006, October 17). Privacy Lost: Does anybody care?. Retrieved March 10, 2007 from http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/15221095/print/1/displaymode/1098/
Halavais, A. (2007, March 1). Panveillance. Retrieved March 10, 2007 from http://alex.halavais.net/panveillance/
Bonus Mission #1: Omnipticon
Quite frankly, I've been on a desperate lookout for unfortunate people whose actions would be immortalized through the eye of my camera phone. The award goes to this uncle on the 151 bus I was taking with Graham.
Thinking about it, I have no problem with people who clip their nails discreetly. Because to be brutally honest, I don't care that the nails fall onto the bus floor. It's a public bus. We don't lick the floors of private buses, let alone public buses. And the driver does a sweep at the end of each round anyway.
I know I'm bad.
More importantly, he was doing it blatantly, and... 'enthusiastically'. It was a 3-in-1 clipper, so our friend dug dirt from under his cuticles with all his might, clipped his nails with all his might, filed with all his might, and blew at his nails with all his might. Moreover, his nails are thick, and dirty (smoker, I think). The problem I have with this strange factor relates to a personal experience.
Once, I was clipping my toenails outside my house, sitting on the staircase landing. I was waging a world war with my big toe nail because it refused to be clipped, stopping the almighty power of the nail clipper halfway through. I twisted and rattled the nail clipper, and that stupid big toenail taught me a big lesson by sacrificing itself.
Before I could react, half the nail snapped off, and boomeranged towards my face. It missed me in the end, but I froze in icy fear as it passed by my ear, or more accurately BUZZED past my ear. That's right. It was spinning so fast from flying off that it went vvmmm as it shot past me. I knew then how it felt to have bullets missing you by an inch - how it felt and how it sounded. That thing could have sliced my eyebrow off!
Now. Return to the uncle in the bus. The bus was relatively empty, but what if there had been people behind him?! Or in fact, as you can see I was to the slight bottom right of him. The clipped nail could have flown up down left right, and hit someone. If it doesn't cause physical damage, at least stop to think of the psychological damage caused by pulling a cut nail from your hair.
Rosen very aptly coined a new word in his article The Naked Crowd. 'Omnipticon', 'in which the many watch the many, though no one knows precisely who is watching or being watched at any given time' (Rosen, 2004). This uncle has the luxury of not worrying about this, unless he has an affair with...... which looks unlikely, in any event. But we, the users and wielders of the Internet, of Web 2.0, have to consider and consider again our every move and action. A racially biased joke meant to be kept within a small community of friends has a million ways of being leaked to the wrath of the whole world, we've seen instances of that happening so many times. In these times, we cannot afford anymore to be careless or frivolous about what we say or do, online, or offline.
References
Rosen, J. (2004, July 19). The Naked Crowd. Retrieved March 10, 2007 from http://www.spiked-online.com/Printable/0000000CA5FF.htm
Thinking about it, I have no problem with people who clip their nails discreetly. Because to be brutally honest, I don't care that the nails fall onto the bus floor. It's a public bus. We don't lick the floors of private buses, let alone public buses. And the driver does a sweep at the end of each round anyway.
I know I'm bad.
More importantly, he was doing it blatantly, and... 'enthusiastically'. It was a 3-in-1 clipper, so our friend dug dirt from under his cuticles with all his might, clipped his nails with all his might, filed with all his might, and blew at his nails with all his might. Moreover, his nails are thick, and dirty (smoker, I think). The problem I have with this strange factor relates to a personal experience.
Once, I was clipping my toenails outside my house, sitting on the staircase landing. I was waging a world war with my big toe nail because it refused to be clipped, stopping the almighty power of the nail clipper halfway through. I twisted and rattled the nail clipper, and that stupid big toenail taught me a big lesson by sacrificing itself.
Before I could react, half the nail snapped off, and boomeranged towards my face. It missed me in the end, but I froze in icy fear as it passed by my ear, or more accurately BUZZED past my ear. That's right. It was spinning so fast from flying off that it went vvmmm as it shot past me. I knew then how it felt to have bullets missing you by an inch - how it felt and how it sounded. That thing could have sliced my eyebrow off!
Now. Return to the uncle in the bus. The bus was relatively empty, but what if there had been people behind him?! Or in fact, as you can see I was to the slight bottom right of him. The clipped nail could have flown up down left right, and hit someone. If it doesn't cause physical damage, at least stop to think of the psychological damage caused by pulling a cut nail from your hair.
Rosen very aptly coined a new word in his article The Naked Crowd. 'Omnipticon', 'in which the many watch the many, though no one knows precisely who is watching or being watched at any given time' (Rosen, 2004). This uncle has the luxury of not worrying about this, unless he has an affair with...... which looks unlikely, in any event. But we, the users and wielders of the Internet, of Web 2.0, have to consider and consider again our every move and action. A racially biased joke meant to be kept within a small community of friends has a million ways of being leaked to the wrath of the whole world, we've seen instances of that happening so many times. In these times, we cannot afford anymore to be careless or frivolous about what we say or do, online, or offline.
References
Rosen, J. (2004, July 19). The Naked Crowd. Retrieved March 10, 2007 from http://www.spiked-online.com/Printable/0000000CA5FF.htm
Sunday, March 4, 2007
In the name of Science?
It's been some time since I've blogged. Simply because I have no motivation too. I love blogging, but I don't see the point of forced spontaneity.
I should get this off my chest.
It was a huge mistake for me to have put details of my Youtube flamer study up here. The whole damn world can see it, what was I thinking? Right now all that's left for me is to take it as a lesson and, like Jeremy who brought us the Yishun MRT suicide video (taken down in consideration of the victim's family), think twice before putting ANYTHING on the Net. Anything at all. It's so ironic that just the other day I was so enthusiastically telling my mom how once stuff is on the Net it can never be fully taken off, or else near impossible to do so.
That however is not quite my primary concern. My concern is what this study is doing to me personally. Again, I didn't have the prudence to set up seperate accounts for this study, and blindly used my personal Blogger and Youtube accounts to execute my plans. The problem is when the flame exchange turns personal, as it almost inevitably will - mother father sister's vagina - you know, the whole lot. I'm not some SM freak who likes to tell the world my weaknesses and let them throw eggs at me and mock me, but fact - I AM emotionally weak. That's the simple truth, and yet such a powerful weakness. I used to be not much harder than water last time. I'm better now. But it's still a major weakness.
Obviously, if I'm let's say smart enough to have ideas of conducting a study, or at least an amateur emulation of an academic study, I can distinguish for myself the boundaries of my split personalities. Mr Hyde is only activated (to the best of my ability anyway) when I'm composing a counterflame. I can clearly feel the difference, the dark thrill when I'm constructing the hardest insults, and the composed scientific musings when I'm looking through and analysing the records of my exchange with the flamer I've targeted. Some words, however, do a damn good job of flipping my switch. And guess what? When the big tough guy gets real pissed, he doesn't power up. He curls up in a corner and cries. -.-"
Like I told Ryan, don't think for one moment I pride myself on being sensitive. Perhaps it helps in empathizing with others, but I'm far from happy to have it. It's a blessing to my friends and a curse to myself. Now I know why fiction, especially science-ficiton, stereotypes scientists as cold unfeeling creatures. Because you have to be one. He could call you a piss drinker. You could call him Omdigr, Martian for he who smears excreta on his face and then licks it up with relish. It is WORK, and to you, it is not personal. It cannot be. If you want to be pedantic about it even your 'personal' insults have to be well thought out to engage maximum probability of a fireback. Or whatever.
Problem? I can't stop it getting to me. I'm too susceptible too personal attacks, excluding those I know is merely friendly teasing.
This is why I don't play chess. I don't think before unleashing my queen. I really need my generals with me.
Sigh. Feel a wee bit better. Thanks for reading. Later~
I should get this off my chest.
It was a huge mistake for me to have put details of my Youtube flamer study up here. The whole damn world can see it, what was I thinking? Right now all that's left for me is to take it as a lesson and, like Jeremy who brought us the Yishun MRT suicide video (taken down in consideration of the victim's family), think twice before putting ANYTHING on the Net. Anything at all. It's so ironic that just the other day I was so enthusiastically telling my mom how once stuff is on the Net it can never be fully taken off, or else near impossible to do so.
That however is not quite my primary concern. My concern is what this study is doing to me personally. Again, I didn't have the prudence to set up seperate accounts for this study, and blindly used my personal Blogger and Youtube accounts to execute my plans. The problem is when the flame exchange turns personal, as it almost inevitably will - mother father sister's vagina - you know, the whole lot. I'm not some SM freak who likes to tell the world my weaknesses and let them throw eggs at me and mock me, but fact - I AM emotionally weak. That's the simple truth, and yet such a powerful weakness. I used to be not much harder than water last time. I'm better now. But it's still a major weakness.
Obviously, if I'm let's say smart enough to have ideas of conducting a study, or at least an amateur emulation of an academic study, I can distinguish for myself the boundaries of my split personalities. Mr Hyde is only activated (to the best of my ability anyway) when I'm composing a counterflame. I can clearly feel the difference, the dark thrill when I'm constructing the hardest insults, and the composed scientific musings when I'm looking through and analysing the records of my exchange with the flamer I've targeted. Some words, however, do a damn good job of flipping my switch. And guess what? When the big tough guy gets real pissed, he doesn't power up. He curls up in a corner and cries. -.-"
Like I told Ryan, don't think for one moment I pride myself on being sensitive. Perhaps it helps in empathizing with others, but I'm far from happy to have it. It's a blessing to my friends and a curse to myself. Now I know why fiction, especially science-ficiton, stereotypes scientists as cold unfeeling creatures. Because you have to be one. He could call you a piss drinker. You could call him Omdigr, Martian for he who smears excreta on his face and then licks it up with relish. It is WORK, and to you, it is not personal. It cannot be. If you want to be pedantic about it even your 'personal' insults have to be well thought out to engage maximum probability of a fireback. Or whatever.
Problem? I can't stop it getting to me. I'm too susceptible too personal attacks, excluding those I know is merely friendly teasing.
This is why I don't play chess. I don't think before unleashing my queen. I really need my generals with me.
Sigh. Feel a wee bit better. Thanks for reading. Later~
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