Office Wars is coming courtesy of Good Game!

You are the average Joe or Jill, working in the average office. You want to make it to the top and will do anything to get there, no matter how sneaky, underhanded; deceitful that may be (even go as far as to actually WORK HARD if need be, but only as last resort). Your ultimate goal is to get promoted and make it to "The Top". As the average Jo or Jill, you must complete certain work related tasks to progress in the game.

The "Equipment" you have to achieve your goal includes: a calculator, mobile phone, tools & clothes. To help sabotage work colleagues you will also have nasty stuff like itching powder & stinky old prawns to hide in someone else's desk as part of your arsenal.

That sounds just like where I use to work!  Check out the top ten ideas and another ten worthy of merit.

They start building the game on April 28, and it should be ready as a prototype for testing in November.  Can't wait to see how this works out, a fascinating concept!

There was a good quote from an interview with Terry Tamminen the author of "Lives Per Gallon: The True Cost of Our Oil Addiction." on the Lehrer News Hour the other day.

He said:
"And so the real answer for the future is not a silver bullet; it's silver buckshot. We're not going to move from petroleum to one other thing."

His point is that there is currently NO ONE ENERGY solution to replace fossil fuels.

Electric Cars have been an interest of mine, they use exotic materials, usually involving Lithium for the batteries as storage.  But is there enough lithium available  to supply multiple batteries for all the cars of the world today, let alone at the rate they are growing.

What about SMES and more research on room temperature, or at least not as cold as absolute zero Super Conductors?  This could be a companion energy storage technique for Hydrogen powered cars that store the gas compresses, and hence rather cool?

Based on all the alternatives the general public seems to be able to come up with in the automotive stakes - you would think big business must be coming onto the scene soonish like?  In the mean time how does your current vehicle stack up?

I found Death Note on DVD the other week in Myer Miranda (Sydney Australia) in the Indie/Foreign section .  I don't know why I bought it, I had not heard anything about it before - I liked the sound of the story and it was Japanese who do some weird/interesting stuff.

And so I landed right into the middle of a pop culture phenomenon!  A really interesting and fresh Japanese movie, actually both the movies.  The plot is very fresh (from a western perspective), and just when you think it's settled down to a formula there are twists and turns in the plot coming at you from all directions until the very end!

The Anime has started on ABC2 on Mondays after Good Game!

I was surfing this afternoon, and came across some more interesting articles about the game console choices. 

Apparently EA predicts that the PS3 will better the XBox sales for 2008.   However as that article and others predict the Wii will better them both.

However it's obvious that there are still a lot of die hard supporters for the XBox who would still recommend the XBox as the best console to buy.  With a 16% Red Ring Of Death failure rate and the chance of scratched disks that's some loyal following!

I also noted in one of the articles the best selling game of 2007 was Call Of Duty 4 - which I agree is a superb game.

I was a games addict for about two years in the mid nineties.  I mean I didn't sleep for days at a time as I gorged on certain computer games.  And when I did try and sleep I kept hearing that music in my head ... I mean seriously it wouldn't come out.  I would start playing after dinner, and next thing I would know it was five o'clock in the morning.

So I went cold turkey and gave up computer gaming altogether.

I casually followed the gaming industry, but after watching Good Game for a year, and specifically their review of Call Of Duty 4 - Modern Warfare I thought I would get back in, and see if I could enjoy gaming without it taking over my life.

At the end of 2007, I chose to buy a PS3 as it was a  technically superior console to the XBox and I believed that the more grunt the better the gaming, and the longer the console would 'last'.  I had some misgivings about this choice just with regard to the number and types of games available at the time.

I will mention my joy in hearing that the new C&C Version 3 will be out on the PS3.

I then came across the following article in the SMH XBox not up to scratch say gamers.

I sent this URL to friend who sent me back the following Wikipedia link: Wikipedia X Box 360 Technical Problems which really blew me away in regards to the scale of the problem.

I am now SO happy I chose the PS3 ... and I feel even better as I leave it on 24x7 for Folding @ Home processing when not gaming for my 3 hours a week.

Oh and I found the addiction hasn't returned ... yet ...

I was originally sent the following primer on the subprime meltdown as a powerpoint set by a friend.  I don't know where he got it or who drew it, but I think it is a brilliant piece of communication!

In honour of this great piece of work, I intended to converted it to an animated GIF to place it online, but found that someone was already well ahead of me, so I will just pass on the URL.

What a mess ... and on a GOP President's watch!

Subprime Primer

An excerpt from an email from a friend attending a finance course that happened to touch on Monolines ...

We learnt more about Monolines on Friday:

Initially set up to wrap up debt offerings (bonds) from Municipalities (cities, counties) in the US.  Most municipalities don't have AAA  or any sort of A type credit rating, so the idea was that Monolines would "wrap" (ie, guarantee) the bond thus giving the bond a AAA credit rating. The monoline got a fee, and because the bond was AAA the Municipality would be able to get away with offering a lower coupon rate so even after the fee they were ahead.

This was a great business, good for Municipalities, good for rate payers, and good for the Monolines.  Despite the low credit rating most Municipalities would never default so for the most part it was money for jam as far as the monolines were concerned; which is why Warren Buffet is now circling the monolines to see what he can pick up cheap. Then of course the Monolines got greedy.

They started to wrap other things  including CDOs, giving them a AAA rating.

As we know a lot of these CDOs consisted of sub-prime mortgages. The mortgages started to default and caused problems for the CDOs, this led to problems for the monolines as they had guaranteed the CDOs - cash outflow.  And the cards came down.

What I didn't know is that it is not over yet by a long shot. Now we are into the ripple effects.  Because of the problems caused by the CDOs, most monolines have been downgraded from their AAA rating; the two largest in the US are barely hanging on to theirs.  Now think about that for a minute. If a monoline doesn't have a AAA rating then anything it wraps will now have to offer a higher interest rate than before.  So now municipalities in the US will have to pay more in interest on their debt issues, high rates for taxpayers etc. Last week NY and another city did a debt release the coupon rate was 20%!!!!  Now this wasn't just from the decline in the monolines rating, there is also a drying up of liquidity in the US, people are scared to loan money, the monolines worried about their ratings are much more conservative in what they will wrap.  What all these changes will lead to nobody really knows.

The lecturer's opinion was that the recent announced investigate by the SEC in the US into CDOs, monolines, rating agency's, and investment banks will do nothing.

Another topic that was raised on Friday was the state of the US economy. While it looks like shit, the Govt and Treasury have been hard at work and some people feel that the US is now better prepared for any shock waves to come, on the other hand Europe seems oblivious to the whole thing. A number of economists think that if there is a recession it will be triggered by Europe and not the US.

The current outlook on commodities are good. China is still roaring ahead. However, nobody knows really how decoupled Asia is from the US.  If there was an  US recession how badly would it affect China? If the commodities market stalls because China pulls it's head in, then Oz is in trouble and our property market will also collapse. His advice was basically don't invest in anything with the aim of capital gains for at least six months until hopefully the picture is clearer.