Game addiction- Football Manager

Last week, I saw many people writing about their game addiction. I was attracted by those posts as it is very interesting to read about others' gaming experiences and anecdotes. Thus, I decide to share my long-lasting game addiction.

When I was around age 12 or 13, I was introduced to a game called Football Manager. In this game, you are the manager of the soccer club. You can buy/sell players, select players for the line-up, adopt different tactics, upgrade facilities and hire coaches. It is not like the popular Winning Eleven or FIFA. You don't control players and play in the match. Instead, you substitute players, change formation and command your team like what the manager acts in real life. So this game is the same as people build their amusement park in Roller Coaster, form a society in Sims. It is about building a dream team that can win titles and glories. You should try it if you are a fan of soccer.

Back in those days, I used to play soccer with my friends weekly mostly after school. Sometimes, I went to my friend's house, which was near my school, after playing soccer. He would show me the games he was playing and share the games with me. Of course, he conspired to make me compelled to the games, such that he had someone to discuss with. This is what a good friend would do! I don't quite remember whether Football Manager was the first game that he recommended. But, it was those early games that he urged me to play.

If you number your fingers, you can count how many years I have been playing Football Manager. The first version of the game is called CM01/02. And the latest version is called FM 2011. In fact, this game has been my major entertainment in my adolescence and young adult (now). Merely the number of years I have been playing this game is not a comprehensive of my obsession. I still remembered those days, the first thing I would do after I went home was to boot my computer. Then I started to manage my teams as if this was my real job. I would play the game while I was watching TV. I would play the game while I was doing my homework. In case you are curious, it is a click and process game. So I could do my homework while waiting for the game to process. Occasionally, I identify myself more of a full-time soccer manager than a full-time student. I am not exaggerating. When I look back a few times, I always find that I consume too much time on it. For example, I am playing FM2010, the time I have spent on the game is 150 days real-life time, not including the time that I exit and restart the match, which I do it quite often.

I have tried a few times to "cold turkey" this game as it is going to ruin my life. It ruins at some degree already. I am now forced to be in a "cold turkey" mode for this game because the game cannot run with parsing xml errors. The good news is that I don't vision myself playing this game anymore as I believe there are more challenges in real life, which will be far more exciting than this simulation game.

Crowdsourcing reminds me of grid computing

Crowdsourcing is the idea that a company outsources the tasks that are previously done by employees to a group of undefined virtual crowd, who share the same interest and passion. Many forms of crowdsourcing exist in the world. iStockPhoto is an example of crowdsourcing. Although the participants on this platform aren't hired by anyone, they have the market demand in mind while they are shooting photos. Grid computing allows volunteers to have their idle computers help compute a small piece of some large-scale projects. BOINC is a grid computing project that is being held in Berkeley. Volunteers only have to register and download the software. It will run automatically when the computer is idle.

I find that both crowdsourcing and grid computing have something in common. First of all, they benefited from the established internet. Internet speed has grown a lot over the past decade. It is one of the main reasons why crowdsourcing and grid computing have been prospering as well. Imagine if we lived in the old modem world, how could crowsourcing and grid computing be feasible? From our guest speaker's speech, the system that he is developing is a real-time competition for participants. If your internet is faster, you could probably work on more tiny problems and earn more rewards. Although time is not a critical issue for grid computing, it does require smooth internet connection in order to transfer data that needs calculation and the result. Especially, other computations might depends on your result. Thus, internet speed is indispensable to both.

Secondly, both require the involvement from a large group of unknown people in order to be time efficient. Regarding the translation crowdsourcing project that was mentioned in class, each piece of paper or essay is divided into snippets. Each contributor will work on their piece of snippet. Meanwhile, contributors are unknown to the manager. Grid computing is exactly the same, with the exception that the algorithm substitutes the manager. As many people can contribute to different parts of the project simultaneously, grid computing and crowdsourcing requires less time than the sequential way.

Without the established internet and the heavy involvement from the online population, crowdsourcing and grid computing will only be innovative uses of computing power on the paper. Besides time efficiency as many computations or tasks can be completed in parallel, they are also economically effective.

Buying computers to process large data is not as expensive as it used to be. One can buy a $200 computers easily these days. However, it is not the total expense. Buying more computers implicitly means more spaces, more fans and more staff to maintain. The total expenditure might be scary enough. But now, you might only need a few servers computing and connecting to clients (volunteers). It is less overhead and maintaining fees for grid computing. As for crowdsourcing, the company can employ less staff. The one-time overhead is the developing expenses for the coordinating platform and the set up fees. Although the company has to reward online participants and hire a manager to coordinate the project, it is usually might cheaper than hiring permanent staff.

Grid computing is very similar to crowdsourcing in terms of economical factor and the dependency on the maturity of the internet infrastructure and the participation rate. However, crowdsourcing seems to generate more law issues, ethical problems and employment benefits than merely grid computing. Will you go for crowdsourcing? It is hard to say. But if I were the employer, why not?

Youtube + Net Neutrality

I will treat myself as an interviewee as those were interviewed for "Publicy Private and Public: Social Networking on YouTube.”

Interviewer: Hi! How is your day? Do you mind if we videotape the whole process?

Bobby: Sure! No problem!

Interviewer: What are the major advantages and disadvantages about participating on YouTube? Why is YouTube better than other online videos sharing sites? Are you a ‘‘YouTuber’’? Why or why not?

Bobby: Youtube is a fabulous place where you can share your videos or watch others’ videos with high-speed and high quality. On top of it, it is free and doesn’t impose restrictions on how long you can watch per day. Also, it is easy to categorize videos for different audiences (public vs private). I am not quite sure about how you define “YouTuber”. I spend an hour on YouTube every day. However, I don’t often upload my own videos.

Interviewer: Nice! I will check them out for more detail. Do you know all the people who have posted comments to your videos? Where do you know them from (YouTube, elsewhere online, offline)? What were your reactions to the comments on your videos?

Bobby: My videos are mostly about school work, but they are fun to watch. I would define them as ‘publicly private’ videos. There isn’t any comment, but some of my offline-friends “like” the videos. However, I would like to see more positive and encouraging comments. Although my friends didn’t leave comment on YouTube, I forced them to give me feedback when I showed them my videos.

Interviewer: Under what circumstances do you ‘‘friend’’ someone? Do you only make YouTube friends with people you know offline? Do you make YouTube friends with people only online or only from YouTube? Why? How do you decide to whom you will subscribe?

Bobby: I do not befriend with anyone on my YouTube account. However, if I really befriend with someone on YouTube, I believe they would either be my offline friends or some interesting online friends. Befriending with online people doesn’t harm me anyway and there isn’t any benefit that they can gain from befriending with me. In terms of subscribing to channels, I subscribe to channels that often upload new videos (such as lectures, episodes, funny videos).

I try to share my YouTube experience in a new way. In brief, YouTube is more like a personal entertainment or learning platform (such as online lectures) rather than a social platform, as it can’t really connect people that you know offline.

Here is one of the few that I uploaded to YouTube. Enjoy!

Net Neutrality, which means equal access if some amount of money is paid, heated up the class last Thursday. However, unlike many other keywords, which flooded the search results. I couldn’t find much up-to-date information/articles about Net Neutrality, nor could I find any in-depth analysis about Net Neutrality online. I could not stand on any side because of the lack of comprehensive information on the issue. However, I do have some concerns after the Google and Verizon’s proposal was approved.

“How are the Wireless Service Providers (WSP) going to charge the user and the content users? Will the fees that the WSP charges the content providers at the expense of the users?” I don’t know why FCC would approve the proposal without any of the detail how WSP would adopt the proposal has been revealed. Is it because the FCC tried to comprise with the big companies? If that’s the case, do they really have enough resources/ authorities to scrutinize the WSP? In addition to whether FCC has enough authority, Google has been saying that having protection is better than no protection. However, I don’t know what the restrictions are and how they can protect us. Especially, I don’t know whether the proposal encompasses restrictions that can prevent WSP from overcharging content providers and users. Otherwise, I couldn’t imagine that we will be charged for visiting Facebook or doing a Goggle search, which are most people’s daily routine. Could you?

Net Neutrality- Analysis after class and the class panel

Today we had a fierce panel discussion about Net Neutrality from different perspectives, including F.C.C., Comcast, AT&T, Verizon and small business representatives. From the point of an audience, I really want to comment on their arguments.

I was assigned to be a Comcast person. But, I don't really have any stance right now, given my limit understanding to the 5-years on & off issue.

Our representative was really active during the panel. Nice job! There was one point that he kept insisting on- providing better service for the customers. He brought up the Amazon 2 days shipping example. He asked the question that if Amazon can offer the audience a free 2 days shipping and better return policy, what the audience

If there isn't Net Neutrality, then Amazon can pay Comcast for more bandwidth (let say), then users can have a better experience surfing the Amazon stores than other online stores that don't pay Comcast. Then he asked the audience whether would like to go for Amazon or other stores which offer worse services(lo. People would definitely say we went for Amazon as it provided better service in the case. This is a rational customer behavior. He used the technique called "bundling" (If no one uses it before, then I coin it=]) to blur people' sights. He bundled something (2 day shipping) that's correct or makes sense to people with something that we are still uncertain about (whether net neutrality really help provide better service).

However, due to the time that I have, I am just going to discuss about Comcast today. I might talk about the others later if I still remember and once I have time. Also, I find that this short comment is kind of not that streamlined, but my point is straight and clear though.

Happy Chinese New Year!

Celebrate! This is our Chinese New Year! 2011 is the year of Hare!

I could imagine that I will see tons of Red shirts, Red jackets, Red shoes, Red hats tomorrow. Go Bears! Go Chinese New Year! It is awesome that tomorrow is Thursday, then people can go and have their New Year Dinner tomorrow night! Poor me! Can't make it, I need to prepare for something (Not test, exam, etc. Yeah! They are not important! No! Just kidding! I am still a student! Haha!) Anyway, wish you guys all the best luck with the Hui Chun, it means May the fortune comes to your house!