Friday 30 March 2007

Pimp My Blog, Support Play Asia and Cheap Xbox360 games!

If, like me, you run Firefox web browser and have a great piece of software called ABP (or AdBlocker Pro as its otherwise know) this post and my blog additions will not affect you too much. Together they make the internet a great advert free place, and the only exposure I get to adverts online now is when stupid MSN Messenger gets my email in its own choice of browser (i.e. IE7) rather than my "default Internet Browser" (this pisses me off).

Anyway, I hope you're not too offended by the addition of one of my favorite websites, Play Asia, and their new additions to my blog. Maybe one day this blog will drive enough traffic to make the 1 to 10,000 ratio or whatever it is to generate some money online, but maybe not! I support Play-Asia and buy all my cheap region free Xbox 360 games from them now that Lik-Sang is gone (and there goes the only healthy competition on the international games import market, thanks Sony).

The great thing is that apart from some localisation on the front cover, everything from the manual to the game menus is in FULL ENGLISH. Thats right, NTSC-J games for the Hong Kong region are around half the price and exactly the same as the PAL English counterparts. I'd even argue they were better because they don't have any of those filthy multi-language menus supporting German, Spanish and French. Plus you get them months before their Pal release, for instance, Gears of War I had weeks before I came home and people were still like "what... you have Gears of War... its not even out yet?!?". To add insult to injury I told them it cost me 40000 won (ie £20) and that it was in full English and they go mental!

So stop paying unhealthy UK prices for games and get over to Play-Asia now; they have a big list of games that will definitely work on UK machines so you won't ever get stung again.

Fortunately I own an NTSC-J Xbox360 so I don't ever have to worry about cheaper English language Asian games (ie games released for Hong Kong) but you'll find a lot of games are region free. Avoid anything by EA though... they suck balls by locking all their games to specific regions so they can bleed you of more money in the UK through regionalised advertising sponsorship.... bastards!!!

Friday 23 March 2007

The Million Person Outreach program! 1to1000000.co.uk

Touching one million people is my goal... not in a weird pervy way my usual readers might be thinking, but in a logical, I know, he knows, she knows way.

We all like to think our voice is heard, and more over that if we have something important to say our voice is going to be heard. I am trying to embrace the power of the internet to see if thats true. I have read articles about this before; how in some way we are all connected to the whole world by a chain of 6 people, but recently the idea has been playing on my mind.

Like a pyramid scheme, the logic is simple. I know 20 people, who in turn know 20 people, and so on and so forth. This is not a con, it is simply an educational exercise to be completed by a bored Software Engineering graduate (read GEEK) to test the power of this.

Potentially the plan goes like this...

1->20->400->16000->2560000000

There we go, simple and effective. The maths and implementation aren't quite that simple, but without going into those details, a pyramid scheme would only need another layer or 2 and the idea still works.


Why?
I have a few reasons really, but the main one is to see how far an online voice can travel. I find it interesting that we have a global interconnection of information and communication, but on the whole we can still be fed disinformation, lies and half truths by peers, advertisers, governments, whoever. I read a great Violent Acres article entitled The Government who cried Wolf and her sentiment was shared by myself in a lot of the things I write. It's not an original article, but its nice to hear someone who describes herself as an "Average Joe" (she is far from it in my opinion) waking up to these facts.

I like to think that we all have the power to touch others and in the complete opposite way to the emails I receive daily offering viagra, porn, to be enlightened, to pass this chain mail on to 5 of my friends and something good will happen to me, etc etc, I want to put something in motion that has the potential to make a difference. People believe these emails (still! It amazes me!), but I want to see if they will do the same in an effort for research and development.

Plus, this whole Sony hate month is coming to an end, yet they are still pushing their lies about how well the PS3 is doing and that makes me sad that a just because a company has a massive base, a stock pile of cash, and a direct line into the media they can inject lies, like a poison coursing through the veins of society, and people just lap it up. I want to see if email has that potential if we, the people, find something out that effects us all, if that information could hit the mainstream mind.


Whats in this for me?
Nothing more than the satisfaction of intellectual development and the stimulation of a bored mind.


Whats in this for you?
Ah, the age old question of give and take! Well, in an ideal world I will develop a means of giving a voice potentially massive portal for people. All news is subjective, but a means of hearing real peoples voices in regards to events, news and the real world sounds like a good thing to me. Having lost faith in the mainstream media, I want to know what real people are thinking and whats really going on.

I guess this is what sites like Digg are with a twist, but I'm interested more in the ability for users to filter out what news is relevant to their own lives. There are still a few details that need ironing out but the motion has begun.

Really, just the peace of mind in the potential for knowing whether or not if you had something to tell the whole world, how well you would be heard!


Apologies and Thanks!!
I should apologise and thank everyone who does take part in my experiment for the time they have taken to pass the email on, and for their efforts to see if my goal of enlightening the masses works.

In my email I request you Carbon Copy my 1to1000000.co.uk email address so I can see how many people you have touched, so please be assured your email address and those you send it on to will only be used by me for my own research and will not receive any unsolicited emails. This is a research project and I am not a 419 scammer!!!

The website will be up and running sooner rather than later hopefully, so in the mean time, please feel free to peruse my angry blog.

Tuesday 20 March 2007

Copyright Law stomps another great website...

CD-Wow is getting the Lik-Sang treatment in another case of corperate scumfucks being able to use Copyright Law as the reason to force the UK into high retail prices with no other options.

Explain to me how this harms the artists and I'll go back to buying my albums in the UK. We are told time and time again we are to "support the artists" as a justification for the iron fist of the RIAA and things like this reiterate the greed element of the record industry. I want to support the artists I love but I won't be ripped off in the process - like Sonys shakedown on Lik-Sang, CD-Wow will just be another long gone Asian website that helped the consumer by offering the UK access to that level playing ground the rest of the world has access to.

You are lucky to find an album for under £10 at a retail outlet (average price for a cd is around £13 these days), and with CD-Wow offering most chart CDs for less than £7.99 delivered each, its easy to see why the big boys in the UK would be losing out... hell, it puts the pricing some where in line with the rest of the world! The last time I checked, the artists (i.e. the people I want to support) got paid on a per CD basis (who also get fucked by the Industry but from a different angle), and as every single CD CD-Wow sells is legitimate I would be doing my bit for them, but unfortuately the system doesnt get enough of a cut.

With CD sales declining (less and less original artists, more covers by cretins, more copy cat bands in a vain attempt to have a "current" artist on every label and expensive pricing in the UK all being factors for this), the UK has to do something to try and "win back" the buying public. Taking CD-Wow away from us isn't going to do them any favours.

Im tired and will finish this in the morning! ;)

Monday 19 March 2007

Digg : The End of Subjective Broadcasting

Digg(tm) has to be one of my most visited sites for the past 9 months and I really do love to hate it now. Dugg(tm) news, as it becomes increasingly more popular, its becoming rife with over elaborating article news in a sorry attempt to get people to view their own site.

I am sick to death of people saying "The Best Flash Game EVAAAAAA!! w000t!" or "Unbelievable Work..ZOMG!?!" only to lead to some decade old piece that some teenage asshole has just found for the first time.

I guess social networked news brings its own take on internal "editorialism" but I'm pleading with the World here, for people to have a bit of self control the next time they feel the need to use a superlative to describe something they Digg... ask yourself these questions:

1) Is it really the best/amazing/unbelievable/life changing? If not.. STFU else goto 2;
2) Will it still be amazing in a few days/weeks/months? If not.. STFU else goto 3;
3) Has the article been online for more than a year? If it has, most of the people on Digg will have already seen is so STFU else goto 4;
4) STFU

You see, the moral of this rant is that the best articles on Digg are those that don't self gratify and allow the reader to decide whether they really are amazing. Most of the time you'll find its just better than average...

Thursday 15 March 2007

Sony Hate Month Continues - BluRay 2 : HDDVD 1, a Scoreline I find hard to believe...

Mikes comment reiterating this 2:1 ratio of BluRay sales hit home a little bit to be honest, as he is an In The Know guy who has also digested that stat as gospel truth. Given the theme of March being Sony Hate Month , so charged for landing its gimped console on our sandy shores ("who the fuck wants to see them"..haha, that movie quote works for 2 things in that statement!) I wanted to delve a little deeper.

The first worrying sign was that research material is proving a little difficult to come by. It seems it is hard to put stats down for unit sales so the consumer can't readily see where the format war is heading. Sony seemed very quick to announce themselves as the winner in January when the release of 2 popular movie exclusives saw a boost in sales (*shock).

Im not the only one struggling to find this data. Apparently, those with more than just a keen interest are using Amazon stats in a frantic effort to see whose winning, so the data is obviously a mixed bag. Of the more Sony suck theming stats, I found the following bites.

Sony officials also revealed that, according to an online survey of approximately 100,000 current PlayStation 3 owners conducted by the company, 90 percent have watched a Blu-ray movie on their console.

To me, thats a worrying statistic when the console is bundled with a "free" BluRay movie, TALLADEGA NIGHTS in the US. So 10% of those that bought a PS3 in the US/Japan don't give a shit about BluRay?! That or the movie was so horrible they couldn't watch it all the way through (which goes to show how much Sony care about you, by bundling a POS movie that no one would buy normally (note. The UK launch sees the film Click featuring Adam Sandler as a freebie!)). These are Sonys own statistics too! Even if they didn't like the bundled disc, I would say they tested it to "see the amazing differences", yet there are 10% of PS3 owners that don't feel BluRay offers enough of a difference to warrant buying a movie they actually want.

Plus, this statistic leads to

But even apart from that, 80 percent of those surveyed plan to purchase further Blu-ray movies, while 72 percent of respondents stated that they plan to rent a Blu-ray movie in the near future.

So let me get this straight... 10% thought BluRay was an unimportant feature on the PS3, then a further 10% watched the steaming pile of turd you provided them with and now have no intention of buying BlueRay movies..

Without getting technical (I like to keep my blog at surface level) I can see the merits of future gen (current gen is actually the correct term, it is 2007 ) but when 1/5th of those buying a console don't give a shit about one of its "key features" (see previous entry) you have definitely got something wrong.

Consumerwise, the first company to really embrace the triple format disc will win hands down, as consumers will be future-proof and be able to use it on current players they actually have at the moment. I would buy a HD DVD drive for my 360 tomorrow if DVD movies were dropped in favor of dual layer DVD and HD DVD discs... that would be awesome, and great value for money! I really don't see the Movie Conglomerates or the MPIAA loving the idea of providing people with discs they wont have to replace unfortunately! :(

Blu-ray discs are being declared the victor over rival HD-DVD by Blu-ray supporter Sony. 'And yet while all agree that it was a strong month for Blu-ray, opinion is split on whether the surge in sales is an indicator of stronger user adaption of Blu-ray compared to HD DVD, or simply a reflection of the larger number of new Blu-ray titles that hit the market over the month -- 25 new Blu-ray titles were released in January, compared to just 11 titles on HD DVD for the same period.'"

The statistics are largely pumped up by the "free" BluRay disc in the PS3, and as they pump more PS3s into the US and Japan, the amount of BluRay movies shockingly goes up too. I'm not saying that this is the only reason BluRay is "winning" the format wars, I just think the statistics used to draw these conclusions are manipulated to begin with.

Stock levels at Amazon are a little confusing too :



They show a stock level of, on average, 15k of both formats. The HD DVD graph seems consistent with a good throughput of sale and demand, whilst to me, the BluRay stock looks like stagnant stock rotation to me. Maybe I'm slightly jaded this month, but it does!

I also find total number of sales quite interesting:

More interestingly, VideoScan's numbers indicate that during the seven days between Jan 7 and Jan 14, Blu-ray managed to close the gap of total discs sold since inception with HD DVD by over seven percentage points, suggesting that if the current trend continues, the two formats could be at disc sales parity within weeks.

So, even with 2 million copies of TALLADEGA NIGHTS out there, BluRay is still trailing the total number of sales? Most of the FACTS are still blurred as we approach April, so this "race" is still a Black Box scenario.

Maybe if we had some actual sales figures from both camps, we might be able to see which format people seem to be buying. To me it still seems like nobody really cares, and I'm sure if you compared sales to DVD sales both formats get the finger at the present time.

So long as HD DVD doesn't slowdown its output of films, and catches up with a few killer releases, we hopefully won't be drowning in a Sony proprietary format in the future, one that thanks to DRM (that we all know Sony love so much), will mean we are enslaved to buying exclusively what they tell us, subjected to the advertising they make money from, watch it how they tell us (no skipping those trailers), on a machine they made/licensed, and led into a future of even more formats because Sony is now so "brilliant".

Wednesday 14 March 2007

Comical Ali Vs Phil Harrison - The Showdown

Is it just me or does every word that spews out of Phil Harrisons mouth just remind you of the now dead Iraqi minister "Comical" Ali? Its every fucking word that comes out of his mouth, it just reeks of bullshit...

After my last rant about Sony and their choices with the PS3, the 2007 Game Developers Conference took place in San Francisco and Phil Harrison was there to give a key note speech about PS3 Home (which admittedly does look pretty cool..if only for a few days until I get bored of it like Second Life) and again in his speech, surrounding interviews and general media that comes from his camp is just so reminiscent of the early days of Iraq II : This Time Its Personal (This Ones for you Daddy).


I've compiled a few of my favorite quotes by Phil, with what I think about them, and a comparable quote from the Comical genius himself.

Do you accept that Sony has had a bit of an image problem with PlayStation 3 in recent months? Phil Harrison: No, I don't accept it. I've been doing my best to make sure that the world sees PlayStation 3 for what it is. I can't deny that we've had some challenges, but I think those are all behind us. What – an overpriced POS?! No you've actually bee overhyping the PS3 and relaying bullshit information about its Super Computer Capabilities. Really Sony, the challenges are NOT behind you yet - you have a million of this monolith coming to the UK and they really aren't all preordered!!
Comical Ali says - "We are in control. They are in a state of hysteria. Losers, they think that by killing civilians and trying to distort the feelings of the people they will win. I think they will not win, those bastards."
It's all about software now, it's not about hardware. It's all about services, it's all about the way that the industry is changing and the way that we hope to be taking a leadership position in that change. Since when has Sony been pushing the issue of Software over Hardware? If he truly believed this, the BluRay wouldve been scrapped in favor of, oh.. I dont know, maybe an easy produce DVD drive that developers can actually use! Services too... hmm, I forgot with M$ having IPTV, Media Center etc etc that Sony had BETTER services to offer... Comical Ali says - "We have shot down 2 Apache helicopters. Have the Americans said yet that they were shot down by their - what do they call it - friendly fire? No? Well... [dramatic pause, then smiles] ...not yet!"
We've been hearing lots of positive things from lots of people, and the response on the blogs and the websites and the forum seems to be almost universally fantastic - so I'm delighted. So you've only been reading the positive Fanboy sites then, because what I know online the PS3 has been welcomed like a shitstorm! "The situation is excellent, they are going to try to approach Baghdad...and I believe their grave will be there."
There's still criticism of the PS3's high price point. How long is it going to be before the price comes down? But it's not about price, it's about value, and it's about putting into the PS3, offering the value that is going to make consumers satisfied - and I think we've done that. My sentiments exactly Phil... its not about price one bit.. I forgot that everyone has a spare £425+ in their pockets to buy a gimped PS3. Value is speculative and relative.. so for a CEO I guess this isn't a massive issue but £425 is a lot of money to me!
Comical Ali Says : "We're going to drag the drunken junkie nose of Bush through Iraq's desert, him and his follower dog Blair...There are 26 million Saddams in Iraq"
The backwards compatibility issue has been talked about a lot in Europe recently. You made comments some months ago saying that backwards compatibility was important, something that you wanted to give consumers and that they wanted... Why has that strategy changed? The strategy has not changed. We have made a technical change to the machine which moves us from being a hardware-embedded backwards compatibility solution to one which is a combination of hardware and software. This is Comical Ali all over! “The strategy has not changed”!! That could actually be a direct quote! The strategy has changed, changed in the favor of Sony, not the consumer. I read a recent article testing 12 PAL PS2 games on the PS3, all games I would say are worthy of playing (Guitar Heroes 2, GTA amongst them) and only 1 of them worked?! Jeez... what a great stance! Comical Ali says "They are not in Najaf. They are nowhere. They are on the moon. They are snakes in the desert..."
In America, where PS3 disc is already out, Blu-ray disc is surging ahead as the next-generation movie format of choice. It's absolutely trouncing any other formats, and I think we'll see the same in Europe and the UK. What?! Next gen wise this is speculative at best as the reports on the Next Gen format of choice are largely false, but saying its trouncing any other format is utter lies. Using the words "any other format" makes it sound like hes encompassing DVD into it, yet DVD is still the media of choice by far... incorporate DVD figures and its easy to see that no one currently cares about HD discs Comical Ali says "We're going to drag the drunken junkie nose of Bush through Iraq's desert, him and his follower dog Blair...There are 26 million Saddams in Iraq" : Falsifying facts, just like Phil!

So there we have it... one interview diluted into Comical Alis styling! This really could be part one of a million, as I took all those quote from ONE INTERVIEW!! There are a lot of better and more "Comical" ones but this will do for now! I said previously to not get me started on Phil Harrison but I just cant help myself... the guy is just a fucking douche!

Thursday 8 March 2007

UK PS3 at launch?!? I'd rather lick my own arsehole...

For those of you who don't know me all that well, you might say I know a little bit about video games... and not in the way that most people say "I know about X", I genuinely can be referred to as an expert in this genre. Why? Well, I live and breathe them, and have done all my life, and not many people can say that.

I dig a little deeper than that, and tell you that as part of my degree in Software Engineering I coded a Physics API that served as the basis for any video game from scratch, rendering such in OpenGL. I code a little for the PSP amongst other things, and have worked in the games industry (briefly appreciated, but thats another story). I grew up in front of a C64 and proceeded through every generation of video game console to date, devouring game after game to progress my own understanding and expertise so that one day I could develop the best game of all time. I know more about the history of video gaming than I care to recall and am an all round gamer geek.

I generally get that "chill" around the launch of a new console; its my crack.. I just love that new console smell. Gaming has revolutionised the way we think about home entertainment and I love that too, and he thought of a brand spanking new piece of kit under my TV fills me with anticipation for any developer to unleash its potential at any moment.

I've paid for my own consoles since the age of 13, starting with my own PSX, saving paperboy wages and mixing birthday and xmas money to eventually afford a new machine. I took time off college on Dreamcast launch day, telling my Physics tutor, much to her dismay, that a new console mattered more to me than her lectures. I'm now approaching 25 and I can generally afford a new piece of hardware out of my monthly disposable income at a push, but not on March 23rd 2007 I can't!

Sony have upped the ante with the PS3 to "considered purchase" with a pricepoint in the UK that is cringe worthy at best. Ripping out one of the more appealing features (by replacing the Emotion Engine with Software Emulation.. I mean wtf is that!) Sony force us to keep our PS2s out as not all games will definitely be supported in the European Launch, unlike the US and Japanese counterparts. Anyone who knows anything about emulation will tell you that 99% of the time emulated support is no match for hardware compatibility. Cheers for that Sony, its bad enough we've had to wait another 5 months for a PS3, then get ripped off with our pricepoint to begin with, but you're making our PS3 WORSE than the NTSC counterparts... thats a pretty bold statement of Fuck You in my book!

..and it seems that this is the Sony brand theme these days. They force standard after standard on us (I don't recall a Sony proprietary format that has genuinely succeeded in the mainstream, although I am open to suggestion) and they attempt to do it again with BluRay. My forecast is due to Sonys iron grip on the DRM for BluRay, HD DVD will be the choice of the average Joe, with BluRay just being used exclusively for PS3 games, until, like every other Sony proprietary format (Betamax, DAT, miniDisc, MemoryStick, UMD... need I go on!), it eventually gets laughed off as another Sony mistake. I know why they keep plugging away (to control a media market and make billions in licensing), but I just wish they wouldn't!

But Blu-Ray is a major factor in the pricing of the PS3, so how can I not be against this format from the get go. The infamous blue diode fiasco they seem to be having in manufacturing their drives was the suggested blame for the low production numbers from day one (and Europe got the major shaft with Sony deciding to allocate their stock to NTSC regions first), so it brunts most of my grudge for PS3 pricing.

Which brings me to my beloved past love, Lik-Sang, and the Iron Fist it used to smash them into oblivion. I can't, thanks to Sony, choose to purchase a Japanese PS3 and import it to the UK as that would break some (made up) international law. I can go to Japan, purchase a PS3 there and simply bring it home with me, but I will struggle to buy one from a reputable online retailer. I would much rather have a NTSC-J console, like my Xbox360 is, not just to save about half the price on Original titles (you know, so I don't have to resort to piracy/second hand buying for shitter games I would never pay and support at full price), but to have access to all the lovely games that never get released in the UK, or we get the shaft and have to wait whilst they are converted to PAL regions (which sucks balls might I add).

Generally Sony seems content giving its fan base the shaft, so in return I am giving the PS3 the shaft this generation around. I am not a fan boy of any specific console (I am a Console Fanboy if you must label me) and always plan to own any new hardware I can get my hands on, but this time Sony have pushed too far.

Pricepoint : Wrong - £450+ for a games machine is a big turn off, even with the BluRay Magic, and (now Emulated) Backward compatibility of PSX and PS2 games. Sony wouldn't even pay for the licencing of the rumble feature, with that cretin Phil Harrison (dont get me started on him) claiming rumble was "so last gen" then oh wait, due to popular demand they pay Immersion off and are now planning on putting it back in. I'm sure all the people who've stocked up on PS3 wireless controllers are rejoicing at the thought of having to buy a whole wave of new pads!

Technology : Wrong, wrong and more wrong! They've spend billions on R&D for the Cell processor then they put a measly 256mb RAM in, with a maximum texture size of 1.something mb (not 100% on this fact, I was pretty drunk in the conference I heard this at!) due to other limitations don't really cover themselves for future proofing. Whats the point in being able to load that 50Gb disk with textures, movies and game content if developers can't a) pull them off the disk quick enough (BluRay drives are sloooooow but will get faster Im sure) and b) dont have anywhere to quickly access them?! This, in laymans terms, is like building a theme park with all the best rides in, then only putting one entrance on the main gate with some slow old fuck letting people in, then only allowing a small group of people on the rides at once... it makes no sense!!

Customer Appreciation : Fuck off! Trying to force a movie format mixture on your customer base in a vain attempt to win a proprietary format war battle is not something I care to get into.

Exclusive Titles : All but none existent, with most developers pulling away from PS3 exclusivity, opting for a much wiser multi platform approach

Games Lineup : Most of the titles I want are coming to both 360 and PS3, and given the things I've seen with comparisons, the 360 version is generally better than the PS3, thanks to (better) graphical brute, oh... and have more RAM...something Microsoft didn't skimp on.

Future Proofing : Something Sony seem to like to drum home about their Cell Processor. From what I know in the coding world, unless youre a Mathematician with a meticulous approach to calculations in real time, and know the Cell inside out, squeezing every last drop of power out of the cell is almost impossible. I went to a (secret) PS3 tech discussion last year and the guest speaker suggested they had only seen about 20% peak rates with the PS3, largely due to other bottle necks. Developers currently don't need all that power, and will always struggle to use it due to other limitations, like only having 256MB of RAM to start with!

Development Potential : In fairness, for me personally, this is one of the only selling points for the PS3. I do quite fancy a dabble with PS3 Linux..


So of all those points, only the development side of things tempts me at the minute is having the ability to code on the box, and given I can do that on a number of other platforms.. Im going to give the PS3 a miss! I unsurprisingly already own both a Wii and an Xbox360 and really do love that Wii60 combo. So my message is Fuck You Sony, Fuck You in the eye!

Wednesday 7 March 2007

Here's how I set up a business when I was 23.... I'm a fucking douchebag, thats how!

Well I'm looking into sorting my own taxes out with the Inland Revenue and stumbled across this cock stain,with his self glorifying, motivational schpiele on how he set up his own business at 23 and now turns over £500k a year.

Founder of SwapGame.cock, Marc Day is a hero to all aspiring entrepreneurs the country owner... well, not quite. You see, in this rather drab piece of propaganda you may or may not miss the asinine way this fuck weasel founded his company.

Their Reason: Take time for thorough research

Take time for thorough research?! Swapping things... fuck me, thats brilliant... that must've taken him all his years at University to come up with that idea. A way of swapping/renting games online.. a childhood watching Swapshop would suffice.

No, the reason he was able to establish such a company is that his family were already rich.

"Importantly, I also secured a £30,000 bank loan. The bank was apprehensive, but I was able to use my parents' property as security and I made my father chairman of the company, which gave the bank more confidence. My father was experienced in business and I used him as a sounding board anyway."
Wow... I wish my daddy would let me secure my business loan on his property! Apprehensive my arse.. I remember going to the bank to ask them for a loan once and they looked at me like I'd just shit on the desk and wrote the amount I wanted with it.

So there we go... in a nut shell, if you want to start a business you need to do research.. oh, and have a family thats rich.. got that??? :|