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Today I'm just going to kind of go all over the place, post a few links, and ramble a bit. So pretty much the same as any other day.
Yesterday I saw The Operative: Noone Lives Forever and C&C: Zero Hour on sale at Future Shop for under $10 each. Today I saw Dark Cloud 2 and Amplitude for $9.99 each as well. That's four games, four excellent games, for less than the cost of one new one. It has finally happened, I have truly become a cheap ass gamer.
And why not? With great games being released at such a rapid rate, it's really hard to justify paying top dollar for anything but the absolute greatest games. Even then, those truly great games are probably only worth buying around the release date if they are multiplayer, because then at least you can be assured of a good range of players and player skill levels on the servers.
This also got me thinking about the future of online and real world commerce. Just down the block from where I bought Dark Cloud 2, brand new for $10, was a store selling a used copy for $29. It made me wonder if I brought it in to them right now, how much they would offer me for it. If it is more than ten dollars, I'd be making a profit, and could just turn around and head back to EB for another copy. The question I have, is how far are we away from being able to create an AI that will monitor these sorts of pricing shifts and be able to monopolize on them? Amazon.com already has a system in place where when you search for something they lost off all the different new and used versions of that item and how much they will cost. It really isn't that much of a leap from there to have a system that will just automatically track down that best cost and buy it for you as a one click option.
And my final thought of the day is this, if a placebo can have almost as much of an effect as the real thing, is it possible for me to still get a buzz off caffeine free diet Pepsi?
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Today I saw an article about how a call centre in Pakistan had an incident with people's medical records that is drawing quite a bit of media attention. Apparently a disgruntled employee sent an e-mail demanding more money and attached to it were several actual patient records. Add to that the additional paranoia that is being caused by a recent case in which call centre workers disclosed people's private information and funneled £200,000 worth of US customers money into offshore accounts, and you have a recipe for some gold old fashioned xenophobia.
The thing that strikes me as funny is that the articles all seem to say something like, "security has been a growing concern to companies that offshore call centre work". The implication is that if these same companies had gone with American call centres they would have been much better off.
But placing the blame on someone is easy when they are in another country. The truth is that the real culprits are the companies who do the outsourcing. Now, I'm certainly no ecmonomist, but even I recgnize the fact that the reason many of these companies are outsourcing this work is because they can get it cheaper somewhere else. Now, it isn't that foreigners are inherently untrustworthy, it is because you get what you pay for. Imagine you own gas station that sits across the street from another gas station, and you keep your price at the pump down by paying your employees next to nothing. You may consistently outsell your competitor across the street because you save costs, but I can almost guarantee that every month you are going to have more chocolate bars, chips, and pop go missing than your competitor.
Nobody likes to feel like they are making less money than someone else doing the same job. It doesn't matter if that job is across the street, or across the world. Why do you think things exist like the Monster Salary Centre? People are competitive, they want to feel like the work they are doing is as important, and rewarding, as what other people are doing.
The way to ensure that these things don't happen in the future isn't to stop outsourcing, it is to make sure that the companies you deal with aren't sweatshops. If you are thinking of sending millions of dollars overseas each year, make sure that a good portion of that makes its ways into the pockets of the people who actually do the work. Good business practices are universal, and can save a lot of headaches in the long run.
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