Now this was definitely an interesting way of dealing with piracy issues as I have never seen anything like this before. This incident had to deal with a man named Yonatan Cohen who has been operating a large business that sold a product called the “Power Player” through various kiosks in highly populated shopping malls. The Power Player is basically a device that contained pirated versions of popular Nintendo games such as Donkey Kong and Super Mario Bros. He was eventually convicted guilty for his crime and has to face penalties such as spending 60 months in prison and after his prison sentence is served he will be deported back to Israel. But the real shocker was this advertisement that was published in a video game magazine:

As stated on the bottom of the page “This ad was paid for by Yonatan Cohen as part of his restitution to warn others about the dangers and penalties associated with violating the copyright laws”. Basically, he had to use some of the funds that he earned through selling these illegal Power Play products to fund an advertisement about his crime and punishment. I have honestly never seen anything like this before. Hopefully this will also raise some awareness for all of those unsuspecting customers as well who purchased these products in the mall thinking that it is a perfectly legal product.

Let this be a lesson to aspiring entrepreneurs that just because something is very profitable doesn’t mean you should do it if it is illegal as you’ll end up losing everything and so much more.

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Looks like Microsoft is offering an incentive for Internet users within the US to be able to win gifts and prizes for using its MSN search engine. You can find more information about it at www.msnsearchandwin.com.

From what I am reading, you would basically use the search engine as you normally would and if you just happen to search for a keyword or term that triggers a prize, on the top portion of the results page will be a link that you can click on to try and claim your prize. I know that I don’t qualify for the prize, but I just tried it for fun and I can tell you ahead of time that the most obvious ones like “Xbox 360” or “Windows Vista” doesn’t seem to produce any prize links.

This is a pretty common marketing strategy that I have seen companies do as a way to attract new users. Incase anyone is wondering what the catch is, it is to get you to try the search engine to hopefully get you to use it more often and to adopt it as one of your main Internet searching tools. I guess you wouldn’t have much to lose as you can test it out to see if it is a worthy search engine or not and at the same time you can win some free stuff.

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Today I accidentally stumbled upon a piece of news that happened in a particular Blenz franchise here in Vancouver a few days back. For those who are unaware, Blenz is a coffee house. What caught my attention was this image that has been floating around the Internet:

As it appears, it seems like four employees that worked for this particular Blenz franchise were fed up with their working conditions and felt that they were not appreciated and therefore they decided to quit by placing this large note on the window of the store for the entire public to view which is essentially the four employees being blunt and direct to their former boss, which is possibly the franchise owner, that they quit due to various circumstances.
I know the first reaction from most people is that these guys are like heroes for sticking it to their former employer in such a publicized way for treating them poorly. Even for myself, I am one of the first people who would absolutely agree that in many cases certain companies treat their employees as if they are expendable resources to help drive profits for the business without too much concern about their personal well being and so I would applaud them for speaking out. As odd as it may sound to many business owners or people who work in higher management roles, often times these complaints and concerns that are brought up by employees is to help the business grow as they genuinely like the company and want to help improve it.

In regards to agreeing with the way they chose to deal with the situation though, I personally don’t fully agree with it. Keep in mind that I personally can’t verify the merits of the information provided on that picture, so I am just basing this from a general sense as I see and hear similar situations happen everyday in other companies. For this particular incident though, since this is a company that is a fairly large organization, there were probably other ways that they could of gotten their voice to be heard internally such as attempting to contact individuals from a higher corporate level to help rectify the situation. Who knows, maybe the person is just following rules and directions from his superiors which is often a factor that many people overlook.

If you think about it too, even for myself as a general spectator of the incident I would immediately think of the entire Blenz company as a whole in this ordeal as oppose to just that particular franchise. So unfortunately, if their intent was to just target this particular franchise operator, placing it for the public to view in this fashion is probably going to create a public relations disaster for the company in general which I don’t think is what they originally intended to do. Carelessly start a fire in one place and the odds that it will likely create a fire in other places that you did not intend are highly possible.

Like every large company, you are bound to have executives and managers who seem to care about nothing but themselves and profits. Likewise, large companies are inevitably going to have certain employees who do nothing but abuse company resources and to try to work the system for personal gains and so everyone needs to see things from each other’s point of view. However, I personally believe that if a company worries too much of its material assets while neglecting to take care of its most important assets, their employees, they will not be as successful as they could be. Like the old saying goes, if you take care of the people they will take care of the profits.

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I was reading about an incident today about a person who had a very bad experience at a particular restaurant ranging from bad food to receiving horrible service. In the end when the bill came, they decided to give them less than a 10 percent tip. When the employees tallied up the total, they realized that the tip was less than 10 percent and so they then approached the customers with an angry attitude and tried to imply that the tip must be at least 10 percent of the total price and that they couldn’t leave without paying that amount. The end result, the customers then decided to not tip them at all and the employees yelled at them to never come back.

I personally never understood these attempts from restaurants that try and force their customers to pay tips regardless of the quality of experience that they have received as if tips are like some kind of mandatory restaurant dining tax. I think the most common argument that I hear from people who feel that everyone should always tip 10 percent regardless of their experience is because people such as the waiters and waitresses at a restaurant make very little money and so tips are suppose to be a way for them to generate a livable income. I personally don’t think that is a valid reason as by that logic virtually every convenience store clerk or fast food restaurant employee should also receive a 10 percent tip.

For myself, I personally see tips as a way for you to tell the business that you enjoyed the service and that paying them more than you are suppose to is a way to encourage them to maintain their great offering and at the same time to hopefully encourage the business to grow and expand into something better. It’s kind of like that you vote with your dollar saying where if you keep buying things from a certain vendor or provider, you are basically supporting their beliefs and operation standards to maintain a presence in your community.

In a sense, I guess I see tips more as an investment to the community. For example, if there is this great small restaurant that provides better service than some kind of large franchise, in my mind providing that extra 10 percent will help them grow their business so that hopefully more people could enjoy it. On the other hand, if a particular restaurant provided me with bad service or that I was simply being served in an assembly line type of fashion, not providing a 10 percent tip is a way for me to say that you didn’t really go out of your way to try and provide me with the best experience, so in return I shouldn’t go out of my way to pay you more as I will also treat you like a vending machine and expect to pay no more or less than what was advertised. You can usually find places that will give you the bare bone minimums at a fast and cheap price, but a lot of times the places that provide the best often struggle financially to compete with others to stay in business and so in my mind the tip is meant to partially help them tackle that obstacle.

In the end though, I think tips in general should be viewed as a form of voting for a company and its practices as opposed to some form of obligatory fee that is placed upon customers to accommodate low wage employees in a business.

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There are a lot of rumblings around here as Electronic Arts, one of the world’s largest video game publisher, is cutting jobs across the board. On record, the figures I am reading is that the layoffs affect about 5 percent of its work force which equals to about 325 to 350 people. On the other side, the numbers I am hearing from people who work in the industry are saying that the number of people that were laid off are more in the range of 900+.

That is definitely bad news for a lot of people as it hit them all by surprise without any time to find an alternative job or form of income. I even read that it was pretty much like a cattle call where people were just constantly given the news that there is no longer a position for them and that they were then given about 5 minutes to pack up their stuff and leave. I hope everyone affected by this will be able to get back on their feet in no time.

Another perspective about this situation that I am reading from a lot of other people who have no remorse over the situation is how they are mocking everyone who complained about the long work hours that are common for most people who work in the game industry. For those who are unaware, there was recently a huge uproar against EA from its employees and their family members on how the company forces people to work ridiculously long hours to the point that one pretty much does nothing but work for EA all day. Anyhow, their perspective on the situation was that everyone who was complaining about having to work long hours now would probably want to go back to that as oppose to be unemployed.

I guess this type of scenario always boils down to the same thing where one side claims that the company is just being greedy by trying to cut down cost to increase their bottom line and the other side claiming that it is purely a business decision to do so in order to improve the company. It’s hard for me to say personally on what the real reasons are as I don’t exactly have inside information about the company plans, but I’m pretty sure it probably had a little to do with both.

An interesting thing that I am reminded of about this situation though are the countless debates on how there really isn’t such a thing as true job security as with unfortunate examples like this a company could be forced to make drastic changes that will affect you. In my opinion, because of this it should be important that you are working on something because it is something that you truly want to do as opposed to just for money. That way, if what you are doing unfortunately has to come to an end, at least you can leave knowing that you had a great experience and will be confident in fulfilling the next chapter in your professional life. Otherwise, you’ll just be a disgruntled person complaining about how you have left with nothing to show and how it has destroyed your financial future.

Generally speaking, if you pursue something that you truly have passion for and believe in it, you could always find ways later on how to make money with it. Doesn’t matter if this is your own business or a job that you are pursuing, enjoying and being good at what you do will always open opportunities for you to satisfy your financial needs. I wish everyone that was affected by this the best in starting a new path.

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