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There's few surprises in the Spike TV Video Game Awards trailer for BioShock Infinite. However, there is a lot of gameplay footage set to some soothing tunes. See Irrational Games' unique mix of FPS action and American history in the latest trailer, after the break.
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Diana Clement 's Opinion
Your Money and careers writer for the NZ Herald
Diana Clement: Knowing tricks best defence against scams
Persuasion is a key part of the sales patter. Photo / Getty Images
We're conned every day of the week. Sometimes it's perfectly legal - such as the salesman on your doorstep, or the gushing claims about how that cream visibly reduces wrinkles. Other times it's a scam such as an email claiming you've won the lottery or are due to inherit millions.
Both scammers and salespeople use persuasion tactics designed to part man (or woman) from money. Too many of us fall for the patter. At least we do if the person is good at what they do.
There is a science to how we are persuaded. One of the most common sales techniques uses reciprocity. People want to give back to others the form of behaviour they have received first. Our brains are hardwired that way.
Or if someone does you a favour you owe a debt to him or her. The bottom line is that people are more likely to say "yes" to those who offer them something for free. Being given a gift is common. This could be the free digital camera or hotel nights offered by timeshare salespeople.
I regularly see adverts for "free seminars" allegedly valued at some ridiculously high price. The reality is that they're sales pitches for the paid-for seminar or some product. Once you've pocketed your freebie you're statistically more likely to hand over money for the real thing.
Sometimes the freebie is only insights. The salesperson or scammer makes out that they're sharing secrets with you or valuable information that they've spent years learning. You feel indebted to this kind person.
There are other common ways of making this pitch work. Someone wants you to spend money with them - as a genuine purchase or a scam. They ask for a high sum - say $3000 - to begin with. You baulk. They then go away and come back and say just for you the boss has allowed a special price of $2000. How would you like to pay? They've done you a favour by reducing the price especially for you and now it's your responsibility to sign up.
The concept of scarcity is very commonly used as a persuasion technique. Whatever it is that is being sold is made out to be unique and the victim is made aware of what they'll "lose" if they fail to take up the offer.
Time pressure is usually coupled with the scarcity. Buy within the next hour and get free steak knives is standard patter, says Lee Chisholm, operations manager at NetSafe.
During the last property boom I went to an apartment sales seminar run by an otherwise reputable real estate agency where, surprise surprise, the apartments were allegedly selling so fast you'd have to sign up that night or miss out.
Telephony and power salespeople who appear on my doorstep regularly use the same tactic. Like the apartment salespeople who stick the information to the wall and won't let you take the details away, the door-to-door salespeople are only in my area today and if I don't sign on the bottom line I won't get this alleged deal-of-the-decade they're offering.
Romance scams are a classic for using the speed technique. The scammers move fast when they find a prospect, says Chisholm. A lonely Kiwi single who is desperate for love is showered with compliments and poems over hours or days.
"They say: 'I will do anything for you, even if it means coming to New Zealand. But I just need some money first'," says Chisholm. Sometimes the victims send their transcripts to NetSafe. So similar are the victim's stories that Chisholm wonders if the scammers share notes.
A classic scarcity story is the flatting scam that has sucked in many Kiwis desperate to get a decent rental. They may reply to an advert for a too-good-to-be-true apartment on the waterfront for a really cheap weekly rental cost. It's all done over email because the "owner" is overseas "working in an orphanage" or something designed to pull your heartstrings. "They say: 'You can't look at it because I am not there. Once you pay the bond and rent I will send you the key'," says Chisholm.
We are very easily persuaded by fake authority. Salespeople and scammers alike make a big effort to sell themselves as knowledgeable, knowing that we'll value them more for it.
One of the tricks is to have someone else introducing them. It doesn't matter if the person is connected to the salesperson/scammer. I saw this recently where the sidekick of an "entrepreneur" running a seminar warmed the audience up by gushing about how lucky they were to have her boss's time.
Another way of doing this is for a cold caller to arrange a meeting with you and their "expert".
This also works for scammers who tell us they're from the Inland Revenue Department, bank or other organisation.
The next ploy is to ask you to commit to something. It's probably a small sum of money at the beginning. But you're asked to make bigger and bigger commitments. In a recent scam dubbed "puppygate", Kiwis were offered pedigree puppies from overseas. Once they'd paid a shipping fee they were committed to the purchase. Next came a request for insurance, and then a customs fee. The puppy, of course, was fictitious.
Another weapon in the salesperson's arsenal is to find common ground. We all like to say "yes" to people we like. So the salesperson pays us compliments and pretends that we're co-operating.
He or she may find things out about you - such as your child plays rugby - and then purport to have this same interest in common.
Salespeople of the legitimate and illegitimate kind play on fear. The classic example of this, says Chisholm, is the vacuum cleaner salesperson who comes around, does a demonstration and says: "Oh my God, look at the mites in this carpet. Do you have children? You have to DO something about this." The customer (or victim as some people would prefer to call them) is scared into making a purchase.
It's the same with those "germy germs under the rim" that we heard about on TV for years scaring us into buying XYZ brand of toilet cleaner.
The baby equipment industry is great at using this persuasion tactic to wrest unnecessary money from new parents. "If you don't buy this 2014 model, or this new-fangled highly expensive model you're risking the life of your baby."
A recent scam that has used fear involved new immigrants to New Zealand being cold-called and told that there was a mistake with their visa and they would be deported the next day if they didn't pay $900 by Western Union that day.
Greed is an easy emotion to play on. We think our life would be so much better if we just had a little more money, says Chisholm.
NetSafe had a complaint last month from someone who had borrowed and lost $660 to a Facebook scammer. The scammer had hijacked a friend's page and was chatting online with the victim about having just won $50,000. The victim was convinced his name was on the list of winners as well and was directed to a phishing page that looked genuine but was not. To pick up his $50,000 the victim had to pay $660, which he borrowed, in administration charges.
Then there's consensus. We look to the actions and behaviours of others to determine our own. We hear that three people in this street have bought this broom already. If the neighbours had then it must be a good buy, mustn't it.
The investment scammers go one step further and tell you how other Kiwis have made millions doing whatever it is they're selling by getting in early. You're not going to want to miss out are you?
Last year 562 people told NetSafe they'd lost money to scammers. Those amounts ranged from $3 to $224,000. The highest figure was for a dating scam.
Collectively New Zealanders spent millions of dollars on things that were sold to us using the same persuasion techniques.
Watch and listen next time someone tries to sell you something. What persuasion tactics are they using?
Being aware is the best defence.
- NZ Herald
Diana Clement
Your Money and careers writer for the NZ Herald
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I need to create web application with module of instant messaging. And according to my task I should use Yii for my web application and node.js for creating notification about new incoming message.
As web-server nginx is used, database - MySQL.
Can you help me with some documentation or examples how to configure and use these correctly? (Yii + node.js + nginx)
What database you recommend to me use for this module? (mongodb, mysql)
Thank you!
A recent ruling by the Washington State Court of Appeals in Cannabis Action Coalition v. City of Kent has declared collective medical marijuana gardens illegal because they can only consist of registered medical marijuana patients and Washington State has no medical marijuana registry.
Confused? That’s understandable, some background is in order.
Washington State has always had a loosely written medical marijuana law. Passed in 1998, the law does not actually provide any arrest protections for medical marijuana patients. Unlike any medical marijuana state but California, there is no statewide registry of medical marijuana patients. There are no Washington State medical marijuana cards, only doctor’s recommendations typed on tamper-proof paper. Washington State defines a fairly standard set of conditions to qualify for the recommendation, but it remains only an affirmative defense in court to charges of possession and/or cultivation -- patients can still be arrested.
Initially, Washington didn’t even define how much marijuana a patient could possess and cultivate, referring only to a “60-day supply.” That supply turned out to be fairly generous in western areas like Seattle and mighty low in eastern areas like Kennewick, depending on the attitude of law enforcement toward medical marijuana. Eventually, that 60-day supply got defined as 24 ounces (a pound and a half!) and 15 plants -- the greatest statewide limits in the country.
But there still remained the problem of where to buy marijuana if you couldn’t or wouldn’t grow it. That’s where entrepreneurs stepped in with a creative interpretation of the “designated provider” (caregiver) portions of the law and the activists were more than happy to help. A caregiver, who could only serve one patient at a time, was legally allowed to assist their patient with the use of medical marijuana. So, entrepreneurs opened storefront dispensaries. As a customer (patient) approached the counter, they would sign a note designating the clerk at the counter as their “designated provider.” The clerk would offer some marijuana, free of charge, to the customer, who would then, out of the kindness of his heart, donate some money to the clerk to reimburse his costs of production. Then the customer would sign a note revoking the clerk’s status as “designated provider” so that the next customer in line could sign up that clerk as “designated provider. See? That’s not a clerk at a dispensary…that’s a “designated provider serving only one patient at one time.”
This plainly illegal operation of dispensaries led to some raids and much anger from the medical activist community. There had to be some way of meeting the need for dispensaries. Soon, one of their top legislators had written a bill, SB 5073, which would finally bring some order to the medical marijuana market in Washington. It clearly defined dispensaries and created a voluntary statewide patient registry with medical marijuana cards. It also defined patient collective gardens so 10 patients could legitimately pool resources to cultivate and harvest up to 45 marijuana plants.
But then the US Attorneys on the Eastern and Western districts of the state cried foul. They did not want to see the legalization of dispensaries and threatened the then-Governor Christine Gregoire that any state employees involved with the aiding and abetting of federally illegal marijuana commerce would be brought up on federal charges. Gregoire used her power of line-item veto to strike the sections of the new law that created dispensaries and a registry, but in a nod to the needs of legitimate patients, kept the portions that established the 10-person collective gardens.
There was also established a 15-day waiting period before a “designated provider” could switch patients, clearly a move by the legislature to eliminate the loophole allowing storefront dispensaries. So the entrepreneurs switched from being “providers for one patient at a time” to being “collective gardens for 10 patients at a time,” and continued operations as storefront dispensaries without missing a beat. When a patient comes in, he becomes Patient #1 in the collective, the existing patients slide down a slot in the list, and patient number 10 is dropped from the collective.
This is where the City of Kent comes in. Not wanting any medical marijuana dispensaries no matter what loophole they’re using, the city banned collective gardens. A group called the Cannabis Action Coalition sued, saying SB 5073 legalized collective gardens and the city had no right to ban them. That’s when a smart attorney for the city noticed that collective gardens were only legal if comprised of registered patients:
APPEALS COURT: “Kent, in response, contends that the plain language of the [SB 5073] did not legalize collective gardens because collective gardens would only have been legalized in circumstances wherein the participating patients were duly registered, and the registry does not exist. The trial court properly ruled that Kent is correct.”
So now, not only are the storefronts operating as “collective gardens” officially declared illegal in Washington State, but so are the legitimate groups of ten patients cultivating 45 plants for their personal medical needs who never had any intention of profiting or opening a storefront. All patients in Washington State have left is the right to possess and cultivate their own marijuana without any protection from arrest, except for the possession of one ounce made legal for all Washingtonians by recreational legalization and, eventually, recreational stores in which to purchase up to an ounce of marijuana.
If Washington State had a voluntary patient registry, those collective gardens would still be legal, if a bit in a gray area. Let’s see, who has been one of the most vocal opponents of forming Washington state patient registry, going back to the 20th Century? Which groups and medical marijuana leaders have steadfastly refused to budge on even a voluntary patient registry, complaining that means patients would “register like sex offenders?” Who was it that vigorously opposed a “heinous patient registry?” Who called for the retirement of the legislator who tried passing that SB 5073 because she’d be “forcing us to register like sex-offenders?”
Why, that would be the same Cannabis Action Coalition that just lost the appeal vs. the City of Kent and stood as the loudest opponent to the recreational legalization in Washington State that finally protected patients from arrest for misdemeanor possession.
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California's Prop. 5 Could Change the Course of America's Drug War
Californians have chance with the NORA initiative to reject decades of fear mongering and try alternatives to jail for drug abuse.
It was in Los Angeles in 1983, while I was attending John Burroughs Junior High, when I recall coming home and tuning into an episode of the popular ABC sitcom, Diff'rent Strokes . I remember watching intently as First Lady Nancy Reagan teetered onto the screen.
I watched that show the way I did most other American sitcoms having to do with race relations, with a studious blend of curiousity, fascination, and burgeoning media criticism. I hadn't been born in the U.S., but I'd been living in the diverse megalopolis since 1977. That was long enough to know that this country had rather serious, unresolved problems when it came to skin color, class, ethnicity, culture and language.
To say nothing of drug use.
There was no way to avoid it. Most of the kids in my public school were not from well-to-do families, but the children of the well-to-do were actually the first kids I saw with illicit drugs and cigarettes -- that was back in elementary school. After that point, I saw cigarette, drug and alcohol use everywhere, all around me, whether at the hands of rich kids buying and selling pills and powder for weekend parties, or self-destructing teens trying to flush trauma out of their bodies with copious amounts of Olde English malt liquor.
Standing in front of the television in our living room, I remember thinking, most vividly, that Nancy Reagan's head was enormous. I also clearly remember the smiles plastered on the cast member's faces as she adopted a motherly tone and explained that what the kids had to do was to "just say no to drugs."
It was an amazing bit of an accomplishment for the federal government's anti-drug crusade: let's work with Hollywood to beam the message straight into American homes, using one of the most popular shows on television at the time.
The thinking behind Nancy Reagan's appearance on Diff'rent Strokes probably went something like this: make it stern, but friendly. We want the kids to know that everything is just fine, and that everything will stay calm, as long as they say "no."
With the War on Drugs, the accompanying, implicit threat is also always there, whether it's spoken or not: If you don't listen to us, if you make a different decision, all bets are off. Once you use actually use an illicit drug -- and especially if you dare to sell one -- you have become something 'other.'
You have become a criminal.
The kind of criminal that California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger was talking about when he announced his opposition to Proposition 5, the Nonviolent Offender Rehabilitation Act of 2008 (NORA), at a news conference this past week, in front of the Criminal Courts Building in downtown Los Angeles.
"[Proposition 5] is a great threat to our neighborhoods," Schwarzenegger was quoted as saying this week by the Los Angeles Times . "It was written by those who care more about the rights of criminals." Republican Gov. Schwarzenegger made his statement standing alongside four previous California governors: Gray Davis and Jerry Brown, both Democrats, and Republicans Pete Wilson and George Deukmejian.
Side-by-side, these five different men had the same, rabidly oppositional message about the sheer "danger" of Proposition 5, which is designed to divert tens of thousands of non-violent drug users away from incarceration; expand youth programs to prevent substance abuse and imprisonment; and mandate a continuum of rehabilitation and treatment options both during and after incarceration for people sentenced to do time.
Many initiatives and pieces of legislation end up being little more than hastily-conceived, reactionary proposals to what are perceived as public safety threats. This cannot be said of Proposition 5. In fact, NORA's drug treatment/education diversion is based around a well-conceived, three-tier system based on real clinical assessments, public safety, prior convictions, and ongoing evaluations (conducted by a new, 23-member Treatment Diversion Oversight and Accountability Commission), to make sure that the program is working as intended.
The proposition has been years in the making, in consultation with drug addiction recovery and rehabilitation experts, research scientists, even law enforcement and corrections personnel. The initiative is a big one, both in text length and impact: According to the independent Legislative Analyst's Office (LAO), the measure would require $1 billion in spending each year, something that would be completely offset by $1 billion in savings from the ever-increasing prison and parole budget in the State of California. To boot, the LAO projects an additional net savings of $2.5 billion over the next few years because unnecessary prison construction would not be undertaken.
The cost savings are undeniable, and terribly necessary. Currently, the cost to operate the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR) stands at $10 billion, and operating capacity in some prisons exceeds 200%. Federal District Court Judge Thelton Henderson has given state officials under November 5th to cough up $250 million toward new prison healthcare facilities, or else face the likely possibility of a federal take-over. With at least one death a week attributable to inadequate and negligent healthcare, the CDCR has already been found to be in constitutional violation of the Eighth Amendment banning cruel and unusual punishment. This past week, the state's youth detention system was also under fire again, when Alameda County Superior Court Judge Jon Tigar accused the Division of Juvenile Justice of failing to take "even the most basic, fundamental steps to implement reform."
Indeed, this sudden flash of gubernatorial solidarity might seem outright bizarre until one considers the fact that all five men have played primary, mutually reinforcing roles in building, expanding, and mismanaging what now amounts to one of the largest prison systems in the world. As it now stands, the California state prison system "supervises" 318,411 people, nearly 173,000 of whom are held in captivity.
Among both men and women, at least 80% have some kind of substance abuse history. More specifically, nearly 30% of women doing time in the state prison system are in because of a drug-related offense. (For men, that figure is just under 20%.) Many addicts, it has long since been known, end up committing non-violent property crimes in order to support their habits. So, when drug offense-related and property crime-related crimes are added together, we find that over 60% of women are incarcerated for one or the other. Over the years, the women (and men) I've interviewed behind prison walls have spoken consistently of their need for substance abuse treatment, in tandem with the ability to obtain their G.E.D's (or even just learn to read basic sentences); counseling for histories of sexual, physical, and mental abuse; and vocational training. While behind bars, however, most never get anything of the sort: by the CDCR's own admission, only 5% of prisoners receive substance abuse treatment while they're locked up.
Proposition 36 did a great deal to wake California up to the fact that non-violent drug users could actually benefit from services and treatment, and not end up costing the average $46,000 per person, per year, that state prisoners currently do. The problem has been that drug court judges wield far too much power in deciding who gets treatment, and of what sort, something that NORA would help to remedy. In addition, first-time offenders wouldn't be the only ones getting help.
Paul Kobulnicky, 55, is now a drug and alcohol counselor in San Diego County, employed by the very same residential treatment program, Casa Rafael, that he says saved his life from an addiction that surely would have ended his life. Following an accident, Kobulnicky got addicted to Vicodin, something that led to an arrest, the loss of his chiropractor's license, a divorce, and then a slide into crystal meth addiction. "If it weren't for Proposition 36," he told me, "I would probably just have paroled, without any treatment for my problems."
Instead, he's not only gainfully employed and sober, but had his record wiped clean because he successfully completed the program. He's also trying to get his vocational license back (something not possible after a felony conviction), has happily remarried, and gotten close to his daughter again.
"I'm passionate about what I do and so grateful for my recovery," he said. "Look at what I've been able to do with my life. That's why Proposition 5 is so important. Other people need that chance." As in other people our society now defines, nearly across the board, as "criminals."
All five of the governors assembled to speak out against Prop. 5 were there because -- and I'll say it -- this initiative represents a threat to the justification for what they built. They also each played crucial roles in feeding that system by supporting endless pieces of legislation specifically designed to expand what it means to be a "criminal," and how long "criminals" should be punished. "Laws change, depending on what, in a social order, counts as stability," and who, in a social order, needs to be controlled," as Ruth Wilson Gilmore wrote in her 2007 book, Golden Gulag: Prisons, Surplus, and Opposition in Globalizing California.
Who needs to be controlled, indeed.
For these five men, and for legions of Americans hooked on the notion that people's substance use decisions can and should be controlled and punished by law enforcement and government, drug users are key among them.
Only now, the verbiage is changing to suit the times we're living in. That's because the demonization of non-violent substance users isn't playing as well to the American public. (A Zogby poll in early October revealed that three out of four U.S. voters think the war on drugs is "failing.") The strategic shift in language is, thus, to the "sellers."
Thus, the opposition to Proposition 5 is being cast, at this last minute, as a "drug dealers' bill of rights," and giving them a "get-out-of-jail-free-card," and that it's about protecting "violent" criminals. (In point of fact, Proposition 5 adds penalties for serious and violent crimes, including gang-affiliated crimes, which I object to on the grounds that each "serious" criminal case is unique and should be sentenced and paroled as such; and that gang-enhancements in California are already excessively punitive and too easily subject to prosecutorial/judicial prejudice.)
These phrases are being repeated in a multi-million-dollar media blitz, over and over, in a rather familiar fashion.
Not at all unlike what Nancy Reagan told child stars Dana Plato and Todd Bridges, both of whom eventually became drug addicts. Plato died from an overdose in her 30s. "Just say no. Just say no. Just say no."
That's a way of looking at drugs in America just as removed from the reality of the illicit drug economy as Nancy Reagan was.
What Californian voters need to know, if they're removed from the drug scene and are worried about all these "dealers" in their midst, is the following.

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