The CEO Game

Vuvuzela whine ruining your World Cup? Get rid of it!

There comes a time, once in four years, when the entire world unites- regardless of any disputes or politics- around the game of soccer for one major event of pure entertainment and sportsmanship, which goes by the name of the “World Cup”. However, this time everyone from home viewers to fans who have followed their teams to South Africa and even many of the football players themselves are united around an entirely different thing- their hatred for the beehive like buzzing sound of the Vuvuzelas. A sound so annoying, that long after the game has ended, it continues to echo in our ears, but all hope is not lost for “serenity now!”: here are some tips and ideas how to achieve your desired inner peace and tranquility.

The Vuvuzela

The plastic stadium horn, which is blown constantly by World Cup (over) enthusiastic fans in order to celebrate such glorious moments in a game as- well, every single moment apparently- has achieved unprecedented fame and rancor this games. It is said that the noise is so loud that the players can’t even communicate with each other on the field. Yet, while there has been some talk of banning the evil instruments from the stadiums altogether, that brilliant idea was rejected. So now it’s all up to us to stop it and with a little bit of work and information online we can get rid of the buzz, leaving the games blissfully vuvuzela-free.

A German hacker named Tube details on his blog- Surfpoeten, how he banished the Vuvuzela from his World Cup audio by selectively muting four frequencies on his equalizer. The bad news is the instructions are in German. The good news is someone has already translated it for us and it is very easy to google it up. Basically what he does is not that difficult: he runs the audio from his TV through a Mac (can be done on any computer actually) with logic express (sound software). Then a series of bandpass equalizer filters in the software neatly excise the offensive frequencies: 233, 466, 932 and 1864 Hz.

On the other side, Windows users can use a program named REAPER in order to block out the sound. The installation process is very easy but to save you plenty of time, download the “reaper-anti-vuvuzela.RPP” file from http://martin.bz and run it. Note that you can change the volume in the program if the output is too loud and causes some noise problems of its own, and you might have to mute the “Line In” in volume control if you get echoed output, depending on how you set up your audio.

Actually, you don’t need a PC at all. If you have got a stereo with an equalizer or even a TV set with a built in equalizer, you can adjust your hardware settings to significantly filter out the noise. For example, the Book of Joe blog details the process on a Samsung TV. Lifehacker, another famous site which also deals with the Vuvuzela menace suggests to “duck your EQ at 465Hz and 235Hz, you can in fact filter out the buzz with great results. Ideally you’ll reduce each frequency by at least 40dB (which got rid of the drone completely for us), but if your equipment can’t quite duck that low, just go as low as you can”.
As you can see, it’s not all that difficult to silence the Vuvuzela once and for all. All you need it to hook up your gear with an equalizer- again 233, 466, 932 and 1864 Hz (or as close to those numbers as you can get). Please tell us if you have came across other methods which worked out for you and by the way we suggest you hurry up, the sooner the better, so you can really enjoy your favorite playing starting of this weekend.

Omer Shachnai

The CEO Game.

Obama- not only state affairs: Has President Barack Obama been cheating on his wife with Vera Baker? A celebrity gossip newspaper, claims it has got evidence that while running for senator, United States President, Barack Obama spent the night with one of his campaign’s aide. The “National Enquirer”, a yellow tabloid, which also revealed Senator John Edwards’ cheating scandal, is the one behind this shocking allegations. The publication claims that Obama and Baker, his former employee, stayed together in a hotel in Washington DC and that a “security video” could expose the whole thing.

Barak Obama

The woman standing in the midst of the scandal, is 36 years old, Vera Baker. According to the tabloid, she has raised millions in campaign contributions for Obama when he was running for the US Senate, in 2004 and they grew close ever since. While Vera Baker insists that nothing has happened between them, the Enquirer claims it has got two “incriminating” pieces of evidence- a video that proves that the two spent the night together and an anonymous limousine driver claiming he drove Vera to a secret hotel rendezvous with the President.

The limo driver says he drove Baker “from a friend’s home in the DC area to the Hotel George where I learned later that Obama would be spending the night”. The driver also recalled “to the best of my knowledge she did not have a room at the hotel and she was not staying there so I thought that it was a bit odd”. He drove them around the city and finally he claims that around “10:30 pm, I drove them to the hotel and they went in together! My services for the evening were done”, and in addition “there was absolutely no indication she was going to leave the hotel that night”. They also claim the driver has been paid off to remain silent about that night.

Moreover, the Enquirer claims “on-site hotel surveillance video camera footage could provide indisputable evidence. Investigators are working to obtain the tape”. “If the tape surfaces, it will explode the scandal”, they conclude. The paper says the driver’s “testimony” was independently corroborated by investigators and that they now believe that the couple spent the night together there, in spite of the fact that they didn’t see the tape at all. The paper also says political activists who oppose Obama are offering $1 million for information confirming the affair.

As aforementioned, the National Enquirer previously exposed John Edwards’ scandal who cheated on his wife with Rielle Hunter. At the time people thought he got intentionally smeared, but look how that turned out. But, you are right, there is a difference between him (a second tier candidate running for presidency) and an actual President in office. Finally, we suggest not to believe the Obama tale, at least not without any real evidence. However, don’t think something like this can’t happen just because it is the President, remember, for a short while, American also gave Bill Clinton the benefit of the doubt.
Omer Shachnai

The CEO Game

May we all have a wonderful new year and may all your wishes come true.

We hope you had a good year and wish the next one will be good as well.  We would like to thank all those who sent us emails and messages with ideas and thoughts regarding the CEO game. We hope to see you all in a few weeks once the beta will be publicly lunch.

We wish you a marry Christmas.

Marry Christmas,

The CEO Game Crew.

Barak Obama attacks US banks: When you needed, you were helped; now it’s your turn to give back.

The President of the US addressed all the banks that were helped during the ongoing financial crisis and requested them to return a favor. In his words, now it’s the time for the banks to do their part and chip in to help the financial recovery and give more credit to little businesses. He is practically saying, hey the US tax payer helped you bail out; now the time has come for you to give something back to the public.

Time For A Change?

Obama made this statement at his “weekly address” which is broadcasted live via the radio and the internet. In his speech, he commented that many business owners in America are having a hard time to get credit from the banks, even though the government had done a lot to improve the financial situation of the banks after the economic collapse in September 2008, which afterwards the banks stopped handing out loans for small and medium businesses.
“These are the very taxpayers who stood by America’s banks in a crisis, and now it’s time for our banks to stand by credit worthy small businesses and make the loans they need to open their doors, grow their operations and create new jobs” Obama said. He pointed out the White House is willing to take the steps needed to encourage the banks to give credit, but he didn’t mention what steps will be taken if at all. “It’s time for those banks to fulfill their responsibility to help ensure a wider recovery, a more secure system and more broadly shared prosperity” he added.

Earlier last week, Barak Obama criticized the American banks and financial institutes and claimed that they were working through Congress to try and sabotage his idea of a federal agency the “Consumer Financial Protection Agency”. Obama blamed them for “using every bit of influence they have to maintain the status quo” that has helped them get richer “at the expense of American consumers”. That is in spite of the fact that recently those same consumers helped them bail out as a consequence of their wrong decisions.

According to estimations, the financial bailout package cost taxpayers around 700 billion dollars. In his address last Saturday, Obama also said that small businesses have created two thirds of US new jobs over the last 15 years, thus making them a crucial part of the economy, that we must help to sustain- “they must be at the forefront of our recovery”, he said. In addition, last week, he asked Congress to increase the size of SBA loans (small business administration) and announced his rewarding plan: to give low interest loans to banks, who do help and agree to lend more money to small businesses.

When playing business simulation games, you can learn from these past mistakes and learn how to foresee the consequences of your actions. During the development of The CEO Game, we have kept in mind the financial crisis and have taken a great deal of effort in creating and simulating a vast real-life like economic system which generates and is influenced all the time by unplanned events and misfortunes, that every CEO has to cope with in order to succeed.

Omer Shachnai

The CEO Game.

You do something that goes exactly how you planned, and even better. You buy a stock that rises 20% the day after you bought it. You sell your startup and make a couple million dollars before you even have the final product. What does it mean? Does that make you successful in what you do? Does it make you invulnerable?

In business, as in real life, every step we take is affected by factors we have no control over and that influence each other in a way we can`t always understand. A famous theory is “the butterfly effect”, which states: “a butterfly`s wing movement on one side of the world can cause a tornado on the other side”. If we`ll try to analyze this theory, we will come to a conclusion that in some way we can reach full control of our actions – only we have full knowledge of everything that happens around us. But in real life, there are a lot of things that happen without us being aware. Those little things can affect our actions without us being able to understand their impact.

How can we overcome this?

Planning Your Next Gamble

At first, before we even do anything, we need to have a plan. It doesn’t matter if we are running a business or investing in stocks, we need to have a plan that considers most of the factors we can think of and the way they may affect our actions.

During our process, we need to act as we planned. If not, we need to remember to write down the changes we made and the reasons for those changes. If we have no actual reason to make the change, we shouldn’t make it.

After the process we need to look at the results – We have three conclusions:

1. As we expected.
2. Better than we expected.
3. Worse than we expected.

Regardless of the conclusion, we need to analyze the results and figure out whether it’s a result of factors we took under consideration or a result of new factors which popped up during the process.

Why is it important to know what affected the results?

The results of your actions will motivate you to your next step. If this motivation is based on false information it can cause a catastrophe. For example: you buy a stock and at the next day or week it climb 20% – now you think you are a great investor which can predict the market way better and faster than any other investor, so you make another trade, and another one, keeping yourself uncovered whiletaking more risk than you could afford, which leads you to catastrophe as soon as the market turns on you. In the good case you will lose some savings you had for a rainy day while at the worse case you end up losing your house or car payments and start taking loans to cover your loses (and even lose those loans).

On other hand, you might have done everything right, but some rare combination of coincidence made you end up with results worse than you expected, which will make you give up trying in the future, even though there was nothing you could have done better.

How can you control the results?

By creating a good plan and analyzing the results each time, you can build and improve your actions from time to time. Keep in your state of mind that there is an option that everything you do is affected from pure luck and things can go wrong at any point. What`s amazing in random-action is that sometimes it doesn`t seem random at all.

If you understand the risk and put it under control, with a good and solid plan you should do ok in the long run. Never get too excited when you succeed, never get too down when you fail. Do your best to understand what have happened and what the things aer you need to change for the next time. Also keep in mind that there are things you will never be able to predict.

Assaf Arie

The CEO Game.