Android game: Strategy to play Pirates and Traders

Pirates and Traders is a single-player strategic role-play game for Android phones and tablets. It is developed by MicaByte Systems,  surprisingly just a 1-person company based in Norway.

As informed by its developer, Pirates and Traders is a homage to Sid Meier's classic PC game, Pirates! It would be remiss, however, not to mention other influences on the game - most notably Pieter Spronck's "Space Trader" (for PalmOS), David Braben and Ian Bell's "Elite", and the Richard Berg boardgame "Blackbeard".

The game started by bringing you back to year 1650 in the Carribean sea, where you'll start your adventure.

Here is the strategy I found out, after playing with this game for a few hours:

• Befriend with British, Dutch and French. Get the Letter of Marque from their Governors and only attack the Spanish ships and ports.

• In the beginning of the game, borrow money from the Governor and use the money to upgrade your ship as soon as possible.
• Make sure to repay back your loan as soon as possible once you are able to earn more than 10,000 doubloons (gold coins) , otherwise your debt will grow with interest.
• You will be able to attack and win the combat with larger warship once your ship got all the necessary upgrades. Seize the larger warship and upgrade it again. With larger warship, you have higher chance to win battles, and you'll have enough capacity to carry more crew for port attack.

• Remember to recruit specialist crew (Master) found on the ship you captured. You have higher chance to encounter them when you play the game in easier game levels, and harder to find them in harder levels.
• The fastest way to gain a lot of doubloons is to attack and plunder enemy ports. Start your attack to ports with smaller army. If you are outnumbered, use the "cunning" attack strategy. You'll also need a high cunning skill.

• The types of ship in this game, and their capacity before any upgrade, are listed as below. Once you acquired the Flag Galleon and fully upgrade it, you'll be quite invincible, especially in easier game levels.

• When you start feeling boring due to no comparable opponent, click the Retire button to end the game.

The 4 pillars of IT security management

When we talk about IT security, we have to ensure that all the following 4 areas are well covered and non are missed out:

• Availability - information must be available and usable when required, and the systems that provide it can appropriate resist attacks and recover from or prevent failures.
• Confidentiality - information must only observed by or disclosed to those who have the right to know, and well protected against unauthorized access and use.
• Integrity - information must be complete, accurate and protected against unauthorized modification.
• Authenticity - business transactions, as well as information exchanges between enterprises, or with partners, can be trusted

Information Security Management must consider the following 4 perspectives:

• Organizational – well defined security policies and staff awareness of these
• Procedural – well defined procedures used to control security
• Physical – controls used to protect any physical sites against security incidents
• Technical – controls used to protect the IT infrastructure against security incidents

Does the IT security of your organization has all these in place?

Who are the one afraid of BERSIH 2.0?

BERSIH 2.0 (a.k.a. Coalition for Clean and Fair Elections) is a civil coalition currently endorsed by 62 non-government organizations (NGO).

If you support BERSIH 2.0, you simply agree and support the following 8 demands to reform Malaysia's electoral processes:

1. Clean up the electoral roll to address irregularities
2. Reform postal voting
3. Use indelible ink
4. Establish a minimum campaign period of 21 days
5. Ensure free and fair access for all political parties to the media
6. Strengthen public institutions
7. Get rid of corruption
8. Put a stop to dirty politics

Yes, BERSIH 2.0 is about reformation, for the sake of goodness. Anyway, what's wrong with the word "reformation"? If certain party afraid of "reformation", how about using the word "transformation"? After all, the aim is to "change" to a better state.

It is ridiculous for certain parties, and their helpers/servants/bondmen/slaves to attempt to defame BERSIH 2.0 or to mislead people by tying BERSIH 2.0 with:

• the opposition politic parties - well, the opposition can support BERSIH 2.0, so does the ruling one. Does BERSIH 2.0 rejected or unwelcome the ruling parties to be part of them in the first place?
• communist - in my understanding, communists don't need election. It is more likely for those afraid of BERSIH 2.0 to be communist supporter instead.
• troublemaker - well, in their eyes, BERSIH 2.0 is really a troublemaker for them. That's why they are so afraid.

Why they are afraid of BERSIH 2.0? Probably because they have totally no confident to win the game in a fair manner.

A student would not need to cheat in the exam if he/she has confident to pass. A worker would not worry about being sacked if he/she is ethical and well perform.

If you are afraid, you know you have weaknesses. The right way should be to reform/transform/adjust/correct your points of weaknesses, instead of fortify your weaknesses.