KBC Interactive Game Show Fraud (with pics)

January 20, 2011 by 5 Comments

This article was generously contributed by Mutwiri.

Earlier this month there was a huge debate on this forum about an error KTN had made on their interactive game show. The issue was with the simple arithmetic – 11 x 2 + 32 – 21 + 5 x 3 + 5 x 1 The answer that won cash was 120, which off course was WAY off.

Well, yesterday KBC ran something similar on their show.

23 – 12 x 5 + 112 – 20 + 3 x 8 + 12

The choices were -125, -170 and 250

I took screen shots:

KBC interactive game show fraud

The Question (click for larger)


The answer that won Kshs.50,000 was 250

So how did they arrive at 250? Here’s their calculation:


KBC interactive game show fraud

The Fraudulent answer (click for larger)

If you look at the pictures closely, KBC actually changed the question and then awarded 50,000/- to….”the winner”. Theft in broad daylight!

What are your thoughts on this? Where can a complaint be made?

Update
Even the fraudulent answer does NOT add up to 250!!!!

Filed Under: Internet Culture, Tips Hacking and Reviews Tagged With: ,

Shocking Stories of Business Failure!

October 6, 2010 by 1 Comment

Business failureYou know, when your friend or someone tells you of what they did to succeed in business you learn a lot. Learning from others’ experience beats learning from books any day, ama? You know what, though? Nothing beats learning from others’ failures.

In fact, someone once told me: Failure in business happens for a reason, it is the ultimate lesson.

In that spirit, I decided to share some stories of business failure. The smart thing to do would be for you to read them, analyse them, and learn.

I’ll start with my own little story:

Right after high school (6 years ago), I teamed up with two of my neighbors and childhood friends to start a video games arcade in the neighborhood.

It was quite the learning experience – everything that we did, I was doing for the first time ever. This ranged from getting the business licensed to actually building a small shed to buying a TV and playstation, to put a roof over our business. I think a lot of people don’t know how to actually practically do these things.

So after getting everything ready, we agreed on how to share the profit and started. It was a smashing success and we had all the neighborhood kids hooked! I was actually making my money from my own business. Life couldn’t be better!

Not really. We used to charge about Kshs 60 per hour per gamer. But we had only two gaming machines. Things were good at the start but we somehow decided to move the business from our self-built shed to a real building in the shopping center. Rent shot up from 0 to Kshs 10,000 a month. We believed that the exposure gotten from the shopping center would get us more customers and lead us to growth. We were wrong. We still had only two gaming machines and there was only so much we could make a day. Things started to get strained.

Before long, the business broke apart due to the stress and two of us left with very bad tastes in our mouth. My business #1 down the drain!

Lessons learnt: strategically plan your every move and never go with “hunches” – always try to make sure you make decisions based on realistic data.

Here are 25 other stories of business failure.

What do you think? Did you learn anything?

Hey, have you ever tried your hand at business and failed? Why don’t you share your story in the comments below? Thanks!

Filed Under: Internet Culture, Small Business Tagged With:

Facebook: The Age of Privacy is Over

January 11, 2010 by 2 Comments

In an interview with Techcrunch’s Michael Arrington, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg spent a while talking about Facebook’s privacy policy. The gist of his talk was that the “age” of privacy is over. This is part of what he said:

“When I got started in my dorm room at Harvard, the question a lot of people asked was ‘why would I want to put any information on the Internet at all? Why would I want to have a website?’

“And then in the last 5 or 6 years, blogging has taken off in a huge way and all these different services that have people sharing all this information. People have really gotten comfortable not only sharing more information and different kinds, but more openly and with more people. That social norm is just something that has evolved over time.

“We view it as our role in the system to constantly be innovating and be updating what our system is to reflect what the current social norms are.

“A lot of companies would be trapped by the conventions and their legacies of what they’ve built, doing a privacy change – doing a privacy change for 350 million users is not the kind of thing that a lot of companies would do. But we viewed that as a really important thing, to always keep a beginner’s mind and what would we do if we were starting the company now and we decided that these would be the social norms now and we just went for it.”

I don’t know about you, but what he said sounds a lot like BS to me. The guys over at ReadWriteWeb share my view.

I came to Facebook from Myspace specifically because Facebook allowed me more control over my privacy. Now, Facebook has changed its privacy policy so much that I cannot make some things private. Why would they do this? I don’t buy the official explanation – methinks that Facebook are looking for two things: more money, and more control.

What do you think?

Filed Under: Miscellaneous Tagged With:

Pesatupu Vs Peoplestring

November 9, 2009 by Leave a Comment

Peoplestring isn’t your average social network. Yes, it is a social network site much like Facebook, but with a surprising twist: you earn money for just using the website.. Interestingly, the makers of peoplestring pledge to share upto 70% of the site’s earnings with its users. They will make periodic payments to members for doing things that we all do anyway: read email, invite friends, surf the net, etc etc. Cool eh?

Read more about peoplestring. I think it is pretty cool – you should try it out.

What about pesatupu.com? This one is interesting. If you visit www.pesatupu.com, you will notice that it looks exactly like peoplestring. Weird? Yes, very weird and possibly criminal. I do not know why the people behind pesatupu have done this – my guess is that it is some sort of subtle ploy. Notice that people string pays its members whenever they invite their friends to use it. I am guessing that when you sign up to peoplestring from pesatupu.com, the makers of pesatupu get paid. Of course, I could be wrong.

Whether I am wrong or not, pesatupu is a sham. Making money is good, but not like this.

Filed Under: Miscellaneous Tagged With: ,