Category Archives: IT

February 20, 2016 · 12:25

Omphalos and its syndrome

This syndrome comes from the references of Delphi and the ‘navel of the world’, which is what Delphi was regarded as. Nowadays, we see Omphalos syndrome as the misguided belief that a place of geopolitical power and currency is the most important place in the world.

I believe that to be no longer correct, I believe that it has been ‘converted’ into something slightly more generic. I believe that it should be seen as ‘the misguided believe that its choice of management and achievement of profit are the most important in the world’. Let’s take a look at a few examples.

A is for Apple

‘Apple apologises over Error 53 and issues fix for bricked iPhones’ (at http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/feb/19/error-53-apple-issues-fix-bricked-iphones) shows the first example. The entire error53 mess is a direct example. It goes on to the core that we now see “Apple has released a fix for users affected by “Error 53”, a software issue that rendered useless iPhones that had had their home buttons replaced by third parties“, The initial response “At the time Apple said that Error 53 was a security feature to protect customers” reads like a joke. The mere alternative that was open was that any non-Apple certified method meant the wiping of data would have been enough. It took me 5 minutes to come up with that solution. A mere auto wipe of all data. No we have to read quotes like “Apple has apologised for Error 53 and said customers who paid for an out-of-warranty replacement for their phone should contact AppleCare about reimbursement” as well as “Solving Error 53 does not re-enable Touch ID, as a third-party replacement of the home button could potentially allow unauthorised access to a locked phone by modifying the fingerprint sensor“. It would have been the simplest of solutions to go through the re-enabling system again. All these simple solutions, all because apple wanted to enforce the repairs of their phones to what they consider to be THEIR allowed service repair shops. An application of greed, to maximise profits, not the openness of what was once the Apple OS X through a Unix open source system, but the mere stranglehold of a greed driven corporation. It was brought to light by several articles in the Guardian and an initial customer service based solution comes “after widespread publicity and the Californian tech giant being served with a class action lawsuit over in the US and attention from a competition watchdog in Australia“, I wonder how many IOS people will start considering Android now.

E is for Eisai

This event is taking us back a fair bit, around 2000 Eisai came with its Alzheimer’s drug Aricept (donepezil). The fact that profits grow by 100% might not be the biggest thing on the planet. Yes when the LA Times (at http://articles.latimes.com/2012/mar/22/health/la-he-aricept-fda-20120323) reported “FDA officials should not have allowed it, the authors said, because the clinical studies Eisai offered in support of its application did not meet standards the agency itself had laid out“, in addition we see “it failed to yield the improvements that the FDA had set as a condition of approval“, in all this a clear investigation did not take place. It is still allowed, mainly because it is FDA approved. We see in other sources the claims like “Further, the higher dose was not superior on either of the pre-specified secondary outcome measures, which, as the FDA medical reviewer pointed out, argues that the cognitive difference was not meaningful“, which we get from the FDA Center for Drug Evauation and Research. Application number 022568: medical review. Aricept 23 mg tablets. (at www.accessdata.fda.gov/drugsatfda_docs/nda/2010/022568Orig1s000MedR.pdf), when we consider the source http://www.nhs.uk/news/2015/10October/Pages/Cheap-Alzheimers-drug-may-help-keep-people-out-of-care-homes.aspx, where we get the quote “a year’s worth of donepezil costs around £21 a year, compared with a year’s worth of care home costs – estimated to be between £30,732 and £34,424 a year. If the results of the study were replicated at a population level, this could save the NHS a considerable sum of money“.

This is where we see another version of Omphalos syndrome, “the misguided believe that my version of cost cutting is the best in the world“, at this point, we should investigate the players and consider whether a case for criminal endangerment exists. The fact that sources have shown ‘evidence’ as per 2007 gives rise to a failed system, not just the NHS, but the leeway for pharmaceuticals as, from the given reports failed to yield the improvements that the FDA had set as a condition of approval, making the question why on earth was it approved at all and why are certain diseases used for marketing a cash cow, more important why is the NHS not loudly and outspoken dealing with this? Especially as www.NHS.UK is involved in promoting articles in favour of Aricept (donepezil).

I is for Insight Enterprises

This is a side that rests with Omphalos, yet in all this it is in equal measure a situation we must accept. Insight Enterprises did nothing wrong, it made a choice, it’s governing body stated ‘this is the best path, this is the golden solution’, we must accept that any governing body, being it corporate or governmental will be ‘smitten’ with Omphalos Syndrome. So as Microsoft changed the partner program in 2014, Insight Enterprises saw the filling of its corporate coffers trickle down to zero. (at http://www.crn.com/news/channel-programs/300079674/insight-enterprises-absorbs-another-hit-after-microsoft-partner-program-changes.htm). We can debate the mess Insight Enterprises received, the near simple answer is that Microsoft had to change programs, any large corporations will do that. Any program they offer and device tends to be ‘fluidic’ over time. Yet when we see the quote “The changes also affected Microsoft’s Licensing Solution Providers, like Tempe, Ariz.-based Insight, which are the only partners Microsoft allows to sell licensing agreements to large corporations“, which is now showing another side. Does this make Microsoft narcissistically selfish or just plain sociopathic? You see all narcissists are selfish, but not all selfish corporations are narcissistically in nature (which is proven as greed we put the greedy in front of a mirrors), yet in all this, is this a sociopathic side in Microsoft? Well, that is a debate for another day as the entire Omphalos topic would soon get too murky.

O is for Omphalos

As shown in the last example, we tend to see Omphalos in a bad light. Which is not all correct either. On the other side we can take Bill Gates and his Omphalosian approach to IT. This got us DOS and later Windows. On the far side of the scale of limiting, there is the view of the truly visionary, but that view needs a start. Here the Omphalos syndrome works in another way. As I see it, we can accuse Bill Gates, Steve Jobs and Larry Ellison on that list. Yet, we only did that AFTER they became successful, the not so successful are usually never heard of again.

In this world today, the foundation of ‘the most important place in the world’ is less and less applicable, it becomes a world of solutions, an amalgamation of aggregated values (the European Economic Community being a nice example). Yet the foundation of how to go about it was done in a very Omphalosian way. Especially when we consider the past blogs on how only self-proclaimed departures were the option. Which is exactly where Brexit is now. As Brexit gains momentum we see that the Omphalosian solution was the most dangerous here, it took one of the smallest nations (Greece) to push their non-accountability for the entire EEC to be in turmoil, with now a decent chance of collapsing the EEC as well as the Euro as a coin. Even as the United Kingdom is not on the Euro, France is and a Brexit will soon push for an additional Frexit. In that regard, the Financial Times quoted Florian Philippot who stated “the idea of challenging greater EU integration had become “taboo” in Europe. “The more we talk about it, the more people will vote against it,” he said” (at http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/58f9cc98-ce51-11e5-92a1-c5e23ef99c77.html#axzz40fDAW3BL). This is yet another side of Omphalos, actually two sides. The foundation of Omphalos is based on one view, if that view does not evolve or alters as time goes by, that view becomes less and less actual. The view becomes an act of obstruction at best and debilitating at worst.

In the second part, we have forever seen the Omphalos syndrome in its power core on the scope of government (read: Communistic), in that view we forgot that it is corporations with their view on the ‘only’ solution that is now impacting the lives of people in several (read: many) nations. In that same view we see that the old approach to currency is no longer the same. Most values are too dependent on independent views of static organisations and their push for changed industrialisations. How come that the value of a coin is now directly impacted by places like Dow Jones index, Nasdaq, Standards and Poor, the IMF, the ECB and so on? Governments allowed themselves to be directly be valued from what is perceived to be an ‘independent’ side. This is the other part that drives Brexit and other plans to no longer be part of anything. There is a near global consensus that these sources can no longer be trusted. That their view is to some extent ‘Greed Incarnate’.

As I see it, there is no true independence anymore. When we read that Eagle Capital Management Invests $293000 and that J. W. Burns & Company Has $533000 invested in in SPDR Dow Jones Industrial Average ETF (DIA). When the index itself is invested on, the expectations of improved value must be met, where does that leave us?

U is for You!

Even when we see the old and the new versions of the Omphalos syndrome, we need to realise that what once seen as short-sighted and limited is now not so limiting. It remains (as I personally see it) as short-sighted as it ever was (only in the rarest of occasions is it visionary), but now, the impact is no longer limited to one government, now its short-sighted impact is nearly global. It hits parties in many nations and it does not stop there. You see in a governmental approach it is ‘set’ to be what is best for its citizens and in case of the EEC it is what a group of nations see. Now consider the application from corporations that impacts governments on a global scale, offices of standards that impact the dangers to lives on a global scale as it does not enforce its own given values. How can we be aligned to a limiting view that could cost us our lives and our choice of living?

So as you consider ‘the misguided believe that its choice of management and achievement of profit are the most important in the world’ also strongly consider what it will cost you, not now, but down the track.

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Tagged as Android, Apple, Aricept, Bill Gates, Brexit, Delphi, Donepezil, Eagle Capital Management, EEC, Eisa, Euro, Financial Times, Florian Philippot, France, Frexit, Insight Enterprises, J. W. Burns & Company, LA Times, Larry Ellison, NHS, Omphalos, Omphalos syndrome, Steve Jobs, the Guardian, UK, United Kingdom, www.nhs.uk

February 16, 2016 · 19:31

Fear mongers cannot learn, will the reader?

The technology section of the Guardian had an interesting article (at http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/feb/13/artificial-intelligence-ai-unemployment-jobs-moshe-vardi), ‘Would you bet against sex robots? AI ‘could leave half of world unemployed’‘, is that so? So, is the title a reference that 50% is in prostitution, or is there more?

The article starts straight of the bat without delay it gives the quote: “Machines could put more than half the world’s population out of a job in the next 30 years, according to a computer scientist who said on Saturday that artificial intelligence’s threat to the economy should not be understated“.

I remember a similar discussion now 35 years ago. It was 1981, I was working on the defence mainframe and I got the inside scoop how computers would replace people, how those machines would put hardworking people out of a job and a future. In the first 5 years that followed I saw the opposite, yes some work became easier, but that also meant that more work could be done. The decade that followed gave us an entire new region of technology. A region that would open doors that had never been there in the first place.

This technology is not any different, it will open up different doors.

Now, the people in ‘fear’ of it all are not the most half-baked individuals. They include Physicist Stephen Hawking and the tech billionaires Bill Gates and Elon Musk, in addition there is professor Vardi from Rice University, his statement “AI could drive global unemployment to 50%, wiping out middle-class jobs and exacerbating inequality“, I massively disagree here. The words of Elon Musk calling it “our biggest existential threat” and in addition professor Vardi stated “humanity will face an existential challenge“, those two comments are closer to the reality. Yet here too I believe changes will dominate. Consider a few years back, back to the time when I was younger then young (like 900BC roughly), in an age of Greek wars and utter ‘nationalism’ the Olympic truce was created. “Ekecheiria”, was established in Ancient Greece in the 9th century BC through the signing of a treaty by three kings: Iphitos of Elis, Cleosthenes of Pisa and Lycurgus of Sparta. (Source: olympic.org) There was a lull but in 1896 it started again. An event, which origin was to create an option to not be in a war and to compete. Of all the existential angst we have, robots should not be on the list any time soon.

My reasoning?

As we saw the start of recruitment for Mars, a serious recruitment to start colonising mars, we must admit that there are issues on mars, several could be diminished with the use of intelligent robots. Or perhaps the idea that NASA is looking on how to get resources from asteroids, so how about that Android solution? The BBC gives us the speculation on ocean living (at http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20131101-living-on-the-ocean), again an element where we do not thrive, but a robot could pave the way. In my own view, with the massive energy issues, how long until someone has the idea to place paddled wheels above a hydrothermal vent in the ocean to capture it as an energy source? Not the kind of work a person can do, a machine could, and an AI driven one could excel there. Just three places where we could end up with more and not less. Yet Vardi does give an interesting side, if robots replace people to some extent, that value of physicality might be lost. Now ask the bricklayer if he could do something else, would he? There is indeed the danger that physical labour becomes less and less appealing, yet that does not mean it will be gone. It would take at least half a century for things to be completed, whilst in that mean time new evolutions start, new challenges start.

More important, much more important is the one fact people tend to avoid out of fear. But you the reader, if you are over 45, consider that in the near future you will be dead! So will 3 out of 7 of your friends. Yes, the population is growing, yet the age groups are shifting, this implies that robots could be a solution for some of the work areas that do not require academic thinking. All these opportunities, not threats!

So as we see a new iteration of fear, is this version more valid than then the previous one? With that I mean the implementation of the PC. Perhaps having another set of less fear mongering eyes would help. The second part people forget is that fear mongering is also a drain on productivity here. Even as we speak Japan has a lead in this market, as does America. So how about we start getting ahead of the rest, so that is wrong with the commonwealth picking up a robotic skill or two, because one truth remains, once the other player get too much of a lead, the consequence will be that the followers are not considered for the creational jobs here and that is where the real mulah is, the IT explosion taught us that and that field grew a multitude of billionaires, the next technological iteration will do no less.

I am not alone in my way of thinking, the writer Nicholas Carr gives us: “human creativity and intuition in the face of complex problems is essentially irreplaceable, and an advantage over computers and their overly accurate reputation“, which is where the new future will head. Not to create robots, but the creativity to make then excel in extreme places where we could not comprehend until out boundaries are clearly mapped. So how is this news such an eyeopener? Well, when we get back to the beginning we saw “artificial intelligence’s threat to the economy“, as stated, much like the Personal Computer, it will not be a threat, but a solution, an opening into a new arm of the technology sector, even more important, this is not just a IT only field. It will require quality engineers and depending on the application of the scene. This means that we get new challenges, different ones mind you, but not lesser ones?

In that regard, depending on the implementation, it will require analysts, engineers, programmers and a few others on the list of adepts.

all these options and we did not even need to get close to the technological design of the new age cybernetic machines for the purpose of erotic exploration (level 1 at http://www.vanityfair.com/culture/2015/04/sexbots-realdoll-sex-toys), which is nowhere near an AI experience, time will tell how real that field becomes. Consider the age of STD’s we see nowadays. Mycoplasma Genitalium might be the new ‘trend’, as it can be cured with a mere one week setting of anti-biotics. So how long until it evolves into something that does not cure? Yet we do not even have to go that far, consider all the areas where man (or woman) cannot function, the risk too high and the rewards become too low. Here comes the clockwork system (aka the AI robot) and we are back on track.

So I see the robot as a positive wave. For careers, for jobs, for business evolution and for evolving technology. We only need to see the light of creation and we will end up with a lot more options than we bargained for.

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Tagged as AI, BBC, Bill Gates, Elon Musk, IT, Japan, NASA, Nicholas Carr, Olympics, professor Vardi, Rice University, Robots, Stephen Hawking, the Guardian, Vanity Fair

February 15, 2016 · 21:33

Is there a doctor on this budget?

The title ‘Is this doctor (and Ukip candidate) right that EU migrants will destroy the NHS?‘ seems inflammatory to say the least, but the reality is actually a lot less appealing. Even when we see today’s article: ‘NHS vows to transform mental health services with extra £1bn a year‘ (at http://www.theguardian.com/society/2016/feb/15/nhs-vows-to-transform-mental-health-services-with-extra-1bn-a-year), the quote “People facing mental health crises will be able to get community care 24 hours a day, seven days a week as part of the biggest transformation of NHS mental health services in England for a generation, to be unveiled on Monday“, that quote now reflects back to the initial NHL article. There we see that Professor Angus Dalgleish is giving us another view: “He says the NHS is on its knees and “could collapse completely” because of immigrants from the EU that we are legally obliged to treat“, so even as the Guardian is hiding behind the identity ‘Pass notes‘, there are issues. The first is the unintelligent trivialisation by ‘Pass notes‘. The quote “Eighteen British hospitals made £42m from people coming here for treatment on 2010” is just too ridiculous to be considered valid. I am not stating that it is a lie, but consider that the NHS budget is set to be around £115b for 2015/2016, that £42m amounts to roughly 0.000365%, so how insignificant is that trivialisation? Especially when we consider that many papers (including the Guardian) reported the NHS to be £1.6b in deficit, so there is an issue already.

Now we get the next step.

From several sources we see that refugees are coming. That is not an accusation, or negativism, it is merely factual that over the next 5 years 20.000 refugees will arrive. Now consider that these people come from actual devastated locations, on a horrendous trip that has lasted years (including their stay in refugee centres) to get to the UK, if only 75% needs mental health care, the UK should be thanking their lucky stars. So that £1bn will not last too long, especially considering the current population is in dire need of mental health in one form or another. So as ‘Pass notes‘ complains the quote “But I expect doctors to be liberal! By which I mean intelligent! By which I mean liberal! We expect much. And sometimes we are disappointed“, which is just the Guardian showing that its own values are not set on intelligence. The NHS itself states: “However, if you are now living in an EEA member state and pay into a state healthcare scheme then you are entitled to apply to that member state for an EHIC. Under EC law, this entitles you free of charge to ‘all medically necessary treatment’ here, which provides a greater coverage than that mentioned above since it includes routine treatment for chronic conditions such as diabetes“, which gives way to the claim that Professor Dalgleish is making. In addition the National Health Service Act 2006, section 83 states that “all reasonable requirements to provide or secure necessary primary medical services for all patients, irrespective of their immigration status, within their areas” must be met, this is a legal duty for the primary care trust as reported by the Primary Care Commission (at https://www.pcc-cic.org.uk/sites/default/files/articles/attachments/pcc_briefing_-_illegal_immigrantsv6.pdf), which now implies that Professor Dalgleish has indeed reported an issue that the Guardian casually trivialises. Yet, we must also ask, what if the Guardian is correct? Well, section 83 of the National Health Service Act 2006, literally states at s83(1) “Each Primary Care Trust must, to the extent that it considers necessary to meet all reasonable requirements, exercise its powers so as to provide primary medical services within its area, or secure their provision within its area“, which bakes the cake on one side. The issue is however not done, it is about to get a lot ‘worse’, because s83(2)(b) gives us: “A Primary Care Trust may (in addition to any other power conferred on it) make such arrangements for their provision (whether within or outside its area) as it considers appropriate, and may in particular make contractual arrangements with any person“, which now gets us two elements:

Make contractual arrangements with any person, which also implies that it could be a contract set at £0.00.
Arrangements for their provision (whether within or outside its area), which now implies that the Primary medical services can transfer a refugee or illegal immigrant to psychological care and/or specialised mental health clinics.

So ‘Pass notes‘ is not reflecting on the dangers that Professor Dalgleish was trying to illuminate. More important, these issues have been known for some time. Issues on these elements have been illuminated in plenty of publications going back to 2012. There is even more information at http://www.commonwealthfund.org/~/media/Files/Publications/Issue%20Brief/2012/Dec/1650_Gray_hlt_care_undocumented_migrants_intl_brief.pdf, yet overall they tend to give the same reflection, especially when you look at page 3, where the cubic impression titled ‘Exhibit 1. Three Dimensions of Health Care Coverage Policy for Undocumented Migrants‘, gives rise to the massive growth of costs that could be associated with migrant health care (not to mention due to incoming refugees).

So how much valid weight can be given to the statements of Professor Dalgleish? I personally believe that the weight of his statements should be weight on a debatable high level (evidence to follow at the near end). The issue is not just regarding the costing the immigrants and refugees bring, the fact that the Euro systems is wreaking havoc all over the world is an equal concern. I cannot state for certain what will be the best path, what is a given is that trivialisation was never an option.

When we add ‘Jeremy Hunt on the NHS: ‘I think this decade needs to see the quality revolution’‘ (at http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2016/feb/15/jeremy-hunt-on-the-nhs-i-think-this-decade-needs-to-see-the-quality-revolution) to the fold, the plot thickens. You see, quality revolution sounds fair and essential, it is in fact at resent likely the least important part. There is a massive shortage of medical professionals, there is a lack of funds and that lack can be sized into the billions. This implies that quality, though nice is nothing compared towards the lack of resources. Which gets us to the Junior Doctor contracts. You see the quote “none of the 152 foundation trust hospitals in England will be obliged to force their junior doctors to accept the deal and can instead offer them better terms“, which gets us back to that massive deficit and more important, what additional pressures will be added onto it?

That is a part which has been known for a while, I voiced it at least 2 years ago and the current investigation that the BBC gave visibility to in January 2016 (at http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-scotland-scotland-politics-35361908) is still centre in all the issues that will come. You see, without a proper IT system, the NHS will have less and less options to streamline any solution, with that I mean larger operational matters for streamlining. Even as Tavish Scott (Lib Dem Scotland) asked on who got figuratively axed, we got the answer: “The chair of the board is no longer there, the chief executive is no longer there and the chief finance officer“, a very unsatisfactory answer. When we consider “he was not informed of a ‘fundamental flaw’ in the system being delivered for 22 months, adding “other, more junior staff were aware of omissions” in the contract, “but they didn’t tell me”“, we see a systematic shortening of another matter. The fact that junior staff were aware, implies that the documentation was an issue from day 1, in addition, no clear QA protocol was in place. No drilldown teams, from Junior to board member line was in play and overall the system was beyond merely defective. Consider the simple quote: “Mr Turner, who signed the 1,000-page contract for the IT system in March 2012, said he felt “very let down” by a senior colleague, saying they “didn’t advise me at all”“, can anyone explain to me, how such a document does not come with an excerpt chapter by chapter (by members of the NHS) underwriting per chapter how the contract impacts the NHS, the system and their services? A mere SWOT analyses (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats) would have made all the difference before signing. A waste of £40-£50 million is more than just a few doctors, the lack of such a solution will give additional worry to the claims Professor Dalgleish made. In light of refugees, illegal immigrants and costings, the lack of oversight will soon pressure resources down further.

This all gives a clear view that a doctor is required to take the pulse of the budget. It is billions in deficit and the drain will only increase. The fact that most parties have not given clear light to several sides is only a first reason why Ukip is gaining momentum. That view goes a little further when we consider “Committee convener Paul Martin said there must have been issues with management if staff did not feel able to come forward“, Scottish Labour has more than just a point, the issue becomes why junior members were not asked directly. Someone had to make an inventory, which means that the step was skipped, or intentionally overlooked. That now gives way to the fact that axing three members is not nearly enough. There is, what could be regarded as an institutional failure within the NHS. Considering that the NHS 24 is only one of several systems that are not on par, or even worse, then never got properly managed is proof further still that the NHS cannot handle too many pressure points at present.

What was wrong from Professor Dalgleish is that ‘EU migrants’ are only one of several straws, each currently heavy enough to separately break the camel’s back (read: NHS), which might be a case that the professor was trying to make, but ‘Pass notes‘ was too busy writing lame non-jokes, whilst the editor of the Guardian remained absent in this matter, which is why its readers are left in the dark (and in the near future untreated too). It was interesting to see that Rochdale Online did give more information through the statement by Louise Bours, UKIP health spokesman and North West MEP.

Here you must ask yourself the question: “Is this all just a storm in a teacup?” Especially as the larger papers ignored the ‘Dalgleish matter’. I myself expect that the statement from Dalgleish is out of context and incomplete. This failing as other elements that are driving the NHS over the cliffs were ignored could have been an option to illuminate why Ukip might not be the answer, yet as we see these levels of trivialisation, people are wondering the why; mainly because no clear explanation is coming forward they start to listen to Ukip more and more. Which is EXACTLY why I wrote the initial view with supporting documentation of a more academic level. So it is not a storm in a teacup, as we can clearly see that the NHS could be seen as close to ‘terminal’, but the factors here are a lot more than just the EU-migrants, what is a given is that unless certain things change, the EU-migrants could be breaking the NHS back, but that is equally a given for a few more factors that are currently in play.

Should any of these elements drive you crazy, then you will be equally out of luck as the BBC reported that finding a mental health spot has become pretty impossible, in that element alone, the £1b might be a great help, but there is a decent chance it will not be enough, because it is not just the beds that are unavailable, services are an equal worry, services that require staff and the refugee pressure will only add to that shortage (which is not the fault of these refugees mind you).

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Tagged as BBC, Jeremy Hunt, John Turner, Lib Dem Scotland, Louise Bours, National Health Service Act 2006, NHS, Paul Martin, PCC, Primary Care Commission, Professor Dalgleish, Rochdale Online, Scottish Labour, SWOT analyses, Tavish Scott, the Guardian, UK, UKIP

February 2, 2016 · 20:02

Just an idea I had

The Guardian posted an interesting article that I noticed today (the benefits of reading the Guardian online). The article named ‘Yes we should teach our kids about money, but how exactly escapes me‘, is a very nice piece. It is actually something that the Greek government should take a look at. Zoe Williams gives us the subtitle ‘Pocket money, savings, ponies, Muppets and nails – it’s a minefield, especially when your audience is clueless‘, and here I personally disagree. You see, I think that the question has been given to the wrong people (at http://www.theguardian.com/money/2016/jan/12/teach-kids-about-money-pockey-money-savings).

So, any app developers take notice, because this article could make you a millionaire!

The quote “miniature bank accounts are brilliant, but not necessarily educational. I use Osper, which is an account for eight-pluses that comes with a card they can use in a cash machine or on the internet” gives us a first insight into the dangers here. Which Zoe shows with the quote that follows “So far, Osper has taught the big ’un that money, with automating top-ups and nobody ever spending it, accumulates as effortlessly as wet leaves in a drain. It also taught him that getting money out of a cashpoint with his own pin is mind-bendingly exciting“.

The one that got the train (the one in my mind) rolling was the quote “most parents just want children to learn the value of money so that they’re not constantly asking for a pony or a Lear jet“, that is where my train went into a station named ‘creative mode’.

You see, I reckon you looked in the wrong direction. I looked at it from another angle. I saw it as a puzzle, a challenge. What is more challenging than a game? You see, kids (adults too), love playing games, more important, they love WINNING games. This is where we see the first test of getting a solution.

What if there is a game that is based on the economy. I am not talking about monopoly. I am talking in the direction of a new version and an online version of ‘Jones in the fast lane‘. The original was decently brilliant, it was made for PC in 1990 and in that game you had to achieve certain amounts of money, happiness, status, and education. In that game there was still the flaw that you could only proceed when you got money, but what if credit cards, debts and events were added? What if debt became an added visible factor?

The player in young and old, would consider the options lost when money was spent. The player would feel the pinch for the credit card. Not as actual debt, but what if debt was shown as decreased time? If debt makes you lost 3 hours a day, what was left? When you get overly in debt and you see that your time is forgone to work, so you get no happiness and no education, how can you win? You would restart making better selection and increasing the choices that show the danger of debt, the danger of no money.

The game Sierra Entertainment created was already well above standard, but it lived by the standards of the 80’s. Now we see that other elements are a part of daily life, which now gives us that this game, if redone, could be an educational tool that could sell on tablets, PC’s and mobile phones with the greatest of ease for a mere $2-$3. I feel certain that it would go to the hearts of parents by the millions! So whomever creates that educational side in a game (not those RPG life click games), but a decent board game will grow a fan base and game solutions tend to go viral on the internet .

So why did I say ‘not those RPG life click games‘? You see, too many games are about looking cool, looking quick and snappy. Interactive it sounds nice, but the board game that JITFL was had a little more, not enough for today’s elements, but it is a massive step in the right direction. Still, a few additional elements should be considered, yet in that light, I feel that the future ‘millionaire-to-be’ should solve a few puzzles so that they can boast that it was THEIR solution, that is fair, is it not?

So, why is my idea so good? Well, I am not sure that it is, but consider the ‘educational’ solutions out there. Instead of trivialising the smaller parts, why not re-focus on the parts that many do not want people to realise. You see time is money, which means that money is time, so what happens when you suddenly need to do it all with 14.6% less time? It sounds so little, yet over 40 hours, it comes to well over half a day. Even on a daily basis it is 3.5 hours less. So, where to get it from? Your working day? Less money, more debts. A second job, or even a third job? This implies a life without free time. You see, through that path, the original Jones in the fast lane shows to be excellent in its origin and could be near perfect with today’s modern complexities. Especially when the prices for rent and education get adjusted. Internet, mobiles, consoles and laptops, all with a partial benefit and all at a cost. When the younger player starts seeing it as a puzzle, they will see that money is part of a solution and a debt is a long term burden.

the lessons that several players want to trivialise, which gets the young saver an insight that banks claim to be instilling on them, yet at Up to 2.85% p.a. they seem to see the benefit of a little gets a little (especially when debts are 15%+), but in that same light, the consequence of the costs of cards are usually not seen in the beginning. So as they reach the age where they have a job and an income there’s an unbalance, a lack of balance on the impact that debts and overspending has. This is the side that is equally ignored. We cannot blame banks here and parents are usually not equipped to let them feel the impact of it. A game is different, to show them the impact that costs have, they understand that no balance means no spending, but until confronted with debt, the impact of interest is usually not comprehended. A game could be elemental in getting the young savers to feel that impact, in a lack of balance in the game and a sliding lack of time.

It is just an idea, it might not be the best idea, but it is not the response Zoe Williams gave us with ‘how exactly escapes me’, there is no fault here, we all often lack that spark and my spark could go nowhere, but the issue remains, the spark Zoe Williams tried to instil on her readers, how can we teach and give insight to the next generation, because in that regard the latest generation got the short end of a stick that came with no explanation, which is what the next generation needs to be protected from, or we will never be able to tackle our burdening economic problems.

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Filed under Finance, Gaming, IT, Media

Tagged as Jones in the fast lane, Sierra Entertainment, the Guardian, Zoe Williams

February 1, 2016 · 20:50

Where are my lenses?

For a moment I was contemplating the Guardian article ‘National borders are becoming irrelevant, says John McDonnell‘, which could be seen as a load of labour by the Bollocks party, or is that a load of bollocks by the Labour party? Anyway, the article was so shaky that it did not deserve the paper to explain the load of bollocks in there. What is however an interesting article, is the article in the National Security section of the Washington Post. The article “‘Eyewash’: How the CIA deceives its own workforce about operations” is worthy of digging into for a few reasons (at https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/eyewash-how-the-cia-deceives-its-own-workforce-about-operations/2016/01/31/c00f5a78-c53d-11e5-9693-933a4d31bcc8_story.html).

Initially, the very first thought I had was regarding Lao Tsu, who gave us the quote: ‘Those who know do not speak. Those who speak do not know‘, which is a truth in all this.

Apart from the title, the first quote to look at is: “Senior CIA officials have for years intentionally deceived parts of the agency workforce by transmitting internal memos that contain false information about operations and sources overseas“, there are a number of issues here, but let’s focus on one thread for now.

You see the second quote “Agency veterans described the tactic as an infrequent but important security measure, a means of protecting vital secrets by inserting fake communications into routine cable traffic while using separate channels to convey accurate information to cleared recipients” is at the very core of this.

No matter how you slice and dice it, the CIA has had a number of issues since 2002. The first is that after two planes got the wrong end of a vertical runway, the game changed, suddenly there was a massive overhaul and suddenly it had to deal with the United States Department of Homeland Security. In 2002 the DHS combined 22 different federal departments and agencies into a unified, integrated cabinet agency. More important, the DHS was working within and outside of American borders.

Now, the blissfully ignorant (including a host of politicians) seemed to live with the notion that under one flag and united, these people would start playing nice. Now, apart from that being a shaped a joke of titanic proportions, hilarious and all, the reality is far from that. You see, both the FBI and the CIA (not to mention the NSA) suddenly had to worry about 240,000 people, 240,000 security screenings. What do you think was going to happen? The issue of ‘false information about operations and sources overseas‘ is not an issue until you try to exploit that information, which means that you are doing something ILLEGAL (to the extent of being worthy of a shot through the back of the head). ‘Eyewash’ is only one cog in a vast machine of smokescreens that counterintelligence has to see how certain tracks of misinformation makes it outside the walls of intelligent wailing. You must have heard the story of the Senator/Governor who has a ‘friend’ in the CIA, not all those ‘friends’ are working valid paths. The intelligence community is a closed one for a reason. There is a clear chain of command, which means that the CIA has a chain of command and if a Senator or a Governor wants information, there is a clear path that he/she walks, from that point a politician gets informed if that person is allowed or has a valid reason for knowing. If anyone needs to move outside that path, you better believe that it is for political or personal reasons!

Now we get the quote that matters “officials said there is no clear mechanism for labelling eyewash cables or distinguishing them from legitimate records being examined by the CIA’s inspector general, turned over to Congress or declassified for historians“, I am not sure that this is correct. The question becomes what paths and what changes were pushed through in the last 2 administrations? I am willing to contemplate that errors have popped up since the Bush Government, yet in all this the parties seem to forget that the DHS was a political solution pushed through by politicians within a year. I know at least three companies that seriously screwed up a reorganisation of no more than 1,500 people over the period of 2 years, so what did you think would happen when 240,000 people get pushed all over the place? In addition, when a massive chunk of the intelligence section went private to get an income that was 400% better than there previous income (same place, same job), additional issues became their own level of a problem within the DHS, CIA, FBI (and again the non-mentioned NSA).

There were all levels of iterative issues in DATAINT, SIGINT, IT and Tradecraft. Names like Bradley/Chelsea Manning and Edward Snowden might be the most visible ones, but I feel 99.99993422% certain (roughly), that there were more. Eyewash is one of the methods essential to keep others off balance and in the dark what actually was going on, because it was not their business or place to know this. This gets us to the following quotes “But a second set of instructions sent to a smaller circle of recipients told them to disregard the other message and that the mission could proceed” and ““The people in the outer levels who didn’t have insider access were being lied to,” said a U.S. official familiar with the report. “They were being intentionally deceived.”“, now consider this quote from another source “Having DOOMED SPIES, doing certain things openly for purposes of deception, and allowing our spies to know of them and report them to the enemy“, which comes from chapter 13 of Sun Tzu’s ‘The Art of War‘, a book that is almost 2,500 years old, and the tactic remains a valid one. Should you consider that to be hollow, than consider the little hiccup that the British Empire faced (I just love the old titles). Perhaps you remember the names: Kim Philby, Donald Duart Maclean, Guy Burgess and Anthony Blunt. They made a massive mess of British Intelligence, it took them years to clean up the mess those four had left behind, now consider adding 245,000 names, for the most none of them had passed CIA and/or FBI clearances. So what options did the CIA have? In addition, as we saw more and more evidence of the events linking to Edward Snowden, additional questions on the clearing process should be asked in equal measure, which leads to: ‘What options did the CIA have?’

In that light, the quote “Federal law makes it a criminal offense when a government employee “conceals, covers up, falsifies or makes a false entry” in an official record. Legal experts said they knew of no special exemption for the CIA, nor any attempt to prosecute agency officials for alleged violations” becomes little more than a joke, for the mere reason that not making the intelligence community exempt from this would be a very dangerous issue indeed. You see, today the CIA has a larger issue than just small players like North Korea, it has to deal with business conglomerates all over the world and they have become close to sovereign financial entities in their own right. What happens when a Senator chooses to take a book filled with intelligence anecdotes, just because it is an American Corporation? What happens when he gets the multi-billion dollar deal and he only has to ‘sweeten’ the deal a little? This is entering a grey area that most regard to be a grey area no one wants to touch, but what if it is not a high ranking official? What if it is just a mid-level controller, or a mere IT member looking for a retirement fund? Suddenly, this scenario became a whole lot more realistic, didn’t it?

Eyewash is just one cog in a machine of cogs, it drives a certain amount of cogs of the machine and as certain levels of Intel makes it outside of the walls, counterintelligence has a path to trot on, the article only lightly (too lightly) treads on those elements (yet they are mentioned), but the overall issue of internal dangers that the CIA (et al) faces are almost trivialised, in addition, the entire issue of the DHS and the linked dangers of intelligence access remains untouched. That is perhaps the only issue the article has. Well, from my point it has a few more, like under valuating the need for counter intelligence and the fact that this tactic had been around for around 2,500 years, but let’s not squabble on minor details.

The only additional minor detail I would like to add is that in all this is the missing component of the chain of command towards the Director of National Intelligence (which at present is James Clapper), in opposition, there is no denying that there is an issue that the internal mechanisms for managing eyewash cables were largely informal, which is an issue, even if there would be a clear document, likely higher than Top Secret within the CIA on how to identify and/or classify eyewash cables. Which now only leaves us with the Eyewash cables by No Such Agency like the CIA, but that is something for another day.

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Tagged as Bradley Manning, Chelsea Manning, CIA, DHS, Director of National Intelligence, Donald Duart Maclean, Edward Snowden, Eyewash, FBI, Federal law, Guy Burgess and Anthony Blunt, James Clapper, John McDonnell, Kim Philby, NSA, President Bush, SIGINT, Sun Tzu, The Art of War, United States Department of Homeland Security, Washington Post

January 31, 2016 · 14:34

Where the gamers no longer go

There is an interesting development in the gaming industry. On the one hand, we see that Ubisoft is still cornering the mediocre side. On the other side we see that Gamespot might no longer be the site to watch. Let’s tackle the second part first, so that part one is a little easier to digest. Consider the following sources:

Forbes, January 21^st 2016
PlayStation Life Style, January 26^th 2016
PC Advisor, January 15^th 2016
PC Gamer, January 8^th 2016
Eurogamer, January 26^th 2016
Gamespot, no review
Design & Trend, January 29^th, 2016

Can anyone explain why a dedicated gaming site, one that is regarded to be less and less reliable for some time now. Can someone tell me how they did not have a review to offer? In addition this is not the first time. Is this a speculated first indication that this game is not really worth the effort?

Within the Forbes article Paul Tassi gives us “You destroy horns in encampments to prevent reinforcements. You still use beasts to wreak havoc on bases, only this time you can literally summon them yourself, rather than just hoping that the enemies are keeping a dangerous animal in a very flimsy cage on-site” which feels massively familiar to me when we consider Far Cry 3. In addition there is “you stalked around hunting down gun-less enemies with a bow and knife, a tiger at your side, attacking bad guys on command. It’s exactly like that, actually, though now with more combat options” (at http://www.forbes.com/sites/erikkain/2016/01/21/why-far-cry-primal-should-be-more-of-the-same).

These are not negative sides. I loved Far Cry 3, I skipped 4 for a few reason that do not matter here, but so far what I got shown, and what I am told, there are issues and I will mention them, because for a reason that will complete it all.

Second review is PlayStation Life Style (at http://www.playstationlifestyle.net/2016/01/26/far-cry-primal-gameplay-video-blowout/), which depends mostly on videos. The linked story relies on the fair enough headline (which they got from FX) “The Story Is Everything“, which is actually true in gaming. This page has a link to the intro of the game, which comes with a fair amount of scripted events. As it is the intro, I have no issues with that, intros require scripting at times to get the gamer to a certain gamer skill level. Only a fool objects to those moments as the gamer learns how to play their character, beyond that point onwards it needs to become the real deal.

The PC Advisor (at http://www.pcadvisor.co.uk/new-product/game/far-cry-primal-uk-release-date-features-gameplay-videos-3633525/), gives us additional gameplay, with one issue, namely Who made the play through? The movie came from Ubisoft, which is part of the problem. They give us a decent view, yet, we have seen in past events (the Division that the demo turned out to be a lot better looking than the final version, which is something that Eurogamer uncovered last month. Now we have a new issue, because is what we see going to be decently representative of what we will buy? Now, there is no indication that this is the case, but it is what Ubisoft has done in the recent past as well as the events that took place around Assassins Creed Unity, it is these events that is now, as I see it, to have a downdraft in trust towards the Ubisoft products.

It is now taking a turn for the even less optimistic as we see the review in Design & Trend as per yesterday (at http://www.designntrend.com/articles/69262/20160129/far-cry-primal-review-leak-story-missions-worst-far-cry-watch.htm). The title gives us “Its Story And Missions, Called The Worst ‘Far Cry’“, which is not very flattering.

We see in addition “too low quality for a triple-A game“, in addition we see that the review gives us the validation “The reviewer is apparently a career play tester that has spent several days with a near-final version of the product“. Yet in the end, the online magazine screws it up by giving us “Do you think this reviewer truly played “Far Cry Primal?” Are the leaked criticisms a sign of poor reviews to come? Tell us in the poll and comments section!” This is followed by the question “How do you think ‘Far Cry Primal’ will be reviewed by critics?” with the options: Well, OK, poorly and Who Cares?

One comment is not linked to the question, in addition, if the editor had any clear indication that the game was not really played, he had absolutely no business publishing that review. I wonder if by these words Design & Trend have set themselves up for a defamation case. You see, from their words this AAA game is not worth buying, now if there is decent support (through quality reviews) then fry Ubisoft must, yet if this article came from the imagination of an Ubisoft basher, the product is now smitten downwards, which as I see it makes the publisher liable as he questioned the review at the end, so they are no longer mere facilitators.

Now let’s take a look at a side that Eurogamer brought (at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ym5IYUTaH5M). The issue here: ‘all the buildings are pre-set and build in set locations‘, which is important, I will get to this soon. The video shows, the one thing that the people at Ubisoft do master, which are the graphics. There is no dispute, the bulk of all games have always excelled graphically. Yet here in the video we get “a little on the basic side” and “it would have been cool if Ubisoft had made more of a feature out of it all“, which is at the core of the issue for Ubisoft. Weirdly enough, it is the view that Eurogamer that changed my thought of getting the game, from ‘absolute not’ to ‘perhaps, maybe’, so not all negative reviews are bad or leave a person not wanting a product. That is what a good review achieves!

I think it is also fair that Ubisoft is given defence. This is seen at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jhv3Jq6O-nw, it is a life stream of what I reckon is a final version as it was streamed on January 6^th which shows the Ubisoft team showing of the game, so, do not just take my words, but also look at the other side, because you can only make up your mind as you see both sides.

So why going into this?

You see, the reviews and the impressions that Ubisoft is leaving with us is that their games is about recycling technology. This in itself is not a bad thing. The issue is not Far Cry Primal, it is an issue we have seen for too long with Ubisoft. The Eurogamer view on camp building is at the core of what we have seen for too long. Ubisoft had the option of creating legendary games, now we see games that are decent, sometimes good, yet overall no longer really great. Assassins Creed and Far Cry 4 are both examples. We are now getting close to 5 years of gaming mediocrity. Most of the games did not make the 90% or better rating. I will go one step further, the score they did get has been mainly because of the graphic and soundtrack groups. Game design, level design, area design and in game stories have been a problem for some time now and this started as early as Assassins Creed Revelations. Chests in Assassins Creed are the clearest, outposts in Far Cry 3/4, in Primal they are called bonfires. There is an issue here, not on the side of the game mind you. Many tactical players rely on a level of ‘repetition’ (read: goals) in games. Familiar actions to feel able. This is a side I understand and accept. I looked forward to synchronise in Assassins Creed. It gives us a detailed map and the view was always really good, but is it not interesting how synchronise has not ‘evolved’ in 5 iterations? There could have been so much more options than just to get to a high point. Additional to that part, the utter idiocy (as I see it, with the chests). Look, I get it, and having a few chests in there is fine, a link to the past, part of a mission, there are several options. But 20+ per area at times is just chest running and utterly bogus in my view. Now we see repetition in Far Cry. I get that some parts are there, like the sneak (which I love), yet, the idea of changing a gameplay so that replaying a game is not just an addition, it becomes a desired gaming must has not been explored to the levels it could (the fallout series has done this to a better extent). Now, that is not a side I can state for Primal, but the Eurogamer review shows us that upping the ante there could have been a game changer, it could make an 80% game into a 95% game, which does wonders to the audience and the coffers of Ubisoft. So the next Assassins Creed could actually be the last one as we see the interest in that IP change. If Ubisoft is willing to put it all on the line (and fix the massive glitches of the user interface), they have the option to truly rekindle their audience, or they can lose their audience. So far, the reviews on Primal are not great, which is an indication of an issue but in addition, this is not a given certainty for a failed game, do not make the mistake that one supports the meaning of the other, because that would be really wrong.

Until you yourself has seen the actual shared video’s from the released games and never take anyone’s word, not even mine! You should decide for yourself and regard the games you enjoyed playing!

As I see it, the issues that surfaced are the real evidence that the business formula that Ubisoft seems to be employing to prevent ‘failures’, shows that relying on certain repeated choices gives in addition a near certainty that games will not be regarded the legendary games they could have been.

I will remain hopeful that For Honor will crush the expectations of many gamers!

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Tagged as Design & Trend, Eurogamer, Far Cry Primal, Farcry 3, Forbes, Gamespot, Paul Tassi, PC Advisor, PC Gamer, PlayStation Life Style, Ubisoft

January 28, 2016 · 20:41

Bitches of Technology

There are multiple issues in play, first there is the continuation of the previous part, which I will address here. The second is the article the Guardian published (at http://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/jan/25/uk-should-be-punished-if-it-leaves-european-union-to-deter-other-exits) titled ‘UK should be punished if it leaves EU to deter other exits, say former ministers‘.

My first response in regards to this would be “are you bitches out of your mind?” which sounds highly emotional and it is. You see, Brexit (and the possible upcoming Frexit) is a direct result of the people in charge of REFUSING to take action when they could, in addition, they decided to hide behind ‘Status Quo’ when they should have acted. In final addition, several acts of change have been pushed forward again for the good of big business, which makes me question their intent.

To illustrate this with evidence (which is always important), in my article ‘Dress rehearsal (part 1)‘ (at https://lawlordtobe.com/2015/07/01/dress-rehearsal-part-1/), which I published on July 1^st 2015, I included the PDF at the end of the blog too ‘Withdrawal and expulsion from the EU and EMU some reflections‘. On page 33 we get “it is likely that some Member States would object to the introduction of a right of expulsion in the treaties, coupled with an amendment of Article 48 TEU to make that possible, since this would expose them to the risk of being forced out at some future date. Moreover, apart from it being politically almost inconceivable, forcing a Member State out of the EU or EMU would inevitably give rise to tremendous legal complexities. This, perhaps, explains why expulsion has not been, and may never be, provided for in the treaties“, as the members in charge of that piece of paper were already too deep in the mess on non-accountability, they actually set themselves up for a long fall, one the Greece instigated and even now, reflecting back on all the warnings I gave from 2013 onwards, none would have been considered. Now again in this paper we get on page 11 the text “The silence of Community primary law on the existence or otherwise of a legal right of withdrawal was, in any event, inconclusive, lending itself to two fundamentally opposed interpretations. One is that a right of unilateral withdrawal existed even in the absence of any explicit reference to it in the treaties, since sovereign States were, in any case, free to exercise their sovereign right to withdraw from their international commitments“, the text refers to P. Doehring and P. Hill where there seemed to be the case of favouring the theory that it reflects the hope of the drafters of dissuading Member States from withdrawing. That was nice in those days, but the interested parties of today have had enough of the utter irresponsible acts of other so called world leaders. In addition there is the expression ‘Sovereign power’, coming from ‘Sovereign States’ which has been defined as ‘power not subject to limitation by higher or coordinate power held over some territory’ this comes from N. MacCormick’s ‘Questioning Sovereignty‘.

So even after we saw the useless and toothless statements from some in the past regarding “throwing Greece out of the Euro and the EEC“, we see an even more toothless statement from several former ministers at this junction regarding the punishment for those leaving the Euro/EEC. It is given additional voice in the quote “We should not encourage other populist forces campaigning on exit such as National Front in France or Podemos in Spain. This is a very important consideration. This is in the interests of Europe that we do not encourage other EU countries to leave. The common interest of remaining members is to deter other exits. This should have an impact on the terms Britain gets”, words spoken by the former Polish deputy prime minister Leszek Balcerowicz. He is probably realising that his goose is cooked soon after Brexit and Frexit. Even though he looks ‘good’ on paper, 53% debt of GDP still comes to 236 billion dollars, in a nation with 38 million people. They are all panicking now, because the British referendum is not going good (read: the way they want it to go). If only someone had the balls to strongly intervene with Greece, and in better terms clean up legislation a long time ago, this mess would have been speculative at best. Now we see the texts that the writers want us to focus on, but in all this, in that same air, we see the ignored facts. Facts, that (as I see them), Patrick Wintour Diplomatic editor is not eager to inform his readers on.

The little part in all this is something that was mentioned twice, including the photo caption. You see, this is an exercise to debunk issues by the Open Europe Think-tank. You might notice some ‘fluffy’ facts, yet the truth is, is that these people are speaking whilst at their backs (read: they are the political shield) for players like Jardine Matheson Holdings (61 billion plus) and British Petroleum (358 billion plus), with a lot more then these two, we see that Open Europe is a shield for the bigger players, all behind a fluffy website (at http://openeurope.org.uk/). These groups are very dependent on keeping the EEC as is, the Status Quo to be, but the people all over Europe have had enough of this non-accountability from both politicians and large corporations. That is exactly why Le Pen and Farage are a worry to them. Even now we see (at http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2016/jan/25/northern-ireland-irish-republic-eu-referendum-enda-kenny) the first mentions that a referendum is not needed until the end of 2017. That stalling is exactly what Farage is hoping for, showing more vigour in this fight! We see that Reuters is giving us “To loud applause, Nigel Farage, the leader of the UK Independence Party, told a Grassroots Out campaign event that Europe’s policy of taking in migrants with few checks had endangered the lives of those living in the 28-member bloc“, with an additional “Farage was joined on the stage by Britain’s former defence secretary Liam Fox from Cameron’s ruling Conservative party who is also campaigning for an exit“, which is now a growing issue.

Now I need to get back to the previous article, even though this time it is not about the man or the victim, this is about data and data systems. you see, certain amendments were to be made in Serious Crime Bill (at the http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2014-06/06/cybercrime-bill-life-sentence), Wired informed us regarding “there is no existing offence of owning manuals that offer advice on how to groom or abuse children sexually“, which might not help Breck Bednar and family any regarding the circumstances. In addition, the Serious Crime Act would in this case apply AFTER the damage is done, so no matter how many improvements, Breck Bednar ends up remaining terminally dead no matter what.

When we look at the Serious Crime Act of 2015, we see at section 3 we see ‘Unauthorised acts causing, or creating risk of, serious damage‘, but this is AFTER the fact and even then, many of the facilitating acts will remain unanswered. In my previous blog I got some comments on ‘the Nigerian prince‘ issue. They were fair enough, but in some of these parts we have two issues. We can go with the part that Breck Bednar got himself killed by not listening to his mother. Which to some extent makes sense, yet in the same light, we see that levels of facilitation remain unanswered in many ways.

Consider the following

The administrator of a server service gets to intentionally misrepresent himself or herself. We have two issues, one, is that we already have issues of misrepresentation. The issue given is “He claimed to be a 17-year-old computer engineer running a multimillion pound company“, the fact that this misrepresentation comes with “he was invited into an online gaming group – a ‘virtual clubhouse’“, in the foundation there is no initial cause of imminent danger, but the danger could have been avoided in a few ways.
What if such servers need to be openly registered and linked to a registered corporation or firm, which now gives us the issue that Lewis Daynes would have been better known, moreover, the police would have seen more red flags possibly intervening before Breck Bednar entered a state of being permanently dead. I will go one step further, what if, not unlike ‘Raising the bar’ in IP law (2013), we see, contemplate and try to adjust the validity and the accountability of the facilitator. Now we get that change!

You see, Lewis Daynes would have to answer several questions, logs would have been available for the police to investigate. That is the one step too many sides do not want to consider, because accountability in too many cases seem to deflate maximised profits, yet in all this, is that a valid train of thought for any government to consider?

Consider that on February 17, 2014 Breck Bednar ended up dead, those facts had been in court for a while (he was convicted in January 2015), yet knowing that this issue was already playing we see (at https://www.nspcc.org.uk/fighting-for-childhood/news-opinion/flaw-law-online-grooming-legislation/). The headline ‘PM announces new online grooming offence‘ sounds nice, and there is forward movement, yet there is a massive gap in the prevention of grooming, which is not even correct in this case, when we consider the law. Most laws would have been able to use the path of facilitator, most social media will still be able to hold onto the defence of ‘innocent disseminator‘, yet, the action of Lewis Daynes do not allow for that. His continued interactions stop him from that path giving us an option to grant an additional level of protection to future victims, whilst not hindering business and profit as a whole, because the bulk of all social media is founded on interactions by users and facilitation by the system. Even in the most precise case of scripting, it is not towards ONE individual, it would be towards a spearheaded group of thousands. Breck Bednar would have been in an automated introduction amongst thousands and in this case there is safety in numbers, because the actions of Lewis Daynes would have raised many more flags, enough from barring him from a system he did not control and in his own system he is not the facilitator. It is the lack of many organisations (governments, corporations and legal parties) to dig into the option of setting safety parameters regarding ‘facilitation’.

As seen, there needs to be an additional circle of protection, which addresses the dangers of the ability for grooming. This is a hard issue to address and in light of any Brexit it could become a lot harder, if any law has to be addressed, than in light of all the changes the next 10 years will bring, a massive change to digital devices, for example, the new Huawei P9 will come (read: is rumoured to come) with 4GB RAM, 64GB ROM, 8MP front camera and 16MP back camera, and installed Android 6.0. It comes with a 64-bit processor that outperforms plenty of laptops.

Now we get back to part one, because the two are linked in cyberspace.

You see, the chance of Brexit which was 39% in November 2015 is now surpassing 48%, this means that there are a few issues coming forward, apart from the growing danger that UKIP seems to be. You see, this is not just a Nigel Farage thing. There is a rather massive jurisprudential lag in prosecuting economic crimes, especially economic cyber-crimes.

Some of the information can be found (at http://www.actionfraud.police.uk/news/british-crime-survey-reveals-extent-of-fraud-and-cyber-crime-in-sngland-and-wales-oct15). The article ‘British Crime Survey reveals extent of fraud and cyber crime in England and Wales‘ gives us “the cost of fraud to the UK economy estimated at £30 billion more needs to be done and more resources are needed to assist law enforcement to help victims of crime and prevent further victimisation“, which sounds nice in theory, but the foundation needed is stronger legislation. Yet in all this, there is an issue with the article. The quote “This is new crime in our society and it brings new challenges for policing in prosecuting offenders and protecting victims. Notwithstanding the cuts to police budgets we must find ways of responding to the needs of victims of fraud. Alongside this policing response the UK needs to begin a prevention revolution to educate the public on how to stop hackers and fraudsters from taking our money“, which focusses on the money, just on the money, in all this there are other venues where there is an issue (perhaps the name Breck Bednar sounds familiar).

The issue is to deal with the facilitators without strangling true entrepreneurial options, which is what has been lacking both within the Commonwealth and outside of it. You see, the danger to the many sides of life through technology, including the children is growing on a near exponential level. First of all, the main issue is IPv6, it was essential to conceive this new technology for the mere reason that its predecessor has actually run out of options. With a mobile growth that seems to double on an annual base, the new phones won’t just have IPv6 (as the mobile industry started to adopt it since around 2009), the growth of IPv6 has doubled in the last 12 months. At http://betanews.com/2016/01/05/ipv6-adoption-nearly-doubles-in-a-year/ we see that usage went from just below 6% to well over 10%, falling just short of 84%, here I mean that over 10% of all traffic to websites is now IPv6. For the most, this cannot be clearly monitored, which means that with the next mobile iteration, we will see a growth unlike we have seen before. You see, Statista (at http://www.statista.com/statistics/263441/global-smartphone-shipments-forecast/) forecasts a sale of 1.4 billion phones in 2016. This would include the upcoming Huawei P9, the Apple iPhone 7, Google Nexus 6, HTC One M10, the Samsung Galaxy S7 and a few more. These phones will ship with up to 4GB RAM (in two cases 6GB is rumoured), several of them with 64GB internal storage.

This is a nightmare to the intelligence community, as well as the CPS and the DPP, yet I feel that for parents the worry should be bigger, a lot bigger. As social media gets more and more derived solutions, niche groups will be a consequence, which means that children like Breck Bednar could end up being an even larger target, because there is too much evidence at present that monitoring those groups will become technologically near impossible. IPv6 Now (at http://www.ipv6now.com.au/primers/IPv6SecurityIssues.php) shows us a few issues. The first quote is “With 18 billion billion addresses in a /64 subnet, sequential scanning is pointless. It would take 500,000 years to scan a single /64 at a million probes per second“, I will immediately admit that I left a little part out of it, so there are options, yet let’s see my reasoning.

That part is seen in the quote “In IPv4, multiple addresses are always possible, but rare. But in IPv6 they are very common, arising from SLAAC, temporary DHCPv6, link-local addresses, multiple prefixes, overlapping lifetimes, as well as IPv4 addresses. Admins must be aware of all possible interface addresses and the capacity of network devices to create their own addresses“, this implies that the admin is all on the up and up, but when we consider those with other agenda’s like Lewis Daynes and we see apps appearing that allow for a peer-2-peer approach, a system that piggybacks messages. At some point someone will miss out on checking, especially when they are distributed in other ways. Financial opportunists, organised crimes, schoolkids and monsters in the making a system that cannot be monitored in any way because governments ended up being too lax in a world where those in power requiring ‘space’ and not realising who else they were enabling, or perhaps they did know but did not care.

Now we are beyond running out of time, because of the Statista is even close to correct, the world could have an IPv6 based mobile server park (as well as a data cloud) that ends up being unmonitored. Now, I am not evangelising not allowing for these iterations, yet the need to adjust legislation that additional options exist to hold certain groups to account becomes an increasing essential need.

There is one final side that IPv6 Now gives us. The quote is part of auto configuration (which is too often way more dodgy than I care for) gives us “DHCPv6 (Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol) allows a server to supply addresses to hosts. DHCP in IPv4 needed external support, but in IPv6 it requires nothing but a working router for the connected host to be immediately reachable“, if we consider that any mobile phone is a router, how reachable will this modern host be and more important, what data could be gotten access to, especially in an unmonitored way?

At this point, we seem to become nothing less than the bitches of technology. I could state that there is a group that will try to align certain paths, but it is already too late for that. People, their lives and whatever they own is streamed on a near 24:7 foundation and in all this there remains a technological lack in the places that cannot afford not to have it. When we see the news on the ‘evolving’ systems fighting fraud and other creative (and sometimes graphical) activities, we see that the gap of our safety and our allowance for accepted acts is widening to the extent that everyone is an evolving target without any clear means of staying safe. There is support for that statement. It comes from the Czech Ministry of Education (at http://services.geant.net/cbp/Knowledge_Base/Network_Monitoring/Documents/gn3-na3-t4-cbpd132.pdf), now we will accept that this is a 2011 document, yet, this does not diminish the quote “IPv6 configured hosts on an IPv4 network can bypass defined security policy or hide their identity using temporary IPv6 addresses“, consider that in conjunction that many users (young and old) tend to use free Wi-Fi locations whenever possible, making monitoring an even lesser option. Now consider those places and the traffic that they could (unintentionally) offer through ‘temporary IPv6 addresses‘, so what safety is there?

Clearly we have become the bitch of technology and the law is falling behind more and more. The EEC has done too little and Brexit could go either way in protecting the people, but the danger here must be acknowledged, if ‘protection’ becomes too draconian it would not become protective and only drive away commerce, a mere lose-lose situation for everyone involved.

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Tagged as Apple iPhone 7, BBC, betanews.com, Breck Bednar, Brexit, British Petroleum, Conservative party, Conservatives, Czech Ministry of Education, David Cameron, France, Frexit, Google Nexus 6, HTC One M10, Huawei P9, IPv6 Now, Jardine Matheson Holdings, Leszek Balcerowicz, Lewis Daynes, Liam Fox, MacCormick, Marine Le Pen, National Front, Nigel Farage, P. Doehring, P. Hill, Pablo Iglesias, Patrick Wintour, Podemos, Poland, Samsung Galaxy S7, Spain, Statista, the Guardian, UKIP, Wired

January 24, 2016 · 22:05

Persecuting the prosecutors

Sometimes things get to me. We all have those moments, we all consider the things that touch us in different ways. For me, I have been a gamer since the beginning of gaming. This world started for me in 1983 with the Vic-20 and was followed up with the CBM-64 a year later. I never stopped gaming, so when I got hit with the article ‘I couldn’t save my child from being killed by an online predator‘ (at http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2016/jan/23/breck-bednar-murder-online-grooming-gaming-lorin-lafave), I kind of lost it. This gaming world is a world I share, virtually and in reality. I talk to my co-workers on the new games, the challenges some games give and how we feel about some games. A few friends are all about GTA, some share my passion for Fallout, Diablo 3 and Minecraft. Whilst some games we all play by ourselves, because we cannot be into every game that is a mere reality. We hunt down the mutants, kill them with our rifles (all by ourselves), and when we get that legendary monster we get to talk about it the next day. This is a world of fun, joy and challenges. We do not ignore the real life, we interact with others too, which is not always about games. So, I was slightly dismayed when Olivia Wilde chose Jason Sudeikis over me (it must have been the beard). Life goes on, so as you see, we have our dreams, our fun, our joy, our fantasies and we go out of our way to get as much joy into our lives without bringing harm. That is as I see it a way of life that the bulk of us gamers have.

Some are a lot more competitive and even relenting on gaming as they kill virtually to be the best, some of them have a too vivid drive to be winners and dissing the losers or at times being the wannabe’s that strike out to winners. In that world we have all kinds, but actual harm, those cases are rare to say the least. So as I read the article, a form of anger flushed over me. This is for the mere reason that, for a large part of my life, I have been driven by logic and common sense (apart from that Olivia Wilde moment). From what I have read, there are several things wrong here. Not towards one person, but towards a few, including the victim himself.

This is the first quote that actually came after the second one “He claimed to be a 17-year-old computer engineer running a multimillion pound company. Sometimes he was in New York, working for the US government. Other times, he was in Dubai, or off to Syria” and “the ringmaster, whose server they played on. While the other members were known to Breck or his friends, Lewis Daynes was not someone they knew in real life“.

These two quotes should have been a red flag to all parties. We cannot blame a 14 year old, but this should have been the red flag to upset the parents. You see, I will never be a multi-millionaire (actually if Larry Page listens to an option I came up with, I could be). What is the issue is that gaming comes at a price, for the most the really wealthy ones work too much to get time to be on gaming servers. In addition, his location should have been all over the place, any Cyber squad could have seen that, it would have been a real orange flag to the victim that not all was on the up and up, the first thread on the loom of disaster would have been dismantled.

The quote “Lewis says I don’t need to finish school as he can get me a Microsoft apprenticeship when I turn 16” is the second flag. It should have been the alert on several levels. The man was either some ‘multi-millionaire‘ working for Microsoft, or again this was a ruse. The additional “I should be allowed to game as long as I want“, should have alerted parents and police. You see, in common Law even at 16 Breck Bednar would have remained a minor. So, why is a stranger deciding on what someone else’s child does?

The final quote on that topic is “I’d be telling Breck to get offline and he’d literally have Dayne’s voice in his earphones telling him not to listen. I could see Breck’s face, torn between me and his cool mentor who had the whole world going for him”, which now gets us a stranger involving themselves in the life of a minor.

The police as well as the cyber groups should have been all over this, in addition, did anyone contact the FBI here (even though after the facts it seemed an irrelevant act)? You see, the events not yet known could have been averted before zero hour, as Lewis Daynes was from Grays, Essex. This could have diffused a lot of issues. His stories out in the open, for Breck Bednar and all his friends to know what kind of a person Lewis Daynes was before he could strike. Now we can blame the police, and I am doing that partially. Yet in all this, we must also expect that there is a limit to the resources the police has, limitations in time and hardware. Not all is a given.

But there is an issue when we go solely from the article we see in the guardian. You see the quote “I told the call handler what I’d heard, what I feared. She obviously didn’t understand online grooming” has more than one side.

The known elements here are that Breck Bednar was a minor and that there was a clear indication that Breck Bednar was unlikely to be the only minor. We have the following parts, when we look from the other side: ‘Cyberstalking is the use of the Internet or other electronic means to stalk an individual. It may include monitoring, identity theft, threats, or gathering information that may be used to threaten or harass‘, I edited the non-relevant parts out of here. So we see that Lewis Daynes was monitoring, we have identity theft, we can make that case as he assumed to be a person, moreover an industrial who did not exist. This could be seen as a danger to the life and wellbeing of minors.

The elements here are now another matter. You see, in the eyes of the court there is no established guilt, or even crime at this point, yet exposing the elements would have diminished the threat Lewis Daynes was and would most certainly have protected at least one child, leaving us with the reality that Breck Bednar could have been alive today. In this we might consider that the police is to be blamed to some extent, but in equal measure, they did look for the elements, the issue here is the fact that does also count. When we see the quote “Daynes later pleaded guilty to murder with sexual and sadistic motivation“, we are confronted with a combination that is really rare, and with the elements as found, or better stated those that were missing, mainly that the police didn’t find a single image or text about bodies or sex. Certain flags were never raised, but as stated, from what we can see, enough flags should have been raised to take this serious, to give clear indication to Lewis Daynes that he was under open investigation, perhaps enough for him to back off. Enough to diffuse the situation.

Here is my part that is now also an issue. This took me mere minutes, which also beckons on what more precisely happened. You see the police is not lacking or stupid, I would go even further that the involved people might be burdened with guilt. So why is it so clear to me? Well, first of all, to see this in the article is simple, a mere exercise of logic. The true elements over time are a lot less clear, but in all this, the main elements were gamers, gaming platforms and servers, they have time lines and logs. Any level of logs missing would have been another red flag, any other interactions would create even more red flags. So why were these elements missed? Where did the police system fail? In my view there was a clear failure here. Police 101 had failed in a few ways, but it is uncertain whether the failure should allow any level of blame. You see, there is an element that is in the article, but cannot clearly be weighted. it is “Now 18, he was unemployed, living alone in an Essex flat where he bought server space and used it to game with teenage boys“, we are looking at a 2012 system, so what kind of server space? Did he have his own server? Or did he lease hardware? Unemployed and cash for that? If it was a solitary server, we see another element, because it would not be in an enterprise environment, showing even more flags, if it was a personal server, the cyber division had a place to look at, who had Lewis Daynes been interacting with? Even more parents would have been alerted, other gamers would have been informed that he was a jobless no one, and not the 7 figure income person dangling IT jobs from Syria, New York or Dubai.

All elements, all flags and more issues. All out in the open could have prevented the fatal consequence to Breck Bednar, but that is me talking after the events. As stated, this one article is not a proper setting for it. Yet the BBC article gave a few more issues to consider. The fact “Five other counts against Daynes, including the rape of another boy, were not pursued as there was not a realistic prospect of a conviction, the prosecution said“, so perhaps the fact that the element of rape might have been an additional flag that there was a real risk of danger to Breck Bednar. Yet, the BBC is unclear as per when those criminal elements would have been known. Yet there is additional evidence. If there had been a clear investigation the evidence “encrypted electronic equipment” as stated by the BBC could have given additional issues, because they might have been there validly in an organisational situation, in the case of an unemployed 18 year old, such elements could give rise to flags of a criminal aspect, a criminal aspect that had children in the mix.

Even though there have been investigations and even though a misconduct notice was brought, it took almost no time to find enough flags to raise concerns on several levels. This gives concerns to what else is getting missed. Not because I am so bright (I am that), or that the police is that stupid (they really are not), but the need for an evolving infrastructure. If you think that issues are missed now, what do you think will happen when the transition to IPv6 really gets underway? With handheld and mobile devices all stronger than the average data server in 2007, what was reserved to data servers and corporations, is already in the hands of individuals, most of them having no clue what they are holding onto and what these systems are capable of. How can any police force sustain its workload if it is not reshaped into an evolving infrastructure that is able to adjust to other criminal elements? This level of evolution is currently not happening, moreover, it is not happening in many nations. Which is a worry when we consider the case of Lewis Daynes, you see, in this age of economy, the danger of extreme behaviour in a time when people have no jobs, no outlooks and no prospects, these souls are more likely to become extreme, that is a given, yet the extent to it happening is not known, it cannot be predicted and it requires for a better level of investigation. If we are to lower the dangers that kids like Breck Bednar face, we have no other choice but to evolve and change the way we investigate these issues. There has been a clear call for a long time that legislation requires adaption to all kinds of cyber-crimes and cyber based crimes. This for the mere reason that the jump to IPv6 allows a jump from the 4.3 billion addresses that IPv4 gave, to the amount that every person on the planet would have a unique address for every device it owns. More important, IPv6 will allow for every person on the planet to have 1,000 devices, each with their own address and even after that less than 0.1% of all available IPv6 addresses would have been used. We are pushed into an evolution because IP addresses are no longer available. Our devices, each 1,000 times more powerful than the computer that got Apollo 11 to the moon, the computers required to monitor the satellites is now no more than an app and nearly every mobile phone from the previous generation would be able to run it. We moved technology that far ahead. We are now moving to the situation where we see that almost 4 Exabyte a day is transmitted. All that data, once we are in IPv6, all that data can be identified per person and the amount of data will increase almost exponentially. When we get there, how impossible will it become to find extreme elements like Lewis Daynes? That is just the extremes, we haven’t even considered what organised crime could be up to. A situation that brings more questions than answers. Some answers are being sought by Lorin LaFave and I wonder if enough parties are asking the right questions, because some questions come with the element of costs, and they will grow, yet the costs will already be high to begin with. A dimension many politicians are not ready for because the coffers are empty and budgets constraints will limit the steps that need to be made, many are aware of it and nearly no one are voicing those elements.

There is a reality to that, but the reality we need to address is the nightmare Lorin LaFave is forced to face and she is not the only mother who should be worried.

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Tagged as BBC, Breck Bednar, CBM-64, Diablo 3, Essex, Fallout, FBI, Grays, IPv4, IPv6, Jason Sudeikis, Larry Page, Lewis Daynes, Lorin LaFave, Minecraft, Olivia Wilde, police line 101, the Guardian, VIC-20

January 19, 2016 · 21:54

Calling a centre

It seems that BT is one of the first one making a step back, a step towards the old times. They are moving away from those bulk cheap Indian call centres. I wonder if they are just the first. The title ‘BT hires 1,000 UK staff after complaints over Indian call centres‘ is not wrong, but I feel it is misleading. The article (at http://www.theguardian.com/business/2016/jan/18/bt-hires-1000-uk-staff-after-complaints-indian-call-centres),

I have had my share of experience with Indian call centres. The quote “The recruitment drive follows reports from customers that they preferred speaking to people in UK call centres rather than Indian staff based in Bangalore and Delhi. BT said the new jobs would be “frontline roles” in customer care“. You see, there are many places where the solution might to some degree work, yet the UK is different in many ways. They excel in dialects and expressions, so when an Indian call centre has an employee that would speak ‘English’, the idea that all versions of English are the same, they will come back from a cold turkey dinner with an added icy cold shower.

The fact that 80% of the call must be repeated because the friendly voice on the other side did not understand it is at the core of what is wrong, and it is one of two massive issues. In all fairness, none are actually the fault of the friendly voice on the phone, they are the core of the issue the flaw of the boss of his/her boss, likely even one level higher. Talking to someone in England in BBC English works perfect for the person on the non-Indian side of the phone conversation, the person responding is for the most ignorant of the BBC English condition and before the Indian call centre operator realises it.

So when the call starts and that person hears “I needed a bullseye before going off to Bedfordshire, now the fast sausage and mash machine has gone bollocks and ate me card!”

How long until the call centre operator gets a clue that the man is trying to get $50 from the ATM and it swallowed his bank card? It could take 10 minutes just to get that sentence translated. I know it is an exaggeration, but consider how inaudible some dialects are especially from people in places like Hounslow or Cardiff. Now most UK people have a small problem comprehending people from there, so how will someone in India have a clue? These examples are a little out there, yet considering the vast wealth of expressions and dialects, the issue remains and for BT and some banks, the Indian call centres are not a solution, they never were and I personally talked to people in the late 90’s where that prediction was clearly given, yet it was all about cutting costs and getting a solution where people could live with a degradation from 100% service to 80% service, not just in the UK, this issue is nearly global.

The second issue is even more of a problem, again, the kind Indian voice should not be blamed, for the simple reason that this was all management. To get a certain path, people were ‘taught’ scripts and clear paths of choices. Almost like the automated system when you call places like Telstra, Optus, Vodafone (and Vodafail too) and many others. The system that takes you from choice to choice, a path with 1-5 choices, the call centre person got a similar path, and for 70% it works, for 70% of the issues, that they are receiving a call for, that gets resolved. Yet the other 30% are out of luck. The system is unrelenting and the call centre was not allowed to deviate. Having have worked as a Technical Account Manager in the service field, I saw and have been through many iterations where the customer has that 1% flaw, a dozen a day, data fields can be a relentless one and as more systems interact, more flaws creep into the connectivity. Now add the language to the procedural part and yes, now 1 in 3 would have an issue and the call centre would see new escalations on how one would infect another and soon the system was unworkable, the call centre person never had a clue on how things went from bad to worse and the worst part is that this is not some average count, in this system, the issues stack, so we get issue on issue with an ever increasing population who go from ‘tolerating’ to ‘extremely oppositional’.

A flawed system that came into play from the need of cost suppression. A sales driven industry that would never properly value the power of quality service, interesting is that it took this long to realise it. or is the issue not really costs, but the need for having home shaped jobs, more and more are needed in a current economy where local jobs are essentially more important.

In all this, we now need to consider the following: “But while BT performed badly overall, data on how quickly telecoms firms resolved complaints undermine reports that customers find it hard to communicate with Indian call centre staff“. Here we see two parts, the first one is ‘how quickly telecoms firms resolved complaints‘, there was not a technology part, for the most the issue was communication, clear communication both ways, when you consider that the UK population side does not speak BBC English (apart from perhaps those in the BBC building, and those in that large London donut), so as far as I can tell, most issues could be easily resolved though ‘proper’ English and the actual issue when identified would be resolved almost immediately. The part ‘hard to communicate with Indian call centre staff‘ gives the other part from the resolution, but overall there is another question, how do the numbers hold up when every case from beginning to end is checked on timeframes and quality? The given statement might not hold up, for the simple reason that the operational system is still an issue that path will not be the greatest issue when it is all in the UK, but overall there is an operational side that is not addressed. What operational call centre solutions will become part of the BT frame? Because the data that follows will need to be monitored and even as places are ‘preparing’ for the new solution, the question that follows is ‘are the right metrics being considered?‘ When we take that into consideration, we would need to see who will be looking at those metrics. A sales person will look at different metrics than a solution, service or consultancy manager, even though the consultancy manager is about sales, it will be about the satisfaction of the sold solution, so there will be a much stronger overlap.

The question now becomes, what will be the next hurdles for BT?

The infrastructure and the technology is one, the IT and the call centre system will require different solutions today than most solutions offered a decade ago, are those solutions up to speed to remain scalable, evolutionary and easily deployable? You see, the Indians who developed those solutions have created a decade of infrastructure expertise, that knowledge is partially lost to the UK solution industry.

the final quote to consider is “It said staff had recently agreed to more flexible working hours, to make sure calls could be answered from the UK at the weekend and in the evenings. “This demonstrates the commitment from everyone at BT to work together to improve customer service and to make things easy for our customers,” said Barr“, part of this has always existed, many places, including in the late 90’s required solutions to be working for a longer time. In that part there are two solutions, one is the variable times, which are at the current core of the solutions, in some cases (possibly not in the case of BT) is to have a time zone coverage, where large corporations have coverage in Europe, the US and Australia, creating a near perfect 24 hour coverage. When one call centre shuts down, the other one starts, or has been operating a few hours, meaning that any issue not dealt with in call centre one, the one to the east will pick up those issues as well as the ones they receive until they shot down, this moves forwards and in that solution a global service system comes to play, that level of service is now more and more required, because saving money was only an option where sales is king, in a system where sales is no longer staying up to speed, services needs to create a pillow for new sales and new steps to higher revenue.

That time is now returning, or perhaps better stated, the core of business needs to return to their home fields. In a state where mobiles rule, where Telco’s can be started from a living room with the mere need to have access to bandwidth to sell on, the home field advantage relies on service and interactive response, that step is now the place for the larger home players to get back their consumer base and from that step, reclaim the foundation of income to return to those large players. The sharks are returning and they are getting rid of the pilot fish that have been feeding themselves on too much food, the shark has been hungry for too long.

In that example, we all understand that in the healthy environment the shark will need, allow and even require the pilot fish. Yet as its food supply has been reduced to a mere fraction of what it was, the shark needs to evolve into being better and more efficient in devouring the food it gets, as there is less. So it sucks to be the pilot fish, but for too long every shark had not one but 5-10 pilot fish around its teeth, that part can no longer continue, whether those 5-10 were ‘validly’ there. In the end, cutting costs for those banks might have been a jump that is a lot more expensive than they bargained for, which will be at the centre of the numbers that the new call centre solutions would be trying to show in the pursuit of growing their grades, qualities and key result areas. So where is the flaw in my last statement?

You see, past the shark we get the issue that it was about cheap that was not, which is not completely correct, it is the change towards the new location that is the new cost, not the lack of old profits. We can argue that the not predicting that change is short sighted, but is that the flaw of the past, or our obsessive need to lay blame in the now?

It seems to me that BT is only the first in many, for those who have the quality and the knowledge, this will be an evolving field of need. Personally I see that this could be a potential job bringer to places like Scotland and Wales. When this evolves into a separate global call centre with a global coverage, those who have it will come to a decent growing field, a field of need where for the last few years there was none.

You see, there is another side in this, in the last few weeks there have been reports from places like Digital India we see titles like ‘Digital India will take off on the strength of call centres in small towns‘ (at http://indianexpress.com/article/business/business-others/digital-india-will-take-off-on-the-strength-of-call-centres-in-small-towns-ravi-shankar-prasad/) which makes perfect sense for their local market, a local market that has been evolving for some time now. Now consider the quote “There is enough data work available in the country (to be handled by these centres)”, which remains a fair call, yet the article is absent of international parts, which is a little odd, considering that this is about Ravi Shankar Prasad, Minister of Communications and Information Technology. Yet, in that same line of thinking we now get lines like ‘Serco on the road to recovery with £250m sale of Indian call centre business‘, Serco seems to be on a road, leaving that outsourcing solution to Blackstone.

The issue is a little hard to set, as Serco has had its fingers in so many pies, many failing to a larger extent, so that issue on Call centres is not easily settled here, but consider the dive they took by ridding themselves of it at this time and at the massive discount it was sold at, it starts to form a speculated pattern. You see, the fact that Indian call centres are all growing in their local market, and ‘speculated’ must remain the operative word here, because the needs of one Telco, does not give way to an early summer feeling in the employment market. For that we need to take one additional look to the BBC article (at http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-31762595), called ‘The country training people to leave‘, the quote there is ““British companies love us because our English is not accented. The brightest graduates from our universities fight to get a job here. We only take the smartest kids. And after we’ve finished training them they even get your British sarcasm,” says Tubbs“, which is actually at the heart of the matter for one of the Indian issues, yet the part that is not addressed is that India had grown a strong infrastructure. That part was shown in the NY Times a year earlier, “The 2.2 million vehicles a day that grind away on Manila’s crumbling road system cost the country 876 billion pesos a year, or more than $20 billion, in lost productivity and wasted energy, according to a recent study by the Japan International Cooperation Agency. That is a serious drain on an economy of about $250 billion“, now add to that “Manila is plagued by power failures, chronic water shortages and an antiquated telecommunications system“, I am taking the airport out of that equation, which remains an issue too. The bottleneck was not addressing the growing options that required a massive overhaul, now it is too late, the power from Manilla in language was shown, making the move back to the UK an easy step. Consider the earlier BBC article, which gave “the government teaches thousands of people the skills they need to get jobs abroad“, we now have a rolling economy moving back to the UK, with additional options for workers who could be relocated to the UK should the call centres run dry on willing staff, even more optional is getting a hold of all that call centre staff, should the UK market not be providing enough early on, the UK has options to home grow a market they had lost, even more important is that this is a service filed Scottish workers could be trained in, giving additional solutions when the cost of corporate costs in the greater London area falls short, that is providing Birmingham does not pick up this opportunity.

As stated, it is speculated, but I see that BT has opened a door, a door that remains ajar for others to consider. Even if they are not in the UK, large US and Japanese corporations requires more and more the need for service solutions in the European timeline, the Indian solution was not the success they expected and the Manilla crises will continue at least 4-5 years, that is, if the infrastructure gets a massive overhaul as per immediate, if not, they lose the market too and Europe is hungry for real revenue, revenue that requires a service solution, one they had abstained form for too long.

Will this pan out correctly?

Even as the Philippine government is projecting a 15% growth from 2014 onwards, getting it from $11 billion, to $15 billion this year, the issue remains infrastructure, they have no real solution and the issues started to play in 2014, whilst no true overhaul had commenced, which means that it needs to address a near 32% growth and need in resources, whilst Manilla has no way to deal with it. This means that the summer drains will leave systems collapsing, something that we would start to see soon enough, it also means that those with Manilla support choices will need an alternative they did not bargain for. So the BT move is timely (in Philippine terms), if not essential to their path to repair.

Whatever comes next will be interesting to watch, because when that move does go forward, it becomes interesting to see how the larger corporations deal with their vested interest in places like Germany and France. In that regard, BT’s step (as stated by the Financial Times) comes with additional needs, as Sir Mike Rake saw the outsourcing as an ‘Achilles heel’, which might have been an understatement. In all that, Deutsche Telekom, who is connected in all this, might be seeing new trends to insourcing (pushing for could be a better word), as it also closes the door for the UK to leave the EEC as insourcing becomes more and more successful, which means many business players will be pushing for this success.

That part has additional reasons when we see that Sir Mike Rake, possibly UK’s largest Europhile in history gets to voice on how UK business at large does not want any form of Brexit, a move that can be given strength as call centres will grow in need within the EEC, which is just what the UK Conservatives hoped for, they just never expected to get saved by a call centre, which is amazingly hilarious in its own right.

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Tagged as Bangalore, BBC, BBC English, Brexit, British Telecom, BT, Call centre, Delhi, Deutsche Telekom, Digital India, EEC, France, GCHQ, Germany, Indian call centre, insourcing, London, Minister of Communications and Information Technology, Philippines, Ravi Shankar Prasad

January 18, 2016 · 19:43

The line of privacy

I have a decent grasp on privacy. I tend to give it to others as much as possible, moreover as I on average do not really care about their private lives. This sounds harsh, but consider the facts. When the person isn’t family, or directly connected to you, how much do you actually care? Some people do care to know everything, but that is another matter entirely. So when ZDNET and a few others published ‘61 agencies after warrantless access to Australian telecommunications metadata‘, I was initially in that mood of, ‘oh yea, whatever!’ You see, when I see names like ‘Australian Financial Security Authority’, I reckon financial planners will get jumpy, but is that about possible ‘dubious’ choices, or their need for privacy? You see, one implies the element of a transgression, as such it becomes debatable whether those actions are to be lauded with non-access.

With a player like Clean Energy Regulator we see an industrial access need, and I very much doubt whether they are interested in individuals. But what happens when we see that groups like Bankstown City Council, Racing Queensland, Office of the Racing Integrity Commissioner (VIC) and the National Measurement Institute, I start having questions (especially regarding levels of sanity).

Let’s consider the access: “warrantless access two years’ worth of customers’ call records, location information, IP addresses, billing information, and other data stored by Telco’s“.

Now, I will be the last one to questions access by ‘valid’ organisations and even looking that the ‘alphabetical’ list the locations of the redacted names does not seem to include ASIO and ASIS, who have a clear need for that access, but can anyone explain why Bankstown City Council needs that access? In that same line we can add both Racing Queensland and the Office of the Racing Integrity Commissioner (VIC). If there is an investigation, it should go via the police of the correct channels. I see zero, I say again, zero reason to give those three access. Before we know it, we see Waverly City Council and perhaps even Chatswood City Council. How long then until all that data becomes available ‘for a special price’?

There are a few others on that list that require scrutiny. Do you really think that industrial transgressors wanted by the Department of the Environment will use their own phones? How much wasted man-years will we face as those untrained individuals try to make sense of 23,644 burner phones, which is just Sydney. In all this it seems to me that those requiring access will after that have an issue with processing data, which means more software, more failed levels of security and even more data transgressions. This must be the heaven that Rupert Murdoch dreams of. Data all accessible behind a server guarded with the admin password ‘qwerty’ or perhaps even ‘password’.

Yes, there is a massive issue here and the magazines including ZDNET (at http://www.zdnet.com/article/61-agencies-after-warrantless-access-to-australian-telecommunications-metadata/) mention the names (minus the redacted ones), we see the additional quote “Of the agencies and departments given access to existing information or documents to enforce a criminal law over the 12-month period, and not included on either list released by AGD, or known to be an enforcement agency already“, we now see names like RSPCA Tasmania and The Hills Shire Council, when we look at one of the websites (http://www.rspcatas.org.au/ for example).

We see in the about section: “The RSPCA (The Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals) is the voice for the animals of Australia. We defend their dignity and fight to stop cruelty. We offer shelter, education, medical attention and love. We are animal protectors, carers and guardians. We bring solace to abandoned, surrendered and injured. We prosecute those who would harm them. And we fight for the humane treatment of all living things. Our job does not stop at animals. We believe behind every animal is a human being who is in need of guidance, encouragement and help“, which is a nice fluffy and caring text. Nothing wrong there. So explain to me, how a place like that has a decent level of cyber security, with in their office pool an IT person with CCSP certification or higher and a few other skills. You see, when these skills are absent your data will be up for grabs. Perhaps that is outsourced, meaning that additional people have access to all that data, have those places been properly vetted? So on an island of 515,000 we see this level of personal data access requirements? My initial follow up questions would than become, of all those funds required from the donations, how much ends up going to animals?

In the case of the Hills Shire Council we can have a lot more fun, their community profile (at http://profile.id.com.au/the-hills/population) gives us “The Census population of The Hills Shire in 2011 was 169,873, living in 57,205 dwellings“, why for the love of whatever is holy (or named Cthulhu) would THEY need that level of access to data?

In my view we should start asking a few questions regarding the mental health of whomever gave that level of access. I am guessing that this was Attorney General, George Brandis, which basically gets confirmed in the Guardian Article (at http://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/jan/18/dozens-of-agencies-want-warrantless-access-to-australians-metadata-again). As we see the quote “the government narrowed the definition of an “enforcement agency” that was eligible to access telecommunications data to a shortlist of law enforcement agencies, including the Australian federal police and state and territory police forces“, my initial thought was ‘that makes perfect sense’, yet in that light, how the flipping Divine Comedies did RSPCA Tasmania make that list?

The Guardian in light of all this ends with a comical quote “This method was taken to allow the Australian Border Force to gain access to telecommunications data without needing to gain approval from the Attorney General’s Department or the intelligence committee“, which is interesting as this implies that the Australian Border Force has less access than RSPCA Tasmania, which would make perfect sense if you are a golden retriever.

So apart of the access and the lack of insight here, has anyone considered how that data is to be read, analysed and processed? In addition, when we consider the access level of applications, the support and very likely (read: extremely likely) the levels of consultancy needed, what else is missing what will this cost the taxpayers in the end? I can tell you now that such solutions are not cheap, not easily implemented and did I mention the security needed for keeping that data safe? Even if this all goes through clouds and remote access, how long until a volunteer looking after cats will leave that password accidently out in the open, or even worse leave that system logged in and unattended?

As stated, I would never object to the actual law-enforcement agencies to get that access, but it seems to me that too large a group on that list is nowhere near that level and even (read: especially) when we consider groups like Greyhound Racing Victoria, why are they not going through police channels?

I see both articles and no one seems to be asking the questions that need to be asked. Questions that had to be asked extremely loud and very nearby after a mere 30 seconds of reading those articles. By the way, when reading the ZDNET article, it is the article that follows that is cause for even more questions.

One of the quotes is ‘the Many Layers and Tools of Digital Collaboration Today‘, which is nice when it is a mere graph of generic data. In that we might not care, but in the issue of ‘call records, location information, IP addresses, billing information, and other data stored by Telco’s‘, which includes all your personal data. Consider the following quotes “employees and departments are helping themselves to the tools they believe they really need. At the same time, companies are steadily dealing with what is now too many categories of communication and collaboration software to adequately manage and govern, much less individual apps” and “The issue itself is perhaps best demonstrated by the rapid rise of Slack, the current darling of team chat and wildly popular with its users. In many of my recent conversations with IT managers, I find that Slack is invading the workplace on many fronts, regardless whether it’s sanctioned or not” and finally “The top categories of apps today include VOIP, Web conferencing, e-mail, unified communications, IM/chat, file shares, file sync, CMS/DMS, intranets, discussion forums, enterprise social networks, relationship management platforms (including customer-facing CRM), and last but not least, online community“.

Now remember, the second article (on the same page) is not connected to the first, but consider the cloud and the explosive growth of so called ‘tool apps’ and the utter lack of in-depth security and access checking, how many back doors are organisations creating through such tools, with access to your data? Weirdly, I would never hold a bad thought for a volunteer organisations like the RSPCA, which is exactly why they should have never ever been given access to data like that. For the mere reason that cyber security cannot viably be maintained.

Whomever boasts on the security of places like Slack is in my view decently nuts. When we see interested players like Accel, Andreessen Horowitz, Index Ventures, KPCB, Spark, and Social+Capital, the first thing we will see fail is a pressure to release a new version and there will be the need of security patches (which is a reality), this also means that data would have been unprotected. The mere intense need for Common Cyber Sense is that boss who wants that new version, because the presentation looks cooler. Even when we ignore the issue of Slack, we still see an exponential growing app base, with access all over the place, which means danger to the data. Even when remotely accessed, even if that connection is secure, too many places get access to data they should not have access to.

When we hear people state that servers have access limitations and more of the mumbling, here is a simple word of caution, something I personally witnessed. There was a financial software program. It was a good and legitimate program. The small issue was that when the program accidently crashed, that person remained on the data server with rights of an administrator. It took them 2 weeks to figure out it was happening and another 3 weeks to repair their system. Consider something like that happening today and with the ‘upgrades’ Microsoft requires on a too regular a basis, can we even risk this level of access to the expanded group that has too limited a grasp (as I see it) on what constitutes Common Cyber Sense?

I wonder how long until we get a carefully phrased apology from certain high ranking IT elements, who will offer their resignation and walk away with a 7 figure handshake.

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Tagged as Accel, Andreessen Horowitz, Attorney General, Attorney-General George Brandis, Australian Border Force, Australian Financial Security Authority, Bankstown City Council, Cthulhu, George Brandis, Greyhound Racing Victoria, Index Ventures, KPCB, National Measurement Institute, Office of the Racing Integrity Commissioner (VIC), Racing Queensland, RSPCA Tasmania, Social+Capital, Spark, the Guardian, The Hills Shire Council, ZDNet

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