Yup, me trying to be clever and finding an alternative for ‘No Such Agency’ (NSA). I reckon that this is for them. I do not keep any IP for the hunting of terrorists and other people in similar lines of work. The idea hit me today, I cannot tell whether it was sparked by the Metadata directional assistant, something I wrote about a year ago. Or that is was a reference to a jump in time I made when I went back to the late 80’s and BASICODE. This last one needs an explanation. In the late 80’s someone came up with the concept of basic that would work anywhere (I think it was a way to plug MSX systems) and radio programs would tell you to record what was coming and you hear a fax like sound, but then via radio the entire script was transmitted and these people could play the cassette on their computer and load the program. I was a geeky nerd, I had a disk drive, not a cassette. But for some reason the thought came to me. What if we add an inaudible sound to the conversation, not digital, but analogue. Something added to the conversation that cannot be edited out, not directly anyway. So kidnappers, terrorists, and all kinds of people would be transmitting part of their location in the message. The first mobile tower for example. It is not a complete solution, it might need tweaking, but that is why I leave this idea to the NSA (GCHQ can go nuts on this too). Consider that smartphones are getting smarter, the makers are making ‘privacy’ a noble goal (whilst assisting criminals in their work), so what if the noise is not the digital path, but an added analogue part, possibly in the ultra law side of the spectrum (the high part sets of dogs and those with sensitive hearing), so I reckon that ultra low is the way to go. It would be nice if the signal towers respond more like radar (so a direction could be added) but that might be too much of a catch. An alternative is three antenna’s in a place like London or New York and like Decca they give their signal and it gets incorporated in the signal. And as 5G towers need overhaul and there would be a priority approach, it might make issues easier for the suited players (FBI and aligned players).
I wonder if this could work, suddenly we consider not what is digitally possible, but what analogue solutions could be added to the digital fold.
Yes, it might be a crazy idea, like one of my previous bosses stated, but he threw away the idea I created and what would become reality in Facebook, so that told me years later what he knew (basically nothing) and as I am about to prove that three times over, my mind started to be creative all by itself and this was the result. No idea if these people can make it work, or if they see anything in this, but at least I added options without charging them. And now it is time to imitate a sawmill (snore like the devil until 05:30)
A few hours ago I was alerted to an article on the BBC site. The article (at https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-63260648) gives us ‘Cyber-attacks on small firms: The US economy’s ‘Achilles heel’?’ In itself no real surprise, but then I saw “It was a total head-in-the-sand situation. ‘It’s not going to happen to me. I’m too small.’ That was the overwhelming message that I was hearing five years ago,” says Ms Graham, co-founder of CYDEF, which is based in Canada. “But yes, it is happening.” There we see the first instance of utter stupidity, a setting where insurance companies go ‘well, I am sorry to report that it is on your dime that this is happening’ and that is not a speculation, this is about to happen. In addition to that the insurance against cyber attacks will skyrocket unless you have state of the art equipment (something small businesses cannot afford). A stage that is waiting exploitation. There are all kinds of speculations. One of them is “Cyber-crimes are expected to cost the world $10.5tn (£9.3tn) by 2025, according to cyber-security research firm Cyber Ventures”, I do not completely agree, for the most I do, but the big bucks are depending on national 5G, which is not happening in many nations before 2027. You see, one source gives us “For example, in November 2020, one cybersecurity company estimated that global cybercrime costs will grow by 15 percent per year over the next five years, reaching US$10.5t annually by 2025, up from US$3t in 2015 (Cision 2020)” they are seemingly ALL quoting the same source and that source is Cyber Ventures. That does not make it incorrect, yet I have reservations. That number is completely acceptable under 5G, under other conditions (when big tech do not screw up and hand over the keys to hackers) should not go that fast (yet), but when 5G, a national 5G stage is there this number will increase swimmingly all over the globe, which is why I shouted for law adjustments well over two years ago, but the law is seemingly sitting on their hands, all about ‘letting all parties’ swim in the large all whilst the swimming pool has close to zero protection, so this will get worse a lot faster and the EU will see plenty of drowners (aka floaters) soon enough. My speculative view is that the larger problems are a mere 6 months away.
Then we are given “The pandemic created a whole new set of challenges and small businesses weren’t prepared,” says Mary Ellen Seale, chief executive of the National Cybersecurity Society, a non-profit that helps small businesses create cyber-security plans. In March 2020, at the cusp of the pandemic, a survey of small businesses by broadcaster CNBC found that only 20% planned to invest in cyber-protection.” This sounds nice, but I wonder what we will see in 2023. I expect that it is then that we will learn that less than 40% of these 20% will have actually done something and that is when a lot of people (insurance especially) realise that this is about to become a sinking ship. There was clear indication in 2010 that setting up cyber security was essential in players a little larger than SBE sized companies. They had issues too, but the revenue was too small. The problem is that clever hackers do not grab the whole enchilada. With “It typically takes 200 days from the moment of the hacking until discovery” we see the pattern. The clever ones will hit places for about 150 days then they go underground. That gives them enough to live like a king for a decade. They stay under the fold, they stay inconspicuous for as long as they can. They book a weekend in Vegas and then they launder what they had going home with $5-$15 million. The caper has worked and they are in the clear. Yet these same clever people can clear $50-$150 million when they get access to a fully deployed 5G network and the BS argument of “We will have a solution before that” does not fly, that excuse is a decade old and they have no adjusted laws, there is no adjusted technology and whatever the NSA has is not shared. So as you can see, the numbers are not entirely in the air (the Cyber Ventures one) but it will rely on a fully deployed 5G network which should be around 2027.
It is time that ALL businesses take cyber security serious. The moment that there is no insurance for that these Achilles heel companies go under with no options for the owner, that person will have lost everything. So when Kirsten Dunst stated ‘Let them eat cake’ (Marie Antoinette) she stated a good case for Cyber criminals. They are having cake every day and those not using Common Cyber Sense will be paying for that meal day after day after month after month after year (you get the idea). It was essential to properly adjust laws for that. And when we look at the data from April we get “according to industry data only four to five percent of hackers are actually caught, but high-profile cases showcase how even the most skilled can make simple mistakes which lead to them being apprehended” so between one in twenty to one in twenty five gets caught. Do you really want to hope on that statistic? This is not a pun against law enforcement or the FBI, they are in a fight with both hands tied behind their backs. Not a good position to win a fight. And that is before we look at state funded hackers. Lets be clear both Russia and China have every benefit for American and European business to lose way too much, proving that part is close to impossible. These players are almost never caught. The arrest by the FSB of REvil was a rare instance, but not all was lost. At https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/ransom-cartel-linked-to-notorious-revil-ransomware-operation/ we learn “Researchers have linked the relatively new Ransom Cartel ransomware operation with the notorious REvil gang based on code similarities in both operations’ encryptors” and that was two weeks ago. At present with Russians not being able to wage war against an enemy that is at best 15% of their own army gives rise that the people behind REvil will be out and about soon enough (if they aren’t already).
So those who want cake, better find a place to enjoy it before the hackers get it all and I will not care. I have been clearly evangelising the essential need for Common Cyber Sense for years now. And if Optus Australia is anything to go by there are plenty of big fish not too interested in that approach.
Yes, it is a setting, but also the title of a Alistair McLean novel. And fear came to mind when I saw ‘New EU law could open up messaging and app buying’ (at https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-63458377), for the most I am all for open markets, the problem however is that these small players aren’t too concerned about safety. The fear becomes that these small players will be a platform for hackers and criminals to propagate THEIR agenda and I do very much have a problem with that. So as the article gives us “Under the DMA, smaller messaging apps will be able to ask the tech gatekeepers to allow their users to send and receive messages via the bigger firm’s platform. However, large firms will not be required to make more advanced features interoperable immediately. Under the plans, audio and video calls between two individual users or groups of end users on different platforms will not happen for four years.” This statement gives us two dangers. Danger number one is that the small player is propagating party X (aka hacking party), we cannot state that there was intent, or that there was malicious intent. There is every chance that these maker are unaware. The second danger is that the absence of ‘advanced features’ which would include certain security measures. Yes, that is a speculation, but these security measures tent to be more advanced, hence the danger of missing out. I wonder what excuse these ‘enablers’ have when things go wrong, because there is EVERY chance that this will happen. In certain cases, could the BEUC be held accountable for damages to mobiles and persons? It is a fair question, because the rules of torts tell is to go after the money and the EU has plenty, not?
So as we are given “Margrethe Vestager, the commissioner for competition, who originally proposed the legislation said: “We invite all potential gatekeepers, their competitors or consumer organisations, to come and talk to us about how to best implement the DMA.”” I personally wonder who will ask the EU to be held accountable for any hacks that get propagated this way and more important can these smaller players be held liable? That last part is dicey on a few levels. It sets the stage that the consumer has to agree to an ‘as is’ policy, which means that the consumer gets to be held accountable for any damages. This is not a good setting to be in.
I am all for open markets, but until the EU (US too) has actual victories against hackers, I fear the worst will happen and it tends to happen too soon when no one is prepared or has a clue, a mindset the EU is well familiar with.
I have every intention to ban messages that are not from my provider, which is dangerous as Optus has been hacked into to the largest degree, so I am not holding my breath regarding any mobile safety at present.
Here I was, relaxing, looking at tweets when suddenly a tweet Elon Musk passes by (see below).
Now I had a hard time here. You see I do not trust the media, but the top shelf media (LA Times, SF Chronicle, Boston Globe, and Washington Post) were always above board. Actually there was one more, but it seems that the NY Times now joins the third tier newspapers right next to the Daily Mail (UK). How could any newspaper be so stupid to give us the article (see below).
The idea that a newspaper does not properly vet the information they have is not new, but in the past the NY Times was always above board. Whether they hate Elon Musk, whether they have other needs (like towards former Twitter owners) or whatever the reason, not vetting information is a problem, it is one I have been talking about for years. When the media cannot differentiate between real news and fake news the media has a problem, they merely hand over the news to TikTokkers like the one claiming that there are a large number of UFO’s over Australia (a TikTok ad), so now you know.
Now what was one the huge and mighty NY Times is now a bringer of debatable fake news, which will deteriorate any other news they bring. Although, I do realise that if Elon Musk was not honest my goose is cooked. Yet Elon Musk has a lot more credibility than most media ever could hope to have, so I am presently siding with the E Musk group. I could not read the whole article because the subscription nag overlapped my article again and again, so there might be an ulterior reason for the NY Times.
In this day and age when we trust the media less and less, they need to bend over backwards to vet the information again and again and hiding behind a mention of Reuters no longer does the trick.
That is something that has been with me a lifetime. Even when I was little, being a passenger in a car, I always wondered where the exits led that we passed. Over time, as my knowledge of geography grew I knew where they led, but it was not that simple, although I never realised that at the time. So when I got accepted into Uni something started to stir and I got myself degrees in internet-working and legal studies with a master of Intellectual Property. That did not open the doors I hoped would open, yet it opened up doors inside of me. A much more rewarding part. I started to question almost everything and it led to over a dozen pieces of IP. UTS opened a doorway into how other people were thinking and that was utterly rewarding, because the exits I saw pass by were now in the open for me to explore and a dozen of IP pieces are now mine. Google never looked there, Amazon did not look there and wherever Microsoft is looking and not looking is not something anyone needs to be bothered about. Especially as some give us only 15 hours ago ‘Microsoft warns that October 2022 security updates can cause problems joining domains in Windows 11 and older’, I wonder if Microsoft can actually properly test security updates, they have become too big and the cracks are showing. In all this I found billions in revenue and to be honest, I do not trust a whole lot of wannabe tech firms. You see them on LinkedIn with fortune cookie wisdoms, getting their friends to like their post and liking the posts of friends hoping they gain traction. It is one of the reasons I handed the first part of my IP to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and if part 1 comes through they get a shot at the rest as well. As the large firms contract into the billions, I found additional billions as well as a few more options, because I explored the paths not trodden. Not only that, I found a few new sides that were ignored for longer than anyone would be happy about. When I started to meditate on these parts, my speculation (perhaps presumption) was that they either did not understood what they were looking at, or they didn’t fit it with their ‘marketing’ revenue. And that is the larger station. They are all trying to cash in on advertisements, and as they do that, they left billions on the floor. The certain telling of a limited field of view, like Microsoft. It is still a mystery why dopey googly Google would miss out and for that same reason Amazon, but there you have it, by looking where other race by, you tend to find the gemstones. The problems is which party could want and would pay for these gemstones. I am banking on the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, the UAE is an option but too far from Sydney at present and there are too many unknowns there too. The fact that the tech firms in the US, UK and EU have the same failing implies that they are all connected and optionally a discriminating source to some, as such I went the other way and now that there is a real chance to take a slice of the marketshare that should have been Google and Amazon (or wannabe Microsoft too) is a larger concern. I did not forget about Apple or IBM, they have focussed areas and they focus on these places as any tech firm will. So they never faltered (not to that degree), and in all this when you start digging and you see how they are all in the same mindset you will see that they miss the same opportunities again and again, which is now amounting to billions. So when you see ‘Google reportedly spends $100 million on avatars to take on TikTok’, or ‘Google making disinformation profitable via ad business: Report’ you get a first view that they are all looking at each other, optionally coveting the piece of pie the other one has and I found a new pie that I would not need to share (well whomever buys my IP). And now we have a new ballgame. The IT representing hundreds of billions of value is ignoring the few percentages that I found and no one else is aware (for now), I actually wonder when they will wake up from their dog eats dog momentum to realise that the dogs fighting over the same bone left half a dozen bones still covered in meat alone. Me as the little chihuahua got those bones as they were seemingly too small, but at 2%-5%, these billions are a lot to a little Chihuahua like me and I am happy with the spoils that they bring, I reckon that Saudi Arabia will be equally pleased. They get to sit at the big tech table and the other players will wonder how that happened. It happened because they followed each other and they all ignored the few exits that made me wonder, they all thought it went nowhere, which tells you more about them than me. And after my first win, the other IP pieces will become interestingly easy to sell, but I am also loyal, as such Saudi Arabia gets to pick first. The others never wanted to show interest, now they do not have to. That is only fair, is it not?
Yes, that I how it started for me today. It all links back to the Optus failures and a few other matters, but cybersecurity is at the heart of it. Initially I saw the second article, but I will get back to that later. First we look at ‘Sydney teenager accused of using Optus data breach to blackmail indicates guilty plea in court’ (at https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-10-27/teenager-accused-of-using-optus-data-breach-to-blackmail-court/101584078), a simple deception. Yet one with a few sides. The first part “Australian Federal Police (AFP) charged Dennis Su with two offences earlier this month, claiming he sent text messages to 93 Optus customers demanding they transfer $2,000 to a bank account” sets the guilty party up, but in more ways when we consider part two “The charges were laid after a bank account belonging to a juvenile, which Mr Su allegedly used, was identified”, so he used a third parties account and wholly Moses, it is apparently of a minor. How the bough breaks! Well it actually doesn’t break. It seems that there was a serious amount of thoughts and planning here. Well, for some it is not a serious amount, but he had to know what was planned and he got a minor to be the front to some parts. It all refers not to the second article that as the first on my eye sight. It was ‘Medibank and Optus hacks spark warning over identity theft risks from former victims’ (at https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-10-27/identity-theft-warning-after-optus-medibank-hack/101576992). Here we get “The first thing the victim knew about her identity being hacked was when a man turned up on her parents’ doorstep asking for the sexual services he’d paid for online.” It is the start of a new steeple chase. When we consider “Former identity theft victims have shared how their details were used to steal luxury vehicles, take out personal loans in their name and hock fake goods online, because criminals got hold of the kinds of information millions of Australians are believed to have had compromised in the latest Medibank and Optus hacks” and this is not nearly the end of this. When we see “While living in Melbourne, she sent a photo of her licence to a real estate agent applying for a lease, and that image was somehow then uploaded into a gallery of property photos featured on that agent’s website” especially in the Australian housing market, can we please remove this bozo’s character from the housing market? How can anyone be stupid enough to ‘upload’ identity details? There is an unacceptable lack of common cyber sense in Australia. It goes from the big banks to the most stupid of housing players. They have no idea what they are doing and the excuse ‘we made a boo-boo’ just doesn’t play here. First Optus, then Medibank and that list keeps on growing. That is accelerated by alleged cowboy institutes that make money offering cyber degrees. Australia has a serious problem and it needs to be dealt with starting with a lot better protection regarding ID’s and identity documents.
And we do not blame Google here, but “Probably the most shocking and stressful part was just seeing my licence there on Google for anyone to use” should be seen as evidence that a much larger issue is in play. When we see newspapers give us “The federal government has promised to dedicate millions of dollars to “investigate and respond” to the massive cyber attack which rocked Optus” which according to some amounts to $6,000,000 over two years. I reckon that in two years the problem will be a lot larger and two years to investigate what I in part did in 5 minutes is a joke. Something needs to be done NOW and lets start by holding corporations accountable to cyber security and lets make sure that a certain housing agent is an Uber driver in 48 hours and not a housing agent any more. Yes, I agree that I am overreacting, but uploading ID details? To a photo gallery? I think we hit rock bottom on the village idiot scale and that needs to be addressed well within 2 years, within 48 hours be more likely. I think that my optional IP move to Canada might be a good thing. It is not out of the question that these players will set my IP on a server with a connected router that still has the password ‘Cisco123’, that could be how my luck goes and I have seen enough bad luck to last me a lifetime.
As I see it Australia has a lot of problems, not in the least the larger absence of Common Cyber Sense, I raised that in ‘The Bully’s henchman’ (at https://lawlordtobe.com/2020/01/31/the-bullys-henchman/) which I wrote on January 31st 2020, almost 3 years ago, it is that much of a failure and if I raised it then, it was already an issue. As such we see a failure that surpasses 3 years and now they want to debate it for two more years? These people are out of their flipping minds!
This happens, we all cannot see things at times. I am no exclusion to that equation. We all look in directions and we see things, but we also miss things. Things in front of us and things outside of our peripheral vision. This happens to us all. But what does it take to miss a larger stage? This is the thought I giggled about when I saw (at https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-63394516) ‘Google and Microsoft hit by slowing economy’ a mere 4 hours ago. There we see “Alphabet, which owns Google and YouTube, said sales rose just 6% in the three months to September, to $69bn, as firms cut their advertising budgets. It marked the US firm’s weakest quarterly growth in nearly a decade outside of the start of the pandemic”, and it made me giggle because it implies that they have no idea what they are missing. The fact that I am holding on to a $500M revenue stream per month implies that there are options and they go beyond the KSA. Now that Google sees the shores of recession implies that they will seek (hauntingly) for new revenue streams. A larger stage that works for poor little moi. And a stage that holds a little more than I suspected. More because if Amazon and Google remain in the dark, they are hindered by blinkers, or they are just not wake. In an age of recession they remain unchanged towards focal needs and revenue needs. It boggles the mind, but my share just increased 1% and that is not a bad thing, it implies (not guarantees) an optional $5,000,000 a month extra, and an optional additional commission more. And that is merely the second pay-cycle. It is weird, but it implies that for once timing is on my side (which is a perfectly lovely consideration to receive). And to be honest. I do not care about Microsoft, they made their own bed, yet Google is another story and even as I think that Amazon has a better stage, Google is not out of the race (Microsoft can live with their wooden spoon for all I care). So as timing goes on and we consider “Profits at Alphabet dropped nearly 30% to $13.9bn in the quarter, as YouTube ad revenues declined for the first time since the firm started to report them publicly. Sales growth at the firm has slowed for five consecutive quarters” my solution could add well over $6bn annually and that I not the high point, merely the lowest median. So there is plenty of room to grow. And I am smiling like a Cheshire Cat because the big wigs at Google and Amazon are still in the dark, lets hope they remain ignorant until one of them pays me.
That happens at times, we all have a drawing board, we have an idea or IP and it goes swimmingly and then the floor drops. Not because of the idea or the IP, but the floor drops because you forgot, or were unaware of certain parts. This happens and there is no real blame here not in any direction, it is merely what is. This is currently happening to me. In this my IP bundle 3 was knowingly with some risk, because it is depending on certain Meta evolutions, but over time there would be the stage. Yet in event number one we are confronted with a video regarding Modern Warfare 2 Amsterdam Mission. (At https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X_LlSR6-ibA) this is so close to real that the metaverse cannot be that far behind (when they figure out where to put their data centre). This is part presumption (a better from of speculation) and the fact that certain players want a benefit now in the metaverse and that works in part in my favour. Yet my idea was set to a stage where the takings were set to somewhere between two and three billion. In part because of the Meta risk, in part to how things tend to evolve. That is in part the name of the game. Now with the evolution stage being that far pushed, the takings of my IP could be 5-10 times higher and there still is a risk. So what gives? Well there are three cogs in that machine. The speed of adapting to the metaverse. That cog is now a lot smaller (hence quicker adaption) because of some of the Modern warfare 2 imagery. Cog two is personal evolution, this remains steady at the same size, it will go quicker because of cog 1, but not that much faster. Cog three is technological attachment. That one remains a little bit of a mystery. Because of what we see in Modern warfare two, we can assume that the rest will be as great, but that is not a given, there will be congestion and there will be overlap, but it matters as the whole image is now a presumption of what Modern Warfare 2 brings. And that matter as the adaption goes quicker, more will adapt and that quantifies the 5-10 times larger growth then I had foreseen. The risks remain the same, as the adaption is more complete my solution will find a home in a lot more cases than I can anticipate, but that is less presumption and more speculation. Amazon is still the frontrunner, but Google has options here too. Amazon has a few extra benefits (if they adapt), but that does not take Google out of the race, not by a long shot. And this matters in other ways too.
You see, these thoughts raced through my mind when I saw the three day old article ‘90% of schools in England will run out of money next year’ (at https://www.theguardian.com/education/2022/oct/22/exclusive-90-of-uk-schools-will-go-bust-next-year-heads-warn) there we see “Nine out of 10 schools in England will have run out of money by the next school year as the enormous burden of increased energy and salary bills takes its toll, the Observer can reveal”, I do not completely agree with this. I can agree on the entire energy setting. The UK and other nations are dealing with the Russian part of the equation, as such we are given “electricity and gas costs for schools in his chain had rocketed from £26,000 a year to £89,000” and there is no way that any organisation can foresee a rise of well over 300%, as such other solutions need to be found. We can return to covid stages and shut the schools down for now. This could work in my favour, but I prefer not to go there. Amazon will have a much larger benefit there and both Google and Apple are close by. In all this Apple could trump Google, but that too is speculation. What does matter is that these two elements have similar solutions and we need to look at solutions. The concepts of schools are now more and more outdated. Outdated might not be the right word, but the drain on energy needs to be stopped and as such schools in winter become a no-no. But that same setting gets pushed to homes and they are equally not entirely on the mark for dealing with this. The reality is crass and not that nice. But you need proper isolated warehouses where you can place a few hundred students all with proper internet access, all with power supplies. Well, that or properly isolate schools which should have been done decades ago. The lesser evil needs to be found and I am not sure what the best for education is. As such we have a drawing board, but we need to question that one too. That drawing board is set to old standards, new standards are required and I am not sure where to find them, and I need not worry as it is not on my plate, but that stage is altering enough that we all need to think what is possible here. There is a larger stage and that is on the politics (of the UK), the stage that 90% runs out of funds is only in part on energy, the rest is the consequence of inaction. We want to give blame but the Covid era was a year and too little was done there, the Russian invasion of the Ukraine made the mess complete but that too is only in part (for western Europe). I believe that Strasbourg and London should have had large debates with Elon Musk on the energy issues and that could have been started well over two years ago, now it is seemingly too late and one generation will get the mess of inactions. That is almost a given. I could be wrong, but see of what is happening and see what was not done, not merely in the UK, in most of Western Europe. The early bird that hesitates gets worms. An expression seen in 1988, so this is not new. I will let you mull over what could be a solution for schools, but I am not sure if there is a good one at present, it might be a little too late for several solutions.
That is the thought I was confronted with when I saw an article this morning. It linked to an article to the beginning of the year and it was about stamps, and I initially ignored it (there is only so much I can read), but today I saw the article (at https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-63367733) giving me ‘Royal Mail: 100 days left to use stamps without a barcode’ and this time it held my attention. In the article we see “Royal Mail introduced barcoded stamps in February, saying they would open up possibilities for “new innovative services.” The long-term plan is that people will be able to watch videos, find out information and send birthday messages to each other through the barcodes which can be scanned with the Royal Mail app”, but the implications are a lot larger.
There are all kinds of intelligence implications not short term, but long term. If it can be paired to this setting, it could also be paired to where that stamp was bought, over time we can connect it to who bought it and that list extents almost indefinitely. QR codes are that solution too and let no lulling of some innocent setting tell you otherwise. It makes sense, the UK has billions of pounds getting shipped through royal mail under the eyes of the police, under the eyes of intelligence and something had to give. There was no other way, and frankly it is kind of ingenious, it seems no one else had the idea and that gives the UK an edge for a much longer time.
And as I look at the solution, I wonder why no one else hd the idea, I certainly did not. I still mail things at time, but it is rare that I do so and we accepted a stamp as the most mundane of solutions and someone (a Brit no less) decided to evolve the stamp and how it is used. I reckon that someone in GCHQ will also be bucking for a promotion, because if I see this right, the criminals who rely on the mail solution will soon be out of business and that is a victory that should not now or ever be underestimated.
Yes, that is the indication. So far I have been busy redesigning over half a dozen games and I get the impression that asleep at the wheel is a common factor at both at Amazon and Google, might be at Microsoft a well, but I do not care about them, they can become obsolete all on their own. The redesign is essential as there are factors for a larger audience and one does want to entice that audience as such I started with half a dozen games, kept the overall appeal, kept the foundation of the game, but the rest got upgraded to the improvements we got the last decade. And 3 of them had 90+ scores, so they can be remade into something better fitting this decade and this generation. Even as I am looking into Unreal engine 5 (where applicable), we have a much larger optional setting and this I did after having a sandwich, before I had a cup of milk and I am merely waking up. We have had a lot of games that were contemporary, we had games that were in the stage or the age of the arcade, but why are they abandoned? They were good games and even as we see everyone go nuts for some goat simulator (for some reason Microsoft got that right and it is massively addictive to some), they forgot a game like Soul Edge (1995), the Dreamcast had it as Soul Calibur (1998) where it scored a whopping 97%, a game that close to perfection was partially forgotten and what was rereleased was nowhere near as perfect and the makers decided they were more clever and created a lesser product. The lines in those days were that this game alone was reason to buy a Dreamcast. Why are these gaming executives so short of memory? Soul Calibur was all about fun and they created a game that did that and more. There are a lot more examples and more could be done to make it changed enough to get a new IP registered. One day and I come up with half a dozen games that could be upgraded and Google (deciding not to be a developer and dropping the Google Stadia coming January) is letting $500 million a month slip by, well they must have the corner on something. I for one am willing to guess that they got the corner on Melatonin (sleeping ingredient). And that is merely one part of one branch. I truly wonder what Tencent is up to, because if they are more awake then there is every chance that Amazon will lose their share as well. And these two got that done in under two years. Good going guys (girls also).
And as I am vamping a few more titles, I remembered a game from 1991 called Streets of Rage, a simple game, but addictive and a game that could entice plenty of people. You see, this new ‘gaming’ industry is a lot less about making money. It is about the microtransactions, that is where they think the real money is and when my solution is accepted and 50 million subscriptions start cancelling the other options, these people will learn the hard way what an empty IP looks like. They all ignored that gamers want to have fun and for some it is racing, for some it is stealth, for some it is bashing and in these groups none of them are overly excited of microtransactions. So when they get a micro-transaction free environment, they will move. I am completely convinced of that. These people also are not interested to pay by watching advertisements. So there are two elements that would fall away pretty quickly and in all that the current ‘champions’ would end up being tomorrows losers. I reckon that is here Tencent is heading as well, so they will get two tiers of advantages of all those who haven’t figured it out yet and that will cost the wrong people a lot of marketshare. But not to fret, they are willing to lose that marketshare, I know because I cannot see them making any alterations, so they are definitely waiting until it is too late. But that is big tech for you. So whilst they are asleep at the wheel, I will continue embellishing my IP for the current customer line. And there it will stay, especially when the right people figure out I wasn’t making a funny, and that my part in gaming since 1984 implies I actually know stuff. But feel free to disagree, it is your right and when you come up short, you merely did it yourself.
As such I do hope to have a field day. Because hope is still part of that equation, we all hope, we can do little more. And lets give Microsoft a hand, only yesterday we were given “Many enterprises continue to leave cloud storage buckets exposed despite widely available documentation on how to properly secure them”, and the hand was not in sarcasm. You see ‘despite widely available documentation’ implies that this is a Layer 8 ID10T issue (aka: idiot users). So when we read “SOCRadar, the threat intelligence firm that reported the issue to Microsoft, described discovering the data in an Azure Blob storage bucket that was publicly accessible over the Internet. The data was associated with more than 65,000 companies in 11 countries and included statement-of-work documents, invoices, product orders, project details, signed customer documents, product price lists, personally identifiable information (PII), and potentially intellectual property as well.” Yes, it gets to be that bad and it is NOT all on Microsoft, some is, not all. But keep screaming that Azure is fine, especially when 65000 companies are placing their data on the internet. As such the China and Huawei issues are not an issue, people are placing their data online all by themselves. Cisco was also a factor, but they seemingly fixed the issues they had. In all this it matters, because streaming opens a new can of worms and I am opening a separate one as well, especially when the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia buys my IP. In all this we see that there is a much larger need to stop being the inclusive wanker. It is time to call out the larger flaws and stop messing about, or buy a Jaguar (a Crazy People 1990 reference).
This is one of the reasons I do not want Microsoft anywhere near my IP, and that is in part why I offered it to Saudi Arabia. These tech players might bully me, but they have a much larger problem if they mess with Saudi Arabia and when the Saudi party realises just how big the IP can be, Microsoft will be kept outside, of that I am convinced. It was also in part why I hoped that Amazon would have called earlier, but they slept for months, so I am happy to head to plan B. And as I embellish my IP the chances will increase and increase. Some wheels might be for sleeping but my cogs rotate unrelentlessly and they keep on rotating, I owe that to myself even if it is merely to show where all the others went wrong.
Lawrence van Rijn - Law Lord to be 