Category Archives: Media

Contemplation and consideration

This is not part 4, but it is linked to yesterday’s article. As I was contemplating a few things, more precisely looking at 5G parameters, I started considering a new media format. You see YouTube became great by being better at compressed video viewing, over time the became the one and nearly only expert. Yet 5G offers a lot more and it offers a new stage, a stage where the advertisement will be completely downloaded in a second, so what happens with the rest of the time? What happens when the video offers a click to a brochure, a leaflet, the website and other matters? You see information is given, but in 5G the offered information can be a lot more and as I see it there is not too much manoeuvring in that area. A stage where some might go for ‘Yes, we are working on it’, yet I am now offering the idea in the open, as such it becomes public domain. In this I believe there is a lot more directions opening, as soon as the bandwidth becomes available we will see an explosion of ideas and they are all directed towards gaining the attention of an audience, a situation we might call ‘the choice of a new congregation’. There is no real insight whether it will be an option for good or for bad. In the 50’s advertisements were seen as a power of good, a power of information giving. In the last 10 years it became a power towards harassment. This does not mean that we should stop the direction, but perhaps when we hand the power back to the consumer we can revert to a better stage, one that is information bringing.

Consider the image of the book (one I am eagerly awaiting), what happens when we click on it that it will take us directly to OUR local bookshop, or our PERSONAL choice in online place? 5G makes this possible and a lot more. Yet the centralised data hoarders want you to go a THEIR specific place, it is time for that to change. I wonder if Amazon or Google will champion such a solution? It becomes a lot more demanding when it is a trailer, or a car advertisement, yet 5G will enable larger solutions whilst still ending up being faster than before.

I created my 5G IP to set aside centralisation, a place like Neom City requires this and they are only the beginning. The EU has a direct need and even as they still have nationalised central points, that too will become a thing of the past, the larger data centres will not care where its origin was, it merely crunches and as I was considering the stages that will unfold, I created the second 5G IP. The third was part of that but it was a longer trail, so I made it public domain, and in this we now have an optional part 4, a side I only considered and contemplated tonight, actually I was watching Downton Abbey when this happened. Something clicked and I reckon part 5 is not far away, all whilst those claiming to be on top are not producing anything. I (on the other hand) created the setup for two movies, a TV series and half a dozen games. The autumn of my life is quite the creationary delight. 

Who would have thunk it?

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The danger of being wrong

It happens, to you and me, sometimes we are wrong. It can be because of belief, it can be because of presented facts, or it is linked to the faith you hold. Faith, not religion! In this I have a surprising large foundation of preference towards being incorrect, not being wrong. They are not the same. When you are incorrect, it tends to be towards a specific part of the equation, when you are wrong, you are looking at another equation. That tends to set you on the wrong foot, the one that cannot kick the ball.

For me it started roughly 780 seconds ago when the BBC gives us ‘Facebook Australia: PM Scott Morrison ‘will not be intimidated‘ by tech giant’ (at https://www.bbc.com/news/world-australia-56109036). To be honest this mess started a few weeks ago when politicians were starting to suck up to a desperate media setting. The larger fear is not merely the new linking and cookie solution that Google is working on, and that is before they realise that my new IP takes the newspapers out of ALL equations. It was not intentional, but the fact that my solution gets rid of ‘filtered information’ carriers is just icing on the cake. So the article gives us “Australians on Thursday woke up to find that Facebook pages of all local and global news sites were unavailable. People outside the country are also unable to read or access any Australian news publications on the platform”, which suit me just fine, it is not my use of social media, as such I do not care of seeing news (read: filtered information) there. So when we consider the information from the same source giving us “The world-first law aims to address the media’s loss of advertising revenue to US tech firms” my initial somewhat less diplomatic view tends to lean towards “Who the fuck are you legalising advertisement revenue and who gets it?” From my seat it looks like that everyone is all about free trade until the friends of politicians lose their trade, then it becomes a political setting towards protecting those moneybags, that is how I see it. The fact that the media did not comprehend what digital media and digital advertisement was until it was much too late, why do we cater to them? In that same setting how much protection will the Yellow Pages receive against that same media outlet trying to rip dollars from tech companies? The world evolves and those who cannot adjust die, or go under. This is how capitalism works. The stage is even less acceptable when we consider the Guardian (at https://www.theguardian.com/media/2019/oct/11/the-press-were-never-in-a-post-leveson-straitjacket) giving us “It has always suited journalists to suggest it is unwise for victims of illegality to pursue justice against newspaper publishers”, so not only is it unwise for victims to get against their media harassers, we see a larger stage where politicians and laws are devised to protect them from acts of technological evolution. In this at what point are they held to account for their actions?

So when we consider the part where we see “Under the code, news outlets will be required to negotiate commercial deals individually or collectively with Facebook and Google. If they cannot reach an agreement, an arbitrator will decide whose offer is more reasonable. If Facebook or Google break any resulting agreements, they can be fined up to A$10 million ($7.4 million) in civil penalties”, we see discrimination. Microsoft Bing is not in that equation, why not? In addition, why would we want to see any Australian news in our social media? Come think of it, the setting that Facebook has with advertisements goes back to 2007, so over almost 14 years, the media was incomprehensibly incompetent toward advertisements and the impact. 

In 14 years they did almost nothing to counter it with their own version, by the end of 2012 they had passed 1 billion users, 5 years later they doubled that. (at https://www.statista.com/statistics/264810/number-of-monthly-active-facebook-users-worldwide/)
And the media sat on their hands, they sat on their hands to such a degree that now politicians are aiding the filtered information bringers to get some more undeserved revenue, in addition these same politicians did nothing to overhaul the tax laws, so how does that play?

As such why do they deserve that leg up? Oh and in this stage if the population is a solar system, planet earth becomes a system with planet Bing, planet IBM, planet Google, planet Facebook and planet media. In this planet media is mercury, scorched from being too close to the sun, Saturn and Jupiter are Google and Facebook, each with their own asteroids and moons, al having their own function, Mercury, like the media has no moons, no services to offer, merely a printed media solution, as such, how much protection did the parchment guild get when the news went to the pulp business? What was left for the paper mills?

The paper mill is a nice touch, I actually went to one, I saw how paper is made and we all go towards: ‘Yes, but that is now obsolete’, this is true, but in that same light, the media we see today made THEMSELVES obsolete. They did not apply the brakes when they had the option and the Leveson inquiry is merely one of a few examples. When one side of media becomes too populistic, people can no longer tell or differentiate, that made them obsolete and now that this is the stage they want to hang to any solution they can, even the ones that require legality, all whilst they hang freedom of speech and freedom of expression somewhere else so they can accuse others of negating their right to show that freedom of filtered information.

Another voice is journalism professor at City University New York Jeff Jarvis, he gives us (at https://pressgazette.co.uk/media-bargaining-code/) ““The Code is built on a series of fallacies. First is the idea that Google and Facebook should owe publishers so much as a farthing for linking to their content, sending them audience, giving them marketing. In any rational market, publishers would owe platforms for this free marketing, except that Google at its founding decided not to sell links outside of advertisements. The headlines and snippets the platforms quote are necessary to link to them, and if the publishers don’t want to be included, it is easy for them to opt out…”, he gave this yesterday, I was on that train a week ago. And as I see “if the publishers don’t want to be included, it is easy for them to opt out”, the ACCC was eager not to include that little snippet of the equation making them a tool and optionally a joke too. As such we might wonder what politicians are dong (apart from helping their media friends remaining a non-poor entity), I could be wrong, I could be incorrect. I believe I am neither and that is the stage we see, all whilst the bringers of filtered information continue their revenue round one more lap, that is until the race is called. I believe it was called some time ago, but that is merely me. I could be wrong.

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Sleight of hand

We know the term, we see what is connected and we see just how it tends to work, yet the term is larger than that. The term is to some “Sleight of hand refers to fine motor skills when used by performing artists in different art forms to entertain or manipulate”, it is also know to some as ‘skilful deception’ and that is where we are at. To see, and to understand this sleight of hand, we need to consider a few items. The first element in this is seen in the BBC with ‘Princess Latifa: UN to question UAE about Dubai ruler’s daughter’, we get that there might be an issue, yet what was also happening is seen in the Arab News ‘Houthi snipers accused of targeting children in Taiz’, interestingly enough there is no mention in the BBC of that. What would be your interest? The daughter of a ruler, or people using children for target practice? I will let you decide. Yet linked to this is the news that Al Jazeera and several other newspapers gave us ‘Biden admin ends Trump-era Houthi ‘terrorist’ designation’. Yes, you do not need to be a terrorist to use children for target practice, it makes perfect sense. A normal person uses children to align his sights and make sure to test their sight in case actual soldiers drop by and what is better than trying to shoot children? They are much smaller than adults, so you need to aim better.

And in this we get back to the Princess Latifa story, it is not about her, but about one part that was in the article. ““I’ve seen some of the footage and it’s deeply troubling”- Dominic Raab”, I will agree that a cushy life in the UK is optionally all that UK Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab knows, or so we can presume. So what does that have to do with the other parts? Yes that is a good question, you see last November Dominic Raab Tweeted (see image), and he was eager to condemn the Houthi people, yet in this he seems to forget that the Houthi forces could not have done it. The distance, the precision and a few other facts make the setting that Iran was the only perpetrator. The hardware could not be made in Yemen, the hardware could not be operated by Houthi forces and there is no way that Houthi forces got over half a dozen targets with almost 100% precision when an inverted setting (one in six) is all they could have hoped for (at best). So how come Dominic Raab was that badly informed? As I see it this is a political sleight of hand and the USA whilst showing a short-minded slight of brain (aka delusional setting) is adding to the Fues of chaos and confusion. So how come that the BBC will do whatever it can to avoid settings? I am not ignoring ‘Yemen: The boy who saved his sister from a sniper’ (source: BBC), but when you see the amount of visibility a princess gets (with Dominic Raab rhetoric) whilst the actions of Iran are ignored again and again is a massive issue. When I look at the top 50 articles on “Houthi” and “Iran” the BBC does not show up once, yet Fox News (you know the channel that is criticised by all others) gives us ‘UN experts find ‘growing’ evidence Iran sending weapons to Houthi rebels in war-torn Yemen’, personally I believe that they are a bit late to the party and we should accept that they showed up at all, so how much evidence on Iranian involvement in Yemen did the BBC (and a few others) give us? So when one MP gives the other MP (Dominic Raab) ‘Classifying Houthis as Terrorists will Worsen Famine in Yemen’ we need to consider that NOT designating them terrorists does not help matters. The Houthi transgressions have been going on month after month. I gave voice to that in ‘Be the bitch’ (at https://lawlordtobe.com/2019/07/07/be-the-bitch/) well over 198 months ago. As such they are to be seen as terrorists, a stage where Iran is equally guilty, so after a years, it is time for these so called ‘distinguished’ journalists to come to the party and properly identify the players as well as their acts. 

Consider over the larger regions, what news we are given and what news we are not given, that is beside the setting of what information makes the news and what not. The setting that we are ‘offered’ with ‘EU has role in salvaging Iran deal, says Tehran UN envoy’ (source: Euronews) all whilst Iran has transgressed set limits by well over 1000%, so well over ten times the allowed amount. But the larger groups of newspapers are unlikely to show the flim-flam show that Iran gives us, and those who do see it as an opportunity,  all whilst no one is stopping the stage of Iran and more, they are trying to limit that protection and military options that the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia gets, all whilst the proxy war between Iran and Saudi Arabia continues. It is the Financial Times that gives optional light to that. The article ‘New Iran envoy shows Biden is serious about reviving nuclear deal’ (at https://www.ft.com/content/eae24633-844a-4bb5-b5a9-28deead96ab7), an interesting stage, especially when we consider “Mr Malley was an important actor in the 2015 negotiations with Iran. Before stepping down last month as head of the ICG he published what amounts to a calibrated road map for negotiating with Tehran — an approach the Biden team now seems to embrace.” We can look at the article in a few ways, but for me the stage will be set to ‘calibrated road map’, I merely wonder how much news will end up becoming ‘filtered information’, that is the setting and the silence on Houthi transgressions (to a larger degree) as well as the ignorance of Iranian actions in all this is a stage that we cannot ignore. 

Yet, I will not be surprised for some of the International politicians to give us a weighted ‘it is a complex situation’, or perhaps ‘we are still looking into some of the data we are given’, all whilst gave light to a lot of it well over 18 months ago. I will let you figure out what you missed (if you care that is), because I do accept that not everyone is interested in what is going on in the middle east. 

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From drain to sewer

To be honest, I am not surprised. In this day and age of overruling greed and the lack of care I see a change and this change will set woe to Australia and its local brands. It all started with overly stupid shareholders and stake holders, who engaged greed driven politicians on prolonging the lifestyle that some would and should never have been allowed to continue. I am of course talking on those relying on journalism. This is not about the journalists, although they are not entirely without blame. The news was happy to side with a player who has less than 5% of the market. So they were happy to go towards a player who has a mere 1/20 slice of the advertisement cake, this was never about fair, or about realism. 

In the first when we see “Under the proposed bill digital platforms would be required to pay media companies for content” EVERYONE is ignoring the part where the media can decide not to be on the digital format, they can decide not to post their messages on Google Search or place them on Facebook. So why is it an option. It is like advertising on the Yellow Pages and demanding the Yellow Pages for payment for the privilege of showing these articles. The ACCC and a few other players were happy to ignore that part, in addition we see them ignoring the fact that some of these papers have articles that ALWAYS push the link to a payment portal. There is more, these greed driven silly people relied on Microsoft and their Bing flaw to take the forefront into staging the response of “both would have to better compensate news publications for displaying their content, as well as give outlets more information about their search and newsfeed algorithms”, in this, the stage of ‘better compensate news publications’ as well as ‘give outlets more information about their search and newsfeed algorithms’, in this Microsoft who only has at best 5% is eager to increase its market share, yet there is a reason that they only have 5% and the news is only getting worse. As Australia moves away from Google search, they are cutting their fingers in a few more places as well. As silly people are all about their personal gains and personal wealth, the idiots owning the media that they are demanding payment for are all in a stage that they never understood in the first place. The Conversation gives us ‘The old news business model is broken: making Google and Facebook pay won’t save journalism’ (at https://theconversation.com/the-old-news-business-model-is-broken-making-google-and-facebook-pay-wont-save-journalism-150357). There we see “The code is meant to help alleviate the revenue crisis facing news publishers. Over the past two decades they have made deep cuts to newsrooms. Scores of local print papers have become “digital only” or been shut down completely”, as such, we seem to overlook that the elderly owning news media (example the Murdoch wannabe’s) never understood the digital part. We optionally see this in “To understand why the commercial news model is so broken, we first need to recognise what the primary business of commercial news media has been: attracting an audience that can be sold to advertisers”, Google already has the audience and Microsoft wants them too, so silly people (optionally including the politicians) are setting a slippery slope and Australia is about to lose whatever global foothold they have. In this the silly people are clueless on the damage that will hit. 

This is seen in two parts, the first is “2021 Cloud Report from Cockroach Labs ranked Google Cloud Platform as the best-performing of the three major public cloud platforms, offering an impressive threefold advantage in throughput capability”, so not only is Microsoft out of options, they are severely outclassed by Google (and optionally IBM as well), a stage that is influencing a global stage that we see (at https://www2.deloitte.com/au/en/pages/consumer-industrial-products/articles/global-powers-of-retailing.html#), so consider the players that have some global visibility. Players like Wesfarmers, Woolworths and JB HiFi. All players that were until 2020 in the top 250, now consider that they are removed from that field. This is because Microsoft does not count on the global field, not with a mere 5%, 7% on the global stage, we get it that Microsoft wants it desperately, but the silly people never realised that the media is now influencing a stage where others will no longer count as well. It is the purest form of ‘Think local, act global’ it would sound nice, but it merely makes Australian brands no longer a global player, a stage that will make New Zealand the number one consumer target for Australian brands and wherever they are second place, they become obsolete. The ACCC should be proud of not comprehending the larger stage. And in all this as the Conversation informs us of “before 2000 print media attracted nearly 60% of Australian advertiser dollars, according to an analysis for the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission’s Digital Platforms Inquiry. By 2017 it was just 12%”, we see the initial folly, it almost reads like the setting of Alexandre Auguste Ledru-Rollin where we see ‘There go the people. I must follow them, for I am their leader’, but the media was never a leader in the digital media (or media for that matter), they were merely facilitators to shareholders and stake holders, as such ‘their’ people are already the population of planet Google and Microsoft wants to annex that population in any way they can. So whilst the ACCC is setting a Microsoft stage, the media is still clueless on what is required. As we see “the core of the problem is that funding such journalism through advertising is no longer viable. Other solutions are needed – locally and nationally – to ensure its survival”, it is the larger setting they all relied on advertisers, advertiser whores for a better reference, yet in all this the newspapers are all drowning most pages in advertisements, it is partial evidence of remaining clueless. The owners needed to act over a decade ago, that is seen in the decrease from 60% to 12%, a decade of decrease and nothing was done and now that they are desperate Microsoft steps in, they will save the day, or so they say but will they? They only have a 7% global penetration, they did this to themselves by forgetting that the consumer had become in charge to some degree, it is what Google wanted all along, they merely became the facilitator of whatever the consumer required and requested, the media does not understand as they think that they are the centre of the universe, but in a global setting with thousands of voices they are merely a discord in a choir at best. 

So as the small players listening to the media are throwing away whatever options they have to the media, the media is locally acting to fill its pockets, although they will not see it that way and Microsoft is in a stage where they gain 25,000,000 bing users. And in that stage where 5G passes Microsoft by, the Australians will see a decade of hardship with no future options at all. Well some players will proclaim in their presentations that this is not the case, but when their presentations run dry and when we get to 2023 and players like Wesfarmers, Woolworths and JB HiFi will no longer be on a top 500 list, at that point some people will wonder why they listened to the silly people. I can only hope that my IP is sold before that because the hardship Australia faces with no global audience is not one I hope to rely on, and when you realise just how dangerous this setting is, you will not want that either.

In this when you realise that the media pushed you to a room in the sewer with that view, will you finally realise that the media, their shareholders, stakeholders and advertisers have sold you a bag of goods whilst calling it ‘life on quality street’? Who will you hold accountable the moment you realise that?

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The black door of death

Yup there is a door, a black door, some say it is the door of death. Hades assures me it is a door of change and opportunity, but then that man is not happy until the news given to all is gloomy beyond belief. I am a republican, I never made a secret of that and in some cases I gave that news up front. Today we see why! Al Jazeera gives us (among others) “Trump lawyers and House impeachment managers have decided to avoid calling witnesses in Donald Trump’s impeachment trial, beginning four hours of closing statements”, then we get ABC giving us “Mr Evans, 35, appeared before a federal judge in Huntington West Virginia on Friday afternoon after being arrested. If convicted, he faces up to a year and a half in federal prison for two misdemeanours: entering a restricted area and disorderly conduct. A growing number of Republicans and Democrats have said they want to expel Mr Evans from the legislature if he does not resign. His lawyer, John Bryan, said Mr Evans was acting as an amateur journalist recording the day’s events and he was not involved in violence. He said Evans did not commit a crime and did not plan to step down”, a setting when we consider “two black men were arrested last week when a store employee called police to say the men were trespassing. The protests followed the release of a video that showed the two men being arrested after a store manager called the police because they were sitting in the store without placing an order” (source: the Guardian), as such, they could have avoided arrest and cuffing if they called themselves ‘amateur journalists’?

We see the defence give us “It was a report from a reporter from a friend of somebody who had some hearsay they heard the night before at a bar somewhere”, we see hundreds of hours of footage, we see a loud mouthed petulant bullish childish NYC realtor gave us on January 6th “Today I will lay out just some of the evidence proving that we won this election and we won it by a landslide. This was not a close election”, we are also given “Trump defence dodges question on what he did to stop Capitol attack, says there was no insurrection”, yet the democrats miss the ball again and again. So what was this media circus, a show? A let this all be good for the grace of death?

And now we see “Former President Donald Trump acquitted again” (source: ABC news). The democrats foil the ball yet again, OK, I will admit that there are a few dubious characters on my side of the isle, yet proper investigation and interrogation might have gone a long way in this. 

So why do I care? I think something despicable happened, and a knowingly lying former president of the USA is not a good way to stage the setting. But that also opens the door of opportunity. And that door is not a nice one. I hereby call upon the specialist (read: CIA Wet Teams) to set a new standard. In an age of “Ransomware attacks are proving more lucrative for cyber criminals as even organisations that can restore from backups are paying ransom demands to prevent further damage”, as well as “As 2020 started, only the Maze ransomware gang was using this tactic. But as it ended, an additional 17 ransomware crews had taken to publishing stolen data of victims if they didn’t receive payment”. As such I am asking (read: demanding) that the CIA Wet teams are activated to secure American business safety. The victims are wide spread “They included 1,681 schools, colleges and universities, 560 healthcare facilities and 113 federal, state and municipal governments and agencies. Meanwhile, over 1,300 private companies were also hit by ransomware attacks”, as such we set the C.W.T. (CIA Wet Teams) in the field and we kill these people, no long wasted court-time, just a bullet through the back of the head. I don’t care it comes from a 16 year old with a crying excuse “I wanted to be cool”, that person will be pretty cool (ground temperature) in a casket, unless he is cremated, that person will be room temperature (still cool). Is that too much? I think it is time to set a different premise, it is time to set the premise of ‘enough is enough’, the law has not worked , not for 2-3 decades, scare tactics did not and as such, after the first half dozen are found and put to death, the rest will dump their computers faster than anything else they ever had and as such they are dealt with. It is a bit over the top, but Hades told me that there would be opportunity, so I sought one, I found one and now I am casing one. 

The setting stage of such failing blunders on the democratic side is just the start of the larger stage, the attacks on Saudi Arabia, whilst the actions by Iran on this are are almost 100% ignored, there is more one sided actions, as such setting a larger footprint on the other side of the fence is not the worst tactic to use, and lets face it, apart from the ransomware attackers (and their mummies and daddies) how much real opposition will there be? The second acquittal opened a new door, a door of all those thinking there would be no accountability for electing a stupid person, lets make sure that the new signals are a clear given sign that this was not the case and that we are all in a stage of having had enough. That is how I see it, yet I could be wrong.

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The marker, what is it?

We are always in a stage where it is about the price, as such the title ‘are video games too expensive?’ In the Guardian (at https://www.theguardian.com/games/2021/feb/08/are-video-games-too-expensive-assassins-creed-cyberpunk-2077) had my attention, I wonder what they are throwing at us this time, they being Luke Holland. He throws “With new consoles from Sony and Microsoft expected, a raft of video game publishers announced that the RRP of their new releases would increase for the first time since the mid-00s” at us and that seems fine. There is also the fact that most game dealers tend to lower that price off the bat, the makers have there day one discounts and it goes on. I get it. Luke is not wrong and through the article he gives a decent point of view, but some issues remain. It is not given with “While an extra £20 won’t break the bank for some, games might already be stretching what little disposable income many people have, particularly when twinned with the £250-£450 cost of the shiny new console on which to play them”, it is a fact, but there is more (there always is). He touches on it with “the cost of producing an AAA game – big-budget, big-studio, tentpole titles – is now akin to that of making a Hollywood blockbuster. Grand Theft Auto V, released in 2013, cost £195m in development and marketing” yet he dances around it by dangling Cyberpunks and the bugs in our faces, whilst he ignores the massive bug list that AC Valhalla had (the very first image in the story). So whilst we get “A Martin Scorsese film lumbers in at three hours long. Most narrative-led games clock in at 15-or-so hours – five whole Scorseses; a hundred quid’s worth of Marty”, yes but there we see it, the quality, quality is what separates them, Scorsese hands us sheer perfection, Ubisoft products have not done this for the better part of a decade, in addition a game like Cyberpunk is showing us innovation to a much larger degree even (if for now) it has bugs. Ubisoft has been treating us to more of the same for years and they still can’t get it right. That is the part that is missing in this. And the gem is given at the very last “Yes, £70 is a lot. But choose wisely and you’ll never, ever feel short-changed”, yes we agree, but the ‘choose wisely’ part has become tainted. Consider that IGN gave us ‘Update 1.1.0 will fix over 30 Quest, World Event, and Side Activity issues, many that would prevent players from proceeding due to glitches and problems’, they gave this TWO MONTHS after the game was released, so how come that we see scores (metacritic: 80-85) depending on what system, a game with that many bugs is given 70+? And when we see that per source Gamepro (65) to PC gamer (92), we should have issues with the ‘choose wisely part’, in opposition there is Watchdogs: Legion, they did get that part right and when we see metacritic reviews (66-74) we need to sit down and consider that we all have different tastes and the settings are not equally pressed, which is unfair to Ubisoft as well. 

This is where the shoes become an issue, we might think that £20  is not too big an issue, when you are in a stage where you might buy a lemon £20 is a lot, really it is. 

As we try to set a value per time range, we need to consider that art is not easily categorised, and a true video game is still a work of art, which is why I have been slapping Ubisoft all I can, as I feel that they forgot that part. They got parts right they got games right. Even now, I still see in my mind the sunrise in AC Origins, perhaps because it was the first real 4K game, perhaps it was the setting, but they got that part right, pretty much all of it, which is why I am so angry about AC Valhalla. I stayed away from it and until the price is set to below £10 I continue to do so. I got AC Odyssey at £10 at some point, and I still regret it, so I might not fall for that this time around, in this I have serious settings on finding a way to officially remove Ubisoft from the AAA developers list, but then I remember, they got Watchdogs: Legion right, they might pull it off again. 

In this we need to make one more sidestep, Luke gives us “December’s Cyberpunk 2077 – despite being unfinished, riddled with bugs and, on consoles, uglier than a pooing pug”, which is interesting as he did not give us that setting for AC Valhalla, did he? I get it, we all have style of games we like, as I was in the 70’s addicted to the original William Gibson’s Neuromancer, I remain faithful to the game, I keep it on my shelf and I wait until the fixes have come in to play beyond the introduction. We also seem to forget that Cyberpunk 2077 had grossed well over $600 million in digital sales alone as of the end of 2020. He can have that view, I never liked GTA5, I did not like GTA4, so I stayed away from the sequel, I get it plenty like it, but it is not for me, just like Skyrim is not the game for a lot of them. We all have different tastes. 

Yet the title of the article remains in my mind, it still does, you see the part that Luke skated away from is that Immortals Fenyx Rising is $39 in the US, the same game is $50 in Europe, $77 in Australia and $45 in the UK (all PS4 prices). And this has been going on for years, all whilst the prices are even worse when you buy a digital format game, it also impacts the value of the art but we do not see that here, or in Luke’s defence with “a hundred quid’s worth of Marty”, when a game is not set to a level stage we see the issues, especially when the Xbox store charges more for a digital copy than a store would for a physical one, even an Australian store. This has been going on for at least 5 years. Games are judged by markers, but the reviewers are using different markers on different stages and they all refer to them as ‘markers’, as such people are walking away because they can no longer tell the difference. In this the final remark (which is still wise) “But choose wisely and you’ll never, ever feel short-changed” loses ground. An overhaul of what reviews and what should be reviewed is set to corners that are blatantly disregarded and it required an overhaul for well over a decade, I know because in the beginning (1988-1999) I was a reviewer. I might never have been the best, but I was always fair on the games I reviewed and I kept to the games I liked. When you get 2 pages a month, you want to spend them on the games you like, nothing else. A flaw? Optionally, but I had to make the space count so I did it on the games I likes and other reviewers on the games they liked. 

And I will admit, reviewing has become a lot more complex. A game that was on the CBM64, Atari ST or PC286 does not compare what is out today, so in that consider Watchdogs: Legion (at https://www.bworldonline.com/it-could-have-been-transcendent-arts/), I for the most agree with the review and the 85% score is decent and well earned and the one issue that I have is seen in “perhaps due to the weight of its pledges, it never gets to reach its projected dazzling heights. It never stops being enjoyable, but the most demanding players will be bothered by a nagging feeling that it could have been not just better, but transcendent — that it’s just a few steps shy of greatness”, it sums up the failing of Ubisoft, games that could have been beyond ‘WOW!’ are merely ‘Nice!’ And many reviewers do not do half as good a job on reviews as Alexander O. Cuaycong and Anthony L. Cuaycong did. So whilst we give attention to ‘choose wisely’ we forget that gamers are getting overloaded with reviews on all kinds of digital formats, and they often can no longer separate the critical reviewer from the unquestioning followers and the blind hater, which is an actual problem that makes any gamer like they are getting played and suddenly that £20 makes a whole lot of difference. 

If enough people say that it is not a marker, it is a coffee stick. We will see that at some point some will stir their coffee with it, no matter where it was before. 

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Setting sun of reality

There was a BBC story that struck a chord with me, it was about jobs and it is given to us by Andrea Murad. The article called ‘The computers rejecting your job application’ (at https://www.bbc.com/news/business-55932977) shows us new ways on how HR and recruiters are just a joke. Even as Andrea Murad (unintentionally) falsely gives us “Welcome to the fast-growing world of AI recruitment”, we see the initial failure, AI does not exist, not yet at least and that setting is the larger lie that HR’s and recruiters are spinning. As such whist we look at “While recruiters have been using AI for around the past decade, the technology has been greatly refined in recent years. And demand for it has risen strongly since the pandemic, thanks to its convenience and fast results at a time when staff may be off due to Covid-19” we get the following:

  1. AI does not exist.
  2. Demand for something that does not exist is a delusional lie.
  3. Convenience of what, something that does not exist?

The stage is slowly starting, you see games are games and these recruitment games are set to get rid of the ‘slow’ applications, then they look at the ones with the most errors and the most hesitations, you see everything is measured in these games. So even if the explanation is a little wobbly, as people are trying to figure things out, they get one shot. And that is not even close to the end.

So when we see “The questions, and your answers to them, are designed to evaluate several aspects of a jobseeker’s personality and intelligence, such as your risk tolerance and how quickly you respond to situations”, it is one that is loaded with issues, but the nice part is that it follows “Or as Pymetrics puts it, “to fairly and accurately measure cognitive and emotional attributes in only 25 minutes””, or as I put it, there is no fairly stage, you are set against others and the lower scores are basically cut off, a game does not measure emotional I attributes and any test that is set to seconds can never not now, not ever fairly measure emotions. I am not even touching cognitive, as I would see it, in the case of Pymetrics, it is like watching a slide ruler judge the precision of a calculator. It is the new way of HR divisions to set scores to the needs of bosses and it will backfire in the most disastrous of ways. 

This all gets to be worse when we look at “The audio of this is then converted into text, and an AI algorithm analyses it for key words, such as the use of “I” instead of “we” in response to questions about teamwork. The recruiting company can then choose to let HireVue’s system reject candidates without having a human double-check, or have the candidate moved on for a video interview with an actual recruiter”, it is a system where the older fail, they are not accustomed to zoom style interviews, a stage that is, as I personally see it, a way to legalise age discrimination. There is also the stage of the questions and how impersonal edged questions wash out even more people, people that would for the most be great candidates. And that is not all there are signs (unproven ones) that these systems are also used to categorise people, fake jobs and the creation of rainbow results, a fake version of something that does not even exist at present (AI that is).

Yet the article is still good, when we get to the latter part and we are given some issues by Prof Sandra Wachter, a senior research fellow in AI at Oxford University we see that there is a larger stage and the stage is debatable. It is seen in “All machine learning works in the same basic way – you go through a bunch of data, and find patterns and similarities. So in recruitment, looking at the successful candidates of the past is the data you have. Who were the chief executives in the past, who were the Oxford professors in the past?” In this we see the first issue ‘machine learning’ is a part of AI, it is NOT AI, and those relying on machine learning will lose a lot. To see this, I found an image by Daniel S. Christian, I believe it is incomplete, but it is a larger stage we see and optionally you will see how those claimants of AI are just wrong. You see the image misses, Datapoint Creation, category creation, new data comprehension and verification of data (new against old old), this is essential because if that I not done it is not AI, a person will always be in the mix to make calls making the data arbitrary and obsolete (read: useless) from the get go.

And all that is before we consider that those with a bad webcam will be judged unfairly, so the poor with indecent equipment will not be judged correctly against those with much better webcams, if that is not the case there can be no AI, because face recognition would be essential in emotional recognition, or not?

The worst part in all this is all these sources going on about ‘AI’, I wonder what kind of cool-aid they are drinking, it’s a set of fake values and as such the entire setting is fake, it is fake for all kinds of reasons, yet I personally feel it is so that these ‘wielders’ can indiscriminately discriminate the pool of applicants, it is merely my view on the matter, and there will be plenty of greed driven players calling my view foul, I will let you decide for yourself.

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Number of states

We all have states, we all have considerations. There isn’t a person who does not enter that stage, the stage of the blame game. Now, I could blame the Saudi Crown prince for my poverty, they never did anything for me, but is that not the central part in all this? 

It started some time ago, yet the Al Jazeera article that starts with “Lawyers have filed an amended complaint in the US-based lawsuit against Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MBS) containing allegations about attempts to “lure” an ex-spymaster’s family to the Saudi consulate in Istanbul and summons for two alleged members of the “Tiger” hit squad”, the there are the allegations to ‘lure’, interesting as lure means “tempt (a person or animal) to do something or to go somewhere”, in this I wonder is it a crime, and there is a stage: ““Luring” is not a crime at the top of most people’s minds, but the law in Washington and other states does make luring a child or developmentally disabled person a felony”, as such is ex-Saudi intelligence officer Saad al-Jabri a child or a disabled person? In the second, what evidence is there that there is a direct connection between the attempted lure and Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MBS)? I am not stating that this is not the case, I actually do not know, so I am asking the question. And as we turn to the PDF (at https://www.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.dcd.220747/gov.uscourts.dcd.220747.66.1.pdf), we see a few things. The first is seen at [4], when we see “Fortunately, in the United States, justice is measured not by the might of one’s arms; what is lawful is measured not by the reach of one’s sword; and the law itself is not laggard when faced with a prince who, having directed the dismemberment of a prominent U.S. journalist overseas, also dispatched a team of hunters and killers into the United States and Canada to murder again.”, and I hereby demand that the accusers show evidence, evidence that holds up in court, in the pretrial the stage of ‘the dismemberment of a prominent U.S. journalist’, so at what stage was some journalist dismembered, what evidence is there that this ever happened?

Then at [5] we are treated to “The target of that attempted killing is Plaintiff Dr. Saad Aljabri”, at what stage did “attempts to “lure”” change into “attempted killing”? What evidence supports this?

So when the delusional man (Dr. Saad Aljabri) relies on “a longtime trusted partner of senior U.S. intelligence officials”, all whilst he no longer has value, it stands to reason that he uses his so called friends one more time to get a huge pay day. Something to hold him over until he passes away and as some of these people rely on the delusional stage of immortality, that pay day needs to be bigger and better.

At that point there is all kinds of emotions, and when we get to [11] we see “Defendant bin Salman has taken steps to lure Dr. Saad back to Saudi Arabia or to another jurisdiction where he could be more easily killed without consequences”, so what evidence is there that the Crown Prince was directly involved, also ‘where he could be more easily killed’ is an assumption that cannot be proven, not proven as an act and not proven towards any person. And this charade of laughing usage of the law, is set in 199 pages, the pages, I added in the link, the pages that Al Jazeera correctly added. It is like the second instalment of Blood and Oil, that fictional piece by Bradley Hope and Justin Scheck, to my amazement I have never seen so many organisations using fiction, allegations and innuendo to frame a person, in this case Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. Oh and before I forget, who was that prominent US journalist? Khashoggi was a columnist and an author. A columnist for the Washington Post, that does not make him a prominent US journalist, does it? 

And there is more the use of intentional ‘mis-statements’ like at [7] “Dr. Saad ledhelped to lead a team that saved hundreds” are emotional statements that have no bearing on the alleged case, a stage that is set to folly from the get go. 

So lets take a look at this respected person

  • He was dismissed from his governmental positions on 10 September 2015.
  • In September 2017, Saudi authorities sought Al Jabri’s arrest for corruption. 

I reckon that part is not illuminated in the brief, is it? In addition to this the number one laughing stage is that we are told “border agents at Toronto Pearson International Airport stopped the group and refused them entry into Canada”, so not only is it an alleged setting, it is an alleged setting that was allegedly staged in Canada, so why is it in an American court? This is about something else and it has nothing to do with Dr. Saad Aljabri, but with his American friends, perhaps they get a slice of that yummy settlement cake. Feel free to disagree and especially to oppose this, it is fair to do so, I am just saddened that the law, especially US law allows for such pieces of fiction to proceed. I would be happy to support anything to go to court if it was a lot less fictional, and let’s face it, consider that it was an attempted lure, a lot more facts on a brief that would be a lot less than 199 pages might have done the trick. I see so much fiction there, on so many pages, I wonder how the writer of that brief can live with him/her self. And in all this, when exactly did Canada become the 51st state?

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Not a good thing

There are moments when I hate being right. For the most it is a nice feeling, but the stage where people lives go to shambles just so that I am right is not my forte. I have no issues getting Google’s own Papa Smurf (read: Sergey Brin) to buy my 5G IP, but he can easily afford it (he might just have enough in his wallet). Getting to a stage where millions of people pay an additional £6-£96 a month for energy is not my idea of fun, but the BBC (at https://www.bbc.com/news/business-55925514) gave us only two hours ago an article with loads of emotion, yet the two foundations are in the first £6-£96 a month more, so being on the wrong side of that scale will hurt in massive ways. And we see that it “affects 11 million households in England, Wales and Scotland who have never switched suppliers or whose discounted deals have expired”, so the hurt will come and come again and there is every indication that they will get hit again around August 2021. And beyond that we see “The cap for prepayment meter customers will go up by £87  to £1,156, affecting another four million customers”, a change that is about to hit 22% of all Britons. 

So now we get to the me being right thing, on December 3rd last year (or better stated a year ago) in the article ‘Trillion dollar Musk’ (at https://lawlordtobe.com/2020/12/03/trillion-dollar-musk/) I gave the readers “the UK has an increasing need for Scandinavian power and soon it cannot be met. I reckon that in the next 2-3 years that shortage will be close to systemic all over the EU” where we see the simplest application of price rises, and now we see the rise on a much larger scale than ever witnessed before. So now consider the average annual pensioner income £15,080. Now consider that 1%-6% more is given to the power company. It depends where they are, but the stage is now already getting to a dangerous close, a close that a lot cannot afford and that setting will continue all over Europe. I saw this coming but even I am a little amazed on how fast it is arriving at the front door of people. I expected that there were 2-3 years for people like Elon Musk to stop the cost from drowning people (making him rich at the very same time), there was a clear clarion prediction to the ‘Trillion dollar Musk’ setting and no space ride would be needed. Now that we are given “Citizens Advice said its research in December indicated that 2.1 million households were behind on their energy bills, a rise of 600,000 compared with before the pandemic”, we might point towards some corona event, but the truth is that overall power needs have been going up and up and beyond some point the power companies will have to pay for importing power and that side of the equation is not going away.  And with “Heating a poorly insulated home costs around £50 a month more than a decent home. If bills rise by £96, millions of households have two stark choices; stay cold or fall further into debt” the final piece falls into place, even as they all make it about heating (which is partially true), the overall use of electricity is off the scales, I stated them in ‘Dangerous conclusions’, which I wrote on December 16th (at https://lawlordtobe.com/2020/12/16/dangerous-conclusions/) and now that the stage is here, Eon Musk has a massive opportunity and soon enough it will grow into Europe as well, I wonder who will cash in before the half baked solutions stir their ugly heads.

Because the impact of that stage is not a good thing. 

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A Swift rescue

I was half asleep one moment and the next I wake up to ‘Theme park sues singer over Evermore album name’ (at https://www.bbc.com/news/entertainment-arts-55932164). So, in this setting, what are the rules? Well, one of them is “Common words and phrases can be trademarked if the person or company seeking the trademark can demonstrate that the phrase has acquired a distinctive secondary meaning apart from its original meaning. That secondary meaning must be one that identifies the phrase with a particular good or service”, the word has existed in an ecclesiastical sense for centuries. So the original word meant “always”, it is one of the words also at times we see it as ‘aways and forever’. So, the trade-marker must now show that it “identifies the phrase with a particular good or service”, and there we have the issue, Taylor Swift has a real identifiable service, the service of an entertainer/performer, as Evermore has “opened its doors officially to the public on September 29, 2018. In contrast to most theme parks, Evermore Park does not feature any major rides; instead, trained actors who portray fantasy characters are the main attraction”, and if I were a betting man, I would bet against the theme park. It’s creative director Josh Shipley, has called Evermore a “living theatrical park”, a park, not a CD, not a place where at all times a collection of songs can be listened to, a park. This was their way to get extra visibility. A bad choice as I see it. I reckon that if all the fans of Taylor Swift made a proper and polite complaint against this (at +1 801-796-2372) their phones will be blocked for weeks. In the second, did they sue the Australian band Evermore as well? Then there is Neil Diamond, who also had a song with that title. Now, that song was out for a while, so there can be no claim, the Australian band Evermore existed for some time as well, the list goes on. 

So for a theme park no one had heard of to use Taylor Swift to get visibility is one thing, would it not have been better to contact Taylor Swift to request the launch of her album at the park? No, the American will sue to get the upper hand for marketing. That is how I see it. And back to the law, the park was opened in 2018, so the stage of “one that identifies the phrase with a particular good or service”, that is not possible, because the theme park is not open forever and always, as their website states: ‘Evermore Park Is Currently Closed’, so they are not forever or always open, they are closed. As such the stage of “the trademark can demonstrate that the phrase has acquired a distinctive secondary meaning”, which will fail very distinctively and directly, but when they open and if you are a fan of Taylor Swift, please complain politely (at +1 801-796-2372). Oh and lastly, the CD has the ‘e’ in lowercase, the park has it as ‘E’ (uppercase), so the name is not enough, the word is not more alike than not, another setting to let the claim fail.

Well, that is my part done for the day and I am still feeling frisky for some humour, so let take a look at what types of mischief the Kremlin is up to, I cannot make fun of Josh Shipley and not make fun of President Putin, or can I? Ah, 05:00 the new day is starting, lets see what else I can do this morning.

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