Category Archives: Media

Gapping data

I did take notice of the story, but there were other considerations. So what is the issue with a two week old story? Actually there is nothing wrong with the time gap, it actually works out nicely. Yet before we go anywhere, lets take a look at ‘A data ‘black hole’: Europol ordered to delete vast store of personal data’ (at https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/jan/10/a-data-black-hole-europol-ordered-to-delete-vast-store-of-personal-data) there we are given “The EU’s police agency, Europol, will be forced to delete much of a vast store of personal data that it has been found to have amassed unlawfully by the bloc’s data protection watchdog.” Here I have an issue with the stage of “amassed unlawfully”, then we get “The unprecedented finding from the European Data Protection Supervisor (EDPS) targets what privacy experts are calling a “big data ark” containing billions of points of information. Sensitive data in the ark has been drawn from crime reports, hacked from encrypted phone services and sampled from asylum seekers never involved in any crime.” There we get “hacked from encrypted phone services and sampled from asylum seekers never involved in any crime” You see, the biggest problem in any data set are the data gaps. MISSING VALUE analyses will not get you anywhere and data cannot be analysed on data that is not there. As I see it, the commercial world amasses worlds of data and the EDPS (European Data Protection Supervisor) does next to nothing. We could start an argument that the EDPS is catering to organised crime, but that might be a stretch. I know my data has been collected by CIA, FBI, GCHQ, Mossad, DGSE and at least two other organisations. You think I care? I live my life and keep doing what I am legally allowed to do. The data merely reinforces this. So why is there such a rush to maim the mobility of Europol? I have nothing against laws, I believe that laws are important, but how stupid is it to set up the laws to hinder the law? When our data is all over Microsoft, Google, Amazon, GTCOM and whatever Russia has. The 4,000 TB that is to be deleted will serve organised crime and criminals, no one else. And more importantly it will not protect refugees, if anything, the data shows them to be innocent. Did no one make that leap? You see I oppose “Europol had worked with the EDPS “to find a balance between keeping the EU secure and its citizens safe while adhering to the highest standards of data protection”, the agency said.” I oppose it because data does not protect or endanger lives, it is the one wielding all that data does and whilst commercial enterprises are given a wide berth avoiding their ‘legal’ teams, the EDPS has to prove its existence by having a go at Interpol.

Yes, it is their job, but in what job do you hand opportunity to criminals, organised crime and terrorists? 

And the Guardian is appeasing the stage buy giving the simplest of examples, the example that makes you go ‘awww’. But the example “The political activist, whose only serious run-ins with police amount to breaking a window to gain entrance to a building and create a squat for homeless people, was removed from the Dutch watch-list by authorities in 2019. But a year prior to this removal he had moved to Berlin, which unknown to Van der Linde at the time prompted Dutch police to share his data with German counterparts and Europol. The activist discovered his entanglement with Europol only when he saw a partially declassified file at Amsterdam city hall.” So a criminal, guilty of breaking and entering, that is the simple truth. But we are not supposed to see that, are we? And when the next assault is not in London, but Amsterdam and the gapped data will show to have been an option to stop this, what will the EU give as a response? 

 

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As the swarm settles

It has been hours since the Netflix scare. And a few hours after that, less then 10 hours after I wrote the previous article, we get to see ‘CNN streaming service to shut a month after launch’ the article (source: BBC) also gives us “Warner Bros Discovery (WBD) says it will issue refunds to subscribers after the service is shut down on 30 April. The head of CNN+ has resigned and hundreds more workers could be at risk of losing their jobs. CNN+ was launched on 29 March in an attempt to bring in revenues from news streaming subscriptions”, we can see this in a few ways. Yet in this I personally believe that saturation is part of the issue and it will not go away. The others will feel the brunt. Netflix will bounce in part back, Disney will take a hit, but these two are too big to fail drastically, the smaller ones will take larger hits as CNN+ is doing and some of them will not survive. What I stated some time ago is now coming to pass. I wonder if I was right in the thought that smaller could survive if they would merge. The idea that smaller would combine their channels and subscriptions is a little bit extreme, but it beats being dead, does it not?

Yet there is more underfoot. There is ‘Cinedigm’s DMR Unveils Cinehouse – A Curated Lineup of Free Streaming Channels for Superfans’ (Source: Accesswire) where we see “Digital media and entertainment company DMR, is letting fans stream their favourite niche channels with the launch of Cinehouse. A wholly-owned subsidiary of Cinedigm (NASDAQ:CIDM), DMR is unveiling this new free ad-supported streaming television (FAST) service to super-serve enthusiast fan bases across several popular genres.” You can take these thoughts in many ways but when I see “Cinehouse is dedicated to bringing fans the best movies and TV shows from around the world – from ancient mysteries and heart-stopping action, to classic anime, comedy, gaming, K-pop and more.” I personally believe that some are dropping small channels with ‘free’ materials to subvert the populations requiring free options to make them unavailable. A bait to get rid of the smaller fish and clean the pond, decrease saturation levels by getting rid of the opposition. It is a personal believe and I might be wrong, but we see new free channels after the drowning of CNN+?

The swarms seem to settle and some are playing the free card to take out the competition. It is one thought and my thought could be way off and massively wrong, but when you see one source that can verify the setting that the rest ‘seems’ to overlook, my wandering lobe starts to take a look at the information others leave lying round and this is where it got me. Is it me, or not?

I will let you decide.

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Tweeter and Sylvester Musk

Yes, it seems like an animated fest. But there is a lot more under the hoods called media. Even there battle lines are being drawn. The problem is that this war is a little more annoying than other wars. T?he media is making sure that every statement is checked. And still there are multiple sides in this war. 

Forbes
Forbes is one side and gives us “Now, four years later, Musk’s desire to purchase Twitter may to be tied, at least in part, to his still-burning desire to correct what he perceives as media bias generally, and toward him and his companies, which is amplified on social media. Twitter’s board of directors has unanimously rejected his offer and vowed to fight the takeover bid. Whether or not he ultimately succeeds in purchasing Twitter, his views about free speech and social media are ill-conceived in at least three ways.” This is a fair point of view. The added “he does not acknowledge that rules pertaining to free speech in the United States are intended to constrain the actions of governments not companies or private actors. The First Amendment to the Constitution provides that Congress shall pass no law abridging free speech, significantly limiting government action. Over the last 230 years, U.S. lawmakers and courts have carved out a few carefully crafted exceptions to this absolute prohibition on government action.” Is equally fair, yet the missing part is that “U.S. lawmakers and courts have carved out a few carefully crafted exceptions to this absolute prohibition on government action” is that this is a statement that the media exploited to a large degree for the push of self. The media has its own media filter systems. They are called stakeholders and they have been around for over a decade, most likely longer. In a TV series called Torchwood, we are given “Harry Bosco was a man who would alter information fed to the public during the Vietnam War. In the words of Esther Drummond, “He did it by mistranslation. He couldn’t censor or change, but he could manipulate the English translation. Change one word, change the entire meaning.”” It is not far from the truth we see today. People are given filtered information, one sided stories and intentional mistranslations and it is EVERYWHERE. The Ukraine coverage by internet trolls on Facebook and Twitter. Filtering by deleting accounts on Twitter and the intentional one sided coverage in Syria and Yemen shows that this is going on and in the media certain stakeholders are as I personally see it filling their pockets. 

And when the additional “In the U.S., these free speech standards were never intended to apply to private companies. It would be especially counter-productive to apply them to social media platforms like Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube or TikTok. It is in both the commercial interest of these firms and the best interest of our society for them to moderate content on their platforms actively and responsibly. If they do not do so, their platforms will quickly be overwhelmed by spam, pornography, hate speech and violent incitement, misinformation, and conspiracy theories, which would drive away both users and advertisers”, and when you see “If they do not do so, their platforms will quickly be overwhelmed by spam, hate speech and violent incitement, misinformation, and conspiracy theories, which would drive away users” you know that I am right. The media is exploiting every digital dollar via flames, hate speech, misinformation, and conspiracy theories. We see them on pretty much ALL social media, so I reckon that that ship has sailed already. 

In all this, I cannot say whether Elon Musk will be a force of good, or bad for Twitter, it is interesting to note that there is a downside to Twitter and if Elon Musk will launch his version of Twitter, some version of Social Media, I will take notice get hop on board to see how good, or how different it will be. And whilst you are all so emotional on Elon Musk, consider that this might be a good thing. When you see the amount of seesaw data (either really good, or massively bad) news on Meta is handed to people via hundreds of sources. We see a slow but certain form of polarisation coming. These people will watch from the sidelines and they will see that whatever Elon Musk has might be an alternative. And it would work for Elon Musk. When he adds Hybrid to his system he would be able to steer in multiple ways and it should give him a larger benefit, especially when his cars have it and others do not, the bough breaks and the car industry will lose a massive chunk to Tesla. All sides that might, that could happen. But it is equally possible that certain sides will fall for him but not completely so. Basically the 50/50 split could become 70/30 with 30 going the Musk way and that is good news for Google, Amazon and Meta. Yet they will have to accept that Musk Social Media could become a powerhouse all by itself and at that stage whatever the Forbes people will say was bad news will get a really quick rewrite. That is how I see it.

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Comedy Capers it is not

There was news in the Guardian (at https://www.theguardian.com/weather/2022/apr/14/iranian-born-woman-fake-officers-elnaz-hajtamiri-canadian-police) almost a week ago. I saw it yesterday and it has me baffled. There is no wrongdoing by the police, there is no wrongdoing by the media, yet something is off. Consider ‘Case of Iranian-born woman abducted by fake officers baffles Canadian police’. The message there is “On a cold winter night, three armed men disguised as police officers arrived at a suburban home in a small Canadian resort town and knocked on the door, claiming that they had an arrest warrant for a 37-year-old woman who was staying there.” The situation is weird and brazen, but not in a good way and as we are given “Nearly three months later, police admit they are no closer to locating Hajtamiri, in a case that has baffled investigators” we want to blame someone, but who? The police did no wrong and with ““I have never, never come across a case like this,” Ontario provincial police detective inspector Martin Graham told reporters this week, adding that investigators had not determined a motive or received any ransom demands. They also have not located the white Lexus SUV vehicle used in the abduction on 12 January, nor have they identified its owner.” We see a different field, and there is no blame, but it seems to me that Elnaz Hajtamiri had caught the eye of someone. Either from her past, or towards someone else’s future. We all would want to be the sleuth, the Sherlock that hands the police the answers they seek, but that is unlikely to come. The fact that the White Lexus is not found implies that it was not stolen, or the owner was optionally aware of what was going on. So how many white Lexus SUV’s are there in Ontario? There will be a few, but these ruddy things go for more than $50K, so if none are missing through theft it becomes a larger game, then there is the setting that any owner of a white Lexus SUV might have gone skiing in Whistler and when they returned the car was where they left it, as such no alarm was raised. 

It did give me an idea for a new piece of IP, but more about that later. 

All these facts tend to give me the feeling that this was not some simple abduction, it was a targeted event. So why was Elnaz Hajtamiri important to some? I can make some empty gesture, I can make some claim, but that would be folly. The Canadian police is more than able, and when we see that they never face this before gives rise to this being more than a unique thing. It was as I personally see it either a very old crime or a very new one, but I keep on brooding on who could profit of her disappearance. It is easy to accuse Riyasat Singh and I do not know if he is a party of interest for the police, it could be, I do not know. I am wondering on “Two other tracking devices were found in her car when she brought the vehicle in for servicing in November.” You see, if it was as simple as a jealous ex, or boyfriend we see the reason for one of these trackers, it is the second (and third) tracker that is the issue and it makes me believe that she was an intentional target, but for what reason, I do not know. There was a third device, so it leaves me with questions. There is little about these devices, so it can go in every direction, but they are the clue I am brooding on. Not merely what they were, but where they came from, where ordered, when ordered and what was mapped. All questions that remain in the dark, but I keep on wondering, because 3 devices give a different light than one device, so was she being monitored by more than one, or by one professional? That is the question that rises in my mind and I could very well be extremely wrong on this. Then there is the part of “After overpowering the homeowner” gives us that they were ready for violence, so they had purpose, as such she was the target, not the opportunity. That is as far as I can get with the data available and I feel certain that the Canadian police got further than I did. 

I hope that the Canadian police will be able to resolve this, and preferably with Elnaz Hajtamiri still alive, but the time gap is making that less and less realistic. 

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800,000,000 failures and a home-run

This is what I faced today, but the two are not connected, well not directly, optionally even indirectly. They are connected by the smallest sliver of thought. To start, the first part comes from the BBC. The article (at https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-61080536) gives us ‘Sanctioned Russian oligarchs linked to £800m worth of UK property’, which sounds nice, but lets take a deeper look. We get “Some of the individuals deny ownership of the mansions, which may mean they are beyond the reach of the sanctions. To get to the bottom of who owns what, we carried out a detailed trawl of leaked offshore documents, the Land Registry and court papers – as well as previous reporting.” It comes down to the first part. There we see “Because of the system of secrecy here in the UK and in relation to the Overseas Dependencies it’s really easy for people to hide their assets and their funds in the UK and not even the police necessarily have sight of where those assets are,” these people are skating around the central issue ‘What they did was perfectly legal’ a setting of creating actual tax laws is at the heart of this and this is decades overdue. It should have started in the age of Gordon Brown (2007), there is a stage where we could agree that Tony Blair (1997-2007) should have started it, but the pressure was not on for the UK at that point, the meltdown in the US should have been a clear signal, but from 1997 onwards NOTHING was done to rewrite tax laws into the laws the UK needed to have in 2010, and now a decade later we see “To get to the bottom of who owns what” and there hiding behind the Panama Papers is jut a farce. This should have been adjusted in the EU, UK and US by 2010 but none of them did ANYTHING to clear the waters. They merely pretended to do so to appease political friends, they all did. And now when we see the laughingly weak “We are coming for your ill-begotten gains” this implies that laws were broken, so is he just incompetent, stupid or both? And this matters, because it is all linked. 

Roman Abramovich, has a vast property portfolio in the UK with more than 50 luxury residences, most on Fulham Road in west London. Through his UK company Fordstam Limited, he owns dozens of apartments in Chelsea Village, plus the hotel and residential complex around Chelsea’s Stamford Bridge stadium, according to the Land Registry. On Roman Abramovich we see “He has a vast property portfolio in the UK with more than 50 luxury residences, most on Fulham Road in west London. Through his UK company Fordstam Limited, he owns dozens of apartments in Chelsea Village, plus the hotel and residential complex around Chelsea’s Stamford Bridge stadium, according to the Land Registry. His most expensive London property is a 15-bedroom house on a street that is nicknamed Billionaires Row. With its vast stucco-faced Italianate mansions, it is home to royalty and ambassadors – as well as oligarchs.” The one element missing (two actually) were any laws broken? More important we see sanctioned by UK and EU, not the US. Then we get to the main event. It is Alisher Usmanov, sanctioned by all three and the desert of all this is more than a Medovik. We are given “a spokesman for Mr Usmanov said most of the billionaire’s UK property, plus a $600m (£456m) yacht, had already been “transferred into irrevocable trusts”, potentially putting them beyond the reach of sanctions.” A stage that is perfectly legal and the laws were never rewritten making this a sliding scale of discrimination, a scale of injustice and no laws were broken. The law makers were too stupid, too lazy to do anything about it. In the UK, the US and the EU. The lawmakers appeased THEIR friends as I personally see it and the oligarchs merely used the laws available to THEM TOO. A stage we need to accept and respect if we are a nation of laws. More important, which of these oligarchs ACTIVELY supported the war by Putin? I am asking, I actually do not know and the media merely surrounds itself with emotional BS, not a fact in sight and it is time to call these media players out on that too. The BBC article is actually quite good, but where do we see ‘Laws were broken’? We see “Ravenmorrow Limited was set up in December last year and no individual is identified on UK company records as the beneficial owner.” A clear failure of UK Laws, a setting where it was allowed to do this and no one is to blame but British Parliament and the House of Lords. The BBC does not really state that do they? As. I see it I see not the acts of Oligarchs, I see the failures of governments not overhauling tax laws when they could and as I see it all parties are guilty (except the greens), unlike the others the green parties all over the world seem to be oblivious on what a rudder is or does, so they are going Hades knows where at a speed no one can predict to arrive at some location no one knows.

Home-run
Yes, like the side we saw before there is another side and it makes more of a case towards the end of Microsoft, all whilst Adobe is getting more and more in place of taking over 25% of their office business. It is depending on two elements, and when these elements are out I will happily hand them over what I have if Google or Amazon buy the other IP and give me permission to hand that over to Adobe, I will gladly do that, just to see Microsoft squirm a little more. 5 markets lost to stupidity, 5 markets lost to shortsightedness and Adobe will be one of the winners. The setting that comes has been out for a while and the lost sides (four at present) are things that Microsoft should have seen years ago, their inaction is now more than enough. If you are asleep at the wheel you lose the ship, it is that simple and unlike the Ever Given, others are not in the Suez Canal, we can go around this Microsoft vessel and let it sink. A home-run out in the open and Microsoft just will not wake up, well let them sleep, I reckon that Adobe is more than ready to take over a chunk of the Office users. Consider that after all this time and all these follies, people do not merely gain a program, they gain a suite of options to tantalise their creativity. 

There is no telling where the creative people are going to end, but it will be ahead of where Microsoft hoped they would be, a lag that only intensifies the losses they will face. The setting reminded me of an article I saw in LinkedIn. 

There we see a person objecting to the discrimination of scouting. There we see “The announcer labelled the boy scouts as ‘Future leaders of America’ and the girls scouts as a group that were ‘just having fun’” This is what we see as a setting for Adobe and Microsoft. Adobe instills and propagates creativity, whilst Microsoft merely sets a mediocre foundation of presenting. Yet if there is one thing I have seen from Adobe, it is a clear stage where presenters can create works of art, whilst Microsoft sets a stage of mediocre joyous presentations, but in this day and age presentations are serious business, it sets the tone for corporate stories, sales events, propagating new projects and products. Joy gets us nowhere and Microsoft joy is close to a decade old. Adobe is on the verge of setting the next generation of presenting tools. So where do YOU wanna be when your idea is ready to be shown to the world? At the edge of what is possible, or in a joyous looking meadow, one that we have seen a million times over? I will let you decide on where you want to be and be honest, do you really think that Microsoft has any serious relevance left?

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What’s the name, what’s the game?

I saw the news a few days ago, and for the most it does not matter to me, but there is an awful lot of hypocrisy going around and the media is (as I personally see it) as tainted as anything else. The stage is set to Elon Musk, or better stated is set against Elon Musk. Why? Don’t really know the man, but he seems the modern day Midas. Whatever he touches turns to gold. He made an upheaval in the battery market, the mobile market, the energy market. The man is (allegedly) an inventor like me, or he can see proper innovation just like Steve Jobs. How is this a bad thing? Consider the news that he was getting involved in social media. Why not? I do not know if it is a bad idea. But he has the dough to become part of it. Yet the Sydney Morning Herald gives us ‘Elon Musk launches $58 billion hostile takeover of Twitter’ (at https://www.smh.com.au/business/companies/elon-musk-launches-hostile-takeover-of-twitter-20220414-p5admv.html) as such lets take a look at what constitutes a hostile takeover? The definition gives us “A hostile takeover occurs when an acquiring company attempts to take over a target company against the wishes of the target company’s management. An acquiring company can achieve a hostile takeover by going directly to the target company’s shareholders or fighting to replace its management” is this true? CBS gives us ‘Elon Musk offers to buy Twitter for $43 billion’, so who is giving us the truth and who is giving a stakeholder a blow job? You think this is rude? You ain’t seen nothing yet. We can argue until the sun goes down, but the setting of finance is clear. If a company is worth it, or could become worth it, you buy it. This has been the case in many occasions. Yet no one is saying that about Microsoft and Blizzard. There we get ‘Activision Blizzard/Microsoft Deal Discouraged by Letter Penned by SOC Investment Group’, how quaint.

So it was today when I saw (at https://www.reuters.com/technology/twitter-adopts-poison-pill-fight-musk-2022-04-15/) ‘Twitter adopts ‘poison pill’ as challenger to Musk emerges’, it is the Guardian version where we see “The method, known as a “poison pill” in the finance world, suggests Twitter will fight Musk to prevent a hostile takeover. It would go into effect if a shareholder were to acquire more than 15% of the company in a deal not approved by the board and expires 14 April 2023.”You see my issue is with the ‘hostile takeover’ part. The guardian gives us those goods with “Jack Dorsey, Twitter founder and former CEO, noted in a tweet on Friday that such surprise purchases are always a risk for the company. “As a public company, Twitter has always been ‘for sale’,” he said. “That’s the real issue.” Musk is already facing legal action for his Twitter purchases, with one investor suing the Tesla executive in a potential class action lawsuit for failing to disclose his buy-up of shares before the required deadline to do so. The lawsuit comes as Musk faces a number of investigations by the Securities and Exchange Commission for his investment activities, including insider trading allegations related to his own tweets.” So we see ‘insider trading’, we see ‘hostile takeover’ but we are given no real evidence of either. Merely the word ‘allegations’ that everyone is overlooking. 

The stage becomes even weirder as we consider the actions that Microsoft unleashed on the gaming industry and it is casually trivialised by too many media outlets. 

In all this the statement “he wanted to release its “extraordinary potential” to support free speech and democracy across the world.” Is trivialised by “Twitter’s board on Friday unanimously approved a plan that would allow existing shareholders to buy stocks at a substantial discount in order to dilute the holdings of new investors”, there is no real setting of who these board members are, the media seemingly forgot about that part. These members that include Bret Taylor (SalesForce), Parag Agrawal (CEO Twitter), Mimi Alemayehou (Mastercard), Egon Durban (Silver Lake), Martha Lane Fox (House of Lords), Dr. Fei-Fei Li (Stanford), Patrick Pichette (Google), David Rosenblatt and Robert Zoellick (AllianceBernstein Holding L.P.) there was a unanimous objection to the purchase by Elon Musk and no media outlet had anything from these members with the simple question ‘Why oppose?’. There might be a very valid reason, but I and all others were not informed, so what gives?

We can speculate on why it was done. Elon Musk sees that the US is going after the billionaires. As such he might be buying anything he can to drop the tax rift, and lets face it, he has been turning things to gold and Twitter is a golden idea. So whilst we see all kinds of objections on how analysts see (and say) things like “KeyBanc Capital analyst Justin Patterson downgraded the social media company in the wake of Elon Musk’s buyout proposal. Patterson cut his rating to sector weight, after being at overweight since January 2021, saying that the potential for the Musk bid to “go up in smoke” will turn investor focus on a more challenging macro environment that elevates downside risk to financial estimates.” I personally honestly do not know what will happen, but when a person buys a company, a person that has transformed several companies into powerhouses, I wonder what really is going on. It could be simple, it could be complex, yet the larger station is that people laughed at Tesla and now we see “As of April 2022 Tesla has a market cap of $1.018 Trillion. This makes Tesla the world’s 6th most valuable company by market cap according to our data.” So as I see it, the joke is on them. What was an idea is now 6th on the most valuable companies on the market and that is behind Apple, Microsoft, Aramco, Alphabet, and Amazon and as I gave voice to Microsoft, there is every chance that it will head of Microsoft in the next 3 years. And that is whilst no one has a clue where Meta will end, because they will become part of the top 7 soon enough (2024), and that too is out into the market. So I have questions and the media is not asking the board members of Twitter, or Elon Musk a clear set of questions. And all that before someone decides to ask KeyBanc Capital a few uncomfortable questions. So what is in the name Twitter, what is in the name Elon Musk and what is in the shares game being played now. No matter what is happening, I feel certain that the media will not properly inform us, that mush seems a personal given. Yet in all this we see the approximation of “to support free speech and democracy across the world”, it seems to me that Elon Musk is giving us options, options in mobile technology and energy technology. Who else has been giving us that? I see questions and no one asking them, it is weird, is it not?

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Directions

We all do this, we take a direction, we choose a heading and most of us do it for emotional and sentimental reasons. I am no different. Yes, I still enjoy every moment in Horizons: Forbidden West. I hope I will enjoy Hogwarts Legacy well over half that much (more is always good). I try to have a realistic mind and the movie of Hogwarts Legacy blew me away, as it did most of us. Yet, some of us also hope for other IP to be made into games. Some go nuts for Marvel or DC games. Some of us love the Lego games. Yet I wonder what is possible if someone takes a gander and grabs a series like the Magicians, Babylon 5 or Battlestar Galactica into a game. Hogwarts and the writings of JK Rowling shows that there is massive appeal in the arcane. As such the writings of Lev Grossman could make for one hell of a game. Babylon 5 always had its own following and 5 seasons as well as a few movies opens the doors to a larger game. And there is a benefit to a space station. The same could be said for the Galactica, but I wonder what happens when we try to set a much larger station by opening the gameplay on a dozen worlds. A game that covers Icarus, Picon, Caprica, Gemenon, Tauron, Leonis, Virgon, Libran, Scorpia, Sagittaron, Aerilon, Aquaria and Canceron. A game that is too big for consoles, but not for streamers. All options that are forsaken, overlooked or just too big to contemplate. That last reason is a decent one. It is one hell of a challenge to get one world done right, to get 12 done good would be folly and I recognise that. A state of gaming we sometimes overlook. Just like the hungry man whose eyes are bigger than his stomach. In the latter case we waste some money on food we never had and that is OK, when you make a game and you make THAT much of an oversight bankruptcies start, so the game needs to be played careful and cautious. I get that, but if we always play it safe a game like The Darkness on Xbox360 would never have been a reality. A game that scored 82% (better than some Ubisoft games). There are other games with that setting and they were good games. Some would state not great games and I could go along with that. There are other games that scored not as much and were great games to play. So I am at time cautious on looking too hard at some rating. A game is what captures us, and for different people it is a different game. It was different with the approach for 50,000,000 consoles, which is weirdly enough based on small numbers, because it has never been done before. And if one program can lead there, what else are designers not looking at? I made the mistake of listening to the wrong people when I had my idea for Facebook 4 years before Facebook. Now, my version was not as slick, not as good looking and limiting, but I was ahead by 4 years. I will never do that again. I will go my own way and for now I have 5G IP in directions no one considered, optionally with extensions in several directions. A lot of them based on seeing the plans of Neom (Saudi Arabia). I came up with the IP for streaming consoles in a direction NO ONE considered. And it is ready for development. And the game is not even close to over. Only a few days ago it gave pressure to another IP, an IP no one seems to be considering and I reckon it could amount to billions, but it will not be overnight. A simple thought brought it to the top and in that same light I want to be positive on the IP of a TV series, a mini series and a movie, but they are not the real moneymakers, they are there for my ego (I think). And that is for some the rub. They are all about the profit, optionally the Adobe solutions that will bring Microsoft to their knees, but I believe that the small gains of TV ideas are no less than the other much larger amounts. The creator believes in his creations, not the value it represents. It is a path the creator walks and he (or she) hopes to see all the sideways that are connected to it, or the hope that new sideways are opened because of one IP. I believe that this happened in one case, but not in all cases. And there are other considerations. In my case Ego is one situation. I considered the evolution of the Amazon Luna, giving it all kinds of side uses, for the mere reason that Sony left them on the side and I want to be there to pick it up before Microsoft does. I want to make sure that they are seen as copycats, a former titan that is now merely a follower, not a leader, no matter what their marketing department advertises, but you saw that, did you not? ‘The most powerful console in the world’ is a considered statement of fact, but the fact that it was surpassed by the weakest console of them all is regularly overlooked. A stage that we ignore because some want us to overlook it and through that we overlook a lot more. But I do not mind, as I am alone on a path gives light to other options and it take one (not Microsoft) to take that jump and see their portfolio of revenue grow and when that does, the rest will sell itself. And when that happens my ego will be happy and shouting with glee showing all what Microsoft left in the dust and that was before the previous article where I saw more parts and places that Microsoft left lying on the floor, all ready for Adobe to pick up and make a move on what should now be considered a mediocre solution no one needs anymore and as people seek deep within ones self, they will understand that ‘They are the only advanced solution’ is no longer good enough and when that changes Microsoft loses the field on a 4th tier. They lost gaming to Nintendo and Sony, they never achieved anything in Tablets (Apple), they are a browsers joke (Google) and they will lose even more to Meta and they are about to be surpassed in streaming consoles by Amazon who also surpassed them on Cloud computing (Amazon AWS) and that is when their office solution passes over to Adobe, they will be the loser of the decade and I cannot wait to see those articles make headlines way too late. Microsoft took a direction to a cull de sac in a place no one wants to be all whilst others copied their failings. 

And I am so close to the victory I dreamt of, I can almost taste it, whether I get my IP sold or not, I will be around to see Microsoft fall to such a degree that the media can no longer ignore what has been in front of them for years. And when the people catch on the mess will be complete. 

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Inclination of letters

We tend to act in certain ways. I am no exception (as you are about to find out). Yet, before we have a go at the BBC and another go at the ICIJ, lets take another look at how Microsoft has FAILED its audience. Now, this is not out in the open and I do not really reveal what has happened, but I am making a jab at it as it will set fortunes to Adobe and this is for their eyes only. So, there I was watching several presentations in the last 24 hours (from several sources) and something occurred to me, it was the third time when I heard something. My mind started to race and suddenly I wondered why Microsoft had left all this in the open, unsolved, unattended for a DECADE. It was so out in the open that I was wondering what on earth they were doing. Yes, their 365 solution is all about making sure their customers pay, and that I fine, but to leave gaps in their office solution out in the open for over a decade, how stupid is that. Yet, no fears. Adobe will fill up that hole nicely with their adjusted suite of programs which will start a new age in corporate needs and Microsoft will be looked at with the look of ‘How could you have been this stupid to such a degree?’ Yet I will not care, I will be giggling in a corner. Watching the wannabe’s seek jobs and seek solutions. 

So now we get to the main event. It is the BBC article ‘Hidden wealth of one of Putin’s ‘inner circle’ revealed’ (at https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-61028866). There is so much wrong here, I almost do not know where to start, so the beginning it is. 

We see from the start “They reveal how a Swiss tattoo artist was falsely named as owner of a company that transferred over $300m (£230m) to firms linked to Suleiman Kerimov. They also show how $700m of transactions – and the secret ownership of luxury properties – went undetected. The investigation exposes failures of the banking system and the obstacles impeding Western sanctions.” It sounds nice, it really does. But lets take a closer look, shall we? 

Transactions worth $700m linked to Suleiman Kerimov and his closest business associates were reported as suspicious by banks between 2010 and 2015” So was anything done? Were ACTUAL crimes committed? ‘Suspicious’ is merely a word that shows no side towards legality. Then we get “Swiss accountant Alexander Studhalter posed as owner of properties actually owned by Mr Kerimov” So were laws broken? Was anything illegal done? The BBC shows itself to be as big a loser as the ICIJ shown it is. And when we get “Mr Kerimov was the secret owner of properties on the French Riviera and in London, including the most expensive terraced property ever sold in the UK” we see again the small setting ‘If he was a real secret owner, how did they find out?’ But the larger stage is whether LAWS were broken. The BBC does not really inform us of this, do they? They merely illuminate how useless journalists have become. Who is Suleiman Kerimov? I actually do not care. He is not part of my life, I never expect that to happen. But the BBC, the player claiming to be so trustworthy, where are they? Where is the list of broken laws? Where is the EVIDENCE showing us that laws were broken in Switzerland, the UK, and France? We can grasp at the Oligarch foundation all we want, but if we are a nation of laws we need to be shown the laws that were optionally (and allegedly) transgressed upon. So when we are finally given “Experts say Western countries have a lot of work to do because, for years, they have taken a lax approach to the fight against dirty money and failed to hold banks to account.” We see a clear path to something I have been stating for DECADES. Internationally tax laws need to be overhauled and politicians were lax, politicians were all about inaction and now we see the BS tap turned open all whilst we are not given the real deal. What laws were transgressed upon? I reckon that the answer will be none. I cannot tell because I am not a lawyer, I am not a tax lawyer and I am not an attorney. I have my Master of Intellectual property and when (or if) Amazon (or Google) buys my IP, my ship will arrive and I can retire nicely. Yet in this I have questions and the BBC answers none of them, so when we are finally given “In 2020, Swiru Holding accepted its involvement in evading the tax and was fined €1.4m and made to pay another €10.3m to settle the case. Mr Kerimov’s lawyer put out a statement saying that the French courts had “officially dismissed the allegations made by the former Nice Prosecutor against Suleiman Kerimov of having carried out money-laundering operations.”” We basically see a fine less then €12,000,000 for avoiding a taxable amount of €127,000,000 so as it seems crime pays and that is the part we do get to see. So when we are given how $700m of transactions were seemingly ‘undetected’ were laws broken? We are shown the transgression of 20% which was dealt with, but we have no information on the large amount and whether laws were broken. How come? We are given “The transaction was just one in a series of wire transfers carried out from 2010 to 2015 totalling $700m reported to US authorities as suspicious”, yet there is a large gap between ‘suspicious’ and ‘criminal’ and neither the ICIJ or the BBC give us anything on that, merely the alleged indignation. So is the BBC as useless as the ICIJ is showing itself to be? That is my question and I feel that this is not on James Oliver, Nassos Stylianou or Steve Swann. I believe that it is Francesca Mary Unsworth, chief editor of BBC News that needs to come forward and do some explaining on what should be seen as reporting and what should be seen as trivial filtering of news. 

I will let you decide what is what, but I reckon that the entire ICIJ mess needs a long hard look by a few people in all kinds of business walks.

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Can a chihuahua win?

It is what I stated before, Iran will poison the well and that is exactly what I am seeing now (well 5 hours ago). Reuters gives us ‘Iran wants U.S. to show goodwill by lifting some sanctions prior to nuclear deal’ (at https://www.reuters.com/world/china/irans-foreign-minister-says-biden-should-lift-some-sanctions-prior-nuclear-deal-2022-04-10/), yes, Iran always wants something up front, even though they lack credibility. So when we are given “On multiple occasions, we have told Americans they should bring forward one or two practical points prior to any agreement, for example by releasing some of Iran’s assets withheld in foreign banks,” Amirabdollahian added.” We know that we are being played, so what happens after? Just one little added thing, just one more altered state? They didn’t state it as part of the deal, no, they want it upfront. There is logic to that, but when you have no credibility you really do not have a chance. The question now is this game going to be decided by chihuahua’s in Washington DC who will come with the ‘excuse’ that it was for the good of the deal? And when Iran adds an item, or just one small addition, and at that point we see that the US has become the loser Iran expects the US to be. 

So what will happen? To be honest, I am not in the know so I can only speculate. And all this whilst we got a day before ‘Iran sanctions 24 US officials over ‘terrorism’ and rights abuses’ (source: Reuters) and that is the setting. It is not a prelude to any nuclear deal. It is a pissing match and Iran is hungry for any win it can get, at the expense of anything and that is the same nation we all give time and time again for it to complete its nuclear challenges. So when that happens. What will the US do? Impose sanctions? And now, should you wonder what Saudi Arabia and the state of Israel will do. I reckon that Saudi Arabia will rely on what military hardware China can deliver. Israel will not have that advantage, but the larger station is that the world is about to learn the hard way what inaction does to both Israel and Saudi Arabia. And when we see that evolve the hard way, we get to see what is left of the US and it’s inactivity. So feel free to oppose and reject my notion. It is fair to do so, as a lot of this is linked to speculation, but as events unfold, as events go ‘my’ way. Remember that this was about time, about stalling and I personally feel that Iran has been given enough stall time. 

Just my $0.02 on the matter.

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The ruse is on

I got the news, just like all of you. The news (at https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2022/apr/09/rise-of-tiktok-why-facebook-is-worried-booming-social-app) gives us ‘The rise of TikTok: why Facebook is worried about the booming social app’. As I wrote in a previous article. Yes, Facebook might SEEM worried, but only until Meta fully launches. When that happens Meta is off to a multi billion per week start. Yes, TikTok does have the approaching edge and yes, they have a jump on places like YouTube that is the true nature of Innovation and TikTok was a true innovator. Google and Meta are seeing it is not some iterator and they are heading for deeper and larger revenues. I have an issue with “The Chinese-owned video-sharing platform is forecast to catch up with YouTube by 2024 when both are predicted to take $23.6bn (£18.2bn) in ad revenue, despite TikTok being launched globally 12 years after its Google-owned rival.” There is a stage where this is true. I do not believe the Guardian is lying to you, it is setting. Stage of presumption and they are drawing out cause and effect. It is the “when both are predicted to take” that is interesting. You see this was ALWAYS going to happen. Google could never hold all the cards and take all the revenue, it is the nature of the beast. Then we are given “The company is winning the battle for the “sweet spot” of social media users, those in the 18- to 25-year-old demographic where Facebook is seeing its biggest declines, with parent company Meta trying to stem the exodus by attracting them to stablemate Instagram” a nice ploy, but the numbers are there, they are out in a much larger stage, yes Facebook is worried because the time line is shifting, they do not have the comfortable lead that they once had, but that does not matter. When Meta launches the advantage FOR Meta will be close to indescribable and until Hybrid launches (see another of my articles) they have the field, the whole field and nothing but the field. Absent of TikTok, absent of Google and absent of Microsoft. 

Meta has two other advantages, but I keep them for now, lets see how informative journo’s really are. I set the stage in one of my articles and I will pull them in when the news comes with some ‘exclusive’ months after my  article. The ruse is larger, the ruse is setting a stage of claiming worry, whilst there are a few really clever people out there (the US boy-scout department of digital information, aka NSA), they can clearly see what is out there and I reckon they merely see a temporary advantage for Chinese owned TikTok, it is what comes after that will change the board by a lot and there Meta will have years of advantage. YouTube will remain, they will lose some grounds, but when you have an app that was bought for in 2006 for $1.65 billion, and it will still be making $23.6bn in 2024, not a bad setting for Google. So the Ruse might be that TikTok is also making $23.6bn in 2024, but you would be wrong. When Meta does deploy the stage changes. From a Football field to an olympic aqua stadium and only Meta can swim, the rest will need time to learn to swim, to learn the streams of the aqua stadium and where the audience is at. All things Meta will know beforehand, all advantages that will keep them swimming for years, with well over $23.6bn uncontended until deep into 2027. That is the actual stage and even as the headline seems nice, yet it will be an inaccurate one. When Meta launches it will be the new thing, the new innovation and it will take a larger group of people years just to get their heads around what Meta deployed. That is the true setting and even as we expect a full deployment in 2023, we do not truly know until Meta sends out the invitations. So the ruse is nice, but that is all it was, merely ‘nice’

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