Category Archives: Science

November 12, 2019 · 13:57

The art of marketing

The art of marketing is not new, it is often not understood (even I doubt whetheer I know what they talk about), even more often the people who do the marketing are clueless on what exactly they are doing but they are doing something and that counts according to their needs.

It all started as I made a stop at ‘SuperYachtWorld’ what they would call the ‘the global magazine for superyacht owners’, Now I am not one of them, I do not even own a tinny, Yet I was on that site for a reason, Lurssen and Damen were producing new ships, I was curious as I used to have Damen as a neighbour (of sorts) and I was curious about his second SeaXplorer sale, a 75 meter yacht. I was curious about his dinky toy. Anyway, the article was nice and ended with “You can read more about EYOS Expeditions in the forthcoming issue of SuperYacht World, which publishes tomorrow“, I do not know whether I will buy it, I was just curious, so I decided to click the link ‘subscribe now’ I was curious on how much such a magazine costed. The next is much funnier in graphic form, as you see, I am showing you the first two pages (of the buy a subscription), and explain to me how I can ‘subscribe’ to ‘SuperYachtWorld’? Now, the subscriptions was not really sincere, I merely wanted to find out how much a magazine would cost. Yet the foundation of digital marketing is seen right here. No matter what you can sell, sell it as soon as possible, they merely forgot to give ‘SuperYachtWorld’ the benefit of whatever they wanted to sell.

Or perhaps something else went wrong, but that is the foundation of digital marketing. I even tried the search option, but alas ‘SuperYachtWorld’ was not recognised by Magazinesdirect.com. There are at least 4 flaws in the digital marketing at this point, lets numbers them

Magazine link did not work
Alternate link should mention ‘SuperYachtWorld’ first, or start with a link to that magazine
TI Media Limited (the people behind MagazinesDirect.com) should have spacing before they start their marketing of their magazines.
After the MD dot com element there was a whole part of empty white, after which we got the magazine issues, there too was a ‘subscribe to the magazine’ but that gave a 404 error which is error number 5.

I can go on for a little while longer, but I would think that a magazine who deals with customers dealing with items worth millions of dollars would be a little more finicky, it is the consequence of digital marketing, it’s a cavalier attitude to ‘We will fix it on the flip side‘, I was just so surprised to see it in this area. Ships captains are at times as anal as it needs to be and on the ocean there tends to be no time for ‘Oops, will fix that on the flip side‘, at that point it tends to be too late for that. Feel free to ask the Captain of the Herald of Free Enterprise, which was Captain David Lewry, there were apparently three warnings, the third warning was covered with a (according to magazines “they were busy, go away“, as such 193 lives were sacrificed to the Channel where temperatures of the water were -3C, so there. The entire event took less than 4 minutes. Yes, on Friday 6^th March 1987 we learned how disastrous ‘We will fix it on the flip side‘ can be when it involves boating. Digital marketeers will go with the assumption, ‘When we make mistakes it does not cost lives‘, yet is that true? Now consider me a winner of the lotto (I am not, do not worry) and I wanted to read that specific article because I had money for a Damen Ship of 95 meters (again, I do not, so do not worry), now we get into murky waters, the short-sighted view of one limits the access of many, that is actually why I designed the 5G changes as I did them, that is why I came up with a different distribution system, one that is for the small businesses, that is why I came up with the Stupid Smart Device, it fit the needs we will see in 5G because as speeds go up, time becomes more and more a straight pass through of ‘Time is Money‘, who was up to speed? The person selling his wares will be up to speed more and more and that is why changes will push through faster and faster, Places like Google Ads, will require a stranger selling point and when the changes can be made immediate, the term of time is money will be a stronger stage in all this and that is why I decided to go after the 400 million small business owners, they all want to be on the 5G horse as fast as possible, they will drive the next changes even more than those people in telecom will. They are still twisting their thumbs on what to do next and soon enough that system will change, but not today, Places like Google and Huawei will need tome to set a new stage where the Telecom operators are the followers, no longer the deciders. As they are all in the hurry to make deals as far as they can they are 4-7 iterations behind, my IP will optionally change that.

Because by the time you check, ‘SuperYachtWorld’ are most likely, not updating their website, so more likely than not you and Damen miss out on changes, I designed my system to be depended on the two elements that drive marketing needs, the person selling and the person buying. Too many digital marketeers are about ‘I am in the middle, I know when it is right‘ Yet a decade in software sales told me that the Marketing person is the person inhibiting supports (hence diminished sales) because they want to sell it ‘Now!’, they give some response on how it is all with the ‘shareholder’ yet the shareholder does not realise what they are in for by selling a solution that is only 80% complete, the maker knows when it is ready and that is the moment that the buyer wants it. Should you doubt this, look at places like Ubisoft (Breakpoint) to see that part! TechCrunch had a good article on that (at https://techcrunch.com/2016/07/14/the-3-biggest-sales-mistakes-enterprise-software-companies-make/)

Good product-market fit is not good enough

Yes that is true and we see a good explanation on that, I fought a few iterations of that battle with my bosses, because I was always service minded. Yet they were all sales people, they never got it. The article givers an example of ‘are still challenged with sales cycles longer than ideal‘ OK, that is fair enough, yet I countered it in my solution to be able to set the force of changes when the salesperson thinks it is ready. In addition, a sales cycle should be zero, when the person comes into the shop that is when he/she wants to buy. Yet I know that this is retail thinking, but is enterprise thinking not merely a large customer that comes in now? I get it there are other options and this person wants to buy the best solution, so he is seeking, but that is marketing, not sales. Marketing makes sure that they sell on paper what the salesperson can sell for a price (OK, I get it, it is a self-denying truth) but that is how I roll. We need a solution taking marketing out of the loop, if time is money, marketing is the delay in this, and optionally it needs to be sales driven, when YOU can sell.

Are you competitively disadvantaged?

Nope, my solution came up with the standard you sell when you are ready to sell, and you are not disadvantaged, you merely focus on those who want your product in your neighbourhood. We also get “80% of on-premise software vendors operate a channel program to enable other companies to sell their products, while only 20% of SaaS vendors operate similar programs“, it is all about the stage of selling, and tho whom you sell, a lot of the sales systems in place are marketing driven, so when we change the view of marketing we tend to change the view of sales. It is hard to explain, so let’s get back to boats.

When you see the image below, we see a solution of where the other ships need to be, but we forget that the setting is that we are losing 2 out of 4 sales options, if marketing was on the bow of the ship, he could have guided those two additional sales towards THEIR solution, and in the 5G world that solution starts taking shape, software vendors go from tall order to tall order and at that point forget the 4-9 customers they could have gotten by adding their solution to the front of their convoy, looking for the small enterprises. I decided to change the wheel and the steering of such solutions. There is no competitive disadvantage; there is merely your own advantage and how quickly you can turn around sales.

Bad timing — outta sync, outta luck

I never got that part, ‘sales cycles’ are basically whenever the customer comes to shake your hand and you get to explain on what solution you sell, or basically the customer wants to buy and you either have what they want or you do not. And in a marketing solution where YOU are the solution applicant, it is easy, you have what they want or you do not. At the very end of that setting we see: “and most important deals, people skills are ultimately at the top of that list” is the part where we need to focus on, because only you can sell what you sell. In the end that is YOUR power and there are 400 million small business owners that relay on that believe I merely gave them a clear solution to talk into. The rest is up to them, at their speed with their options at their fingertips.

It was that simple!

The art of marketing is not some solution that one person, or one through gives out, we see too many times that the small business units feel that they are told that they are competitively disadvantaged and they took that as some truth whilst they merely wanted to sell, I am setting the stage where they get to prove it, they get to prove it the moment they get to 5G, the game gets to change, let’s see who is ready for that. Now I need to add a part, I am not taking marketing out of the equation, I merely placing it where it needs to be, before the sales cycle, not part of the sales cycle. For the small business owner that is the game that counts, IT forgot about that part and it is time that we recognise that, and fix it, because in 5G Time will truly be money and every delay is a sales opportunity missed.

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Tagged as 5G, Captain David Lewry, Damen, google, Herald of free enterprise, Huawei, Lurssen, Magazinesdirect.com, Marketing, SaaS vendors, sales cycle, SuperYachtWorld, Techcrunch, TI Media Limited

November 9, 2019 · 10:54

Finally!

Yup, there is a new fashion in town and it will force the companies to fix the one element in IT that most corporations have ignored fixing for the longest of times. The issue that needed fixing for the longest time was non-repudiation, the issue has been clearly around for almost 10 years, 15 if you want to set a time table, but today on LinkedIn ‘Netflix and don’t share‘ shows that the industry will start doing something about it. The problem is what drives the masses to think that a paid service could ever be free. And even as we see: “Market leader Netflix has already declared it is examining how to curtail password sharing among family and friends. But streamers are treading carefully in teaming up “against the grifters,” aware of the backlash record labels previously generated in the Napster era” we need to be aware of the setting that it is a Netflix world and if you don’t pay, that is fair enough, but it also means that you can’t have Netflix. This issue is not limited to Netflix, it has a setting in video games, a setting in programs and in the past it had a setting in music. The problem is how to go about it. For places like Netflix, there is the non-repudiation solution, so in your network there are a few devices that could be set to receive, in the home environment the router tends to be the most culpable solution, yet in equal measure the home devices are also solutions that give rise to the patch of hardware that will allow one person to be connected, as such, Netflix was nice enough to allow 4 devices to be linked. Yet what to use as a system of non-repudation?

Well, email is certainly one way of doing it, but that only helps to some extent, the nice part about e-mails are that it allows Netflix (and like-minded people) to communicate with the owner on hardware, so as long as the email address is not hacked, this is decently safe.

Non-Repudiation

The term Non-Repudiation is not new, It refers to the ability to ensure that a party to a contract or a communication cannot deny the authenticity of their signature on a document or the sending of a message that they originated. So you and only you could have instigated the connection, bio-metrics are only one part of it, so is a password, non-repudiation is more, an autograph have the elements to complete non-repudiation, but in automated traffic, a copy of a autograph is becoming exceedingly simple, so we need to set the state where two tiered enabling is the way to go. Even if the origin of the two tiers was done in separate ways, combining them in any stream would be a decent level of assurance to convict a jury of peers (and Netflix) that only you could have instigated the stream. And Netflix is not the only one seeking for a solution. Bank solutions, use a pin and a bank pass, it is close but in in the end it is not real non-repudiation. Netflix needs to find a solution and whatever they find will push authentication technology.

And the system needs to be simple, not just for customers sake, the setting of complexity in these matters was best described by Scotty the Chief Engineer in Star Trek 3 whilst sabotaging the Excelsior: “The more they over-think the plumbing, the easier it is to stop up the drain“, it does apply to authentication and non-repudiation systems, especially when distance is an issue. So whatever we have at point X requesting for an authentication that tends to be the soft spot in the track.

It has to be simple, it needs to always work and it needs to set 2-3 alternatives at the spot. The problem with such a system is that it is not really non-repudiation at that point.

For example

A programmable dongle can be hacked; the hacked account can be copied. And these dongles will come from somewhere, so criminals will end up having access to the stuff they need.

As such the best you can hope for is a system that will take out 80% from accessing such a solution, add proper cyber solutions in the form of law and you have a solution that a company can live with, as it deals with 10% of the outstanding 20%. It is not pretty at times, but at least it works. So these solutions could stop 90% from using stated systems in a non-paying capacity.

We can go in all directions from there, but the world needs a solution where non-repudiation will stop 96% dead in its track, and only up to 1% would be able to find a workaround. Making the non-repudiation system a 98.9999% working solution. I reckon that this is as good a solution as we are going to get and the solution is needed faster as 5G will require correct non-repudiation solutions to be up and running. With 5G out and about, the criminals get a 500% chance to get to more systems to infect more and more devices as such the need for Common Cyber Sense is becoming a pressing matter and from there we can move onto non-repudiation. Consider that the current situation allowed cyber criminals to lay their fingers on $120 billion dollars and with 5G out and about criminals will have access to well over half a trillion dollars, one could argue that it is a great day to be a cyber-criminal, or we can do something about it, because the one thing I do know is that the banks will only take hits for as long as they cannot make a case for ‘negligent care, the person did not take care of the item like a father would take care of its child‘, that is not some rant, the art world is already working with terms like that. How long will it be until banks and payment systems will take the same steps? At that point, the hardship will fall on the owner of the hit bank account, not the bank, unless a clear established path of evidence is presented that the bank itself was the intended target.

Oh, and when banks are no longer held accountable how much attention do you think that the FBI has for little you? Common Cyber Sense will be the immediate requirement.

Non-repudiation will be the big next thing soon enough and whoever gets a system like that up and running will make an absolute fortune, it would change my 5G IP systems into small change, nothing more. It is the next thing and we are in dire need for such an inventor soon enough, not just Netflix.

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Tagged as 5G, Common Cyber Sense, IP, Netflix, non-repudiation

November 5, 2019 · 11:20

The tradesman and the deal

Yes, we all have moments where a deal didn’t sound great, but the way it was brought was essential when the deal was there ready to be signed, the deal was accepted, not because of the deal, but the tradesman involved had brought it in such a way that the deal sounded too great to pass up. We have seen several of these events in the past, it is the literal event where the numbers do not add up when the analyst brings the ‘good’ news, but the diplomat was able to swing it to the direct event where all were looking forward to the fringe benefits that this deal brought. That is how I saw the Nuclear Deal, and one day after April 1^st, the JCPOA (Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action) was ready for signatures on April 2^nd 2015. Now that the deal is up in smoke we look towards the people setting up the deal, but they are no longer there, there is merely the JCPOA and the Iranian party has decided to walk away from it, already in a stage where several parts have been transgressed upon, but diplomats state “be not afraid, we are on top of it, the injunction is minor” (in various publications in the last 3 months), meanwhile Iran has announced (or was that a promise or a threat) that they are about the increase tenfold the Uranium enrichment process. Ali Akbar Salehi, the head of Iran’s atomic energy organisation has made the statement that enrichment is now up to 5kg per day, up from 450g less than 60 days earlier, also , the Guardian (at https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/nov/04/irans-production-of-enriched-uranium-rises-tenfold-in-two-months) gives us “It is not clear how the European Union will react to the latest step, but so far the EU has not put the whole nuclear agreement into review, which would be the first move towards its suspension and possible collapse“, the diplomats are not home, they are out and about on a golf course, on a sabbatical and on long term travels where they are not to be reached, no one wants to touch the toxic agreement, no one wants their nae connected to this, it is the deal that is bringing direct danger to the State of Israel and to the safety of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, so whilst Anna Ahronheim gives us in the Jerusalem Post ‘EU Parliament Members: Support Israel In Fight Against Hezbollah And Iran‘, we seemingly forget that the term ‘EU parliamentary‘ is transient and above all, the 8-person delegation (four MEPs and four European Parliament policy advisers) are close to a joke, 4 MEP doubled by policy advisors are out and about stating (well sort of) ‘We support you against Iran‘, you see 4 out of 751 MEP’s is not much, did they bring the combined voices of 442 coalition members? I do not think so! You see the EU needs to look important, so they keep their options open with Iran and the problem here is that the moment Iran acts with their enriched Uranium, the EU is less than likely to do anything, Iran has oil and the EU needs it, the chance of Iran acting out against Israel is a lot higher than Iran acting out against the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and the chances of Israel being a first strike victim just went up tenfold. The same can be said for the article by Yonah Jeremy Bob, also in the Jerusalem Post, there we see ‘Iran-Us-Israel’s 40 Years Of Hostility With No End In Sight – Analysis‘, a definite truth, but here too it is all about hostilities. And the quote “One would think the US’s greatest hostility would be for a country that killed 58,000 of its soldiers and that Israel’s greatest hostility would be for a country that killed more than 2,500 of its soldiers in a single war“, but that is not where its at. And he danger is perfectly voiced in one paragraph: “Ironically, 40 years later, it is Iran that is the lasting threat against Israel as many of the moderate Sunni Arab countries are trying to find ways to live a stable coexistence with Israel, even if there is not yet formal peace with some of them” and that is where the danger lies. The two quotes ‘to find ways to live a stable coexistence with Israel‘, as well as ‘even if there is not yet formal peace‘ these two events are the heart of the matter, Iran is not interested in peace with Israel, Rouhani might be president, but he does not represent the Iranian Clergy or the Iranian military, they both merely allow Rouhani to be where he is and they both want to finish off Israel, and remove the power that KSA has, in that order, as such events are required and Iran is on track with it as Uranium enrichment is now allowed by the EU and the US is nowhere to be seen, merely in a stage where they think that more economic sanctions work, in an age where the half time of security is far below the half time of Uranium, and Iran has its targets set. And ever after the first strike on Israel there is EVERY CHANCE that the EU will not harshly react against Iran, they are knowingly selling Israel down the drain to ensure Middle Eastern Oil agreements with ALL OPEC nations, I wonder when the people will figure out that the EU is nothing more than a sheep’s rug that is not being used, it is merely there to give the large corporations the stick they need to deal with individual European nations, it is the result of becoming a corporatocracy.

The corporatocracy wants to find some level of solution, but then we are shown “Europe has made promises to find ways to circumvent the US sanctions“, it was the latest in folly’s, all doomed to fail, corporatocracy on one side, ego on the other, did you actually think that there will be a solution? Even as we see ‘French president Emmanuel Macron’s efforts to set up talks between Iran and the US to break the impasse‘ in the meanwhile the dangers are growing to dangerous levels, because of the Iranian acts, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia has no options but to find an equal stick to work with and that is where the Russian and Chinese connections become important to the KSA, one of them has to hand over the technology and that will be the beginning of the end of the EU, because the most prevalent of all reasons are ignored, Israel might seem far away, but they are at the Mediterranean, and any explosion there will give particles all over that sea, optionally directly endangering Cyprus meaning that the radiation is already on European soil, in addition to that Turkey will see the impact and the SE of the Mediterranean will optionally become uninhabitable or fishable.

Yes, that is the direct impact we are looking at and the corporatocratic security that the EU relies on will now be a feigned form of apologies and when the Diplomats wake up it will be too late. That is the direct danger we face and at that point the people get to rely on denials from politicians who proclaim to be working for them. Good luck with that!

We can argue about the validity of the JCPOA and hat nuclear deal, but the direct show-able danger is that Iran has increased its nuclear actions by 1000%, whilst there are no power plants requiring this, do you need a road map to figure it out?

If politicians do not hand over a template of actions within the next 48 hours, to time will have come for citizens to act and ensure that some level of quality of life continues, and for those who are in doubt of it, consider looking at your map, at any map that includes the Mediterranean. Israel is in the SE corner, with radiation having no other course to go but west, the tides will change where that radiation ends up, it includes Greece, Crete, Italy, Spain and the most expensive parts of France (Marseille) as well as Monaco, It will take a while for radiation to move through the waters to those parts but once the radiation is in one part, there is no denying it, it will get to those parts as well. So how irradiated will you like your fish to be when you eat it? Perhaps you like your Paella to glow in the dark when you have dinner at 22:00 in Barcelona.

Feel free to think I am merely having a sense of humour, but that first explosion will be the instant that life in Southern Europe will end and the EU parliament is letting it happen, so what are their priorities? Where are their priorities?

As I personally see it the time to be nice to Iran is over, it has been for a while now and the idea to play ‘soft kitten’ games with someone who is rejoicing on their enrichment program to be 1000% of what it was 60 days ago is not the way to go.

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Tagged as Ali Akbar Salehi, Anna Ahronheim, Corporatocracy, Cyprus, Eu, EU coalition, France, Greece, Iran, Iranian Clergy, Iranian Military, Israel, Italy, JCPOA, Jerusalem Post, Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, KSA, Marseille, Monaco, OPEC, Rouhani, Saudi Arabia, Spain, State of Israel, the Guardian, Turkey, Uranium, Yonah Jeremy Bob

November 4, 2019 · 11:53

The foundation of a blame game

It was the Independent that gave the headline ‘Tens of thousands of operations cancelled because of staff shortages and faulty equipment, NHS figures show‘ by Vincent Wood about 13 minutes ago, and the by-line gives us ‘Labour blames ‘Tory cutbacks running our NHS into the ground’‘ did anyone catch that? Did anyone catch the issues that were given over the last 5 years, not eventual new issues bu the Conservatives, but the destructive path of Labour? “The Labour party bungled the option to get part of the technological solution implemented that could have helped the NHS (perhaps you remember the loss of roughly £11.2 billion in NHS IT restructuring)” did you think that a loss of £11.2 billion is easy to wipe away? That loss hit out into every corner of the NHS, £11.2 billion in IT, in Systems never delivered and the need to do something, so as Labour make some claim as we see printed: “The simple truth is under the Tories, patients wait longer and longer for vital care. This general election is about the future of the NHS and ensuring quality care for all. Labour will fully fund our NHS, recruit the doctors and nurses we need and safeguard our NHS from a Trump deal sell off that could cost the NHS £500 million a week” my question becomes: ‘Will any Labour MP connected to the initial NHS spending disaster be removed from politics?‘ it is a fair demand, is it not? And as I see “The figures were compiled by the Labour party, is based on responses from 82 per cent of hospital trusts” I wonder what else they wrote up and connected down, now we cannot keep on bringing up the £11.2 billion, but it had to come from somewhere, did it not?

And how did we get to “staff vacancies continue to put the health service under strain, with the NHS reporting last year it was short of 100,000 staff including 10,000 doctors and 35,000 nurses“, shall we take a look at the state of things in 1997 – 2010? Then we also need to look into the state of things from 2010-2019. Shall we take a look on the changes required in 1997-2010 and the impact of the Economic meltdown? Now the second part is not on the heads of labour, but there was a definite impact, it is so easy for Labour to make a definite push to ignore that and in the years when it mattered Labour squandered £11.2 billion, that is a whole boatload of systems and thousands of nurses and doctors. Interesting how they ignore that part of the equation.

So as Labour hides behind “the statistics obtained via a Freedom of Information (FOI) request” shall we ask to include the amount they squandered? And whilst were at it, let’s take a look at the squandered part compared to that nutshell trust charity requiring ‘the amount needed to repair faulty equipment across the service provider at £6bn‘ let’s see what is left when we compare one to the other, it seems that Labour is all about forgetting one element in this equation.

The article (at https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/nhs-operations-cancelled-tens-of-thousands-official-figures-tories-damage-labour-a9183636.html) has a few more idle hands in all this and I am not stating that the Tories are entirely innocent here, but the joke that is regarded to be Labour’s shadow health secretary seemingly decided to ignore the heart ship that £11.2 billion squandered had on the services of the NHS, in addition the loaded debt on the government corporate credit card did not help any, in that regard the Tories are not innocent, i am not claiming that, but the ignoranus that is Labour better get their part right, because the people should be aware of that £11.2 billion fuck up called Labour IT plan, and the issues from there were widespread because that amount had to come from somewhere. And when we start looking at the surplus that the Labour party should have created but did not we will get to an amount that is a lot less representative of what actually should be the consequence of the NHS, amounts and numbers of staff that has been too low for almost 2 decades. When we look a NHS Digital we get that (at https://files.digital.nhs.uk/publicationimport/pub00xxx/pub00912/nhs-staf-over-1996-2006-rep1.pdf) we might think that a good job was achieved with “The number of staff in the NHS has grown every year to 2005 with a small fall in 2006. The workforce is now 27% larger than in 1996“, yet how many SHOULD have been added? When we look at ‘Total staff employed 1,338,000‘ this includes ‘professionally qualified clinical staff 675,000‘ is that not a low number? Remember the earlier ‘the NHS reporting last year it was short of 100,000 staff including 10,000 doctors and 35,000 nurses‘ how come that this number is so divergent from the initial numbers that at the end of Labour was given? How many positions got fired? Yes, there is something wrong and a place like the NHS is dependent of what the government has available and that part is also missing from the equation, so when we start drilling down the numbers Labour comes off as insincere and the usual yokes that they are. All yellow, icky and not really to any point are they?

Oh, and the numbers also calls into question that training places are lacking in a few corners and degrees, so as we are looking at that part too, how did Labour address that in their term? It is important, not because it stops Tories being responsible, it does not, but it does show a systemic problem in the matter and that goes beyond the political element here, there was a shortage for funds and the so called British professional medical degrees should have made a larger and louder complaint in all; this, perhaps it was done, perhaps it was not, but the article does not give light to any of this and it relates to a direct quote that Vincent Wood relies on. And it all related back to the failings that Labour introduced in their term from 1997-2010, so this issue is a lot larger than anyone realises and leave it to the Labour party to add their own failures onto the Tories back, it merely makes no sense to do so, the numbers are out there and it is time to hit Labour with the long term damage that they pushed onto at least half a dozen directions, or did you think that tapping the £11.2 billion NHS vein was the only bloodletting they allowed for? I also believe that certain questions need to be asked towards British Medical Association chair Dr Chaand Nagpaul. He was a topic of investigation in my article ‘As a Puppet‘ in May 2017 (at https://lawlordtobe.com/2017/05/18/as-a-puppet/) when I also had a go at the Labour manifesto, I also wrote at that point: “It states: “The people of Britain are rightly proud of the NHS and we will invest £12 billion over the next five years to keep it working for them“, so we get a little over £6 million a day, or slightly more than £200 million a month, so where does this £350 a week ‘pledge’ come from? The independent (at http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/conservatives-must-make-manifesto-commitment-of-350m-a-week-for-the-nhs-say-doctors-a7739401.html) shows us: “Doctors, academics and public health officials have called on the Conservative Party to include in its general election manifesto a commitment to spend £350m a week on the NHS, in keeping with the notorious posters of the Vote Leave campaign“, which makes me wonder where the actual pledge comes from. So it seems that Dr Chand Nagpaul and Norman Lamb are both missing a few parts here (I am happy to be proven wrong)“, so not only is the claim debatable, yet I wonder what the numbers then and now represent, yes a 2017 number in this day and age will show a total lack of change towards today, is that the case? From my point of view Dr. Chand Nagpaul has a few explanations to make and I get it, he is watching his own turf and what he’s in value, there is nothing wrong with that, but how much has he achieved in spreading the love of budget? And all this is also linked to the January 2017 article where we see: ““Coventry and Warwickshire NHS chiefs fork out £340,000 for advice on how to SAVE money” (at https://lawlordtobe.com/2017/01/15/the-views-we-question/)“, so how much money was forked out by NHS chiefs on how to save money and how much did they safe in the end?

There are a few issues that are open all over the NHS and the Labour party, but in case you were not aware, I am happy to inform you.

Have a great Monday! #Justsaying

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Tagged as British Medical Association, Chand Nagpaul, Conservatives, Coventry and Warwickshire NHS, FOI, Freedom of Information, Independent, labour party, NHS, NHS Digital, NHS IT, Norman Lamb, UK, Vincent Wood

November 2, 2019 · 11:10

The side no one seriously looks at

There was an issue, in the Guardian voiced it less than three hours ago as: ‘WhatsApp ‘hack’ is serious rights violation, say alleged victims‘, yet in all this, in all the banter, in all the accusations, the one side not heard is the one not mentioned in any newspaper, why is that? (the article is at https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2019/nov/01/whatsapp-hack-is-serious-rights-violation-say-alleged-victims)

We all see: “More than a dozen pro-democracy activists, journalists and academics have spoken out after WhatsApp privately warned them they had allegedly been the victims of cyber-attacks designed to secretly infiltrate their mobile phones“, in equal measure we see “malware sold by NSO Group, an Israeli cyber weapons company” yet no one discusses the main frame of the mind. No one discusses the fact that WhatsApp got hacked, the fact that a software solution found the software hackable.

We see Facebook, WhatsApp, Pinter, Twitter and no one makes a larger leap on the How. How are these solutions so hackable? There is one voice in the article giving us “One referred to Facebook as “the world’s greatest privacy violator”” At this point you might think that it is merely a way to look at someone else, but it is not. These software vendors are all about sellable and resalable technologies, so they want to make a deal with large corporations who can mine that data to their hearts content, the problem is how to do it without the overbearing amount of oversight, neither side wants that, it would result in uneasy questions and questions that have answers that a lot of people would not want to work on until forced.

And how do you think that NSO technology, a company etched in cyber intelligence and software solutions to find counterintelligence loops would design a way to get into places like WhatsApp and Facebook?

There is a need
There is the opening
Both one and two represent a massive amount of money.

It is that simple and whilst we all want to shout ‘foul, foul’ are we shouting at the right people?

Are we shouting at WhatsApp and Facebook for allowing these gaps to appear in their software? No we do not and we need to wake up. Did you learn nothing from Cambridge Analityca?

The movements of people is worth a lot of money, whilst we all seem hell bent in locking out governments, we open up to commercial enterprises like there is no tomorrow, like there is no hassle there, but that side is the largest hassle of all, they sell some form of access directly to insurances for ‘advertising’ to healthcare clinics for the same reason and they do not care how that knowledge is used. And there is no reason people forget that a company is often no more than its mission statement: “People use Facebook to stay connected with friends and family, to discover what’s going on in the world, and to share and express what matters to them” The Facebook corporate vision statement in its direct form. There is no mention of data security, there is no need for data arbitration, and none of it is there. The same could be stated about WhatsApp “Our messages and calls are secured with end-to-end encryption, meaning that no third party including WhatsApp can read or listen to them. Behind every product decision is our desire to let people communicate anywhere in the world without barriers” there we see no security affix in regards to from who to who(m). And let’s be direct here the part ‘to let people communicate anywhere in the world without barriers‘ is quite sincere, there is no hiatus on KNOWING who is speaking to who, do they?

That are merely tow basic parts that are ignored and they are open and for sale, places like NSO technology fixed their views on getting to those parts of the equation for their customer. Basically Facebook and WhatsApp let them, that is the part you remain ignorant about and that is why it is happening again and again.

You did not think it was going to be easy did ya!

All these issues would fall away when the stage for secure apps would actually be secure, that is the one part that would stop a lot of this and with smaller apps it will happen, when the app comes to a size of distribution where a few hundred million users will be using it, the need for a secure app will be out in the open, well over a dozen of these apps are out in the open and there is not solution, not until that changes and if it were up to the politicians it will never change, because they need that data too.

So if you want a secure App, you will just have to stop using the one you have until they make a secure edition of the App, now there are a whole range of ideas on how that will be, for example that App will not be free, or in case of Facebook where data is their brainchild, they will figure something out, but until they do none of your data is allowed to be secure.

Doubt my words?

Consider that three programmers were at the foundation of NSO Technology Niv Carmi, Omri Lavie, and Shalev Hulio figured out what internal programmers clearly knew but did not stop to realise and these three founded software to combat terror and crime, Three programmers could see what the 150+ programmers could clearly see in the halls of Facebook and WhatsApp and now we see “the lawsuit described the alleged attacks as an “unmistakeable pattern of abuse” that violated US law” instead of the question: “How was this possible in the first place?”

The need to be able to answer that question will reside far and wide in the scope of software developers, it will reside far and wide in the heads of those using these solutions, but not as much in the heads of the developers or the politicians, they know what was there, they knew what was for sale. And in all this the brief reads “More than a dozen pro-democracy activists, journalists and academics have spoken out after WhatsApp privately warned them they had allegedly been the victims of cyber-attacks designed to secretly infiltrate their mobile phones” and no one wonders why there are no politicians on that list? Or perhaps they are the ‘academics’ in all this.

In all this and no one is asking the question ‘Why was the weakness there to begin with?‘ and in all this the entire how come that the pattern of abuse is the one violating US Law and the weakness in the software is not?

Consider that for a moment! #JustSaying

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Tagged as Cambridge Analityca, Facebook, NGO Technology, Niv Carmi, NSO Technology, Omri Lavie, Shalev Hulio, the Guardian, US Laws, WhatsApp

October 18, 2019 · 12:25

When we are merely given a paragraph

It happens, we get offered a paragraph and for some reason we wake up, we think: ‘That’s nice! Tell me more!‘ It can be for the strangest and least connected reasons out there. No matter that the push or the reason, we only get that one paragraph and are left hanging. That feeling came right off the bat when ABC gave me ‘ASIO warns of ‘hostile intelligence services’ using social media in annual report‘ (at https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-10-17/asio-warns-of-hostile-intelligence-services-on-social-media/11609726) a day ago. Now, let’s be fair, ASIO is not really the one to play games of open communication, as its employees and governing staff were educated by the people of Sneaky, Peeping and Backstabbing incorporated, they have other markers to work with. As such as I was fed ““hostile intelligence services” using social media to target people across business and government“, which basically is a continuation (to some degree) of the quote we saw at ABC in July 2017 when we were given “help Australian security agencies get access to encrypted messages from suspected terrorists and other criminals“, in itself not an issue one would think, and there is exactly the problem, one did not think. I made references to private chat groups in Social media and extremism before 2016, just nice to know that someone gets around and wakes up every now and then. Or as I would phrase it as ‘What else is new?‘, Yet as Jade MacMillan takes us by the hand in this ABC article, we see: “A report in the New York Times earlier this year claimed China was using LinkedIn to try to recruit foreign spies“, again we go with the ‘What else is new?‘. There is nothing new under the sun as MI-6, CIA, DGSE and optionally ASIS have been using that very same tool to get information. The honey traps, the enticement parties and the stage where you are a winner, the tricks are as old as the very first sign stating: ‘Authorised Personally Only‘. In this the larger issue is avoided, you see financial entrepreneurs have been using these paths to gain information on how to find people with debts and some of them have (allegedly) been reporting those people to international whisper divisions, so that a deal could be struck. So whilst some look for foreign agents, they all ignore the debt collectors mining every bit of social media to gain a momentary advantage to collect on one debt and gain another bonus, and those people will always look for investors, especially investors that have a fluidic opinion of ethics and how to be working towards rewards.

It all comes across as silly and as mindless as “Attorney-General George Brandis said encryption was potentially the “greatest degradation of intelligence and law enforcement capability” in a lifetime“, he could not put gamers in a proper dimensional view, so why would he get this right? It is an easy enough question and there is a link. There was a reason why Facebook suspended and ended all group chat options (there were a few actually), they were off course way late, now that Lone wolves and others have found new means to get this started, they need to be more careful, but the state remains. Mining is the only way to do this and you need resources for that, as well as proper staff who comprehend data and not let some silly deep learning algorithm fix it. For example, consider that a facilitator created an auto fill chat system; it has 250,000 lines an hour, whilst the system has one anchor word, a word you can select. So as we see the chat go through, we make no sense on it, yet the users have set the word ‘الدراجين’ (meaning ‘riders’) even as the initial part makes no sense

WE now get:

يتيح للجميع وقتا طيبا والحزب

الهذيان الكبير في واحة في منتصف الليل

جميع الدراجين سباق اليوم

معلومات السباق في اللعبة

تسجيل جميع الدراجين بعد صلاة الفجر

يجب أن المؤمنين اقتبس مرور البقر

جميع الدراجين يعرفون أن السيارة مائة مؤهلة

Even in this setting the programming cannot make sense, and unless you knew that ‘riders’ was the operative word good luck in finding what comes next. a system like this has been in place for years, now there are dedicated programs, yet in the past there were 4-6 in a group of 100, so those 4 guest gamers would not be noticed and by the time someone woke up, it was already too late, the meeting was over and more secure conversations had taken place, this system worked global and now that Facebook chat groups are a thing of the past other means are used for all kinds of groups to find a way to pass a message along.

We get it, the employees of Sneaky, Peeping and Backstabbing incorporated are not supposed to put it in the open, yet the annual report seemingly ignores one part. Instead of having a dozen systems creating a small solution, we need to find the agencies actually working together to avert “ASIO has limited scope to redirect internal resources to address the increasing gap between demand for our counterespionage and foreign interference advice and our ability to furnish this assistance” and partially find a solution that will take care of the extremists, the organised crackpots and the corporate facilitators, if you do not consider the third group to be important, then you have remained asleep for far too long at the wheel.

So when I mentioned Brandis (never the sharpest tool in my personal opinion) we might consider the 2017 event and the quote: “If the laws are passed and technology companies comply, they could help with investigations into paedophile networks, major organised crime or terrorism”, the man is transparent as glass as he hid in the past behind ‘violent gamers’ and now he uses ‘paedophile networks’. Yet the larger issue not seen here are financial services, there is no oversight and there is no telling what an approached debt collector could find out without setting of ANY red flags. And that is with the players who are on the up and up and playing a proper game taking all the proper guidelines and consumer protection laws as noticed and complied with, this wild west group has a truckload of groups all willing to do what it takes to get the score and a foreign player is a stakeholder in finding needs. That group has been able to remain off the books for at least 2 years. They all seemingly forgot that places like Experian, Equifax, Dun & Bradstreet, have their own customer base and who checked out those credentials?

Yes, we can agree that the entire matter is too large for ASIO to deal with, but there is also the flaw that the scope of what they face is not dimensionalised in the proper fashion, it is openly misrepresented and that is optionally acceptable, as long as they know what they face in-house.

And it is not a rocket science deal; the FBI, MI5, BRGE, AIVD, MAD (yes that is the acronym for the German Intelligence Services) and the FSB all deal with these issues. OK, these players will not be calling the FSB but you get the idea. There are players that are about data and proper intelligence mining (Palantir Technologies), yet the field needs to widen but in another direction. If this is Business Intelligence then Palantir is SAS, whilst we need a more IBM statistics and IBM Modeller based solution rolled out, we do not need a solution that fits all, we need to feed clusters of investigators with power tools that allow them to surf data and mine activities to a much larger degree. We need to set server milestones with collected raw data that different clusters can attack. The intelligence branches have wanted to do it the wrong way around for too long (often pressured by wannabe politicians), what we need is a treasure trove of data that all players can have a go at and actually report findings. We create almost 3 Exabyte of data every day, and we need to find 1% of 1% in that, whilst all this happens before 5G, it is about to become 20 times worse and they cannot even handle what is out there now.

All whilst we know that the 1% of 1% remains a group of 98% which is merely misdemeanours playing around, as such we need to change the premise towards collected data, that is what we face at present so the entire matter of “greater awareness among our stakeholders of that threat — has increased demand for our advice and support”, which is misrepresentation in its own right. The stakeholders have their own needs and their own game to play. Consider the IP needs of Telstra (Australia), the Inside protection and mandates of Novartis (Pharmaceuticals), Insider trading on HSBC (Banking) and their needs are their financial protection needs and in this fearless leader Duncan Lewis (ASIO) has to optionally look out for the needs of Telstra (as some claim that hat Telstra needs, Australia needs) whilst hunting those wanting to harm Australians, in this the Stakeholders are more about the revenue and debatable a source of good (they allegedly merely want their bonus safe), as such we should optionally wonder about the needs of the stakeholders and the difference about their claim and their needs.

So whilst we see another batch of mobile swipe and pay solutions being rolled out whilst there are a few concerns on how that data is processed all over the world, we forget that those out to harm national needs are also out looking into all those apps and finding out that for the largest extent the IMEI number of any smartphone is a much easier anchor to work with and mapping the usage also gives a larger content on data and where the target might be, yet most forgot about how the old is still beneath the new, did they not? So even as we consider the title ‘ASIO warns of ‘hostile intelligence services’ using social media in annual report‘, we need to consider that ‘hostile intelligence services‘ is merely part of a much larger problem and that those services use all kinds of methods that the local knights of the round facilitating table (FBI, MI5, BRGE, AIVD, and MAD) are still not looking at (as far as I can tell).

In all this we were merely given a paragraph and whilst people wonder how to find resources, the matter on how to properly apply those resources so that they can have an impact was left off the table, and that was actually the delicious cream that should have graced the Strawberries, or are those Blackberries? I’ll let you work on that little last line conundrum yourself this weekend.

So have a nice day and let’s not forget that the weekend ends in 48 hours! #JustSaying

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Tagged as ABC, AIVD, ASIO, ASIS, BRGE, CIA, DGSE, Dun & Bradstreet, Equifax, Experian, Extremism, FBI, George Brandis, Jade MacMillan, LinkedIn, Lone Wolves, MAD, MI-6, MI5, New York Times, Palantir Technologies, Social Media, Telstra

October 10, 2019 · 11:31

62 weeks

Yes, the game is not really afoot, but we see the kick-off by Keith Stuart in the Guardian (at https://www.theguardian.com/games/2019/oct/09/playstation-5-v-xbox-scarlett-the-next-console-war-begins-in-2020). Microsoft and Sony are now starting to face each other is what is going to be the biggest fight that they have had so far. there are a few parts, in the first the consoles are basically released at the same time and unless you have a spiffy bank account, this time around you will have to make a direct choice, this means that one of the two will have a direct advantage, and with the PlayStation 4 having a head start to the degree it has also implies that it could be off to the races from day one.

In this the media will be the largest problem, like crack addicted prostitutes they will be hunting for advertisement from both and that is part of the problem. In February 2019 I gave: “In October 2012, I alerted the media to an issue impacting 30 million gamers within the commonwealth. I directly alerted Channel 7, Channel 9 and the Sydney Morning Herald; the all ignored it to the largest degree. There were clear screenshots on how the impact was given, yet the left it on the left of what was important. A change by Sony for their gaming community 3 weeks before the PS4 was released, they all (except for the Australian Guardian) ignored it for the most, and perhaps it was not news? What they (as I personally see it) intentionally ignored is that the Sony Terms of Service is a legally binding contract, the mention of a memo is merely a piece of paper that could be ignored the very next directors meeting. The press needed advertisement dollars and Sony is high on that list of needs, PlayStation 4 was big bucks, plain and simple” this all came from an article I wrote in November 2013 (at https://lawlordtobe.com/2013/11/20/pricing-a-sony-game/). The problem was that the media (the Guardian being one of a few exceptions) who decided not to write anything on it and they left millions of gamers hanging in the wind. The problem is whether we will face this same situation again. If the media facilitates towards the shareholders, the stake holders and the advertisers, there is every danger that the gamers will not be properly informed and that tactic was done by Sony AND Microsoft.

It is not the only issue, Microsoft with its new Xbox will have a larger issue, the flaws in their design were unacceptable (online harassment, and storage space), so the bullying has set in motion an aversion towards the Microsoft console and if Sony has the same great approach that they had in the past they already have a larger advantage from the very beginning.

Yet there is a new stage, both players know that the foundation is games, when hardware has so many similarities, getting the games is everything. It will be all about the exclusives a lot more than ever before. In this I would reckon that Microsoft has a small advantage, yet Sony has had the titles for the longest time, so they can prep what they need ahead of time.

The new part is the 8K option, the problem is having the games and the TV to enjoy it and that is where the problem starts. Even as we look a year too early, at present Samsung is the ONLY one with an affordable 8K TV. With (only) 65″ it is the only TV under $5000, with at the upper end we see Sony with 85″ at an astounding $22,000. Even as prices will decrease over the next year, we can see that the console will be overpowered (for now), this is a good thing and this implies that 4K games will be fast and smooth, which in light of the affordability of 4K TV’s is great but that is only one part.

Storage space has been the eternal issue and with 4K and 8K games storage will be everything. Microsoft was stupid, yes truly stupid in their design. It is like making a one seater sports car, you get to enjoy, but you never get to share what you view and gaming is all about showing off your point of view, which means that serious storage space was required. Sony gave the option for people to buy a larger drive and I did on day 1, in 2012 for a mere $109 I doubled my PS4 with a 2TB drive, I never regretted it, only last year (after 6 years) did I finally max out my gaming space. I hid the max on my Xbox within 6 months. Microsoft was indeed that stupid! I hope that they learned from this disastrous choice. For Sony things are different, at the same stage, if the PS5 supports the Samsung 860 EVO 4TB SSD things change by a lot, OK, we admit that it is currently expensive at $900, yet in a year it will be cheaper and starting your new console with 4TB storage is nothing to be sneered at, I reckon that I will survive for a while and my normal PS4 is on 2TB, so getting double that for 4K gaming is not a luxury.

Even as I will admit that the large backward compatible drive works for Microsoft, we have not seen a lot where Sony will go, in addition, neither party has shown that they comprehend social media and gamers, as such what they think is interaction, really is not. Both Sony and Microsoft failed in that department and there is no telling whether they will drive it in the next generation of consoles. Both players are all over haptic feedback and some version of VR, yet the games are the driving party and even as they can enjoy additions through the upgrades, we see that gaming needs to evolve.

As I looked at the redesign of the Mass Effect series, I made certain discoveries (it is easy when you redesign a game in your mind), the (many) flaws that were there and the path to take to make a much better game also gives a handle on the question: ‘what can I do different‘, it is not a given, but having to make a change is also a path towards a larger game and a larger interactive change. You get from the first question to the second one: ‘what can I do different with the parts I have now?‘ That tends to be a game changer. What if leveling up is not really changed, but could be augmented? When all the memory triggers are on the Hyperion, what if upgrading and repairing the Hyperion becomes an actual long term mission? For example 25 missions just to fix parts of the Hyperion giving 25%-50% additional tech powers? There are examples in abundance where we can adapt the game to be more inclusive and becomes the foundation for a much larger story.

When we take that towards the consoles, we see that the narrative is an actual dimension in gaming. What if the community part gets evolved into an actual social media channel where you can present a narrative and over the length of a game that could bring a lot more information towards gamers and game designers; the fact that the social media part was teased in 2012 and left untapped to a much larger degree in both consoles (except the abundance of forced advertisements by Microsoft) was a little disappointing, as Microsoft was all about utilising awareness through advertising on your console front page, the idea to utilise the option for gamers to up their game was largely left untapped.

Sony had its own flaws, but fixed a few of them well in advance of time giving them a few advantages at present, storage being the biggest, but not the only part in this. As 8K comes near, I reckon that PlayStation home will be missed out on, especially as virtual spaces will be the larger thing in 8K on 5G, an advantage lost.

There is a larger node in all this, we have seen the attempts by some to add dimensions via online and mobile gaming, I believe that this via 5G will take a much larger floor. It failed initially because we are not ready, but for a lot of sport games (EA), the direct link with NHL, NFL, NBA, FIFA and the game we play will take a much larger central position, the player cards that could connect to social media of our favourite players and teams. The option to link the 49’ers (for example) to our NFL game would give us the direct events and also more info on our favourite team (whichever that one is), in sports it makes more sense, it drives fans, it had for the longest of times. Consider you get the player card of quarterback Jimmy Garoppolo and by clicking on the twitter icon you see his ACTUAL twitter feed. I believe that this is what sport fans live for, until 4G+ the system was not powerful enough, on next gen systems with 5G it will be smooth and easy as pie.

It is a larger frame that we see, a social media framework that both ignored earlier. Yes, we can argue that hardware and telecom were not ready in 2012, yet over a term of 6 years nothing really changed to the degree it should have and that too is an issue with both. We get that it is all about gaming, but nowadays, when we see that the Overwatch group on Facebook has 83873 members, we see an untapped part of gaming, Facebook is not the best vessel here, but the console could unite hundreds of thousands of fans for many games, by making not the player but both the gamer and the game a united cluster we see a very different story and it seems that neither Sony nor Microsoft seriously looked at his.

And as we end today with the look on what both consoles deliver and what sets them apart, we see the failing that is coming when it is not properly looked at, a level of interaction in gaming that both ignored, when you set the foundation like Google Plus you get a much better handle of whatever else you can do, whatever else you can facilitate towards and prosper from, those two parts when properly done go hand in hand. Game developers seem to wait for Facebook to do something, but that is the failure, it was not up to them, it was up to Microsoft and Sony to facilitate for systems that game developers could have gotten to give a much larger drive to gaming and their fans.

We might be 64 weeks away from the next season of gaming, but in the end in 30 weeks the marketing machines will drive hypes and forget that proper testing might reveal what else was missed in the 11^th hour, as such we await the two streams that follow, inclusion of marketed BS segregation. It tends to be one of the two and Microsoft in their one Windows central gave us that on June 2018 when they gave us: “Microsoft’s repeated consumer product failures could be indicative of a fatal flaw in the company’s culture“, they have proven that several times in the Xbox One life cycle and then repeated the same mistake in the Xbox One X, Sony is not without failings either but corrected a few of them over the years.

I wonder what they will have missed by July 2020, at that point most system choices will be locked in and will not be fixed before the second wave of consoles are released, which makes for the repair of the found flaws and shortcomings no earlier than Winter 2021.

I wonder how what this stage looks like when we get to March 1st 2021, I believe that in light of the past Sony with the PlayStation 5 will be the reigning champion (yet again), but we need to acknowledge that Phil Spencer does know the field he is in, will the Microsoft board of directors give him the space he needs? I am not certain but we will know when the system comes, actually, I reckon that in the month before release we will have a clear view on how much space and options he was given, it will be the first decisive strike in the upcoming console war.

In this, the largest trap is that executives start feeling ‘relaxed’ with the hypes they create, once anyone bursts that bubble whomever relied on unsubstantiated hypes will lose almost all momentum immediately making them less than second best in that race. Still, it is quite the feat to become 3rd in a race with 2 players, is it not?

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Tagged as 49'ers, 4G, 4K TV, 5G, 8K TV, EA, FIFA, haptic feedback, Jimmy Garoppolo, Keifer Stuart, Mas Effect, Microsoft, NBA, NFL, NHL, Overwatch, Playstation, PlayStation 5, Samsung, Sony, the Guardian, Twitter, Xbox

October 2, 2019 · 12:20

Inspirational creativity

Today it is not the news that got me active; it was a TED video (at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xYemnKEKx0c). It was inspirational for a few reasons. In the first, I have had my exposure to Mental Health Law at UTS, best elective subject ever!

Anyway, the video gives an interesting view on the properties of Mental Health. Whether we look at this from the comedy perspective; whether we see it as an assessment of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, it does not actually matter. We can take it into several directions, the problem is the approach towards statistics and how we see people.

Jon Ronson gives an interesting view, but the issue behind this all is that we have pushed ourselves onto the list of being a member of at least one of the stated diagnosis of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. Is that not interesting? Consider that close to 80% of the people optionally have mental disorders, 85% if you are in the UK.

How did I get there?

First we get to the group of people who are a sociopath, that group is well over 30%, one in three is a sociopath, I know, because I basically am one (of we accept the evidence).

Let’s go over the rules:

Doesn’t respect social norms or laws. Most gamers seemingly disrespect social norms, gamers are a separate group of people and they are often in niche places that are based on what games they play. In addition, workaholics ignore the social norms of a family life.
Lies, deceives others, uses false identities or nicknames, and uses others. Gamers are often deceptive, yet we need to see levels of deception, gamers use other players to gain a tactical advantage. Workaholics use nick names all the time to alleviate stress, often these nicknames are not disrespectful or intended to be disrespectful.
Doesn’t make any long-term plans. Workaholics live from deadline to deadline; as such gamers often do too, from gaming season to gaming season, as well as release dates to upgrade the pool of games they live by.
Shows aggressive or aggravated behaviour. OK, in this, virtual violence (NHL, Fortnite, Overwatch) does not count.
Doesn’t consider their own safety or the safety of others. A lot of workaholics are chasing deadlines and meetings; they always overbook their schedule and in addition to that, leave too late for every appointment trying to balance that by speeding and being a menace on the road. Oh and they always call their next appointment that they are stuck in traffic and they will be there in 5 minutes (whilst they are still 15 minutes away).
Doesn’t follow up on personal or professional responsibilities. Most workaholics ignore or pushes against personal responsibilities, even as they do whatever they can to meet and follow up on professional responsibilities, with a schedule that is overburdened by well over 15%, they fail there too with some regularity.
Doesn’t feel guilt or remorse. It is all about the job, there is no remorse when a target is to be met, there is no guilt when it is met and often thee is a lack of guilt when it is not met either.

As a dedicated workaholic (since 1979) I pass every test but one on the sociopath list, from all this we can state that EVERY workaholic is a sociopath. This is the first issue where we see that the balance of work and life styles is so thin, that line will get crossed on a daily basis. This economy and the work life style that some companies claim (and then set the stage that it can be met when all tasks have been completed) is a stage that warps, instigates and promotes mental health issues.

The plot thickens

You see, there is another revelation; it comes to us when we consider the difference between a sociopath and a psychopath. “There’s no clinical difference between a sociopath and a psychopath. These terms are both used to refer to people with ASPD. They’re often used interchangeably” and now we have created a stage of mayhem!

You see antisocial personality disorder (ASPD) is as I personally see it outdates issue, we see the setting “People with ASPD can’t understand others’ feelings” I do not disagree with the stage, I merely see that stage as a convoluted, overrated and optionally outdated one, social media is part of the live of almost all and it influences all our actions inside and outside the social media. How many people have been willing to ‘understand the feelings of a gamer‘, I have been a gamer since the very early 80’s (1983) and I never stopped being one, yet for decades (until late 90’s) women would ‘yuck’ at those who loved video games, these people were not cool, they were nerds and no one wanted to understand them, because cool people rub off on them making those socially cool people optionally no longer cool.

It was only after the PS2 and the Xbox that gamers were more and more accepted in the world. Now we see the issue when we consider a workaholic that is also a gamer (that still includes me), for us time is a precious commodity, for the social types, time is a measure of procrastination, you merely have to see Facebook, Snapchat and optionally Tinder to see where their priorities lie, and self-esteem with a dose of Ego feeding is more often than not the ingredients of their need.

Those people fill another void of the DSM, the Narcissistic personality disorder.

When we look at the elements we get:

Have an exaggerated sense of self-importance.
Have a sense of entitlement and require constant, excessive admiration.
Expect to be recognized as superior even without achievements that warrant it
Exaggerate achievements and talents
Be preoccupied with fantasies about success, power, brilliance, beauty or the perfect mate
Believe they are superior and can only associate with equally special people
Monopolize conversations and belittle or look down on people they perceive as inferior
Expect special favours and unquestioning compliance with their expectations
Take advantage of others to get what they want
Have an inability or unwillingness to recognize the needs and feelings of others
Be envious of others and believe others envy them
Behave in an arrogant or haughty manner, coming across as conceited, boastful and pretentious
Insist on having the best of everything — for instance, the best car or office

Here the colours change, the blue is directly seen in Facebook exchanges that a lot make, the problem here is that they are intent on feeding the urge to respond, feeding the interaction that are part of the Rules towards Social Media engagement. the greens are sometimes part of Facebook, yet too often these elements are merely trolling and cyber bullying issues, they are however optionally still part of the Narcissistic personality disorder, Red is a different issue, at times it is not an issue. It can be the sociopathic side in them waking up; it can also be due to unclear communication in social media. When the one word response ‘fine’ comes through, it could be positive, or perhaps sarcastic oppositional negativity, the problem is that this carries in the voice and not on the keyboard. To quote Big Bang theory, Dr Sheldon: “How can I be conceited when you cannot understand what I say?” He is true and he is truth, communication and comprehension requires a third step, the feedback of comprehension, that part where the bringer of the message sees that you comprehended the message; a step that is left null and void in the bulk of all social media used.

In all this there is also the issue with the DSM, 5^th edition. I believe that people have evolved to some degree (whether positive or negative cannot be said), the stage of corporatocracy where it is all about the deadline, all about the next spreadsheet for commission and the next quarter. A created workforce of workaholics in an age where we see ‘work life balance‘ given out as a ‘mandate’ for a happy future, whilst the work pressures have not been dealt with, it is an unbalanced stage where people are more and more in doubt of what to do and in my experience the first group getting hit on that part are the families that these people are part of.

In an age where jobs become an issue, where job security is out of the window almost 24:7 in present day and as these issues become more and more visible, we see the added levels of depression added to the mix.

In all this, I mentioned ‘people have evolved to some degree‘ is the previous paragraph, well here it is, even as some claim to be social companies and socially responsible companies, their shareholders and board of directors are all about the bottom dollar, an environment that becomes corporatocratical more and more, the social markers are diminishing. they claim to have their ‘Friday afternoon drinks‘ or their social events once a month, yet these events are more and more about ‘heralding’ successes as a light on all others to become more successful. That is not some social event that is a directed pep talk to give the people something to think about on the weekend that precedes next Monday. It happens more and more and it is there that I invented the joke (which I love to tell every Friday afternoon): “Don’t worry, only another 62 hours and it will be Monday morning again!“, most people shiver, they get how short a weekend is, they merely never understood why they shivered, it was not about Monday morning, it was about the lack of true social family time that has gone more and more into the mists of forgetfulness and it saddens them to the core.

I believe that we will see more and more technological jumps which gives light to more commerce, more goals, more metrics and further isolation of individuals, as they are pushed and pushed into a stage of performance, making the bulk of your workforce an optional mental health case. Even as the Irish Times seemingly hides behind the quote ‘Employers are recognising the importance of supporting employees’ mental health‘, the underlying question is whether this is about work force retention, or actual mental health wellbeing in the workplace. For Europe this is to address “This is because right now almost one third of senior leaders cite finding talent as their most significant challenge” when you cannot find people hanging onto the ones you have is essential, yet the foundation of all this is not the workforce, not the pressures, as I see it the entire quality of life balance has been unhinged for the longest time of a decade and until that is addressed the issue that comes with ‘Why do I bother‘ cannot be maintained and these people are looking for every workaholic they can, those people go on regardless and that is fine with the talent seekers to a much larger degree.

There is no real short term solution and until the metrics reflect diminished work pressures, the situation merely escalated that part we see when HR presentations are set to a stage that no longer includes certain metrics.

When we see:

Revenue per Employee.
Cost per Hire.
Employee Turnover.
Overtime Percentage.
Length of Service.
Job Satisfaction Rate.

We see a problem that does not go away, even as we understand ‘Revenue per employee‘, there are scores where it was all about the team, where the first person properly informs a person and another sells the product as the person comes back gives a lack of understanding of the ‘browsing around’ customer, in a larger corporation there is a lack of comprehension where services and support are reasons why customers remain and buy again, not the salesperson, not even when he or she is selling in the nude. It is the services department that retains the customer and the business they bring. For the largest degree I have seen a lack of comprehension of that in senior management. As long as that issue remains there will be no resolution, especially when the sales people go to suave places for long weekends of training and booze and diners whilst services keep the business clear as they are away.

And in all of these stages, there has been an almost evangelistic absenteeism of the marketing department and their approach to ‘Inspirational creativity‘. For me it was the poster and the advertisement of Macquarie University, as they gave us all: ‘You to the power of us!‘

Did you ever realise just how brilliant that approach was? It is about inclusion where the approached person is at the centre of it all, how many advertisers were able to inspire you? You might not realise it but inspiration and enlightenment is the first sign that there is no mental health issue, because it is them driving you and it is you who engages that drive to a higher degree, we balance ourselves when someone else becomes the inspiration of us, not the work we need to do, but for us to excel what we were doing all along, at that point when we are there we retain ourselves and we contain ourselves to what we can inspire ourselves. I wonder how many companies have figured that out. I know that Google has been on the right track, but behind that metric is still the need to become accomplished as an increase, not as a state of awareness towards something better and in the second degree that is the track where the true innovations are found. It gave me 7 pieces of IP for 5G, two video games, one movie and an optional TV series (still working that out in my mind).

We can all be creative, yet to be inspirational requires something special and too many have not been able to push that, this is one of the reasons why Huawei is ruling the path of 5G and not anyone else. They all forgot to become inspirational creating their share of workaholics, psychopaths/sociopaths and narcissists, to them: “Welcome to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, 5^th Edition”, did you have time to find on which page you belong?

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Tagged as antisocial personality disorder, ASPD, Big Bang theory, Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, DSM, Eu, Facebook, google, Huawei, Jon Ronson, Macquarie University, Narcissistic personality disorder, SnapChat, Social Media, Ted, Tinder, UK, UTS

September 28, 2019 · 12:59

It’s been that long

I got alerted to a milestone yesterday on YouTube, you see, last week was the 25^th anniversary of System Shock, one of my most beloved games from the past. I still remember the two moments that set the milestones for this game. The first was the PC Format by Future plc. About a month before the release, PC format included the entire first level of the game (medical level). So you got about an hour of gameplay into that game, a month later the game arrived and of course, I had to have that game on day one! I did and that started a tour of around a week getting through the game. Someone was nice enough to stream the game (at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4IzNzVAxk8E) the stream starts at 10:00. Even now, hearing the intro music still gives me the good shivers. For a game to do that is so rare, it is to some degree scary. I am still awaiting the remastered edition by NightDive Studios. It will be launched a little later than planned (2020) but on all the consoles, so I might get that happy feeling again on all my consoles.

This is the foundation of better than great gaming, the story, the emersion and the control. The game offered all three to a great degree. That part is also important as System Shock 2, a game that came 5 years later had almost all the same controls, the first game was the founding father of RPG games, and control was close to that perfect. Graphics did upgrade by a lot, yet the shock (for me) in this game that the game only sold 170,000 copies, not much for a game this perfect, as such I do hope that the remaster will hand out the multimillion copy achievement sold. When we look at PC Gamer we see: “System Shock smokes. It is the most fully immersive game world I have ever experienced“, as well as “no matter what kind of game you’re looking for, you’ll find something in System Shock to delight you“. Finishing with “unquestionably raises computer gaming to a new level” (at https://web.archive.org/web/20000309153138/http://www.pcgamer.com/reviews/1024.html), I gave the game a similar review and gave it a 95% score when I reviewed it.

From that moment on, I reviewed RPG games using System Shock as the minimum bar, as you might imagine not many games got to that level. It was also the first game where ‘leaning around corners‘ became an option in shooting games. As far as you see the stream and listening to the makers of the game, you get the part how this game became a trendsetter of excellence, even if they do not mention it, it was a labour of love and passion gets to be the deciding driver in any game towards excellence.

Depending on your age, consider the game that you would play again after 10, 20 and 25 years. What titles come to mind? In my view Elite Dangerous (after 35 years), Ultima 4 (after 35 years), System Shock (after 25 years), Ultima 7 (after 25 years), System Shock 2 (after 20 years), and the list goes on, but it is not a long list, games that are dipped in excellence are rare to say the least. Yet I am a gamer, a game junkie and like all other gamers I remain hopeful that another developer gets it right to the largest degree, Ubisoft did that with Assassins Creed 2 (and Brotherhood) then stuffed up to a much larger degree until Assassins Creed Origins was released. That is why the scrutiny of 93%+ games is so essential. Most gamers will take a turn in other direction if it gives them excellence, yet when they leave their comfort zone in gaming, excellence is the only marker that they will accept to make them do so. Games like Mass Effect 2, The Witcher 3, Grand Theft Auto V, Horizon Zero Dawn, all games that relied on near perfection; it is a stage that is seldom reached. And in all this the FX Slogan was key (for me it is) ‘The story is everything‘. Horizon Zero Dawn is perhaps the strongest example. In the beginning I enjoyed the game, yet it was the storyline after the proving that set the stage for me to continue and learn more and more. The origin story of Elisabeth Sobeck and Aloy is absolutely marvellous. Yes, I have seen the rants against the game, rants like ‘Giving up Horizon Zero Dawn‘ (at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qv_1DzGf_1s). His response ‘I just don’t find it interesting anymore‘. Yes, I do not agree, but it is his view, and his view is valid to him, just when we see this he is still not completing: ‘The War – Chief’s trail‘. Yet the best story parts were still coming up and the game takes it time getting into the story, it is important to show this, because you might have a different love for games, I love stealth games, games with an essential need for stealth, not everyone loves this, I get that. You have to realise that, I might not be the voice for you; I might have other loves in gaming. I was never a lover of GTA5, I admire it for its excellence, but it is not my game, it is however for millions of other gamers.

In this view it is important to find more voices until you find the reviewer that aligns with your fulfilment in gaming. It is easy to find good reviews and for many games a lot will have the same view, but in the 90%+ range you need to find the one voice that is on your level of gaming. It is easy to merely see that The Last of Us was a great game, pretty much everyone will agree, yet Dark Souls 3 and Bloodborne? I loved both games; I never got to complete them. With Bloodborne I actually stopped (after a dozen attempts), I still have the game as it shows excellence on many levels and the engine is sublime, but it is also an excellent example for ratings. I would give it 91%, yet others will give it 93%-95% and now we have the review issue. Are their reviews better? They might be, they might be better at playing this game, more important, they might highlight things I missed, because I was not great at this game. Graphics and engines are easy, the subtle parts defining Bloodborne (as well as Dark Souls 3) is another matter. And now you come into the mix thinking it was merely an 85% game as you did not like the game (which is fair enough), finding the right reviewer is important, more important, the one that aligns with your game play and this is where a game like System Shock differs. The game remained playable for a much larger audience. Now we accept that the gaming bar was not as high in 1994 as it is in 2014, yet playability had remained similar over 25 years, it is my view that Bloodborne is a great game, yet, to me, it is not as playable. That small distinction is important when you seek out buying a full priced game that totally rocks your world.

To me the story is a deciding factor, whilst play style is the most important second. That part is visible to many who remember Metroid Prime on GameCube; I still love that game as well. I never got beyond 98% completion, and I would love to play it again getting to 100%, that is because the game is extremely playable with a play style that is set to comfort. We might sneer at the graphic level (compared to the Xbox and Playstation2 in those days), yet Metroid Prime still delivered as an equal and better to anything the other two could offer. That part validates the 97% rating it received. Yet, if it is not your game, would you still regard it as high?

The question is important as System Shock did make that cut, even by those not loving the game style, they were all impressed with the game, it set a new bar of quality, Metroid Prime and Horizon Zero Dawn both did that as well.

And it is there where we see the stage for streaming games, for Apple Arcade, Google Stadia and thee we see the links. Apple Arcade shows smooth gaming, but not hi-res gaming. That is not an issue if you consider Metroid Prime, the lowest resolution of the three consoles delivered the best gaming experience of all. You can see this (at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q73cHEAwKVw), I found the top 10 interesting, but not overwhelming, of course the number one is like some Zelda clone, with decent graphics, but not great graphics. There are 100 games announced yet there too I wonder if people are willing to pay $5 a month, $60 a year to do this, You can argue if you can find even 3 games you really like, then the money is well spent. So it is a decent idea, the issue I have with the stage is that the solution will be years two and later. However, in a family setting the game changes massively, the cost is per family (up to 5 players) as such $1 per person per month is just too good to pass up.
More important is the fact that the games look amazing on the iPad, so there is that to consider. My larger personal issue is long term. For me it is $8 month (Australia), as such in Australia it gets down to $100 a year. It has good games and the important dig is: no ads, unlimited access to 100+ new games rolling out later this year, as well as download for off-line playing are the catchers that will make people try this. Consider the initial $100 for the entire year, seems a lot, but playing 100 games for the price of one is still a game changer. I am assuming that you can only play for as long as you are a member, but we get the same on consoles, so that should not be the issue.

The arrival of Apple Arcade and Google Stadia is still important, but not for the reason you think. System Shock was important as the game was a true innovator in gaming. These new streaming services are set on a stage where the amounts of gamers imply the revenue for the makers. Even as marketing get you in the beginning, the bulk of gamers will push for games that are TRULY innovative and I have learned and seen that true innovation pushes the envelope of games in general. System Shock, Command and Conquer, Metal Gear Solid, Wolfenstein 3D, Gran Turismo, Warcraft 3, Minecraft, Tombraider, Diablo, Zelda – Ocarina of Time, Goldeneye, Super Mario 64, Half-Life, Doom. These are on a short list of the most innovative games in history and the most important part is that most of them started on systems lacking resources. Systems like the first PlayStation, the Nintendo 64 and the PC-Pentium One. Most mobiles and tablets now surpass what was possible even in those maxed out years. As such, innovation was always about imagination and I love the idea of streaming services as it pushes the need for innovation. I go back to System Shock one and two, yet some might remember Molyneux’s titanic achievement Black and White, a god video game. A game where you influence actions and not control all actions, when you realise that innovation is creation linked to imagination, we start considering the lack of resources required, not the max of resources. In this games and gamers are about finding the right note, the right chord that makes your heart sing. System Shock still does that to me 25 years later (OK, Elite Dangerous does it as well after 35 years).

I still play Blockheads by Dave Frampton after 6 years on my very first iPad, it is basically the only reason I still use my very first iPad for anything else but reading (until I get a new one). I got the game to deal with my Minecraft addiction when I was not at home and I never regretted getting it (oh, and I found the tablet edition of Minecraft not that playable), even today (last night actually) I still play Blockheads.

We might think that innovation fades, as it would over time, but I personally learned that innovation creates a captive audience regardless of time, it is a personal observation and you might not agree, but I also believe that this is the stepping stone for both Apple Arcade and Google Stadia. Consider the re-released consoles. CBM64 mini that gives us: Boulder Dash, Paradroid, Jumpman, Temple of Apshai Trilogy, Uridium, Impossible Mission (1+2), Winter Games and Summer Games II all games that could be upgraded and give a new audience the games they love to play. The CBM 64 brought so much innovation in games with only 64KB available; these games became the foundation for better games as systems upgraded (Atari ST and CBM Amiga). In this Nintendo with their 64 was pushing the envelope even further, Super Mario 64 is just one title, Goldeneye (named after the bond movie) set the bar so high that it was still the most desired game a decade later, even as the Wii relaunched the game, it ended up being inferior to the original, that is the level of excellence we lost out on and in this resources are not the issue, these are games that could easily be streamed and offer gaming perfection.

The list goes on and it would take too long, yet when we consider sources like My Abandonware and other sources (like Amiga Emulators) we see optional chests containing hundreds of titles that are ready to be remade and a lot of it has no IP protection, as such the best programmers can take the great vision and turn it into a cash maker through streaming. I reckon that is what both Google Stadia and Apple Arcade are hoping for, I am uncertain to see a winner at present, but the games that make it will be the deciding factor and even as the games on Apple are not great, they are still off to a good start, I myself hope that the historic database will inspire game makers, and this is a field where both genders can excel, you merely need to remember the name Danielle Bunten Berry (M.U.L.E. and Seven Cities of Gold) to realise that creativity was key, not gender. As such I do hope that we see both genders remain active, even as Danielle Bunten Berry left us in 1998, her games could stay around for much longer, that is the other part of innovation, it has no expiration date; it is almost timeless. If you doubt that, consider her games as well as those by Roberta Williams (King’s quest series). That is actually another part of gaming, there the playing field for genders is almost level as creativity not ego decides on the quality of the game.

As such it might have been that long, but in the end, the timeline was not long enough, I am willing to get into streaming to some degree (Assassins Creed Odyssey might get lag issues) but there are hundreds of games that will never have that issue and the list of games that will hit the spot is a lot larger than anyone ever considered, especially when a good idea (or a great idea) gets upgraded with innovations that were not available when a certain game came out.

Consider the game Command and conquer, optionally a game like Battle for Middle Earth, or even Dungeon Keeper 2. We have gone through those games and finished all the maps; now consider the issues you face when the maps are created procedural, would your strategy still hold up? That question impacts all three games. Often the strategy was in the map design, take that away and the challenge changes by a lot. I believe that ‘It has been that long‘ is a premise that does not really exist in gaming, I truly believe that System Shock will capture the hearts of new gamers, I believe that upgrading innovation that was will give life to other games, even games that were in the 80%-90% and upgrade them by an optional 15%, and be honest, what game maker would not love to be linked to making a 90%+ game? At present Ubisoft is seemingly proud of their 70% games (so are a few other makers mind you), so we can see the essential need of excellence in gaming, the question is who will bring it and with two new players (gaming providers) entering that field, answering those question becomes a lot more important as we (gamers in general) have had our fill of mediocre games.

Even now we see that as we still yearn for Elder Scrolls: Oblivion as well as Skyrim; I stated to Richard Garriott (the man behind the Ultima series) a while go, if we could get the Oblivion/Skyrim engine and create Sosaria to life, we would have a winner that could entice millions of gamers. Skyrim with over 30 million sold is clear evidence of that and the tales of Sosaria were founded on great story-lines and compelling interaction of personal choices and philosophical concepts. The entire Ultima line (story 4 and later) are all about eh seven virtues (Honesty, Justice, Honour, Sacrifice, Compassion, Spirituality and Humility), it would be the foundation of 6 games, each one surpassing the previous one and to see the evolution from isometric to first person would be the game changer for anyone who loved that story-line, in addition, the Elder Scrolls never did concepts to that degree, which is not their flaw, but it could be the strength of any new Ultima IP.

It is in that part where I see System Shock one and two, it was near perfect and it is still ready for a whole new generation of players. Especially when you consider that the original System Shock on floppy (yes there was a floppy version) was a mere 15Mb, and Metroid Prime on GameCube was less than 1.5Gb, whilst Goldeneye was a mere 64Mb, so as you can see size was never the deciding factor.

I believe that 2020 will be an interesting year for games and gamers. I believe that those relying on ridiculous large games and high resource requiring games (like a Core i9-9980XE) will find that their size issue gets thumbed by true playability and innovation setting the stage for much better games after that. Innovation remains a game changer for games and I wonder how much change we get to see in 2021-2022.

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Tagged as Apple Arcade, Atari ST, Battle for Middle Earth, Blockheads, Boulder Dash, CBM Amiga, CBM64, Danielle Bunten Berry, Dave Frampton, Diablo, Doom, Dungeon Keeper, Elder Scrolls, Goldeneye, Google Stadia, Half-Life, Impossible Mission, Jumpman, Metroid Prime, Minecraft, My Abandonware, N64, Nintendo, Paradroid, Peter Molyneux, Playstation, Richard Gerriott, Roberta Williams, Skyrim, Summer Games II, Super Mario 64, System Shock, Temple of Apshai Trilogy, Tombraider, Ubisoft, Ultima, Ultima 4, Ultima series, Uridium, Winter Games, Xbox, Zelda - Ocarina of Time

September 27, 2019 · 12:28

Branding

An Apple original, a Netflix original, Stan presents and so on. This is the view I started this morning when the trailer ‘For All Mankind‘ hit the screens. The game has changed and the value of IP has gone through the roof, finding quality IP is going to take on a new level of interest. Not merely finding the IP, getting there first means something now, it is a new form of Armistice and it is a game designed for all the creative Masters of Art out there. Yes there is the anticipation of new hits and movies we want to see. We look forward to people like Nicholas Cage (Primal), and Robert de Niro (The Irishman). Yet it goes further than that, the amount of movies that are popping up with references to ‘Basically, How to Write a Netflix Original‘, we see new cash cows coming into existence. Yet the basic need is not to write the story, it is to have the idea in the first place. I can, at any given moment drum up a new story; I have been writing my blog for several years now, creating over 1200 articles. All the articles have news references and have references to events, but creation was key! And that is not the stage, the stage is not the Wall Street journal (at https://www.wsj.com/articles/with-chips-down-saudi-arabia-finds-little-goodwill-in-the-u-s-11569495606) giving us: ‘With Chips Down, Saudi Arabia Finds Little Goodwill in the U.S.‘, this is a given and required little creativity, yet the creative eye will spot beyond the quote “Two-thirds of Americans now have an unfavorable impression of Saudi Arabia, according to a Gallup Poll earlier this year, the highest percentage the survey group has ever recorded for the kingdom. It is higher now than it was after Sept. 11 attacks, in which 15 of the 19 hijackers were Saudi“, it would be able to see that the anti-marketing machine that even included the United Nations (the essay by Agnès Callamard), where even with a lack of evidence the Saudi Arabian crown prince was painted as the guilty party, Eggy Calamari even gave us: “The killing of Mr Khashoggi thus constitutes an international crime over which other States should claim universal jurisdiction. I call on those States to take the necessary measures to establish their competence to exercise jurisdiction under international law over this crime of extrajudicial execution,” we cannot deny that the likelihood that the life of Jamal Khashoggi was ended in an unnatural way with a certainty approaching 100%, no one denies that, yet the who remains an issue and the reference “for which the State of Saudi Arabia is responsible” can only be made through circumstantial evidence (and it still remains dubious at that), whilst the use of that evidence leaves too many gaps, giving a clear failure as ‘beyond all reasonable doubt‘ is not met, yet in opposition these same state facilitating players have ignored actual evidence of Iranian actions of assaults and bombing of Saudi Arabian civilian targets. As such there is a creative engine in play and that engine is targeted at Saudi Arabia (the connections will make sense soon enough).

The actions by the UN to stop escalation with ‘US-Iran tensions escalate despite UN efforts‘, gives us the light that clearly produced evidence is ignored and shunned by the UN, giving us the stage that the discrimination of produced evidence is set aside, the western media to a larger extent has been accommodating to that, in the one case where the Washington Post could get a reprieve, even now when we see mere hours ago headlines like ‘Iranian president: US should end ‘maximum pressure’ policy‘ and ‘As tensions boil in the Persian Gulf, Iraq seeks to rein in Iran-aligned militias‘, we should notice that the Washington Post has gone to extremes to keep the mention of Saudi Arabia as a victim to an absolute minimum.

It is a new kind of branding, it is anti-branding. The western world is scared, too scared at present. First there was Huawei that has the hands on the largest bulk of 5G IP ever made, and it reduces several nations to an Intellectual property joke at best, the cream of all 5G patents is in the hands of Huawei (China), in this Reuters reported less than 12 hours ago ‘Huawei already producing 5G base stations without U.S. parts‘, more important, in 2020 that production line will be doubled, add to that that Norway is not siding with several EU nations not to block Huawei as a 5G solution has the US on the ropes, they are about to lose billions upon billions. It is the price of iterative complacency and it scares Wall Street. You might think that I switched topics, but I did not. There is a clear line.

As Saudi Arabia is more and more committed to build its Neom city, Huawei is now ready to implement their 5G solution and that pushes Saudi Arabia forward in ways never seen before. The academic consideration that Neom City will be on par with the latest Silicon Valley solutions has never been seen before and as that trail picks up speed, the IP consideration will be passed to other regions too, at that point IP firms registering their patents and Trademarks will rise in China and the Middle East even further, it is exactly the play I had in mind when I created my IP and even now I am looking at a golden parachute the size I never held possible ever before.

All this still reflects on the hindrance that pushes these technologies and there we see that Iran is becoming the larger problem in several fields. Even now, as we see projects grow, we also see the larger field that is fuelling this endeavour. The National gave us “Neom’s contribution to the kingdom’s GDP is projected to reach at least $100 billion by 2030” and that is a pessimistic view, as the 5G boundaries are met in Saudi Arabia, there will be a growing workforce trying to get their 5G apps on the ground as this could fuel millions in revenue for any app maker that makes it, and the most important part in this is the fact that being there first gives a lot more benefit for a longer amount of time. This path gained momentum as Huawei started to cater to 5G needs 6 months ago in both India and Pakistan, for Pakistan the middle East and in particular Saudi Arabia will give rise to more apps, better apps and stronger commerce; yet it is not merely in Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates is also pushing for this boundary, as is Qatar. The experience in app making will spread form Pakistan further and further giving these entrepreneurs’ futures they themselves never thought possible under the stage of 4G and it makes them all hungry for success.

Creativity

It is there where creativity and needs interact. Whilst the arts are claiming a larger group to write idea’s for streaming TV, the creative engineers are pushing new telecom boundaries in 5G, setting a stage for a new kind of facilitation, one that is not limited to the iterative community, as they were trying to cater to the needs of guided anticipation, the innovators are going where iterative makers did not consider to look, 5 of my IP trains are on that track going decent for now, I still have a little more than 2 years to set the final stage, whilst the stage is curving to my desired needs more and more. That we see when IT Wire gave us ‘US seeks funds to remove Huawei, ZTE gear from rural providers‘ only 2 days ago.

As we see the quote: “Legislation supported by both sides of politics in the US seeks a sum of US$1 billion to help small and rural wireless providers replace equipment made by Chinese vendors Huawei Technology and ZTE Corporation“, we see a growing failure in the US. Don’t get me wrong, the US is allowed to do what it is, but instead of fuelling innovation forward, it is wasting $1,000,000,000 to remove rural equipment, whilst the supporting quote “helping small and rural wireless providers root-out suspect network equipment and replace it with more secure equipment” cannot be met with evidence on any level. Even the term ‘more secure equipment‘ is a grey remark open to interpretation, all equipment form 2018 onward will be more secure than the equipment that was installed in 2012, even with the latest updates this statement remains true, as this is the nature of the technology beast. What is adamant in all this that the lack of security in Huawei equipment was never proven other than one specific 2011 example, an issue that was apparently addressed and settled in 2013.

Even now, no espionage evidence by China was ever given in any way, shape or form. As I personally see it, this is all about economic foundations and progress and the non-Chinese solutions lack technology, innovation and quality to compete with China, now that the Middle East and Europe (to a larger degree) has allowed Huawei to get there, they will reap the benefits of it all, consider that over the next 5 years Neom city, block by block will be 5G ready whilst the longest changes in most parts of the world will be still upgrading, it will create a clear need for to use what is available and now we get to the union of both.

As we see the testing grounds of Saudi Arabia being there, the makers of streaming services will have a place to test and create 5G IP (or was that create and test). We have seen Hollywood, Bollywood and now there is a case to be made for Neomwood as well. If Saudi Arabia plays its cards right, there would be the stage for implementing and creating 5G streaming services and the creation of originals (to some extent) of TV series, shows and movies. People seem to forget that there are around 2 billion Muslims in the world, and the ability to cater to 25% of a global population, whilst the other creators have neglected this group offers a larger opportunity than most people realise.

Even as we accept the story of the 60’s where in the new production called for all mankind we see the stage and setting of the first woman on the moon, there is nothing stopping the Middle East of creating Islamic series that are about furthering their goals on the big screen and the little screen. The lack of actual quality TV in that regard (as far as I can tell) becomes more and more visible. There has been great controversy regarding the TV series Omar, I understand that thousands are stating that the show must be stopped because they believe such depictions are forbidden by Islam. Yet there are other ways to give light to Islam, to educate the non-Islamic community, and I believe that a larger stage could become apparent there. Also, the entire stage of soap series is seemingly ruled by Bab Al-Hara, a Syrian show by Bassam Al-Mulla that has been going on for 10 seasons, as I see TV watching people, they are never content with just one series and to be able to stream globally on 5G will be the larger need soon enough, owning the studios, production, IP and delivery will give whomever gets there first a much larger cut of the winnings and they can be huge, especially with 2 billion Muslims looking for more. I am still smirking (on the inside) to seek a way to make my idea: ‘How to assassinate a politician‘ a reality and optionally get it selected for Emmy and Oscar’s consideration (that is how I roll, never stop dreaming). In this, as I stated several times in the past, the slogan of FX (a filmmaker) is the best ever: ‘The story is everything‘, it is the holy grail that Apple, Stan, Netflix and all other streamers, as well as all other forms of medium are pursuing, it comes from creativity and as creativity overlaps from creation to technology we see a much larger shift in innovation, Whomever doubts that look at Big Brother and consider why it was a success. The overlap of technology, innovation and creation is a direct result of that is something that John de Mol Jr. saw immediately, it took a little while for me to catch on and it was an eye opener (I personally never liked the series, but I admired the approach of innovation and technology towards creation), now creation drives innovation and technology (as it should), yet I also accept that this interaction tends to be symbiotic and the direction of these streams can go in either direction making it the closest to a perpetual system, in this iteration will be the death of it and that is why I have been frantically against iterative designers.

In this, branding has been too much about iteration, Google and Huawei being the obvious exceptions, yet they are at present still the exceptions to that rule. I see that branding can be about innovation, but not the marketed innovation that Apple claims it is. Innovation as Heineken marketing shows it to be is a much better example, even as their product has not changed for the a longest time, their marketing has been on the edge of what is possible for over a decade, if we can keep creativity on that scale we have the making of long term success, no matter what field we move in, that is what the US fears, as innovation grows through Huawei, they see a dip that turns into a revenue canyon, the lack of forward momentum. Even now we see how economic momentum in the US is lost, whilst their IP investments are at an all-time high. If IP becomes the currency of a nation the UIS is indeed in a dire position and their stalling and delays of 5G will not help them, it is exactly in that part where we see the anti-Huawei weaves becoming a disaster for those embracing a non-Huawei solution. The fact that the hardware is not on par with Huawei is one part, the implied accusation ‘But Can They Scale Operations Timely‘ is a much bigger danger, as the markets evolve, scalability will be key and in that (for now) Huawei is far ahead of the others, making any non-Huawei advantage short lived, in addition to that part we see the earlier mentioned solution that Huawei is on the road improving and upgrading the base stations without US parts, when that one hits the US economy will take a much bigger hit, and as latency and delays add to the 5G part, those who want to be at the head of streaming will need to consider where they will be running from, as I see it there is a case to be made (to some degree) for Neomwood, when that happens, the revenue streams will change even further giving the US to live with the realisation that the entire Huawei war was the worst of all idea’s, especially when there were alternatives and especially as the security risks have never ever been proven.

I believe that due to data options there will be a larger change in trademarks in the next 5 years, also in that regard IP will decline in the US a lot more, as data is key, any delaying factor to 5G will have larger impacts over the next 24 months. Those who want to be ahead need to select what gets them there and not listen to fabricated fears and speculative events that have so far not been proven. As creativity shows, those who can dream the new stories, those who can consider the next idea will be catered to, because if the story is everything, the value of a poet and a writer outpaces the accountant by a lot. We can get all kinds of accountant a dime a dozen, yet how many poets are there? How many story writers and story tellers are out there who can spin a story that makes you sit down and relax? Consider what you watch on streaming services and what you are willing to pay for, now consider where the market is and you will see a large gap, a lag that was ignored for the longest of times. In 2020 alone we see a need to invest close to $50 billion, $6 billion by Apple alone for start-up; do you think that there is a higher need for a book keeper or someone who can create a story? As WarnerMedia buys back the old TV series Friends for $245 million, ready to spend $11 billion on content this year alone, how much are they willing to pay for an original idea?

Branding starts with a dream, or a thought that is actually original, how much originality could we find in the Islamic world that has ignored that path for decades? It is a path exploring, especially with 2 billion optional content customers. A path to a larger success that is currently written off through the fear mongering of governments and media needs, whilst there was not ever a need to do so; the facilitation of iteration pushed non solutions and whilst that happens, originality in content and technology will take a backseat to facilitate to the people who no longer should have any voice on the matter, their need to delay and slowdown innovation made it so.

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Tagged as 5G, Agnes Callamard, App making, Apple, Bab Al-Hara, Bassam Al-Mulla, Big Brother, China, Emmy, For All Mankind, FX, Huawei, Intellectual Property, IP, Iran, Jamal Khashoggi, John de Mol, Neom city, Neomwood, Netflix, Nicholas Cage, Norway, Oscar, Pakistan, Primal, Robert De Niro, Saudi Arabia, Stan, Syria, the Irishman, UN, Wall Street Journal, WarnerMedia, Washington Post, ZTE

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