Category Archives: Science

October 16, 2021 · 10:15

Funky mushroom pizza

Did you ever wake up from a dream that was so surreal that it was stamped with ‘weird dream’ by your brain? I do not mean ‘after contemplation’, but a stage where the forefront of every part of the brain is rejecting it upfront and in capital letters. It has happened to me before, but this was surreal. This was not some wild and passionate night with a Canadian goddess, or a threesome with two ladies from Hooters. Those are dreams you know are not real, but the mind keeps a sign in the back of your mind stating ‘perhaps…..if…..’, no this was outright weird.

It all starts on the moon, Procellarum to be more precise. Service agents have taken to the moon, there is a reason for this, the moon has no timeline, the sun is always there, yet the close to the sun’s rim the better. Even as there are settings that work, the edge is colder and the quantum computers with all their locking and cooling stages work better where there is a lot of cold (a lack of heat) and the cost of having larger systems on earth was pushing the cost stages. Also, hackers were more easily controlled. These systems are on-site only. No hacker can get to it and any hacking person on the moon gets thrown into space, no trial. 

In this there was a weird setting (yes, this was not weird enough). Taking a 5 year job in the moon is well rewarded, like really well rewarded. So I was there doing technical support. One day all the systems go nuts, reason unknown and whilst I was checking system after system, node after node we see a change in one of the ‘overseers’, he is suddenly a lot stronger than usual, I mean weirdly strong. He is complaining about headaches and starts referencing systems on a quantum level (no person can do that), but the headaches are massive. We get him to the infirmary, we continue work. We hear alarms and things are going wrong over there, but we do not know the extent. In the mean time we are trying to keep our heads cool and some posh bastard (A UK boss) is throwing his weight around. The UK has set up lines of nobility on the moon, they are larger players and have all kinds of legal based rights, so whenever one shows up we keep as clear as possible. When they leave we see that 2 boxes are gone, but they were never ours, so we do not care. As we go on, the alarms are of a larger concern. But we are all compartmentalised in our tasks and duties. 

In the mean time we notice a UK buggy outside near an old abandoned storage, which is odd to say the least. As out work is done for this region we check it out (from a distance) and there we see the two boxes. The rest is foggy, it was an hour ago when I woke up and the dream is already facing. But the short and sweet I that we had alien visitors, the overseer had something we do not, there is a segmentation in his brain that allows for a different kind of storage and segmentation of knowledge, I do not know how to better put it (a lack of neural education I reckon), one box has an arm, a left arm of a space suit, it looks like ours, but this is different, it is not from any design we ever saw and the elements are like an advanced form of quantum selection. The arm is unusually cool and the inscriptions on the arm are like nothing I had ever seen. The second box had a visor, almost like ours but this too is way more advanced than anything I had ever seen on the moon. Er notice another buggy in the distance. I grab several rocks and place them in the box, so for the other one, we make clear before the buggy returns. There is another foggy patch. The overseer gets to our place, he looks out of his mind, his head hurts and he seems to be grasping at his left arm and his actions do not seem to make sense. Then we get the idea to give him the other parts. We are cautious, he knows that we are good people, but his headache seems to be overwhelming him, we give him the arm which is more solid than the fabric suits we wear, but it is weirdly flexible, almost like a solid resin arm that is pliable like water. I never saw anything like it. Then we give him the visor and suddenly things change, he calms down, he is looking at his visor like the inside has some form of HUD, he starts speaking. “The headaches are fading, data conductors 17-34 are not transmitting data, magnetic instability is crashing the conducting drives”, we report the message exactly, but we are not aware of what it means, the magnetic coil rooms are off-limits. Way above our pay-grade. 

The central office gives us the option to look and fix, we will get a promotion as well as a massive bonus, so we agree and we set foot towards a corridor we have never entered before. 

Thats when I woke up. 

It was so surreal, corridors, the moonscape, I have no idea how my mind got there. I think it is in part the old series like Space 1999, in part levels from Wolfenstein, the new order. It has a moon segment. Whatever it was, I need to get another slice of that pizza, even as I had no pizza in weeks. I think I blew a gasket in my mind, So I need to get some groceries now. No matter what, it was one of the weirdest dreams I ever had.

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October 13, 2021 · 03:11

Chook chook thinking

Why? Because train of thought reads too boring, thats why! So this all happened, or better stated started happening a few hours ago. Someone stated that IBM Z Mainframes are in 96% of all mainframe places. Now, I have no problem with this, I moved out of mainframes 30 years ago, and I still respect what these things can do (they are just too big for my desk). Yet in this, my first question was, what do the other 4% use? A simple question. I got all kinds of answers, yet none of them answered my question ‘What do the other 4% use’, in this it does not matter if it is known, but it is essential to look at.

Why?
Well, in this IBM has a luxury problem, they basically own 96% of that market, but the 4% can become 8% then 16%, at that point the message from IBM becomes 4 out of 5 use our mainframe. When the 96% is 120,000 mainframes it is one thing, when it is based on 960 mainframes it is a whole different story. The numbers matter, that has always been the case (even if Microsoft is in denial now they are shedding market share). 

Reasons
There can be a simple reason. For one epidemiology, if it is about real time numbers, the market is slim, massively slim, compared to that market a size zero model is a mere chunky blobernaut. Cray is one of the few players in that setting and it makes sense that a Cray is there where an IBM is optionally not. Still, I would want to know.

You see, in strategic thinking we have two elements we ALWAYS need to keep one eye on. One is threat the other is weakness. In this example real-time data management is a weakness. Now we need to understand that this market is set to billions and those who desperately need it, that number is not an issue, yet for IBM investing that much for 4% is tactically not sound, not until that marketshare is a lot larger. That makes perfect sense and let’s face it no one owns 100% of a market, if that ever happens we will have a lot more problems than we could possibly understand. 

Why do I care?
Well, for the most I do not, but at present I am not to involved with any SWOT analyses, and the ones I did lately was done for wannabe managers who seemingly only understand bulletpoint memo’s. The idea of any strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats (SWOT) analyses that is related to business competition, project planning and capability planning is more important than most people realise. We see it in intelligence, business intelligence and market intelligence. And now we see two new real markets emerging where it is important too. Gaming and SAAS/GAAS. Even as GAAS is still some time away, the need to actively SWOT in all three is there and I believe the players are not too finicky about that and they need to be. As the cloud is oversold and the dangers are underestimated their board of directors need to hold up a mirror where they can tell themselves that it doesn’t matter, and when we understand how completely those people are lying to themselves, at that point you might get the idea that there is a problem. The SWOT has more sides, it tests your capability, your software (Strengths and opportunities) but that needs to be levelled by weaknesses and strength. 

800 years ago
To understand this we need to go back to the good old days (Ghengis Khan). It was he who stated “It is not enough for me to win, my opponents must all fail”. Yes, I admit it is a massively loose translation but it applies to the now. When we stumble over sales people and their unnatural large ego’s, we tend to listen because they make the loudest claims, yet are they valid? Consider Solarwinds and what they enabled criminals to do, when you consider the news last week when we were given ‘SolarWinds hackers stole US sanctions policy data, Microsoft confirms’, it was a weakness and a threat, so when we how long the hack was active and that we now see that policy data is online and open for anyone to look into, what other sides are not yet known? It is not enough for SAAS vendors to look at SWOT, their customers need to do the same thing. So when I considered the 4% is was not because I need to know everything (which at times is still nice as a high executive CIA decision maker has a girlfriend that has size 6 lingerie, his wife is size 11), so who needed to do the SWOT, someone at the CIA or me? One could say both as I am his threat and he is my opportunity. 

The stage of what is what could be remains forever in motion. 

So where from here?
That remains open. For players like Amazon, the enabling of GAAS becomes more and more important, especially when you see the blunders that players like Ubisoft makes, they need to be aware of where their customers are, especially when Netflix becomes active in gaming too. They will have an advantage, but Amazon can counter it, yet there are sides that remain unknown for now and they should not be (not on that level) and there is the rub. Too many rely on external solutions when that solution needs to be in-house. And we can disperse with all the marketing BS that some give like “We are a better company now”, when you drop the ball to that degree there was a massive space for improvement and you merely are on par for not being where you should have been a year ago. An old IBM Statistics wisdom was “You’ll know when you measure”. This sounds corny but it is true, you cannot anticipate and adjust when there is no data and in all this any SWOT analyses would have been usable data. So where was the 4%? I do not know and the poster seemingly did not know either. It might be fair enough, yet when that 4% becomes 8%, when should you have known? It is a question with a subjective answer. Yet in gaming it is less so, especially as I am becoming aware (unproven at present) that Microsoft has one nice trick up their sleeve. There is partial evidence out there that Skyrim will be on PS5 in digital formal only. Several shops now have a ‘DO NOT USE’ for any physical PS5 format of Skyrim. Now, there might be an easy answer for this after all these lockdowns, but it is only 4 weeks away now, so you tell me. Is Microsoft playing its ‘bully’ card? Are they trying to push people to Xbox? It is a fair approach, they did pay 8 billion and change for it, but consider that their actions are set to a larger stage. A stage of millions of angry fans. I solved it for them by creating public domain gaming ideas for any Sony exclusive RPG game. I am not Bethesda, I am a mere IP creator, but when software makers are given a free ride towards Sony exclusives and even if one game hits the mark, the Bethesda market share dwindles to a lower number. Now consider what happens when that happens on Amazon Luna too? I might be a mere 1% factor, but if another one joins me I grow 100% whilst Microsoft dwindles more. For Microsoft Amazon is becoming a real threat and a weakness, for Amazon Netflix is optionally a threat and a weakness whilst Google Stadia is optionally the opportunity for Amazon. 

All SWOT settings that could have been seen from afar from the beginning. It is not everyones train of thought, yet in this day and age, I think it needs to be, the markets and our lives are changing in all kinds of ways too quickly and too large, we need to think head and having a clear grasp on how to apply SWOT in our lives might become essential. 

The difference?
That is a much harder line to follow. It comes down to the word ‘Insight’ and it is a dangerous, a very dangerous word. Because depending on the person this can be Insight, speculated insight, expected insight, and adjusted insight and more than once they are all on one pile making the data less reliable. Insight is also subjective, we all see it differently and that does not mean that I am right and everyone else has a wrong station. No, it is all subjective and most CAN be correct, but as the insight is disturbed by speculated, adjusted and expected versions, the numbers alter slightly. And now we see that 4% was not 4%, is was 7% and 5%, 5% because there were other IBM mainframes in play (adjusted) and 4% was the speculated number and 7% was the expected number. Now we have a very different station, the expected moves us from 96% use our product, towards 9 out of 10 are our customers, which is now a mere step towards 4 out of 5 use IBM. So would you like to bring that conversation to any board of directors? 
They’ll serve your balls for dinner (see image). 

Still feel certain that you do not want to know? In reality most SWOT analyses are seemingly pointless and often amazingly boring, yet in this day and age they are an essential part of business and gaming at $130 billion a year is facing that side as well. So when you consider what I gave you also consider the impact that some shops have ‘DO NOT USE’ for Skyrim preorders, 4 weeks before release, lockdown or not, it beckons all kinds of questions. And to be fair, there could be a simple explanation for all of it, but that too is the consequence of trying to create hypes via YouTube without clearly informing the audience. It is a weakness Microsoft has shown a few times (Bethesda was never completely innocent, but equally never this guilty). 

So what has a game in common with a business setting? It is simple, they both need to manage expectations and that too is a side of SWOT, even as marketing often merely focusses on opportunity, there is a weakness and a threat. The lack of clarity and misinformation are both a weakness (angry customers) and a threat (churning customers) and in the world of gaming the churners are the real danger, they can get the flocking population of angry gamers to come with them and really make numbers spiral downward. In this day and age SWOT is an additional essential way to go, in nearly all walks of life. We simply can not avoid being that naive anymore, not with spiralling energy prices and more and more articles that can at present no longer be found in any supermarket, all whilst plenty of people are in a holding pattern for their incomes. 

It is a train of thought and it is up to you to decide if you want to do it or not, because that was always your right, the right to ignore, but it must be said that it will be at your own peril. 

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October 10, 2021 · 22:19

Darkness through inaction

I had the weirdest dream, it was dark. When I woke up, the cat woke me up and I was slightly weirded out. Everything was pitch black. Was I dead? Was I blind? I looked at my watch, and the time was bright green, I was not blind. I looked around, it took a lot longer than usual. It was the darkest black. I slowly walked to the wall, I turned the lights off and on, nothing happened. Then I remembered my emergency flashlight (better safe than sorry) and it gave some light. I looked around, everything was black. I walked to the windows and looked out, outside was black too, yet this was London, close to Hyde Park, no light anywhere. I walked to the kitchen and got the emergency tea lights and the candleholders. Over a dozen were placed all over the apartment, all IKEA and all working. Three in the living room, one in the bedroom, one in the kitchen, all whilst checking what had happened to the stove, there was gas so I placed the filled kettle on the stove. I inspected the apartment and I got a decent insight in the damage. There was no heating, there was no light, but there was gas and there were candles. 

This is not imaginary, people in Lebanon know what I am talking about and when we consider the Independent (at https://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/gas-prices-rise-electricity-bills-b1935122.html) and they give us ‘Gas price spike will add £29bn to UK electricity bills next year, analysis finds’ yet this is only half the story, you see there is a growing shortage of electricity and it is getting worse. I had hoped for 2-3 more years, but that is less and less likely. So even as my version will not apply to many, but some will face it, it is now becoming heating versus light versus food. Yet there is a workaround. I spoke about it in the past. Even as Elon Musk has an advantage with his car battery, he is not alone and for plenty of applications there are alternatives. Consider a battery, rechargeable batteries, the size of 4 D-type batteries in a row. A stage where you can have one, a harness of two of those beauties linked to charge systems. And there are several solutions. In WW2 people used bicycles. So your home trainer becomes a more powerful charger. There are of course the solar panels, but it is not a solution for all, some will put some version of a wind-vane on their roof. All options to charge the batteries. So when we see that, we also need a new light source. Emergency lighting based on LED systems will come more and more into play, some are more festive and there are several solutions there. It is however a solution I saw in Sweden that could be the larger station. 

Swedish plug

This plug is a lot smaller than others and there is the station, an additional power net in every home and the people with decent DIY skills can do it themselves. And in the beginning it will be merely light and chargers, but over time we will see more and more shift to the low power consumption curve. In the Netherlands electricity prices went up by 57%, so how long until that is a setting no one can afford? Some state (using ‘could’) that electricity prices in the UK will rise by 30%, do you think you have a lot of time? And then we need to consider both the US and Canada, they might not be in the same boat, but they will see the prices rise too. As such the ideas I am giving you now are not new and not unique and taking notice of these dangers sooner rather than later is also important. There are solutions now and some are not elegant, not the prettiest, but they work and that will always be better than sitting it out in complete darkness. And in the stage where you can have 10 4 Watt LED’s are the equivalent of 10 30 Watt lightbulbs, it  is not a lot, but it might be enough and as the batteries are stronger you can have 8 hours with 10 8 Watts that compare to 10 60 Watt bulbs. Even though the bedrooms will suffice with 4 Watt solutions. And this situation is not that far away. The price hikes will force people to take that stand soon enough. And the sooner you can start, the better off you are because when 20,000,000 start on the same day the only people who will end up with lights are those willing to pay the 450% markup, commerce taught us that lesson in a pretty harsh way in the past already.

Feel free to take no notice, but when you forgot your Tea lights at IKEA and you wake up in complete darkness, it will be too late, I hope you will never face that. Yes, I admit that this setting in London is remotely small, but at present it is no longer zero, which is a setting you did not face a year ago, neither did you face a 30% price hike and that is now (by some) a speculated setting a mere year away.

Consider what you have, what you face and what could be and arm yourself for that situation, your choice, your consequence. And also consider the optional savings you make especially in a 30% price hike when you have a solution that takes 75% less energy, even if the battery is the last  part you get, you will already be making a saving.

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October 10, 2021 · 19:46

Choices that some make

We all have this. We make choices and that is not against anyone (or anything for that matter). So I was a bit on the fence when I saw ‘Frances Haugen takes on Facebook: the making of a modern US hero’ (at https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2021/oct/10/frances-haugen-takes-on-facebook-the-making-of-a-modern-us-hero). First off, let’s start by saying I have nothing against Frances Haugen or her point of view. I do find the setting ‘the making of a modern US hero’ debatable. I feel certain that it was not her setting to become a hero or to see heroism. It is the paint stage that the massively less than credible media is taking. If big tech was not under attack the media would most likely have been more moderate in their colours of painting brushes. 

We get told “The 37-year-old logged out of Facebook’s company network for the last time in May and last week was being publicly lauded a “21st-century American hero” on Washington’s Capitol Hill” yet where was the media these last three years? Collecting Facebook advertising money I reckon. So when we are given “I believe Facebook’s products harm children, stoke division and weaken our democracy” I do not disagree, I have no data to disagree, but the media had that, they have had a clear picture for years, but for the media flaming creates emotion, it create click bitches and it generates digital advertisement income. But Facebook was an eager tool for a long time and you do not bite the hand that feeds you and the media has shown itself very protective of ANY hand that feeds them. If there is one part I disagree with (to some extent) then it is “She repeatedly referred to the company choosing growth and profit over safety and warned that Facebook and Instagram’s algorithms – which tailor the content that a user sees – were causing harm”, it is the “which tailor the content that a user sees – were causing harm” part I cannot completely agree with. I do believe that Frances Haugen is sincere in her approach, but ‘causing harm’ requires evidence, evidence that is a lot harder to obtain. Perhaps that was given, and I did not look at all the documents, but there is a stage, optionally two. The first is “choosing growth and profit over safety”, that seems clear, the entire emotional flames might be part of that, yet there is a stage of “choosing growth and profit over increased safety”, it seems like a small step, yet the stage is proving that it was all against “profit over decreased safety” that matters. We create safety, or we stop increased safety, none of that is on Facebook, only if a clear view of “profit over decreased safety” is shown Facebook will have a larger problem. You see, no matter how we point the fingers on ‘flaming’ in the end it is the view of the less than articulate person lacking a decent education and the US is so protective of its First Amendment, that nothing goes anywhere. The Media has been using that stick to slap donkeys, horses, dogs and people for decades. In this I have some issues with Democrat Senator Ed Markey (D-MA), when we are given   “Facebook is like big tobacco, enticing young kids with that first cigarette,” said Senator Markey at the hearing. “Congress will be taking action. We will not allow your company to harm our children and our families and our democracy, any longer.” I cannot completely disagree, yet in the 70’s and 80’s there was clear evidence on Big Tobacco, but the US government and corporations had no issues taxing and grabbing marketing dollars wherever they could. (Example at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Vg_QVAEJtg) If Facebook is just as bad, you should have had years of evidence and I believe you had it but these political big wigs were unwilling to act. A model based on selling advertisements that brought in billions, what was there not to love and for the most the media loved it too. So I am not arguing with the views that Frances Haugen is bringing, it is the views of those heralding her now. And too many of them should be seriously afraid. When hackers and others start looking into data and the timeline of decisions a few people in the Senate, Congress and a few other players will sweat drops of death. 

And my view? Well CNBC did that work with ‘Facebook spent more on lobbying than any other Big Tech company in 2020’ (at https://www.cnbc.com/2021/01/22/facebook-spent-more-on-lobbying-than-any-other-big-tech-company-in-2020.html) at the beginning of the year. So when someone grabs an abacus and digs on where the $19 million plus went, some politicians might not like the answers the people are given, and that is the part that is out in the open, the setting of Stakeholders and media for Facebook might optionally double or triple that amount. It is the highest of all the FAANG group and almost twice as much as Microsoft, so what do you think will happen next? 

It took 20 years for big tobacco to get into real trouble, as such if there is a parallel there is every chance that something is done by 2040, as such Facebook has plenty of time. But in all this, there is a part missing, which is not on anyone (and not on CNBC either). The stage where the people get to know the names the lobbyists and how these politicians voted on Facebook and other first amendment issues. That is the part no one gets to see and I very much doubt that this will change any day soon.

And my point of view is seen with Christopher Wylie when we get “Wylie said he had relived his own experience as a whistleblower by watching Haugen. But he also found the flashbacks frustrating – because nothing has changed.” The Cambridge Analytica is out there and even as the New York Times gives us 2 days ago “We’re Smarter About Facebook Now”, I personally am considering that they are full of it. They needed to be smarter about it close to 2 years ago, so weren’t they? Isn’t that equally a decent question to ask? So as Wylie gives us “The fact that we are still having a conversation about what is happening, not what are we going to do about it, I find slightly exasperating,” shows us clearly the inaction of politics, of policies and the lack of actions by the law, global law no less. Fir we look at the US, but the laws and the actions by the EU and the Commonwealth is equally lacking, so why is that? It is due to the choices some make and the consequences we all have to face and in a stage where every coffer is empty and every nation has a credit card that has a maximised debt, acting against a company bringing in millions in taxable dollars is often not considered.

We all make choices, that is not a sin, but after the Catholics, a second deal where the choosing parties are giving sanctum to those endangering kids is debatable on several levels, that being said, those opposing Facebook will need to prove it and that is not an easy matter to do, because as I state, it is not about “choosing growth and profit over safety”, it will be about “profit versus decreased safety” and that is a very different data stage and the evidence will not be easy to obtain, mainly because the users are often the problem too. Facebook gives us “Facebook’s policy is to delete accounts if there is proof that the account holder is under 13 – they won’t be able to take action if they can’t be sure of the child’s age.” And they try to adhere to that, yet there have been plenty of indications that some were younger, but the stage of “if there is proof that the account holder is under 13”, as such the account stays in place. And when we see several sources give us (unverified for honesty) “A friend has a 9-year-old son and they have allowed him to create his own Facebook account” how can Facebook be blamed and that setting will taint the evidence as well, as such it will take a long time for actual action to start, it is not a setting that Frances Haugen might have seen coming, but in a land of laws, evidence is key (unless political issues take precedence). 

There is a lot more on the Facebook front and it will take months for it all to surface and when it does there is more than likely several months of contemplation and inaction, all because those who could act would not. Who is to blame there? I will let you work that one out.

Have a great day!

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October 8, 2021 · 17:17

Paradoxical thinking

This is not reality, this is not what is happening, but it could have been. Surprised? I actually was when my mind (the back of my mind) came up with a third idea for a TV series. Perhaps that is the wrong setting, a mini series is better. You see any story needs to have a beginning, the substance, optionally with twists, plots and loads of question marks. After that we get an ending, the satisfaction of any story is that there is completion. Now, I love the works of Terry Gilliam and as such I loved 12 monkeys and Brazil, they leave question marks. It is not a fine refined story from beginning to end. A setting I homaged to in the third season of Keno Diastima. The series needs to keep a question mark or two in place, let the watcher, the reader, the appreciator of any story find their own epilogue in this. If a story draws in the person taking notice of that story continues and sparks their own imagination, the story goes beyond success. That is how I believe that stories need to go at times. Here I giggle towards Jimmy Carr who stated more than once that women watch porn movies to see if they get married in the end. Or as I see it an alternative to ‘Try before you buy’ or is it ‘Fit before you commit’?. So in any paradoxical setting we need to take the stage of ‘a statement that is seemingly contradictory or opposed to common sense and yet is perhaps true’, here we see the use of ‘perhaps’ and that is fine, only history is to some degree is set in absolutes and even those are at times debatable. You see, in the two elements of what could be we need to see the stage of what could be possible and that is where we need to go. A stage where it is not about what happens when X and Y do not happen, but a stage where we see what is happening because X1 and Y2 never did happen, and we can set a stage to adhere to this and that was the stage my mind was tinkering with the last 2 days (it might have been longer but I was not aware of it) and seeing this come to pass is important. 

It does not interfere with any of my IP, so I have no issues making that public now. Yet is it interfere or inter phere? Weirdly enough it is a larger setting that applies and there my mind keeps me out for now. 

So when I stated in the past “being able to test” there is a stage where we see what happens, but because some elements are in play it did not happen. So when I talked about the assassination of a fictive character named Marty Walsh there was a larger stage, that stage was that fictive character Patrick Pizzella would have served longer and he would have given his seat to a person named Julie Su in 2024. Because that is no longer happening certain labour adjustments were never made and that is the rub, for some players that change would have been detrimental to their profit margins. Yet how can you set the stage of what never happened? Well if you think of the Patents in play, if the change happened, the stage for 2026 would alter slightly, not a lot but enough. Because of a stage Julie Su favoured, 3 students would enter the halls of ISG, they started having lunch together and they come up with an idea that would set the foundations of 5G in a new direction, it would create 4 patents setting a new direction that creates the partnership of Rogers Wireless and Amazon and that 5G goes into new directions, this never happens but the changes towards that were really small and even if you cannot prove it, the stage was close to alter economic boundaries and more important Technological settings on nanotechnology and 5G, three people were essential to that part and as Marty Walsh the threshold is shifting towards the not happening. A paradoxical stage that becomes a non-event and Julie Su would never know, because she was not where she needed to be for the events to happen. 

So when we see the story evolve we do not merely see when did not happen, but we get a glimpse of what else was never a reality and what more is on the stage to be considered an option. Paradoxical settings are never the stage of one stone in a pond and watching the ripples, they are the second, third and fourth stone that interfere with the ripples seen. The caster will hope that the second stone will create enough chaos, but that person knows that more might be required. The story is then an almost given certainty, and the story evolves as it had the caster, the stones and the ripples to focus on, and as such the paradoxical parameters are set to the audience. Yet in all this there is a finite amount of actions that we can take and that too sets the stage towards a maximum stage that any story can hold. I believe that this is a stage that American producers can never comprehend, they watch the story and see how the spreadsheet goes green, yet that part had nothing to do with either the caster, the stones or the ripples. That person needs to trust the finite approach to the storyteller and so far they either over manage or merely cut off hoping to get better grounds elsewhere. A sad stage, but in this the storyteller does not care, that person can revert to books to tell the story for those who care, for that person the story was everything and in this FX has always been right from the moment they gave that slogan to their audience.

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October 7, 2021 · 20:39

Reprising 39 steps

This is not about an alcoholic taking his 12 steps three times with 3 breaks. This is about a 1935 movie. An absolute masterpiece by Alfred Hitchcock. It is also one if the first exposures by Tinseltown of the use of industrial espionage. Over time there would be more cases and more events, yet the stage I saw today ‘Twitch confirms massive data breach’ (source: BBC) made me think of the earliest steps in that direction. Even as we are given “it comes at a time when competitors such as YouTube Gaming are offering huge salaries to snap up gaming talent, so the fallout could be significant.” This does not mean that Google was behind it, yet the larger stage is that Industrial espionage is at the seat of many corporations and these corporations have absolutely no idea what they are in for. There are no checks, no balances and at this point Twitch is in a stage where they could lose the bulk of their value overnight. So as I read “Twitch confirmed the breach and said it was “working with urgency” to understand the extent of it” I see a stage where a company was clueless and now less of a clue where their money will go in November 2021. 

Even as I think back to the 39 steps and the momentous line “The 39 Steps is an organization of spies, collecting information on behalf of the foreign office of…the design for a silent aircraft engine” but the one step they did not have in those days was the disgruntled employee. They can do in one hour more damage then Baker at MI-6 or Evans at MI-5 can do in a month, and companies are just not ready to take a larger setting of cyber and internal investigations serious. Fell free to doubt me and call +44 1242 221491 (GCHQ), they probably have a few leaflets and other information that will make any CTO cry like a little chihuahua. 

The problem how to go about it, as I see it it will be too late for Twitch, Microsoft was done for a long time ago and Google is one of the few who has a decent handle on cyber security. Yet the nightmare is actually a lot worse. To grasp this we merely need to take a look at ‘Industrial Espionage: Criminal or Civil Remedies’ by Gillian Dempsey (at https://www.aic.gov.au/sites/default/files/2020-05/tandi106.pdf) the quote “Australian companies should be mindful that competitors, and nations which might be hosts to Australian investment, may have a strong interest in Australian trade secrets and other economic intelligence. Although its incidence and prevalence are unknowable, industrial espionage by governments and private sector institutions is a fact of contemporary commercial life. Recent developments in the technology of intercepting communications make such activities easier to undertake and more difficult to detect than in the past.” There are a few issues and the biggest one is partnerships, find in that partnership two disgruntled employees on both sides of the fence and that company is pretty much doomed. Even if the law becomes adequate, the rules of evidence will get in the way because the bulk of ALL companies have a lovely disregard of non-repudiation, and the third party exploiting the two angry people will laugh all the way to his zero tax haven (Cayman Islands anyone?) And that stage will grow and grow, because there is a board room believe that their company will not get into that, all whilst they cannot see the pie chart as the chunky blubbernaut in the room ate it. And the game gets to go from bad to nasty, with cryptocurrency the appeal for many increases whilst the ability to find the people involved goes from tiny to a number approximating zero and the law is not ready, it hasn’t been ready for several years and as sources give us “One of the reasons why corporations engage in industrial espionage is to save time as well as huge sums of money. After all, it can take years to bring products and services to market and the costs can add up.” This is true but it is the setting that several people who were dismissed ended up with huge starting bonuses whilst being as productive as the janitors paperweight in that new company. So when did you get $675,000 a year with a startup bonus of $3,500,000 plus a piece of real estate in the Cayman Islands for surfing Facebook all day long? That is the setting that some companies face and until they adjust the safety in their firms, they are the companies with huge neon lights and the neon phrase ‘sucker’ right next to it. I was taught about non-repudiation at Uni 14 years ago and so far the amount of companies taking it serious is just as close to zero as the people getting convicted of it.

So whilst the media is flaming the $13,000,000 total twitch payments, we are all looking in the wrong direction. We see one side, and this might have been by disgruntled people (my speculation) but it was an attack of a side that Amazon had decently solidified, so what comes next and when will it impact something that YOU depend on? There was a lesson and it was handed to the people in 1935, so why did the decision makers not take the essential steps?

Perhaps they were done in some places but there is at present no evidence that any were done. 

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October 7, 2021 · 12:47

Two items

Yes, there are two items that are on the mind of may people. One is directly on the mind of many and as I stated in ‘Utter insanity’ on October 4th a lot of impact will be seen and the poor will get the brunt of that impact. As I see it, there is a lot that will be going wrong and even as the US Democrats are hiding behind the media slogans like ‘Biden: Republicans playing ‘Russian roulette’ with US economy over debt ceiling’, we better catch on quick. This issue is not now, it has been going on for over a decade, too much spending, no exit strategy and upping the debt every time and this has been going on since the Presidents George W Bush, Barack Obama, Donald Trump and President Joe Biden were in office. From 2001 the debt want from $6 trillion until now as it is $28 trillion. I will agree that President Biden got a really bad hand and he inherited the debt, but so did Obama and Trump. George W Bush had Afghanistan and Iraq in consequence to what happened in New York which was not on him, but ALL these presidents had the option to overhaul the Tax system and NONE of them did so, this pox is on BOTH the Republican and the Democrat houses. A budget that was there to enable big business and media but none acted over well over 20 years, so this is on more. In this Bill Clinton was the one who left the budget was in surplus so his inaction has a decent acceptable excuse. And now the Republicans say enough is enough, I cannot fault them for that. As I showed the Defence department wasted $30-$45 billion on TWO PROJECTS, two projects that does not meet the bare minimum but we go on paying those wasting the funds. Why is that? And the lack of adjusting Tax laws, not to tax the rich, but the setting of justly tax ALL. An optional setting that as offered to them in 1998, but they were eager to state that it was too hard. Now consider the Google Ads system that properly (and decently) charges the advertiser and not greedy grab the advertiser like the advertisement  agencies did for decades. So it was not that hard, was it?

And as we now see the need to ‘overhaul’ the Senate rules to end the amendment of the ‘filibuster’, a stage that has been there for a long time is now regarded by the Democrats as too hard to handle. I am not the voice for against that decision, yet consider that THEY TOO would not overhaul the tax system when it was in their administration, so is it fair? And in all this Wall Street is giving whatever ‘free’ advice the media is willing to listen to, they are so scared now. 

What was issue two?
It cones from a different corner. When the BBC gave us ‘Princess Haya: Dubai ruler had ex-wife’s phone hacked – UK court’ 8 hours ago (at https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-58814978) I saw “The High Court has found that the ruler of Dubai, Sheikh Mohammed Al Maktoum, interfered with British justice by ordering the hacking of the phone of his ex-wife, Princess Haya of Jordan. The phones of her solicitors, Baroness Fiona Shackleton QC and Nick Manners, were also targeted during their divorce custody case, according to the court”, it took a few second (approximately 7.1) and my mind raced. You see the media is a nice source to use given information against them. You see, The Verge gave us on July 23rd (at https://www.theverge.com/22589942/nso-group-pegasus-project-amnesty-investigation-journalists-activists-targeted) ‘NSO’s Pegasus spyware: here’s what we know’. In that article we get “NSO Group’s CEO and co-founder Shalev Hulio broadly denied the allegations, claiming that the list of numbers had nothing to do with Pegasus or NSO. He argued that a list of phone numbers targeted by Pegasus (which NSO says it doesn’t keep, as it has “no insight” into what investigations are being carried out by its clients) would be much shorter”, It is the setting of “has “no insight” into what investigations are being carried out by its clients” against the setting that the BBC gives us which is “referred to the hacking as “serial breaches of (UK) domestic criminal law”, “in violation of fundamental common law and ECHR rights”, “interference with the process of this court and the mother’s access to justice” and “abuse of power” by a head of government”, we can agree with the point of view, but where is the evidence? The NSO stated that it does not keep any, so what is the source and the foundation of the evidence? The link the BBC gives us the judgment (at https://www.judiciary.uk/judgments/al-maktoum-judgments/) yet there I see in the reference for the Hacking fact finding part:

i. The mobile phones of the mother, two of her solicitors (Baroness Shackleton and Nicholas Manners), her Personal Assistant and two members of her security staff have been the subject of unlawful surveillance during the course of the present proceedings and at a time of significant events in those proceedings.

ii. The surveillance has been carried out by using software licensed to the Emirate of Dubai or the UAE by the NSO Group.

iit. The surveillance has been carried out by servants or agents of the father, the Emirate of Dubai or the UAE.

iv. The software used for this surveillance included the capacity to track the target’s location, the reading of SMS and email messages and other messaging apps, listening to telephone calls and accessing the target’s contact lists, passwords, calendars and photographs. It would also allow recording of live activity and taking of screenshots and pictures.

Yet in all this, how was this evidence obtained? The findings rely on the setting stated by Baroness Hale, which is fair enough and she stated “In this country we do not require documentary proof. We rely heavily on oral evidence, especially from those who were present when the alleged events took place. Day after day, up and down the country, on issues large and small, judges are making up their minds whom to believe. They are guided by many things, including the inherent probabilities, any contemporaneous documentation or records, any circumstantial evidence tending to support one account rather than the other, and their overall impression of the characters and motivations of the witnesses.” Here I have a problem. Not the setting that Baroness Hale states, it applies for many cases and I would support this, yet in this technology the problem is that even those deep into this technology do not completely understand what they face. When we look at sources all over, we see a former intelligence officer from Germany who cannot state that Huawei is a danger, because their technology people do not comprehend it. We see source after source flaming the NSO group issues but they are flaming and even those sources are debated as it refers to sources from 2016, long before the Pegasus group had the software it deploys now. If we accept the words by Baroness Hale “We rely heavily on oral evidence, especially from those who were present when the alleged events took place” yet what happens when that witness the average normal person, how can that person give credibility to neural surgery? It is the same, a stage where the media relied on flaming and keeping people off balance, how can a person who does not comprehend technology be given the credibility that this court has? And should the court disregard the influence the media has, they merely need to see connected contributory manslaughter Martin Bashir was a part of, as I personally see it, his actions resulted in the path that led to the death of Lady Diana Spencer. 

In this I support “the court’s findings were based on evidence that was not disclosed to him, and that they were “made in a manner which was unfair””, I will take it one step further, if the submitted evidence is held to the cold light of day, its value will be debatable on a few levels. So when we consider “Dr William Marczak, who is based in California and is a senior research fellow at the University of Toronto’s Citizen Lab, which researches digital surveillance. He told the court he had no doubt the phones were hacked using NSO’s Pegasus software. He also concluded “with high confidence” that the phones were hacked by a single operator in a nation state. He concluded with medium confidence that it was most unlikely to be any state other than the UAE.” In this we saw the CIA with their “with high confidence” and I wonder hat it is based on. I am not attacking Dr William Marczak, there is no reason to, but when you consider “with medium confidence that it was most unlikely to be any state other than the UAE”, so he is not completely certain, he is decently certain that someone did it, but there is no evidence (aka he cannot swear) that it was the UAE, feel free to read the settings and the statements, it could have been anyone, if the evidence holds up to scrutiny and that pert is also a part I am not certain of. You see when we see “A senior member of NSO’s management team called Mrs Blair from Israel on 5 August 2020 to inform her that “it had come to their attention that their software may have been misused to monitor the mobile phones of Baroness Shackleton and HRH Princess Haya” and we hold it up to the interview in The Verge on July 23rd with Shalev Hulio we see conflicts, conflicts of optional evidence by the same source, why is that?

These are the two Items that were bugging me to some extent and as my mind is racing towards another TV series stage (it will be the third my mind designs) I wonder what the eager bored mind is able to contemplate. So as we wonder what drove the judgement (no negativity implied), I see too many strings going from one place to another and they might be just in my mind (the place between ones ears) but too much evidence does not make sense, in both stages offered and the media took centre stage to both, and the media is the weakest link of credibility, that has been personally proven a few times over.

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October 6, 2021 · 23:03

What sells better?

That is the question that was racing through my mind today. We all know (or have heard of) the expression ‘Sex sells’. It is used to market, to advertise and to entice (usually the men). But what if that is merely the setting? What if in actuality fantasy is the part that sells better? I had a small daydream this afternoon. I was in Toronto and I was chosen to be the backup goalie for the Toronto Maple Leafs (yes, the dream is not very realistic). I was sitting in some cafe, the staff was nice and suddenly addressed by Sheldon Keefe (their coach) and he said to me “Lawrence, today your most desired dreams becomes a reality”, my dry response was “What? You arranged a weekend of wild and passionate sex with Laura Vandervoort?” The team was howling with laughter and the coach deadpan response was “Well almost most desired then” and I was given the 62 Jersey to be the backup goalie that week, and lets face it, not unlike my blog name, if we want to have a fantasy, lets go for the really satisfying ones. 

So there I was with my jersey there were a few other jokes and giggles after that I woke up from my daydream (without the LV special), such is life. But the dream stuck and when I was watching someones drawing of Alice in wonderland I started to put things together. What if we are not looking at a porn or some sex movie, but what we used to call in the old days a soft porn movie (all innuendo and little or no show, except for the boobies). What if the movie is a new take in Alice in Wonderland? We go through the motions (or Alice does) and the Cheshire Cat, the Caterpillar, the rabbit, they are all men with masks and onesies. A movie that is like not some cheap movie, but high end special effects (not unlike The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus) and a storyline that does follow the book, but with a twist at the end. The end being that [CENSORED]

A stage that reminded me of a movie that impacted with me, Jacob’s Ladder. So what happens if Virtual Reality takes over our lives too much? There are settings (Elite Dangerous) where I would love to have the hardware to do just that, but the hardware for now is too expensive and (for now) not immersive enough. So when that changes (most likely in 2-3 years) what are the applications? What happens when we can dig into the fantasies of any person (like The Cell) 

So what can we learn? I am not merely thinking healing, but interrogations, information retrieval and a few other avenue’s. So when we take the stage and turn on the fantasy, what could be achieved? We have seen this in the past but always as the end goal, as far as I can tell it was never used as a mere waypoint. Why was that? It cannot be the limit of Hollywood, it could be the limit of any producer yet I believe that this path could lead to a load of green as the faith of Americans go. I believe that there is a host of options here, and as streaming channels are competing more and more, whatever we can do that is truly original is one that streamers will entice, I merely hope that they wake up before they cancel the series too soon (way too many examples) because it is the slow start and the deep story that entices a crowd and engages them. Not the Marvel versions. This is not me having a go at Marvel movies, because I love them, but there is more and that part is not explored, or perhaps explored too little. I personally would have loved where Dollhouse season 3 would have taken us. Eliza Dushku, Dichen Lachman, Enver Gjokaj, Tahmoh Penikett, Fran Kranz, Olivia Williams, Harry Lennix and Amy Acker were all beyond good, the story was engaging and enticing, yet we were sold short, a cancellation after season 2. So will a new approach to Virtual Reality as a weapon make it? I honestly do not know but as far as I can tell no one took that route and in a stage where games can almost take us there, the lack of such a direction seems like a loss.

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October 3, 2021 · 10:09

The balance of one and zero

I just woke up from the weirdest dream, so take my word on this, this is not about reality, this is entertainment (or the future). The dream was nice and ‘uplifting’ there is nothing not sexy about a dozen women in tight outfits defending a location killing anything in sight. I am sitting in a chair (I think), the women are patrolling the place, there are at least 4-5 women in my room and a lot more outside. But the difference between peace and the other thing is a mere switch. From one moment to another all the women change from tranquil to deadly, waves of attacks start and the women kill whatever comes in view and there is a lot coming their way, yet in the end it does not matter, nearly all are killed, the exercise is over. It was a training, but not one you would see. This was the training of a true AI. You see, AI’s lean differently. They had similar training a child has, but the AI becomes mature a lot faster, a thousand times faster and to teach an AI they get pointers. They literally get data points and point references. This is called aggregated evolution. 

This specific AI is owned by the CIA and the year is 21xx something. 

The evolution happens through what will call an Exabyte drive. The parsing of that data takes a little while and it is done in the background, and the AI takes in every aspect of the training. It makes the AI the dangerous thing it is, and it is truly dangerous. So at this time there are only a few true AI’s, some are economic, some are logistic, some are tactical, some are operational. And only the big players can afford them, a true AI is not some server, it is like making the 1984 comparison between an IBM model 36 mainframe to an IBM PCXT. There are other AI’s, they are not true AI’s, but are a lot similar. They are a lot smaller and they are evolved deeper learning systems. They bring the bacon but only to a degree and the world is in a stage to create stronger AI’s, and as people find cheap ways to evolve their AI, a hacker team is dedicated to finding and hacking streams with data from Exabyte drives. They cannot comprehend the data, but any AI can and the evolution of an AI is worth a lot of money, so as these hackers seek they find the wrong Aggregation file. They find the one that was highly secure, but still someone found a way and got the stream of the CIA and there the problem starts. At some point the wrong one is pushed into a zero (yes, it had to be a sexual reference). But here we get a new lesson, one that as out there, but not the one we envisioned. When you were young, you tried to play with matches and your parents stopped you, just like you were stopped playing with knifes. You were told danger, and evil, bad and dangerous. It was how we learn. An AI does not learn, it does not merely learn the game of chess, it gets handed the history of EVERY chess game ever played. It gets pointers and create the experience, free of morality, free of ‘burden’, so when it gets data it never had it learns in its own way and has no morality baggage, yet what it learns could be anything. The pointers the AI creates evolves it and it makes it worth a lot more. 

So as we turn a page to another time we see a young woman dressed in retro miniskirt (70’s) and tight tank-top, she is looking in a store for a 4K movie, she picks up the Notebook (off course she did) and walks to the counter to pay, but now the stage changes, the operational AI in that mall was fed the CIA drive and recognises the woman, it sees a danger and EVERY system in the mall is now out to kill her and her kind (basically all women overly nicely dressed). The woman has no problems dealing with any attack, the security guards were easily dispersed but it suddenly happens all over the mall, and the security guards and the police accept the alarms that AI’s give them, the AI locks down the mall to protect the people outside but the mall becomes a deathtrap and all the other nice women who have no idea what’s going on are killed almost instantly. Those women who were not alone are suddenly seen as group dangers and women, men and children are executed, the AI never understood foundational stages and disperses as it was taught that a transgressing danger must be killed. And it happens all over the place, not merely in one mall, in any mall that had the same operational AI. 

It becomes over time the dangers that short cuts, hackers and greedy overseers represent, it is not some avoidable setting, when we consider Solarwinds, Microsoft and a few other hacked places, they all gave the goods, but we need to understand that true AI’s have foundational differences. We have seen this in many movies, but did we learn anything? 

You see, we saw periodic tables of what one day might be an AI, we see ‘Knowledge refinement’, we see ‘Relationship learning’ but they are separated entities, and the AI is supposed to operate like this and it does not matter what you think or say, someone will come, someone will be stupid enough to enlarge any AI for a lot of cash and there lies the rub, once we give any true AI the exabyte drive it is out of our hands, we do not get to become ‘caring’ parents, we merely unleash what we have wrought and there is no cautionary tale, because the greed driven will not care. In this the news is already there. Bloomberg gave us a week ago ‘Trained in the American intelligence community, cyber-contractors are now making their expertise available to governments around the world’, and today the Financial Times give us ‘Hackers stole cryptocurrencies from at least 6,000 Coinbase customers’ (at https://www.ft.com/content/43ab875b-2e96-48b7-926d-be17e925f1c3) there we see “by exploiting a flaw in its two-factor authentication system. The news, first reported by Bleeping Computer, comes just a week after the company had to drop its plans to launch a new lending product following the threat of legal action from US securities regulators.” It is followed by a lot of yaba-yaba and with “Coinbase said it had “immediately” fixed the flaw, but it did not reveal when it had discovered the vulnerability or the hacking campaign” we see that whatever it fixed was AFTER the fact and the use of ‘immediately’ indicates that no one was cruising their system trying to find optional defects, so it could happen again. All this whilst there is a debatable situation on the timeline that was out there getting to 6000 clients, so now consider a CTO using hackers to make its system a lot more valuable. 

Are you catching on yet?

Yes, the story I started with was merely the setting for entertainment, a movie or a TV episode, but it is founded on the dangerous premise we see every day, we use servers, we are online and hackers are a danger, yet what happens when we see the adaptation from Bloomberg, who gave us “To meet the surging demand for their services, these firms recruited cyber-operatives and analysts from U.S. intelligence agencies, offering what one former Federal Bureau of Investigations agent described to me as “buy-yourself-a-Ferrari” salaries. For some, their job description evolved from playing defence against hackers to going on the offence, heading attackers off at the pass. Others were assigned to counterterrorism operations, doing for their new clients what they had previously done for their country, and often using the same tools.” These nations evolved their systems with the experts that they could afford. Were they wrong? We seem to forget that US greed allowed for this setting to evolve and everyone wants people with top notch cyber skills. As I see it they did nothing wrong, they merely went where the financial security takes them and when we see the US as bankrupt as it presently is, all those nations get to go on a shopping spree and start a digital brain-drain of the US (and Europe too). 

We are seeing the impact of billion in damage and an almost absent stage of stopping it from happening. Close to a dozen events in this year alone and how long until the damage ends at our desk, the insurance and banks can no longer foot the bill, and that is happening now. We are handed phrases like “Potential future lost profits. Loss of value due to theft of your intellectual property. Betterment: the cost to improve internal technology systems, including any software or security upgrades after a cyber event”, so consider the dangers we saw with solarwinds, at this point there is still debate whether the full extent of that damage is known and it has been more than 6 months. So change back to the AI story I had, when it is an exabyte of data (which is 1,000,000,000 gigabyte), how long until this is parsed? That is before you realise that there is almost no rolling back from that setting, the cost would be?

This is the balance of one and zero, we need a larger change in what people are allowed to do, not because we want to, but because we have to, a change that final needs to pushed to a larger station, and this is not merely against hackers, the greed driven need to be held to account, optionally doing double digits in a holiday location known as Rikers Island. We have entertained ‘fines’ for too long, it only fuelled what needs to be seen as a wave of enriching crime, but that might be merely my point of view on the matter.

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October 1, 2021 · 19:59

The idea as it came voiced

I was browsing some real estate magazine and I saw the image. A home theatre for the not so poor. A place where a family can watch a Blu-ray or 4K, stream Netflix or play a game.

The image shows a nice place, a place most would want, and it is made to size, it all makes sense, but then I wondered, what if the family changes? One person loses a partner, the empty chair next to theirs, reminding them every time that their life turned to goo. Or the reverse, they can finally share something, but they end up with one lap dancing the other, or behind one another. Yes the solution is so simple. I cannot tell whether this was done here, but I saw a few solutions where it was not done. It is simple, like the image below.

Consider LEGO, consider the setting of LEGO, a room where we have chairs and support, the support that can be altered to some degree allowing for a change in furniture whilst keeping it a home theatre. It is such a simple elegant solution, yet it is ignored by more than a few, all whilst anyone who ever played with a LEGO set could have come up with the idea, however as far as I can see this, less then a few is taking a long hard look at what ingenuity LEGO could bring their ideas, so could another invention Meccano, invented in 1898 by Frank Hornby from Liverpool (that city where the Beatles are from). It is part of a larger truth I believe in, only limitations tends to push the larger form of creativity. It has been a truth in engineering, IT and design and it is an almost absolute given that will never change. It is when a limitation hits us, we look for workarounds. When SPSS could not give us an age pyramid, I designed a syntax that did just that, it was always there, in the High-Low chart and I published it in 1993 (or 1994). Limitations are there to test us, make us creative and we are not seeing enough creativity. The LEGO idea is merely one side but when you take a larger look at the solutions LEGO, Meccano, Wilesco Steak kits, and Wise Elk toys, all toys that fuel the ideas that kids have, all fuelling the foundations that they have as adults. A foundational step we overlooked for way too long. We all relied on IT greats to give us the foundations, but they are the foundations that THEY want us to take. Microsoft might have its azure, but when we see hack after hack, all because people overlooked security and if it is not there, it will be the Amazon Web services, the Google cloud, IBM cloud, Oracle cloud and so on. So what happens when they all overlook similar stations? It is not an accusation, but it is a larger stage. The assumption that they are all flawless is delusional to the umpteenth degree. 

We might not see the larger stage, we might not see the larger goals, but to give a person a LEGO set for IT is not the worst idea. To seek in limitation is what awakes up the mind and as you can see several players preceded us. 

There is a larger stage and it is not on any of those players, but it is on us, if we rely on the people telling us where to look, we end up looking in the wrong direction. We end up not looking where we desperately needed to see in the first place. To be honest, I am not giving you advice where to look, it all merely started with an interior decorator, reminding me of others that took a limited view on the needs of a customer, so when you get the option of invoice A at 100%, or invoice B at 115%, yet invoice B give you options and invoice A does not, is invoice A really 15% cheaper or will it end up being 30% more expensive down the track? 

I will let you mull this over, and consider where you limited your options at the advice of others. 

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