RPG Arms race

Yes, I had not forgotten my promise, so before I start resetting the Saudi Airforce from the American options to either the BAE Typhoon or the Chinese Chengdu J-20, all whilst bagging myself a rather nice (and large) commission, I have a promise to keep. It took me a whilst, yet when Bethesda made the Elder Scrolls, they had the alone stage for Fantasy RPG and they grew it rather nicely, close to perfection. Yet I am no ones second fiddle, as such I thought it would be nice to change the game. In the setting where you are a ranged ‘fighter’, or a stealth type, I decided on the Indonesian blowpipe. It has the benefit of stealth, speed, some distance (not overly large) poison dart options and a few more, as such the blowpipe would be in, there is the Trisula (Indonesian version of the Japanese Sai), the Gollocks, yet they also have swords and spears, so there is a whole range of new weapons giving the RPG lover a new set of discoveries to make in how to best give the realisation of mortality to your enemies. And as I was taking a look at the weapons, I came to the conclusion, that as I spread the power of magic, the same could be done to the weapons. Even as we might like all weapons (some people do), giving them the power of one (agility for the blowpipe) removes strength for the sword and spear. It is a little more natural that way. Stealth still has knives and blades, but that person would be less in other weapons, the other way as well, those adapts and better in swords and spears are lousy in the precision of the blowpipe, they can still use knives for stealth parts, but not much more, the stage to reply is set. As I set the stage of magic and weapons, the third need would be there.
The support of the craft of artisan. The agile are good at pottery, but slow and less able to be the armorer or blacksmith, the blacksmith would be less of an alchemist and pottery person, item can always be bought and the fighter can still be a good alchemist in nearly every way, yet the division pushes a person to become passable and average n all directions, or set towards excellence in one or optionally two directions. Too many RPG’s are about inclusions, the ‘you can be all approach’, yet as I have stated towards Ubisoft for the longest time, a game that states it pleases everyone, in the end will please no one. That setting set a larger stage, a stage where you can reply the game, optionally multiple times and face the stage where you see new things at least twice over, it makes for longer joy in a game. 

And all whilst doing this, I got the inside idea of yet another game, based on a golden oldie. It was done by Melbourne House in 1985, yet not unlike the older version, you have to grow your skills, go to places and unlock abilities and unlock moves. So what happens when the stage is not all, but you get one night to do it, you get 5 hours until the final showdown where you are the challenger, and every time you play the game, the powers are somewhere else, so no running to the 6 points to get the max character, you get a stage where the skills you acquire are the skills you have for the final fight, yet the stage is not who presses the button faster, it is more like Nioh, a tactical challenge, we keep on forgetting that the old games have actual diamonds in the rough (sorry Disney), actual gems that can shine, even now on the PS5 can bring joy to millions of Playstation gamers (as such all ideas are always free for Sony Playstation exclusive games). 

So as I finished the ideas of fighting, artisans and magic, it is time to think of a storyline, a main story where we need to set a new level of adaptability, because if you are in one place in one chosen group, you will not face the same story, so what happens when the main storyline is not one story, but there are 5 for you to find? How to go about that part? I can tell you one thing, that has never been done before, I wonder why not?

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An idea is born

This happens, to some it happens a lot, having an idea is something different from actually having steps towards an IP, those who got there know the difference, so as I was watching the Angel series with Gerard Butler, an idea started to take shape. I thought of the IP I had, some of the IP that I was considering and a third part slowly started to take shape. Even as the stage if the second movie had something a little too incredible, the stage started to form. In the original 5G chart, Domotics is isolated, which is an option but not a given. 

In a stage where we become increasingly workaholics, the need to have some level of connection to domotics parts become increasingly important to the single people relying on domotics. The second chart gives us some level of interactivity, yet the larger stage is still under consideration. There is a larger stage where we are still unwilling to trust certain sources and certain destinations, we prefer it to go through us and that is where the domotics chart seemingly fails. 

It is in some level of understanding that it is all fine with us, but for a lot of people it is not. A sort of central hub is missing, a personalised service agent (optionally a tablet of phone) where we decide what is good and what is allowed. That part is nowhere to be seen. I partially designed a solution of sorts when I looked into an alternative solution to the British NHS. A similar solution might suffice, but it need not to be as large as I initially designed it. To set this up a similar solution to the Google key would optionally work, yet it needs to be a programmable one where the person has a key, which is altered by the key in the software and the tablet or phone, it would be a three pronged key, we think of solutions that are all app, yet in this day and age, an app alone will not set the tone.

Even as smart devices take inventory, the content needs to be available to the owner alone and that is where the setting tends to fail. As I realised that (apart from the news given today), Elon Musk is not merely the second richest man on the planet, he is sitting on $1.2T in IP value when directed in a , as such there is a larger stage to see domotics in another light, especially if the information streams are to be contained. We can contain it in some form with nano dongles added to devices, yet the larger streams will take a little more handling. It is very tempting to try and fit the solution to the options Elon Musk has available, but the stage is larger, it isn’t merely what we see like a smart fridge, it is a stage where we cannot see the parts yet, the parts that need to be invented, so we can set some form of security ahead of time. So we need to look at what we have and what else it can do.   Not merely make contact, but break contacts too, when the connection fails (like burglary) an automated signal goes to the proper places, security firms are looking into it, but domotics can take it a step further. An optional stage is radar, without impairing the privacy of a person, the child of a parent or grandparent can receive a signal if no activity is seen for an extended period of time (like 2 hours), that in combination with a locked door could be a flag for someone to take a look or make a call. In a time when the elderly become a much larger population a stage is created where alternative solutions need to be found, a stage that cannot alway be activated, the absence of signals could do the same thing. It is not a given, but there are a few settings that need checking (like pets), as well as the need to set a stage where their privacy is not trampled on. 

It is funny what idea’s are born when you rewatch a movie, it gives hold to the weirdest thoughts at times, well, it is time to see this angel fall (a reprise as well). As such I bid thee all a lovely evening.

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Spe……what?

Yup, we get to speculation, we all do it, and it is at times not a bad thing, but only as long as you are aware of the fact that you are doing it, remain aware of the missing fact and remain aware of the adjustment required n your side of the equation. As such the red banner got waved in front of my face. This tends to happen when Vodafail, I meant Vodafone is part of any equation and the Reuter news (at https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-vodafone-group-germany/vodafone-hit-by-three-hour-mobile-network-outage-in-germany-idUKKBN2831WE) gives us ‘Vodafone hit by three-hour mobile network outage in Germany’, first of all, outages will happen, they tend to happen with some regularity, yet the back up systems tend to fall into place and for the most none of the users (with perhaps an unlucky few) notices anything, this is how systems tend to work. Yet Reuters gives us “hotspots in Berlin, Hamburg, Munich, Cologne, Frankfurt and other cities”, when you know your geography, it is a much larger issue, and that is where it tends to get interesting. When you consider the distances of these places, there is an optional picture we get to see. And this is where speculation comes into play.

I am wondering whether this was a mere outage, or if this is a software flaw that never dealt with congestion on a larger scale before. I merely wonder if Vodafone is one of the first that has to deal with a system unable to comprehend or properly address congestion. Open Signal in 2019 (at https://www.opensignal.com/reports/2019/05/germany/mobile-network-experience) gave us “They are likely a result of network challenges such as poor network routing, peering issues or a side effect of increased congestion”, as well as “Vodafone’s lead is slipping, and it needs to ensure it addresses any congestion issues if it hopes to stay ahead of the pack”, this was Open Signal giving us a business case where Vodafone might lose business if unaddressed, and now we see an optional first case where the system is unable to deal with a million hungry 4G mobiles and it cannot deal with the stage unless it throttles EVERYONE down a few notches. 

As I state, this is speculation, yet Vodafone gives us “Vodafone said the network problem had been caused by the failure of control equipment in Munich, Frankfurt and Berlin”, which makes me wonder why ‘control equipment’ all fail at the same time, or almost at the same time. It almost sounds like a person saying, he has no reason to drive a car AFTER they parked their car in the Hamburg Harbour parking lot, where we see that ‘he has no reason to drive’ basically means ‘he is currently unable to drive his car’, I think you al get the gist of it, even as we move to Light Reading who gave us in July (at https://www.lightreading.com/5g/disadvantage-towers-vodafone-plays-game-of-risk/d/d-id/762639) “While Vodafone does not report any profitability metrics in its quarterly statements, its margin for earnings (before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation) rose 1.2 percentage points in its last fiscal year, to 33.1%”, this does not signal congestion, but it set a dangerous premise for any company to cut corners, and that same source gave us three weeks ago (in the UK) ‘Vodafone UK to swap big part of Huawei for open RAN’, I wonder how far these approaches are in Germany, it would signal a larger side towards congestion, but as I stated earlier, it is speculative. And we have seen in the past that Vodafone executives are always ready for a game of Risk (the Hasbro kind), for me the thought is that if this is a first case of congestion, how large would be the impact in France and Spain? Consider that there are issues in either place and these issues cannot be communicated because of congestion, will there be a secondary impact? And let’s face it Vodafone is not the smallest player here. 

Speculatively, I hope I am wrong, I knew that we were heading in these dangerous grounds, but if there is any truth to my speculation, we got here almost 1-2 years ahead of schedule and that implies that infrastructures are presently in a dangerous place. A force stage of change whilst other players are basically not in a better place at present.

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On the fence

Yup we are at times all on the fence, some call me massively pro Saudi Arabia, yet for the most I am more anti hypocrisy. There is way to much of that going on. Saudi Arabia at present has the fastest 5G on the planet, pretty much all over their nation, why is that? Saudi Arabia is attempting to create a large high tech futuristic city well over 20 times the size of New York, who knows this? Be honest to yourself, what do you know? 

Turkey has the most incarcerated journalists on the planet, sources also give us “64 names of journalists killed between 1909 and 2009”, this happened in Turkey, can you even name one person? (At http://www.cgd.org.tr/index.php?Did=22), that is not even the beginning, we are also given “A published a list in April 2012 that contained 112 names of incarcerated journalists” (at https://www.gazeteciler.com/gundem/103-yilda-112-gazeteci-ve-yazar-olduruldu-50058h.html), I had problems getting the actual page and it is 8 years ago, so it might be that it was removed. Reuters gave us last year “More than 120 journalists are still being held in Turkey’s jails, a global record, and the situation of the media in the country has not improved since the lifting of a two-year state of emergency last year, a global press watchdog said on Tuesday”, so how much screaming do we get on that front? How many care, in sight of the one Saudi journalist no one cares about, I think that these 120 people will just vanish. As such when I see ABC giving us ‘Calls for countries like Australia to boycott Saudi Arabia’s G20 summit over the jailing of female political prisoners’, and I see the name of QC Baroness Helena Kennedy connected to all this, I am at a loss to consider what the fuck she thinks she is connected to. How much actions did she take on the 120 journalists? And when we get to ‘calls for countries like Australia’, I wonder what the hell is going on, how can we be blind in one direction and give rise to the other, for me that touches on discrimination. 

As such the Irish Law Gazette, gives us ‘Bubble has burst’ on Saudi crimes – Khashoggi fiancée’, yes, please tell us WHAT CRIMES? The stage is clear, apparently and allegedly a journalist is missing, we expect foul play, but at present we cannot prove it, the investigators screwed up the setting, some UN essay writer made it all worse and we are given “The fiancée of murdered Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi has said that G20 leaders have a moral duty to solve his case”, a nice touch from the Law Gazette, but murder must show intent, or it is at the most ‘alleged murder’, the G20 leaders have no criminal expertise, so why should they solve it and all the tainted evidence comes from the nation with the most incarcerated journalists, are we catching on yet? As such we see a fiancee (Hatice Cengiz) shouting out to any media that will print and that is fair enough, but we need to see the larger picture of a missing person, not unlike the alleged murder of Suzanne Pilley (UK), in this even the BBC printed in 2012 that they hope to find the body, and this is the issue, I am not stating that Suzanne Pilley was not murdered, I am not stating that Jamal Khashoggi went clubbing, I am stating that the evidence is not there, that UN essay writer spend 105 pages on it and was able to set a political agenda as well, which she hid on page 98 (Support to freedom of expression in the gulf region), yup her mission was done and it took only one journalist to get the game rolling. So in all this will Baroness Helena Kennedy have anything to add?

No one is debating that Saudi Arabia is a nation adjusting to modern times, or did you forget the small detail that Women were not allowed to vote in Australia until 1911, and in the US when the 19th Amendment was passed, it was done because of the Republicans? Over 200 Republicans voted in favour of the 19th Amendment, while only 102 Democrats voted alongside them, as such only 102 Democrats thought the women worthy of the right of voting. It was introduced in 1878, but it would take up to 1920 to ratify it, small details we tend to overlook, so when we see the 102 democrats, which democrats were against it? Can we see names please?

We think we are all so uppity uppity clever, but we dropped the ball again and again, this is not a shame, it is merely life and those denying its lessons will repeat it again and again, so as we claim to be a nation of laws, let’s then adhere to the law. I never claimed that certain Saudi Arabians were innocent, I am merely stating that there is no evidence at all towards their guilt, and is there not a saying that people are innocent until found guilty in a court of law? In the case of the journalist nobody cares of and we consider the massive amount of tainted evidence, no conviction will ever happen, not in a true setting of the application of law, but most people knew that, did they not?

I remain on the fence, I personally think that something happened to him, what? I cannot tell, the evidence is lacking in too many places and the essay that the UN released merely adds questions, not solutions, merely the beginning of political plays. Neom City was the start point of some of my IP design, that is why I take notice, I expect to get at least 3-5 more pieces of IP out of that setting and a city that big, how can that not happen? I feel certain that others will get their IP, construction firms are starting to figure things out and when (not if) the EU collapses under mounting debts, Neom City might hold the ticket for optional new wealth, yet this time it will be by adjusting to Islamic law and islamic rules, a stage that might dread plenty of people, yet if new growth is gained by change, what new borders will we all surpass? The US is heading to darker waters, the Covid issues, the Paris accords, all choices that the US is allowed to make, but these changes have alienated the EU in the process, and even as some are awaiting President elect Biden to take up the baton, the larger stage is not set and when we see that (Newsweek) gives us ‘Pompeo Says U.S.-Saudi Ties Are ‘Strong,’ but Biden Looks to Pressure ‘Pariah’ State’, we optionally see a much larger problem, but that I OK, I am ready and willing to find an alternative solution to a $8,500,000,000 arms invoice that the US is squandering, I have two parties willing (read: chomping at the bit) to satisfy the needs of Saudi Arabia, one mans loss is another mans new castle and I do have a nice castle in mind with the 3.75% bonus I would gain from that, so here, at least that is what Guan De of the Chengdu Aircraft Industry Group thinks, they are willing to take it of the American hands, when they fumble the ball someone has to pick it up, it might as well be me.

So when you get all huffy and puffy, consider that at least Baroness Helena Kennedy is working of at least some level of evidence, you see that the acts of Hillary Kennedy were not wrong, there are flaws in Saudi Arabia, but when we consider the progress they have made, the progress they are making and the silence we see all sides give Turkey, I merely wonder how stupid the actions of some are. It is admirable that the US is willing to face hunger for morality it for the most cannot prove, yet what about these 80 million hungry Americans, will they like the decisions that come? I reckon so, they voted, did they not?

So that is why I am on the fence, evidence that is failing, accusations that come without evidence, all whilst the players with evidence are taking the long road around those problems, I have always had an issue with that, all whilst Saudi Arabia is the top player in 5G speed and they are setting a construction endeavour the sight we have NEVER seen before and why isn’t every paper in the world looking at that part, is that not weird too? 

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The speed of rumours

Yes, we have all heard of the speed of sound and the speed of light, yet have you heard of the speed of rumours? In this, I was amazed at how quick it actually is. On the 14th of November, I wrote ‘Outdated?’ (At https://lawlordtobe.com/2020/11/14/outdated/), and now, less than 9 days later we see the Guardian give us “State-sponsored hackers from China, Russia, Iran and North Korea are engaged in concerted attempts to steal coronavirus vaccine secrets in what security experts describe as “an intellectual property war”” and those are merely the ones they are willing to name, yet the larger stage is that ANY and ALL IP is under duress, if ownership can be reregistered, as such I see the need for a clear data vault, without it I am keeping my IP on the one system that never connects to the internet, is never networking and is never handed out of hands. It is (for now) safe. And all these so called data vaults in the Apple app store can reconsider what they are, because as I see it they are many vaults, but not really a data vault, what a surprise. 

So as we take notice of “The cyber struggle involves western intelligence agencies, including Britain’s National Cyber Security Centre, who say they are committed to protecting “our most critical assets”. But they discuss only a fraction of their work in public”, I merely wonder what our side is up to, with the US as broke as it is, with the media filtering what people are allowed to know, the issue is not who can we trust, but is there anyone left to trust? I know that this is not the way we tend to feel on Monday morning, but when will we feel ready? Even as the news is limiting the scope through “Adam Meyers, senior vice-president at the IT security specialists Crowdstrike, said countries including Russia and China had been engaged in hacking western companies and agencies “for the past 20 years””, I tried to bring you up to speed with with Hollywood and how easy they find it to reassign ownership, there are a few cases out there, and how protected were the original creators, Do you think that 5G IP is any safer? Do you think that given a chance, corporations are even hesitating to claim millions, of not billions? I cannot guarantee that Huawei would keep its word, yet would Amazon or IBM? Google has a larger disadvantage, this gets out and as such they would get a brain drain the size that could snowball into the greatest loss they ever faced. But the settings out there are not in favour of the average inventor and for some of us time is running out, making it public domain is all we might have, in that field the cheapest maker gets the largest slice and when that is out, they get hired for a nice fee and it is what comes next that gets the money rolling. It might be the only option for some. So when we are told “western governments remain reluctant to point the finger of blame in all cases of hacking attacks for fear of diplomatic repercussions, with the UK, for example, particularly cautious about accusing China”, I am wondering what the reluctance is, I am speculating that it is not merely governments, it is the large corporations directing some key people in those governments. The Financial Times gives us (at https://www.ft.com/content/26903a94-3617-11ea-ac3c-f68c10993b04) ‘Americans are wrong to paint China as an intellectual property thief’, as well as “Now that the US has reached the top of the ladder of tech supremacy, it wants to kick it away”. In all this, we take notice of “the US made the claim that China’s IP theft violated “public morals” prevailing in US society, while noting that such behaviour “may not offend China’s sense of public morals”. That allegation is both wrong and offensive. IP violations bring about civil, administrative and even criminal penalties in China, as well as in the US. China cherishes a culture of fair competition and respect for innovation. “To steal a book is an elegant offence,” has long been misread as a permissive aphorism peculiar to Chinese culture”, yet the setting is larger, when you do the Google searches on IP theft by the US you find none, only mentions of China stealing from the US and they tend to be opinion pieces and allegations, a lot of them absent of any level of evidence. It does not add up, there is no mention of the scripts that were ‘reacquired’ other events that I know happened do not get a mention, the setting is too unbalanced, and I do not trust any equation that unbalanced. Yet the article is failing in one respect, it does not show the imbalance that iterators versus innovator bring and that is important, Huawei is only the first of I reckon a dozen that can conquer others a dozen times over. It is the larger setting we face, because we face it now as the underdog, 30 years ago the lines were blurry, now we see that China has telecom, cars, motorcycles, an d many more, it is now the world’s leading manufacturer of chemical fertilisers, cement, and steel. A stage that remains growing in a time when the US and the EU are in a stage of mounting debts, a system of deranged stupidity and we are all idly sitting by, whilst the captains of balance sheets are setting another tone and in this we all get slammed, Some might say we are getting hammered, yet in the UK they will think we are merely getting drunk. Yet the Wirecard issues which is costing some $2,200,000,000 is merely the beginning of a larger stage and soon the players need whatever IP they can get, just to keep their heads above the water. And in all this thousands of inventors are trying to keep whatever they had secure, all whilst app stores are looking at data vaults and think it is to keep pictures safe by transferring them via a camera roll, yes really inventive move!

So what is being done (nation by nation) to keep IP safe? With 70% of the cloud getting hacked, I do not think that will be the place to keep them, but that is merely my idea.

Have a fun Monday!

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Could it be worse?

Yup, when I dream all stops go out the window. And as such, I had myself a new idea, OK, new is a stretch but it was my dream and I get to have it. In this one, there was a third lockdown and Google’s own Papa Smurf just bought my IP, as such I was having. Celebration and my first long term vacation vacation in the Hermitage Hotel in Monaco. So far so good, in this setting I ended with a little more money than was good for me, so I got a new iPhone 12 PRO 256GB gold. I also got the GoPro 4K as I wanted to make a record of it all, that was when the third lockdown started. There I was looking out of the hotel the next morning when I noticed a red glare. I rubbed my eyes and the glare was gone. So there I was on my balcony, looking out towards the Mediterranean when I noticed people reacting a little brute, sluggish, they were a little out of it, well a third lockdown will do that to a person. I saw girls running and 6 of them ran into the hotel. They were freaked out. I saw the staff members keeping them safe, some were sluggish themselves and the girls came in. It was not an hour later when the people outside became violent and the hotel locked down even more. 

It is that evening when things go from bad to worse, even in the hotel noises are heard, so there I was and soon there after the girls came too, they were scared, I guided them to my room, but it felt like a trap. The terrace wasn’t much better, but it gave me the idea to walk to the furthest room, take the turn left and there it was, just a little out of reach. I went into the room of the terrace I was on and I grabbed the sheets. In the mean time, the screaming all over the place intensified. I had tied two sheets together, it allowed me to climb to the roof, then a few careful steps further and I was on a small balcony. The windows were closed, but the balcony next to them had them open. I went there, and I saw the suite was empty. Then I opened up the last window and I went back to the roof. I signalled the girls and they came up too, two of them a lot easier than I did. After that to the room. This did not end the stage. I noticed that the entry door swung outwards. I carefully snuck out through that door. Outside around the corner I saw the extinguisher, there was little to no noise, the noise I did hear was further away. I looked around and saw the door to what I believed was some kind of janitor door, it was and there were all kinds of goodies there. Chlorine, Ammonia (and I did remember the benefit of that combination), a few mops, and the real treasure, wedges, three of them. I snuck back, still silent everywhere. I hit the electronic entrance with the extinguisher a few times as hard as I could, I removed the door handles and I tied the doors though the two holes with a piece of rope. I used my inconvenient red hammer again and jammed the wedges in whilst one of the girls put pressure on the ropes. After that we got the two beds and placed them vertical, one against each door, if they did open the doors, we would have time to get away. 

It was already in the afternoon and we were getting hungry. Yet, there was little food in the suite apart from the fruit, we each had an apple, except one of the girls had grabbed the pear. We looked outside, it was pandemonium there. We turned on the TV, it was not merely Monaco, it was all over parts of France as well. The Cote D’Azu, the Alpes, there were numerous mentions of people who had gone mad attacking others. We all looked in disbelief. 

The evening part was really nice, but as mot of you are most likely too young I will refrain, but I can tell you that the two agile girls were gymnasts, and they did things to me I cannot rent on video, so there!

The next day was different, everything was quiet, there was no sound at all. It was eerie. We watched the TV, it seemed that most people had died, there were still outbursts, but the French authorities told the people that the containment was proceeding. It was then that we saw a helicopter. We waived and signalled and in good humour they waived back. They landed on the roof and we got in, they spoke French, I had no idea what he said, one of the girls spoke French, she told them I kept them safe, I didn’t feel like much of a hombre, I merely looked outside, and as we went north I saw the smoke it was a long line, I looked at the man. He pointed at it and stated ‘Meteor!’ I figured it out, it was an alien invasion, but not with the version that Ridley Scott gave us, but the version from H.G. Wells, our defence against the Martians, now used against us, microbic parts that devoured parts of us, most likely the brains. So many ways to get to them brains. 

I merely wondered what the next meteor would bring us, especially when we see that 500 meteors strike this world every year. Perhaps my grandfather was right and I have to be ready and get some kind of secure shelter. I can’t wait to tell Papa Smurf what I got up to, I wonder if they bill me for the damage to the Diamond penthouse suite, I could always deny I did it. I better tell the girls. Life is weird at times, I wonder if these two would come and stay with me in Mountain view? Weirder things have happened, I know that to be a fact, the last two days might be regarded as evidence of that. Ah well, better tell Papa Smurf, I have a new idea, he might like it.

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The Old stuff

I have it at times, I do not know about you, but at times I want to see the old movies, play the old games, listen to the old sounds. It allows me to balance my feelings about a game, let me mesmerise on other ideas, contemplate thoughts, a whole range of actions become available when I do that what I had done before. So, as I watched Robocop (2014), It’s a wonderful life (1946), Planet of the Apes (1968), listened to the golden oldies by Madonna and Rammstein, my mind wandered as I was playing Fallout 4 again, thinking of Fallout 3. Two games I really liked. At that point my mind started to wander, what if we could play Planet of the Apes as a RPG. Consider the 6 original movies. What if the setting of the game was in the era of Charlton Heston, but covered close to the entire east coast? Optionally merely Rhode Island (the state) and as DLC’s within a year to add Massachusetts and Connecticut. Consider the amount of exploring one could do, find the old stages, create villages against a physical and morally superior force. Finding books setting the stage of a history group, a science group, a medical group. Find books for them to evolve, finding books to teach the next generation. Finding skills that can be transferred to books teaching the next group. A multigenerational game, so as the previous group becomes to old, you can transfer (with the right group enabled) to the next generation. No RPG has done this before. When you consider this, is it not weird that no game (in light of so many copying each other’s concepts) that something original can be staged. 

I am not sure when the ideas started to mingle, but the setting is there. A stage where the game is NOT on one person, but it is your stage to create a much larger foothold as you create generations for you to move from one to the next generation. It should also have drawbacks. The older person learns faster and learns more, the younger person can find more, can achieve more faster, a set of balances to chose from.

I also see the interactions with other books, for example (an idea I had last year), the setting of a prequel to Soylent Green with Chris Hemsworth in the lead. Yet what if we add Soylent Green (without the dead people) to the mix? What if the sea becomes the larger food provider again? The setting where the books and skills result in advanced options? It is merely a setting, a stage to draw and see what connections we can make. If great apes cannot swim, is the start on an island not perfect? It will not get you far, but as a training, the game can help you get the maximum out of the game, before you find a small Rigid Inflatable Boat. The initial game with a mapped 3,140 km² before we add 27,363 km², another thing we have not seen before (that is apart from my version of Elder Scrolls VII: Restoration), the continuation of a game, you keep what you create and we see  much larger consideration when the expansion comes, will we start again, or do we go on? OK, it might not be completely feasible on 1:1, yet 1:100, or 1:1000 might work. Yet in that stage we ned to adjust. And that is before you realise that it will be a much larger consideration when we add regions that are internationally largely unknown. Apart from the fact that (as far as I know) has never been done before becomes the creation of a much larger IP for any software house.

And whenever you go over the old stuff, the chance is that your mind makes silent Connections that could be diamonds for any one person to consider. It is the power of the old stuff, because we were done with it and we forgot what it contained. So as our minds see it again, time will be a larger stage for our minds, it does not re-create old links (will to some degree it does), it will create new connections, because you have seen other things over the last 3-7 years that you had not seen this work, or listened to it. I reckon that not watched Planet of the Apes for almost 2 years and a lot of things happened in that time, so we see things differently and we connect to it in other ways too. I have no evidence of this, it is merely my thought on the matter, yet s it got me a new concept (apart from the 4 I already have) not a bad days work.

Well, that is it for me for today. Perhaps I have more to add to the idea of Simian World tomorrow, you never know what Spinach does to the brain. For me it is agony, because for some reason I feel the massive need to have Tourte Pascale, my mum used to make it and now for some reason I want it, now after 3 decades (it might be four), I feel the massive yearn to get my fingers on a slice. Life is hell at times, so I will leave you with an image I found online, so that you will become as equally hungry as I am at this very moment.

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News, fake news, or else?

Yup that is the statement that I am going for today. You see, at times we cannot tell one form the other, and the news is making it happen. OK, that seems rough but it is not, and in this particular case it is not an attack on the news or the media, as I see it they are suckered into this false sense of security, mainly because the tech hype creators are prat of the problem. As I personally see it, this came to light when I saw the BBC article ‘Facebook’s Instagram ‘failed self-harm responsibilities’’, the article (at https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-55004693) was released 9 hours ago and my blinkers went red when I noticed “This warning preceded distressing images that Facebook’s AI tools did not catch”, you see, there is no AI, it is a hype, a ruse a figment of greedy industrialists and to give you more than merely my point of view, let me introduce you to ‘AI Doesn’t Actually Exist Yet’ (at https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/ai-doesnt-actually-exist-yet/). Here we see some parts written by Max Simkoff and Andy Mahdavi. Here we see “They highlight a problem facing any discussion about AI: Few people agree on what it is. Working in this space, we believe all such discussions are premature. In fact, artificial intelligence for business doesn’t really exist yet”, they also go with a paraphrased version of Mark Twain “reports of AI’s birth have been greatly exaggerated, I gave my version in a few blogs before, the need for shallow circuits, the need for a powerful quantum computer, IBM have a few in development and they are far, but they are not there yet and that is merely the top of the cream, the icing on the cake. Yet these two give the goods in a more eloquent way than I ever did “Organisations are using processes that have existed for decades but have been carried out by people in longhand (such as entering information into books) or in spreadsheets. Now these same processes are being translated into code for machines to do. The machines are like player pianos, mindlessly executing actions they don’t understand”, and that is the crux, understanding and comprehension, it is required in an AI, that level of computing will not now exist, not for at least a decade. Then they give us “Some businesses today are using machine learning, though just a few. It involves a set of computational techniques that have come of age since the 2000s. With these tools, machines figure out how to improve their own results over time”, it is part of the AI, but merely part, and it seems that the wielders of the AI term are unwilling to learn, possibly because they can charge more, a setting we have never seen before, right? And after that we get “AI determines an optimal solution to a problem by using intelligence similar to that of a human being. In addition to looking for trends in data, it also takes in and combines information from other sources to come up with a logical answer”, which as I see is not wrong, but not entirely correct either (from my personal point of view), I see “an AI has the ability to correctly analyse, combine and weigh information, coming up with a logical or pragmatic solution towards the question asked”, this is important, the question asked is the larger problem, the human mind has this auto assumption mode, a computer does not, there is the old joke that an AI cannot weigh data as he does not own a scale. You think it is funny and it is, but it is the foundation of the issue. The fun part is that we saw this application by Stanley Kubrick in his version of Arthur C Clarke’s 2001: A Space Odyssey. It is the conflicting part that HAL-9000 had received, the crew was unaware of a larger stage of the process and when the stage of “resolve a conflict between his general mission to relay information accurately and orders specific to the mission requiring that he withhold from Bowman and Poole the true purpose of the mission”, which has the unfortunate part that Astronaut Poole goes the way of the Dodo. It matters because there are levels of data that we have yet to categorise and in this the AI becomes as useful as a shovel at sea. This coincides with my hero the Cheshire Cat ‘When is a billy club like a mallet?’, the AI cannot fathom it because he does not know the Cheshire Cat, the thoughts of Lewis Carrol and the less said to the AI about Alice Kingsleigh the better, yet that also gives us the part we need to see, dimensionality, weighing data from different sources and knowing the multi usage of a specific tool.

You see a tradie knows that a monkey wrench is optionally also useful as a hammer, an AI will not comprehend this, because the data is unlikely to be there, the AI programmer is lacking knowledge and skills and the optional metrics and size of the monkey wrench are missing. All elements that a true AI can adapt to, it can weight data, it can surmise additional data and it can aggregate and dimensionalise data, automation cannot and when you see this little side quest you start to consider “I don’t think the social media companies set up their platforms to be purveyors of dangerous, harmful content but we know that they are and so there’s a responsibility at that level for the tech companies to do what they can to make sure their platforms are as safe as is possible”, as I see it, this is only part of the problem, the larger issue is that there are no actions against the poster of the materials, that is where politics fall short. This is not about freedom of speech and freedom of expression. This is a stage where (optionally with intent) people are placed in danger and the law is falling short (and has been falling short for well over a decade), until that is resolved people like Molly Russell will just have to die. If that offends you? Good! Perhaps that makes you ready to start holding the right transgressors to account. Places like Facebook might not be innocent, yet they are not the real guilty parties here, are they? Tech companies can only do so such and that failing has been seen by plenty for a long time, so why is Molly Russel dead? Yet finding the posters of this material and making sure that they are publicly put to shame is a larger need, their mommy and daddy can cry ‘foul play’ all they like, but the other parents are still left with the grief of losing Molly. I think it is time we do something actual about it and stop wasting time blaming automation for something it is not. It is not an AI, automation is a useful tool, no one denies this, but it is not some life altering reality, it really is not.

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What was the past

It is something we all face, we see what we had and we miss it. Consider NCIS, an awesome series, and when we were introduced to Agent Fornell, I remembered Joe Spano, he was young innocent, wearing a bowtie and being the psychiatrist at Hill Street blues station. I miss that series at times. I know time moves on and we got Blue Bloods now, yet Hill Street Blues struck a chord in 1981, others did less so, it is hard to explain, because it sounds negative on the series that are out now, but the reality is that something got lost in TV series in the last 10 years. There are series that spring outside the equation, series like NCIS, the Magicians, Lucifer, Fortitude, American Horror Story, but the equation is very unbalanced. When you are trying to figure out how that happened, do not worry, it is simple. In 2019, the number of original scripted television series in the United States hit 532. It is almost 450% up from 1981. Hollywood is so much towards creating amount and less about creating quality, which is why the series I mentioned and a few more stand out. I keep n hearing mentions of Game of Thrones, but not much more, one show takes the cake and that used to be different. Discussions were going on regarding Hill Street Blues, Dallas, Dynasty, Bergerac, Tatort, and a few more. Yet nowadays, the amount of series crossing our eyes increases, yet it seems that nothing between the ear sticks. That tends to be quality, not quantity. There is a reason why a series like NCIS has been around for 18 seasons. Yet at times I still think of the old Hill Street blues station. And each nation had its own quality shows. Germany brought us Tatort and Derrick, the UK gave us Bergerac, the Avengers, Hammer house of horrors, and the list from other nations goes on. But now it seemingly needs to be American, whilst overall (with a few exceptions) the quality is not fantastic, not bad, just not great. And I do believe it is not the cast, not the team and not the writers. It seems to be the pressures to create on too limited a schedule with repetitive ideas again and again.

Why is that?
It is no secret, Hollywood is all about return on investment, but that circle becomes virtual and fictive when quality goes down. There is a need to make money and we get that, I am not against the idea of making money, but what do you think when 2019 had 532 series, all needing originality, all needing ideas and only so many writers with actual original ideas around. It didn’t require rocket science, it was a simple equation. So how long does it take for the Hollywoodians to figure out that there is a limit to quality series that can be produced? You might think that I am talking out of my (non-mouth), but the setting of Netflix handing over $18 billion in the last year for IP should get us to ask questions. Netflix’s 2019 costs to buy, produce and license content will be $15 billion. And when you considered they made a little over $20 billion in 2019, it seems that I am wrong, but am I? Consider how long this pattern can continue? No one denies that you have to spend to make money. Yet, how is the equation correct? And 

Netflix is merely one of several stations, so when this model implodes, we will see Netflix, HBO, Stan, Apple, Amazon and Disney, all spending billions, all whilst the people will have to make choices and we get that, as such some will survive, some will not, we all get that. Yet at that point, what happens to HBO, Stan, Disney, Apple, Amazon and Netflix? Where will you be? 

Differential
I need to set a separation here, we have the money side and the creation side. Yet the money side  will hinder, impair, and optionally drive the creation side, even though the negative sides are only looked at after things go wrong. I believe that continuation can only exist if the quality is of the highest caliber and I personally believe that this is not possible when you create 532 series in a year. At some point something has to give and that is before we consider that there are really good series out there and no one denies that they are good. Yet consider that in 2009 Joss Whedon created an amazing series called the Dollhouse, not merely a good series, it set the tone on serious matters and was cut off after two seasons. He also lost the tone on Firefly, yet that one is still around, after 17 years, now seen as a cult classic. Out of the 532 series, what else will we lose out on, because they are the silent victims, scrapped because the moment was wrong, the analyst did not get what mattered and as such the makers lose out. This setting is important, because with 532 titles that group will increase, too little time, too much to miss out on.

Creation cut short for reasons not within the stage of an audience. Streaming makes this a much smaller factor, but it still will not make it zero. Yes streaming will be important to give good series a larger chance, but in all that the numbers are not adding up, not when you consider what Netflix as one provider sets their cost at and all the other streamers with their own costs as well. Soon it will change again, yet not for the reasons you considered before. You see streamers have one larger station, and internet congestion will hit them too, especially in light of the issues hitting the internet. And we will see places all over the world get a earful of fibre-to-the-node (FTTN) and fibre-to-the-premises (FTTP), and int he end we will rely on all kind of matters, but we forgot that streaming is not alone, there are PC’s for gaming, there are computers for FaceTime, there are computers for work from home, gamers and now with PS5 and the new Xbox it will increase, there are ‘digital editions’ consoles without 4K drives and they all have to download. And they will need to do so a lot more than before on the Xbox One and PS4. The stage is not on the gamers, but we have already seen the news on YouTube and Netflix throttling down, so how can the growth rate continue when the internet is clearly becoming the weakest chain in that link? In March the Guardian reported ‘Disney+ streaming service to launch in UK with lower bandwidth’, so there you are, your new 4K TV so that you can admire Baby Yoda in the Mandalorian, and the service can merely give you 1080 resolution. That is the reality and it is not getting any better until 2023, so can you consider the issues that streaming has and cannot deliver? It is not merely the amount of series, it is the stage where we cannot see their full potential and the UK is not alone, these elements are showing up all over the Commonwealth, al over the EU and the US is also not absent of issues. It was a stage I saw coming in 2018, yet they all declared me a fool, now they say it is a complex issue. Well it is not, it is the issue that was clearly out in the open, ignored by too many. Even now we see the blame game continue n other fields, how long has the PS5 been sold out? How long did we know that this was a setting of hundreds of thousands per nation and we get ‘The UK’s biggest game retailer blames PS5 size for launch delivery delays’, really? The size was known for months, the amount of systems were known for months. Too many people are reacting at the 11th hour, in systems, on the internet and with the ISP’s. Who will they blame when streaming is cut down again? When do the people get the next news from ISP’s that there are issues? Oh, wait, that moment passed already. When we are treated to “Possibly the most common form of buffering occurs when your internet speed is too slow to download the amount of data needed”, as well as “You need at least 25 Mbps for 4K streaming video on your computer or Ultra HD enabled devices”, yet on a global scale and especially outside of metropolitan area that issue is becoming an issue in streaming. So as Net Neutrality is back on the political table in the US, it becomes a massively larger issue to face. This all is not the fault of the streamers, lets be clear about that part, they are a factor, but not the cause, like the blame game couriers, here the ISP’s should have been ready to a much larger degree and we cannot blame them for the covid lockdowns, yet the setting of bandwidth limits has been known for some time, at least a year and that was also out in the open, as such the stage we see will be a larger issue and that I merely a fraction of the station that I see, the math does not add up, it was clear for a much longer time and so far too many parties are aligned to ignore that part. We see solution A, option B and everyone dances around the overwhelming lack of bandwidth.

Consider that Saudi Arabia has a 5G internet that is 750% faster than anything the US has, did anyone consider the weird setting in that regard? And the interesting part is that no one is asking the questions that matters, how come that Saudi Arabia of all places has an internet is so much faster? It is a much larger setting and the people are seemingly kept blind, which is fine by me, but when you lose out on HD episodes of NCIS, American Horror Show season 10, Superman & Lois (2021), or A Discovery of Witches season 2 (2021)? When the throttling continues or increases, what happens to streaming? What happens to net neutrality? Did anyone consider that part of the equation when they saw the $15,000,000,000 bill that Netflix had for 2019? There was a reason why sacking Huawei was a really bad idea and others will soon catch up on that idea. I have no issues with an alternative being found, but none have the capabilities at present and they are unlikely to have them until 2022, should you doubt that? Take a look at how abysmal the USA has its 5G at present, look at how fast streaming is in rural USA, you see the US is a lot more than the 25 large cities and plenty of people live outside these places, should they not be able to stream at the max? When we see that discrimination is the prejudicial treatment of different categories of people, as is the streaming of rural versus metropolitans discrimination or not? Consider that for a moment. So let’s not wait until the 11th hour, let’s make sure that the right people look to the right places quickly, the term sooner rather than later cannot apply, we are already 2 years too late for that. It is the technology side, with the finance and creativity, too many forgot about the technology side of it and now it starts calling foul, it cannot deliver more.

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Citizens of Jahannam

Yes, the bulk of us transgressed to a new village, a new town, optionally a city. We all moved to the city of Jahannam, we enabled the politicians who diverted the laws that enabled the corporations. And as Eve spoke to the guy on her needs of an apple product, she stated, yes that would be nice. So he got her a iPhone 7 SE (Swedish edition) and to make sure that it would last longer, the maker of Apple products slowed the battery down, to enable it to be older. Does it sound familiar? The story (at https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-54996601), give us ‘Apple to pay $113m to settle iPhone ‘batterygate’’, basically it took 76,000 victims to break even. Yet the news gives us “Millions of people were affected when the models of iPhone 6 and 7 and SE were slowed down in 2016 in a scandal that was dubbed batterygate”, and as such we see the first part, the second part is seen in the Verge who gave us “11 million customers that didn’t need to buy a new iPhone”, you still think that crime does not pay? Yes, there will be all kinds of noise that there wee more cases, more settlements, but all that money is TAX DEDUCTIBLE, as such we get to see a larger stage and it is high time that the people involved get the limelight. When we consider “Any legal fees or court costs incurred will be deductible as well as the cost of resolving the suit, whether the company pays damages to the plaintiff or agrees to settle the dispute”, So this is how you get to become a trillion dollar company, you set the stage in one direction, and as long as it cannot be proven, you tell the people something fitting, take the profit and pay the fee which is a tax option, so can we come to the conclusion that in this world criminals are better protected than the victims ever will be?

That consideration comes (in part) from “Two fatal crashes of Boeing 737 Max aircraft were partly due to the plane-maker’s unwillingness to share technical details, a congressional investigation has found” (at https://www.bbc.com/news/business-54174223), with the additional ““Boeing failed in its design and development of the Max, and the FAA failed in its oversight of Boeing and its certification of the aircraft,” the 18-month investigation concluded”, even as we suspect t the there is something wrong with the statement ‘the FAA failed in its oversight of Boeing’, yet could that ever be proven? What does matter the the lives of people are optionally ignored when the bottom line of a corporation is under fire, just like the USS Zumwalt that cannot fire any of their smart bullets (at $1,000,000 per shot). As such, when we read the “The nearly 250-page report found a series of failures in the plane’s design, combined with “regulatory capture”, an overly close relationship between Boeing and the federal regulator, which compromised the process of gaining safety certification”, I wonder what the optional price was of ‘an overly close relationship between Boeing and the federal regulator, several ideas come to mind, none of them really proper for vocation, yet the setting is there. Again corporate needs are protected as the courts seem to be in a stage of protecting those who do not deserve it and fail to protect those who were in need of protection. And the people wonder why we do have become so distrustful of governments, really?

We might have a few questions on the unrealistic minimum-cost estimates of the USS Zumwalt, yet will those who heralded the unrealistic minimum-cost estimates the inside of a court having to explain their actions, I doubt it, as such is the thought that we have become Citizens of Jahannam.
Too much of a leap? 

Consider the issues that we face, the political egos we allow for and ask yourself, how much more will we have to accept before the law does what it showed do and protect victims? As such, we need to ask the questions we at times fear to ask. And even as we accept the pragmatism is at times the safest course of action, yet the acts of Apple and Boeing give us a very different story, the story of pragmatism being the death of far too many people, yet that is a side we are seldom to see, is it?

I merely wonder what corporations are saved from facing next, I wonder if my choices to be slightly selfish were so bad in the end. If Apple can become a trillion dollar company the way it did, could I not become slightly less rich without dec option and by keeping my (slightly stubborn) disposition of fair play?

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