July 22, 2015 · 21:22

Spelling fraud with a ‘T’

So, after we see the events in Tesco, which has taken its billions in toll from September 2014 onwards, we now learn that Japan has its own version of Tesco, which we read in ‘Toshiba boss quits over £780m accounting scandal‘ (at http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/jul/21/toshiba-boss-quits-hisao-tanaka-accounting-scandal).

Here it is not the meagre 263 million that Deloitte discovered would only be the tip of the Titanic sinker, in the case of Japan, it is three times the amount, which initially might beckon the question whether the fall out for Toshiba could be 9 times worse. Is it that simple?

The Guardian gives us the following “Tanaka and Sasaki knew about the profit overstatement and created a pressurised corporate culture that prompted business heads to manipulate figures to meet targets, the investigators found“, the other one is “Improper accounting at Toshiba included overstatements and booking profits early or pushing back the recording of losses or charges. Those actions often resulted in still higher targets being set for business divisions in the following period“.

These two are aimed at one side of a picture, but what some sales people will know is that this is already a disjointed part. Before I go into this, there is one more quote that needs to be mentioned. It is “Despite its shares losing almost a quarter of their value since the irregularities surfaced in April, it is still Japan’s 10th biggest company by market value. It was created by a merger in 1938 but its roots date back to 1875 and it was one of the companies that turned Japan into an industrial power“, so these irregularities have been part of something already for months, in addition, from an article one day earlier we get “The report said much of the improper accounting, stretching back to fiscal year 2008, was intentional and would have been difficult for auditors to detect“.

The last paragraph alone implies that like with Tesco, this system could not be done without massive ‘support’ from accountancy firms, moreover in all this, we have to wonder if anything will be achieved, especially as PwC (Pricewaterhouse Coopers) seems to have fallen off the view of journalists, and as we have seen no news from the SFO (Serious Fraud Office) since December 2014, we can ask in equal measure, whether the now sparkly news on Toshiba will go anywhere at all. Is it not interesting that PwC added 64 new partners three weeks ago, they get all the limelight as we read “Luke Sayers, chief executive of PwC Australia, congratulated the new partners on their appointment, praising their outstanding professional expertise“, whilst at the same time we get “IOOF has hired accounting giant PwC to review its regulatory breach reporting policy and procedures within the firm’s research division“, whilst in all this, PwC should still be regarded as the number one problem, as for a long time Tesco’s ‘issues of monetary matters‘ ended up getting overstated by well over a quarter of a billion, and so far it seems that either the SFO is nowhere, it is hushed or it seems to pussyfoot around PwC as the PwC marketing engine goes on like there was never a glitch in their seamless sky to begin with.

Now it is important that the entire PwC issue hits the UK, so a global company like PwC should not get hindered by one rotten basket, especially as they have dozens of baskets. Yet as one basket was regarded to have gone ‘rotten through’, the fact that there remains a system of silence, gives way to ask the question why PwC should be trusted at all and in that light, in the case of Toshiba, how intensely damaged the accounting business has become, you see Tesco and if we go by the words of Sheldon Ray of the Financial times we see “non-GAAP earnings per share that were more than 100 per cent higher than its GAAP numbers in the last quarter. Another reported 2 cents a share non-GAAP profit vs $1.41 per share loss under GAAP in one quarter” (at http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/f07720d4-c9b1-11e4-b2ef-00144feab7de.html#axzz3gWXJGSSF), so how deep goes all this? This grows in light when we consider ‘Richard Bove on Fannie Mae’s Accounting Irregularities‘ (at http://www.valuewalk.com/2015/07/fannie-mae-accounting/). Not a number one source, yet consider the quote “The result of their work is a conspiracy theory concerning the government takeover of Fannie Mae in which the public has been lied to concerning Fannie Mae’s financial condition in 2008 and in subsequent years“, this is linked to the work by Adam Spittler CPA, MS, and Mike Ciklin JD, MBA, MRE. Spittler is a Senior Associate at KPMG and Ciklin is an investor in a number of start-up digitally based companies, so we see that there is at least some Gravitas with these people, now add to that the information from the Washington Times (at http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2015/mar/11/fannie-mae-recklessness-risks-future-financial-cri/), where we see ‘Mortgage giant hired unqualified auditor with conflict of interest for critical position‘ and “Nearly seven years after it was bailed out from the housing market crash, mortgage giant Fannie Mae is still engaging in behaviour that could precipitate future financial crises and taxpayer losses, a government watchdog warns in a report to be released Wednesday“, which was an article from last March. Now, the fact that this is not ‘new’ news is not the issue, what is the issue is that there is an almost Global act of blatant disregard, leaving the people the feeling that accounting seems to be set to levels of intentional misrepresenting companies for the need of bonuses and the ‘Holy Dow’. The fact that the activity against such transgressions is seemingly kept of the table in these economic times will only grow stronger unrest.

Yet, is my view correct, is it not me that is in error? Let’s face it, One in the US, one in Japan and one in UK does not a conspiracy make, it does not reflect on some non-existing criminal empire based on the quill, ink and parchment (as accounting used to go in the old days). What is an issue is how on a global scale governments seem to act or not act is matter for discussion, yet in all this external forces have been at work too, let’s face it that the US in 2008 was a place of desperation, even as it is now still on the ‘to-be-regarded-as-bankrupt’ even governments will make weird leaps when they are pushed into a corner. In my view, the fact that the bulk of global accounting is pretty much in the hands of half a dozen accounting firms remains cause for alarm and PwC is in the thick of many events. Including the 40 million property scandal surrounding Xu Jiayin last march.

Yet back we go to Japan, the land of yummy Sushi and as it seems shady bookkeeping. You see, there is no way to tell how deep Toshiba will get gutted, if Tesco is any form of indication, there will be a massive backlash, If 256 million leads to a well over 3 billion drop in value, what will it do to Toshiba? More important, with Japan so deep in debt, would it push Japan over the edge of bankruptcy? Let’s not forget that Japan hung over that Abyss a few times and the US seemed to have ‘intervened’ in favour of Japan in the past, in this case, that might not ever be an option again. For those who think that I overreact, think again. Tesco lost value factor 12. Now, we all agree that this is extremely unlikely to hit Toshiba to that degree, but what happens when stockholders walk out? Now consider that Toshiba is amongst the 10 largest Japanese companies with a global reach that equals IBM, that whilst Japan has a debt of $10 trillion, the fallout will hit Japan (again). To give view to the next part, I need to revisit a part I mentioned in the past. Let us take a look at the following example:

In week 10 a salesperson makes a sale, knowing it will not be a solution, during the next week that customer gets managed all over support and after a week, they escalate and communicate with the customer on solving it, a week after that the customer gets the apology that there is no solution, but that the customer will get a full refund, case closed.

Week 10 Sale made
Week 11  Support starts
Week 12 Escalation
Week 13 No resolution
Week 15 Refund

Now the part, the sale was made, in Week 13 no resolution, now we leave one quarter and go into the new quarter, the refund will not affect the sales person’s bonus, nor will the sales target be affected due to negative sale.

This is based on actual events, now think of the impact when this is not mere sales, but 1.2 billion in sales. Did this happen? I cannot state that all of the funds were done in that way, but consider the impact of increased sales and the people who enjoyed their bonuses from that (if that happens in Japan).

Consider the quote “blamed on management’s overzealous pursuit of profit“, which we get from the ABC article (at http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-07-21/toshiba-top-executives-quit-over-us12-billion-scandal/6637976). Now add to that the quote “underlings could not challenge powerful bosses who were intent on boosting profits at almost any cost“, so how was the profit boosted? You see, this is not just an auditing issue, when we look at these large companies and the way that sales are arranged and forecasted, consider the events involved. To name but a few

  1. Leads
  2. Contacts (the consequence of a lead)
  3. Forecasting (the consequence of contact and the push for sale)
  4. Sales registration (Scopus, Salesforce, SAP)
  5. Accounting
  6. Reporting

Six iterations of paper and electronic trails that had to handle 1.2 billion in virtual revenue to some extent. Even if the leads cycle was avoided (by going through existing customers), there are other divisions that needed to be aware of a large non existing sale. You see, twelve hundred million dollars makes for a massive amount of monitors, laptops and other items Toshiba makes. Even over time, flags should have been raised on several levels, so when I read “The report said much of the improper accounting, which stretched back to 2008, was intentional and would have been difficult for auditors to detect“, which implies that the intentional misdirection was done over 6 iterations, which means that the group involved was a bit larger than we read in the articles at present. More important, how well did the Auditors seek in this regard? Which now takes me back to the reference I made earlier regarding “PwC added 64 new partners“, so how good are these ‘senior’ players? Making someone a partner, so that they can be misdirected by a senior partner would be equally disturbing. The fact that Toshiba falls through just like Olympus did, in a place where these events are regarded as ‘shocking’ according to investigating lawyer Koichi Ueda does not make me any less nervous. How institutionalised is overstating revenues on a global scale? You see, this is happening a lot more than many realise and even though many are not found, it does not mean it is not happening next to your own place of business. Now we get back to the issue I raised regarding Fannie Mae. The fact that it is not unrealistic that the government looked the other way here is still a fact we must consider. More important, are the two parts not mentioned in any of this. The first is linked to the issue I reported on January 30th 2013 (yes over 2 years ago at https://lawlordtobe.com/2013/01/30/time-for-another-collapse/) in my article ‘Time for another collapse‘, I questioned the way the Dow did not just recover, it did so whilst places all around us were remaining below par for a very long time after that. Now consider the following speculative theory:

What if places like Fannie Mae used the ‘leave one in’ approach. So there were mortgage packages and derivatives. So, we have four properties that are doing fine and we add one worthless one to the mix. The package deal as the salesperson states. So the buyer ends up with a ‘value’ and whilst one part is ‘given’ without value, that person has a good deal, now consider that this one place is no longer a lost place, it is no longer a write off. Over time the market would recover with less losses, so is this truly an action that is virtually impossible? Moreover, if such a thing truly happens, would it be fraud? How could an auditor ever find the event in the first place?

This now links back to Toshiba, not just in how you push up 1.2 billion, but how to get it passing the view of a ton of auditors. In the case of Tesco, I personally considered the involvement of PwC from the first moment the news came out, there it was a less murky place because as supermarket chain their product goes to Joe and Jolene Public. That is not the case with Toshiba. Not only are they global, but with a power plant division (including the one that makes you grow in the dark) as well as medical equipment (likely needed for previous mentioned division), Toshiba deals with consumers, corporations and governments, which on one side requires a lot more administration, but that administration would have the ability to go murky on an exponential level, which gives added value to the claim “difficult for auditors to detect” yet that gives option to two parts, is there a questionable level of administration, or are we confronted that the auditing partner in this case was a 28 year old recently promoted individual who now gets his/her first real large account?

Why these statements?

You see in all this, on a global scale, the law has failed. It fails because the rewards are just too good to pass up for those playing that game, the chance to get away with it and the option to keep at least a decent part of these earnings safe makes the option to do this again and again almost a certainty. The law has no bite and the corporations involved are too powerful to get smitten down, so this avenue will continue for a long time to come. In addition to this we ask what else is affected and why is there a tendency from the press to not keep these matters a lot more visible? Consider how much the Guardian and others reported in 2014, if you now Google ‘PwC Fraud SFO Tesco‘ we get nothing after December 22nd, what a Christmas present that is! What is funny that one other part showed up, which is Keith McCarthy, now director at PwC London, who was Chief Investigator with the UK Serious Fraud Office before that, so would it be mere speculation that the best way to avoid prison is to hire the police officer so you know where they will be looking? #JustAsking

I am only asking!

Anyway, with a wish for a better lifestyle, I will consider helping Toshiba to retrench their IP and Patents for a mere 0.4% of the value, now if I could only persuade my Law Professor to help me out, 0.3% for her and 0.1% for me, I should end up with enough to buy http://www.cooperbrouard.com/St-Peter-Port/Ridge-House-property/3835453 and retire in a relaxing way!

I agree that I could do better, but then I was never a greedy person, which is a failing the Toshiba executive clearly lacked.

 

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July 20, 2015 · 21:50

Are stockbrokers clueless here?

My twitter account tweeted a tweet only minutes ago that gave me pause to take a look. It is an article from Gamespot (at http://www.gamespot.com/articles/activision-stock-joins-ea-in-hitting-all-time-high/1100-6428993/), which is actually 2 days old. The title ‘Activision Stock Joins EA in Hitting All-Time High‘ was reason for the first giggle, then I decided to take a deeper look at the quotes. The result?

Well, judge for yourself!

First off we get “The video game publishing giant’s share price reached an all-time high recently of just above $26 a share–and some experts are optimistic about the company’s potential to grow even further“, which is funny in its own right, where ‘some experts‘ is a link to www.zacks.com. Now, as I see it, the fact that they rely on how Activision/Blizzard is such a success as they state it “Call of Duty, Warcraft, Diablo, and Guitar Hero franchises“, which gets an added “Along with its Zacks Rank #2 (Buy) and an expected EPS Growth Rate of 7.47%, there are three important factors to know when considering investing in Activision Blizzard” the site goes on mentioning a few titbits, which are all true, yet the foundation of the issue is one they skated around, why? It can be that they have no real sight on video games, or because they have other reasons. I have no idea what the other reasons are, yet in my view, their first tactical error is: “For the quarter ended March 31, 2015, Activision Blizzard’s GAAP net revenues were $1.28 billion, as compared with $1.11 billion for the first quarter of 2014” the second one is “Activision Blizzard’s earnings per share in 2014 was $1.42, again representing an all-time high of over 50% growth year to year“.

Before I start explaining this, let’s go back to the original article for a moment.

The next quote is “Activision has a number of projects currently in the development that investors may be looking forward to. These include Destiny’s Taken King expansion (September), Skylanders: Superchargers (September), and Call of Duty: Black Ops III (November)“. It is important to see what is up and coming, as such we see a field of particular possibilities, which gets the final added quote “the company will report earnings for its latest financial quarter on August 4th“.

So why is all this an issue?

First off, this is about stock joining EA, whilst the article is deadly numb on anything Electronic Arts in this field, which is odd to say the least.

Now for my other part, you see, investing in game stock is often massively risky, the part that these research companies fail to realise is that the value of these places are directly depending on the next upcoming failure! That has forever been the case with gaming companies, you see there is a reason why Ubisoft PC sales were down 90% in 2011 and I can tell you for certain that software piracy was NOT the cause of that!

So why did I find this all hilarious? In the end whatever a person wants to sink their money in, it is all fine by me. Now for the backdrop in all this, because so far, my reasoning could be regarded as an emotional one, which is really bad when it comes to shares.

No one will deny that Blizzard is a place of success, I am still addicted to Diablo 3 (as I was to versions one and two), yet Blizzard is still getting over the loss of Titan, a success that would never come to truth, which in the scheme of things is not the deadliest issue, especially as World of Warcraft is still grossing a billion a year, so Blizzard has many moments of success. However, stability is not a sexy thing in the market and Blizzard requires growth to pull this off, even though there are clear and reliable rumours of another DLC for Diablo 3, which would be, if we go by reaper of souls an essential and absolute must for any Diablo fan, it would not be enough for Blizzard to propel forward to the degree it needs to (personal view), in the end Blizzard is a fine company, with a solid income, yet as I see it, the massive sales drive needed (growth of customer base) is not one that Blizzard has, it has a faithful and loyal customer base (I am one of them), yet in my case, it is set to a game I have had for well over a year with no new spending in that time.

Now let’s take a look at Activision, first the good stuff, there is no denying that Skylanders was a brilliant idea, not particularly for me, but it is making kids spend, and spend and spend (or at least their parents), these figurines are not cheap. A well thought through business model. Destiny is another matter, this game is an MMO and a FPS, which is nothing short of a hybrid game and even though I am not a fan, the game looks good on the systems, but like all games of this nature, it has a problem and a handicap. This is nothing personal, you see, whatever good it is, it is money that has been spent. In one way Destiny is a huge success, the cost to make it was half a billion, yet this game made over 1 billion, so that is definitely a win. Now Destiny joins the ranks of requiring DLC moments, and here is the first hiccup. The drive and ‘choices’ in ‘The Taken King‘ expansion, has been all over the net and the day one gamers are not happy! The new full version with DLC will come with items available only in the Collector’s Edition mean that players only chance to get those items requires them to re-purchase a game and DLC they already own, which is not a good moment, so the new players will get rare weapons and items that seasoned players will not be able to get their hands on, the playing field will now be slightly uneven, it also makes for a game where players have a case of the ‘envy’ which also does no good, you see envy bites in a gamer, until he is too pissed off to play, which is deadly to Bungie to say the least. In addition, like with blizzard, revenue will come in, yet not in the large masses it did come in, so these players need to also rely on new IP and new games to grow its customer base. In addition, when we see a review like ‘Final verdict on most expensive video game ever made is a disappointing lack of ambition’, which we can question as it is only a single view, but MMO’s have fans and loathers, there is no in-between here. I am to some extent a loather, in this my reasoning is that these games at some point get hacked and the people go in overcharged destroying a perfectly good game, in addition, you need a decent player base with gamers that play like gamers, I do not mean their skill levels, but I mean that a certain level of courtesy is expected of your fellow fight mates, that at times is just not happening, souring the experience. It is also important that these bad moments are often just moments, not constant occurring events, in addition, many MMO games are often too unforgiving to new players, in some cases players who are experiencing their first 10 minutes in a game like Destiny, I have found in the past that MMO games do not once, not ever correctly tailor to those players, which puts them off. Someone gave this as a con to Destiny “Repetitive enemies, non-existent set pieces, and terrible bosses. No new ideas and overly simplistic role-playing and customisation elements“, I do not disagree here (from what I have played) but there is one side that is not part of that ‘con’ A game that tailors to thousands of players needs a stable setting, which cannot survive on terrible bosses and simplicity, what cannot (and as far as I can state) has not ever been confirmed is how the game plays after a while, you see, these games need to rely that a person once he/she pushes past level 13 is still eager to play, repetition is a killer here, not at level 4, 5 or 6. That will impact longevity, a side the stockbrokers do not seem to understand as that part of the game will not fit into a spreadsheet.

Now we get to the EA side of things, yes, there is no denying that their list is good. First we get the sports games (NHL, FIFA, NBA and NFL) and there will be Star Wars Battlefront. Now the bad part, so far EA Sports will always need patches and if the previous games are anything to go by it will not be that bad. In addition, sports games have a loyal following so unless their QA department screws up, we have 4 seemingly decent going games, however Star Wars Battlefront (SWB) is another matter, no matter how it looks now, there will be issues all over the board when the population at large goes into it, it is a mere statement of fact. An open system with so many fans will optionally truly drain the internet, so as EA overcomes the first issues, it will be an important setting, because Destiny and other MMO’s (real Elder Scrolls) have made many gamers a little hesitant to go day one (except for the limited edition fans), so that first hiccup will determine how wave two will react and that will result in slacking sales, in addition, upcoming Q1 2016 games will possibly see delays and the true kicker (Mass Effect Andromeda) is not out until the end of 2016, that is if there are no development hiccups. So in all this we have a stable setting from both, yet in my view, stability does not give rise to exploding share prices and the fact that EA doubled in a year might sound nice, but that was the result of new Nextgen consoles with a population making a mandatory purchase as there were almost no choices in games, now a year later that market shifted and the true anticipated upcoming games only have SWB on its list, the rest of the desired Nextgen games are all indie developers with none of them linked to either Electronic Arts or Blizzard/Activision.

In addition, the latest ‘remaster’ joke comes from Activision, The Prototype bundle, which I was initially looking forward to is now already regarded as the worst remastering ever. A frame rate that seems to go no higher than 30, blurry graphics at times, what was original is now a game not to take seriously (either of the two games). So Activision end up with two titles on Nextgen that look worse than it did on the original consoles, who is that for a non-achievement, that failing will also impact the non-revenue side. Kotaku shows it best at (http://kotaku.com/the-prototype-bundle-for-ps4-and-xbox-one-is-pretty-sho-1718779050), especially when the Xbox 360 has a framerate of 26, whilst the Xbox One has a framerate of 24. The average gamer can immediately see the flaw here, so why release a game that below acceptable default? It also implies that when a software house goes to this length to hope for revenue, we see a side that many gamers fear, the remake of a decent game that becomes a far below average result. It tend to make them shift focus to other titles, titles that are not from that software house.

From these point, I can now state the opposite of Zack’s reason to buy, which is from a gamer’s point of view, perhaps the shareholders will see it differently (as they focus on spreadsheets) when they look at returns, so when the next set of games fall short of quality, are returns still a guarantee? Again, my emotional side does not trust the setting here and I would personally prefer to sink $100 for shares on Frontier Development or Hello games based on their beta’s then on some of the final versions that either Activision or Electronic Arts has to offer. Yes we gamers are an emotional lot perhaps that will be part of what some might regard as ‘my failed view’ here, which would be fair enough.

 

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July 19, 2015 · 21:03

Getting back on the horse

Finally a blog article from me that is for the most all about my view of gaming  (because there is nothing interesting about reading stories regarding Varoufakis being a sore loser in the Guardian).

We all have these moments where we go shopping, whilst there are no funds available. A situation I have been very familiar with, yet we still go browsing in many places to see whether there is something to work towards. This certainly describes my case and as I found out soon thereafter, I got myself into a mingled world of facts and none facts a lot more than I bargained for. So what started this?

I’ll be honest, ever since the release of Elite: Dangerous I have been living on the edge of my previous addiction. It is one of the most loved games I had ever played. I still think back with utter fondness playing this game on the CBM-64. Wireframe and low resolution were at the core of a game that offered such fun, its challenge and entertainment that left its mark on me ever since. I played the remake on the Amiga somewhere in the 90’s, but the original was still the soul breaker for me. With David Braben making the ‘now’ version for today’s PC environment and by adding not just a galactic map, but by almost mapping the ENTIRE galaxy, this game is now an entirely new revelation and because Sean Murray keeps on not giving a release date for his upcoming masterpiece No Man’s sky, my desire to play Elite: Dangerous increases. It is however not that simple, my PC (which still works excellently) is now 9 years old, so it cannot deal with today’s gaming. As I stated, there is no way to afford a new PC at present, which is why I kept on browsing.

Now we get to the issue: The amount of gaming systems out there appear to be a joke! I lost two days getting back into the field I had high expertise in, but as I moved to consoles (as keeping up with gaming PC’s became way too expensive, even when I had my good income), the market moved on (as it would) and I learned that changes had been many. Now, for the most I understand it all, but the diversity to learn what is needed to know is one that a non-hardware savvy person, gamer or not, is one that could boggle the mind.

It took me two days to get back onto the level of knowledge I once had. Even now, there are still diminishing gaps.

So, why is all this an issue?

Well, even though the graphics card was always an issue, in my days I moved from a Diamond Viper (which was top of the market in 1998) to a NVIDIA GeForce 6800 card (in 2005), which was again pretty high up (and not cheap), at this point I could game pretty much anything, I had the top of the range SoundBlaster and a good screen and I could game and compute my life away behind my desktop.

Now gaming has changed. For one, it is no longer really about sound cards, the system board has all it needs for gamers, so we are left with the proper processor, the right amount of memory and the graphics card. This is where the issue starts. The diversity of graphic cards is now a jungle, how can any parent choose the right system for their kid, or for that matter, how can any newbie gamer select the best card for their needs?

I can tell you right now that many shops are truly lacking in knowledge there. When you go to online places (which is an initial MUST), you get a boatload of options too. System prices range from 999 to 4299, so where is the best choice? In the middle or at the far end? Questions that many do not have and others state: ‘the more expensive the better’ (which is a truth to some degree). You see, at some point I decided to stay one hardware iteration behind, so that I could game at a very high level, yet needing a decently less amount of money. That truth in gaming remains to be an almost absolute truth. There is a new property in play, one that was never a real issue even 5 years is now a massive part, it is about the noise level of the graphics card as some of those bad boys make noise when they are working, which is not that dissimilar an issue from the Xbox 360 DVD drive and fan noise. So getting a quiet system is worth it. A lesser item is the power consumption of such a card, which at maximum uses as much energy as two PS4 systems in full gaming mode and at the price of $999 (just for a graphics card), that bad boy costs the same as two PlayStation 4 systems. So is gaming on the PC worth it?

That is the question you must ask yourself, especially considering that gaming will take another bang in hardware in 3-4 years, even as you might only need to replace the graphics card, you see a devaluation of 25% a year. That is the part many people are not always considering, which fair is enough. Now, the truth is that if you see some games like Skyrim, where some mods were made to truly blast the hell out of the word pretty, as an RPG fan, I would fold like a bad poker player at the mere sight of the created graphics, yet, I never felt that Skyrim was anything less than amazing on a console, and I knew that the PC was a lot better.

Fortunately for me Elite: Dangerous does not require the most massive card, so that system is a lot less unaffordable than any new system, but unaffordable it remains, so what is this about? First of all, people need to really take a look at what they are willing to afford online before walking into a computer shop. Places like http://www.pccasegear.com and http://www.mwave.com.au/ (for Australian consumers) are good places to take a first look. When you see the prices you are in for (that is before you add the keyboard, mouse and display), you need to see what the graphical needs will be, and moreover, how some games perform. In this I relied on http://www.tomshardware.com/  in the past and it is still around. It is here where we would read “In the graph, MSI’s card is listed at 34 decibels. This is done to represent just how quiet the Twin Frozr V solution really is. The meter wouldn’t register a reading two inches from the rear panel, even when the fans started up“, that is indeed one part that matters, another part is frame-rate, so how smooth is the game, this site gives us that too, although one setback is that Tom does not seem to test all resolutions whilst the new gamers all want 1440p and a few now demand 4K resolution performance graphs, but the new upcoming cards will likely show that too.

There are other sites that give good independent review of cards, just be willing to spend an hour looking at the different places before you go shopping, I have tried a few conversations out there and I can tell you now that these places (read: shops) are often devoid of true inside knowledge on cards, finding one gamer amongst that lot is a treasure, but also a hindrance, as you might find yourself overspending a bit sooner and a little more than you expected.

In all this, PC gaming will remain and there is no reason why it should not, but in this day and age that part is too often forgotten, and electricity, especially in the UK does not come cheap. The amount of gamers not considering their electricity bill is growing on a daily basis.

For example, 9.429p per 1kWh, 600W PSU means 0.094 x 0.6 x 24 = £1.35 per day, meaning that your gaming PC (if you keep it on all day) will cost you £495 a year alone. The Australian example is harder as energy suppliers seem to REFUSE to give out clear pricing, only when they know all your facts will they give you any information, making them slightly less reputable than the ice dealers in Kings Cross. So if we go by the same system and a 20c per KwH, we get: 0.2 x 0.6 x 24 = $2.88, which amounts to $1042 a year on power to the gaming system alone.

You might think that this is trivial, but in this day and age, in these moments, you better consider shutting down your PC. A friend of mine got scared as he got his quarterly bill, he now shuts down the computer properly. It is one of the running costs of gaming that people forget as they think it does not matter, and when you are renting in a university dorm it might not, but when you work, you are not working to be the bitch of Energy Australia, or EDF Energy for that matter, are you? At least UK power (www.ukpower.co.uk) gave me some decent prices to work with.

How does this relate?

Getting back on the horse is a term we see ourselves confronted with, because the term ‘is the juice worth the squeeze’ is becoming a predominant question in gaming, not just in PC gaming, the fact that several high profile cases have changed the industry is linked to all this. When we see Assassins Creed: Unity, with needing gigabytes in patches, where a game almost a year old is still receiving patches (number 5 was released 3 days ago). The gamer’s view of quality demand and the industry of lacking the ability to meet even the minimal requirement here is also affecting the choice of gaming system. Why spend $4200 on a system that will require patching for a year? And that game is not alone. Arkham knight is now treading that same line, an industry inherently unable to even meet basic expectations. And even though Witcher 3 exceeded expectations wildly, the new patch is massive at 7Gb and as Forbes is informing us (at http://www.forbes.com/sites/davidthier/2015/07/18/theres-a-problem-with-the-witcher-3s-new-patch/), where we see “the new patch means that The Witcher 3 doesn’t perform as well on either the Xbox One or the PS4, dipping down to 20 FPS fairly consistently in some of the game’s busier locales” gives clear indication that PC gaming is however much desired a path that is riddled with issues at a price so much higher than the console world.

So even if it were possible for me to get back on that horse, I have serious doubts whether the juice will be worth the squeeze, because at $4200 ($1999 is a more realistic choice in decent gaming PC’s) I would demand a decent level of perfection in gaming and even though the hardware meets it, it seems more and more clear that the industry is no longer able to meet these expectations, so even though I will require a PC at some point, my old one still (thankfully) suffices for non-gaming purposes and gaming on a PC is no longer truly surpassing the joy of a console.

Many will not agree with me on the latter and that is just fine, some will get great gaming on their PC when it comes down to World of Warcraft and League of Legends, yet when we consider the following headlines ‘Battlefield 4 – what can we expect from the summer patch?‘ (July 10th 2015), ‘Batman: Arkham Knight PC Version Fixes Not Coming Until Fall‘ (July 16th 2015), ‘The Huge Witcher 3 Patch Is Rolling Out Over The Next 24 Hours‘ (July 17th 2015) and the least said about ‘F1 2015 Errors, Crashes, Bugs, Performance, Low FPS, and Fixes‘ the better, with 2 patches within a week (including a day 1 patch) and as stated “PC community still seemed to struggle to get a decent gameplay experience” the question is not just about the massive cost of hardware, the issue becomes, if this industry does not up its game by a lot real fast, will there still be a long term future for these less affordable gaming PC’s?

 

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July 19, 2015 · 12:17

A political minefield

If there is one place where politics have bungled the ball on near titanic proportions, than it would be healthcare. The UK with the NHS issues, Australia with Medicare, the Netherlands with Gezondsheidszorg and the less we say about Obamacare, the better it is for all of us. They all made massive errors which changed the game for any nation that needs to take care of healthcare.

The UK has had its own issues for some time, yet now we see a new event coming up. Let’s take a look at ‘Cancer diagnosis ‘within four weeks’ under new care plan‘ (at http://www.bbc.com/news/health-33574233). First off, it is a good article by Nick Triggle, he looks at it from a decent viewpoint, but is there an issue?

The first part is “The five-year plan will cost £400m a year but experts say earlier treatment will result in similar savings. They say the plan could help an extra 30,000 patients survive for 10 years“, so basically there is no additional cost, which sounds good, let’s face it, in the increasing pull of funds, breaking even over the next 5 years does sound awesome, the people get to live up to another decade, which is just a bonus.

My initial issue is with the quote “Harpal Kumar, chief executive of Cancer Research UK and chairman of NHS England’s task force, said the changes could help create a “world class” service over the coming years“, the term ‘world class‘ seems a little out of bounds and that also sets the tone, let me go on so that it will all make sense.

The second quote is “We have an opportunity to save many thousands of lives from cancer“, which in light of all this does not make sense, especially when we see “But Mr Kumar believes another 30,000 people a year could end up surviving that long once the changes have been put in place – a third of them simply through diagnosing the disease earlier”

I admit that I am splitting hairs, because giving them an additional 10 years is not saving a life, it is prolonging it. Apart from that, is there an objection? You see, healthcare is about keeping people healthy (and saving lives whenever possible) so there is no real objection is there? Giving a person up to 10 years more is a noble goal, especially when 130,000 people die each year, letting them enjoy life a little longer is not wrong at all. So why am I looking at this article?

For that we need to look at the steps. These 7 steps is what brought the light in

  • The creation of a four-week target for diagnosis from GP referral. Currently patients are meant to see a specialist within two weeks of a GP referral but can then face weeks of waiting for tests, meaning a growing number of patients do not get their treatment started within 62 days as they should
  • An 80% increase in the number of tests being carried out, including increasing the ability of GPs to order tests directly – for many they have to go through a hospital specialist
  • Replacing more than 100 radiotherapy machines – half of England’s stock – with new, better models
  • Recruiting extra staff in areas such as specialist nurses and radiologists, with the latter needing to nearly double in number
  • Cancer patients to get online access to all their test results and a specialist nurse or other key worker to co-ordinate their care
  • A call for action on smoking and obesity – four in 10 cancers could be prevented through lifestyle improvements
  • All cancer survivors to be given a recovery package so they get the support they need to recover from their treatment and stay cancer-free

The first premise is shown in dots 3 and 4. Replacing 100 radio therapy machines with newer ones and recruiting extra staff (especially radiologists). The fact that the article implies that there are 200 radiotherapy machines is equally disturbing. You see, 280,000 diagnosed people implies 4 people a day and that is if every machine is properly managed, monitored and staffed. The issue is not complete and facts are missing.

For this we take a look at breast cancer. The site Jezebel had an interesting article linking to all this. ‘Can You Be Diagnosed With Breast Cancer In Just One Day?‘ (at http://jezebel.com/5865123/can-you-be-diagnosed-with-breast-cancer-in-just-one-day), where we read “I wrote to Dr. Karla Kerlikowske, professor of medicine and epidemiology/biostatistics at USCF’s Helen Diller Family Comprehensive Cancer Center. She explained: Mammograms can identify a site likely to be cancer, but it requires taking a sample of breast tissue and looking at it under a microscope to know a person has breast cancer. Rarely, less than 1% of the time a radiologist can look at a mammogram and based on the mammogram know a woman has breast cancer, even then it requires a tissue diagnosis for confirmation“. This seems to be a universal truth. In (as I see it) nearly all forms of cancer, confirmation is needed), which is part of the entire issue.

This does not change one essential truth “simply through diagnosing the disease earlier“, that is again a universal truth, so even for that mere fact this project should go on. The issue is not with the idea, or the plan or what we read, but by what we are not reading here.

Part 5 is the first real kicker, giving online to test results is a dangerous step, often cancer will hit the elderly, who do not comprehend the need for proper approach to common cyber sense and as such too many medical details will ends up in the open air, a place where medical details should not be allowed. Now, issue number 2 is one that can be handled, there is no reason why not to do this, yet we must acknowledge that specialists are there for a reason, as such, we can accept that GP’s could call for the test yet, here is also the danger that a GP will act under the ‘better be safe than sorry premise‘ which will now give the situation that 80% more tests are being made, yet it will also include the stronger increase of false alarm results, even under an issue of the best intentions. A mere consequence of people doing the best possible for the patient, an anticipated side effect of ‘world class cancer care‘. I do not object to these parts (or fight the approach here), but it calls into question the given budget already from this point on. So what is expected to be £400m a year, could end up being £520m a year. In addition to issue 4 where we see the need for specialist nurses and radiologists, there will also be the need for additional technicians and re-schooling of technicians and upgrading other peripheral devices. It is possible that these parts had been added to the cart of costs, yet the fact that they are not mentioned, the fact that some parts might not have been looked at yet makes the anticipated £400m a year incorrect and dangerous. The Labour party made a 12 billion IT fiasco, let’s not add to that, shall we?

You see, the cancer confirmation part is not always possible on the spot. So when we accept that ‘Most incisional and excisional biopsies are performed by surgeons‘, we see that additional costs and additional resources will be required. This means that there will be additional pressure on surgeons, was that factored in? You see, there is already a massive backlog. The Guardian reported on July 4th 2014 in the article ‘NHS patients waiting longer for routine operations under coalition‘ (at http://www.theguardian.com/society/2014/jul/04/nhs-patients-waiting-longer-for-routine-operations-under-coalition), that delays had been reported of up to 215 days.

So the entire ‘speed need’ in cancer diagnoses is going to take another matter of growth entirely.

So as I give you these facts and the thoughts around this, you might get a first idea what was wrong with the article by Nick Triggle. I am an ample Medici, but I never studied medicine and it took me roughly 17 seconds to get my question marks up, so why did Nick Triggle not voice these concerns?

The quote by Dr Maureen Baker, of the Royal College of GPs, who welcomed the plans was “The system is already overloaded and we must ensure that there is sufficient imaging and specialist capacity to cope with the increased number of referrals before promises are made to patients that cannot be delivered“. Yet her quote is equally incomplete. I would have expected the quote to be “The system is already overloaded and radiology is only one step in determining the path for a cancer patient. We must ensure that there is growth in several ways in several divisions of hospitals to cope with the increased number of referrals before promises are made to patients that cannot be delivered“, which would have been more correct and as lacking as the quote seems to be from my point of view, I personally would acknowledge that the BBC article could have been used to emphasize on how much work the NHS needs and how much more needs to be done.

None of that can be seen in the article.

It seems to be that the response from Lynda Thomas, chief executive at Macmillan Cancer Support is more on point. Even though it is ambitious, she states “This report has to be more than a set of recommendations on paper. It has to inspire action and lead to meaningful improvements for the lives of people with cancer“. I think that she is playing the game carefully as she wants to get whatever she can for people with cancer, yet the though in my mind is (based on the BBC article) that I would have phrased “This report has to be more than just a set of incomplete recommendations on paper“. That will lead to questions and that will lead to proper dimensioning of a massive problem. I agree that this needs to be done, but without the fact that the pressure for surgeons is already beyond believe (not just in the UK), not addressing this part will lead to another fiasco for NHS, which is what we need to avoid at all costs.

So we are facing a political minefield, one that Labour did not survive, I hope that the conservatives and especially the Rt Hon Jeremy Hunt MP takes more than just a few additional looks at it. And even though he might dread sitting down with a collection of ‘funny and entertaining people’ (like hospital administrators), he will do so and get a proper scope of what will be impacted, because spending another 2 billion only to learn that the term ‘similar savings‘ will never be an option is one he must be willing to accept having to deal with.

There is nothing against spending it on treatment and diagnoses of cancer patients, I just want to make certain that they do not end up becoming the group who ends up with the short straw, a draw they never got a choice in voted for.

 

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July 16, 2015 · 23:10

You keep what you kill

The business section of the Guardian had an interesting article yesterday. It comes from David Pegg and it is about targeting customers. In the article we see a prominent picture of Robert Redford (at http://www.theguardian.com/business/2015/jul/15/sky-broadband-customers-targeted-allegedly-pirating-robert-redford-film). So what is at play here?

Here we see ‘US firm TCYK, apparently named after film The Company You Keep, made Sky hand over details of customers accused of downloading movie‘, which comes with the opening quote “Dozens of UK broadband customers have received letters from a US firm accusing them of pirating a little-known Robert Redford film and inviting them to pay a financial settlement on pain of further legal action“. You see TCYK got a court order against Sky Broadband, which must now hand over customer details of those TCYK accuses of using torrent sites to download and distribute the films.

These people now get the offer of paying a hefty fine or end up in a legal battle.

So, how does that work in Australia? Well, here we depend on the Copyright Act 1968, where we see in section 36(1) “Subject to this Act, the copyright in a literary, dramatic, musical or artistic work is infringed by a person who, not being the owner of the copyright, and without the licence of the owner of the copyright, does in Australia, or authorizes the doing in Australia of, any act comprised in the copyright“, which means you made the movie, you are licensed to handle the movie, or you own the copyright, if you are none of these three, you become the infringer.

Now we get to the nitty gritty of the act (sections 43A and 43B) when we consider ‘temporary reproductions‘, which starts of nicely in section 43A(1) with “The copyright in a work, or an adaptation of a work, is not infringed by making a temporary reproduction of the work or adaptation as part of the technical process of making or receiving a communication“, with the crown part ‘temporary reproduction of the work or adaptation as part of the technical process’, which takes Sky Broadband out of the loop in all this, because Sky just sends packages from point A to Point B and as such, they do not keep any parts of that they communicate, they only keep the logs of what is communicated.

In subsection 2 of section 43A we see “Subsection (1) does not apply in relation to the making of a temporary reproduction of a work, or an adaptation of a work, as part of the technical process of making a communication if the making of the communication is an infringement of copyright“, which might put Sky in the hotspot, yet Sky is at this point an innocent disseminator of information (you know that anti-censoring part people all love), so Sky must prove that by handing over the records. This now counters the (what I would regard as fake indignation) from Michael Coyle, a solicitor advocate at Lawdit Solicitors, who stated regarding the act of Sky Broadband “They should be fighting tooth and nail not to have this information released”, to which I would state “Yes, because we should always protect the people engaging in illegal acts!” more important is the part that comes next “TCYK says that it hired a “forensic computer analyst” to identify IP addresses of computers that were making the film available online” so it seems that those watching the movie are not high on the list, it is about the distributors, those who made the movie available online. So there are two parts. The first part ‘temporary reproductions’, is a part we are still looking at, yet ‘distribution’, which we will also look at.

As Sky is protecting itself by showing themselves to be innocent disseminators, we need to see the logs, part of that is to give evidence that you (or they) are working on a temporary reproduction.

Temporary what?

OK, let’s take YouTube, when you watch a movie, a trailer, a TV Show, you are looking at a temporary reproduction. The movie is streamed into the memory of your computer and once the link is severed at ANY GIVEN MOMENT, the movie cannot be watched and it cannot be re-watched’ it must be pushed into the memory of your computer again. This is different from Torrent systems where a file, temporary or not is actually saved to your computer. This is the confusing part, whether it is a temporary file (what the people refer to as temporary) is actually ‘just a file’ that file remains on your computer, just like many other ‘temporary’ files.

I know, it is still confusing! Let me elaborate, when windows or a windows application needs to handle data, it created a file that changes all the time, we refer to them as temporary files. The UNIX reference is much better, they are called ‘scratch files’. So if you download a PDF, it will create a file, and that file will capture all the packages and add them together. That is done until the file is complete, when the download is completed the file gets written becoming the permanent file. This is the normal way for operating systems to work. The issue is that something is written (read: saved) onto your local destination, when this is done, it is by sheer definition no longer a temporary file. this is the part that is taken care of in Section 43A, now as long as there is no way to make the ‘temporary file’ work via an application of any kind, you can also rely on section 43B of the act where we see in subsection 1 “Subject to subsection (2), the copyright in a work is not infringed by the making of a temporary reproduction of the work if the reproduction is incidentally made as a necessary part of a technical process of using a copy of the work“. This now shows my explanation of temporary reproduction, where we refer to ‘incidentally made as a necessary part of a technical process‘, which could make that part a no go area, was it not for the first part where we saw ‘Subject to subsection (2)’, which is now the issue as this does not apply as per section 43B (2)(a) relying on both (i) which states “if the reproduction is made from an infringing copy of the work“, and the irritating use of the ‘or’ statement for (ii) “a copy of the work where the copy is made in another country and would be an infringing copy of the work if the person who made the copy had done so in Australia“, which takes care of any ‘border’ issues.

So, here we are with an infringed work, so what about the words of Michael Coyle?

Well, for this we need to look at Part V remedies and offenses, specifically ‘Division 2AA Limitation on remedies available against carriage service providers‘, which now puts poor poor old Sky Broadband in the limelight! It is a bit of a puzzle, but in short it amounts to “A carriage service provider must satisfy the relevant conditions set out in Subdivision D before the limitations on remedies apply” (a bit paraphrased), this is set in section 116AH, where we see that the carriage service must provide the following two elements for ALL category transgressions

  1. “The carriage service provider must adopt and reasonably implement a policy that provides for termination, in appropriate circumstances, of the accounts of repeat infringers“
  2. “If there is a relevant industry code in force—the carriage service provider must comply with the relevant provisions of that code relating to accommodating and not interfering with standard technical measures used to protect and identify copyright material“

This is only the first of several elements that address the part that the Guardian stated “TCYK says that it hired a “forensic computer analyst” to identify IP addresses of computers that were making the film available online“, that part is also needed for Sky Broadband to prove that limitations ‘a’ and ‘b’ were adhered to. For this we need to take a look to a case (mentioned below) where we see at [697] “The question whether a person has supplied the means with which copyright has been infringed raises its own difficult issues. The primary judge concluded that the BitTorrent system was the means by which the appellants’ copyright was infringed. But I cannot see why the means with which the primary infringers committed acts of infringement must be so narrowly defined. The primary infringers used computers which were no less essential to their infringing activities than was the BitTorrent system. The same is true of the internet connections with which they made the appellants’ films available online”

More important, at [505] we see “It follows that customers, by entry into the CRA, consented to iiNet disclosing and using information, including personal information as defined, for the purpose of iiNet administering and managing the services provided pursuant to the CRA. Part of that administration and management includes compliance with the CRA. In circumstances where iiNet has received evidence of breaches of its CRA (for example, cl 4.2(a) and (e)) the customer has necessarily consented to iiNet using information it possesses, including personal information, to determine whether to take action under cl 14.2 of the CRA“, which all comes from the case Roadshow Films Pty Limited v iiNet Limited [2011] FCAFC 23, which means that Sky Broadband is going through the motions iiNet in Australia went through 4 years ago. This is important, because the customer relationship agreement is a legal scope that the customer agrees to, which allows for disclosure and more important, now looking at the ‘limitation on remedy’ or bluntly put ‘the massive amount of money TCYK will demand of Sky Broadband if they cannot satisfy conditions’ is where we see actions from Sky Broadband to disclose information.

In addition we need to see the satisfied part “Any transmission of copyright material in carrying out this activity must be initiated by or at the direction of a person other than the carriage service provider“, that part is given by the logs as the viewer did the ‘click here to watch full movie‘, basically that means that the user initiated the act. In addition, there is “The carriage service provider must not make substantive modifications to copyright material transmitted. This does not apply to modifications made as part of a technical process“, showing that whatever solution was used, Sky broadband passed through the information as part of what it is supposed to do as an ISP.

In the end, this will be a messy battle and there is one part that holds less water. It is the statement “Nicolas Chartier, the president of Voltage Pictures, told the Hollywood Reporter this year that he had issued 20,000 lawsuits against individuals accused of pirating the Hurt Locker in order to “make a statement”. “The day after we announced 20,000 lawsuits, the internet downloads of Hurt Locker went down about 40%”“, I am not sure if that will be the end this time, Hollywood has been clasping down in several ways. We see the 10 movies that make a billion, but the hundreds of others that aren’t slicing the cake are not in there, as such Hollywood is now lashing out all over Terra ‘non US’ and we see that it will hit Australia too, even more direct when the TPP becomes fact, at that point having a computer with logs pointing to it with irrefutable evidence might literally cost you your house. There is one side in the TPP that remains undiscussed, especially, as I personally see it behind the closed doors of the TPP negotiations. In all this America relies on fair use, in all this they are eager to criminalise that what is not criminal within the US, it makes for another case.

If we accept the following “Some historians prefer ‘slave’ because the term is familiar and shorter and it accurately reflects the inhumanity of slavery, with ‘person’ implying a degree of autonomy that slavery did not allow for“.

Now we convert that sentence into “Some politicians prefer ‘user’ because the term is familiar and shorter and it accurately reflects the chargeability of usage, with ‘US consumer’ implying a degree of freedom that users are not allowed to have” This is as I see it exactly the core and the broken foundation of the TPP, there is no fair use and there is no accountability on the other side, by all means the TPP ignores the constitutions of more than one nation. This was raised by Alan Morrison in The Atlantic on June 23rd 2015 (at http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2015/06/tpp-isds-constitution/396389/). The quote in question is “It is January 2017. The mayor of San Francisco signs a bill that will raise the minimum wage of all workers from $8 to $16 an hour effective July 1st. His lawyers assure him that neither federal nor California minimum wage laws forbid that and that it is fine under the U.S. Constitution. Then, a month later, a Vietnamese company that owns 15 restaurants in San Francisco files a lawsuit saying that the pay increase violates the “investor protection” provisions of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) agreement recently approved by Congress“, this is a situation that could be a reality.

You see, this relates to the case at hand in more than one way. In my view, TCYK has every right to protect its side, the movie it made and the revenue coming from that, so I am not against prosecuting copyright infringement at all. Yet, in all this the shift that TPP will allow for is a situation where ‘investor protection’ will bring a case which will be heard by three private arbitrators; the United States government is the sole defendant in that given scenario. More important, it will be a case brought by “investor-based expectations”, I think we can clearly see the link when we consider “Village Roadshow’s revenue and profits are below expectations, which was down 1.9% to $469.5 million for the six months to December. Net profit was lower by 26.2% to $13.34 million“, so in this case Village Roadshow blamed the weather, yet Village roadshow has blamed piracy on many occasions, so the moment we see a court case based on ‘investor-based expectations’, we should all become weary of this becoming an option the regain revenue from a mismanaged product (which is far-fetched but not out of the question).

So why these jumps?

  1. It might be a movie piracy case in the UK, but the result will hit Australia sooner rather than later and vice versa.
  2. Infringement is a growing ‘market’ and as such, especially in dire times, the industry at large wants to recoup parts of their losses due to infringement, yet will it truly hunt down the real perpetrators?
  3. Too many people rely on their ignorance and ‘they did not know’. This defence is now slowly but surely coming to an end, it is more and more an accepted rule that if you did not buy the article, or pay for it, how come you watched it?
  4. The TPP will change EVERYTHING! This closed door agreement is all about ‘indulging’ big business whilst big business is not playing the game fairly to begin with. In its core it can be seen as a discriminatory violation of ‘fair use’ and ‘constitutional values’.

In all this I jumped at Village Roadshow more than once. Personally I think that Graham Burke has been playing a lose rant game too often, whilst trying not to step on the toes of Telstra and Optus, but that might just be me! In addition, I have additional issues with Federal Attorney-General George Brandis regarding past events. This all links to an article last April in the Sydney Morning Herald (at http://www.smh.com.au/business/village-roadshow-wants-to-work-with-isps-instead-of-suing-movie-pirates-20150416-1mj8cd.html), where we see the quotes “The document centres on a “three strikes” system. An illegal downloader will get three warning notices before a Telco will help copyright holders identify them for potential legal action“, which sounds fine, yet in that part, if at any time the IP address was hijacked, there will not be any evidence absolving the accused person, so the one in court could be the victim in all this. In my view, this is a warped solution to the court case Village Roadshow lost against iiNet, meaning that other avenues need to be taken, which now reflects back to the UK case of Sky Broadband, which could hit Australian legislation. The next quote is “Federal Attorney-General George Brandis and Communications Minister Malcolm Turnbull set a 120-day deadline last December for internet service providers and entertainment companies to create a binding code“, which is indeed central but not in the way reported on. You see, Telstra and Optus are all about bandwidth, the more you use, the better the invoice from their point of view. This is part of the move we see all over the internet in the last article I wrote regarding the short-sightedness of Graham Burke, in the article ‘The real issue is here!‘ (at https://lawlordtobe.com/2014/06/17/the-real-issue-here/), which also reflected on the article ‘FACT on Piracy?‘ (at https://lawlordtobe.com/2014/01/03/fact-on-piracy/) from January 3rd 2014. These articles connect through ISP’s like Telstra and Optus who have been rescaling their bandwidth plans. The consequence of losing out on 4 billion a year. Now Telstra offers 50GB for $75 a month, smaller plans no longer exist, they have been pushing for new broadband boundaries so that their revenue is less impacted, so the impact of $40 and $80 a month is now decreased to an optional loss of $20 and $40 a month. It was (as I personally saw it) always about time and retrenching. It has been forever about big business! By the way, it is not just Telstra, others like iiNet have done the same thing, offering a new margin, reset to the width that has never been offered before. It is about rescaling the broadband plans, which results in resetting expectations and preparing for new data usage adherence.

You keep what you kill fits perfectly, it comes from the Riddick movies, which is basically the credo of a survivor, in this day and I agree, in this economy it is about lasting the longest and as such, they keep what they kill, which are the copyright infringers and their technologies. I do not oppose it, as I feel that owners of copyright are entitled to protect their assets. Yet, when we read Graham Burke we see “He said Australian film producers were trying to educate the public rather than sue them“, which might seem true enough, but behind that, I suspect, is the fear that if the Australian Copyright Act 1968 adds the ‘Fair Use’ principle, his education boat will sink on the spot, moreover, whatever US pressure we get from the TPP, gets drowned by Fair Use, because if it is good enough for Americans, it should be good enough for non-Americans too.

Last in all this is Matthew Deaner, executive director of Screen Producers Australia, who made a fair statement in the SMH article “They’re trying to say, ‘this is the right way to go about this stuff, this has a consequence to us’,” Mr Deaner said“, which we can get behind, yet the colourful rants by both Graham Burke and Sony executives on the utter non-realistic loss of billions is a consequence as well. By not properly and realistically setting the view, whilst, as I personally saw it, Sony executives were hiding behind excuses regarding missed targets that were never realistic to begin, which soured the milk of reality and reasonability.

Will this affect Australia?

Roadshow Films Pty Ltd v iiNet Ltd [2012] HCA 16 was settled in the High Court of Australia, yet the essential changes to copyright, the impact of the Trans Pacific Partnership (once signed) will also impact the future. The lack of a ‘fair use’ clause is as I see it an essential first step to protect those not engaged in active copyright infringement as well as allowing for innocuous acts not to be struck down in favour of big business in a draconian way. In all this, US corporations have relied on unfair advantages, whilst overcharging people all over the non-US in a massive way is just beyond belief.

Even now, example, ‘Ex Machina’ is in the US $17, in the UK $20 (both Amazon), which is already a 20% offset, a title which cannot be bought in Australia. The US has segmented commerce to maximise profits, whilst not giving fair options to consumers. The fact that they still enforce multiple region codes to limit fair consumer rights is also not addressed. This is in part what drives piracy. If Mr Burke is so about educating, how about Mr Burke educating the other side of the equation? With video games where price difference can go up to 100% in difference between the US and Australia, a consumer grievance that Federal Attorney-General George Brandis never bothered to properly address. When we consider the issue of price fixing we see “Price fixing occurs when competitors agree on pricing rather than competing against each other. In relation to price fixing, the Competition and Consumer Act refers to the ‘fixing, controlling or maintaining’ of prices“, in this we see a loaded gun of different proportions. You see, Agreements between related companies are also exempt from price fixing, yet, when this difference is set at 100%, whilst the firms place technological restrictions (region codes) on products, as well as denying fair competition, largely pushed by American corporations, where is the fairness in any trade agreement?

If a trade agreement is about removing trade barrier, in that regard, the region codes should be regarded as detrimental to trade, but the TPP is not about equality, it is about giving the power to big business and limiting the rights of consumers, which is why partially because of created limitations movies and videogames are not equally and honestly made available. So as we look at what some can buy more expensive and others cannot buy at all, Mr Burke should in part refrain from stating that ‘one leg is education’ the other is regarding ‘products being available at the same time as other countries’, it would make him instantly paraplegic. Unfairness is what drives infringement. This was shown in the 80’s in Europe in a very direct way as games, movies and music were so unbalanced that a $450 ferry ride to London (from Rotterdam) could pay itself back during one VHS shopping spree (not to mention the price difference in games).

That same principle applies here, so if this is truly about stopping infringement than the first step would have been consumer equality. Yet this is about the US maximising its profits, counteracting whatever ‘free’ trade is supposed to do, so copyright infringement is not going away any day soon, it will soon create new situations, all because those involved seem to be about abolishing what constitutes a fair user, which is why the TPP should never come into effect.

You keep what you kill

The question is, who gets killed in the end, because as more true illumination is given, the bigger the question mark we see on what propels infringement. If there is one real upside to all this, it will be evolution, it will not take long for someone to change the premise of the game and design a new peer to peer cloud solution that resets the legal playing field.

Strife has always been the number one innovator in both war and technology, that part has not and will not change.

 

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July 13, 2015 · 23:16

Wackadoo for a game

The E3 is done, the 2015 San Diego Comic Con is on and I am missing out on all of it this year. Whether it is addiction, compulsion or enslavement. It might be the last one, yet my feelings for Elite: Dangerous are no less than the same feeling I had when I had when the original  on the Commodore 64 was released in 1985. There was one shop who had it on the first day, which meant a 4 hour train ride, two hours there, and two hours nail biting trip back. Yes, it was one hell of a day, but the result was exceeding expectations, the game would be my number one game to play for a very very long time, all because a friend showed it to me on his BBC Micro B one year earlier (1984).

Enslavement is what I have in common with Greece on several levels. Like Greece, I did this to myself, whether my DNA made me desire this videogame more than sex or whether it is just the animation of pretty pictures that move because of my interaction does not matter, it was all me! Now it is so simple to blame David Braben (like calling him ‘Jerry’), but it is me, only me and I very much realize that.

It seems that the press and many others (like Greek Politicians) cannot see that. So I feel miffed when I see ‘The euro ‘family’ has shown it is capable of real cruelty‘ (at http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/jul/13/euro-family-angela-merkel-greek-bailout) by Suzanne Moore. In January 30th 2013, I wrote ‘Time for another collapse‘ (at https://lawlordtobe.com/2013/01/30/time-for-another-collapse/). In there I stated “Greece is fighting just about everything from no longer payable debts and unemployment figures to phantoms of their past“, in February 2013 in ‘The Italian menace?‘ I wrote “Politicians are also to blame. For that I would like to mention papers like “Investing in Greece: an Olympic opportunity”. It came from Costas Bakouris in 2001. The thoughts were all fair enough. However, how much came to happen? How much money did come in?” This list goes on and on, I reported on it well over two years ago, no one truly dug into these matters and everyone seems to live by the credo: ‘if Goldman Sachs can hide it and the press does not report on it, it does not exist‘.

Now, the Greek people will get a harsh dose of the consequences of not holding its politicians to account.

Than 22nd January 2014 ‘Cooking the Books?‘ (at https://lawlordtobe.com/2014/01/22/cooking-the-books/), where the quote by Business Week “Europe’s having a bond rally and the PIGS are playing host. Portugal, Ireland, Spain—and even Greece, where Europe’s debt crisis began—are heading back to the bond markets and enjoying their lowest borrowing costs in years, as investors appear reassured that the region’s sickest economies are on the mend” is centre in all this, the part ‘investors appear reassured that the region’s sickest economies are on the mend‘ is the delusion to outrank all other delusions. In all this there is a link of power players promoting one another through unnamed sources. Greece should have known better! And in all this, as I stated before, these power players will sell Greece down the river in a heartbeat, because the fallout of Italy and France would be massively worse (10 times worse). All what we see now is the direct consequence of inaction, inaction for 3 Greek administrations and especially these last 6 months when the Greeks gave faith to what I regard to be a rock star (Varoufakis) and a paper tiger (Tsipras), all this, a mere consequence of inaction.

Was all this inevitable? Yes, personally I believe so, even though I believe that Antonis Samaras was on the right path, yet overall, that path was just prolonging a bad situation that had no long term future path.

In all this the Press is equally to blame, in conjunction with economic forecasters, power players and political whatever you want to call them. They were all about demonising ‘austerity’, it was all about how bad austerity is. The plain, bland and bitter truth is that austerity is nothing more than keeping a proper budget, yet several of the previous parties are ALL ABOUT SPENDING! Which is delusional! Just like I cannot speed up the release of Elite: Dangerous or No Man’s Sky, they cannot write away debts, there will be a consequence.

So when I read “Alexis Tsipras has fought tooth and nail for something resembling the debt restructuring that even the International Monetary Fund acknowledges is needed. The incompetence of a succession of Greek governments and tax evasion within Greece is not in doubt. But the creditors of the euro family knew this as they upped their loans, and must now delude themselves that everything they have done has been for the best” which is nicely written Miss Moore, but the following parts remain an issue “something resembling the debt restructuring” is not even close to a reality unless you keep your spending in order, which has not been done for decades.

It is her last paragraph that bothers me the most “The euro family has been exposed as a loan sharking conglomerate that cares nothing for democracy. This family is abusive. This “bailout”, which will be sold as being a cruel-to-be-kind deal is nothing of the sort. It is simply being cruel to be cruel“, in all this governments are to blame, in all this the press took a back seat to ignore what needed to be done, keep a proper budget, in all this close to ALL EEC nations failed. You see debt, even governmental one needs to be paid back, that part has been ignored for too long. The EEC now has an accumulated debt that is closing in on the size of the US debt. It almost looks like a plan by the banks in global charge to equalise all debts making them in charge of everything. Is that such a large leap? You see the debt only seems to go down in Malta, Czech Republic and Belgium. Belgium is essential because its debt is already too large, but at least they are making a positive change, only them and no one seems bothered about this. As per today they are all bothered with the upcoming consequences, now as Greece has seemingly pulled the bunny out of the hat, we will see changes of another nature, because Marine Le Pen will not let the momentum she can gain from this unanswered issue and as France is down 2.6 trillion, she will now emphasize on the benefit of moving away from the EEC, which heralds future for France, the French product and the all-round future of France. Is she right? I cannot tell as there are a few too many unknown factors here, but beyond Suzanne Moore there is more to see.

For that we need to look at gung-ho go-getter Helena Smith of the Guardian, who writes “It will take years – decades perhaps – for Greeks to get over this crisis. Catastrophe may have been averted, but it comes at the expense of conscious national failure: an overriding recognition that the state formed after the fall of military rule provided 40 years of peace and stability, but has ended in extraordinary ignominy. The promise of unending progress did not occur. Of all the truths that Greeks must now confront, that will be the hardest“, personally she writes well, but the truth is (as I see it), that the Greek issue will take generations, likely 3 of them to get it all under true control, in all this the deadly issue was not changing when it was possible. A hard-line change in 2005 would have made all the difference, now we get the added pain of a decade of spills whilst the economy is down further and more people are unemployed, all factors changing the game.

Helena writes “In return for a third bailout – this time staggered over three years and amounting to €53bn – Greeks essentially have been told to walk through the valley of the shadow of death. And that is the good scenario. The alternative – Grexit – would have bypassed purgatory but taken crisis train passengers straight to hell“, even that is not completely on par. Yes Helena is correct, but what she (validly) abstains from, is the part that is depicted by ‘the valley of the shadow of death‘ is a road of reformation of administrative law, criminal law, taxation law and taxation regulation. In addition there will be pension reformation and consumer taxation. If any of these matters are not initially resolved in 18 months, with this I mean proper reformation design from day 1 (tomorrow), not a collection of empty meetings with governmental paid lunches and dinners.

It will take long working weeks (50 hours plus) to make this happen in 18 months and that draft will be decent enough to truly change the tides. If any of these changes are not done by then (so even if they get all but one done), than the Greeks will only have hell to look forward to, the Purgatory station will not be an option at that point. Changes that if Syriza had seriously started talking and started on changing them, the last week would never have happened. In all this there is one other advice the Greeks need to take home, no matter how proud they are, their survival will now depend on changing their family structure.

Let me explain, as time is now too short for those who have an option, the Greeks have one option left to survive (if at all). Consider a family with grandparents, parents and children. We call them iteration 1, 2 and 3. They need to sit down and see where the lowest debt is. If at all possible, make to all debts the minimum payments then, take every coin they have left and place that on the lowest debt. Do not hide behind pride and time and just pay them all. Get rid of them one by one as fast as possible. Banks will all state that this will not work, but they need these people all enslaved. Create safety by removing the first debt, then the second and so on. As the debts fall away, so does the interest, Greeks need to make momentum and the banks are ALL about longevity. They will twist, spin and make all kinds of brazen projections, but Greece will be in a bad place well beyond 2020. So the Greek people, if possible need to move away from all debt, after that, whomever has shed the debt, they can move forward, they can acquire and grow.

In all this, it will be another Greece, one that has a retirement system which can no longer work in the previous path, there will be a Consumer tax setting that will up the cost of living and the health care system in Greece will remain a matter of nightmares, possible it can only be accessed through the purgatory station the Greeks hopefully avoided, but in all this, taxation laws will have to change at first light, it will also mean that the very wealthy Greeks will move to another place, not unlike Gerard Depardieu. There is no telling where they will end if they want to avoid taxation of that what they avoided for so long and it is equally wrong to speculate how much taxation is due, I lack the pure data on that. What is cause to all is the dire need for the Greeks (and many EEC politicians) to stop spending money they did not have and money they were unlikely to receive. all this is centre to the fall of Greece and it is not over yet because even though Greece when over the edge, France and Italy are right there with Greece (which is why they were so opposed to Grexit) and with these two we face a 5 trillion Euro tumble, 10 times the debt of Greece.

So are we wackadoo for a video game, are we going wackadoo for the game of economics or are we just wackadoo for a totalitarian enabling of banks through debt?

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July 11, 2015 · 11:43

This planet has been drained!

That was the voice in my head, as I was reading the article ‘Lab-grown leather is coming, but is the industry ready for it?‘ (at http://www.theguardian.com/sustainable-business/2015/jul/10/lab-grown-leather-modern-meadow-ceh-suzanne-lee). The voice in my head is from a forgotten gem called ‘Conquest: Frontier Wars‘ by UBI soft. It is an amazing game (but that is not what this is about), in the game, when you have mined all the resources and the planetary resources have gone to 0, you can hear the Caleron AI state ‘This planet has been drained’. So what does that have to do with growing leather?

Consider the, what I would personally regard as an incorrect quote: “the supply of leather is dwindling as fewer people eat meat, with the US cattle population dropping by 32% in the last few decades“. I feel fairly certain that the amount of people of a carnivorous nature has not dwindled down, the mere fact is that fewer and fewer people can afford a decent steak (or lamb chop for that matter). That does not dwindle stocks, there is more in play than just the mere numbers of cattle (but that is a discussion for another time).

You see, the quote that matters is “As the supply of cow hides declines, could a lab-grown alternative fill the supply gap?“, it is shown under a photo of two men going through mountains of leather. The article is an interesting read and my contemplations started in earnest when I read “The Company is experimenting with cultured animal cells and tissues to create an alternative biomaterial to traditional leather. This lab-grown leather could offer a more sustainable alternative and even a possible long-term bridge for the gap in supply and demand“. Now on the premise it seems interesting, a grown form of leather, which means that cattle need not be slaughtered for the mere need of their hides. A new substance that could imbue fashion, accessories and other leather items for whatever reason.

Yet, in there I also see a clear danger that the article does not dwell upon. Perhaps it is as I am not talking on the numbers of cattle, Stephanie Hepburn might focus on the emerging market and just look at that part, which is fair enough. Yet the dangers of this new market would potentially be staggering and as such, how relaxed should we get?

Now, I am not really considering “materials made from leather waste – as leather. That could make it a harder sell for alternative materials claiming to be leather” from UK Leather Federation director Kerry Senior. He makes a fair point as spokesperson of the leather federation. I would stand on his side as I have had my fill with junk shoes from Australia, claiming it to be a leather shoe, only to learn that they usually survive no more than 4 months. So, that part I get. That still does not invalidate the path that some are walking on, the dangers that they would possibly introduce are many times more truly dangerous. Bad shoes are not dangerous, they are a mere irritation.

No, the first danger is seen in this quote “Ben Wurgaft, a historian based at MIT who is writing a book about laboratory-grown meat, applauds Modern Meadow’s ambitions but says that, given the speed at which fashion changes, the company’s success depends on whether it can scale up quickly“. It is not the applauding that matters, it is ‘whether it can scale up quickly‘ which could end up being the killer. Now let’s be clear, there is no immediate danger. That part we get from “Lee admits that the company still has a long way to go in terms of research and development, producing the leather, and being able to provide product samples“, which means it is still in research and there is no given timeline when the danger comes to town.

The final paragraph gives us a clear indication that the dangers are of a future nature, which is stated through “Even if the technology has advanced since he last saw samples and even if it could be usable as an alternative to leather, Senior doesn’t think it will be made in sufficient quantity or at a cost to be a viable option for most brands. It is interesting work, and the technology that is being developed could very well be the future for many products, Senior says. He adds, though: “I suspect it will be a distant future.””

So we know that even though there is a danger, there is no immediate one. Yet, what danger is there? For that part of the equation we need to look at the academic paper (at http://pub.epsilon.slu.se/1170/1/Avhandling_nr_070.2006_Tryckfil.pdf). It is titled ‘Recycled Biowaste as a Source of Infection‘, which is a 2006 PhD paper by Leena Sahlström. If the title was not unsettling, then consider the abstract which gives us “Biowaste and sewage sludge can be used as a fertiliser and soil amendment in agriculture. However if not treated efficiently before use, such products can contain microbial pathogens that pose a health risk for humans and animals“.

Here we get the first light onto the dangers we are about to expose ourselves to. You see, growing leather is one thing, which remains a lesser noble cause. Yet, the danger can be perceived in ‘whether it can scale up quickly‘, the moment this milestone is reached and True Grown Leather becomes a part of our lives, we will see an exploding need for this product, especially as we are looking at a market that might be no sooner than a decade away. What will you think will happen when the option is there? The industry will be all about upscaling product for maximised revenue and quicker return on investment, which is also a fact, because the ROI will take centre stage for producers. This also means that tweaking the process of production will be a very first issue, which will give us additional worries.

Now we add the second part from the abstract “vancomycin resistant enterococci (VRE) were frequently isolated from sewage sludge. PFGE and PhenePlate analyses showed that both VRE and Salmonella spp. were capable of persisting for some months and up to two years, respectively, in the sewage sludge. Thus sewage sludge may act as a reservoir of Salmonella spp., VRE and other pathogens“, which now implies that Biowaste could become at the core a sustaining factor for Salmonella and other pathogens is the danger that remains pushed into the shadows.

Because we have seen decades of evidence where mass production will take precedence over health and safety. For that you need look no further than the nearest Bangladeshi sweatshop, and that is just for T-Shirts, what do you think will happen when bio waste enters those premises? I know we need to shed 80% of the planets population, but can we all agree that a more humane solution needs to be found?

Still, the dangers are coming and to some extent they are already here, the additional growth from new emerging ‘solutions’ to what I perceive to be an ego based need is seen in “Antimicrobial resistant bacteria are clonally spread but a further dimension to the growing problem is horizontal gene transfer, where resistance genes may be transferred between bacteria of the same species or to other bacterial species or genera (Klare et al., 2003)“, so are we move away from the Samsonite Aluminium or the canvas duffel bag, as we look so much more ‘travelled’ with a leather duffel bag and backpack, we are pushing for a solution that gives us more and more antimicrobial resistant bacteria, yes, and we really truly need additional antimicrobial resistant bacteria in our life (add sarcastic undertone for dramatic effect).

It is that danger we see growing, not growing in the future, already growing now, which means that other bioware mass produced products will just push the events of danger forward, faster and towards more deadly niche events.  So, if  you read a new article next week regarding safely cleaning biowaste, remember that the academic paper I refer to is already 9 years old and so far, the countering of these dangers have been substandard. How active do you think Bangladesh, Pakistan, Myanmar and China are in countering biowaste? That is the additional question, because Biowaste has the ability to survive for a very long time, whilst the infusion of more biowaste is going on, on a daily basis. So how does this translate to dangers?

You might consider that there is no danger where you are, if that is your mindset, then consider the following part from the paper of Leena Sahlström on page 19 “The use of avoparcin, an analogue to vancomycin, which was previously used as a growth promoter in animal husbandry and is the believed cause of the common occurrence of vancomycin resistant enterococci (VRE) in European livestock, was prohibited in Sweden in the early 1980s. Despite this, there is still a rather high frequency of VRE in Swedish sewage (Iversen et al., 2002). Because of the way WWTPs work, using bacterial adhesion to particles in their treatment process (Godfree & Farrell, 2005), it is expected that VRE are found in sewage sludge as well“, so even after a ban close to 20 years before the event, it turned out that a rather high amount of VRE was detected in Swedish sewage, simply because of the way Waste Water Treatment Plants work. The danger found another way and as such it becomes mobile and procreative. You see I am a man of reasonable goofiness’, so when I consider the option that there is creation like procreation, if successful, only me and possibly one other get to be the party that requires a working solution. However, in the case of biowaste, the creators will place a burden on hundreds and perhaps even thousands of potential victims and in a greying population, a vast growing population of Antimicrobial resistant bacteria whilst no medicinal or antibiotics will be available, we would be digging our future straight into graves and urns.

Now, the last parts are all subjective and all based on a market that is not there yet, but more importantly, we are in an age where the law has been subjugated to the need of industry and profit for such a long time, there is a need for a true overhaul of the law an regulations in dealing with biowaste. The one element ignored in all this is that biowaste should be shunned as directly and strongly as biological warfare. Because it will get out of control and the consequences might not be stopped, because that side did not get the proper funding.

So even as we consider the very first line in the abstract by Leena Sahlström “Biowaste and sewage sludge can be used as a fertiliser and soil amendment in agriculture“, what happens when the VRE has infected the crops it is growing faster? What can we at that point rely on? All fair questions and at present there is no true long term answer or solution, so adjusting the law becomes paramount, so that places remain to have a future.

 

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July 10, 2015 · 21:47

Was it choice?

The guardian had an interesting article today, it is one point of view, but it is a driven point, a point from the view of some. Now, the article makes us ask good questions, it makes us ask the right questions too, but at the heart of the matter is the issue not phrased, what about the value of others? The article ‘When it comes to nudity, Facebook is little different than Victorian England‘ (at http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2015/jul/09/facebook-nudity-policy-censorship-freedom-of-expression) looks into the censorship. You see, censorship is always a tough question, when we consider ‘freedom of expression‘ censorship can creep in. This view might seem odd, but it is a direct confrontation between freedom of speech and accountability of what is being said. When I state ‘Bill Shorten is an idiot!’ The honourable BS might take offense, he might take no offense at all and most likely he will not give a toss what I think regarding him! The man just found out the hard way that Justice Heydon has the ability to make a man feel raw, grilled and roasted all at the same time! You see, we all (including me) all go overboard at times, we say a little more than we thought we needed to say and sometimes we show a little more than is acceptable, at this point censorship comes into play. You see, most men (nearly all) and many women do not care whether the young pretty 1st year university lady does the topless selfie and posts it to show that she is fearless, proud and whatever other emotion she had whilst doing it (like being slightly too intoxicated). Yet, people forget that social media is global, Facebook, Google+ and several other players reach hundreds of nations. Many have democracy and freedom, yet they all have laws and many of them have restrictions on nudity. India with its 1.2 billion people makes up for 16%-18% of the global population and they are just one nation, many other nations have even more strict rules, so places like Facebook, if they want to remain in the game, need to be a lot more strict in their application of ‘allowing nudity’.

Yet, this issue, would not have been an issue if there is a clear and equal cover. When we see “Jay-Marie Hill found that photos she had posted – of San Francisco demonstrations against police killings of unarmed black women that shut down rush hour traffic in the city, no doubt a newsworthy event – had been removed from Facebook because some of the female protesters were topless. Hill sees Facebook’s policies as racist, and “exceptionally forgiving to white bodies over other bodies and life experiences”“, we get another issue all together. However, is that the complete truth or a subjective truth?

The quote “Ultimately, these images were not taken down because we were ‘nude’ but because we challenged a system and made people uncomfortable” is a strong one. So was this about discomfort? That is a problematic question in the world of censorship, because even Facebook realises that in EVERY social media there is a point where someone, or a group can become ‘uncomfortable’. You see, censorship is negatively strengthened by two elements, the first being the people confronted with the question, the second one is the censor with his/her own feelings in all this. The second one will ALWAYS taint the first one, it is a mere fact. If you doubt that than look at the Australian censorship of videogames.

Could I walk up to a woman and state ‘I love you!’ or ‘I want to have sex with you!’? The directness is overwhelming in case one and extremely likely to be regarded as offensive in the second case. Yet, when I change that into ‘Are you interested in having sex with me?’ could be regarded as equally offensive, but why (academically speaking)? Analytically stated, it is a question, this one is likely to get either the answer ‘no’ or ‘NO!’ You see, this is not just about censorship, this is about our inner self, the bulk (99%) of the people are all in an ‘I must not cause a fuss’, which is basically an insincerity filter, which opposes honesty and directness. Even though directness when it is laced with what one might regard as ‘diplomacy’ might be seen as honesty shaded in grey (less than 50 of them).

In my view, when we turn to a life comprised of ‘shades of grey’, we will soon forget the true impact of either black or white, which I regard as a direct detrimental impact on our values. In addition, when we live in ‘grey’ mode, people are forever looking in a paranoid way, if there was something behind the meaning. If you want to test that theory, go to any person that is a mere acquaintance of you or slightly less than that and ask that person to join you for a tea or coffee, you will be amazed on the percentage of people that will assume something behind that request. It is the effect of living through ‘greys’ as I personally see it.

Let’s get back to the article, where we see “Although it’s true that Facebook’s user base is diverse, Facebook is not a “community”. It’s a corporation, and its users are its products – but have no say in how the space is regulated“, which is a very true statement, but seems incomplete. In my view it is “It’s a corporation, and its users are its products – but have no say as the space is mostly managed according to international laws“, you see, we all know that sex sells, so for the most, the more the ‘exposure’ the bigger the flock, yet Facebook must remain mindful of the national laws where the pages arrive (for example India and Muslim nations), because the one thing that social media fears most is the dangers of national bans or even possible prosecutions.

Now we get to the part that is debatable, or even as I see it incorrect: “Here, Facebook is making a distinct choice: rather than enable freedom of expression as the company often claims to do, it is imposing cultural conservatism by claiming that nudity is somehow dangerous. In this, it is little different than Victorian England“. No, I disagree! Facebook (and all social media) need to traverse a restless ocean of laws, where the most stringent one seems to be the one calling the shots. This gives us the issue at hand. The issue in the second degree is not social media, but the poster.

Let’s take a look at the case of ‘Frédéric Durand-Baïssas, who is suing Facebook for €20,000 ($22,000) in damages‘, why? Because his account got cancelled? Is this about the art, or about his ego? Consider that the painting in question can be seen unreservedly (at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L’Origine_du_monde). So instead of Freddy posting the message with a link to the painting on a private website or in another way, we see that he decided to share the picture to a very wide audience. Very wide, because his friends got it, but the friends of those friends would have seen the link too (as it was on the timeline of this friend), which means we now have two degrees of projection. So, why did Freddy not think this through? I have seen loads of photographers sending me a link as Facebook might object to materials. So is all of this a mere storm in a teacup?

It might not be!

Consider the quote: “Men’s nipples are acceptable, but women’s are not. And despite Facebook’s seeming progressiveness toward gender (the platform allows users to self-define their gender), its treatment of transgender bodies is troubling: in one case, a user’s semi-nude photo was taken down and reinstated when they decided the user was a man – despite the user’s physical presentation and personal gender identity“, from a common law view, this could constitute discrimination, making Facebook look even less innocent than they thought they were, yet the overall situation of international laws remains a hot potato, one that seems to work in degrees, which is no help to anyone it seems. Japan is a clear example of the previous (see below)

Yet, is this truly about freedom of speech? So far we have seen a biased presentation of what people want to see, regardless of law. Is that the correct atmosphere to conduct events in? That is partially answered in the last quote “Despite being the main driver of profit for these companies, the user lacks all control over their own content. Even inside a closed network, we are still denied the opportunity to opt out of morality policing. If we want more control over what we can post and see, then we must fight for more control over the platforms we use every day“, it seems to be the simplest part “we must fight for more control over the platforms we use every day”, which is at the core of the issue, but the solution is as I see it quite simple, “we must own the platform we use for the freedom of our speech”, so as you install your own personal webserver, you can be the art evangelist all you want, but that is not what people wanted to do, they just wanted to post the selfie/painting and be done with it, in that path they forgot about the law of the land of the reader.

Yet if you do become a publisher at this point, you must also take heed of what comes next, as the enthusiast that becomes a publisher and cannot hide through an ‘innocent dissemination’ defence. When we take a quick look at the law, we see for example the Anti-Cyber Crime Law (2007) of Saudi Arabia, where Article 6 of this royal decree makes it a crime to produce, possess, distribute, transmit or store Internet content or a computer program that involves gambling, human trafficking, pornography or anything deemed to be against Islam, public morals or public order, which would have put Frédéric Durand-Baïssas in a real amount of trouble if he had uploaded it there. This is the only angle missing and the issue that I have with the article, which is nicely written. You see, Jillian C York is all about freedom of speech, which is fair enough, but global freedom of speech comes at a price, because not all places embrace it and social media needs to be careful where it posts, or soon be blocked from too many places, which would downgrade the social media company in less time than it takes to boil an egg.

So let’s be clear, I personally do not care, and when you see local/international actions like #FreeTheNipple where plenty are on board and most don’t care, but in all this the law is an issue and yes, in many places the law should be massively adjusted, if only to make sure that the baby can get fed. Those protesters should also realise that even though it is all good and fair to fight for the rights and freedom in their nation, not all countries are on board and even nations where there is a democracy and clear freedom of speech (like Japan) some of them still have Draconian laws on frontal nudity, which is an issue many US photographers had to deal with in the past, hence the use of social media becomes a bit of a loaded canon.

So was it about choice or was it on the pure indifference of law towards ‘freedom’ of speech?

It might be a little bit of both, but what is on par at present is that ‘enthusiasts’ who wish to make a name for themselves in social media need to learn that ignorance of the law will hit them square in the face more and more often, after which the clean-up operation (like getting your social media account back) will be another time consuming matter entirely.

 

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July 8, 2015 · 10:37

In the lull of news

As people brace themselves for the outcome of another Greek deadline, the US army will find itself cut by 40,000 troops and there seems to be ongoing talks between Iran and interested parties. The last one is the one that feels like it is largely ignored. There is nothing sexy on nuclear talks and unless you are Israel, most people do not care. Yet, is that the clear truth?

This is what the BBC gives us (at http://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-33424502), “The so-called P5+1 – the US, UK, France, China and Russia plus Germany – want Iran to scale back its sensitive nuclear activities to ensure that it cannot build a nuclear weapon“, which sounds of course really nice on paper (and in theory). Yet, when we look at the quote “The sticking points are said to include the duration of limits on Iranian nuclear research and development, guidelines for international inspections and how sanctions will be lifted. Tehran is also demanding that the UN ban on the import and export of conventional arms and ballistic missiles be lifted as part of any deal”

We have to wonder for how long this ‘agreement’ will last and why we see ‘export of conventional arms and ballistic missiles‘, why is that? Perhaps certain Middle Eastern parties have been waiting on a Misagh-2 delivery? It might just be another model, so as we might understand that Iran would want to open options for import, the reasons for export are a little fuzzier as well as who would buy them? Russia? They have excellent missiles themselves and they supply them to nations all over the world too. So the question becomes, why allow for export? Especially when a captured stockpile of IS showed “26 of the recovered shells were made in Iran, an ally of Assad’s, and 18 were made in Syria itself, the report states” (at http://foreignpolicy.com/2014/10/06/where-does-the-islamic-state-get-its-weapons/). So certain parties are already getting arms somehow under an embargo, when the floodgate opens, the balance of power will shift in the Middle East, especially as certain parties are getting funded somehow (reference to Hamas). So even as we might not like, but could not openly object to Iran improving its defences (from Russian Stockpiles) there should remain a strong vigilant approach to not letting them export weapons of any kind.

In the Jerusalem Post we see the headline ‘Iranian official: US will remain our enemy despite emerging nuclear deal’, which is fair enough, and the quote “”Our enmity with them is over the principles and is rooted because we are after the truth and nations’ freedom, but they seek exploiting nations and putting them in chains” he explained further” is fair enough, we can’t all be friends, yet the problem is that its military commander stated ““This is the duty of the Muslim world to obey the order of the Supreme Leader of the Islamic Revolution (Khamenei) and arm the Palestinian people so that a powerful response will be given to the Zionist regime,” said Brig. Gen. Ahmad Reza Pourdastan, commander of the Army Ground Force” not too long ago (august 2014), which beckons the dangers of letting Iran export weapons. Consider that a mere lieutenant or a master sergeant can lose certain items in his depot at times, so how much can get ‘lost’ in a depot when a General is calling the shots?

Is that so far-fetched?

This is at the core if the issue, the heart of the matter is quite a different thing here.

You see, the core is about the enrichment. LiveScience had an interesting quote “Separating that type of uranium from the more common variety requires a great deal of engineering skill, despite the fact that the technology needed to do it is decades old. The challenge lies not in figuring out how to separate uranium, but in constructing and running the equipment needed for the task“, so if we accept “The key to their separation is that atoms of uranium-235 weigh slightly less than atoms of uranium-238” so if the approach of a centrifuge gives us “Each centrifuge pulls out a little bit of uranium-238, and then passes the slightly refined gas mixture onto the next tube, and so on, until many hundreds of thousands of spins later, the gas remaining in the tube is almost entirely composed of uranium-235” a clear explanation by Jeff Binder, the isotope production program manager at Oak Ridge National Laboratory.

Yet is that the only way? Stanford University has a course called Physics 241, where we see Uranium Enrichment by Misam Jaffer, who also gives us “Laser separation: The use of laser separation for uranium enrichment is based on the principle of differential photoexicitation of isotopes of uranium by the use of monochromatic radiation. One such process is the Atomic Vapor Laser Isotope Separation (AVLIS) in which the laser light used photo ionizes a particular isotope while not affecting the others and changes its physical or chemical properties which are then utilized to separate the desired isotope, which in uranium enrichment is U-235. In doing so, the U-235 ions are positively charged and hence are attracted to a negatively charged plate and collected“, we will get all kinds of ‘experts’ telling us how this is not as efficient, or other words added into telling us on how this is not good enough. Yet, with Brig. Gen. Ahmad Reza Pourdastan in charge in Iran, ‘good enough’ is not the issue, the issue becomes, is it good enough to make a dirty bomb?

That is the fear Israel has been dealing with, because when missiles start flying from around Rafah, they will not need a hit, it just needs to get close enough to Beer Shiva, Ashkelon and Tel Aviv to make the issue evolve into something truly terrifying for the middle east, because at that point the US has absolutely no chance of getting a hold of the situation. the fact that some of the negotiating players have no clue (or do not care) regarding that danger is seen in the quote “Foreign ministers of the other powers started to return to Vienna on Sunday to help push for a swift deal“, please give me one example where a nuclear ‘swift deal‘ was ever a good idea, and in light of the glow in the dark consequences, should the word ‘swift’ be allowed to be used?

You see, the end quote “US Secretary of State John Kerry said on Sunday that reaching an agreement is possible this week if Iran makes the ‘hard choices’ necessary, but if not, the United States stands ready to walk away from the negotiations” sounds nice, yet the reality is, is that the US has not had any clear defining diplomatic victories for a long time, in that light, the word ‘swift’ is not that reassuring and I feel 99.53324% certain (roughly) that it leaves Israel with not such a good feeling either, especially that any lifting of the embargo means that their Iron Domes might have to work overtime soon thereafter.

The last part is not just an assumption, with many newsreels on missile attacks on Israel in 2015 alone.

So how did we get from Iran to Israel? Simple, Iran is an open supporter of Hamas. In addition, the top leaders of the Iranian military are eager to carve their names in history in anti-Israel acts and Hamas is eager to oblige. The fact that ISIS is all over Gaza and the Sinai only makes matters worse. So as some might strip away parts of any embargo on Iran, they should also keep a keen eye on what they give away, because it seems that the issue is not just ‘what could aid Iran’, but these people are also contemplating (on a daily basis) ‘what could hurt the US and its ally Israel’, there is not too much on that side of the equation, which makes any ‘swift deal’ a worry for several players (read victims) involved.

 

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July 6, 2015 · 14:46

The mere legality

Now that the Greeks have voted to bankrupt themselves (blaming everyone else in the process), it is duly time to take another look at the part I touched on in my article ‘Dress rehearsal (part 1)’ on July 1st 2015 (at https://lawlordtobe.com/2015/07/01/dress-rehearsal-part-1/). There the issue that came from Danuta Hübner, Chair of the Committee on Constitutional Affairs, European Parliament, with the attachment I added in the paper by Phoebus Athanassiou ‘Withdrawal and expulsion from the EU and EMU‘

Danuta Hübner mentions Art. 50 of the Lisbon Treaty as well as Art. 140 Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union (TFEU). So, this is something we need to look at, because Greece has decided not to be responsible and before the papers and TV drown us in emotional issues, whilst keeping quiet that the debt of other European nations might go up and not by a small amount.

So, yes, basically article 50 is about ‘withdraw from the Union in accordance with its own constitutional requirements‘, which does not mean the others can throw Greece out.

So far, that part seems almost impossible, as Tsipras keeps on claiming wanting to remain in the Eurozone, the image given is that he would stay in because article 50 is all about voluntarily removing one’s self from the Euro. Article 7(1) gives us “On a reasoned proposal by one third of the Member States, by the European Parliament or by the European Commission, the Council, acting by a majority of four fifths of its members after obtaining the consent of the European Parliament, may determine that there is a clear risk of a serious breach by a Member State of the values referred to in Article 2“, which leads to Article 7(3) “Where a determination under paragraph 2 has been made, the Council, acting by a qualified majority, may decide to suspend certain of the rights deriving from the application of the Treaties to the Member State in question, including the voting rights of the representative of the government of that Member State in the Council”

In short, Article 7 is about reprimanding, even if all rights are suspended. That does not mean that they exit, which gives us two parts, the fact that France can walk away from the Euro to protect itself, yet Greece cannot get removed, which is not a given yet, there is a lot more to sift through. Article 2 is all about values, respect from Human rights and the rights of minorities, which does not have bearing on this precise case. The PDF that brought this to light, which by the way (due to an error on my side) is from Phoebus Athanassiou, my apologies for the earlier mistake in my previous blog!

“The idea that the treaties should explicitly provide for a possibility of expulsion was discussed in the 2001-2003 Intergovernmental Conference responsible for drafting the ill-fated Constitutional Treaty, but was abandoned“, so not only were politicians the start of the mess, yet NO ONE had the bright idea to consider that one player might not be an adult giving them all permanent headaches is beyond hilarious, the fact that this legal bright mind (trained in the UK) is also a former Lawyer connected to Athens Law Firm of Tsibanoulis & Partners, and a former consultant for Government of the Republic of Cyprus just adds to the humour. His paper from 2009 and now we are all about to learn how we wasted millions on representations from the ECB whilst they were unable (as it seems) to properly protect the members. In all this both Yanis Varoufakis and Alexis Tsipras must be howling with laughter as we learn that most papers had not even clearly investigated the marketing term Grexit, so even as Brexit and Frexit might become reality in voluntary secession, Grexit will not happen against the will of Greece, as the facts presently are given, but let’s take a look at the steps that come next, because the PDF I added on July 1st is truly a treasure trove (Phoebus Athanassiou seems to be hindered by extreme levels of brilliance).

There is however another consideration, if we look at Article 2, where we see “The Union is founded on the values of respect for human dignity, freedom, democracy, equality, the rule of law and respect for human rights, including the rights of persons belonging to minorities“, the question becomes, as Greece decided to ignore equality and rule of law, are they in violation of Article 2?

Consider, that the creditors are a factual minority (one set on wealth and power of decision), the Greek government took out loans, they signed of these loans, as they are not complying with the execution of the agreed terms, are they not breaking the law? In addition, Article 3(2) gives us “The Union shall offer its citizens an area of freedom, security and justice without internal frontiers, in which the free movement of persons is ensured in conjunction with appropriate measures with respect to external border controls, asylum, immigration and the prevention and combating of crime”

It is the part ‘prevention and combating of crime‘, so as we see that for decades Greece did not ‘uphold’ (read reform) taxation laws or properly prosecute tax evaders (one fined Bobolas ‘proper’ combatting tax evasion does not make), can we state that Greece is in violation in accepting the articles of the Union, as such, what could be made then?

I will be the first to admit that this is a mighty fine line, but in this game, could such a fine line be enough?

Article 3(3) is about several things, including cohesion, Economic, social and territorial. When we consider the economic part we get the thought that economic and social cohesion is an expression of solidarity between the Member States and regions of the European Union. This means balanced and sustainable development, reducing structural disparities between regions and countries and promoting equal opportunities for all individuals. The fact that Greece (one of many) has not been able to (or intentionally unwilling) to keep a proper budget, we get an unbalanced and unsustainable development, whilst these people (the previous administrations) have not been properly investigated or even prosecuted, which gives us possible transgressions of Articles 2, Article 3(2) and Article 3(3). So is expulsion still not an option in that hindsight?

So as we see that the makers of the articles painted themselves in a corner by only focussing on growth and ignoring accountability, we see that Greece either got really well informed, or just had the right page open on the right day, no matter what, the EEC is inheriting a mess it did not properly defend itself against, so even though the path was reached in another way, as we see this explode, it seems very conceivable that the fallout from this event will have a large impact on the chances of Brexit and Frexit as they will be voluntary. So even as the UN was bright enough to include their Article 6, where the member can send home in a not so nice way for ‘persistently infringing the principles of the Charter‘, it becomes clear that the overpaid makers of Treaty of Lisbon were a lot less clued in at this point (or so it seems).

As I see it, Dr Phoebus Athanassiou, Senior Legal Counsel with the DGLS of the European Central Bank (ECB) had nailed the issue fair and square in 2009, I am just appalled that journalists and politicians have either ignored the options, or intentionally misinformed the people, whilst the European member politicians had their ‘closed door‘ meeting.

As I stated on July 1st: “Consider the next news “Here’s Bloomberg on Schaeuble’s comments: German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble told lawmakers in Berlin that Greece would stay in the euro for the time being if Greek voters reject austerity in a referendum scheduled this week, according to three people present. Schaeuble also said the European Central Bank would do what’s needed to protect the euro if Greeks voted against the bailout terms in the July 5 referendum, according to the people, all of whom participated in the closed-door meeting on Tuesday“, is that why it was closed door? The fact that expulsion is pretty much impossible?

So as we now see “Angela Merkel, is to head to Paris on Monday for urgent talks with French president François Hollande over how to avert a growing Eurozone debt crisis” (at http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/jul/05/germany-greek-referendum-anger-solidarity), which signals two things, the first is that Germany is not considering steps that will accelerate many things, pat of it will make Greece the pariah it should not have made itself, you see, the BBC and the Guardian are all about ‘negotiations’ and the, as we might regard it hollow statement from EU Parliamentarian Martin Schulz “he hopes that meaningful proposals from the Greek government will arrive in the coming hours because “if not, we are entering a very difficult and even dramatic time.”“, is that so? Because Greece can only leave the Euro voluntarily as we see it at present. Another voice, which is the Economic editor Robert Preston gives us even more to worry about. “The Bank of Greece could make unsecured loans to Greek banks without the ECB’s permission“, which could blow the Euro straight into the basement value, as well as “Or it can explicitly create a new currency, a new drachma, which it could then use to provide vital finance to Greek banks and the Greek economy“, which might be more likely, but does Greece have to go either way? Consider that the lacking law makers forgot to properly defend itself, now take into account that when Tsipras will let it all fall and food and medication are no longer an option, we get back to Article 2 of the Lisbon Treaty with “The Union is founded on the values of respect for human dignity, freedom, democracy, equality, the rule of law and respect for human rights, including the rights of persons belonging to minorities“, which means that the other EEC nations would have to foot the bill and come to the aid of Greece to deliver food and medication. All this because previous Greek elected officials refused to adhere to Article 3(2) regarding ‘prevention and combating of crime‘ (tax crime to be exact), as well as the economic cohesion thing, but the last one is one that pretty much NONE of the EEC members adhered too, so calling Greece on that seems slightly hypocritical from my side.

So as the creditors might resort to “Qu’ils mangent de la brioche” (let them eat cake), we see a dangerous escalation. I wonder how both Nigel Farage and Marine Le Pen will respond in the coming days. There is no doubt in my mind that this will impact Brexit and Grexit, especially as it will be voluntarily.

No matter how this plays, we already seeing images on how Greek retirees are getting hit all over the place. So as we see Tsipras playing ‘paper tiger’ stating “the vote showed that “democracy won’t be blackmailed””, my less ‘diplomatic’ quote would be: “No, you blistering idiot, you sitting on your hands and not seriously reforming taxation and prosecution laws is part of the direct reason of the mess we now see!” This is why we will now see articles like http://www.thenational.ae/world/europe/crying-greek-pensioner-the-story-behind-the-heartbreaking-photo, ‘Crying Greek pensioner’. Here we now see quotes like “I see my fellow citizens begging for a few cents to buy bread. I see more and more suicides. I am a sensitive person. I cannot stand to see my country in this situation.” And this is not even close to the tip of iceberg.

The next few days will be interesting to say the least.

 

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