November 16, 2013 · 23:17

A changing console war

We are 12 days from the beginning of a new war, an all-out war, it is the war of the consoles and this war will start now and will go on until past Christmas. Yes, Christmas is the new center of these war efforts.

On the left side we have the one, and on the right side, the other. It is Sony versus Microsoft and it does not matter who you choose or support, you the gamer will make at some point a choice. Some with get neither and some will get both, 4 groups! From my view, I choose the Sony side, as the PlayStation 4 is stated by them as a system for gamers! Yet, both sides made the same mistake, even though Sony had an optional alternative, both systems come with a 500 Gb drive. The PS4 allows for the system to be upgraded with a bigger drive. What I do not understand is why they did not install a 1Tb drive for a mere $20 more. There is a lot more to this, but about that part more a little later.

I will mention at this point, right now, that part of the view that follows has bias. I want to be completely impartial, but to claim impartiality when a person’s passion is attacked is at times way to ludicrous!

My issue with the Xbox One, the Microsoft (aka Micro$oft) product had issues from the very beginning. First, they (Microsoft via Don Mattrick) announced on the need for a once a day login to the Microsoft system. I discussed that in my blog called ‘Discrimination or Segmentation in gaming? (UPDATED!)‘ In June 2013, that part was later recalled, which is why I updated the blog. I do believe in keeping people abreast of the correct information. Microsoft made the blog again in August 2013 in my blog called ‘Tax evasion, copyrighted by Vodafone?‘ This was all about ‘pay as little as taxation as possible‘, which will link to this later. Then in September 2013 we get the blog ‘The marks of trade‘ which again links Microsoft. So, why are these linked to the console war?

The last article has the mayor link to what the consumers of their choice in the console wars are not getting informed about.  “When the digital world is entering the field where more and more possible ‘new’ consumers are updated through the net, it seems that their marketing and party lines need to get a massive overhaul and it should all get a much better mentor system then it currently seems to have.” There is a side that had been hidden, even from me. This side is not on the up and up and even game sites like Gamespot have until now been silent about it. The latter one is silent about it as they might not be aware at all, which would be fair enough.

So what is going on?

The next generation of consoles will evolve into a new world that is all about DRM (Digital Rights Management). Even though you think that this was off the table, certain changes are now becoming visible doubting that all no matter what some executives claim to be the case. In case of Microsoft, for their system, as this is not a gaming system, but it has been labelled as an ‘entertainment system’ this all will become a much bigger issue. Do not think that Sony is off the hook here, they will be part of all this down the road too!

The issue came to light when I was made aware to an article called “TPP ‘A Substantial Threat To Australian Sovereignty’” (at https://newmatilda.com/2013/11/14/tpp-serious-threat-australian-sovereignty). If we ignore mentions like ‘secret law‘ for now and concentrate on “a law that will override the High Court of Australia” as quoted, then we see that our attention was pulled away from lawmaking that will have a massive influence on global users of all forms of entertainment.

Suelette Dreyfus a research fellow from the University of Melbourne states “At its heart the TPP is basically a grab for money. It will take money out of the pockets of average Australians and give it to large corporations in the US“. She also makes a mention on how illegal movies will now have to be policed by the ISP’s, even though the high Court of Australia had already ruled in ‘Roadshow Films Pty Ltd v iiNet Ltd [2012] HCA 16‘ in this matter. The law changes would influence future events. I dealt with the initial issues of illegal downloads somewhere during the year, but the change might, if enforced mean that, should illegal downloads stop (I am not against that), that the economic fallout would be enormous. Consider that Telco’s would see a bandwidth drop of two marks, which would mean that the consumer bill would lower an average of $30 a month, with over 7 million users this amounts to 210 million revenue per month less (spread over several providers), this would have a massive consequence, but the effect would soon be global if this path continues. To be frank, it does not affect me, I never download movies. I prefer the quality of a DVD/Blu-Ray on my TV screen, whenever I want it.

Brendan Molloy, the Information freedom activist and Councillor for Pirate Party Australia has an interesting view on other changes. “Perhaps the most shocking inclusion in the TPP IP chapter is criminalisation of non-commercial copyright infringement.” The Australian patent law changes, discussed in what is referred to as the ‘raising the bar act 2013‘, is all about promoting innovation. These events change everything. His quote “The text even attempts to consider temporary copies to be copyright infringement!” is an interesting (read dangerous) change. It implies that personal owned transfers (like CD to MP3) could be affected. A final quote is “There is language that would lower global standards on medical patents and potentially extend patents beyond 20 years, all supported by the United States.” This means that there steps in place to thwart innovation and strangle hold commerce. This means that only the big boys will be able to dictate progress for the next few decades, which means innovation goes out the window for a long time to come.

Angela Mitropoulos, Researcher at the University of Sydney has the following to say “The biggest winners in the TPP are the largest global corporations and, with the proliferation of mechanisms proposed, they intend to fully harness the infrastructures of the internet and the full force of the law in order to capture and extract even larger profits and a wider share of the world market.”

Basically, the new world terrorists will be the large corporations, if these reported events are true. So how does this strike back to the console war of Sony and Microsoft?

First of all, games and consoles are ALL about innovation. A console is only as good as its games and without innovation a console dies fast. Sometimes reverse engineering is the only way to get true progress. Consider the parts mentioned earlier, and if you have a console (either Wii, Xbox 360 or PS3), look at all the parts you have and how many of these parts were not an official Sony, Nintendo or Microsoft product. Items like recharge-able batteries, controllers and head sets. All that could stop! The issue goes a lot further, if we consider the quote from Brendan Molloy “article QQ.G.10 reinforces one of the worst parts of our current IP regime, which consists of legal protections for technical protection measures. Why should it be illegal to jailbreak your iPhone?”

So products like Blu-Ray’s and DVD regions and Smartphones. All of it treated under scrutiny of big business! Consider that due to these changes the new iPhone 6 could then only be there for the Telstra (or Vodafone) customers (presumption). These changes would make these events possible. Smaller firms would quickly be pushed out of existence, giving even more power to big Telco’s. This could also have an effect on consoles. If we consider the implications, then the danger becomes ever more apparent that the innovation that we desire to see gaming go forward is also in danger as a sizeable part of the indie developers are in the Czech Republic, Finland, Germany and a few others, who are not part of this agreement. So, if Sony and Microsoft set their IP stranglehold to such an extent to drive these developers away, then what happens to innovation?

The TPP seems to be about segregation not about innovation (as far as I saw the information pass by), which means that whatever happens will be under complete control for Sony and Microsoft for their respective consoles. Is this bad or is this good?

I think it is a bad thing, if we consider innovation in gaming. I am not against Activision protecting themselves against a reverse engineered version of Skylanders on one side, but to strangle hold a market will never lead to innovation, which translates in our case to better and new original games.

The next part is on Microsoft specifically. This is because they ‘wanted’ to label their system as an ‘entertainment system’ as such; the changes that the TPP is trying to push through will have additional consequences for the Xbox One.

The initial TPP article made the following mention, which came from Brendan Molloy “The United States has proposed several provisions that are anti-innovation. One such provision is a blanket ban on the retransmission of TV signals over the Internet in Article QQ.H.12, regardless of purpose, without permission of the rights holder.” This is where I get back to that small drive in the Xbox One. There are two sides. If we cannot store too much on the Xbox One, then we must either park it on the cloud (where we can be monitored), or we download it again and again (costing us bandwidth). That was ‘yesterday’, when the TPP comes into play, the retransmission of a movie from the cloud might come with additional limitations where any additional ‘replay’ could be charged. I am not stating that it will, yet the changes are ALL about economic control, so it could happen. This reflects back to the part in ‘Tax evasion, copyrighted by Vodafone?‘, because even though we are all charged, the provider is likely to pay a lot less taxation on these services, so not only will local commerce get hurt, those local governments will collect a lot less corporate taxation because of this all. We saw that in cases of Apple, Amazon, Google and a few others.

That means that the digital movie and TV options from Microsoft would go through very specific bans and very tight rules. This means that picking up the Swedish or the Dutch newscasts online might not be possible. You see, QQ.H.12 is one step away from WHICH stations your entertainment system will receive, all set in a nice package pushed through by a nation that is one step away from bankruptcy, desperately in need of money! You still feel safe with your Xbox One?

So, as we see the interaction of QQ.G.10 (jail breaking) and QQ.H.12 (retransmission) we see that in the broadest sense of the word that Microsoft could decide what we see and when we see it. Is this the global, shared world we were supposed to move forward to?

The site ‘Business Spectator’ quoted the following in regards to the TPP. “Besides the United States, the pact would include 11 other nations, among them Australia, Japan, Malaysia and Mexico, though it excludes regional powerhouse China as well as Indonesia, Southeast Asia’s largest economy.” So, it seems that the IP world is no longer about making a global effort in moving forward, with these different trade pacts we will get a new war, not on resources, but on who gets to play with what, when and how and the new consoles are smack in the middle of this changing landscape.

So if your console does more then play games, the question will soon become ‘at what price‘ will it do what it does?

Philip Dorling from the Sydney Morning Herald reported this 2 days ago “Australians could pay more for drugs and medicines, movies, computer games and software” so even though we get to pay 30%-60% more on games at present and 60% more for movies, we might end up paying even more then that? I am not even touching medication, which is a hot iron on several levels. To read that Tony Abbott is quoted in the article with “Prime Minister Tony Abbott has indicated he is keen to see the trade talks pushed to a successful conclusion next month” gives us further pause for concern. The man just got elected and it looks like he sold us out to the Americans within 80 days of his election, this must be a new world record!

So the choice of your new console could come with an additional price tag, one that the politicians will happily leave to big business to decide. I have not known ANY instance EVER, where greed driven entities EVER decided in favour of the consumer! It is an expensive lesson gamers might soon be forced to learn again soon.

Have a great holiday and don’t let that new console hit you too hard in the Credit Card on the way out of the shop.

 

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November 8, 2013 · 20:00

Is SIGINT a joke?

The news has been rampant on several levels these last few days. Whether it is revelation 16 (roughly) by the traitor Snowden, whether it is the historic event that the top three in British intelligence were in one line, as requested by British parliament, or the fact of revelations we read in the press, whilst (former) press members find themselves prosecuted for blatant and indiscriminate invasion of privacy. The list goes on and on and on.

There is a lot more, but let us confine ourselves to these three events.

For the Commonwealth the event in Parliament was likely the ‘important’ one. Was it truly about the events there? Some might want to question the questions, the answers and what follows. I, with my sense of perspective wondered about the choice of the green tie that Sir John Sawers was wearing. Does it matter? It is all as trivial as choosing pancakes for breakfast!

Yes, we all think we know it, we all think we have an inkling of an idea. I did have an idea, but that was almost 29 years ago. Now, I still have an idea from my specialised view of data, data technologies as well as data collection techniques and none of that falls with MI-6 (only a small part of it). The gem of the event was with Sir Iain Lobban, director of GCHQ, which gave us the part we need to care about. You see, as the press was so willing to give out the details as the people had a right to know, as we have allowed our wrists to get cut because the press is all about advertising profits, gang bang sensation and visibility, it was willing to sacrifice safety and progress for PR and visibility. To go deep and give both criminals and terrorists the information on how to avoid certain paths of detection we see the limits of their use. These same reporters that are part of a group listening in on voice mails to get the scoop, who will sanctimoniously proclaim freedom of the press, will not hesitate to sell their neighbour down the drain for the commission of another column of text, paid per letter.

From my point, if I had the option of making the killing shot ending Edward Snowden’s life I would, even if that gets me 20 years in prison, because traitors do not deserve consideration of any kind. The entire situation of laughable as an American ran to their Communist opponent and almost 50% of the American population considered it a good thing. In addition, if in light of the revealed information a child of Guardian editor in chief Alan Rusbridger would get molested, then he would blame the system on the front page of his newspaper immediately. I do not wish anything bad on him or his family ever! He is not likely to be worried as his four hundred thousand pound a year job allows for secure private schools, but what about the other children? Those children who are not that safe environment, possibly in danger to be at the mercy of predators, whom now with knowledge of longer avoidance and as such pose even more danger to innocent victims. What about them?

It is a level of what I see as utter short-sightedness. An assault on three groups that have lived in a world of ambiguity to get their work done, now that world is in turmoil, especially as some traitor comes with information that is for the most non confirmable, too much goes from the air of ‘Snowden told us, so it must be true’. Several questions are not dealt with on many levels, especially by the press. It just drains the gravy train as it sells more and more news (papers).

The second part is directly linked to all this. Two news messages:

1. Snowden persuaded other NSA workers to give up passwords (at http://mobile.reuters.com/article/idUSBRE9A703020131108)
2. Snowden has stolen 50,000 to 200,000 Classified Items from NSA.

The second had no verifiable source and as such there is no way to tell how correct that is, the first one is more of an issue. How stupid are Americans? That is of course if there is any truth in that part.

YOU NEVER GIVE OUT THAT INFO!

You can leave your partner/spouse/lover at some university frat party to have all the sex he/she needs, you give your credit card to your kids to buy all the toys they want, giving out login information is beyond utterly stupid. Snowden would not have needed it. As an IT person he either has rights to make changes, or he does not. If he did not, then giving out login info is the worst anyone could do. If this ever went to court then he could blame the original account holder. It is a level of non-repudiation!

So were the people at the NSA born stupid and stopped evolving after birth? That remains to be seen! The point is that the press is not that trustworthy either! The second part in regards to the classified items was from a non-disclosed, but also non verifiable source. There is no way for me to know. The question from this part is the one you do not see discussed openly on the news. How did all this info leave the building? Who was in charge? Issues that are also in play for Sir Iain Lobban! How vulnerable is GCHQ? What is in play to prevent this to happen in the UK? Even though Booz Allen Hamilton was cleared as they are the official boss of Edward Snowden, yet how was the clearing process? What are the checks in place for civilian contractors? The Washington Post published a large article questioning civilian contractor issues, from this part we wonder if it was deep enough. Even more, why were these issues not looked at more than a YEAR before the Snowden issues started?

If it was up to me (Sir Iain Lobban is likely secure in the knowledge that this is the last option that should ever happen), then I would like to make a small change at GCHQ. I would add a new inner circle, consisting of a Law Lord and two members from both MI-5 and MI-6 to watch the watchers. My only worry is that whoever oversees GCHQ internally is part of the ‘problem’ (no illegal or negative inclination implied). It does not harm for a set of cleared fresh eyes to look at the system to see if there is a danger. Something similar would need to happen at the NSA, but with their systems and such it might be a different source of people (like members of cyber command FBI and cyber command military).

There is too much info out there supporting the idea that US intelligence (and other governmental departments) seems to be oblivious to the need for Common Cyber Sense (at present with the amount of published info, it is unlikely that my thought on this is wrong).

Here is the third part, the PRESS part!

Their phone hacking was all about exploitation, revenue, profit and personal gain. The Intelligence community is about keeping people safe. There is a massive difference. If you wonder about these events, then consider the fact that because of greed and revenue, no steps have been taken on a global scale to see who buys your personal details and who has them. It could influence your insurance premium, your credit rating and your financial options. No one seems to be on par to get that properly regulated, because in America, Cash is king and the president to the United States is simply a number with a possible temporary status elevation, the rest is data cattle, sold at a moment’s notice. This risk is very real in the UK and Europe too. A consumer is nothing more than a customer number with an address and with a possible shipment of goods under way, that is their value and only for as long as they need products. To some extent the Washington Post covered this a week ago at http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/michael-chertoff-what-the-nsa-and-social-media-have-in-common/2013/10/31/b286260e-4167-11e3-8b74-d89d714ca4dd_story.html

what is less known is that they are one of the few who took a decent look at it (the Washington post), the rest remains on the Snowden gravy train, not informing anyone, they simply re-quote a Reuters line. Seems a little wrong doesn’t it? The article by Michael Chertoff sees the gem no one properly questions half way through where he wrote “there is no assurance that what is disseminated has context or news value“.

The true part, the real smart and the questionable art! The intelligence world is ALL about disseminating information and giving proper weight to the information acquired. It is about finding the bad guys, without that weight it is all media gossip used by the press and as we saw, the disciples of Rupert Murdoch have truly dented that group’s reliability, perhaps for a long time.

So is today’s SIGINT a joke? I hope not, because if so, the questions had been phrased at the wrong people. At some point parliament gets to answer the questions asked by the innocent and the victims on how parliament asked all about data and left corporations to do whatever they liked with our personal details. How many UK companies have had a backup data server in the US?

Consider this quote by Salesquest “The Siebel Customer Intelligence List consists of 265 Fortune 1000 or Global 500 companies that have deployed Siebel in their enterprise application environment. The first tab in the spread sheet lists the 265 Siebel customers, industries, corporate headquarter addresses, phone numbers, and web site addresses.” (At http://www.salesquest.com/resources/siebel-customer-list/)

How many of those are backing up their data to some server park in San Antonio? Consider those places, all their customer data, their financial data and forecast information. In some cases, the data will come from over a dozen nations. It is nice to ask where their data is, but what about the data dumps, the logs and the backups, where were they kept?

Let the intelligence community do what it needs to do, if not, then neither we nor the press gets to point fingers at them when things truly go very wrong.

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November 1, 2013 · 17:58

Crime still pays!

If the banks are any indication then there is plenty of indications that only amateurs become burglars, thieves or murderers. If you really want to move forward in strong financial ways, then one needs to become a banker. That is the message we read when we see the Dutch approach to their RABO bank in regards to the LIBOR scandal. The RABO received its 774 million euro fine. Part of the information is here at http://nos.nl/video/568494-rabobankbestuurder-schat-geschokt-door-renteschandaal.html

One of the issues is that they paid off the Dutch version of the CPS with a 70 million euro settlement.

The news mentioned that some got fired, some lost rank, and people lost commission (no explicit mention whether all lost it). This is part of the problem. Some got away and they can try again at some point. I personally found the mention that chairman of the board Piet Moerland’s departure to be a hollow one. Yes, this is just my personal view! He would have retired next year. Consider that the RABO puts a fine of three quarters of a billion in the books this month, which gives us that the next fiscal year the board is less likely to get any commission, which gives us the view that the RABO boss decides to retire and not work for free. Interesting is, that whilst the issues of LIBOR have been visible (for well over a year) that the final moment when the amount is known sends him to make a gesture resulting in his non-working near future. There is no evidence that the top knew what was going on. Yet another story by the NOS shows that even though traders got such lovely extras, no real internal investigation existed on how they got to these high commissions.

There is something to be said about Sipko Schat, who was in charge of the traders in that period and who remains with the RABO bank. That part is not negative. There was no indication of any sorts (or so it seems at present) that he had any idea what was going on. We can doubt that, yet considering the structures of the other involved banks, the viewpoint that Sipco Schat seems to be innocent and unconnected is a rational and acceptable one.

So why the issue on crime that pays?

It seems to me that if we consider the Dutch Banking law of 1998 that at present, there do not seem to be enough handles in place to successfully prosecute these transgressors and this issues goes vastly beyond the Dutch borders, which is the one part that truly bites the people of many nations (not just the Dutch). It is my conclusion that the Dutch prosecutions office was willing to settle for 70 million, for the realistic reason that the chance of getting true legal justice for the transgressors seems to have been unlikely and for those who got to feel the axe, the proceedings for the crown would have been a lot lower. Yet prosecuting them might have been a better option. This is because many are now seeing and feeling the same sting of the years of building frauds for the Amsterdam International tunnel (to name one of several events), where three constructors settled for 1 million each, even though the transgressions showed inaccuracies of well over 30 million. This was in November 2001. There were additional building fraud cases in 2002 and 2003. Isn’t it interesting how builders and banks seem to get to settle for the fraction of the transgressed amount?

Even though much of the actual damages will get returned, not all of it will and it seems to me that profit margins remain to be too good for people not to try a roll at the high yielding criminal slot machine.

I see the issue in several nations that non-violent crimes are not correctly weighted (so, not just in the Netherlands). Too many judges seem to remain oblivious on the consequences of non-violent crimes, often these events get trivialised in courts (not just the Dutch). Not enough power is placed on improved legislation and successful convictions against financial crimes and no one seems to be willing to rock the stable boat in these regards. Until the cutting knife of the law shows unreservedly that traders and bankers could lose their professional licences and qualifications for such transgressions too many remain willing to give the slot machine of ‘hefty returns’ a go, as $1 might give them $xn if they can roll the bars to F-RAU-D, because even if they get caught, there seems to be a decent chance for them to hold onto a fair share of the unfair gained amount.

 

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October 29, 2013 · 23:03

The Wrong questions!

Another day and another day we see escalations into the direction that was once called ‘No Such Agency’ and now regarded as the only server in the US that allows anonymous and the People’s Republic of China to get port 8080 access. Go figure!

As we see another article in the Guardian, this time the limelight shines on Dianne Feinstein, chairperson for the Senate Intelligence Committee. It seems that she wants to a complete review of the NSA (at http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/oct/28/nsa-surveillance-dianne-feinstein-opposed-allies)The article leaves the doctors check on the pulse that listening in on several leaders of the allied nations is taking a dip for the worst. All this is shown against another reference towards Snowden’s disclosures. This picture is wrong in many ways. You see, the first two events might have had some work by Snowden, yet overall, when we consider the amount of data that Snowden has walked away with is beyond strange.

We could come to the following conclusions.

1. The NSA is completely oblivious to a silly little thing called Common Cyber Sense.
2. The NSA is completely oblivious to standard network security and logging.

Consider that SE-Linux is a NSA invention (OK, that was a strong word, but they were the driving force of SE-Linux). The first two issues show that the NSA either lost the plot, or they decided to hire a multitude of Americans with IT skills that seems limited to the connection that their child has a Nintendo!

Now feel free to laugh out loud, but consider the information. Allegedly listening in on conversations of the leader of a sovereign nation is not something one would admit to. This is not a bulk thing, this is specific. The fact that only a chosen few had that information would be the way to go. Consider any firm having a ‘second’ bookkeeping system. What are the chances that anyone but the CEO, CFO and the head of IT knew about that? That is just a ‘little’ tax evasion and commission increase. In case of the NSA they are alleged to keep phone records on most of their European allies. You think that this is NSA lunchroom conversation material? Snowden should never have had any access to it. So either the NSA system is completely broken, or we are dealing with something completely different.

3. The NSA has decided staff monitoring was not an issue?

That point is actually less correct, however when reading “Intelligence Authorization Legislation: Status and Challenges” at http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/intel/R40240.pdf you will see on page 15 “the Intelligence Authorization Act for FY2013, passing the legislation by a vote of 14-1, and the bill was reported to the Senate on July 30, 2012. Among other things, S. 3454 as passed by the committee:” linked to this it states: “Requires the intelligence community to develop a comprehensive insider threat program management plan.” So after the Brits showed you in the 60’s that someone could be working for MI-6 and Russia at the same time, this was not clearly in place? (actually, such systems have been in place for a long time, yet the document seems to refer to ‘developing’ and not ‘upgrading’, which makes me wonder why the tax payer is paying for all these internal security officers.

Also, this was at least 6 months BEFORE there was Snowden, and all the members of the Alphabet Soup have their own Internal Security Officers. How come the NSA missed so many alert events? I can understand some leakage with the CIA. Those people are all over the place, hundreds of locations, thousands of involved people. So statistically, if only one person slips up a day, it would be a really good day for the CIA. If we compare it to the restricted, bundled and compact NSA, they seemed to have ‘loosened’ up its standards twice each 10 minutes. This does not add up!

If you question some of this (you should always do that, never take things at face value).

Then consider that the US Intelligence Community consists of:

  • Air Force Intelligence
  • Army Intelligence
  • Central Intelligence Agency
  • Coast Guard Intelligence
  • Defense Intelligence Agency
  • Department of Energy
  • Department of Homeland Security
  • Department of State
  • Department of the Treasury
  • Drug Enforcement Administration
  • Federal Bureau of Investigation
  • Marine Corps Intelligence
  • National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency
  • National Reconnaissance Office
  • National Security Agency (<- free data access here)
  • Navy Intelligence

And the massive amount of leaked information comes from just one of these groups. Now let me make a jump out of the box. Consider the picture I have shown you and consider that the NSA was mostly invisible before the 90’s. Now, nothing remains invisible forever, yet, the step from unknown to open source is a mighty leap. Is it so weird that we should look into other directions?

What if Snowden is not the person he claims to be? I personally still believe he is a joke at best, a patsy at worst. What if the leak is NOT a person? Consider the amount of data that SIGINT parses. What if the Echelon system was compromised? Is someone having a backdoor into the SIGINT satellite system not a lot more likely than one person walking out with Gigabytes of data, through the front door of one of what used to be regarded as one of the most secure locations on the planet? Yes, these satellites are supposed to have top level encryption, yet in 2004 two Chinese academics wrote a paper on how such levels of encryption could be broken. That was 8 years ago!

This would mean that Director James Clapper has another issue on his plate. Getting into an intelligence satellite is supposed to be really hard, so was there an ‘open information supporter’ when it was build? Is there a security flaw in its logical system? Is this option so much more unlikely then a person, who was according to several magazines seen as “The CIA believed Snowden had tried to access classified data that he wasn’t authorized to view. Based on this suspicion, the agency decided to send Snowden packing.”

So that person made it into the NSA? Even if that was the case (which it was), would this person be allowed to remain unmonitored and get his hands on the amount of data that is now all over the Guardian editorial?

Not even the US could ever get to be THAT dim! Now consider what I said at the beginning, the CIA flagged him accessing data he was not cleared for. Do you think a mere technician had access to the phone data collection of not one, but a host of national leaders. Top Secret information that would have been limited to an absolute minimum number of people.

The numbers do not add up and it seems that nobody is asking the right questions.

 

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October 28, 2013 · 19:31

Damage through virtual nudity

Gamespot’s Feedbackula gave me pause for this issue. It seems that when you have a PlayStation 3 debugging console, it will be possible to see Ellen Page ‘fully’ naked in a shower scene. Now, this was a little issue, because when I played the game the clock in the kitchen stated 7:49, which meant that pizza and the CIA buddy would arrive in roughly 660 seconds. The buddy might arrive late, but the pizza delivery guy is not likely to be late, hence, no shower. I saw the shower footage and under normal conditions you see nothing revealing. Which seemed to be different from Heavy Rain (a game I did not play) there is complete nudity, like a decent quality movie, when she takes of her panties, Madison’s view on her thighs are ‘blocked’ by a washbasin between her and the camera. So, basically we saw nothing ‘too’ revealing. With Beyond two souls it is a different thing. Here we saw in the making, that Ellen and her co-workers were all in tight fitting black overalls with grey balls all over their bodies (like bad 21st century polka dot fashion), which means that the body they used was not Ellen (so I guess), so why is this likely to hit her career? Willem Dafoe was naked in ‘Body of Evidence’; his career did not take a hit, did it? In case female gamers are into seeing a little more of Eric Winters, which made Katherine Heigl go ‘Oh my!‘ then check out ‘the Ugly truth’, for extra giggles check out the ‘outtakes’ on the DVD.

So why this hypocrisy, more important, how was this not avoided? I think that the breasts might not have been a big issue; here in Australia we see tens of thousands of them on the beach (usually in sets of two). What is likely the bigger issue is the noisy mess Sony is making out of it all! The latest (which is a few days old), is that “Actress Ellen Page is reportedly considering a lawsuit against Sony, it was revealed yesterday“, this news showed up on more than one location, so I do not know where this is at. What is important is that this is the same glitch Heavy Rain had and as such I do not know what that status is. That nude scene was on several sites. I do not know whether this had been Madison’s actual body (played by Jacqui Ainsley), if so then we can only envy Guy Ritchie. Likely that the nude body of Jacqui Ainsley was also based on someone else, but I could not tell in either case if this was the case (just logical assumption on my part).

Should Ellen Page go to court, then she would end up with a strong case. The Heavy Rain issue was from 2010; the fact that this issues surfaces again three years later, means that either Sony or the developer was unable or unwilling to learn from past mistakes. Those possibilities tend to get expensive once proven. Jacqui Ainsley was a model in numerous glossies; Ellen Page is an award winning actress, winning an Academy Award and a Golden Globe. If she can show that this event is hurting her career, then it would be fun to read in Forbes in 2014, that a Canadian from Nova Scotia became the CEO of Sony, a company that is one of the pillars of the Japanese Economy, (an unlikely, but entertaining scenario). I got the image from http://www.allgamesbeta.com/2013/10/uncensored-pictures-of-ellen-page-from.html (it is one of several sites).

B2S_Shower1a
I am adding a censored frontal shot, so that people can see how far this scene was taken onto the disc (even though nothing was ever shown in the actual game). It does not matter whether it was playful banter, or just a little piece of candy for the male gamers (remember that only development test consoles allowed for changing the camera angles), so why was it all taken this far for a scene that was not needed for the game or the storyline?

I initially thought that this would mean that this would add up to good times for Ellen Page. The issue is that when it comes to virtual nudity not much exists. There is an interesting paper called ‘A Passive Approach to Regulation of Virtual Worlds’ by Jacob Rogers that made it to the ‘The George Washington Law Review’. It was published in 2008 Vol. 76. (Pages 405-425). In this paper Jacob observes that there is a lot of legislation missing involving virtual events. However, Ellen is not without due defence. As Jacob quotes Professor Jack Balkin “someone might bring claims for intentional infliction of emotional distress.” Which came from “Jack M. Balkin, ‘Virtual Liberty: Freedom to Design and Freedom to Play in Virtual Worlds’,2004”. So there is precedence for this, which takes us to the world of Torts. Sony might claim that there was no intent, yet the issue three years earlier (also with a Sony game) had not been dealt with, which takes us to the world of Torts. We have Foreseeability of damage, the Wagon Mound 1 case [1961] could apply. If we consider (there are statistics), that the average gamer is a horny little rascal, then we could foresee that they would check the heavy rain option the moment a shower scene came up, if we accept (consider) that the shower scene had no bearing on the story, then we can consider two sides. First in the regard that the scene could have been replaced by a gun cleaning scene (she fires a few during the game), A hand wash laundry scene (in case the steam on the mirror was essential) or a dressing scene in front of a mirror. In the second it would have been an option to make the shower scene a non-interfering cut scene (a movie cut, not a location cut). All these options! As we are in torts, the negligent act causing economic loss is a situation that is covered in every common law nation, yes also in Japan.

So we can safely say that should Miss Page take this to the next level, Sony might be wise to give her a residency tower (to get some landlord income on the side), a small percentage in Sony Interactive Entertainment and at least 5 roles at twice her last pay to settle this issue (not a bad day for a short youthful Halifax Canadian). It is not realistic, but we can hope for her!

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October 24, 2013 · 20:35

A Label for Labour

If we can use the information (to some extent) that the Guardian gave us this morning, then the first reference would be ‘Whinging’ 1. To complain, whine 2. A message from the labour party! So, the second one actually explains part of the newscast. The story was how according to Miliband, Cameron was losing control over the energy policy. (At http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2013/oct/24/edmiliband-davidcameron) How does he figure that?

The facts are not that unclear. There once was a non-fairy tale involving 6 commercial enterprises, who to some degree had to make a profit. In addition, the following headline should be interesting “Every UK home to face 15pc energy price rise” (Jan 2008)

Not to mention that parliament had an interesting document (at www.parliament.uk/briefing-papers/sn04153.pdf ). There are two issues, one, several sources mention an average 16% annual increase during 3 terms of labour. I mention it, but some numbers are sketchy, so I have some reservations how correct those numbers were, even though the parliament briefing papers do show a spike in that time frame.

It does not matter what the direct cause was, however, in three labour terms, nothing was done to limit that price increase, so labour’s nagging whilst the honourable Ed Miliband is on the non-winner side of the isle is rather fishy to say the least. Yes, we should acknowledge that The Electricity Act 1989 was enacted under the conservatives by Baroness Thatcher, then Prime Minister Thatcher. I reckon that there should always be a certain amount of questions when we privatise any form of utility. Commerce is the quickest attack on any wallet (a life lesson that is universally accepted).

So, even though there are questions, the one involving 3 terms of labour and energy prices should remain high on that list.

The article has a few other points of attention, Miliband’s quote “But this prime minister is too weak to stand up for the consumer and he always takes the side of the big six companies.” Really Edward? You do remember the greed issues involving a commercial enterprise? Or perhaps the London School of Economics classes (the ones on Economy) had a different focus? ;-), you party animal you! 🙂

Anyway, we can nag on the last three terms (but then we might sound like labour), in this term there needs to be an actual focus not on stopping (which is slightly non-realistic), but to some extent limiting price increases. Although allowing the French and the Chinese into the UK energy game might put a limit on price hikes to some extent, but it remains to be left in the hands of non-government, hence at that point, it remains a commercial play. What are the options?

There is actually an idea that might work. The idea was not mine; I picked it up in Sweden around 2001. The idea was that sound stable firms started to buy and install wind farms (in this case 1-3 turbines per firm). There are plenty of places to do that. The UK and Scotland could offer such areas too. Yes, in many places people might complain on the view, and they could select to pay £100-£200 a year more, or just accept the ‘lesser’ view. Consider that these people will get some tax benefits, but more importantly, they could lessen the power grid pressure and at times contribute to the net inviting refunds. There is an additional benefit. As the net gets a power feed, all over the place, losing power points would not have the blackout results other solutions have. So consider that through whatever non-governmental funding these windmills are added, the UK grid could end up getting a solid power addition by 1500-3000 turbines.

In the past I have ALWAYS spoken out against the irresponsible investment of retirement funds. If we accept that these turbines would prove to be a stable return on investment, keep price hikes down and allow for alternative ways to stabilise power needs, then why not look into such an adoption?

I never heard anything mentioned in that regard in the House of Commons (I do admit, I dozed off at some point, but it was 02:00 when that happened). So perhaps we can all look for a solution together? Because no matter where you live, we all need water and power, having alternatives when greed driven elements strike is NEVER a bad idea.

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October 23, 2013 · 12:00

United Nations going overboard

I could not believe my ears when I was watching the news this morning. It actually enraged me. The UN advice is that the Dutch feast of St. Nicholas is racist and should be stopped. I grew up in the Netherlands! As a kid, with other kids we looked forward to St. Nicholas as his companions. His companions were handing out hands filled with candy. Pepper nuts, lollies and chocolade letters. Then St. Nicholas would judge us to be good or bad and we would get a present. They were magical years. Of course, when we get around 10, we knew he was not real. We all bragged that we would on THAT year we would tug his fake beard! But of course, when the moment was there, we all chickened out! In part because we still wanted our present I reckon. I was lucky! My dad was Dutch, my mum was British, so I got two parties! Yay to being young in those days. There is an additional thought, when were too old to receive those presents, we hoped that WE would be chosen to get suited up and sooted up, to play ‘Black Pete’ (Zwarte Piet). Then we were the ones giving out candy, handing over the presents. If this was truly about discrimination, do you think we would be so happy to volunteer?

So why this circus? We never thought of discrimination. St. Nicholas dressed as a bishop, his assistants (sometimes named companions) in moorish outfits from the 16th century. Outfits, that were very like the outfits many (black and caucasians) wore in the 16th century. It was Spanish fashion. So why this circus?

A national feast that has been going on for over close to two centuries? If so, then why is Sana Claus acceptable? Is he not that guy who has slave labour going on, Elvish slaves working an a sweat shop to make all the toys for children all year long? Is the honourable Verene Shepherd a little too hypocritical here? All up in arms about discrimination, but sweatshops and slave labour is OK?

The fun fact is that the Dutch outlawed slave trade HALF A CENTURY before America, how is that for insight? Also, slaves were illegal in the Netherlands, which was never the case in America. Yes, I admit that the Dutch were huge in the slave trade in them ‘good old days‘ of the VOC ‘Verenigde Oostindische Compagnie‘. and guess what, the Dutch were the traders, the Americans needed a product and the Dutch traders supplied. If this angers you, well, fair enough, but remember, this was 360 years ago. If we want to get that ‘historic’, perhaps the honourable Verene Shepherd would like to be slightly less sanctimonious and start a trial case against the current American administration? You see, the original inhabitants were displaced, disowned and retrenched again and again. Breach of contract upon breach of contract. A small (extreme rough) esitmate tells us that the Native American population is due 54,000,000 acres American of agricultural and hunting grounds. If the Chairperson of the Working Group of Experts on People of African Descent would be so kind as to start those proceedings and after that we will consider her plea for abolishing a childrens party, which has forever been all about joy and never about discrimination.

But perhaps this was not about the discrimination and all about ‘the’ party. I had to hear for almost a decade how people from EA, Ocean, Mindscape and a few other bitch about the feast of St. Nicholas. It was not about the feast, but about the timing. You see these boys were all ready for the christmas feast and never for the feast of St. Nicholas, so for a long time small toy firms made decent coin on that time. For the bigger players like Mattel, it never mattered as barbie was timeless (perhaps it still is), but many complained.

So why this much hassle about something that has never been about racism?

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October 22, 2013 · 22:28

Patrons of Al-Qaeda

Many people have some form of religion, which is fine. To have a personal believe in something that is bigger than yourself or bigger then that what you see is not a bad thing. Many Christians have their father, their son and their holy ghost. Some go the other way and give credence to Satan, the anti-Christ and the false prophet. I cannot vouch for any of that. I agree that there is more than this in the universe, but what?

No matter how that part falls, it is likely that Al-Qaeda believes in their personal ‘information’ trinity.

They would be Edward Snowden, Bradley Manning and Julian Assange. These three people have done more to support Al-Qaeda then Osama Bin Laden ever could.

Assange, who is still hiding in an embassy, is the lowest transgressor of the three. First of all, as an Australian he did not really break any laws (although some debate should be had over hindering the actions of an ally under war time conditions). The public view is that on one side he should be nailed to a cross and on the other side he should be heralded. Information is often a lot more complex than many consider. If you want an example, you only need to look at this week’s situation where Assad is now blocking peace talks. Should there be any surprise?

I still am not completely convinced he was directly involved with the Sarin attacks; the issue here is that too much intelligence is questionable. If the USA had shown ALL OF IT publicly, the doubt might not have been there. Yet, the reality is whether they actually had hard evidence on who did it. Let us not forget that the evidence collected in the investigation was all about whether it had happened, not who did it. And guess what, Al-Qaeda was an element in Syria too, so what exactly did happen? Watching Secretary of State John Kerry go on a plane with his briefcase, shown on the news like he is some kind of rock star is not helping anyone either. It seemed as empty to me as a PowerPoint on some concept that no one wants to spend money on.

It shows two possible sides, either they have actual evidence that needs to remain a secret (which no one seemed to be accepting), or they actually didn’t have any and we were watching some version of the Punch and Judy show!

The other side is one that Assange was not into, the acts of terrorism by Al-Qaeda and the Taliban were not shown, we saw through WikiLeaks just one side of it and it changed the overall balance.

Then WikiLeaks released thousands of diplomatic cables, which I consider to be an act of utter stupidity, the information was one-sided, so the US opposition (all of them) get several free punches into play and as such, US recovery is still being hindered. This is the ‘bad’ side of Julian Assange. Their one sided act destabilised many events. Yes, there is a case to be made, but by not exposing the other side, we get a one-sided situation. In the end, the damage is done and even as there might not be any criminal activity by Julian Assange, we should ask questions.

In case the reader thinks that ‘actions’ against Julian Assange should be made, then consider that many in the financial industry did nothing ‘criminals’ either, even though thousands became homeless because of their ‘non-criminal’ actions.

By the way, remember the quote by CNBC (and many others), somewhere in 2010: “WikiLeaks honcho Julian Assange told Andy Greenberg at Forbes that he was in possession of a trove of documents that ‘could take down a bank or two.’ The documents wouldn’t necessarily show illegality but they would reveal an ‘ecosystem of corruption’ at one of the biggest banks in the United States. WikiLeaks would release it ‘early next year.’”

They never came! So was this about intelligence, or about positioning banks in an even stronger place? Is it not interesting that Al-Qaeda’s patron number three and number one patron are all about neutering governments, whilst the banks stay out of play? Is it such a far fetching thought that these two idealists get played by those who believe greed is all?

In the middle we see Bradley Manning. This is not some ‘foreigner’; this was a member of the US military. In my view, he is a traitor plain and simple. A private, without any in depth education thought he had it all figured out, decides on US military policy. Which is interesting as many military members above the rank of Colonel are still trying to figure out what the best course of action is, even those with Ivy League degrees. The only positive thing from all this is that the military needs to seriously start to address its mental health issues, but beyond that small sparkle of recognition, this person was more than a small danger.

That part is not addressed even as the news still discusses the winner of this unholy threesome. Three days ago USA today published information on the fact that anti-leak software had still not been installed. I think it is even worse than many think it is. Some of these applications have (as any good application would) powerful log files. Even when we look at non-military solutions we see the following:

“The client’s log file is located at <user_directory>/Palantir/<version>/logs/client.log”

We can see at Palantir’s wiki what it logs, and depending on the settings it can give a lot (at https://wiki.palantir.com/pgkb/does-the-palantir-product-do-any-logging.html)

By the way, one needed only to change three settings to really log a lot:

# log4j.logger.com.palantir.services=error # package level
# log4j.logger.com.palantir.serveres.Nexus=warn # class level
# log4j.logger.MyLabeledLogger=info # specific logger

Removing ‘# ‘ on each line was all it would take.

This one warning gives a final view “Note that we do NOT recommend enabling logging below the warn level for production scenarios.” which means that all logging is possible mapping out the active military network in real time as the user muddles along.

This is not about Palantir, or even anti-Palantir. It is a software solution that part of the Intelligence community is currently using. IBM Modeler and SAS Miner are both data mining tools with similar abilities (and there are more). They all have these options as it is needed to make their products go smoothly. So when Bradley Manning gave it all away, he really gave it all away! The consequence might have (or could be resulting) in deep targeted attacks against a military server system. The question becomes how good is the anti-leak software? As many logging is set at higher levels (read administrator), many of them would be able to log events unhindered by many prying eyes (it is not realistic to monitor all logs on even 1 server). Even if it is all covered, who else has access to just read these log files? It is not uncommon to negate log files, as their users are usually vetted for use of the application. LOG files can however show more than many bargain for.

Unless the server architecture has been re-arranged, there is plenty of worry whether these servers are safe at this time, because log files are inherently their and needed, they are not linked to a password change and often, they do not get reconfigured away from their standard configuration as the case has been with plenty of application that it would hinder smooth operations.

Last on the list of the Patron Threesome is Edward Snowden. I have mentioned him often enough, so I will not go through it all again. He is in my view a traitor and not some ‘holier than thou’ protector. He is not some idealist, too much pointed to him making a getaway with the eye on some quick bucks (and many of them), I might be wrong, but that is how I see him. As he showed us how ‘naughty’ the NSA was, did he show us how unscrupulous Microsoft seems to be?

That view can be seen through an article in Techbeat just 4 days ago. The first quote is “Microsoft is developing a new technology to replace cookies. This work is similar to projects being undertaken by Amazon, Apple, Facebook and Google. Tracking cookies have come under scrutiny recently from regulators by many concerned about privacy; certain types of cookies (Third party tracking cookies) are now easily blocked through built-in functions and extensions/add-ons within main web browsers.”

The second one from the same article is “This technology should also include Microsoft services including their search engine Bing. Tracking in mobile devices remains a key point. The big advantage of Microsoft’s emerging technology is that it could track a user across a platform.”

So basically, this reads like: ‘we the consumer used to have a little privacy, but soon, thanks to Microsoft, that privacy might be gone forever, allowing for non-stop online harassment wherever we are‘ So, That Snowden fellow never gave us anything on that, did he? Even though the NSA should have been aware of such plans long before Techbeat had a clue. Does the reader still think he is such an idealist?

Yet, on the other side, he has shown one important weakness. The US intelligence branch is on that same low level as the organisation that in the 50’s used to be laughingly referred to as ‘British Intelligence’. The question is not just how weak is the NSA seems to be; it links to questions regarding the weakness that GCHQ and its current Commonwealth peers might have. There are in addition issues with the personal digital safety of people on a global scale. Not because the NSA is scanning to identify terrorist networks, but if one person (Snowden) could get away, is there anyone else who just wanted money and gave their data download to cyber criminals? There is absolute 0% guarantee that this did not happen, so in how much danger are our details?

So, why this blog today? Many do this at the start, but in certain light this had to be done at the very end. It is not just about their acts, but also about the acts you and I undertake. We willingly give out our details to Facebook (including a beheading, but excluding exposed breasts), LinkedIn and Google+, yet many scream about ‘some government‘ seeing what we are doing and who we are doing it with (or without).

The twisted world we allowed to be created is likely to throw us at least two more curve balls before Christmas. Enjoy!

 

 

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October 21, 2013 · 01:33

The reality that wasn’t one

Until we all realise that the edge of the abyss is on the Americans, we all need to realise that what will topple the Americans, will have a massive effect on us all. Partly because we are linked, partially because the events that are in effect there are also in effect in the Commonwealth and both are not willing to change their ways.

The issues all start with an article in the Guardian (at http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/oct/19/barack-obama-address-shutdown-debt-ceiling).

The first quote is: “There’s been a lot of discussion lately of the politics of this shutdown. But the truth is, there were no winners in this.“

Actually, there are. The banks! They are making a bundle and as things go, the US will be (pardon my French) the Bank’s Bitch for a long time to come. $17,000 Billion has that effect on them. The article by the LA Times, which I personally call laughable, can be found at http://touch.latimes.com/#section/-1/article/p2p-77819148/

The four points should be looked at.

1. The U.S. debt burden is starting to decline. That’s right – it’s going down, not up.

Really? $17,000 Billion remains that. The economy is not even close to being on par, and as long as the government is spending over a trillion a year more than they earn, the debt is not going anywhere. If we go from the T-Bill path, then the payable cost of T-bills (basically the discount value), for the entire amount would be $453 billion. This is of course not realistic; the number that is closer is based upon the annual deficit increase. These numbers were discussed in my blog ‘A new third World continent‘. So, when they do start to mature, an annual amount no less than $1,000 billion a year for no less ten 5 years would be needed. So, that debt burden is going nowhere, it will be there waiting for the people and it will come with additional bills.

2. China holds only a relatively small fraction of U.S. debt.

That is actually true, yet roughly 14% of $17,000 billion is still a massive amount, it just seems little. By the way, if they suddenly cash in, the chances of the US being able to pay it becomes smaller and smaller by the day. The debt ceiling is there and it would be instantly crossed.

3. The U.S. has had a national debt for almost its entire history.

Again that is also true for the most, yet in 2000 it was only 5 trillion (roughly), so in 13 years it grew by 12 trillion dollars, it grew from 5 to 9 trillion up to 2007 and the rest grew in the last 6 years.

4. Debt crises have marked American politics from the beginning.

Well, that is not entirely incorrect. The article starts with General George Washington. The guy who ran the American defence forces before Patton, roughly about 140 years before Patton. The debt remained under 1 trillion until the 80’s, so basically the US went through Independence Day 1 (1776, not the one with the aliens), WW1, WW2, the Cold War and the Vietnam war. All these elements involving massive amounts of politics, (except the Cold war, which was a contemporary event where Ivan Aleksandrovich Serov and Allen Dulles had a bit of fun, as well as their successors (boys will be boys).

The moral here is not about the marking of American politics, it is about Politics not doing what they were supposed to be doing. From my point of view, the right questions were not asked, hence the actions proceeded were of a game where open and clear communications were not in play (or this deficit would be a lot smaller).
There is plenty of blame to go around! Initial there was former President Clinton, even though the coffers actually had real cash in his era, the Silicon Valley crash started to leave its mark. It drove Gray Davis (former Governor of California) out of office and it was the beginning of a massive shift. After that the USA had former President Bush. He did a good job, but then 9/11 struck. The consequences had a major influence, it also changed the premise of many, instead of a true revamping of intelligence, 4 agencies were suddenly spending like there was no tomorrow. The military costs went up, which would really hurt the treasury coffers and lastly the financial crash of 2008 was one that had a long term consequence, especially as a building named America got prepped in the years 2003-2005, by the time the 2008 financial fire hit the house, there were no fire hydrants and there was no one able to actually fight that fire. The rest is the now and many are still reeling from those hits.

This takes us back to the article in the Guardian, where President Obama is quoted saying “First, we should sit down and pursue a balanced approach to a responsible budget, one that grows our economy faster and shrinks our long-term deficits further.“

That is a simple answer, stop spending too much. I understand that spending $5 to make $50 is perfectly sensible, but America has become a nation of entitlements and costs, not profits. When you as a nation allow for tax evasion and keep on postponing putting a stop to these acrobatics (the Tax evasion rule is not expected to become active until 2014). So the US is in an extremely fragile situation. It is basically what you hear of Fox News (people like Glenn Beck, Bill O’Reilly and John Stossel), is that view wrong? Well the Nanny state is an overprotective government. I am all for protection. We should protect the weak, the sick and so on. But when you are broke, you cannot pay the beggar with coins you do not have, you cannot feed the hungry with food you cannot pay for. When your money runs out, it runs out. So until the government gets their horses back on track, entitlements will (not should) suffer. Perhaps doing something about Corporations and their tax evasion? For Example, Google paid the UK $12M in taxation, whilst their UK revenue was $3,000M. That is less than 1/2% in taxation. They avoided $2B in taxation in the US, according to the Bloomberg article (at http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-12-10/google-revenues-sheltered-in-no-tax-bermuda-soar-to-10-billion.html)

So how much taxation is NOT going into the US coffers? That list of corporations using tax havens is long and they are all prosperous. So, when entitlements fall away, look at those places on why support is gone.

The only part remaining is an article that came to view as I was reading up on a few parts. It is at http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2013/03/25/economics-professor-smacks-down-bill-oreilly-he-has-no-idea-what-a-nanny-state-is/

And the story is about Professor Richard Wolff having a go at Bill O’Reilly. It was on ‘Democracy Now‘ so the idea that this is about a democrat having a go at a Republican should be clear.

The first part was in regards to “a clip of O’Reilly talking about the latest round of European bailouts, which O’Reilly said is happening ‘because they’re all nanny states’ that do not have enough workers to support ‘entitlements’.“

So what are the numbers? According to the site, http://apografi.yap.gov.gr/ where the Greek state currently employs 614,053 people, 15,000 jobs got axed in the first half of 2013. The Greek population is around 11 million; this gives us that just over 5.5% of the ENTIRE Greek population works for the state. There are reports that this used to be over 20% (in 2011), so how is that not a nanny state? According to the Oxford press it is stated as “a view that a government or its policies are overprotective or interfering unduly with personal choice.” when 1 in 5 works for the government, overprotective seems to be the case. The only part I do not agree with, in this case, with Mr O’Reilly is that Greece seems more and more the consequence of short sightedness and utter stupidity. In reflection, when a government asks Goldman Sachs to hide the size of their debt, I personally want to sail towards words like stupidity and irresponsibility.

Professor Wolff sees Germany and Sweden as Nanny States. That is not incorrect, however the next part “they’re the winners of the current situation. The unemployment rate in Germany is now below 5 percent.” is misrepresentation. First of all, when changes were needed (around 2009) Germany tightened the belt by A LOT! This is why it seems that they got off lighter, because they decided against borrowing (a lesson that the USA still has not learned). The second part is that Sweden has a different system. Yes, they do have a protective nanny state, but taxation is also higher. It is 57% at the highest tier; whereas the rich and playful in the US seem to pay only 29%. In addition, most Swedes are ‘proud’ (slightly overstated, I admit) to pay taxation. The more they pay, the higher their status. (Inwards they’ll sulk like nothing you’ll ever see).

So, Professor Wolff is missing his shares of facts too. In addition, Sweden had to deal with its own issues in 2003 as Ericsson dismissed thousands of people. They went from 85,200 staff members in 2001, to 51,600 in 2003. That is over 33000 in just 2 years. Try finding a job in IT in 2003. So as Sweden got itself back on its feet, they had moved themselves into a position to remain cautious. There is a good PDF file to read, it is called ‘Growth and renewal in the Swedish economy‘ It is by McKinsey and Company and worth reading. I wanted to add the link, but like Google’s ability to avoid taxation; they are getting better and better in avoiding clean links (just huge links full of Google statistics garbage). Although Sweden got through it all not too harmed, their current projections are not too good. Their deficit is likely to rise to 3% this year. One of the more noticeable incomes Sweden had was from Vattenfal and their nuclear power plant, the issues in the UK showed that Vattenfal has issues, some of their sites (outside of Sweden) were not panning out the way they were. www.vattenfall.com/en/file/Q2-report-2013_35251329.pdf has some interesting materials. So as they reported an operating profit of MINUS 25 billion (in Swedish kronor), they are still there, but that is an amount that hurts, and of course as they depreciated that much, it will affect the Swedish deficit. Let us not forget, they only have a population of 9.5 million and unlike Greece they are doing decently well. As for health care? The numbers from the OECD (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development) show us two interesting facts, percentage of government revenue spend on health gives us USA 18.5% (highest), whilst Sweden spend 13.6% (lowest), then look at the percentage of health costs paid by government which gives us USA with 45.1% (lowest) and Sweden with 81.4% (2nd highest). So, either the Swedes get a much better bang for their buck, or in comparison the American system is extremely flawed. There are ways to find out which, but compared to the UK, which is almost identical to Sweden in covered health costs, yet the slightly higher spending by the UK government leaves me with the thought that an overhaul of US healthcare was essential, but until I see the actual numbers on the new system, I will remain doubtful whether Obamacare would ever be a solution (but I refuse to judge until better numbers are known).

So in the end, the information by Professor Wolff reads less correct when you take another look at certain facts.

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October 19, 2013 · 10:05

A case of Gas

Yes, many of us have a case of gas; I used to have it before I moved to Sydney. Many got it as they moved away from Sydney and some have had it all their lives. Whether you prepared Broccoli, made yourself a cheesecake or just because the Chili needs to be hot. Natural Gas is one of the most common ways to prepare your food.

The topic is the foundation of high emotions in the UK.

This all got the high note after Ed Miliband made his pledge to freeze those prices. so was he right? Let us not forget that this all is a commercial enterprise, but should it be?

So a lot happened after the news broke that British Gas would raise prices by 9.2%. You can read about it at http://news.sky.com/story/1155720/energy-bills-british-gas-ups-prices-by-9-2-percent  and the Guardian had a social twist in their story at http://www.theguardian.com/money/2013/oct/17/british-gas-backlash-price-hike-energy-bills

It is nice that many stayed asleep as British Gas was privatised, but that is what happened in 1986. These are consequences of it all. As for competition, that sounds like a nice idea, but when 6 players have a comfortable life not having to fight over one another, slicing a large cake in 6 pieces mean that none of them grow hungry. It is a basic fact of life. Only AFTER 2018, should China become a power supplier through their nuclear plant, only then will these 6 companies wake up. You see, having to make money as a private commercial enterprise comes with the consequence of price hikes.

The question is whether the price hikes are fair. That can only happen when all numbers become open to all for inspection. Oh! I forgot these are commercial corporations; they do not really have to, or do they?

What is a factor is possible comparison to a historic event. The Phoebus cartel! It was a group that all made certain agreements based upon the 1000 hour light bulb. They had a global control on the price of the light bulb. You might not think much of it, but in those days you had to consider that light bulbs would have to be replaced every 3 months. In an average house you might have 1 dozen lights. Now consider that 200,000,000 (over a few dozen countries) people needed to buy 50 light bulbs annually. It might not seem much, but that is the beauty. It is too low an amount to be noticed. Yet, the arranged additional profit of $3-$5 a year (in 1924 that was a decent amount), this still adds up half a billion to a billion dollars for 15 years split three ways. That is a massive amount. This is all a low estimate as I did not completely include businesses. Now getting back to Gas, the entire UK split 6 ways all connected to the same system. So, switching will not hamper any person. Is it so strange that these 6 are playing nice?

So, if there is an unwritten agreement between these 6, then it is important that the numbers are opened up. I am not against profit; I am not against companies having a buffer. I am against people getting bled dry by 6 corporations in agreement. Yet, at that point it is important to have all the facts. I did not agree with Ed Miliband making a half-baked ‘promise’ about freezing prices.

What was the reason for my view?

Oil is getting more expensive, all natural resources are getting more expensive. Can you freeze prices as the providers are getting charge more and more? To ascertain this, the numbers should go out into the open. As for arranging prices Philips has been in deep waters more than once. The recent $1.9B fine as they were one (of several) involved in price arranging for CRT monitors, does not mean that this could not be the case that this is happening in the situation of your gas line. The fact that the gas prices are close together does not make them guilty (they all go to the same network in the end), to not look into such matter would however be extremely irresponsible.

As for the dream Ed Miliband had? A dream to some, a nightmare to corporations!
They have rights too!

 

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