We are feeling all kinds of weird at times, we fall for someone, for something, and we also trip at times. These things happen and more often than not we have ourselves to blame, but is that the case all the time? In this I refer to a BBC article 3 days ago called ‘Victim of ‘Elon Musk’ Bitcoin scam loses home deposit’, first of all, the scam used the name ‘Elon Musk’ the man himself has no dealings here. But it was part of the article that woke me up. It is “Ms Bushnell, an investor in cryptocurrency, spotted an item on a website that appeared to use BBC News branding, claiming Mr Musk, the billionaire boss of the Tesla car firm, would pay back double the sum of any Bitcoin deposit”, now in my case the part where I see ‘pay back double the sum’ would raise all the red flags, but it is “an item on a website”, not merely “appeared to use BBC News branding” that got my eyes.
There are two elements here, the first is that more and more advertisements (and scams) rely way too heavily on ‘deceptive conduct’ and the law has been dragging its heels here for 2-3 years on drowning that issue. Stronger laws against deceptive conduct needs to be there, not some political loon relying on some complaints department, but laws that give power to the law to chastise the advertisement agency that allowed for this with fines in excess of £1,000,000. I reckon that these people will clean up their acts when the fine equals a quarter of their revenue. Do you think it is overreaching? I myself thwarted 5 attempts to get scammed last week, and I believe it is getting worse, with Indian developers learning that for a mere investment of $250 they could reap $250,000 matters are getting worse and it needs to be halted, or at least diminished by a hell of a lot. In this I am willing to point the finger at Apple, Google, Microsoft, Facebook and optionally Amazon as well. Some advertisements should not be allowed to continue.
Even when we see the Guardian giving us (some time ago) “investigation shows apparent ease of promoting fraudulent services online”, we see the lack of actions by all. They made these AI claims, so use your AI (actually AI does not yet exist), but there needs to be a much larger level of checks and even as the BBC watered down the stage towards “spotted an item on a website”, which due to a lack of presentable evidence makes sense, the setting is not all towards the victim. Yet in that light, If I had a real option to double your money, do you think I would go open, or go to my best friends? If I had an option that there was a 100% chance of a 100% gain, do you think I would give this to strangers, or to close friends? Consider that question when you go out and spend (read: donate) your money on something that is without evidence and without verification.
And there is a reason to blame big tech in this instance, it is seen in “The fake site is still currently online”, this implies that there was advertisement, there is a trail and I reckon there is a need for action and an option for action. You do not need a big degree in IT (I do have one) and we do know that there are ways to mask one’s digital identity, but wonder should those with a masked digital identity be allowed to advertise?
The article gives more questions than answers, but that is not a bad thing. Getting the questions out into the open optionally raises the bar or perception and if we get that bar high enough, my peers in the House of Lords will wake up and demand action, which gets us at least part of the way there.
We all have these moments, we feel ashamed for choices made, even though we know it is not our fault, even as we see that proper examples of our choices and believes are out in the open. The larger stage is as shown a corrupting view of disbelief and exaggerated view that cannot be fact checked, and when they are shown to be not true, the people paint over that setting with a brush as fast as possible.
I am a Republican, I have for the most always been proud of that. The Democrats want some version of a nanny state, they want to tax the rich, but they are really adamant on NOT rewriting tax laws so that we all pay a decent amount. Any law in that direction will be crushed by lobbyists and other options and it comes from BOTH sides of the isle, both Democrats and Republicans make noise in the tax direction and never resolve anything. Yet now, the stage becomes dangerous and there are two tiers of changes on their way, two that have massive repercussions for the American economy 2023-2030.
It all started with Mitt Romney and Liz Chaney opposing the lies that former president Trump keeps on voicing. The BBC gives us ‘Liz Cheney: Republican ousted from leadership for challenging Trump election claims’ (at https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-57090202). It has her statement on video, it also gives us “her party could not stand for truth if it upheld Mr Trump’s false claims he won the 2020 election. House Republicans will probably replace her this month with a Trump loyalist.” It is a much larger problem than anyone realises. Even as we see again and again that he stops Tax inquiries (I am speculating that he probably need to hide that he has less than 25% of what he claims he has), we also see the larger stage that the Republicans are now willing to embrace a lie, even if that ends their economy.
Even as we see “Ms Cheney’s fate was decided in less than 20 minutes by House Republicans behind closed doors on Wednesday morning”, the larger problem is seen with “The ballot was not recorded but lawmakers cast an overwhelming voice vote in favour of removing Ms Cheney from her post”, the lawmakers are too scared for the names to get out, and it matters.
So what will happen? Even is those people like Kevin McCarthy make claims that they had it with her. The truth is that soon enough the Republicans will show how much they are done with him and a few others. If Mitt Romney and Liz Chaney Crete an independent true Republican Party, the GOP will be done for. They will clean house and then the little weasels will come running and they need some votes to be unregistered.
There is actually a much larger issue. This is PURE speculation, but I have seen some messages going back and forth and I feel the same way. In the setting that a GOP is based on lies and even worse Trump claims, the makers of new IP will optionally only do business with these American firms if the IP will be registered in Canada, Australia or the United Kingdom. Consider 2,000-6,0000 IP and patents to be filed OUTSIDE of the US. It will change the valuation of the US in a dark way and not a good one. The fact that some will embrace the lie makes a lot of indie developers very very nervous. I personally hope that Google (or Amazon) are two of 4 players that can buy my IP, yet at present I hope that it goes to Canada or the UK. I might pay more taxation, but I feel that my IP will be a lot safer, if innovation is an essential need for IP, there is every chance that the US cannot meet that innovation curve and the GOP is making it worse.
So even as Democrats are laughing at the tweets by Gaetz and Cawthorn, the larger stage is about to be set and if even just a thousand IP owners register outside of the US, the valuation that goes deep into the billions will have larger repercussions all over the field. Even as sources like Business News gave us in 2017 ‘Yes, IP is the currency of the 21st century’, now consider the 2020 news “IP industries account for 38.2% of the total GDP of the U.S. and for almost ¾ of the U.S.’s exports; America’s intellectual property accounts for $6.6 trillion in added value”, now watch that GDP part fall from 38.2% to 20% or less, do you have any idea the panic that Wall Street will see because they allowed lies to continue? When the added value falls by a third to a half, the US will not be able to pay for the interest of outstanding debt, does it now become clear? The UK, Canada and Australia will have their great days, but when the US falls over, Japan will too, one keeps the other up and even if the US can survive a collapse of Japan, the other way round will not work for a lot of people.
So as people are taking in the larger stage and hide behind “It started with a lie”, the plain truth is that the US did this to themselves, first by electing that bully in the first place, then allowing him to continue when fact checks again and again showed his claims to be not true. This is not merely me, a lot of judges, judges HE put forward are saying the same thing, the election was never stolen and now the larger plays come into view and it spells a lot of bad new for the GOP and because of that America will see larger downfalls again and again. And the entire Chinese hatred in America does not help either, most IP registered has a 60% chance that Asians are involved, do you think that they want their IP registered in a nation that hates them? And as more and more US Asians are moving to Canada, there is every chance that the IP moves too, or will be completely registered in Canada.
I wonder how long it will take the government to realise that former President Donald Trump is starting to become a clear and present danger for the nation and its residents. This will be a first for America, no President has ever been such a source of anti Americanism. As such I hope that people like Mitt Romney and Liz Chaney will be able to take charge in whatever form it is.
There is time between now and 2023, but as things go with 5G, I reckon that the first changes might be visible in 2022, and we are a mere 6 months and 18 days away from that point. As these matters expand, I wonder what a player like Amazon will do, they cannot continue to the degree that they are now when the US economy tanks, it made a lot or profit, it will not accept that it has to trim the fat in all places whilst the US government is allowing a bad situation grow worse, they will have alternatives and that makes for a much larger problem for the US at present. Yet, I am not asking you to believe me, I can wait, and in March 2022 when the signs are becoming clear and the newspapers write the setting, I can point back to this article stating: ‘Told you so!’
Well that is it for me, I will await the call from one of the four players, it will be a long wait but it took Rome a few years to build, but I will not wait that long, when the markers are matched, my IP becomes Public Domain, and I will watch the greed driven go nuts because they were willing to put their personal needs before their companies need and that will be nice and visible when my IP becomes Public Domain. Such is life!
Yes, it seems harsh, and it is not meant to be. You see, this might be the tweet of today, but the setting has never changed not for three decades. Even as political windbags are all claiming that they are doing their bit, they are actually relying on emotional events to keep the flames going, especially when they do not resolve anything. My blog has covered it for almost a decade, and I have been stating it for another two decades. And this tweet is bringing it to the surface yet again.
People are all about ‘taxing billionaires’, ‘taxing corporations’, and ‘taxing churches’, the last one is nice, I hardly ever see that one. So let’s take a jab at this (yet again).
Taxing Billionaires Yes, it is all about discrimination, taxing the billionaires. I still hope to become one, that is if Papa Smurf (Sergey Brin), Clever Smurf (Larry Page) and optionally Tracker Smurf (Sundar Pichai) wake up and take notice. OK, wake up is incorrect and uncalled for, they are likely awake 18 hours a day and they optionally take notice of a dozen matters every hour of every day, but so far they are not noticing my 5G IP (darn). So at what point will we ‘tax’ the billionaires? Will we check their bank accounts and levy it for 20%? At what point do you think will these 614 billionaires move to Canada, or Europe and leave the US completely bankrupt? What do you think happens when $5,000,000,000,000 moves to another nation? I have another issue, these people made money in whatever way, and not all are a Lawrence Elliot, Mark Zuckerberg or Google top. As such do you really want the creative top of the world to vacate to another place?
Taxing Churches There is a larger stage here and I am not against taxing the churches. The Catholic church has pillaged in their own way the planet for centuries. So will you tax one (discrimination) or tax all? It is a slippery slope, and ever as it is not the worst idea, it is a trap waiting t explode in all our faces, we just do not know how.
Taxing corporations They are getting taxed, it is the degree of required taxation that is the issue.
The point is not taxing them, it is overhauling the tax laws and on both sides, both democratic and republican presidents, they all failed. From 1993 onwards the USA has had two democrats, two republicans and now another democrat President, the last 4 all failed to overhaul the tax laws. As such, blame Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, Barack Obama, and Donald Trump for this failure. In April 2019 we saw “Amazon, Netflix, IBM, and General Motors are among the 60 big companies paying $0 in federal income taxes in 2018”, not one, not two, not three, but 60 big companies all avoiding taxation, avoiding not evading. Evading taxation is illegal, avoiding it is only paying what the letter of the law tells you to pay and that is how it should be, as such tax laws need an overhaul and this has been clear for 30 years, so why is it not done?
Because we see flames, we react to flames and no one is considering (intentional or not) to push legislation to overhaul the tax laws. It is the same joke again and again. Tax and gun laws are trodden on, we see all the crocodile tears, but people die and die again and until gun laws are truly overhauled, starting by giving the ATF the teeth they need to take a chunk out of guns, this will continue. And the media knows this too, but they cater to their shareholders, their stake holders and their advertisers and none of those three are happy about overhauling tax laws.
And until the people unite complaining to the media nothing will change. It is funny that a valid objection by a journalist regarding an Oprah Winfrey interview, where we see a reported “Over 57,000 complaints have been delivered to Ofcom” regarding the point of view of a reporter, yet I am willing to bet that NONE of those 57,000 people ever complained on the need to overhaul tax laws. And we notice people complaining that nothing gets done, well, does this not start with you? A person can tweet to high heaven, but that does not change things. Getting hundreds even thousands complain to electable officials never happens (and the politicians, as well as corporations are happy about this), they need the rich to pay for their reelections and that will not happen when tax laws are overhauled.
This is also not limited to the US, it is a global issue and if people really want poverty to go away, you need to demand an overhaul of the tax laws. It is really that simple. But beware, when you push corporations away it has other impacts. California is now learning that the hard way as more and more corporations are moving to Texas. So this is a much larger slippery scale and their will be consequences, no matter how we slice that tax cake.
But I am not against taxation, but I too will take the tax avoidance route when called on, it is not because I am against paying taxation, I am against paying too much taxation, that is why tax laws were created. A paper in 2014 gave us “‘Tax avoidance is a taxpayer’s course of action in line with the letter but contrary to the spirit of the law’. Definitions phrased along these lines can be found in many policy statements and legal provisions. They are common, but nonetheless problematic. It is the ‘spirit of the law’ part which poses problems. These difficulties not only have theoretical import; they also cast doubt on the legitimacy of efforts to combat tax avoidance. And the skeptics – ‘non-believers’ in the spirit of the law – are many.” The paper by Hanna Filipczyk gives us a lot in that regard, on the problems and on the 27 references that show that this has been going on for a long time, and until politicians stop wanking about the spirit of tax law and do something about the letter of tax law, this will continue, and its continuation will never cease. And the media is making it easy for them as they cater to part of that group. Should you doubt that, then wonder when the media told you to that to achieve a proper level of taxing, tax laws need to change. Do not take my word, check what THEY said, you will see I was right and I have been correct in this case for well over a quarter of a century.
It was never hard, it was never complex, it merely needed to be done and the previous 4 presidents did not achieve it, why not? I will let you ponder that part for a little part longer.
Yup, it is about the desert, well in some form. To be honest, I never had it, I saw pictures, I saw people making it (YouTube), but I never ate it. And for today that is OK. You see, it is not really about food. It all started this morning when I saw ‘PS5 isn’t good value compared to Xbox Series X, and I’m sick of it’, that is his view, I believe it to be a bit of a hatchet job, but that is usually the case with opinion pieces. There are also ‘anti-Xbox articles’ and that is fine by me. In the end the systems are closely matching, yet for me the actions by Microsoft over the last 8 years have been an indication that the Xbox console is lost to me. No matter what promises they make, as I personally see it, they betrayed the gamers, all in favour of more and more Azure pressure. It is a personal choice and you need to realise that, I personally demoted Microsoft, but it remains personal. Even as they are now starting the Xcloud and other services, I do not want any of them on my systems, but it is mostly personal (partly instinctive). I will not tell you to not do it, you must select what you think is best for you.
When it comes to Xcloud, I feel that I am leaning towards Amazon Luna if I get into that field. The Luna was close to the Google Stadia, almost there but not quite. Considering that Google should have won it as a tech giant implies that Amazon is more hungry and more willing to make the leap, it gives them an edge and in all this, I want something giving me games no other system will, exclusivity matters. I am not certain if the Luna can deliver, but their setting is looking good.
The fact that we saw ‘Amazon Games opens new Montreal studio, developing a multiplayer game with Rainbow Six Siege veterans’ implies that Amazon has skin in the game, and as such, if my IP (as published earlier) is either PS5, and/or Luna, see it as public domain. The setting for good gaming is what we need and Microsoft (in my personal view) has betrayed that approach. It was their right to make choices, but they come with consequences. So why is there a baked Alaskan in play? Consider the method “The entire dessert is then placed in an extremely hot oven for a brief time, long enough to firm and caramelise the meringue but not long enough to begin melting the ice cream”, it is a way to use the crust to hide what is inside and it can only done once, yet via Microsoft we get ‘As Microsoft pushes partner transformation, a state of ‘channel inertia’ is emerging’, ‘Microsoft’s Surface Laptop 4 Is Nearly Perfect’ and ‘Microsoft’s Visual Studio 2022 is moving to 64-bit’, all different titles, all different sources, but there is a link, lets see if you pick up on it. There is also “Microsoft officials also said they are planning to refresh Visual Studio for Mac by moving it to the native macOS UI”, perhaps you are already catching on. One more hint. It is ‘The FBI removed hacker backdoors from vulnerable Microsoft Exchange servers. Not everyone likes the idea’ there are two parts here.
A court order allowed the FBI to enter networks of businesses to remove web shells used by cyber attackers exploiting Exchange vulnerabilities. But what does this mean for the future of cybersecurity? It is one view, I am not against it, but I get that some are. This has nothing to do with the FBI, it has everything to do with Microsoft dropping the ball.
Microsoft is seemingly everywhere, with connections way past their computers, Xcloud gives them more and there is too much questions on what Microsoft is capturing, when I asked why they needed to upload 5GB their help-desk stated that this was with my ISP, how stupid is that? I will not allow them on any device, no matter what game will become unavailable to me.
You see, it is not today, or tomorrow, it is what happens a week after that, when we see the exchange issue, the idea of a DDOS version that can use Xcloud is not that farfetched, a DDOS setting using any console it can connect to is a nightmare that should keep several Cyber divisions awake for a long time to come and when we see how Exchange was ‘bitched’ that thought is not the weirdest one to have, with any connection through Xcloud and Azure, the data options are the wettest dreams of organised crime, whilst data facilitators will seek access in whatever way they can and it connects to your systems, your data and could optionally impact your consoles and games. If we get (as published earlier) the setting of ransomware, considering the millions of gamers who have built up a lifetime of achievements, gear and wealth in a dozen games. How long until someone gets a hold of that? Microsoft is spreading itself too thin on too many systems, channels and operating systems. I believe it to be the much larger danger down the track. Yes that is a personal feeling and it is riddled with speculation, but when we see the transgressions over the last 6 months, is the thought that far fetched?
At the middle of this is their marketing. ‘Partners should ‘ride the wave’’, ‘Nearly Perfect’ and a lot more, all to make sure that Microsoft is on the high rise and in the light of diminished negativity, which is the job of marketing, with over 285,000,000 hits on Microsoft (as per today), and 329,000 (Microsoft+scandal), 14,500,000 (Microsoft+problem) we see an overly positive view, which might not be wrong, but that imbalance is making me massively uncomfortable. Especially when we consider “Some Windows 10 users are encountering serious problems following the release of the recent “KB5001330” update, with some reports even coming in that the update itself can’t be installed on some machines”, now these things happen, anyone making other claims is flat-out lying, there is no way that things go perfect, things happen. However, in a stage where Microsoft is so widespread that one hitch could mean all kinds of transgressions, the setting becomes a problem. When we see that and consider “Socure to Provide Identity Verification for Microsoft Azure Active Directory Verifiable Credentials”, we see more and more third party solutions becoming part of the equation. Now, there is nothing wrong with that, but speculatively consider that any danger is double of the previous danger per party involved, as such we see 1%, 2%, 4%, 8%, 16%. The fifth (third party) connection sets the danger to almost one in five, and now consider that we see a stage of overlaps of PC, MAC (iOS), Surface, Azure, Xcloud, Android, we are now optionally in the 32% group, almost one in three where things can go wrong and organised crime wants in, I hope that you realise that a group like HAFNIUM will have no issues selling their solution to the highest bidder, as such, are you sure you want to connect all these systems?
I accept the work that any marketing division does, but the setting of keeping the users for too long in the dark can have massive consequences down the line and that is where Microsoft has become (my personally speculation) a clear and present danger to gaming (among other parts), that is beside the fact that they are in it for the data, but that too is my personal assumption on the matter. Oh, and I remained conservative, when the error becomes exponential, the setting goes towards 1%+4%+9%+16%, there we see the 4th link making a lager negative impact then any before, I see that, but I personally do not believe that the situation will become quite that bad, but it could be.
The other night I was pondering the setting (as you might have read in the previous blog) on RPG’s and the setting of a dream within a dream. The idea took another turn as I was considering the interaction of reality with virtuality, and in this a game based on a 1 exabyte setting, an online multiplayer game based on virtuality. A game where players fight each other, they create alliances and they conquer. To get this done, we either create a world that is believable, or we turn it around and let the world create our reality.
And as I was pondering this, I remember a game called ‘Virus’, in this shooter the game created the levels depending on your hard-drive, that was when the cogs clicked together.
The new game an entire exabyte of challenges.
The world where we are thrown into is not unlike TRON, but in this setting we become citizens of a cloud environment, we are kidnapped and as we scape we end up getting left to our own devices. So as such we see a challenge, but consider a cloud environment, one that has a dozen Fortune 500 companies, thousands of mid sized companies and a lot more small companies. So will you take on a large player, or do you start small? A game with settings unlike we have ever seen and it is a game that develops further as more players sink into a company, a game without a timeline, but with time as either an ally or an enemy. A stage we have (as far as I know) never seen before and as the cloud evolves, so does the world and the enemies we face. So consider creating a cloud environment for that event and turning it into a game, we are always looking for a challenge, so why not become the infecting part and take over companies, corporations and grow in that way and this is the game with a difference, it is hard core only, one life! You can restart as often as you want, but one defeated you start at square one, until you have complete control of your first company, corporation or enterprise. So as we see and as we get into one cloud, it will be close to an all out war with anyone you face, that is unless you can strike an alliance, and alliances require all parties to see the benefit of one another. The nice part here is that this might (or might not) be the stage where we either love it or hate it. You see this will not appeal to all, there is no doubt it is, yet how can we create the challenge of such a game? We appeal to the player and we set the event that the player will embrace. An approach where the benefit of both sledgehammer and scalpel are seen, and the creation of an environment where both can thrive. And that is the challenge, creating the environment where everything piece of hardware is shown as something, where every router and its components are shown as challenges, I wonder if it can be done.
The question Yes, I do ask myself the question if it is feasible, if it is even remotely possible. You see, we all have Monday morning quarterbacks in one end, but the other end is also taken. Usually by some manager that has a new plan every Monday morning, but it never pans out to be possible, achievable or even deeply contemplated. I see that, I always question my own thoughts, you see the person who does not question their own thoughts ends up drawing castles in the sky, and then expects a dot matrix printer to print a 1200 DPI photograph. We must question ourselves at all times, especially when we caress our creative side.
So is my idea a castle in the sky? Perhaps it is, there is no doubt on that. Yet for every 8-10 failures, that one idea will push through and become a real winner. In 1997 I opted and idea to my bosses to use a marketing strategy that used websites as the central core for reaching out to others, my bosses laughed, stating that there was no business model for something that delusional, and stupid me, I listened, 4 years before Facebook, I had the idea for a digital marketing path and it was ignored, silly stupid me, as such I am putting ALL my ideas on the public domain, some will find ground, some will not, perhaps most will not, yet in this I am setting the stage for some to take the idea and push it into a direction that I am currently unable to pursue, for a few reasons, but I digress.
We can try to literally translate a cloud, or we can set the inventory of any given cloud and create a converted one that boggles the mind. Consider that a company has a server, users, computers, routers, Cloud Connectors, Data Center Interconnect Platforms, Mobile Internet Routers and a few other devices, and the larger the company becomes, the larger the hardware and that is before the cloud, in the cloud we see all kind of other issues and to map these out we need a different set of rules, a different set of limits to add to the game, to give some version of ‘reality’ to the game, a set of spawning rules (I hate spawning in games) or to set a better stage, if a cloud is represented in elements (see image) now consider that each company has larger or smaller elements of all, how diverse will be the challenge a gamer has, even as the gamer goes from place to place, he is still in one cloud and there is the larger cloud security to content with. Perhaps the game is a fools errant, yet I believe that if gaming is the edge of technology, the only way we get beyond what we have now, is to push the stage of a new game towards and beyond the horizon of what we now can see. Sony gave us the console to do it, so let’s push into a realm we have never seen before, it is the only way to keep gaming at the height of any system, if we do not do that, we are hopelessly lost.
So where is your virtual gaming life? In a new version of an existing game, or in a stage of gaming we haven’t seen yet? I have nothing against the next iteration in gaming, I played Tombraider, 1, 2 and 3 and never regretted that, yet even there, we saw evolution of gaming. That part was less and less visible in some other franchises and that is a sad part, because only those who push gaming beyond the limits will show a game worthy of conquering. We have all kind of views on this, some hate them, some love them and that is OK. I was never a GTA fan, but a lot are, some hate Watchdogs 2, I loved it (3 as well). Some love Breakpoint, me not that much. That is fine, I always state that those claiming to create a game that appeals to all, will create a game that pleases none, so if I am not part of any equation, that is fine by me. Others, will serve the game I like.
This is how it should be and in all this creativity will push limits and creativity will open up other doors, such is life and we need to push as many doors as we can if we are to make life better all around us, the iterators never will, they are part of the margin spreadsheet, sailing a safe course to last longer, it will never ever go their way. Nintendo is perhaps one of the shiniest examples. It pushed the Wii, which was a decent success, then the WiiU, an abysmal failure, yet it resulted in the Nintendo Switch, an absolute home run in gaming and there we see that failings will optionally turn to wins, an iterator will never see that, only the innovator will get there. Nintendo at present is close to 75,000,000 switch consoles sold, that implies 2 Nintendo’s for every Xbox, so where is their ‘most powerful system in the world’ now? Iterators always have a good story, but they do not yield results, we will get another ‘We’re not driven by how many consoles we sell’, it is the same all over, the losers will say the numbers are shallow, but when they are in pole position, it is everything. A brand gone to the dogs, largely because they ignored the voice of the gamer, I saw that almost a decade ago. And now we see a new world rising, one run by Sone ind Nintendo, it is fine by me, although I needed Microsoft to keep Sony on their toes, this idea will soon be a bust. So the best I can do is to set a stage of creativity and hope that some will Create more and more Sony exclusive games, those who do will be able to use my gaming IP free of charge, I do have commercial needs (income) for my 5G IP, such is life and I do like to enjoy a good meal.
So is my cloud game a bust? Perhaps it is, but for now I will try to envision more and more of that approach, consider a complete created cloud, one where you travel and set the premise of ruling the cloud, yet not alone, it is too big making alliances more and more important, a stage that several have attempted, some a lot more successful then others, I merely want to add to the success rate, or at least attempt to do so. It is the price of creativity and its push to innovation, only the successful continue that battle stronger, the failures continue too, but on a smaller scale, and that is fine, every person will fail at some point, it is what they do next that matters, because Steve Jobs had its successes, but he also had the NeXT computer. We recognise success, but we fail to recognise the failures and where they lead to, it is the flaw in many of us. And this is a larger stage, so how can we set that stage, when people keep on pushing Microsoft and their Blue solution. So as ZDnet reported “Microsoft acknowledged it was a service update targeting an internal validation test ring that caused a crash in Azure AD backend services. “A latent code defect in the Azure AD backend service Safe Deployment Process (SDP) system caused this to deploy directly into our production environment, by passing our normal validation process,” officials said”, a lot of bla bla and yada yada, yet the flaw is not merely within Microsoft, it is the same approach that is replicated again and again. So as we see mentions of Active Directory, we also see ‘a validation ring that doesn’t include customer data’, as well as ‘the SDP didn’t correctly target the validation ring due to a defect and all rings were targeted concurrently causing service availability to degrade’, so how long until there are more and more failures and the rollback merely adds to the problem? This is what I saw when I considered the NSA approach towards Trust Zero, the idea is good, but larger players will screw up making any rollback a much larger issues over the whole field. This is part of the idea to make the cloud a game, we could optionally see something we never noticed before, because thousands of gamers will kick the one part everyone ignored.
Whether we see the issue in reality, or merely virtual. We need to look with different kind of glasses, I see that because 20 years ago I listened to the wrong people, those relying on bullet points, memo’s and ego. There is no space for that in gaming, or in innovative design, I wonder when Microsoft will figure that part out, they are now in 3rd position, what happens when they become deal last (behind Amazon), will they blame metrics or will it be a Covid set of variables? No matter what they will rely on, they are in a stage where they are losing more and more slices of business cake, they are losing slices in a time where they should have had the entire pie, as I personally see it stupidity, greed driven short sightedness and ego driven conviction made them lose field after field, and now they are in a ratchet state, they have no ability to get close to Amazon and at the same time there is every chance that Google could catch up with them. When that happens, Microsoft will be holding a losing hand in the both the cloud and the gaming field and as their surface solution falls short, we see them handing over slices of that pie to Apple, a three sided losing streak, it is a rare but slightly satisfying field. Why do I think that Microsoft will fail? ZDnet stated it best with “There is still no publicly available data on Azure sales. Azure is the part of Microsoft’s cloud business that most rhymes with AWS, but is buried in the commercial cloud”. In a lifetime of working in IT, I have learned that when commercial driven players rely on ‘no publicly available data’, it tends to be because someone is too close, they are too far behind, or the results create questions, and as I personally see it, Microsoft does all three, Google is too close, they are too far behind with Amazon and the Exchange server issues call in question issues with the Microsoft cloud as a whole. As we saw (from 2019 onwards) more and more hacks towards clouds, there is every notion that together with one source claiming that 90% of clouds are in danger, Microsoft has a lot is problems coming their way, I do not know if this is completely fair on Microsoft, as all three have issues, but the replicated approach Microsoft has (Active Directory anyone?), we see a larger issue, if hacks can be transposed from one system to the other, Microsoft hacks might be seen as lucrative (from the organised crime point of view), it makes the NSA approach more and more essential, yet I personally feel that any rollback has hidden flaws and flaws are a problem, especially in a cloud where one flaw transfers to a whole number of corporations. I will be the first to agree that my view is speculative, because it is, but to see that part you need to grasp back to 2003 where the people got “Erroneous VeriSign-Issued Digital Certificates Pose Spoofing Hazard”, this needs to happen only once on the cloud and the mess is almost complete and I believe that a rollback will make it happen. So how do you feel about ‘due to a defect and all rings were targeted concurrently’ now?
So perhaps my idea for a cloud game has a few additional benefits, apart from it being an interesting approach to a new game.
This is the first part (the third actually) that I am putting on the internet, as such this part of the IP can no longer be sold, be constraint or managed. This now becomes public domain, in a hope for some of the less intelligent people to take a larger stand pushing innovation, instead of hiding behind iteration. Those who want innovation are silenced, it is against the greed driven needs of board directors. So as I make it public domain the innovative driven players are getting a push to a larger stage where they can freely incorporate and innovate.
5G+ or 6G? Yes, it is soon, perhaps even too soon, but the solution is not meant for mere 5G, it is a push that is a larger stage and to open that stage to all players, we get the driven need and that need tends to be positive and good. To set that stage I need to make a small diversion to the era 1840-1845, several players were on a stag where there was a new way to communicate, it would result in morse code that is used even today. 180 years and that system could be part of the new era.
To see the new system we need to make a small change
Dot – e Dot dot – i Dot dot dot – s Dot dot dot dot – h Dot dot dash – u Dash dot dot dot – b
You see, time is now a factor, so to limit to the dot founded symbols will be faster, we need 17 (16 and the 0), the setting is on every window in every shop. A simple blue circle illuminating a message for everyone to pick up, day or night, a hexadecimal package that contains whatever the transmitter likes, a setting where our devices can pick it up. A JPG, a PDF, a business card, a leaflet. The new digital foundry is not centralisation, it is decentralisation. If there is one clarity in light of Saudi Arabia and their 2030 vision they call Neom City, that is the one clear part given. When that city, staged to be 20 times the size of New York becomes reality, the digital stage changes, so far all the stages are the opposite, they all want control, they all want some version of data as a currency, but the power to give back to the shopkeeper becomes more powerful and the excuse that they do not want to deal with it no longer applies. A shop that has no digital comprehension loses their business, we need to set the stage that enables them to choose and having marketing run from the safety of their shop matters, especially when it is in front of their shop, the stage matters, but the stage of a ‘megacity’ like Neom City is new, no one has ever dealt with issues of that nature and setting a larger stage that is localised will matter, as such I came up with a few ideas, this was one. It is also the one furthest away and in a Corona lockdown the shopkeepers would still remain enabled. It was not on my mind, but the corona issues and lockdowns brought it to the forefront and top of my mind. I saw how shops could not deliver because the people who did their marketing were not in. A stage that is nice to have until you need it.
A setting where we transmit at the speed of light is not new and it is out there but not to the larger degree and it might come with the next 5G, but I doubt it, full 5G is not ready for 3-4 years, and as such a 5G+ or 6G stage makes more sense, a stage where we can directly receive at the speed of light, a laser ring giving us a hexadecimal package, in the 2 seconds we are in front of the shop we can receive the new Pandora catalogue, the new Mercedes booklet in 24 bit colours, the supermarket specials or the offerings that a place like Sachs of fifth has, no paper wasted. The times are changing and it goes well beyond that.
Have fun using the idea and have fun seeing how the big players missed all this.
It happens, to you and me, sometimes we are wrong. It can be because of belief, it can be because of presented facts, or it is linked to the faith you hold. Faith, not religion! In this I have a surprising large foundation of preference towards being incorrect, not being wrong. They are not the same. When you are incorrect, it tends to be towards a specific part of the equation, when you are wrong, you are looking at another equation. That tends to set you on the wrong foot, the one that cannot kick the ball.
For me it started roughly 780 seconds ago when the BBC gives us ‘Facebook Australia: PM Scott Morrison ‘will not be intimidated‘ by tech giant’ (at https://www.bbc.com/news/world-australia-56109036). To be honest this mess started a few weeks ago when politicians were starting to suck up to a desperate media setting. The larger fear is not merely the new linking and cookie solution that Google is working on, and that is before they realise that my new IP takes the newspapers out of ALL equations. It was not intentional, but the fact that my solution gets rid of ‘filtered information’ carriers is just icing on the cake. So the article gives us “Australians on Thursday woke up to find that Facebook pages of all local and global news sites were unavailable. People outside the country are also unable to read or access any Australian news publications on the platform”, which suit me just fine, it is not my use of social media, as such I do not care of seeing news (read: filtered information) there. So when we consider the information from the same source giving us “The world-first law aims to address the media’s loss of advertising revenue to US tech firms” my initial somewhat less diplomatic view tends to lean towards “Who the fuck are you legalising advertisement revenue and who gets it?” From my seat it looks like that everyone is all about free trade until the friends of politicians lose their trade, then it becomes a political setting towards protecting those moneybags, that is how I see it. The fact that the media did not comprehend what digital media and digital advertisement was until it was much too late, why do we cater to them? In that same setting how much protection will the Yellow Pages receive against that same media outlet trying to rip dollars from tech companies? The world evolves and those who cannot adjust die, or go under. This is how capitalism works. The stage is even less acceptable when we consider the Guardian (at https://www.theguardian.com/media/2019/oct/11/the-press-were-never-in-a-post-leveson-straitjacket) giving us “It has always suited journalists to suggest it is unwise for victims of illegality to pursue justice against newspaper publishers”, so not only is it unwise for victims to get against their media harassers, we see a larger stage where politicians and laws are devised to protect them from acts of technological evolution. In this at what point are they held to account for their actions?
So when we consider the part where we see “Under the code, news outlets will be required to negotiate commercial deals individually or collectively with Facebook and Google. If they cannot reach an agreement, an arbitrator will decide whose offer is more reasonable. If Facebook or Google break any resulting agreements, they can be fined up to A$10 million ($7.4 million) in civil penalties”, we see discrimination. Microsoft Bing is not in that equation, why not? In addition, why would we want to see any Australian news in our social media? Come think of it, the setting that Facebook has with advertisements goes back to 2007, so over almost 14 years, the media was incomprehensibly incompetent toward advertisements and the impact.
In 14 years they did almost nothing to counter it with their own version, by the end of 2012 they had passed 1 billion users, 5 years later they doubled that. (at https://www.statista.com/statistics/264810/number-of-monthly-active-facebook-users-worldwide/) And the media sat on their hands, they sat on their hands to such a degree that now politicians are aiding the filtered information bringers to get some more undeserved revenue, in addition these same politicians did nothing to overhaul the tax laws, so how does that play?
As such why do they deserve that leg up? Oh and in this stage if the population is a solar system, planet earth becomes a system with planet Bing, planet IBM, planet Google, planet Facebook and planet media. In this planet media is mercury, scorched from being too close to the sun, Saturn and Jupiter are Google and Facebook, each with their own asteroids and moons, al having their own function, Mercury, like the media has no moons, no services to offer, merely a printed media solution, as such, how much protection did the parchment guild get when the news went to the pulp business? What was left for the paper mills?
The paper mill is a nice touch, I actually went to one, I saw how paper is made and we all go towards: ‘Yes, but that is now obsolete’, this is true, but in that same light, the media we see today made THEMSELVES obsolete. They did not apply the brakes when they had the option and the Leveson inquiry is merely one of a few examples. When one side of media becomes too populistic, people can no longer tell or differentiate, that made them obsolete and now that this is the stage they want to hang to any solution they can, even the ones that require legality, all whilst they hang freedom of speech and freedom of expression somewhere else so they can accuse others of negating their right to show that freedom of filtered information.
Another voice is journalism professor at City University New York Jeff Jarvis, he gives us (at https://pressgazette.co.uk/media-bargaining-code/) ““The Code is built on a series of fallacies. First is the idea that Google and Facebook should owe publishers so much as a farthing for linking to their content, sending them audience, giving them marketing. In any rational market, publishers would owe platforms for this free marketing, except that Google at its founding decided not to sell links outside of advertisements. The headlines and snippets the platforms quote are necessary to link to them, and if the publishers don’t want to be included, it is easy for them to opt out…”, he gave this yesterday, I was on that train a week ago. And as I see “if the publishers don’t want to be included, it is easy for them to opt out”, the ACCC was eager not to include that little snippet of the equation making them a tool and optionally a joke too. As such we might wonder what politicians are dong (apart from helping their media friends remaining a non-poor entity), I could be wrong, I could be incorrect. I believe I am neither and that is the stage we see, all whilst the bringers of filtered information continue their revenue round one more lap, that is until the race is called. I believe it was called some time ago, but that is merely me. I could be wrong.
Yes, we all have them, doubts that is. And I had mine yesterday and this morning. I got a whiff of a game called Sandship (on iOS) and it did not take me long to get hooked. Now, we all get hooked, but hooked can be short term and long term. This game has all the trimmings that we can expect to see. It has some sort of storyline, it has puzzles, a sort of challenge setting and of course there is always the option of micro transactions. All these games have them now, but in this game it is done in both an ingenious and non-invasive way. As I was looking at what is possible, I realised that there was doubt in me. You see, I feel certain that a game like this would be a huge success on the Nintendo Switch, it would need some tweaking, but the foundation of the game is close to perfect. And as far as I can tell, Nintendo has nothing like this in their arsenal, especially when you consider that there is some level of operational education in the game. I get it, some will doubt my view on this, yet I also find myself wondering whether the makers took a look towards the Console, or are they in a stage where they will rely on micro transactions? For a beginning developer it is a fair call to rely on the micro transactions, yet this is not a game made by a beginner, if so that person is a real gaming savant.
The doubt is whether I am seeing it correctly, I am to some degree anti-MT, yet I understand that these MT’s are a good starting point for any developer. In addition, even as I accept that some people want to play on their phones, some games need a tablet or a decent TV screen. It just works better that way.
The consideration is for some of these developers, once they have a starting capital, did they consider setting the game, optionally adjusted on a console and with cloud gaming on the rise that consideration will soon be a lot more important than ever before. It is more important because extending existing IP is a lot more important and optionally a lot cheaper than making up new IP.
This gets me to part 3 in this, you see there was a game in 1985, it was made by Epyx and it was called Chipwits, now the game seems redundant, but the educational side as well as the challenge in all this was amazing, especially for a computer with only 64KB (RAM and ROM), consider what could be done with a Nintendo Switch that has 62,500 times the memory and a CPU that is probably just as excessively more powerful than the 6502 in the CBM-64 was. One of many games that are as easily remembered as some of the other games that some gamers idolised. Why? Because these games were truly innovative and original. And even now as as we see some developers concentrate on the flash and the bang, they are all seemingly forgetting that gamers come in all shapes and sizes, in addition, plenty of younger gamers are dependant on the parents and guess what, these parents are not a great fan of games like Manhunter 2, but they are always seemingly willing to buy the additional game that has an educational character. But that might be mere speculation.
What is in view is that too many games rely on one path, whilst they could add paths to their software range and in these days having more than one path is important, especially when the waning range of downloadable games that can be surpassed every new week, yet the games we purchase are the games we keep around, often for a long time. There are plenty of examples.
It is that part that shows the folly of Google when they dropped certain paths from their Stadia range, I wonder what Amazon will do, because we have 4 generations of consoles that show us that original and exclusive games make the console. PSX, N64, PS2, PS3, Xbox, Xbox360, PS4 and PS5. They all had their range and gathered clusters of 1000’s if not hundreds of thousands. Microsoft had their Master Sergeant, Sony had Lara, Kratos (and a few others), it is the exclusives that makes and break the console, yet original games are still part of that equation and the makers need to realise that, because there is every indication that some are relying on makers like Ubisoft and EA (complete with bugs), yet that comes with a risk, the moment the gamer has had enough the entire development house will be regarded as toxic, whether that is fair or not, the gamer will almost always act out of emotion and emotion does not really consider the balance of the topic, merely his bruised ego and the aggravation of glitches. As such all consoles need a stack of options, options that Google (as I was told) has done away with, giving a larger playing field to Amazon. It is in this light that we will optionally sooner than expected see:
1. Sony 2. Nintendo 3. Microsoft
Turn into
1. Sony 2. Nintendo 3. Amazon 4. Microsoft 4. Google
This is not a typo, Even if Amazon wins, there is no real telling how Microsoft ends up against Google Stadia, I think that is the fear that drove their Xcloud. You remember the pictures?
Why keep on pushing this when you have a console that comes close to the PS5? No one is asking that question. We see speculative settings on Xcloud and mobiles, yet the real gamer does not consider a mobile screen to be a real screen. So facilitating to more games will push Microsoft further to the back of the console line. I wonder how much Amazon and Google are considering that path, and there are options, there are games that matter, but will the hardware people consider the options that are decently in abundance?
I was almost asleep when an article in the Guardian passed my eyes. The article was from Feb 3, but I read it only now. This happens, there is only so much my eyes can deal with and this is one of those moments I am catching up, it is 05:15, as such I am still ahead of the curve.
You see, we are looking who wins the Cloud gaming rush, but even I forgot the setting that is forgotten. I touched on it in the past and I did point out that Amazon is doing much better than expected against Giant Google, yet that is not enough. The lesson that Microsoft refused to learn is upon all three of them. In my view these three are staged in a mindset of ‘Business staging art’, which is the wrong setting. It is now and has always been ‘Art pushing business’, it is the one side that they all forgot (Nintendo and Sony as an exception). Art is the power over business, not the other way around and Ubisoft is learning that the hard way. They forgot the station they were in when they got their business executives push the thought ‘A new Assassins Creed every year’ that is when they lost the plot and if Google and Amazon do not learn that lesson quick enough they will be out of the race too. At present there are thoughts that Amazon is now in the lead. I cannot tell as I do not have certain links and connections, but those who voiced it have a decent case, Amazon might win this, a race I actually never saw. I thought that the people at Google were googly and artsy enough to see that, yet I could be wrong there.
So as cloud gaming is taking a slow stage towards the gaming of tomorrow, the stage is larger and it needs to be painted. Not by some painters R Us franchise, but by kids and dreamers who dream of tomorrow, who dream of what might be and then we see if the artsy people can guide these younglings into a frame of gaming, not the business executives on what looks cool, but art people on feels cool and what plays truly cool, a stage ignored too often and also pushed into silence by the wrong people. Keith makes mention in his article on the business stage of AAA game development, yet the business needs will be the collected data and cloud services and the art of gaming falls away. Just as Microsoft was blinkered into the Azure stage, we see Google and Amazon making similar if not too identical moves. Parts were seen almost a year ago in Forbes when they gave us ‘The Console War Is Over Because Sony Left Microsoft Behind From The Start’ (at https://www.forbes.com/sites/erikkain/2020/02/28/theres-never-really-been-a-console-war-because-playstation-left-xbox-behind-from-the-start/), a stage most saw coming a mile away. Only because Microsoft still doesn’t get it, they never did. Not for almost 7 years, they lost the plot and they had to answer to board members who never understood it in the first place. That is the stage that Google and Amazon face at present and the one getting it last (or not at all) will be the loser in this. To be honest I expected Google to win this, I did not expect Amazon Luna to be on par with Google but they were and if they can solve the software issue, they will be ahead of both Google and Microsoft which is a race result I would never have bet on a year ago, but there you have it.
So when we look back at a quote in the Forbes “the console war is over and Microsoft has moved on, leaving Sony in the dust”, we see the problem. It is a business quote, it is a cloud quote and it is a presumptive quote on what gamers need. Yet the gamer wants a good game, it does not matter where it is and they prefer to play on THEIR system. By making the cloud the axial and not the game Microsoft lost and it will lose bigger because cloud gaming requires a good connection which takes out well over 30% of Europe and well over 35% of the US, so these executives are running in a race with both hands tied behind their back, they will claim that their legs do the running, but the arms are required to keep balance, and without balance they do not stand much of a chance. Even now, as we see congestion after congestions, they keep on saying it is about cloud, but the stage of the cloud is the internet and the connections and they are not on par, 5G is too far away, so those with the options will look at cloud and there the games matter, so Microsoft is out of the race and it is now between Google and Amazon and the Amazon horse has now optionally an advantage.
So even as Forbes is setting the (wrong) stage by consoles and how Microsoft only has one console on that list in the top 10, the Xbox360 in 8th position. We forget that time was an issue, and in a short time Xbox 360 became an actual contender, after that the wrong people at Microsoft started to talk and others were told to listen, it gave folly to the Xbox One and more folly to what came after. All whilst Nintendo completed the Switch and that ended Microsoft. Now Microsoft is a mere distant third and if Amazon gets its game right, optionally Microsoft becomes 4th at that point the people will abandon that system. The titan that was created in 7 years was utterly destroyed 8 years later, and as I see it there will be no coming back from that. This saddens me, not because of Microsoft, but with Microsoft where it was Sony had to up its game and that is the part that matters. It is not about the PS5, it will be about the PS6 in 2028 and without Microsoft the difference between PS5 and PS6 might not be to the degree it should be. I look at the future and gamers, true gamers will look at the games that are dreamt up right now, the dreamers will require hardware that does not exist yet pushing consoles and optionally cloud systems, but any gaming cloud system set to the premise of business people will not have that much of a chance.
I might be wrong, but so far in gaming I have been right a lot more than wrong, so I feel confident in my view of the matter.
Yup that was my finest hour in diplomacy, we’ve all been there. Although I just woke up and I just had a great idea, well, I sort of had the idea before, but it took shape and it is now 03:30, so it must be good.
You see, I have worked on several parts of the free RPG for Sony (as a response to the act of Bethesda), yet I now have a larger stage for the map, the map is not one map, there will be 5-6 maps, yet with every iteration of the map, the map evolves the map changes the presentation of where you are and what is there, but it does not change what is there. Consider the maps from 14th century and the maps we see now (not Google Maps), there is evolution and I set a stage where we have larger differences. A geologist and an explorer have their own versions of maps, that is how their trade set it up, it is how they evolved their maps, yet in gaming we never did that, so I am making a larger change, and in support of that, I also came up with the option of a new game, or a new game plus, making the game a larger evolution stage. Why?
No one has ever done it before and in that regard the larger stage is set. There will also be a cartography shop, run by no one other then Miss Beth Esda (sorry Christopher, I just had to go there). I will tell you later about New Game Plus, because this one is one that is also new, but the stage is that it still needs a little work.
So as we barge through the land (clodhopping), and as we look towards the sky on where we have to go, I see options I had never contemplated before. We can push boundaries on what we perceive we know, but what happens when the darkness is actually a void, a place where we merely stop being? So as we step in and out of the void, we set a new registration, one that Skyrim but not to the degree that they could have seen it, and my vibe merely picked up on the missed opportunity. It will be some work to set the stage to a larger frame, and it will take a decent amount of brooding, but I think I have an idea how to proceed on it and I will keep you informed. Still there is more, I wrote about it earlier, and as I considered the ideas I had in a new version of ‘Murder on the Zinderneuf’, I considered a different stage to the game, yes it is based on that game, but so different it is no longer the same game, and as I considered the game Clue, perhaps you have played it, so what happens when the corner rooms no longer have secret doors, but on a higher level they have doors that lead to another part of the Hindenburg? In addition to that, there will be a stealth and a deception element to the game. Linking that game to achievements in another game. If the new ‘Murder on the Zinderneuf’ is an evolution of Clue, we could also have an evolution of Hotels, or Monopoly. If this is a Google Stadia setting, then the people would have access to both games, so what happens that relics found on the Hindenburg will unlock new options in Hotels, and Hotels opens up options in ‘Murder on the Zinderneuf’? The options are all cosmetic, but they are nice options to find. It is not completely new this approach, but it was seldom trodden and as such, I think it is important to set that stage. The gamer loves any game more if we offer something that they never had before and a cloud gaming solution like Google Stadia (or Amazon Luna) will need to reconsider and re-evaluate what they have, what they think they have and what could be made possible. You see cloud gaming can only exist if people have long term commitments to that setting, a new Ubisoft game is not going to do it, Nintendo is figuring it out, as I see it the long term commitment that gamers have with Animal Crossing: New Horizons show me to be correct, and the amount of gamers that are ‘addicted’ to that game doubly so.
There is even a larger stage to the RPG that I am only now trying to figure out, it is a new setting in conversations and in localisation, and the setting that it has never been done before is making me happy. Consider that Ubisoft lost 15% of its value over a period of 30 months, and I now show that I have the inside track on solutions that they never were able to innovate, I think that I am on the right track, now, that does not mean that I am better than them, I am merely more willing to drive innovation, is that not what gaming was all about in the past?
Why have we become so driven to ‘highest graphics’ and ‘coolest effects’, look at Nintendo and watch where that happens (it does not) and still they beat the most powerful console in the world (the Microsoft contraption), as such we need to consider what we could be able to achieve, not merely what some marketing type tells us what great is. We can decide for ourselves what great is and it tends to be the game that baffles us (God of War for example) and a long list of baffling games, and in all this where are some of the creator? They are merely pushing out more of the same and they market it as innovative new, but tell me, which franchise has truly delivered innovation in gaming?
Lawrence van Rijn - Law Lord to be 