Yup, that has to go down like a kick in the head, does it not? But that was the thought I had when I was confronted with the BBC article ‘Mastercard severs links with pornography site’ (at https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-55267311), now personally I do not care about Pornhub. I don’t think I have ever been there, honestly. I am not anti or against porn, in Europe it was available on nearly every corner and a lot of it for free, as such I got over that need decades ago. So, whatever, I (for the most) do not care, but I hate hypocrisy, I hate it with a passion. So when I see “Mastercard says it is ending the use of its cards on the pornography platform Pornhub after a review confirmed the presence of unlawful content”, yup, it is an option they can take, but at the same time they are setting themselves up for a court case regarding discrimination by Pornhub. You see, when we consider “Members of China’s Uyghur ethnic minority are being used as forced labor in factories far from the so-called reeducation camps that have held them for years in Xinjiang, according to an extensive new report by the Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI), a think-tank founded by Australia’s government” (source: Quartz), if I remember my law lessons, slave labour is illegal, is it not?
As such, how many Nike shops were banned by Mastercard as well? How many Apple Stores are not able to process Mastercard? The New York Post (25th July) gave us ‘Nike should quit lecturing on social justice — and atone for using slave labor in China’, where was Mastercard at that point? Oh and according to ABC VISA is doing the same thing and for both I see no actions on Nike, Apple and a few others, like fashion stores that have been involved in ‘Aussie fashion retailers accused of driving poverty in Bangladesh with cut-throat pricing in new Oxfam report’, this came from Nine News 3 weeks ago regarding an Oxfam report, so where were VISA and Mastercard barring “Some of the biggest Australian fast fashion brands” in this? Sauce for the goose, sauce for the gander, I say. But it seems that hypocrisy is high with the financial institutions. Now, I am not stating that Pornhub is innocent, even as we are told “A New York Times investigation accused the site of being “infested” with child-abuse and rape-related videos”, it calls for investigation and pressure, but the voice of Mastercard and VISA stating some holier than though barring, all whilst they have no issue processing slave labour goods is a bit much, even for me.
So when we get “Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Nicholas Kristof named it in his New York Times article, saying he “didn’t see why search engines, banks or credit-card companies” should “bolster” Pornhub”, I am willing to initially side against Pornhub on matters and when we see a name like Nicholas Kristof, we all want to see where and how he got the data he used, fair is fair, yet in this, I see the actions by VISA and Mastercard as a BS approach towards the limelight. Especially when we see reports of Oxfam and several others on the other issues. But I reckon that these two card companies will hide behind the ‘too complicated an issue’ and will continue as usual, but as I see it, they are discriminating foundations and if Pornhub wants to extract a billion in losses from these two, I would be able to live with it, but it does not take them off the hook. Even if we are told “Pornhub, which has denied the claims”, I would want to look into the evidence of Nicholas Kristof, I have had my doubts on journalists several times, but this is a Pulitzer Prize winner, they tend to remain well above board, in this Pornhub is the lesser trustworthy of the two on a mere glance, and I state that speculatively, I have not seen the evidence and I hope that Nicholas Kristof will hand over that evidence to the press on a much larger stage. Yet, we need to see Pornhub like a much less puritan version of YouTube, or Facebook (me thinks), as such they facilitate automated distribution, just like social media, but they too need to look into matters to a much deeper degree, if I believe that social media must do this, then players like Pornhub must too, and if there are criminal issues, they need to be dealt with and fast. We cannot say for sure what is criminal and what is fake criminal and the track is not an easy one, a source (Tweaktown) gave us in December 2018 “Pornhub saw 4.79 million videos uploaded in 2018, with 147GB per second”, this might not be as much as YouTube, but it cannot be too far off and a place like Pornhub does not have the infrastructure that Google has (my speculated view), as such there is every chance that criminal activities will pass the filters and not be seen until it is much too late, and yes, something needs to be done, but we can do without the hypocritical BS that VISA and Mastercard are giving us, if anything Pornhub needs the funds to upgrade their hardware on detection, investigation and reporting, that’s how I see it.
You know, this article might have the most use of the letters pee, ohh, arr, enn ever. Oh Joy! Well, time to enjoy Saturday with a strong cup of coffee and a sandwich.
This started a week ago when I wrote ‘8 missed opportunities’, I had been pondering a few issues and I was wondering whether it was a fair call what I wrote (at https://lawlordtobe.com/2020/11/28/8-missed-opportunities/), and whilst I was pondering that, my mind being slightly preoccupied with “The Aeneid of Virgil”, I suddenly had this brain twist for an idea that might work on the Apple Arcade, the Google Stadia and the Amazon Luna. I named the game ‘Kick the Arcade’, a game optionally 2 players online (in co-op), a side scrolling game, not unlike Streets of Rage (SEGA Megadrive), but there is a difference, this game grows over time. An idea that the game has 20 levels, every 5 levels a boss and in each set of 5 levels an arcade, where one machine can be kicked (hence the title) and you can free the hero in that machine. At that point, you unlock the hero and after defeating that boss of these levels you can switch to one of the unlocked hero’s and continue the fight on those levels with different enemies. I was thinking of one little complication. When someone joins you that person can only select one of the unlocked hero’s and at that point, it might be your levels, but the enemies are the ones of the second player hero, it would be a whole new level of challenges. Consider all these great side scrolling levels, Streets of Rage, Double Dragon, Green beret, Ghosts n Goblins, Golden Axe and the list goes on, there is still the issue whether the IP is locked, yet this idea basically washed over me in minutes, so what is keeping them making new games? Yes, Google Stadia at present has an interesting list of games, but lets face it Lara Croft and the Temple of Osiris (2014), Hitman (2016), Destiny 2 (2017), they have originals, but they need more originals, a console is defined by what others do not have, not what others ALSO have. And this is happening whilst 7 announced titles are apparently no longer coming, so if Google is all about being googly, be Googly!
Set yourself apart, because no matter how the presentation looks, there is every chance that most people will not be able to tell the difference between Apple Arcade, Amazon Luna and Google Stadia, when that happens, there is every indication that Apple would win by default, is that truly what we want?
I am not stating that Apple is bad, but I expected more from the out of the box thinkers (aka people at Google). No wonder I have the 5G IP that Google does not have, ah well, such is life.
Even as we see ‘opinions’ like “Google’s Stadia was always going to fail, but a new report claims that the issue isn’t missing features or a tiny game library. It’s Google. … “Google didn’t offer them enough money, and they don’t trust the mercurial company to stick with gaming in the long term” and here we see two parts the important part ‘they don’t trust the mercurial company to stick with gaming in the long term’, it is the long term part, yes it is a fair call, but it comes with the dependancy on others to fill your chest with treasures, the selfish corporate settings we see all over the place gives a clear signal, they bring something that is exclusive and unique, or you are forever in a stage where you are not the first focal point. We have seen this a few times over (Bethesda anyone?), and as such the fickle state that Google tends to be on at present is partially forced upon them (corona viral distribution and change) and part from within, they are spread too thin and they are in too many places, as such Tracker smurf (Sundar Pichai) is optionally losing oversight, or he is too many places too often, take your pick. But the critique offered is not all empty. I do not care too much for ‘Google didn’t offer them enough money’, either there was no real commitment on the $$$ price or someone didn’t negotiate too well, no matter what the reason is, I find it lacks focus. As I see it, the old games would be an optional saviour, 1-2 dozen games rewired in better graphics, optional additional sides to the game and the stage is soon a different one, but does Google have the drive? The idea that ‘the long term’ would optionally translate into Google ending third in a three man race (with Apple and Amazon), it is the one outcome I would never have seen coming and perhaps that is also what Jeff Bezos is expecting with the Amazon Luna, the idea that he ends ahead of Google must be absolutely intoxicating to him.
So in the end, I didn’t merely added one more idea, I have added a setting where Google is not leading the waves and that is a little weird, but if that what the googly people have decided on, that is how it will be, and if they do not want that one part, they will see other parts see a reduced setting soon enough as well. Consider the people expecting top notch from Google, when they take their market to Amazon the game changes and I would never have expected that to happen, yet that is what we face, a setting that is no longer imaginative, something that comes with anticipating expectations, options that are offered away from one and towards a player that started as an online bookshop. I will be honest, I never saw that coming a year ago, but that stage is now getting a little bit too real. For if the Googly people turn down the innovations, what else will they abandon?
What is the value that comes from the creation of the moment? It is a fair question, a question most do not know, mostly never reminiscence on. There I was rewatching NCIS season 2, one moment merely going up into the episode, the next moment a new series/mini series/movie comes into mind. This is not the first time, it has happened close to a dozen times, the frame of creation is one that most cannot fathom, but what happens when it falls into your lap? Would you recognise it? We are so ‘obsessed’ with the eternal, that no one seems to look into the other direction. What happens when we consider that the stories of the Greek gods were mostly true? We see some (Stephen Fry) give rise to one train of thought, even though I haven’t picked up Troy yet, the hardcover looks amazing. But in this, what happens when we consider that Poseidon, Hades and Zeus are close to gods, but what happens when the power of Poseidon changes due to our pollution, what happens when he becomes his version of deranged and strikes out? What happens when in the old days their seat of Olympus was because it was the highest they initially knew, so what happens when they moved to a place higher? What happens to Zeus with pollution? You might think that this is all bollocks and from an academic point of view you could optionally be right. It is about creation, but what happens when creation can no longer happen? Creation of life and creation of thought? It remains a fair question. Some forms of creation is to invoke into others the questions others were too afraid to ask. Minstrels did this all the way back in the 12th century. You see, this also reflects on the now, larger corporations are afraid of the question, but how healthy is meat nowadays? The overuse of antibiotics gives us more and more to worry about. We might shrug our shoulders on “A new report is taking the US beef industry to task for overuse of medically important antibiotics. The report, released yesterday by the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), reveals that US cattle producers use more than 40% of all medically important antibiotics—those that are also used in human medicine—sold for use in US livestock, and use them three to six times more intensively than many of their European counterparts”, yet to some extent there is truth to ‘You are what you eat’ in that regard we have mostly become diseased. So how long until there is a visible impact? I wrote about this a few years ago, can we even consider beef, especially when the beef we ate when we were young (60’s) is no longer the same from the beef we see today, the meat makers do not want us to look, they are pretty much scared shitless on the findings there, and I would be too. I am not some vegetarian or vegan. I like my beef just fine, I like sheep like any other (mostly as cutlets). Yet the question is more important than we think, even as too many scientists (most for valid reasons) are not wondering where Covid came from, but it evolves somehow and for the first time in a century is there a visible impact. And when you consider that we will hit the 1,500,000 cadaver marker, we better wake up. When have we seen that flu was a small temporary thing? During WW1 the numbers were skewed and most of us did not know better, but now that we do, can we idly sit by?
So if Poseidon wanes in the ocean due to pollution, what can we hope for ourselves? In light of us handing over 1,500,000 foot soldiers to Hades, are we so much better? Yet I am not trying to ‘confuse’ science with fiction, however, is there a chance that we limited our view of science for reasons unknown? How many true long term investigations were done on the impact of antibiotics? The maker does not want to look into it, not to the degree we need to look, the seller of beef wants his money, so he is not cooperating, but can we afford that posture?
Harvard Medical School gave us ‘Antibiotic resistance and the dangers of superbugs’ (Sep 2019), if that is so, did we, through short sightedness create Covid? I am not telling, I am asking. And it is not the weirdest question, only two weeks ago did we get “Identifying the source will be tricky, and investigators will need to grapple with the sensitive political situation”, I do not think it is politically sensitive, it is not merely China, or the United States, it is all of this that created weakness in all of us, especially mothers. How did we look at the advertisements of that crying child and mommy just grasping for the nearest ‘Panadol for Children’?
I personally believe (and many others do too) that this might seem like a good idea but it could be limiting their immune system, it takes a while to kick in and the body uses pain (and discomfort) to regulate parts of it to some extent. I am not some whack anti-vaxxer, we have seen the good that vaccines do, I have seen the impact on some others that polio did, now it is close to extinct, but we need to see a larger scale, that what strengthen us, and what does not, what merely gives a short term relief only to hit us twice over in the future. I am not advocating against any vaccine, but I am questioning what we are doing to ourselves and is that not what we need to do? If the Iliad gave us the power of us 2000 years ago, why did we abandon some truths? Are the new truths so much better?
When we look at the setting of Fate (us), Pride (corporations), Hubris (the opponents of corporations), wrath (victims) and consideration of the gods. Most of us tend to forget that Helen of Troy was a daughter of Zeus, as such this setting was larger, we forgot about that. When we consider that Eris (goddess of strife) ended up giving the Apple of Discord to Paris (an older Macintosh model), we optionally see the Iliad s a much larger story where we are pawns in a game that is beyond our scope. It is merely one way to look at it and if this now comes to haunt us through the choices made (pollution) we might realise that we were warned thousands of years ago, we merely decided to ignore that warning, at our own peril mind you.
So as I watched the episode of NCIS where the perpetrator was already dead and the girl was a stage of a larger form of jealousy, I wonder what happened in the end to the apple of discord, especially with a new Apple (G6) coming. Will we take a bite out of that one too, or will we realise that this world is finite and we almost squandered a larger part of it, for much too long. When we consider one more speculation, when we see “Wagyu beef is extremely rich in monounsaturated fatty acids and contains all of the essential amino acids, including omega-3 and omega-6 fatty acids”, is that unique to Kobe beef, or is that because we gave up the healthy nutrients because we relied on antibiotics and medication to maximise our profits? I honestly do not know, I am merely asking. It is what one does when creation takes a gander in an unexpected direction.
Yes, I admit it is a vocal stage, to accuse people of this, yet, today I took another look at the Apple store, looking for a data vault. I looked at 75 programs, the bulk of them all failed. So when I see ‘The Apple App Store has 1.96 million apps available for download’, all whilst 75 failed a basic level and beyond that, the one that USED to work is now crashing s well. How useful is that app store? As such when the Guardian gives me “The government’s £22bn test-and-trace system has failed to reach more than 100,000 people exposed to coronavirus in England’s worst-hit areas since the second wave began, official figures show, with four in 10 not asked to self-isolate”, I am not surprised at all. Basically three weeks ago 98.66% failed and as per last week 100% failed. Now, I admit that there are good apps out there, I have several, but there is a larger failing, people who want to be app developers, yet their focus is on how quick, not on how good it is. The larger failing is clear communication on what I required. All whilst too many software firms are bout their shareholders and not on properly managing these shareholders. App creators all copying each others idea’s not being innovative. That is the larger failing and I see this ‘test-and-trace system’ as a mere example of failure. And when we see “failed to reach more than 100,000 people”, can someone please explain to me why this failure came at a cost of £22 billion? What testing was done? Who signed off on this? As such, who exactly is part of this “privately run arm”?
And when we are told “The government’s Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (Sage) has said that 80% of an infected person’s close contacts must be contacted and told to self-isolate within 48 to 72 hours for the national programme to be effective”, I keep wondering on how this was achieved, at £22 billion, all whilst people question the entrance fee I set to €25 million post taxation, I have no idea what people are crying about, especially as the Covid tracking system (at close to 950 times more expensive) does seemingly not work.
But this is not about my IP, this is about the failing of apps, the lack of testing, the lack of contemplation of what is required and the lack of what I see as clear communication on what is required. A station of consultants looking with $/€/£ shaped pupils, and from that point onward the mess merely escalates and erupts.
So when we get to the question, can we get the £22 billion back, will we see hastily designed excuses of political connected people that there was a miscommunication and the programmer delivered EXACTLY what was required? I am not telling, I am asking, even as a Conservative, I had no problems slamming Labour when they wasted £11.2 of the NHS on an IT project, as such, do you think I would be pulling punches on this matter now? That would be highly hypocritical.
It is time to illuminate the stupidity that has come at the expense of £30 billion at the expense of the people and their health system. It is only fair that this is done, and it is time that it is done with the illumination of names of all involved, it seems a little weird that the papers are not ahead of this setting, but that might just be me.
It is something we all face, we see what we had and we miss it. Consider NCIS, an awesome series, and when we were introduced to Agent Fornell, I remembered Joe Spano, he was young innocent, wearing a bowtie and being the psychiatrist at Hill Street blues station. I miss that series at times. I know time moves on and we got Blue Bloods now, yet Hill Street Blues struck a chord in 1981, others did less so, it is hard to explain, because it sounds negative on the series that are out now, but the reality is that something got lost in TV series in the last 10 years. There are series that spring outside the equation, series like NCIS, the Magicians, Lucifer, Fortitude, American Horror Story, but the equation is very unbalanced. When you are trying to figure out how that happened, do not worry, it is simple. In 2019, the number of original scripted television series in the United States hit 532. It is almost 450% up from 1981. Hollywood is so much towards creating amount and less about creating quality, which is why the series I mentioned and a few more stand out. I keep n hearing mentions of Game of Thrones, but not much more, one show takes the cake and that used to be different. Discussions were going on regarding Hill Street Blues, Dallas, Dynasty, Bergerac, Tatort, and a few more. Yet nowadays, the amount of series crossing our eyes increases, yet it seems that nothing between the ear sticks. That tends to be quality, not quantity. There is a reason why a series like NCIS has been around for 18 seasons. Yet at times I still think of the old Hill Street blues station. And each nation had its own quality shows. Germany brought us Tatort and Derrick, the UK gave us Bergerac, the Avengers, Hammer house of horrors, and the list from other nations goes on. But now it seemingly needs to be American, whilst overall (with a few exceptions) the quality is not fantastic, not bad, just not great. And I do believe it is not the cast, not the team and not the writers. It seems to be the pressures to create on too limited a schedule with repetitive ideas again and again.
Why is that? It is no secret, Hollywood is all about return on investment, but that circle becomes virtual and fictive when quality goes down. There is a need to make money and we get that, I am not against the idea of making money, but what do you think when 2019 had 532 series, all needing originality, all needing ideas and only so many writers with actual original ideas around. It didn’t require rocket science, it was a simple equation. So how long does it take for the Hollywoodians to figure out that there is a limit to quality series that can be produced? You might think that I am talking out of my (non-mouth), but the setting of Netflix handing over $18 billion in the last year for IP should get us to ask questions. Netflix’s 2019 costs to buy, produce and license content will be $15 billion. And when you considered they made a little over $20 billion in 2019, it seems that I am wrong, but am I? Consider how long this pattern can continue? No one denies that you have to spend to make money. Yet, how is the equation correct? And
Netflix is merely one of several stations, so when this model implodes, we will see Netflix, HBO, Stan, Apple, Amazon and Disney, all spending billions, all whilst the people will have to make choices and we get that, as such some will survive, some will not, we all get that. Yet at that point, what happens to HBO, Stan, Disney, Apple, Amazon and Netflix? Where will you be?
Differential I need to set a separation here, we have the money side and the creation side. Yet the money side will hinder, impair, and optionally drive the creation side, even though the negative sides are only looked at after things go wrong. I believe that continuation can only exist if the quality is of the highest caliber and I personally believe that this is not possible when you create 532 series in a year. At some point something has to give and that is before we consider that there are really good series out there and no one denies that they are good. Yet consider that in 2009 Joss Whedon created an amazing series called the Dollhouse, not merely a good series, it set the tone on serious matters and was cut off after two seasons. He also lost the tone on Firefly, yet that one is still around, after 17 years, now seen as a cult classic. Out of the 532 series, what else will we lose out on, because they are the silent victims, scrapped because the moment was wrong, the analyst did not get what mattered and as such the makers lose out. This setting is important, because with 532 titles that group will increase, too little time, too much to miss out on.
Creation cut short for reasons not within the stage of an audience. Streaming makes this a much smaller factor, but it still will not make it zero. Yes streaming will be important to give good series a larger chance, but in all that the numbers are not adding up, not when you consider what Netflix as one provider sets their cost at and all the other streamers with their own costs as well. Soon it will change again, yet not for the reasons you considered before. You see streamers have one larger station, and internet congestion will hit them too, especially in light of the issues hitting the internet. And we will see places all over the world get a earful of fibre-to-the-node (FTTN) and fibre-to-the-premises (FTTP), and int he end we will rely on all kind of matters, but we forgot that streaming is not alone, there are PC’s for gaming, there are computers for FaceTime, there are computers for work from home, gamers and now with PS5 and the new Xbox it will increase, there are ‘digital editions’ consoles without 4K drives and they all have to download. And they will need to do so a lot more than before on the Xbox One and PS4. The stage is not on the gamers, but we have already seen the news on YouTube and Netflix throttling down, so how can the growth rate continue when the internet is clearly becoming the weakest chain in that link? In March the Guardian reported ‘Disney+ streaming service to launch in UK with lower bandwidth’, so there you are, your new 4K TV so that you can admire Baby Yoda in the Mandalorian, and the service can merely give you 1080 resolution. That is the reality and it is not getting any better until 2023, so can you consider the issues that streaming has and cannot deliver? It is not merely the amount of series, it is the stage where we cannot see their full potential and the UK is not alone, these elements are showing up all over the Commonwealth, al over the EU and the US is also not absent of issues. It was a stage I saw coming in 2018, yet they all declared me a fool, now they say it is a complex issue. Well it is not, it is the issue that was clearly out in the open, ignored by too many. Even now we see the blame game continue n other fields, how long has the PS5 been sold out? How long did we know that this was a setting of hundreds of thousands per nation and we get ‘The UK’s biggest game retailer blames PS5 size for launch delivery delays’, really? The size was known for months, the amount of systems were known for months. Too many people are reacting at the 11th hour, in systems, on the internet and with the ISP’s. Who will they blame when streaming is cut down again? When do the people get the next news from ISP’s that there are issues? Oh, wait, that moment passed already. When we are treated to “Possibly the most common form of buffering occurs when your internet speed is too slow to download the amount of data needed”, as well as “You need at least 25 Mbps for 4K streaming video on your computer or Ultra HD enabled devices”, yet on a global scale and especially outside of metropolitan area that issue is becoming an issue in streaming. So as Net Neutrality is back on the political table in the US, it becomes a massively larger issue to face. This all is not the fault of the streamers, lets be clear about that part, they are a factor, but not the cause, like the blame game couriers, here the ISP’s should have been ready to a much larger degree and we cannot blame them for the covid lockdowns, yet the setting of bandwidth limits has been known for some time, at least a year and that was also out in the open, as such the stage we see will be a larger issue and that I merely a fraction of the station that I see, the math does not add up, it was clear for a much longer time and so far too many parties are aligned to ignore that part. We see solution A, option B and everyone dances around the overwhelming lack of bandwidth.
Consider that Saudi Arabia has a 5G internet that is 750% faster than anything the US has, did anyone consider the weird setting in that regard? And the interesting part is that no one is asking the questions that matters, how come that Saudi Arabia of all places has an internet is so much faster? It is a much larger setting and the people are seemingly kept blind, which is fine by me, but when you lose out on HD episodes of NCIS, American Horror Show season 10, Superman & Lois (2021), or A Discovery of Witches season 2 (2021)? When the throttling continues or increases, what happens to streaming? What happens to net neutrality? Did anyone consider that part of the equation when they saw the $15,000,000,000 bill that Netflix had for 2019? There was a reason why sacking Huawei was a really bad idea and others will soon catch up on that idea. I have no issues with an alternative being found, but none have the capabilities at present and they are unlikely to have them until 2022, should you doubt that? Take a look at how abysmal the USA has its 5G at present, look at how fast streaming is in rural USA, you see the US is a lot more than the 25 large cities and plenty of people live outside these places, should they not be able to stream at the max? When we see that discrimination is the prejudicial treatment of different categories of people, as is the streaming of rural versus metropolitans discrimination or not? Consider that for a moment. So let’s not wait until the 11th hour, let’s make sure that the right people look to the right places quickly, the term sooner rather than later cannot apply, we are already 2 years too late for that. It is the technology side, with the finance and creativity, too many forgot about the technology side of it and now it starts calling foul, it cannot deliver more.
Yes, the bulk of us transgressed to a new village, a new town, optionally a city. We all moved to the city of Jahannam, we enabled the politicians who diverted the laws that enabled the corporations. And as Eve spoke to the guy on her needs of an apple product, she stated, yes that would be nice. So he got her a iPhone 7 SE (Swedish edition) and to make sure that it would last longer, the maker of Apple products slowed the battery down, to enable it to be older. Does it sound familiar? The story (at https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-54996601), give us ‘Apple to pay $113m to settle iPhone ‘batterygate’’, basically it took 76,000 victims to break even. Yet the news gives us “Millions of people were affected when the models of iPhone 6 and 7 and SE were slowed down in 2016 in a scandal that was dubbed batterygate”, and as such we see the first part, the second part is seen in the Verge who gave us “11 million customers that didn’t need to buy a new iPhone”, you still think that crime does not pay? Yes, there will be all kinds of noise that there wee more cases, more settlements, but all that money is TAX DEDUCTIBLE, as such we get to see a larger stage and it is high time that the people involved get the limelight. When we consider “Any legal fees or court costs incurred will be deductible as well as the cost of resolving the suit, whether the company pays damages to the plaintiff or agrees to settle the dispute”, So this is how you get to become a trillion dollar company, you set the stage in one direction, and as long as it cannot be proven, you tell the people something fitting, take the profit and pay the fee which is a tax option, so can we come to the conclusion that in this world criminals are better protected than the victims ever will be?
That consideration comes (in part) from “Two fatal crashes of Boeing 737 Max aircraft were partly due to the plane-maker’s unwillingness to share technical details, a congressional investigation has found” (at https://www.bbc.com/news/business-54174223), with the additional ““Boeing failed in its design and development of the Max, and the FAA failed in its oversight of Boeing and its certification of the aircraft,” the 18-month investigation concluded”, even as we suspect t the there is something wrong with the statement ‘the FAA failed in its oversight of Boeing’, yet could that ever be proven? What does matter the the lives of people are optionally ignored when the bottom line of a corporation is under fire, just like the USS Zumwalt that cannot fire any of their smart bullets (at $1,000,000 per shot). As such, when we read the “The nearly 250-page report found a series of failures in the plane’s design, combined with “regulatory capture”, an overly close relationship between Boeing and the federal regulator, which compromised the process of gaining safety certification”, I wonder what the optional price was of ‘an overly close relationship between Boeing and the federal regulator’, several ideas come to mind, none of them really proper for vocation, yet the setting is there. Again corporate needs are protected as the courts seem to be in a stage of protecting those who do not deserve it and fail to protect those who were in need of protection. And the people wonder why we do have become so distrustful of governments, really?
We might have a few questions on the unrealistic minimum-cost estimates of the USS Zumwalt, yet will those who heralded the unrealistic minimum-cost estimates the inside of a court having to explain their actions, I doubt it, as such is the thought that we have become Citizens of Jahannam. Too much of a leap?
Consider the issues that we face, the political egos we allow for and ask yourself, how much more will we have to accept before the law does what it showed do and protect victims? As such, we need to ask the questions we at times fear to ask. And even as we accept the pragmatism is at times the safest course of action, yet the acts of Apple and Boeing give us a very different story, the story of pragmatism being the death of far too many people, yet that is a side we are seldom to see, is it?
I merely wonder what corporations are saved from facing next, I wonder if my choices to be slightly selfish were so bad in the end. If Apple can become a trillion dollar company the way it did, could I not become slightly less rich without dec option and by keeping my (slightly stubborn) disposition of fair play?
When you stop being a teenager you think that you are on top of the world, that is for about a decade, some have kids, some do not, but the you hit category three (old fart), you tend to feel outdated. This gets me to a comedian who had the setting (40 years ago) that there were three categories. Teener, Twenny, Old fart. Perhaps he was right.
So here I am looking towards the options of data vaults, and personally I find them lacking. They are all seemingly founded on a population that hides the porn from partners and spouses.
The problem is that there are specific needs to hide files (JPG, PPT, XLS, MOV, MP4, DOC, PDF, RTF, TXT), yes some want to keep the natural pictures of partners and spouses when she was 21-24, and even a decade or two ahead, she still has the ability to make you horny. Yet there is another person. They get horny on the dollar amount that patents represent, and in this age where 70% of clouds are invaded, this stage where data in transit is no longer safe, the need to set a secure location, with an optional link to a tablet is becoming essential. You see, those who have the IP trust no one, none at all. Having a secure application on one station, and that being the ONLY place where they can link is a setting that will grow pretty much exponentially soon enough.
So whilst I was trying to find a secondary place to keep the files, I see that the apple store caries failure after failure, and that is when you auto-delete anything that has an annual fee. A dozen data vaults, al copying the same idea, all seeing the stage to files being safe in open space. Yeah right!
But it dawned on me that there is a lack in services available. And this station is not one that I can do, merely because I am not a programmer, what is making me wonder is why programmers could not come up with this by themselves. To be honest, the app F-Vault is close to perfect, if they add the iPad app and link the two and also have players (PPT, PDF, DOC, RTF) in there it would become a pretty picture.
Yet the idea that everything has to go via your iTunes, your Apple TV and so on is weird. There is every chance that data will be copied to other places and that tends to be the end of IP.
Yet in the second, the change that Apple pushed for (in their defence) makes sense on the broad view. Yet it also gives rise to the perceived lack of privacy and safety when it comes to IP. At best you end up with 4 versions, at worst it is soon on the internet making IP public domain and that ends the value of the IP. With all these programmers, no one thought of that? F-vault has the option of fees, but for $10 (AU$15) you become a lifetime member and it all unlocks for you the VIP member. $10 is fair and if the added setting comes, it will be a steal at $20, as no-one else has the essential needs.
In NCIS it is seen as Gibbs rule #4 “Best way to keep a secret. Keep it to yourself. Second-best, tell one other person—if you must. There is no third best”, it is not merely about secrets, the rule applies to intellectual property as well, in bigger firms they have lawyers, yet hat if the inventor is you? What if the invention is one THEY want? Upload it? You have got to be kidding me. In all these settings, it seems no one thought of expanding the need, reaching the larger station, because it is about a lot more, consider the writers of their stories, the makers of a new concept. You think that studios are waiting fr the great idea? They seek out anyone who can give it to them, almost no questions asked. In 2008 today gave us ‘Million-dollar ideas often stolen in Hollywood’ with the added “37-year-old Cleveland resident Jeff Grosso, who paid his way through film school by playing Texas Hold ’Em, wrote a screenplay about it, then sued Miramax over its poker movie “Rounders.””, we get the added “attorney John Marder, who specialises in representing aggrieved writers. Many are victims of a system that favours studios and networks and offers little protection for writers and ideas”, to be honest, I do not know who is right, but I do know that at present there is only one system where my IP is safe, until some parts are upgraded, there is no way I am storing this on my laptop or tablet. So whilst we ponder our own safety regarding “Ideas are not subject to federal copyright protection and, until recently, that was the only legal avenue for relief. Federal law says only the expression of ideas — actual screenplays or treatments — are copyrightable. Therefore a writer would have to prove that a finished film or television show was almost identical to his original screenplay. A studio can get around that by simply tweaking a few details”. So when the greed driven are that driven to remove the original creator and the law falls short, is anyone even surprised that I would offer my IP to Huawei? The US claims that China blatantly steals IP, yet they cannot keep a muzzle on the greedy needs of players like Hollywood, it seems that the holy dollar is the golden cow they all worship at the expense of any soul. The article (at https://www.today.com/popculture/million-dollar-ideas-often-stolen-hollywood-wbna15641336) gives a lot more, but it mainly instills the fear that any idea needs to be safely behind lock and key and you have to have faith in yourself. So when writers consider the approach of “anyone who would take it” to be an invitation not to get paid for your work, at the point we will see other studios waking up and smelling the lack of creativity whilst having coffee. Yes, there is an alternative, getting an agent or a lawyer and make their pitches with that person present I an option, but an expensive one and writers tend to lack funds.
Yet the stage is here, and I must ask myself, have I become outdated? Has the world moved on to cater to absolute greed? I wonder, yet I also wonder what happens when a player like Huawei takes my IP and gives us an additional 5G dimension others did not see coming. At that point, I wonder what those in Washington DC will d when they missed out again and again as they catered to the wrong people. There is only so many times that you can do this until there is nothing left. It is a stage often looked away from, but President elect Biden has this matter facing him from day one. $8,500,000,000 is in danger as they angered Saudi Arabia (and I greedily hope for my 3.75%), a nation who actually has the fastest 5G now, so as app developers over there see a larger option to become app powerhouses, and they are hungry to become them. The US doesn’t merely misses out on revenue, the data usage connected to all the is monitored outside of the US, and the US has more gaps in what was a near complete picture in the past. Not merely the US, Google is now also in a setting where they are soon to be showing gaps in their data wall. We might ignore ‘Huawei’s New ‘Fight’ With Google To Beat Android Is Suddenly More Threatening’, and it seems like a joke, but Forbes also gives us “the combination of HarmonyOS, its Android OS alternative and HMS, its Google Mobile Services replacement. Until the latest sanction speculation, the HarmonyOS threat to Android was tempered by the chipset sanctions. But if Huawei’s smartphone sales can recover, that materially changes. Furthermore, Huawei has now confirmed that HarmonyOS will be available as an open-source OS, pushed at other Chinese OEMs, to build bridges, Huawei says, between China and the West”, bridges the elude Google, so the dangers I predicted in 2019 are now coming to pass and they are about to land on the US economy as well, when app revenue dives, when app data is going elsewhere, the value of Google will take a step back, so will the value of Apple. It is a simple stage, what was iOS/Android, is now iOS, HarmonyOS and Android. HarmonyOS is not just a slice from the Android cake, as Apple fails to set options in China, their Chinese slice goes directly to HarmonyOS and that is a extending well beyond China, consider that both Google and Apple lose not just the Chinese part, but no less than 30% of the Indian part on top of that. Now we see a different powerhouse, all whilst Google, Apple and others are seeking margins the are no longer where they were and IP is setting a much larger tone, so this was about a lot more than a simple data vault, was it not? And as Forbes gives us “Huawei’s ecosystem pushed further into Google territory. We now have multiple mapping options, for example, to replace Google Maps. And now, critically, we also have a search alternative as well. This is beginning to feel more like the real thing. Yes, Huawei is short on apps and a global developer network, but it’s ploughing in money to its community and it knows consumers worldwide want its recipe of premium smartphones for less—a recipe now being replicated by those other Chinese OEMs” (at https://www.forbes.com/sites/zakdoffman/2020/11/01/huawei-wants-to-beat-google-android-apple-iphone-and-samsung-galaxy-after-trump-ban-update/?sh=12fce8b1e39e) almost two weeks ago, the stage shifts and the players better realise that it was the lack of creativity in the US that started all this (a pretty stupid government administration did the rest). In the end do you think that some of the players will sit still? They are about to lose billions and this is just the beginning, the lack of real 5G in several nations is the foundation for more losses, all in a stage where we still have not seen any real evidence that Huawei was a security risk, other than Huawei being a Chinese company.
So how long until the people catch on that the world map is changing and when we realise that the US is no longer a superpower (apart from super debt), what will they end up doing? I will let you see the light be yourself, when you consider who is outdated, consider that what we thought was a station of IP, a station too many players ignored from the start, perhaps the values we assign because Hollywood and Wall Street gave them to us, perhaps they too have become outdated. Just a thought to consider.
OK, I have been outspoken on more than one occasion, and as such, I also feel partially connected to make the call when it was made. And the call was made towards President-elect Biden. Even as a republican, I have no issue with this, this is how it is, the votes decide. It is not over yet, team Trump will trump (or rump) what is can, and the numbers are there for automated recounts. Arizona, Biden won by 0.3%, a difference of less than 12,000. Georgia has Biden by 0.3% and that amounts to 14,000 votes. I do not believe that these numbers are overcome and a win of 1 vote is all President elect Biden will need, then there is Wisconsin where Biden won, there is no automatic recount, but team Trump might push for it, they need to overcome 20,610 which amounts to 0.7%. It is a really tall order to overthrow all three and not a real realistic one at that, but that was the game and President-elect Biden seemingly won.
After 10 days of counting the calls are officially made (perhaps pre-official), which was the game. We can wait for the election lawyers to step in, but the numbers are too large to overcome, There is no way the this many ballots are invalid, they can look, but I am not holding my breath on that, yet for me, there is a sunny side (see previous blog), the scare they gave Saudi-Arabia will have larger consequences and with 5G operational there, the response is not going to be a happy one for American entrepreneurs, not when Chinese developers have a much larger app development pol to look at with options in Egypt as well, with nearly 100 million people, it is a stage China really wants and the talks we see between Egypt and Saudi Arabia and given with ‘Vodafone may reconsider price of Egypt sale to Saudi Telecom’ (at https://www.arabnews.com/node/1733206/business-economy) two months ago, were already in the pipeline. I warned for this situation and it seems the Saudi Arabia sees the technology light, pushing out not merely Vodafone, but the sale to Saudi Telecom (STC) is set to $2.4B, which is almost a steal at twice the price. You see, with the Saudi 5G (thanks to Huawei) a lot more services will soon opt via Saudi Arabia and that setting will grow over the next 2 years. A setting the EU and the US have never faced before, and would you believe it, team president-elect has not made friends in the KSA, they can reassess all they want, but the market shares are moving away from those who had it, as will that linked data and Huawei is sitting on the side smirking and nodding in appreciation. What I predicted in my blogs as early s 2018 is now coming to pass, soon Apple and Google want their data centres to run larger services and that is when the US will lose even more. Decentralisation is the worst the could happen here and the timing is even less inviting to the US. In 2019 we saw ‘Google still pursuing Saudi Arabian data centers’, with Egypt in the setting their need increases dramatically, and what else will Vodafail lose? I doubt it is merely Egypt. Last week we were given ‘Vodafone Idea’s inadequate network investments to further accelerate subscriber loss: Analysts’, a stage the might not aid the KSA too much, but the losses will go somewhere and whatever partnership comes from there, in the end Huawei will profit, so there goes the setting we hd towards a setting the US never wanted in the first place and as we see it, we will also see that the EU will need to make a call, especially as they lose out again and again. What path they will walk is still unknown, but it seems decently clear that the path they are on now tends to lead towards self-destruction, the is seen in the Euro reporter, who gives us ‘EU and member states risk a possible WTO challenge for unfair actions against Huawei’ a mere two days ago. Even though it is not on the same setting I had, theirs will do jut as well. As we see: “US actions against Huawei based mainly on its Chinese origins simply will not stand up to a legal challenge before the World Trade Organization. This is because of international treaty obligations that Romania, Poland and Sweden as both EU Member States and WTO members are all bound by, precluding them from discriminating against or between the products of another WTO member” is not merely a costly stage, it is the setting the the path (poorly) chosen could cost the EU a lot more than it bargained for.
Even now Saudi Arabia has the fastest 5G network, compared to the US 752% faster, when Egypt is added to this, the stage changes, two nations with willing and tech hungry developers, all with a 2 year advantage over both the EU and the US, the damage they can install by having faster apps and faster infrastructure is going to cost the other two a bundle, perhaps more. Consider that the UK and US are trailing Egypt and the KSA by such a large difference, the mere humiliation of being second to Egypt and Saudi Arabia is just what the flaccid western technologists required, relying on politicians to fight for them, all whilst their technology could not keep up and that damage will continue until at least 2022. It seems to me that this is only the beginning. When the profit fall away, the real damage comes and both players (EU and US) are nowhere near ready to deal with that, as I see it, President-elect Biden inherited a leaky boat names USA, I reckon he better play nice with whatever ally he still has, the game will change and the US no longer has the lead position for choices, that much is I hope been made clear.
Have a great Friday, especially those calling in sick so the they can test their new PS5.
I have been outspoken in the past on the US Administration speaking out on things they hardly understand, more specifically the nuts and fruits division (aka US Senate and US Congress), yet this morning I got confronted with one of such calls and I find it hard to disagree. The article that I initially saw on ABC (at https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-11-09/google-facebook-banking-senate-inquiry-fintech/12856080) where we get told ‘Senate inquiry asks whether Facebook, Google should be regulated like banks’ is the foundation of a much larger stage, and in the I find it weird that Apple is not named either. You see the quote “The inquiry — which in September handed down an interim report into other issues including regulation of buy now, pay later platforms such as Afterpay and Zip — is now examining whether it is dangerous to have large tech giants offering banking or other financial services”, is more than simply on the money, there is a whole range of services pushed and prodded towards consumers, if anything, the fact that players are faced with games like Gardenscape who continue their deceptive advertising trough games is a mere indication of how bad it could get. There is a basic level of protection that consumers are entitled to and as I personally see it they will not be getting it.
Now, if these tech providers want to facilitate financial services whilst their services are not linked and behind a Chinese wall, isolating data and speculative insight away from the financial services it is one thing, it would level the playing field with the other providers. Yet in it current stage that setting is indeed extremely unbalanced, unbalanced towards their competitors and more important it will be unbalanced for the consumers who need a honest chance.
So whilst we are getting treated to “Senator Bragg says our personal data has become an asset and the tech giants could be regulated so they use it fairly”, my response towards Andrew Bragg is that he is wrong, or perhaps incorrect is a much better word here, it is not regulation, it is isolation from internal and external data sources. Which means that if Banco Googly wants to extent a loan to Jack the Keyboard Hammer for a $99 new keyboard, they will have to do their own due diligence and use the methods the other banks and financial services have. That is the only way to keep level playing field.
Now, player like Google Facebook and Apple might claim that the data link will allow cheaper loans, the might optionally be true, but when you get to the other side of the seesaw, and the seesaw is down for you, the data links might give you less options or more expensive options for the longest of times and the would not be fair. In that regard, have you ever seen ANY financial institution who set your wellbeing over their need for profit, please give me their name, because the alleged law firm known as Mandacious, Dissembling and Sneaky, who will inform you that there are leagues of financial institutions the always have your wellbeing at heart, all whilst you know that there are none that actually do.
So, yes, I do believe the these tech giant have a much larger drive to own more and more money and there is nothing wrong with the, but they are doing it with a massive unfair advantage leaving banks with the empty jar of watered down milk as tech giants get to skim the cream of every milk delivery, it would be an unfair advantage, with larger implications when they start connecting financial data to the data the they already have, it would be a stage where we get a larger segregation of those who have versus those who have not. A stage that Dutch Journalist and tech savvy person Luc Sala warned us all against in the late 80’s, so 30 years ago he saw this level of segregation through technology, and when did personal segregation EVER have positive consequences? Ask the African Americans, the US Latino’s, optionally Native American Indians. Ask them what positive result they saw from segregation. Oh, and by the way good luck getting out of the room alive when you ask.
Yet there is a larger stage the Google, Apple and Facebook will face and they already have the larger pieces in place to avoid them, as such regulation does not solve anything, it merely gives rise to legal loopholes, as I personally see it, the segregation of those services is the only decently clean and complete stage the void a lot of traps (most of them, not all), there is a larger stage where Google, Apple, Facebook and Amazon (yup they are in it too) can set the stage of offering testing data, but the should only be allowed if that data is open to all financial institutions and for the same price. You see, they are not alone, that field has has layers like Equifax, TransUnion, Dun & Bradstreet, LexisNexis and a few more, as such there is a stage where their data has more unequal benefits, which is interesting, the article never mentioned them, so whilst some are amazed by people like Andrew Bragg and their PowerPoint voice, yet the data keepers the re out in the field now are not on the ticket here, it seems weird as they have been around and their impact is not to be ignored, so why did Andrew Bragg miss that?
And the final quote is “Senator Bragg calls it a “game changer”, although critics have pointed out that without careful consideration, it could have serious privacy implications, among other concerns”, so what is his game, when we see ‘serious privacy implications’, I merely wonder who is buttering his bread, because the few I mentioned have a much larger impact, one the is never to be ignored and they have been involved in the financial industry almost forever setting the bar of allowed data versus insincere, or unjust data, a term that should have been in the article as well. You see the unequal field is created by some having more data as well as second degree data. Second degree, or secondary data is where it is at. We can consider that Secondary data refers to data, collected by someone other than the user. Yet what is the case is that these sources of secondary data is often collected for other means and other settings, like social science which includes censuses, information collected by government ad commercial departments for other means; organisational records and data that was originally collected for other research purposes, research purposes that are now reused without the users knowledge. And that is beside the station that some of this data is cleaned badly, and often linked to settings the are no longer relevant, yet they are there connected to a user setting an unrealistic view and optionally ignoring the setting that the created debt is false. The person will soon learn the he/she cannot pay it back, or it is rated as just that little more expensive.
All stations that players like Experian and Dunn & Bradstreet arm against, for their needs as well as the good of the people. These tech giants are nowhere near the level of clean (and optionally corrected) data. As such there is a fair call to disallow these tech giants their Fintech arm, unless it is completely isolated from their other business arms.
Yup, it happens, it is not intentional and it will happen to us all. This started for me as I was listening to my iPod, I am enjoying a band called The Sweet, a British band I really liked in the 70’s. So listening to their greatest hits was something I had not done for a long time, yet for some reasons somewhere between Ballroom Blitz and Blockbuster cogs started to turn, it was that time of the day again as I was setting my creative cap on, you see, I had the idea for the MD net drive in the early 90’s when I saw one of the first Mini Disc drives. Consider that this small disk had the option to store an entire CD, in a time that a Bernoulli drive with a disc 20 times that size could only story up to 90 MB. I talked to Sony about it, but they waved the idea away, it would never catch on. Little did they realise just how long they ended up to be. Yet these idea’s are giving me the thought of a new generation of devices.
Consider the iPad, iPod, Mobile phone, they all have items that you use all over, they all have a setting that is almost transparent, perhaps even trans parent. Now consider that we might rely on the cloud in some cases, but that cloud will soon become less and less reliable. Even now, the last week I have had all kinds of congestion issues with YouTube, friends in the UK have had other data related items, nothing major, there was no loss, but there was also no clear connection, things went bump into the night (and next morning).
Now consider how small an NVME SSD drive is now, a 1 TB drive fit into my hand, so what happens when we look at the KingstonSSD drive that is a mere 42 mm large? They will get smaller, but for now it is small enough, and 240GB is small enough to be an ejectable drive tht can go from device to device. Your music inserted in whatever device you need it to be. Yes, the cloud does this too, but how long until the cloud costs more than you bargained for? What happens when the congestion increases, net neutrality is off the beaten track through Service Level Agreements that you either sign up for (for a fee) or lose?
Now is the time to have alternatives, if only to avoid the lack of 5G in France and Germany or perhaps the fact that 5G in the US is only 13% of the speed of 5G in Saudi Arabia, you think it will not hit you at some point? You’re dreaming, the question is will it affect you, for the most there is little doubt, it will not hinder you, but there is every chance that it will aggravate you, when the 3rd or 4th song stagnates, freezes or just stops, your mood is gone. This is what happened to you with CD’s and it will hit you again. Yet the setting is not so bad, we can void it all at the beginning of the station. What if these factors would never hit you?
There is no doubt that there will be an option to have a NVME port. Perhaps a MNVME (Mobile NVME) port, even now we see the Orico GV100 512GB NVMe Portable External SSD, which is the size of a USB stick, it is 3.78 inch long, but almost 1/3 is for the key holder, so that thing can already be smaller, and it is $179, in consideration a 2TB drive for the PS4 is $97, so there is room to manoeuvre and when these drives become popular, prices go down.
Yet the foundation is that we need all kinds of devices, that all link to one drive, a drive we have on us. Soon it will have crypto parts, biometrics data and we keep it on us, a validation for all kinds of matters. We have no option but to move in this direction, several factors will push us, some good, some required and some because it is just a form of laziness. Consider that the drive has the 2 Netflix movies you downloaded last night, so you can enjoy whatever you binge on the train to work? It is destined to happen, and some of the companies are most likely already looking into this, I predict ted in 2012 (after seeing a stack of patents by Samsung and Apple) that the stage of mobile devices was changing. The hardwire became more transparent and nondescript (fitting multiple directions), it was the software that was pushing a direction, yet in all this the data (your music, your movies, your games) remains open to direction and I reckon that the setting of mobile name will deal with that direction, some will be generic, some will be branded. It is the generic part that has the highest stage of usage, because people do not believe in one direction, they embrace the freedom of choice, there are plenty who all really on Apple, but Apple will take care of that part, it is portable and mobile data that will set in the third wave. Why?
Because the people think that others will take care of it, just like they did when Google created search (and they latched on for a free ride) and now they are all crying like little bitches: “boo hoo hoo, Google is so nasty”, to them I tell, go cry me a river, you get ahead of the curve or you stop being part of the process and when the data part is very soon coming up for debate, it is those who allow for larger portability that will get the podium, not some Azure service agent, giving you some version of “Get Started With Free Credit To Try Any Combination Of Azure Services. Build Your Next Idea”, yes but it is still set to the Azure Frame (Apple and Amazon having their standards), it is those who allow for a larger frame of open choice, they will win, because data requires open stages (a copy me, I want to travel) idea, whilst others have one system, one cloud and when you get conflicts these salespeople stop talking when you get to the part that is not inherently theirs, it makes them no money.
It is there where we see a the stage where a billion people will want to move and as some business types will sell their children for a slice of that cake, what do you think your value will be when you are the one holding that cake? And all that I even before governments get clued in on what data they are missing out of.
There will always be need of a cloud, there are however more and more moments when the cloud is overrated and more of a hindrance, that is where mobile data will become a key player in the hardware that people will buy. It will be a consumers market where the buyer decide where they want to go, not the seller telling the buyer where they need to go, that is the frame in 3-5 years.
Lawrence van Rijn - Law Lord to be 