Tag Archives: Apple

February 11, 2020 · 17:20

In light of projected greed

This is an odd phrase, projected greed is not the same as greed, it is not. Projected greed is about speculated revenue, but greed tends to be a driving motive here, no matter how you stage your response. The salesman states words like ‘pipeline’ because it gives him a handle on quarterly bonus, he’ll tell you that it is about the continuity of sales, but it is not, it really is not. The CEO uses all kinds of terms for the ‘saleslife of his quarter’, but the stage of the quarter and their extra monetary incomes are linked to it. So how do we see this in movies? For producers it tends to be about the above break even point, even as it tends to be disrupted by visibility, but good visibility is movie momentum that a producer can push onto his next project. 

As I made mention before in ‘What is unintended discrimination?‘ (at https://lawlordtobe.com/2020/02/07/what-is-unintended-discrimination/) we need to see that recognition of revenue and the missing of unadulterated vision and attention which drives down movie revenue, the stage of projected greed gets bitten by being the biter.

In the last few days we have seen all kinds of people critics, movie stars, directors and producers give voice to diversifying the Oscars and Baftas. 

Bafta

This is actually the simple one, the ‘mission’ of the Bafta is stated as “The stated charitable purpose of BAFTA is to “support, develop and promote the art forms of the moving image, by identifying and rewarding excellence, inspiring practitioners, and benefiting the public”“, all whilst the supported part is “Films must have been available to the UK public for the first time in the UK between 1 January 2019 & 31 January 2020. There is an exception for Films Not In The English Language (FNIEL) which are eligible if they have been made available to the UK public for the first time between 1 January 2019 & 28 February 2020” which we see at https://awards.bafta.org/sites/default/files/images/ee_british_academy_film_awards_1920_-_rules_and_guidelines_-_feature_categories_october_2019.pdf

As such a movie is eligible when it was available for watching in England, seems all very correct, does it not?

In 2019, a total of 786 movies were released in the United States and Canada, which implies that when we consider Bollywood and Nollywood that number goes up by a decent amount. At which stage can you diversify when we see that there are around 775 cinemas in the United Kingdom? Now we need to consider that some movies are in a cinema for weeks and that some movies are almost in every city for example, in 2019 Avengers: Endgame played in 682 cinema’s in the UK alone, as such when you see that there are 775 cinema’s, we see that ONE TITLE takes up a lot of space in the display area. As such there is no way that these 786 movies can be shown. And the British people want sensational movies (as do people in most nations), so tell me where does that leave a title like Lionheart?

 

Abacus

This was simple stuff that could have been figured out by a 5 year old on an abacus, it was not that hard and I like putting this out there as some critics requested the dismissal of HRH Prince Harry (or was that Prince Albert Victor, Duke of Clarence and Avondale?), ah well that person (the critic) will optionally fall over his on words of misinterpreted denial soon enough.

And I forgot about one part that was actually obvious and clearly out there, but just for jollies “Films are not eligible when they have been previously entered into the British Academy Film, Television, or Television Craft Awards“.

So in all this in 2019 when we consider Avenger: Endgame (Robert Downey Junior, Chris Hemsworth), 1917, Once Upon a time in Hollywood (Brad Pitt), Joker (Joaquin Phoenix),  Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker (John Boyega, Daisy Ridley), Bombshell (Charlize Theron), Jumanji: The Next Level (Dwayne Johnson, Karen Gillan), Fast & Furious: Hobbs & Shaw (Jason Statham, Dwayne Johnson) all movies in multiple cinemas for multiple weeks, it makes the remaining space not spacious, it is the drawback of more and more film releases. I left the Marvel movies and Cats alone for obvious and opposite reasons. I also have not even taken movies with Will Smith and Angelina Jolie into consideration. As such, when we see Steve McQueen (the director, not the actor) give us “BAFTAs risk becoming irrelevant“, we see an optional valid argument, but the stage to diversification is stale and now almost obsolete, the need for greed took care of that part. His view of “After a while you get a bit fed up with it. Because if the BAFTAs are not supporting British talent, if you’re not supporting the people who are making headway in the industry, then I don’t understand what you are there for. If (film-makers) are not recognised visually in our culture, well what’s the bloody point? It becomes irrelevant, redundant and of no interest or importance. End of“, when we consider the rules, we see that the deck is warped through the need for greed (producers call it getting their investment back), we can push to change the rules, yet the environment of being able to watch a movie is not in sync with the needs of those good enough to win. Lionhart was merely one example, there are plenty more and whilst the filling of cinemas is set around the release of Marvel movies (not a bad thing) we need to consider that time is also a factor, income is a factor. I went to the movies at least once a week when I was young, bills and payments have set this back to once a month and from there to 2-3 times a year, Also limits factors in movie revenue because each trip to the cinema is $25 at least and that is when I bring my own bottle of soda and a pack of lollies. As such can you deny that Netflix had become a gift from heaven to millions of people?

The final rule for Bafta that matters is “An entry can be made either to the Film Awards or to the Television and/or Television Craft Awards, not both“, as such how did the Irishman get in? It is a superb movie, yet which category did it get mixed in with? In addition when we see ‘Andy Serkis to receive top honour at BAFTA for ‘revolutionary’ contribution to cinema‘ and we see him getting all that well earned credit, yet we saw no mention of him being a cut throat mercenary in two Marvel movies, odd is it not? 😉

Oscar

Here we almost get a repetition of the Baftas, although what I did not know (never looked it up before “to be eligible for awards consideration, a film must have a minimum seven-day theatrical run in a Los Angeles County commercial theater, with at least three screenings per day for paid admission“, as such we see a small bewilderment, he idea that the voice of America is based on ‘a minimum seven-day theatrical run in a Los Angeles County commercial theater‘, in light of this we see a larger issue, from what I am speculating (I could not get the numbers) we see that the Oscars are likely based on a much smaller sample size than the Baftas, with the previous arguments in sight, as well as “Voting on all achievements shall be restricted to active and life Academy members“, which we accept makes sense, yet as the movie industry goes on, as it intertwines with HBO, Netflix, Apple and Stan. How much time will a voter get? The rules could be found at https://www.oscars.org/sites/oscars/files/92aa_rules.pdf and even as it looks a little more ‘lawyeree’ than the Bafta rules, it is not unreadable. Yet in light of voters, how much time did they get (as well as interest) to watch 786 movies? Consider the personal diary of Adam Driver (or Tessa Thompson for that matter), how much time did they have to sit down and watch a movie they liked and a movie they thought had to checked out because the critics were raving about it? When we consider that, we see a shifting image and the movie list given earlier (we might think that Adam was biased seeing Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker), we need to consider a much larger stage. Oh and cutting down on Oscars and time on TV would not be a bad thing to consider either.

Yet how will that go over with the people cut from consideration? When we look back to the first Oscar, where the presentation ceremony lasted 15 minutes and had 12 winners, in this the most notable part is that Charles Chaplin lost out on three nominations, it is a big difference from the 92nd Oscars, is it not?

I do optionally not disagree with the ‘So White’ part of the outcry, but as I see it, there is a limiting factor in place that makes it hard to get distinguished here and in the 2020 Oscars we get to see Parasite, a South Korean movie (the distinction of South is important here) ending up with 4 wins and two nominations is pretty amazing. How excellent must this movie be to get that many awards (I did not see it yet), it is also amazing that it is the first non-English picture to ever win best picture. 

So until we change the premise of who is allowed to win, we will get a grey collection of movies that are in the running. In all this Parasite and Joker are already a larger step towards exceptional movies that are less mainstream than what mostly takes the slices of the cakes. And in light of all this, there is still the factor of projected greed; it is not the continuation of getting your money back. Avengers: endgame, cost 365 million, revenue 2,800 million. Then there is the real life Lion King with a cost of 260 million and a revenue of 1,700 million, two movies that took up exactly how many theatre rooms in Los Angeles County? That is part of the premise as well, because as they run, other excellent movies could not be set to the rules of being a nominee. Now I am not blaming these two movies, yet the premise of the Oscars is most easily seen when you consider that part of the equation. Projected greed might be the most dangerous part in all this, first of all because it is not actual greed, but it is closely related to its awful brother, and movies have become too much about projected revenues, in this, which studio exactly used to rely on ‘Ars gratia artis‘ (Art for art’s sake) before they (and all others) seem to have transferred it into ‘Ars pro reditus‘ (art for the sake of revenue)? It seems unfair on the directors, actors and actresses, yet they too are linked to their careers and they need to be the person who grows the income of the producer if they want to stay employed, in this I reckon both the Bafta and Oscar get to draw the short straw.

 

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February 5, 2020 · 16:19

And so it begins

Yes, it is beginning and the quote is not from me, the phrase was used by King Theoden in the Lord of the Rings movie “The Two Towers“, right before the major battle at Helms Deep. It is not the first time it was used, but there is where most get it from. As we were treated a few hours ago ‘The US is making its own 5G technology with American and European companies, and without Huawei‘, in this I have no objection, but the larger image is ignored by those less intelligent individuals in the White House. 

What I predicted is coming to pass and big tech companies are about to face the larger setback in the US. So no matter how this gets warped by players like the Wall Street Journal. In my personal view this step now gives us a clear view, the US will be lagging by 3-5 years in 5G as per now. When we see the article in the Business Insider (at https://www.businessinsider.com.au/5g-huawei-white-house-kudlow-dell-microsoft-att-nokia-ericsson-2020-2), we forget a few items, in the first the US is nowhere near ready for 5G, in the second Huawei is already fully ready for 5G and any nation embracing either temporary or long term with Huawei will get the jump on American Big Tech. Even as “sic infit” (so it begins) goes back to The Metamorphoses of Apuleius, we need to understand that the reference to ‘The Golden Ass‘ might actually apply to certain players in the White House, we need to understand that the push for anti-Huawei sentiments was never doused in evidence, merely non-US paranoia. The world to a much larger degree has demanded evidence from the US, who actually never produced it. 

So as the Wall Street Journal gives us “the White House is working with U.S. technology companies to create advanced software for next-generation 5G telecommunications networks. The plan would build on efforts by some U.S. telecom and technology companies to agree on common engineering standards that would allow 5G software developers to run code on machines that come from nearly any hardware manufacturer. That would reduce, if not eliminate, reliance on Huawei equipment.“

And here we see a few points. First there is ‘create advanced software‘, which is only partially true, the hardware is a larger part that is currently incomplete when we look at non-Huawei players, as such the presentation given is one that is debatable on a few sides. Then we get ‘agree on common engineering standards‘, a statement which would have been a given long before any of this started, as such the presentations we will see will be doused in ambiguity and in that format it implies that the US will be being whatever it was +2 years as it will not fill the gap it currently does not. Then we get a larger issue ‘run code on machines that come from nearly any hardware manufacturer‘, which should not be a 5G issue in the infrastructure, they would need to pass on anything on the system, this is a mobile setting. It is basically telling the stage that Apple and Android should have the same code and optionally set the stage to bar Harmony OS, so is this an actual 5G setting or a filtering setting to keep unwanted players out?

Yet this setting is one that is massively dangerous to the US, it relies on Big Tech (Google and Facebook) to enter a new stage where they cannot gather data and merge data in a global stage which would redefine their global data settings and such a delay would be monumental for these two. 

So we get all this because the US cannot provide evidence of optional Huawei wrongdoing? How weird is that? It is actually not weird that the data gathering tools are on the Chinese side now, the US is about to learn that being 4th in a place where they were alone is not the place to ever be, not in this economy, as such setting a stage for segregation now would give them a larger benefit down the road and that is where the shoes get to tight to dance.

There is a decent chance that Huawei is not the player that will be disregarded on the global stage, as such several EU countries are willing to entertain Huawei and with the Middle East and Asia already there, we will see Huawei getting a larger share of data than the US (with 325 million people) represents and that is what the US fears and that fear through the White House will be pushed onto Google, Facebook and Apple, and I am guessing not with their approval, they will have to adjust their models by a fair bit and feel the brint for a year at least (that is if hardware manufacturers agree on standards) and good luck with that part. 

Then we get to look at “the White House is working with US companies, and potentially European companies, to deploy the United States’5G architecture and infrastructure, according to White House economic adviser Larry Kudlow who spoke with The Wall Street Journal’s Bob Davis and Drew FitzGerald“, so not only are they 3-5 (or 4-6) years behind, we now see ‘the United States’5G architecture‘, so not only is it their 5G, but based on their standards and when we consider the stage of AT&T and their 5G Evolution we saw last year, the US (and those who sign on) are in for a really rough ride that might never be 5G, merely a reset 4G+ standard. Of course the latter part is not a given, but time is the one part that the White House does not have and the hardware setting in the US is nationwide too far behind. In this there will be no national 5G in the US for a much longer time. 

As such were these steps even considered by Big Tech who relies on billions of users, not merely the 325,000,000 Americans? With the UK starting now on Huawei and their 68 million people, will that stop Europe? No, it will make them switch against American paranoia and Huawei gets a much bigger boost and this will have a larger impact, as these places go ahead and gain speed the rest of the EU will find themselves in a bind to accept other standards faster and leaving the US in a stage of isolation which will impact the US in several ways. And if you think that the restrictions will work? Yes they will but only to show that those not on the Huawei pool will lag in several stages and there will be a screaming to get Huawei in a larger pool soon enough. From there we will see Germany who is partially  on board and when they see the impact in the UK, Spain, France, and Germany will sway and that means that three of the large 4 will get the fourth on board, that is what we will see in 2020 and optionally 2021 when stubborn people delay, in that stage those who are early on the 5G path they will get a much larger commercial slice of that cake and there will be a massive amount of governments blaming the US for paranoia, in my view I would state that it is all their own fault. 

And whilst nations have their own policies in place are now in a stage where the option to buy the 5G technology and develop their own national cores would be a perfect solutions for these nations whilst Huawei will enjoy the financial benefits it brings, in this their pool of talents and showing a stage of training that is much larger than expected, training these nations in making their own national 5G developers on a Huawei core is a larger play and that is one that brings in the revenue and then some.

All this was a path that the US could have committed to but they do see that the data is the future currency and they do not want to share, the US was the only one efficiently gathering data and their value is based on all this, all that whilst their prospect was ludicrous all the way to sieve based routers on a global scale. The NSA and GCHQ aren’t the only players in the field, the US merely wanted to limit the data drain value and 5G makes it a non place, ata will go nearly anywhere, you merely need to ask Amazon (Jeff Bezos) and ask him where his data has gone to and he cannot answer that question, neither can former FBI agent Anthony J. Ferrante (an FTI consulting joke), as such we see a 4G failure and it will merely get larger in 5G, more data will go anywhere and the US is on board with limiting this as long as they get the data. That is the stage we see and it is not idle speak, there is too much information out there. 

So as we see the events unfold over this year we will merely see that non US success stories will take the limelight showing us just how far the US has fallen behind in 5G. That is the stage we are sailing to and we will see large players in media remaining in denial of that, that is until the evidence of data will open all over the place, at that point the carefully stated denials come out, as well as some claims that 5G is so much more complicated than anything else. Yet, it is a stage where we all see the impact without it hurting us too much, at least not more than it is hurting us now. 

In finality we see a first case where a lack of evidence is still enough to warrant a level of discrimination, did you consider that? We are getting short changed on cheaper phones and internet because the larger players have their own bonus to consider and we do get to pay for that part, we will to a much larger degree than ever before.

 

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January 16, 2020 · 10:30

The time is now

Yesterday, an article in the BBC made me aware of a few items. Now, I was aware to a larger degree of most items, yet I kept it in the second drawer of the third desk of my brain, it was something I took for accepted and then shrug it off, so what changed? Nothing actually changed, but the article seems good enough to take a few items on view.

The article (at https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-51115315) gives us “Google has announced a timeline for implementing new privacy standards that will limit third-party use of a digital tool known as cookies“, now this is nothing new, it was always going to happen, yet we also see: “analysts say the move gives Google more control over the digital ad market where it is already a major player.  To make advertising more personal web browsers collect small bits of information that allow them to create a profile of the users likes and online habits“, the question becomes, is that actually true? And when we see “This presents a core problem from a competition perspective. It is yet another example of Google diminishing ad rivals’ access to data for the stated purpose of protecting users’ privacy“, a quote from Dina Srinivasan, a lawyer focused on competition issues is not really that truthful, is it? Apple made a similar move in 2017 and when we go back in time, we see Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, Internet Explorer, Safari, Microsoft Edge, and Opera. Most will have forgotten Netscape who became defunct in 2003, and basically stopped making a blip 2 years before that. We seemingly forgot about the exploitative market that Microsoft had in those days with Internet Explorer and all the crap it added to our HTML files (as did Word when we saved as an HTML file), in those days data in files was still an issue because there was a limit to what we could safe when we were not rich. Chrome was the first to keep our files clean, or at least lacking a lot of rubbish. Netscape was however on a different route, an employee of Netscape Communications, which was developing an e-commerce application for MCI. MCI did not want its servers to have to retain partial transaction states which was a killer for storage, as such they asked the people at Netscape to find a way to store partial options and methods of transactions where it mattered the most, at the side of the buyer, Cookies provided a solution to the problem of reliably implementing a virtual shopping cart, Google found a new way of using that idea and used cookies in the far reaching solution it currently has, they innovated, others merely took on board someone else’s solution and not they are all crying foul. Perhaps when these people had taken the time to innovate, they would have the choice, and the option of two years seems decent, so when I read “advertisers had hoped to have more time before it was implemented” is as I personally see a larger BS issue on timeframes and exploitation, if advertisers are in the now, they would be all about advanced implementation, yet they like their bonus and they seemingly do not like to spend money on investments to counter the timeline (an assumption from my side). 

Google’s director of Chrome engineering, Justin Schuh gives us “Users are demanding greater privacy – including transparency, choice and control over how their data is used – and it’s clear the web ecosystem needs to evolve to meet these increasing demands“, which seems slightly too political to my liking, but there we have it. Business Day gives us “But GDPR also made life harder for a cohort of second-tier adtech players trying to compete with the likes of Google and Facebook. The regulation’s provision to prevent data being shared wantonly with third parties seemed to give the tech giants an opportunity to tighten their control over user data” where we see that this was one of the foundations that led to the end of SizMek, some state that it was DSP Rocket Fuel that ended the heartbeat of SizMek, yet everyone ignores a simple truth, ‘an overcrowded ad tech market with independent vendors with an inability to face serious cost pressures to their pricing structures‘, they all arrogantly believed that THEIR solution was the real one and they all basically read cookies like the ones Google had distributed. You can all claim to have the magic potion that Asterix drinks, but when the truth comes out that he drinks Darjeeling tea from India, the playing field gets overcrowded and when the customer figures out what they get priced for the end is pretty much around the corner of the next door you face.

So as we are told “third-party ad sellers will need to go through Google to get information about internet users. But critics say that is an advantage that makes the market less fair and safe“, in my view my question becomes: ‘Which critics, names please!‘, the problem is that third party ad sellers have no rights, none at all, the rights should be with the owner of the computer, Google (Apple also) are setting (not by their own accord) that stage, Microsoft is using their Azure Cloud to counter the Cookie option on PC and Microsoft Console, but the hard sight is already there, the people who are unable, unwilling and cannot afford to set the stage still want their freebee and they are now starting to complain as they are made aware that their time has ended, even though this was the direction we saw in US politics and EU politics well over three years ago. The EU had their General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and everyone shrugged their shoulders stating that it would not happen that fast, yet that was three years ago and now the time has been set back to merely two years to go and the ad sellers are feeling the pinch of the cost they will actually face. Moreover, they are seeing the red lights of career ends. The Verge gave us “an industry that’s used to collecting and sharing data with little to no restriction, that means rewriting the rules of how ads are targeted online“, they gave us that on May 25th 2018, so 1.5 years ago, why is this now a problem? The people wanted this, ad soon it will be here, Google has not been sitting still updating their systems accordingly, and as such we see that the flaccid and non-concerned rest is now looking at a deadline a mere two years away. When we look to the larger field we see Criteo, LiveRamp, Trade Desk, Rubicon, and Telaria, all losing value as ad-tech providers, yet the opposite could also be true when they offer to the customer a value, a value where most ad-tech companies never bothered going. Yet the power of any ad-tech was never the cookie, that was for the most merely the revenue. They had 5 years to consider the power of ad-tech and they didn’t. The power of this is basically engagement. Facebook showed this year after year and now it is out on the larger field, those who engage will survive, the rest will end up on a dog eat dog football field and a few will survive but only as long as they push to the next hurdle and make it, if not they will end up on the obituary page (just like Netscape, however Netscape ended there for other reasons). 

I wonder if that is why Google is so adamant about its stadia? It would get a massive tier of small time developers creating engagement content to be released on mobiles. That i me merely speculating. 

Still the words of Dina Srinivasan are not entirely without merit, she gives the Facebook issue (at https://www.wsj.com/articles/yale-law-grads-hipster-antitrust-argument-against-facebook-findsmainstream-support-11575987274), and she makes a good case, yet the history of certain players need to be taken into account. Even as she was her own misgivings about the evolution of the digital advertising market, history had been clear, some of them basically did not bother, they wanted it handed to them for free and in the beginning they got away with it. And she made a point with “How could a company with Facebook Inc.’s checkered privacy record have obtained so much of its users’ personal data?“, yet equally we need to weigh this with the words of U.S. Attorney General William Barr. He gives us “he is “open to that argument” that consumer harm can exist through the use of personal data, even if a service is free. “I am inclined to think there is no free lunch. Something that is free is actually getting paid for one way or the other”“, which is what I have been saying on my blog for around 4 years, so happy to see people wake up in January 2020. So when I see “Ms. Srinivasan would prefer that Facebook be forced to change certain business practices, including how it tracks users when they are off the company’s platforms“, I wonder when they give account to the small truth that Facebook is a free service for a reason and they are no longer alone in this, you are going after the large players when they are in the largest danger by losing slices of that revenue pie to contenders elsewhere in the world (EU and China). 

Whatever you want to do is fine, but realise that it will put a large group of people in the streets without a job, I am not against them losing their job, but that revenue and that data will also flow in other directions and that is the one part that all players (with political support) are trying to counter as much as possible. I wonder if they will succeed. The weird part is that if this group had been properly taxed 3 out of the 5 major issues would also fall away and in that view a workable solution could be pivoted to.

 

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January 2, 2020 · 10:52

Twenty twenty is visual

Yes, we are in the new year, yet this year (according to Forbes at https://www.forbes.com/sites/zakdoffman/2020/12/29/us-and-china-technology-conflict-heres-why-2020-is-so-critical/amp/) will be a lot more critical than anyone thinks. Yes it is about Huawei, however not in the same lame way that the US administration brings it. Here we see: “Huawei has 42% of the huge Chinese market and more than 25% of the Russian market to get it started. Then on December 28, China’s state media announced that its “Beidou” alternative to America’s GPS satellite navigation system will be completed“, now this is a different kettle of fish. It is not about government intel (in a way it is), it is about who gets the data and the lies that seemingly originated at the oval office are now no longer about ‘the chinese government connections’ it is more about how the US government is not getting the free data that they have had for so long, moreover as we take notice of “But Beidou—“Big Dipper” in Chinese—will not stop at China. It will focus on converting markets in South East Asia, Africa and Eastern Europe, price- and investment-sensitive markets” we see a much larger concern for the yanks, they are at risk of gaining access to a little over 50% of all given data by the end of 2020, that is something to notice, and in my view they had it coming. They make one accusation after another and never show any data to support it. Even now (yesterday) as we see the number of links of TikTok and data, I was able to find well over a dozen US sites where the advertisement of the TikTok app continues, one is called seemingly hypocritical national security (I actually do not know the Tik Tok situation), the other is money and money trumps Trump.

I am baffled why the US would think that this free reaping would continue, I am actually amazed that Russia did not have its own version of software ready. We even see “Russian President Putin described the U.S. campaign against Chinese technology as “the first technological war of the coming digital era.” His point was that this is the start of something much greater and more significant“, he is right in more than one way. Do you think that I would offer my IP to the US when I know that I am getting lied to? I wonder how large the failing list is actually hitting Google and Facebook, the fact that people are intentionally getting misinformed should show up in their numbers as well. For those who have no real affiliation to Social media, China is becoming more and more interesting, the moment that it has a real Facebook equivalent, we will see a much larger jump. For Google the mess is not that big, YouTube is an engine that people cannot live without (pretty much the medical condition is ‘acute VideoitisfromYoutube failure‘) so as we cannot get treated on that, we will continue in the YouTube realm. I personally believe that if the news was a year ago that China was launching its own services the news would have been accepted differently, the entire ‘China is all about spying through Huawei‘ got us on the wrong foot, just like Iraq, just like two other events afterwards the US have been handling billions of free voices and the free voices are through with a lying party like America.

So whilst we take notice of “For China, it will increase its independence and influence. For the U.S., its grip on key standards will loosen and for some of its key players there are risks they could loose material market share“, that is the ballgame, the ‘loose material market share‘, until the beginning of the internet, the US has never had an equal in this fight and in the economic place they are now they are scared. Consider the interest on $23,000,000,000,000 all whilst they are facing a technology user setback of 10%-25% in the first year, and as Asia, Russia and Europe start folding away from the US solutions the interest is impacted and can no longer be paid, for example try the Apple solution for $1749 (down from $2365) and as things ‘suddenly’ become affordable for the people, think of how the population reacts to the coin grab of 2010-2019 when they were trying to make ends meet. This technology wave will follow an anger wave that the US is unable to stop, and beyond that, Huawei has a much larger base soon enough. In Saudi Arabia Huawei was able to set the stage of a strategic memorandum of understanding, healthcare is only the first step and as it shows the progress it will entice Egypt and India, at that point Huawei will achieve two paths that the US only hinted at and sneered (their version of enticement) for well over 10 years whilst never delivering. The people who decide things saw no eager listing to pursue, now that the numbers are getting called in 2020 and 2021 the game changes and there have been too many lies (oops, I meant ‘intentional misrepresentation’) coming from the US players.

And as the EU gives us: ‘European Commission chief Ursula von der Leyen voiced skepticism Friday over involving Chinese tech giant Huawei in the rollout of Europe’s 5G networks amid concerns its equipment could be used for spying by Beijing‘, we see that optionally the career of Ursula von der Leyen will be cut short too. She might be the President of the European Commission for a month now, but I am certain that her history lessons included the time when we hung those who hid behind ‘befehl ist befehl‘ and even now, as we traverse that time, the US will not have any dimes to sit on, those spreading the US message without evidence could be demanded to be called on, even now as Germany (and India) are moving against the warnings of the US, warning that have never seen any real evidence since the beginning, will now have a coin marker, people like Ursula von der Leyen will see that as other European nations demand evidence, their place in the hierarchie will seem unholdable, held together by US promises that they will fall back on and fold on when the moment is nigh. That is the ball game for the US and the Europeans will not have alternatives, especially as Nokia is showing several cracks in their veneer, as their 5G outlook changes and as the backlash of bribery scandals, the US will find themself in a stage that is not holdable, and they are not alone, Ericsson is right there next to Nokia when it comes to scandals and the US was not ready for that. The impact will be larger than they expect and that part will bite too. When the EC members will look towards alternatives and there is only Huawei, they will shift gears and give the boot to whomever supported the US and stopped them to get their bonus, people are easy to anticipate in that regard.

If only there was direct evidence of the US claims. There was a reason why I used the Colin Powell and silver briefcase example in the past, there was no way around it, the game that was being played was short for whomever was counting the cards and too many were out in the open, the US had two plays left and they chose the wrong one. That becomes more and more clear when we look at the actions of Sony last October, that setting changed the anger levels of Third Point to some degree, and as I cannot tell who was right, the fact that Daniel Loeb lost out against the Sony view ”no concrete proposals to improve the business“, who is eagerly spending a billion to get on the market is a larger issue than you can imagine, the Japanese government has a larger stake in all this then even I can surmise. Japan will have to take on a few players and they are behind (really behind), yet they are all in it to win it and their ego’s will collide, the US will have to find new areas to push against and as we see that this is being fought, we also see the American dream is under pressure of failing and that is one concrete version why the american corporate views are not what they are surmised to be, it will be a stronger difference as the year progresses, but I reckon that half way, when that American super villain Taxman has to give documentation as to the values it holds dear (numbers on a spreadsheet) we will see additional cracks, there is only so much that people will live for and the US has no reserves, it lost those a little over three years ago as the debt kept rising. In this as we saw one month ago that “Dan Loeb sharply boosted its net long position in equities,’‘ we will see managed bad news over the next 6 months that will reduce that position (as I personally see and anticipate), that will be the first (of many) cracks in all this and China is not merely a crack in their armor, it is a flaming hole the size of the Grand Canyon. And still my IP is outlasting theirs as they have no idea what they should have been looking at, it is becoming more than a spreadsheet user versus a visionary, the US status is becoming a spreadsheet user to someone who does not comprehend a cross tabulation, and that is not a situation that the US can hold up. 

In this all these solutions give China an advantage, because as we see more and more dubious statements from people who caress the limelight, we also see that the chinks in their armour are lighting up and that is where Russia and China only have to ask: ‘what is that?‘ (pointing at the chinks) and those people will not have the setting to answer. 

It is a stage we have not seen before and will not see again any day soon, but in 2020 it will matter, it will drive the global population away from any American solution. They will only have themselves to blame soon enough, they vied for it but will do anything to make anyone else pay and the people are taking notice, they are no longer willing to take the idiocy and the current American administration made it happen, at least that part has no push towards previous administrations. When that happens, the loss of revenue will increase faster and faster and all others are ready to step in wherever they can, I am happy I have no stake in any of the American hedges, their national product is about to lose value and a lot, I merely wonder how long it will take, as we saw in several situations in 2008, the $1.1B bill to Moody’s was paid without hesitation, I wonder what and who will delay the news this time around and those who got out late, will they have any recourse? I reckon not, at some point we will see certain academics make a statement that the technology sector was too complex and too covariant to clearly see any pattern emerge, at that point whatever rating existed will be thrown out and as we see that, the people will run to any technology that has proven themselves and at present that is Huawei (and Huawei only), that is the part the US is unwilling to see, even as we see the Verge (only three weeks ago) give us both “T-Mobile has been saying it’s got a smarter, sounder 5G strategy than both Verizon and AT&T” and “They also won’t support 5G on other networks, so if you switch carriers, you’re hosed” implying that there is no real 5G standard in the US and they are all merely marketing 5G whilst not having any real 5G (my personal view) and the Verge supports that view I have (at https://www.theverge.com/2019/12/16/20997594/tmobile-5g-600mhz-low-band-speed-tests-oneplus-samsung) when we see “you’ll never get the speed thrill of downloading an entire movie from Netflix or Prime Video in seconds“, all whilst the 5G advertisement is about that part alone, we see the hose job in the making and in 2020 that will not be tolerated by the people, in the US there is no alternative, yet Europe, Africa and Asia have other options which enables Huawei and that is the short play that the US is not ready for and the EU people are about to get a dose of reality soon enough, when the MoU that Huawei has signed show actual progress, Europe will run towards whatever shelter they can whilst ignoring the pleas from the USA, it will be that simple, people like Ursula von der Leyen will run towards what pays them and what keeps them safe, warm and dry, they will soon see that ‘befehl ist befehl‘ fell short the second time around too and at that point they will enable whomever has the technology and America is about three years late.  

It is the biting reality that 2020 brings, whilst the vision of twenty twenty is negated at every turn whenever possible and it is the ‘whenever possible’ part that will fall short soon enough (sooner rather than later).

 

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September 27, 2019 · 12:28

Branding

An Apple original, a Netflix original, Stan presents and so on. This is the view I started this morning when the trailer ‘For All Mankind‘ hit the screens. The game has changed and the value of IP has gone through the roof, finding quality IP is going to take on a new level of interest. Not merely finding the IP, getting there first means something now, it is a new form of Armistice and it is a game designed for all the creative Masters of Art out there. Yes there is the anticipation of new hits and movies we want to see. We look forward to people like Nicholas Cage (Primal), and Robert de Niro (The Irishman). Yet it goes further than that, the amount of movies that are popping up with references to ‘Basically, How to Write a Netflix Original‘, we see new cash cows coming into existence. Yet the basic need is not to write the story, it is to have the idea in the first place. I can, at any given moment drum up a new story; I have been writing my blog for several years now, creating over 1200 articles. All the articles have news references and have references to events, but creation was key! And that is not the stage, the stage is not the Wall Street journal (at https://www.wsj.com/articles/with-chips-down-saudi-arabia-finds-little-goodwill-in-the-u-s-11569495606) giving us: ‘With Chips Down, Saudi Arabia Finds Little Goodwill in the U.S.‘, this is a given and required little creativity, yet the creative eye will spot beyond the quote “Two-thirds of Americans now have an unfavorable impression of Saudi Arabia, according to a Gallup Poll earlier this year, the highest percentage the survey group has ever recorded for the kingdom. It is higher now than it was after Sept. 11 attacks, in which 15 of the 19 hijackers were Saudi“, it would be able to see that the anti-marketing machine that even included the United Nations (the essay by Agnès Callamard), where even with a lack of evidence the Saudi Arabian crown prince was painted as the guilty party, Eggy Calamari even gave us: “The killing of Mr Khashoggi thus constitutes an international crime over which other States should claim universal jurisdiction. I call on those States to take the necessary measures to establish their competence to exercise jurisdiction under international law over this crime of extrajudicial execution,” we cannot deny that the likelihood that the life of Jamal Khashoggi was ended in an unnatural way with a certainty approaching 100%, no one denies that, yet the who remains an issue and the reference “for which the State of Saudi Arabia is responsible” can only be made through circumstantial evidence (and it still remains dubious at that), whilst the use of that evidence leaves too many gaps, giving a clear failure as ‘beyond all reasonable doubt‘ is not met, yet in opposition these same state facilitating players have ignored actual evidence of Iranian actions of assaults and bombing of Saudi Arabian civilian targets. As such there is a creative engine in play and that engine is targeted at Saudi Arabia (the connections will make sense soon enough).

The actions by the UN to stop escalation with ‘US-Iran tensions escalate despite UN efforts‘, gives us the light that clearly produced evidence is ignored and shunned by the UN, giving us the stage that the discrimination of produced evidence is set aside, the western media to a larger extent has been accommodating to that, in the one case where the Washington Post could get a reprieve, even now when we see mere hours ago headlines like ‘Iranian president: US should end ‘maximum pressure’ policy‘ and ‘As tensions boil in the Persian Gulf, Iraq seeks to rein in Iran-aligned militias‘, we should notice that the Washington Post has gone to extremes to keep the mention of Saudi Arabia as a victim to an absolute minimum.

It is a new kind of branding, it is anti-branding. The western world is scared, too scared at present. First there was Huawei that has the hands on the largest bulk of 5G IP ever made, and it reduces several nations to an Intellectual property joke at best, the cream of all 5G patents is in the hands of Huawei (China), in this Reuters reported less than 12 hours ago ‘Huawei already producing 5G base stations without U.S. parts‘, more important, in 2020 that production line will be doubled, add to that that Norway is not siding with several EU nations not to block Huawei as a 5G solution has the US on the ropes, they are about to lose billions upon billions. It is the price of iterative complacency and it scares Wall Street. You might think that I switched topics, but I did not. There is a clear line.

As Saudi Arabia is more and more committed to build its Neom city, Huawei is now ready to implement their 5G solution and that pushes Saudi Arabia forward in ways never seen before. The academic consideration that Neom City will be on par with the latest Silicon Valley solutions has never been seen before and as that trail picks up speed, the IP consideration will be passed to other regions too, at that point IP firms registering their patents and Trademarks will rise in China and the Middle East even further, it is exactly the play I had in mind when I created my IP and even now I am looking at a golden parachute the size I never held possible ever before.

All this still reflects on the hindrance that pushes these technologies and there we see that Iran is becoming the larger problem in several fields. Even now, as we see projects grow, we also see the larger field that is fuelling this endeavour. The National gave us “Neom’s contribution to the kingdom’s GDP is projected to reach at least $100 billion by 2030” and that is a pessimistic view, as the 5G boundaries are met in Saudi Arabia, there will be a growing workforce trying to get their 5G apps on the ground as this could fuel millions in revenue for any app maker that makes it, and the most important part in this is the fact that being there first gives a lot more benefit for a longer amount of time. This path gained momentum as Huawei started to cater to 5G needs 6 months ago in both India and Pakistan, for Pakistan the middle East and in particular Saudi Arabia will give rise to more apps, better apps and stronger commerce; yet it is not merely in Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates is also pushing for this boundary, as is Qatar. The experience in app making will spread form Pakistan further and further giving these entrepreneurs’ futures they themselves never thought possible under the stage of 4G and it makes them all hungry for success.

Creativity

It is there where creativity and needs interact. Whilst the arts are claiming a larger group to write idea’s for streaming TV, the creative engineers are pushing new telecom boundaries in 5G, setting a stage for a new kind of facilitation, one that is not limited to the iterative community, as they were trying to cater to the needs of guided anticipation, the innovators are going where iterative makers did not consider to look, 5 of my IP trains are on that track going decent for now, I still have a little more than 2 years to set the final stage, whilst the stage is curving to my desired needs more and more. That we see when IT Wire gave us ‘US seeks funds to remove Huawei, ZTE gear from rural providers‘ only 2 days ago.

As we see the quote: “Legislation supported by both sides of politics in the US seeks a sum of US$1 billion to help small and rural wireless providers replace equipment made by Chinese vendors Huawei Technology and ZTE Corporation“, we see a growing failure in the US. Don’t get me wrong, the US is allowed to do what it is, but instead of fuelling innovation forward, it is wasting $1,000,000,000 to remove rural equipment, whilst the supporting quote “helping small and rural wireless providers root-out suspect network equipment and replace it with more secure equipment” cannot be met with evidence on any level. Even the term ‘more secure equipment‘ is a grey remark open to interpretation, all equipment form 2018 onward will be more secure than the equipment that was installed in 2012, even with the latest updates this statement remains true, as this is the nature of the technology beast. What is adamant in all this that the lack of security in Huawei equipment was never proven other than one specific 2011 example, an issue that was apparently addressed and settled in 2013.

Even now, no espionage evidence by China was ever given in any way, shape or form. As I personally see it, this is all about economic foundations and progress and the non-Chinese solutions lack technology, innovation and quality to compete with China, now that the Middle East and Europe (to a larger degree) has allowed Huawei to get there, they will reap the benefits of it all, consider that over the next 5 years Neom city, block by block will be 5G ready whilst the longest changes in most parts of the world will be still upgrading, it will create a clear need for to use what is available and now we get to the union of both.

As we see the testing grounds of Saudi Arabia being there, the makers of streaming services will have a place to test and create 5G IP (or was that create and test). We have seen Hollywood, Bollywood and now there is a case to be made for Neomwood as well. If Saudi Arabia plays its cards right, there would be the stage for implementing and creating 5G streaming services and the creation of originals (to some extent) of TV series, shows and movies. People seem to forget that there are around 2 billion Muslims in the world, and the ability to cater to 25% of a global population, whilst the other creators have neglected this group offers a larger opportunity than most people realise.

Even as we accept the story of the 60’s where in the new production called for all mankind we see the stage and setting of the first woman on the moon, there is nothing stopping the Middle East of creating Islamic series that are about furthering their goals on the big screen and the little screen. The lack of actual quality TV in that regard (as far as I can tell) becomes more and more visible. There has been great controversy regarding the TV series Omar, I understand that thousands are stating that the show must be stopped because they believe such depictions are forbidden by Islam. Yet there are other ways to give light to Islam, to educate the non-Islamic community, and I believe that a larger stage could become apparent there. Also, the entire stage of soap series is seemingly ruled by Bab Al-Hara, a Syrian show by Bassam Al-Mulla that has been going on for 10 seasons, as I see TV watching people, they are never content with just one series and to be able to stream globally on 5G will be the larger need soon enough, owning the studios, production, IP and delivery will give whomever gets there first a much larger cut of the winnings and they can be huge, especially with 2 billion Muslims looking for more. I am still smirking (on the inside) to seek a way to make my idea: ‘How to assassinate a politician‘ a reality and optionally get it selected for Emmy and Oscar’s consideration (that is how I roll, never stop dreaming). In this, as I stated several times in the past, the slogan of FX (a filmmaker) is the best ever: ‘The story is everything‘, it is the holy grail that Apple, Stan, Netflix and all other streamers, as well as all other forms of medium are pursuing, it comes from creativity and as creativity overlaps from creation to technology we see a much larger shift in innovation, Whomever doubts that look at Big Brother and consider why it was a success. The overlap of technology, innovation and creation is a direct result of that is something that John de Mol Jr. saw immediately, it took a little while for me to catch on and it was an eye opener (I personally never liked the series, but I admired the approach of innovation and technology towards creation), now creation drives innovation and technology (as it should), yet I also accept that this interaction tends to be symbiotic and the direction of these streams can go in either direction making it the closest to a perpetual system, in this iteration will be the death of it and that is why I have been frantically against iterative designers.

In this, branding has been too much about iteration, Google and Huawei being the obvious exceptions, yet they are at present still the exceptions to that rule. I see that branding can be about innovation, but not the marketed innovation that Apple claims it is. Innovation as Heineken marketing shows it to be is a much better example, even as their product has not changed for the a longest time, their marketing has been on the edge of what is possible for over a decade, if we can keep creativity on that scale we have the making of long term success, no matter what field we move in, that is what the US fears, as innovation grows through Huawei, they see a dip that turns into a revenue canyon, the lack of forward momentum. Even now we see how economic momentum in the US is lost, whilst their IP investments are at an all-time high. If IP becomes the currency of a nation the UIS is indeed in a dire position and their stalling and delays of 5G will not help them, it is exactly in that part where we see the anti-Huawei weaves becoming a disaster for those embracing a non-Huawei solution. The fact that the hardware is not on par with Huawei is one part, the implied accusation ‘But Can They Scale Operations Timely‘ is a much bigger danger, as the markets evolve, scalability will be key and in that (for now) Huawei is far ahead of the others, making any non-Huawei advantage short lived, in addition to that part we see the earlier mentioned solution that Huawei is on the road improving and upgrading the base stations without US parts, when that one hits the US economy will take a much bigger hit, and as latency and delays add to the 5G part, those who want to be at the head of streaming will need to consider where they will be running from, as I see it there is a case to be made (to some degree) for Neomwood, when that happens, the revenue streams will change even further giving the US to live with the realisation that the entire Huawei war was the worst of all idea’s, especially when there were alternatives and especially as the security risks have never ever been proven.

I believe that due to data options there will be a larger change in trademarks in the next 5 years, also in that regard IP will decline in the US a lot more, as data is key, any delaying factor to 5G will have larger impacts over the next 24 months. Those who want to be ahead need to select what gets them there and not listen to fabricated fears and speculative events that have so far not been proven. As creativity shows, those who can dream the new stories, those who can consider the next idea will be catered to, because if the story is everything, the value of a poet and a writer outpaces the accountant by a lot. We can get all kinds of accountant a dime a dozen, yet how many poets are there? How many story writers and story tellers are out there who can spin a story that makes you sit down and relax? Consider what you watch on streaming services and what you are willing to pay for, now consider where the market is and you will see a large gap, a lag that was ignored for the longest of times. In 2020 alone we see a need to invest close to $50 billion, $6 billion by Apple alone for start-up; do you think that there is a higher need for a book keeper or someone who can create a story? As WarnerMedia buys back the old TV series Friends for $245 million, ready to spend $11 billion on content this year alone, how much are they willing to pay for an original idea?

Branding starts with a dream, or a thought that is actually original, how much originality could we find in the Islamic world that has ignored that path for decades? It is a path exploring, especially with 2 billion optional content customers. A path to a larger success that is currently written off through the fear mongering of governments and media needs, whilst there was not ever a need to do so; the facilitation of iteration pushed non solutions and whilst that happens, originality in content and technology will take a backseat to facilitate to the people who no longer should have any voice on the matter, their need to delay and slowdown innovation made it so.

 

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September 21, 2019 · 11:50

The first changes

We have arrived at the point of the first changes; the next 12 months will give a much larger view of the consumers and the changes that they are willing to accept. The Huawei P30 Pro is the beginning of this; at $1249 this choice is a lot cheaper than its competitor Samsung $1849 (a difference of 32.5%, whilst the Apple at $1999 will set you back an additional 37.5%, this adds up to a lot! Yet the price is not the issue, the fact that the Huawei now comes without YouTube, Google Maps and Gmail among other software, it also does not feature Google’s Play Store. It is an Android game changer; Huawei has pre-loaded new alternative apps of its own. It was the step we expected, the trade wars with China and the persecution of Huawei and the discrimination against Huawei was actually THAT stupid. Now that we are confronted with the changes we will see a new optional change. When an equal mobile is well over $500 cheaper we see the changes that matter. As the people get accustomed to other apps, apps that replace social media solutions we see a shift of consumers, I personally believe it will be a lager change. I do recommend that there will be an upgraded LinkedIn and a new Facebook available, yet there is a situation where the Asian population in Australia will embrace the Chinese solutions, there is in addition a larger need for affordable phones, so there will be a larger shift. Yes, most will hate being without Facebook, yet the credibility Facebook has lost in the past, the people might just keep these solutions on their laptop/Desktop. Yet there is already word that Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp would all be available via Huawei’s own store, called the Huawei App Gallery, so all is not lost, but the fact that Google will lose millions of people who will now go via the Huawei App Gallery is almost a given. The BBC (at https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-49754376) also gave us: “He added that the firm had set aside $1bn (£801m) to encourage developers to make their apps compatible, and said more than 45,000 apps had already integrated the firm’s technology. But he did not name any of them“, so $1,000,000,000 to corner a market and get a handle into the Chinese app user market. It will be found and it will create momentum. I changed my mobile less than a year ago, so I have no need to change for now, yet there is every indication that the upgrade to a new Android version will see me change as well and why would I not do that? Perhaps I am part of the population that thinks “Maybe they’re just trying to ride it out in the hope that they eventually get access to those Google services later“, I am most likely on that fence, however when I check the amount of options that I desperately want on my Mobile, I am limited to WordPress and LinkedIn, and they are not essential, merely a nice to have on my mobile. I can do either on a desktop. I am not alone, as thousands will shift from one side to the other month by month, Google will feel the pinch. Consider that there will be a close to immediate shift on YouTube metrics, implying that the Google Ads department will start requiring new metrics to keep their push going, we see a larger impact on Google, it will not be immediate, but it will be there and growing from the beginning, even as Google and the US will debate on how wrong the metrics are, they too realise that the American corporations will see the impact on their business, it will be visible and direct, merely because a war on greed by flaccid politicians and surpassed technologists was stated to be in denial.

The US did not to its homework, it neglected the choirs they have and are now pushing their losses on other markets. Even as we contemplate what the impact of “side-loading” Google’s apps onto the handsets and that phone store staff would advise customers how to do that. They are wondering how it would limit its impact as long as the usage impact remains close to 100%, when that falters a few times the consumers will be offered alternatives that are 100% and that is where we see the shift towards Chinese commerce.

Now that Huawei has been informed on my 5 parts of IP (hopefully bringing me decent funds too), there might be a larger shift as the issues in 5G cybersecurity and propagating 5G commerce is still lacking at least 3 elements, I feel that I will win in the long run. All the players that are behind ‘T-Mobile gets closer to launching nationwide 5G on low-band spectrum‘, I have seen that Sprint, T-Mobile, Vodafone, Telstra, as well as BT have not implemented certain parts and even what they designed lacks certain small business needs, as such I feel a lot more confident on my IP. They had 3 years to look at it and they have the same short minded and shallow approach to business ignoring the Small businesses (a little over 400 million of them) to the larger degree. All elements that were clearly visible moved from the 4G premise of ‘Wherever I am‘, to 5G ‘Whenever I want it‘, that failure alone gives Huawei an additional push. As the numbers rack up towards Huawei and Chinese innovation, we will see a larger change towards the business needs and so far none of the non-Chinese solutions have addressed these changes.

As the Chinese app user market explodes in activities between now and December 2020 we will see a larger shift. With Huawei market share at 19% and Oppo at 9.5%, we see a larger growth towards 5G, as Apple is now declining to 37%, we see that Apple in 5G will lose close to 15% all these parts matter, because it does more than increase the market share for Huawei, it actually gives China a larger option to grow in a few directions that it had no real option to grow in previously, the anti-Huawei steps were THAT stupid and now we start seeing the impact. The only way to stop this is for American brands to start offering their phones at the same price as Huawei is. And that is how we see it, Google took that step and offered the Pixel 3XL at a mere 16% extra and that might be a reason to switch to Google, but in the end the others are now pushing themselves out of the race quicker and quicker.

There is a larger need to consider, as the US is getting its thanksgiving and as we are all facing Christmas (and the Dutch will get Saint Nicholas as well) the consumers will have a limited option, yet an essential need to tickle themselves, when you consider that place, would you accept the $1249 that gives you what you need, or would you spend 37.5% for what others market you towards your needs? When you realise that the essentials can be done on the smaller budget, in a time when budgets are still tight and the dangers of recession remains, can you really afford to spend those hundreds of dollars more?

The bulk of the people I know cannot afford them, they often will accept a more expensive contract, yet in the stage when 5G is about to come, would you really want to tie yourself down? And when all the small business owners realise that the current stage will hurt their business for 2-3 years, would they really want to take that chance when the commerce slice is the one everyone wants, at that point can they tie themselves down?

The first changes are here, but they also signal larger changes towards a stage where commerce will be the deciding factor and the bulk of them merely looked at their needs to sell, they to a much larger degree forget to consider what their consumers needed in the 5G environment, that failure will rear its ugly head soon enough, as I see it, Huawei is finding themselves ready for that shift. In the end that is the third stage of innovation that lazy Americans ignored, I wonder how much that will cost them this time around. As I personally see it, 400 million small business owners was too large a group to leave in the cauldron of non-decisions, yet that is exactly what they did in Europe and the US.

Forbes

So as Forbes gives us ‘Shock New Google Warning For Anyone Buying Huawei Mate 30‘, we see how the writer Zak Doffman gives us (at https://www.forbes.com/sites/zakdoffman/2019/09/20/shock-new-google-warning-for-anyone-buying-huawei-mate-30) “Despite impressive hardware innovation, the media write-ups went straight to the lack of full-fat Android, the lack of YouTube and Gmail and Google Maps, the lack of the Play Store” which opposes the BBC, who did give clear mention and as implied so did Huawei. So there we are, already we see issues with the media bringers. After that we see the barricade “24-hours post launch, the reality of the Mate 30 is firming up. It seems highly unlikely there is any Google workaround” yet the reality is that these users get a first glimpse that it is possible to be without Google on their mobile, we do not have to get bothered every minute on news we did not need. In addition with a functional browser we still get what we need, we just will not get it via an app (for now), and believe me when the numbers start slashing into the Google needs, they will want a workaround as desperately as possible. The writer even ends with: “And so for any of you enamoured with the Mate 30 hardware who can live without Google for an unknown amount of time, maybe this is a risk worth taking” which is at the heart of the matter, not the heart we choose and not the one Google choice, because when the numbers start proving that there is real life after google, those numbers will give growth to an exponential growth of people accepting Chinese apps and accepting non-Google solutions. I feel certain that it will happen, merely because the browser is still going to be there and it will show that there is a larger need in people, even if it is to show that the want to prove that dependency on Facebook and Google is a solution, even if it is a mere point of ego, they want to prove that they are not the slave of their mobile. That alone will be a driving factor as well.

No matter how we slice it, within the next 12 months we will see an almost polarised population, those who want the best and fastest and those who need some Google solution, both will have their own validity and merits, yet in the end as small business owners see that Huawei 5G solutions can cater to both, they get to win and that is the real victory, soon thereafter the US will change the blacklist, the moment that there is a clear invoice to the losses and Google will hold the US government accountable to these tax deductible losses, at that point will we see a strong push to find some middle ground, the US will have to give is with every additional billion dollar loss and market shift towards China. They basically have no options left, their inability to deal with Iran is one view, their inability to deal with Syria is a second stage of evidence, and within the next 12 months we will get several other pieces of evidence get released to the larger audience. And that is not the end of it, as the cases regarding Pacific Gas and Electric Company, Purdue Pharma, OrbCare, Insys Therapeutics Inc and their bankruptcy issues are rising, they matter to the regard that the US government is seeing the pinch from 3 directions at present, and that is only whilst California is able to keep its head above the waterline. All these impact are also the impact on 5G propagation, installation and implementation. When you doubt that, consider the Government tech source hat gave us “5G won’t roll out to much of Southern California for a few more years, but companies such as Verizon and AT&T are beginning to install the necessary infrastructure, including those small cells pole by pole, across the region” last April, the fires and other calamities only made things harder, so whilst we see the FCC stepping in, we only see more hindrance for these people, not less and that is the impacting issue from Pasadena to Huntington Beach, and that is only the most visible one. The infrastructure is getting a second hit as we are shown that “the Federal Communications Commission is now restricting how much cities can charge the companies to install equipment: $500 for up to five cells, $100 a cell after that and a $270 annual access fee for each cell“, it is a loaded issue no matter how you slice it and whilst they are trying to figure out how to resolve it, the truth of the matter is that Huawei had this issue solved already and that is how California (and other states) end up getting limited 5G for 2-3 years, all whilst the Huawei case is growing more and more outside of the USA. It is a situation where the technology is not up to scrap and the diminished amount of funds available allows for no alternatives either; now add to this the consumers shifting to some degree away from Google who relies on Google Ads more and more and a near perfect storm is created, a storm that slams the US and gives growth upon growth to China and Chinese interests.

As the EU is accepting Huawei and as Huawei is now embracing a shift towards cloud systems, and as it grows the needs, and sets the growing stage towards 21Vianet, we see a much larger shift and in all this, the first changes brought a push in directions we never considered before. It was only a day ago when Microsoft President Brad Smith requested that the United States should end its blacklisting of Chinese giant Huawei Technologies, we might not realise it, yet the changes allowed for Huawei to look into a partnership with 21Vianet, which will directly impede Microsoft Azure business that is not in Chinese hands (outside of China), in this stage 21Vianet will have a direct option to offer services to European players, as it will not be their solution, but a Huawei solutions and the group of small businesses that are in Europe (a nice slice of 400 million companies) they too will select ‘the other’ Chinese solution. All instigated by a Huawei war that was not based on facts or on reality, it was to address the need of greed and now that it bites back, the US will find itself at the dinner table where only humble pie is to be served. When they buckle (and they will) the shift becomes larger and faster, because at that point the consumers will have the additional questions that will be met with denial on every level conceivable.

Huawei would need to do one additional thing to make that wave a lot larger, I wonder if they will do just that before the end of this year.

 

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September 11, 2019 · 11:45

A gaming shift

I am watching on how Google and Apple are starting their stream service. I don’t expect to sign up (no way will I get to Apple), but there is also another side to it all and I am not sure whether we realise this.

I might be outspoken not into Apple Arcade, yet this is largely because I am an android man. I still have my very first iPad, the anonymous one, without camera’s and such and it has done its job for over 8 years. Yes, I have games on it and foremost, the one game I still play is Blockheads, even after all these years. Like Minecraft it is fun escapism playing whilst my mind works out puzzles in the background. On the iPad 1 I also still play Sudoku and a few other games, on Android my life limits me to a few games, Gems of War being the most outspoken one.

The use of problem would be the wrong word, there is no problem, and the limitation that these systems show is the stage of real gaming. The bulk of people might be happy with Candy King, or some equivalent, the bulk might like Pokémon Go, yet is it gaming or connected mini games?

The question is more important than you might think; the question becomes what is real gaming to you? For a lot it is FIFA, NFL, NBA and NHL games and that is fine, for me it will be RPG’s. I consider Minecraft to be a game that I really love playing, yet true gaming is more and we forget the elements that we loved when we go for the short term. The Nintendo Switch makes games truly mobile, yet until I played some of the streaming games to confirm this, they might be the only one that still embraces real gaming on the go. You see, it only hits you when you see (or see again) the cut scene movies of games like God of War 4 and Horizon Zero Dawn to realise the massive journey you took to get to the end. You do not comprehend the journey until you have been on it, and Guerrilla games made more than an effort, it created an origin story so titanic in size and so overwhelming in completeness that you wonder who could ever equal it. The Horizon Zero Dawn (HZD) movie journey is well over 5 hours and that is merely the cut scene and stories that are part of a hundred hours of gameplay. I reckon it can be done sooner, but you might lose out on seeing just how amazing that world was. Santa Monica Studio did the same with God of War 4, it was a story well done and when you get to the end and see the twist [no spoiler given], and you end of merely sitting back in amazement giving yourself a loud ‘What the fuck?‘ Excelling games do that, Bethesda games do not give us that to the degree the previous two did and they still make excellent games. There is a balance in place in high level gaming, there is a balance, yet it seems to be like a seesaw, what one side gets the other loses. We might have all kinds of issues with like of Ubisoft, yet their graphics and stories have always been really good. Yet it is the other side where they lost largely on gameplay. The earlier mentioned two had both right, both gameplay and story, making the seesaw a much larger version than the one Ubisoft, EA and Rockstar Games have.

Don’t think this is a negative thing; we do not always want RPG games. Even now, lacking storyline, I would not be able to resist playing MediEvil again as it comes to PS4, that game was the reason I bought the PSP when it launched in 2005, I loved the game on the first PlayStation and thoroughly enjoyed it again on the PSP. It is the rewarding feeling of gaming you get making you want to play it again, if that did not exist, we would not have 8 versions of Mario Kart, yet they are not the only one offering that game. I still miss the challenge and fun that Wacky Races on the Dreamcast gave us 19 years ago. In equal measure from that same year there was Fur Fighters, also on Dreamcast (the PS2 version was a disaster). So there is more than a storyline in play, the satisfaction of gaming goes in several directions. It is the challenge of gaming that has a few packages, for RPG story is the overwhelming one, yet without challenging gameplay the game falls flat. In shooters and platform games it is more than the challenge, the shooters offer it most often through multiplayer. For Honor is an excellent example, it is below par on single player due to the lack and often repetitive mission gameplay in single player mode, yet the multiplayer mode is an amazing almost unparalleled experience.

This is where we stand in gaming and I fear that both google and Apple will fall short of that. Even as Apple Arcade comes out in 8 days, it seems that the list of 100 games will remain hidden for those same 8 days, yet there is also the challenge, I do believe we will find games we love, but when you consider the Australian price of $8 a month, would you pay that every month just to keep one game you care for? The games are said not to be sold individually and the 100 games might sound nice, yet what happens in month 3? There lies the issue for both Apple and Google, to entice a population not to play games, but to become gamers and I wonder if they can pull it off beyond year 1, that applies to both Apple and Google. Part of it was exactly what I predicted a long time ago two years ago and Beneath a Steel Sky (a 1994 original) was good gaming and with the reduced resources needed, the game would work well on any mobile or system. My issue is not with newly released golden oldies, it is the ability to embrace those playing games and turn them into actual gamers, they are not the same goal and both Google and Apple will have to rely on the growing number of actual gamers to do better than merely survive. Even as we see that Ghost Recon: Breakpoint comes to Google Stadia, so there are larger games coming to cloud based streaming and here we get the initial issue. So far I personally have had at least one hiccup a day on Netflix, even as it was merely a second it was not an issue, yet in gaming it is a much larger issue, it becomes almost literally the death of you. How will you react then? I believe that congestion is going to be a much larger issue until 5G is truly deployed to the largest extent. One could argue that overall at present the Microsoft Game Pass is too good value for the price and at that point is becomes the break on the acceleration for streaming games.
So what is the issue?

I believe that we face a larger lag soon enough, I believe that there is a danger that the increase of high end RPG gaming will take a hit, as people embrace Google and Apple, the development of games will be towards gaming that includes both new systems; and there is where I see the negative impact. Yes, the two earlier mentioned game makers will still make their games, but a whole range of other developers will try to find a solution that includes all systems and I feel that there is a danger to the development of excelling RPG games; it will decrease and that makes me sad.

Still, the streaming world does have its own challenges and that is where we see the benefit, whenever a challenge is met and surpassed games benefit and that is the trade-off that works on our behalf, there us a whole range of games that were originals and most are now forgotten, yet streaming games could bring them back. 7 cities of gold, Sentinel returns, Fur Fighters, Wacky Races, Shadow man, System Shock 2, Millennium 2.2 and this list goes on for a while. Games that will never be forgotten and could also lead to new game innovation. Even later games like MGS4, guns of the patriot showed innovation at the very end of the PS3 life cycle. People like Richard Garriott who innovated RPG gaming via the Ultima series. People like Peter Molyneux who started with Magic Carpet and Dungeon keeper a new age of gaming, they inspired some of the game makers that followed; the past is full of game makers who inspired others. Yet, this is not the end; these games could also inspire the next phase of gaming. I believe that through limitations we see the creation of new options. If there is one lesson learned from the CBM64, then that would be the one. We embrace gaming because we get to a place we did not think would be possible, Ubisoft showed that when they created Assassins Creed 2, we embraced the first one to some degree because of originality, the second one because we never believed it possible. I believe that this is the part we forgot about when Xbox360 went to Xbox One and PS3 when to PS4. Even now as PS5 and Xbox Two are coming, we still see merely a larger version of what was. It is games like Cyberpunk 2077 that will show what would be possible, in the same way that MGS4, guns of the patriot did on PS3.

With Streaming we will see new hurdles and we will meet innovative game designers that will get past that boundary showing us something we never saw coming, that is the stage the true gamer embraces, it goes beyond we thought we could and that is also why we look with eager eyes to Santa Monica Studio who surpassed itself three times over with every God of War release, the same we hope to see with Guerrilla games and a new Eloy story (the ending game ample consideration there), yet in the end we do not merely want to see more, we want to see more and something entirely new. In that regard CD Projekt RED delivered beyond amazing in Witcher 3 and is as far as we can tell, surpassing excellence again with Cyberpunk 2077. These few makers all delivered 90%+ games, games for true gamers.

And true gamers like junkies need their 90%+ games to stay alive (to coin a phrase), it does not make other games unwanted, it does not make a game like the crew bad (well it does make it below par), yet it does make us wonder how far that game could have been taken, or perhaps what would be possible when it was upgraded to the max, or perhaps what happens when a 97% game like GTA5 is no longer merely is based in the fictional state of San Andreas, but has the ability to cover the entire USA, how many thousands if not millions more gamers would it attract? Streaming might make that possible, and as such streaming will be here to stay when it becomes a serious piece of work, yet in that when we see the wrongful (not incorrect) quote in the Guardian “Arcade, which was demonstrated during the unveiling of Apple’s latest iPhones on Tuesday, is an attempt to turn the mobile gaming industry on its head and add an extensive new revenue stream to the company’s books” (at https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2019/sep/10/apple-arcade-launch-netflix-for-games-will-cost-499-a-month) there is a danger that a lot of people forget what streaming could offer, the question becomes to what degree are either Apple and Google aware that this playground for true gamers is equally open for them to dig into?

In a lot of places we see: “Bethesda Softworks is providing a gaggle of titles for Stadia’s launch later this year: “DOOM 2016,” “Rage 2,” “The Elder Scrolls Online,” and “Wolfenstein: Youngblood.”” which is merely a new place to play games already released, yet the corner of what was not done has not been turned yet and I hope that we will see more than merely more of the same, streaming could potentially open a market and give a game that PC’s and consoles cannot offer. Yet until those are actually released, we will have to wait to see just how rewarding that platform actually is, we will know the initial in a week, but it is the second wave that decides on just how successful these platforms will be, it is where the consoles cannot go, that is when streaming services will prove their worth and their place in the gaming community.

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September 2, 2019 · 11:23

Funny Money, Amusing Thickheads

There are two issues and they do not link, but they are supportive of one another. I made notice of this situation 5 months ago in my article (at https://lawlordtobe.com/2019/04/27/then-the-hard/) called ‘Then the hard‘, in the article I give “Now we get to the part where the €2.5 trillion mark matters, as the ECB is trying to find new ways to convince others that the continued provision of stimulus to the economy matters“, as I see it the stimulus protects banks, makes them more powerful, it allows for political stupidity, yet the economy has not been saved (not in the two attempts), it has not been jump started, and it has not been a positive impact for its citizens, merely the industrial executives and the rich CEO’s (OK, that was a more biased view from yours truly, the writer).

As Bloomberg gave us on Saturday (at https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-08-31/more-ecb-officials-pile-into-stimulus-debate-as-economy-wilts) ‘More ECB Officials Pile Into Stimulus Debate as Economy Wilts‘, and when we see: “the ECB should keep all options on the table to reinvigorate inflation and growth, including a relaunch of quantitative easing“, it is at that point that the EU citizens are getting screwed (again), more debt (again) and no resolution because the ECB is about the gravy train and not about resolutions. Yes that same article gives opposing voices, yet I would not be surprised that (by a narrow margin) the stimulus people win. This is why Brexit was so important!

In the end the retirees get hammered for those debts, the ECB officials have too fat wallets to care. At this point the debts have surpassed €3,000,000,000,000 and it seems that the end is nowhere near, yet the stage of bankruptcy is there. Even at 0.1% (no debt interest is ever that low) implies that the interest is €3 billion a year. A payment that is way beyond the budgets of any of the EU nations, payment due every year whilst the bulk of them have overextended themselves with budgets that should have been shrunk by well over 5%, so pretty much all the EU nations are running an economic deficit whilst the Mario Draghi Posse is handing out more money, printed money, for a lack of a better term funny money.

What the ECB is not telling anyone that most stimulus options fall flat when the UK officially leaves the EU that is the despair there. Their options melt away when the UK is out and that is why everyone is suddenly in a panic, that is why we get these moronic acts and even UK Labour is all about remain now. And with that part we move to the second part of this.

Now we get to the Chief of Grief, the Duke of Fluke, the one and only real loser in history (as I personally see it) Jeremy Corbyn. When we see headlines like ‘No-deal Brexit: Jeremy Corbyn vows to ‘pull Britain back from the brink’‘, or ‘Final sovereignty on Brexit must rest with the people‘ we see the idiot he is. There was a referendum, there was a voice and Brexit won, the issues with the ECB shows us that we are a lot better outside then inside that mess. There is no brink of Brexit, there is an economic mess and we will enter a stage of recession, anyone telling you that it can be presented is lying to you, or they are wielding massive amounts of money, amounts that no one has. This has been shown by people more intelligent than me and by people with actual economic degrees; they all are on the ‘remain’ fence, merely because it butters their bread. It gets worse when we see that the Hysterical Remain groups that have become violent, abusive and out of control, more important, to a larger degree the media isn’t even covering it. How is that for balanced information?

I have heard one or two actual ‘remainers’ who made a really good case, yet in the end, they have no control over the ECB and the ECB is in Europe at present the great evil. What they claim is good for Europe is to a much larger extent merely good for big business. When we look at those companies leaving the UK, these are all companies hiding behind taxation options, or facilitating to really large players and to some degree that is fine, but the ECB forgot that the well over 150 million small business owners see nothing of any of that and more important, they will see the impact of the 3 trillion euro of debt that the ECB created, things are that much out of whack and I do not get why people accept the presented BS that people like Jeremy Corbyn have been presenting to the masses. I am aware and I also believe that Brexit had its own waves of BS presenters. I made up my own mind and for the most I was leaning towards Remain, Mark Carney (the Marky Mark of the British bank) and especially his speech to the House of Lords was the setting of that stage. Yet he too had one flaw (if you want to call it that), there was no controlling the ECB and they are out again making some lame excuse on the essential economic need for more stimulus, whilst we already know now that it will not save the economy and they are willing to wager another trillion euro and spend it up front.

These people are not held accountable in any way and I say: ‘Enough is enough!‘ The UK is better off by itself steering the economic waters as it had done for centuries. Oh, I almost forgot the second part on sovereignty, sovereignty does not rest with the people, it rests in Buckingham Palace with HRH Queen Elisabeth II. There was a referendum and the Brexit group with a little over 51% won. And to those people still in doubt, you only have yourself to blame with the mess you are creating. There were 46 million votes, representing a 72% group, so 28% did not even bother to vote! Those 13 million votes were invalid straight of the bat, with only 25,000 invalid or blank votes we see no real impact, it they were all remain voted it would not have mattered. When you consider all this and you see the hooligan masses being remain people, we see two parts, the first is that they are moronic (worthy of UK Labour), yet the larger issue is that a lot are in anger because they are not getting properly informed. Stories like: ‘UK government officials told the food industry that supplies of liquid egg could run out in a no-deal Brexit‘, yet the operative word is ‘could‘ we just do not know, and not knowing is adamant in a lot of this, yet the people have faced two years of fear mongering, all large consortiums that see a danger to their margins, not the margins of the shop, the margins to executives and their bonuses, and the people are eating the fear hook, line and sinker. There will be actual issues, but the foundation of all this is that this has never happened before and the EU and the ECB did this to themselves. We all forget how this started, this all started when Greece in 2009 had misrepresented itself and we saw issue after issue, debt after debt and the politicians that caused it merely walked away. Then we were told stories on how Greece might be evicted from the EU, the news was all over that yet the truth was that we were misled (or is that made Miss Led?) The Guardian (in 2015) gave us: “As Athens will be unable to satisfy its financial obligations after a default, many hardliners expect Greece to leave the Eurozone, and printing as much neo-drachma as necessary. Some see this as the only solution to the Greek crisis: it would allow Greece to devalue its new currency, supposedly making the country competitive and resulting in economic growth and the ability to repay its debt“, in addition we get: “while only article 50 of the EU treaty regulates how a state can leave the union. And a mechanism for leaving only the Eurozone or for expulsion even has not been provided for at all“, basically the stupidity of the EU was that they stated that every member will always be up front and do what must be done, which was deceptive in its own rights. So a group that is merely inclusive and under stringent rules can they leave, yet in addition other sources gave us that NO MEMBER can be expelled. This is called a Corporatocracy, not a democracy. Corporations decide on what happens and that is what we basically see at present. The problem here is that any Corporatocracy will limit its actions towards enablers and consumers; the rest is pretty much screwed. In a monarchy all citizens matter and the people do not seem to be able to grasp that, the UK (and the Netherlands, as well as Sweden, Belgium and so on are monarchies within a Corporatocracy and that is a very different setting, that stage can only be made profitable where debts are soaring and the banks not the government decide where you can be at, a situation we see all over Europe. this is not new, I did not invent it, other voices going back to 2014 say pretty much the same thing, I merely have a lot more data available at present. The media relies on advertisement money from any Corporatocracy, so you cannot expect them to actually inform you, it is a double edged blade and both sides are pointed at YOUR guts, it is that detrimental a situation.

So as Greece made a few issues clear in the wrong way, people like Nigel Farage went with the notion of ‘Better Out than in‘, I agree with him, yet I remained on the fence for the longest of times. It was the second ECB stimulus who would put us so much deeper in debt that got me across. The first stimulus was fine, it was an option and even as it did not work out, it gave Europe time, yet the second one the best we could hope for was time and that is where the problem started and now as stimulus 3 is on the table the setting is too unacceptable, the UK needs to get out and fast, deal or not.

Let’s not make a fairy tale, this will not be a nice time and things will get worse for a little while, anyone telling you different is lying to you. The issue is that with the ropes cut the EU cannot force debts on the UK to the degree it is doing now, more important the UK gets to make a few other choices and it will down the road (3-4 years) turn the economy in something stronger. It will result in an actual better quality of life over time, but it will not be immediate. This is why the ties and economic options with players like Huawei (5G), nations like Saudi Arabia (all kinds of goods) and a few other players become important (optionally India with generic medication). Anyone with the misguided notion that Human Rights are the optimal route better stay at home. If Human Rights were an actual power there would be no age discrimination, there would be actual better (and more) housing and there would be a better social security. All missing and mostly because in a Corporatocracy, corporations are largely tax exempt, exactly what we see today. In that stage we now see the rumblings, even as players like Google, Facebook, Amazon, Apple and others are all making noises on leaving, they do so at the risk of losing 69 million consumers. Facebook is truly global, so is Google to the largest extent, yet for Apple we get Huawei, ASUS and HP, Amazon leaving would give the people a slimmer HMV and optionally small businesses come back (my preferred solution), and even as corporations are shouting, screaming, streaming and threatening, they all realise that you cannot walk away from 69 million consumers. Not when they need to share the smaller EU pool with 3-4 competitors at every corner. That is the part we all forgot, consumer power is actually power and we listened to the likes of Jeremy Corbyn for far too long. To be honest, I never thought that it would be possible to be more dim than Nick Clegg (LIBDEMS), yet I was wrong, Jeremy Corbyn pulled it off nicely. I am not stating that Boris Johnson is without flaws (his barber being the obvious one). I am stating that the UK has been in a dangerous position for far too long and as long as the ECB does the way it does it, the danger stays, getting away from that danger is an immediate need at present.

 

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August 24, 2019 · 12:34

From trade war to losses

Huawei remains in the news on an international level. Australia gives us ‘Huawei sheds 100 Australian jobs in the face of 5G ban‘ (ZDNet), ‘Huawei Australia says over half of jobs at threat due to 5G ban‘ (ITnews), and ‘Greece opens up to Huawei’s 5G ambitions‘ (ZDNet). For the most there is some level of balance that is going on. We see messages of reprieve given to the US on Huawei, yet the clear part is that there is no way around Huawei. Just like the 80’s when there was no way around IBM. I still remember those arrogant sales people. Whenever they could not answer a question with any clarity (which was more often than I was ever comfortable with), the response became: ‘Sir, we are IBM‘.

It is not limited to one company, CNN reports (at https://edition.cnn.com/2019/08/23/business/china-tariffs-trade-war/index.html) “The US-China trade war ratcheted up yet again on Friday, with Beijing unveiling a new round of retaliatory tariffs on about $75 billion worth of US goods“, this round will hit “25% for vehicles or 5% on parts, and would take effect on December 15th. The new tariffs will target 5,078 products, including soybeans, coffee, whiskey, seafood and crude oil“, this war was a bad idea for America the moment they started it. Yes, there is an impact on China and there is an impact on Huawei. Yet the world cannot go around Huawei. The non-Chinese players were complacent for well over half a decade and the invoice is due, it is an invoice that a bankrupt America cannot afford at present. Moreover, the stage is now sliding away from the American market more and more. As Europe is seeking Huawei to instigate growth, America grows lag time losing momentum more and more. In Europe the issue is larger because it is not one EU; we are looking at 27 member states. The UK with BT gives us: “The investment bank also noted that the Conservatives have outlined an ambition for the roll out of super-fast fibre broadband across the whole of the UK by 2025 but it is not clear how it will be funded or what the returns will be for BT“, a technology years out of date, too much delays, politicising and now BT, a company that was once regarded as a company at the height of technology (some might remember the 80’s advertisement with Tom Baker, the 4th Doctor Who showing us a piece of fibre optics, transmitting the entire bible in one second), the message of advanced progress was clear. Yet in 2018 we see other messages ‘Why most of the UK doesn’t have True Fibre Optic Broadband‘, the setting is a disappointing one and there is a really nice explanation (at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DDp9-tSYpU0). The Dutch have KPN, an advantage here is that they managed to put 30% of the British population on 14% of the UK, so they have less distance issues. So even as Reuters gave us last April “Dutch telecom firm Royal KPN NV said on Friday it would select a Western supplier to build its core 5G mobile“, they will be digging a large hole for themselves. No matter who gets chosen, they all lag to a much larger degree the abilities that Huawei offers and that impact will only increase over time.

To see this we need to take you to a little math equation. An innovative technology gives you 10 years. Huawei has at present two innovations and three iterations lined up, which gives them 26 years (iterations gives one a mere 2 year advantage), which almost aligns as reengineering catches up three years annually. This gives us the number that others need to catch up to Huawei, who could in 2020 be technologically already at 2047. At present none of them have any TRUE innovations. As such the iterators will truly catch up in 2028 whilst that stage will be met in 2020 by Huawei. This is the largest danger for all the other players. In 2028 the 5G market will settle and they are all still catching up whilst Huawei rules the 5G on a global scale.

The math was important, because it also meant that I have until 2023 to sell my IP, at that point iterators will have found part of my IP and they can equal it to me by 2025. The math was everything and the math is not looking good for America or Europe. Those who embrace Huawei to some degree will get a much larger advantage. My IP was about pushing momentum and if that goes as I hope, the others will face a much larger setback, in all this a much larger part of cybersecurity will not work, or will merely delay the commerce. When was the last time you saw commerce seeking safety over revenue?

The fact that the Guardian gives us: ‘Apple warns new credit card users over risks of it touching wallets and pockets‘ (at https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2019/aug/22/apple-card-wallet-pocket-warning) gives a much larger issue. Even as we laugh on: ““Apple Card completely rethinks everything about the credit card. It represents all the things Apple stands for. Like simplicity, transparency, and privacy,” as the company said when the card was launched. Just don’t put it in your pocket.”

So when was the last time you went on vacation and you had to take care of all that for a mere Credit Card? What happens when there is damage to the card whilst on a business trip? Oh, and more interesting, what Forbes told us (at https://www.forbes.com/sites/daveywinder/2019/08/10/apples-iphone-faceid-hacked-in-less-than-120-seconds/#1c136a2421bc) with the title ‘Apple’s iPhone FaceID Hacked In Less Than 120 Seconds‘, it is the issue of greed versus Common Cyber Sense and CCS never gets to win, greed dies!

That will show in 5G within the first year and as such there is a lot less taken care of, and it was exactly why I am rubbing my hands, the more desperate they become, the more valued my IP becomes and in the end, my IP pushes commerce and safety in the same IP line. As an android solution I get to thumb my nose against Apple and iOS, it is too iterative to consider. I hope that Google wakes up, so far Huawei might be the only tender and that is just fine by me.

How do these relate?

The pressures that we saw when thatcher decided to stop Fibre, as she saw that BT got an unfair advantage (which is fair enough) too many players try to get part of the cookie for their minimalist services and it directly relates to the US. Their stage of Status Quo as dictated by Wall Street has stopped innovation. The boat that was not rocked was giving Wall Street the managed expected returns they vowed to get. Yet the other side is also a given. We see this as the senior people stayed where they were, stopping innovation too often because they were scared to make the jump, it is the principle that gave Google the growth they had, yet the linked headline (to the smallest degree mind you) ‘Americans Owe $1.6 Trillion In Student Debt – What Will It Take To Solve This Crisis?‘ close to an entire generation was topped to innovate, I grant you that not all are innovators, but the entire innovation cycle was missed. As such highly educated people got menial jobs and went in other directions, a decent amount of them disillusioned. There is a part that gives the concern of affordable higher education, yet there is also the path that those educated and ready were stopped their innovation; each of them stopping 3-7 fellow students to tag along in that innovation path. It is what I call, a non-proven given. It is hard to set a number to this and there are of course other elements (like the economic crash) all set through and connected to the actions of a few on Wall Street, that much we all agree on and whilst that path was set to non-motion, innovation was lost in almost a dozen industries, IT and telecommunication being the most visible ones. Patents are the most visible marker here, but not the only one. That part is making the US scared, not nervous but scared. Over the next 5 years 43 drugs will become generic, the patents expire, 28 of them this year. the world looks at the pharmaceutical patents because of the aging population, yet technology patents expire too and all of those not linked to renewed innovation patents will be collapsing, consider all that was patented from 1985 and 1999, all coming to a close some were just forgotten and not renewed because the technology was surpassed, yet there we forget that original ideas can be reengineered solutions, all up for patenting and that market is well over $100 billion. One consideration is shown (at https://www.dnj.com/story/news/2019/08/22/rutherford-county-jail-hit-lawsuit-over-patent-infringement-stealing-technology-smart-communications/2064500001/) where we get: “Smart Communications accused them infringing upon their patented technology that transformed written mail into an electronic version sent directly to inmates“, I merely wonder how we see that setting when we look at players like Perceptive software, Readsoft and a few other players. Readsoft became part of Lexmark and then Lexmark, the printing and Software Company, agreed Wednesday to be sold to a consortium led by Apex Technology of China and PAG Asia Capital, a private equity firm. Consider the placement of digital transfer, on an international level in the hands of a Chinese consortium. The NY Times took notice (at https://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/21/business/dealbook/lexmark-apex-pag-asia.html), for the most no one else did. They had no grasp of the power that the innovations were that Readsoft had. I worked with the materials; it was next gen software in 2003. Now consider that we think digital almost every moment nowadays, but there are decades of legacy materials out there and not everyone has the budget of the America alphabet group. In 5G that material needs to be digital or it will be lost. All these patents give advantage to the owner and stop others, having to re-engineer their idea again and again, that is direct currency and China has a much larger truckload of them with a later end date, even as Huawei is all innovation, they still need their patents and whatever innovation they launch next, they will need to have the patent in place. It stops all the other making the case that their advantage grows as the others forgot to get a workforce that is innovative in nature (Google is excluded from those losers). The innovator drivers are gaining momentum and over the next three years their advantage gets to grow.

That was always the advantage the innovators have and the iterators are starting to feel the pain. IBM, Microsoft and Apple might market their ‘innovation’ yet marketing it doesn’t make it actual innovation. Perhaps you remember the Verge last March giving us ‘Study confirms AT&T’s fake 5G E network is no faster than Verizon, T-Mobile or Sprint 4G‘, marketing versus reality is often disappointing and the iterative technology firms are finding out the hard way that there is no such thing as marketing the reality of shareholders expectations.

We see that part ibn another field as Microsoft Phil Spencer gets to be quoted: “There’s only one new Xbox coming in 2020: ‘We are not working on a streaming-only console,’ says Xbox chief“, yet the end of the article gives us: “given the iterative nature of game consoles and the history of the business, we wouldn’t be surprised to see new versions of Project Scarlett in the coming years – it just sounds like we’ll only see one in 2020“, that is where Business Insider made the massive flaw one week ago. It is a flaw because if that was actually true the Nintendo Switch would exist, iteration would never have led to the Nintendo Switch, and not only is it beating all the records, it is also reducing the Microsoft Xbox One to the number three console. Projections are that Nintendo Switch will get to 50 million consoles sold before the end of the tax year, a lofty promise, yet that too shows the impact of innovation. In 2 years it equaled what Microsoft calls the most powerful console in the world and it took Microsoft 6 years to get there. Clearly power is not all it is cracked up to be. In addition, for the first time in history Sony is worried about how far Nintendo can get. Nintendo never wavered, they never lost their core groups, they merely added to them.

Innovation does that and innovation will push 5G in the same way, it seems that Huawei with its innovation has support all over the world on the impact of innovation and the funny part is that IBM and Microsoft used to be actually innovative, they merely forgot the sweetness of innovation victory, which is sad really. I gave mention to the Wall Street part in the Status Quo, yet they are not the only ones in that game and those who embraced that game held technology and innovation back to a much larger degree than you realise and that loss of momentum is a much larger issue in this trade war than anyone has considered.

 

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August 21, 2019 · 13:47

Premise towards boredom

Yesterday’s article in the Guardian by Alex Hern is a bit of a wakeup call. When I re-read the article I start to agree with him more and more. As a gamer, RPG’s have been my life. This started in the old days with the Ultima series by Richard Garriott on CBM-64. The first full game experience was the third installment. On the CBM-64, the quality was a little less then you see now, but the entire experience was amazing. This game made me addicted to RPG’s for life and Ultima 4 made matters worse for me. I was lucky; some RPG’s will never have the amazing depth that the Ultima series offered, not for at least a decade.

Yet Alex asks the important question: ‘are role-playing games getting too predictable?‘ When I sat down I did exactly that, try to avoid predictability. In my version of TESVI I was at all times considering replayability. As such the creation required sidesteps, not to be reflectively repetitive, but to set the stage of 100 missions at least twice over, so you did not play two versions of a mission, but two very different missions. It allowed for the market value of a game to remain high, whilst at the same time give other players something to think about. I had been there. I must have played Oblivion 3-4 times all the way through the end. Yet at heart it remained repetitive, so my design was the thwart that nuisance. Skyrim was a little the same in many ways, and Skyrim even as it outperformed Oblivion by a large amount had a few issues, some slightly terminal, but with a game that large it is almost unavoidable (I did say almost). So if we open The Elder Scrolls to number 6 a lot more was required, and as I set the model in play (not the one Bethesda is releasing) I remained dedicated to what Bethesda will offer, because so far they have not disappointed me (this is NOT about Fallout 76). So as we see the push towards the outer Worlds, we are given: “In this world, where mega corporations are starting to take over alien planets, you can act like a hero, an opportunistic mercenary, or a total idiot. The writing is sharp, snappy and funny, the world exciting and vibrant, and there’s a classic New Vegas interplay between factions of characters, any of whom the player can help or hinder“, I am not questioning, not judging, and not placing a verdict. I await the final result that is open for review and purchase. The writer (at https://www.theguardian.com/games/2019/aug/20/from-cyberpunk-2077-to-the-outer-worlds-are-role-playing-games-getting-too-predictable) is giving us a lot more. So when the article ends with: “But their genre needs its Breath of the Wild moment: an outsider to toss out the conventions, and build something beautiful from what is left. Surely choosing between shooting, stealthing or sweet talking can’t be the only options that the next generation of virtual worlds have to offer“, I find myself agreeing with him to the part that games (at times) need more. Yet is that in part the limitation of an RPG? What if we take another look at the Ultima range? Ultima 7, the Black Gate is one of the few games that EVER received a 100% rating from me (on PC). In that time (1992) that game surpassed anything else, and others never came close to what The Black Gate offered. So when we see the part ‘shooting, stealthing or sweet talking‘, we need to consider alternatives. There was the option of getting a job (so not shooting and killing), stealing (stealthily not working), and Retail industry (not sweet talking). In part we saw the retail on Skyrim by selling (just like in Oblivion), in Fable 2 and 3 we see the option of doing jobs and gaining money that way, even buying the place and getting the revenue, so we have seen it (almost) all. Yet what happens, when the world is truly a lot larger? What happens when your impact is seen as one of thousands creating commerce and in that way create price fluctuations? What if the game needs to be set to the larger premise? To get one part right, and through the linked limitations create a new system of balances to get the whole environment correct? Make the game impact seen through the changes that not just you create. As a member of the thieves guild you can never be a companion, or with the fighter guild or the Mages guild. So what happens when we take a much larger bite out of the apple of gaming and actually set the apple to be an actual much larger play of impact? The apple of knowledge (Eden), the golden apple (Olympus) and the apple of immortality (Asgard), set the stage where you can merely choose one of them, creating a tripod where one leg is rigid and the other two vary to create some form of balance.

What if one choice demolishes the others and through that path offer 300% more? There is still the challenge of making all missions decently unique and challenging, and if you realise that the Skyrim guide is over 1100 pages, we are facing a serious clambake, not a mere picnic. It was the largest stage setting, so whatever I considered to be the design of TESVI, needed to be able to surpass that, and I mean by no less than 20%.

Now, this does not mean that boredom will not set in, the biggest issue with any RPG is the danger of grinding, and preventing that is a first. Most games have become decently adept in minimising that risk, yet it is not zero, even my version would not have zero grinding, so the need to remain long term appealing is essential. The game does not stop there. Now that the gamers soon get Google and Apple with streaming gaming, the game changes even more and finding original content in any RPG game is the essential search for every gaming junk (I am proudly part of that family), so basically the ante is upped by a fair bit. It becomes even more impressing as I look to more challenge and the Skyrim guide has 350 quests, which implies that in my book, I will need close to 800 missions to keep head of the curve and in all this, anyone getting the range of 800 quests is less interactive in what we see and the mountain of work we look up to. It also requires very different IP to continue on a higher level of gaming.
The second level of grinding is often the places where things are found. In many situations we needed to get to the same places (shouts) and we needed to find essential hardware, however if the word wall did not contain Kyne’s Peace, but a random shout? In addition, what happens when you influence the entire game by making another choice as to where the Fighters Guild, the Thieves Guild, the Dark Brotherhood and the clan of Minimarco is placed (Necromancers), more important when you shape the game as you play and the impact is seen on a larger scale. A stage where the trade route from Skingrad, via Arenthia, to Riverhold, Orcrest, Rimmen and Bravil takes another step as the Fighters guild is placed in Riverhold and not in Rimmen, these are all choices that shape a world you live in. Consider the real (non-virtual) world if not Brussels, but Paris had become the centre of the EU, it would massively impact Belgium economy negatively and France’s economy positively, the direct aftermath is that living in Paris would be almost impossible, cause and effect in play. That same setting might be applied to gaming. Where the aggregation of the lowest and highest 1,000 gamers sets the parameters of your RPG game. a game not set in stone, but in motion as 2,000 players are not set to the average, but on the outliers of the high and the low players, a game that is shaped by all as the economic footprint changes. Yet to prevent deal seekers, we make time a much more definite in any RPG game.

As the measure evolves over time, other players become part of the low and the lower high end. A game now in flux, no longer rigid and confined. Add to that that they all might have issues on some of the resurrection choices and we get an entirely new path towards gaming. Boredom can only start to set in when the game is fixed, so we start by setting change to the game itself. A second choice is to add a management part, not just overall, but a specific super large quest, where you cannot complete the quest, but you provide the options for the quest. I can no longer sneak in like William Tell grasping apples, now we create a workforce working the field and still we are involved to maximise what is possible. Yes, we need virtual worlds that have more and differences to offer, but the best option is allowing evolution in ways that we cannot set, we might be able to influence them towards 6%, impacting but not overwhelming. That too allows for a game to be enjoyed again and again. That is the kind of RPG all RPG players want and yet up to now, no one delivered that option, it is surprising and perhaps it will be the cornerstone of any RPG, the amount that cannot be predicted, for all those coming from the very bottom of the maze and interesting challenge to face.

For now we await The Outer Worlds and Cyberpunk 2077 to make it into the family of RPG fanatics, yet we too await the next Elder Scrolls, and who know, perhaps my idea makes it into The Elder Scrolls VII, as a gamer I can only hope to be given the chance to change the game for thousands of RPG lovers in a new never seen before direction. Even as I accept that this is almost not possible and I would settle for a ‘novel’ place in new original gaming, we need to see that it all has been done before, well, it almost all has been done before. Yet so far, the idea’s I had have not popped up anywhere, so I am sitting pretty for now.

I actually do not care whether someone else finds them and implements them; it means new and original gaming, the ultimate rush for an RPG gamer, preferably additions done to a game that the gamer loves. So Alex Hern is correct and the first step in avoiding all this is to make sure that we take a non Ubisoft approach to gaming, I have faith that Bethesda can do that, they might have missed the ball with Fallout 76, but still, they took it in a direction that had not been done before. Let’s not forget that before Nintendo gave us the Switch, we were given the WiiU. Everyone gets to have a bad day and when we realise that Bethesda have given us winners from 2002 onwards, over a dozen clear winners in 16 years, the existence of one less popular title (Fallout 76) with so many winners is not an issue at all, in Bethesda we trust, the rest can take a number and await their turn with the global RPG population.

 

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