Tag Archives: Apple

March 2, 2015 · 23:39

Trolls are real

No, this is not an episode of Grimm, where we see the Hässlich as they collect their fee. This is not the case of David Giuntoli, beheading reapers and taking care of the trolls. This is today, the trolls are real and the fee goes up by hundreds of millions. This is the case of SMARTFLASH LLC, et al. v. APPLE, INC., et al. The article was from Cnet, but I got wind of it through EpicTimes. All this got to blows not because of the amount, but because this issue has been allowed to fester for well over two decades. The issue takes a legal leap into the unknown, which is still unmanaged at present. The questions that we have to pose is in two parts.

Is this a festering scene?

You see, it is nice for Apple to cry wolf, but is it a valid scene of the crying? The fact is that Smartflash LLC has 7 patents, the first one filed Oct 25, 2000, with a Foreign Application Priority date (UK) of Nov 25th 1999, and this makes it a patent that was filed before the initial release of Apple’s iTunes, which was January 9th, 2001.

The Apple response we see (at http://www.cnet.com/news/apple-ordered-to-pay-533-million-over-alleged-itunes-patent-infringement/)

“Smartflash makes no products, has no employees, creates no jobs, has no U.S. presence, and is exploiting our patent system to seek royalties for technology Apple invented. We refused to pay off this company for the ideas our employees spent years innovating and unfortunately we have been left with no choice but to take this fight up through the court system”, so let’s take a look at the slightly empty response as I see it:

‘Makes no products‘, is not a prerequisite for a patent;

‘Has no employees‘, is also not an issue, someone filed for this case and someone filed for a patent. Whether this is an employee is not an issue;

‘Exploiting our patent system to seek royalties for technology Apple invented‘, is slightly moot. The patent was filed before iTunes existed, hence, we could argue that Apple did not invent what they did, the latter statement is an incorrect one, but I will return to this.

Now let me rephrase the Apple statement in a very unflattering way: “Smartflash had an original idea, the idea was not novel because this is the direction the world was moving to”. This notion was a clear given ever since day two that Napster got active. The people understanding these technologies would innovate and come up with ideas. Unlike me, who was a Patent Virgin in 1999 (and unaware of the power they hold) would see that the future is all about IP, so some of these people would file the ideas and they would stick. Now we see that Apple might have reinvented the wheel, but reinvention is no invention at all. It becomes a license and Smartflash LLC only had to wait for their chooks to grow and grow. Now pay day has arrived.

So as we go back to the initial part, questions come to mind. Questions many (including Apple) might not want an answer to, because the answer might be a lot scarier than we all imagine. You see, in previous blogs I discussed the dangers of a faltering and collapsing economy, because those in charge remained too flaccid to actually act on issues. The consequence is that if a monetary system collapses, what will replace it? In my view, the new currency for any corporation and government is Intellectual Property. If that is true, than those who own the property will become the new true wealth.

This makes Patrick Racz a visionary of massive fortune, if we see the first fee that Apple will end up paying, what will happen to the next step? What will the Samsung invoice become? Beyond that, Apple now has a choice to make, the entire DRM future is now no longer in the hands of the large industrials, so that coin will be making massive waves soon enough.

So where is the festering part? Well, Patent Trolls are not a new group. This ‘valid’ group has existed since the early 90’s. So over the last two decades, this groups had not been dealt with. The valid question becomes, should Patent Trolls be dealt with? You see, patents get bought all the time, someone goes bankrupt, the patent is bought, perhaps sold by a bank trying to limit its losses. This market evolved, because the issue as is, is that corporate ‘losses’ due to patent trolling has been exceeding 20 billion a year from 2010 onwards. So, why not act against trolling?

The question becomes is it wrong to be a troll? The Hässlich might disagree if we say yes. The fact is that those with the novel idea, might not have the means to pursue the real deal. So they might want to file their original idea. To give you an example, which you might not believe, is that I came up with the idea around 1994. Now, it could be seen as a DPod (Data Pod), my idea was not in that direction, you see. In my past I was confronted with the ‘joke’, that was known as a tape streamer. It was a backup solution that never properly worked in households. So I had the idea to make the Minidisc a backup device. To connect it to computers, so that we could copy files, the Minidisc looked like a 3.5″ floppy, but could hold hundreds of megabytes. It could have evolved the need for diskettes and it would have propelled data halve a decade earlier. I would have been decently wealthy. So, I should have patented the idea (although, in those days I did not realise I could). So as such, Patrick Racz was the clever one. Yet, in view of all this, did Apple lag? That becomes the cornerstone in all this. Does it matter? Is a more apt question. A patent was filed, Apple did not do its homework as I see it a cost comes into play.

So now we get a new issue, will Apple et al ‘force’ a change in patenting? Will capping be imposed? All decent questions that are for tomorrow. For today, Apple gets to admire its own armour, which is not as shiny as it was yesterday. I must however state, that I personally do not think that Apple did anything wrong. Now I return to the initial exploiting part I promised to revisit. They came up with an idea and they designed it. In 1370, a Dutchman named Laurens Janszoon Coster came up with an idea, it was the printing press. He came up with the idea around the same time Johannes Gensfleisch zur Laden zum Gutenberg came up with the same idea. They both had similar (not identical) ideas in a time when the need for a cheaper solution was needed. The Dutch and the Germans all state that their citizen discovered the idea, which is fair enough. I think that this is a similar situation. In all fairness it seems to me that the patent system did not allow for such a situation, it does not make it right or wrong, the situation just is. In a land (US) where it is all about number one, it must now bite that this patent is in hands of a non-American. So as we realise that any system is flawed, is it flawed enough? If patents are about innovation, are the little people the solution? I have always believed that true innovation will survive, big companies will need to consider the age old situation, having the person with the ‘nice’ PowerPoint, does not mean that they have the innovation.

Is it unmanaged?

Like any legal system, the Patent system is good, but is it good enough? This one case is calling for visibility, but one case does not a change make. If we go back to 2013 we see the following in Forbes (at http://www.forbes.com/sites/toddhixon/2013/10/04/for-most-small-companies-patents-are-just-about-worthless/). “But, TechCo will need to use a lot of other technology to build and deliver a complete product, e.g., the product design might be protected by a patent, but the manufacturing process might be subject to another company’s “blocking” patent“. Here is the kicker, there has been a lot of noise on how large corporations have the ability to block others. If we accept Business Insider (at http://www.businessinsider.com.au/chart-of-the-day-the-totally-useless-patent-wars-2014-10) “In other words, based on patent cases brought to court by Apple, Samsung, Microsoft, Nokia, Motorola, and a host of others, litigation is, more often than not, a serious waste of time and money for all parties involved“. The question is, should the system change? Because these big boys are in disagreement, does not mean that the system should just fall away. Are these patent cases valid to begin with? If we look at the quote “As it turns out, only 20 or the 222 patent assertions (9%) were able to establish liability, but even in that small sample, only 10 of those 20 cases resulted in “lasting injunctive relief.” Mueller says that number would be even smaller if “the patents underlying Nokia’s German injunctions against HTC had come to judgment in the Federal Patent Court.”“. My question is that if the numbers are this skewed, why take it to court in the first place? What was the tactic behind it? Delay? A mere pissing contest or was this about satisfying the need for additional costs? I have no idea, but the result data speaks for itself. Is the score so impressive that pursuing a 10% chance is essential, worth the effort or it is something else?

I do not proclaim to have the answer, but the questions are not getting asked, moreover, the press at large have all quoted Apple on their ‘indignation’, but answer me this, how many papers gave any view, brought any decent quotes from Brad Caldwell apart from the one liner victory? In addition, when we see Reuters (at http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/02/25/us-ip-apple-verdict-idUSKBN0LT0E720150225), the quote “Apple, which said it would appeal, said the outcome was another reason reform was needed in the patent system to curb litigation by companies that don’t make products themselves“, that sounds nice in theory, but that leaves only the large companies in charge of it all, it takes out the small innovators whilst large corporations are left choking those small innovators for a mere tuppence to get complete control. Patents were never designed to give power to the manufacturers, they were an exclusive rights granted by a sovereign state to an inventor or assignee for a limited period of time in exchange for detailed public disclosure of an invention. However, as the world became all about shore term goals and iterative exploitation, in that regard patents are a massive impropriety to the need of large corporations.

Time will tell what direction the legal industry makes, for now, as Apple and Google are so about non tax accountability, the danger of actual change remains not too large (only for now).

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Tagged as Apple, Business Insider, CNET, David Giuntoli, Forbes, google, Grimm, Hässlich, HTC, Intellectual Property, iTunes, Minidisc, Napster, Nokia, Patent Trolls, reuters, Smartflash LLC, SMARTFLASH LLC et al. v. APPLE INC. et al

February 12, 2015 · 21:30

Supporting exploitation

This time, there is a different issue in play, this time, I have felt the consequence of both crime and scheming, all in one nice package. Part of this is set in the article ‘Robbed of a mobile, but we have to pick up the thief’s phone bill. Why?‘ (at http://www.theguardian.com/money/2015/feb/11/robbed-mobile-thiefs-phone-bill).

Now, my mobiles has been stolen, it has been broken and a few other issues have gone my way. Now in the first, I have to admit that I was with Optus at the time, stolen mobile, we had a business account and to my surprise, a new mobile and no hassle (just a small fee). This was great, the doom feeling of what had happened was a feeling that some places are great to be connected to. Now in the article we see the following quote: “it’s worth pointing out that you are not liable for any charges once you’ve reported a phone lost or stolen. But there are often good reasons why this may not be immediately possible, and during the briefest of delays, thieves can run up catastrophic charges“. Yes, this is true, but there is also an initial solution. You see, no matter how important you are as a business person, your ego is getting in the way fast. You see, disabling International calls on day one, in addition to 1900 and 1902 numbers stops massive costs coming your way. There is also the embarrassment you have when your boss asks you which distributor had 1900-blow-my-mobile is also worth the day one blocking action.

The next paragraph is the kicker: “In 2012, Ofcom gave service providers until that summer to present plans to cap customers’ liabilities and declared they would face enforcement action if they failed. Nothing happened. In December 2013 the government announced that six of the big providers had finally agreed a cap, and that, from spring 2014, customers – like victims of bank card theft – would not have to pay more than around £50 for thieves’ phone calls. Nothing happened. A year on, only Three has introduced protection – customers are liable for only the first £100 before a phone is reported missing, provided they report it within 24 hours“, so when you are on holiday or on business abroad, and your phone gets stolen, the chance of you notifying your stolen phone in time is not an option.

The paragraph becomes even more interesting if you Google the following “Ofcom spineless useless“, you get 32,000 hits. So we can say that whatever Ofcom pretends to be, which by their own statements is “Independent regulator and competition authority for the UK communications industries” (at http://www.ofcom.org.uk/), we can state with some certainty that it has failed the British people close to 100%. This view does not evolve in any positive way when we look at http://stakeholders.ofcom.org.uk/enforcement/competition-bulletins/complaints-disputes/, where we see ‘Ofcom’s Approach to Complaints and Disputes‘, the text on that page is “This page provides links to guidance that Ofcom has produced setting out our powers and processes we will follow in conducting investigations into adherence with regulatory rules, consumer protection issues, competition issues and resolving regulatory disputes“, with a few PDF links, so how useful is Ofcom?

Well, the Guardian had this to say: “It would seem Ofcom is waiting for the government to do something and the government is waiting for the phone companies to find a solution“, which is not even close to the actual part, it seems that Ofcom is all about sort of regulating issues, but awaiting feedback from stakeholders in regards to these actions (which are likely to be phone companies and when we see the Telecoms Complaints Bulletin on Ofcom, we see a few charts on silent calls and unwanted marketing calls. So is Ofcom basically a report valve that gives the telecom companies a signal when marketeers and phone companies have to simmer down a little bit?

So when we see the claim “Ed Vaizey, the digital economy minister, met the big players last month. Once again they promised a code of practice, but, strangely, still haven’t agreed on the details. “We expect the networks to confirm shortly details of liability caps and when they will be introduced,” says the Department of Media, Culture and Sport“, we must wonder if Mr Vaizey is actually seriously looking into an issue that has played for many years now.

The next part involves Vodafone (or Vodafail as some call it) and opens up an entirely new can of worms, one that I myself have been privy to.

“Vodafone says it has agreed to “explore” a cap but the sticking point is how to do that without destroying the incentive to report a phone missing. “We do not want to create an environment where it is even more attractive for criminals to focus on theft,” it says“, you see, that is not the Vodafone I have been experiencing!

So, last year I had a heart attack, this happens, as it happens I had a sim for my iPad with Vodafone, which is a data only thing. Now, I admit, I was late with paying, which is my own fault and whilst in hospital, they had cut me off. With that I had no issue; I was late, my own fault, as I stated before. Now comes the kicker, whilst in hospital and after that in recovery, I learned that even though cut off, I am still liable for ALL COSTS, so that means that whilst cut off, I am still due all monthly expenses, even when disconnected. The fact that I had had a heart attack did not interest them. So I am still in a legal fight with Vodafone, I accept the initial costs, but the months after that I refuse, so it is due to go to court at some point. Vodafone might state it is exploring, yet its main need is to stay afloat, which makes them close to desperate. That part is seen with ‘Mobile users flee Vodafone Australia‘, which started in 2013. The quote “Vodafone Hutchison Group lost 600,000 customers in the three months ending September 30, even as its British parent first-half results showed a return to profit” is only the tip of the iceberg that will sink the ‘Vodafonic’ (that event filmed by James Cameron, where you see Leonardo DiCaprio drown in icy cold water at http://www.businessspectator.com.au/news/2013/11/13/technology/mobile-users-flee-vodafone-australia). The fact that Vodafone is still linked to a class action brought by Piper Alderman should indicate that Vodafone has a league of issues, capping is not even close to their essential need to solve.

But we go back to the issue at hand regarding phone bills. The article ends with the realisation that in an election year these issues will not be addressed, which means that this issue will stay around until at least 2016, which is odd as we consider the article ‘Bankrupted by a mobile phone bill‘ (at http://www.theguardian.com/money/2013/dec/07/mobile-phone-bill-cap-theft), which is 14 months old. The issue, that was raised and gave way for the quote “culture secretary Maria Miller told journalists in Beijing this week that a deal had been struck to introduce a bank card-style limit to a consumer’s liability – possibly as low as £50“. In my view as a Tory, both Maria Miller and Ed Vaizey need to wake up fast and start a few fires in the halls of telecom corporations. You see, it is after all an election year and should Labour or Ukip achieve that what the conservatives could not, the fallout will be, as I see it a conservative unpopular one (well over 80% of the population worries about their mobile bill), because governing from the opposition bench is not governing at all, it is merely spouting critique to those who govern. The first course of action, as I personally see it, is to shake up the Ofcom executive committee by replacing Steve Unger, Polly Weitzman and Jonathan Oxley. I reckon the signal that the chief executive, the general council and the group director for Competition are replaced by individuals with bite, who will hunt issues for the victims and the general audience, might give the signal to the Telecom companies to act now, or accept a much harsher deal soon after the elections are done. The reality is, that when that signal comes, they will all quickly agree with the Three policy, which means a £100 cap and possible a reporting extension to a max of 72 hours, which would be fair.

Yet, this is not even close to the only thing in play, you see, last month Google made an announcement to no longer support any Android version before KitKat (v4.4). This means that not only are people almost forced into new mobiles, the flaws, gaps and other issues that might pop up are at the heart of what follows and that what is already happening to the current mobile user base (including myself). First there are the iPhones. Apple is already experiencing the class action in that regard. The fact that IOS is taking up around 20% is just bizarre. Apple could have saved itself a lot of hassle by just having the 64Gb phone at a 16Gb price, I was told (from an unconfirmed source) that the parts involved costed no more than $49. So how ridiculous is the entire issue that Apple is forcing upon Apple? Let’s not forget they have around 170 billion in loose change. Now, I am not stating that they had to pay for it, but to just set the 64Gb edition at $799 would have saved them a boatload of hassles. In this Android is not without faults either. The new phones, with 2Gb ram and 16Gb storage drops down a lot in Android. There, of the 2Gb you are only left with 1Gb and you lose an easy 30% of your 16Gb. Now, that is still a decent amount, but to consider that my old smartphone, which was 1Gb with 4Gm storage has now dwindled to a 250Mb phone (so I can run 2 apps at the most), with just 2.4Gb storage is not what I signed up for. As Google became too clever for its own good, adding more and more trash I never want or need, setting dozens of updates which no longer let my phone work is now at the core of my problem. I cannot even deactivate most, it shows up at EVERY update, selecting what I actually need and not what Google thinks I might like is at the core of my growing resent of Android. And with every app pushed out, there is additional danger that the security of my phone gets compromised, especially as Jellybean is no longer supported.

Yet there is more. I am now looking at a new phone, whilst I know the limitations I face. The strongest was the Huawei Mate7 premium. Now, here is the kicker, the 3Gb phone with 32Gb storage will only get you 1.7Gb RAM and 25Gb from day one, Android takes the rest and this is close to the strongest phone that a limited budget can buy. In Australia the smallest iPhone starts at $1000, the 64Gb, which would be a minimum choice is 20% more expensive, whilst these phones only have 1Gb RAM. This all seems as short-sighted as the developers of Xbox One showed to have. Yet, it must also be said that 1Gb seems to suffice for Apple, that is shown in this small article (at http://www.phonearena.com/news/Why-Android-phones-need-3GB-of-RAM-and-iOS-gets-by-with-1GB-of-the-stuff_id62901), yes IOS is more efficient, but as IOS evolves, so will the need for RAM, which when it starts to be too little would of force us to upgrade again. Was it such a jump to set the iPhone RAM to 2Gb? When you become a penny pincher, you face class actions and that is exactly what Apple faces now. Although I remain (for now) Android minded, and When we compare the Nexus 6 (the very latest), we see that it only almost equals the Huawei Mate7 premium. The Nexus is however $100 more, whilst the screen resolution was a lot more impressive on the Huawei, but that could just be the Jazz screensaver. This shows that Huawei is not just the Android player, with the P7 and Mate7, Huawei is now the contender that makes Google sweat. Like Apple, Google could have saved themselves a lot of hassle by not skimping on resources, which could have pulled the customers in like a magnet, now in the margins they will see customers slip through their fingers, which will be an unsettling feeling for whomever misses out on commission.

All this as the providers supported exploitation; we see that the massive losses are now showing as the margins are not worth considering for some. The same could be said for the upcoming Samsung S6, it looks amazing, but as they fix one issue by being a 4Gb RAM player, they waste it on bringing a 32Gb version, which might suffice for now, but what in 2 years? Getting the 64Gb version makes sense, but then it becomes a $1240 millstone around your neck. So as I see it, Huawei is the budget choice, which still gives you a top of the line contender, iPhone and Nexus are slowly pricing themselves away by offering the entry option, which is a joke as we see space used.

All this now links back to the issue of phone theft and the inactions of Ofcom. If stolen bandwidth and phone time is all there is, than you are gravely mistaken, these smartphones are not just a connection, they are a link to your diary, your details, your credit, your access and your future. Soon, we will see that organised crime will not just call their mommy in Samarkand, Zhengzou, Davao or Vung Tao. Soon they will transfer your data and access and see what else is under the hood. That is the added danger of the smartphone, because you had one more mail to read, one more file to see or one more connection to make, all that in applications that were never closed and accessed be merely starting the application. You see, what we ‘need’ to have, came first, and we all seem to forget the consequences of such choices. Ofcom cannot be held responsible for this, but they should have set up several parameters a long time ago, as they remained inactive in the phone charges issue, they also did little to nothing into changing certain parameters in connection monitoring and non-repudiation, all that left to whomever else, that is the danger we will face in 2015 and 2016. Unless there is a drastic event that shakes up the media, there is every indication that nothing will be done until it is too late.

History taught us that there is nothing as effective as taking away someone’s cushy job to make the next person consider showing their teeth from day one, but that might just be my imagination.

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Tagged as Android, Apple, Davao, Ed Miliband, Ed Vaizey, google, Huawei, IOS, iPhone, James Cameron, Jellybean, Kitkat, Labour, Maria Miller, Nexus, Nigel Farage, ofcom, ofcom.org.uk, Optus, Piper Alderman, Samarkand, Samsung S6, UKIP, Vodafail, Vodafone, Vodafone Hutchison Group, Vung Tao, Zhengzou

January 29, 2015 · 21:21

Whinging from a desperate left

This is how I felt when both ‘We must stop Angela Merkel’s bullying – or let the forces of austerity win‘ by Owen Jones (at http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/jan/28/syriza-merkel-economic-greece-europe) and ‘Bank of England governor attacks eurozone austerity‘ by Larry Elliott (at http://www.theguardian.com/business/2015/jan/28/bank-england-governor-attacks-eurozone-austerity) passed in front of me. It is a unique issue, the political left in league with the banks. It is likely to be a first. The left want the image of cost of living relief, which is a ludicrous fantasy to begin with and that fantasy seems to be all about getting to spend money. We have a similar ‘BS’ joke like this in Australia. That person is called Bill Shorten. You see, as I see it, the banks want ease so that this generation can get a few more millions in commissions before it all collapses.

Let’s take a look at the youthful Mr Oxford (Owen Jones). It starts with the opening premise: ‘Angela Merkel is the most monstrous western European leader of this generation‘. No, she is not! Let’s take a look at the past. Around 2009 Merkel stated that enough is enough. She introduced austerity measures and she sliced back on German spending by a lot. The German people were in pain, they all were. The consequence was that the debt had gone down by a lot, so when harder times came, Germany had shed some of its debt and as such, lower costs on interests and therefor the pain that followed in 2011 and 2012 was suddenly not as painful for the Germans at large. I remember seeing the news. The Dutch did not adhere to such notions, they were all in the mindset like ‘it will get better next year’, at that time the Dutch Finance minister was Wouter Bos. It would not be so good. To be honest, the pain the Dutch felt would not have been that extreme if they had tightened the belt from 2009 onwards as well, but they were all adhering to their ‘good news cycle’, whomever came next had to clean up the mess. It was not just the Dutch, the French, the Italian, the Spanish, as well as the United Kingdom, they all went overboard in spending trillions.

So when I read the deluded word by Owen Jones, it just makes me a little sad. the quote “The Greeks have rebelled against machine men – and women – and they are crying out for others to follow“, that sounds nice as an epitaph for Don Quixote as he marches against the next windmill (possibly a Dutch one), but the Greeks created their own mess. Their inadequacy to deal with corruption, tax collection and a host of other issues got THEMSELVES into the mess they have. Would it not be nice to clearly state that?

Then Own comes with “As Krugman notes, the troika – the IMF, European Central Bank and European commission – promoted “an economic fantasy”, for which the Greeks have paid. They projected that unemployment would peak at 15% in 2012, but it hurtled to over 25% instead“, which is a part I do agree with. There was an economic fantasy, because the austerity measures needed where on lethal levels which cannot be denied, how do the Greeks react? With a series of strikes and vandalism events which only got them into deeper water. A watery grave the Greeks had created for themselves. They now have a debt of well over 325 billion for a population of 11 million, so how wealthy are those 11 million Greeks? If not, where did that money go? The fact that Greek bonds are now at 9.85% should be an indication that Greece is now almost denied existence, it for the most, only has itself to blame, since 2009, how many Greeks actually went to court and to prison for what was done? Of the 2069 Greek accounts in Switzerland (as mentioned in a Greek magazine), who besides the journalist has appeared in court? It seems that making Germany the scapegoat for something the Greeks did themselves is absent of loads of logic.

Then we get another quote that is up for discussion: “Germany ploughed money into countries such as Greece and Spain – that’s the “magic” of deregulated markets – and in doing so “lent more than they could afford”. German banks and their political champions should have known this would end in disaster“, I disagree. Greece was given an option, but was also informed of the intense pressures that this causes. What did they do? Whinge and whine like faulty politicians with the spinal cord of a paperback, not a hardcover amongst them! Instead of going after tax dodgers and those who had made bad calls, to see what they could get back, they went into states of denial, like flaccid applications to a concrete wall, not a scratch was made and when the time was up, they again, whined for more cash, an idea given to them by Charles Dickens in his story Oliver Twist. Then suddenly miraculously, the crisis was over and suddenly they went back to the bond market for more. None of those events are in this article.

Last we get “The future of millions of Europeans – Greek, French, Spanish and British alike – will be bleak indeed. That is why a movement to defend the already ruined nation of Greece is so important. Defeated Germany benefited from debt relief in 1953, and we must demand that for Greece today“, how about the clarity that debt relief came and Greece did nothing, and now, they are whinging and whining (again) for more cash, less debt (through forgiving current debts). However, nobody is making any headway in aligning the justice system and the law to take care of those evading taxation. It will not be anywhere near enough, but it will be a clear signal that Greece is serious about taking a stance for resolving debt and fortifying its annual income. Oh and when the debt is forgiven? Who pays for that money not coming in? The IMF or divide the debt over all the EU nations, who are all beyond their maximum borrowing points? Perhaps option 2? Let the ‘Grexit’ commence and let’s see how the Drachma will leave the Greek people in a state so much worse. At that point the people will dream of those good old austerity times.

Let’s face it, it is not fair to the Greek people, not one bit, but I have seen enough BS in regards to blaming the Germans for what some Greeks did to Greece. If we look at 2013, the quote “The state collected less than half of the revenues it was due to receive last year as it appeared unable to ensure that taxes and fines found their way to its coffers, according to a State Audit Council report submitted in Parliament on Tuesday by its president, Ioannis Karavokyris“, this was an article from November 2013, almost 4 years after the mess they themselves created. (at http://www.ekathimerini.com/4dcgi/_w_articles_wsite2_1_05/11/2013_526451), so as the Greeks drop the ball over and over again, who do they have to blame but themselves? So as I take my leave from Owen Jones, we look at the second Mr Oxford in this equation. With Owen I am willing to concede that he has his ideological heart in the right place, with Mr Smiley Smiley Canadian Mark Carney, former Governor of the Bank of Canada and the current Governor of the Bank of England, the gloves come off. So let’s introduce Marky Mark to the business end of a two by four in the shape of a keyboard!

It starts quite lovely, immediate of the bat with “Mark Carney says eurozone is caught in a debt trap and should ease hardline budget cuts just days after the Syriza election directly challenged policy“, just under the title. Why should we ease up? If we ease up after an election, the Greeks can forgo debt by having 12 elections over the next three years. It is the cost of doing business and as such, the Greeks themselves have not shown one iota of intent from 2009 onward (the lack of artful tax dodge prosecution could be regarded as evidence piece number one).

The second whopping ‘miss-statement’ might be seen in “Speaking in Dublin, Carney said the eurozone needed to ease its hardline budgetary policies and make rapid progress towards a fiscal union that would transfer resources from rich to poor countries“, when we see parts like ‘transfer resources from rich to poor countries‘, in my view (and in the view of some others), it reads like ‘as big business transfers corporate structures towards economic ailing areas. This was achieved through a subsidy structure that gave way to spreading business opportunity to less fortunate areas’. It also translates in the non-written text part of that statement as less tax liable options for big business, already far beyond normal wealth, move towards areas where labour laws are even less protective, optimising profits for big business.

So when he states as a bank governor the following “Carney made it clear that he thought the failure to complete the process of integration coupled with over-restrictive fiscal policies risked driving the 18-nation single currency area deeper into a debt trap“, which is not untrue, yet the part as a banker, that he does not mention is that he and his buddies profit greatly from spending sprees, if governments suddenly get a hold of their budgets, banks lose out a lot. This can be seen in the simplest way when we consider the Greek bonds. When that market opened up again (which should never have been allowed), the Greeks did not just add to their debt, someone in the banking world ended up with a 65 million euro bonus (in total) for selling these bonds, I am certain that the ‘wealth’ was spread around a little, but some of these financial people just cannot make ends meet on 350K a year, supporting a wife, kids, a Ferrari, a Ducati and two mistresses. You need that bond bonus to feel secure in your way of life as I see it. I wonder if the easing up has anything to do with meetings that places like Loomis Sayles ‘might’ have had with Natixis, perhaps Mr Carney attended a social event in such settings?

I agree with the premise we read in the quote “Since the financial crisis all major advanced economies have been in a debt trap where low growth deepens the burden of debt, prompting the private sector to cut spending further. Persistent economic weakness damages the extent to which economies can recover. Skills and capital atrophy“, I agree with that premise, yet this was a given already in 2011. I foresaw these events in 2012 and I read as bankers all over the place were hosting to ‘bright weather forecasting‘ whilst not taking the cautious steps that should have been taken. We can either state that politicians were too stupid to consider the dangers, or they were happy to leave the mess to those who followed (like Labour left hundreds of billions in debts to the Liberals in Australia), after that we see banks and the media in cycles of ‘bad news management’ slowly lowering expectation and forecasts, whilst the money had already been spend. So, yes Mr Carney, you state a good quote, it is just incredibly incomplete!

So, when we read “Carney has been vocal in his support for the European Central Bank’s decision to start buying government and commercial debt in its own version of the quantitative easing programmes, but said the Frankfurt-based central bank was unable alone to eliminate the threat of a prolonged stagnation“, we see nothing wrong. It is to the smallest degree commendable, only to the smallest degree, because several governments had entered a state of overspending, followed by ‘bad news management’ an intertwined cycle that would undo whatever headway quantitative easing would bring. The need for greed will always win in the end, so those programs are just a fantasy, Greece has some evidence of that part too, as they were part in both sides of that game. Isn’t it nice when the bank plays player one, player two and acts as the bank in the middle. That part truly sucks if you are player three and four in a game of monopoly. If we see Germany as player 3, than who is player 4?

I’ll let you do the math there!

You see, the actual solution would have been to take a stronger position on IP rules and regulations. An approach to ease the path for the small innovator of newly designed products. As several IP sides were all about setting goals towards ‘business’ (read big business), they forgot that when we look at the period between the 50’s and the 70’s, innovation came from the small inventors. Nearly every economy starts stepwise from small players and small innovators. Today, the players are so focussed on the large amounts, they tend to focus on large players like Apple and Microsoft and they forget that these companies, for a larger part live of the premise of the Vulture cycle, you pick the carcass until the hunter shoots a new prey, then they wait until it is feeding time. Small innovators (like Markus Persson with Minecraft) have the actual idea, which a large company then buys for 2 billion plus. As small innovators are given space to proceed and as larger players are denied blocking patents to force amalgamation of the true visionary into their moulding process that is the moment when economies will truly move forward. That is how you get forward momentum!

So when we see the final quote by Mark Carney “Carney said the eurozone’s unemployment rate of 11.5% was more than double that of the UK, but its fiscal deficit – the gap between tax revenues and spending – was only half the size of the UK’s. The eurozone, he said, should be using a “constructive” fiscal policy to support demand and mitigate the “tail risks of stagnation”“, we should wonder who he is catering to. As I saw it, the article was all about policies that are interesting for the boards of directors of the corporations, but the people will only be allowed the conceptual benefit on the tale end. Benefits that might have been a realistic form of support for treasuries all over Europe if they had done something actual to properly set up tax policies. Catering to big business stopped being constructive or lucrative for governments for half a decade now, how much longer will you take until you figure out that big business only caters to their own board of directors?

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Tagged as Angela Merkel, Apple, austerity measures, Australia, Bank of England, Bill shorten, Charles Dickens, debt relief, Don Quixote, Dutch, ekathimerini.com, European Central Bank, European Central Bank and European commission, France, Germany, Governor of the Bank of Canada, Governor of the Bank of England, Greece, IMF, Ioannis Karavokyris, Italia, Krugman, Larry Elliott, Loomis Sayles, Mark Carney, Microsoft, Natixis, Netherlands, Oliver Twist, Owen Jones, Oxford University, Spain, Switzerland, SYRIZA, the Guardian, Wouter Bos

January 26, 2015 · 23:54

Double standards, no resolve (part 2)

Part two is not about Greece or the Greeks, it is about what has been behind several parts for a long time now. Yet, the visibility of certain events is now forcing another large change to the surface. First let us look at the events as we see them in the Guardian (at http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2015/jan/25/wikileaks-google-staff-emails-us-government).

The title ‘WikiLeaks demands answers after Google hands staff emails to US government‘ calls for a few thoughts, but I think you should consider a few quotes and then reconsider how you feel. The first one is “Google revealed to WikiLeaks on Christmas Eve – a traditionally quiet news period – that it had responded to a Justice Department order to hand over a catch-all dragnet of digital data including all emails and IP addresses relating to the three staffers“. The second one is “Harrison, who also heads the Courage Foundation, told the Guardian she was distressed by the thought of government officials gaining access to her private emails” and then we get “The investigation followed WikiLeaks’ publication, initially in participation with international news organisations including the Guardian, of hundreds of thousands of US secrets that had been passed to the organisation by the army private Chelsea Manning“. So this was specific! Let us not forget that this person (Manning) should be regarded as guilty of treason! This is nothing less than an intelligence analyst going beyond rogue! Manning was a simple E-1 private with no comprehension of the complexity of wars, especially the war the US found itself in, a theatre that is hard to grasp for some of the brightest generals (you know these highly educated, passed their middle age point individuals with a few decades of military experience, in the US seen wearing stars on their shoulders). No, Manning decided on the safety of hundreds if not thousands of lives. In addition US diplomatic efforts were thrown out of the window, setting economic options back for up to a decade, if not longer.

So when we see the response by investigative editor Sarah Harrison “Knowing that the FBI read the words I wrote to console my mother over a death in the family makes me feel sick“, seems a little hollow. For one the FBI does not care about her mommy, two, what did you expect to happen when you access unauthorised data to the size, scope and extent as Manning had transmitted?

I think Harrison is overreacting, if we accept chapter 13 in the Art of war, both the spy and the receiver of information should have been put to death. Is it not a good thing that it was merely investigated by the FBI?

Yet, there is a side that many are ignoring; many do so in an unintentional way, mainly because it tends to not hit us in any way. For that we need to take a step back to Forbes 2013 (at http://www.forbes.com/sites/robertwood/2013/08/06/excuse-me-apple-google-starbucks-h-p-irs-wants-to-tax-stateless-income/), here we see the following parts: “U.S. companies are said to have more than $1.5 trillion sitting offshore. Most claim that they must keep the money there to avoid the taxes they would face by bringing it back to the U.S.“, “the money at stake is enormous. Plus, the companies involved have treasure troves of cash for many war chests. Big and protracted battles seem inevitable. Still, some big companies may be in for battles that are even larger than they think. They may even need to think different” and “The OECD plan claims that companies like Apple and Google avoid billions in taxes. The G20 is made up of 19 leading world economies plus the European Union. It too has voiced support for a fundamental reassessment of the rules on taxing multinationals“. These thoughts all sound nice, but there is an additional element to all this. You see, as I stated more than once, currency is slowly on the way out (loosely approached). The nations that are left with manageable debt are now slowly but surely diminishing to zero. Greece may be the first one, but at minus 18 trillion, the US is the clearest one to end up with nothing, especially as those large US firms have become stateless. You see, now we get to the good part, the new currency will be IP, but here is the kicker, most (including me) seemed to forget that IP is more than Patents and Trade Marks, it includes data! Now we get to the nice stuff, you see, Google adhered to a situation, Twitter and a few others did not, or at least in a delayed way, but the new currency will include massive amounts of data and many players are now catching on that data is at the core a stateless, virtual and duplicable currency. No matter how Sony called its hack attack, does it now look a little clearer that those having a copy of that data are preparing for more than just a data dump? This is what McKinsey & Company had to say in August 2014 “Indeed, the analytics performed by actuaries are critically important to an insurer’s continued existence and profitability“, as well as “While the impetus to invest in analytics has never been greater for insurance companies, the challenges of capturing business value should not be underestimated. Technology, as everyone knows, changes much faster than people. The key for insurers is to motivate their highly skilled experts to adopt the newest tools and use them with creativity, confidence, and consistency” and finally there is “The proliferation of third-party data sources is reducing insurers’ dependence on internal data. Digital “data exhaust” from social media and multimedia, smartphones, computers, and other consumer and industrial devices—used within privacy guidelines and assuring anonymity—has become a rich source for behavioural insights for insurance companies, as it has for virtually all businesses. Recently, the release of previously unavailable or inaccessible public-sector data has greatly expanded potential sources of third-party data“. Yes, it sounds nice that there is public-sector data, but the one part no mentioned is how the analytics is not driven by those, but ascertained through private-sector data fields. You see the data that Sony had on its employees and on the actions of 70 million customers is a lot more insightful when you link it to medical records. Consider how much profit a company gets if it could ascertain more precisely the risk 7 million of its own customers are. If the connection of medical (obesity) and the gamer data of one person results in a $12 per month surcharge, what happens when we see the US having an obesity rating of around 32%? Now we have 70 million accounts and their gaming behaviour. So if we do the following math 32% of 70 million (falsely assuming that they were all American gamers), then we now get the number of people confronted with a $144 a year additive. So in one swoop, this data set gives way to an additional $3.2 billion for insurance fees. Data is going to be that simply applied sooner than you think. With the cloud being forever virtual (as one would think), people forget that a personal space is linked to a real location (wherever that drive is), but what when the data set is beyond massively huge? What if it is spread over several locations? How do we think then? You see Stateless data is not a new concept, but until recently it was never a realistic concept. It is interesting how tax dodging makes engineers a lot more creative.

At the foundation of all this is not the Wikileaks part, that part just illuminates the nutty side of data. Consider the amounts you as the reader had shared in the last 72 hours via Facebook, LinkedIn, SnapChat, Instagram and such. You freely distributed that, you gave up your privacy rights for whatever you openly published. Now consider that whatever you shared got collected. Several people were on vacation (so someone knows that their house is empty and possible unguarded), some revealed that they were sick (health data) and some revealed other details like parties attended and such.

Now the empty house is the most direct one, but not the most important one. Consider the times you updated your status that you were at home with the flu, or something else. Under normal conditions you just had a sickie, or perhaps another way. Now consider that someone now automatically collects the times you were sick, how does that affect your premium? How will your health cycle be analysed if you are shown to have attended 15-30, or even 50-100 parties a year? How long until this shows as detrimental on your health chart? Weirdly enough not having that does not lower your premium, but there is every evidence that doing it will increase your premium.

Do you think that this is over the top?

Then see the following (at http://www.qbe.com.au/Personal/Home/Managing-Your-Risk/Insurance.html). Here we see “Importantly, reducing the likelihood of making a claim helps protect your No Claim Bonus, helping to keep the cost of your insurance premium down“, which has been a truth for a long time. Yet when we consider the mention ‘Don’t alert people you are going away (including on social networking sites)‘. How long until someone combines the two? At reputation.com we see the following “Life insurance companies are increasingly turning to the Internet to determine a potential customer’s risk“, so if you like extreme sports, you might pay for that passion in other ways too. In addition, the one most disturbing was “Donating to charitable causes is a noble gesture, but if you show too great an interest in any particular medical-focused cause, say breast cancer research or prostate cancer awareness, it might indicate to insurance companies that you’re at a higher risk for certain illnesses“, that gives a possible (implied, but not proven), connection that your social responsibility comes at an insurance price. Did you consider that? And this is not starting this year, or next year. Some of these events started no later than 2010.

This all was nothing but to pave the way for that what comes next. You see, there are several sides to Google and Facebook. They are all about bandwidth and several nations are now seeing that even though Facebook is too large, there is a clear path that data is currency, so how long until we see a growth of radicalisation through localisation? This is not radicalisation in the violent way, but in the opposite way. You should see radicalisation of data, attained by washing all the data markers in local server environments. You can’t wash all the markers, but you can make access to it a lot less available. This is the fear Google (possibly Facebook too) has had for some time. As these privacy acts, that data acts and data collection rights of the US grew in a need for compliance, people become falsely fearful of what is dangerous and what is not. The US government ascertaining whether you are a terrorist is not a danger. An insurance company upping your fees by $150 through collected data is a direct danger (to your cost of living). Now we see the link as it gets us to the first story that included Greece.

There will soon be a higher need for localised connected providers. Localised forms of Hushmail (www.hushmail.com), where the people get encrypted mail accounts that can be accessed online, through the web. How long until mobile users will select encrypted android apps, that do not connect to Google, but to local Hushmail providers. We still have the internet, but it will now go through national portals. The fact that Sony happened was only a matter of time. The fact that people now want that there data comes with actual privacy is a growing wave. The Wikileaks issue was the most visible and the most harmless one (for us citizens at least). The world is changing a lot faster than last year and many are now getting clued in that the things of value have not been guarded in the right way.

We will soon see new options on cheaper internet, cheaper mobiles and on package deals, this is what was skated around when this so called IP hearing was going on. Yet, when we look at an earlier statement by Mr Turnbull, in regards to IP, who said at the time. “It is very, very, very difficult if not impossible for someone that is just selling connectivity, just providing bandwidth to then be monitoring what people are doing“.

This is at the heart of the problem, they live of bandwidth, because bandwidth implies data, and the more used, the more data collected, which leads to the better their lives are. This is why they do not want monitoring. I am fairly certain that as their bandwidth falls away, as people move to localised solutions, which remain at the core local, these providers will ‘suddenly’ opt in a ‘possible’ solution. Only at the end of the tether will an industrial give in. Oddly enough, with fear of privacy and the dangers of insurance exploitation on the rise that tether will end up a sudden two inches shorter and now those providers will have to share that what they never had to share before.

Greece has changed the way they play the game; now perhaps we can change the game that is played and make a first monumental change for all!

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Tagged as analytics, Apple, Art of war, Chelsea Manning, Facebook, FBI, Forbes, G20, google, Hushmail, Instagram, insurance companies, insurance costs, LinkedIn, McKinsey & Company, Mr Turnbull, OECD, Sarah Harrison, SnapChat, Sony, stateless tax, the Guardian, WikiLeaks

January 26, 2015 · 21:19

Double standards, no resolve (part 1)

This is at the heart of two matters that are at play. The mere notion that change will do anything definite is just a laughing matter. Yet, it is not laughter at the people trying to do this; it is about the next two cogs of grinding that will halt it all. The first issue is Greece. There had been little doubt on Alexis Tsipras winning this, I was holding my breath in favour of Antonis Samaras winning, but it was never overly realistic. The problem is what will happen now. The direct issue is that none have been able to deal with Greek corruption in any way, shape or form. The fact that Kostas Vaxevanis and not those dodging Greek taxation ended up in a courtroom in 2013 is still additional cause for concern. Can we agree that as Greece has not been able to do ANYTHING about the mounting debts from 2009 onwards, a massive change must be made! It goes hand in hand with the quote we see in the Guardian “Priti Patel, Conservative MP in Westminster, just told Sky News that Greece’s economic problems are “a stark reminder that we should never join the euro”“, I will take it one step further, if Alexis Tsipras is not massively careful on what he does next, the downward curve (curve, not spiral) of the Euro will only fuel both British UKIP and French Front Nationale even further, it could also force the German people to feel pressure to leave the Euro in a failing attempt to bolster their diminished fortunes. It is a failing notion because no matter what happens next, those under the Euro will take a hard hit over the next 2 weeks, whatever bolstering will happen, it will only aid the super wealthy and only short term as they recap their non-tied down wealth as I personally see it.

The biggest issue remains corruption and tax evasion in Greece, no matter who comes next, without dealing with those two elements is simply selling a fairy tail (pun intended) to the Greek voters. This is at the heart of Zoe Williams piece that I disagree with (at http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/jan/25/syriza-uk-left-labour), the title is already a bit of an issue for me ‘Syriza stood up to the money men – the UK left must do the same‘, which money men are you referring to Zoe? The artful tax dodgers, who are partly to blame for the entire mess, yet no one has the cajones (or any jurisprudential power) to actually prosecute? Or are they the people holding the debts? Let’s not forget that governments got ‘assistance’ under the strict rule of austerity, a promise never kept, because none of these politicians will do anything about them Greek artful tax dodgers.

There is also another side, the fact that less than 2100 Greeks have this much money in unpaid tax debts seems simply ludicrous to me (the Kostas Vaxevanis list of 2100 naughty Greeks), so I wonder how much spending should have been cut for over half a decade, so again we get to Alexis Tsipras, who would need to cut massive spending, for the mere reason that there is no money coming into the coffers. Yet, within the article Zoe wrote, there is a gem, it is out there in the open and it has been there for a long time: “Ukip is often saying something similar to the Greens: business interests aren’t everything. That’s a reality that the majority feels, but that you never hear described; that’s how the Greens overtook the Liberal Democrats, while all eyes were on Ukip“, when we see ‘business interests aren’t everything‘ we need to realise that this is not just corporate greed, it is a majority of corporate greed signs that have been rampant on a global scale. The issue of a 15% board of director’s wealth growth in a 2% margin world; how was that ever a sustainable situation? It is also the deadly option Alexis Tsipras might opt for. As Greece becomes a possible tax shelter ‘for a fee’, to allow for closed bank account details under limited donation of revenue (all for the people approach) where we see the next waves. Global corporations will love the coming step (if it happens), a non-accountable 0.3% tax account, each coming with its own island. It will anger the American IRS (and State Department) to no extent, it will drive the IMF into entirely new problems and the rest of Europe will see a shift of fund flows. This is all assumption (read speculation) on my side, but it could work for Greece, for a very short time. I reckon that this step, if taken, might have one massive obstacle, that would be assuring that another Kostas Vaxevanis list never surfaces, so when you see any announcement on the new Apple iOlympian or the new Google Nexus ‘Theíos’, then you know that Greece will be embracing new tax free shores. The question now is not, what is the solution, but what options are actually open?

We can accept the statement from Professor Christopher Pissarides from the London School of Economics “Greece’s debt pile is simply too high for the country to return to growth and services its borrowing”, in addition, we can accept the words of Yanis Varoufakis MP “Grexit is not on the cards, we will not go to Brussels in a spirit of confrontation. There is plenty of room for mutual benefit”, this all sounds fine, but if no one is actually actively dealing with the list of 2100 of Kostas Vaxevanis you tend to not have that many options, which means you need a decently strict austerity regime, the one issue that got them elected by disposing of.

What is the option of change?

Well, with my law education, I do have another path for Greece, yet, it is an uneven path, but it could be a long term salvation if it works. Now, feel free to object to the notion and if you are a law professional, than those remarks will be met with my personal investigation. So here is the premise!

Issue: The levels of corruption within Greece are beyond several layers of acceptability. We all acknowledge, that any nation will have a level of corruption, however, what can be done to stem the tide in a novel way.

Solution: As the current legal system is in such disarray, the mess will evolve from bad to worse. We might state that it had gone from worse to unsustainable, so what if we change the premise altogether? What if the new Greece will implement a new legal system from a common law system? Instead of making their civil law more draconian, with of course the added danger of more loop holes, what if Greece evolved into a Common Law nation? It will still be based upon Greek constitution and Greek values, but will come with a few centuries of English jurisprudential evolution. The benefit is that it does not need to happen overnight, but can be structured to deal with the tax laws and criminal law (corruption, fraud and such) first. You see, if there is no faith in the Greek courts, would it not make sense to evolve the justice system (this is a choice of words; this does not indicate that a civil law system is less evolved than a common law system).

It seems that the evolving flexibility of common law is exactly what Greece needs, no matter how good the law is regarded now in Greece; it has failed a nation and its people. This is at the unspoken heart of several issues. There is ample concern on such changes too; the big issue is that no matter how the Greeks feel at present, there is enough concern that Alexis Tsipras is not the new hope, he will be their last hope, because if no solution grows now, Greece will be finished, that much is clear. The reported word from several nations, in many publications is all about reforms. Greek journalist Nick Malkoutzis from the Kathimerini English Edition stated today “Syriza’s top priority should be to reform the justice system, the civil service and the tax-collection operations, to show Eurozone allies he is serious”. He is one of many voices stating issues in this direction. Yet, reforming a justice system is also wrought with the dangers they get when new legislation is passed. It sounds good in theory, but such reforms tend to be time consuming ones and that is one element Greece no longer has. It has been sustaining on borrowed time too long and those holding the debt papers are out of patience (loss of profit will do that to these people). So will common law be good or bad for Greece? I personally do not know, but the current system is not working and so far, the failed system has not been overhauled or tested since the 2009 collapse, which makes the issue more pressing, so as Alexis Tsipras claims it is turning a page, will it be for better or for a lot worse for Greece and for the Greek people. Only time will tell.

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Tagged as Alexis Tsipras, Antonis Samaras, Apple, Civil Law, Common Law, Conservative MP Westminster, France, Front Nationale, google, Greece, Greek constitution, IMF, Kathimerini, Kostas Vaxevanis, London School of Economics, Nick Malkoutzis, Priti Patel, Professor Christopher Pissarides, SYRIZA, UK, UKIP, Yanis Varoufakis MP, Zoe Williams

December 6, 2014 · 20:43

Not just telling you so!

This article took a little time. There is so much not happening, it is almost scary. Yet, I found a few issues that gave way to the following topics from both the past and the upcoming present.

The Dutch Economy will recover slower according to the IMF (at http://nos.nl/artikel/2007483-imf-langzamer-herstel-economie-nederland.html). Here we see the following statement in regards to this: “Het IMF dacht in oktober nog dat de Nederlandse economie volgend jaar met 1,4 procent zou groeien, dat is nu iets naar beneden bijgesteld op 1,2 procent. Dit jaar wordt een groei verwacht van 0,8 procent. Dat is overigens iets meer dan de 0,6 procent die het IMF een jaar geleden verwachtte“. “Translated: The IMF expected the Dutch economy to grow next year with 1.4%, which is downgraded to 1.2%, this year the economy will grow with 0.8%, which is slightly better than the 0.6% expected a year ago“.

Yet, when we look at my blog dated May 15th 2013 ‘A noun of non-profit‘ (at https://lawlordtobe.com/2013/05/15/a-noun-of-non-profit/), we see the following: “The Dutch NOS reported the prediction that even though the Dutch economy will shrink another 0.5%, they do predict a growth of 1.1% next year, so basically, they expected the economy to grow 1.1%“, so that story about “this year the economy will grow with 0.8%, which is slightly better than the 0.6% expected a year ago“, seems to be retroactive rhetorical whimsy (a sort of economic BS using numbers, as I see it). When we see the predictions on how they were ‘so close’, it is in its most colourful form an example about a guy having unprotected sex and then cry out ‘but I almost did not get her pregnant!’, yes, pragmatically speaking he failed by a mere six inches (you the reader can connect the dots, can’t you?).

You see, this is not whether I am right or wrong (it is a nice side effect), I am postulating the issues of managing Bad News. We see this happen all over the world, even in the more respectable places like the Netherlands and the United Kingdom. There are cogs in the system, but between these cogs is one extra cog that is slightly variable in size. You see, if the cogs are consistent as a watch, then they are always at one speed. Yet economies do not run like that, so the spring that drives it is not consistent in strength and resilience, as such the cogs would be a little variable in displaying the economy, now here is the magic cog, it is placed between two cogs so that it can shrink or expand, so as the economy slows down, then so does that cog, which means it rotates faster and commercial times will move through with the same consistency, we do not get to notice the slowing. Yet, this approach is virtual, it is nice on paper, but in reality, the money is not coming in, so the people have to make due with less, but the economy shows growth, no matter how much we cannot afford food and the items for our creatures comfort.

I think that the IMF is aware of this to some extent. Euro nations have been optimising their presentations in a few ways. Mind you, then are not cooking the books, but at times as the situation is generic, there are all kinds of posts that could be included or excluded, the difference is billions allowing for an upgrade or downgrade by one or two tenths of a percentage point. That is at the heart of it, now we see this for almost a dozen nations and the colourful loom that is called the EEC economy is now a lot less white and its product shows a fabric in all the colours of the rainbow, which is what we face now. We get incorrect presentation which will require a lot more adjusting. Doubt me? Then consider the two quotes that I showed earlier from the IMF. In an economy of 770 billion (previous Dutch GDP), the offset comes down to 3.85 billion, that covers a lot of bills. Now that you see this, consider how inaccurate some need to be to base a budget on something that is off by almost 4 billion, which is 50% of the entire budget for defence. How can this not have been ‘predicted’ better? Well, here is the crux, prediction are never accurate (and 4 billion out of 770 billion is a mere drop), yet in the end, governments all over the world will always portray them to be in a better position, then downgrade that view, yet with billions at risk, that approach seems short-sighted to me. It is almost a forced attempt to spend where there is no money, which is how we all got to be in this predicament to begin with.

To illustrate it, I will grasp to the article and link of a story done by Greg Jericho, who does an excellent job of it. It is called ‘Why isn’t the government being held to account on the China free trade deal?‘ (at http://www.theguardian.com/business/grogonomics/2014/nov/20/why-isnt-the-government-being-held-to-account-on-the-china-free-trade-deal). I do not completely agree with his assessments, but overall the picture that is painted here is quite clear and not incorrect. The first quote in this regard it “The modelling, which was used in the feasibility study, estimates that had a free-trade agreement been signed in 2005 by 2015, our GDP would have been about $3bn more than it would have otherwise been. Is that much? Well it’s about 0.37% bigger. So no, it’s not much at all“. Yes, I have warned in previous articles how dangerous it is to compare statistics, what I had not mentioned at that time, which was not in play, is that changing the base of measurement is also a good way to ‘lie with statistics’, as the article points out. I had done an example in a class I have years ago on founding a hypothesis. In there I used a Dutch municipality data set. When I compared the two in one graph, it showed how the states that were adjacent to the river ‘the Maas’ had decreased in average population, in those years that river caused damage due to flooding in several towns. Yet, the municipalities are all over that state, so does it apply? How to prove it? That is an entirely different question.

Now, I have nothing against free trade, but when we consider the large corporations not paying tax at all due to artistic accounting, adding fuel to the fire to give these large firms even more options to avoid taxation is not a good thing. So that net revenue, how is that taxed, what is more important, once this agreement is in place, how long until Google, Apple and Amazon will change their parameters to include that setup to avoid paying more taxation. How does that help Australia or Australians in any way, shape or measure? When that graph changes, export slows down and imports of all measure go up, how will free trade benefit then? I am not stating that this will happen, I am just wondering what happens if it does.

The one statement by Greg I disagree with is the one at the end “A free-trade agreement is no more a guarantee of economic growth than not having one is“; I would state “A free-trade agreement gives a lot more danger to tax avoidance on several levels than not having one“. Google, Apple and several others proved that point for the last 4 years, at present there is little chance of seeing them pay any taxation for at least another three years, then there is the solar panel debacle, but the least said the better. The fact that there is a decent issue with well over 50% of the panels (out of 600-1000 manufacturers) should give an indication that this free trade agreement, does not necessarily mean that quality will improve, with free-trade in play, that list consisting of dozens upon dozens of articles will sharply rise. How to guarantee that quality? The article does not reflect on that (was not meant to do so), but that issue will be (better stated should be) on our minds too. There is however one side that we should consider. We forget how rich the Chinese culture is. I believe that China could become a serious player on the video games market. Some of these stories would translate into different genres of games on every console. I am not talking about South South East China (most people call it Taiwan), I am referring to Guangzhou, Shanghai and Beijing. One of the strongest cultures has not presented itself digitally in any strong way, which is a shame, because in the end, gamers care for good games, not where it was made.

Why the jump to games and gaming? Well, it is one of the markets I know a lot of. We might be on par with IT, engineering and other options, but gaming in China, original gaming in China is a relative unknown. We tend to look at Japan for that. Well, guess what, Nintendo has been rereleasing games for some time now (good games mind you), but they are slowly becoming an iteration of what was an original concept. It is not about the games (well, it is only to some extent), I believe that new innovation, new IP and new, truly mindboggling advances come from interaction. We need IP, advances and new opportunities, these come from fields we have not seen yet. If you doubt it, consider 1993, when a game named Doom entered into our lives. Most will not remember it, but it changed gaming in a massive way. I still believe that this game became the spark that would be the conception of what would become in 1998 the Unreal engine. That would change gaming forever, even today, 16 years later, many games are relying on the unreal engine, and some of the artwork created today through the Unreal engine is so amazingly sharp that it makes the result almost undistinguishable from reality. That is the foundation I believe we can see, another jolt in the advance of gaming. That is a development which will not just remain in gaming, as unreal developed, it developed a commercial need for 3D technologies and it even has military applications in more than one nation today. I believe that the multi-billion dollar games industry has the potential to drive a trillion dollar commercial need for innovation; we only need to find the right combination to make it work.

That’s just the opinion of one blogger, but I feel fairly certain it is a shared opinion.

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Tagged as Apple, Dutch Economy, economy, google, Greg Jericho, IMF, Netherlands, UK, United Kingdom

October 10, 2014 · 09:54

Billion dollar blame

Some do it quick, some do it with conviction, some take a life time and some don’t experience it at all. You might want to guess on what naughtiness I am talking about. It is simple negative profit in a firm. Some seem clear, some are to be expected and some are just plain ignorant.

We could rephrase them as the alphabet, like A is for Airline that’s lost in the queue; B is for banks, who lost more than a few. But then, that nursery rhyme would get boring real quick. The issue is not Tesco, not as we read in Bloomberg: ‘Bank of America Lost $2.7 Billion in a Maze of Accounting‘, it is simple overreaching. First the car industry, now the mobile industry is getting hammered. It would be fine to just blame Apple, who does have a stake in this, but in the end the true culprit is what I call ‘lack of vision‘.

Sony is downgrading its profits to far below zero. It is projecting a loss of 2,140,000,000 at the end of the current financial year. So we are talking about a loss so big, I personally believe is that those ‘idea-illogicals’ are still with their heads in the pre-recession era, they keep on believing that the old ways still work. Guess what! That time is gone, the financial institutions and banks changed that game forever.

The electronics empire initially forecast a $466 million net loss by the end of the current financial year, but has now informed investors that the projected loss has been revised to $2.14 billion. That is the budget for a small nation, so how is Sony still around? Well, that is not about that part of the equation, but it is an interesting question to consider for the future. The biggest issue is with their mobiles and we should wonder how they are currently surviving. I have nothing against Sony mobiles, I have had Nokia mobiles, I have Sony mobiles and mobiles from Ericsson and currently I use a Motorola. The entire mobile market is plummeting, Apple is doing fine, but overall they are likely to see a peaking of profits too.

Why?

Well, like those in the car industry, the people behind them are just not too clued in. They listen to ‘experts’, ‘analysts’ and from there they think that they comprehend their customers. They get market research, get 1000-2000 responses, weigh the hell out of the data and they consider that they have the knowledge.

Guess what, it does not work that way!

True investigation takes more, takes longer and takes actual preparation. Some half-baked set-up, which is quickly designed on Monday, live on Tuesday, data collected up to Thursday and reporting on Friday can work for some parts to get a general idea, but in the end, you will not get the ACTUAL wisdom you need. And guess what, it is not just Sony doing this; there are a few other larger players. Apple, Alcatel, BenQ, HTC, Motorola, Nokia, Samsung, Siemens and Sony Ericsson et all. All of them have several models; most of them are not that cheap.

To this I add two facts. The first one is the economy. It has been 10 years when the 2004 crash came, that hit many people, then the 2008 crash that turned a massive amount of people over the brink of poverty. In that decade the consumer lost close to 21% of purchasing powers. In that decade, the bulk of all people lost a job, or was retrenched at least once, was forced to live on a frozen income, whilst prices of food and housing kept rising and many are not dealing with their debt, so that part is also hanging round their necks as an anchor. The consumer markets ignored that part and now they see the fallout, a fallout that could have been clear to them for at least 3 years, so the writing is not just on the wall, it is a massive neon billboard that was ignored by those who should not have done this (at http://www.cnet.com/au/news/sony-forecasts-2-1-billion-loss-this-year-due-to-its-smartphone-business/)

There is additional ‘evidence’, which is seen here in the quote “The Company blamed the ‘competitive environment of the mobile business.’ Sony has been hammered by competition and an inability to find distributors in key markets such as the US“, I consider that to be a statement of falsehood. Why?

Well, that is always the real question. Consider the list I gave earlier. Siemens has lost a large share, Ericsson lost it as it united with Sony (the company in question), Alcatel was never the largest party in this and neither is Siemens. Huawei is relatively new and several smaller ones do not make the list any more (like NEC), so overall Sony should have consolidated its visibility, but it did not and neither did Nokia. Apple, Samsung and HTC grew, yet overall Sony should not have lost THAT amount, which means that there is more. I blame the over flooding and iterative consumer model as one reason, such a model cannot be sustained if you cannot grow the customer base and that part is currently diminishing and will keep on diminishing for another 2 years. We can no longer afford a new mobile or car every year, in all honesty, we never could, but that part is mainly the result from the pushed idea of ‘ego’ and peer pressure.

The second quote that gives the ‘frying pan’ and ‘the fire’ expression is: “While its Xperia Z3 flagship is making its way into the US through T-Mobile“, many consumers have had enough of being held over a barrel by telecom providers, the ‘new’ mobile is less and less an incentive to hold on to a solution, that side only works for business customers and they too are shopping in the margins. The final quote is “companies such as Google and Microsoft are laying out plans to broaden their reach into the emerging markets with more affordable smartphones“, that group is now targeting the ACTUAL consumers that are available. Huawei had an advantage there, but they are quickly losing that advantage as they emulate Samsung and HTC more and more.

You see, in this day and age, mobile makers have been pressing the ‘exclusivity’ option just a little too long and now the towers break down. You do not have to believe it, but not unlike the car industry, we do not need 7 models with 22 configurations. That image is created by advertisers, finding people telling you that ‘choice’ is all about ‘individuality’ whilst they try to sell that same package to millions; it is a fake concept as I see it. Yes, we want some choice, but the consumer driven industry took that way over the top. That same issue we have seen in mobiles for some time now and the bigger players, coming with half a dozen models are now finding that they are selling ‘hot’ cakes from a fridge in a place where there is no electricity. So why the ridiculous amounts of ‘add-ons’?

Apple avoided most of the issues by having one phone in 3-4 options, where memory was the choice. We do not need 8-12 models, having one phone, which does most, would suffice. Then we get the issue with price, smaller models cost some, or need a ‘contract’, in my eyes it is an interaction of pimping and harlotry for customers, but who is who is not clear to the consumer. Consider that many do not have $800 for a phone, yes we get options for cheaper, but many providers offer a lot less at that point, whilst a generic cheaper phone would be the solution to many, brands are ego pushing the more expensive models at any given opportunity. Although Huawei seemed to have nailed the market, they seem to slowly start making the same error the others are making. Consider that Huawei offered a 4G phone for less than half the price (unlocked and free of contract) than many other providers, so why would we pay twice the price?

Let’s not forget that many providers are no longer delivering a reliable mobile. If it has android than it is likely that the phone is forcing Google search down our throats, whilst forcing people to store all data on a Google account, so that they can copy the data. Apparently there is a way to switch that off, but the result is implied to be so disgustingly customer unfriendly, that we are starting to wonder whether criminal charges are in order. Now, my Motorola suddenly got ‘enhanced’ buttons at the bottom, where it seems that there is a software overlaid button that FORCES me to Google search. How was that MY choice?

So, in the age of data, the market will soon belong to the mobile maker that will respect the customer and BY DEFAULT, let the person choose what they want to do with their data, photos and other smart phone parts. This is all linked, because where confidence dwindles, people are less likely to choose a smart phone and more likely to go back to the old days of the Nokia 1100 (with silver LCD screen, offering voice and SMS only, oh and it avoided bank security for a little while).

It is my firm believe that if big boys like Sony, Nokia and others want to turn their market around, they will need to take time to ACTUALLY learn their customers’ needs and not force corporate choice as customer wishes down the throats of these consumers. For example, instead of 19 Nokia Lumia models make 4 with one extra landscape option. If you only need 5 models, you can simplify the process, down production costs, distribution complications and get a better return. It is just a crazy thought, but what do I know. I thought that the Lumia was gorgeous, but I am not paying $935 for a phone, not in this age of theft and pickpockets, especially as phone insurances are getting less and less affordable. Sony should consider that same idea. Do you think Apple was lazy? 2 phone models, each with three memory options, which means two models each with three memory chip options. NO! Apple foresaw the complicated BS that others face and as such they have more than a small corner in the market. This is odd as the main component for a phone is its battery and Sony has always had superior battery technology, so Sony should have been the number one choice, but alas, that is not the case, so why do we see a contender with a superior key part run a market at minus 2000 million? Beats me, but someone is clearly asleep at the wheel.

Of course, I admit that I am oversimplifying the entire issue, but am I so wrong? I do not think so. I will admit that I missed a few issues in this, but as Sony is at minus a lot and others have a dwindling market, I feel that I am onto something. I am also certain that people have had enough of data collection and these mobile players to use their consumers as off the books revenue piggy banks, the first one to change the wheel on that process might end up owning the market. For those who would ‘ignore’ that path, remember that no matter how ‘valuable’ that data seems to be, once the customers walk away, you end up without data and without people using your product. Sony has the option to bounce back, but that window of opportunity is small and quickly getting smaller as Google and Microsoft are tapping into their own worlds. Sony might have not have that many options left and they forgot the one lesson Miyamoto Musashi instilled upon them almost 450 years ago: “If you do not control the enemy, the enemy will control you”, they forgot this lesson as well as the fact that ego is as much an enemy as an actual opponent, especially as ego is not regarded as an enemy until it strikes after which it gets named Hinan!

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Tagged as Alcatel, Apple, BenQ, bloomberg, CNET, go rin no sho, google, HTC, Huawei, Microsoft, Miyamoto Musashi, Mobiles, Motorola, Nokia, Samsung, Siemens, Sony, Sony Ericsson, T-Mobile, Xperia Z3

September 11, 2014 · 22:28

Enabling cybercrime!

Yes, we are all in the unintentional habit to enable cybercrime. Yet what complications do we face when the one enabling it is not you, me or Joe Worker, but Microsoft or Apple? Where do we stand when we are confronted by companies, so driven by what I consider the useless drive of greed through Marketing, whilst ignoring the technical support department? Do not claim that it does not happen, because I have been witness to such events (though not personally at Microsoft or Apple).

It did not just start with the affair of the 101 nude celebrities, yet it is at the core of the visibility that it drives. It is not with the push by so many to get forced towards Google Search and Facebook Messenger, but that is definitely the debatable event pushing the worry, fear and quite honestly the total distrust of greed and marketability that is overtaking what some seem to laughingly refer to as ‘technological improvements‘.

In this age, we see a growing drive for ease and ‘comfort’, yet a lot seems to be enabling cybercrime and exploitation.

We got the ‘Fear Google‘ event and the expose with a non-dressed Jennifer Lawrence has been cancelled (at http://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/jennifer-lawrence-and-kate-upton-nude-photos-exhibition-cancelled-after-artist-finally-concedes-the-images-were-stolen-property-9723751.html).

Perhaps I am too much of a cynic, but the text “Though not, says the artist behind it, due to legal reasons. But instead because he’s had a moral change of heart“, how about the truth (as I consider it to be), ‘the pressure of Jennifer Lawrence has given my expose ALL the publications I needed‘. Seems to be more honest, also, the fact that her lawyer Lawrence Shire, especially if he is the Shire related to Grubman Shire, might have taken away whatever courage he thought he had to continue. I leave it up to the reader to form their own mind.

Yet this is not about that, but it could be.

Consider the following issue, which I witnessed myself today. The setting is simple. She uses her smartphone and for the most never ever uses Skype. Yet, she has a Skype account on her notebook. She needed Skype on her mobile, which was easy enough, yet after installing it, we have lost 4 hours and half a dozen attempts to reset her password.

Skype1

We enter Skype.
Password lost, which means another browser.
We enter mail details.
We use the received code to enter a new password
We go to Skype, yet the linked identity does not work.
We start again from step 2.

As you can see in the diagram, for some reason, the Skype name and the android Skype are not updated or linked. Even as a technologist it took me a while to see through this and Microsoft is not much help either. If we consider I had dozens of attempts without any repercussions, how long until someone starts trying to get into someone that actually matters?

The issue I showed two days ago (at http://thenextweb.com/apple/2014/09/01/this-could-be-the-apple-icloud-flaw-that-led-to-celebrity-photos-being-leaked/) gave some indications of what is going on. Now we see another level on Skype that calls certain matters into question, more important that the Skype android cannot get updated for some reason, so there is even more going on now, especially as the issues surrounding android Skype seem to have been around since 2012.

This is not the only issues that are out on the works; it seems that Microsoft OneDrive has similar issues of security. There we see that you cannot limit the one drive to be ONLY accessible by certain devices, with cyber-crime on the rise to this degree, we see another mass collecting point, where the people behind it seem to be dancing to the music of Marketing and the mere simplistic need of the matter, as a technologist would mention it is not there. It is likely the same kind of answer I heard in the past “We will get to that in the next edition” or “Let’s get this ‘solution to’ (read revenue from) the customer first“, solutions where the technologist is not at the centre of it all.

Only AFTER some got to admire the Jennifer Lawrence’s chest section do we now see the headline “Apple Says It Will Add New iCloud Security Measures After Celebrity Hack” (at http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/09/04/apple-says-it-will-add-new-security-measures-after-celebrity-hack/), so is this Marketing waking up, or was IT slamming their fist on the table? Either way, those pushing people and business alike to cloudy places of automatic public revelations should now seriously wake up and smell the intrusion on their networks.

Several of these solutions are still not completely up and running, and the ‘patch’ like solutions in place now, are likely no more than a temporary option, whilst the cyber-criminal goes on exploiting other venues of weaknesses. Let’s not forget that the 101 celebrities list sounds nice, but there are globally at least 399 more women who are beautiful beyond believe, and those not into that kind of information are likely interested in the files of Sir Iain Robert Lobban (GCHQ), Andrew Parker (MI5), John Sawers (MI6). Guess what! They are likely to have very secure solutions in their possession, yet can the same be said for Ewen Stevenson (CFO-RBS) or Simon Henry (CFO Lloyds Banking group)? These people all use solutions for presentations, memo’s and other items. In some cases they need connections to keep up and running. How long until we see the power of Cyber criminals as they influence the market? It just takes one unconfirmed message to make a shift in any direction. If people are scared of what a Lone Wolf can do by blowing up things, think of the damage of disclosed financial events bring. We have seen the smallest of restraint in the press in the case of Jennifer Lawrence (but only by using a super computer and exposing the deeds of the members of the press to the Lyapunov stability algorithm), but is that enough?

There is a growing sense of fear and massive distrust. We have seen it start with Facebook Messenger on the mobile, we have seen some people whisk it all away, yet not unlike the laughable Sony Troll, as they mentioned the ridiculousness of the changed terms of service from Sony, we have seen too much blatant abuse from the greed driven data collectors and now, as trust is gone, more people are starting to wonder why their own local governments aren’t truly looking into it and they fear the same flaccid indecisiveness from them when the Financial sector left a large group of the population (not just in America) in utter destitution.

It goes beyond mere ethics; it is an absolute absence of dedication towards consumer protection for the prospering board of directors, which is at the essential fearing heart of many, both wealthy and utterly non wealthy alike.

This all is getting now more and more visibility as we see the growing amount of people in their ‘right to be forgotten‘, yet as we see at the Guardian (at http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/sep/10/google-europe-explain-right-forgotten-eric-schmidt-article-29) we see the following quote “Google is currently conducting a grand tour of Europe, with the ten members of its Advisory Council touring seven cities to gather evidence on the developments in the so-called “right to be forgotten” ruling“, in addition we see “The one thing that everyone agrees about this case is that the label it has been given – the “right to be forgotten” – is a very poor descriptor. More accurately, it is about the right to obscure or suppress personal information“, so is that it, or is there more? Well we can consider the part where the absence of any legal obligation on Google to reveal its processes, which renders Google judge, jury, and executioner. So in combination that it is not about forgetting (read deleting), but about obscuring (read less easy to find) will leave an open field for those with better data comprehension. A market where Google is trying to cash in, so instead of everyone finding it, only those paying for certain levels will more easily acquire information. That is not what ‘right to be forgotten‘ was about. Now again we see the press, yet in this case they are not really placed in any blame, however there is a (sizeable) missing level of clarity on what EXACTLY is requested from more than one side, the un-clarity leads to uncertainty with that leading to nothing getting done. So what is in play?

We know that Google’s fortunes are also linked to data, which means that any additional ‘forget me now’ request is impacting the business of Google, not the one, or the 5, but consider every postcode in the world and 5-10 requests from each of those to be forgotten, now it becomes a massive task, requiring thousands of people, working thousands of hours, paid from the at that point medium slim lined coffers of Google, whilst at the same time having to hold onto those records for later reasons, likely including journalistically and/or juridical. So as we look at all these escalations, then Skype, OneDrive and iCloud are not just three identities, they become three entities of threat of the collected data of all, the privacy of them and whether forgotten or not, they are aware of where they kept their information, passwords and snapshots.

The view of technology every person needs to start comprehending, because they all forgot that ease and comfort come at a price, they just did not consider the currency that was linked to that price. Some of this can be seen in the Lifehacker who in February 2013 (at http://www.lifehacker.com.au/2013/02/why-cloud-services-are-so-easy-to-hack/) write “In most cloud environments, there’s no concept of intrusion detection or prevention, and if they are there people don’t know how to use them“, in itself not that amazing a quote, even though it is a year old and in one year many people tend to not educate themselves that much because of the declining comfort levels. Yet at the end he states a more powerful issue: “This week, I’m in London for Data Centre World, paying particular attention to how to maximise efficiency and lower costs in the data centre“, which is at the heart of my issue. Often these factors involve automation and scripting, which when it comes to issues like speed and the prominence of reduced cost tends to leave security in the backdrop. So if you had any reason to fear any of these solutions, then consider one issue “If all your cloud data became public knowledge at 23:00 and in the 8 hours following you had ZERO control“. Would you be worried? If not then sleep on and sweet dreams, if the answer is ‘Yes’, then you need to take some serious time and get educated on the risks and the consequences. I cannot answer the question for you, but when was the last time you actually had such a conversation with your IT person, or with the sales engineer of the sales person who sold you the cloud solution?

Data is currency, when it is open knowledge for all; you end up only having goodwill and an empty hard drive, which is valued at the price of the empty hard drive.

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Tagged as Andrew Parker, Apple, Ewen Stevenson, Fear Google, GCHQ, google, iCloud, Jennifer Lawrence, John Sawers, Lloyds, Lyapunov stability algorithm, MI5, MI6, Microsoft, OneDrive, RBS, right to be forgotten, Simon Henry, Sir Iain Robert Lobban, Skype, thenextweb.com, www.lifehacker.com.au

March 12, 2014 · 17:18

Who runs America?

This is a question that has been in the back of my mind for some time. When we consider the economic events from 2008 onwards and how slow (almost 2 administrations) it has taken for any economic legislation to take shape for the (at present) ineffective halting of moving tax dollars off shore. Even now, several economic boffins are slowly and casually mentioning that current measures are not going far enough.

The entire issue took a new foothold as we see the Ukrainian events unfold. We see how some politicians are acting so….outspokenly against certain acts. Now, I am not speaking out against these people, I believe in the freedom of speech and as such, we need to hear all sides. The issue was shown the most visible in the UK when some stated on how economic sanctions against Russia would be taken, like getting gas from a different source.

It was at that point when I saw just how hollow their boasts were. In my view those politicians would soon be dragged to a separate room where several high powered industrials would add these politicians to the Christian choir of ‘Mare Castratum’, see this as a slightly more efficient form of gagging a politician.

Why this view?

Consider that politicians would make that rash decision and also consider the fact that in the UK (amongst most EEC nations), the energy prices are way above normal. So in a place where like the US, 1 in 7 lives below the poverty line, where these people can hardly pay their bills, get confronted with a 10%-15% raise on energy bills. What do you expect to happen?

I expect something similar to happen in the US, as I see it there are two elements in play here. The first is the claim (at http://www.skynews.com.au/world/article.aspx?id=957624)

The two quotes are “The Senate on Tuesday expressed its support for Ukraine by passing strongly worded resolutions, using tough language against Russia and urging it be suspended from the Group of 8 world powers.” and “The House of Representatives also passed a resolution to condemn what House Speaker John Boehner called ‘Russia’s hostile acts of aggression’”

I understand the second quote and I reckon that House Speaker John Boehner was quite correct to pass such a resolution. It is the first one that is an issue, I understand that governments want to stand in support of the Ukraine, there is no way that any objection to that is valid, consider however what the G8 stands for. If we accept the following ‘G8 nations comprise 50.1% of 2012 global nominal GDP‘, then without Russia, will the G8 be a valid office of existence and what to do to keep its validity? Replace it with China?

That part would make sense as in many ways, the Chinese economy would be much more interesting to America then Russia is for the mere fact that China imports almost 3 times more than Russia does (based on 2012 numbers). Yet, if this happens, then what will be the long term consequences? Consider that the Ukraine is in an even less prosperous situation then most EEC countries. Now consider the information (at http://www.forbes.com/sites/kenrapoza/2014/03/05/in-ukraine-crisis-russias-natural-gas-tactics-could-backfire/), basically the Ukraine was getting gas at a 36% discount. If that fell away, then what will the Ukraine do? The quote seen here “The UK National Balancing Point (NBP) futures for natural gas jumped nearly 10% to $10.28 per MMBtu, according to Bloomberg. Prices have since moderated as the political situation appears to be calming down” gives validity to my claims of the energy prices; if futures would take that must a blast, then I reckon the people could face a charge at nearly twice that percentage. There was a side in all this that I had not reckoned on. When we see the quote “The U.S. wants to become a large LNG exporter later this decade and a portion of that would be bound for Europe” we see two dangers. The first is that this is not just government, but this is definitely a ‘Big Business’ push. Yet, consider the amount of customers could be the issue as the amount needed would far outstrip what could be delivered. That part is implied in the Dutch article (at https://decorrespondent.nl/299/eerst-het-gas-dan-de-moraal/32952491-c7e501ab) called ‘Eerst het gas, dan de moraal‘, which could be loosely translated and paraphrased as: “Business before morality“, which is basically at the heart of all these events. The article states that the Russian pipeline is supplying well over 26 million households, which is well over twice the size of California (in households). There should be no illusions that Gazprom has its powerful claws firmly in the EEC.

Let’s make sure that I am not stating that the politicians are acting purely or mostly out of economic reasons. I am to a lesser extent implying that it is possible that the Natural Gas lobbyists in Washington have been speaking with politicians over a lunch or two (which is how things are done in the US and UK). That latter part was discussed in the Guardian in October 2013, as UK Labour leader Ed Miliband mentioned that these lobby groups are not getting the proper levels of scrutiny (at http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2013/oct/07/energy-firm-lobbyists-scrutiny-ed-miliband). So it is IMHO Big Business that is the second danger element in these cases. If the politicians represent the people, yet big business has the funds, ability and know-how to override the views of the people, then what use are the people at the end of all this?

This all goes a few steps further than just the energy groups. I started all this with a mention of economic sanctions. So how does this connect? Well, it does not directly connect, yet the elements all have their political influence. Consider the needs of Apple in Russia (at http://appleinsider.com/articles/14/03/07/russias-megafon-deal-with-apple-inc-guarantees-sales-of-750k-iphones-over-3-years). This was less than a week ago. So we consider the value of a little over 20,000 iPhones a month for the next three years and we should expect that this sparks the sale of iPad and iPod and other Apple articles. Do you think that the members in charge of Apple are hindered by morality? They have parked billions in taxable dollars away from the collecting hands of the IRS (and other taxing governments). The commission these people get from their deals in Russia will not stop them in any way. Whether there will be some ‘illusive’ distributor in India, Japan or China will not matter, the show (read sale) will go on. The same could be said for Dell. You think that they stop selling to Russia and leave their market share to ASUS? I think not! These are just two examples of the dozens of massively large companies doing business with Russian one form or another, not just from the USA, but also from Europe. In that same regard, there is not export without import, so as we see the boasts of economic sanctions to Russia by politicians, remember that when we see that when Russians show off their latest Apple gadgets on TV, the question ‘who runs America?‘ should remain firmly on your mind. In the end you should also remember that the entire situation is a lot more complex then I make it out to be.

As we focus on ‘Business before Morality‘ then remember the bills most of you have in your drawer still awaiting payment. We are nearly all of us overdue to the smallest or a larger extent and as some are more fortunate not to be one of the seven people living below poverty, consider that most of us are in the same place where 45% of us are, most of these people are all a little below getting by, which comes down to one step from a total nightmare life.

I am not stating it is a good place or an acceptable place; it is merely a realistic place. It is in this realistic place the question gets the volume it needs to have: ‘Who runs America?‘

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Filed under Finance, Politics

Tagged as Apple, Appleinsider, Asus, Dell, Ed Miliband, EEC, Energy lobby, Forbes, G8, Gazprom, iPad, iPhone, iPod, John Boehner, Russia, Sky News, UK, UK National Balancing Point, US, US Senate

November 16, 2013 · 23:17

A changing console war

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

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

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

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

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

So what is going on?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Filed under Finance, Gaming, IT, Law, Media, Politics, Science

Tagged as Activision, Amazon, Angela Mitropoulos, Apple, Brendan Molloy, Don Mattrick, google, Microsoft, Philip Dorling, PlayStation 4, Sony, Suelette Dreyfus, Sydney Morning Herald, Telco, Tony Abbott, TPP, University of Melbourne, University of Sydney, Xbox One

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