Tag Archives: James Quincey

And there was more

You see three days ago (merely two days and change) I wrote ‘A story in two parts’ (at https://lawlordtobe.com/2025/01/17/a-story-in-two-parts/) where I laird bare a few of the ‘shortcomings’ of Microsoft. However there was more. I had initially chosen the title ‘The color is blue’ yet I decided that the premise is not about Azure, there is more to it all. You see Fierce Network gives us ‘Google Cloud could overtake Microsoft’s No. 2 cloud position this year’, which sounds nice. However there are a few issues with that. We will all love ““Google Cloud is already nearly equal to Microsoft Azure in revenues, and has a higher revenue growth rate than Microsoft Azure,” Gold wrote in a research note. “By the end of the next four years of revenue growth, we project Google Cloud’s revenues will be 55% greater than Azure at current growth rates.”” The research note gives the proper “Based on the Average of Past Two Years Revenue Growth Rate

Assuming Same Growth Rate Going Forward” so that is good, but it does not despair from “By the end of the next 4 years of revenue growth, we project Google Cloud’s revenues will be 55% greater than Azure at current growth rates.” Yet this setting does not account that someone at Microsoft ‘suddenly’ takes an innovative step towards (who knows), the second setting is that the technology premise stays where it is. Huawei with their HarmonyOS is another factor, the Chinese factor. In this I predict that they might use Microsoft down the line and might step away from Google (speculative). We have little insight in what places like the UAE does and they have a large investment in their approach to AI and in this Microsoft has the inner track there. So I love the premise, but I have thoughts of consideration on how the future unfolds. There is a chance that AWS will clear house, but there are reservations on that front too. 

Still, Azure has issues. You see the Register (at https://www.theregister.com/2025/01/13/azure_m365_outage/) gives us ‘Azure, Microsoft 365 MFA outage locks out users across regions’ with the added “Microsoft’s multi-factor authentication (MFA) for Azure and Microsoft 365 (M365) was offline for four hours during Monday’s busy start for European subscribers.” I understand that it comes with “It’s fixed, mostly, after Europeans had a manic Monday” now I wonder why we see the use of ‘mostly’ there are perhaps a few gaps in the solution and that happens, but how many of these events will Microsoft cater to until a user like Coca Cola gets a tap on the shoulder to start looking for alternatives? Do you think that a man like James Quincey keeps his sense of humor when his bottom line is under fire? And that is only the beginning.

Still Microsoft has its own ‘defense’ knee jerk operation, we are informed of that by Techi where we see (at https://www.techi.com/microsoft-files-suit-against-hundreds-abuse-azure-openai-services/) with the headline ‘Microsoft Files Suit Against Hundreds for Abuse of Azure OpenAI Services’, so not only is their OpenAI ‘flawed’, it is open to abuse (apparently). We are given “API Key Theft and Hacking-as-a-Service”where we see “As per Microsoft, the defendants systematically and through their deceitful acts stole API keys, the fundamental means of authentication to its AI services. The hacked accounts were allegedly pivotal in creating an act of “hacking-as-a-service” One main ingredient for that operation would be De3u, a software that enabled one to convert images synthesized by OpenAI’s DALL-E without the necessity of writing an actual code.” I kinda covered that on September 8th 2024 in ‘Poised to give critique’ (at https://lawlordtobe.com/2024/09/08/poised-to-deliver-critique/). Michael Bargury gave us a small example of how bad things can get.  Here the operational setting is given through “A former security architect demonstrates 15 different ways to break Copilot: “Microsoft is trying, but if we are honest here, we don’t know how to build secure AI applications”” and here is the premise now consider what (under Torts) customers will do, for example Coca Cola. Do you think they go after the so called hacker with not enough money to afford his/her own place or Microsoft with access to several bank vaults? Take the fortune 500 clients with claims of transgressions, do you really think there will be even a penny left in those Microsoft vaults when their legal teams are done with them? It might not be fair on Microsoft, but the setting of the use of the term AI opens up a whole new can of worms.

Then the Business Times (at https://www.businesstimes.com.sg/companies-markets/microsoft-openai-partnership-raises-antitrust-concerns-ftc-says) gives us ‘Microsoft-OpenAI partnership raises antitrust concerns, FTC says’ in this I might actually be a bit on the side of Microsoft. They give us “MICROSOFT’S US$13 billion investment in OpenAI raises concerns that the tech giant could extend its dominance in cloud computing into the nascent artificial intelligence (AI) market, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) said in a report released on Friday (Jan 17).” My issue here is that there is a setting we had in the past and in countries they created their version of the FTC. It was a power for good then, but there is now the setting that LLM’s and Deeper Machine Learning has grown to a scope that the FTC cannot really fathom. This IT solution goes beyond what they know or understand and all the tech companies face this. So either they grow their ‘programming with barricades’ side of it all, giving tech companies the flaws that the law imbued in whatever country it is based. And that for global companies will set a larger flawed premise. It is like parties are limited to what others have. As such all criminals will come to us with BB-guns, because that is what the police have. Does that sound realistic? I don’t think so. But this also falls straight into the premise that Fierce Networks gave us. It works out fine for Google, until Google gets barricaded I reckon. So this is a setting that the tech firms are set to whatever the wannabe’s can do, that is a direct strangling of commerce and innovation and it sets whomever develop the trigital computer system and if you think that these systems are fast now? The next level system develops with a trinary operating system running on that hardware will astound the world. As I see it should diminish the IBM Deep Blue to a simple calculator. The difference will be THAT much, so who will innovate that when the FTC strangles innovation?

And finally we get the CIO (at https://www.cio.com/article/3802745/microsoft-commits-to-ai-integration-but-delivers-no-particulars-to-differentiate-from-rivals.html) who gives us ‘Microsoft commits to AI integration, but delivers no particulars to differentiate from rivals’ and as I see it, it was already lagging too much against AWS, and now apparently Google is coming up fast and under these settings we get this headline? And the part that matters is given with “Analysts, however, agreed that the statement reflected no meaningful changes to Microsoft’s AI strategy. The bluntest assessment came from Ryan Brunet, a principal research director at the Info-Tech Research Group: “This is classic Microsoft. It’s very much the same old garbage.”” It reminded my towards an old premise from the late 80’s when the PC was exciting and new ‘Garbage in, Garbage out’ in the age when everyone considered themselves a Market Research executive and these wannabe’s had not even mastered the basic needs of data quality. It was a Gender versus Shoe size and they thought that the solution was add the Lambda test (I think it was Lambda). And I get it, Satya Nadella talks his own street side, the problem is that there are too many unknowns at present and he hopes to get all the others onboard before they have thoroughly selected their options and in light of the selected abuses, that setting is not a given, especially as Google seemingly doesn’t have these flaws (as far as I know neither does IBM or whatever AWS wields). 

A setting that was more and could set a lot of people in the liable column of choices. And some of this has been known for at least a quarter. When you add this with part one, you see why I predicted the downfall of Microsoft three years ago. And as I see it Microsoft walked to dotted line in a near perfect manner, too bad they never read the byline ‘this way to the crevice you will not avoid when getting too close’.

It is as some say ‘the way the cookie crumbles’. Darn still 4 hours until breakfast. Time to find a new story. Have a great Monday and if you cannot get into Azure today, feel free to investigate alternatives.

Leave a comment

Filed under Finance, IT, Law, Media, Science

Officials? Bitching!

I have a few ideas on advertisers, don’t get me wrong, I have nothing against people wanting to advertise, or sponsor, yet they should open their wallets and keep their mouths shut. So as such when I saw ‘Euro 2020: Uefa warns teams could be fined if they move drinks at news conferences’ (at https://www.bbc.com/sport/football/57517337) I had to take a walk to cool down a bit. You see, not only is Aleksander Čeferin a bitch, he is apparently a prime time one. We might agree, or not on his position towards advertisers and that super league issue, but he has a duty to shield the player.

So when I see “Uefa has reminded participating teams that partnerships are integral to the delivery of the tournament and to ensuring the development of football across Europe, including for youth and women”, I merely wonder if he had lost the plot (which could be the case). So as we see ‘partnerships are integral to the delivery of the tournament’ we should remind Alex that the delivery of the tournament is not being a photo opportunity for the pleasure of James Quincey (CEO Coca Cola). Sugary drinks are in part a health hazard and if a soccer player does not condone them, he moves them, so suck that up Aleksander Čeferin, and go cry in a corner! If Ronaldo prefers water, that is his business and not the business of UEFA or Coca Cola. And if Pogba, a practising Muslim objects to an alcoholic drink in front of his face, you have to accept that, one better, if you knew that a muslim was there there should not have been any beer there in the first place. So reading “Teams have been reminded of their contractual regulations and Kallen said disciplinary action was “a possibility”” is quite literally a showboat of bullshit. So show EVERYONE just how much you fucked up and show those ‘contractual regulations’ where players have to take photo ops with sugary and alcoholic drinks and I will show you just how much UEFA failed the players! Oh and by the way, please show the UEFA contract that UEFA signed with Coca Cola, I reckon that there will be a few other issues in there that we will openly and loudly object to.

So whilst you might not like that they moved the bottles, you as president of UEFA fucked it up yourself. So as Martin Kallen hid behind “We are never fining players directly from the Uefa side, we will do this always through the participating national association and then they could look if they will go further to the player, but we are not going directly for the moment to the player”, you Alexander are in the end responsible for that mess and hiding behind legal talk will not shield you, so when we advertise that Aleksander Čeferin and Martin Kallen support health hazards to players, which we see when we consider “People consider sugary drinks to be a significant contributor to many health conditions, including obesity, type 2 diabetes, and tooth decay. Research has shown that drinking a can of Coca-Cola can have damaging effects on the body within an hour” (source: Medial News Today), so do you have anything else to bitch about? No? Good, now go and for the love of god keep your advertisers (sponsors too) in line. 

Leave a comment

Filed under Law, Media

Seeing correctly and that view’s danger

The title makes no sense to some, if you see something correctly, why is there danger? You see at present we have what some call a fluidic situation in regards to Iran, Israel, Russia, Saudi Arabia and Turkey. They are all connected and as such, certain parts I stated yesterday have been proven correctly. Now, the longer game cannot be predicted, because when they are moves and countermoves in a setting that changes, we cannot always predict certain moves, they are based on intelligence out there and internal intelligence available. For example, in the gaming industry, we see ‘leaked’ information from both Microsoft and Nintendo, yet is it actually leaked as we see it, or did their marketing/corporate department leak information to get the feelers out, to test the audience, in the month preceding the biggest gaming event of the year in the world, it does matter, there are 200 million gamers up for grab and Microsoft felt directly how negative that can get in 2013; what it feels like to piss all them gamers off; it took 3 years to stop the damage, now consider that this is not a video game, but a political arena where it is about billions, about lives and about setting the world stage, the stakes get to be higher. So as I said “the connection between Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and the Iranian military is closer and stronger than either of them ever had for President Rouhani, that is the setting and even as both ‘tolerated’ the elected president, they have been ready to go it alone” (on May 7th in ‘Stopping Slumber, Halting Hesitation‘). Reuters gave less than a day ago (at https://www.reuters.com/article/us-iran-nuclear-rouhani/irans-rouhani-seen-as-lame-duck-after-trump-ditches-deal-idUSKBN1IA287), where we see ““Khamenei prefers a weak president. Rouhani will serve his term, but as a lame duck,” the diplomat said“, so not only am I correct, the dangers of a hardliner replacement like Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is not just likely, it is now almost a given that whoever comes next is not a puppet, it is a person completely in line with the hard-line position of Ali Khamenei. Now we don’t get to have a ballgame, now we have a hard-line setting that will impact the entire Middle East. Reuters got this from ‘an Iranian diplomat, who declined to be named‘, just like Nintendo and Microsoft, Iran is now testing the waters on who stands where. Iran’s larger issue is not on how it attacks Saudi Arabia, it is on how the others react and at present it seems like there will be forceful defence of Saudi Arabia and Israel, their position and what they feel is justified. The US and Europe are in their corners. That is the issue Iran is dealing with, because there is a clear support against Iran, whilst at the same time we see ‘Putin Is Giving Israel a Free Hand against Iran in Syria. But He May Soon Have to Pick a Side‘ (source: Haaretz), as well as ‘Russia seeks to take mediator role between Israel and Iran‘ (at http://www.arabnews.com/node/1300286/world), this is more important; as we see “Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said on Thursday that “all issues should be solved through dialogue.”“. There is the crux of the matter where we see that Russia will most certainly not back Iran, but will at times come to their supportive aid (at a price of course), especially when they can have a go at the USA. That last part is speculative from my side, but we have seen enough evidence over the last year to see that be a partial gospel truth, or we could water it down with: ‘it is the crutch of the matter as Israel ends up having Iran by the balls at present

Even as we accept “Russia has become a major player in the Middle East since intervening in the Syrian war on the side of the Damascus regime in September 2015. Analysts also highlight its role as mediator in other conflicts in the area“, as a lot of it is true, depending on the coloured lenses you wear in your glasses, but the foundation has a setting. In this Russian analyst Fyodor Lukyanov is correct. Alexander Krylov, a foreign policy expert at the Moscow State Institute of International Relations gives us “The role of Russia as a mediator is strongly appreciated in the region. This role will be reinforced if the crisis between Israel and Iran worsens,” that too is true, because bluntly stated at present America has no real credibility left outside of the actual support given to Saudi Arabia and Israel. The Middle East is a lot larger than merely Saudi Arabia, even as they are not seen as large players, the still pack a punch and as such the UAE and Qatar will have a voice. The setting at present does not give the UAE a pro Saudi view (speculative) but in equal measure they will not side with Iran as I see it, not on this scale. Even as there is a link between Qatar and Iran, it will not hold, when hostilities grow, Qatar will isolate themselves away from both parties because the largest fear for Qatar is that they become the beachhead for Iran or the entrenchment for Saudi Arabia. When either of the two happens, do you think that after that Doha will look like this?

Just google: ‘Images of Ghouta‘, that is how Doha ends up looking like with a FIFA event merely 3 years away, so that would be instantly cancelled at that point, oh,. FIFA is already on that, not merely because it is Qatar, the anti-Qatar slurs of the media has been long and lasting, a (let’s just be blunt) fucked up situation caused by stupid greedy people who have been taking the longest gravy train ride. When we are all treated to “The British press continues to be hostile towards Qatar because the tournament will be held during winter, to avoid the searing heat in the Gulf“, because they want a 100% exploitative coverage, and Qatar with its weather got in the way of that and large sponsoring corporations like Coca Cola and every other FIFA sponsor now get a 40% reduced bang for their exploitative buck, now they are suddenly willing to go all out, and it links to all this, it matters!

In that setting we are treated to half-truths, especially by the media who willingly looked the other way on all allegations regarding Sepp Blatter, or is that ‘step bladder’ as he was pissing all over everyone for the longest time? When was the last time when you looked at all the work from BBC reporter Andrew Jennings? He was ignored and partially shunned as I see it, and as we saw the escalations regarding all this with “In 2012 the Sunday Times revelations sparked a genuinely independent inquiry by a former US attorney general, Michael Garcia. This report was delivered to Blatter, but he has refused to publish it in full“, the full report was never shown (at that time), merely an example of evidence on how large corporation are in charge and the law is just a nasty side effect that can be ignored when certain people call the shots. So when we see ESPN give us “While the mystery of what details are contained in the full 430-page dossier has been revealed, it does not contain any additional proof of major acts of corruption. However, Garcia said some bidders tested rules of conduct to the limit“, that is ESPN, a sports channel, not the Times, the Guardian or any other newspaper that should have taken it to the front page. The article started with “FIFA released the full contents of the Garcia report that examined alleged corruption in 2018 and 2022 World Cup bidding on Tuesday, one day after it was leaked to German newspaper Bild“, so there is clarity, FIFA only released it when they learned someone else had it already. That is the game played by the press who are ALL afraid for another Leveson inquiry for them to be held to account. In this we see people like James Quincey (CEO of Coca Cola) get to tell the media and others what to do, we see that politicians are no longer in charge, they are merely caretakers, janitors of the high and mighty and the press remains around as mere facilitators of the lot. In this there is another matter that I can feel happy about to message towards Martin Ivens, editor of The Sunday Times to get the fuck out of his office and never return to media (period)! Remember the claim of “obtained millions of secret documents – emails, letters and bank transfers – which it alleges are proof that the disgraced Qatari football official Mohamed Bin Hammam made payments totalling US$5m (£3m) to football officials in return for their support for the Qatar bid“. In all this he is allowed one defence, by publishing all the evidence he claimed to have had. But that will not happen will it?

How is this related?

The entire setting of the Middle East is set for our eyes in misrepresentation by newspapers all over the world. They tell the stories that they are told to tell. I call it at times, writing with blinders, like a horse so they do not get scared by all the events around them. it is one thing to not inform us of everything, another to give us a pack of lies, to stack the deck against us and in all this the media is still at it, facilitating for all the Satya Narayana Nadella’s and James Quincey’s in the world, they are not alone and there are a few. In this these two named people are not evil; they are merely representing the best interest of their shareholders, which is their function is it not?

That is what is in play, Qatar will soon be optionally in the thick of it and their only safe move is not to play the game, to isolate them from their opposition (Saudi Arabia) and their non-friend Iran, they basically have no moves available and that is fine, but we need to make sure that the people realise and understand that no matter how they got to a certain stage, they need to remove themselves from the game, no longer be the pawn in this, the Iranian setting has shown to be adversarial and committed to a long term game to become an active enemy, delusional imagining themselves as conqueror of Saudi Arabia and the exterminator of the state of Israel, but not at the same time, that was never going to work, this is why it is my personal view on the matter that Iran resorted to ‘puppets’. Turkey and Hezbollah are the main ones, they were trying to be as thick as thieves with Russia, but they are no fools and they took the middle path at the earliest setting of them getting into warmer waters. Now the other players see certain matters evolve and whilst Mossad was kind enough to give the people something to read about, it was not enough, yet when we aggregate 15 months of news cycles, we see a path that shows a long term commitment of Iran taking a different path, the path I feared when people were trying to get cosy to President Rouhani to alleviate Middle Eastern tensions (in perfectly valid ways), the truth (as I personally see it) was that Iran had no one to replace Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, a committed hardliner, a politician that does the bidding of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and Major general Mohammad Bagheri. They needed one that accepted both and I expect that one is in the works, but President Rouhani (the lame duck as voiced by one Iranian diplomat) is not that person and the other two are too powerful for President Rouhani, there will be no moderation in Iran. They are set to destroy their opponents no matter what, their one view is the only one that counts and as such, we might prefer to not be part of it at all, especially as non-Muslims, but they have given us no option, none that are diplomatic that is, we have to side with Saudi Arabia in that setting. Qatar is standing in a shallow spot with too many requiring water, and as solutions dry up, there is every option that Saudi diplomats, together with the GIP (Ri’āsat Al-Istikhbārāt Al-‘Āmah) can change that setting. I personally believe that Iran overplayed its hand a little too soon; perhaps they thought that the timing was right? It remains speculative yet the setting is now that the Iranian Qatar links can be (permanently) broken, in addition to all that the setting offers an option to ‘rekindle’ certain connections with the UAE which now puts the entire Yemen/Houthi situation in play where with the removal of Iran things could be resolved and actual humanitarian aid could commence, which would be a relief for millions of people all over the world. In both matters Iran ends up holding the wrong cards and an additional crack in the Iran/Hezbollah veneer could be created, in this setting, no one will care about the survival of the terrorist organisation Hezbollah and their only path is to hide in the deepest hole, hoping that some of them might survive at best.

I am certain that the matters are seen correctly, we are in an almost hostile setting where we limited options by misrepresenting nations and their views for the need of corporate greed (Qatar), we have been facilitating through all kinds of means to get a fictive deal in place, one that is shown more and more to never have been realistic (Iran), we have alienated other nations by demanding that they adjust to our way of thinking (Saudi Arabia) and in all this we went out of our ways to not hold others accountable because of other needs that the EU had for their personal little deals (Turkey), it is in all this that we should be creating a solution path, yet some have limited moves through previous acts and now that there is a time limit in place to prevent serious escalations, we suddenly see that we are in a place where Russia of all players ends up being the best placed for mediation in this, which will of course delay the second cold war for a fair bit, so we have that to look forward to as well.

In all this we see another reflective part towards this situation and the entire unacceptable mess within FIFA. With ‘Swiss prosecutor appeals for cooperation on FIFA case file‘, we see: “Switzerland’s attorney general has a message for his foreign counterparts as his office pores over reams of seized documents and dozens of criminal cases linked to FIFA: “Come to us.” Michael Lauber said Friday the investigations require both quick action and patience, and noted “good developments” like how growing cooperation has led to 45 requests for legal assistance from Switzerland with regard to soccer“, as well as “One of the complexities, Lauber said, is that Swiss law has no clause for cases of private corruption, meaning that his team has to find creative ways of going after suspected wrongdoing at times — as with the disloyal management allegations against Blatter“. This is interesting as most of the media left us in the dark, but moreover, we see that this was given to us on April 20th 2018. The question becomes regarding FIFA, what other options were never looked at or actively engaged in, and if this escalates and explodes, do we have any recourse left?

Are we in a place where corporate corruption in facilitating towards media and big business in all this is tolerated, what is left for us? If the sports can no longer be trusted, can we merely claw back to the old days that there are no licenses and sports can be freely covered by any media, remove all exclusivity whilst banning advertisements on EVERY sport event. So how many heart attacks could I cause in these higher corporate echelons by demanding this move to be made by the UN on a global scale?  #IDoHaveASenseOfHumour

When you see the media outrage on freedom of the press and the right to know, should that not include coverage of events? In that regard, when the media screams at that point, who will they be representing, the shareholders, the stakeholders, the advertisers or those watching the event, the actual audience? Now take that view towards the Middle East and the escalations and limitations we see, and especially the innuendo not backed by facts or evidence. The Middle East situation is indeed more complex, yet in part we made it that way, so when we see Amnesty International (at https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/campaigns/2017/02/free-turkey-media/) with ‘Turkey: Journalism Is Not A Crime‘, and we realise the quote “Since the failed coup attempt in July 2016, academics, journalists and writers who criticise the government risk criminal investigation and prosecution, intimidation, harassment and censorship. Coupled with the closure of at least 180 media outlets by executive decree under the state of emergency, the message – and the resulting effect on press freedom – is clear and disturbing. The severity of the Turkish government’s repression of the media is such that it has been described by some as the “death of journalism”“, so when we see this and also realise that this is not the leading story in EVERY newspaper in the free world, why is that? Now consider last January we got: “Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan was in Paris for talks with Macron, part of efforts to improve his government’s strained relationship with Europe. Macron confirmed that Turkey’s wait for EU membership was far from over and suggested a partnership instead in the meantime“, the use of ‘meantime‘, an implied setting of facilitation and the fact that Europe is bending over backwards allowing Turkey to get the sweet spots and not being held accountable for not one, but optionally two genocides (Armenia and Kurds). Can anyone explain where the press is in all this, because it remained ambiguous for the longest of time!

So in the end, how should we see that endangered view, is it merely projection versus perception? I do not belief that this is the case, but that might be merely my view on the matter.

And he game is not over, the issues we will see next week will be impacting on several issues at present and not only for the nations separately, some of the links will be influenced by several events and high end meetings, so next week I might end up looking entirely wrong, as we see some state it in a certain way, like for example: “it was in everyone’s best interest to make certain changes to the agreement as it was currently set”. That is the mere reality of the matter. Yet they will not change the answer, they will end up changing the question so that it matches the answer, which in the end is not the same.

 

Leave a comment

Filed under Finance, Gaming, Media, Military, Politics