Tag Archives: LinkedIn

August 28, 2025 · 15:27

The real deal

So this happened yesterday. I was at first a little out of sort. I was surprised by a head line in the Australian giving me ‘capitalizing on a $266m IT fiasco that fueled Birmingham’s bankruptcy’ this is a setting that happens to be a weird fiasco. You see the words uniting fiasco and Oracle is nothing short of a miracle. Oracle does not usually make these kind of mistakes EVER. And this sounds like an Australian kind of advisement towards their paid wall of settings. As I am not some Australian weirdo approach to their paid wall, I had to take another look and soon enough some f the words got me to the real deal and theft that it was merely one article gave me the setting that this wasn’t real. 

The article that gave me the ‘real’ deal was found at (at https://www.cio.com/article/3830277/how-birminghams-48m-oracle-erp-project-turned-into-an-epic-failure.html) here we get the deal. It was set by ‘How Birmingham’s $48M Oracle ERP project turned into an epic failure’ which was given on February 25th 2025. Still, to see Oracle combined with ‘epic failure’ was news, so I needed to know more. And the story start ‘strong’ with “A Grant Thornton audit reveals systemic governance, expertise, and vendor management failures led to catastrophic ERP rollout.” Shows us the little setting that this tends to go the road of Birmingham and not Oracle. With the hindsight “Birmingham City Council’s (BCC) troubled enterprise resource planning (ERP) system, built on Oracle software, has become a case study of how large-scale IT projects can go awry. The system, intended to streamline payments and HR processes, is now “unlikely” to function correctly before 2026 — four years after its 2022 launch. The project involved replacing the city council’s long-standing SAP system with Oracle Cloud.” So as we see it, the setting is now set towards another setting. That setting is “The catastrophic failure of the project, which has ballooned from an initial $48 million (£38 million) investment to an estimated $114 million (£90 million) after including re-implementation costs, stands as a stark reminder of how large-scale enterprise software projects can spiral out of control.” As I see it, it is another setting. We have saw something like this in 2016 min ‘The excuse from a failed politician’ (at https://lawlordtobe.com/2016/03/27/the-excuse-from-a-failed-politician/) where the Labor government pretty much wasted £11 BILLION on a non-working NHS system, as such this is not new in political povernment (funny typo), so we have seen this before. I see this as someone in government sees this as the ‘golden’ opportunity to make his (or her) grind in the way of things and let this grow this out of hand into the behemoth the eats them alive.

So while CIO gives the right question, but they might go ‘lightly’ over the failure of the setting. And they give us “The audit revealed that the project’s budget ballooned from an initial £19 million to over £90 million, with delays pushing the system’s full functionality to 2026—four years beyond the planned 2022 launch.” As I see it, I have seen this kinda before decades ago where we get two elements together a sales person who wants to make an entry and someone in government wants to appeal to ‘their’ friends by giving the entire collective a setting that is not entirely manageable. The salesperson wants this deal as it makes his collective revenue shine and the other side as they have no clue what they are doing, but they have ‘friends’ who wants a player like Oracle to strike out. So the sales person contact everyone in support until they find that person who signs off on it (I didn’t) and they go from person to person until they get the ‘willing’ support person who gives them the heads up. I opposed as it would never work, but the sales person found the one support person who signed off on it and he avoided my assessment. You see, when the deal comes through he merely needs to keep me away from it (didn’t work) because after the quarter was finished he pays the person back but his commission is no longer touchable. And that is not how I believe things should work. The second setting is the ‘friend’ tactic. As such someone feeling ‘blue’ (subtle hint) gets to say make sure it includes A, B and C (they know it all never work) and as such Oracle goes down and they become the winner as they ‘suddenly’ have an option. This is how the players in the wrong setting are thrust upon the daily lives of government. 

Did that happen here?

Can’t tell, but the more you read here, the more you see that It was NOT the flaw that Oracle introduce, it was another flaw and you might see this when you see ““Integration with Oracle’s systems proved more complex than expected, leading to prolonged testing and spiraling costs,” the report stated. Payroll integration issues, combined with the volume and quality of data migration, required extensive retesting, further inflating costs. BCC’s heavy reliance on Oracle and external consultants became a double-edged sword. While third-party expertise was essential, it also weakened internal control over the project’s financial and operational outcomes.”

So we get there with the next part. 

CIO media gives us “The governance-expertise gap

The investigation uncovered a governance structure plagued by fundamental weaknesses.  At the heart of Birmingham’s ERP crisis lies what we might term the “governance-expertise gap” – a critical disconnect between oversight responsibilities and technical understanding. The absence of Oracle expertise within the council’s digital department created a dangerous scenario where those responsible for governance lacked the technical foundation to evaluate and challenge their implementation partners effectively.” As I see it, the initial Australian setting was wrong in the very least and I recon (especially as the headline changed) that the Australian headline (which was thrust upon me on LinkedIn) as 

I added the image on how I was ‘misinformed’ and perhaps Oracle wants to have a go at these people too. 

So as CIO is giving it a realistic brush (by painting IT environment of Birmingham stupid) we see the second setting and as we approach that ‘critically’ we might see an Oracle failure or two, They did not make the actual flaw. It is seen in 

“Moreover, the lack of technical oversight led to the acceptance of extensive customizations that violated their own “adopt not adapt” principle, accepting extensive customizations to align with existing business processes based on their legacy SAP system. Change requests affecting critical aspects of the solution were accepted late in the implementation cycle, creating unnecessary complexity and risk.” Where we see the adherence to a legacy system and for a council their data is their strength and “The council’s approach to governance showed a startling lack of independent oversight. Despite the program’s complexity and critical nature, no review was undertaken by Internal Audit until just before go-live.” Which is an actual failure, but not by Oracle, it is the Birmingham government that should have acted when possible, I reckon that the people involved saw the golden rainbow markers as their golden opportunity. If there is an Oracle failure it is at this point where the Oracle head honcho should have applied all breaks and talk to the Lord Mayor of Birmingham bringing his attention to the initial $48 million (£38 million) investment to an estimated $114 million (£90 million) after including re-implementation costs. I reckon that when the £60 million tag was reached someone should have drawn attention to this (perhaps they did)

It is when CIO brings attention to ‘Culture of silence and suppression’ that I wonder who was at fault, nothing here shows the flaw of Oracle, As I personally see it, the blundering setting of a seemingly absent Omnibus, a written account of what or who did what and how it was received in that office setting might be at risk of showing the real audit failure and I am willing to bet that Oracle has nothing to do with it. 

A mere collective feeling, but I have seen Oracle set the trends and projects for decades and this does not feel like an Oracle flaw, It might be as simple as Australian fear mongering advertisement settings, but there you have it. With little effort we see that the ‘Oracle Blunder’ was omitted by simple tracking and perhaps I am tracking the ‘wrong’ setting but there you have it, Australian is now getting into hot water by paid wall settings and fear mongering. So be it.

Have a great day today. It is time for some snoring if possible. Feeling a little tired today.

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October 13, 2024 · 18:01

What is real?

That is at times the question. There was an image on LinkedIn (see below) and I had taken notice of it. Yet today on LinkedIn we were given a rather large recruiting drive which seems odd, but it doesn’t need to be. The line “Amazon plans to cut 14,000 manager positions by 2025” directly opposes the recruitment drive on which 150 people applied for (as a presented fact).

We see all the big boys dumping staff around 120,000 of them and the others are planning to dump a significant amount of people (numbers unknown). One of them I know ‘personally’, it is the Swedish telecom company Telia. We were given a month ago “Swedish carrier Telia is set to cut 3,000 jobs this year as part of cost reduction measures. The proposed cuts would equate to around 15 percent of its workforce, and deliver annual savings of 2.6 billion Swedish crowns ($253 million), the operator said today (September 4)” the larger issue is not that they are dwindling down staff, a 15% decrease is significant. It is the other side of the coin that I cannot see at the moment. That 15% might be all over the place, but the turnover is that a company with 15% less staff tends to have issues all over the board. Perhaps it works out, perhaps not. But the issue that I see with 3,000 persons saving them 2.6 billion Swedish crowns is a more significant issue. You see that amounts to a personal saving of 866K per person and no one in Sweden makes that much (well almost no one) this means that Telia is downsizing a lot, as such we need to take a look at “As of 2023, the company had a market share of roughly 31.5 percent” This implies (implied does not mean factual) that Telia is downsizing a few more branches and that now leads us to a much larger setting. Another source on this gives us “I envisage that this intended approach will not only result in a Telia that is simpler and faster in decision-making and commercial execution, but also help us to grow our business and generate enough cash so that we can make necessary investments and cover our dividend, as we remain committed to our dividend policy” I feel uneasy on this. Especially the statement “we remain committed to our dividend policy”, now this might (and likely is) merely me, but it could also mean that Sweden is ripe for players like STC (Saudi Telecom Company) and Huawei (Ren Zhengfei) to take up the baton to wave a much larger change in Europe. I expect that Huawei might show links to China Telecom (a speculation, not a fact). You see, as these companies all dwindle down, these staff members (requiring a job) might be a nice niche for these two players. Saudi’s STC is already in Europe “Saudi Telecommunication Company’s subsidiary TAWAL officially began operations in Europe in August of that year. In September 2023, it was announced STC Group had acquired a 9.9% stake in the Madrid-headquartered multinational telecommunications company, Telefónica, S.A..” When you consider this stage, and Sweden is the next target, Finland and Norway are not far away. I saw some data on STC entering Slovenia (might have been Slovakia) and that puts the option of Poland on the table, at that point Saudi Arabia has a clear path from the South of Europe all to the far north. And with that on the road, Huawei will have negated a much larger win, it took them some time but with this in place America is out of the race in Europe. All that bantering of fear mongers (never showing any evidence) and now these players will succumb to a much larger setting. Mind you, I am speculating. I have no evidence of this. And when we consider that IBM and Cisco are also on the list, the internet overhaul could become a lot larger. We say ‘it won’t get this far’ but the stage where they could be replaced by other players There is a Chinese version of Cisco (not sure how that words), but the stage becomes that Huawei and STC would have a clear path taking over servicing the European population of 449 million people in the EU. It is what I would attempt to do and America losing 120,000 people to ‘streamlining’ businesses will not help. So what happens next? Well if this impacts Telecom in Europe, especially a well maintained network, America will lose more and more and now they have no data to look into, that implies that Google, Meta and Microsoft will get less data and that will hinder their actions in the long run as well, especially as the Department of Justice is seeking to slice and dice Google. In that setting Huawei and their Harmony OS NEXT will get a great option and as that vibrates through the Middle East and Asia, Huawei will get the sweetest revenge on America to start. In this setting (as I personally see it) Germany and France will soon count the chickens they have and the eggs coming from this setting. I feel that Germany will turn first, but that might merely be my view on the matter. 

What is a given is that this is merely a setting as I see it (optionally very wrong), but as Saudi Arabia via BRICS makes more inroads into Europe, America will essentially lose these income streams. And that is the beginning of the end for America and its $35,000,000,000,000 debt. There is every consideration that more then 20% loss of revenue implies that America can no longer pay the interest bill. A setting I saw coming a mile away (5 years ago), so I do not see any hindrance to this scenario (which doesn’t make it correct).

And in all this China is seeking ‘revenge’ on the accusations America spouted and Saudi Arabia is aiming to become a technology hub and they are well underway to make that so.

So in this day and age of redundancies, there is a larger group of people almost desperate to find a new gig and there these two players can find all kinds of people ready and willing to give their new employer the best that they had. Will it be so? Time will tell. 

I want to congratulate Vancouver as they join us on this Sunday and the rest on having an equally fine day.

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February 11, 2024 · 14:34

Don’t take my word

That is serious, especially in this case. My inner paranoia hit overdrive at the sight of an image. They have been pasting sales pitches all over LinkedIn and they are clever about it. Yet, I believe they left a dangerous premise on the floor and that was where I came up and basically said ‘Are you serious?’

The image below started all this.

The added text 

Drove my paranoia into overdrive. Why you ask? Well simple. 2023 had (according to some sources) a mentioned total of 2,814 breaches. This converts towards 8,214,886,660 breached records. There is no clear OS or system and it is nowhere near the total. The amount of people deciding not to report this because of no coverage is apparently astounding. Now consider the image above and now a hacker doesn’t just get access to one stream. That hacker suddenly gets access to ALL streams. This is a hackers wet dream in development.

The issue that I state that you cannot take my word is that I am unaware just how good (or how bad) their cyber security is. They are so driven to create awareness that they seemingly forgot to hand cyber awareness the limelight it deserves. Microsoft has been the target of hackers for a long time and this is NOT in Microsoft. This is a whole range of issues (some Microsoft) and that is the problem. Now we see a solution that links all these social media connectors? I shover at the thought.

Now what I would have done is to create 2-3 white papers on how secure that solution is. How (to some degree) the protection plays. I get that we do not need to feed hackers, but I missed a large setting of marketing effort to keep IT people at rest on this solution. For example, the Optus breach of 2022 was set in three stages. One was a public-facing API. Two, the open API facilitated access to very sensitive customer data and three was the use of incrementing customer identifiers. Three settings that have hackers a way to 2.1 million of its customers and their identity documents. Now consider that you have a funnel API linking ALL your social media data. Can you even comprehend the possible damage that this ‘luxury’ brings? Now, perhaps the security of Funnel is top-notch. Yet in this, I would have started with this, especially as hackers got access to almost 3,000 systems comprising over 8 billion breached records. It isn’t merely that I would have done it differently. It is essential for everyone to become cyber savvy and no capturing emails. Send this out to whomever wants to read it. So don’t take my word for this, check the data, check the company and check their claims. Security is important. Marketing gets paid to do their job and making things easy for them is optionally making things easy for hackers.

You really don’t want to do that. You see hackers created a total income for themselves of $20,000,000,000 in 2021, which is 5700% more than in 2015. You see why hackers do what they do? You really want to make it ‘easier’? Now if Funnel does have top notch security (and I hope they do), lets hope they wisen up and make sure everyone sees that too because their solution does look appealing, but until I am certain, anyone installing that solution on my corporate server gets to be hung until death from the chandelier in the board of directors meeting room. Safety and security, there is no substitute.

Enjoy your weekend.

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January 21, 2024 · 13:32

Pink is the colour of ignorance

That is what set this in motion. All the (as I would call them) stupid people all having their own little opinion devoid of facts. It is the devoid of facts that makes them stupid (as I personally see it). Still, you need to be forewarned of this article. To see this you need to realise the difference between speculation and presumption. One is a guess, the other is an educated guess. The difference is all about knowledge of the subject matter and in this case I do not have that. So even as I rely on facts, on given knowledge my guess remains that, a guess, optional pure speculation. I think it will be better than what some will give you, but that will be up to you to decide. This was all set off by a story in LinkedIn. 

The story (at https://www.linkedin.com/posts/codepink_today-when-we-asked-senator-menendez-when-activity-7153799630453923841-xIln) gives us the accusation, and the BS from a group of people (all women) that have a point of view, but like the irrelevant tea nannies all against arms for Saudi Arabia via Campaign Against Arms Trade (CAAT), they cannot see the whole picture and they caused the loss of billions to the United Kingdom treasury coffers. You see this all started with Hamas. On Sat, Oct 7th 2023 Hamas attacked Israel. The result 1,139 deaths – 695 Israeli civilians (including 36 children), 71 foreign nationals, and 373 members of the security forces. Approximately 250 Israeli civilians and soldiers were taken as hostages to the Gaza Strip, including 30 children, with the stated goal to force Israel to release Palestinian prisoners. It was quite literally the straw that broke the camels back and Israel responded, harshly I might add. This is what set it off and the ignorant are eager to ignore this fact. Now we see SBS giving us that Gaza now has 25,000 casualties, and several sources give us the starting point. It wasn’t Israel, it was Hamas and we better wake up and we need to wake up fast.

The guardian (at https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/jan/18/evidence-points-to-systematic-use-of-rape-by-hamas-in-7-october-attacks) gives us ‘Evidence points to systematic use of rape and sexual violence by Hamas in 7 October attacks’ with the text “Israel’s top police investigations unit, Lahav 433, is still poring over 50,000 pieces of visual evidence and 1,500 witness testimonies, and says it is unable to put a number on how many women and girls suffered gender-based violence”, so how many media outlets gave us that part of the equation, or how many media outlets give us the fact (recorded by IDF) that Hamas has weapons caches and connecting tunnels straight into Gaza hospitals. None of the hospital staff ever came forward with that, did they? When you add these parts to the equation we see that Israel pretty much has no choice and as long as Gaza protects Hamas, they are in for a rough ride and soon they will stand alone. 

Standing alone?
Yes, you see what Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates clearly see is that Hamas is not some muslim solution. They are a liability and they are a danger to middle eastern stability. The moment that comes out clearly to all muslims, Hamas will be deserted by the population of Saudi Arabia, The Emirates, Bahrain, Egypt and Oman (I’m not sure where Iraq stands). In that setting Qatar giving refuge to the heads of Hamas will have to choose to be out of the game or throw Hamas out. Qatar for now has Al Jazeera, when the KSA starts its international English news channel that advantage is gone. As such Qatar will have to openly side with Iran or be made the irrelevant player of the Middle East. In that regard when the UAE and KSA do start the stability setting, Egypt will get on board fast because of the economic benefits, as will Oman, as will Bahrain. The rest will have to chose and as I see it that leaves very little options for Hamas, they were close to irrelevant 5 years ago, now they are out of options. And the middle east needs stability, something America is fearful of. They had a good thing going in instability. Now the game changes and the largest economic hub could be the middle east by 2032. The EU is in shambles, it is all about presentations and not about providing results, merely quoting the image of results (where did I see that before?) Overall the larger game for the middle east is to set a table with the largest players. I believe the three players are Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates and Egypt, the rest is not unimportant, but these three are the founding pillars. When that happens Hamas is a liability and Iran becomes obsolete. So where will Qatar end? Hard to say, it largely depends on Qatar handles that situation, but as long as it gives refuge to Hamas their options will be dwindling down and I reckon faster than they are happy about, especially after the KSA starts its global English news channel. 

Yes, they are all facts, but in the end my point of view is speculative, no matter how many facts surround this. When you start looking at some of the actions and the inability of the media to give us facts. Where can we look? Consider that the media has been soft on Houthi activities for three years, now that they are attacking ships and impeding profits, now they are all out on these Houthi’s? These terrorists? So where were they in the last three years when Hezbollah allegedly and Iran were supplying these forces with arms and drones. Where was the media when Iran backed Houthis were attacking civilian Saudi targets? Investigate for yourself and see what we weren’t told. Consider these parts when forming your point of view instead of blatantly following the colour of ignorance.

Enjoy the weekend.

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December 10, 2023 · 18:47

It’s not about the salad

Yup, we think salad but it is not. You see, I gave you yesterday the inkling on what would be coming and today the events seemingly have gone away, but the link lies in the story ‘Lap Time’ (at https://lawlordtobe.com/2019/06/27/lap-time/) a story I wrote in June 2019. The issue given was “giving us levels of unparalleled congestion soon enough after that”, as well as “The moment that ANY vendor needs to acknowledge 5G and congestion in the first year will be the point that turns the customer base into a churn tidal wave and that will happen if the infrastructure is not in place” and guess what. I just have faced over two days of congestion. The interesting part is that the media is seemingly silent on this. Optus already has issues in different areas and now I face additional congestion. Lets be clear, there is at any time a change for congestion. When it is a few minutes at some point, it should be seen as a simple glitch. When it is well over a day it becomes a systemic problem. In my setting it took over 10 minutes to do a simple Google Search. Apps would not update and apply changes, the issue was seen on laptop, tablet and mobile. This is a larger problem and it applied to DIFFERENT connections. Youtube kept freezing, LinkedIn would not update and the list continues. This is the start of congestion and no matter what ‘excuse’ the telecom company gives us, this setting was always going to happen. As such I wonder what comes next. Of course we will see denials, we will see debunking and we will see a whole range of issues. 

Really?
So, could it just be me? Yup, that is an option, but to get it on several devices, each with their own connections becomes an issue. It could be one tower, all options, but it was days, not merely a few hours and congestion is a killer for any telecom company. I could rely on other sources, but the press has lost most of its credibility, so they are not much use and telecom companies would deny it is happening, and refer to some ‘glitch’ trying to trivialise the issue. I see it differently, when sources lose cohesive credibility there is no real reporting and the people who should be are too afraid for their bonus setting. This is now becoming a problem.

Could I be wrong?
That is a fair question and that could be the case, but after 2+ days of this, I do not believe I am. The fact that a simple Google question took minutes is also reenforcing my speculation. There is an issue and we are at the start of it. As the issue dwindled away, we think it is over, but peak issues (Christmas and New Years eve) will show wether I am wrong, or more correct than ever. I a happy to be wrong, but congestion is a problem because when this becomes systemic someone will attack net neutrality and that implies that we need to be aware of our service level agreements. So, who kept their mobile contract? I should have it somewhere, but not sure where. Others would have dumped their papers and now their service level agreement is whatever the telecom company tells us it is. That is a fine way to go through December, is it not?

The additional station isn’t merely our phones and mobiles. It becomes whatever else are we dependent on. And when your Zoom or whatever other solution you use quits on you, you will see the impact of being on the lower scale of the cluster that a telecom company immediately cares about.

I get it, it is a slippery slope. What does matter is that I now faced the first instance of congestion 3.5 years after I predicted this. And this happens before this network is fully 5G implemented. As such I believe the impact will be wider, but that is pure speculation from my side. 

Enjoy the day, my Saturday is mostly over now.

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December 9, 2023 · 21:24

A busy day

This is not how it started. It started with an easy setting, the setting I am bout to explain. From there I got to a second station, which is the story that comes after this story and last there was a setting towards Engonos (my new TV series), in light of season 2. I came up with an additional ploy. A ploy not unlike the movie the league of extraordinary gentlemen gave us. But I am spinning it into another direction. I am actually using the setting that TV gave u in the past to create a setting towards a new spin, when people are confronted with TV series and their colloquialism is perhaps the best explanation I can give for now, but I will get back to that soon enough. The reason for telling you this is that these events happened almost at the same time, so in my head they are connected, my other brain (the wakey wakey part) hasn’t figured that out yet. Yet being the operative word.

Stage one
It started with a message on LinkedIn. A message by Simon Robinson, about who killed his reporters. The problem is that this is all emotions, lacking too many facts, as I personally see it. You see, the IDF doesn’t just casually shoot reporters with a tank, I am not willing to accept that. Yet in the same setting, I do rely on EVIDENCE. That is important to me. You see, Simon is emotional, his little bunny is dead, I get it. But the NY Post gives us “The alleged strike occurred shortly after the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) confirmed retaliatory artillery fire over the Israel-Lebanon border in response to shooting from Lebanese territory.” So was it a tank, or artillery? There is a difference, did Simon think of that? 

Al Jazeera gives us ‘Journalist killed in Lebanon was in ‘active combat zone’’ (at https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/12/8/israeli-army-says-journalist-killed-in-lebanon-was-in-active-combat-zone) in addition we are given “Appearing to dismiss calls for a war crime investigation into the death of a Reuters journalist and injury of six others under fire from its tanks in October, the Israeli army said on Friday that the incident is under review, but noted that the reporters had placed themselves in a “dangerous” area.”  So, Reuters got the tank part correct. But never mentioned that they were in an active combat zone, a part we never got. It was what I speculated on from the very beginning, the bunny was collateral damage. If you take offence, that is fine. I get it. But lets be clear, the press has no credibility left and partial news to give the line “who hit him, who killed him” is a bloody joke. There is a cost to being in an active combat zone. The question becomes did Issam Abdallah know that he was in an active combat zone? I do not know, and I am not speculating. The part problem is that the press has no credibility left and they already lied to all of us. So what happened? In all this that remains the question and it is going to need several sources, sources that are independent and can be used as verifiable sources that could solve this issue.

As I said, it was a busy day. Tomorrow it is Optus to be exposed and I have something going back to 2019. Should be fun, enjoy Saturday. I have less than 3 hours left of that day.

Cheerio.

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December 7, 2023 · 22:15

DM for losers

It all started with an image on LinkedIn this morning. We see here (see photo below) that Google has instigated a 5000 email limit per day and that three ‘objected’. 

There is no fighting another day. When you need to send over 5000 emails a day, you are a loser. You are what the 90’s regards the worst case of sales. Direct Marketing for losers. There is no setting of email more, get more revenue. If you cannot set that stage at 250 mails per day, you will not know your customers, you are nothing more then a Cialis pusher (as some say). Real sales is knowing your customers and you have ascertained that YOU have something they need. Proper customer care requires you to know your customer, have a system in place to service your customers. If you are a small business 250 customers a day is even  stretch, but OK, I could go along with that. You are not Nike, SAS, Adidas, Gucci, Volkswagen or Volvo. These have systems and people in place to service that much customers and that limit will not affect professional corporations. 

If you want to be a loser, that is on you, but as more and more people block your personal domain for email harassment, the string will go quickly. One, Two, Four, Eight then people will alert friends and after that it goes 32, 128, 512, 2048. In a week 50% of your daily target is gone and soon the algorithm takes over and less people will get your message, your options decreases even more. Making you start your setup from zero, all lost because you took the path of a loser.

In this world you (as a small business) could address at best 250 people a day. If you have the system to register it all, and you read it all you can retain at best 250 deals a day. Yes it is a speculative number, but the larger setting is not merely selling, it is also the need of manufacturing (if applies),stock, sales service, it is a track and one person cannot properly deal with more than 250 people. Considering 10 hours a day, you have 25 seconds per customer. You can listen to all the BS given to you as they want to sell their system to you, but consider, can you serve your customer completely in 25 seconds? No you can’t, no one can, not even McDonalds who needs 120 seconds. Direct Marketing for losers is not a solution, it is a delusion with no destination. It reminds me of a joke I told someone with a subway map on his T-shirt. “The pink line is the woke subway, it goes everywhere and gets you nowhere ever, no destination will ever be reached” perhaps not entirely accurate, but that is how I feel. 

The largest of all jokes is the one telling you can do it all, it makes you believe that you are stronger then Popeye, faster than roadrunner and wealthier than Scrooge McDuck. None of them real, none of them have any basis of reality. A setting you walked into driven by greed. Like a civil servant with dollar shaped pupils all he does is chase revenue which he hands over to his government leaving him with $882 per week (at best), optionally working yourself to death. As I stated, Direct Marketing for losers has no solution, it never ever will be a solution to anyone but the people selling you that system, serving their income. So how will you get reliable data on 5000 emails a day? Who else has it? Can you see the vicious self defeating circle you are in there? 

Google is right and it is time you figure it out too.

Enjoy your day, Friday is now 2 hours away for me. 

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November 13, 2023 · 23:32

Sides of currency

That is the setting, it is never sides of a coin. That was in the old days when things were simple. Things are no longer simple and that is why it took me so long to take on this issue. To be honest, the one clarion voice in all this has been the actor Misha Collins. I will get back to that later.

For now it is important to know that I am not anti-Israel, I am not anti-palestine. I am anti-Hamas. Hamas is a terrorist organisation and my largest issue is that the western media was eager to ‘forget’ the events that started all this. The Nova Festival in a rural farmland area near the Gaza-Israel border was just one of multiple locations hit by Hamas on October 7th. It was the spark in a powder keg and we are seeing the results of all that. Yet that was weeks ago. What started this were two stories. The first was given by Al Jazeera (at https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/11/11/saudi-arabia-to-host-arab-islamic-summit-to-unify-efforts-on-gaza) giving us ‘Arab-Islamic summit rejects justifying Gaza war as Israeli self-defence’ there we see that Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MBS) gives us “This is a humanitarian catastrophe that has proved the failure of the international community and the UN Security Council to put an end to Israel’s gross violations of international humanitarian laws, and prove the dual standards adopted by the world,” I do not completely agree. This all started by acts of terror by Hamas and Israel has hd enough. We are also given by a source I do not know (at https://unitedwithisrael-org.cdn.ampproject.org/c/s/unitedwithisrael.org/saudis-help-block-anti-israel-measures-at-arab-summit/amp/) where we are given ‘Saudis and 8 More Arab Countries Block Anti-Israel Measures at Arab Summit’, I cannot say how correct this is because Al Jazeera makes no mention of this. I added the article because it is important in other ways.

Important to know 
We get all kinds of information, in this we get all kinds of information through LinkedIn, through Twitter (X to some). The first is about anti-semitism

This matters. I do not know if these events in London are really all pro-palestine. I believe that is not the case. It is riddled with anti-semitism and quite frankly it bothers me because anti-semitism is now worse than it was in 1933, this will go from bad to worse soon enough and it is making this world not a nice place. All these children with no idea what is going on ripping the posters of kidnapped jews from the walls, smiling like they matter, these children really do not matter. If you are willing to hide real events you have no value whatsoever. It is a dangerous thing to say, because the media is partially to blame. Some are intentionally misreporting and misrepresenting events. 

Image two is more dangerous. It implies that Arabs in Israel aren’t protesting against Israel. I fail to believe that 100% would not protest, but it is possible. Still I haven’t seen any media really reporting on this. Is it true, or is it false?

These things matter. You see with deepfakes, advanced learning machines we get data and images that cater to anyone who has the money to set these things in motion and the media is part of that. 

What needs to happen
The first part is that Saudi Arabia needs to clearly advertise a site that gives the true settings. What was said in these events. Where does Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman al Saud stand? This is important because he is the stabilising voice of the Middle East and there is now a stage where we no longer can trust the media to give us the low down on what is ACTUALLY being said, were we get the real deal on where certain parties stand.  

The Actor
Now we get to Misha Collins. He stated on Twitter (X to some) something that struck a nerve. You can see it (at https://x.com/mishacollins/status/1723909073219772737?t=Nrp0sJig4eyEqYW4aIY_iA&s=03) it is amazingly good. He does give the setting from two sides and we need to ac knowledge that Israel had true grievances. The operative word was ‘had’. This has gone on for too long and in the end Hamas is not getting hit, merely the people from Gaza are and the top Hamas person is safely in Qatar, so what is now the point? 

That is the question I am struggling with. Can or should Israel be allowed to continue when 100 people from Gaza are killed and merely 2-3 Hamas operators? That is a price much to high, on the other side we see that as long as Hamas is in charge in Gaza this setting is unlikely to change. 

I understand that Hamas needs to be stopped, but this needs a very different approach and bombing Gaza into the stone age will not make it so. 

As such I have been struggling with several issues, but the largest issue is that the western media is no longer to be trusted and that makes it much harder, add to that deep fakes and populist agenda’s that are more often then not anti-semitic in nature makes us all run for the hills, we can no longer tell what is real and it is my hope that Al Jazeera and Arab News will become the real sources of information, but that is merely one thought. 

This weekend is hard, harder then most and it is all happening whilst we all see the Santa Claus stands and commercialisation of Christmas events, all whilst the reality for the west bank is one that is not including reindeers. 

I will not tell you to enjoy the weekend. I get it, you want to but it is time to mull a few things over.

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October 25, 2023 · 00:10

LinkedIn has problems

That is the setting I have been looking at for the last few days. What was the number one BUSINESS solution on social media has become a populist self promoting machine of garbage. Yes, a treasure to some is garbage to others. 

Small Issue
See here the small issue. Aqualand Australia, it is more than just a method of presentation. 

We can all agree that presentation would be part of LinkedIn and I have zero issues with that. Yet the link goes to a place lacking all kinds of information and you MIGHT get more, if you only hand over your details and e-mail. A simple email grab, not unlike cybercriminals out for some phishing spots. I don’t mind them being bad at informing you, but the email grab? I have an issue with that. It is the lowest least acceptable form of sales technique done by people who lack sales skills. You see, if they were proper sales people, they would have included a PDF (example) with ALL the information. If the information is good, the real people would be in contact, they would be making the next move. Yet in Australia housing is expensive and I personally suspect that the lack of information is to ensure that these salespeople get every dime out of you that they can get. Not merely the price of the house, but the maximum drain they can get. Now, I accept that I might be wrong on a few things and it could have been resolved by giving us all the goods and the real deal, but we aren’t getting that are we?

Big Issue
This is becoming an actual nuisance. LinkedIn members are getting more and more hassled with fake polls. 

Consider “Is your job hunt in the Intelligence Community becoming more challenging and what specific challenges are you encountering?” Is this an actual Yes/No question? And I am seeing several a day. Some will actually try to connect to whomever answered the question, because the author can see how YOU voted. It is a sales technique that is not clever, it is not innovative. It is (as I personally see it) merely stupid and with groups becoming public, this issue will merely grow.

The larger issue is that LinkedIn was an established professional network, by changing the rules and through that increase traffic, they are now becoming their own words enemy. Consider that players like Xing (German version) is starting to get into a position where they could poach plenty of LinkedIn members by doing nothing and by preventing that these actions will be allowed. Less than half a dozen little actions that could diminish LinkedIn with their 950 million members in more than 200 countries could make them lose close to 10% annually. LinkedIn will be a larger network for some time, but the foundations are shifting. Players like Xing, Jobcase, Hired and Hirect are nowhere near that size, but people might decide to take up a second network and when that network is giving them what they need, LinkedIn will lose a lot more than they thought of. I personally see this that their need to increase traffic for all kinds of reasons is starting to have a more negative impact. 

The number one question becomes how wrong could I be? I could always be wrong, but the populist approach seldom has a positive outcome. It is only those seeking (and lacking) attention seek the populist method and as I personally see it, those lacking sales skills (marketing too) need  all kinds of attention, some valid, some questionable. Yet this is merely my point of view.

As such, LinkedIn need to reassess what they are doing and what they allow to be ‘collected’ A mere change in certain paths might solve part of the problem for LinkedIn for now.

Enjoy the day.

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October 10, 2023 · 05:11

The job never evolved

There was an article in the Sydney Morning Herald and it angered me. The article (at https://www.smh.com.au/business/the-economy/recruitment-labour-hire-companies-collapse-amid-worker-reluctance-to-swap-jobs-20231006-p5ea8q.html) gives us ‘Recruitment, labour hire companies collapse amid worker reluctance to swap jobs’ it is there that we are given “the slowing economy makes employers more reluctant to fork out money to external recruitment firms who are struggling to fill job vacancies with qualified candidates.” First of all, the recruitment firms in Australia are a joke. They never learned anything. They keep on playing the same games for resume collections and mass marketing job filling. Over the last 10 years I have had less than a dozen confirmation emails. We are talking in excess of 300 job applications and less then a dozen replied with something like ‘We have received your resume’ or even ‘We regret to inform you that you have not been selected’ Less then a dozen in over 300 applications. That is the recruitment firm setting, a setting that has less credibility than a cocaine pusher in Sydney’s drug capital called Kings Cross.

They are all about cutting corners and all about reducing costs, all whilst they lose more and more credibility. As such there is every chance that employers are more and more becoming self sufficient in this task. There are more and more corporations with talent pages and career pages.

And the stage of “recruitment agencies were struggling with more vacancies than they could find qualified candidates for” is laughable to say the least. Ageism is merely one factor, the other factor is that more and more recruitment agencies have staff members that seemingly have no clue what they are doing. In one event I met the same recruiter a week later by pure chance and he stated that he hadn’t had any time to read my resume. But there he was collecting more resume’s.

So why don’t we give the setting a twist towards the reality of the stage? Perhaps it should be ‘hire companies collapse due to staff competency and repeated outdated actions’, I think that this is a much more to the point reason. In addition we see all kinds of recruitment firms popping up. There is every chance that one person was good at what he or she did and started their own firm. Makes perfect sense to me, but now we have 8 instead of one firm and these 8 firms are not communicative at all, the previous version wasn’t either. 

There are of course valid reasons and the SMH gives it to us via “A broader collapse in the construction industry, including high-profile businesses Porter Davis and Mahercorp, has reverberated through labour hire companies such as Duet Recruitment, ARI Recruitment, Collar Up Recruitment, GRB 365 Recruitment and PG Labour Services, who have called in administrators as their work dries up”. I reckon that in IT similar settings are happening. Google, Amazon, Microsoft and IBM are all shedding jobs. So there would be an impact. Yet the larger issue is that we see dozens of jobs every day in LinkedIn and those jobs are often pushed by recruiters, who keep on doing the same thing again and again and not communicating any of this. So when we see ‘worker reluctance to swap jobs’, the setting might be that these workers do not trust recruitment firms. All promising a calf with golden horns but in the end whatever they promise isn’t set in stone. Firms promising warm calling and inbound calls all whilst the result is that they are cold calling firms and people don’t like cold callers and whatever bonus is promised is a joke. Recruiters haven’t learned their lesson in over a decade and they continue in the trend of  direct mail companies, all whilst that setting is decades old. You either evolve or you become irrelevant. It is that simple.

Enjoy the day.

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