Tag Archives: News

Spend, spend, spend

Yes, that can be seen as spending three times over. We are of course referring to the debilitating debt the US has and now it is about to cost them a lot, in the larger stage this has had my attention for some time, but today three articles brought it to the top (yet again). The first one comes from the CBC (at https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/debt-ceiling-us-scrap-1.6836090) where we see ‘The U.S. debt limit is again stoking fears across the globe. Why not just scrap the thing?’ There are of course several answers to that part, but it is ““I don’t think there’s any reason to have it exist anymore,” said Douglas Holtz-Eakin, former director of the Congressional Budget Office, who is the current president of the right-wing think-tank American Action Forum.” I think that Douglas has been sniffing the alternative Gatorade. You see, if there was no reason to have credit limits, I would take out a $50M loan with my IP as collateral and move to Dubai. Have a nice one floor apartment and live of the rest with $300K a month at my disposal until the day I die. The reality is that we all have credit limits and most of us have a credit limit that is in the basement. As such nations and governments have limits as well. It is the idea that Americans think they do not have one, but that is a false assumption. It might have had a delusional ring of truth when they were a super power and when they had all the innovations, but they first off shored the knowledge they had because the board of directors had more bonus options, but they are now either retired or mostly dead. Now India has that power, now Saudi Arabia is the innovative player and now China is about to become the one true superpower. All negative things for the US, but this is what they wanted and they shunned Saudi Arabia too often and now they lose them as an ally as well. The one player that really has all the cash is shunned. Well done America! In the mean time spending went on and it was catered to by people who have close to no ash in the first place. Now the Fortune 100 have less American companies and several of them have a spin on what they really own. The largest players who really have things are Google, IBM, Amazon and Adobe. The rest are wannabe collapsing entities. There is Netflix, but they will be in turmoil for at least a year and there is no way to tell how they are pulling through. Facebook is under the gun and they are about to lose another segment, in the meantime Meta is nowhere near ready. 

So off to article two, this is Reuters (at https://www.reuters.com/markets/us-debt-standoff-overshadows-g7-finance-leaders-meeting-2023-05-11/) giving us ‘US debt standoff overshadows G7 finance leaders’ meeting’, which could be true. You see, Japan is in deep waters, optionally too deep, but that requires financial knowledge I do not have, what I think is the case, is that they are too deep in debt and when the US goes, so does Japan. The 7 nations are Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the United Kingdom and the United States. Italy and France are already in deep waters, in part of the overspending my Mario Draghi, in part of a slowing economy. The UK has its own set of troubles which basically leaves Canada and they cannot hold the fort by themselves but that is the group that is in some kind of meeting and the conversation to raise the debt ceiling is a farce, they all know that the US is fighting of shadows of their former selves all alone, all because no one was willing to do something about overspending and they are decades too late in overhauling their tax systems. All these small issues line up to a setting where there is soon an America defaulting on ALL their loans, bonds collapse and that also pushes Japan over the edge. The Reuters article also gives us “U.S.-China tensions also cloud the outlook for the global economy that is already under pressure from signs of weakness in the world’s second-largest economy China.” This is a stage that I find debatable, from my point of view (optionally not a correct one), the Chinese economy is already surpassing America and now that they have the stage for the Middle East with larger venues into Saudi Arabia, they surpass America. The fact that Saudi Oil can now be bought with Yuan is the one push America never needed and never really could handle. With Saudi Arabia about to launch their own version (in English) of Al Jazeera will mean that advertisers have an alternative to Fox and CNN and when that channel branches out to Indonesia, Egypt, Bangladesh and India, the numbers will vastly surpass 500,000,000 viewers. In this I didn’t even consider Pakistan at present. As such where do you think Advertiser will go? America pushed the wrong buttons for years and now their birds are roosting in other nests. The third is also Reuters (at https://www.reuters.com/markets/us/yellen-warns-us-default-would-threaten-global-economy-undermine-us-leadership-2023-05-11/) giving us ‘Yellen warns US default would threaten global economy, undermine its leadership’ where we see “U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen on Thursday urged Congress to raise the $31.4 trillion federal debt limit and avert an unprecedented default that would trigger a global economic downturn and risk undermining U.S. global economic leadership” in this I personally believe that the US hasn’t been a real economic leader for some time. It started just before the age of Trump as the US learned that they could no longer afford the things they were doing and now these accounts are all coming up empty all at the same time. So at the end we are given “Yellen said Republican brinkmanship on the issue amounted to a “crisis of our own making” and that just the threat of a default could lead to a downgrade of the U.S. government’s credit rating, as occurred during a debt ceiling fight in 2011.” I personally feel that this is totally bogus, the issue was overspending and both sides of the isle were doing that and both sides were doing that. In addition they alienated the one player who was loaded, the rich relative was made a pariah and that didn’t sit well with that relative. This is why I approached them with my IP. I feel better when someone with the cash pays for my IP than the fakers who have a maximised credit card, implying I would be without cash for too long whilst they walk away with my multi billion dollar IP. I will not allow Microsoft anywhere near it, as such I would have no issues selling it to Tencent Technologies (with a few attached clauses mind you). And I have reason. A clear solution that could have given Google and/or Amazon billions was shunned by them giving me the excuse to go wherever I needed to go to get my golden retirement. And they connect. You see, they are all about contracting economies, all whilst innovation will go where there was no one and in my case in several cases there was no one, only in one case there was someone (Gucci), but they are only on one side of one IP I had and I had several other venues connected to it, optionally to android phones as well. And you see that same issue here. We see ‘raise the debt ceiling’ whilst 4 presidents did not stop overspending, it was not an issue and now as they lose tens of billions in industries that are all headed for China, they are all up in arms with “Yellen wants G7 debate on restricting investment to China”, just like the Huawei issue and we never were EVER given any evidence regarding Huawei. That is the effect of a bully who lost whatever innovation they had to players who were truly innovative and now they are running out of time, they are running out of fairway and they have nothing left. Two elemental parts were ignored for too long the first was overhauling their tax system, the second was overspending and in 2011 the point of no return was reached, both Democrats and Republicans worked together in making that happen and China merely waited for it to collapse and that is now about to happen. Will there be another raise? I cannot tell, but this is not enough, after this one another one will come and that is how this game is being played, almost like bluffing in Omaha poker, the issue is that bluffing is too dangerous and can often fall flat, for someone to think that they can bluff for this long is a new level of delusion. 

No matter what, we are about to find out how much longer the US can play that game and they returns to the stage of tax the rich, another delusional setting, which by the way works out well for Monaco, the Bahamas and Dubai to name but three where the retiring rich could go to actually enjoy their cash. 

Enjoy your day unless you have a PacWest Bank account, at that point you are decently screwed at present.

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The bigger shift

The news that caught me today is (at https://dohanews.co/saudi-arabia-mulls-launch-of-english-news-channel-to-rival-al-jazeera-reports/) giving us ‘Saudi Arabia mulls launch of English news channel to rival Al Jazeera’. I actually originally got it from the Financial Times, but they are behind a paywall, so I cannot use them as a source. So Saudi Arabia is now considering an English News Channel. This changes things. First E-Sports, now sports (Messi And Ronaldo), Formula one and now we get “A Saudi state-backed media organisation is considering the development of an international English-language news station, seen as an effort to counter Qatar’s flagship Al Jazeera network and boost the kingdom’s media influence”. I personally think that there is another reason. You see, if tourism develops in Saudi Arabia, the need for an English Channel rises and it’s need will rise exponentially. It also allows to dig into advertisement funds that have been denied them for decades. You see, the advertiser goes to where the people and the money is. The money is already in Saudi Arabia, but soon so will be the people. The stages of sports will allow Saudi Arabia exclusive news channelling and that leads to more revenue and more visibility. Even as we are given “The Saudi Research and Media Group reportedly approached media consultancies to assess the viability and scope of the endeavour, according to a number of people familiar with the project, the Financial Times reported. They said it will be the second-largest English-language broadcaster in the Arab world, after Al Jazeera English, although the preparations are still in the early stages.” And this is not all, there is another reason. As western media ‘embraced’ their Share holder, stake holder and advertiser approach to filtering information. They lost credibility and the audience. Most places no longer call it news, they refer to it as information entertainment (Fox anyone?) In addition to this, the west would finally get real information on Aramco (not filtered by Brent), on SAMI (not filtered by the pentagon) and sports. It would even propel interest into things like Camel racing, the Emirates Ice Hockey League and from that we could see the development of a Saudi Ice Hockey league. We know that they are still not a member of the International Ice Hockey Federation, but to see Saudi Arabia grow teams in Jeddah, Dammam and Riyadh, taking on the UAE teams from the Emirates Hockey League (EHL). We could see names like Abu Dhabi Scorpions, Abu Dhabi Storms, Al Ain Theebs, Dubai White Bears, Dubai Mighty Camels propel all over the western TV stations. 

If the west is embracing sports Saudi Arabia has the making to replace a whole collection of news channels that lost too much credibility. And it isn’t merely influence. As I personally see it the KSA lacks perception and awareness in the view of the non Arabian people and this could be a first step to open that door. Beyond that there are several markets where the KSA could set foot into and in this world in this current economic climate that will go a long way, what is important that the first steps are made setting the larger stage towards doing something and that is where it is at. Will it happen? This happening is a logical step after setting claims towards E-sports, Formula 1, Football and Ice hockey. Beyond that is the stage where the people will get first looks on the Line (that long building) and several other innovations coming towards us from Saudi Arabia. 

A bigger shift is underway and the US with their deceptive ‘entertainment’ like Fox and even CNN, they will have nothing to counter it. In the last 5 years they wasted too much credibility opening the door to other players and as I see it the KSA stands to add an audience of close to half a billion in the first 2 years, would you like to see the advertisement money on that pool? 

Enjoy the day before Friday.

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Changing the narrative

That happens at times. Narratives are slightly altered, but in this case? The media to a much larger degree are changing the narrative of the strikes at the Writers Guild of America. Is it because of advertisement needs? Is it because the streaming corporations now have a hold on them? You tell me. In this I have two examples. The first is ABC and even though the headline is deceptive, they do give all the facts. 

Yet others are seemingly not doing that. They are all about the AI side, yet the two largest issues which are the unbelievable amount of underpaid writers as well as the streaming revenue where writers get next to nothing are massive issues. ABC does mention them but plenty of them do not. I saw at least a few of them copying other texts almost to the letter and no mention of streaming issues. Why is that? It is all nice that the WGA is on strike and picketing, but the media should at least take one small effort to hand the real issues and all of them to the public. The media has lost enough credibility as it is and as such we need to wake up (and fast). 

As I heard it new media (streaming) was not addressed satisfactory the last time around, because it was really new. So to read that some writers creating winning series need a government handout to get by is clearly insane. And it will cost Hollywood a lot more then they realise. What happens when the Commonwealth (Australia, Canada, United Kingdom) take over? What happens when the Dubai stage of G5 starts catering to global streaming? What happens when China with Tencent Technologies adjusts to this stream whilst paying a proper income? America might shun it all and stats that these series are not welcome, yet I believe that parts of Asia, Europe and the Middle East are ready for change and Hollywood better tarts realising really fast that the latter three players are close to 60% of their income stream. When that falls away it will be one of several multi billion income streams falling away. First Defence, then IT now streaming and as I see it both the UAE and China are chomping at the bit to take a slice of that income stage. 

So whilst the media is pondering how to cater to advertisers, they better realise that when that falls away they have nothing left. One of my IP will already hurt advertisement money to a decent amount, the streaming industry will hurt a lot more when the shift to any of the other three players come through. All stages that were out in the open for all to admire, that was until the media changed the narrative as I see it. I have no idea how long this strike will last, but at the end when writers vacate to a place where they end up having a decent income, plenty of series will collapse, perhaps not completely, but several will lose the little talent they had at their disposal. Yet for these providers there is still one option, a reality show based on republican politicians with real republican politicians. They will take any limelight that will have them and it could be hosted by Tucker Carlson, apparently he is looking for a job. So how is that future of streaming? Yes, there is an upcoming issue with AI, but that will take time. The fact that paid writers still require government handouts whilst these series make billions is disgusting and it will not take long until some will show the people this and plead that we cancel out streaming subscriptions. What happens when the people on mass agree?

Enjoy Sunday and consider the price of what you are watching on your streaming channel.

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Would it still be news?

We get that at times. A question regarding the news, not what they bring, but what they are. I was left with a few questions today when I took notice of ‘Saudi news channels start moving operations out of Dubai’ (at https://www.aljazeera.com/economy/2021/9/1/saudi-news-channels-start-moving-operations-out-of-dubai). Just as the BBC is in London, the NOS is in the Netherlands (Hilversum), Swedish News is predominantly in Stockholm. I always assumed that Saudi News was in Riyadh, so to see that they were in Dubai which is a nice and large town in another nation was a little bit of a surprise. So as I take notice of “Riyadh has told international firms to put their MidEast hubs there by the start of 2024 or risk losing out on business” has a certain amount of sense.

The question becomes who offers more, Dubai or Riyadh? I am not talking money, even though for the international stations that will be some part of it. Dubai has its yachts, its connected jet-setting, yet what does Riyadh offer? It is a genuine question. I must admit that I only recently saw Riyadh through the eyes of YouTuber Jason Billiam Travel, and he did an excellent job, if you have never been to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, the view that (at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xk_4wPK6oks) where I got my first glimpse of the Kingdom Tower at the beginning of the video no less. He was able to give me a clear impression that Riyadh, the capital is larger than the entire nation of Bahrein and he gives us a lot more over several movies, more on Riyadh and more on the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. There is one element that there is no yacht club in Saudi Arabia. If I had the ability to create one in Riyadh, I would. Even if it is just to set aside my sense of humour as the nearest decent amount of water is almost 400Km away (Sea of Dammam, aka the Persian gulf), so the idea to have a restaurant in the building that represents a yacht would be a fun idea. A place where 8 million people live and most have never seen a boat with their own eyes, so to create a concrete yacht that is a restaurant and optionally an international hotel will get the eyes of a lot of people. But we were talking about the news and Al Jazeera also gives us “Saudi Arabian news channels are starting to transfer operations out of Dubai amid a push by the country’s crown prince to get multinational companies to relocate their headquarters to the kingdom” and it makes sense, although it would have made initial more sense to have Saudi news offices in Saudi Arabia, but that is merely me and it is a thought that is based on the idea that news channels should be local. So when I see “Saudi Arabia has been pressuring international companies to put their Middle East hubs in the kingdom by the start of 2024 or risk losing out on business in the region’s largest economy” I do realise that too many people will focus on ‘pressuring international companies’, yet is that fair? Consider that the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia should award business to its local parties, so Dubai has benefitted with its Media centre to the largest degree for well over a decade. And the reason seen in “The move is intended to limit “economic leakage” and boost job creation” makes perfect sense. 

There are actually two additional reasons to contemplate, whether it is all news is in the middle. With that shift the media will get a lot more exposure to Neom city as well as the tourist visibility places that Riyadh has to offer, the Kingdom Tower is merely one of them. The Grand Mosque of Riyadh is according to many another one.  

The entire setting made me wonder why Saudi news was not set on a local premise in the first place. I am not saying it was wrong, I am merely wondering what was the reasoning in the first place. There are many valid reasons that come to mind, yet none of these have been tested at present and with Neom City now a mere 9 years away, the local presence seem to make more and more sense. There is of course more, there is a larger stage to promote Jeddah as well, we can argue that this could be done from either place, but I have seen on how minds get distracted from other places as the distance increases and Dubai is very far away from Jeddah, it is not enough a reason, but it is one and consider that in the last 24 hours globally ‘Neom’ was mentioned 10 times. One in Chinese, three in Arabic and the rest in English, in a world where there are thousands of publication, 10 mentions? Yes the news needs adjusting and perhaps it starts with getting the international news stations local. As I see it it is a lot less about economic leakage and more about ignoring Saudi events, in this the Houthi attacks on civilian Saudi targets might finally get the exposure it deserves. 

Will it still be news after the switch? I hope not, as it had been happening for too long, but that is merely my 2 coins on the subject. 

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Why do we bother?

Yup, that was the question that came to mind, you see the so called free world is all about ‘Ballerina with Alzheimer’s returns to Swan Lake’ and ‘Telstra customers overcharged millions’, which is news, I do not deny that, yet as far as I can tell less than an hour ago, only 2 gave us ‘Several injured in explosion at Saudi Armistice Day event’, which comes from the Guardian, and ‘Several injured in ‘bomb attack’ on Armistice Day ceremony at Saudi cemetery’, which we get from France24. For the most I merely looked at it sideways, that is until I saw a small part I was actually unaware of. It is the quote “The annual ceremony commemorating the end of World War I at the non-Muslim cemetery in Jeddah, attended by several consulates, including that of France, was the target of an IED [improvised explosive device] attack this morning, which injured several people”, to be honest I was unaware that Saudi Arabia was active during WW1, and I found out that the two parties were the Idrisid Emirate of Asir and the Emirate of Nejd and Hasa, they would later become part of what is now the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. 

So the western media will rely on fake news to bash Saudi Arabia, yet a WW1 commemoration is seemingly off limits for a larger group of the media to comment on. Yes, that makes perfect sense, and you wonder why there is no action on fake news? From my speculative view it might be because the news itself is heralding fake news as means to set agenda’s. Off course I will admit to the fact that my view is speculative, but in light of what we are shown again and again, am I that far off?

The papers also give us “his country’s commitment to free speech, strict secular traditions and right to blasphemy, President Emmanuel Macron promised France would not “renounce caricatures””, I get it. I might not agree, but I get it, in part because the French Revolution was one bloody mosaic of blood and guts and lasted a fair bit, so they have a stage, yet the stage of blasphemy ‘the action or offence of speaking sacrilegiously about God or sacred things’ is a dangerous setting. The ‘freedom’ to attack any religion is something that never sat well with me. It always reminds me of this joke:

Reverend: We should unite and find harmony, we both worship our heavenly father
Pastor: Indeed
Reverend: You serve him your way
Pastor: Correct
Reverend: I serve him the way he prefers to be served
Pastor: ….

Yes, being a christian is not an easy thing, and finding a safe course to guide any conversation on politics or religion tends to be one with dangerous waters. I admit to this, yet to openly confront islam by making caricatures of Mohammed and making it a larger freedom is a big issue. And I get the schools have an issue explaining freedom of speech, but the school teacher had dozens of options to show before he got to the drawing of Mohamed, history is filled with them. And when we remember the news in 2017 where we see ‘FRANCE IS BANNING COMPANIES FROM PHOTOSHOPPING IMAGES OF MODELS IN ADVERTS’, so where is the free speech, the secular need to blaspheme the human shape for the good of free speech? Isn’t a double standard nice to have? I am sort of wondering how “In a bid to tackle misleading promotions”, perhaps it is ‘you can be this thin, apply for a position in the Fritzl basement, you will end up 5 sizes smaller, we will fit you with ankle jewellery. Perhaps that was misleading? 

What bothers me is that most events taking place in Saudi Arabia is either an attack on Saudi Arabia, or a misleading setting where the actions of Hezbollah and Iran are left out of the equation, and I believe it is time that we alter that need. It is time to openly demand the list of shareholders, stake holders and advertisers of anyone found complicit in this. I wonder how many links to power players we end up seeing.

And it is important, because when the equation changes, these same people will scream that they are not given a fair go, and as I personally see it, nothing will be farther from the truth. So when we are treated to “Zain KSA’s 5G services will certainly unlock new prospects for these regions, enabling us to provide residents and citizens with tools for innovation and development, and to support the wise leadership’s efforts aiming towards achieving economic diversification and increasing the competitiveness of the national economy.”Zain launched commercial 5G operations in Saudi Arabia in October 2019. In the initial deployment phase, the telco deployed 2,000 towers that covered an area of more than 20 cities across Saudi Arabia”, we are given a first direct setting where Saudi Arabia has an active business ability in designing and deploying 5G solutions. Yet only this year did we get “Verizon Communications (VZ), AT&T (T), and T-Mobile US (TMUS) have all begun rolling out next-generation 5G networks in markets across the U.S., promising faster speeds, greater capacity, and lower latency” in this we need to take particular notice of ‘have all begun rolling out’ and when we ask for tower information we get ‘a large amount of investment going toward 5G-ready cell sites’, clear English was never in the interest of the business spinner. It gets us towards comical when we consider VentureBeat giving us ‘The U.S. now has 4 live 5G networks, but good luck actually using them’, we see  larger stage and the US is falling behind, it does so at an alarming rate, so whilst we take notice of “Just days after blasting rivals AT&T and Verizon for lying about their limited 5G offerings, T-Mobile commenced initial service on June 28, becoming the last U.S. national carrier to launch 5G”, they need an actual working stage for app developers to get their zoom spot on (or G-Spot), whatever floats their network. So when we got “Just like Verizon, which launched pre-standards 5G home broadband service in small parts of Los Angeles last year, T-Mobile’s current coverage appears to be sparing at best. Initial reports from a small group of testers suggest that the magenta brushstrokes in Manhattan are a bit too thick and numerous given actual 5G connectivity on the ground, and that’s the best of its six cities”, I knew that my IP had no business being in the US at the point and when we consider  we got last July “The problem is that the width of the “lanes” used to transmit data at those frequencies are very narrow, which means that the speeds are not much different from 4G. That’s certainly not what we were led to believe 5G was going to be able to do”, with the emphasis on ‘the speeds are not much different from 4G’, which show us (in part) WHY 5G in Saudi Arabia is 750% faster. So when we look at all the spin, the spin I warned about in 2018, we see why anyone siding with the US is now in a stage that they are 3-5 years behind, and even more shameful on them, they are behind Saudi Arabia and China in this. So when you wonder where the new innovative 5G options come from, consider that they will less and less likely be coming from the USA.

In light of what might be seen as the betrayal of technology, how do you find your level of blasphemy to be when you are up against a Saudi Programmer who has an app that is 2-5 times faster? If speed is the determining factor in 4G and 5G, what else are you losing out on?

I stated it before, 4G was about ‘Where ever you are’, 5G will be about ‘Whenever you want it’, and my IP saw that benefit upfront, are you catching on yet? You see, if you were aware of all the news that we are not getting regarding the KSA and their options, we would be better prepared, but the is not the case and should the Virgin Hyperloop get that Saudi Contract, we will be falling behind even more. Gee, for those who care, the Xbox is out now, too bad the 75GB downloads are not on a 5G setting, are they? And d you have the bandwidth to get all that data across?

Have fun!

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What light is the limelight

We all wonder at times why certain matters are brought to attention, we now automatically assume that issues are revealed to seat the limelight, not merely TV and other media, the press is seen in that same way. It is not that we are bombarded with fake news, there is now the assumed feeling by many that the media is giving us fake news (they tend to call it direct and speculated views from experts). 

This view is supported (to a degree) by Al Jazeera who gave us “Long before “fake news” had a name, the BBC was a master of fake news, in fact fake news of the most dangerous, the most vicious consequences, casting nations, not just individuals, into direct calamities”, they did so in November 2018, they also give us “The role of BBC in the overthrow of Mosaddeq was not out of character or unusual. In a piece titled Why the taboo tale of the BBC’s wartime propaganda battle must be told published by The Guardian, David Boyle writes about characters like Noel Francis Newsome (1906-1976), who “as director of European broadcasts … led what is still the biggest broadcasting operation ever mounted, in 25 different languages for a total of just over 25 hours a day, across three wavelengths.””, in this the BBC does not stand alone, there are scores of producers that have had the ear of their governments. 

The problem now is that the media is flaunting the #Fakenews items and procrastinate on what they regard on what is fake news, yet they themselves have been heralding tweaked news and scores of misinformation through either omission or ‘non disclosed sources’ and the people have caught on, they have caught on for a while, so whilst they disregard newspapers, they embrace another level of debatable news that others publish on social media. 

And everyone is seeking the limelight, yet the most obvious question becomes slowly apparent to some, what sort of light is the limelight? And what sort of light was it supposed to be?

That is the question, in people like Freddy Mercury and David Bowie got to be exposed to the purest form that was discovered in 1837, at that point we had: “limelight was used for the first time to illuminate a stage, at London’s Covent Garden. During the second half of the 19th century, theaters regularly utilized this powerful form of light, which could be focused into a beam to spotlight specific actors or an area of the stage”, the stage was set to illuminate and give visibility to, in this case titans of music. In other forms we see the pink limelight, which in this case is not a version of ‘La vie en rose’, it is a version to make softer the harsh reality of a situation that we face, we see it whenever the limelight needs to be on Iran, we see it when bad news must be tempered for the good of that government or for the good of the political needs of THAT moment. In this stage we also need to see the omissions of news and I am not buying the usual ‘we ran out of space’ BS all whilst digital space costs nothing and any additional space implies more advertisement space too. Some might have noticed on the massive lack of reporting whilst Houthi forces (via Iran) were firing missiles on the Saudi government. To merely quote one of the (many) sources “When important news is omitted, we get a skewed or biased perspective”, as I see it, the Saudi example shows a few issues, as the larger lack of reporting was shown, right around the time several governments were setting the stage of no weapons to Saudi Arabia. And in all that mess, the lack of reporting on the actions of Iran take a larger view and we need to do that. We see a global stage that is changing, whilst a group of politic Ians are setting the stage based on their egotistical needs, and that group is getting too large, all whilst the political field of the US is dwindling down and European politics is getting a dangerous overhaul. In this stage of changes, some have figured out that a new way of setting the tone of news is not changing the story, it is adjusting the limelight. As I see it it will open differently across forms of media, but the readers will have a lot more issues to distinguish between news and fake news, you see, there will be news, adjusted news and fake news. The problem is that all have a professional looking character, yet the impact differs. It gets us back to the 90’s when the 256 greyscale solutions came, but the setting is an important distinguishing one. We cannot distinguish these 256 grey scales. Our eyes are not that good, and our brains are even less distinguishing, as the overlap between real, adjusted and fake messages increases, our ability to distinguish becomes a larger issue. In this a personal view is that there is a correlation between phishing and adjusted news. It becomes harder, if not close to impossible to see the difference. I almost fell for two phishing attacks, even as I knew what to look for, the message was indistinguishable from the real deal and news is going the same way, the media relying on ‘adjusted news’ is not helping any. The one clear part (from factcheck.org) is “Not all of the misinformation being passed along online is complete fiction”, the question is when does it become too hard to see the difference between a story that is not ‘all fiction’ and a story that is not ‘all true’. When can we no longer tell the difference? And as some come with the treated excuse ‘Is there not an AI solution?’, the stage becomes rather large, because AI does not exist, not yet at least. You see, the salespeople are selling AI, because it is marketed at all, just like the 80’s when printers had to be sold, they came up with Near Letter Quality. Wit AI we now have True AI: “True artificial intelligence is autonomous — it does not require human maintenance and works for you silently in the background” and there we see the problem, the identification is still done with human intervention, and the part in this that I did not report on is that AI, or perhaps more clearly stated True AI requires to be learning. That is not yet possible as it requires quantum computing with shallow circuits. IBM is close to getting it, but not completely there yet, only when that is ready, complete and true AI becomes achievable. So whilst that stage is still evading us, the issues of adjusted and fake news keep on going. Yet I am concerned with the question “What is the light they use as limelight?”, in this we consider it as we need to contemplate that news should not change when WE change the light, so real news will remain  the same whether it is rose or lime light, adjusted news will change slightly, but perhaps just enough for us to see the difference. It is speculative, but I believe that it is a future option.

 

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Donkey Balls!

The explanation is actually almost too simple, I am writing this whilst I am rewatching the Expanse on Bluray (thanks to the awesome sale JB Hifi had 3 weeks ago). I was watching and browsing whilst I got exposed to ‘Media rules must help news providers harness digital platforms’ value’, the link was on LinkedIn and came from Facebook. I do not disagree with the setting, but the entire issue is much larger and has traps on a few levels. That issue is a little less complicated when we consider the news on the daily mail where we see ‘Top Facebook exec says it DID help Donald Trump win but only because ‘he ran the single best digital ad campaign I’ve ever seen. Period.’ And NOT because of Russia’, the claim was apparantly made by Andrew Bosworth and it was in the Daily Mail on January 8th. It is not the claim that is the issue, it is the linked advertisements that the viewer gets. I ended up with advertisements by Telstra and Microsoft. Now, there was nothing wrong with that, yet if I had not clicked on the story, the advertisements would not have come. That is the issue, even newsmakers need to rely on clicks and there is the first issue. Basically the (short) story has the following 2nd headlines:

  • Andrew Bosworth is a longtime senior Facebook executive and confidant of Mark Zuckerberg
  • Bosworth wrote a 2,500 word memo shared internally with Facebook employees that was published on December 30
  • He claimed the Cambridge Analytica scandal was a ‘non-event’ and admitted the Russians did manipulate the U.S. election
  • Bosworth also essentially branded criticism of the company as fake news because the press ‘often gets so many details wrong’ 
  • The memo was initially leaked to the New York Times on Tuesday before the top executive published it in full on his public Facebook account 

5 times to get the clicks, 5 times to get advertisements and the news channels are in the setting to get CLICKS, making the quality of news debatable and there is the larger issue. When the news becomes a commercial vessel, how can it be trusted?

SO when I looked at the news (according to the Sydney Morning Herald) we get: “It would allow news publishers and digital platforms that distribute news to continue building on existing commercial arrangements, and support the development of a Digital News Council to advance cross-industry collaboration. It would also encourage more transparency for significant changes to the ranking of news content in News Feed and guarantee to publishers we’ll continue to share measurement data on how their content performs on Facebook as well as insights on their audiences, without sharing personal user information.” Here I see that there are optional ‘agreements’ on the sharing of revenue (which I do not debate, or wonder whether that is wrong), yet I do wonder about who has the stronger pull. Revenue based decisions, or news quality decisions and the ambiguity of it deepens the innate mistrust in me and the mistrust of the optional news that it breeds. So the quote “It would allow news publishers and digital platforms that distribute news to continue building on existing commercial arrangements” sets the steps for commercially inclined news, not neutral based and news baked news. It ends up not getting the clicks and that is the larger problem. The digital problem is that there needs to be space for news to set the parameters, yet the click is what gets the revenue and they tend to be on opposite sides of coins of different currency. Better stated was the Expanse response, which was ‘It really is Donkey balls’, the settings a larger one and those relying on click based revenue would not be interested in slaughtering the goose with the golden egg and I get that. But we need to move the news into another stage of the media, now making it revenue based, all whilst those participating should require to pay these newsagents something, it was their material used.

So whether we accept that the previous elections used a much better digital profile, we need to take the news out of it, and give them their own digital channel, not set to a click based system. It requires new levels of innovation on digital media and we all better accept that fast. 

What is the solution?

I actually do not know, but in part it will be creating awareness with the people, they need to realise that they are part of that problem, they are the inquisitive types and usually that is not a problem, yet the push the click based activities forward and at the point they become part of the problem. As I see it, the news might be part of social media, yet they should not be part of the click based equation and until the news starts realising that, as well as the fact that their shareholders, stakeholders and advertisers are part of the problem and not part of the solution, this issue will continue.

So those who have seen the Expanse season three and know that the initial weapon was something more might realise that in the digital media that click is the something more towards a weapon, all thanks to the shareholders, stakeholders and advertisers. We need a much larger change and until cash is taken out of the equation it cannot continue, yet that too is a dicey position, because the news has every right to cash in on materials they created. We cannot ignore that part of the equation.

 

 

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Those we needlessly fear

All others pay cash! Yes, that was direct, was it not? We have seen millions of articles fly by, all given the very same announcement: ‘Fear Saudi Arabia‘, as well as ‘MBS is a monster‘. Yet, what evidence was given? What actual evidence did we get?

Turkey played its innuendo game, we can also accept that the US is playing a protective game for Saudi Arabia and that too should be highlighted, yet NO ONE has taken an academic look at those so called tapes as have given the audience the rundown, what was there, what was proven. Is there even enough evidence that Jamal Khashoggi is on the tapes? Journalists are in their own corrupt little world of satisfying the shareholders, the stake holders and the advertisers and they all want Saudi Arabia to look like they are all guilty, all to the very top. In addition we see the G20 Argentina game that France played with their ‘confrontation’, conveniently enough staged to be caught on CNN. He was not that amateur like when he had to have a few words with someone high up at Crédit Agricole, was he? Where have they got that leaked conversation?

I see it as a simple operational premise to counter the fear that they have. It gets worse, at present the vultures are circling and we get to see more fallout. News dot com dot au are giving us (at https://www.news.com.au/world/middle-east/saudi-friend-of-jamal-khashoggi-sues-israeli-surveillance-firm/news-story/b0bf9d501332df9ad31bede7de904b6c) ‘Saudi friend of Jamal Khashoggi sues Israeli surveillance firm‘ gives us ‘A Saudi dissident‘, as well as ‘Omar Abdulaziz, said he was friends with Khashoggi‘. Now people make all kinds of claims, I can make the claim that I am the lover of Scarlett Johansson; she just does not know it yet. Anyone in the media can contact frukan Johansson and verify that fact (or prove it to be wrong), we can’t in the case of Khashoggi, can we? Was there corroborating evidence that they were actual friends? If so, why was that not added? The news site makes no real effort to substantiate that friendship and that is not what this is about. You see, it is the claim ‘a lawsuit against an Israeli surveillance company, claiming its sophisticated spyware targeted him and helped lead to the killing of his friend‘. We have two problems here. In the first, is there any evidence to back that up? In the second, Jamal Khashoggi was an unknown person to 93% of the planet, yet he was a journalist for the Washington Post, and as such he was a lot more visible than most others. Also, the entire filing matter in Istanbul gave rise that plenty of people knew where he was, so the spyware seems redundant. If there was quality spyware in place he could have been killed anywhere and leave the optional involvement of Saudi Arabia almost completely out of it. Does that not make sense?

The last paragraph is the killer here: “citing news reports and other sources claiming that NSO Group sold Saudi Arabia the technology in 2017 for $US55 million ($A75 million)“. The first thing here is to look at those news reports; I wonder how much innuendo is in there. Then we get the stage that technology worth $55 million was bought when JK was very much alone, giving rise to the reason of purchase, last by not least is the investigation on the NSO group and their software and that is what I believe was the foundation, it does not matter where and how the NSO group software was used. I believe that Omar Abdulaziz got wind of a 2016 article not unlike those on Vice (at https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/3da5qj/government-hackers-iphone-hacking-jailbreak-nso-group), and saw ‘Government Hackers Caught Using Unprecedented iPhone Spy Tool‘. so when we see (or saw) “Ahmed Mansoor, a 46-year-old human rights activist from the United Arab Emirates, received a strange text message from a number he did not recognize on his iPhone“, the brain of Omar Abdulaziz  optionally went ‘ka-chink‘ and his pupils turned to dollar signs, It was optionally his opportunity of a lifetime.

So who is right?

I am telling you right now that all I am writing from my opposition is pure speculation, yet is it less of more believable? Is the NSO group real? Yes they are and they have something that every nation on the planet with a decent technology level requires. Any government have people they want to keep tabs on, and that is what this solution optionally provides for. It is not a killing tool, and at $55 million it is not some tool you use for simply ending someone’s life, there are more convenient and more elegant ways to facilitate to punch out someone time clock of life. When you stage a $55 million solution when $50K in an account does it, that solution does not make sense.

Still, we cannot ignore the NSO group software and it might have been used to keep tabs on JK, that is optionally a reality we face, yet we all face that optional for a number of reasons and there we have the crux, knowing where a person is does not mean that their life has to be ended, the fact that we have tools, does not imply that we have to use other tools. The audience factor is trying to give us that idea, an emotional driven premise of events to set the stage of intentional international execution. There has been, and unlikely will be any evidence showing that. Not by some eager frog (an unnamed France governmental executive) stating to Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman ‘I am really worried!‘ worried about what? Conversations eagerly and ‘unintentionally’ leaked right in full view of the CNN camera, are people truly stupid enough to go for that bait?

Then we get claims in papers like the Sydney Morning Herald trying to up their game, yet at present I am not certain if the Saudi government would lose if a defamation case was brought to court and that is me merely contemplating two of the JK articles that I have read in the last two days.

In addition, the article has the claim ‘and helped lead to the killing of his friend‘, which is actually very clever as in this way stated we have a problem, or do we? Is there any evidence that the solution was or was not used? If there is a way to check the usage of that software then Omar Abdulaziz opened an interesting door. You see at that point, under the US freedom of information act, close to two dozen claims can be made regarding the NSA (the San Antonio location) on how they have been keeping tabs on people. In the January case of Sherretta Shaunte Washington, her attorney might optionally (with properly applied intelligence) be able to overturn any given sentence against her. There has been the rumour that the NSA assisted in keeping tabs on a dozen burner phones. You see, it is not the sim card; it is the mobile imei number on EVERY phone that is the issue. The NSO group seemingly figured out the algorithm to take this to the races and that advantage is worth well over $55 million. That is exactly why the Mexicans wanted the solution too. Most Mexicans are still believing that without the sim it is nothing, yet one call gave away the imei number and that number is a lot more useful than most consider.

And in the end it is Forbes who gives us the missing diamond going all the way back to August 2016. Here we are treated to: “looking at the domains registered by NSO, they determined Pegasus could have been used across Turkey, Israel, Thailand, Qatar, Kenya, Uzbekistan, Mozambique, Morocco, Yemen, Hungary, Saudi Arabia, Nigeria, and Bahrain, though there was no clear evidence“, in all this the one logical step, the one thought that no one has been willing to voice for a number of reasons. Turkey is on that list. So what if this was Turkey all along from beginning to end? Turkey, who had the solution to keep tabs on thousands of journalists, reporters and bloggers, and jailing hundreds of journalists, do you actually think that they are beyond killing a journalist? I mentioned a few yesterday, so you there is evidence all over the field and so far no actual and factual evidence has been given on any involvement of the Saudi Royal family, yet everyone is playing that card as often as possible.

I am not in denial, I am not stating that they are innocent, I am merely looking and hoping to see real evidence, and so far the absence of that investigation has been astounding. There is enough evidence on the involvement of Saudi’s in all this, yet the proper vetting of Turkish evidence by the media has seemingly been lacking. The press (and the media as a whole) merely pushed that same button again and again and it makes me wonder on the premise in which other ways we are (seemingly) being deceived. That is the clear consequence of orchestration, it makes us all doubt all the other evidence, and in light of the USA playing their silver briefcase WMD game in regards to Iraq, that has made us distrust a lot of other evidence, evidence that might have been valid, but we are in a stage where we no longer trust the messengers in all that and as the media and newspapers lose more and more credibility, we have started to treat most news as fake news.

That is the price of orchestration and the players remain in denial that it is happening. That is the part we see form a source called Foreign Policy dot com. The article (at https://foreignpolicy.com/2018/12/03/how-an-internet-impostor-exposed-the-underbelly-of-the-czech-media/), gives us: ‘How an Internet Impostor Exposed the Underbelly of the Czech Media. When politicians own the press, trolls have the last laugh‘, the article by Tim Gosling gives us: “Czech Prime Minister Andrej Babis—and expose just how easily disinformation can slip into the mainstream press, especially when politicians control it.” It is a mere introduction to: “In September, the Czech broadsheet Lidove Noviny published an op-ed by Horakova expressing support for Babis’s refusal to offer asylum to 50 Syrian orphans, as was proposed by an opposition member of parliament. Playing up to his populist pledge not to allow “a single refugee” into the Czech Republic, the prime minister said the country had its own orphans to care for“. It merely gives us parts to ponder, the amount of pondering increases with: “In tapes released by unknown sources onto the internet last year, for instance, he was heard discussing stories damaging to his political rivals with a reporter from Mlada fronta Dnes, which alongside Lidove Noviny is controlled by Agrofert—the agrochemicals conglomerate that is the centerpiece of Babis’s business empire.

I have written again and again against the media facilitation for the shareholders, the stakeholders and the advertisers, here we see the impact when the media and the shareholder are one and the same. That article from a freelance reporter who seemingly contributed to Foreign Policy, The Telegraph, Politico Europe, Deutsche Welle, World Politics et al. He shows that there is a much larger issue and that the difference between those bringing the news and fake news bringers is almost indistinguishable. We might give passage to the LA Times, the Washington Post, New York Times, the Times, the Guardian and several others, yet after that the mess becomes no longer trusted, mostly because the source is too unknown to us. The media did this to themselves through facilitation and until that changes fake news will have too many options to gain traction with the people influencing a populist political nation on a near global scale.

It is one of the reasons why I refuse to merely accept the view of people blaming Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman for it all. There are too many intelligence gaps, too many parts of merely insinuated conjecture whilst the intelligence was not properly vetted and it happened for the most in Turkey (the consulate is Saudi ground). We might never ever get the answer of what truly happened, and to a very large extent it is because of the games that the media played from the very beginning. A game staged in innuendo, unnamed sources and people talking on the promise of anonymity. It is not the fact that these elements exist, it is because to a much larger extent too many of them were used at the same time, pressing the same directional button, most of it not scrutinised to the degree that was essential, and when contra dictionary evidence was found, those issues were ignored by the largest extent by all the media, that too is the foundation of fake news, we merely chose to ignore it, it is our emotional side and that is the bigger issue. People are no longer adhering to innocent until guilty, the media has become a ‘guilty until proven innocent machine‘ and that drives the populist agenda more than anything else, so I oppose them all by stating: ‘The Saudi government is one we needlessly fear, until we have conclusive evidence of their action that is the only way we should be‘. We have become puppets in a world where tyrants (Robert Mugabe), alleged mass murderers (Slobodan Milošević), criminals (shooters who were granted indemnity from prosecution) and paedophiles (Catholic clergy) get more consideration than any Muslim ever had, how sad has our world become?

 

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The beat goes on

Perhaps you remember the stage. It was around the time that Sony started giving the audience both God of War 4 and Spiderman, breaking all kinds of records in the process. It is gaming at a new level and both groups of players (and many who play both games) have been satisfied well beyond amazement. Now we see that Microsoft is trying to bring the pain to Sony and they are doing it the right way (and only 5 years too late).

With the acquisition of Obsidian (Fallout New Vegas) and InXile (Wasteland 1+2) we see that they are starting to wake up, yet will it be enough? Having exclusive RPG games is the right way to go about it. You see, dedicated RPG fans tend to be long term fans. If you get the game right, there will be no chance that these players will switch consoles or PC Gaming platform. Bethesda proved that point and it gets to be better, there are people (including me) who have the game on all their consoles. There is value in doing that, but it tends to be reserved to the dedicated few and if you are not that person and you merely like it on one system, that is good too.

But it is not all roses and honey in this arranged marriage. Former Obsidian Owner Chris Avellone gave us (via Screenrant) “Chris Avellone didn’t hold back after discovering that Microsoft had just acquired Obsidian Entertainment in a blockbuster deal, beseeching the powerful tech company to gut the leadership that still worked there” that might be the case, it might not. I do not know. Yet what is a given is that the value of such a company is its IP, plain and simple and no matter how amazing Fallout New Vegas was for the Xbox360, that is still Bethesda IP, so is the Elder Scrolls. If they cannot match my ability to create the foundation of new IP within 168 hours, what value, or perhaps what costs is Microsoft looking forward to and will it even have a chance? Let’s take a leap in another direction. In 2017 Guerrilla Games released Horizon Zero Dawn, a game that when looked in depth has an amazing story behind it. It’s a little Matrix perhaps, but the intention towards greatness was there and with reviews ranging from 89%-95% shows that they had the good stuff, the right stuff and the parts that Ubisoft keeps missing out on. Now they are in not merely in the right pace, they are literally sitting on the next goldmine. How it will turn out? No way to tell. I am not in their in-crowd, but the potential is there. Can Obsidian bring that level of pain to their competitors in this field, because that will be the need? I know a lot less about InXile, yet so far they have been largely dependent on the Bards Tale and Wasteland franchise and that could be enough if they take it to new levels, because that is what the players look for. For me the Bards Tale looked awesome as I had not touched the Bards Tale Franchise since the CBM-64. I never really got into that game. Not every game is everyone’s cup of tea and that is not a bad thing; only Ubisoft has been delusional enough to think that they can make a game for everyone and they keep on making games that pleases no one (OK that was a bit of an exaggeration).

You might think that gaming is not interesting, yet it is the most interesting part in all this, merely because gaming has remained on the edges of technology for the longest of times. Its push is also a push for hardware. It is my personal belief that the new I9 processor (an Intel fabrication) would not exist without gamers. Mark Seconi (Intel) gave us in Forbes last month “Gaming has traditionally been the more lightly-threaded of applications your PC will face, but over the last couple of years we’ve seen games and gaming engines become more threaded. Nonetheless, they do still remain lightly-threaded, but we also recognize that a lot of the gaming community also do content creation to some extent. That’s both casual creation or something more demanding and a lot of those applications are beginning to use more and more threads“, you merely have to consider how this skill could propel blockchain software solutions over time and we see that partially at Digital trends with two quotes. The first one “Rather than compete directly with either the Threadripper 1900X or the Ryzen 7 1800X, the Core i9-9900K promises the best of both worlds. It has a base clock speed of 3.6GHz, matching the Ryzen 7, but boosts up to an audacious 5GHz Turbo frequency. Not even the 2nd-gen Threadripper has cracked that milestone. Its core count might be far behind, but the Core i9-9900K can hit higher per-core clock speeds at default settings“, as well as “the Core i9 is the clear winner in every benchmark and test we could put it through. Against the previous generation Core i7-8700K, the Core i9 matched its single-core performance, but flexed its eight-core muscles by upping its multi-core score by around 25 percent. That’s the kind of improvement two extra cores provides“, something that is 25% more powerful than anything else. This implies that your data mining scripts can clear up more data, aggregate as well as set the stage for more predictive analytics in a single day, well over 25% more because the solid state drive fixed a lot before, the processor had become the bottleneck and that is now changing. Consider another paraphrased quote: “It takes millennia to break the cryptographic algorithm. This cannot be done faster because of the computational limits we have (now that takes 25% faster). Quantum computers in the future might be the answer, yet we merely upgrade the algorithm. Satoshi Nakamoto, the bitcoin creator added cryptography in his system to help people authorise bitcoin transactions from their wallets“, yet it is not the hacking, it is the creation of all this that also takes time and if it is about speed, creating the cryptographic 25% faster will be everything in banking and FinTech solutions for decades to come, that is where the i9 will find itself get embraced by banks at the speed of light, and that is even before we see new solutions that will allow people to now create live video-edited streams on the air. A system that optionally censors ‘live news action’ within 7 seconds, from the battlefield straight to the TV recipient, a stage that allows almost instant filtering. Places like CBS, Fox News, SBS, BBC and many others will fly to the shops getting that solution taking away time constraints. When you consider ‘There are nine factors associated with newsworthiness: generally recognized significance, possible future impact, conflict, human interest, proximity, the number of people affected, timeliness, exceptional quality, and shock value‘, now consider that this so called ‘gaming chip’ optionally removes the time constraint for the creation of 3-4 of them, do you still think it is merely about gaming?

Is this about gaming?

It still is to some degree; it is about pushing corporate creativity, this is not merely set in a more expensive computer, it is seen in the creation of material and the creation of a video game is one of the most visible digital creation fields there is.

We can all admire the creativity of an advertisement, the clever use of innuendo and graphics. Yet this is all staged in a time frame. What happens when we remove that element? What happens when we see (as this is happening at this very moment) that data mining is done on the fly, the need of ‘on to go’ editing for dashboards and presentations are set to zero time? Don’t laugh because this is happening at this very moment all over the world. The systems are fast enough to no longer be the bottleneck. Now we see the need of a new kind of data miner. One that can see through data and who can creatively look at other ways to present the lack of 2.75% growth, or perhaps a long term impact that has to be explained to the shareholders in an acceptable way. It is a new age in Data Visualization, where the story is everything and now we see the intersection with gaming development. Adjusting the storyline of the dashboard is becoming the mainstream player here. Don’t take my word for that, Forbes gave us two weeks ago: “Any great story means visualization and detail. It takes the small additions of those details to build a picture in someone’s mind to truly make the story complete. The same goes for analytics and data“, it is a new style of adherence. a person needs to be able to focus the listener and create attachment of the shareholders to a cause, a trust and a commitment to that corporation, in this creativity is become everything and that is directly seen in the ability to create any Role Playing Game.

It is digital theater in a new way, the hardware is now ready to do it on the fly, but with the wrong presenter that view collapses as soon as it is presented and the gap between projection of data, capture of results and presentation to the shareholders is now diminishing and we see that solutions like Tableau are ready for that, if they can only find the right people to get the data from Point A to PowerPoint presentation. The corporations still have their marketeers to tell the story, yet the shareholders will no longer accept the delay of the presentation pushing a new need to a group of people that we have not seen before.

Uniting Business Intelligence and Gaming

In the first stage we see (a random choice) presentation (at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LntX_5qA_Aw), this two minute presentation gives what BI was, frozen moments in time presented on the screen to a group of people. Now we go to the extreme other end, it comes from a game called Counterstrike. It is 90 seconds and shows how the display dashboard is adjusted (at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JQO8dR8NHM4). In the second stage we need to unite the views, the issue is that no one is ready at present. A company named Profitsword is making waves in the right direction, yet they have not arrived at this destination yet (at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UhE6RMZYF3M), it is merely on theme and it is the themes that drive the solutions. Should you doubt me, ask yourself, have you ever gone to a car site and configured a car to your liking even though you will never be able to afford the wheel caps? Jaguar, Dodge, Maserati and there are plenty more. You see, it is actually quite simple. A thematic approach gives us identity and the identity of a company translates into value, interaction gives engagement and these two elements are becoming more crucial in keeping the shareholders (and the general audience) interest. The question is problem is how to avoid a mere ‘sprinkle’ of interest and keep it business oriented. The gaming industry had that solved close to a decade ago, people ignored it too long and those in the trenches of that world are now reaping the benefits. The game has 11 million players, in May 450,000 people were actively playing the game. In a business of 100 billion, those numbers matter and the fact that this game has been around for 18 years is even more amazing. We are halfway in the month and this morning 178,000 gamers were playing that game. These numbers matter, because if engagement and interaction is everything in this field, how long until BI graphics require a lot more than we currently see?

What happens when Hawaiian Tropics changes the game and this poster is not merely advertisement, but the Shark, and the swimmer in the water becomes elements of profit, loss, ability and availability shown in its own way? What happens, when the presentation is not merely graphics, but the water itself shown brand visibility against others? That is not a fab, that is the direction that we are going in and people will stop, they will take additional looks at that presentation and when they can choose elements like placement, and product type to see how the brand shows up against others, how much better in protection, where to get it, where the best deal is and we are there now 5G will allows that to be done on the fly, to see the ads, interact and the people will engage, and as has been shown for a few years now, engagement is quality marketing. It is not views on Facebook, it is not a display advertisement, it is the engagement with the presented product that draws people in, every single time and the quality programmers for that solution have been doing it in gaming for over a decade. As I started, the beat goes on, but the tune is shifting as are the beats per minute in that showstopper. The push for engagement will be everything over the next 5 years and that will be seen even more clearly in the boardroom and shareholder presentations. Having the ability to mainstream such levels of interaction is going to be the next gold rush and at present the amount of players on that level is disturbingly low. The moment they catch up too late we will see all these golden fires that promise a lot, yet in the end you merely see a file with scorched data results.

Whatever we will see, it is not an easy path and there will not be too many good players, ready to go that distance, yet those who do will corner that market for close to the next generation. That path is actually a different one and the golden programmers will be needed, but not high on this corporate ladder. that place will be limited to the with the creative vision to see what needs to be programmed and those programmers who see the image and comprehend how to program that will end up being the people with a job and career until their retirement.

It has been a long time from the models we had to the model where creativity was the slowest element in the digital framework, however we are there now and knowing how to deal with it will be the crux. Or to frame it in another view, the time for the cold accountant is over in the Annual stockholders meeting, now it is not merely that knowledge, it is the one who finds the novelist that gives the correct engaging story that weaves it all together in a way all shareholders can relate to, that will be the golden placement to have.

This now gets us back to Microsoft. No matter what software house they buy, yes they will always have a Minecraft audience need, yet the bulk of all the gamers require a new a most original IP to get them through the next season of gaming. Guerrilla Wars figured it out and gave the people Horizon Zero Dawn. A new IP, now Microsoft needs to do the same with two houses that have relied on the same IP for an awful long time; are they ready for what comes next? Microsoft Studios has the right stage when the connected with Bioware and unleashed Mass Effect on the people in 2007, it seems to be a lesson they have forgotten too easily, so I hope that they catch on quick as this is a stage where you are merely allowed to get it wrong only once. Mass Effect Andromeda taught them this lesson the hard way, a C$100 million dollars development failure that merely gave them a 71% rating (in gaming rating translates directly to revenue), Guerrilla Wars needed a mere 50% to get a much better result, creativity and the story were everything, pretty much quite literally and we will see that same push in Business Intelligence. Data Visualisation is getting us there, whether we want it or not. When we realise to all the ways we can engage with an audience, we will learn that a few buttons will not do the trick, it will be about the backdrop, the interaction and the choice of what we see. It is a path gaming has been on since 1993. You cannot ignore 25 years of technology evolution that would actually be really stupid.

 

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