Tag Archives: the Guardian

January 24, 2016 · 22:05

Persecuting the prosecutors

Sometimes things get to me. We all have those moments, we all consider the things that touch us in different ways. For me, I have been a gamer since the beginning of gaming. This world started for me in 1983 with the Vic-20 and was followed up with the CBM-64 a year later. I never stopped gaming, so when I got hit with the article ‘I couldn’t save my child from being killed by an online predator‘ (at http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2016/jan/23/breck-bednar-murder-online-grooming-gaming-lorin-lafave), I kind of lost it. This gaming world is a world I share, virtually and in reality. I talk to my co-workers on the new games, the challenges some games give and how we feel about some games. A few friends are all about GTA, some share my passion for Fallout, Diablo 3 and Minecraft. Whilst some games we all play by ourselves, because we cannot be into every game that is a mere reality. We hunt down the mutants, kill them with our rifles (all by ourselves), and when we get that legendary monster we get to talk about it the next day. This is a world of fun, joy and challenges. We do not ignore the real life, we interact with others too, which is not always about games. So, I was slightly dismayed when Olivia Wilde chose Jason Sudeikis over me (it must have been the beard). Life goes on, so as you see, we have our dreams, our fun, our joy, our fantasies and we go out of our way to get as much joy into our lives without bringing harm. That is as I see it a way of life that the bulk of us gamers have.

Some are a lot more competitive and even relenting on gaming as they kill virtually to be the best, some of them have a too vivid drive to be winners and dissing the losers or at times being the wannabe’s that strike out to winners. In that world we have all kinds, but actual harm, those cases are rare to say the least. So as I read the article, a form of anger flushed over me. This is for the mere reason that, for a large part of my life, I have been driven by logic and common sense (apart from that Olivia Wilde moment). From what I have read, there are several things wrong here. Not towards one person, but towards a few, including the victim himself.

This is the first quote that actually came after the second one “He claimed to be a 17-year-old computer engineer running a multimillion pound company. Sometimes he was in New York, working for the US government. Other times, he was in Dubai, or off to Syria” and “the ringmaster, whose server they played on. While the other members were known to Breck or his friends, Lewis Daynes was not someone they knew in real life“.

These two quotes should have been a red flag to all parties. We cannot blame a 14 year old, but this should have been the red flag to upset the parents. You see, I will never be a multi-millionaire (actually if Larry Page listens to an option I came up with, I could be). What is the issue is that gaming comes at a price, for the most the really wealthy ones work too much to get time to be on gaming servers. In addition, his location should have been all over the place, any Cyber squad could have seen that, it would have been a real orange flag to the victim that not all was on the up and up, the first thread on the loom of disaster would have been dismantled.

The quote “Lewis says I don’t need to finish school as he can get me a Microsoft apprenticeship when I turn 16” is the second flag. It should have been the alert on several levels. The man was either some ‘multi-millionaire‘ working for Microsoft, or again this was a ruse. The additional “I should be allowed to game as long as I want“, should have alerted parents and police. You see, in common Law even at 16 Breck Bednar would have remained a minor. So, why is a stranger deciding on what someone else’s child does?

The final quote on that topic is “I’d be telling Breck to get offline and he’d literally have Dayne’s voice in his earphones telling him not to listen. I could see Breck’s face, torn between me and his cool mentor who had the whole world going for him”, which now gets us a stranger involving themselves in the life of a minor.

The police as well as the cyber groups should have been all over this, in addition, did anyone contact the FBI here (even though after the facts it seemed an irrelevant act)? You see, the events not yet known could have been averted before zero hour, as Lewis Daynes was from Grays, Essex. This could have diffused a lot of issues. His stories out in the open, for Breck Bednar and all his friends to know what kind of a person Lewis Daynes was before he could strike. Now we can blame the police, and I am doing that partially. Yet in all this, we must also expect that there is a limit to the resources the police has, limitations in time and hardware. Not all is a given.

But there is an issue when we go solely from the article we see in the guardian. You see the quote “I told the call handler what I’d heard, what I feared. She obviously didn’t understand online grooming” has more than one side.

The known elements here are that Breck Bednar was a minor and that there was a clear indication that Breck Bednar was unlikely to be the only minor. We have the following parts, when we look from the other side: ‘Cyberstalking is the use of the Internet or other electronic means to stalk an individual. It may include monitoring, identity theft, threats, or gathering information that may be used to threaten or harass‘, I edited the non-relevant parts out of here. So we see that Lewis Daynes was monitoring, we have identity theft, we can make that case as he assumed to be a person, moreover an industrial who did not exist. This could be seen as a danger to the life and wellbeing of minors.

The elements here are now another matter. You see, in the eyes of the court there is no established guilt, or even crime at this point, yet exposing the elements would have diminished the threat Lewis Daynes was and would most certainly have protected at least one child, leaving us with the reality that Breck Bednar could have been alive today. In this we might consider that the police is to be blamed to some extent, but in equal measure, they did look for the elements, the issue here is the fact that does also count. When we see the quote “Daynes later pleaded guilty to murder with sexual and sadistic motivation“, we are confronted with a combination that is really rare, and with the elements as found, or better stated those that were missing, mainly that the police didn’t find a single image or text about bodies or sex. Certain flags were never raised, but as stated, from what we can see, enough flags should have been raised to take this serious, to give clear indication to Lewis Daynes that he was under open investigation, perhaps enough for him to back off. Enough to diffuse the situation.

Here is my part that is now also an issue. This took me mere minutes, which also beckons on what more precisely happened. You see the police is not lacking or stupid, I would go even further that the involved people might be burdened with guilt. So why is it so clear to me? Well, first of all, to see this in the article is simple, a mere exercise of logic. The true elements over time are a lot less clear, but in all this, the main elements were gamers, gaming platforms and servers, they have time lines and logs. Any level of logs missing would have been another red flag, any other interactions would create even more red flags. So why were these elements missed? Where did the police system fail? In my view there was a clear failure here. Police 101 had failed in a few ways, but it is uncertain whether the failure should allow any level of blame. You see, there is an element that is in the article, but cannot clearly be weighted. it is “Now 18, he was unemployed, living alone in an Essex flat where he bought server space and used it to game with teenage boys“, we are looking at a 2012 system, so what kind of server space? Did he have his own server? Or did he lease hardware? Unemployed and cash for that? If it was a solitary server, we see another element, because it would not be in an enterprise environment, showing even more flags, if it was a personal server, the cyber division had a place to look at, who had Lewis Daynes been interacting with? Even more parents would have been alerted, other gamers would have been informed that he was a jobless no one, and not the 7 figure income person dangling IT jobs from Syria, New York or Dubai.

All elements, all flags and more issues. All out in the open could have prevented the fatal consequence to Breck Bednar, but that is me talking after the events. As stated, this one article is not a proper setting for it. Yet the BBC article gave a few more issues to consider. The fact “Five other counts against Daynes, including the rape of another boy, were not pursued as there was not a realistic prospect of a conviction, the prosecution said“, so perhaps the fact that the element of rape might have been an additional flag that there was a real risk of danger to Breck Bednar. Yet, the BBC is unclear as per when those criminal elements would have been known. Yet there is additional evidence. If there had been a clear investigation the evidence “encrypted electronic equipment” as stated by the BBC could have given additional issues, because they might have been there validly in an organisational situation, in the case of an unemployed 18 year old, such elements could give rise to flags of a criminal aspect, a criminal aspect that had children in the mix.

Even though there have been investigations and even though a misconduct notice was brought, it took almost no time to find enough flags to raise concerns on several levels. This gives concerns to what else is getting missed. Not because I am so bright (I am that), or that the police is that stupid (they really are not), but the need for an evolving infrastructure. If you think that issues are missed now, what do you think will happen when the transition to IPv6 really gets underway? With handheld and mobile devices all stronger than the average data server in 2007, what was reserved to data servers and corporations, is already in the hands of individuals, most of them having no clue what they are holding onto and what these systems are capable of. How can any police force sustain its workload if it is not reshaped into an evolving infrastructure that is able to adjust to other criminal elements? This level of evolution is currently not happening, moreover, it is not happening in many nations. Which is a worry when we consider the case of Lewis Daynes, you see, in this age of economy, the danger of extreme behaviour in a time when people have no jobs, no outlooks and no prospects, these souls are more likely to become extreme, that is a given, yet the extent to it happening is not known, it cannot be predicted and it requires for a better level of investigation. If we are to lower the dangers that kids like Breck Bednar face, we have no other choice but to evolve and change the way we investigate these issues. There has been a clear call for a long time that legislation requires adaption to all kinds of cyber-crimes and cyber based crimes. This for the mere reason that the jump to IPv6 allows a jump from the 4.3 billion addresses that IPv4 gave, to the amount that every person on the planet would have a unique address for every device it owns. More important, IPv6 will allow for every person on the planet to have 1,000 devices, each with their own address and even after that less than 0.1% of all available IPv6 addresses would have been used. We are pushed into an evolution because IP addresses are no longer available. Our devices, each 1,000 times more powerful than the computer that got Apollo 11 to the moon, the computers required to monitor the satellites is now no more than an app and nearly every mobile phone from the previous generation would be able to run it. We moved technology that far ahead. We are now moving to the situation where we see that almost 4 Exabyte a day is transmitted. All that data, once we are in IPv6, all that data can be identified per person and the amount of data will increase almost exponentially. When we get there, how impossible will it become to find extreme elements like Lewis Daynes? That is just the extremes, we haven’t even considered what organised crime could be up to. A situation that brings more questions than answers. Some answers are being sought by Lorin LaFave and I wonder if enough parties are asking the right questions, because some questions come with the element of costs, and they will grow, yet the costs will already be high to begin with. A dimension many politicians are not ready for because the coffers are empty and budgets constraints will limit the steps that need to be made, many are aware of it and nearly no one are voicing those elements.

There is a reality to that, but the reality we need to address is the nightmare Lorin LaFave is forced to face and she is not the only mother who should be worried.

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Filed under Gaming, IT, Law, Politics

Tagged as BBC, Breck Bednar, CBM-64, Diablo 3, Essex, Fallout, FBI, Grays, IPv4, IPv6, Jason Sudeikis, Larry Page, Lewis Daynes, Lorin LaFave, Minecraft, Olivia Wilde, police line 101, the Guardian, VIC-20

January 23, 2016 · 22:49

Rampling was the domino

It is a side I had not thought of for quite a while. I have my own views, movies I like, movies I go to see. When I do, there is no regard towards race or religion. I just want to see a good movie, for the mere reason that going to the cinema is expensive, so when I go there, it better be a good one. So when I initially read the article ‘Charlotte Rampling finds herself outnumbered in Oscars diversity row‘ (at http://www.theguardian.com/film/2016/jan/22/charlotte-rampling-finds-herself-outnumbered-in-oscars-diversity-row), I was not entirely sure what to think. For me, I am still slightly upset on the Golden globes, because no matter how much I enjoyed the Martian, it is NOT a comedy. A light-hearted drama at best. So in my eyes, the foreign press desperately wanted to get the Martian elected even though EVERYONE knew that the titanic achievement ‘the Revenant’ could not be equalled. So, they were willing to screw over Paul Feig or Judd Apatow, depending on your view of comedy. In that same light Matt Damon should not have won, not because his achievement was bad, it was quite excellent and I will look forward to own this achievement on Blu-Ray in 17 days, 13 hours and 14 minutes (roughly, but who’s counting). Yet, I will see this as excellent drama, not as a comedy. All the movies I saw, had a Caucasian caste. I thought nothing of it, no bad thoughts; no directed thoughts. There was an African American in Star Wars and he played his part really well, just nothing I would nominate a Golden globe or Oscar to. The day is young and I will look forward to him rocking my world as an actor in a future movie hr does. I have seen my share of excellent acting in Sidney Poitier (Heat of the night), Morgan Freeman (loads of movies there), Eddie Murphy (Beverly Hills Cop/Harlem Nights), and Don Cheadle (Traitor). Here I pause for a moment, you see, this is a serious piece of work based on an idea by funny guy Steve Martin. The result is a spy thriller of unrivalled proportions and until the very end, you have no idea what will happen. As Spy stories goes, this is a killer! We tend to look at Freeman in the Shawshank Redemption, or one of my favourites ‘I, Robot’ with Will Smith, but in all this, we are limited by the exposure we tend to see through marketing (trailers). Because of that element I almost missed out on a gem called ‘Seven Pounds’, which is an amazing piece of work. Yes, it is sentimental, and there are truths in the view Todd McCarthy from Variety has, but it seems that his world is about one view, it is his view. I try to see multiple views, not always mine, one I can agree with or a comfortable one, but the fact remains that we all have our own skeletons, sometimes they are dark and leave no sunlight or a shadow. In this his last ‘view’ was “an endlessly sentimental fable about sacrifice and redemption that aims only at the heart at the expense of the head” (at http://variety.com/2008/film/awards/seven-pounds-2-1200472723/), but in all this Variety forgets that movies are made to appeal an audience and in a directly addressable audience of well over 3 billion, there is a need for everyone. It is for that reason I have a similar appreciation for Lars von Trier’s ‘Dancer in the Dark‘ (and ended up being depressed for well over a week).

The question becomes, how correct is Charlotte Rampling. She is not wrong and I feel that the issue goes a lot further than is currently illustrated. That part is also shown in the Guardian article when you see the video on that page with Mark Ruffalo. But neither show the element I am aiming for. You see, it was not until the Golden Globes that I saw that Will Smith was nominated for a role in a movie I had absolutely ZERO awareness of. Wiki and the trailer of Concussion shows a drama that hits at the heart of America. It shows two sides, one, do not ever mess with their ‘sport’ and the second issue is that America remains in denial as long as it is convenient for their bottom dollar. In that Concussion seems to surpass several dramas. You see, this issue goes a lot further than what we see from either Charlotte Rampling or Mark Ruffalo state, although Mark reflects on the direction. You see it goes further than we see in the article. the quote “An analysis by the Los Angeles Times in 2014 found that the 6,000-plus members are 93% white and 76% male, with an average age of 63“, a system that is set around a nation where the median age is 39, state wise spread from Utah (29) to Maine (44). You see, the people looking at the entertainment industry are no longer representative of their age, which gives a new problem. It is their marketing and publication side. The fact that a gem like Concussion, a 2015 movie that only gets visibility after the nominations of the golden Globes is a bigger problem than many realise. Now we see in the Hollywood Reporter, the following quote by Charlotte Rampling “I simply meant to say that in an ideal world every performance will be given equal opportunities for consideration“, which is true and part of the problem, because that is unlikely to be the case. Equally true is the quote we see from Michael Caine “You Can’t Vote for an Actor Because He’s Black“, which is equally true. The actors I mentioned earlier did the work, the hardship and ended up with the nominations, yet in opposition I offer that my view is in equal measure that there is an indication that votes are lost, or not duly received because of colour. In that light I offer ‘the Color Purple‘ which in 1986 rocked da house! The Academy awards had given it 11 nominations, ZERO wins. Whoopi Goldberg did get her Golden Globe, but they lost out on 4 other nominations. One out of 15, which is statistically a joke. Yet is it mere fate? You see Out of Africa was good, but not great (a personal view). I feel this because I enjoyed both movies, but I have since (1986) watched the Color Purple at least 8 times on DVD and Out of Africa? Nil times! In other lights, it had fierce competition from Prizzi’s Honor (Anjelica Huston) and Ran (Emi Wada), yet are the other 9 times deserved non-winners? I feel I cannot state this for certain, but with the exception of Best Original Screenplay I have a few too many question marks.

In all this we see that the Color Purple is more than a failing marketing and visibility campaign. Which is at the heart of non-recognition. In 2016 there is another side that we see in the Oscars. Concussion gets zero nominations. Here is it harder to oppose it, because the Revenant, Spotlight and Bridge of Spies are massive pieces of Work, which does allow for the situation to exist, yet in that same light, as we see the group that represents the Academy Awards, how many were clearly aware of Concussion and how many of them would see Concussion as the gem it is? In that same light, did the failure of marketing and publications now propagate the situation that Concussion is not making the BAFTA list? We have to accept that this is about American Football and as such, when we see that the BAFTA’s stated purpose is to “support, develop and promote the art forms of the moving image, by identifying and rewarding excellence, inspiring practitioners and benefiting the public“, we have to consider that American Football is an American interest and as such, Will Smith could miss out for the interest group, not because of his quality or the fact that he is an African American. But the issue remains, has marketing and publications cut themselves in their American fingers?

An issue that will remains for a longer time, because as the power players are growing away from the average younger audience, the selection could become a lot more disjointed, which might actually be a little too strong an expression.

The truth remains that we all have valid questions at times, yet in that same light we must accept (to some degree) that the bulk have an opinion, an impression and a preference. It is at times influenced by marketing as the people are given the royal tour by the promoters of the movies. We see at PRSA.ORG “Oscar campaigns are not cheap — campaign budgets can run $24 million per film. Mailing DVD screeners to the Academy’s 6,000-plus members, advertising in trade publications, attending festivals, hosting screening events and conducting media tours are only the beginning“, the Public Relations Society of America is decently outspoken here. Money rolls, which means that the name alone will not do it. Will Smith is a bankable name, but in the end, it is more than just the name, the DVD screeners and opportunity here. It is a business model, which now implies that art is not at the heart of the matter, product marketing is. The question that remains here is that if a movie needs that kind of marketing, how memorable was it? Perhaps that is the wrong question too. Not everyone has time to see all the movies and the fact that some movies are not released on disc long after the Oscars is equally an issue, so is that approach wrong?

I cannot vote against it unless it is more than the actual book, the movie or the soundtrack. Optimising any product is far enough, but in that light, was Concussion properly optimised for exposure to the public and the audience at large? If not, who was behind that part? It is a Sony production, yet should this be about the awards? I wonder if the really good actors really take a role for that reason. In this I like to quote Tim Mincin In his UWA acceptance speech. There he states “Happiness is like an orgasm: if you think about it too much, it goes away. Keep busy and aim to make someone else happy, and you might find you get some as a side effect“, which seems to be (in my mind) how the great actors could think. Will Smith has had 85 nominations and 45 awards. None of them golden globes or Oscars. In the Golden globe section he lost out to Russell Crowe and Forest Whitaker who both delivered amazing performances that year, yet as The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air he lost out to both John Goodman and Jerry Seinfeld, both series I was never a fan of, but they have their own following. In the Academy Awards he lost out to Denzel Washington and Forest Whitaker. A much harder choice, because both The Pursuit of Happyness and The Last King of Scotland are amazing works of art. I found the call between Ali and Training Day much harder because of my admiration of Muhammad Ali. So I know that I have bias here, I feel valid bias as the arts are about moments and ideals, Will Smith has been on that fine line many times. It is CNN (at http://edition.cnn.com/2015/12/18/sport/nfl-head-injuries-will-smith-movie-concussion/) that gives us “I probably won’t be getting my free Super Bowl tickets this year“, which is part of all this (apart from the fact that I never received ANY free tickets for any of the Ashes games), we see again that America will be in denial or in opposition as the NFL is the bottom dollar at least one day a week. I cannot oppose this. Yet reflecting on this, I feel a little uncertain when it comes to an outspoken #OscarsSoWhite. My issue in this case is that the opposition this year is massive, Spotlight, the Revenant, Bridge of Spies and the Martian are outstanding pieces of excellence. We can complain that these roles were too absent of African American roles, but that is based on different elements, in my view, not a #OscarsSoWhite view, or is it?

In all this we must see that we are not part of the actual world the actors and actresses live in. They would have a more realistic view, which makes the entire #OscarsSoWhite such an uneasy issue. You see, I feel that #OscarsSoWhite is almost a personal attack, I see the movies I like, and because of the reasons I see them. So, even as a written off product like ‘Seven Pounds’ is one I enjoyed, I enjoyed Gravity as well, and I enjoyed the Martian in near equal measure (the special effects in Gravity were just so awesome). In all this race was never a consideration. That is my personal view, I cannot answer for others, you must decide on your reasoning and your preference, which is as it should be with anything that comes from the arts.

This now gets me to the final part. As I saw it, from the first moment I saw the movie (not when it was released as I was 5 at that time), is that Virgil Tibbs made ‘In the Heat of the night’ the movie it was, the legend it became. Sir Sidney Poitier made the movie what it was (Rod Steiger was great too). So here we have our issue we want to feel that #OscarsSoWhite is valid, we do however want to base it on the now, not on 50 years ago. So can we question the issues, or is there a second layer that we are to some extent conveniently ignoring. One of marketing and PR, the other on the denial that the NFL (Americans with their idolisation of their sport in general) seems to bring. Two elements that seem to equally make the movie Concussion fall short. Those elements are not illustrated in equal measure here, which does not give any less value to Will Smith, it only impacted the topic Will Smith illustrated (as I personally see it).

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Tagged as #OscarsSoWhite, Academy Awards, Anjelica Huston, BAFTA, Bridge of Spies, Charlotte Rampling, CNN, Concussion, Dancer in the Dark, Don Cheadle, Eddie Murphy, Emi Wada, Forest Whitaker, Golden Globes, Hollywood Reporter, I Robot, Judd Apatow, Lars von Trier, Mark Ruffalo, Matt Damon, Michael Caine, Morgan Freeman, Oscars, Out of Africa, Paul Feig, Prizzi's Honor, Public Relations Society of America, Ran, Russell Crowe, Sidney Poitier, Spotlight, the Color Purple, the Guardian, The Last King of Scotland, the Martian, The Pursuit of Happyness, the Revenant, Tim Mincin, Whoopi Goldberg, Will Smith

January 18, 2016 · 19:43

The line of privacy

I have a decent grasp on privacy. I tend to give it to others as much as possible, moreover as I on average do not really care about their private lives. This sounds harsh, but consider the facts. When the person isn’t family, or directly connected to you, how much do you actually care? Some people do care to know everything, but that is another matter entirely. So when ZDNET and a few others published ‘61 agencies after warrantless access to Australian telecommunications metadata‘, I was initially in that mood of, ‘oh yea, whatever!’ You see, when I see names like ‘Australian Financial Security Authority’, I reckon financial planners will get jumpy, but is that about possible ‘dubious’ choices, or their need for privacy? You see, one implies the element of a transgression, as such it becomes debatable whether those actions are to be lauded with non-access.

With a player like Clean Energy Regulator we see an industrial access need, and I very much doubt whether they are interested in individuals. But what happens when we see that groups like Bankstown City Council, Racing Queensland, Office of the Racing Integrity Commissioner (VIC) and the National Measurement Institute, I start having questions (especially regarding levels of sanity).

Let’s consider the access: “warrantless access two years’ worth of customers’ call records, location information, IP addresses, billing information, and other data stored by Telco’s“.

Now, I will be the last one to questions access by ‘valid’ organisations and even looking that the ‘alphabetical’ list the locations of the redacted names does not seem to include ASIO and ASIS, who have a clear need for that access, but can anyone explain why Bankstown City Council needs that access? In that same line we can add both Racing Queensland and the Office of the Racing Integrity Commissioner (VIC). If there is an investigation, it should go via the police of the correct channels. I see zero, I say again, zero reason to give those three access. Before we know it, we see Waverly City Council and perhaps even Chatswood City Council. How long then until all that data becomes available ‘for a special price’?

There are a few others on that list that require scrutiny. Do you really think that industrial transgressors wanted by the Department of the Environment will use their own phones? How much wasted man-years will we face as those untrained individuals try to make sense of 23,644 burner phones, which is just Sydney. In all this it seems to me that those requiring access will after that have an issue with processing data, which means more software, more failed levels of security and even more data transgressions. This must be the heaven that Rupert Murdoch dreams of. Data all accessible behind a server guarded with the admin password ‘qwerty’ or perhaps even ‘password’.

Yes, there is a massive issue here and the magazines including ZDNET (at http://www.zdnet.com/article/61-agencies-after-warrantless-access-to-australian-telecommunications-metadata/) mention the names (minus the redacted ones), we see the additional quote “Of the agencies and departments given access to existing information or documents to enforce a criminal law over the 12-month period, and not included on either list released by AGD, or known to be an enforcement agency already“, we now see names like RSPCA Tasmania and The Hills Shire Council, when we look at one of the websites (http://www.rspcatas.org.au/ for example).

We see in the about section: “The RSPCA (The Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals) is the voice for the animals of Australia. We defend their dignity and fight to stop cruelty. We offer shelter, education, medical attention and love. We are animal protectors, carers and guardians. We bring solace to abandoned, surrendered and injured. We prosecute those who would harm them. And we fight for the humane treatment of all living things. Our job does not stop at animals. We believe behind every animal is a human being who is in need of guidance, encouragement and help“, which is a nice fluffy and caring text. Nothing wrong there. So explain to me, how a place like that has a decent level of cyber security, with in their office pool an IT person with CCSP certification or higher and a few other skills. You see, when these skills are absent your data will be up for grabs. Perhaps that is outsourced, meaning that additional people have access to all that data, have those places been properly vetted? So on an island of 515,000 we see this level of personal data access requirements? My initial follow up questions would than become, of all those funds required from the donations, how much ends up going to animals?

In the case of the Hills Shire Council we can have a lot more fun, their community profile (at http://profile.id.com.au/the-hills/population) gives us “The Census population of The Hills Shire in 2011 was 169,873, living in 57,205 dwellings“, why for the love of whatever is holy (or named Cthulhu) would THEY need that level of access to data?

In my view we should start asking a few questions regarding the mental health of whomever gave that level of access. I am guessing that this was Attorney General, George Brandis, which basically gets confirmed in the Guardian Article (at http://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/jan/18/dozens-of-agencies-want-warrantless-access-to-australians-metadata-again). As we see the quote “the government narrowed the definition of an “enforcement agency” that was eligible to access telecommunications data to a shortlist of law enforcement agencies, including the Australian federal police and state and territory police forces“, my initial thought was ‘that makes perfect sense’, yet in that light, how the flipping Divine Comedies did RSPCA Tasmania make that list?

The Guardian in light of all this ends with a comical quote “This method was taken to allow the Australian Border Force to gain access to telecommunications data without needing to gain approval from the Attorney General’s Department or the intelligence committee“, which is interesting as this implies that the Australian Border Force has less access than RSPCA Tasmania, which would make perfect sense if you are a golden retriever.

So apart of the access and the lack of insight here, has anyone considered how that data is to be read, analysed and processed? In addition, when we consider the access level of applications, the support and very likely (read: extremely likely) the levels of consultancy needed, what else is missing what will this cost the taxpayers in the end? I can tell you now that such solutions are not cheap, not easily implemented and did I mention the security needed for keeping that data safe? Even if this all goes through clouds and remote access, how long until a volunteer looking after cats will leave that password accidently out in the open, or even worse leave that system logged in and unattended?

As stated, I would never object to the actual law-enforcement agencies to get that access, but it seems to me that too large a group on that list is nowhere near that level and even (read: especially) when we consider groups like Greyhound Racing Victoria, why are they not going through police channels?

I see both articles and no one seems to be asking the questions that need to be asked. Questions that had to be asked extremely loud and very nearby after a mere 30 seconds of reading those articles. By the way, when reading the ZDNET article, it is the article that follows that is cause for even more questions.

One of the quotes is ‘the Many Layers and Tools of Digital Collaboration Today‘, which is nice when it is a mere graph of generic data. In that we might not care, but in the issue of ‘call records, location information, IP addresses, billing information, and other data stored by Telco’s‘, which includes all your personal data. Consider the following quotes “employees and departments are helping themselves to the tools they believe they really need. At the same time, companies are steadily dealing with what is now too many categories of communication and collaboration software to adequately manage and govern, much less individual apps” and “The issue itself is perhaps best demonstrated by the rapid rise of Slack, the current darling of team chat and wildly popular with its users. In many of my recent conversations with IT managers, I find that Slack is invading the workplace on many fronts, regardless whether it’s sanctioned or not” and finally “The top categories of apps today include VOIP, Web conferencing, e-mail, unified communications, IM/chat, file shares, file sync, CMS/DMS, intranets, discussion forums, enterprise social networks, relationship management platforms (including customer-facing CRM), and last but not least, online community“.

Now remember, the second article (on the same page) is not connected to the first, but consider the cloud and the explosive growth of so called ‘tool apps’ and the utter lack of in-depth security and access checking, how many back doors are organisations creating through such tools, with access to your data? Weirdly, I would never hold a bad thought for a volunteer organisations like the RSPCA, which is exactly why they should have never ever been given access to data like that. For the mere reason that cyber security cannot viably be maintained.

Whomever boasts on the security of places like Slack is in my view decently nuts. When we see interested players like Accel, Andreessen Horowitz, Index Ventures, KPCB, Spark, and Social+Capital, the first thing we will see fail is a pressure to release a new version and there will be the need of security patches (which is a reality), this also means that data would have been unprotected. The mere intense need for Common Cyber Sense is that boss who wants that new version, because the presentation looks cooler. Even when we ignore the issue of Slack, we still see an exponential growing app base, with access all over the place, which means danger to the data. Even when remotely accessed, even if that connection is secure, too many places get access to data they should not have access to.

When we hear people state that servers have access limitations and more of the mumbling, here is a simple word of caution, something I personally witnessed. There was a financial software program. It was a good and legitimate program. The small issue was that when the program accidently crashed, that person remained on the data server with rights of an administrator. It took them 2 weeks to figure out it was happening and another 3 weeks to repair their system. Consider something like that happening today and with the ‘upgrades’ Microsoft requires on a too regular a basis, can we even risk this level of access to the expanded group that has too limited a grasp (as I see it) on what constitutes Common Cyber Sense?

I wonder how long until we get a carefully phrased apology from certain high ranking IT elements, who will offer their resignation and walk away with a 7 figure handshake.

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Tagged as Accel, Andreessen Horowitz, Attorney General, Attorney-General George Brandis, Australian Border Force, Australian Financial Security Authority, Bankstown City Council, Cthulhu, George Brandis, Greyhound Racing Victoria, Index Ventures, KPCB, National Measurement Institute, Office of the Racing Integrity Commissioner (VIC), Racing Queensland, RSPCA Tasmania, Social+Capital, Spark, the Guardian, The Hills Shire Council, ZDNet

January 16, 2016 · 20:04

Twilight in your pants

This is not about medication, or even about flaccidness (other than the flaccidness of the economy or politicians for that matter). No this is about changes, about the need for governments to do a lot more than wake up, because that knock on your door is no one else but the grim reaper informing you that time is up, with the additional request to follow him into the next room.

Yes, this sounds like drama and entertainment, but it is not. At present, the changes that will hit us can impact our retirement funds, they will hit our lifestyle and it will most definitely hit the cost of our living. All elements of a situation I send warning about. So now we read ‘US stock markets take a major fall as Dow reaches lowest level since August‘, where (at http://www.theguardian.com/business/2016/jan/15/us-stock-markets-fall-dow-oil-prices-china), the quote “the Standard & Poor’s 500, the index of America’s biggest companies, falling 2.2%” might give view that there is not a large event going on, but that is alas not the case. The two quotes “the markets’ decline has put “a negativity across the economy, a negativity to every CEO looking at his or her stock price, a negativity about business”. He also warned that the oil price, which on Friday settled below $30 for the first time in 12 years, could fall as far as $25 a barrel or lower” as well as “We’ll probably have to test the markets lower, and I think when we test the markets lower it’s going to be a pretty good buying opportunity”. These two give view that waves are coming, but when we look at the reality of any market and any season, there will be indications that sometimes those markets are up and sometimes they are down. So why exactly is this a big issue?

Well, that part is seen in “The falling oil price and disappointing retail sales data released on Friday have pushed back expectations of when the Federal Reserve will next increase interest rates“, yet the question is, was this all about the oil, or is this about the hidden text, the mere mention ‘disappointing retail sales data‘, which in a long down economy should not be a real surprise. The text “retail sales declined in December to make 2015 the worst year for US shops since 2009“, as well as “retail sales dropped 0.1% compared to November” was set in two separate paragraphs as to confuse the reader with a half sentence, but consider that November preceding the shopping needs for Christmas was 0.1% higher, this gives a clear part of the problem, because consider all those temp workers, with economy that bad, how can they hold on to their jobs? Their bosses cannot be blamed here. This is about an economy that had been ‘spiced’ up in reports and then failed to deliver. Something that we all should have seen coming.

The second story confirming all this namely ‘Wall Street plunges after poor US manufacturing and retail sales‘ (at http://www.theguardian.com/business/blog/live/2016/jan/15/oil-prices-slide-back-towards-30-heading-for-10-weekly-loss-business-live), gives more information. Now I’ll add the quote “On Wall Street, the Dow shed more than 400 points, a drop of 2.3%, and the Nasdaq is nearly 120 points off, a 2.7% decline. The FTSE 100 index is down 2.1%, France’s CAC is off 2.8% and Germany’s Dax has lost nearly 3%” but I’ll ignore it for the moment, you see when we see “We now estimate that real consumption growth was a disappointing 1.5% to 2% annualized in the fourth quarter, with overall GDP growth at an even weaker 1%“, which comes from Steve Murphy, US economist at Capital Economics. So, Mr Murphy, which part of a weak economy, people out of jobs, people forced to work two jobs to get above the poverty level, what did you expect them to do? Ignore their hardship, whilst they realise that bills are due a mere week after Christmas? Neil Saunders from retail consultants Conlumino adds to that conundrum by adding “A relatively weak product line up in electricals failed to capture consumer interest, resulting in a sales decline of around 3.5% in December; and although sales picked up the latter end of the month, clothing also put in a lackluster performance thanks to warmer than average weather“, so he is stating (considering the group mentioned earlier, a group that impacts well over 15% of the US population, in addition, the group that is somewhere between 25% and 30% is just getting by. That gives us close to 50% of the population, do you actually think that these people are interested in an Electrical product line? Did you not consider that well over 50% of the US population is not interested in a new 3D TV, but will find whatever cheap option available, in addition, if the current TV is working, they will try to skip it for a year. Did you not consider that? As for the fashion part, the fact that it was also US’s wettest December on record is ignored, so those people did not pay for things like coats, boots and so on? Umbrella’s perhaps?

So even though it is not the coldest one, it might not have stopped a collection of ladies to buy something for the Christmas occasion, they would still have needed clothes, perhaps your consideration is off?

You see, these people project and make conjectures based on flawed data sets, in addition, as they make the call for needs that might be, they are ignoring the needs that actually are. A functioning economy being the first part of it. In all this the UK is not outside of the scope either. This we see in the third article called ‘Bank of England bans two former Co-op Bank chiefs from top City jobs‘, the article (at http://www.theguardian.com/business/2016/jan/15/bank-of-england-bans-co-op-bank-barry-tootell-keith-alderson-top-city-jobs). These three articles were not randomly chosen. Let me add the following quotes “Two former bankers at the Co-operative Bank have been banned by the Bank of England from holding senior positions in the City after being found to have posed an unacceptable threat to the company’s financial position“, we also get “The Bank is fining Barry Tootell, a former Co-op Bank chief executive, £173,802, and Keith Alderson, who ran the corporate and business banking division, £88,890“. Which might leave us with the thought that a fine was given, so what is the hustle?

That we get from “Banks that are not well governed have the potential to pose a threat to UK financial stability. The actions of Mr Tootell and Mr Alderson posed an unacceptable threat to the safety and soundness of the Co-op Bank, which is why we have decided a prohibition is appropriate in these cases”, which sounds awesome and in that, similar steps should have been taken against many others for amounts many times higher than those mentioned. Yet, what is still the issue?

Well part of it is seen here “It cites moves by him to change bad debt charges, which in one instance which had the effect of maintaining the bonus pool“, which is an issue to one end, yet the other part “The Co-op Bank has already taken steps under previous rules to withdraw £5m of bonuses from a number of employees and there is no prospect of clawing back any more bonuses“, you see these things happen and as such there will be consequences. The final quote “The Bank of England did not find Tootell or Alderson deliberately or recklessly breached the rules and did not make findings of dishonesty or lack of integrity in issuing the bans and fines”, gives us the issues to work with. So as stated, the quote “the potential to pose a threat to UK financial stability” is now at hand, because even as those two had senior positions, they still reported to others, they reported to a board of members at the very least. The two might have been fined £261K, but how much in bonuses have they acquired?

That issue can be seen in the first part as stated earlier “did not find Tootell or Alderson deliberately or recklessly breached the rules and did not make findings of dishonesty or lack of integrity“, so if that is not the case, why would there be an issue? If there was no deliberate or reckless, than why are they held to account? There were no guilty parties? So those two are either patsies, or they have the goods on multiple others and they are ‘let off’ with a possible bonus option down the line. In all this we see a few issues. The first, as I see it is that pushing two people out is merely a hollow gesture. Which also connects to the US, as given in “to pose a threat to UK financial stability“. You see if that is true and these small fish are indeed a danger, why are the big fish not acted against? Someone hired these two and mentored (and hopefully monitored) these two. The fact that they are merely ‘senior’ also implies that there are a few involved members that they reported to, are they not bigger threats?

The article ends with “the current management team continues to progress the turnaround, having raised additional capital, achieved considerable de-risking and improved brand metrics“, so how much of a risk does Co-Op remain to be. More important, why is a market research metric an issue here? You see ‘improved brand metrics’ sounds nice, but how much does it matter in the scheme of things? We all accept that brand metrics matter, yet in this light, is this truly about ‘branding’? Perhaps this is about the issue of ‘de-risking’ which also impacts branding, but de-risking is all about the bank not becoming the next ocean floater. So are we misinformed? Yes, we are, but embossing was never really illegal (it is the existence of marketing).

In this, the press has little blame, it is what they are told and as such, in this case, I am not having a go at the Press. What is partially the issue is that these articles are at the foundation of things that have been known, issues that are set or expected, but in all this, the governments and their over optimistic reporting has not led to serious questions and questioning by the press either, which is an issue and remains to be so. That part is now gaining visibility when we see that two senior executives are banned with the reasoning ‘a threat to UK financial stability‘, I am not stating that this is not the case, but the fact that two individuals can have this strong an impact is equal worry on how the banks high executives could have allowed for such risks to remain in place, moreover, the fact that this is done to these two, why are their bosses not mentioned or part of the conversation as to what is regarded to be ‘a threat to UK financial stability‘? That part is clearly missing.

This now reflects back to the US.

For this we need to take an academic step back in time (see the TARDIS on your right). On August 19^th 1988 Richard B. McKenzie wrote ‘The Twilight of Government Growth in a Competitive World Economy‘. Initially he focuses on “Technology is gradually eroding the monopoly power of government and is thereby reducing people’s incentive to control governments (or the people who run them). This is the case because the capital in capital-ism is becoming far more elusive and far more difficult to control–by governments“, so we see a view that in 1988 someone reported on the dangers on how technologies might enable big business, but will cause erosion within governments. Simply stated, most governments are confronted with the twilight in their pants, flaccid and to some even regarded as redundant. His paper is more about the impact on technology, but there are a few gems that have been ignored by spokespeople and reporters at large. The quote “Democratic governments are necessarily constrained by the rules of politics. For example, these rules require that a majority of the voting representatives approve fiscal and regulatory policies. Rules of democracy also force politicians to face periodic elections and to be held accountable, within limits, for what they do. If politicians raise taxes and expand business regulations, they have to consider the possibility of being turned out of office“, might be accepted as a mere fact, yet consider ‘voting representatives approve fiscal and regulatory policies‘ and ‘the possibility of being turned out of office‘. Now we get the issue that has been playing for almost a decade. By not approving fiscal and regulatory policies politicians could stretch their time in office. So, is my premise correctly, by stating that acting has consequences, does the inaction guarantees the opposite? Proving one is not a premise for proving the other, yet in all this, we see the elements of the economy that has been plaguing the people since 2005. Now consider the following: “In general, a growing number of policymakers see a need to make America ‘competitive’ again, mainly by releasing government constraints on capital and income“, here I am not in agreement. Actually I am, providing that accountability will be taken into account and as such accountability will become a massive part in the change we require. Here we see the link towards the UK, the banning sounds nice, but until what extent? How can some be ‘punished’ whilst we see stated that they never deliberately or recklessly breached the rules? Which might be a discussion for another day.

So where do I stand?

Is this the case that these events are mere flickers of the light? This remains an option, we are all fixated on the US and their 18 trillion debt, the UK has a trillion and small change in debt and both are realising that they have degraded their populations as upcoming slave labourers for whomever holds onto those debt slips. I admit that this sounds ludicrous, but is it that far-fetched? Consider the loans you have, ALL your loans, now consider the loans your government has, and now consider what happens when they default. Do you think that things remain the same? No, your loans will now suddenly be adjusted due to risk and you will end up with an additional 2%-10% (there is no way knowing of how much you will face). Now, some will state that default is an illusion and that the no government will default. Really? How long until we all realise that Greece can no longer be saved? They call it ‘debt forgiveness‘, but it remains a default. Carmen Reinhart is Professor of the International Financial System at Harvard seems to be trivialising it in an article, as I see it (at http://www.afr.com/opinion/signs-of-sovereign-debt-default-loom-20160110-gm2s05), we see quotes like “creditors may be overstating its potential external impacts“, which might have been true in the past, but we see little regard on the impact of the Euro when Greece defaults. There is no way it will not impact. The bulk of the Euro nations are so deep in debt that these hundreds of billions will impact them. I reckon the day that happens it will not be a good day to be a Greek outside of Greece. These issues are elements of a needed change. We need to make big changes and they will have to start this year. Every year that changes are delayed means that less people will have any options down the road. It is the direct and pragmatic approach to triage in an economic environment. There are no shortcuts to resolving any of this. There is only the harsh reality of changes, legislative, regulatory, procedural and then operational. It can only be done if all are aligned in that same goal, which implies that politicians should be left out of it (even though that is not a reality). The action by the bank of England might be a first spark, yet it is a spark that might go nowhere, if you doubt this then contemplate Tesco v Pricewaterhouse Coopers [2015], when exactly did that happen?

We need change, massive change, it was stated by many, not just me, but when will it come?

Here is the crux of the danger we face, whatever change we need, it needs to be implemented by politicians, all fearing the flaccid twilight in their pants. In France Marine Le Pen is trying to force change, to give France to the French, this scared Hollande and Sarkozy to the extent that they collaborated in a coalition, just to keep any victory away from Le Pen. Consider that part, two political opponents collaborating BEFORE the election, regarding who will win. That is what nations face. In my view that action was not about the good of France, that was about keeping the status Quo for big financial behemoths like Natixis, one of many who would lose out on billions when change happens. So as we see we need change, we are confronted with the people who have, as I see it too many self-interests at play, how can this ever go right? In that same way we have Nigel Farage in the UK. Here the UK has an advantage as the Conservatives have been trying to get the damage down as much as possible. It has been a bumpy ride for them, but there is progress, even as the waters seem to work against them, the UK is moving with many more options than the US or Japan has. The other Euro players (those with the Euro) are nervous, their nervousness increasing every day and faster as we see the back set by markets. In that regard, other nations have their own issues that are pushing things down. The Dutch pensions have breached solvency levels. They are below the required 105% levels, some have it as low as 101% and one even at 99%. They are facing the issue of combined value of pension assets fell by £6 billion, rising bond yields reduced the total liability by £20 billion. How will those be further impacted with the economic forecasts as they are diminishing and even further when those who invested in government debts see that the first one, Greece can no longer pay them! What do you think will happen? Are these just bad panic mongering words?

Can we perhaps consider that as events of the last few years have unfurled the way I expected, when they did not (as some did), we only saw a mere setback in the critical timeline, only to see these events come again with a much higher need for funds. In all this many forgot about Norway and their dwindling profits. As their wealth was oil and oil went from price X, to price X/4, their deficit went through the roof. Norway started to use their oil funds to plug their deficits. A story that got to Bloomberg, but did not get the visibility it should have had, because it gives us another nation that is not able to pull its own weight. I do not mean that in too bad a way, only in the realisation that the nations that have an economy where its governments have correctly budgeted for the year has now been reduced to less than 5, it is a stretch that Greece can topple the EEC, there is however the issue that the pressure from Greece will reduce the error margin of Italy and France to 0%, which is really a bad thing.

So will politicians remain flaccid admiring the twilight in their pants for the neediness of their own future, or will we finally see the first drastic legislative changes we need to charge up a start to regulatory changes?

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Tagged as Bank of England, Barry Tootell, bloomberg, Dow Jones Index, Hollande, Keith Alderson, Marine Le Pen, Natixis, Nigel Farage, Richard B. McKenzie, Sarkozy, Standard & Poor, the Guardian, Wall Street

January 10, 2016 · 20:49

One in six before this court

The Guardian had an interesting piece yesterday. The article (at http://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/jan/09/netxflix-murder-whoddunit-petition) with the title ‘Making a Murderer spurs 275,000 viewers to demand pardon for central character‘ is centre in all this. The first thing that came to my mind was the question: ‘Are people stupid, or is Netflix just brilliant?‘ takes a centre stage. You see, we seem to hang onto this notion given by movies and books that wrongful convictions happen all the time. Yet, where is the reality? First of all, the reality is getting buried by pretty much all parties. The best I could initially find was a 2013 statistical highlight. 172,024 matters were received involving 113,893 defendants. The document does have a lot more (at http://www.justice.gov/sites/default/files/usao/legacy/2014/09/22/13statrpt.pdf) and I hoped to find a more recent one, but these 121 pages should be enough to get you started. You see, the issue becomes when we try to get a deeper view of the issue, one that might not be in the interest of the U.S. Department of Justice Executive Office for United States Attorneys, but when we see on page 8 that 2013 had 61,529 cases files, and we see the claim on page 9 “The rate of conviction remained over 92 percent, as it has since Fiscal Year 2010“, which gets us 56,607 cases.

This document is important for a few reasons, you see, Netflix has created a monster in a few ways. First of all, this is not a legal piece of work, it is an emotional one. An emotional presentation. One would think like many other reality shows bombarding emotions. This would be the first mistake for anyone making that jump. It is a documentary, a presentation made in the best light any camera could do. The view of cars in decay might have meaning, but the mere view is that is, is a view of written off ‘rust’. It all starts with the fact that a person was freed after 18 years when DNA proves him to be innocent. We immediately feel for this person, a sex crime one of the most heinous crimes we would all love to clobber a man like that to death, like a fur dealer kills a baby seal, with a nail board. But then, we are confronted with innocence. This man never did that, so how did he get convicted? These are the thoughts many will have in the first 6 minutes of the pilot. Most will be hooked, I myself saw this and was captured. We get even more turmoil when we consider ‘The wrongful Convictions Blog‘, which has Contributing Editors like Justin Brooks, Professor, California Western School of Law, who is in addition to that Director of the California Innocence Project. I feel certain that Netflix (read: the makers of this documentary) did their homework on this project, so why is there an issue?

The series is brilliant because this could be the first time that this series is sparking the need for a true total overhaul of the American Justice system. As I see it, it is a first that we see ‘more than 275,000 viewers have signed a petition asking President Obama to overturn Avery’s conviction‘ on a scale to this side. Yes, Netflix created a monster, but is it a bad one? When we see numbers like 5,000 – 10,000 wrong convictions, when we realise that 5-10K out of 56,607 represents 8.8%-17.6%, now we get one in six to one in eleven gets wrongfully convicted.

Footnote: This is based on two sets of numbers, there is no clear picture on how many wrongful convictions there are in 2013, giving a debatable number (just making sure that you understand that my numbers remain debatable).

Now the issue shift, it shifts strongly in a direction we cannot predict, because until the numbers were clear we were all (me including) how often does this really happen, so when we see a jail movie where someone states that he was framed, he was innocent, the numbers tell us that one in eleven (lowest denominator) actually could be. When it is a parking fine it is one thing, when it is 30+ days it affects a life possibly forever, the American people now have an issue.

Now we get to the other part. The quote “In a statement, the White House said action in this case would need to be taken at state level – in this instance, Wisconsin. A petition directed at Wisconsin’s governor, Scott Walker, on Change.org has 6,300 supporters, but the governor has said that he will grant no pardons“, we see that the White House parked this on the state level this needs to be on, and the response by governor Scott Walker will not help the White House any, but that is the law, the man got convicted. Yet in that our emotions also play up, because when a person is convicted wrongly once, that state better make damn sure that all the evidence is truly Hunky Dory, because two wrongful convictions of this nature can break a government (and their bank account). Yet in all this we see presentations, presentations from all parties. When we see the claim “Two years after DNA evidence was used to clear Avery of sexual assault in 2003, and as he was starting a claim for $36m in damages, he was accused of the murder of Halbach, who had visited his property to take pictures of a vehicle for Auto Trader“, so is one truly linked to the other? You see, my thoughts take me in a partial other direction. Would any woman go near a man convicted of a sex crime? Even if that man was found to be innocent? Doubt will always be in play there. Now consider the location and the date, October 31^st, aka Halloween. Over that day and the day that follows, we see 12 to 4 degrees Celcius, There is sweat, DNA. There is a premise of planted evidence, what is more interesting, why is there sweat from Avery under the bonnet on a day when it is 12 degrees? Summer, we all get, but late October? Was her camera that heavy? Yet in all that defence, we must also voice the quote “Prosecutor Ken Kratz last week accused the programme’s makers – Laura Ricciardi and Moira Demos – of withholding important evidence that led a jury to convict Avery and his nephew, Brendan Dassey“, which is at the heart of the matter. Netflix gives us a presentation and calls it ‘documentary’, which does not make the accused innocent, yet as evidence is allegedly withheld from the documentary, what do we have now? A mockumentary with a taste of legality? #JustAsking

I cannot tell, because I see one side.

So as we all see that outrage is what Netflix wanted to create, we see a job decently done, but is that all it is? Because I reckon until before this series, the one in six part was never that visible. The issue of innocently found guilty is not a new term, but it was a term that was never so widely known in the US. Making a murderer changes all that in a big way, once larger places get on the bandwagon for advertisement reasons, we will see a few more million getting emotional on the one in six group, as they should. Edward Helmore does give us the vital clue in this article “this is not a trial, but the truncated representation of one by journalists” and as I see it they always have their own agenda, does the viewer realise this?

Yet it isn’t just the image or the presentation, one part of the power that Making a murderer holds is the fact that Laura Ricciardi (one of the two makers) holds a JD from New York Law School and an MFA in film from Columbia University School of the Arts, which gives for the extra bang for the buck, but it does not take away that this remains a presentation, call it a new open presentation by ‘the’ defence; which is happening AFTER the conviction took place.

So will this start a legal change for America? The one thing that does in addition stands out is that the US is too bankrupt to be anywhere near considering a 35 million payout for one in six. That will impact the US in ways it cannot survive, so as Netflix brought a monster to life, we could see a massive change in prosecution and legislation, which if it happens would propel Making a murderer into the historic annals of TV presentations.

We should also take a look at the opposition, one who got his visibility through FoxNews (at http://www.foxnews.com/entertainment/2016/01/08/did-making-murderer-get-story-wrong). Here we see “Head of Investigation Discovery Henry Schlieff believes important elements of convicted murderer Steven Avery’s story were left out of the 10-hour Netflix documentary “Making a Murderer,” leading many viewers to draw the wrong conclusion about the crime everyone in America seems to be talking about“, which in my view is not unexpected. Henry Schlieff passed up on the high ratings show, as did HBO. Here lies the issue, part of the response ““We just didn’t feel it right for us in terms of the length,” Schlieff told FOX411. “I think something like this will work really well for Netflix”“. So when was the last time a network passed up on the chance for massive advertisement space opportunities? You can count those occurrences on one hand and you would not need any fingers.

HBO, Henry Schlieff and a few others missed out on a winner, more important, even though there are clear issues with the series, it does something that has not been achieved before; it gives a national and even international light to the massive number of wrongful convictions. Even when taking the lowest number of 5,000, which would not be low, we get close to one in eleven, we might state that one in nine could be closer to the speculated truth, so how many wrongful convictions will it take to overthrow the US justice system as is, as some regard it as a failed system? That conversation is now happening in many US living rooms. The Justice Department might think in way too many households, which will become a much stronger issue down the line, especially when the governor comes up for re-election, even the next presidential election will feel the impact, in an election where every point counts, 10 points come with a bigger bang than what a fair amount of states can offer, so this will become a growing issue sooner rather than later.

In the end, the paths that the series skates on is the implied issue of planted evidence, which is an option but not a given. The pending issue of 34 million gives weight to this, yet in all this most of our minds are stating that this was a rare occurrence. Which many groups are now debating, when a one in six number gets approached the consequence of large claims and the fact that most state coffers could not survive more than a dozen of those. The numbers if even taken at 50% correct give us no less than 4,000 possible cases, which in an equally distributed world implies 75 per state. If even half of that makes it to court, the bulk of the states would go into receivership overnight, the ultimate nightmare scenario.

An issue Laura Ricciardi and Moira Demos might hope to steer to as an ulterior motive, but in equal measure we must look at the direct impact. One, was Steven Avery guilty? In light of the previous false incarceration the main question on the mind of most Americans watching that show and if any clear evidence is ever brought to light that there was reasonable doubt, we will see an escalation unlike any we have seen before in American politics and American jurisprudence, because the 275,000 petition at present will be the mere tip of the iceberg, at that point the anger the people will hold can, could and possibly will topple whatever administration is in control at that point.

Which could have been the intent all along! In my personal view, I think that there has been intent all along. It might not have started out in that way, but after the Michael Iver Peterson Case, after the documentary the Staircase and in succession the events of 2010, I think at this point, both Ricciardi and Demos must have realised that their pet project had the opportunity to turn into a legislative and political Behemoth, and they were the only ones with the footage and the cooperation from the involved parties, they basically had the winning ticket to a lottery no one comprehended its existence.

I believe that part of that is shown in the recent interview that the couple had on Vulture dot com (at http://www.vulture.com/2015/12/making-a-murderer-directors-on-steven-avery-case.html). The quote at the very end: “Demos: One of the experiences we hope will come across is what it’s like to be accused in this country, what it’s like to go through this system. The hope is that with firsthand experience, people will think differently about the criminal justice system: what is working and what is not working, and the role each one of us plays in that“.

I think that the Stephen Avery case is the one straw that can now break the camel’s back. If this plays out correctly (for Ricciardi and Demos), if enough doubt can be created we will see a movement towards justice change unlike anything the US government has ever seen before, because two strikes against one person would be met with opposition never seen before, this is at the centre of many places like ‘The wrongful Convictions Blog‘, they will give rise to the issue of ‘the Justice system and what isn’t working‘.

Make no mistake, in the end Avery does not need to be innocent, in the Netflix presentation they would only need to show enough doubt to get a political ball, the size of a wrecking ball rolling in many unpredictable ways.

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Tagged as Brendan Dassey, California Innocence Project, California Western School of Law, Columbia University School of the Arts, Executive Office for United States Attorneys, Governor of Wisconsin, Governor Scott Walker, Henry Schlieff, Justin Brooks, Ken Kratz, Laura Ricciardi, Making a Murderer, Michael Iver Peterson, Moira Demos, Netflix, New York Law School, President Obama, Scott Walker, Steven Avery, Teresa Halbach, the Guardian, The wrongful Convictions Blog, U.S. Department of Justice, Vulture, vulture.com, White House, www.justice.gov

January 9, 2016 · 17:14

What did you expect?

This all started with an article in the Guardian last December, in the air of ‘it was a day plus one before Santa‘, the title ‘Game shares fall 40% after profit warning‘ (at http://www.theguardian.com/business/2015/dec/23/game-shares-fall-40-percent-after-profit-warning-xbox-one-ps4). You see, none of this should be a surprise to anyone. When we look today we see all these ‘what will come in 2016‘ articles (read: multiple) and that is JUST the Guardian, not even a serious gaming source. Another article kicks of one of its paragraphs with ‘E3 WILL BRING SURPRISES‘ and then it reverts to the mundane “This year, we can expect Nintendo’s new machine and plenty of VR games but, beyond that, little is known. And that’s just how we like it“, if that is so, then why waste space on it in January whilst that event is 22 weeks away. Ignoring the event for no less than 10 weeks would not have been out of place. That article ends with ‘A YEAR OF BIG GAMES‘, where we see the quote “but most exciting for gamers are the big sequels“, with several mentions of games that had been delayed from 2015. What they all forget is an element the mentioned article will give you.

So let us take a look!

The subtitle is as good a place as any to start. It states ‘Gamers failed to buy enough games for new consoles to make up for a steep fall in demand for older formats‘, so how about giving the reality of the games which means the subtitle should have been ‘Game developers fail to deliver quality, they failed in many cases on delivering on time, some delayed until 2017, creating a new level of gaming uncertainty‘ that subtitle would have been on point. Assassins Creed is one of those titles, Unity failed massively, the reason for mentioning it is because Syndicate did not become the success it could have been mainly because of Unity. A game that used to be sold out on special editions is now getting flogged for $50 including art book, statue, extra missions and soundtrack. A game sold at 33% of the initial value, new in box. Yes, I give you right now that Syndicate does not deserve to be regarded as a failure, but it remains a non-success. It still has an amount of glitches and issues that go back all the way to brotherhood, they have never been addressed. Mass NPC issues remain and the list goes on, yet again, the graphics department delivered, sound delivered too. There are in mission issues, yet for the most they did work OK, in a few cases they were actually decently brilliant. Yet in all this the NPC issues rose. For example, I can get attacked and the police does not act. I pull a knife and they all start shooting, even in my own (read: liberated) areas. The fact that they act on me is one thing, the fact that they do not act against my attackers is another thing. It becomes even more a joke when a fellow Rook NPC keeps on pulling his knife against my kidnap target alerting the police who now has a go at me too, all scripted screw ups that were not addressed. Yet overall the latest AC is not a failure, in the same light that I placed the Ubisoft business model in the past, planning for non-failure also means that you will never get an exceptional success. Perhaps Ubisoft will catch on at some point (one would hope, would one not?)

But this is not about Ubisoft, they are just one element in a group of many.

The quote: “However, independent retail analyst Nick Bubb said he was “staggered” by Game’s profit warning after John Lewis boasted of strong sales of computer games earlier this week. “We had just begun to wonder if Game Digital might be a good recovery stock,” he said. The department store said gaming and console sales were up 180% in the week to 19 December, picking them out as one of its Christmas bestsellers“, but based on what was this? Special in house deals with 2 games? Places like EB Games are offering new 1TB consoles with 4 or 5 games that is quite the Christmas pick. Oh and what are the numbers? When you normally sell 10 consoles 180% really does not amount to that much. I would think that Nick Bubb would have done his homework a little more meticulously, or perhaps staggering was a factor after he learned that £2290 is not something that gives price to 180% (I am not saying that I know their sales numbers, but I am asking why no one else is making a clear investigation there). And on what margins are those placed? A £299 console is one thing, one with 3 games at £279 is a good deal for the buyer, but it equally means it is a product without margin for the shops.

Yet the big UK player Game should have known that this issue is a lot more clear, so the statement “Game said a 20% rise in sales of games for the Xbox One and PlayStation 4 had not offset a 57% slump in sales of older Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 games” is a mere given, something they should have known going into the holiday season. You see, many big titles have been delayed, what was coming before Christmas is now coming in March and in a few cases in April. Big titles have not been the success they were supposed to be and in all this So when another article in the Guardian one day later reports “According to the industry body Ukie, sales of new boxed console games in the UK fell 6.3% in 2014 to £935m, and were overtaken by the 17.6% rise in sales of digital console and PC games to £1.05bn“, we should ask the question that Stuart Dredge might have been trying to hide within the text. The issue is “The Steam Winter Sale has gone live today, Dec. 22^nd, and runs until January 4^th“, yes ‘in sales of digital console and PC games‘ translates to Steam sales for PC games, a place where games were down by 50%, in several cases even down by 80%, so as many game shops have a non-return or exchange policy for PC games (which does make perfect sense), people are happy to download a few 4GB packages (in some cases not more than 2) and store that on their multi-Terabyte drives and the list included discounted games like Witcher 3, Metal Gear Solid 5 and Just Cause 3. So, when we know this, the ‘staggered’ response by Nick Bubb comes across as extremely insincere. Perhaps he did not do his homework? How can a person in that field not be up to date as to what Steam does and how that impact the shops, you see Steam has done this before, so it can’t have been that unexpected.

In that same issue we have places like Game and EB Games. In some cases they rely on fans who want their new upcoming Dark Souls 3 (the apocalypse edition) and that game will likely sell out in mere minutes, yet the dangers when a shop is losing space to a stack of Charing Cross editions, because the previous version was so bad is in equal measure not that weird a surprise.

There is still one other part that links to this. You see, we all play the way we can, some only play the way that they can afford and Microsoft has been dubious in several actions, the issues now arising from the Windows 10 update give more towards the fear that at the earliest moment Microsoft will close the valve on ‘pre-owned’ games, a side people rely upon because the average working family no longer has a spare £50 for a new game. Hell, most people in London are hard pressed to have £50 for simple things like food, so how is the drop in revenue such a big mystery?

The UK (as well as many other places on this world) have been dealing with a sliding cost of living crises. It has been around for 2 years and too many people are ignoring this fact, in any normal household games will be the first one to vanish from any budget consideration, which gives rise to the growing need of places like Steam, because between no gaming and playing a game 2 years old at £5, people usually tend to know what to do. The interesting side is that many of those games do not need the latest hardware, actually, those steam consoles will support the bulk of those games on high quality settings, so the Nextgen consoles are losing their footing, a fact that someone like Nick Bubb should have been aware of straight of the bat.

Are you still confused?

Open your wallet, consider your bank account (your present balance) and now go to any gaming store and get a new game. How many of you will actually do that? As I see it, 40% cannot afford it, 60% does not want to do this because they either do not care for games (which is fair enough), they have other bills to pay (which is fair enough too), or they are waiting for one of those delayed games, because they can only afford a game 3-4 times a year. These are given situations for well over 80% of the people in the UK, in addition it is a similar size in most of the EEC nations, so why exactly are we surprised on these sliding scales? I cannot answer why many readers are surprised (many might be genuinely surprised), but we should ask a few serious questions when retail gurus like Nick Bubb are absent in comprehension. In that case we should be asking a few other questions.

And games are not out of the woods yet, not for the near immediate future. Yes, most of us will run towards No Man’s Sky the day it is released (in around 22 weeks), but consider how we as gamers (millions of us) find fun and joy in a $20 game named Minecraft, or on the Tablets on a $5 game named Blockheads, how long until the analysts are catching on the hyped inflated games galore for PC and next gen is a massive marketing mesh that is short term, based upon a turnover need from the initial 21 days of release? We will always want games like Skyrim, Fallout 4, GTA, Diablo 3 and a few others, but that list is a lot shorter than those marketeers will admit to and the large players remain in denial. Hoping on a new shooter online where people do nothing more that run and ‘super jump’ on all levels like it was the first version of Unreal Tournament. How long until that gets boring and old? The remake Doom might be the first one that infuses life into that group, a mere original gems in a mountain of too many fake crystals.

Yes, we will see a few games we all want, we will see games that we thought we wanted because as games developers rely on hype, they are equally extremely unwilling to give out review copies until AFTER the game is released, because it would hurt numbers and the press at large (the real one and the gaming press) tends to be too often in need of advertisers to actually do something about it.

Finally we get back to Ubisoft, but now for very different reasons. You see, they are offering something called a ‘humble bundle’, which one place stated costed $1. I cannot verify this, but the offer (regardless of price) includes:

Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six
Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six 3
Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six Vegas
Tom Clancy’s Splinter Cell Chaos Theory
Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon
Tom Clancy’s Splinter Cell Blacklist ($10 or more)
Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon: Future Soldier ($10 or more)
Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six Vegas 2
Tom Clancy’s Splinter Cell
Tom Clancy’s Splinter Cell Conviction
Beta access to The Division

One source implies that the price is open, but if you paid a few bucks more (like $11) you got a few additional beauties. I was never a Rainbow Six fan, but a huge Splinter cell fan and even only those games at $11 is an impressive deal, so when you consider this, when you see that PC gamers are offered a steamy steam life with excellent not so new games, in a price range that most people could afford, how is the 40% drop in shares of Game still a mystery?

The gaming world is in an uproar, because they did not tap the vein of quality when they should, they did not press forward for true non-annual innovation when they could, leaving marketing to make the call on hype, instead of truly addressing their fan base needs. An expensive mistake that has led to the downfall of the biggest players (EA and Ubisoft), gamers are realising more and more that indie developers will bring what they desire, a great gaming experience; and only now is the press at large considering that the need of advertisement revenue and the need of their readers base is not aligned, the question becomes how will this be addressed?

I do know that when the press is relying on a ‘staggered’ Nick Bubb for gaming, too many people might be looking in the wrong direction.

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Tagged as AC Syndicate, Diablo 3, EA, Fallout 4, gaming, GTA, John Lewis, Just Cause 3, Metal Gear Solid 5, Microsoft, Nick Bubb, Skyrim, Splinter Cell, Steam, Stuart Dredge, the Guardian, Ubisoft, Unreal tournament, Witcher 3

January 5, 2016 · 20:30

Where is the egg timer?

There is an old saying that there is never an egg timer around when you need one. This being the usual response to a person shouting out: ‘watch this’, which is closely followed by moments of chaos. These things happens, they happen even more so when we act ‘ad-hoc’. Yet what should be the issue when we see ‘The 25 most anticipated video games of 2016‘ (at http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2015/dec/30/video-games-2016-dishonored-2-uncharted-4-xcom-2) by Keith Stuart and Kate Gray, which was published on December 30^th, whilst a mere 22 minutes ago, @gamespot presents: ‘Scalebound release date delayed to 2017‘ (at http://l.gamespot.com/1Z2AZVS), which was actually published yesterday. So when we see gamespot flaunt the title “Platinum Games says postponement was necessary to ‘deliver on our ambitious vision’”, now let’s face it, the timeline does not shift that much (2016 -> 2017) within 5 days. We could speculate that at the end of the year Keith Stuart and Co were casually careless at the end of the year, a speculation I myself reject because, even though I do not always agree with Keith, the man is a professional and he tends not to be careless in that regard. In the second, Platinum marketing might have tried to ride the waves of free publicity as much as possible, which is more likely than not the case, yet that would be a casually stupid path to take.

Perhaps there is the idea that instead of trying to feed (or create) hypes (especially in the gaming and movie world), the media at large needs to stop feeding us ‘junk’ (read: rehashed news) when a game is more than 20 weeks away. So, perhaps not mentioning any title that is more than 20 weeks away might not be the worst idea. It would stop hypes to a larger extent, it could result in a focus from the media towards the games of ‘now’ or ‘soon’, which offcourse would include a lot more independent developers. How much have we seen in the media, not on half-baked triple ‘A’ ‘publishers’, but on titles like Adrift, which comes from Three One Zero and will launch this quarter on Microsoft Windows, PlayStation 4 and Xbox One? Is it not most anticipated, perhaps because the media ignored it?

It is my biggest issue with many gaming ‘pages’, especially in main stream media. Too many ignore interesting indie games that would be highly anticipated if more people were aware of it, yet many are pushed into the shadows as two ‘Big-Uns’ (EA and Ubisoft) get overly exposed on products well over a year away. I think that with the consumer in mind, these practices need to stop (or massively lessen). For example, it was only by accident that I stumbled upon Ghost of a Tale, an upcoming game for PC and XB1, I personally believe that this is not an anticipated game because the media seemed to have ignored it, but they kept on rehashing the same news on No Mans Sky again and again.

Which for a short time was understandable, but many kept on going when we heard the official news that the game was coming in June 2016, but as there were more speculations to be made, No Man’s Sky remained on the publications. The interesting part is that Ghost of a tale is a stealth game that would be very appealing to gamers that reside on the lower end of the Teenager scale (a rarity to say the least), what I saw reminded me of Don Bluth, specifically An American Tail and The Secret of NIMH. It came to life as a successful Indie go-go crowd-funding campaign and from what I saw it surpasses loads of games by ‘established’ software houses. How come not more information has seen the light through the media in regards to this title? You can see a lot more about the game at http://www.ghostofatale.com, they show the issues, the upgrades and more important just how amazing parts already look. The game got delayed from 2015 and it seems that 2016 could be the year of the mouse.

Just such a shame that the media at large does not take more time and space to see the wonderful world of the independent developer, with Technomancers on more than one platform and let’s not forget Kingdom Come by Warhorse Studios, it might initially not sound massively interesting as it seems to be released much later for Nextgen consoles, but the fact that the initial release includes both Linux and OS X should be massive as decent games for OS X tend to be really rare events. The fact that it is a Q2 release in 2016 makes it interesting to keep tabs on, as it would be released half a year earlier than games that are already receiving way to much exposure.

So as we look back on the egg timer, we must acknowledge two things, the first is that a sudden shift to another year is not the main reason, that’s just bad luck for some, but the fact that plenty of interesting games tend to not make the media (especially in their online editions) seems to be a lot less acceptable, especially when we see more and more lacking quality reviews. Yet these games all show that timing is still an issue to some degree, yet personally I find the shifting time lines a lot more acceptable from independent developers who try to get through with limited resources than the shifts we see in larger houses that are either close to or exceeding the billion dollar mark, there it is too often a failed form of managing expectations by not in the least of the culprits their own marketing departments; in addition, when I see what a mere independent mouse can show us graphically, I am happy that the group if independent developers is growing, because a mere dozen independent developers have shown me more to look forward to than several of the established branders of gaming. In all this I must point out that the Guardian article does give a fair bit of indie games attention, but they are one of few amongst way too many, which is a real shame.

For me, it is not about the 25 most anticipated games! I, like many others am a man on a budget. For me the important equations is, which games are released in the next 8-12 weeks, as my budget will allow me to purchase only one game, the hype creators seem to ignore that part, knowing that I have a few more options than many families with two working parents who are in possessions of often more than one playing growing young-ling, I would state that the media is ignoring a mainstream niche, one that should be rectified in 2016.

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Tagged as An American Tail, Don Bluth, EA, Gamespot, Ghost of a tale, independent developers, Indie developers, Kate Gray, Keith Stuart, Kingdom Come, Microsoft Windows, No man's sky, Platinum Games, PlayStation 4, Technomancers, the Guardian, The Secret of NIMH, Ubisoft, Xbox One

January 3, 2016 · 11:12

An outlying frame of prediction

The Guardian had another interesting article to present, it came online on Jan 1st, but I just read it a mere moment ago. The nice part that this is about data, it is a little bit more about statistics, but I am not a statistician, I am a Data Miner. The title ‘Alarmingly for pollsters, EU referendum poll results depend heavily on methods‘ gave me the jolt I needed (at http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2016/jan/01/eu-referendum-polling-results-depend-methods). From my point of view, the entire exercise is a failed event, no matter how you slice it. Before we go into the results, let’s take a quick look at the nations involved:

UK, population 65,081,276
France, population 67,063,000
Germany, population 81,276,000
Italy, population 60,963,000
Spain, population 46,335,000
Sweden, population 9,816,666
Finland, population 5,475,000
Denmark, population 5,673,000
Portugal, population 10,311,000

Now look at two quotes: “It found strong support for the UK’s continuing membership, with an average of 53% of respondents favouring Britain’s continuing membership across nine other countries surveyed“, which might be fair enough, but then we get quote two, which is “Only in Norway, which is not a member of the European Union, would a slight plurality, of 34% to 27%, prefer to see the UK leave and join it outside the club“, this is interesting, because Norway is not one of the nine countries in the mix, which now implies that additional nations had been interviewed, so what happened, the others were less in favour?

Now we add the optional considerations “ICM also investigated the appetite in all these countries to call time on their own membership, in the event that their country staged an in/out referendum“, So ICM had another reasoning entirely, the ‘in the event that their country staged a referendum‘ is central to this, because that means that the questionnaire, the hypotheses and the methodology would be different from the get go, which is not even that central in my thinking process, but it is elemental to the entire event. Now, the question becomes whether this is all part of ICM Research a UK Market Research company, was it done as part of the umbrella called Creston Insight, or perhaps even a third part and I am linking the wrong ICM to the wrong company.

These are all valid considerations and in my case the assumption was done intentionally (and most likely to be correct).

You see the paragraph in the Guardian “Alarmingly for the polling industry, however, the result substantially depends on the method used. Nineteen of the 21 polls were done online, and among these the average advantage for remain shrivels to a dangerously slim two points. But the two telephone surveys that have been undertaken point to far bigger pro-EU leads of 17 and 21 points” shows the issue for me. The paragraphs result in the question, were 19 nations interviewed? If so, why are they not all mentioned, in another option, were two methodologies used in the nine countries? One via phone and one via online, which makes perfect sense, but then an even amount of polls should have been used. All the article does is wonder how reliable the approach is, and if at all, are politicians even interested in doing it fair and square?

You see, if the results can sway a lingering vote (which is a given fact) than we can see that the poll could be used to sway some to ‘follow’ the largest group (with a tie a much harder thing to influence), but influence is a given.

For me, the number one issue were none of these items, in my case it was the mention at the very end. The quote “ICM interviewed a representative sample of at least 1000 adults online in each of nine European countries on 15 and 30 November 2015. Interviews in each country have been weighted to the profile of adults living within it” this is the issue, because a sample of 1,000 can never ever be representative of a population of 81 million, not even representative of a population of 46 million, there is no amount of weighting that can give anything but the roughest of estimations. The more representative the sample is for households, the larger the interviewing sample needs to be. There might have been the slightest reliability if a sample of at least 10,000 was used per nation and I use the word ‘slightest’ in the most liberal of ways. The moment we introduce, gender, income and education 10,000 might not slice it either. You see, yes, weighting can be applied, but than a single response could represent a group of 50,000-100,000, how reliable do you think that one voice would be regarding the other 49,999-99,999?

1,000 might be budget based, but this would then reflect a budgeted population that holds no reliability at all.

Sampling can be a real science, but when we see frequency weighing to this amount, we can safely say that science has been replaced by educated guessing, which is not the way to go. Consider France for a moment. Consider that in regions people feel very different, the two regions where Le Pen are powerful, they will not be in favour of the EEC at all, the others regions might be (read: might be). Now consider that France has 22 administrative regions, so in fairness we get roughly 50 responses per region, 25 males and 25 ladies, so per education level en perhaps even per age group, how much remains? How representative are these 25 people for that region? Now consider that not every region has the same population, so the 50 people representing the 11 million that make up for get a very different weight from those representing the 4 million in Normandy. Are you catching on how utterly unreliable those numbers have become? And how is this done for the UK? Or did ICM decide to get in quick and fast so the capitals make up for the bulk of the votes, which in case of Sweden makes sense as the bulk lives in Stockholm, Goteborg or Malmo. So as there is a hint of truth that it might all be about methodology, the required setting can never be met by 1,000 responses per nation as I see it, in addition there is still the unlisted Norway. So ether the article made a few jumps (which could be fair enough) or the reference to ICM in all this should be answerable to a lot more questions than the article is currently giving.

I need to end this with one final quote: “if the huge differences between online and telephone surveys persist, one method or the other can expect to face a bruising referendum, because they cannot both be right“, from the parts I responded to, there is another option all together, neither are correct. They are not flawed, but wrong for the simple fact of sampling size and the quote given “in the event that their country staged an in/out referendum“, which means that there would have been a different hypothesis that needed answering and even then, the sample of 1,000 would never been have anywhere near useful.

A group of 9,000 can never be representative of a group surpassing a third of a billion that should be massively clear to anyone from the get go, even more so when you consider the different lifestyles and values held in Scandinavian nations versus most of Western Europe and that is just the tip of the statistical considerations.

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Tagged as Île-de-France, Creston Insight, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, ICM, Italy, Le Pen, methodology, Normandy, polling, polling data, Portugal, Spain, statistics, the Guardian, UK

January 2, 2016 · 11:30

Costing in the key of life

Over the last decade, political parties have squandered the needs of their constituents. Liberals, conservatives and Labour alike in both the UK and Australia. I have seen the pressure as housing is no longer an options for many. It is a skewed approach to a solution that fit only the truly wealthy. It is a system that has been ignored, shovelled all over the place and no one has done anything serious to address it. How much longer can this go on?

Yesterday’s article in the Guardian by Robert Booth is only the tip of the iceberg that sank the good ship lollipop (at http://www.theguardian.com/money/2016/jan/01/london-flats-costing-up-to-1m-outsell-more-affordable-homes). The title ‘London flats costing up to £1m outsell more affordable homes‘ is on one side deceptive on the other side it is illustrative of several administrations that have not considered any solution, just a propagation of the Status Quo. The quote ‘sold more than twice as many two-bedroom apartments costing between £650,000 and £1m as cheaper homes priced at about £300,000‘ is partially deceptive. You see when you see the data ‘Sales of London homes banded by asking price per square foot’, we see the numbers, but what is missing is not ‘what is sold‘ but the metric ‘available places that people can afford‘, Even higher educated barristers admitted to the bar will not be able to show an annual income of £200,000, which means that even the highest educated are not in line for anything decent any day soon. In Australia the Commonwealth Bank of Australia is now marketing the alternative in the trend of ‘Use your spare room to help pay off your mortgage!‘, they voice it like ‘my new business‘, but in the end, it is a risky approach to either a mortgage that is higher than you bargained for or one that was outside your reach an they are voicing the ‘entrepreneurial’ edge to hide the risk. What if that person suddenly gets into a financial wash? What if the Granny involved dies? All elements that take weeks if not months to resolve and the mortgage is still due. In addition permits might be needed. Nothing of that is clearly shown. The entire housing market is in a dangerous place because the political parties have ‘conveniently’ ignored the lower branches of income and in all that the rent is also still rising whilst incomes are not moving forward. So we are in a place where London, Sydney, Melbourne and Perth are pricing their cities into non-sustainable situations and it has been going on for the better part of two decades. All these places have been trailing demand for over a decade by a decadent amount, whilst they should have been ahead of the curve for at least a decade.

When we look at the following quote in the Guardian “Campbell Robb, the chief executive of homelessness charity Shelter. “It is promising to see the government finally focusing on building more homes. But the only way to truly solve this housing crisis is for both the mayor and central government to finally prioritise building homes that Londoners on ordinary incomes can afford to rent or buy, instead of just higher earners.”“, question marks should be clearly placed, because ‘finally focusing on building more homes’ should have started in 2003 in both London and Sydney. Now, we have to accept that the city is no longer an option for many, yet when we look 4 minutes away from there we see the same trend of shortage. We are face with either not enough, or not affordable. A increasingly larger population in Sydney is now confronted that their income will at best support the rent of a mere studio apartment, meaning that the bulk must rely on 2 incomes to get anything above a one bedroom apartment, more than that, the current growth of rent means that any year that an annual increase of 3% is not met or exceeded, the living standard goes down on a quarterly base. These numbers might sound scary, but compared to London it is nowhere near as bad as it gets. The political parties have abandoned its population all for the need and premise of inviting wealth into the UK and Australia, whilst there is no evidence that these people are spending a great deal in those places, other than supporting and funding new unaffordable buildings. This goes far beyond these mere borders, we see a similar evolution in the Netherlands, where the issue is even more interesting as larger proportions of the Netherlands are facing a similar issue we see in London and Sydney. There is no ignoring the act that the Netherlands is only a fraction of the size of the UK (and an even more diminishable part of Australia), which of course drives prices up even faster. The Guardian article shows the most dangerous part at the very end with the quote “Since 2009, the fastest growing locations for new housing have been Barnet, Brent, Croydon, Newham and Wandsworth. In Croydon, the price of dozens of flats in the Coombe Cross development have increased by around a quarter, with one-bedroom flats rising £63,000 to £287,950“, now implying that the outer doughnut is no longer affordable, moreover, the fact that not more alerts are ringing all over Whitehall with an increase of 25% is even more unsettling. The average UK salary might be set at £26,500, but that implies that well over 50% of the UK is faced with a house price well over 1,000% of their income, making it never an option. That same trend is seen in Australia, where the median house price is now set at one million, setting the house price on average between 1,500% and 2,000% of their income, an issue that could have been avoided if the parties a decade ago had set clear paths in motion to battle this dangerous trend. Whilst both places are steering towards the New York unaffordability we are also faced with a situation that our values of life are in equal decrease, because as we move from nations that are no longer ‘working to live’, but nations that moved to ‘live to work’, our values will diminish faster and faster and it is all due to a path of greed and a path of flaccid and unreliable politicians. Labour UK 1997 – 2010, Labour AUS 2007 – 2013, in Australia partial fault is also with the Liberals as John Howard was sailing the good Ship Wallaby from 1996 – 2007. All parties that seemed to forget that not everyone can afford to live on a $100K+ income and we will be paying for their shortcomings for a long time to come.

I wonder if it ever gets properly solved without having to resort to ‘culling’ the population at large.

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December 29, 2015 · 11:19

Ignorance is not an option

Moments of scandal within the IDF are rare, but oh boy, when they do happen, they don’t seem to be light ones. That was the first thought I had when I updated my news brief last night and the news ‘Israel’s armed forces shocked at dismissal of missile defence chief‘ (at http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/dec/28/israel-armed-forces-shocked-dismissal-missile-defence-chief-yair-ramati) caressed my pupils. Yair Ramati an Israeli veteran was sacked for a “grave breach of information security”, the added quote “Israeli media reports said Ramati had broken protocol when he transferred documents to his computer, making them easier to steal” was an additional reason for concern. Israel, a nation that has been under attack for decades, where Muslim fanatics will seek any way to get a hold of information that can further any anti-Israeli cause got a little help when Yair Ramati transferred documents to his personal computer. Now the issue is not that simple, because I myself tend to hold much higher levels of protection on my own computer than the corporate networks tend to have, as such it would be safe, but infrastructure and the rules on them are clear in most networks, even more so in the slightly less trusting environment of the IDF, so what gives?

In the world of cyber, ignorance is no longer an option, ignorance can quite literally get you and your friends killed. Socially, Financially or actually killed in a death certificate kind of way, the IDF (read: Mossad Cyber division) is very aware of that and for a person like Yair Ramati to make a mistake like that, is it complacency or just plain stupidity?

Well, I am less on the side of stupidity, because stupid people do not head the Iron Dome project, they just remain janitors; so should we ‘over-analyse’ this? Yes we should, mainly because complacency is a massive issue. We all do this at times. Any person who states no is either lying to you or will soon be lying to you. We all drop the ball at times, the error might be small and it will not be to the extent of copying files to a personal computer, but those moments will happen. Phishers, hackers and others are all awaiting you to make that basic flaw one day. The only excuse where such a flaw might be excused (to some extent) is burnout. We get to be too exhausted and in one moment we think ‘oh whatever’ the moment you endanger it all.

That is the moment we need to worry about, because it will always happen.

ABC had an interesting quote “Three people familiar with Mr Ramati said, on condition of anonymity, that he had improperly handled classified documents but was not accused of criminal misconduct like espionage“(at http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-12-28/israeli-missile-defence-director-dismissed-over-security-breach/7056400). From the data I have on Yair Ramati I feel like I should explicitly agree (not that my view can be expertly vetted), but a man like Yair Ramati with decades of loyal service does not commit espionage as I see it, the state of Israel will use his services again and again and with the last three years of missile attacks, I reckon burn out set in and Yair Ramati had his ‘oh whatever‘ moment. This event is a wakeup call for the Israeli security services in more than one way, because this situation could have more than one person in such a predicament. Some of the boffins at the IDF are in dire need of some mental health support, not in the way that they are unbalanced, they actually are, as some of them are exhausted!

A side Hamas and Hezbollah might be hoping for at present, you see when the really good ones are too tired mistakes are made and those mistakes will be exploited. And these exploitation might be on an additional side too. You see, as ABC reported “Israel has received hundreds of millions of dollars in US funding for the three missile defence systems, whose private contractors include Boeing Co, Raytheon, and Elbit Systems“, what happens when its main conductor is no longer creating the symphony? What will that mean for the product at large? We might focus on Iron dome, but the stretch goes a lot further than this. Consider places like Ashot Ashkelon Industries Ltd. People like Haim Defrin and Julian Cohen, unlike the board with people like Avi Felder, Yoram Shechter, Yehuda Gai et al. Haim and Julian are in the thick of things. With additional military pressures and of course the responsibility to get the highest quality, they are under constant need (read: pressure) to deliver, when were they taken aside, to unwind, educate them on common cyber sense and when were their stress levels reduced? Not to mention their parent company IMI (Israel Military Industries). For every organisation, there tends to be an In Bitching Mode overall whining umbrella corporation, nes paz?

So in that light, it is not entirely impossible that Udi Adam and Avi Felder at IMI could be facing dilemmas of a similar kind within their infrastructure, the question becomes, is it happening, is it containable and unlike the step made now by sacking Yair Ramati, can a solution be found to reinvigorate the soul of the loyal population that has been pushed and pushed again and again?

You see, some might see the transgression by Yair Ramati as a part of legal and security (not debating that), but we all forget that Common Cyber Sense is equally Operations, Strategy and HR. HR has a much bigger role to play, because if this is stress and burnout, than it is clear in my view that HR failed the people who have been loyal to their infrastructure, success all the time is an illusion, a person will fail to some extent, the issue is to make sure that the damage is averted. I cannot state whether this was an option for Yair Ramati due to the size of the transgression, but certain questions are asked to the lesser extent. It is the Guardian quote “The former director of the Israeli atomic energy commission, Uzi Eilam, told Israel Radio he had known Ramati for 30 years and found the news hard to believe“, in a place like Israel, when a person with 3 decades of knowledge has an issue, my view is that the dismissal might not be an overreaction, but the issues leading to this are a lot more important than we realise and another set of proper investigations (by the right people) is an essential next step.

Ignorance is not an option and the question becomes was that ignorance just in the court of Yair Ramati, or had that ball been dropped by his superiors in another field at an earlier stage?

It is not a question I can answer with the information I have, but there are enough indicators to ask that question out loud, now it is up to the right people over there to ask a similar question and it is up to them to do some proper investigations.

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