Items filtered by date: Tuesday, 02 December 2014

Fading of established church ushers in new druidic epoch believes Mediaeval era authority.

Antiquity authority Gordon Strong points out that the current surge of accelerated ethical mass hysteria centred now on an extended Hollywood – Westminster axis amounts to nothing more than an electronic replication of such collective expressions of righteousness in ancient times.

The main difference between such outbreaks in the pre-media age and the current version is that now it is an underclass seeking to diabolise a superior or over-class.

In the current and resurgent trans-Atlantic outbreak this targeted superior strata is represented by those in power in two cooperative and linked categories –the electronic entertainment class and the political class.

In the current outbreak this represents those who control the capital, and thus the jobs in the visual mass media, and to an only lesser extent those in politics deemed to be exercising a similar style of economic power upon those beneath them.

Mr Strong is considered Britain’s leading specialist in ancient superstitions and their outcomes and has authored many books on the subject.

The current Hollywood- Westminster axis outbreak, contrary to a widespread notion in academia, had more in common with mob behaviour than with the witch hunt manifestation, he said.

Witch hunts , he said were levied by a superior class on members of an under class deemed to be the source of a community problem such as still-born children, plagues, and famines.

The contemporary version in contrast he pointed out is reversed in that it is being levied by an underclass on a dominating overclass.

The purpose is to excoriate those considered to have failed to deliver on an undertaking made to their accusers.

These accusers also believe themselves to have been humiliated in the course of achieving that same undertaking from those in power over them..

In all instances the accused had been considered to have been operating from a consented and superior position of trust, and one confirmed and promoted by the same electronic media now being applied to their condemnation.

One similarity between the current outbreak and those of ancient times was the accelerator in the shape of the same core mob, drawing in more participants and more strength as it rolled along.

The presence of the mob in ancient times and now currently supplied the key to understanding the syndrome, said Mr Strong.

Regardless of the epoch the mob transcended the constituted authority of the era in defining its own targets, its own malefactors, and challenged the authorities of the era to do something about them.-

Otherwise the mob would take the law into its own hands, and in doing so make the authorities look weak and thus vulnerable.

The mob effect was clearly visible in its current incarnation as those on the sidelines and observing the snowball effect now joined it for fear of themselves incurring its wrath.

Marching on its fingertips now rather than on its clogs the individual power vested in the population by electronics meant that this virtual mob can criss-cross frontiers and oceans in seconds.

The “virtual mob” would become increasingly powerful and increasingly prevalent, assured Mr Strong.

The reason was the collapse over the past 50 years in the respect for, and thus the fear of, institutions – notably the established church.

Filling this vacuum noted Mr Strong was the re-appearance in the English-speaking world of the Druid, an official whose role it was in ancient times to intercede and generally mediate between the people and their unseen deities.

.He cited show-business exemplars such as George Clooney and Benedict Cumberbatch (pictured) as two such revenants who from their position of recognition and trust had sought to arbitrate during the current resurgence and generally to “exercise a calming influence.”

| From the MSCNewsWire repporters' desk  ||  Sunday 5 November 2017   |||  

4 Nov _ As blockchain and IoT converge, the push to commercialize applications leveraging both technologies grows. The latest industry to embrace this confluence is the transportation and logistics industry. In late August, the Blockchain in Trucking Alliance (BITA) launched with 150 or so member organizations — including transportation management companies, brokers, carriers, shippers and technology vendors. BITA’s stated goal is to create standards and educate industry stakeholders about the promise of blockchain. And at last week’s Connected Fleets USA event in Atlanta, BITA co-founder Craig Fuller, CEO for TransRisk, stressed that the combination of IoT and blockchain in logistics and transportation will be a formidable one.

Blockchain “has the power to transform almost every element of this industry,” said Fuller, whose company develops products to help stakeholders in the transportation industry manage price risk. In the future, blockchain systems will work in tandem with data from IoT devices used in transportation and logistics. Business transactions surrounding the shipment of freight will be automated using blockchain-based “smart contracts,” which improve upon traditional contracts by enforcing the rules controlling the transfer of currency or assets under specific conditions. In simplified terms, blockchain systems use a chain of cryptographically protected records to expose the details of transactions to all participants and distribute records across the network of participating “nodes,” or computers, thereby eliminating the need for a central authority to maintain records, which makes processes more efficient and cuts costs.

The benefits according to Sandeep Kar, chief strategy officer for Fleet Complete, include:

• Accelerated payment, better security and reduction of fraud.
• Simplified claims settlement.
• Improved traceability and trackability.
• Elimination of the middleman, which cuts costs, reduces paperwork and shortens the supply chain.
• Reduction in the cost of regulations and compliance.
• Increased transparency of price, ownership and the entire process.

But there are, of course, challenges to blockchain in logistics and transportation, which Kar summarized as:

• Lack of initial knowledge, skills, expertise and trust in the technology.
• Limited easy availability of cryptocurrencies, which may or may not be coupled with a blockchain system.
• A bias toward the established infrastructure.
• Lack of a central authority to mitigate risk.
• Potential cryptocurrency volatility because no central authority governs cryptocurrencies.

To help the industry get past the obstacles and reap the rewards of blockchain, BITA is attempting to address the education gap, as well as help develop standards that are specific to the transport industry. Education is critical, Fuller said: “People don’t understand the use cases for it. They know the buzzwords, but they don’t know how it’s actually used in the market.” Fuller said he’s been on the receiving end of a number of questions about how to create commercial uses of blockchain in logistics and trucking. Questions like those are what led to the formation of BITA. “We’re bringing disparate, sometimes competitive parties together to create a common framework to solve problems. … We’re trying to bring together the folks [who] can actually have an impact,” he said.

Performance history records. Potential use cases for blockchain in trucking include maintaining accurate performance history records. When a truck enters the secondary market (that is, gets sold as a used vehicle), questions come up around how the vehicle was maintained. “In a blockchain environment, you can have a trustless record” of that maintenance, Fuller said. Because blockchain transaction records are considered immutable and transparent, parties in a transaction don’t need to have established trust with one another beforehand. “The beautiful part is, I don’t have to trust the other party, the seller or an intermediary. The data is flawless.”

“The analog [to the performance history use case] in the consumer car industry is Carfax,” Fuller said. “Except [with blockchain], there’s no reporting agency. [The records] are distributed [across the nodes in the blockchain system built for this purpose].” All records pertaining to the truck would be recorded to the blockchain, from the moment it rolled off the assembly line until it entered the market as a used vehicle — using IoT sensor data as well as other transactional data related to the vehicle. A potential buyer of the truck therefore would be able to make a purchase decision with full knowledge of the vehicle’s history.

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Capacity monitoring. Another potential use of blockchain in the trucking industry is capacity monitoring. One of the factors determining the cost of shipping freight relates to cargo volume. IoT sensors can be used to detect the amount of space a particular party uses; that info is used in determining cost associated with shipment. In the future, pouring that data into a blockchain-based system, enabled by a smart contract, will mean self-executing payments against the amount of space used by the freight, as measured by the IoT sensors. In other words, a much more efficient process than what exists today.

Gray trailers. Blockchain also could level the playing field between truck owners and third-party logistics companies when it comes to “gray trailer pools.” Today, Fuller said, truck owners have an advantage over third-party logistics companies because they own access to freight trailers. Blockchain could enable a business model whereby “the trailers will be owned by a third-party entity and shared collectively with fleets. … You can have a fleet of gray trailers and use blockchain to not only know who had access to that equipment but also charge for it. And you can tie a contract to it and settle it in real time so there is no collection process,” Fuller said.

Dispute resolution. Blockchain will also have a role resolving disputes, he said. “Every single day, there’s $140 billion tied up in disputes for payment,” Fuller said. “The shipper says, ‘You didn’t send me a proper bill. … Your rate is $1.90, but [the bill] says $1.89.” And guess what? The shipper … doesn’t pay it until that price is exact.” Such wrangling creates a strain on the trucking payments environment, he said. With a blockchain system and a smart contract, the transaction would be handled according to the smart contract terms and the contract would be executed and the transaction cleared at the same time, eliminating the current back and forth between parties as they hash out the finer points of their agreement. “In a blockchain environment, you have a transaction standardized and anonymized, and [it’s subject to] what we call smart arbitration,” in which disputes or controversy related to the contract are settled immediately according to the blockchain system’s arbitration rules. And because the facts of the transaction are viewable by all parties, fewer disputes are likely to occur.

Fraud detection. Blockchain will also be useful for fraud detection. The example Fuller cited was the practice of “factoring” in trucking, or assigning unpaid freight bills to a third-party company for less than — perhaps 60% to 90% of — the value of the bill. Trucking companies use factoring to improve their cash flow since it gives them access to the money right away, but it costs them a percentage of the bill. “One of the reasons factoring companies charge so much [is because a significant portion of] factoring receivables end up getting duplicated, [when trucking companies] send multiple bills of lading to multiple factoring companies, or [a company might] create a false bill of lading.” Factoring companies charge a very high rate because a portion, which Fuller said was likely low, of transactions it engages in is fraudulent. With blockchain, as long as the sensor data itself is not falsified, the transactions represent what actually happened as opposed to what someone says happened. But perhaps more importantly, factoring itself would become less necessary since a blockchain system with smart contracts would govern the payment for transactions in an automated way.

Making all these use cases a reality, of course, will require the various stakeholders in the process to work together. “True implementation of blockchain involves both the shipper and carrier using this platform and so far what we have seen is a few shipping companies using it,” Kar said. “The real market pull, not push, will start … once the shippers start demanding carriers to start using this platform.”

When will that happen? At this point, it seems too soon to tell. Kar said, “I believe we’re at least two to five years out, or maybe sooner.”

| A IOT release   ||  November 4,  2017   |||