We begin this week with sad news. Nintendo’s president Satoru Iwata died over the weekend after a battle?with bile duct cancer. Mr. Iwata was just 55 years old.
Mr. Iwata began his Nintendo career in the 1980s. He spent the rest of the 20th century working in their HAL laboratory. He helped develop games like Balloon Fight and EarthBound. In 2000, he was promoted to Nintendo Director. In 2002, he was promoted to company president, a position he held until his untimely death. In 2014, he couldn’t attend the Nintendo annual E3 conference because of failing health. But in November 2014, he tweeted his health was progressing well. However on July 11, 2015, Mr. Iwata passed away. Mr. Iwata led Nintendo through some challenging times. Competitors like XBox and Playstation sometimes put Nintendo third in the gaming industry. Game Cube and Wii U nearly flopped. But under Mr. Iwata’s leadership, Nintendo persevered and thrived. He led the launch of portable console DS in 2004 and Wii home video games in 2006. Both turned out wildly successful. Nintendo DS and 3DS went on to sell over 200 million units. Nintendo Wii would be Nintendo’s all-time home console seller. Over 100 million have sold since it’s inception in 2006. Colleagues and employees remember Mr. Iwata as a strong, creative and intelligent leader.
But Nintendo gamers and fans will forever remember Mr. Iwata for his humor, charisma and connection with fans. He took it upon himself to become the public face of Nintendo.?Mr. Iwata used humor for promotions and at public events. That’s what turned him into a cult icon and made him a hero among Nintendo customers and other video game enthusiast. Tweets and tributes from around the world continue to pour with condolences. And here at Computer Geeks, we’d like to extend our deepest sympathy and condolences to Mr. Satoru Iwata’s family, friends and colleagues during this difficult time. What can other corporate leaders learn from Satoru Iwata?
Not everyone is on board with being online. In Europe, there is a ‘right to be forgotten’ law. Millions, including criminals, want to be forgotten.
In May 2014, the European Court of Justice ruled Google must remove websites that are ‘irrelevant’ or ‘inadequate’ from their search engine. Since then, over 281,000 people throughout the continent requested Google delete over a million websites. More than half of them have been removed. France leads the way. One fifth of the requests and removals seem to come from that nation. The British are the least likely to take advantage of this ruling. Less than 36,000 have requested web removals. The majority of folks want embarrassing things taken down. Remember those vacation photos posted on social media, or when you cursed someone out, or going on that naughty dating site? But there’s a potentially more sinister component to this. Criminals and sociopaths, such as serial killers, drug lords, sexual predators, and terrorists want their criminal past and activity removed, and are using this law to do so. A British newspaper called The Daily Mail received a request to remove articles about Joseph Fritzl, an Austrian convicted of raping, abusing, and holding her own daughter hostage for 24 years. The Daily Mail was told to get rid of another story, this one about Robert Castree, an infamous British child abductor from the 1970s.
So we have a dilemma. I somewhat agree with the ‘right to be forgotten’ law. If someone requests a bad online mistake be removed, that request should be honored. It shouldn’t be held against them forever. That is, if they’re a law abiding citizen. I don’t like the fact that even the press can be told what articles can and can’t be published because of this. I’m glad here in the US, Congress shall make no longer abridging freedom of the press. Let’s hope it stays that way in the US. Do you think convicted criminals have a right to be forgotten?
Social media site Reddit is losing it’s CEO. Ellen Pao voluntarily stepped down as the company’s top leader thanks to pressure and controversy.?
Despite the controversy, Ellen Pao insists this was a mutual decision, and the recent controversies had nothing to do with her departure. One controversy involved stolen celebrity photos from Reddit. This led to the resignation of former CEO Yishan Wong back in November 2014, whom Pao replaced. Then there’s the dissatisfaction and tensions between Pao and Reddit users. The tension got so bad co-founder and new CEO Steve Huffman took it upon himself to warn users against threatening Ellen Pao. Some of the things written about her were so vile and violent Huffman put up the following notice in a statement, “?Disagreements are fine. Death threats are not, are not covered under free speech, and will continue to get offending users banned.? If that weren’t enough, Pao still recovers from losing her discrimination lawsuit against former employer Kleiner, Perkins, Caufield and Byers.
Needless to say, these last several months have been challenging ones for Ellen Pao. When asked what her next move was, she didn’t talk about job prospects or travel plans. All she wanted to do was get some sleep and take some time off. I can understand why. I wish Ellen Pao the absolute best: she deserves nothing less after this mess. Although I’m not sure how much of this ‘mutual decision’ was her decision. But I must speak out against this cyber hatred she’s been getting on her own company site! We’re all going to disagree on some things. The world would be a boring place if we all agreed on everything all the time. But that’s no excuse for cyber hatred, bullying, or death threats. Cowards who threaten people’s lives online (because they don’t have the guts to do it to someone’s face) should not only be banned from Reddit, but reported, arrested and prosecuted. What will Ellen Pao’s next move be?
Happy glitch day! That’s what we should call yesterday, July 8, 2015. ?At least three major institutions were affected in one day.
A computer glitch at the New York Stock Exchange made an already bad day at Wall St. even worse. Glitches halted trading for four hours, interrupting trading for over half the work day. Meanwhile, United Airlines, one of the largest airline carriers, suffered a computer shutdown. It was so bad that it grounded every United airplane at every airport in the USA for three hours! A United Airline spokesperson said the glitch was a router issue. If that wasn’t enough, The Wall Street Journal, the most trusted financial news medium in the US, was also hit by a glitch. This one was blamed on the people. It was explained so many people went to the Wall Street Journal in the wake of the other two glitches that WSJ’s website couldn’t handle so much traffic at once. By workday’s end, all three institutions were running again. No link was found between the NYSE and United Airline glitch. Though these shutdowns concerned authority figures from the White House to the FBI to Homeland Security, all insisted hacking wasn’t involved.
I must disagree with the authorities’ assessment. Three major institutions went down in one day at the same time! That’s no coincidence. Think of all the chaos this caused. Think of the chaos and work stoppage at the stock exchange and the billions that didn’t get traded. This was on the same day Asian stocks took a nose dive. Think about the chaos at airports nationwide. Business meetings were disrupted. Vacations were disrupted. I can only imagine the tempers flaring and tears shedding at the airports. And even after the glitch was fixed, they have to get thousands of displaced passengers on flights. They’re too many coincidences. And why ?was Wall St. Journal the only one hit? I’m sure many media were flooded when these glitches came down. I’m convinced these businesses were deliberately hacked (okay, there’s no hard evidence to prove that…yet). But who could and would pull something of this magnitude?
We’ve reported on disturbing cases about?the savagery of sextortion. But this has to be the worst sextortion case ever! This one is so bad it got the culprit 105 years in prison.
That culprit’s name is 31-year-old Lucas Michael Chansler from St. John’s, Florida, a suburb 25 miles south of Jacksonville, FL. Chansler pleaded guilty to nine counts of producing child pornography, but that’s only the beginning. ?Authorities representing the FBI have identified 109 victims. Most victims were underage teen girls. These victims span 26 US states, three Canadian provinces, and throughout the United Kingdom. Authorities believe there are 240 more victims out there. ?Chansler would seek out girls on social media sites. Eventually, he’d persuade girls to take inappropriate photos of themselves. Then, he’d threaten to blast the inappropriate photos online or even to their parents if they didn’t send him more explicit photos. Back in 2010, Chansler was indicted when one girl and her parents came forward. Here’s the real chilling part: Chansler himself confessed he targeted teenagers because he felt adults were too smart to fall for his scheme. Chansler used many aliases from VictorHugo to CaptainObvious. That’s one reason he was able to do so much damage.
The other is the reason this case is still fluid. There’s over 200 victims yet to be identified. Authorities believe, and I agree, it’s because of the shame this could put on themselves, their futures and their families. Thank God Chansler was caught. If not, he would have gone on and on and on. Parents, please keep an extremely close eye on what your children and/or teenagers are doing online, especially on social media. I urge adults to use caution and be very picky about who they let in their computer. If you don’t know that person, don’t accept that friend or follower request. If your?kid doesn’t know that alias, that alias shouldn’t be there! I’m not here to blame the victim. It’s a?shame?the internet has to be spoiled by a handful of sociopaths like Lucas Micheal Chansler. I hope authorities step up their game in the war against sextortion. Chansler will never experience another day of freedom, nor should he. What can we do to keep our families and friends safe?
The 2016 games in Rio de Janeiro are just months away. And they’re two cable companies who’ve already made preparations for future Olympics. In fact, they don’t even know where they’re having the 2024 games yet, but we already know who has the right to them.
In Europe, Discovery Communications and Eurosport have European rights to broadcast the upcoming Olympic games in 2018, 2020, 2022, and 2024. This landmark deal made with the IOC [International Olympic Committee] will give Discovery, major cred in the sports coverage world. It could definitely make Eurosport the premier sports network in Europe, if it isn’t already. This deal is valued at over $1.44 billion dollars; that’s 1.3 billion Euros. But that’s just the beginning. Come Olympic time, they’ll have exclusive rights to free TV, pay-per view, and even computer/mobile Olympic events. As tremendous is this feat is, there are limits. This deal doesn’t cover Russia. Nor does it cover Great Britain and France between 2018 and 2020. That honor belongs to the BBC and France Televisions. It’s been said Eurosport is a bigger sports network than our ESPN, or any American cable network. Maybe that’s because the US population is 315 million. The European population is over twice as much, reaching twice as many more people.
That’s one of the reasons we here at Computer Geeks don’t like this idea. Two cable companies have full, exclusive Olympic rights over 54 countries and 137 million households. Think about that. If that’s not monopoly, I don’t know what is. And the IOC approves this. I’m just glad British, French and Russian media intervened, even if it’s just over a couple of years. Couldn’t they have shared with German, Dutch, Italian, and other networks instead of taking the whole pot? The Olympics cover hundreds of sports over days. Couldn’t they have split the events? I know what you’re going to say. “But in America, you don’t see NBC splitting the events.” Do you see NBC hogging up the Olympics in 54 countries?
