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lol I knew secretly you were a covert hacker!

lol you beat me to it, I was going to have a very similar rant about this yesterday but got side tracked

I'll confess to being an Apprentice fan. Take it at face value, it's entertainment and a good laugh. I've been watching it since it started and genuinely miss the the TV shopping task they used to do, but I don't for one moment think this is the cream of Britain's business talent.

If you watch the follow up program on BBC2 afterwards hosted by Dara Ó Briain a lot of the candidates show how daft some of their business ideas were and most seem to have already decided to abandon them!

But onto Mark and his PPC agency.

"I've been in this industry for 3 years" A real veteran of the digital marketing age then 

But he's a salesman, a good salesman, but he is exactly why I can't get on with salespeople, they (for the most part) are very slick which to me comes over as false and fake. 

What he's not is someone who has worked at the technical level of the digital marketing scale. He has no idea about algorithms, semantic search, structured data or even I suspect the strategy of Google moving from search engine to search destination.

So without this understanding he is going to outsource and hire SEO's, which to be fair any agency has to, but I think as Tom says in his post, his employee salary expectations are hilarious.

How will he be different?

Well a consultant will sit down with you at your business and get to know you on a one to one level, then meet up with you once a month...

What a load of cobblers

So his overheads are rising and rising with his motley crew touring London doing their monthly site visits. His SEO bods that are any good are demanding pay rises or they will walk, leaving him with mediocre technical resource which means mediocre performance, which will become a damming reputation. Then there is the London office rent and bills, unless Lord Sugar is covering that.

I don't get the name. If I was going on the Apprentice with my well crafted and researched business idea and plan, I'm pretty sure I would have already come up with a name, reserved domain name (or holding page) etc. Unless they aren't allowed to? Game show versus genuine business show argument...

As for the SEO audience, so the UK manager of Google said to Lord Sugar if he didn't take him, Google would. Really? Based on what, a sales pitch about an SEO agency? My view of Google slides ever lower....

Best of luck to Mark, but I think Lord Sugar backed the wrong horse and should have gone with tights

Ok, that's more like it, a full nationwide internet outage

So North Korea mysteriously went off the air as a behind the scenes cyber skirmish kicked off. 

The BBC is reporting that North Korea is now partially back online but also puts thing in perspective. The average citizen is denied access to the world wide web, an North Korea has a more draconian version of the great Chinese Firewall, meaning few will read our western ramblings 

Instead they more of a Statewide Intranet showing suitable viewing, such as the Worlds funniest goose stepping, and a 101 ways to serve rice.

So the average North Korean citizen will be unaware of all the fuss and nothing like the hysteria we would see in the UK or US if Facebook and Google went off the air.

It turns out the country only has a single connection out of the country which is routed through a Chinese ISP, which makes bringing it down relatively straight forward by overloading the data on the circuit, or just a simple denial of service attack. Unlike the UK which multiple entry and exit points, with cables laid across the Channel, North Sea and the Atlantic.

So is this the future of warfare, cyber terrorism carried out by hormonal spotty teenagers!

another thread that has run its course, closing...

It's interesting to hear of some of the politics behind the headlines and Saudi, the worlds largest oil producer and key member of OPEC, a predominantly MiddleEast organisation set up to stabilise the price of the worlds oils and gas supplies, but more often refereed to as a Cartel.

According the News this morning Saudi is saying OPEC won't be cutting production, which they traditionally do to ensure the price of oil remains high. This now seems to be turning in to a high risk poker game as American Shale gas production increases lowering the demand from OPEC.

After an emergency meeting by OPEC leaders, they decided to not to cut production and said they had the given other world producers the chance to reduce production who had refused. So conspiracy theorists now see this as a plot to undermine non OPEC producers in particularly the new US reserves, and see whose nerve holds out the longest as the price drops.

Source BBC News

So good news for the person in the street, lower costs, should mean lower transport costs which means lower product costs and supermarket prices.

But the reverse is our own oil and gas industry is now dangerously exposed. With everyone producing and demand declining, who is going to make the decision to slow production across the board. So it seems we are still being held to ransom by OPEC, only this time it's our oil and gas industry and not our pockets.

I wonder how it will pan out?

lol I think that's the impression we like to paint of North Korea ridiculing them about some of their backwards technology and blinkered view on the world.

The average user might be on a dial up Windows 95 machine, but in reality though cyber terrorism is actually one area where they can be pretty sophisticated. They have no morality checks or balances and any young talent is nurtured with no doubt plenty of budget thrown at it and plenty of covertly imported kit.

For young hackers it must be a like a dream, state financed and sponsored. They have no legal issues and can pretty much do what they like without ramifications. What's anyone going to do? Sanctions, invade them? Issue a stern statement?

Obama finally decided to comment, saying it's a mistake and Sony should have spoken to him, but what would the US Government done to help or support them?

Sony has hit back saying it hasn't caved in, instead blaming Cinema chains, as without their support they have no distribution network, but it looks like they will release the film on DVD or online streaming services.

On the face of it, looks like a victory for the North Korean cyber geeks.

I think this will be worthy of a film in it's own right! North Korea takes on Hollywood and wins.

Sony makes a comedy about the North Korean leader, then before it's imminent release Sony are threatened with a hack attack and Cinema chains are threatened with terrorist attacks!

So in this cyber war of words, it appears North Korea has won as Sony pulls the plug and ends up losing reportedly $75 million 

George Clooney has launched a scathing attack on the press and Hollywood and thinks the film should be released. Others have been shouting that it violates the freedom of speech.

But if the threats are deemed to be genuine, is it right to risk terror attacks on civilians for the sake of preserving the right of free speech?

Or should Sony have stood firm and been backed by the Government, escalating it if necessary?

Looks like the crisis is now hitting car manufacturers. Renault and Nissan have stopped taking orders for some models, following General Motors, Audi and Jaguar Land Rover.

CEO for the Renault Nissan alliance said "When the rouble sinks it's a bloodbath for everybody. It's red ink, people are losing money, all car manufacturers are losing money,"

BBC News

Didn't know Renault and Nissan where in a partnership, and they also own Russian manufacturer Avtovaz, or Lada to me and you. So wonder how that will affect public opinion when locally produced vehicles are no longer taking orders?

I do wonder how it's going to end. It's not that long ago that Russian Troops based in Kosovo weren't getting paid and allegedly stealing chickens for food. A return to those days could spark internal discontent with the military or worse.

Three in five (62%) small firms expect to grow their business in 2015 according to research published by the Federation of Small Businesses (FSB). The FSB's Small Business Index finds that while firms are less confident than in previous quarters, they still expect to hire more staff, increase exports and grow their businesses in the first quarter of 2015. 

Small firms' productivity grew year-on-year in the second half of 2014, rising by 1.1 per cent in the fourth quarter of the year. This is an encouraging sign for the both economy as a whole and workers in particular, as wage growth is typically linked to productivity increases.

 John Allan, FSB National Chairman, said:
"All the signs show that as we head into the New Year small businesses are expecting to grow and take on new staff. But to achieve these positive ambitions small firms will need certainty in the domestic economy including interest rates."

FSB Press Release

As a headline it sounds optimistic. The survey was made up of results from 1,782 FSB members so it's good sample size.

What does anyone else think? Do you share the FSB's optimism and also concerns about interest rates?

Could charge a fortune

House would be a bit drafty though...