CIA sues Apple

Patents fascinate me. I even attempted to write one once and gave up because

they are an art form. It's not enough to simply say my widget does this, it does
this thing so much better than the other things out there and here are the plans. A good patent will cover every possibility or eventual function of the widget in question. It will say just enough and be a little ambiguous and contain phrases like "I can imagine it could also be used for" which will leave enough wiggle to cover future tech advances to be covered. When you consider that to patent a 4 legged chair would take about 14 pages of verbal description plus drawings and searches for prior art you can see why Patent Lawyers get paid so well.

Consider the paper clip has had multiple iterations and patents simply because the Lawyers who drew up the first two patents simply were not smart enough. This left the original inventor of the paper clip high and dry.    

When I saw Apple was sued again and this time over "Facetime" and they lost my curiosity was piqued. Facetime is basically Apples version of video conferencing (or Skype to you PC guys).
It's been around for awhile and as long as the other user has an Apple product you can call them over WiFi.
So I started digging and it turns out that some company I had never heard of, VirnetX, holds a few patents and the gist of them state that the shortest distance between two points is a straight line but in digital bits and bytes. Well apparently someone at the patent office thought this was just @#$"D brilliant and awarded them a patent or three. So what this means is everyone now has to pay these jackasses or they have to make an extra hop between the connections.
I took a cursory glance through their latest patent and see little to no details as to how they would implement this tech. I see a lot of techno babble wrapped up in lawyer babble but no real meat.
It's kind of like saying I want to patent my toilet that doesn't use water. Well how does it work? If you can't describe it so that a competent person in the relevant field can duplicate it then you don't have an invention you have a $%^$$ idea. The shortest distance between two points notion has been around for a while. Sure you can say in the digital world it requires a VPN to make it happen but this is not new tech. Sure they mention some rubbish about encrypting the calls (this is the the I can imagine part). They even mention some more rubbish about generating extra bits and bytes to confuse the casual eves dropper.


But whilst I was looking through patent # 7,490,151
I saw this;

"GOVERNMENT CONTRACT RIGHTS

This invention was made with Government support under Contract No. 360000-1999-000000-QC-000-000 awarded by the Central Intelligence Agency. The Government has certain rights in the invention."

New Pope sighted in bowl of Corn Flakes

There is a lot of crap being written about the who the next pope will be.
Click bait posing as news and even the preppers and doomers are gettting
excited about the possibility of the next Pope being Black
fulfilling St. Malachy's prophecy and heralding the end of the world.


So here are the facts:
St. Malachy was a real guy doing real godly work in the 12th century.
There are 112 prophecies attributed to him starting at the 12th Century and the run up until today. They describe the personalities of each successive pope. He describes a Black Pope as the last Pope. Black may not mean he has a year round tan.

EXCLUSIVE: Conclusive proof of salted gold

The big story of last week was the circulation on the web of photos purporting to be of 'salted' (i.e. tungsten-filled) gold, which was picked up by at least two-dozen websites with an interest in the PMs.

Screwtape questioned at the time the provenance of this story, and we also had concerns about the photos. We still have our doubts for this particular case. However, in an astonishing new development the Screwtape Files has come into possession of a new set of photographs of a different gold bar which has been pretty much incontrovertibly salted. The pictures are, as far as we can ascertain, entirely genuine and they came to us from a highly respected and well-placed source.

[IMPORTANT: To our knowledge, we are the first website to publish these pictures. Any reproduction of these pictures on other sites must be with the permission of the Screwtape Files, and must link back to this article.]

We cannot disclose our source, but the 1 kg bar was intercepted by police in Algeria, following the flight of gold from Libya after the NATO intervention last year. It was sent to Paris for expert analysis, and it is the results of this analysis that we are about to show you now. What you will see is at once shocking in its brazenness, and humbling in its ambition to defraud on a massive scale. We are told that there may be many hundreds of similar bars from the same shipment that were similarly salted.

The FBI targets Screwtape

Well, it has been an exciting couple of days. First off, the Screwtape Files became the first on-line source to question the veracity of the now infamous story about tungsten-filled (or 'salted') gold story, which ruffled all manner of feathers around the gold- and silverogosphere. Since then, many other doubters have started to come out of the woodwork, and some serious examination of this story has begun.

This particular salted gold story may yet be proved to be true (although I personally doubt it, I have to admit), but the important issue was always about the challenging of dubious provenances of stories, and daring to question when certain others (including some mighty commentators) simply copy and paste.

I hope readers won't consider this too proud a boast, but the readership of Screwtape has been expanding of late, and we're delighted to welcome all our new readers and all the new people who have taken the time to comment on our articles. We always try hard to challenge, take the devil's advocate view, and never give in to group think. As I said in a recent comment: fans of Screwtape come here to hear the opposite of what they want to hear. Confirmation bias leaves one dead in the water in both Tradingland and Investingania.

Which makes us wonder all the more why even the Federal Bureau of Investigation now appears to have taken an interest in us.

Bankster Shills

The thing I love the most about this blog is that the contributors are a collection of very different individuals, with very diverse views. I think it's fair to say that we're all generally bullish on the PMs, and that we have declared positions in gold and silver, but apart from that our only unifying trait is that we love debate, getting to the heart of the matter, and seeking to dispel myths and shoddy thinking as often as we can. If we see something we disagree with, we probe and challenge - including our fellow contributors' views.

Unfortunately, this approach has done little to endear ourselves to certain quarters of the PM community. Although that's a shame, it's perhaps understandable given that we're often a bit cheeky and polemic (or just good old-fashioned devil's advocates). However, what is less understandable is how a brand new PM meme has started doing the rounds: i.e. that the Screwtape Files is a fully paid-up psyops front for bullion banks.

The abuse in some parts of the blogosphere has been predictably banal and depressing, spiked by Brian O'Flanagan's recent question about the relationship between ZeroHedge and Sprott's PSLV. Here are a few of my favourite recent comments about Screwtape, taken from a number of sites, including ours (the asterisks are my addition, for those of a nervous disposition):

Tyberious: Those little piss ant, SLV, GLD, c*ck suckers[...]What the f*ck! They shall have no quarter here![...]I know these guys a paid shills for JPM, or whatever banks' d*ck they suck! Look nothing against homos, but these guys are whores! For all those that are new, these guys (KID D*CKINMYASS [sic], and butt buddies) pray on the ignorant and pretend that all is well, like there is no manipulation in the PM markets, that SLV and GLD actually have the metal they report to have and they attempt to spread misinformation and worst of all they f*cking do it for money!

PaidInFiat: Jeanne, eat a d*ck. How's that for an explanation? [and, later] Jeanne darc, gobble a donkey d*ck, you elf.

Silver Stacker: I don't doubt what you say, but I don't believe it either. It equates to me stating that the contributors to this blog like to suck each others d*cks and blow loads in each others faces.

Bay of Pigs: They are useless tools on gold or silver, IMO. Better off to ignore them. They have deadpanning gold and silver and supporting the MSM status quo since I can remember. They don't acknowledge anything being wrong/corrupted in the markets (especially the COMEX).

Green Lantern: That must be where the trolls go after they have finished flaming Turd on the main blog. I guess they need a place to wet their whistle also. From simply a journalistic point of view, did you notice that his entire blog is dedicated to flaming individuals/sites and point of views and rarely puts forth his own world views?

Ledbedder: Looks like the boys and girls at the other blog are green with (fake gold) envy.They think because they write "articulately" that they can fool some folks. Go right ahead, try. I honestly do not know anyone that can make an argument against the PM's not going higher over the next few years. Yes, 2011 wasn't their best, but look at the 10 years before that. Guess a decade isn't enough data to go on. That was my roughly written 2 cents as I didn't get a degree from Brown or HAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAvard. One last thing, look down your noses at us because we type swear words, who cares? Tell us you don't let out a good "F*CK" when you bang your shin on the coffee table. Liar.

SGS: Yeah. These morons, especially kid dynamite [sic] are part of a paid JP group to discredit us.

Anonymous: Screwtapefiles is just a front site run by the Bankers. Zero credibility there.

Anonymous: screwtape has zero credibility. The people authoring there have been exposed and countered many times before. It's a site of the banking shills, by the banking shills and for the gullible.

SGS: Dont come back here. You realize that I know who you are now. My tech seems shitty on the front end, no[t] so bad on the backend. You've been warned.

Lovely. What is very striking about such posts (and there are many more) is the level of visceral hatred for those who do not necessarily share their world view or - more importantly - the world view of their heroes. It is also hard not to pick up on a certain amount of deep-seated auto-erotic tension, which I imagine would be better released in a more amorous rather than aggressive way - but I'll leave that train of thought to the psychologists.

However, what is utterly conspicuous by its absence is any attempt to engage with the question at hand, to refute it through evidence, or to present a coherent counter-argument. Responses are limited to either "you're a c*ck sucker" or "you're a bankster shill".

Now that's a bizarre approach. Let's say for a moment (for the sake of argument) that they're right, and the only things we love in life are violent oral sex and getting fistfulls of dollars from JPM. How, exactly, does that refute the facts we have pointed out, or answered the questions we've posed? It's simply a diversionary tactic to avoid answering the difficult questions. So we are forced to ask: why would such diversionary tactics be used by certain elements of the PM blogosphere? If what they say is an open-and-shut case, why respond with abuse and allegations, rather than simply presenting their evidence and explaining their reasoning?

It is obvious to anyone who has ever read Screwtapes that we are not paid up Bankster Shills. We all give our time free to this site, despite us all having extremely busy day jobs and family lives. You will notice that there are no adverts on this site, and there is no donation button either. We make not one penny from this site by any means. We strive to hold the highest levels of integrity, and make full disclosures when necessary.

Sadly this cannot be said for other elements on the web. Some sites earn serious cash from their traffic, and others have direct links to those with a corporate interest in promoting precious metals. Not all sites - and I want to stress that. There are good guys out there. But suffice to say that the supposedly 'independent' content and advice peddled on certain PM sites is often as partisan and sponsored as that which emanates from certain parts of the MSM about which they scream foul on a daily basis. Corporate shills by any other name. I will expand on some of these themes in future posts.

Most of us are long the PMs, and most of us accept that there is a degree of manipulation in the PM markets. But we refuse to subscribe to the cartoon version of evil empires and wicked witches; a world of Zionist plots and farting bears. If a claim is made, such as Sprott's delivery problems or DSK's imprisonment at the hands of the Cartel, or a problematic gold bar in a vault, then we will investigate it. If we find it to be true, we say so. If we find it to be false, then we say that too.

This refusal to blindly accept all we're told, or to unthinkingly cheerlead the latest silver memes does not make us 'anti gold' or 'anti silver'. It does not make us 'perma bears'. And it certainly does not make us Bankster Shills. We value your comments, and we want you to challenge us (politely). If shown the evidence we will change our views on the spot.

We are beholden neither to the banks and Wall Street, nor to those with an interest in selling as many coins and bars as possible.

And it is that which makes us the most independent PM site on the web.

Zero Hedge ZJ6752

An interesting article at Zero Hedge today, which has a story about Bob Pisani’s visit to the GLD vault. The thrust of the story is that the Rand Refineries bar with serial number ZJ6752, does not appear in the GLD bar list. Our database has records from 20th June and I can confirm that the bar does not appear in the last 45 published documents. Eagle eyed Zero Hedge reader ‘The Grifter’, located an old copy of the GLD bar list from November 2009 on way back web with a bar from a similar number range, but not the bar itself (thanks Grifter, we’ve added this file to our data library).

We’re happy to announce that we found the bar, but just not in the GLD data. The bar currently belongs to ETF Securities. For those wanting to relieve their angst about the mystery identity of the bar, can check the following (zipped) spreadsheet, specifically work-sheet “MSL Gold”, row #10590 (Website bar list 2011-08-31.xls).

Note that the fineness for this bar is 0.9989, which we get a glimpse of that just briefly in the video (click for large version / close up).

As far as we have dug, this bar first appeared in the ETF Securities list on 21st July 2011, which at least gives a window for the timing of Pisani’s mini-documentary – however in all likelihood the bar had been in the vault since it was cast in 2009. The HSBC vault holds gold for other funds, so basically what happened is that the bar which was picked up, just happened to belong to ETF Securities (and not GLD) and no one on the TV crew bothered to check.

This find was a bit of an anti-climax for me, since it dispels the main conspiracy thrust so sought after by most of the commenters at Zero Hedge. The article is not completely without merit, since the gold bar shown did not belong to GLD – so in terms of ‘proving’ the GLD holdings, that’s really sloppy work by Pisani and HSBC. Maybe they showed him the wrong vault? But - the article was great because I would not have seen that video clip otherwise – it reveals a lot about the way HSBC work with that massive repository (for example, it looks like there is not too much physical segregation going on). On a frame-by-frame sequence with the video there are actually a bunch of other serial numbers seen and if I get the time I might match these up as well, but overall we get the picture – namely that HSBC hold a whole stack of gold bars and they don’t all belong to the same fund.

Watching the video sequence a few times, I do think he flips that bar around a bit too quickly though ... 400 ounces is actually really heavy. That thing looks really light :)

P.S. For anyone interested in the Rand Refinery numbering system, according to my book the two-digit and four-number system was first introduced in 1921, and the two letters are chosen at random and get changed once the full 9,999 bars are manufactured for that sequence.

P.P.S. This article was followed up a year later with more detail. (link)