Comment history

ThisIsOurs says...

I see alot of people cleaning their personal stock of fish and throwing fish guts right where people swim. They need a major education campaign around this. As I wrote I simultaneously said, what's the point, they dont even stop people blatantly running red lights and people also continue to park in the path of cars on a speedway near Shell prince charles. Does the commissioner own that business? I dont understand why the owner hasnt gotten a gigantic fine for repeat violations.

The gutting needs to stop. Its ignorance. Arawak Cay Potters Cay and Montagu are basically live baiting sites

ThisIsOurs says...

Criminals go where the money is. If there's no ATM, they'll get it in the cloud. Eliminate one risk take on another. The first place where the local cashless marketing goes wrong is when its assumed it removes ALL risk. It simply converts risk.

A year ago the Central Bank was the main proponent for the cashless trend with major "*cashless*" marketing behind the food festival. When the payments options bombed they started backtracking, which was a good thing, if something doesnt work, pivot.

The major difference between our society and Chinese society and US society is mass. Those societies also have their rural sectors that aren't tech forward, but the tech forward sectors are so massive it makes sense to make the major cities cashless or near cashless, the uptake is still huge. Not gonna happen here, "*soon*", "*by choice*". But in Armageddon (and recently lockdowns) cashless will be king. I had this *not ready for payment provider takeover* conversation with someone 10 years ago, it was obvious.

ThisIsOurs says...

As I said "*because thats where the money is*". If someone had the bright idea to start doing cash drops using all these useless pigeons floating around, plenty robbers would learn how to targer and shoot birds

ThisIsOurs says...

Scammers come from all over, Africa, America, East Asia, the Soviet block countries, the Caribbean, Bain Town and Lyford Cay to name a few.

ThisIsOurs says...

Been saying for months and all during the "*cashless*" craze, that when I hear business owners use the term, two things are true, they dont understand their market and they dont understand how innovation works

ThisIsOurs says...

"*This is done despite the Prime Minister and other ministers, including this one, who've said over again and made a claim we do not agree with a cashless society. Nor forcing people to use the Customs App, nor consigning our folk in the Family Islands to the Sand Dollar.”*

Customs App??? Dand dollar??? When all these protests happen that even the PM was powerless to slow down? Some Minister, still in dispute as to which one, was able to bypass all kinds of immigration laws for 62 suspected illegally residing Chinese immigrants, maybe ask them what to do to get civil servants to put aside rules

ThisIsOurs says...

When bank robber Wllie Sutton was asked *why do you rob banks*, in folklore he's attributed as saying, "*because that's where the money is*". There's also a corollary about why MS computers get hacked more, *because that's where the users are*.

Post COVID when digital suddenly became king, grandmas and grandpas were forced to go digital, every business wanted to advertise that they were now "*cashless*" and everybody had to move to sand dollar to be techy-hip...all I could think about was Sutton.

And here we are. Surprised again. "*Surprise, surprise, surprise*" as Gomer Pyle used to say. The way you know are dgitization plan is wrongheaded is this is an afterthought. Who could have known?

ThisIsOurs says...

"The person sitting down waiting to be served, they done hear what you come here for, there’s no confidentiality, there’s no privacy.*"

More than 20 years ago I asked a bank clerk, why do you have me here shouting my name, address and identifying details across a counter? Nothing has changed. In the Bananas there is a fundamental misunderstanding of data privacy and how valuable small details are to hackers and identity thieves. I can only imagine the trauma of having to also shout the ways in which you were violated across a counter.

I struggle with releasing information on the 8 year old rape victim in order to provide support (and the posting of a video with contact details of a tourist). While most people will be supportive, some people can be cruel, most especially classmates and other children.

Very simple solution. Place an iPad where persons key in basic information, it can be but doesnt have to be networked, it's just for the purpose of transmitting details at that point. Some persons may not be able to read so you need very simple layouts with suitable icons. You can have an education campaign around what those icons mean. Think for example when you're in an airport in a foreign non English speaking country. All airports have agreed upon symbols that any traveler will recognize as a bathroom, food location, police station, teller machine etc etc.

This solution should not cost more than 3000 dollars. Even that's high, but I'll allow for the time necessary to code and test. The maintenance contract should consider a given number of hours of support per month, maybe 10, at no more than 100 dollars per hour. Any support over that time maxed at 150 per hour. There should be no circumstance where any month sees more than 5 extended support hours per station. This is a simple application. Your graphic designer who sits with people under the dilly tree to get their feedback on proposed icons may have a different rate. Remember people have to intuitively link the visual with something and they should be tasteful not further traumatic. But that's a one time project charge no more than 8k. Enough with these multi million dollar technology projects for 10hours of work. e.g Marco's alert.

And of course remember sanitation.

ThisIsOurs says...

This act was largely a failure. The one business that the govt used as the poster child for technology startups had to be eventually propped up with a govt contract. It never made any sense to me to launch a tech industry staffed with foreigners and expect Bahamians to gain knowledge through osmosis. it never worked in any other industry. The foreign workers just received 20+ years of work permit renewals. I always thought the poorly crafted act was written by someone with a tech business who wanted a legal means to import cheap Indian labour, the govt later signed a diplomatic waiver that allowed any Indian nationality anywhere to enter the country to work without a vusa.

ThisIsOurs says...

**Same tired lack of accountability dodging**. Before you do the celebrations you document the cost. This why the entire country failing and a 20m dollar baseball stadium end up costing 70m... so they say. It een finish yet, I thought there was still discussion of landscaping and bathrooms?... dont quite recall