The problem of acknowledging Internet as a global distribution channel

Aaargh!!! It never ceases to amaze me how certain companies refuse to acknowledge the wonder of the global distribution channel called Internet. Instead companies are clinging on to the idea of old geographically fragmented and costly distribution models where you would have to establish agreements in each country or region with wholesalers or retailers, you would have to have a lot of logistics in place to ship your products around the world... Sure, I could understand that certain products were only available in certain parts of the world back in those days, or that they had different launch dates in different parts of the world.

But downloadable software..."not available in your country"...really? I can't believe a company like Microsoft, who likes to think of themselves as innovators (of course in reality they're quite the opposite, but that's another discussion...), just recently opened up for European users to download and install their free security software Security Essentials, six months after making the same piece of software available for the Americans! That's just so 1990's.

Organized crime recruiting young prospects

The mafiosos over at Warner Bros have started recruiting prospects, who will do their dirty work of infiltrating file-sharing sites and hunt down unsuspecting kids who have not yet learned to deal with this relatively new kind of terror. The price for selling your soul to the devil? A pathetic £17.500 for a year's "internship".

The approach is similar to the criminal MC gangs like Hell's Angels and Bandidos, where young, easily impressionable kids, often from dysfunctional families and without a social network, are recruited to do the dirty work for a few lousy bucks, with hopes of one day making it big in the criminal underworld.

Go work at MacDonald's instead, the pay is the same and at least you'll have a clean conscience.

Tree-huggers without visions

Few things annoy me more than "environmentalists" who are unable to look further than the tip of their nose. One of these dumb tree-huggers, Mårten Wallenberg at Naturskyddsföreningen, lashes out at road investments, and insists that instead of building a smarter and sustainable road infrastructure we should be taxing the motorists to death, only allowing the wealthiest of Stockholmers to utilize a car in order to fulfill their daily transportation needs, whatever these may be:

– Förbifarten löser inte Stockholms trafikproblem. För att komma ned på en rimlig nivå när det gäller köer och framkomlighet räknar vi med att trängselavgifterna måste fördubblas till 2030, säger Mårten Wallberg.

Looking at a 20 year perspective I have to ask, what exactly is Wallberg so afraid of? Is it the mere sight of cars in and around the city that offends him? Is it the thought that people will be able to manage their time in a more efficient way? It can't be the pollution, because surely no-one in their right mind thinks that gasoline and diesel will be the prime means of propulsion in 2030, considering the massive technological advances that have been made in environmentally friendly fuels over just the last few years?

So why exactly is it you want to deny the less wealthy citizens of Stockholm the right to drive their zero-emissions car to and from work, kindergarten or the grocery store, Wallberg? Stop talking nonsense and focus your energy on how we can get the infrastructure in place to support the current environmentally friendly fuels, like biogas.

Freshly baked bread

Who doesn't love freshly baked bread? I do, and since I'm a retard when it comes to baking I usually have to rely on the local grocery store. Up until now, that is.

You know those stands most grocery stores have with fresh bread and pastries and stuff, and you grab a paper bag and put the bread of your choice in it? Yeah, well, that's not really the greatest idea, seeing as we live in a world of nasty, filthy, disgusting people who have to poke their dirty little fingers at everything that isn't individually wrapped and tightly sealed. Well, they probably poke those things as well, but that doesn't matter, as their filth doesn't end up in my food.

Last time I was in the store I noticed this moron standing over by the fresh bread stand, talking on his cell phone, and just like that - for no apparent reason and while talking on the phone - he started pinching a bread between his fingers. And then he went away. What the hell kind of disgusting behavior is that? God only knows where those nasty, bony fingers have been... Up his nose? Up his arse? Yuck.

Needless to say I didn't buy a bread that day, and I probably won't be buying them any time soon. If the stores cared the least bit about cleanliness and their customer's well being they would replace these bread-stands with proper counters where you would point at the bread you want, instead of poking at it, and an employee would get it and put it in a paper bag for you.

Who uses self-bleaching cream???

Apparently the police found dozens of bottles of a skin bleaching cream in the house of the late Michael Jackson...? Now, I've heard of self-tanning lotion - a quick and not so good way of getting a tan when there's no sun. But self-bleaching? I've never even heard something like that existed. Who the hell, except Michael Jackson, would want to make their skin paler?

I'm totally flabbergasted.

"Good job, China!"

Swedish prime minister Fredrik Reinfeldt met with Chinese vice-president Xi Jinping, and discussed among other things the Chinese censorship of the Internet. Might we assume that the conversation went something like this:

Fredrik: Hey Xi, great job you're doing on that Internet censorship.
Xi: Why, thank you.
Fredrik: We're actually working on a similar project ourselves, but being a democracy we're don't really have a long history in restricting the public's opportunity to share thoughts and information. Perhaps you could share some experiences with us? We would like to have it in place by 2012.
Xi: Sure, no worries, with your technology and eagerness to restrict the public's access to information you consider "inappropriate" this could be up and running in no time.
Fredrik: Cool.

A taste of what is to come

The Americans got a little taste of what is to come in the near future when due to a DNS error they ended up behind China's "Great Firewall". This meant websites with inappropriate content were blocked.

Personally I don't understand what the fuzz is all about. I mean, they better get used to it as both the US and the EU are planning to incorporate similar Internet filtering, where the governments will be able to decide what information their citizens should be allowed to part-take in, and what should be considered "inappropriate" and blocked.

If all goes according to plan, the EU will join the likes of Iran, North Korea, Australia and China by 2012, with the US probably not far behind. Congratulations, you miserable enemies of freedom.

New Moore is No More

Believe it or not India and Bangladesh have been fighting over a lousy piece of rock (3 by 3,5 km in size) situated in the Bay of Bengal for nearly 30 years. There were no people living on this tiny island, no structures of any kind, no valuable natural resources, just a remote piece of rock in the ocean, called New Moore Island.

Finally God got fed up with the utterly pointless bickering and sunk this pitiful little island into the ocean.

I think oceanographer Sugata Hazra summed it all up pretty nice:

"What these two countries could not achieve from years of talking, has been resolved by global warming".

Oh the stupidity of the world.


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The Minister of Injustice, part 2

What has to be Sweden's least popular politician at the moment, the notoriously incompetent, spiteful and integrity-hating minister of (in)justice Beatrice Ask (M), has gone ahead and done it again. The video below speaks for itself, as this sorry excuse of a politician goes on record suggesting that the families and neighbors of suspected sex buyers should be informed what they might have been up to:



Mind you this is a suggestion to penalize (no pun intended) potentially innocent persons in the most barbaric, medieval way for a petty crime that has no victim. We're not talking about trafficking, rape or child abuse, those crimes are taken care of by other and much harsher laws. We're simply talking about consenting adults exchanging favors for money that Swedish politicians only recently decided were morally unacceptable, and thus should be criminalized.

Today, after days of increasing criticism, Ask herself comments on her ridiculous suggestion:

- Ja naturligtvis och javisst gör jag en pudel. Det var klumpigt uttryckt eftersom det kan och har missuppfattats.

Say what? She's sorry her suggestion was misinterpreted??? Does she think the Swedish public are that stupid? The message was loud and clear Ask, without room for any kind of misinterpretations: We should put the presumption of innocent until proven guilty to the side and permanently stigmatize anyone suspected of buying sex from a consenting adult.

That's the Swedish (not the Iranian or Chinese, in case you were wondering) Minister of Justice, ladies and gentlemen.

Give me a "Kravmärkt" Spotify, please.

Svd.se has an article today on how Spotify makes money and how this money is distributed (or should I say heavily filtered?) to the artists. And we all know how the artist's cut looks these days.

My proposal is a "Kravmärkt" version of Spotify. An ethical, ecological if you will, version that distributes the money directly to the artists without any costly and highly unethical intermediaries. Not only would I not hesitate to use such a service (as opposed to my reluctance to use Spotify today), but I would gladly pay 99 SEK per month for the premium version knowing that my money went to the artists I'm listening to. Something like this:

The Minister of Injustice

The Swedish Minister of Injustice, the notorious Beatrice Ask (M), continues her crusade to make Sweden a less safe place to be. Now she wants the police to be able to do random drug tests on kids without the consent of their legal guardian.

She doesn't see any risk of the police taking this opportunity to harass innocent youngsters, because clearly the police have better things to do:

Lagrådet har också varnat för att urinprov under tvång kan användas av polisen som en slags bestraffning. Den kritiken avvisar Ask och menar att polisen har viktigare saker för sig än att ägna sig åt att trakassera unga.

Riiiiiight... Perhaps you should get your head out of your ass and start reading a newspaper every now and then, Ask. And yes, I'm giving you the benefit of the doubt here, which I probably shouldn't, you disgusting piece of totalitarian garbage.

Hell yeah

Let copyright legislation rest in peace

Couldn't have said it better myself. There is no way to uphold copyright laws on a non-commercial scale without introducing fascism. Which is exactly what is being introduced in Europe and the US at an increasing speed these days.