The perils of alcohol

Reading the newspaper today I couldn't help noticing the warning by the wine ad: "Alkohol i samband med arbete ökar risken för olyckor", or translated into English something like "Alcohol in conjunction with work increases the risk of accidents".

Now, I don't know about you but in my job drinking alcohol could at most cause an incident, like spilling the red wine on my laptop or send a few e-mails to the wrong people, perhaps in a non-business appropriate language. Hardly worth warning me about when I uncork that bottle of Letizia.

So what I'm saying is they should definitely put a big "may" in there, right between the word work and increases. I mean, I'm not completely unreasonable, I can see the hazards if you're a cab driver, construction worker or surgeon.

Comical Ask

A document containing a draft of a new law proposal further weakening (if at all possible) citizens rights in Sweden has been published on Wikileaks. Swedish Minister of Justice, Beatrice Ask, does a magnificent impersonation of the infamous Comical Ali as she denies the existence of this document:

Justitieminister Beatrice Ask vill inte kommentera det läckta dokumentet. Hennes pressekreterare Martin Valfridsson säger dock till SvD.se att det inte finns "någon opublicerad lagremiss som är signerad Beatrice Ask".

Or, in the (famous last) words of the original Comical Ali:

"They're not even [within] 100 miles [of Baghdad]. They are not in any place. They hold no place in Iraq. This is an illusion ... they are trying to sell to the others an illusion."

Insulting the tax payers

Stockholms Stad, the city of Stockholm, is suddenly turning into a 100% Microsoft shop, stacking up on tons of unnecessary, expensive and proprietary software at the taxpayer's expense.

Whatever happened to the report that estimated an upgrade from Microsoft Office 2003 to Microsoft Office 2007 would cost between 3000-3800 SEK per user (this is an upgrade, mind you!!!), as opposed to a migration to OpenOffice that would cost a mere 795 SEK per user? I'm wondering which decision maker was paid off by Microsoft to make a U-turn like that, and just turn down open standards, platform independence and lower costs?

Not to mention the fact that Stockholms Stad's decision is the exact oposite of the government's intentions:

E-delegationen ska i sitt arbete sträva efter att den offentliga förvaltningens e-tjänster i så stor utsträckning som möjligt ska bygga på öppna standarder, använda sig av programvara som bygger på öppen källkod samt sträva efter lösningar som stegvis frigör förvaltningen från beroendet av enskilda plattformar och lösningar.

That's a laugh.

University of Uppsala adopts the Hadopi law

The University of Uppsala has adopted what may quite possibly be the single most ridiculous law ever to be passed by a senate, the Hadopi law, even though this law has yet to be implemented in Sweden. The university is acting as both judge and jury when it terminates the internet connection for its students based on allegations from the entertainment industry.

So much for the legal protection of the students...

I wonder what would happen if these "legal principles" were applied on other parts of the society:

"So, Mr. Svensson, your neighbour has reported that you've been writing her naughty letters, which she doesn't appreciate. Of course you know this means we will terminate your access to pen and paper for a year. No, we don't care that you need to sign your bills or do your tax return, and no, you can most certainly not get a fair trial in court. What do you think this is, a freakin' democracy or something?".

Angels and annoyances

I went to the movies yesterday, to watch the premiere of Angels and Demons, based on the book by Dan Brown. Free tickets of course (as I'm on my third year of a total entertainment industry boycott, my "don't feed the monster" campaign). Before the movie started the audience was informed that the distributor, Walt Disney, had ordered the following:

• There were to be absolutely no use of cell phones or other equipment with any possibilities to record any parts of the movie.
• If a cell phone, or any kind of illuminated LCD display for that matter, was observed by one of the security guards patrolling the auditorium (what is this, a penitentiary???), the movie would be stopped immediately, and the device would be confiscated.

This brings up a few questions:

• What kind of police authority does Walt Disney think a cinema security guard has, to confiscate other people's property with no proof whatsoever that a criminal act has taken place? Nevermind, I forgot about the Ipred for a while...
  
• More importantly though: How do those morons over at Walt Disney think the public reacts to being treated like criminals when they go (and actually pay) to see a movie? Does this encourage the audience to come back and pay to take more abuse?
  
• Oh, and do these paranoid bastards really think, even in their wildest imagination, that a cell phone recording, grainy, 320x250 resolution and inaudible sound, of Angels and Demons will be any kind of substitute for the high quality cinema version? Of course not, it wouldn't even be watchable. I'm gonna wait for the high quality, region free, decrypted DVD rip myself. If I can be bothered to download it.
  

And as for the movie itself, it was ok.

Congratulations, France!

I guess congratulations are in order, as the French prove that they've got by far the dumbest collection of politicians in the EU, quite possibly in the whole, wide world. Now that's quite an achievement considering all the stupidity out there.

The frogs have just managed to pass an Act so ridiculous, so bizarre, so outrageous that it is bound to go down in the history books. The "Hadopi-law" (yes, it's just as silly as the name implies) gives the government legal rights to terminate a users internet access based on mere allegations that his or her ip-address has been used to perform copyright infringements (yes, exactly, just copyright infringements, not acts of terrorism!). Why bother proving a copyright infringement has taken place? Why bother proving that the owner of the internet subscription was in fact the person performing this alleged infringement? Oh, and of course, why bother the court of law with all this when the government can take matters into its own hands, and terminate internet access on suspicion, taking the opportunity to terminate access for "unpleasant" people who don't share the government's views, and maybe even dare to blog about it ("nöt föör löööng, ju döön't!").

From an integrity, privacy, free speech and legal point of view this law is a complete disaster, of course. It promotes a massive surveillance and censorship, and it bypasses all judicial authority. To be quite honest, it sounds like president Nicolas Sarkozy is aiming for the big league now, with the likes of Fidel Castro, Kim Jong-il and the CPC, to mention a few.

The question now is: To what lengths will the French go in order to enforce this law? Will every French computer be fitted with a piece of spyware controlled by the government, in order to keep track of those who are banned from internet access, and make sure nothing illegal or government unfriendly is distributed in any way? If so, how do these dumb, French bastards intend to deal with Wi-Fi hotspots and internet cafés? Shut them all down, I presume? And if a friend provides a banned individual (or "non-person", as George Orwell calls them in his "1984" novel) with internet access through his own network, will he also be banned?

A bleeding industry

Seeing as the entertainment mafia industry is completly on it's knees financially, trying to collect the ridiculously high damage compensation they were rewarded by their good friend the judge in the Pirate Bay trial, even before the highly questionable verdict is final, please do your part and keep their head above the water by donating 1 SEK to their lawyers account. Remember, every penny helps ;)

Thank you so much!

iPod versus Zune

It costs 30.000 dollars to fill an Apple iPod with music. It costs 14 dollars a month to fill a Microsoft Zune mp3-player (with what is presumably DRM-infested sh*t that is lost forever once your Zune calls it a night).

Obviously ripping your own cd's, copying from friends or family, or even downloading here and there, aren't options Microsoft have considered possible...

Bad apples, part 2

As I've said before, I'm not (to say the least) a huge fan of Apple and their over-priced range of proprietary technology gadgets with a lock-in effect that should make Microsoft cry their eyes out. Today's example is just another one of why I would never dream of buying anything with the stupid apple logo on it: Being the control freaks they are, they have banned an actually useful utility, one of the very few I've ever heard of, from the AppStore (you know, the online store that let's you download applications that enable you to tickle your stupid iPhone, pop virtual bubble wrap and mimic the sound of a light sabre...), a remote control for a BitTorrent client, with the motivation that "this kind of software is often use to perform copyright infringements". Say what???

The BitTorrent technology is not only perfectly legal, it's a brilliant way of distributing all kinds of files. Furthermore, this remote control app doesn't actually download one single byte of "potentially illegal" material, it merely controls a BitTorrent client you've set up at home.

So, Apple, I'm assuming computers in general should be banned then, because they're "often used to perform copyright infringements". Particularily the DVD-burner, that's got to be banned. Burn it, I say! Oh, and the Internet, of course, we all know that a huge amount of the traffic on the Internet, both HTTP, FTP and not to mention those dreaded newsgroups, is piracy, so let's just close down the whole thing, shall we*?


*) Incidentally this is just what French president and crazy frog extraordinaire, Nicolas Sarkozy is trying to accomplish. Perhaps they should join forces, dumb bastards.

Mr. Muscle

I bought this can the other day, to clean the drainage pipes in our bathroom. Nothing peculiar about that, except the warning label on the back informing me that old and rusty pipes could be damaged by this product. Well, how on earth am I supposed to know if my pipes are rusty? Perform a colonoscopy on them? Heck, I don't even know if they're made of plastic or metal, that's how skilled a plumber I am.