Category: Freedom

Pirate Bay Sold, Founder Sunde to Retire in Cape Town?

Post author By Shaun
Post date 2009-07-01
No Comments on Pirate Bay Sold, Founder Sunde to Retire in Cape Town?

: Image via Wikipedia

So the hot news on the interwebs is that the world’s largest torrent tracking site is due to be sold to a private Swedish gaming firm, who will attempt to turn the service legit. Shades of Napster‘s demise loom large, but hopefully this time the record companies and the motion picture association have a bit more foresight and don’t attempt to bully their way completely out of the online era. I’ve always maintained I don’t mind paying a few bucks for legit downloads from a decent music download site.

Whether this is a good thing or not remains to be seen. We’ll have to watch closely as it plays out over the coming months, which means that Peter Sunde’s visit to South Africa to keynote at iWeek 2009 should prove to be a hot event.

One does wonder how he’ll skip out of Sweden with a jail sentence hanging over his head. Perhaps he’s got himself one of those easily obtained fake South African passports?

Pirate Bay Heading to Davy Jones’ Locker (wired.com)

Tags copyright, iweek 2009, Music download, Napster, Peter Sunde, pirate bay, Record label, south africa, Sweden

Freedom

Quiverful? Seriously? Dumb Religion at its Best

Post author By Shaun
Post date 2008-12-05
2 Comments on Quiverful? Seriously? Dumb Religion at its Best

I don’t actually want to get into any religious debate – I’m not a fan of organised religion in any form. However, sometimes you read something that just comes across as stupid. These “Quiverful” families basically hold that they will keep on breeding so long as God keeps them fertile.

The Duggar family now has 17 kids with an 18th on the way and they blame it on a messy combination of fertility and religion… Can you imagine what the life insurance quote looks like for that family? Never mind the food bill, or clothing and housing costs. It’s not socially responsible to home-school so many kids either – there’s no realistic way the kids could ever get the education they need, which simply turns them into a burden on society. Thank goodness its American Society.

Conveniently these Christians have forgotten that God gave Adam the freedom of choice.

While I’m on the topic, let’s throw some fat in the fire with a few interesting links:

Intelligent people ‘less likely to believe in God’ (Ouch!)

An opinion on belief: Why I believe in God

and Belief in God really can relieve pain. (Cool!)

Tags children, choice, christian, fertility, Freedom, god, life, quiverful, religion

Freedom

Diamonds are only De Beers’ Best Friend

Post author By Shaun
Post date 2008-12-03
3 Comments on Diamonds are only De Beers’ Best Friend

Ever since watching the absolutely horrifying Blood Diamond (the movie where Leo DiCaprio can for like to talk wif a Souf Efriken accent), I’ve had a rather bitter taste in my mouth when it comes to any glassy rock, and their biggest monopolistic producer, who, it is claimed, deliberately stockpile the rocks to increase scarcity and therefore value. (And in doing so have probably directly and indirectly funded decades of wars in Africa).

This has led to some very strong negative sentiment towards ever buying a diamond (sorry ladies), and I tend to take out this sentiment on the poor salespeople behind the counter who try to divert my cubic zirconia preference elsewhere: “A Diamond? What? Have you ever seen the movie Blood Diamond!!!???”

Of course De Beers claim with a straight face that all their diamonds are 100% conflict free, but why would they ever say anything else, right?

As a monopoly, and a very controversial one at that, De Beers should be ready for parody in any way shape or form. Apparently they aren’t. De Beers was recently criticised in the following advert featured in a fake edition of the New York Times which was distributed in New York City on 12 November 2008:

The real New York Times had a good chuckle about the whole pardoy, but in contrast De Beers responded, well, with the typical legal sideswipe in the internet era – go after the domain registrar that hosts the domain name entry for the site, because they simply cannot ever get a real win against comment covered by free speech rights (that’s free speech in De Beers’ home, South Africa, never mind the First Amendment stuff the yanks use).

The sad truth is that large corporates will continue to exploit these backhand techniques, chasing the softer targets instead of taking a head on confrontation, or even better, actually embracing the criticism and firing directly back at it with facts and truths.

Sucks to them. As a consumer I’ll just keep my conscience clear and stick with the man-made rocks. (And besides I don’t have money for jewels like that, or even someone to give it to!!!)

By the way, given the fast growing economic depression, poor sales predict an artificially large drop in diamond production in the De Beers stable.