In a foolish, unguided move today, the Swedish court hearing the trial, at which the Pirate Bay was the star, it declare its founders to be guilty and sentenced them to one year in jail. All because the court held that the founders aided users in engaging in copyright infringement.

If that is the reasoning for this, then shut down the whole goddamn internet! Every link will invariably link to some kind of copyrighted material. I know I likely am linking to something that is copyright. I too am guilty. After all, I am linking to the Pirate Bay from the image above. After all, it’s just a link until you decide to actually take the material. A link is simply a link until you do something with the material.

Advertising is a kind of linking. It is just telling you what is there and where to find it. A link is just that. What the person does is their responsibility.

I believe in the internet and I will not give up just because some court somewhere has decided it wants to give into the whims of corporate bullies who apply collective, punitive punishment to their paying customer base in the form of DRM.

If the music and films being produced are such garbage that people won’t pay to see them, then perhaps the industry should take note and stop pumping out utter garbage en masse and start giving us quality again if they want to see people pay for the goods. I know I won’t pay for garbage. I would have no qualms with downloading it, but I would never pay for low quality garbage.

If prices weren’t so high and quality was a sure thing, filing sharing would go down. Too bad the industry is run by a bunch of moronic twats who have their collective head shove twenty thousand leagues up its ass to see this.

a

Registered with the do-not-call list? Expect more calls, says consumer watchdog

I read it, briefly fumed then went on to find something else. In the end, my wrath returns to this topic because I have received on my cellphone, which is an unlisted number, numerous unsolicited spam calls from automated machines! Utterly disgusting that my phone is being bombarded with such trash. The worse is that I wanted to prevent anyone other than those I voluntarily gave my number to calling me.

916-219-8163
949-256-9160
866-529-5998

Above are just three such numbers from whom I have received automated phone calls from (I love my cellphone for that reason. The numbers were stored in my recently received calls list). The DNC List is utterly worthless. I’d sooner place all my blind faith in the Liberal’s Gun Registry – the million dollar boondoggle – than this travesty. At least that registry was somewhat worth the paper it was metaphorically printed on.

This is just further proof that the CRTC doesn’t give a rat’s ass about the Canadian consumer. It’s controlled by the large media conglomerates who want an easy profit and will do anything to increase their quarterly profit, even if it means selling their soul.

While I intend to file a complaint (do so here), I’m airing my grievances here so that anyone who does a search for those three numbers can see that these clearly belong to unscrupulous telemarketers who are violating the laws of our land. That the laws implemented here in Canada are being violated by Canadians themselves all for the sake of making easy money. It’s a bloody scam. I’m weary about complaining because it requires my phone number and it’s going to the sale lot of immoral scavengers of human misery. I was tempted not to until I was told that my number was already on their file… so it’s not as although they can do any more damage. Assholes.

In addition to ‘bitching’ through the complaints option, I’m also writing to my MP (though, I wouldn’t count on Ron Oliphant for much) and to my party, who I’ve received a decent reply from in the past when I’ve written about legitimate concerns.

It should be noted that all of the calls I’ve received are from machines. If you want to determine if it’s a machine, just wait a couple of seconds. The message won’t play and it waits until a human voice speaks. A human would notice if the ringing has stopped…

a

I’ve been playing an online game since 2003 called “NationStates“. There isn’t much too it. The main website allows for you to create a nation or several if one so desires. In my case, I created a nation called Kryozerkia. Each day your nation can get up to 2 issues to make a ruling on. One can dismiss it or pick one of the often insane options that are available.

The game has a forum as well. The forum has many people who often can’t play nice together, so that’s where the moderators come in. There are mods who are there to overlord the forum and game then there’s me, (I have snazzy moderator powers!) who has enough power to only overlord the forum, but it’s fun enough on its own.

If people just go along, there would be no need for mods on the NS forums… sadly, some people don’t get along. The anonymity of the internet lets people say and post incredibly, extreme asinine shit they probably wouldn’t say or do in real life (though that does remain doubtful since in my pre-mod days I did post really stupid shit that I really did do or say… or for that matter believe). Some of which is designed solely to create a ruckus and rouse the rabble – we call the people who thrive on this: trolls.

Fortunately, trolls don’t last long; at least the highly controversial and highly flammable ones don’t. The ones that do have managed to not trample on too many toes… and the rest of the people are amusing in their own way, even if I don’t agree with most of what the people write.

a

“Please tell me it’s Wayne Easter.” is what the Agriculture Minister Gerry Ritz is reported to have said after being informed that there was another death, this time in P.E.I. related to the listeriosis outbreak that began last month after contanimated cold-cuts were allowed out of a Maple Leaf food processing plant.

To date, seventeen deaths across Canada have been attributed to this outbreak. Yet insensitivity over this issue runs deep within the federal minority, which is thankfully facing the voting Canadian public in the general election.

It seems that the minister could take the honourable route and resign. But that’s not the case. In a moment of pure stupidity, Harper rejected the calls for this callous individual to resign. He didn’t even have the decency to suggest that his minister ought to apologise for being insensitive.

The individual to whom the comment had been directed has shown a level of class and isn’t expecting a personal apology but rather one to the seventeen odd families who have to date suffered the loss of a loved one due to the outbreak, which is a result of the federal Conservatives allowing the industry to self-regulate.

“What was said about me is beside the point. The real issue here is being totally insensitive to the families affected on an extremely serious matter where loved ones have died. And for a minister of the Crown to make a joke even in an internal conversation with senior officials is just wrong. It’s not a joking matter.” ~ Wayne Easter, Liberal Agriculture Critic

Even if there is no death in P.E.I. attributed to the break out, it doesn’t erase the words that have come out of one of the mouth pieces of the Conservative regime.

To wish death upon another is just plain wrong. To not reprimend one’s own minister is just as low. Is this the type of people we want to lead Canada or do we want people who are sensitive and able to respond adequately to the needs of Canadians?

After all, when the outbreak happened, where was Tony Clement and the others? I’ll tell you where they weren’t… at the switch ready to handle this like a true government. This could be Walkerton all over again; after all, the members of the federal cabinet happen to be former Ontario PC cabinet ministers from the Harris era…

Easter seeks another apology on death wish

a

One British woman, Lorraine Allard, decided that she would rather not. Instead, she refused to accept medical treatment for a disease that decades of research and sacrifice have long since learned how to fight and nearly cure. The woman foolishly chose to not accept chemotherapy, and carried to term an unborn foetus at the cost of her life.

Either way, there was still going to be a ‘death’.

If she had accepted the treatment the doctors felt she needed, the cancer wouldn’t have advanced into the stage where it would be incurable. But, she didn’t listen to the doctors when told that she would have to abort the barely development foetus in order to be able to receive the life saving treatment that would have made the difference for the children she already had and depended on her.

Accept a medical abortion in order to allow her to fight back at the bowel cancer that had spread to her liver or bring another child into an over populated world? These were the choices.

She didn’t accept the treatment and carried the foetus as long as she could before an early labour was induced, allowing her to deliver the foetus naturally at 26 weeks, giving the child a mere 50% chance at survival.

Some forums on the internet have people praising her for a ‘sacrifice’ and speak a though she were brave for her choice. As though she was truly a model human. The media (such as FOX, Daily Mail) have used positive words to describe her actions. They have chosen words that convey a noble action when the action was anything but brave.

It was foolish. Simply put, it was foolish. She left behind a husband who now has to bring up four children alone. At the time when her doctors suggested that she abort the foetus for medical reasons, she had three daughters, two of whom are old enough to remember this, to know that their mother would rather die than fight back against cancer and live to see them grow up.

Her son, the one born at the cost of her life could very well have issues over this if he cannot accept or handle the fact that he “killed mom”.

The daughters who remember could very well grow up to resent their brother, who they will associate with the death of their mother.

People are free to make their own choices, and if those choices are foolish, the rest of us are free to mock those people for such choices. This woman made such a choice and people shouldn’t be praising her for dying and leaving the man who loves her without the mother of his children to face the world.

a