The Hypocrisy Weblog

I still remember the first visit at the cinema that I did as a child (one of the few times that my parents took me actually), and this was to watch Superman 2; I was so excited to finally be able to see the hero I’ve been reading about in real life – I even had a t-shirt with the characteristic “S” on the chest.

Though, Christopher Reeve’s real act of heroism was when he, paralyzed from the neck and down, (no matter how “selfish”) fought to get therapeutic cloning allowed in the United States of America, to show that cloning of stem cells is a fundamental part to cure people with severe illnesses and to show that this is not something unethical.

Christopher Reeve died at 52.

Isn’t this just a little bit odd?! I mean… a Volcano that probably won’t threaten any human lives, still it’s a huge story in the news, even in the little country, known as Sweden where I live. (talk about anglo-americanisation)

Anyways… over at http://www.fs.fed.us/gpnf/volcanocams/msh/ you can find a webcam-image of the volcano, which I btw linked in below… (oh brother, what a waste of space this entry was )

As a member of Spymac.com, I got the following email sent to me on tuesday the 21st of September, and this made me wonder; was the reason that Spymac.com’s SMTP-server for outgoing emails was blacklisted in several RBLs – realtime (spam) blacklists – due to the fact that they didn’t have SMTP authentication activated?

If so, I can’t believe my eyes…

This information may affect you if you use a mail client with Spymac Mail.

Dear member,

Spymac has begun to ask its subscribers to use SMTP authentication when
sending mail from a desktop mail client. Spymac will completely switch
over to SMTP authorization on Sept 24, 2004.

If you are using a desktop mail client like Mail.app or Outlook
Express, you must activate SMTP authentication before this time. This
does not affect you if you use Webmail or your ISP’s SMTP server.

If you do not activate SMTP authorization you will no longer be able to
send mail using Spymac.

If you would like to confirm your mail settings, you can find
instructions here for:

OS X Mail: http://www.spymac.com/support/index.php\?postid=44

Outlook Express for Windows:
http://www.spymac.com/support/index.php\?postid=46

If this is set up, you should have no problems. This change will also
improve the reliability of sending with the Internet’s first free 1 GB
e-mail. Thank you for using Spymac Mail.

-Spymac Technical Support
techsupport@spymac.com

Related link – http://www.spymac.com

According to a report quoted on the swedish IT-news site IDG.se, 80% of the network-traffic in Sweden is piracy-related. With piracy I mean Applications, Games and Movies.

On the site where this news is posted, which you can find below for sources, the ones claiming this is the Anti-Piracy organization “Antipiratbyrån” – the Anti-Piracy Bureau. The bureau is an organzation put together by the software, game and movie industry, and is there to (obviously) defeat piracy, which in the end makes them lose huge amounts of money.

I do believe that the Anti-Piracy Bureau is right in their reasoning. In the news-article you can read that the bureau claims that 15 million movies are downloaded each year in Sweden (a figure coming from Mediavision), and according to my own experiences; most people I know don’t buy DVDs etc now, they simply go online to download the ~4GB (GigaByte) that the regular DVD-disc consist of and burn their own DVD-copies.

Is this wrong? You bet it is, but then again – why should the people who buy a DVD-burner for around 70€+shipping bother renting a movie for ~5Euros/24hours when you can often get it faster from the net compared to what it takes to go to the DVD-rentalstore and back again? (with the increasing number of users with fast Internet-connections, this is a reality now.)I am not saying that what I just wrote is “ok”, but it’s understandable. (If you understand swedish and read the reader-comments of the news-article, you’ll see that many writes that it’s “propaganda” from the Anti-piracy Bureau, which totally shows a general attitude of the swedish (in this case) people, as I see it.)

Is there any hope for the industry? Yes, I do believe that the Netflix-clones and the Movie / applications / games on demand may serve the industry good in the long run, but I think that there needs to be a change in people’s attitudes. Now it is considered “ok” to not pay for someone elses work, musicians are considered to work for free etc.

To end this post; I’ve read an interesting article in a Swedish Internet Magazine, where 2 representatives from the music-industry respectively a piracy organization sits down for a discussion. A lot of what the piracy organization’s rep. claims is just horrific and narrowminded in my mind, but then again – I can understand the “rebellion”. I hope to get the time in order to dissect this article and comment on selected parts of it. It could end up with something quite interesting, I think.

The article from IDG.se
The Swedish Anti-Piracy Bureau

(The logo on the top of the post belongs to Svenska Antipiratbyrån.)

Alright, I am not against the feminist-movement or anything, I’m all for equality of the sexes – I actually see INDVIDUALS, not GENDER when I look at someone when it comes to society / work and so on-related topics, but now the swedish leftwing party have gone too far (again).

They want a special tax-raise that will ONLY inflict MEN. Talk about shooting yourself in the foot?!!! The left-wing party speaks about a “collective responsibility of all men” when it comes to the abuse of women.

If this tax-raise goes through this will only backfire on women in general, which is something I, nor I think most other people want.

This tax-raise is a typical product of the leftwing party, who’s basic response to fix something is not to cure the disease, but to try and treat one or more symptoms. In their case, this “cure” spells “tax-raise”, and is considered to be the magic against all evil in the world.

This motion of the leftwing party only reveals a scary outlook on humans in general, and is yet another reason for me to never vote on them.

Link to article in swedish.

I was watching the Kerry vs. Bush debate the other night (yes,it did start at 03.00 (or 3 am) local time here in sweden), I thought about the classical “tip of the iceberg”-saying…

It’s awfully cliché, I know – but still… They don’t call it a cliché for nothing, right?!

Anyways, while this post is read by you, and the image below is digested, I have to “order” you to go to http://www.betavote.com and cast your vote. Let us at hypocrisy.nu know what you voted, and perhaps why, in the comment-function.

What I find interesting, no matter how “scientific” you may call this webpage, is how different the countries voted. There is no guarantee that these figures are real, but if you think about how the outlook is in world-politics today, and then look at the chart of votes, well… it fits the picture quite well.

PS. Note how styled up George W Bush looks compared with John Kerry!! (Seems like looks don’t matter after all!)

Alright, a new weblog – where hopefully all will work.

Going to try and make this one look better and better as time flows along…

Good luck to me… to US!!!