Retro-warning!!
Back in the early 90’s when I was but a teenage nerd playing games in my little room on my Amiga I got when I turned 15 and then PC at 18, one of my favorite gaming series was called “Wing Commander“. As a space sim I’d say it was not as good as the X-Wing series but the story was pretty damn good! It was so good that by the time the third one was produced they had actual films – with none other than Mark Hamill as the hero of the story! And the fourth one took it one step further when it launched as DVD and the story became even better!! Then there was Privateer which took up where Elite left off. Anyway, back then space sims where good and had a huge focus on story and a “being there”-feel. Graphics was secondary. And the man behind it all was Chris Roberts.
After being successful with all this he took a break from the game-world and went to Hollywood (and made the underrated and under-budgetted movie “Wing Commander“). But last year he came back and started a crowd funding campaign for a new ambitious space sim called “Star Citizen“. Crowd funding is basically telling people “I wanna do this and this and I need your money to do it, if you give me this much this is what you’ll get” and the people reponds with giving what they feel it’s worth for them, or they don’t and it fails. Well, “Star Citizen” blew all records of crowd funding and reached their goal pretty quickly. After than they launched their website where people could purchase ships and stuff and all the money goes into the development of the game. They are right now almost up to $18.000.000 that people have donated to the project! That’s how much people want this to succeed! There are people that have donated upwards of $1.000 each to this! I’m only at $125 but that will get bigger I think.
But the main reason why this is so “big” in the gaming world is the crowd funding part of it. Normal games go from being an idea to seeking investors to back it up and the always have investors and publishers dictating terms and conditions and every time they want to invest money into something they have to get an OK for it and launch dates are pretty final. Just look at what happened with Condor, the makers of “Diablo”. They got bought by Blizzard but after a while they didn’t like working there so they broke off to start Flagship Studios. And there they had to push out a game that was far, far from finished (“Hellgate London“). And the company went to hell.
But that’s what I love about this. They have their money (and getting more and more all the time) so they are just pushing on with the development. And they show us sneak peaks at specific stages of development, last week they launched the hangar which shows us our hangar and our ship. Next stage in 5-6 months is a working dog fighting simulation. And so on and so forth until they launch the final game. Another thing that’s great about this is the community is so very involved and energetic about the game. Just check the YouTubes from when Chris demoed the hangar last week in Germany, the crowd went wild!! It’s awesome! And we don’t have to pay for a big campus, middle management, no publishers, no marketing, it goes to the development of the best, most ambitious space sim game ever. I hope. Because crowd funding is a lot about hoping that they deliver what they promise. Like Ouya, as far as I can tell right now it really isn’t delivering what they promised.
But I have faith in Chris Roberts. I don’t think they are going to be able to push everything they want into the game when it launched but pretty sure it’ll be an ongoing development. Stay tuned!!
So Obama is coming to town this Wednesday. Although our government, and especially Bildt, are very eager to brag about it. But I wonder if they ever stopped and wonder if we, the people, even want that. Because you see, we had Condoleza Rice here about 5 years ago and that was a nightmare for the traffic in the entire Stockholm-region. I was sitting in queues for over an hour in a tunnel because of it. But now it’s the president which means it’s going to be atleast 10 times worse!
Today “they” declared that driving a car on Wednesday and Thursday was the most stupid thing you can imagine because basically the entire region will be shutdown for this. My question is – who’s paying for it? People will either stay home, be in queues for hours or take the trains resulting in overload of the train system with queues there too. Either way, people and companies are going to lose a lot of money and man hours on this. Not to mention taxi- and truck-drivers and everyone else who drives around in Stockholm for a living! It’s going to be total and utter chaos costing companies and people a lot of money. And who okay’s things like this in the first place, or is it just an order from above “make it happen” and we, the foot soldiers, just have to live with the consequences?! I really don’t get it. And it doesn’t help that the traffic system in Stockholm today will literally get shutdown if you cut off the E4, which they are going to do. There aren’t any other roads that can handle the traffic and there is noway to get around Stockholm. So this is going to be chaos. And usually I should be able to work from home – but this week I’m attending a course about EpiServer so I’m definitely going to have to go into the heart of Stockholm both of these days. Wish me luck. 🙂
Sorry but I’m about to go very political and existential on your asses so buckle up!
I dunno if you heard, but Greenpeace did a pretty fancy job of taking a swing at Shell during their biggest PR event of the year, the Belgian Grand Prix. If you missed it, here’s the clip.
Also I recently saw the SG1 episode “Fallout” in which a planet with 3 major powers who never can agree on anything is about to blow up. The entire planet, yet they can’t get along even in the face of imminent wipeout. I also remember when the Kyoto Protocol was up for voting the US president said that they couldn’t agree with it because “it would hinder their economic growth”. And a few weeks ago, Vattenfall (the biggest producer of energy in Sweden) went on TV and answered the question “don’t you have a responsibility to invest more in greener energy sources?” with “we also have a responsibility to our shareholders to make a profit”.
Here’s a thought. You know that pandemic people seems to be convinced is coming, that will be majorly contagious and infectious, will kill people without prejudice and threaten mankind’s existence as the dominant species? Well I’m thinking it’s already here and it’s called “greed”.
I’m all for making a profit. But not at the expense of people’s life or the health of the planet! Ever since the industrial revolution we have poisoned this planet more and more and we can try to blame our parents or grandparents for it, but the difference is they probably didn’t know it was causing the damage it was. Well my generation has been brought up knowing we’re destroying the planet. And when people use the excuse of making money to defend the destruction of the planet I get upset- Because we know the effect our way of life is having yet we seem unable – or even worse, unwilling! – to change.
I wish I could make more of a difference, but I’m content with donating money to Greenpeace and voting for the Swedish environment party!
Playing as much Assassins Creed as I have religion has popped up in my mind. One of the first screens that pops up every time you start the game is a disclaimer saying that the game was made by people of diverse cultures and religions, as to safeguard them from saying “this is not Jews bashing Islam and Christianity”. Because the game is bashing left and right (hell, you even fistfight with Pope Alexander VI!) and that’s why I kinda love it.
Personally I’m an agnostic which is a sophisticated way of saying my mind isn’t made up yet. People might, and have, respond to that by saying something to indicate that’s a bad or cowardly thing. But I don’t think it is. I think it’s a pretty intelligent approach to it. Considering I did that entire confirmation thing in a Christian church when I was a teenager, not to mention the fact that I credit Knut Fisher for me making it out of my teens, you might think I’d be Christian. But no, I prefer to keep an open mind. To think “this book of genesis makes no sense”. So for me being agnostic is more about keeping an open mind and trying to be objective about it all, rather than choosing a side and sticking by it no matter what happens or anyone, including the leader(s) of whatever religion that may be, says or does. It also enables me to see movies like “Dogma” without being offended.
We saw Oblivion the other day. I didn’t know much about the movie more than Tom Cruises was in it, it was sci-fi and post apocalyptic and most of my friends liked it. Even though I’m no fan of Cruise I gave it a shot. And like the last update – I’m happy I did ’cause it was really good! The story was ok but had some holes in it, the acting was good and I always like a short casting list. But one thing I loved was the special effects. Not of the cool explosions kind, but rather the ones you might not see. Like the background when they were at their place in the skies, they had some beautiful shots there. And when I watched that I was thinking “how that hell did they do that?”. ‘Cause normal blue/greenscreen wasn’t it ’cause the reflections on everything was too perfect. As always IMDB holds the answer 🙂
So, good movie, go and see it!
Now for some spoilers. This will give away the big thing in the movie so don’t read unless you really really want to know. Or if you’ve already seen it!
Ready?
Here I go ..
So as I’m watching the first 10 minutes of this I’m trying to make sense of the plot so far and quickly say to my wife – “the scavs are the humans the the tet are the bad aliens”. The big giveaway to this, and I’m assuming this is 100% delibirate is that if mankind was facing extinnction and the Earth was turned to rubbles and we all had to make an exodus to a distant moon … how did we find the resources, time and energy to build their place in the clouds that looks like it was designed by Apple? Complete with luxury pool and everything, that part didn’t make sense. Humans wouldn’t do that. It’d be a minimalistic “this is what you need” approach. So that gave it away for me.
One of the few game series I’ve never given a try has been Assassin’s Creed. Not that I had much against it but it looked like it was another massproduced series of games with little story or thought. Man was I wrong and I’m glad I gave it a shot!
That shot came about when I saw the gameplay trailer for the one comming in November. The animation, the graphics, how they’d gotten the movement rights, the seemless of it, it got me interested. And as part of the Steam Summer Sale I bought the entire series and I’m already done with the first one and halfway through the second one. And yeah, it has good graphics, animations etc. And great atmosphere. And also great story and alot of thought went into it, atleast the second one where they are basically redifining the Bible and creationalism. Ofcourse it’s just a game so take it for what it is, but still, a bold move. And I like it when sci-fi (which I’d call it) meets the Bible. The revelation of the Vorlons in “Babylon 5” was pretty awesome too. As is the Adam and Eve movie-clip in “Assassins Creed II”!
Tonight I’m pulling an all nighter to go through the second one and atleast have a little taste of “Brotherhood”. The only bad thing so far is that it’s hard to find any good points to quit. There’s always 2-3 minutes or longer dialogue when you think you’re gonna quit.
Now I’m just slacking! Vacation and everything and not a single update?
Well surprisingly enough, now that I’m on vacation I have the least amount of time to care about this place. You see I have a wife that get’s worked up everytime I sit in front of the computer so I don’t have much opportunity to post things here from home. Yeah, you could call me whipped and you wouldn’t be wrong.
But now I’m back at work so now I have time to post things here. And I have time on the train to get through the rest of SG1 as well and all of that other stuff that I don’t have time to watch at home. And unfortunately F1 is on summer break, and besides, the Ferraris aren’t doing too well this year. Oh well, there’s always next year.
Most of my vacation was spent at home with my family. We tried to do things, we went to Gröna Lund and Skansen but in the end it just costs more than we can afford right now, especially since we bought new phones and we spent alot more money in Crete than we thought we would. “Don’t do the crime …” eh? But this week my parents will take Sam for a few days so we can get a slow weekend. “Slow” as in “celebrating my brothers 30th birtyday this friday”, let’s see how that turns out!
Other than that, I’m chugging along just fine!
It’s been a while since I threw crap on the “evil corporation” trying to stop piracy on the internet. A few weeks ago it looked like we had made a bit of a breakthrough because one studio exec actually said that they should look at the piracy seen to learn what the consumers want and adapt.
And today? Well today we know that was just talk and a smokescreen. Because yesterday the Swedish anti piracy organization fixed a raid against a Swedish site. Not a torrent site. Not an FTP site or anything like that that supplies people with movies. No, this site was a source of subtitles!! Seriously – subtitles !! Apparently Henrik Ponten missed being in the spotlight so he went for a site serving up subtitles! And I’d get it if the charge was “aiding copyright violations” like they used to get the Piratebay guys, because they kinda are (although not more so than Winrar!). No, they played the “dialogue is copyrighted too”-card. Which is really great because this isn’t a gray area at all!!
I get how dialogue is copyrighted, but if a person sits down, takes his time to go through a movie and translates it to his tongue, makes his own interpretation of the dialogue and the gives it away for free, is that really copyright violation? If you just write the dialogue in the same language as the movie, word for word, than yea, I can get how that’d be problematic. But I know just how much interpretation goes into translating movies. When I was last tasked with translating a movie we actually had to read the notes that came with the preview to know exactly what they meant in some specific cases. So does a interpretation & translation fall under copyright of the movie? If so .. then I’d say they owe me some money, because that’s exactly what I did for them for free not too long ago and noone told me what we did there was going under any copyright protection?
This’ll be fun to see how it goes. If they end up with the same judges as the piratebay guys they don’t stand a chance if there’s a gray area. I just hope some defense lawyer makes it black and white.
I’ve finally upgraded my image gallery and imported it into WordPress with a cool addon. Took me about 3 days of work to get it sorted and adding comments and stuff but it’s been fun going down that memory lane again.
Here are some of my favorite galleries:
As usual the password what the company I work at is know as in Sweden.
When I got a job at this here place one of the bonuses was that we could travel at a discounted price. Unfortunately we only do charter so that travel is pretty much bound to those really touristy sunny parts of the world. And my wife have had an item on her bucket list to “dive in the turquoise water of Greece”. So after looking through all our hotels we decided to go to Platanias on Crete and stay at Minoa Palace. We also agreed that it was best for everyone if Sam stayed in Sweden for alot of reasons – and some of them selfish I’ll admit. And since neither of us are fan of temperatures over 35 degrees we also agreed to go late May / early June.
So after sorting it out with our family who would take care of him when and where we did our best to explain to him that we’d be away for a few days but gave all the assurances we’d be back and said goodbye to him at the dropoff zone at Arlanda airport at about 6 am on thursday (May 30th) morning, checked in and then enjoyed a very early beer and shrimp sandwhich since we hadn’t ordered food on the plane.
The flight was ok but a bit boring for me, I usually sleep on airplanes but this time I couldn’t. Then we arrived at the hotel and man was it nice!! It really was top notch! But when we got to our room we were really disappointed at the lack of sea view, that we had paid for. We were so disappointed that I actually went to complain at the front desk – and they looked at their bookings and simply snapped their fingers and we got a new room with awesome sea view! Then my wife had to go dip her feet in the ocean and then we kicked back to enjoy a cold nice beer at the beach bar. We spent the next 7 days walking the same road in Platanias (there is just one road unless you want to go along the beach which I don’t recommend) trying out all kinds of different restaurants! The people were very nice and polite, especially the people at the resaurants! There weren’t that many people who tried to force you into their restaurants which was a nice change!.
To go through some of the restaurants to recommend:
We also found a great restaurant when we took a trip with the Fun Trains out to Therisso Gorge but I have no idea what it was called but they served up a great and simple dish of lamb! We really wish we had done more of those Fun Train trips because that was fun.
We also took a city tour of Chania as well but it wasn’t much to write home about, except for the harbor where there were a gazillion restaurants lined up and yes, people trying to force you into their restaurant 🙁 But we already had an evening of Meze planned, but after 4 hours and 8 small dishes we were still kinda hungrey so when we got back to the hotel we took the liberty of taking some desserts from the dinner buffé at the hotel.
Other than we spent the week in the sun by the pool and a quick little visit to the gym to work off that saganaki. But by wednesday we were actually missing our Sam and both felt that we could really go home today. But that wasn’t up to us. But on Thursday (June 6th) we boarded the flight home and when we finally got home I was rushing to the car to see our son again who was really happy to see us again. But so tired after a week of playtime with the family that he feel asleep in the car on the way home!!
Basically we had a blast! There were some things we wish we had done differently but that’s the way it is. Next time we will take Sam with us and go to a real charter resort.
Feel free to check out the pictures here. And you should know the password by now, right?
I’m kind of weird in some ways – like how I in some ways like things to just remain the same and keep on going with “if it ain’t broken why fix it”. Yet sometimes I love to change things around even when it’s already working perfectly. Like this site. This site has been on so many servers I’ve lost count. At one time like 10 years ago it was hosted at “Aleborg Solutions” that later became Binero. And then it moved around until I started hosting it at home, then to our server in the states and now it’s back at Binero! Why? Becuase it was just a bit slow when it was “over there”, I noticed that when going around in the image gallery. So I moved it back home to Sweden. I know it’s gonna cost me a little bit but now I don’t have to worry the least about the server going down!
I’m also trying out a new image gallery called “Justified Image Gallery” that shows the image gallery in a pretty neat way. Look at our gallery for our trip to Crete – looks pretty sweet, no?
I have finally had the time to index and upload all the pictures from our week in Platanias in Crete – so enjoy! You’ll have to do without my colorful commentary but I think you’ll live.
Unless you’ve lived totally unconnected for the past week I’m sure you’ve heard the latest “scandal” – that NSA is being fed data by the big computer companies in the USA, all to try to catch bad guys before they do something bad against them. And the guy who blew the whistle left his life in the states and fled to China and god knows where he is now, and he’ll probably always be a wanted man in the states.
Regarding the fact that NSA can read my e-mails? … anyone who thought anything differently really haven’t been paying attention! I’ve always said e-mail is one of the least secure ways of communicating. And I’ve always assumed that the US authorities _can_ access my files on Dropbox, so I’ve bought an encrypting software so anything personal that I’d never want exposed is encrypted. I’ve always treated my online data with the sceptic view that “if someone really wanted it they could get it” and very aware that with the Patriot Act so could the US authorities. And you know what? I’n fine with that. ‘Cause I’ve got nothing to hide really. I just wish all the IT managers around the world would consider this before being so fast to jump on the “could” bandwagon! As a matter of fact, only two months ago I wrote a recommendation to our IT manager about using Microsofts online cloud-based Sharepoint solution to host a collaboration site. I had the big reservation that “by doing so, we must acknowledge that all the data we put there is only as secure and safe as Microsoft states and as the laws in that country allows”. I almost feel like a prophet now for writing that!
Regarding the guy that blew the whistle … although I totally support people who blow whistles when they feel something is wrong and standing up for their principles, I gotta say, throwing your life away for something that most of us kinda shrugs our shoulders at and say “yeah, so?” at seems kinda dumb. I mean it’s a good thing he did it I guess, but was it really worth it? … especially now that both Google and Microsoft are coming out swearing that basically “no the NSA doesn’t have direct access to our servers, we only send them data they ask for and only when we’re told to”. Should we trust that? I’ve made it a practice not to trust anyone that stands to make a profit out of it. Call me sceptical or paranoid, but time and time again I’m proven right.
Wow, that felt good – getting away from it all for a week!!
So on Thursday 30th Helena’s mother dropped us off at Arlanda and drove away with our son. We knew he would be in a good hands and promptly checked in and bought our first pint – at 6 am! Got on the plane, I introduced myself to the cabin crew and got a really friendly welcome and off we went. We landed, got to the hotel and went to our room only to find that the seaview we were paying for was very, very limited. So limited that I actually went to complain and was expecting to have to argue what classifies as a “sea view” – but nope, the fixed a new room for us by Sunday so we were happy with that.
We walked around the town of Platanias, tried every restaurant we could find and we basically lamed around for 7 days trying not to do anything but work on our tan and we were pretty successful. With the first part of that – not so much with the latter!
I’ll write up a full report later when I have time but for now this’ll do.
But man it’s good to be back!!
Something that can annoy me sometimes, even make me angry, is when people go out of their way to find something sexist or homophobic or whatever their cause is. People can really ruin something fun like an ad on TV that has humor and BAM! someone shows complete lack of humor and just knocks it down because it made fun of women being portrayed in a special way.
Not that I condone portraying women bad, but there’s this huge space between making something funny in a 30 second ad to having an evil master plan. And sometimes I even feel sorry for those people that can’t look at an image without trying to find something politically wrong with it.
But sometimes there’s the freak occurence when they actually have a point! And I think Feminist Frequency may just have one, even though I think they mistaken in other areas. Who? “Feminist Frequency a video webseries that explores the representations of women in pop culture narratives.” says their website. It’s created by Anita Sarkeesian and they have published two long YouTube videos on the subject of how women are portrayed in video games. Not today, but even back in the 90’s. Video 1 is here and video 2 is here. Waiting for video 3.
When I started watching it I was hoping it would be just another feminist trying to prove there’s an Illuminati conspiracy to portray women as inferior beings. And she partly goes into that territory which I think isn’t really helping their case. I’ve played games for a long long time and I haven’t reflected much on this issue. And had there been a long running plan then they seriously failed, at least with me. Another issue I had with the videos was – “what point was she really trying to make?”. Most of episode 2 is covering how women are portrayed as fragile pieces of porcelain that needs rescue (“Pretty Woman” anyone?), right? And then she goes on with statistics of how many women are victims to spousal abuse? How did a (“women being fragile in computer games”) result in b (“women are being beaten because of how they are portrayed in computer games”)? Or did I miss a step?
I can give her points that there is a real lack of women heros in the gaming business. And when cutting so many games together with the common theme like “your wife dies and you have to save your daughter” then yeah it’s apparently lack of creativity on the writing-side of things. We need more Mass Effects and Diablo 3’s where we can chose the sex of our hero to make this even more of a non issue. Although I have to say she missed Diablo 3 when writing up exampled of “women turned evil so you have to kill them” 🙂
I have for a long time thought that treating something like a non issue is a good way to live. 2 guys wanna get married to each other? Not an issue. But Takei made me rethink that by saying that “if we don’t treat it like an issue we’re sweeping it under the rug and pretend there isn’t violence toward the gay community on a daily basis”. And he’s right of course. And I guess it’s the same here, for me it wasn’t an issue of women being portrayed this way. But if we don’t see the issue it won’t change. And not changing our ways is bad.
Not sure how many of you are into the “console war” of Nintendo Wii vs. Sony Playstation vs. Microsoft Xbox? I’ve never been a major fan of consoles really but back in 2000 I bought a PS2 and basically only played Tekken and Grand Tourismo on it, that was it.
Then I bought the PS3 when it came out. That, the PS3 version of “Civilization” and an exercise bike made me lose about 30 pounds! And I’ve watched bluray on it and used it as the primary media player with the use of PMS. But I’ve never been really big on console games. Racing games makes sense but I prefer games with keyboard and mouse. And I’ve never really seen a big enough reason to buy an Xbox 360. I missed out on Halo unfortunately and the entire Xbox Media Center thing and being able to download games and play them on a modified Xbox. But as I’ve said, never been heavily into console games. But it’s not that I’m a huge Playstation fanboy (I can easily crack down on it, like how it’s not nativaly able to play MKV files even though it’s suppose to be DivX compliant!), it’s just that I’ve simply not gotten around to it.
Well now that both are coming out with new consoles I’m ofcourse thinking which one to buy first. And I’ve gotta say it’s looking alot like it’s gonna be Playstation again. Not that I was blown away by their pretty mediocre reveal or the games or anything like that. But because they aren’t conceded enough to think they can change how I have my entertainment setup at home in my living room which Microsoft thinks they can, but I can already tell them “no”.
Xbox One is supposed to be the “one” box to rule them all and make me throw everything else away in my living room. Well it doesn’t have speaker outputs so I’ll still need the amplifier. And unless the plan to release one specifically for Viasat in Sweden I’m still gonna need my satellite reciever with a build in HD to record stuff so there’s that. And there’s no way they are going to support MKV playback over my network at home so I’m still going to need a HTPC computer. So no, it’s “just another box”. I can see how they want me to connect my satellite box to the Xbox input so I can watch TV through my Xbox to minimize the screen and browse the web and read my e-mail on the side. ‘Cause today it’s terrible inconvenient to do that from my phone in my couch, right? .. And the EA Sports partnership? … not really! Had it been a FIA partnership then yay but focusing on NFL, really? Yeah, it’s big there but not anywhere else. What more was there? Halo TV series? Yeah, am I going to buy an Xbox to watch a TV show, that’s more than likely going to be on YouTube or downloadable somewhere else. And the size of the thing? And it comes with an 500 gig drive which by todays standard is pretty lame – and you can’t even upgrade it, something Playstation have not only supported but actually encouraged to prolong the life of their consoles! But yeah, I can buy a USB drive and hook it up (which I can do just as well with a PS4) and I’ve got one more device that I wasn’t suppose to have.
I’m not going to go into the “online” and “killing of used games market” because neither of those are actually a problem – FOR ME!
If I had any input on the development of the new Xbox here’s my list of things to do that would make me go “YAY!”:
– Multiple HDMI inputs. This would be a great solution so people won’t need to switch channels on their TV or amplifier (if you connect your HDMI inputs to the amplifier and then to the TV). That would be huge!
– Replaceable HD
– Full Xbox Media Center support over LAN.
– Stop focusing on partnerships that offer stuff only a small percentage of consumers want !
With those four things I’d easily buy an Xbox over a Playstation. Because the Playstation doesn’t have HDMI in at all. Or any sort of “play media over network” thing that works well. And the only partnerships I know of are all games-related. With the one exception for DivX.
Or I may end up buying neither until 2 years in when they are half the price…
I don’t know if you have Instagram, but if you wanna follow me and my wife when we’re off on vacation next week I suggest you turn to the official “Ving” Instagram channel – http://instagram.com/vingresor
Every week an employee at Ving get’s access to the account and Instagrams from their trip. Yeah, that’s how much we’re travelling – there’s always someone going somewhere willing to Instagram their holiday! Pretty good free PR and it goes both ways – people who are tuned into it via Facebook for example can write up their recommendations and tips for us on the other side, and we can promote our resorts. It’s all good 🙂
So tune in in one week when we’re off to Crete!
I say that a lot, maybe too much for her to really believe me. So let’s put it in writing –
I Love My Wife !
So many reasons, most of them unexplainable and unmeassurable. But this weekend it’s because of this little birthday present she gave me. Not because it was an expensive gift but because she knows what I want and goes the extra miles. So yeah, I definitely love her 🙂
One thing I thought was very important for journalists is listening to both sides of the story. If you’re going to print a story about a trial it’s important to print both sides of story. For example, last week there was a ruling in a trial where 3 guys had apparently shoved a glass bottle up a girls vagina. That’s one side of the story. The other side was that she had just had sex with two of them and they thought she was ok with this since she never outright said “stop”. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not defending the guys here, no matter what’s going on if you think a girl would like a bottle shoved up her vagina there’s something wrong with you, but the point is it’s important to print both sides of the story.
And right now there’s a very big lack of that. So much so it’s embarassing for all journalists in Sweden. Everyone from the people at “TT” who has historically been very good at printing facts down to the “let’s twist the facts so much it’s as juicy as possible without deliberately lying” so called “journalists” at Aftonbladet, they are all doing it. They have for the past 6 months printed one side of a story. Namely the one of Gottfrid Svartholm who’s right now on trial for hacking and stealing sensitive data from our IRS and hacking one of our largest banks mainframe and tried to transfer out money. The guy had apparently done this from his refuge in Laos or wherever. The swedish authorities, who’s already made it public they hate the guy, charged him with a high enough offence that they could have him arrested and deported back to Sweden. This was a long time ago and since then they’ve gathered evidence upon evidence. And most of it is logs on his laptop apparently. And the media have covered this from one angle and that is the information they are fed from the DA who’s handling the case and the managers at the places that got hacked. The DA’s job is to nail the bad guy, and he’s sure this is the bad guy so you could say he’s just doing his job. And the managers at the places that got hacked are, as victims in this case, hardly objective either. And now the trial has begun and in the days leading up to this the DA worked hard to make public what this guy was charged of doing. And he didn’t really speak in the “what we’re charging this guy with is…”-voice, rather the “what this guy did was…” which assumes guilt. But you can still excuse this guy for just doing his job.
But here is where the journalists are failing so hard. They are printing his statements and they are printing them as facts. And so far I have only seen one 30 second clip from the defense where he said “he’s pleaded guilty to some of the lesser charges but not the major ones” and that was it. Where are the people to examine the case against him? Where are the technical experts that will tell anyone that an online computer is easily hackable and anyone could have used this computer to do anything, even plant the logs which now makes up the majority of the evidence against him? Or the people to question why this kind of sensitive information was stored at the outsourced private company in such an insecure way that it was leaked? Where are the journalists to question why they have treated this person as guilty before they even made the arrest (and gained access to those previously mentioned so very important logs)? Where’s the impartiality? Is it left to us in the blogosphere to handle that?
I’m not saying the guy isn’t guilty and that he’s a saint. I can see this guy being totally guilty, but that doesn’t change the fact that there are two sides of the story and the media should cover them both, not just re-print what the DA feeds them!
I gotta say that 2 games into this years ice hockey world championship that the Swedish team wasn’t going to go very far, because it really didn’t look like it. But somehow they got their shit together and pulled a whole rabbit-clan out of a hat and got the gold!
I love it when my expectations go so low and it all just works out like that. But I can’t really say it was the best of hockey games I’ve seen. But you don’t don’t beat Canada, Finland and win the finals 5-1 with luck so there had to be some skill there somewhere!!
As far as my life goes, me and the wife are counting the days until we’re off to Chania, trying not to worry how Sam will cope with us being gone for so long. And we’re also building a little veranda on the east side of the house for those extreme hot sunny days when you just can’t be on the west side. Yeah, I know, really serious problems we have right?