Computer Games Censured For Reflecting The “Dark Side Of Warfare”

Two Swiss human rights organisations, Trial and Pro Juventute, have criticised computer games featuring warfare for not requiring players to adhere to international war legislation. Inspired I am sure by the recent outcry over Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 requiring players to massacre civilians in order to get support for anti-terrorism measures(or some such thing). The bee that is apparently rattling around in these folks bonnet is that by allowing players to carry out what would constitute war crimes without getting punished does not reflect reality. Really? (NSFW)

Despite UK Governments Machinations the Web is Going to Become a Brighter, Better Place!

According to the Financial Times Rupert Murdoch’s Newscorp and Microsoft have been in talks to create an exclusive deal ensuring that only Microsoft’s own “Bing” search engine carries Newscorp content. Microsoft obviously intend this as an attack on Google who are their main competitor in the developing cloud/distributed computing field. For Newscorp it’s more the bellow of a dinosaur confused and frightened and by the new world it finds itself in, similar to the repeated wailing and gnashing of teeth that has been coming from the entertainment industry ever since its attack on Napster and 12 year old girls failed to quench people’s desire to share. What neither company realises however is that far from hurting Google they are simply going to be improving the quality of the service it delivers.

Imagine a world where you are searching for news and no longer have to deal with the right wing garbage spewed forth by such wonderful resources as Fox News or The Sun! A world where should you want to look for the opinion of a right wing bigot you actually have to specifically go and look for it.! It will be like Daily Mail Island but in reverse. As tie goes on and people are exposed to less and less of the ignorance, bigotry and hatred that Newscorp loves so dearly we will enter a new age where people respect one another and don’t live in fear of one another.  A world with no Richard Littlejohn…

So Microsoft and Newscorp I salute you for your valiant attempt to commit sepuku in order to preserve the future for our children.

Oh and please don’t take the Glenn Beck videos off youtube, he’s funny as fuck.

The Grusome Twosome.

 

Britain’s new Internet law — as bad as everyone’s been saying, and worse. Much, much worse.

Reposted from Boing Boing.

The British government has brought down its long-awaited Digital Economy Bill, and it’s perfectly useless and terrible. It consists almost entirely of penalties for people who do things that upset the entertainment industry (including the “three-strikes” rule that allows your entire family to be cut off from the net if anyone who lives in your house is accused of copyright infringement, without proof or evidence or trial), as well as a plan to beat the hell out of the video-game industry with a new, even dumber rating system (why is it acceptable for the government to declare that some forms of artwork have to be mandatorily labelled as to their suitability for kids? And why is it only some media? Why not paintings? Why not novels? Why not modern dance or ballet or opera?).

So it’s bad. £50,000 fines if someone in your house is accused of filesharing. A duty on ISPs to spy on all their customers in case they find something that would help the record or film industry sue them (ISPs who refuse to cooperate can be fined £250,000).

But that’s just for starters. The real meat is in the story we broke yesterday: Peter Mandelson, the unelected Business Secretary, would have to power to make up as many new penalties and enforcement systems as he likes. And he says he’s planning to appoint private militias financed by rightsholder groups who will have the power to kick you off the internet, spy on your use of the network, demand the removal of files or the blocking of websites, and Mandelson will have the power to invent any penalty, including jail time, for any transgression he deems you are guilty of. And of course, Mandelson’s successor in the next government would also have this power.

What isn’t in there? Anything about stimulating the actual digital economy. Nothing about ensuring that broadband is cheap, fast and neutral. Nothing about getting Britain’s poorest connected to the net. Nothing about ensuring that copyright rules get out of the way of entrepreneurship and the freedom to create new things. Nothing to ensure that schoolkids get the best tools in the world to create with, and can freely use the publicly funded media — BBC, Channel 4, BFI, Arts Council grantees — to make new media and so grow up to turn Britain into a powerhouse of tech-savvy creators.

Lobby organisation The Open Rights Group is urging people to contact their MP to oppose the plans.

“This plan won’t stop copyright infringement and with a simple accusation could see you and your family disconnected from the internet – unable to engage in everyday activities like shopping and socialising,” it said.

The government will also introduce age ratings on all boxed video games aimed at children aged 12 or over.

There is, however, little detail in the bill on how the government will stimulate broadband infrastructure.

 

Lucio – Showing Sunday 22nd

Tomorrow we will again be showing an anarchist inspired film. This month it’s Lucio the story of Spanish anarchist bricklayer and bank robber Lucio Uturbia.

Sunday 22nd November, 7.30pm, Upstairs Lounge, Dow’s Bar, 9 Dundas Street

Please Help Florence and Tionge Mhango

HO ref: M1369020

Florence Mhango and her daughter Tionge, known to her friends and family as Precious, (10) were detained this week when they went to sign at the Home Office. They have been given removal directions for a flight to Malawi from Heathrow at 19.00 on Monday 23rd November.

EDL – Keeping The Natives In Line!

I like how when they were designing the SDL t-shirts they simply changed the colour of the cross of St George from red to blue. I suppose the ‘Scottish’ defence league were a bit too dense to notice…

Spot the difference between the pillocks

Scotland ‘United’ Against Anti-Fascists

Yesterday, 14/11/09, saw the English Defence League, in their guise as the ‘Scottish’ Defence League, attempt to hold a rally in Glasgow. This was to be a rally ‘against Islamic extremists’ and not against Muslims in general… honest guv! According to their propaganda they are merely concerned about the spread of radical Islam and the implementation of Sharia law in the UK. A fairly reasonable standpoint; Islam is after all, like it’s Abrahamic siblings Judaism and Christianity, a vile and contemptible ideology of misogyny, homophobia, intolerance and hatred and the thought of its edicts being implemented as law should make all right headed people shudder. This writer would be more than happy to see all mosques, synagogues and churches recycled into socially useful buildings. A friend of mine suggested recently that churches would make excellent climbing centres what with all that wall space in the nave and the steeple for abseiling! This however is not, despite their rhetoric, the aim of the so called Defence Leagues.