Life & Technology

Strange happenings occurring in Europe this week with the The Pirate Party winning a seat in the European parliament. These guys, who are based in Sweden, support The Pirate Bay people who were sentenced to jail for having a website that hosted illegal content for download.

At the outset, I will go on record as saying I don’t agree with copyright infringement. Some people think they have a God-given right to get stuff for free. Because a copyright is not as tangible as a car, house, food or any other commodity that you have to pay for, people think no harm, no foul. To be fair, some of these monolithic record and film companies garner little sympathy with their multi-milliion deals. However, there are a huge number of bands and independent film makers who eke out a living in the industry, let alone those on the periphery like the crews etc, who have little or no job security.

Now, aside from the issue of stealing content, voting somebody into a governing body based on this pretext does seem to send out the wrong signal. Here, you will have somebody in parliament who votes on legislation whose only reason for being there seems to be to make file sharing legal.

What sort of precedent doe that set? What if some other very important vote comes before the parliament and their vote is needed? It’s not the first time somebody has been voted into office based on a cause celebre, but what happens when you expand their mandate to include all the other mundane, and not-so mundane pieces of legislation that go through?

While the download folk seem happy with the outcome, the wider implications are little more unsettling. It will be interesting to see how this unfolds and what sort of effect this parliamentarian has on the inner mechanisms of Europe’s top legislative body.

Last night I went to the launch of Sims 3, the third installment of the Sims franchise brought out by EA. EA launched Sims in 2000 and since then has become the best-selling PC game in history with more than 100 million copies of the original game, its sequel Sims 2, and expansion packs shipped so far.

And I got to thinking, why has it been so successful? I think there are a myriad of reasons – it’s easy to play, family friendly and can offer hours of entertainment. But one of the key things they have got right, is the game hooks into the female market, something most games don’t do and haven’t done for as long as the Sims. Sure, there are women out there who love their gaming, but this past time is dominated by males aged between 19 and 39 to this day and the arrival of the Wii has been the scale tipper in the female and family direction.

This current rendition of the Sims looks certain to be just as popular as its predecessor with more add ons and interaction for gamers. Right now, the game is only available for the Mac, PC and mobile platforms – it looks awesome, and not just for the girls!

You know technology has come a long way when you read about amateur spies publishing information on the “Hermit Kingdom” of North Korea thanks to Google Maps.

Since its inception after WWII, North Korea has been a virtually closed society. Not much is known about it other than rumour and innuendo that leak out from defectors every now and then.

Now that has changed. Some pain-staking work by US doctoral Curtis Melvin and a few of his mates, has revealed a huge amount of information about the country, which would even make the CIA proud.

Studying Google Map pictures, Melvin and co have discovered a huge amount of things including massive grave sites, which are believed to be the result of a severe famine in the 1990s. Apparently these graves cover whole mountains. Other interesting facts include the infrastructure such as electricity grids (and the fact that some towns don’t even have power), labour camps and missile storage facilities. Even more interesting (but hardly surprising) is that the elite in the country live a lavish lifestyle while the rest of the country is in abject poverty – Melvin says they have managed to find palaces and other such luxurious hideaways.

This information is even more important with the country testing a couple of nuclear bombs recently, causing concern even amongst its most vocal supporter, China.

Thanks to technology, not even the recalcitrant Kim Jong-il can keep his agenda fully hidden from the rest of the world. Maybe his next order will be for his scientists to invent some sort of laser beam to shoot satellites out of the heavens!