Margot – Be a Star

Blacklight Fantasy – Freaky Chakra

Plastic Bertrand – Tout Petit La Planete

Brian Reitzell and Roger J. Manning Jr. – Shibuya

Death in Vegas – Black Lead

Mika Vainio – Aaltovaihe

Mika Vainio – Helium

Operator – Seven Years Over A Mirror

Caribou – Hanibal

Moderat – Rusty Nails

Ellen Allien – Sun The Rain

Oneohtrix Point Never – Where Does Time Go

Flying Lotus Ft Tom York – And the world laughs with you

It puzzles me why organisations and people that distribute intellectual property, offer such a terrible user experience the people who pay for there products when you compare the product you get to a “pirate” copy.

First of all, I pay for all of my software but I have came across a lot of “pirate” software as well and in terms of using the product ‘out of the box’ the pirate software is way less annoying, no activation and it works… Systems that cripple users to limited activations or enforce some form of DRM are more detrimental to the paying customer rather than people who use pirate software. On more than one occasion I have had to phone up a company to get a product reauthorized which is an absolute nightmare given the frequency I make changes to my system (once quite recently which is why i chose to write this).

Dongles, online product activation etc… are not acceptable solutions. The fact is all of these hinder those who have paid to use the product rather than those who haven’t.

Even DVD’s and movies you pay to watch… DVD’s worst of all, you’re bombarded with unskippable adds and copy right messages on a product you bought… TNW ilistrate this quite well.

Even buying things can be a chore having to jump through several hoops before you get your item.

You can even argue that piracy has had a huge positive influence on a lot of products creating bigger user bases for which other products can sold, launched or markets upon. In someways you could say it’s free advertising.

Make products more user oriented and then more people will buy them. You can’t stop piracy at the product level, so why even try?

New workstations ^_^

Konohamaru Desktop with Firefox

konohamaru

The Streets of Rage OST…

My Soundcloud

Bit of a rant here so be warned :p.

I will begin with the subject of defining my self, “the black lad” or “mixed raced” or a variety of other connotations of the prior, which I believe (the majority of the time) is first thing people would say to describe me to others. I do take issue to this even if the comments intentions are innocent, by defining someone as “black” or as any other Social construct ^{R.L. Hotz} people wrongly make stereo typical assumptions about the person. It also is very unlikely that people have black skin rather very dark brown. I am Simon Balarabe and I believe it is my actions and character that should define my self and others.

Racism and Discrimination

Race is a social construct derived mainly from perceptions conditioned by events of recorded history, and it has no basic biological reality. R.L. Hotz

Which in my opinion is true, and due to this construct people have formed preconceived beliefs about the people that reside within each “race”. I have very little idea why or when the idea of  “race” came into place to begin with, but I compare it to the abstract of witches in that people where persecuted for some difference, if we look back now the majority would see this as outrageous.

It is no surprise to me that many people discriminate others given the way information is distributed in the media of the time. Take a look at the hype around Barack Obama becoming the first “black” us president or closer to home the “First black woman MP Diane Abbott” entering the leadership race, the issue is surely they are candidates for based on there intellect, charisma and ability not because of there physical attributes, In my opinion it is pointless even referencing them. Even when crimes are committed and reported one of the first things that is highlighted is the “race”, again I believe it is pointless!!! People may try to validate my criticism as “political correctness gone mad” but I do not believe it is.

It’s not just the media, questionnaires (governmental and marketing), application forms etc… collect meta about people and it’s not uncommon to find a question regarding ethnicity, which I believe is wrong no matter what the reason behind it is. From a governmental perspective it could be claimed they are using the data as a part of some wider “positive discrimination” program, but I believe that in reality all discrimination on these grounds is negative.

With the world cup happening right now I have observed a huge increase in xenophobia and racism which I find appalling most notably remarks again Germany with reference of the world wars, which I find kind weird and ironic as although the persecution maybe different the essence is the same as persecution carried out by the Nazis. But even before the world cup I noticed a rise in nationalism and xenophobia people blaming immigrants for shortages in work but why should birth place determine the rights of a person? or the way you treat a person.

I am not ignoring the cultural differences between people and social groups, these differences have little or nothing to do with a persons physical make up, neither I am saying that describing someone to identify them in a crowd is racist, but the belief that there are different “races” is.

Thanks for reading.

n.b.

I also believe nationalism and the concept of social class sucks!!! I hope you do to

Si ^_^

Micromattic – Under Over The Clouds

Ricardo Tobar – Teenager

Boards of Canada – Nlogax

Nightmares On Wax – A Case of Funk

Caribou – Niobe

Push – Universal Nation

Bent – An Ordinary Day