The SA Public's Silly Priorities

I'm constantly finding myself dumbstruck by the South African public. I find it fascinating (in the same way as an exploding volcano) to watch what we as a country get incensed about, what we find worthy of our attention as a group of people.

We've recently had two large upwellings of public protest about two very different issues: The whole Zuma Spear controversy and the toll roads in Jo'Burg. I've already put in my two cents about both those issues so I won't go into them again. What I interested in is that the people of South Africa obviously feel that these are the most important matters facing our country at the moment.

Seriously? Paying tolls (which happens EVERYWHERE else in the world) and a picture that is in (arguably) bad taste? That is what you think is important? Regardless of what you think of either of those issues, surely we have bigger fish to fry? Don't we have a couple blue whales sitting in the background?

Apart from nebulous concepts like crime, corruption and education there are some very serious, very specific problems that I would think take precedence over anything as trivial as what we get worked up about. For instance:

The DA recently had a match to COSATU’s head office that ended in violence when COSATU supporters clashed with the DA. We should be screaming our heads off about this! The right to protest is one of the basic freedoms that the ANC (and COSATU) fought for and it must work both ways… it’s not just the ANC and its partners that can protest.

Bheki Cele is still a member of our government. After every complaint, report and investigation, this man is still collecting a paycheck out of our pockets. The fact that he still has any form of authority is due a failure of us as a people to call for his head. You think he would still be there if we cried about that as much as we do about tolls?

The death toll on our roads is sitting at about 14000 people a year. 14000 people! We had 900 people killed in December last year. It beggars belief. Sure this is due to number of factors, but it could be significantly reduced by enforcing drinking laws and holding Taxi associations accountable for the maintenance of their vehicles.

All of these problems have solutions; they’re not nebulous policy decisions that are open to debate. All that is needed is the political will to make it happen, but that will never materialize until the South African public hold their elected officials accountable for what they do. We need to make a noise about what really matters to us… not about a stupid little painting.

-Odd

P.S. I really do love this country... I think it's the best place to be in the world, and I'll have something more positive next time :)

“Too many leaders act as if the sheep... their people… are there for the benefit of the shepherd, not that the shepherd has responsibility for the sheep.” –Ken Blanchard

Zuma’s Public Privates

In case you missed it, last week a South African artist by the name of Brett Murray exhibited a painting of Jacob Zuma with his scholng hanging out. This has caused a massive outcry in certain circles and there’s now a controversy as to whether or not the artist had a right to use Zuma’s likeness.

On principal I’m inclined to support Brett’s right to use art as a means of political protest, even if I think the painting is in poor taste, but a lot of people are up in arms about the invasion of Zuma’s privacy… I have a couple issues with that.

First off, Zuma is a public person. As president of our country he is in the public domain and must submit himself to criticism, commentary and satire: that’s just the way that a free media operates. Now, you could argue that his wedding tackle is not part of his public profile but if you look at everything he’s been up to while in the presidency (and before) then it’s not a big stretch (ah-ha) to see where the artist is coming from.

Additionally, if Zuma is really personally mortified by this painting and wants to have it removed then it is his right as a private citizen to request that. Note that I said “his right as a PRIVATE CITIZEN” – this is an important distinction, because he chose to lodge his complaint through his position as president of the ANC. In my opinion, the position of President of the ANC is a public position and so open to satire of this nature. You can’t have it both ways, JC: Either you’re a public personality that is backed by the ANC and open to satire or you’re a private citizen without political powers and a right to privacy.

This sort of situation is precisely why politicians in the first world resign at the first hint of controversy. They do that to avoid further embarrassment to themselves and their political party. With all the shenanigans that Zuma has been through in his political career, can anyone really say that they didn’t see this coming? Really?

-Odd

“The first 20 stories written about a public figure set the tone for the next 2000 and it’s almost impossible to reverse it.” –Charles W. Colson

Blizzard Blackout

Like most of the internet, I've been playing Diablo 3. Like most of the internet, I’ve been having trouble playing Diablo 3. Maybe I should give some background information for anyone who isn’t keeping up-to-date with gaming news.

Diablo 3 is a mostly single player game published by Blizzard, but as with all other Blizzard games you must be constantly connected to their servers play it. This is a DRM initiative that Blizzard has put into all of its games and it mystifies me for a number of reasons.

Firstly I’ve already bought this game. I paid money for the original box, I didn’t pirate it or get a copy. I bought a SINGLE PLAYER GAME, but to play it by myself I need to connect to Blizzard servers. I’ve been lucky that (touch wood) my internet connection has been stable for a couple days, but what if it wasn’t? If I had no internet connection then I would be forced to buy a pirated game (when I would rather buy original). I’ve ranted about that before so I won’t belabor the point… much.

How does it make business sense to do this? On one hand you can make a single player game that has only an upfront cost – once it’s being sold, then the only additional overheads you have are marketing, maintenance and patch development. Blizzard then adds these DRM servers into the mix: They now have to pay for all those servers, the bandwidth they use and people to manage and maintain them. That must cost a terrible amount of money. Somehow I don’t think they’ve looked at the cost evaluation of how much their DRM is saving them piracy wise vs how much it costs them to implement.

The thing that irritates me most about this DRM system is that it is failing. You can go now and check the social media site of your choice and find hundreds of people complaining that they cannot play their game. Why? Because Blizzard do not have enough servers to handle the load. Amazing. I bought an original copy of a SINGLE PLAYER game… and I can’t play it because of an initiative that is supposed to encourage me to do that. DRM is supposed to make it better to buy original than pirate…. Something is very wrong.

Blizzard have been very apologetic and have said that they are provisioning additional servers, so we must just hang on a bit and everything will be fine. I don’t think they can use that excuse. If anyone should know how to handle server load, it’s Blizzard. These are the same people who run World of Warcraft (which currently has 10.2 Million users) for Newton’s sake. Add to that the fact that Blizzard has to know the preorder numbers for their game and you arrive at the conclusion that they willfully screwed the pooch.

They KNEW that implementing this DRM would require them to have servers. They KNEW the number of people buying this game at launch. How could they NOT know that they wouldn’t have enough?

Blizzard: You screwed up. Fix it.

-Odd

“All that's left of proud Tristram, are ghosts and ashes.”

P.S. The game is awesome. Really super awesome. I just wish I could play it consistently.