Dark Brightness

This is the second post today about the idiocy of hollywood. In addition to annoying DVD ads, if this is right. we will not be able to use analog to watch blu-ray using component audio.

Which is another reason not to get a goddam blu ray device in the first place. Or to use pirated disks.

Even existing Blu-ray players, even the one you may have sitting underneath your TV right now, will be affected, thanks to a lovely little piece of technology.After January 1, 2011, the producers of Blu-ray disks will be able to include an “Image Constraint Token” with any Blu-ray disk which will disable HD over component video, limiting it to a 480i/576i resolution – even though your player is perfectly capable, and bought well before the cut-off date. They want to ensure that HD content only runs through HDMI.In their provisions, the AACS LA actually refers to all this as the “Analog Sunset”.What makes this so much more incredibly frustrating than it already sounds is that this won't prevent copying of Blu-ray discs in any possible way, since AACS has already been cracked wide open long ago, and has been spread across the internet. In other words, this nonsense only affects normal consumers, who will see that their expensive Blu-ray players, connected over component video contrary to popular belief, HDMI doesn't have to be better than component, will suddenly start playing SD content. It's doubly frustrating for countries like my own, where personal backups are perfectly legal.

via 2010: Analog Sunset, the End of Component Video.

I like the comment from the professional installers webside:

We make no bones about calling out Hollywood studios on their ignorance, anti-market practices and general thick-headedness. These AACS rules are especially frustrating because they, like those FBI and anti-piracy warnings on discs, only affect users intending to legally copy software to a local hard drive. The AACS rules will have absolutely zero effect on actual piracy since the Blu-ray Disc’s AACS/BD+ system has already been broken and spread far and wide across the Internet.

Anyone can copy a BD disc and play it back over analogue outputs.

You just can’t do it legally. And there’s the rub.

Well, I am reaching the point where I am ignoring hollywood. As a fairly patriotic New Zealander, I despise Helengrad (Wellington) where Weka lives: the movie industry is in bed with at least one criminal organisation, promoted by Tom Cruise etc, and they are making any audio or videophile’s life hell. All those lovely burr-brown DACs we use to turn things into analog (which always has higher quality) — useless.

Folks, Go Galt. Ignore Blu Ray. By second hand disks. Don’t go to movies, Starve the beast until there is some humility, or Hollywood dissolves into multiple movie centres, producing smaller, local product.

I have three degrees from the University of Auckland — which is unsurprising since I grew up there. David Farrar and Chris Trotter have linked to this paper.

I have (over the years) seen much nonsense taught — generally in less competitive faculties.  However, this is in law, and this course is propoganda. I argue with Crhis Trotter a lot, but this fisking is quite accurate.

A swift perusal of the course description told me all I needed to know. Here, as I feared, was a particularly stark example of what I call “Self-loathing Leftism” – that self-critical mode of left-wing analysis which takes “the politics of victimhood” out of its more familiar context in the anti-racist, feminist and gay rights movements, and extends it to the whole world.

The result is as predictable as it’s banal: an Avatar world of Goodies versus Baddies and Nature versus Technology, in which the holistic philosophy of innocent and virtuous indigenes crashes into the murderously exploitative intentions of malignant and rapacious colonisers.

Just take a look at the opening sentences of Colonialism to Globalisation’s course description:

“In the late 15th century, imperialist Europe emerged intent on exploring and possessing the New World. Fast forward through five hundred years of colonialism, capitalism, slavery, industrialisation, genocide, and international law and greet the 21st century in all its paradoxical glory.”

There’s so much wrong with this statement that it’s difficult to know where to begin.

For a start, there was no such thing as “imperialist Europe” in the late-15th century. The only entity worthy of such a description at that time was the empire of the Ottoman Turks – whose steady expansion into southern and central Europe was only halted at the gates of Vienna in 1529.

Indeed, it was the Ottomans’ interruption of the trade flows between Europe and Asia that prompted the monarchs of Portugal and Spain to sponsor voyages of exploration westward, into the Atlantic Ocean. Their hope was to access the silks and spices of the “Indies” from the sea. Nobody knew the “New World” was there!

As for Course Co-ordinator, Moshen Al Attar’s, “fast-forwarding” of the next five hundred years: what can one say?

Let’s start by listing the things he left out: the Renaissance; the Reformation; the Enlightenment; the American and French Revolutions; the exponential growth of scientific knowledge and technological expertise; the expansion of democracy; the abolition of slavery; the emancipation of women; the defeat of totalitarianism; the birth of the United Nations; the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. (And this list barely scratches the surface.)

We can only assume that Mr Attar’s justification for bracketing “capitalism” with “colonialism” and “slavery” is because he sees it as being emblematic of the Western World’s lust for conquest and its colonists’ pathological need to demonstrate racial and cultural superiority.

But, to hold up capitalism as a purely Western construct is to engage in precisely the same ethno-centrism his course condemns. For most of human history it was the manufacturers and merchants of East and South Asia who controlled the global economy. And they projected their reach and protected their profits no less ruthlessly than their Western counterparts.

For a brief historical era – a period spanning less than 250 years – the West’s weapons, and their more dynamic mode of economic organisation, permitted it to expand its influence across the globe. But the same could easily be said of those emphatically non-Western expansionists, the Mongols.

Europe’s “imperialists” were not the first to practice slavery and genocide.

They were, however, the first to make both practices illegal – not only in their own jurisdictions, but by the steady development and extension of international law, across the whole planet.

via Bowalley Road.

The old moralists would have described the content of this course as being driven by one of the seven deadly sins — envy. What I am seeing is projection — the ongoing difficulties of the developing and regressing world (Somalia, Zimbabwe etc) are being projected onto Europe as sins of colonialism.

Which is Bullshit. When Rhodesia became Zimbabwe, it was an agricultural exporter. People are now starving after 30 years of mismanagement and corruption courtesy of Mugabe.  The British introduction of English (the language) has allowed a trading language without ethic baggage in India (Hindi is seen as far too aligned to a certain political position to be acceptable in the south).

And finally… if a student challenges Dr Atta, citing chapter and verse and does not get the grade appropriate to his argument… Dr Atta should be held to account — or have his course revised.

Preferably be the engineering and medical faculty — where postmodernism has been found wanting.

During the industrial revolution, miners carried canaries with them. If the canary fell over, they knew the air was full of mine gas — which could not only smother them but would explode of there was a spark.

Let’s look at part of today’s reading.

Ezekiel 39:21-29

21I will display my glory among the nations; and all the nations shall see my judgment that I have executed, and my hand that I have laid on them. 22The house of Israel shall know that I am the LORD their God, from that day forward. 23And the nations shall know that the house of Israel went into captivity for their iniquity, because they dealt treacherously with me. So I hid my face from them and gave them into the hand of their adversaries, and they all fell by the sword. 24I dealt with them according to their uncleanness and their transgressions, and hid my face from them.25Therefore thus says the Lord GOD: Now I will restore the fortunes of Jacob, and have mercy on the whole house of Israel; and I will be jealous for my holy name. 26They shall forget their shame, and all the treachery they have practiced against me, when they live securely in their land with no one to make them afraid, 27when I have brought them back from the peoples and gathered them from their enemies' lands, and through them have displayed my holiness in the sight of many nations. 28Then they shall know that I am the LORD their God because I sent them into exile among the nations, and then gathered them into their own land. I will leave none of them behind; 29and I will never again hide my face from them, when I pour out my spirit upon the house of Israel, says the Lord GOD.

via PCUSA – Devotions – Daily readings for Saturday, February 20, 2010.

What does this mean? If we take this as read it implies:

• God’s glory is displayed in the restoration of Isreal.
• Isreal will not be destroyed.
• God will pour out his spirit on Isreal.

It also suggests that antisemitism is a good acid test, for those doing what is right generally support Isreal. If you don’t like this, you have to spiritualise it: but Ezekial did not do that.

Or you have to say Ezekial was a madman — but the Ancients could quite readily distinguish the madman from the prophet. The ancient penalty for falsr prophecy was death.

And… if you Beleieve Ezekial was a prophet, it is hard to accept Muhummad. who was overtly antisemetic, is one. It also hard to accept those who support the goals of Islam (the modern “useful idiots”) are acting on the side of the right.

And to those who say “by their fruits you will know them — There iwere two  prosperous, democratic countries in the middle East. Isreal and Lebanon. After the Lebanese takeover (de facto) by Hezbollah, there was one country. (We hope that Lebanon and Iraq may also return to democracy) — Israel.

I generally buy DVDs from the rental people. And then I have five minutes of junk — including FBI warnings when I live in New Zealand (Note to the FBI: YOU HAVE NO JURISDICTION OUTSIDE THE USA). Noter Corey Doctorrow’s comment.

This pithy and funny chart does a superb job of explaining how the insertion of a lot of “business model” (FBI warnings, unskippable trailers, THX vanity sequences) makes buying a DVD a lot worse than pirating the same disc online. I rip all my kid’s DVDs (not least because she has a tendency to scratch them to hell), and the difference between firing up a movie on a laptop and it just starting versus trying to explain to a toddler why Daddy has to spend five minutes pressing next-next-next menu-menu-menu is enormous. I think it all comes down to the stuff in the DVD-CCA spec that allows DVD creators to flag sequences as unskippable: that’s such an attractive nuisance, it’s bound to attract every hard-sell marketer and power-tripping fool in any media company, who will eventually colonize it with so much crapola that it comes just short of destroying the possibility that anyone will voluntarily pay for the product.

This is a classic example of how to Piss of f a captive market. It is a modertate faile. Givent that YouTube is taking over — my preteens watch the US shows they want on Hulu or Youtube — it will add to the demise of yet another media format. And unlike LPs, there is no audiophlic or videophilic reason to keep the DVD anyway.

YouTube – PINK PANTHER THEME for Ukulele – Ukulele Lesson/Tutorial #38 taught by Mr. Michael Lynch.

YouTube – Pink Panther Theme arranged for Guitar!.

Note to the non believers: true spirituality is not stating one isn perfect. We transgress, repeatedly. True spirituality is to struggle with these thoughts. to bend our will to G_ds.

Then we can truly sing…

Praise is due to you,

O God, in Zion;

and to you shall vows be performed,

2O you who answer prayer!

To you all flesh shall come.

3When deeds of iniquity overwhelm us,

you forgive our transgressions.

4Happy are those whom you choose and bring near

to live in your courts.

We shall be satisfied with the goodness of your house,

your holy temple.

via PC(USA) – Devotions – Daily readings for Today.

Watched Parliament last night, which is bad for my blood pressure. The Left (Goff, Dyson) weere bleating that the proposed changes are unfair and it is the government’s job to make everyone equal.

The idiots have not learnt. That is the road to bankduptcy: consider the Soviets, California, Coba… (but I repeat myself).

They do not understand that most businesses are mobile. You can close your coffee cart in Dunedin, and set up again somewhere else. Even if you are a professional and there are guild structures that keep you in one place, you can still move if you get pissed off enough.

Cactus did, and she gives the opposition a good hint of how to be effective:

1 didn& apos;t agree with what you were saying necessarily, but if tax needed changes, I can't see any here that are at all substantial.

We've still got welfare for families.

We've still got high taxes and excessive government spending.

We've now got yet another debate as to why GST shouldn't be hiked as it will effect low income earners. And the silliness of welfare to pay for the GST rise.

We've still got yet another government calling for a crackdown on beneficiaries. Hello, aren't you doing that already? And if GST increases they get more money? Why? Isn't that just more welfare.

Diddling with depreciation changes and returns on rental housing, there may be higher rents.

So I turn back to the Tax Working Group and again ask if you aren't going to rejig the entire system:

What was the bloody point?

via Cactus Kate.

Oh, and (thanks Helen Clark and Cullen the liar) we are bankdupt. We cannot afford to do the nice things like provide for people’s home care. Key is not adical. Radical is flat tax (one step, staring around 30K) devolving health and education to the regions, reducing central government to policy, courts, defense and audit, and allowing people to form collaberatvie networks.

Which is what we did ni NZ before 1935.

Love this.

Enjoy your day.

And please only swear in a foreign language in the comments.

YouTube – School Answering Machine.

Well…

These fascist bastards deserve everything coming to them.

YouTube – Green Police: Audi Super Bowl Ad.