Ever since building a media PC for myself to have all my movies & TV shows available at the touch of a button I haven’t had much need to even handle a disc for a while, in fact the media PC experiment has proved so compelling that messing about with discs evokes similar feelings to handling audio cassettes or floppy disks.

Anyway unlike a lot of people I actually do buy things on Bluray that seem like good value for money.  A while ago I bought the metal box version of Band of Brothers - the critically acclaimed mini-series about WW2.  Recently I decided to rewatch it and straight away I was struck by just how long I had to wait before I could even choose which episode I wanted to watch from the menu.

The PS3 - whilst still apparently one of the better Bluray players available - still seemingly has to go through some sort of routine when playing Bluray movies where it changes resolution several times, “loads” something (fuck knows what, dynamic content?) before finally getting on with the job of actually playing the disc proper.

What this all means in practice is that from the moment you put the disc in the PS3 and choose to play it you’re sat there for several minutes whilst unskippable copyright & anti-piracy notices appear on screen, in several different languages.  I swear on this particular BoB boxset I have to wait at least 5 elapsed minutes before I get to the menu.

Now someone who has in their possession a genuine Bluray disk that the PS3 presumably verifies (somehow) as genuine (I can only presume that PS3s wont play copied Blurays) it is fairly safe then to assume that the person who put the disc in the drive either bought it or is renting it.  Either way they’ve paid money for the experience, money which the MPAA/RIAA etc are constantly moaning that they’re not getting the right amount of from consumers.

Since piracy is so easy and convenient nowadays if I go out of my way - because someone who is au fait with the internet & has high speed broadband, that’s exactly what it is - to purchase a genuine authorised copy of something I don’t want an experience that is worse than the people that have pirated it!

With the Band of Brothers bluray boxset if you choose to buy it - as I did - then you have to suffer through 5+ minutes of unskippable content on every disc, when someone who downloads each episode of it from Usenet or torrents has as-near-as-dammit the same picture and sound quality experience but instead they are watching the episode mere seconds after choosing to watch it.  In every way that matters they are receiving a better experience in spite of having not paid for it.  The honest buyer has quite literally lost 5 minutes of their life every time they put the disc in the drive.

Also the PS3 has this great feature whereby if you start watching Sky or anything else (I guess it relates to it detecting when it is no longer the HDMI connector that is in use) it automatically pauses playback, even on the copyright notices/adverts (which you can’t incidentally pause manually - none of the controls work, you just get an “Operation not permitted here” error).  So not only can you not skip the notices but they have to be visible on screen otherwise they’ll be sat waiting for you when you switch back to the PS3.  Your only options are either to “sit there and watch!” or physically walk away, fortunately TVs aren’t at the stage where they can tell when you’re not watching.

Yet.

For a change I’m not writing about something that rages me, it’s more mild astonishment and general confusing. I came into this election scenario as an outsider, thanks to my local council. I also leave as a spectator.

As a side note before I start:

Big thanks go out to my local council, to whom I pay about £120 a month for seemingly piss poor service when I actually need them. Most for utterly failing to register me on the electoral role. All this  after 1) sending someone around to my door to wake me up on a Saturday morning in 2009 2) patronising me at the door because “This is what happens when you don’t fill the forms in” 3) Taking our names and filling the forms in 4) Ignoring any contact we had and failing to put us on the register 5) Further completely ignoring any correspondence from myself for a solid month up until the election asking why they’d done all this and still not made us eligible to vote.

So anyway, what a situation we have here.

The Conservatives came away with the majority vote, but not enough of it to be in control of the government. The Labour party lost over 80 seats in a massive swing. The Liberal Democrats who were apparently “on fire” up until the vote managed to also lose around 5 seats. Good result for them.

Looking at the map of the UK you’d be forgiven for wondering how the Conservatives hadn’t got a clear majority with such a huge land mass.

Then again looking at the actual votes cast you’d be forgiven for wondering how the Liberals did so badly, depending on how the data is interpreted gives very differing and contorted views of what appears to be fair and just, and what is just plain strange.

It strikes me something doesn’t add up about the ways votes are calculated and tallied on a constituency or volume basis. Then again lo and behold the only party pushing for a major change to proportional representation is the party that would benefit the most from it, the Liberals. Can I suggest a better, fairer way? I’m not sure I can, not enough going on in my head to deal with that sort of thing right at this moment, however it does seem more than fairly fucking bent that Labour were allowed to change constituency boundaries over the years to try and rig themselves a more efficient share of the vote.

Regardless, as of today we have now rid ourselves of our own unelected Prime Minister and found we’ve actually got a Green government… yellow and blue, geddit?

Now I’m a bit shocked about this because of the main parties I thought the Liberals were almost an accepted stark polar opposite to the Tories, many of their supporters on Facebook going as far to claim that Cameron is a Nazi and people who vote Conservative a) don’t care about the country b) hate minorities c) hate blacks d) gas Jews e) openly stab small kittens in the eyes then roast their carcasses on makeshift knitting needles and then spit-roasting them over an open flame, gorging on their erupting bodily juices from their previously eviscerated eye sockets.

I made the last one, e) up. And possible the one before. Maybe.

Perhaps such tossers in question may well grow up one day, as most of them seemed to be about 14 but it seems the entire politics thing between anyone who can voice an opinion turned into a stupid fucking trendy war that was almost akin to mindless football supporters battering each other to death over what is essentially a game and someone they’ve chosen to support with no more reasoning than a fucking sheep following the one in front.

So what now.. I guess seeing as Cameron is a Nazi and Clegg is an utter sell out betrayer we better start building some gas chambers to rid ourselves of the pesky Jews that Nazis hate so badly. Yeah right. All the kids that joined the facebook groups that ran along the lines of rather living elsewhere under a Tory government or I’d rather dying than live under Cameron as PM… well lets hope they fuck off somewhere else or kill themselves eh. A lot of childish bullshit from morons, I’m sure it happens anyway but it all comes to light when the internet is involved as every moron has a voice.

I’m not really on anyone’s side politically, I suppose a lot of my theories on things veer mildly towards the right side of politics but only because I see them as being more applicable to a real life circumstance and I have this niggle that people should take more pride and fucking work for what they own, rather than take everything they can out of sheer lazyness.

Anyway, the thing that strikes me as a little disturbing is two political parties with such opposing views suddenly teaming up to form a majority government, or as they keep referring to a “stable” government. Seems strange that in a pinch an “agreement” can be found over policies and a government forced with the leader of the losing main party.. becomming deputy prime minister. I mean the two guys were only openly slagging each other off and focusing on a lot of negativity before this situation happened… now they’re supposedly best mates and have to stand together to run a country? I wonder if it will last.

Something is fairly rotten there when the smallest mainstream party effectively decides who will run the next government for us. When the two larger parties have to sell out ideals and alter manifesto promises to pander to the needs and win the support of the smaller party. That lost seats in the election.

That the liberals can take their share of the vote and more or less use the number behind it to push towards a huge change of ethics that they just happen to agree to get into power. Sorry, but surely in that case a certain percentage of the 7 odd million people who voted Liberal Democrat must have a seriously strong case of feeling betrayed? Even if a lot of good policies are put in place from both parties it may well hurt a lot of people with a strong political compass.

The biggest laugh of the day though was Brown’s exit speech, something along the lines of “it was the joy of the job itself and not the prestigious title or status that being PM granted. In fact I hate that side of it”. Yeah right, you utter liar. It’s pathetic that someone who has just resigned from running a country, previously unelected and in a lot of people’s eyes a hideous failure claims on their way out they were doing it for the love of the job and didn’t give a fuck about being in charge.

The other laugh of the day was the BBC interviewing someone who claimed Brown wasn’t at fault at all for the huge financial failures in the private sector. Sure, being the Chancellor for years and eventually head of the entire government with a pretty sound understanding of economics meant he had no involvement at all with the financial industry. I mean what would the head of the FSA know on this matter? Shall we see a quote from him?
Gordon Brown helped fuel Britain’s banking crisis by pressuring the City regulator not to intervene and stop reckless lending, Lord Turner, the head of the Financial Services Authority, said.
Well, thats pretty conclusive then, Brown clearly had nothing to do with the financial ruining of the country at all, only being the person in charge of the countries budget and a serious influence on the financial sector for around 10 years. Deluded moron.

So anyway, lets hope this coallition is stable and lasts a while, hopefully with a good balance of left and ring wing policies in the correct places things might improve considerably… as long as it works and lasts.