Cinavia, PS3 & my hatred.

I do my best to back up the Internet. Like many others, I may or may not have downloaded the odd movie or two. Though I'm morally against piracy, I am hypocritically against the organisations that try to police it. Instead of embracing the technology and the marvelous convenience of digital content delivery, these organisations have waged a war on those they understand to be infringing on their copyrights. No arguments on that front. But I buy a movie or play a game or purchase an application that I find unsatisfactory, can I get my money back? Well yes and no. There are game and application trials so I won't argue that in this blog. 

Let me explain my situation... I have a PS3 with a broken Blu-ray player that is out of warranty. I use ps3mediaserver (http://www.ps3mediaserver.org) to stream DVDs and Blu-ray’s from my PC to my PlayStation to avoid forking out $200 to Sony to get a refurbished PS3 (for the second time). It works perfectly... Until the sound cuts out. Now we have arrived at the crux of this blog entry.

Cinavia (http://www.cinavia.com) is DRM audio watermarking. Long story short, an audio signal is embedded into the audio of a movie. Devices that are Cinavia aware will pick up on this signal and depending on the source, will mute the audio. This technology is muting the audio on legally purchased genuine Blu-ray films I have.

Just get your PS3 fixed Shane!

This, being the second one I have had. Having already had a PS3 replaced (under warranty). This situation has left a bad taste in my mouth. I'm not paying for devices that have Cinavia! Not even to be fixed.

I have searched the Internet for ways to circumvent Cinavia. There are few old tricks I have tried.

• Setting the audio to optical output on the PS3 - doesn't work with the firmware release I have installed on my PS3 (>4.21).
• Play the film at x2 play speed - works but is not ideal.
• Hack my PS3 - no hacks for PS3 with firmware =>4.21.

Options that don't involve the PS3

• Get a mediaPC (popcornhour) - too expensive. (http://www.popcornhour.com)
• Raspberry Pi - I tried this and it worked quite well as a device to stream to. Cheap and easy to use. Somewhat complicated to initially setup and configure. (http://www.raspberrypi.org)
• Get a new Blu-ray player - maybe, but it had better not have Cinavia. (http://forum.slysoft.com/showthread.php?t=41885)
• Media streaming device - I tried this. I got WDTV (http://www.wdc.com/en/products/products.aspx?id=330). Installed B-RAD's (http://b-rad.cc) firmware and bingo I was back!!

Should the film industry refund my money because I can't watch a film on my broken Blu-ray (PS3) player? Of course not!

But think about this: it would be very convenient for me to illegally download or rip the movies I have to my PC and stream them to my WDTV. I wouldn't even need to get off the couch to crack a Blu-ray out of its plastic case and cram it into a device that is now redundant in my house hold.

What am I even talking about?

Don't pirate stuff! Unless you have to, because of anti-piracy technology.

 

Missing In Action

Wow!

It's been quite some time since my last post - What's happened since I last spewed out my mind in the form of a blog?

• Got married
• Bought a house
• Changed jobs
• Did some overseas travel
• Had a kid

Not bad a for a few years. 

I decided to write this blog post after reading my sister's blog +Angela Wall

http://www.originaloccupation.blogspot.com.au

My sister had a child last year, same as me. Now we are just waiting for the kids to get old enough so that we can race them...

Supreme Intergalactic Oneness

Zeitgeist (German pronunciation: [ˈtsaɪtɡaɪst] ( listen)) is a German language expression (Zeit means "time," and Geist roughly translates to "spirit") referring to "the spirit of the times" and/or "the spirit of the age." The word Zeitgeist is used to describe the general cultural, intellectual, ethical, spiritual, and/or political climate within a nation or even specific groups, along with the general ambience, morals, and sociocultural direction or mood of an era (similar to the English word mainstream or trend).

I have recently watched the Zeitgeist movie http://www.zeitgeistmovie.com/ and I have been left thinking; do I feel inspired or out right petrified...

While I was raised a noncommittal Catholic, I always marveled a the absurdity of the story's told in the Bible. I do believe in the teaching and practice of good will towards your fellow man. But I know giving money to a church for the opportunity to have this message preached to me is redundant...

You know if you are doing the wrong thing, if you feel ashamed or guilty about your actions, you are probably doing the wrong thing. If you need to go to church every Sunday as an excuse to learn what you already know, you are a slave to ignorance.

While I do not think the people going to church are bad people, the institution they populate is feeding on their ignorance.

Watching the Zeitgeist movie has only made me realise this further. The comparison between the Egyptian sun god Horus and Jesus Christ just made laugh at the ludicrousness.

In relation to the monetary system, I would like to see the Venus Project mentioned through-out the documentary, if only because it is alarmingly similar to the Star Trek Universe....

http://www.thevenusproject.com/

Do yourself a big favour and watch the Zeitgeist movie. It makes great dinner conversation...

Excuse to fail

Today I muse at the thought of having a day off from the gym to laze around and eat what ever I want. Sounds to me like scheduling myself in to fail.

I have a deal with myself that I can eat McDonald's on trips to Sydney. Lately I have made many trips to Sydney... Coincidence? Perhaps not. But just try to stop me...

I really enjoy Pavel Tsatsouline's method and ideology for training to a stronger body. His way of thinking is not to give yourself an excuse to fail. Which works for me. My mates Nathan and Jones have unwillingly been dragged into his workout style and they really enjoy the punishment, as far as I can tell... Though they seem to be missing more and more sessions... :-)

No planned days off for me. Things happen in the natural course of your life that steer you off track from your training, so why plan to stray from your goals...?

What an odd thing to blog about. Load of shit if you ask me. I'll be at the gym if you need me.

Below is a picture of my mate Jones after just 3 minutes... in MS Paint. JONES YOU BEAST!

Transformers Poo: Cries of the colon

Giant robot balls. These are part of the obscene absurdity at climax of the Transformers 2 movie. Just when you think it can’t get any worse, someone says “scrotum” - just in case you thought they weren’t going to make a silly point of them.

The original movie only took its self half seriously; the sequel dons a big red nose, floppy clown shoes, a novelty flower and squirts farting robots in your eyes...

If you’re going to make it this stupid, bring in the Dino-bots!

Stupid movie! Don’t waste your time...

Virtually inconceivable

I’ll admit I’m on the VMWare bandwagon. I love the idea of moving a whole system to another device with the click of a button, being able to setup a server to run a single process. My mate Chris would immediately have had a coronary reading that last part. He is of the mind that we greatly underestimate the power of a single Virtual Machine and the hardware underpinning the whole infrastructure… and I agree with him.

I’m starting to see an awful trend with virtual machines. 1 virtual machine (VM) to run one process. I know not every infrastructure is the same and sometimes there is a very real need for this “1 for 1” setup. But I still see it unnecessarily used quite often. At a former company I worked for, they where actually using a VM running Windows Server STD 2003 to execute batch files… (if Chris is reading this, he has had an aneurism and is now dead) 

Now get this… When the ESX box powered up, it launched 9 other similar VM’s running similar configurations to execute similar tasks. I’m not joking. Seems like an awfully expensive way to run batch files. I of course remedied this as soon as I could, much to the delight of the CEO, followed by the despair of the CEO, realising they now owned several redundant copies of Server 2003 they had spent the company’s money on. 

Granted that is a rare and extreme case. But I’ve seen setups where the file and print servers are separate VMs for no good reason. For God’s sake throw some application services on there too, because the bloody things are idling. I refuse to hear arguments of “room for growth” in this type of scenario. We all know the physical infrastructure is only an investment for 3-5 years and the physical infrastructure is a moot point considering how easy it is to move hosts between environments. 

Ramble, ramble, ramble… 

In essence I am seeing ESX boxes running too many unnecessary hosts. It actually reminds me of the Windows Services tab, only a lot more expensive. Instead of Windows Server hosting a service to perform a task, ESX hosts a VM that runs Server 2003 that hosts a service that runs a task… Make sense to you? Me either… 

With all these out-of-the-box plug and play virtual appliances, where by you can have a functional Linux server up and running nearly as quickly as you can download it. I see a change in the need to run Windows Server in a VM all together. In the future could the need to run Windows Server (or any base OS other then ESX) just be a legacy issue? I’m asking, not telling… 

Enough of my rants… For now…

4x4

To all 4x4 drivers.

Burn in hell.

That is all.