DVD Anti-Piracy Measures = Anti-Consumer

Why do movie studios insist on forcing legitimate viewers to watch those anti-piracy spots after a DVD is loaded? I personally find it a bit insulting that someone would insinuate that I would want to pirate a movie.

The irony, of course, is that people who actually watch pirated DVDs don't even see these ads! Pirates would obviously exclude them from the copies. Anti-piracy? More like anti-consumer.

To rub more salt into the wound, some DVDs now play previews of other films after the anti-piracy ad. Aargh! More precious time wasted! Please, just let me watch the movie I want to watch.

I know, this is not exactly an original complaint, e.g. "Intrusive anti-piracy". But I just wanted to get it out of my system.

Perhaps they could at least make the ads more interesting. For example, make them funny and/or in the style of the content they precede? For example, here's one from the opening of The IT Crowd. Other suggestions have been put forward.

[The extreme heatwave in Adelaide continues. Today it was 45.7 degrees Celsius (114 degrees Fahrenheit)!]

Four-Wheel Drives: Car Park Nuisances

Four-Wheel Drives (4WDs) or "four by fours" (4x4s), by whatever name, are nuisances. Especially in shopping centre car parks. I'm talking about the hulking, big, "can't see through or around them" type of things.

Getting in and out of the car parks is tricky enough, with mad shoppers coming out of nowhere and darting around the place. Being parked next to a big behemoth makes it scary to reverse out of a parking space. At least with normal cars you can see through their windows to gauge any potential hazards. But with those big 4WDs, all you see is painted metal.

Sure, in the past you had to deal with the occasional van that would block your sight. Nowadays, with 4WDs apparently accounting for almost 20% of new car sales in Australia, you're more likely to get stuck next to one (or more) of these nuisances.

How about this for a solution? Quarantine all big off-road vehicles in a special parking area. Preferably far away from normal, practical cars. And since they're built for going off-road, there's no real need to clear and pave the ground to accommodate the 4WDs. In fact, leave it rough-and-ready with mounds and ditches, so their owners can at least get their cars' wheels dirty and make use of the special tyres and suspension :)

Scavengers in Suburbia

Our local council has designated that this week residents will be able to leave "hard rubbish" in front of their houses for collection. I cleared out some stuff that I wanted to get rid of and placed them as requested on the kerbside on Sunday evening.

By Monday afternoon, several scavengers had obviously pulled up in their cars and sifted through my pile of rubbish for anything they might find useful. I don't have a problem with that - as they say, one person's trash is another's treasure. But it would be nice if they left the pile as neat as they found it. So I was not happy to see an empty box left almost blocking the footpath, and other bits of rubbish flung around the place. This meant I had to go out last night and tidy up the pile again, otherwise I might get a visit from an angry council rep.

Maybe I'm being to harsh. The scavengers have already reduced my pile by almost half! I may need to put more out just to make my paltry pile look more impressive.

There's no firm time when the council's contractors will actually come to collect the rubbish. At the current rate, there may not be much left for them to pick up! I suspect the council deliberately holds back from collecting the hard rubbish long enough to allow scavengers to pick off most of the stuff, leaving them with less to collect.