To the UK

ORIGINAL: robby
Hey, enjoy your DVDs! LOL!

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I imagine this is in response to Youtube, who are currently blocking all premium music being streamed in the UK. This is all because of a dispute between themselves and the Royalties Commission.

I got flagged by their copyright bot (smart bot ) for using a 29 second sound byte of a Queen song, (Summer of) '39, for background in a shorty I posted. I thought that it was fair use at the time, I know better now. Youtube did not block it as the copyright holder did not complain when notified, so it is still up.

To our British friends -

Robo was talking about Obama giving a greatest hits collection of DVDs to Brown for his state visit. Brown brought a pen holder made from the timbers of one of the British anti-slaving ships from the 1800s - helping end the practice. The funny thing is, those DVDs bought from the White House gift shop probably won't play in a European DVD player. You'd think someone would have realized that. But Obama was in a snit (and sent back the bust of Winston Churchill) since he claimed in his autobiography (one of them, anyway) that his grand pa was totured by you Brits during the Mau-Mau uprising in Kenya - while Churchill was PM. And, as his State dept. said, you guys aren't special - just one of 190 other states. Don't worry, tho, I still like you guys. You are special - I can communicate w/ you while over the pond, almost.

As far as not able to you-tube, I love it when organizations cut off their noses to spite their face. It is so productive. Like how the major labels jumped on downloading.

@

As far as not able to you-tube, I love it when organizations cut off their noses to spite their face. It is so productive. Like how the major labels jumped on downloading.

Here's another example of Microsoft making friends in Iceland at the moment:

[Warning! link rated R for pretty strong language]

I'm Scots/English (and a little German and god knows what else), so I guess I need robby's spanking machine. But then, I don't worry about such things, either. I even have friends at Microsoft!

X&O

@

Not to mention Gordon brown coulda picked up those DVD's at WalMart if he'd wanted to. All in all, a puzzling move by a prez who's supposed to be so savvy.

ORIGINAL: But Obama was in a snit (and sent back the bust of Winston Churchill) since he claimed in his autobiography (one of them, anyway) that his grand pa was totured by you Brits during the Mau-Mau uprising in Kenya - while Churchill was PM.

Wait. The Mau Mau were terrorists. So was BO's grandfather a terrorist, then? Oh dear. It just gets better all the time.

well thankfully back in the day , there was SCART.. so I used to use import game consoles. I mean family would go states and I got a US snes and N64 later. With a lot of things the UK was last to get them, Japan was always ahead of the US and Europe. I always made sure I got a few games from the country also, if you tried to buy them in the UK they'd be double the cost of the UK versions.

to use the n64 I had to use a step down power converter, that worked fine. The games in Japan / US used to come out far sooner and I used to prefer playing them in their original format. In the UK and some of europe , the games would be modified to run on our machines , BUT in some cases it'd take 2-3 months for them to sort it. Also the games used to be modified to work , and it in some cases e.g. mario kart on the snes, it really did effect the game play (I played it on my friends UK machine and it was like a different game)

if you tried to play it on a tv that could only play 60hz the tv would display , but only in black and white.

this goes back years though, even Commodore 64 etc.. the refresh rate is 10hz faster.. BUT there are less scan lines on NTSC. I guess it's the same as the Timex 1000 computer, in the UK known as a Sinclair spectrum.. they had to modify it to deal with the difference in scan lines / refresh rate. I only got an insight into it from programming assembler on c64 and the timings on things where important.

most more recent video recorders had the facility to playback NTSC. So that surprises me. there was also another format, I think for France and some more PAL secam.

most dvd players are generic, not country specific when shipped and they normally had a 4 digit code you could use from the remote to shift region on them and thankfully on some totally unlock them. I mean they were made in Asia countries, so they also needed to test them before shipping. So I guess it was the easy way to do that

ORIGINAL: j boy

ORIGINAL: But Obama was in a snit (and sent back the bust of Winston Churchill) since he claimed in his autobiography (one of them, anyway) that his grand pa was totured by you Brits during the Mau-Mau uprising in Kenya - while Churchill was PM.

Wait. The Mau Mau were terrorists. So was BO's grandfather a terrorist, then? Oh dear. It just gets better all the time.

I am not sure I would call the mau mau terrorists. Freedom fighters in a rebellion, or those who oppose a forced ideology not their own (like in the US Civil War) are not terrorists.

A terrorist is somebody who has decided to blame their minor problems on somebody else, and then attack civilians and their institutions for no other reason but to terrorize the people there, usually as a means to enforce a totalitarian ideology, not gain freedom from oppression. Some could argue that Palestinian militant groups like Hamas would not be terrorists under this view, but groups like that are the real oppressors of their people (or will be if they gain power) and that is what makes them terrorists when they attack non-Israeli or non-military targets. They replace one oppression with another. The warlords of Somalia might be viewed as terrorists now, but the Mau Mau and other anti-colonial fighters, while outlawed and condemned, were rebels (some were terrorists, yes).

However, it is arguable that the Zionist movement which became Israel is responsible the first use of intentional terror tactics in modern times against both Arab Muslims and the peoples of the British Mandate. You reap what you sow I guess eh?

I still say the UK is our greatest ally and I apologize on behalf of our country. Brothers in arms…

Fog - I've read that HD is causing a lot of ego problems for the actors. Too much information.

About your old girlfriend, was her name Nan? I always wondered where she'd land next ...

ORIGINAL: MurMan
About your old girlfriend, was her name Nan? I always wondered where she'd land next ...

haha. no.. Ed (Bapu) posted a thread about "foolish things you've done".. thinking about it, dating her was one of them. It did teach me about not dating materialistic women though, she was under the assumption buying things would make her happy / or make her forget not so nice time (not with me ). I don't mean the usual stuff, I mean excessive spending. Turns out later she'd maxed out her credit cards to the tune of £12k ($24,000) . She did buy lunch once, but I can't recall it cost THAT much.hehe

ORIGINAL: foxwolfen

The director Rodriguez likes to use HD. He to talks about the fact that it shows so much detail. It was interesting to hear him note that the sudden increase in detail for HD vid over even film had cause him to have to rethink how he shot and who he shot. He chooses actors now who have interesting characteristics in the small details of their faces.

It sort of seems HD might have a similar culling effect on actors like the Talkies did back in the 20's.

This is a great topic deserving its own thread. How many times has a new or improved technology caused art to take a new direction?

Thanks for getting us back on track. That's the last time I try to hijack one of your threads!