{"id":757,"date":"2010-04-24T21:20:55","date_gmt":"2010-04-25T03:20:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.gratuitousscience.com\/?p=757"},"modified":"2010-04-24T21:20:55","modified_gmt":"2010-04-25T03:20:55","slug":"marco-polo-flu-over-drm","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.gratuitousscience.com\/?p=757","title":{"rendered":"Marco Polo flu over DRM"},"content":{"rendered":"

So I have the fucking flu.\u00a0 It’s ruined my day, and might possibly screw up my plans for my long weekend.\u00a0 I booked Monday off so I could get some personal stuff done, but so far I haven’t even done a proper vegetation day.\u00a0 Usually on Saturday I do laundry, play video games and drink some refreshing tea.\u00a0 Mmm… refreshing tea.\u00a0 I should go get some more tea.<\/p>\n

Anyway, I’ll have to do that tomorrow, but right now I’m feeling better because I broke down and took a bunch of codeine.\u00a0 Codeine is a cough suppressant, and I may need to go to the store for more of it if I continue to take as much as I have today.\u00a0 It also helps a great deal with my muscle pain.\u00a0 And the soreness and swelling in my throat has gone down enough so that I can speak again.\u00a0 Fuck I hate being sick.<\/p>\n

I have managed to do something productive today though.\u00a0 Last year, I bought my dad (through e-bay) a DVD version of the 1982 miniseries “Marco Polo”.\u00a0 I’m not one for television or movies, so I can’t say whether or not it’s any good.\u00a0 It does have Leonard Nimoy in it however.\u00a0 And it also has John Houseman, who played Dr. Franklin.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
\nHe plays the Archbishop of Venice.\u00a0 I saw a brief scene with him in this role and expected him to go on a rant about fembots.\u00a0 But he didn’t.<\/p>\n

Anyhoo… This DVD came from Taiwan, as I’m guessing the Marco Polo miniseries has never had an official DVD release.\u00a0 The picture looks like it was taken from a TV broadcast.\u00a0 Still, it’s better than the 28-year old VHS copy my dad got from TV.\u00a0 A lot better.<\/p>\n

There was a problem, however.\u00a0 The Chinese subtitles available on the DVD were turned on by default and could not be turned off.\u00a0 Turning them off in the DVD menu didn’t work.\u00a0 And my dad can’t watch something with the lower half of the screen filled with Chinese text like that.\u00a0 At least that’s what he said.<\/p>\n

So… here’s where a little tech savvy comes in handy.\u00a0 In about an hour, I had used CloneDVD 2<\/a> to rip the 3-disc original into 4 iso files that had the chinese subtitles removed.\u00a0 Then it was a matter of using good old ImgBurn<\/a> to make some DVD+Rs he could play in his DVD player.<\/p>\n

And that’s all there is to it.\u00a0 He was very thankful, and amazed that I could do such a thing.\u00a0 I, like MacGyver before me said “Don’t thank me…” and explained in detail what I had done.<\/p>\n

Now… This reminds me of something I read today<\/a>.\u00a0 Another DRM disaster brought to us by the copyright cartels.\u00a0 Aparantly the BluRay version of the recent film Avatar won’t play on many BluRay players, even after a firmware update has been installed.<\/p>\n

Digital Restrictions Management does nothing to stop piracy and only punishes legitimate customers.\u00a0 But greed rules the corporate mind, and facts like this can not be seen.<\/p>\n

Whatever.\u00a0 I don’t like movies and Avatar looks fucking stupid to me.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
\n(I know it’s not Avatar, but it’s blue.)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

So I have the fucking flu.\u00a0 It’s ruined my day, and might possibly screw up my plans for my long weekend.\u00a0 I booked Monday off so I could get some personal stuff done, but so far I haven’t even done a proper vegetation day.\u00a0 Usually on Saturday I do laundry, play video games and drink […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,3],"tags":[86,241],"class_list":["post-757","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-computers","category-miscellaneous","tag-complaining","tag-drm"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.gratuitousscience.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/757","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.gratuitousscience.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.gratuitousscience.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.gratuitousscience.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.gratuitousscience.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=757"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/www.gratuitousscience.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/757\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":761,"href":"http:\/\/www.gratuitousscience.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/757\/revisions\/761"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.gratuitousscience.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=757"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.gratuitousscience.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=757"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.gratuitousscience.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=757"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}