MojoLists

For years I have preached about the evils of pan-and -scan. Thanks to VHS and the public's inability to endure any movie that didn't fill their entire 4:3 screen, pan-and-scan became the way we endured movies, even the early days of DVD were filled with the criminal act. Criterion had the vision and guts to start releasing movies in their original aspect ratio during their beginning with Laserdisc and eventually helped all of the studios see the value of putting out DVD's in their pristine and full aspect ratio.

Aside from the occasional release that comes in both flavors, pan-and-scan has slowly vanished, thanks in part to the popularity of HDTV with its  16:9 aspect ratio. Now a new evil has started to find its way onto DVD and Blu-Ray. The most current release of Gulliver's travels, a movie with an original aspect of 4:3, has been released in an altered 16:9 format.

No movie should be changed from its directors vision, in any way. I don't want to see any of Stanley Kubrick's 4:3 films in 16:9,  that wasn't what he wanted, that wasn't his vision.  The general public needs to be educated all over again it seems... wait, that isn't it at all.

The studios need to be smashed over the head for this idiotic practice and belief that John Q Public won't accept black bars on their screen. People have finally come to understand that some movies don't fit their screen. If they don't like it they can select from a number of options to stretch the picture (a practice I am appalled by but tolerate) and fill their screen. It makes no sense whatsoever to leave those of us who wish to see the movie as it was presented on the big screen.

I am hoping this practice dies quickly and I certainly won't be purchasing movies, in any format that don't present the movie properly. Take a stand and force the studios to do the right thing, skip the purchase until the movie is offered in the format it was filmed for.

I will go into the lesser evil of not offering original sound tracks in a later article, it upsets me just as much however so be prepared for another rant.

I have written several article on the WRT160Nv2 wireless router from Linksys. The problem appears to be much more widespread that anyone imagined and Linksys has yet to admit there is a problem.

I don't get a whole lot of traffic to this blog but my user base has increased by thousands over the last two weeks, all because of people looking for a solution to the DNS bug in this router. The Linksys forums are swarming with upset customers and a total lack of caring on the part of Linksys.

Linksys was kind enough to send me a new router when I bricked the first one trying to downgrade the firmware. The new one arrived with the old firmware and it is running like a champ now. I appreciate Linksys doing a fast swap for me but it still cost me $20 for shipping it to them and I was without wireless for a week. That is a major inconvenience not to mention that the additional cost could have gone to a better router if I had known of the problems with the WRT160Nv2.

I am not giving up on Linksys, their customer support took great care of me. I will have to rethink the relationship if I don't see a fix from them soon however. Running the older version 8 firmware means I am open to a DNS security vulnerability. I don't like that, hell, who would. If you are in the market for a wireless router, especially a Linksys router, I wouldn't buy this one.

Original Article: Linksys WRT160N DNS Issue Needs a Fix

I remember clearly, camping out at a mall with friends to get tickets to many concerts when I was younger. That is how you did it then, you couldn't go online and buying at the show would mean paying scalper prices and possibly getting busted.

Things have changed a lot, scalpers, now called ticket brokers or secondary sellers control the market. I have a love, hate, relationship with these folks. When I really want to see a show and have to have great seat, well they are the best option. Brokers manage to grab the best seats through contacts, contracts or scamming. My wife got front row seats to see Elvis Costello for my birthday a few years ago. The seats and the show were amazing, worth every penny. Every penny was around $300 a seat and to my surprise, the venue was not very full.

 The front row had us and about 6 ticket brokers who had decided to use the seats they didn't sell. Behind us there were a few pockets of folks here and there which was a big surprise because the show was sold out. The problem was that the brokers had grabbed all of the tickets and over estimated how much people were willing to pay for an act that appears in Austin on a regular basis. This time however, I was a happy camper.

Last week I started looking for tickets the Flight of The Conchords show, a show I knew would be popular. I wasn't surprised to find out that it sold out on 10 minutes but I was surprised to hear that very few tickets were offered to the public. Brokers, agents, and a number of other promotional geared companies had almost all of the tickets.

I am more than happy to pay a little extra for a good seat but 5, 6 or even 10 times the original $40 is way out of line. Unless there is a miracle, I will have to miss this show, not that I was able to find any decent seats available for under $500 a head.

I can see the value of brokers having access to a small percentage of the tickets for each show, for some the additional cost associated with getting great seats is worth it but to the majority, paying extra for something we never have a chance to purchase is wrong.

I don't have any answers, I am not even sure I know many of the questions, I just know that it would be nice to get a reasonably priced ticket to a middle of the venue seat. These are the fans and it is sad that we are forced to pay a premium because the brokers have access to almost all of the tickets right out of the gate.