Television

Ok, i hate it. Not so much IT as what it's used for. And how it's used.
Dumping the tv was probably the smartest thing i ever did for my family. My thinking is pretty much as follows:
1) A tv has this magical ability to be left on, even when crap is showing
2) TV noise is the most vile hateful and disturbing of all noise (especially at dinnertime, i cannot eat with soap opera's hyper tension screeching)
3) 99% of airtime is rubbish, or at least irrelevant to me, the 1% i really can do without
4) News sports and actualities are all LATEST NEWS driven, appealing to MAJORITIES of viewers, and really are bland regurgitations of what some people thought important that day (also the SABC, the state broadcaster, is so politically controlled, you cannot accept any news at face value (see former news head, Snuki Zikalala for a perfect representation of a state disinformation agent)
5) Here in SA there is a HUGE campaign to make people who have tv sets pay an annual license, (it's the right thing to do), rich or poor, you will face jail time if you don't pay, but at the same time you cannot EVER get off their list of payees (ask anyone who has tried, even dead people are taken to court and charged interest)

Anyways ... you get where i'm coming from.
So ... sa is now going across to DIGITAL TV ... woohoo ...and bleh.

"Johannesburg - Strict security features will be installed in set-top boxes that will enable South Africans to switch from analogue to digital broadcasting, Communications Minister Ivy Matsepe-Casaburri said in Johannesburg on Monday. "

"Conditional access systems allow whoever controls the system to block the signal getting through and could be used to enforce TV license payments by the SABC, although this was denied by the SABC at the time. "

"Cape Town - Sentech intends to launch at least one high-definition television (HDTV) satellite channel in time for the 2010 Soccer World Cup, Communications Minister Ivy Matsepe-Casaburri said on Thursday."

And my favourite:
"Pretoria - Government is to provide R2.45bn to South Africa's "poorest TV-owning households" to help them buy the set-top signal boxes they will need once the switch from analogue to digital broadcasting is completed in 2011."

Fuck housing, fuck hospitals .... OUR PEOPLE NEED ...TV.

These are the spoils of the revolution.

"And when they found our shadows
Grouped 'round the TV sets
They ran down every lead
They repeated every test
They checked out all the data in their lists
And then the alien anthropologists
Admitted they were still perplexed
But on eliminating every other reason
For our sad demise
They logged the only explanation left
This species has amused itself to death"

Thank you to Roger Waters