OS rants

Annoyances encountered today:
When I started up my desktop computer today (running Gentoo Linux) I noticed that my keyboard layout had, yet again, reset back to "us". The last time this happened was when the developers decided that the X configuration file was no longer a cool place to store configuration options and moved them out to HAL policy files. Took a bit of googling back then but I managed to get my keyboard working properly again easily enough.
So today, the HAL configuration was naturally the first place I looked. I remember that I had installed an update to xorg before shutting down my computer, so maybe some configuration key had been renamed or something. No amount of tweaking could restore the proper keymap. The configuration appeared fine in lshal, but X always loaded the default map. Finally, I found this. So apparently hal is now deprecated and udev is the way to go and settings are back in xorg.conf. Sigh. Progress I suppose.

Another problem. I tried to connect my work Windows 7 laptop to my home wireless network. After entering the details of my network, I was rewarded with the singularly unhelpful message "verkkoasetukset eivät ole tämän verkon edellytysten mukaiset", or something along those lines. (I accidentally selected the Finnish version when first starting up and haven't yet found the option to change it to English.) After some googling (good thing that wasn't my only computer!), it turned out this error (in my case) meant I had just selected the wrong encryption method (WPA vs. WPA2.)
But really? Can you make a less helpful error message? From the wording, I assumed I had to check some box somewhere to acknowledge that I'm allowed to connect to this network or something.

WTF copy protection?!

Today, I tried to rip a copy of the 2009 Star Trek DVD so I could watch it using the projector connected to my PC. I don't have a DVD player at home since, hey, I can play movies with my computer just fine! Or so I thought. Apparently, the disc is encumbered with some new copy protection scheme and instead of the movie, all I got was an IO error.
Seriously, WTF?! I can't believe movie companies are actually putting time and money in developing new and insidious ways of intentionally breaking their own products. And for what? Certainly not to stop piracy. Had I just downloaded an illegal copy I'd be watching the movie right now.
I've been itching to buy a blu ray player since the prices have come down to something reasonable now, but experiences like this really dampen that enthusiasm. What's the point in buying movies if you're just going to get treated as a criminal anyway? Might as well get the pirate version with all the "don't copy this movie" warnings and copy protection removed. Especially since backing up (or just watching, if you're using Linux) your own discs requires breaking the copy protection which is illegal too.