.Net 4 oddities

I installed .Net 4 some days ago, but have not been able to play much with it (apart from "agenda reasons"... the SDK for .Net 4 was not released until last friday, SharpDevelop 4 is still in the works, Reflector support for .Net 4 is also a bit limited...).

Anyway, as I've ever had some interest in "low level" details, I checked a bit what had been installed and found a few things I'd like to mention:

• If you check the %systemroot%\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v4.0.30319\ folder, you won't find there either mscorjit.dll or mscorwks.dll-mscorsvr.dll (the CLR engine). This does not make sense, while .Net 2, 3 and 3.5 were all running on CLR 2 (so, using the JIT compiler and CLR Engine in Framework\v2.0.50727), .Net 4 is running on CLR v4, so there has to be a new CLR engine somewhere. Also, there have been some performance improvements to the JIT compiler (but no new additions to CIL, as far as I know the only changes to it were the addition of generics back in v.2), so there should be a new JIT. I was googling a bit and found this. In brief, the new JIT is in the clrjit.dll Dll, and the new Engine in the clr.dll Dll


• I had a look at the GAC to see the new installed assemblies, and imagine my surprise when I could not find any 4.0 assembly there. I found an entry in Stack Overflow that explains that there's a new GAC for version 4 assemblies, located in %systemroot%\Microsoft.NET\assembly\
  What that entry does not seem to answer clearly is why do we need 2 GACs, hadn't the GAC been designed as the solution to the Dll Hell issues?


• While trying to locate the "missing" assemblies I noticed some repeated ones, so I did this question in Stack Overflow

Daybreakers

I rather like modern vampire films, especially those were vampires are depicted as some sort of an aristocratic elite above the poor simple humans, that continue with their lives of weakness and fragility. I'm talking about the Vampires in films like Underworld, Blade or Rise.

Since I learned that there was a new Vampires film I was keen to watch it, and cinetube made my night yesterday :-)
Daybreakers is a rather good film, I watched it non stop (something not too usual in me that tend to interrupt my home film sessions several times with some web search, mail checking... I could say that it's cause I've got so many interets... but actually it's more that I'm a bit disperse sometimes :-)
To the point, the film is a bit different from what I expected (I was thinking of something revolving around the common elements in the aforementioned films). Vampires are not an elite, but rather the majority of the population, while humans have been reduced to an almost extint sort of cattle. Same as farms of humans provided energy in Matrix, they provide blood here (there's an scene purely reminiscent from Matrix).

Spoiler Warning Begins
As the lower level in the food chain dies out, the upper level begins its decline... so vampires are crazy to find a solution: artificial blood.
In the end another solution is found, reverting vampires back into humans, but would you be willing to renounce to your immortality as an eternally young vampire to turn back into a perishable being whose life is a countdown to the end?
It's a classical moral dilemma, that reminds me in some way the moral conflicts in recent SciFic films like Aeon Flux or The Island (I really enjoyed both films at the time).
Spoiler Warning Ends
One element of this film that can be striking is how bloody some moments are. Vampires act as bloody beasts, reminding me of the horrific vampires in 30 Days of Night, an excellent underrated film that amazed me for how it represented vampires as horrible, revolting monsters, so far from the fashionable "beautiful monster" style in other films.

I won't close this review without praising the impressive opening scene, very beautiful both in visual and meaning terms.

The money of Islam

In the XIX century Karl Marx said this famous sentence with which in general terms (I accept some nuances: religion vs spirituality, individual interpretations) I agree so much:
"Religion is the opiate of the people"

Nowadays we can reformulate it a bit and say:
Drugs are the money of Radical Islam.

Yes, we all know how the Taliban have used drug traffic (heroin) to fund their crimes against humanity, but it seems this trend has spread to other fundamentalist groups.

This interesting documentary (sorry, it's in Spanish) tells us about the relation between Al-Qaeda in Maghref and South American drug dealers. The Wahhabist controlled area of the Sahara desert in Mali is a good place for planes from South America to take land and from there cross the Argelian border all the way to poison Europe. Well, I'm not blaming them for that, nobody forces you to sniff cocaine, it's not the dealer's fault, it's the consumer's fault... From the rotten mind of a Fundamentalist weakening and poisoning the infidels is a good way of carrying out their filthy yihad... but sometimes it's other muslims who fall into addiction, well, sure it's that they're not "devote enough"...

Of course, drugs are not the main source of funding for Radical Islam, petrodollars from the government of Saudi Arabia is the main source of funding, maybe not directly to the armed groups, but sure for the radical clerics that brainwash their congregations and infuse into them their distorted, false and radicalized interpretation of Islam.
Wahhabism, the radical sect that is majoritary in Saudi Arabia hates us cause we're Kafirs (they even hate other muslims that not fit in their mold, like Shia muslims).
They're at war with us (but many of us seem not to want to realize), and because of that they spend millions printing modified versions of Qur'an containing such lunatic sentences for a book written in the VII century as "use tanks and machineguns against the infidels". These versions of Qur'an are sent for free to mosques all over the world... They also spend millions funding madrasas and mosques and paying salaries to radical anti-Western clerics that spread from there their message of hate and bigotry.

Regarding this, wikipedia extracts this sentence from this excellent documentary:

Saudi Arabia began to spend tens of billions of dollars throughout the Islamic world promoting Wahhabism, which was sometimes referred to as "petro-Islam".[47] According to the documentary called The Qur'an aired in the UK, presenter Antony Thomas suggests the figure may be "upward of $100 billion"

I really recommend the documentary, it's not an attack on Islam, but an objective documentary that shows both good and bad things in Islam and attempts to explain why the radical bastards have won the battle to the moderate muslims, and what parts of the book can be mistakenly read to support their fanatical views.

Do you renember the "bearded guys" demonstrating in Trafalgar Square in early 2006 because of the Muhammad cartoons controversy? (those days I really fancied hanging a Danish Flag in my window), claiming for the destruction of Europe (the same Europe that provides them with a salary and a free health system... quite different to what they have in their shit countries...) I bet those bastards got some petrodollar educational aid.

Much more than Iran (where good part of the population is rather moderate and where other religious minorities are respected) the biggest "devil" in the Islamic world is Saudi Arabia (that mediaval country where people are hanged in public squares and where the public practice of non-Muslim religions is prohibited). I don't see the Iranian government (with all the revolting that Ahmadinejad is) funding the world wide spread of Islam (even when they're financing Hezbollah or some Iraqui shia militias).

Of course the problem is that Saudi Government is an "alley" of the USA (and the Western world in general) that aids them to satisfy their need for petrol... Back in the 80s the talibans where also allies of the USA in their war on "Communist Devil". Years later the relationship proved rather wrong, and we all know what came next... when the Saudi-USA alliance proves wrong, I'm afraid the outcome will be much worse...

Update:
while visiting different sources preparing this post, I knew about the Undercover Mosque documentary. I've just watched it and it absolutely backs up all what I claim above about Saudi Arabia. If I were British, I would feel terrified at the prospect of these fundamentalist bastards outnumbering "Kafirs" (we know that they tend to keep here their third world birthrate) and seizing power...

Europe at stake

Europe (that set of Western countries with so many cultural and historical links that I'd like to see becoming a real plurinational State instead of the current "economical union") is at stake. No, I'm not referring here to some of the obvious risks:

• Islamization. It mainly affects UK, Netherlands, France and Spain, so far eastern countries don't seem to be threatened by this issue. I guess the former countries are paying for our centuries of colonial lust and crimes.


• The rise of far right parties (this affects to all Europe, but it's worst in eastern Europe: Hungary, Poland, Romania)


• Outsourcing


• The idiotic governments welcoming Turkey (and, who knows if even Morocco...)

What I'm talking here is about the leader of that think tank on the Future of Europe created in 2007 and that in the last days has submitted some conclusions. That "person" was responsible during his years as president of the Spanish Government of the almost complete destruction of the economy of my homeland (Asturies) and to a lesser extent, of my grandparents homeland, Galiza. Asturies was one of the more wealthy areas of Spain (along with Catalonia and Euskadi had lived an early Industrial revolution and had lived decades of economic expansion and population growth until this bastard reached to power).

For me, having grown up in a land where the economical crisis started (and of course continues today) in the early 80s and not in September 2008, seeing the main responsible for that crisis (with the associated massive forced emigration of a whole generation of Asturians unable to find a job in our broken economy) being awarded such new responsabilities is, at least, revolting.
It's terrifying to think what sort of lunatic ideas this shameless bandit can propose to "improve Europe" with the only purpose of profiting himself at the expense of no matter how many thousands of European workers that happen to stand in his path to power and money.

I hope someday History will judge this "person", his kleptomaniac right hand, and the the gang of criminals that drawing inspiration from him and his impunity have plundered Asturies from their chairs in Asturian Government over the last decades.

When Europe trusts such a bloody, corrupt inept, it's the confirmation that something terribly bad happens with our governments...

The Descent Part 2

The Descent was one of the films that impressed me more in 2005. A fresh plot (sure there are many previous films revolving around a cave populated by terrific creatures, but I was (and still am) not familiar with any), an absolutely claustrophobic atmosphere, and a superb end, with the prey turning into hunter in one memorable shot.

So since I found out that a sequel was in the works I felt eager to watch it.
Finally, after some delay, yesterday was the day.
The Descent Part 2 is another great film, 90 minutes of tension that leave you asking for more (great, seems like the shooting for a new sequel starts this month!).
That said, I have to admit that it's not on pair with the first installment, mainly because you lose one of the key features, the "freshness". Once again we have a group of people trapped in the cave confronting the monsters, so not many surprises in that sense. Another negative point for me is that blood is much more present in this film, making some moments unnecessarily too gory (in other moments the excess of blood is not gratuitous but helps to transmit the complete dimension of what's happening). On the positive side, we've got the claustrophobic feeling, the great role of Sharah (Shauna Macdonald) passing from a state of shock to a state of leadership and great determination, and the vibrating last 30 minutes of the film with its dose of regret-redemtpion (and the 2 final nifty twists).

Above all I would remark one of the last scenes, when Sarah and Rios fight to death one creature each one, it's reminiscent of that scene in the first film with the prey becoming hunter, but this time it's a dual conversion that makes it even more extreme.
So, my advice: stop reading this crappy blog and watch the film!