Archive for August, 2009

Monday is over and done with and the countdown to weeks end has begun. Four more days to contend with before we are given the sweet taste of freedom once again. I’m in desperate need of time off, yet I continue with the grind that seems to achieve nothing but weariness and resentment. We truly are a strange creature and unless I am completely mistaken I’m surely not the only one in the universe who finds work to be truly uninspiring, repetitive and plainly put, repulsive? Maybe I am. A woman at work is always so happy to be there and I am sincerely perturbed at my total incomprehension at how anyone could be so ecstatic to be at work. It’s down right demoralising and so totally not right that I’m sure all could agree that such “happy” people have no place in the workforce. Surely it should be mandated under the Mental Heath Act as just cause to be scheduled into one of our fine Psychiatric facilities for re-education?

Anyway it is not her, it’s me. I just can’t fathom the idea that work could be an enjoyable experience but then again this woman is the antithesis of me. She is so extroverted and is constantly jabbering away and I’m genuinely surprised she gets any work done with her mouth working overtime the way it does. I have to confess that sometimes I just wish she’d just shut her fucking mouth for five minutes. It can get a little grating to have someone yapping so incessantly, asking questions all the time, after all there is a F1 function key that pulls up a help menu. Maybe more people could make use of it. They might even learn something without having to ask questions to break the silence and hear the sound of your own voice.

Well I can thank the merciful technology for creating noise isolating headphones. All I’m saying is that sometimes its good to drown out the background noise of extroverted individuals who need constant attention to enliven themselves.

Luckily today was a day free from too much extroversion and if nothing else, I at least have something to be grateful for. Although Monday’s are the worst day of the week, tomorrow the said woman will be back with her ingratiating cheerfulness and who knows maybe it will be contagious and the meme may even spread to a sour puss like me. Yeah I know, and pigs may fly. 

Full stream ahead for music at $10 a month was a headline in the Technology section of the Sydney Morning Herald and at first glance I was kind of stoked that Australia had embraced a subscription service for music but my enthusiasm soon waned when I read the fine print. Indeed it was staring me in face in the actual headline – stream does not equal steam. And at $10 a month what a bargain it would’ve been to have a downloadable music subscription service and well, you know what they say, “If it sounds too good to be true, then……”

The catch for the service is that it is merely a streaming service so one doesn’t get to keep the music, which to me is useless and I’m sure others will agree that having a music subscription which is utterly dependant upon an internet connection is a rather limited service. One which might be okay for those that have unlimited bandwidth allocated by their phone carrier on their iPhone (good luck with that!) but for those of us with no mobile internet we’ll be stuck at home with what is probably a crap bit rate music service.  Of course one can easily understand in retrospect that being in Australia automatically translates into the fact that we’ll get jibbed on anything that resembles 21st century technology.

What the Sydney Morning Herald failed to inform the public about in that pathetic piece of journalism (or was it just a paraphrased media release by Sony?) is that overseas subscription services like eMusic let you keep the music in the subscription package. Although at $US95 every 6 months with 35 downloads for example, the cost is more expensive, however the music is yours to transfer, burn or copy to any PC, MP3 player or device you wish without restriction.

Australia is missing out on a bona fide subscription service and we seem to be fed incredible amounts of bullshit by the media about illegal downloads and the ilk but  still the Industry insists on ripping us off! Why is that we get a lame streaming service where the US is permitted a proper subscription service? Why do we pay twice the price for MP3s to that of the US? Why are Australians locked out of content due to stupid licensing restrictions?

I can’t see this subscription service selling very well unless P2P is locked down somehow through the Net Censorship Rudd/Conroy scheme or through successful litigation of iiNet by AFACT. Why should I get a subscription to stream music through Bandit FM (Sony) when I can get the same thing from Last.fm for $3 per month? it makes no sense and I think the likes of Sony should stop trying to rort dollars from the Aussie punter and give us a legitimate service that will make cents rather than stir disillusionment amongst the punters who are looking sorely at the dinosaurs that live by the greed is good ethos of the eighties and who by doing so only promote the open source ethos of free is good that P2P provides.

These smug bastards at Sony must think we’re idiots but surely if they fail to get with the program they’ll most assuredly end up like the dinosaurs…Extinct!