You see I recently purchased an iMac. This was after my laptop was about to die and burst out into flames on my very lap any day. So I saved up some funds and did a bit of research on the specs. I then went forth and decided to check out the rumours on any new iMac in the development which were set to be released soon. I couldn’t find any information on anything in the near future. So off I went to the Apple store where I endured the most amount of retail torture from one of the Apple life dweebs, ultra friendly, super tacky and super unknowledgeable in anything beyond the brand and hype. Got my iMac home, very satisfied customer. Until one month later.

Apple drops the bomb, they have released their new line of iMacs, with a heap of new features and for much cheaper than what I paid a month ago. They released a lot of new features in the system, and sporting a massive 27″ screen. Now this leaves me with a piece of redundant computer system that the night before the new release I thought was the best thing since sliced rocket surgery. It almost feels as though i have been ripped off. Which leaves me with the question, have I? Can the sales clerk really provide me fair information that will assist a competitive purchase decision, when he knows (assumed that he may) that a new model will be coming out the next day.

It is a bit like selling someone a car, but withholding certain external factor information. Like someone buying a car, but the car dealer deliberately dances around the fact that the car you’re about to buy is extremely hard to source parts for and will cost and arm and a leg. I know of people who have bought a mac book pro, and the very next day a new model has come out, with much more and for cheaper, and they’re left feeling absolutely ripped. Taking a glance at the Apple return policy, its strict as it gets. If i ain’t t broke, don’t bother coming in to the store, because one size fits all. But how come the ACCC can’t step in and protect the consumers from this sneaky FIFO model they run.

Now my iMac is up for sale. I want the newer one. The value of the system has depreciated $800 in only 1 month. Yes, that is almost half the value. The technology isn’t exactly outdated, it’s just superseded by a newer model. Had I of known that a newer model was going to come out in a months time, would of i waited? I think that’s pretty obvious. But I also would of started a website along the lines of anewimaciscomingsoon.com to warn everyone else. Oh well, I guess they had back log troubles back in the day?

What gets me is the whole ideology of surrendering your aspirations because you feel the world is against you. But then again, you are so weak and easily moulded that you have died your hair black, grown a big fringe that covers your ugly face, bought some van’s shoes, collared shirt with optional pink or black tie accessory, studded belt and a whole lot of attitude, just because you’ve seen it on TV. I can understand fashion, for sure. But when the idea of being different, not the same as everyone else in society, and doing what you want in life because everyone is against you, then you turn around and do the same as everyone else, you’re just a joke. It’s not everyone else that is bringing down society, its you, you’re just a trend, a crying whinging mess of a trend.

Now what really annoys me is how hypocritical you are towards others. You hate people always on your case, you’re a teenager that knows more than Einstein, but no one will ever see that, because they never listen or understand you, and yet you have the audacity to get on other people’s cases and put them down. Who are you to judge, when you’re wearing the whinging police official MTV uniform and standard issue spoilt over-pocket-money paid, 7 year high school graduate with nothing at all to show for it. But I guess its okay, Avril understands you, and New Found Glory feels your pain, only if you keep buying their t-shirts and posters.

Its really quite funny, pathetic, yet funny. You’re such a product of capitalism (which I might add 80% of the songs talk about how capitalism kills) that you have such a weak label for yourself, Emo, short for emotionally and socially retarded. Sorry, I can’t come into work this Monday, I’m feeling a little bit Emo at the moment, you see my mum washed my favourite pair of girl jeans, and they got bleach on them. Now I have to go to the mall with all the other jaded “Emo” clones, and buy more girl pants, so yeah, I have a bad case of the Emo’s. This of course wouldn’t happen, because all you are is a WoW addicted Avril fanboy who has barely seen the light of day, let alone experience any true emotional stress. Stop talking the talk and walk the walk, shut up emo.

But this is where things really start to annoy me. When I am able to source the film or music c.d. That I’m after, it may be extremely difficult to view the content in my region, and by difficult I’m talking about hacking the firmware of my dvd player difficult. This is all thanks to Hollywood, and their ingenious plan to stagger their releases regionally. Hollywood hits the consumer end via their DVD region code system. So lets say I really love a German movie that has come out. If I want to do things by the book, or how Hollywood envisions it, I would have to wait till they release it, regionalised, here in my country. But don’t think this will happen in a matter of weeks. The only chance of a foreign independent film getting an international release status is if it hits massive success in its own region. So I may never get the chance to see the film I want, unless I buy a flight to the country!

Now I know I’m dramatising it here. As if I’m going to fly to a foreign country to see a film. But what this region code system does is simply deny access to international films. Of course Hollywood has developed this system so that they can target individual markets as effectively as possible, secure the highest profit margins and attract the largest audiences as possible. However my question here is to the foreign film distributors. If you believe that your film will never go international status, why would you restrict your DVD products to a specific region. Wouldn’t you prefer to have it region free, so say German ex-pats could buy your product and stick it in their DVD players with no problem at all.

This all arose when I started collecting foreign films, and the idea of reselling these region restricted films came up. Unfortunately, but with no surprise at all, it is in fact illegal to on sell these imported items, and they should only be bought for personal use. If I were to resell these region restricted DVD’s I would in fact be breaching the copyright of the distributor. So in effect, the only thing that is happening here is a dumbing down effect. The film maker’s message is restricted to these nit-picking region codes, when they could be enjoyed by anyone around the world. I can see the application for Hollywood budget movies, they’re built for profit. However independent cinema, you’re just shooting yourself in the foot, get a wider audience, it can’t hurt to be region free.

Web programming is intense. It seems that there is a new language and framework born every day. It’s a good thing; I mean new technologies, new ways to get things done with new flashy and shiny additions. However with every switcher to these new technologies there is a departed technology or product. This is wherein the problem lies that this article is all about. For some reason, when someone decides to change their sweaty, greased up and saturated PHP t-shirt for a Ruby on Rails jersey or a Django hoodie. But this isn’t the problem I’m talking about here. It’s the war cry that follows straight after.

I don’t know what ticks inside your mind. You have moved onto a new language or new framework and suddenly whatever you were working with previously is something that has come out of the stone ages. You are so empowered now, you are so much better than all of the others that you previously would call your closest friends in your hourly visited IRC channel. Perhaps you were reading TechCrunch IT or Digg had a special article about how Linux users love to use Ruby on Rails and that PHP is for new comers. You’re so much better than a new comer, I mean, its your brain we’re talking about here, you deserve to be “cutting edge” and nothing of the sort when it comes to being mainstream.

So you decide to buy a bunch of books on the framework and language combination that sounds like a new emo punk band. What I don’t understand is how you can change over night. Its like an ex-Windows user who bought a Mac in the morning and then decides to Twitter all evening long about how much Mac is so much better than Microsoft products, and that how Mac is simply the next step towards Linux taking over the world. Well maybe not the latter unless you read the technology column in Digg.

I’m just so over seeing on twitter and these miss-guided online article hounds posting all these articles saying this framework is dead, this language is dead, all the users are old school and that they are losers for even contemplating choosing such a technology. Whether CakePHP is better than CodeIgniter, or whether people should move over to Django because Twitter couldn’t scale with Ruby on Rails easily.

Listen people. The most important thing here is whether or not you are able to work effectively with the tools you choose to use. Will your project take 10 weeks if you choose to stick with what you know, or will it take a grand total of 20 weeks if you choose to learn something hip and cool with the boys in your computer meet-up crowd. For sure I love new technologies, and seeing new frameworks come up with new ways of accomplishing a task. I do. But don’t go around bashing out frameworks or even languages that are slightly different than your flashy new social media hyped tool.

I think following a sport or joining a club is an excellent way to make sure one gets outdoors every week. Forcing you to acknowledge that indeed there are other human beings on this planet and not just night elves fending off the Horde. No, I don’t play WoW, but it has unfortunately however infiltrated my brain thanks to the bad habits of neighbouring friends. Anyways, I love going to the game, keeping track of where my favourite team is on the ladder and who needs to lose each week and who needs to win to ensure that we stay #1. I love going to the games and cheering out and meeting up with friends week after week, purely through the game, (we’re members with the same awesome seats each week).

However I have noticed one thing that has spanned not only through the AFL code, which is what I love getting to each home game for the Brisbane Lions, but also into other Australian sporting codes, the choice of sponsorship partners. Now I am all for sponsorship, code wide, of sports. However what I don’t think is right is when sporting associations choose sponsors that would in any way negatively impact the sport as a whole. Unfortunately, there is one sponsor that is quite prominent across Australian sporting codes, and that is of Telstra Bigpond. Bigpond is an Australian Internet service provider that is owned by Telstra, an ex-government owned Australian wide telecommunications body, however enough with the history of telecommunications in Australia.

What Bigpond has done is they have set themselves up to have an exclusive license to media content of the codes, including AFL. This really annoys me, as a lot of the sporting codes firstly are bought out by the pay-tv services and then on sold to other free to air services to be distributed as delayed screenings. So already if I am wanting to catch an away game, I have to wait for free to air to show the match, which might be 11:30 at night concluding at 3am, or even the next day as a replay. A total of 4 channels in my area share the AFL code, making it hard to keep track of what game is playing when and on what channel. Bigpond however, has the exclusive online media license, which could be okay by me, if they didn’t require its viewers to be a Bigpond Internet customer! Which of course I am not!

What they do have however is highlights of the games, not the full match replays, or special content. That would be an okay thing, however it is that slow, and the program and its web-interface is both cumbersome and choppy! I don’t see why I would want to become a customer of theirs anyhow. This is where it all starts to annoy me, to the point of writing this article. I don’t see why any sporting code officials would agree to sign up for such a service, when all it does it hurt the code. It stops new members from actively participating in the code, rural members from getting access to the content, and existing die-hard fans from following the sport when they might have limited access.

Perhaps what sporting codes should do is allow Bigpond or any other online media content provider to place ads through out the content, not limit the accessibility of the content, which in my mind should be free to all that want to follow it. Bigpond has already monetized the sporting content, with their own advertisements. So in effect, they are somewhat forcing fans of the sport to change their Internet plans to them if they want to access the content, and they are grabbing revenue from outside non-related companies by installing ads in the content.

Sporting officials! You should do what is in the best interest of the sport, surely you can develop an online media solution and cover the costs through grabbing online sponsors to offset the costs or even profit from the service you have set up. That way you won’t be limiting access to the sport, more fans, more members, more money from sponsors. No, I will not sign up for an account with you poor service Bigpond!