Archive for the 'Rants' Category

Reason I Hate Facebook #267

Published on February 16, 2009 in Rants. 4 Comments

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There are a number of reasons why I don’t do Facebook. One of those reasons is that Facebook gathers all of your personal data and will one day use it for world domination. It may not happen tomorrow but trust me it will happen.

Did you know that by accepting the terms of service (you know that check box you probably don’t remember checking…?) you allow Facebook to have full license to your content?

Don’t believe me? Well from the terms of service under Licences:

You hereby grant Facebook an irrevocable, perpetual, non-exclusive, transferable, fully paid, worldwide license (with the right to sublicense) to (a) use, copy, publish, stream, store, retain, publicly perform or display, transmit, scan, reformat, modify, edit, frame, translate, excerpt, adapt, create derivative works and distribute (through multiple tiers), any User Content you (i) Post on or in connection with the Facebook Service or the promotion thereof subject only to your privacy settings or (ii) enable a user to Post, including by offering a Share Link on your website and (b) to use your name, likeness and image for any purpose, including commercial or advertising, each of (a) and (b) on or in connection with the Facebook Service or the promotion thereof.

Now this should already be enough to make you reconsider posting that picture of your friend passed out at a party with a big veiny cock drawn on their arm in marker with the words “you complete me” but If not, than have a look at this…

Facebook recently changed their terms of service and added the following under Termination and Changes to the Facebook Service:

The following sections will survive any termination of your use of the Facebook Service: Prohibited Conduct, User Content, Your Privacy Practices, Gift Credits, Ownership; Proprietary Rights, Licenses, Submissions, User Disputes; Complaints, Indemnity, General Disclaimers, Limitation on Liability, Termination and Changes to the Facebook Service, Arbitration, Governing Law; Venue and Jurisdiction and Other.

So essentially Facebook owns all of your shit today, tomorrow and forever even when you do finally see the light and cancel your Facebook account.

Does having your content owned by Facebook for eternity and to be used however the hell they want sound like a fair deal to you?

Ticketek are bendover bandits

Published on March 7, 2008 in Rants. 4 Comments

Well as you can probably tell from the title of this post, I bloody hate ticketek!

I originally discovered this after trying to get myself tickets to see Millencolin at the Metro nightclub. Even though tix are generally more expensive through ticketek things get even worse when you add on their exorbitant booking fee and deliver options. Oh I’m sorry did I say options? I meant extortions!

When your only choices are to pay $9 to get it sent via registered post or $7 to pick it up from a ticketek venue, it’s like saying, “would you like me to kick you in the face or in the groin instead?”

Just to kick you when your down (let’s keep with the analogy), if you choose to pick up tickets you can only get them the day before the gig and only at the city box office. So let me get this right, I’m paying them a delivery charge just so I can pick it up myself, but only when and where they tell me to. WTF?!

I’m also not quite sure where they’re coming up with their pricing scheme, but certain gigs will only let you buy tickets delivered via registered post ($9) or regular mail ($7) so either way you’re going to get ripped off.

The fact that it usually takes 14 days for these tickets to be delivered is a further slap in the face. When you compare this to other ticket selling venues it’s easy to see which is the better deal. Most other vendors have options that allow you to either, pick up the tickets from the venue before the gig (free), on the night (free) or via standard post (yep you guessed it, free).

Even if you CHOOSE (obviously ticketek doesn’t know what this word means) to pay for registered post it’s still $2 cheaper than through Ticketek. If you plan on seeing as many bands as I do (10 so far this year) a minimum saving of $7 per gig can certainly add up.

The ticketek service is so shitty that it makes me wonder what I’m actually paying them for. One time I ordered tickets and they never arrived so I had to chase them up. They gave no phone call, no email and no apology for what happened to them. Talk about customer service. Compare this to the Corner hotel tickets I ordered recently which only took two days to arrive with free delivery.

Whenever I can I now opt to get my tix via oztix, missinglink records or through the venue itself.
Recently I’ve also been sold onto the idea of moshtix. Through this company you can book tix online, via phone, your mobile or over the counter. If you go with the later option you can purchase a moshcard which can hold tickets to multiple events and can be registered to ensure that they’re insured. This system will hopefully catch on and in the future maybe we won’t have to line up in ticket queue’s (I’ve heard bad story’s about ticketeks but don’t get me started).

Despite all my earlier laments I still ended up having to buy my Against Me tickets from ticketek today because no one else seemed to be selling them.
Someone should really start up an anti ticketek petition to stop those bend over bastards from screwing over people.

However now that I’ve ranted bitched and moaned about them at least I feel a little better about the fact that I was reamed yet again.

Picture in Picture

Published on February 1, 2008 in Ego, Random Stuff, Rants and TV. 0 Comments

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So I started to watch Fully Flared and popped the disc into my XBOX 360 and was greeted with the image above.

For those who haven’t had the pleasure of visiting me at ‘The Lodge’ I have the exact same TV as the one pictured which caused my brain to turn to shit as I saw two TVs, one inside of the other.

That is all.

my ring is red

Published on December 6, 2007 in Ego, Rants and Video Games. 4 Comments

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News Time

Published on November 28, 2007 in Music and Rants. 2 Comments

Ok today I thought I would cover a few things in the world of music.

In breaking news Coheed and Cambria have decided to tour with Linkin Park (why?) and as a consequence they have decided to pull the plug on their trip down to Oz for the Soundwave festival. While I’m not really a fan of the lead vocalist I heard that they put on an awesome show and play some kick arse guitar licks in the style of Wilhelm Scream so I’m kind of disappointed that I won’t be seeing them live, though probably not as much as Gav. This is the second bad news from the festival following on from Social Distortion’s announcement that they were also pulling out from the show. At this rate the only headline band left playing will be Offspring.

Speaking of which (now that’s how you do a segway), Offspring have posted some studio footage for the recording of their new album that will be out some time next year. Oh Joy! (can you sense the sarcasm). As I can’t figure how to post video’s on this site I’ll just put the link up here. As the two video clips are only 25 seconds long and both feature the same song it’s probably a good indication that they’ll be stretched to write any good material (it could be said that they haven’t done this for about 10yrs). However I was surprised to see that they actually had a real drummer as I always thought on the last 2 albums they just used a synthesizer to manufacture all their beats. The other clip even has Dexter giving Noodles a hug. Ohhh how lame.

Some punk releases that I will actually be looking forward to next year include Anti-flag’s album titled ‘Bright Lights of America‘ and Milencollin and Rise Against’s as yet untitled releases.

In other album news it has been announced that Pennywise’s next album will be released free (that’s right free) through myspace. Originally this sounded suspiciously similar to what Radiohead have recently done but I then discovered that the album will be ad sponsored through a mobile music company called Textango. What this means is that in order to download the songs you must first add Textango to your myspace profile as a friend (how gay).

I’m not quite sure how the advertising aspect will actually work at this point but enabling Textango as a friend sounds like ticking a box that says “I agree to this company sending me as much bullshit advertising as they want”. Considering that its a mobile music company it probably not much different to all those shit ringtone ads advertised on Foxtel all the time.

This stunt seems to be a desperate attempt by the music industry to try and salvage a sinking ship and here’s hoping that the above mentioned distribution method doesn’t take off and the album fails miserably. Even though Pennywise have said they are also releasing the album in stores it still doesn’t change the fact that they’ve sold out. What’s really disappointing about this whole release is that they used to have a strong anti-capitalism stance and were originally one of the pioneer punk bands to distribute their albums independently. In the world of Darren Hynch “Shame, Shame, Shame”.

On a related note Pete Wentz from Fallout Boy has recently tried to serve a cease and desist on the band Neurosonic for releasing a defamatory song about his current girlfriend Ashlee Simpson. The song titled ‘So Many People’ is rather substandard but it does have some pretty good lines including “You ugly girl, you cannot sing / Can’t even lip sync / Apparently money can even buy you dignity” and “Since practice wasn’t on the list / Clearly talent doesn’t exist… Whose dick did you have to suck to get that number one song?”.

Personally I think Pete should just get over himself and admit that his girlfriend can’t sing for shit (apparently either can he live).

Big Gay Out

Published on November 22, 2007 in Events, Gigs, Music and Rants. 0 Comments

Just found out today that the second lineup for the big day out has been announced.

Silverchair, Spoon, Augie March, Brand New, Regurgitator, Anti-Flag, Karnivool, Carl Cox, Pnau, Kate Nash, Josh Pyke, beXta, Shy Child, Gyroscope, Enter Shikari, Operator Please, Unkle (live), Goodwill, Krafty Kuts & MC Dynamite, Die! Die! Die!, The Nightwatchman (Tom Morello acoustic),Blue King Brown, Dr Octagon with Kutmaster (Just missing the letter ‘N’) Kurt, British India, Aceyalone and Krill (mmm tasty fish)

While I was a bit ‘meh’ over the first bands that were announced this 2nd lineup actually has me interested. What shits me is the fact that its taken them this long to actually tell us that these new bands will be playing.

I would have brought a ticket straight away if I knew I could listen to Gyroscope (I haven’t seen them this year), Brand New, Anti-flag, Regurgitator,Operator Please (yes please) and hell even Silverchair (well at least their older shit before they became gay).

As the online tickets were all sold before this announcement the only way to get tickets now is to go into an online ballot. This kinda sucks as A: there’s only 2000 available and B: they’re going to draw out the whole process by only allowing 200 to be sold per week. At least i’ve already got a ticket to the Soundwave festival but fuck you big day out for screwing me over. Totally gay I say.

Oh Duh!

Published on October 5, 2007 in Rants. 3 Comments

Hi everyone,

I read a couple of stupid articles in the age today which is unusual because I usually expect that shit in the Herald Sun.

I’m having trouble putting links into this web site as they screw up the page but it’s basically about the ‘parents jury’ (Sounds scary) who have voted that McDonalds is the most manipulative marketer to junk food for children. I don’t know if they were conferring for hours on that one, but all I can say is NO SHIT. Their main complaint is about the promotional toys that are used to entice kids into their sugary products. One analogy that comes to mind (I think I stole this from some comedian but sue me) is drug dealers give away free crack pipes with their dope. It doesn’t take a marketing guru to figure out that kids like sugar and toys but things have certainly gone crazy nowday’s with all the movie tie-ins like Shrek and Spiderman. Now I’ve never been much into breakfast (Probably due to the fact that I had to eat natalex) but when I was a kid we were lucky to even get crazy whistles in our cereal. Nowdays there’s things like pedometer’s, mini speakers,waterpistols,games, etc given away with junk food which the parents are blaming for the difficulty in buying healthy food. The companies that the jury gave the parents choice award to were the farm pride eggs range and the Australian Avocado, which is a bit baffling because which fucked up kid would say ‘Mummy can I please have an avocado and egg to play with’.

The parents also wanted to ban the junk food ads that are played in between the cartoons or whatever it is the kids watch now. Our health minister responded by saying it was the parents responsibility for looking after the health of their kids. Damm right I say! This is probably a grossly inadequate generalisation but I say it’s about time that at parents get off their lazy arses and force their tubby lard arse kids to go out and do some exercise rather than playing the blame game. I suppose today’s kids are just too soft and flabby, but when I was in primary school I used to get fit by either throwing rocks at cars (weight lifting), beating up kids (boxing) or playing ‘poison’ (atheletics) Hell, nowdays kids can even play the Wii sports games if real exercise if too hard for the fatty bumbalardas.

Another Oh Duh, article in the age, is about how the Crown casino got busted for playing with shortened decks during Texas hold em and a number of other games. The casino was ripping people off? NO WAY! Now wouldn’t you think that crown is obviously in the business of screwing people out of their money and would do everything they could to increase their odds. The fact is that there were a total of 6 breaches throughout the year and in every case it was blamed as a human ‘error’. The most stupid thing about this whole incident was that they were only given a fine of $35,000, which the casino would probably make up for in a couple of hours. Way to go Casino Control Act that will teach them.

Anyway enough sarcasm and ranting from me. Till next time.

It’s A Mac Attack!

Published on September 27, 2007 in Rants. 7 Comments

Hi All,

As I’ve recently came into the possession of a new 80 Gb iPod classic I’ll soon be writing up a proper review of this new addition to the apple lineup. However before then I want to have a rant about the whole ordering process. While all my friends have numerous iPod’s I never really felt the need to give into the hype as I’ve been using my psp for music for the last 2 years. However after the recent apple press release I finally succumbed and brought one online. The main reason for this was the fact that I was sick of only being able to fit about 2 Gbs of music on the psp’s memory stick. As I’m a fairly avid listener of music this meant that I would have to fill it up at least twice a week, which was a real bitch of a job. The fact that the new 80 Gb ipod fit’s all my music has more features and is actually cheaper than the previous 60 Gb version finally converted me.

As the classic wasn’t actually in store over here yet I didn’t really have a choice but to get one online. However as delivery and engraving is free when you order at the apple store I was pretty happy that it only cost $349. As it was a no brainer about what to get engraved (‘Kick Out The Jams’, wikipedia it people) the only tough decision was the colour. In the end I settled on black as the new brush metal finish isn’t as liable to scratch as on the previous models.

Note: the rest of this post is just me ranting about TNT to anyone that will listen but fuck it it’s my post anyway.

The delivery of the iPod was a bit of a mixed bag. I placed the order on a Thursday night but was stupid enough to get it delivered to my unit. Everything was fine on the apple end as they shipped from asia pretty much the day after I put my order in. However I came home on the following Monday and found that the delivery company TNT had left a calling card saying that they came in the afternoon and no one was home. Why didn’t they ring and arrange a time? After giving them a call I found out that not only do they need your signature but that the package had ended up in their depot in fucking Laverton. Were is laverton you ask. In the middle of fucking nowhere that’s where. Apparently this is their only depot and therefore the only place you can pick it up in person. How about putting one in the city dickheads. Fuck that I thought and asked them to change the delivery address to work. After a bit of attitude from the grumpy bitch on the line she said that the earliest it would get there would be Wednesday. However after another two days of squat I had to call them again and find what the deal was. Apparently the delivery address had not been changed and now they said it would not get there until Tuesday. Following my fuming I came into work the next day and lo and behold my ipod was there after all the bullshit. TNT ought to get their act together as Gav has previously mentioned he has had problems with them as well. If Apple has any sense they will get rid of TNT and get another delivery company.

All’s well that ends well I’ve ranted enough.

Feel free to leave a comment if you’ve had similar delivery problems or even if you’re just bitter and want to complain about something else.

Wanted: Inverock 05 Photos

Published on August 16, 2007 in Events, Random Stuff, Rants and Shout Out!. 0 Comments

Quick shout out to see if anyone has photos from Inverock 05.

I seem to have pictures from 04 and then jump straight to 06. I know Inverock is normally a pretty hardcore drinking fest and loss of memory is a common occurrence but to not have any memories of the whole thing?! ‘cmon!

Guess who hasn’t been to Iraq

Published on July 28, 2007 in Random Stuff and Rants. 0 Comments

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