nemesis's Journal

The Australian Music Industry has just launched a new way for consumers to buy music: USB flash drives. They're calling it "DDA" (who knows what that stands for). And here's why it's failed already:

In this day and age, consumers have already proven that there's really only one mechanism for music distribution: online. But the music industry is adamant to stick to physical media. It gives them a warm fuzzy feeling inside being able to have shopfronts peddling their wares.

"DDA" is, essentially, no different to when Sony tried to get consumers out to shops to buy a card, go back home, and enter the number on the card to download your music.

The key problem with all physical distribution channels is the effort involved. When you hear something on the radio (or Internet radio), you want it right now. You don't want to hop in your car, drive to a crowded mall, and wait in line to buy a USB flash stick.

Sticking to your guns and continuing trying to push physical junk onto consumers is a sure-fire way to drive them further towards piracy. Physical is so 1990s. Get with the times!

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Anyone who's traded stocks more than "infrequently" will know that the markets are open between 10AM and 4PM. Presumably these hours were selected many decades ago to allow stock brokers to arrive at a reasonable hour, and get some preparation done before the market open.

But in this day and age where the Internet allows us to buy things any time, day or night (from anywhere around the world), why is the stock exchange still restricted to these archaic hours? Thanks to online brokers such as CommSec, many investors nowadays are private investors, with full-time jobs that don't involve securities trading. And many other investors are even in different countries, in different timezones.

A 10AM-4PM restriction is not only inconvenient, but it just doesn't make sense anymore. It's not like the technology doesn't exist; the ASX already has a computer-based trading system.

A market that's open 24 hours a day would have another positive side-effect: Companies could no longer time market-sensitive announcements to 4:10 PM. Companies tend to do this (especially in the current environment) so that investors have time to sleep on the announcement, before dumping the stock. That's simply not how the market should work.

It's time to move into the 21st Century -- into the Internet era. If millions of Internet merchants can sell products 24/7, then why can't the ASX?

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The first episode of Top Gear Australia just aired. And I could tell it was a flop, within the first 10 minutes. Somehow, they've managed to make the show sound like a boring documentary -- and without David Attenborough's charm.

The presenters just aren't interesting. Charlie Cox, some old guy nobody's ever heard of, has a voice so boring that I've found a new soundtrack for when I have insomnia. Steve Pizzati is some hippy, with all the wank and none of the charm of Richard Hammond. And I don't even see why Warren Brown's on the show. He just fades into the background.

But Top Gear Australia falls into the trap all Australian motoring shows fall into: they're unable to be critical of the cars. The biggest criticism was that one of the 4x4's sent too much power to the front wheels and not enough to the back.

The one possible redeeming factor Top Gear Australia would have had was that the personality for the interview segment could actually have been someone we've heard of. But instead, they got some nobody who was as almost as boring as listening to Charlie Cox's voice for an hour.

It just goes to show that you can take a successful format, but it's no guarantee of a successful show.

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It's pretty well known that the pension is $273. But what's not often discussed is that this pension was always intended as income supplementation; not as income to live solely off.

Raising the pension is a terrible idea, for one main reason: we have an ageing population. Consider these statistics:

• Today, we have a ratio of around 6 taxpayers per pensioner
• In 2025, we'll have a ratio of around 3.7 taxpayers per pensioner
• By 2050, that ratio will drop to 2.0 taxpayers per pensioner.

That means that, even if the pension isn't raised, by 2050, $137 of the tax you pay per week is going solely to supporting a pensioner. That doesn't leave much money to run the country on.

The pension should be phased out; not raised. It's clearly unsustainable, and places an enormous burden on younger generations to support extravagant baby boomers with no savings capacity.

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