Archive for 11 March 2004
Actually, the more I think about it, the more I think this story is a load of bollocks. The only source quoted is from a company whose business is in communications skills training. The principal comment is from a bunch of gibbering reactionaries who will seize any opportunity to hark back to the good old days of grammar schools, compulsory corporal punishment and children who knew their place. Oh, and there’s a rent-a-quote from the “banning the right of companies to mince up peasants for cattle fodder will be bad for British business” CBI. Hardly investigative journalism at its finest, is it?
I’m suprised noone has done this already – the idea of being able to burn your own custom CDs rather than pick off the one or two decent tracks off a pre-recorded one has definite appeal.
But I can’t imagine that the service will be anything more than a) crippled beyond belief – no recent releases, DRM-infested, that kind of thing; and b) significantly more expensive than the alternative walk-into-a-record-store option. Anything else would require a degree of intelligence on the part of the labels, and we haven’t seen much of that recently, have we?
And anyway, who wants a CD? What I want is a service where I can walk into a store, plug in my [insert MP3 player of your choice] and download tracks there and then. And I’m not holding my breath for that.
I loved this story on the BBC about how “slang makes youths unemployable”. Partly because it reminded me of the interview-on-speed in Trainspotting, and partly because it’s the kind of spluttery middle-aged ranting that you’d expect from the Campaign For Real Education – definitely an organisation harking back to the days of the 3Rs when “house” rhyming with “mice”.
