Cheap electronics and a loss of innocence

Today I decided to buy a new USB flash drive, seeing as I appear to have lost my old Kingston DataTraveler II down the back of a sofa somewhere. I figured I'd probably end up paying about a tenner, although most non-specialist shops sell them for about 20 quid or so. Imagine my surprise, then, when I checked the Boots photo centre and they had 4GB Sony MicroVault drives reduced from £24.99 to £4.99!
So, while making a mental note that these things might eBay well, I headed to the till. While waiting, I perused the pack to make sure it wasn't going to be crippled in any way. Right on the front was a big star that I'd managed to previously miss, advertising the fact that the new Sugababes album is preloaded in MP3 format. I'm not sure the Sugababes would be pleased to know that their inclusion warranted a 80% price reduction!
I found this use of MP3 format very interesting indeed. Sony are no strangers to negative publicity over their DRM policies. In fact, they are known to have a very anti-consumer stance when faced with "intellectual property" issues. The pain involved in getting music onto a Walkman MP3 player is testament to that. So the fact that the tracks were bundled in plain old MP3, with no DRM, no registration required and no proprietary audio formats in sight, was something of a surprise.
I know there have been plans to distribute music on flash drives in the past, and there may be some step toward it. It'll be interesting to see what they do next, and if future distribution may be more encumbered.
So I've seen a glimpse into a possible future of Sony's music distribution plans, and got a cheap flash drive to boot. But at what cost? I can never again look at myself in the mirror and know that I have never bought a Sugababes album. That fact will haunt me for the rest of my days. I think I'm going to go listen to some death metal to cheer myself up.

Comments

Shooting the Enterprise

I was recently asked if I could help out providing an image for a magazine article about stress management. For reasons as yet undiscovered the requested image would be of the USS Enterprise flying through a storm in space. Unfortunately I didn't have a lot of time (just a couple of hours), but I did have a very nice model of the Enterprise D I could use to build the image around. Thinking fast, I rigged up a rather slapdash rig consisting of a black reflector backdrop, an umbrella and stand from which dangled the model by a thread, and a couple of strobes. One light above, diffused, to provide the key light, and another, reflected and lower power, to fill some of the very dark shadows. It ended up all looking something like this: Using a fast shutter, f/16 and cunning flash positioning I managed to keep the background black and give the model suitably textured lighting so it didn't have that flat, uniform, shadowless appearance of, well, a model. The narrow aperture obv

Fairy Lights

Street lights at night can be very pretty. For someone who lives close to the centre of a large city, skirting round the edge of the town centre can provide a host of beautiful views at night. One advantage to using a wide open lens when taking these pictures is the capture of bokeh, or creative blur. An extreme example is shown to your right; a mass of coloured circles that roughly represent the city they are part of. A more subtle example, of course, is in the picture of the day at the top of this post. The lights cluster around the top of the leaves like fireflies, obviously part of a cityscape but at the same time abstract. The extreme out of focus image is a blurred version of the picture on the left. A view over Sheffield from Pitsmoor, looking up Netherthorpe Road and up to the university. Even when the buildings are focussed (roughly; I'm still practicing) the lights take on the shape of the lens's aperture. I try to incorporate some foreground focus wh

Another canal walk

The sun has started being a little more present lately, so some mornings are actually quite pleasant. On one such morning I decided to have a wander up the canal. The clouds made everything look a bit Toy Story, and the low sun gave a lovely light and contrast to everything else. Of course, it wasn't sunny everywhere. But even in the darker places, such as right underneath Leeds railway station, the sun had a go at peeking in.

Lazy Robot

Search This Blog