What has been exciting about Parliament this week has been as much to do with how the debate was conducted as with the subject. Freed from the rigidity of the party system, politicians (with notable exceptions) were revealed to be more thoughtful, intelligent human beings than anyone accustomed to watching question time had realised. Fatuous name-calling and childish arguing gave way to heartfelt and thoughtful contributions. Were this the usual way of conducting parliamentary business, Australians would be less contemptuous of their elected representatives and politicians might be more attuned to the interests of their constituents rather than restricted by narrow political allegiances.

Later this year, consumers will be able to walk into a store, pick individual tracks — and video clips — from a vast database of music, and make their own compilation CD.

The boxes are to be rolled out to Sanity, HMV and Virgin (all same company in Australia) stores in Melbourne in the next half-year.

For a brief microsecond I thought this might be a good idea as my first assumption was that the tracks would be burnt from high-quality uncompressed WAV files. However, I'm stupid.

Of course it's just a stand alone version of Destra Music (or iTunes or whatever) and so tracks will be purchased and burnt in highly compressed formats (most likely with water marks and DRM).

Personally I think the kiosks should come with very large warning signs that indicate the quality of the music being purchased from the box is much lower than the CDs just behind them on the shelves.

Now a kiosk that burnt single tracks in an uncompressed format for $1.50ish a track I might actually use.