Ahhh! Propaganda!

I can't believe how sublime propaganda is nowadays. Check out this article on The Star Online: Stored digital images won't last forever. Their links won't last forever as well so I'll give a brief summary:

The Federation of Commercial Photographic Society is advising digital camera users to print their photos so they could preserve them for years to come. In fact, they are "currently running a campaign to create awareness on the risk of storing digital images on recordable disks and advising consumers on the importance of printing their photos."

Can you imagine that? The most astonishing thing was said by their secretary-general Jeffrey Sek:

“One customer stored all digital images of her two-year-old child since his birth in a compact disc without making any prints. When her computer was infected, she lost everything,” he told a press conference organised by MCA Public Service and Complaints Department head Datuk Michael Chong.

And I can't believe they managed to convince Datuk Michael Chong to be a part of this. I don't blame him - he's not the most tech savvy fella after all.

Going back to what Jeffrey said, I only have one reply: "Huh?"

I don't understand how a virus infection is able to destroy all pictures in a CD. CDs are solid state storage, and if she's using CD-R (which she probably is) then there is no way to delete what is already on the disc. Yes, it's possible that the CD got scratched or spoiled. But the fact that they used a virus infection to scare people is what made me realize this is but a ploy. A ploy to get you to print all your pictures via their society's members (at 60 cents per 4R copy).

In a way, I don't blame them. They are the Federation of Commercial Photographic Society, after all.

Tomorrow: Tips on taking care of photos you already burned on a CD.