Wednesday already, and I’ve got a short week. Doing a half-day on Thursday and taking all of Friday off to attend Kristi & Erik’s wedding down south. I can’t wait… it’s almost like my mini-Friday right now. I’m already zoning out just thinking about it. Before my thoughts turn exclusively to camping and drinking and socializing… I better write something.
It’s amazing how far stealing music has come since the days when I was first introduced to it. I can remember when a buddy of mine mentioned Napster to me on campus one day. I went home, downloaded and installed it, and was blown away. I was late to the game, so the network was already populated with millions and millions of traders hosting everything, and I do mean everything, a body could want. The only problem for me: I was still on dialup at the time. I can remember my formula: on a good day with a good connection, you planned for 10-15min per song. I can remember the day that the Pumpkins’ new album, Machina, leaked – long prior to it’s street-date. I was actually online as the songs started getting propagated. I would refresh my search every few minutes and the next track on the album would show up, I’d add it to my download queue and wait for the next one to come online. That night I stayed up all night long. Literally started downloading at 10pm and didn’t finish until near 4am. To fill the time while songs downloaded, I’d listen to what I already had. Think about that, an entire evening spent online stealing songs bit-by-painfully-slow-bit.
Today, things are so much better. While the P2P situation is no longer as easy, and much more risky – alternate looting-locales are flourishing in the high-speed age. These days, I wouldn’t use a P2P app to download tunes even if you paid me. Sure the odds are low, but I don’t want to be the unlucky one who’s the target of some RIAA lawsuit. I don’t even like using BitTorrent for legit downloading. But, despite the grim P2P landscape – music is easier to get than ever. And, it’s so much faster. Nowadays, I can download and entire album in just a couple minutes. In fact, the situation is such that you can simply download entire albums just to “check them out.” What a luxury! I would’ve killed for that kind of speed back in college. And believe it or not, even without P2P – everything you could ever want is still out there somewhere. Yes, I do believe that one day my conscience will get to me and I’ll start paying to download music (actually, I do pay now – but I pay for the ability to grab stuff illegally, not the music itself). I don’t think I’ll mind paying for music, I’ve always been willing to pay for it considering how much enjoyment I derive from it. But for now, while my conscious is still undecided, I’m building up my collection as best I can.
I don’t think I’ve mentioned it yet, but my next trip to beautiful Taipei is looming not far in the distance. I’ll be gone the 2nd week of September – doing the same conference I’ve done several times before. As I’ve said several times before, I love Taiwan, and always look forward to going. I guess that’s all I had to say about that.
And, I guess that’s all I had to say period. Goodnight.
Also written on this day...
- feelings - 2021
- carnis resurrectionem - fiat vita - 2011
- grandkid-a-palooza - 2010
- same old stuff - 2009
- hairyguy30 - 2006
- wayne presents - 2004