the emergence of CD-R copying amongst normal people: A previous generation of computer junkies called it sneakernet. Rather than relying on the slow, buggy network connections of the day, we hand-carried tapes and floppies to one another’s mainframes. Now, sneakernet is in the schoolyard, bringing reluctant musicians to fans royalty-free, without the Net’s assistance.
I think the author doesn't realise that the reason why people used the sneakernet was because it was easier. So, even if you network interface is the bees' knees, it's still easier to put a bunch of MP3s onto a CD for a mate, than require them to sign up to your network administration thingy where they can download all the MP3s they want.
The (CD-RW/DVD-ROM/DVD-RW/I don't know what other buzzwords) drive in my machine rips CDs at something like 30x speed, and that's at the highest quality it knows about (192 bps and all the trimmings). I can read new web pages while it rips Mark Knopfler, and not know that it was doing that. When it comes to burning a new CD, I can tell it to burn close to 9 hours of stuff, in MP3 format, and it takes it barely half an hour (I think - I don't remember how long it took in actuality).
The major problem, of course, is that it takes far longer than that for the human ear to listen to all these MP3s. Josh, Mike, I'm sorry, but I haven't listened to all of your stuff yet - not surprisingly, as I have something like 3-4 CDs' worth of music, in MP3 format, which is *huge*. Stuart has ambitious plans about making your MP3 player an automatic taste arbitrator and mixer extraordinaire - kudos to him if he manages it.
I'm running out of steam here - any suggestions?
