Share and share alike
Yeah I'm going to talk about the topic which everyone hates. File Sharing, you're either on the one side of the fence "Things should be free" or on the other "No they shouldn't". I was on the first side until I sat down and thought about it "Lets see, its not mine.. The artists say I'm not supposed to have it.. I'm in the wrong". No-one can debate the issue because there's nothing morally correct about it, the one situation in which I would consent to downloading music is on the basis that "I will without doubt pay for this at a later time in life" call me a bit sure of myself but I know I'll be able to buy anything I might download and even then I still don't because my mates would try and throw all my "Stealing is wrong" stuff back at me =]. Plus the complete and utter pantsness of Mac file sharing clients means I couldn't anyway.
Until now.. this interesting iTunes plug in called iCommune was released. One of the coolest things about using a mac is that there are loads of people out there making your experience better by writing nice code. There is a huge irony in the comparative sizes of the Windows and Mac user base and how much the users are willing to put back into the community. 1 Week after iTunes3's new API hits the downloads (nearly all of Apples stuff is open source nowadays - suck it Mr. Bill "Open source is evil communist satanism" Gates) we have a plug in which simply rocks! It takes apple's rendevous instant networking stuff and allows you to share music within iTunes now I'm sorry but since:
a) iTunes is the best Music playback/organization application in the world
b) It syncs automatically with Kevin my iPod
and c) I'm soon to have broadband installed
- it all seems like an elaborate plan to get me to switch to the other side of the fence. Now I'm actually going to use it because it lets you stream off your music library which rocks but could you imagine how cool it would be to have everyone's music in a package which syncs with your iPod? I mean I could have an album straight onto my iPod in doubletime!
Anyhow Apple has pulled iCommune down so I guess its off to the mirror sites if you want some of that p2p goodness.
There is another view that apple is actually pulling it down because it might interfere with its own music sharing iTunes functionality (accross a rendevous network) which does seem to fit as being able to dynamically share around your Mp3's on a network using Rendevous infrastructure is a very cool Digital Lifestyle -type thing.
Anyhow I have 5gigs of all legal music on my iPod apart from 1 track and 1 album
Track: Its going down
Album: System of a Down - Toxicity
and I intend to rectify this situation next time I come within proximity of a record store. There you go Ben, I'm not a hypocrite =] Hehe
Pooch Cafe
I already mentioned this great strip before in one of my posts probably over the new year but I just received feedback from Paul Gillingham who writes the strip! Woo! I'm so happy! Apparently there's a pooch cafe collection coming out in March so if your scratching your head Acquaint yourself with one of the most intelligent comic strips out there =] I guarantee you'll love it - they are dogs which despite their free-will are constantly pulled by their nature to do dog like things. Its superb because most other comic animals are just mini-humans but these guys don't know why they do dog stuff other than because they just do, ultimately Poncho is a dog, and nothing he can do can change that fact. Its glorious.
More later!
John
Posted by John Swaine at January 20, 2003 01:26 PM