UGGGH! I am exhausted! Maybe it’s me staying up too late, maybe it’s working on a project all morning only to have it not work out. A nap would do me good, maybe after writing this post I will have a nap.
Last night I saw a documentary on Napster, called Downloaded. (It’s on Netflix if you are interested.) It seems that the way we buy music today was influenced by Napster. The ease of typing the name of your favorite band and being able to buy every album by that artist was birthed in that original peer to peer network. What I found astounding was that Napster was trying to take their platform and make it profitable, which means selling the music, and thus paying the record companies. but instead of working with Napster and finding a way for everyone to make money, they tried to kill the technology. (Which worked out well for them right limewire?)
I guess the next jump in the p2p, or peer to peer, network game was torrents, of which there are a multitude of programs that work on the torrent network. On Napster you needed to use the Napster program to access the Napster network, by contrast there are a multitude of programs that allow you to access the Torrent network. Another improvement over that original p2p network is that on Napster you where limited not only by your download speed, but also by the file host’s upload speed. Torrents have done away with the host bottleneck. Everyone with the same torrent file can have pieces of the file uploaded to be reassembled at the reception end.
Argh, my ineptitude at teaching is coming through. Let’s try this again.
If the music file being downloaded is like a book, and each chapter needs to be retrieved and delivered separately. Now if I have the book I can deliver the whole book, but it’s going to take time for me to travel to you with all three chapters, because I need to go back and pick up the next chapter and bring it back to you. But if I, your dad and your sister all have the same book I can bring you the first chapter, your dad the second and your sister the third and as long as your door is big enough for all three of us to show up at the same time. You get the book faster. That’s a torrent, if you where only getting the book from me, that’s Napster/LimeWire.
And that ladies and gentlemen is your Tech lesson for the day. If you want me to explain Tech more let me know and I will do my best, even if it doesn’t make sense. Oh, and remember…
ROCK ON internet ROCK ON!
I loved your “aarrggg” moment about your teaching ‘ineptitude’! Made me laugh right out loud because I was just thinking how I had no idea what you’d just said. I was just thinking how this post is really aimed at people who have a good background vocabulary and understanding of techie stuff already. And then you had your moment. I laughed. And your book explanation totally made sense because I am such a book person! 😀