Weekly Observations: 2012 Weeks 10 and 11
Wow, it’s hard to believe that we’re already 11 weeks into 2012. In any case, some of my recent musical ponderings are below.
The interview on NPR with rapper K’naan about his life in Mogadishu, Somalia was interesting. It was especially enlightening to learn of his experiences with grenades in the school yard. Its a completely different experience than many of his listeners have had, and it makes me wonder if we can grasp the full meaning of his music because of this disconnect.
Also, I read an article about how several large Internet service providers are planning to throttle bandwidth on accounts who are downloading pirated media. I’m not sure how they are going to tell though; many pirated files are transmitted through torrents which distribute data. Putting the packets back together in order without getting other packets mixed in would be a challenge and you would practically need the whole file to tell if it contained copyrighted media (many formats will not play if the file is not whole). This sounds like an excuse for the ISPs to limit bandwidth to competitors’ sites, which they have claimed that they have wanted to do for several years.