Wednesday, January 23, 2008

Intoxicated by the Internet, Sleep

It's 2 AM and I'm completely awake and aware and alert, along with other adjectives that begin with the letter 'a'. I stayed up far too late last night, but I slept a good 8 hours, but even then around 10 PM today I felt like 650000397 pounds of fatigue fall on me and I took a 1 hour nap. Then I realized I should go to bed, but that stopped working. So it's 2 AM and I'm full of energy and have no intention of going to bed anytime soon.
This means time wasted on the Internet. Somebody should do a study on time wasted on the Internet. I suppose the only time wasted more than time on the Internet is time studying the wasting of time on the Internet.
Anyway, so I'm watching random videos dispersed throughout the Internet; a trailer for a tongue-in-cheek gamer geek game (with other appositives that begin with the letter 'g'), poorly-recorded live a cappella performances, the likes. What's really pissing me off is this whole idea of "buffering."
The idea behind buffering, as far as I understand it, is that you download enough of the video such that you can watch the whole thing seamlessly while the last portions of the video are being downloaded in your digital background. Okay, so that makes sense. Good idea. So buffering is at 54%, and suddenly it drops...to 36%. 33%. This, to me, looks like the opposite of progress. Is the Internet stealing my download back? I think what's actually happening is that the buffering is being buffered. The percentage buffered is based on a prediction of how fast your connection is, and as that changes, they have to change their prediction. So how much buffering is really going on here? How deep is this mammoth digital construction, this Tower of Babel of buffering? How much bandwidth, worldwide, is being wasted on re-predicting the buffer rate of a youtube video at the 17th level of buffering? This is what some call a ridiculous Russian doll situation.
Another thing. I came across a video that's alleged to contain Mature Content. Thank goodness I was Warned! This warning also comes with a Security Measure. They ask you to put your birthdate in so they can tell if you're Old Enough To Watch It. Now stop me if I'm a blathering idiot, but are perverted 13 year old kids going to be stopped by something like that? "My birthday, huh? Shoot. I'm going to have to put my real birthday in and then they'll know that I'm not 21. This looks like the End Of The Line. Back to Cartoon Network." Maybe Youtube has a widespread security network that actually knows how old people are, and when they lie to see a Mature Video, SWAT teams crash into their houses and apprehend the lying sacks (also known as "terrorists of truth" ) and send them to Guantanamo. Otherwise, I don't see the point of a scroll-bar that gives you the option of saying you're anywhere between 90 and 2 years old.
I feel like some deep, significant epiphany can happen to me this late at night. Probably dangerous. It's about time to force myself to sleep.

2 comments:

tawna said...

I am thoroughly enjoying the official blog of awesomeness.

Remember that fabulous (and yet awful)(or awfully fabulous..or fabulously awful) movie with the giant robots with laser shooting eyes and like a rocket port inside one of them that we all went to? With Martinellis which was so subtley dropped and clanked down the floor? and our milk gallon and cookies? Man! Those were some good times. :)

Anonymous said...

I just buffered your comment space.