It's been a long time

It's been a long time since I last published a blog. My last post probably dates back closer to the last quarter of 2002.

A staggering amount of changes has happened in the world since then. Our country is now in the middle (or perhaps, some would think optimistically towards the end) of a baffling & almost meaningless war. The web had somehow grown up into "2.0" without my realization, even more ironic given that I have been doing nothing but the web since college. The mass public has moved into LCD panels despite the obvious performance issues that still plague them (and will never be solved), and thus, so did I.

Yet it's also amazing how much of the world only seemed to move forward. Every time I see a journalist talk about the usability & greatness of RSS, I think about PointCast. Much of what RSS is now, came from what "push technology" promised. Now the only remain traces of "push" resides in Windows Update, whose insistency is not entirely appreciated by all.

Five years ago, I would also assume that by now, the music industry would've wised up and somehow embraced digital music distribution. Sure, iTunes Music Store has been an astounding success in its own right, but it is nowhere near taking over the traditional music sale business. What boggles my mind even more is that the music industry has still yet to accept digital format fully, and is still consistently fighting & negotiating over the distribution model. Take Microsoft's Zune for example, which actually pays a royalty fee to Universal for every unit sold. Or that fact that Canada still charges a tax for recordable CD's. I would expect by now, not only the music industry would embrace digital format (I mean, think about it, cutting out the middle man means more profit, right?), but they would offer high quality, lossless codecs. Phish has offered lossless recordings of their concerts for years!

Then again, to put everything into perspective... I've gone through two more jobs in these past five years, but I still live at the same place. So who am I to judge? :)