Perversity

Some uses of computers are perverse.  Take listening to a local classical music broadcast radio station's current broadcast by streaming audio. 

Good quality stereo needs bandwidth around 96 to 128kbps.  A typical T1 may provide about 1.28Mbps out of a nominal 1.5: i.e., about 1280kbps. So one listener may take one tenth of that bandwidth.  That's fine, in a one-person or four-person firm or at home.  But if forty lawyers and their staff must share the connection?  Then it may not be fine.   

There are situations for which streaming audio makes great sense.  But they all involve an absence of a current local radio broadcast, such as listening to a recording made yesterday or last year, such as of a past CLE; or listening to a current broadcast being made hundreds or thousands of miles away, outside radio range.  But for a local, current broadcast?  That's unnecessary and inefficient for anyone, and potentially inequitable when a connection is shared.  In short, it's perverse.  Just because one can do something some way doesn't mean it's a sensible way to do it.

I have no gripe with streaming audio itself. It's wonderful: for non-local and non-current material, such as past CLEs or programs miles away.  The gripe is larger: not using tools matched to the job, and wasting resources.  Excel makes no sense as a word processor; tabs and auto-wrap work better than spaces and hard returns; and there's no reason to send a 750kB PDF by email when a 4kB text file will do, with a link to the PDF if it really adds anything.