Wasting Bandwidth

I hope I'm not wasting bandwidth here. I probably am. That sounds funny, to waste bandwidth. Are we supposed to be saving it for future generations? Or is your use of bandwidth more important than someone else's?

I haven't heard that phrase for quite a while. But I remember a few years ago it was like everyday, someone at a blog, message board, IRC, somewhere ... worrying themselves gray over the idea that someone somewhere might be "wasting bandwidth."

They were the Bandwidth Puritans, scared to death that someone might be having a good time with some illicit bandwidth, maybe driving it over state lines to get their jollies.

Today I was looking at some comments at Huffington Post and someone, who apparently disapproved of the entertainment-nature of a particular story (they get that at Huff Post a lot, for some reason, people complaining that certain stories aren't serious enough to post), fretted that it was wasting "storage space." Storage space? What do you care? Isn't memory cheap? Is this a person who holds his/her breath 20 seconds out of every minute so he/she doesn't waste air? It's funny.

So here I am, frolicking around with someone's else's bandwidth. La la la la. Using it up like the Prodigal Son, wasting it, flushing it down the pot!