Had to look that up,

> A Buffer is similar to an array of integers but corresponds to a raw memory allocation outside the V8 heap. http://nodejs.org/docs/v0.3.1/api/buffers.html

Are streams limited to binary buffers, or may they also emit JavaScript objects or primitives? Binary may be great for low-level I/O streams, but I'd expect more nuanced events for high-level streams.