Buzz Out Loud 777: Eight-letter word for fail: Scrabble

On today's show, we discover that it's hard to stand out in an orgy, only about a quarter of things Molly says are words, and EA poops all over you. That's just the kind of show we have when Rafe Needleman fills in for Tom.

EPISODE 777/b>

Happy birthday, NASA!
http://science.slashdot.org/science/08/07/29/2120225.shtml

EA: Hack took Facebook Scrabble down
http://news.cnet.com/8301-13577_3-10002363-36.html

Garmin delays Nuvifone
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB121742654018296961.html

Dell tests player to renew iPod battle
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB121738346889295815.html
http://news.cnet.com/8301-17938_105-10002382-1.html

DNS hacker victim of his own creation
http://it.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/07/30/1242229
http://www.networkworld.com/news/2008/073008-dns-attack-writer-a-victim.html

‘Pentagon hacker’ loses extradition appeal
http://www.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/europe/07/30/uk.hacker.ap/index.html
http://www.crn.com/security/209900321

IOC admits Internet censorship deal with China
http://yro.slashdot.org/yro/08/07/30/1551211.shtml
http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-10002097-93.html

Apple says MobileMe is fixed! Seriously! Go try it!
http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,1895,2326792,00.asp

Amazon unveils online payment service
http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-10002259-93.html

Face swapper software protects privacy
http://www.boingboing.net/2008/07/29/face-swapper-softwar.html

VOICE MAIL:
Anon:
Cops on cell phones!

E-MAIL:

Dear Buzzcrew,

Don’t you hate it when people make inaccurate statements like Sen.Stevens calling the Internet a series of tubes or like when you demonstrate you entire lack of political knowledge when you say he is the head of the Commerce Committee which he in point of fact hasn’t been since January 2007.

But then why let the truth stand in the way of a good story,

Thomas

Dear Buzz Crew

You mentioned on episode 776 the “Mojave experiment”, where Windows Vista was disguised as “Mojave” to make people see past the prejudice that vista faces, and how that doing this led to hugely increased customer satisfaction and popularity. This begs the question, why bother with the “Hey Look, Vista’s all right when it’s not called Vista” marketing campaign, and just not call it Vista. Just make up a cause for a new OS, and then release “Mojave”. Problem solved, and Mojave starts working for Microsoft and Vista is relegated to the nether land of Microsoft Bob and the infuriating paper clip.

Just a thought, keep up the great show

Techpriest

Hey guys,

I can’t believe you didn’t think of this but:

Search engines “help” you find something--a synonym for help is “aid”

Cuil-Aid!!!!

You’ll tell your friends to get some Cuil-Aid, and then have to explain that you don’t want them to grab a sugary drink, but that you want them to look something up.

Keep up the most excellent work!

Respectfully,

Chad

Dear Tom, Molly and Jason,

In your discussion of the new Cuil search engine there was one point you missed, namely its privacy policy. To quote from the site: “…our privacy policy is very simple: when you search with Cuil, we do not collect any personally identifiable information, period.”

As privacy is an increasingly important issue to web users, I’d suggest that this will be highly attractive to many people, especially given the concerns in this area that surround the current search imperator Google. Could Cuil’s privacy pledge be the wedge that prises apart Google’s search monopoly and frees us from the Black Iron Prison of cybersurveillance?

Your show is the tops for tech, and always entertaining. Keep up the consistently engaging (OK, I’ll say it, GOOD) work.

Best regards,

Andrew

Hello buzz crew,

I think the Olympics won’t be a problem for the IT department, because all the competitions will be at night in the U.S. So pretty much nobody will be working by that hour. If everyone gets to see the Olympics it would still be a problem, but for the HR department. People are supposed to sleep at night!

Here in Brazil, back in 2006 during the world cup, what i thought would be a joke worked pretty well: our major TV broadcaster streamed live all the world cup games in the Internet, and pretty much every place where I know there were computers, there were people watching that. There were no network problems because it was so popular, that usually people left one computer per room dedicated for streaming that video in full screen, which looked like as there was an actual television there. It was a total success in every office.

And guys, who are you fooling? People watch YouTube the whole day, and there has never been a problem before

Alexandre