Buzz Out Loud 747: Get Firefox (if you can)

It's Firefox Download Day! In bummer news, Mozilla's site was down by at least 10:12 a.m. (about the time we started our show). So, that's a bad start, then. In other news, AT&T customers using phones other than iPhone will, indeed, have to pay full price for a new iPhone. That's just how the cell phone world works. And the blogosphere takes a legitimately outrageous situation and wildly exaggerates the outrageousness by repeating old information over and over. Sigh.
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EPISODE 747

Firefox Download Day To Start At 10 a.m. PT
http://tech.slashdot.org/tech/08/06/17/1250229.shtml
http://www.cnet.com/firefox-3/

Survey: Young people happy to pay for music--on their terms
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20080616-survey-young-adults-willing-to-pay-for-musicon-their-terms.html

Associated Press expects you to pay to license 5-word quotations (and reserves the right to terminate your license)
http://www.boingboing.net/2008/06/17/associated-press-exp.html

Ineligible AT&T customers need to pay full price for iPhone 3G
http://gizmodo.com/5016912/ineligible-att-customers-need-to-pay-full-price-for-iphone-3g

Apple settles suit over iPhone visual voice mail
http://news.cnet.com/8301-13579_3-9969909-37.html

Cease-and-desist notices sent to Internet DNA testing centers
http://news.cnet.com/8301-10784_3-9970396-7.html

Support grows for universal power adapter (Thanks royterp!)
http://www.infoworld.com/archives/emailPrint.jsp?R=printThis&A=/article/08/06/16/Support_grows_for_universal_power_adapter_1.html
http://www.pcworld.com/businesscenter/article/147086/support_grows_for_universal_power_adapter.html

Spore Creature Creator goes live
http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2320409,00.asp

Road rage linked to automobile bumper stickers
http://tech.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/06/17/0148238

VOICE MAIL

Doug DMCA Canada
About the DMCA…. In Canada.

Jeremy
Flash problems… Solution?

E-MAIL

Hey JaMoTo,

Simon Phipps, Sun Microsystems open-source guy, took a picture of the Sydney Opera House. He then tried to enter his photo into his portfolio at istockphoto.com. However, his photo was rejected as the opera house claims all copyrights on all images of the building.

He is trying to bring attention to this issue by entering his photo into a contest. Go to his Flickr page for details, and a link to the contest if you want to vote.

Flickr Page:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/webmink/480398424

Twitter Page:
http://twitter.com/webmink

–kevin

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Hi Buzzers. I just listened to the joint rant on Ep. 746 about whether AT&T’s iPhone plans are unlimited, although they charge different rates for personal and business accounts. First, let me point out that they’ve done this with other smartphone users for some time. I don’t get my corporate e-mail on my personal BlackBerry because it’s not worth the extra $10 to me. Also, the entire crux of your objections is based on speculation that a personal user would be limited or forced into a business plan based on the amount of data that they use. Can you cite any document that AT&T plans to do this or point to any customers who have been forced to a business plan based on their data usage? The only “limit” that I’ve seen with these plans is not based on data usage but rather on using a specific application, Exchange. There is no evidence that the amount of data a personal user can consume is any more limited than a business user. Couldn’t part of that $10 difference be a licensing fee to Microsoft for providing Exchange connectivity or the cost of any additional infrastructure needed to support Exchange? Until someone can provide evidence that a personal plan user is allowed to consume less data than a business plan user, it is perfectly reasonable for both plans to be called “unlimited.” iPhone users, welcome to the world of us “average” smartphone users.

--Jeff, The Supercomputer Guy

---

Just threw together two quick Unmnemonic devices for the “new” plant list. Hope you like them. DOWN WITH PLUTOIDS!!!

#1)
Molly
Very
Excitedly
Mauled
Jason to
Steal the
Unused
Nokia N95

#2)
Microsoft
Vista
Executed
Malicous
Java
So
Um
Noooooooooooooooooooooooo

--Matt S
Baltimore, Md.

P.S. - [monotone voice] Love the show. [/monotone voice]

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Hi Guys,

The U.K. military satellites known as Skynet that you discussed on ep. 745 is actually the fifth version of Skynet used by the U.K. military. The original Skynet was deployed in 1969, long before the Terminator. Maybe the guys who wrote the Terminator stole the name from the U.K. military and not the other way around.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skynet_(satellites)

Kind regards,

--Andrew.

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You have talked about the upcoming Firefox 3 download event in a couple of previous episodes. But so far I haven’t heard anyone remind you that Microsoft came up with this idea years ago. I still have the T-shirt from Midnight Madness, August 13, 1996, when we waited by our computers until 12 a.m. to download Internet Explorer (some 1,000,000 downloads if I remember correctly). Now that makes me “really” old!
--Pauline
Phoenix, Ariz.