Buzz Out Loud 950: Hackers brave bats and dragons

AT&T had an outage yesterday morning in the bay area due to fiber-optical cables being cut. This didn't just affect landlines, but cell phones as well. Rafe describes the dangers hackers would face in trying to cut those cables. We also estimate the distance to New York as 12 worms, and give a plus-five Holy Avenger sword salute to Dave Arneson.

EPISODE 950

AT&T was vandalized in the Bay Area?
http://www.att.com/gen/press-room?pid=4800&cdvn=news&newsarticleid=26715

AT&T uses Twitter during service outage
http://news.cnet.com/8301-1035_3-10216712-94.html
http://news.cnet.com/8301-1035_3-10216939-94.html

Good Friday via Twitter
http://news.cnet.com/8301-13577_3-10217075-36.html?tag=mncol;title

Yelp lets business owners respond now
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/10/technology/internet/10yelp.html?partner=rss&emc=rss
http://news.cnet.com/8301-17939_109-10216382-2.html

Time Warner Cable lays out broadband capping plans, says $150 for “unlimited” use
http://www.engadget.com/2009/04/10/time-warner-cable-lays-out-broadband-capping-plans-says-150-fo/

Amazon to sell Xbox Live games
http://www.engadget.com/2009/04/08/amazon-now-selling-xbox-live-arcade-games/

Bluetooth 3.0 prepped for launch on April 21
http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/news/2009/04/bluetooth-30-prepped-for-launch-on-april-21.ars

Virgin $50 unlimited plan, and new plan for the laid off
http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2344760,00.asp?kc=PCRSS03069TX1K0001121

Cold, dead hand of Frank Herbert reaches up from grave, stabs Dune Second Life megafans in the back
http://www.boingboing.net/2009/04/09/cold-dead-hand-of-fr.html

Mixed answers to “Is it OK for a Library to lend a Kindle?”
http://www.libraryjournal.com/article/CA6649814.html&

Woman watches home burglarized on Netcam, vectors the cops in FTW!
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21134540/vp/30151019#30151019

Researchers build ‘flying’ micro-robot
http://news.cnet.com/8301-11386_3-10216870-76.html

Researcher resurrects the first computer
http://developers.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=09/04/10/1425220&from=rss

RIP Dave Arneson, 1947-2009
http://www.boingboing.net/2009/04/09/rip-dave-arneson-194.html

VOICEMAIL
Josh in Salt Lake City
Gigabit not Gigabyte

Bill
A question for the author’s guild

E-MAIL
Hello Buzzcrew +1,

I have a bit of a well actually for you. In episode 945 Rafe and Tom mentioned that monkeys and dogs can’t do calculus. Well actually, a math professor from a college near my hometown has published several papers about his corgi’s ability to perform calculus on the fly.

An article about the duo can be found here: http://www.sciencenews.org/view/generic/id/7051/title/Calculating_Dogs

And if you really want details, one of the papers can be found here: http://www.maa.org/features/elvisdog.pdf

Love the show,
-Jake (the computer science student)

**********

http://www.snopes.com/science/lightbulb.asp

hi bol’rs - just wanted to pass this along for natalie - the oldest
working light bulb is in a firehouse in california and has been on
since 1901. - http://www.centennialbulb.org/index.htm

andy b
video geek & fountain of useless knowledge
http://www.rwvc.tv

**********

Tom, Natali, Jason and guest,

In episode 949 you read an email were the user said they would need to downgrade to Windows XP in order to run old programs. Windows Vista (and I expect Windows 7) support a compatibility mode for previous versions of Windows:

Right mouse click on the "exe" file for the program.

Select Properties.

Click on the "Compatibility" tab.

Check the box "Run this program in compatibility mode for:"

From the pull down menu select the Windows version you wish to run in. Options include:
Server 3003
XP
2000
NT 4.0
98/ME
Windows 95

Yes you can run in Windows Frakkin 95 mode. Does Apple offer this level of backwards compatibility, I doubt it. Byte me Apple.

Love the show,

RJ

**********

Hi BOL Crew(of the day),

I am happy to bring news of a game company that seems to finally have the right idea about DRM.

Stardock recently sent me an email/spam that was trying to sell me the stand alone expansion to Company of Heroes, called Tales of Valor.

They offer it through “Impulse” which is similar to “Steam” for downloading game titles instead of buying off of the shelf.

The BIG news is that they claim that their new technology will Only limit the game to the person and you can install it on any number of machines!
They call it Goo or Game Object Obfuscation technology. It will keep the game up to date and associates the game with the person rather than the machine!!!

Wow, if it actually works.. THEY GOT IT RIGHT!
I felt obligated to write this email to you because of the shared angst about game DRM that I share with you all.

Kudos To Stardock.

Love the Show.
Barry in Napa.