Buzz Out Loud Podcast

Episode 876

In these troubled times, RIAA can’t afford to sue you
http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-10127003-93.html
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122966038836021137.html
http://www.paidcontent.org/entry/419-recording-industry-moves-away-from-lawsuits-enlists-isps-in-piracy-figh/

Universal Music seeing ‘tens of millions’ from YouTube
http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-10126439-93.html

Silent protest planned for Jobs-less keynote,
http://arstechnica.com/journals/apple.ars/2008/12/19/silent-protest-planned-for-jobs-less-keynote

Gates Foundation to help libraries be better free ‘net cafes
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20081218-gates-foundation-to-help-libraries-be-better-free-net-cafes.html

Number of landline-free households up 10 percent in U.S.
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20081218-number-of-landline-free-households-up-10-in-us.html

LCD TV revenues to dip for first time ever
http://news.cnet.com/8301-1001_3-10126273-92.html

Toshiba to OEM laptops with OpenSolaris
http://hardware.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08%2F12%2F19%2F1332225&from=rss

NPR now lets you roll your own podcast feed
http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/npr_now_lets_you_roll_your_own_podcasts.php

Samsung Electronics will launch Google phone in Q2
http://english.etnews.co.kr/news/detail.html?id=200812190010

Trek creator’s widow dies aged 76
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/7791210.stm

Voice mail

Oaf-er? SoCal - Nova? Really Palm?
DEBUNKED! http://www.snopes.com/business/misxlate/nova.asp

Chris the Podcaster - Don’t hire podcaster?!!!! Really?

Anonymous - Monstrous problem

E-mail
Happy Holidays, Buzz-folk!

It may seem like $6 million is a lot to pay to have a space shuttle delivered (BOL 875), until you realize that $2.5 million is just for the bubble wrap! Not to mention all the !$&#^*# foam peanuts…

LTS/KUTGW!

Regards,
Steve L.
South Jersey

**********

I think buying the space shuttle is a great idea! I want to chip in with $1000 USD, but since i can’t send actual money i figured i should send you $1000 USD in winkeys. I’m sure Oleg Teterin will be more than happy to buy them from us once we raise enough for the shuttle. In theese troubled times i can only afford $1000USD and i dont know how much that is in winkeys so please send the change back….preferably in sets of or :-o. Thank you and Love the show! - HinDRAncE

**********

To the Nearly Omniscient Leaders of the Buzz Army,

I heard your cries of suffering over the way Firefox skips over drop
down lists on the Mac. I too felt this pain in the past, but today I
bring you good news.

For some reason, Apple decided that the default behavior of OS X should
be to only set the focus on lists and text boxes when tabbing through a
screen. They did have the foresight, however, to let users change that
behavior in the “Keyboard and Mouse” preference pane.

Check out this handy blog entry for the full details, and fear no longer
the Firefox:

http://www.howtogeek.com/howto/apple/why-doesnt-tab-work-for-drop-down-controls-in-firefox-on-os-x/

Matt The Java Developer

**********

Hey JaMoToNat,

There's a cool Facebook Group where Aaron Sorkin himself has been answering posts, in an effort to do some background research for his Facebook script. I'm a huge fan of his writing, so it made my day when he posted back. Other actors like Josh Malina and Kim Webster have posted as well.
http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=33807262256

Love the show,

John in San Diego

**********

The hardware website Sharkeyextreme.com does a price check of various computer parts every month, and they just started checking SSD prices.

http://www.sharkyextreme.com/guides/article.php/10704_3787791__6

Long story short: prices vary considerably, this seems to depend on drives which are enterprise vs consumer focused, SLC vs MLC. budget speeds vs higher speed. etc.

Best deal though: OCZ “core V2″ 30gig drive is $70 or 2.33/GB

Worst Deal: Super Talent MasterDrive PX 64 GB goes for $807 or $12.61/GB (though i would assume its Crazy fast though)

check it out

Faiz

Episode 871

Chrome breaks outta beta
http://news.cnet.com/8301-17939_109-10120965-2.html

Nintendo Wii outsells Xbox 360 more than two-to-one
http://www.informationweek.com/news/personal_tech/peripherals/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=212500018&subSection=All+Stories

Sony’s PS3 A sinking ship: Sales plummet (SNE)
http://www.alleyinsider.com/2008/12/sonys-ps3-a-sinking-ship-sales-plummet-sne

Acer Aspire One goes official on AT&T’s 3G network
http://www.engadget.com/2008/12/11/acer-aspire-one-goes-official-on-atandts-3g-network/
http://www.jkontherun.com/2008/12/acers-99-netboo.html

Android susceptible to apps that turn on roaming
http://mobile.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08%2F12%2F12%2F149242
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/12/11/g1_roaming/

Cellphone jammer crammed into key fob, ends texting / talking while driving (thanks, Greg and Michael and Jordan et al)
http://www.engadget.com/2008/12/12/cellphone-jammer-crammed-into-key-fob-ends-texting-talking-wh/

FCC Commissioner blames World of Warcraft addiction for huge college dropout rate
http://www.alleyinsider.com/2008/12/fcc-blames-college-dropout-rate-on-world-of-warcraft-addiction

Five PC power myths debunked
http://weblog.infoworld.com/sustainableit/archives/2008/12/pc_power_manage_1.html

NFL launches “Game Rewind”, every game on-demand in HD with no commercials
http://blog.streamingmedia.com/the_business_of_online_vi/2008/12/nfl-launches-game-rewind-every-game-ondemand-in-hd-with-no-commercials.html

Russian hopes to cash in on
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/7778767.stm

Puppy Cam: Viewed 15 million times, for 773 years
http://www.alleyinsider.com/2008/12/puppy-cam-viewed-15-million-times-for-773-years

E-mail
Hello Buzz crew,

Since you talk about it SO MUCH, yesterday I finally signed up for Twitter . And looking for CNET celebrities to follow, I went to see who does Rafe Needleman follow. Guess who. Yahoo’s top search term for 2008. That’s right, Rafe Needleman follows Britney Spears on Twitter. I just can’t imagine Rafe listening to "Baby One More Time," so, may I ask why?

Love the show.

Regards,
Bernardo

**********

Have you all been following the USPS outages? I am 2 episodes behind (been to cold and rainy to walk my dog), so apologize if you've mentioned.

http://www.usps.com/homearea/onlinesysteminterruptions.htm

Seems it is affecting small business, too:

http://cbs3.com/local/Loca.l.Business.2.884808.html

LTS,

/John in Fairfax

AAAAAND its fixed.
http://news.cnet.com/8301-13578_3-10121982-38.html

**********

Hey JaMoTo / buzz crew +1,

I think the whole ‘In The Wild’ bingo game is great, and I’m just
waiting for someone to run up and snap a picture of me, being that I
bring my Kindle everywhere and I am a ‘Kindle in the wild’.

Anyhow, after yesterday’s show where Molly mentioned a Retro Edition
of BOL Bingo would be fun, I decided she shouldn’t be denied and I
made one up and attached it below. I’ve also uploaded it to my Flickr
account so it can be shared with the citizens of Buzz Town. It can be
found here:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/98865482@N00/3102895508/
I hope you enjoy it. Love the show!

-Aaron the Delorean driver (and Kindle in the wild)
New York

**********

Hi guys!

In the last show, Molly made a comment about how the ustream
video-page “isn’t an RSS-feed”. Well, now it is! I used Yahoo! Pipes
to create an RSS-feed of your live video shows. I wrote it up in the
forums, at:

http://forums.cnet.com/5208-10152_102-0.html?forumID=97&threadID=320004&messageID=2926270&tag=forums06;forum-threads

Hope you like it!

–Oskar

**********

Ahoy Buzz Brigade,
Regarding episode 870 on LTE, y’all made a few missteps about the facts.

First off, the commonly held misconception is that LTE has anything to do with GSM. This is similar to the misconception that WCDMA, more commonly known as the tech behind UMTS, HSDPA, HSUPA, HSPA and HSPA+, has anything to do with GSM. While the tech that preceded GSM for AT&T, TDMA, was the technical precursor to the speaker-buzzing wonder iPhone fans know and love, HSPA (the 3G in the iPhone 3G, etc.) is only GSM’s successor because that was the preferred upgrade path of most GSM carriers. LTE is OFDM-based (as is 802.11g WiFi and…gasp…WiMAX in higher-speed modulations), and is thus another completely different underlying technology with no built-in backward compatibility to either GSM or HSPA. However, the majority of GSM carriers across the world, plus many CDMA carriers (Verizon being one of them) have chosen LTE as their upgrade path. It’s like saying that Mac OS X is a technical upgrade to OS 9…while the same company is going with the precedent as the successor, OS X is based on BSD/Unix while OS 9 is based on some witch’s brew Apple cooked up eons ago.

To be clear, I’m not bashing LTE, though WiMAX is out in the field now whereas LTE has so far not ventured out of lab doors. But to say either technology is the technical successor to either GSM/HSPA or CDMA (which has a direct 3G upgrade, EvDO) would be flawed. Though the same standards board responsible for GSM and WCDMA also dreamed up LTE (3GPP)…

Second and finally, though tests confirm that LTE, at similar range to WiMAX it seems, can provide link speeds comparable to WiFi, you won’t see speeds like those in the wild for quite awhile. The reason is mostly that of backhaul. To provide 100 Mbps to a subscriber, LTE not only needs a liberal swatch of spectrum (something only ClearWire, the WiMax guys, has), but it needs a tower connected to some serious backhaul. To give you an idea of how serious this backhaul would need to be, think about your local cable company’s node, that serves a few hundred people. If your cable operator is Comcast and you just got a speed upgrade, they can offer a total of 114 Mbps over an entire node on the downstream, and 30 Mbps on the upstream. This would be enough for a single LTE customer to get full-speed access. Then again, AT&T U-Verse and Verizon FiOS have the infrastructure for LTE at the node level, but you’re still looking at more bandwidth than anybody is pushing over copper or cable right now. Of course, if Verizon rolls it out in FiOS areas (WiFiOS anyone?) it’ll work on the backhaul side, but…

…you have the problem of femtocells. Anyone using a femtocell for LTE has their internet connection as the bottleneck for service. You can’t get 100 Mbps over a 6 Mbit cable connection. Of course, if Verizon allowed femtocells to hook directly into customers’ FiOS installs, independent of the 10-50 mbps download and 2-20 mbps upload limits on users’ accounts, that’d work. But that’s about the only solution if they want to actually get the speeds they’re boasting about.

Hope this clears things up and love the show!

Ian (the Colorado college student, iansltx on Twitter)

On today's show, Brian Cooley announces that he's made the switch...I mean, the big switch. He bought an iPhone. The world briefly stopped rotating, and when it resumed, we laid down the smack on poor Jerry Yang, the Justice Department, the XM-Sirius merger, and subsequent channel flipping, and some poor guy who thought it was a good idea to call our show. Good times!

EPISODE 855

Yahoo's Jerry Yang to step down, as a search for new CEO commences
http://kara.allthingsd.com/20081117/yahoos-jerry-yang-to-step-down-as-a-search-for-new-ceo-commences/
Jerry Yang's entire memo to his employees on stepping down as CEO
http://kara.allthingsd.com/20081117/jerry-yangs-entire-memo-to-his-employees-on-stepping-down-as-ceo/

Yahoo’s ultimate search: A new CEO
http://tech.yahoo.com/news/cnet/20081118/tc_cnet/8301102331010077393

Intel’s 3.2GHz monster Nehalem roars onto the scene
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20081118-intels-3-2ghz-monster-nehalem-roars-onto-the-scene.html
http://news.cnet.com/8301-17938_105-10098484-1.html

Feds can locate cell phones without telcos
http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/11/17/2218209

Expanding the cloud: Amazon CloudFront
http://www.allthingsdistributed.com/2008/11/amazon_cloudfront.html
http://news.cnet.com/8301-17939_109-10100883-2.html

Sirius, XM subscribers revolt over merger-induced changes
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20081118-sirius-xm-subscribers-revolt-over-merger-induced-changes.html

Magnatune — sharing-friendly, artist-friendly label — goes all-you-can-eat, no-strings-attached
http://www.boingboing.net/2008/11/18/magnatune-sharingfri.html

More “Vista Capable” e-mails unsealed, revealing sassy civil war
http://www.engadget.com/2008/11/18/more-vista-capable-e-mails-unsealed-revealing-sassy-civil-war/
http://news.cnet.com/8301-10805_3-10097511-75.html

Google ‘Voice Search’ hands-on verdict: Awesome
http://news.cnet.com/8301-17939_109-10100719-2.html

District Court halts keylogger sales
http://news.cnet.com/8301-1009_3-10099123-83.html

Facebook app verification fee draws criticism
http://www.pcworld.com/businesscenter/article/154099/facebook_app_verification_fee_draws_criticism.html

VOICEMAIL

Ned from Missouri: I call collusion!

E-MAIL

JaMoToNaCooTonRa...oh forget it.

I think it's funny when everyone laughs at President Bush's old e-mail address. In 2000, wasn't AOL the myspace/facebook of it's time? We've come a long way, to be sure, but that was then.

Cent me, 2 times!

Jason the curator.

**********

I’m surprised that Domino’s Pizza in the U.S. is only now catching up with Domino’s Pizza in the U.K. when it comes to couch potato ordering - Domino’s Pizza has been on Sky’s digital TV platform for the last several years (IIRC, since the beginning 7 years ago). And if you’d rather order your Domino’s Pizza from your laptop instead of your TV then just go to the Dominos Pizza website (http://www.dominos.co.uk/) which has also been running for years.

cheers

Scot in London

**********

On the topic of pollies and tech, and Web 2.0.

The Australian Prime Minister had joined Twitter. http://twitter.com/KevinRuddPM

It would even appear that Kevin himself is putting up some post (I am
skeptical as ever), but some posts are signed off by what would appear
to be his media department.

What is even crazier, they have been replying to questions and
comments. I would NEVER have expected to see this used as a two way
communications method.

LTS.

Cheers, Tim.

**********

I talk to one of the Phoenix mission managers today. I asked, “If by some mirical Phoenix powers back up after the winter would the mission continue?”

Apparently Phoenix cannot analyze any more soil. The equipment they use to test soil samples has exhausted. The camera and weather station may still work, but they would have to request more money from NASA to continue the mission. Then he told me they really don’t think phoenix will come back.

Why name it Phoenix if you’re going to let it die. Here’s keeping hope alive.

Love the Show
Roeurn (Ru-in
not Rerun:)

**********

This is Daniel, tech support from Memphis. Just writing in reference to episode 852 where another Daniel asked "WHY THE HELL WOULD SOMEONE REGISTER HOBOBOOK.COM?" ..sigh. Thank you Tom and Molly for sharing my vision for the online hobo community! You have inspiring me to do something with one of the domains I've been sitting on for a while: Hoboforums.com. Why hoboforums? I honestly can't remember, BUT now I am glad I actually have something to do with this domain! If you are wondering, yes, the site is exactly what you think it is.

Hoboforums, where transients meet technology.

We're still throwing around slogans.

LTS

Daniel Lewis

There's a new smartphone from LG called the Cookie. It has a little more juice than the Palm Centro. But Natali doesn't like juice in her cookies. But that doesn't mean she doesn't like this smart phone. We also cover the new mobile browsers and Apple's attack ads against Microsoft.

Listen now: Download today's podcast

EPISODE 834

Mozilla launches mobile browser
http://virgintech.blogspot.com/2008/10/mozilla-for-mobile-fennec.html
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20081020-hands-on-fennec-alpha-1-puts-firefox-on-your-handheld.html

Opera launches mobile version 9.5 for Symbian
http://www.intomobile.com/2008/10/20/opera-mobile-95-beta-now-available-for-symbian-uiq3-too.html

Delay of 'Little Big Planet' due to Quran
http://news.cnet.com/8301-17938_105-10069678-1.html
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/7679151.stm

Microsoft gets patent for real-time f-bomb bleeping
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20081020-microsoft-gets-patent-for-real-time-f-bomb-bleeping.html

Record label infringes own copyright, site pulled
http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/10/19/2136213

Microsoft aiming to expand touch screen beyond the Surface
http://news.cnet.com/8301-13860_3-10069105-56.html

Apple campaign attacking Microsoft’s ad spending
http://gizmodo.com/5065783/new-im-a-mac-ads-stop-attacking-vista-start-attacking-microsofts-marketing

Lawsuit between Apple and Psystar moves toward settlement
http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/10/19/1511231

Panasonic has the smallest notebook fuel cell
http://www.crunchgear.com/2008/10/20/panasonic-develops-worlds-smallest-notebook-fuel-cell/

LG’s new touch-screen phone called the Cookie
http://gizmodo.com/5065769/lgs-kp500-touchscreen-smartphone-gets-cookie-codename-low-pricing

Number of ET Civilizations in our galaxy is 37,964
http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/10/20/1230207

VOICE MAIL

Anonymous
The most popular video service.

E-MAIL
Morning BOL.

Just a quick note that I thought your listeners would enjoy.

Sony updated the PS3’s firmware last night. It now supports Flash 9.

Which means, I now have Hulu on my TV.

Sweet.

love the show,
Brian in LA

First of all for all those buzzards out there who hate the iGoogle sidebar, I wrote a small script that removes it: http://www.tekpizza.com/2008/10/remove-igoogle-side-bar.html

Paul

Dear JaMoTo,

Congratulations on your nomination in the Technology/Science category of the Podcast Awards. Be sure to get the citizens of BuzzTown to vote for you daily — beginning Oct. 23 — at PodcastAwards.com.

Since you aren’t nominated in my category (comedy), I feel I can wish you the best of luck!

Love the show.

Clinton

After the release of the new Apple notebooks this week and no announcement to support Blu-Ray. It got me thinking….

What would really prevent them from wanting to add support? I reference the “Security Now” podcasts with our friends Leo Laporte and Steve Gibson, specifically episodes 73, 74. They discuss the addition of AACS DRM in in Vista.

In those episodes they go into the hoops and difficulty engineering the high system overhead DRM that Microsoft had to write into Vista to placate the MPAA. Basically, a LOT of code had to be written so that users could not easily copy HDVD (dead), or Blu-Ray content. Not much is said about the amount of processor and system overhead AACS creates but I bet it is a good reason why Vista was slow to market.

My guess is that Steve and the gang at Cupertino really don’t want to completely engineer and insert more buggy, imposed DRM functionality into OS X. It would mean more than just a 10.5.6 update. And a lot of their existing hardware out there would be incompatible.

Love the show!

Randy from Albuquerque, formerly Boise (Go Broncos!), formerly of Missoula (Go Griz!)

Hello JaMoTo+1!

Mike “TheBusyBrain” from St. Petersburg, Fl. here with a realization which I think may cure your cravings for an “In Transit” Voicemail mode that you guys have spoke a good bit about within the last few BOL shows. This only works for the iPhone… (No hacks needed!)

http://blog.thebusybrain.com/making-good-use-of-the-iphones-custom-greeting-feature/133

Molly, hopefully this will help keep your calling-while-driving temptations at bay!

“LTS!”

Mike J
“TheBusyBrain”

EPISODE 813

New Microsoft Commercials Are Live
http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/09/18/new-microsoft-ads-are-live/

EA Relaxes Rules on Installing ‘Spore’
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122178384121054773.html
http://news.cnet.com/8301-13505_3-10046288-16.html

Zuckerberg: ‘Change can be difficult,’ but the redesign stays
http://news.cnet.com/8301-13577_3-10045887-36.html

PlayStation 3 gets weather, Google News, and other Web goodies
http://news.cnet.com/8301-17938_105-10045886-1.html

Study claims cell phones can affect sperm quality
http://tech.yahoo.com/blogs/null/105897

Large Hadron Collider downed by faulty transformer
http://news.cnet.com/8301-11386_3-10046156-76.html

Social engineering cracked Palin’s e-mail account
http://news.cnet.com/8301-1009_3-10045969-83.html

Report: Voting problems in several swing states
http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/09/18/voting.problems/index.html

eBay looking to unload StumbleUpon?
http://news.yahoo.com/s/cnet/20080919/tc_cnet/8301100131004628992

Voice Mail
Trish: Land lines and emergencies

E-mail

Hey, guys,

After listening to you talking about what you have as your homepage, I just thought I'd make a suggestion. A site called Alltop.com which is the only homepage you will ever need! It summarizes every story of the day about one of the topics you choose on one page. For example if your interested in the iphone, go to iphone.alltop.com and it summarizes all recent stories/ articles about the iphone from sites like macrumours.com

Hope that helps...Jason!

Thanks
Jake

**********

Dear B.O.L. crew,

I could not believe my ears last night when I was listening to you talk about what you use for a home page. I personally use Symbaloo.com for mine. This site lets you create a custom page that links to your most common sites. And Jason, it even lets you read RSS feeds on the page to. I could not believe you guys hadn’t heard of this thing. I have been using it for 2 years and love it.

Loving B.O.L,
Josh from Indiana

**********

Hey, I thought of a solution for the Google Streetview privacy issue…
The Google Streetview vehicle should drive slowly and play music like the ice cream truck so people could run out and wave or dive into the bushes.

Love the show

Anthony

**********

FYI, BOL crew -

Just got this e-mail.

Looks like Chrome will not be adopted by large companies for the time being.

—
From:
Sent: Thursday, September 18, 2008 4:29 PM

Subject: URGENT: Google Chrome Browser Vulnerabilities - Serious Security Risk
Importance: High

To TXU Energy and CGE Personnel with Google Chrome Browser Installed:

In early September, Google release the beta version of its new browser named Chrome. The CGE Data Security group has requested a Group Policy block of the install or execution of Google’s Chrome browser due to serious vulnerabilities that exist in this product (see links below). These vulnerabilities allow both denial of service attacks and remote control, and the exploit code for the remote control vulnerability is already available on the internet. The CGE DSM Team agrees with the Data Security team's recommendation that this is a serious security risk.

29 EFH Network Users already have Google Chrome installed, and you have been identified as one of these users. If you have a legitimate business reason for testing with this new browser please send both myself and Jeff Westerheide (See cc list for e-mail link) your business justification for review. CGE Websense is currently blocking the download site from Google. CGE Change Record CHMN00004653718 has been submitted for implementing the Group Policy block, and that change is scheduled for Friday, Sept 26, 2008, at 9 AM. That allows you one week to respond to this e-mail.

Google Chrome vulnerabilities starting to pile up
http://blogs.zdnet.com/security/?p=1858

More Google Chrome Vulnerabilities emerge
http://www.ghacks.net/2008/09/11/more-google-chrome-vulnerabilities-emerge/

In the meantime, IT Security is requesting that you uninstall the Google Chrome browser from your workstation to protect you and the EFH network from existing malware threats.

If you have trouble uninstalling Chrome due to a message about that function being prohibited by the Administrator, run the following EXE to accomplish the uninstall. Let me know if this fails to work for you for any reason:

\\eptxudsl001\ClientApps\Chrome_Uninstall.exe

Manager, CARE System Operations

**********

Hi there, JaMoTo (and special guest)

I just have a really dumb question for the Twitter engineers. Why are they spending time and resources on a redesign of Twitter when IM and Tracking still don’t work? Seriously, that’s just dumb. Fix your features, then change your image if you’d like. Don’t add features, don’t redesign, don’t do anything until you fix the bugs you have.

Just my 2 cents, as a Web designer and programmer. As an aside, this is what happens with the Agile Development Paradigm if you aren’t careful. It’s all about moving changes out the door. I’ve signed the Agile Manifesto, and I believe in Agile Development, but it’s not the end all and be all of programming. No paradigm is. You shouldn’t move on until the bugs are fixed.

Joe AKA dOgBOi

EPISODE 779

Judge rules Sprint’s early-termination fees illegal
http://news.cnet.com/8301-1035_3-10004049-94.html

Travelers’ laptops may be detained at border
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/content/article/2008/08/01/laptops.html

In-flight cell ban advances in congress
http://mobile.slashdot.org/mobile/08/08/01/0124258.shtml
http://news.cnet.com/8301-17938_105-10004170-1.html

Apple quickly kills popular iPhone-‘tethering’ app
http://blogs.pcworld.com/staffblog/archives/007376.html
http://news.cnet.com/8301-13515_3-10004278-26.html
http://www.macrumors.com/2008/07/31/nullriver-introduces-3g-edge-tethering-app-for-iphone/

College funding bill passed with anti-P2P provisions intact
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20080801-college-funding-bill-passed-with-anti-p2p-provisions-intact.html

Hands on: Delicious 2 cleans up social bookmarking
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20080801-hands-on-delicious-2-cleans-up-social-bookmarking.html
http://news.cnet.com/8301-17939_109-10003874-2.html

China eases Internet restrictions for journalists
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/02/sports/olympics/02beijing.html

Online fantasy game's absurd cancellation policy leads to new law
http://www.alleyinsider.com/2008/7/final-fantasy-online-s-arcane-cancellation-policy-baffles-lawmakers-leads-to-new-law

iPhone + Twitter + sedatives = not a great idea, really
http://www.alleyinsider.com/2008/7/iphone-twitter-sedatives-not-a-great-idea-really

NASA: “We have water” on Mars
http://www.boingboing.net/2008/07/31/nasa-we-have-water-o.html

VOICEMAIL

Grahame, New York
Gift card horror story.

BlackBerry Guy
A little hands-free headset stuff.

E-MAIL

Hey Buzz crew!

A word in defense of providing lunch for employees. I recently joined a start-up here in Boston which does this. We just reviewed the policy and concluded that it’s a great investment. My personal top three arguments in favor:

1. Builds camaraderie and fosters healthy mixing of individuals from different departments.

2. Keeps an otherwise, uh… “distractible” team in the office, rather than wandering around Chinatown looking for Boston’s best dumplings. More importantly, it keeps lunch hour contained within a fixed window of time--1:00 p.m. is actually a usable meeting time in our company.

3. In a competitive recruiting market, free lunch is an attractive perk. We get far more bang from our lunch dollars than if we allocated them toward standard comp.

Waldron, in Boston

**********

Drunk Dialers in Norway get heard through fjords!…fjords..fjords…fjords…

http://www.core77.com/blog/object_culture/public_megaphone_for_drunk_dialers_in_norway_10660.asp

http://www.unsworn.org/telemegaphone/

excerpt:

By dialing the Telemegaphone’s phone number, your voice will ring out across the fjord, the valley, and the village of Dale. A bright light at the top of the pole will be lit as your call goes through, projecting your voice across the valley.

Wanna try? On Aug 2, go here for the phone number. (This’ll work day & night until September 6, 2008).

Best,
Shalin

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Tom, to help you out on the iPhone end, go into settings. Under Safari
there’s an option to switch the search from Google to Yahoo.

Steve from Buffalo, New York

**********

Hey BoL,

The caller in episode 778 who clarified some info on China’s Great
Firewall is right - VPNs are one path around China’s Net censors. A
friend of mine attended the Beijing University of Post &
Telecommunications, where she was taught how to use VPNs and other
proxy server techniques to evade the Great Firewall entirely. I
visited her dorm room when she was still in grad school there, and all
of her roommates (computer science students) were browsing and
downloading content quite freely. Apparently, they’re still huge fans
of ‘Friends.’

The real impact of the Great Firewall is psychological --China’s
government knows they can’t block everything, but if they make certain
information inconvenient enough to access for most of the population,
almost all users just get frustrated and give up. I’m constantly
surprised by how disinterested and oblivious my friend is about world
events, although I can’t speak for the other 1.32 billion. She’s
coming to the States for the second time in August and I’ll be very
curious to see how she reacts to western media’s perceptions of the
Olympics coverage.

<< “L O V E T H E S H O W”;

-Andrew
Portland, Oregan

**********

Dear Tom, Molly, and Jason, While the new FireWire standard may be
faster then the current USB standard, the soon-to-be-released USB 3.0
spec has a max throughput of about 4.8 Gbit/s.

EPISODE 774

Escaped ’spam king’ allegedly kills self, family
http://news.cnet.com/8301-1009_3-9999451-83.html

Cancer doc urges cell phone precaution
http://news.cnet.com/8301-17938_105-9999188-1.html

Reports: AOL cuts XDrive, Pictures, some blogs
http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-9999471-93.html

Report: MySpace could work with Amazon on music service
http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-9999472-93.html

IPhone 2.1 Update to Bring Turn-by-Turn GPS?
http://blog.wired.com/gadgets/2008/07/iphone-21-updat.html

EFF: Yahoo Music should compensate customers
http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-9999244-93.html

The Death of Nearly All Software Patents?
http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/07/24/1458215

Hasbro Finally Sues Makers Of Scrabulous; Invokes DMCA To Get It Removed
http://www.paidcontent.org/entry/419-hasbro-finally-sues-makers-of-scrabulous-invokes-dmca-to-get-it-removed/

Users can automatically encrypt Gmail traffic
http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-9999473-93.html

Internet Firm Says It Targeted Ads To Customers’ Web-Surfing Habits
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/07/24/AR2008072403603.html

Vint Cerf Preps Interplanetary Internet Protocol
http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/07/24/1728214

VOICEMAIL

Steve Tampa
What about the accessories.

EMAIL

Sorry to burst your bubble Tomolly, but Richard Vobes has been doing daily podcasts from his beach hut in Worthing UK since January 2005 and is currently up to show 1009 as of July 25th.

I don’t know if Vobes is THE MOST prolific, but the bar is substantially higher to pass than Curry’s measly 777.

Your long term fan (Since 2005),

Scotto

**********

http://www.newsobserver.com/opinion/columns/story/1152083.html

Finally! For once, the internet is being considered a utility. Wilson,
North Carolina did what the telecoms wouldn’t and installed fiber
optic all of the city. However, by opening that network up to
different carriers and being a carrier themselves, they have solved
several problems that plague the telecommunications industry. I hope
other cities and towns (and possibly telecoms) will see what Wilson
has done and follow their example. I salute Wilson for finding a
better, cheaper, and faster way to connect its citizens to the Internet.

Si
Durham, NC

**********

Hey Buzz Crew,
In episode 722, in responce to the whole “3D Standard” and 3D movies at home, Molly (almost rant-ally) says “What will it take to make the 3D glasses go away?”. Well, guess what, the technology already exists. I was in Seattle at the Boeing Visitors Center about to get a tour of the biggest building in the world by volume, and in the lower level of the building they have displays and exhibits to look at current and future technology. There was an exhibit from engine manufacturer Pratt and Whitney talking about their engine for the new 787 Dreamliner. Around the exhibit were 3 plasma TV’s with the imagies POPPING out at me with no glasses involved. You could walk to the right and left and see around the image… it was amazing!!! I had never seen anything like it, without glasses of course I went home and looked it up based on the information I could get off the plasma TV’s and it seems to be Phillips WOWvx 3D Technology.
http://www.presentationtek.com/2007/11/11/philips-wowvx-3d-display-technology/
Anyway, lets bring these into the homes, no glasses necessary!!!
Love the show,
Jordan from Cincinnati

**********

Hey buzz crew, jamoto (did i spell that right?) here’s some story for you.
http://equiliberate.org/?q=node/3

I’m a windows, mac and linux user, flexible to which any OS i use and i bought a laptop a couple of months ago and if i only had read the license terms of windows vista, i could have got my $699 Dell Inspiron laptop to be $499 if i got that refund. I didn’t even used the original windows vista in there. Oh well, but still happy because Mac OS X runs smoothly in this machine, made it to dual boot with Windows XP for the sake that my clients use it so i have to (work thing). If only Apple legalizes or distribute their OS on pc’s, businesses would embrace it in no time. Definitely. (hmm.. What would PC guy say about this… i wonder… =p)

ciao!
Polo