Buzz Out Loud Podcast

We speculate even more on the rumored large format Kindle, and get the announcement date wrong right from the start. What, we're supposed to read press releases? Also on the rumor front, we discuss Apple's interest in buying Twitter and Electronic Arts. Somethings just not sitting right about this one.

EPISODE 967

Thanks, all: CNET TV wins People’s Voice Webby
http://www.webbyawards.com/webbys/current.php?media_id=97&season=13#film_tech_vid

New photos, details on the Gigundle
http://news.cnet.com/8301-17938_105-10233431-1.html

Windows 7 RC has arrived this morning
http://news.cnet.com/8301-13860_3-10233399-56.html
http://download.cnet.com/Windows-7/3000-18513_4-10906772.html

Apple in “late stage” talks to buy Twitter, announce at WWDC; Google got told to walk?
http://blogs.barrons.com/techtraderdaily/2009/05/05/apple-to-buy-twitter-and-electronic-arts
http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/05/05/twitter-mania-google-got-shut-down-apple-rumors-heat-up/

Report: FTC eyes Apple, Google board relationship
http://news.cnet.com/8301-13579_3-10233187-37.html

When does a Netbook cease being one? Asus rolls out one just shy of the 12″ mark (missed this one yesterday)
http://www.engadget.com/2009/05/04/asus-goes-big-ger-with-11-6-inch-eee-pc-coming-this-month/

Craigslist, seven AGs hold sex ad summit today in NYC
http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-10233256-93.html

RIM CEO confirms Storm 2
http://www.reuters.com/article/technologyNews/idUSN0439320520090504

…and it will soon have native LogMeIn
http://download.cnet.com/8301-2007_4-10233320-12.html

Navigon exits GPS PND business: the Big 3, recession, and nontraditional nav systems are flattening the industry’s structure
http://www.gpsbusinessnews.com/NAVIGON-stops-PND-business-in-North-America_a1497.html

Hacker purports to be holding VA prescription records hostage for $10M
http://news.cnet.com/8301-1009_3-10233348-83.html

VOICEMAIL
Electric cars are worth it

Apple iPhone tablet prediction

Curve vs iPhone

E-MAIL
Hey everyone,
I’ve been reading more about the new Amazon Kindle widescreen and it’s starting to sound like this is being aimed at college students more than the savior of newspapers. Even though this device hasn’t been released yet, and as a college student myself, here a couple of items I have before I drop down money for this device.

1. Many textbooks manufactures are making personalize editions for the university and are not available to buy online. This semester I had three of my four classes that had a personalize edition for the university so students had to buy the textbook at the bookstore and not at amazon.com.

2. Rumor has it that the new widescreen kindle will support PDFs. What would be great is if the new kindle will support powerpoint since many classes are taught on powerpoint and the professors put the ppts available for download.

3. Many college students will not get the kindle as the university bookstore will probably not buyback the downloaded textbooks at the end of the semester. Although, if all of my textbooks that were available for the kindle were $80 - $100 instead of $500 for textbooks, the difference in savings will pay for itself.

Gregory Schultz
Mass Communication major
Louisiana State University

Guys (and gals),

**********

For years, I have been a Sprint…er…Nextel…whatever. Anyway, I see two things that Sprint can offer that will save them, if they so choose. First, you have the iDen PTT service. It is vastly superior to anyone else. Let’s face it, if you want PTT, Nextel is it! Yet Sprint has let this feature sit stagnant for years. Why else would they buy Nextel? Start throwing that feature in as many phones as you can, it has a loyal following!

Second, and probably more importantly to the masses, they have really great speeds (in some places, or so I hear). When they launch the Pre, they should allow 10 gigs of data and tethering. Offering a better deal, rather than a much /cooler/ product (iPhone) could save them.
Sadly, with the eminent release of a GSM Pre, it looks like Palm is doing the wise thing and NOT doubling down on Sprint.

By the way, Sprint CEO Dan Hesse is pretty much an idiot.

Respectfully submitted,

Clayton

**********

BOL Crew,

Just wanted to pass this along (although I’m sure you’ve already seen this). The guy behind NoScript makes his money from ads displayed on his own page, which appears automatically (by default) every time there’s a new update to NoScript. However, he has admitted and apologized for making his NoScript extension break functionality in the extension AdBlock, specifically to not block ads on his own domains. He has since apologized, but it’s very interesting.
http://hackademix.net/2009/05/04/dear-adblock-plus-and-noscript-users-dear-mozilla-community/
Love The Show!

-Greg (emptythevoid)

There is a lot about pants in today's episode. I mean, the French Parliament killed the Net piracy bill, Conficker started adding a key logger, and the AP does more stupid stuff. But really, it's all about pants. The new "Star Trek" movie was shown to a surprised group of Austin fans. Apparently, it melted one man's pants, it was so good. And there are also some robotic pants in today's show. But, the show is far from pants in the British sense. Just listen.

EPISODE 949

French parliament unexpectedly kills Net piracy bill
http://news.cnet.com/8301-13578_3-10215937-38.html
http://www.boingboing.net/2009/04/09/u2s-manager-wants-to.html

Conficker wakes up, updates via P2P, drops payload
http://news.cnet.com/8301-1009_3-10215678-83.html

NAND flash supply to tighten after Apple reportedly places large order
http://www.digitimes.com/news/a20090409PD219.html

Google responds to AP
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/7988561.stm

Associated Press threatens AP affiliate over YouTube channel
http://www.boingboing.net/2009/04/08/associated-press-thr.html
http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-10215703-93.html

BlackBerry Storm 2 with Wi-Fi, new screen?
http://news.cnet.com/8301-1035_3-10215106-94.html

Gmail time zone tracker
http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/04/08/gmail-can-now-tell-which-of-your-contacts-are-awake/

Industry moves: Sims' creator Will Wright leaves EA
http://www.paidcontent.org/entry/419-industry-moves-sims-creator-will-wright-leaves-ea/

Intel aims for 2-second boot time with Moblin Linux platform
http://arstechnica.com/open-source/news/2009/04/intel-aims-for-2-second-boot-time-with-moblin-linux-platform.ars

CFLs causing utility woes
http://hardware.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=09/04/08/2125250

Is Shaq trying to seduce Mark Cuban via Twitter?
http://news.cnet.com/8301-17852_3-10215867-71.html

Spock gives fans 'Star Trek' treat
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/7989146.stm

Monster Cable is still stupid
http://www.engadget.com/2009/04/09/monster-cable-learns-nothing-sues-monster-transmission/

VOICEMAIL
Jimmy from California
Is Costco the cloud?

Anonymous Drinker
???

E-MAIL
Hey Buzz Crew,

On episode 945 you guys talked about taking breaks for internet at work and about how productive that might be. I laughed when Tom mentioned people working in a call center. I work in a large call center and most of our supervisors do not mind if we take a few minutes here or there to check well known sites such as CNN.com or other related news sites. They do not allow us to surf sites such as Twitter or Facebook because of security risks. I just thought I'd pass that along.

Matthew

**********

Hi Buzz crew.

I just finished listening to episode 948 where you followed up on the variable pricing from iTunes, Amazon etc. My first reaction was that, since I’m in Canada, my songs will still be 99 cents for a while longer. Nope. I just checked and, sure enough, all songs are now .69, .99 and 1.29 per song. Amazing! It took us over a year to get the iTunes store in Canada after it was launched in the US because of Licensing issues. Just as long to get T.V. shows and movie rentals for the same reason. We couldn’t get the iPhone untill the 2nd generation and when I checked over the weekend most of my purchased music still was not availible for the DRM free upgrade. But raise the price by 30 cents so the record labels can make more money and the Canadian music industry is instantly all over it. Capitalism. Gotta love it.

Speaking of love it. Love the show….Tom, your segues are rubbing off on me.

Take care,
Wayne, the Visual effects Artist, Quebec, Canada

PS: Natali, I hate FiOS because FiOS hates Natali.

**********

Perhaps for his next upgrade cycle, the eyeborg might consider one of
these:
http://www.engadget.com/2009/04/08/exmoveres-wearable-chariot-for-the-mild-mannered-cyborg/

If you ask me, it looks like the 21st century version of a centaur…
except instead of the lower half being a horse, it’s a Segway)

LOVE THE SHOW.
Donald, the (still) out of work software engineer

**********

Hi Buzz Out Loud
Yesterday you had a caller mention that Mutant Chronicles was on Video on Demand before theaters. Here is a second movie that I know is going to debut on VOD before hitting theaters. The movie is called Surveillance. It is directed by Jennifer Lynch and produced by David Lynch, two well known directors. It will be on VOD on May 29th and in theaters on June 6.

I am excited about this and I hope this trend continues. Also the new tv series Southland premiered on Hulu a week before it was broadcast on tv.
Here is the link to the surveillance site where it shows the dates of release and a trailer, pretty cool.

http://magnetreleasing.com/surveillance/

Enjoy the show
Jimmie from KC

**********

Hey guys,

As stupid as it sounds, I know of at least two reasons why someone would downgrade from Vista or even Windows 7 to XP (not that they’re great reasons). First reason–I work for a company that edits patents for the government; and even though we’re a division of a major publishing company and can probably afford to upgrade our software, we have to use the programs that the government mandates, and some of these programs still rely on a command-line interface (apparently the government doesn’t trust us to make tables using a GUI-based program). Given how many bugs are in these programs anyway (and every time they tweak it things go wrong, like we can’t print in bold or something), I don’t think they’re working to update it and make it compatable with anything beyond XP. We’ve tried to convince our contracter (the USPTO) to let us use newer programs, but it’s no-go, so we’re stuck using XP for the forseeable future (and I do mean future).

The second reason? Just today my parents called to ask me if they can downgrade their brand new computer to XP because their old copies of programs like Lotus 1-2-3 aren’t compatable with Vista. Yeah, there are alternatives, but my stepfather is 85 still reminisces about punch cards (he worked for IBM until the mid-80s). I’m still trying to talk them out of it.

Anyway, those are two (annoying) reasons.

Mary Jones

Episode 867

UK ISPs switch on mass Wikipedia censorship
http://community.zdnet.co.uk/blog/0,1000000567,10009938o-2000331777b,00.htm
http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-10116543-93.html
http://www.boingboing.net/2008/12/07/how-the-great-firewa.html

Technology start-ups to be given £1B fund
http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2008/dec/07/nesta-plan-technology-startups

BlackBerry Storm firmware update
http://news.cnet.com/8301-17938_105-10114383-1.html

WalMart: Wiis and iPhones
http://www.reuters.com/article/technologyNews/idUSTRE4B608520081207
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601103&sid=a4YIU21gLaSY

Google to sell truly open Android dev phone
http://hardware.slashdot.org/hardware/08/12/08/1324256.shtml

ViaSat satellite approved for broadband in 2011
http://tech.yahoo.com/news/pcworld/20081206/tc_pcworld/usbroadbandinternetsatellitescheduledforlaunchin2011

Spore most pirated game of 2008
http://www.gamepolitics.com/2008/12/06/spore-tops-list-2008039s-most-pirated-pc-games

EMI joins Tap Tap Revenge
http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2336325,00.asp?kc=PCRSS03069TX1K0001121

Computer scientists find audio CAPTCHAs easy to crack
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20081208-computer-scientists-find-audio-captchas-easy-to-crack.html

TiVo launches Netflix streaming for its Series3 DVRs
http://news.cnet.com/8301-17938_105-10114609-1.html

Voice mail

Anon from NH - Facebook and eyeballs

Lee in Boston - Podcast guilt

E-mail

Tom, Molly, Jason and whatever other wayward employee you happen to snag
out of the office today,

I guess you have dramatically underestimated your audience with respect
to the difficulty level in the bingo card. Perhaps you should look at a
task you might have previously considered impossible. I think you
should require a picture of Steve Jobs in the wild using a Gphone.
Just a thought.

Love the show,
Vic the Texas Rancher Pilot

**********

Hi Guys,

This is Chris the Frapper Map guy.

Is it just me of you've missed to talk about the opening of Amazon MP3 Store in the UK ?
If I missed it please let me know which episode so I can go back and re-listen. If not, please do mention on your next talk, it's quite important for us here to know this. It's even got cheaper price compare to iTunes !
Here is my blog post talking about it : http://www.toogeektobetrue.com/2008/12/04/amazon-mp3-store-uk-launches-with-songs-cheaper-than-itunes-take-that-apple/

Cheers ! Love the Show !
Chris Prakoso

**********

I figured by Monday you'll be talking about the Consumer survey that claims that Google uses 21 times more bandwidth then it pays for, and I wanted to chime in.

First of all, the numbers are right. The costs are drastically different between what I pay and what Google pays for bandwidth, but Its comparing apples to oranges, consumers to business... of course the numbers are going to be dramatically different.

The company doesn't even get "Costco level" economics. You buy a jar of peanut butter at the grocery store you pay one price, but if you buy a two gallon jar at Costco, you get a much better cost per weight and comparatively Google buys jars as big as your house.

Their conclusion shows just how little this company understands their own numbers. Using the peanut butter example, they look at Google's massive jar and then their own and are shocked by the fact Google's rates are a lot better then theirs. Rather then put their blame on the ISP's for their apparent shafting, they point the finger at Google cause they buy in bulk and say they're not paying their fair share.

The fact is everyone is paying their fair share, its just that anyone who wants Google's rates will have to pay mortgage on their peanut jar. Ok... so the analogy is getting a little wonky here, but you get the point.

These 'facts' are being used in a net neutrality argument regarding infrastructure costs... but the problem is what it always has been... ISP's are bottle necked at the 'last mile' and Google's express lane to the still free flowing internet backbone has absolutely no effect on the problem the ISP's got themselves into by overselling and saturating their connections at the local level and now want someone else to foot the bill.

Ben @ Nova Scotia

**********

Hello Tom, Molly, Jason, & other,
This is Jerry, the US Navy Seabee serving in Italy. Please inform
CMDR Mark that if e-mailing him the show doesn't work out, I would be
willing to burn him a CD each week of that week's shows and mail it to
him. If he is being deployed to Europe or the Middle East I could
mail it for free and it should get to him fairly quickly. Just give
him my email allias, and we will give it a try.

As a "Dirt Sailor," I would be more than happy to help a shipmate
out. I know this method doesn't sound like the best but when I was
deployed to Iraq my wife would shoot video of her and our baby boy
each month and mail a DVD to me. The significance of those DVDs &
what the did to keep me going can not be overstated. Perhaps Buzz Out
Loud will not hold such a high significance for CMDR Mark but it would
be one more thing to look forward to and help to time fly by.

Keep up the great work,
Jerry

Episode 852

BlackBerry Storm gets release date
http://www.boygeniusreport.com/2008/11/13/verizon-announces-blackberry-storm-release-date-november-21st-199/

Microsoft Live becomes social network
http://home.live.com/
http://www.paidcontent.org/entry/419-and-now-windows-live-is-a-social-network/

The flap over Twitterrank and the social echo chamber
http://blogs.zdnet.com/collaboration/?p=164
http://blogs.zdnet.com/collaboration/?p=163

End of a snarky era: Gawker shuts down Valleywag
http://news.cnet.com/8301-13577_3-10095984-36.html
http://valleywag.com/5085562/valleywag-clusterfuck-faq

Spam sees big nosedive as rogue ISP McColo knocked offline
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20081112-spam-sees-big-nosedive-as-rogue-isp-mccolo-knocked-offline.html
http://news.cnet.com/8301-1009_3-10095730-83.html

EU court rejects Lego trade-mark
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/7726700.stm

Worldwide Wrath of the Lich King launch nerfs credit card systems
http://www.gamepro.com/article/news/207893/worldwide-wrath-of-the-lich-king-launch-nerfs-credit-card-systems/

Move over Wii Fit, EA announces EA Sports Active
http://arstechnica.com/journals/thumbs.ars/2008/11/13/move-over-wii-fit-ea-announces-ea-sports-active

Korean geniuses invent lithium batteries with eight times the juice
http://www.engadget.com/2008/11/13/korean-geniuses-invent-lithium-batteries-with-eight-times-the-ju/

Boot Windows Vista In Four Seconds
http://tech.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/11/12/2249253

Voice Mail
“Anonymous”: Google terrifies me!

Rafa: On the flu

Dan: Hobobook

E-mail
Hey buzzards!
First off love the show!
This email is in response to the voice mail about online video. I wanted to point out that you shouldn’t be mad at cbs as all the shows they produce are online. If you will notice all the shows that warner brothers produces, ie “the mentalist” “cold case” and “without a trace” are not online anywhere. Same goes for the shows produced by abc studios for cbs- “criminal minds” and “ghost whisperer”. Instead of cbs you should be mad at the company that produces the show .
Just my two cents.
Stephen
Charlotte, nc

**********

Maybe this explains why Apple’s Cinema Displays are so expensive:

http://www.macobserver.com/article/2008/11/13.4.shtml

Steve Jobs was just waiting for the verdict to come in before he
released new models at a lower price.

-Andres (Austin, TX)

**********

Hey JaMoTo

This was regarding what Ken said in 851 I live downtown Chicago and I see net books every day around the Merchandise Mart and I actually saw one when I was Noodle Company this past weekend. So they’re out there I actually don’t have one but my laptop is close VGNS-360 Sony Vaio running Ubuntu 8.10

Thanks I love the show!

Zach in Chicago

**********

Lee from Boston writes:

Regarding Episode 851 and the discussion of the many press releases,
pitches and the like that use the phrase “in these troubled times”.

I’ve decided to put together a new economic metric, the Buzz Phrase
Index (BPI) — I’ll be tracking the number of hits that a Google
search for the phrase “in these troubled times” yields. We’ll see how
this curve compares to the national and international economic
situation over the next year or so.

Details will be on my blog at http://www.tlex.com/wordpress

A search on November 13, 2008 yielded 334,000 hits.

**********

I’ve come across a few Netbooks (Asus EeePC’s) out here in the wilds of
Dublin…

The GameSoc lads here in DIT have all got laptops, at the moment four of
them are equipped with XP-running EeePC’s. But that is tech-savvy crowd.
However my uncle who is not at all tech-savvy bought an EeePC for my
cousins. They’re running the EeePC linux operating system and really
loving it.
So there you have it, wild.

-ANkh, the Computer Engineering Student, Dublin, Ireland.

**********

Hurricane Electric:
Hey! People have heard of us! You have execs from the company in the
buzz army! Since I am a director for the company, I feel obligated to
point out we are the 8th largest ISP in the world for IPv4 and the
largest ISP for IPv6 in the world. Anyhow, just thought I would touch
base again as an offer of assistance if you need anyone from the IP
backbone industry…
–Reid
Director, East Coast Operations
he.net

Think you've seen the worst of the global financial collapse? Well, you haven't. Microsoft's dipping its toe into subprime software lending, otherwise known as providing free software to start-ups making less than $1 million. We'd call it the "crack dealer" model, but it doesn't have the same current-events gravitas. Also today: we can now officially project that Yahoo is the biggest loser of them all. Sigh.

EPISODE 846

No more GooHoo: Google pulls out of ad deal with Yahoo
http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2008/11/ending-our-agreement-with-yahoo.html
http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-10082800-93.html

Yahoo's reaction: disappointed Google withdrew, but the deal was only 'incremental' anyway
http://www.paidcontent.org/entry/419-yahoos-react-the-deal-was-only-incremental/

CNN’s human hologram on election night
http://news.cnet.com/8301-11386_3-10082802-76.html
http://gadgets.boingboing.net/2008/11/04/cnns-election-night.html
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=thOxW19vsTg
http://gizmodo.com/5076663/how-the-cnn-holographic-interview-system-works

FCC opens up wireless "white spaces;" Assessing winners, losers and wild-cards
http://blogs.zdnet.com/BTL/?p=10688
http://www.alleyinsider.com/2008/11/fcc-approves-wi-fi-on-steroids-good-news-for-consumers-bad-news-for-telcos
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/7709775.stm

Sprint and Clearwire merger approved
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20081105-wimax-combo-gets-fcc-blessing-as-does-verizonalltel-union.html

FCC launches probe into possible cable-pricing shenanigans
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20081105-fcc-launches-probe-into-possible-cable-pricing-shenanigans.html

Microsoft to give free software to start-ups
http://www.eweek.com/c/a/Application-Development/Microsoft-Launches-Effort-to-Spark-Startups/
http://news.cnet.com/8301-13860_3-10082506-56.html

The end of an era--Windows 3.x
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/7707016.stm

EA recommends hilarious work-around for RA3 CD-key
http://games.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/11/05/143240

VOICEMAIL
Mark from Florida: what’s up with that CNN wizardry?
http://www.osnews.com/story/19730/Perceptive_Pixel_s_Magic_Wall_Finds_New_Niche

E-MAIL

About three years ago, I did some research for an ISP on P2P indexing and
redirecting (before it was called P4P) because 80 percent of the traffic on
the ISP was P2P. In the end I advised the ISP NOT to use the
technology. Here’s why:
1 - You need a big ISP for P4P to work. (Ours was under 100K subs)
otherwise there are not enough people to seed it.I guess that's OK for
most U.S. based ISPs though.
2 - Edge networks are expensive and peer traffic prices were in
freefall. It was easier to manage increasing peering costs rather than
balancing edge network costs and fair bandwidth utilisation.
3 - P2P protocols are a moving target.

The biggest problem though was taking the hands-on approach to an
architechture often used for transferring illegal content. The
unknowns there were HUGE and would have been a big risk for bad
publicity, manpower dealing with police requests etc etc.

I really dont expect many ISPs to have much long-term success with P4P.

Love the show.
Steve.
UMPCPortal.

Oh, P.S. THe Dell Mini 12 doesnt use the Intel netbook architechture -
interestingly enough it uses a processor and chipset designed for
MIDs. Could it get more confusing!

Cheers!

Steve ‘Chippy’ Paine

**********

TMJX,

I answered the call and volunteered at my local polling place. I helped setup the voting machines, and then signed people in to vote for 12 hours! At the end of the night the pole watchers came in for the final tally. Our polling place allowed electronic or paper ballot. Paper ballots were scanned as soon as they were filled out, and at the end of the night the lady in charge printed the detail report for the votes. The “detail report” didn’t contain any details! It mearly printed the total amount of ballots. It did not break down how many votes came in for the candidates. We are required to post those results outside the door of the polling place. The pole watchers went off like molly at Spectacle Fest when she found out that wifi wasn’t free. . . they threatened to call CNN and were making allegations of voter fraud. The lady in charge was crying and saying that she’ll never work the polls again. I calmly called the elections office and asked to speak with IT and in no time was able to print a tally report that had the vote tally on it. Everyone was happy. Go Buzz Brigade! Love the show.

Ron Hudson Jr.
Associate Pastor
Calvary Baptist Church

**********

Now your done encouraging Americans to vote, could you please
put a call out for any New Zealand buzz listeners to vote. The NZ
election is this Saturday, Nov 8th.

Mark - the long distance voter.
London.

**********

I haven’t listened to today’s show, yet, but I suspect you’ll be talking about white space spectrum again.

A couple years back, IEEE Spectrum had an article on “smart radio” and using “white space.” This is *my* understanding of a “white space radio.”

The radio samples the spectrum in its current location at the current time. If someone is using this slice of spectrum, move to another. It’s not using space “between” TV channels, it’s using the TV channels that are not active in the current location (city, town, county, valley, whatever).

White space radios cannot interfere with an *active* wireless mike. The radio will perceive that part of the spectrum occupied and look for another chunk. That said, if the white space radio is already operating and you *then* turn on a wireless mike, you may get some interference until the white space radio samples the spectrum and decides to move somewhere else in frequency.

I use the term “radio” to identify an arbitrary wireless communication link. It could be carrying analog signals or various digital modulation schemes on top of which, the designer might implement TCP/IP or other network protocols.

Like the others, LTS (love the show)

Charlie

Tom couldn't decide whether to go with the "marginalized whackjob" wall paint, or just get a marginalized whackjob fringe. Vote? In other news of the day, the McCain campaign discovers that the DMCA can be ANNOYING! Maybe they'll do something about it once they're back in politics-land! Also, EA says no one cares about DRM except an organized online cabal. We know how well that attitude worked out for the music industry.

Listen now: Download today's podcast

EPISODE 831

McCain campaign complains about takedown notice procedure
http://www.publicknowledge.org/node/1795
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20081014-mccainpalin-campaign-angry-over-bogus-dmca-takedowns.html
http://news.cnet.com/8301-13578_3-10066510-38.html

YouTube says: no special treatment
http://news.cnet.com/8301-13578_3-10066738-38.html

99.8% of gamers don’t care about DRM, says EA
http://games.slashdot.org/games/08/10/15/1525259.shtml

Worldwide PC market grew 15 percent in third quarter of 2008
http://www.gartner.com/it/page.jsp?id=777613

YouTube passes yahoo as #2 search engine
http://news.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/10/14/1645227

First look: Firefox 3.1 beta 1 officially released
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20081014-first-look-firefox-3-1-beta-1-officially-released.html

Software blocks car phone users
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/7669533.stm

SanDisk releases $20 slotMusic Player, dozens of SD card albums
http://gizmodo.com/5063564/sandisk-releases-20-slotmusic-player-dozens-of-sd-card-albums

Amazon, EA, Microsoft, others win ‘Popular Mechanics’ Breakthrough Awards
http://news.cnet.com/8301-13772_3-10066453-52.html

Banjo used in rain surgery
http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/10/14/1945249

VOICEMAIL
Anonymous: Why with the MacBook Pro!? Why!?

E-MAIL

I’m still a day behind, so I just finished episode 830. Molly, you keep griping about this flash bug; I used to get it too, but no more. The solution is simple: Flashblock (http://flashblock.mozdev.org/). Flash items are not loaded, and are replaced with a little play button, allowing you to load selectively, so you never have enough flash things open to cause them all to break. It also ends up speeding up page load time, and you never have to see that annoying dancing person on the “mortgage rates” ad ever again.

Love the show!

-Anthony
Dallas, TX

**********

Totally disagree w/ your assessment. We have one Blu-ray player and several DVD players. Providing a DVD copy for the minivan, either of the kids’ rooms, and any of our computers is brilliant. I don’t want the kids handling the BD Disk b/c I’ve seen what they do to the DVD’s. Also, it allows my sister-in-law to borrow a movie, which she can’t whenever we only have it in Blu-ray.

Joe in WI

**********

Hi all of you,

I was checking out the new MacBook Pro on the American page of Apple
to see the specs and everything. http://www.apple.com/macbookpro/specs.html
Then I went the the Swiss page to check the price and… boom 30 minutes of
the battery life of the Mac Book vanished, only 4.5 hours. Then I went
back to the American site: 5 hours.
All the other specs are the same and everything except for the battery
life… strange

Pierre from Switzerland (Yes, I live nearby the CERN.)

P.S. could you send me a MacBook Pro from the USA with the 5 hours battery
life?

**********

Hola Buzz Brigade,

You guys have probably read that Sony has pushed out it’s latest firmware for the PS3. Some of the features include additional support for trophies and the ability to set a sleeper shutdown for the controllers (which is so freakin’ BOSS!). But the other “coolerer” feature that they didn’t mention during their original announcement is that Flash 9 was also included. Which mean now I can watch Hulu directly from the PS3 browser without having to use a third party app to stream it to my PS3 via XNLA. This is a great bonus.

Amazon on Demand doesn’t appear to work but I’ll take one win where I can. Besides, the PSN video store is pretty freakin’ huge and keeps growing by hundreds of titles each week.

Just thought I’d let you know.

Love the show (except when Molly rants on the PS3–such a lame 360 fanboi )

Tim

**********

Hey guys,
Just a “well actually.” The DisplayPort is actually a new industry standard. It’s not created by Apple. Dell started using it before Apple did, in fact. It’s supposed to be better in performance than DVI, not to mention plug in better than DVI ports.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Displayport

OK, fine, so maybe the “Mini DisplayPort” is a proprietary version of the normal DisplayPort.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mini_DisplayPort

They like to “improve” existing technology.

Oh, and you’ll probably know this by now, but the 9400M and the 9600M are not options. They’re BOTH found in the MacBook Pro. You get to switch between them to decide between battery life and performance.

Daniel from Singapore.

**********

FROM THE FORUMS — TOLLIE:
Here’s what I was hoping you’d amend/correct from your reporting yesterday: DisplayPort--not proprietary, VESA standard, will be Apple-wide, also backed by Dell, HP, Intel, et al… and Aluminum MacBooks have no firewire--Apple is bumping Firewire off the consumer line… Trackpad takes away a button, but you can now define TWO button regions (i.e. a right-click area). Hopefully not as dumb as the Mighty Mouse.

**********

Hey BOL crew, you said you wanted to try talking to the robots pretending to be humans online. Well actually, you can. http://elbot.com (press the red button)

I’m not sure if it’s exactly the same Elbot as in the test, because this has been on the Internet for quite a while.

Thanks for the great podcast ,
Keelin

EPISODE 818

Jack Thompson Disbarred
http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/09/25/1822207
http://news.cnet.com/8301-13772_3-10051241-52.html

AT& T, Verizon to refrain from tracking users online
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/09/25/AR2008092504135.html

Calif. bans text-and-drive. Crazy people sad?
http://news.cnet.com/8301-1035_3-10050928-94.html

Google’s plan to free you from cell phone carriers
http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/09/25/googles-end-run-around-the-wireless-carriers/

Trent Reznor to NIN fans: Help us understand what you’ll buy
http://news.cnet.com/8301-13505_3-10051824-16.html

Muxtape founder ‘walked away from licensing deals’
http://news.cnet.com/8301-13577_3-10051297-36.html

EA skirts first-sale doctrine with limits on resale of Spore
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20080925-ea-skirts-first-sale-doctrine-with-limits-on-resale-of-spore.html

College bookstores turn to kiosks to stem e-textbook tide
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20080926-college-bookstores-turn-to-kiosks-to-stem-e-textbook-tide.html

Neuros open set-top box lets you crowd-subtitle the presidential debate
http://www.boingboing.net/2008/09/26/neuros-open-settop-b-1.html

Election season comes to Twitter
http://news.cnet.com/8301-13577_3-10051813-36.html

Jet man Yves Rossy soars into record books with solo flight over Channel
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/france/3086878/Fusionman-Jet-man-Yves-Rossy-soars-into-record-books-with-solo-flight-over-Channel.html

VOICEMAIL
Rogue Tess: I love my Netbook

Justin: about the boot

E-MAIL

Hey Buzzards!

I may not be the first, but I wanted to direct your attention to an article in the Telegraph UK about how iTunes is in trouble. This ties directly back to your discussion on how Kid Rock didn’t want to sell his album on iTunes because it was a “concept album” (I cannot help but laugh every time I hear that). The only concept I’m seeing is that they want to sell us the whole album and not just the songs we like. AC/DC wants to sell only the entire album because blah-blah-blah, one song doesn’t represent who they are right now. Sure, fine, whatever, don’t give me any lines about art--this is all about commerce and selling the more expensive album and not the single. Radio and MTV seem to have done very well just playing one song off these albums for years.

What really got me was the first sentence of the last paragraph, “In the future we will all receive our music under a subscription model.” Like this is some forgone freakin’ conclusion? I’m thinking, ummmm NO! I like to own my music, as I know most of your listeners and the rest of the world do (not withstanding DRM, which is experiencing its death rattle’s as we speak). How many subscription models have we seen come and go? This line just blew me away.

Anyway thanks for reading,

Steve in Atlanta
Listener since the 200’s

P.S. Change is good!

**********

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/arts/main.jhtml?xml=/arts/2008/09/25/bmitunes125.xml

I finally saw my first one. The Aussie that owns this one was very gracious with his time in talking about. This thing is dead silent. Sorry about the bad pic, camera phone after all.

Tom the cube monkey
Boulder, Colo.

**********

Hey Buzz Crew-

Well, I’m a little behind again on the podcast, but in ep. 816 you got discussing narcissism and Tom Merritt believed everything is about him. Well, I believe it. I mean, I hear all the time Tom Merritt in my ears and I get e-mails for Tom Merritt, I write papers for publication and the lead author ends up being Tom Merritt (OK, officially, Thomas Merritt). I mean, in my life Tom Merritt is the most common name on my regular mail, too. And when I first signed onto twitter my posts were listed by Tom Merritt and then I get tweets from Tom Merritt. And I got followers for Tom Merritt (poor fools). So, Tom Merritt is right, my world is filled with Tom Merritt.

Have a good one!
Tom Merritt

**********

Solar power + the Amish = sign of impeding …
doom?
Weirdness?
Wake up call to the rest of us who are suddenly freakishly behind in technology of the Amish.

Here’s the original story:

http://www.philly.com/inquirer/home_top_left_story/20080920_Amish_turn_to_solar_power_for_electricity.html

Sheala, Ga.

**********

So, I’m on my morning bus commute this morning, watching Mythbusters I recorded last night on Vista Media Center on my Zune, and a dialog box pops up. Something like “Someone is sending you a file. Do you wish to accept?”. Being the curious and naive person that I am, I accept. It ends up being “Who are You?” by The Who. The woman beside me on the bus nudges me, holding up HER Zune. I soon realize, I’ve just been squirted!!! I quickly respond back with “Do you think I’m sexy?” by Revolting Cocks. Her next squirt was “Good Girls Don’t” by The Knack.

We exchanged “gamertags”, and I’m hoping to chat some more with my new “squirting” friend.

Just though you might enjoy my strange bus ride story.

See you this afternoon in the chat room;

Paul (alamode) Cyopick

Toronto, Ontario, Canada

BTW, neither of us owns a Kindle or a Segway.

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

The evil power of Dr. M is even greater than we thought...strong enough, in fact, to tarnish the shining reputation of the long-awaited Spore. Also in the news today, DVD ripping goes legit, a little too late, thanks to RealDVD, but we determine it's probably not worth getting sued over. And we put gurus against geniuses in a battle to the tech support death.
Listen now: Download today's podcast

EPISODE 804

Happy Birthday Google - 10
http://blogs.zdnet.com/BTL/?p=9930
http://www.usatoday.com/tech/products/2008-09-06-google-ten-years_N.htm

DVD ripping goes legit with RealDVD
http://news.cnet.com/8301-17938_105-10034540-1.html
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/08/technology/08dvd.html?partner=rssnyt&emc=rss

Gamers fight back against lackluster Spore gameplay, bad DRM
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20080908-gamers-fight-back-against-lackluster-spore-gameplay-bad-drm.html
http://www.boingboing.net/2008/09/07/amazon-reviewers-clo.html

4,000 Anti-Scientology Videos Yanked From YouTube
http://yro.slashdot.org/yro/08/09/08/0256208.shtml

Apple admits iPod is from 1970s U.K.
http://slashdot.org/articles/08/09/08/1343248.shtml
http://gadgets.boingboing.net/2008/09/08/ipodlike-gadget-from.html

Microsoft “Gurus” coming to a store near you
http://www.dailytech.com/Microsoft+Gurus+Coming+to+a+Store+Near+You/article12887.htm

McAfee brings nearly instant malicious software updates
http://news.cnet.com/8301-1009_3-10034741-83.html

New e-newspaper reader echoes look of the paper
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/08/technology/08ink.html
http://www.paidcontent.org/entry/419-the-dream-lives-on-plasticlogics-e-newspaper-reader-esquires-e-ink-cove/
http://gadgets.boingboing.net/2008/09/08/new-epaper-tech-to-b.html

Creating a ‘Facebook for spies’
http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-10034509-93.html

VOICE MAIL

Joel Chandler
Demolition Man is here.

Remy
On the guest hosts.

Sgt. Wagner
ON Chrome's password storage.

E-MAIL

Hello, Buzz Crew!

I’ve been listening to the speculation about how hard it might be for Comcast to provide users with a bandwidth usage number and though I’d comment on a few realities. The idea that “they already have this data in a database with your account number because they assign your IP address” is just plain silly. Your IP address is irrelevant to the process. Carrier-class routers are amazingly powerful computers, but… the Comcast device that’s in a position to meter your usage is a fast but cheap and none-too-smart Layer 2 aggregating neighborhood switch modem that has a port physically connected to the cable that goes to your house. It knows your port number and not much else--even your IP address is assigned at a higher level by another device. The neighborhood switch isn’t primarily built for accounting--fast and cheap, remember?--and asking it to report very much info in real-time will blow its tiny mind.

Those port-level traffic counts have to be passed up to an accounting computer in batches--and not too often or for too many ports at once. Otherwise Comcast starts using up too much network bandwidth and router processing power for accounting, reducing what’s available to users.

And then the accounting computer has to correlate the neighborhood and port ID and traffic count data with the billing records to account for network changes, port reassignment and customer movement in the middle of the accounting period, and all that other boring real-world stuff. I’d guess that the only way it’s practical to do this for millions of users is an overnight mainframe batch run--and maybe not every night.

How many years did it take cell phone companies to get geared up to do a similar job and tell you *approximate usage as of a day or two ago? They don’t ever seem to tell you EXACTLY when the cutoff for the online > total is, and they never guarantee it will correlate 100 percent with your bill, do they?.

Certainly Comcast has an obligation to provide me with a usage meter if they’re going to cap my usage. No doubt they will--once they get their IT and Billing departments to catch up with the Grand Concept their executives decided was appropriate for the FCC. But give them a little time and recognize that it just might not be QUIE as simple as it looks.

Carl
Spokane, Wash.

Hey buzz-crew, long time listener Bob (from Michigan) here. I had an interesting experience today with Micro$oft and thought it deserved a rant. I sold my Xbox 360 via Craigslist, but forgot to delete my credit card information off of the console. I get billed $25 the next day from Microsoft. I rush to Microsoft’s Xbox Web site to cancel my account, but I can’t. I can’t even remove my credit card information! After wrestling my way through the tangled Webs of their customer service site, I ended up getting their 800 number. I immediately gave it a call and was put on hold. I talk to a girl after a few minutes and she transfers me to her supervisor. Ten minutes into this hold, I get charged again for $12.50 from Microsoft. That sunuvagun is still using my card! I finally get the supervisor, and after another long hold, she tells me she cannot refund any of the funds. Not even the funds that were charged during the ridiculous 45 minutes of waiting I did! To add insult to injury, she said she could only put a “hold” on the account and that my card could not be removed from the system for a billing cycle! GRRR, Molly, please back me up on this one.

ps. I’m happy I switched to Sony for my gaming needs.

Hello Jamoto,

I’ve been a long time listener and have heard you refer to the listeners of BOL as the “buzz army”. Well….we already have an army…the twit army.

Therefore I move that we adopt “The Buzz Force” or “The Buzz Air Force” moniker. I’m an Air Force Communications Officer and believe that the sophistication of the BOL audience lends itself to an elite Air Force rather than the a ground pounding Army (just kidding Leo).

Just a thought, keep up the great work and LOVE THE SHOW..

Brian, in O’Fallon IL.