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)

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

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.

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.

I thought I made up a word, but upon further review, slaver turns out to mean to smear as if with saliva. Ew. But we also talked further about listening to media in the shower and even got to some tech news. That involved the release of Spore, the recall of Sony laptops, and Amazon launching a new video streaming service.
Listen now: Download today's podcast

EPISODE 802

Spore (PC) game reviews
http://reviews.cnet.com/pc-games/spore-pc/4505-9696_7-31484467.html

Microsoft cuts Xbox 360 to $199 in throw down with Sony
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20080903-microsoft-makes-play-for-second-place-360-price-cut-to-199.html

Sony recalls 440,000 Vaio laptops
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/7598344.stm

Amazon flicks on its streaming-video service
http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-10032491-93.html

BBC to launch music download store
http://news.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/09/03/1937241

Sprint Touch Diamond reviewed
http://www.phonescoop.com/news/item.php?n=3336

Dell plays defense with Mini 9 netbook
http://news.cnet.com/8301-17938_105-10032134-1.html

Google on Chrome EULA controversy: Our bad, we’ll change it
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20080903-google-on-chrome-eula-controversy-our-bad-well-change-it.html

What exaflood? ‘Net backbone shows no signs of osteoporosis
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20080903-what-exaflood-net-backbone-shows-no-signs-of-osteoporosis.html

The 5 most laughable terms of service on the Net
http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/09/03/2130233

VOICE MAIL

Anonymous
Mad PC gamer

FORUMS

Bandwidth metering software
http://forums.cnet.com/5208-6035_102-0.html?forumID=97&threadID=306977&messageID=2847675

E-MAIL

I’m upset at my ISP. The wrote to me a few months ago with an amazing offer, to ‘upgrade me’ from my naked uncapped ADSL connection to a less expensive capped DSL connection with phone included. Now I’m a busy person so I didn’t write them back to tell them where to take their amazing offer.

Now some months later, the lovely people at my ISP have telephoned me 10 times in eight days offering to ‘upgrade’ me. I--again being busy--pretended not to be the account holder and told them to go away. But the really frustrating thing is that today, my Internet has been down since about 4 a.m. yet they still called me to tell me how I could get the great Internet connection I’m getting just now for less!

I don’t have the time to explain the the minimum wage employee on the end of the phone at 1) the deal is crap, you really expect me to give up an uncapped connection and my static IP address to save £5 a month and 2) that I have something called VoIP and that means I really don’t give a crap about their phone service.

So BOL, please send a nice big Buzz Off to Pipex in the U.K.. They annoy me with their phone calls and with their two instances of downtime, I’ve already exceeded the 5GB cap on my HSDPA account only four days into the month.

ross(cbrown)

Dear Jamoto,

I have been a long time listener and passively enjoying your show, but, I think I may be missing the point on the Psystar issue. I won’t go into some crazy analogy comparing Psystar with some middle earth subcreature or something. I just want someone to clear up how what apple does is so much different than the OEM license that Microsoft issues. Isn’t that copy of the operating system locked to a specific machine?

Someone help me out. Explain to me the difference. Feeling a little dense on this.

Steve

Have you guys wondered why the new 250GB bandwidth cap is not exposed as a meter customers can lookup?

If Comcast knows how much bandwidth a customer consumes in a months time, wouldn’t it simply be an number, adjacent to their account number in a giant database somewhere? How hard would that be to expose to customers via a password protected customer portal…

OR…

Perhaps, the don’t know how much bandwidth each customer uses. After all, its pretty difficult to track this on a shared loop network, like a cable broadband network.

Nilay

Hi Guys,

I loved the story about the waterproof TV because I have to admit I am a shower media junky. I recently upgraded to a smartphone and have loaded it with BOL and other tech podcasts. At home I put the phone on a ledge and play it over the speaker but have contemplated bringing a ziplock to the gym so I can play it in the shower there as well. I drive my wife crazy because I move around with the phone playing the podcasts as I get out of the shower, brush my teeth, and so on. Nothing gets my day off to the right start like a good Molly rant!

My only regret is that I heard this story while in the car, not the shower this time, which would have been really cool. Love the show!

Thanks,

Matt

Just thought you guys would like to know that while watching CNBC today (sadly a little after the live stream concluded) they had a segment on what the Apple announcements might be and one of their highlighted items was a possible Beatles deal. Looks like your rumor is spreading like wildfire. Keep up the good work.

Tommy in Atlanta

EPISODE 800

Apple Store in Hawaii still not open
http://www.ifoapplestore.com/db/2008/08/23/hawaiian-spirits-dictate-storefront-materials/

Meet Chrome, Google’s shiny new browser
http://news.cnet.com/Meet-Chrome%2C-Googles-shiny-new-browser/2009-1032_3-6246210.html
http://news.cnet.com/8301-17939_109-10030025-2.html
http://blogoscoped.com/archive/2008-09-02-n72.html

Apple makes September 9 iPod event official
http://news.cnet.com/8301-13579_3-10030344-37.html

Is Cuil killing Web sites?
http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/09/01/is-cuil-killing-websites/

IE8 Beta 2 fatter than Firefox and XP
http://tech.slashdot.org/tech/08/09/02/1418252.shtml

Lenovo won’t refund the Windows tax without an NDA
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20080831-lenovo-wont-refund-the-windows-tax-without-an-nda.html

Spore to finally appear later this week
http://www.theinquirer.net/gb/inquirer/news/2008/09/02/spore-finally-appear-later
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122031227102788791.html?mod=googlenews_wsj

Nokia ‘Comes With Music’ to offer ‘Free’ music to cell phone subscribers
http://blog.wired.com/music/2008/09/nokia-comes-wit.html

Ultrasound to give feel to games
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/7593444.stm

Is technology making it harder to be unfaithful?
http://news.cnet.com/8301-17852_3-10029985-71.html

Shower TV!
http://www.engadget.com/2008/09/02/sony-floats-waterproof-bravia-xdv-w600-1-seg-tv-for-the-bath/

VOICE MAIL

Jim from London
About bandwidth caps.

Bill
An example of an album as a single file.

E-MAIL

Josh Denver wasn’t very far off, in fact BMW developed a racecar that runs on the same principal. It was super fast setting 9 speed records and its only byproduct was water. It was called the BMW H2R. Here is the the Wikipedia article link.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BMW_H2R

Google it if you have any other questions

Comcast’s limits:

Take 250GB and divide by thirty (8.3GB daily cap), 347MB hourly cap, 5.7 meg per minute, and 96k per second. The key question is, “What applications do I run that consume 100kpbs per second?” In a family of five, here’s the math:

Son 8 - Club Penguin
Daughter 11- Homework, AIM chat
Daughter 4 - iTunes video
Wife - Web browsing/online chat, Internet radio
Me - Buzz out Loud, Skype, Adium, Transmission, Slingbox, Pandora

OK, maybe we ought to switch off our router at night… that would double our numbers, but let’s face it, the real problem is if you need to run something that persistently consumes bandwidth: Torrents & Persistent Music & Video connections are still the big issue. Who’s kidding who?

Glad I’m on Time Warner...so far, we’re safe, for another five minutes. Even so, I know we all know they’re shaping our traffic, it’s just a matter of how sneaky they are at it.

Love the show,

Ernest

I am sure that this is beat to death but I am one of the few who may be affected by this new cap. My husbands employer just allowed him to work at home as a software developer. He VPNs everyday for 8-to-9 hours into his works network. I myself work from home as a writer for a daily news blog and maintain a personal blog where I upload pictures and videos daily. My husband and I do online gaming at night, watch Hulu, just browsing, and so on. My children are home schooled and we use an online learning program and lots of Web sites as educational resources. We even use VoIP for our phone! We pay for the most expensive Comcast plan at $75/month. It was advertised as a “gaming and entertainment plan”. So much for that. If we get booted from Comcast our only choice is 1.5MB DSL thru Fairpoint. Sounds ridiculous but we may have to buy a new house just to get the Internet we need.

-kate

Hey JaMoTo,

Quick update on your analysts site, I settled with NTT DoCoMo. After having a few e-mail discussions with DoCoMo, they eventually told me it was a mistake to send me that e-mail, and the person who sent the e-mail misunderstood what causes infringement on there copyright! Also you can now access the site from a new URL, Jamotoanalysts Dot Com. Plus the first press release comes out wednesday!

-Hayden

August 31, 1998, is when the very first mp3 player was available:

http://www.teamteabag.com/2008/08/31/retro-computing-corner-the-worlds-first-mp3-player-c-1998/

The mp3 player is now a decade old!

Hi Crew,

Regarding Lloyds "password" saga (BOL 799)--it isn't actually a password, it is a "secret word".

Amongst the many joys of the British banking system, any call to customer service will involve (after a 20 minute wait and multiple choice questions) providing such information as age, date of birth, inside trouser (pant?) measurement, and so on, and finally the Secret Word.

From this word you are asked to provide, for example, the first and third letter--all this is to supposedly prove you are you and no one else, said word is not part of any login system and is purely for human consumption.

Finally--Top Gear and the i-pod pronunciation, that is just James May aka Captain Slow, he has made it into the 21st Century, but only just.

Regards

Mike Lumley
Torquay U.K.

While listening to episode 797 the superbug of piracy, you guys were talking about spreading the rumor about The Beatles coming to itunes September 9, well I just wanted to let that the other day at work (I work at Best Buy…… yeah Best Buy, who buy the way are proud sponsors of CNET TV just wanted to throw that in there). I informed a friend of mine (who is also a BOL fan), that The Beatles were coming to itunes September 9 and he was all like REALLY!!!!!!!!! (all excite) and I was like no….. it’s just a rumor that Molly and the guys from BOL are spreading, and he than just started laughing, than later in the day when I was sitting in the lunch room talking with a bunch of other staff, Pat walked in and said “So Nicole did you hear that The Beatles are coming to iTunes September 9” everyone in the room was like really…….and I was like ya didn’t you hear. It was a super funny moment anyways LOVE THE SHOW.

Nicole Drummond
just another BOL fan

EPISODE 787

Intro (Thanks Vic the Texas Rancher Pilot!!)

Best Buy to sell iPhones in September
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/08/13/iphone_best_buy_deal/
http://news.cnet.com/8301-13579_3-10016087-37.html

Some iPhone 3G users find painful experience thanks to poor connections
http://www.dailytech.com/Some+iPhone+3G+Users+Find+Painful+Experience+Thanks+to+Poor+Connections/article12652.htm

Fire at Apple campus
http://www.mercurynews.com/ci_10183827

Home office measure gives public bodies access to personal e-mails and texts (Thanks, Adam)
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2008/aug/13/privacy.civilliberties

Olympic gold medalist credits Wii with helping him mentally prepare
http://www.engadget.com/2008/08/13/olympic-gold-medalist-credits-wii-with-helping-him-mentally-prep/

Slashdot | Miyamoto ‘banned’ from talking about hobbies
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/08/13/1310240

Lucasarts embargoes Clone Wars reviews...it's getting bad pub already
http://entertainment.slashdot.org/entertainment/08/08/13/1222225.shtml

Madden in the hizzouse
http://news.cnet.com/8301-17938_105-10015356-1.html

Extended Digital rentals by Vudu…Love this! I hate the 24-hour viewing period and then it's done
http://news.cnet.com/8301-17938_105-10016151-1.html
http://www.vudu.com/aboutus_extended_rentals.html

Air Force suspends Cyber Command Program
http://tech.slashdot.org/tech/08/08/13/1436224.shtml

Voice mail:
Anonymous Privacy Guy
It’s not just the cookies …

E-mail

Hey JaMoTo,

It’s funny that you brought up not seeing the Kindle in the wild last episode. I had never seen one either…until last night. I was out at a restaurant and saw a teenager at a table with his parents reading his Kindle, while his little brother watched something on his iPod. My first thought was “Hey a Kindle, I didn’t realize people really used those”. My second thought was “Man is that thing UGLY!”. Love the show guys.

Ryan from Charlotte, NC

*********

Hello BOL Crew,

I just wanted to tell you how excited I felt when I saw that Gmail was down on monday.

Why was I excited?

Because I thought they were coming out of beta! I mean, is Gmail really still in beta? Or is it just that someone forgot to change the logo?

Love the show,
Bernardo

**********

Hi BOL,

Here is a question related to Yahoo allowing people to opt out; does one opt out of receiving targeted ads or does one opt out of being tracked?

Clearly very different things and one would hope that it’s the latter.

EricC
Dublin, Ireland

PS: love the show.

**********

Hi All,

Will you be posting info or mentioning on the podcast when/where the BOL livecast will be?

Thanks!

Jason in the OC