Buzz Out Loud Podcast

Rafe Needleman and I get in a fight over Windows 7's loose activation policy. Brian Tong suggests we hug it out. Rafe and I seem to prefer stabbing it out. We also take Flickr to task for censoring images and wonder why the Internet addiction center is so expensive.

Listen now: Download today's podcast

Windows 7 runs free without activation for 120 days with simple command
http://www.engadget.com/2009/08/21/windows-7-runs-free-without-activation-for-120-days-with-simple/

Yahoo deletes anti-Obama image from Flickr
http://www.businessinsider.com/yahoo-deletes-anti-obama-image-from-flickr-2009-8

Twitter to roll out commercial accounts this year
http://digital.venturebeat.com/2009/08/20/twitter-to-roll-out-commercial-accounts-this-year-co-founder-stone-says/

Facebook launches a Twitter app
http://mashable.com/2009/08/20/facebook-twitter-app/

WordPress gets own URL shortener
http://news.cnet.com/8301-19882_3-10314587-250.html
Vb.ly – “sex positive url shortener”
http://news.cnet.com/8301-19882_3-10313617-250.html

Coalition to challenge Google Books settlement
http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-10314586-93.html

Microsoft retail stores are hiring
http://arstechnica.com/microsoft/news/2009/08/microsoft-retail-stores-are-hiring.ars

First American Internet Addiction Treatment Center
http://tech.slashdot.org/story/09/08/20/1833202/First-American-Internet-Addiction-Treatment-Center

ACP, one of the oldest open source apps
http://slashdot.org/story/09/08/21/1121202/ACP-One-of-the-Oldest-Open-Source-Apps

DARPA 3D reasoning engine to identify urban threats
http://news.cnet.com/8301-13639_3-10314619-42.html

Vote for Buzz Out Loud at SXSW 2010
http://www.cnet.com/8301-19709_1-10311505-10.html

Voice mail
Anonymous on how easy it is to install a program in Linux

Patrick in New Hampshire does a word count

E-mail
Hey Buzz Crew!

I was thinking (dangerous, I know), the other day you guys were
talking about URL-Shortening on twitter and how you can’t just allow
links to go on forever because then people would go around that by
putting all the stuff they need in to an http://blahblahblah

So what if…

You had endless links but the actual link text you see is just
“link” ?! Crazy right? That way all links become 4 characters! Yes
yes, there’ll be security issues, but it won’t be worse than bit.ly
already is I suppose

For you html gurus out there, I guess it would look something like:

Here’s the tweet, and here’s the link and the rest of the tweet

TADA, problem solved. No more apocalypse from url shorteners dying XD.
not from twitter at least

Cheers,
Qiming

(Pronounced Ki-Ming)

Love the show

**********

All the URL shortening talk and twitter’s 140 character limit nonsense
got me thinking: Do you think the wireless carriers will ever
officially ditch the 160 limit on SMS, or do they make too much on
suckers like me with VZW Blackberries that don’t use EMS and make you
send multiple messages if you exceed 160 characters?

Wishfully thinking,

Luke the Pastor

**********

Hey Buzz Crew i just wanted to throw my hat into the ring about the
slim. Only the older PS3 Models feature Backwards compatibility. The
current models (80gm, 160gb) DO NOT feature the ability to play PS2
Games. Only the launch Models (60gb and 20gb) have the ability.

~Paul

What? What's wrong with you people? We're talking about Netbooks. Dell has a new "Mini" Note, but it's a 12-inch laptop. So, the question is: what is going on in the Netbook world these days? Also, the Internet makes you both smarter AND dumber, Google Earth shows up for iPhone, and Oprah gives out a Kindle discount. And Natali and Molly love Oprah. Deal with it.

EPISODE 839

Sling.com launch
http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/10/26/slingcom-to-launch-on-november-10/

Google Earth for iPhone/Touch
http://news.cnet.com/8301-13579_3-10075543-37.html
http://news.cnet.com/8301-13579_3-10075860-37.html

iPhone most popular camera on Flickr
http://www.edibleapple.com/iphone-still-reigns-supreme-on-flickr/

Qik for BlackBerry
http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/webware/~3/433186788/8301-17939_109-10075395-2.html

Dell Inspiron Mini 12-inch launch
http://www.dell.com/content/topics/global.aspx/corp/pressoffice/en/2008/2008_10_26_rr_000?c=us&l=en&s=corp

http://blog.wired.com/gadgets/2008/10/dell-mini-inspi.html

Security flaw revealed in T-Mobile’s Google phone
http://news.cnet.com/Security-flaw-revealed-in-T-Mobiles-Google-phone/2100-1002_3-6247261.html

Netflix streams to Macs
http://feeds.engadget.com/~r/weblogsinc/engadget/~3/433102357/
http://www.macworld.com/article/136380/2008/10/netflix.html

The Internet makes you smarter but may give you ADD
http://www.reuters.com/article/technologyNews/idUSTRE49Q2YW20081027

Cable TV provider plans its own wireless network (thanks trails2hike!)
http://www.cnn.com/2008/TECH/biztech/10/27/cox.wireless.ap/index.html

Want $50 off an Amazon Kindle? Thank Oprah
http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2333338,00.asp

VOICEMAIL
Jason the Runner: get my wife off the Oprah

Michah: Can’t split the UVerse

E-MAIL
Thomas:

You mentioned on Friday about the Speed Date application taking over for Oregon Trail. That has already happened at least one time before. I had one of those "wall" programs e.g. Fun Wall, Wild Wall, whatever. The Wall program went away and I got an e-mail announcing it's now Speed Date. I didn't remove the application or anything but I would get these e-mails saying that I matched with someone and someone was wanting to contact me, etc. I clicked on one one day for the heck of it and it asked me to fill in my information like name, e-mail, etc. I am a married man so I decided not to do that! After getting a bunch of e-mails about people wanting to match, I uninstalled the application when I figured out how.

**********

Dear Buzz Crew,

The name ‘Minefield’ is used during all betas. And it uses the Firefox logo without the fox. So basically a globe. With a wick on it. So it looks like a field mine. Think of the mines as bugs. To be exploded and thus removed before the final release.

That is all.

Thanks for reading,
Dylan from KC

**********

Hi Buzz Town,

This is in response to the e-mailer from episode 838 who tried to return his Rock Band 2 video game to Wal-Mart. I worked as a supervisor for a major competitor to Wal-Mart (starts with a “T”) for almost seven years, and was frequently the one behind the counter having to turn away such returns. This is a policy that every retailer I know of that sells unopened media has. Every store has their own policy about how long you have to make the return, assuming that the software/video game/CD/DVD is unopened, but once the product is opened, the ONLY action they can take is to exchange it for the same product. At the time that I was working in this position, we not only could only exchange it for the product, but we actually had to OPEN the product before the customer left the store (for the obvious reason). As a matter of fact, all of the media we sold was supposed to have a little white sticker adhered to it stating this very policy.

While I am not a lawyer, and my education in any kind of law doesn’t stem beyond Business Law 101, I, along with my co-workers, all knew that the reason for this policy was due to copyright, even though our corporate policies never directly stated this. Even in the days of Game Boys and N64’s, this policy applied, I guess because it was assumed that somebody, somewhere, had the equipment to make illegal copies of these console games that you could not even place into your CD drive. In all of the years that I worked in this position, I almost never had a customer give me a difficult time regarding this policy. They all seemed to understand, and even if they did challenge us, we would always offer the excuse the federal copyright law prohibits us from taking back these open products, and they were welcome to go to our competitor to try to return the item, but they would be met with the same frustration. That’s one of the reasons for used video games stores!

A hint for the e-mailer: assuming there are no markings on the copy that you bought online that would identify it as a product from a certain retailer, and the UPC is the same, you can always take THAT copy back to Wal-Mart (assuming it’s unopened).

Love the show…
Stephanie in Atlanta

**********

Hi there, BOL crew (greatest-podcast-in-the-cloud), I was listening to episode 838, and you had an e-mail from someone that wasn’t able to return his Rock Band game he bought from Walmart because of “Federal Copyright Law”, which Molly said she had never heard of and you generally all passed of as BS from a Wal-Mart customer service rep.

Well, I would have been in the same mind frame until yesterday. I work at Best Buy’s Geek Squad, where a customer approached me wanting to return a game she had purchased along with her new $1,200 laptop the day prior because no one told her that it wasn’t compatible with Vista. Despite the fact she came to the wrong counter, since I am not a customer service rep, I was more than willing to see what we could do for her, since I felt it was a simple oversight, and it was only a $10 game. When I asked a customer service supervisor if we would be able to exchange it for a different game for her, I was told that we couldn’t because of “Federal copyright law”! I know our policy is that we normally don’t return open software unless its defective, and even then we can only exchange it for the SAME software, but I figured we could make an exception. It took me by surprise, because I had never heard anything about this law before, and then you at the BOL podcast reiterated it. We made an exception in her case since we didn’t want to come off as total jerks (at least I didn’t). It makes sense, though, that we normally wouldn’t not return it, since we cannot resell open software once its open, the store pretty much has to eat the price of the software, which is not a good business model. Also, if we returned open soft, it would be quite possible for a customer to not only copy software, but copy down activation codes for products such as antivirus, or certain video games, and screw over the next customer who would want to purchase.

In short, this “Federal Copyright Law” in regards to software is not just a Wal-Mart reps attempt to blow off a customer, but actually a policy that carries over to legitimate establishments like Best Buy.

~Wez (The-geek-squad-agent-who-doesn’t-want-to-hear-the-same-best-buy-ads-in-BOL-anymore)

**********

I liked that BitTorrent is used as the distribution method for their content but there is a larger issue at hand: Wikipedia used as a reference source in schools. Isn’t Wikipedia banned as a reference source in many areas of academia?

Michael

EPISODE 748

Flickr co-founders depart Yahoo
http://news.cnet.com/8301-10784_3-9971209-7.html

Statistics show Firefox 3 spreading fast
http://news.cnet.com/8301-10784_3-9971672-7.html
http://mashable.com/2008/06/18/firefox-record/

Firefox 3: Power User’s Guide to Firefox 3 (Thanks royterp!)
http://lifehacker.com/396312/power-users-guide-to-firefox-3

Conde Nast’s Reddit goes open source
http://www.webware.com/8301-1_109-9971150-2.html

VoIP providers to get full 911 access with bill’s passage
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20080618-voip-providers-to-get-full-911-access-with-bills-passage.html

All your coffee are belong to us
http://it.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/06/17/1941200

Can Web predict economic gloom?
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/7459055.stm

An Apple exodus due to low salaries?
http://news.cnet.com/8301-13505_3-9971571-16.html

Like gadgets? You're probably an arrogant
http://www.crunchgear.com/2008/06/18/like-gadgets-youre-probably-an-arrogant-prick/

‘Red Paperclip’ guy ready to trade his house
http://blog.wired.com/underwire/2008/06/red-paperclip-g.html

VOICE MAIL

Mike
T-Mobile told me not to get a new phone yet.

E-MAIL

Mail Order Monsters was AWESOME! Only Archon and M.U.L.E. come close to the fun quotient offered by MOM. I may actually get Spore just because of this. I need to check out the video, but Jason, that is a tremendous geek culture callback. Anyone know of a Windows or Mac emulator for any of those games?

Favorably disposed toward the show,

--Jomichael

Following up on Doug’s voice mail yesterday, the HUGE problem right now is that the Liberals (the opposition and equivalent to the Democrats in Canada ) don’t want to force an election. And if they openly oppose the bill, they could force an election and then lose. So unless something miraculous happens, Canada appears headed into the copyright dark ages.
--Nathaniel
Nova Scotia,
Canada

Hello BOL, I finally got around to installing Firefox 3. I actually installed it on an old laptop that I have laying around that I am having to use. Even though it only has 128MB of RAM while running XP, Firefox 3 is fast! Gmail is responsive: it doesn’t freeze up like Firefox 3 Beta.

Oh yeah, and CNET TV loads without crashing the browser, it displays properly, and the videos play with only a few audio hiccups (probably because of the weird peak in CPU usage). And the amazing part? It does all of this (including rendering flash-heavy CNET TV) with just over 48MB of RAM!

--Tony

It is just after midnight and I am driving south on I-75 from Atlanta. I loaded up the iPod with podcasts for the trip, including the two most recent BOLs. After listening to No. 747 my mind started wandering a bit and I drove on in silence,. Then about 7 minutes later, the sound of the theme music startled me so badly I nearly drove off the road.

On the positive side, I am awake now. This adrenaline rush should last until Tifton or Valdosta.

Love the show,
--The Anonymous Musician.

EPISODE 703

Psystar: Apple's terms violate U.S. monopoly laws
http://blogs.zdnet.com/hardware/?p=1685

Elusive 'Twitter ads' spotted in the wild
http://www.news.com/8301-13577_3-9919041-36.html

Windows XP SP3 now set for April 29 debut
http://arstechnica.com/journals/microsoft.ars/ 2008/04/15/windows-xp-sp3-now-set-for-april-29-debut

NPD: Amazon’s MP3s not affecting iTunes
http://www.news.com/8301-10784_3-9918981-7.html

Kid Breaks Vacuum to Play Xbox Instead of Doing Chores; Mom Sells Xbox, Pranks His MySpace
http://gizmodo.com/379633/kid-breaks-vacuum-to-play-xbox- instead-of-doing-chores-mom-sells-xbox-pranks-his-myspace

Flickr’s Doughnut Giveaway Morphs Into Worldwide Event
http://blog.wired.com/underwire/2008/04/flickr-plans-to.html

Window stickers with cell phone number
http://www.boingboing.net/2008/04/14/window-stickers-with.html

Rocket Racing League announces August takeoff
http://www.news.com/8301-13577_3-9917928-36.html

Iron Man’s New Villain--an Open Source Terrorist
http://entertainment.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/04/15/0037211

VOICE MAIL

Anonymous
But we gave the telcos money before.

Shelley Austin
I think hybrids are too quiet.

FORUMS

Introducing MollyRants.org
http://forums.cnet.com/5208-6035_102-0.html? forumID=97&threadID=291447

E-MAIL

DC Flash Mob Participant Arrested for Dancing in Celebration of TJ Birthday

Hey Buzz Crew,
I just wanted to let Buzzville know about what happened to one of my friends (and yes, I was there) this past Saturday:

http://www.theagitator.com/2008/04/13/so-about-that- tree-of-liberty/

Tonight, a group of about 20 D.C.-area libertarians headed down to the Thomas Jefferson Memorial for some flash mob fun. The prank was harmless revelry: To ring in Jefferson's birthday, we would meet on the steps of the memorial at 11:55 p.m., wearing iPods, then dance for about 10 minutes, capture the whole thing on video, and leave.

Note: This post made the digg front page this weekend.

Further reporting from Radley Balko available here:
Video of the incident: http://www.theagitator.com/2008/04/14/ jefferson-dance-party-video/
http://www.theagitator.com/2008/04/13/jefferson-arrest-update/

Brooke is fine and the most recent break down of the story (from a fellow participant) is available here:

http://www.spectator.org/dsp_article.asp?art_id=13056

Since this event was organized on Facebook, I thought you all might take some interest in the event.

In Freedom,
--Elizabeth

Elizabeth the Economist/Policy Analyst
in Alexandria, VA

Boy Scouts helping neighbors with DTV conversion

Hey Tom,

Listened to today’s BOL postcast (BOL 702) and you played a call from a Boy Scout in Nev. This is Ron, the one you met up at last week’s meetup. My last name is Larson, and I was up from Santa Barbara for the RSA Conference.

I got a laugh about the Jehovah's Witness help. You mentioned a message board about this, but I can’t find it. I looked at the BOL Forum. Nothing there. What Message Board?

Anyhow… it was good talking to you guys.

--Ron Larson

Amazon improving digital download quality?

Hi Tom, Molly, and Jason,

A while back when Amazon debuted their new digital download music service, you read my complaint that the tracks were encoded in joint stereo w/ a variable bitrate. I didn’t download anything from them since, but tonight I gave them another shot with the new Birthday Massacre album (yeah my taste is a bit obscure). Now, I look at the track encoding, and I see that it’s encoded with LAME3.91 at a constant 256 kbps… and in FULL stereo! I don’t think I could encode it any better myself. Amazon, I love you. (And I love BOL too!) I just hope this is across the board and not isolated to this particular album.

--Mike in Fla.

Well actually, Fry’s vs. Fry’s

Hey Tom,

Fry’s Food & Drug/Fry’s Marketplace is not owned by Fry’s Electronics.

Kroger which owns Ralph’s, Quik Stop, Food 4 Less, Hilander, and many other grocery chains is the parent company to Fry’s Food & Drug/Fry’s Marketplace.

Fry’s Electronics is run by the three brothers John, Randy, and Dave Fry.
Their father Charles Fry, sold the Fry’s grocery chain in 1972.
Kroger acquired the chain sometime later.

Fry’s electronics was founded in 1985 using some of the money that their father gave them after selling off the grocery chain.
One more bit of trivia is that the Fry’s brothers are or were part owners in the San Jose Sharks.

LTS KUTGW
Hershal, the former Fry’s (electronics) Employee

P.S. My brother works in the Meat Department at Fry’s …uh, the other one …no, not the electronics one …yeah, I assume you figured that …just in case though… okay, bye now.

Sväng, svang, svung? What is it?

Hi,

In episode 699, you guys were talking something about iPhone/N95 and a new word popped out: Sväng
Molly: Sväng is my new favorite word ever. Sväng me!
Tom: I read once something about that “Sväng” was standard English in 16th hundreds, and then went away.
Molly: Really? Because it sounded too funny?

Anyway,
I’m a developer, and a very long time regular listener of BOL from Finland, and this dialoge hit me because I’m also a member of a Harmonica Quartet called Sväng (www.myspace.com/svangharmonica and http://www.svang.fi ).
While this may sound like totally non_hi_tech thing, it is quite the contrary.

We deploy fully digital audio system on stage comprising a RME digital audio interface connected to PCI express card slot of MacBook Pro running Logic pro’s Main Stage and real time effects, eq’s and other plug-ins. Then we have a Bluetooth remote midi controller to switch between patches during the live performance.

Yes, I realize that our Sväng and yours are not the same thing, and while pronounced exactly alike the spelling most likely is not the same. I’m curious, however, what is the meaning of Sväng(?) in standard English?

-Pasi-

EPISODE 701

Mike
Please keep doing the show.

Windows is ‘collapsing,’ Gartner analysts warn
http://www.news.com/8301-13860_3-9916717-56.html
http://www.computerworld.com.au/index.php/id;1870375122;fp;;fpid;;pf;1
http://blogs.zdnet.com/BTL/?p=8428

Europe rejects plan to criminalize file-sharing
http://www.infoworld.com/article/08/04/10/ Europe-rejects-plan-to-criminalize-file-sharing_1.html
http://www.paidcontent.org/entry/ 419-eu-parliament-warns-against-isp-monitoring-in-music-piracy-fight/

Network Solutions advertises on your subdomain
http://tech.slashdot.org/tech/08/04/11/1326235.shtml

Satellite to be junked because lunar flyby is patented
http://www.boingboing.net/2008/04/11/satellite-to-be-junk.html

Attention Flickr video haters: Try a free doughnut
http://www.news.com/8301-13580_3-9916624-39.html

Amazon, Wal-Mart jump on the HD DVD rebate bandwagon
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/ 20080410-amazon-wal-mart-pile-on-the-hd-dvd-rebate-bandwagon.html

Army brings armed robots home from Iraq over control issues
http://www.engadget.com/2008/04/10/ army-brings-armed-robots-home-from-iraq-over-control-issues/

The PS3 Laptop: From Ben Heck to Engadget with love
http://www.engadget.com/2008/04/10/ the-ps3-laptop-from-ben-heck-to-engadget-with-love/

Datacenter used to heat swimming pool (Thanks Russ960!)
http://www.techworld.com/news/index.cfm?RSS&NewsID=11940

GoogleDrive
http://www.phatfusion.net/googledrive/

Best font ever!!!
http://www.core77.com/blog/object_culture/ the_best_font_ever_9432.asp

VOICE MAIL

Rafa
Well actually…. to myself!

A.C. South Korea
I care about the 3G iPhone

E-MAIL

Hello there. I have been listening for about a month now and noticed that just about every (or perhaps every) listener message played ends with a “love the show” — many of which are fairly awkward/misplaced. For example, “I can’t believe you guys feel this way, what are you morons? My 6-year-old son has more common sense than you! Love the show.” I am thinking that your listeners think their message will not be played unless they say “love the show”. If that is the case, there are probably some really good messages that are not being aired. To solve this, I have created a “love the show”
MP3 for you that you can append to all messages that you wouldn’t normally play on air because of the sans “love the show”. Enjoy.

p.s. Love the show

Bo

Surfing the Internet on my Nokia N800 during a tornado--yes, seriously…

On Thursday morning there was some local, intense cyclonic activity that passed by my front door. I heard the siren went to my apartment’s “weather protection fortress” (aka my half-bathroom) with a comforter, pillow, and my Nokia N800 which I tuned to the local FM station to get the emergency notice. While the wind and hail was passing my front door, I was just listening to the radio and surfing the Web over Wi-Fi. I checked the Woot.com featured items and the BOL forum.

After the weather passed, I went back to bed and realized that I was freakin’ surfin’ the Interwebz while I was waiting out a tornado…WOW!

Have a good weekend,
Shalin

Bandwidth “crisis”

BOLers,

Companies sell a service to customers then complain that there is a bandwidth usage problem. Nearly every network access method is sold based on oversubscription. Companies do this to maximize profits. When they are forced to spend more on infrastructure, it cuts into profits. They don’t raise costs (they cut them and still try to entice new customers on to their networks), they don’t light the No Vacancy sign, they don’t re-engineer--they call in the lawyers and lobbyists to get protection for their bad business model.

I think it is important that this particular tech issue be stripped down to it’s essence of “maximizing shareholder return” (read as: “corporate greed”) instead of a streaming, peer-to-peer, [insert technology or Web site here] story. Their failure to run the business properly and attempts to make others pay for it is the big story that is underreported in the tech sector.

Can we get a good Molly Rant on the subsidization of the network build out and the failure to deliver what was promised soon?

Michael Baker
Columbus, Ohio

Strong Bad video game!

Telltale is creating a Strong Bad video game: Strong Bad’s Cool Game for Attractive People.

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/ 83100-Sam-Max-Developer-Announces-New-Episodic-Game

Kacee

Digital switch-over

Hi BUZZ, you know how TV stations will scroll that white text along the top of your TV usually about impending bad weather without stopping the show you are currently watching? Well I was watching TV last night and the scroll-y text starts going by and explaining the digital switch over in 2009 and where to call to get addition information. Pretty smart, that channel is one of CT’s over the air analog stations. They ran the message once during Jeopardy & once during Wheel of Fortune. Targeted demographic? Absolutely.

Dion in CT

p.s. - I’m not that demographic.

Ten thousand cents

I happened across this site today and its really interesting. http://www.tenthousandcents.com/index.html It looks like these artists used Amazon’s mechanical turk program and had hundreds of people draw 10,000 frames of a $100 bill. When you load the page you see the entire image being simultaneously drawn. They have something in there about how the money they are earning from selling it is going to go toward the OLPC program, however, Google has apparently frozen their account. Not a whole lot of information, but the animation itself is worth checking out.

Charles in SF.

Meetup

OK,

So, you guys went out for a few pints tonight, excellent. Montreal won their game vs. Boston in the Stanley Cup play-offs. I ask that you guys go drinking every night Montreal plays until some time in June (hopefully). As we all know, correlation is causation…

Go Habs Go

Dave (the psychologist and Habs fan)

Being nice

HEY
You guys were so nice at the end of Episode 699! Thank You! Seriously, that was great, thanks for playing me!

As usual, love you guys, I promise my next call or e-mail will be more helpful, less whiny!

Have a great day.

Elam Noor
Arden Hills, Minn.

EPISODE 699

Video on Flickr!
http://blog.flickr.net/en/2008/04/09/video-on-flickr-2/

Wal-Mart going hardline on DRM-free online music store; SonyBMG and Warner Music Group hold outs
http://www.paidcontent.org/entry/ 419-wal-mart-going-hardline-on-drm-free-online-music-store-sonybmg-and-wmg-/

Universal Music Group: Throwing away promo CDs is illegal
http://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2008/04/ umg-says-throwing-away-promo-cds-illegal

Senators still sweating digital TV switch
http://www.news.com/8301-10784_3-9914424-7.html

Pixar to release all new movies in 3D
http://slashdot.org/articles/08/04/09/128258.shtml

Apple error leaves iPhone developers in the lurch
http://it.slashdot.org/it/08/04/08/1932232.shtml

Mossberg: I have no idea when 3G iPhone is coming, and I don’t care
http://www.alleyinsider.com/2008/4/ mossberg_i_don_t_know_the_3g_iphone_date_and_i_don_t_care

Nokia’s touch screen Tube out in the wilds?
http://www.engadget.com/2008/04/09/ nokias-touchscreen-tube-out-in-the-wilds/

Your identity is worth less than $15
http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/04/09/0128221

Study gives high marks to U.S. Internet
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/09/ technology/09internet.html

HP strikes chord with Mini-Note PC
http://www.news.com/8301-10784_3-9912854-7.html

All your baseball are belong to Rick Astley
http://www.news.com/8301-13577_3-9914423-36.html

VOICE MAIL

Vic Norway
The smell of Pong

Elam
Why so mean with the promos?

E-MAIL

3D printer + copyright law = pandemonium

Wow, as if we didn’t have copyright issues before!

“You can’t print that wheel for your dishwasher Merritt! We own the patent! You have to buy it from us for $29.99!”

“You can’t fabricate a life-sized copy of Col. Sanders! We own it!”

“You can’t make a copy of that Star Wars figure! George Lucas owns the patent to your childhood!”

The intellectual property issues are staggering. Someone call Lawrence Lessig!

Ethan
Minneapolis

E-mail to Apple

Hi guys
I sent you a copy of an e-mail i sent to apple, what do you think of the reply i got ?

—–
Dear Doug,

I understand you’re wanting some information about how to stop the prompts from asking if you’d like to install Safari for Windows. My name is Noël and I will be happy to assist you in this matter.

First off, I’d just like to say that Safari, in my opinion, is by far the best Web browser available today. It has everything you could want or need built in. I’d highly recommend you try it out to see for yourself.

To discontinue getting the message, you will need to either install the browser, or disable the Software updater from the scheduled tasks. The following article I found by googling this issue may help:

Disable Apple software update screen (Windows) http://www.technipages.com/disable-apple-software-update-screen-windows.html

I have issued 2 song credits to your “dep112362@aol.com” iTunes Store account for this frustrating matter. You can use these to buy the individual songs of your choice from the iTunes Store.

When you next sign in with this account, the song credits will appear by your account name (in the upper-right section of the iTunes Store). The next individual song you buy from the iTunes Store will use one of your song credits instead of your primary form of payment (until all credits have been used or have expired). Please note that song credits cannot be used for purchasing songs that are listed as “Album Only.”

If you don’t see your credits, refresh your account information by signing out and back in to the iTunes Store. You can find both “Sign Out” and “Sign In” within the pull-down “Store” menu. If you don’t see this menu, you should need only download the latest version of iTunes from our Web site for free:

http://www.apple.com/itunes/download/

Let me know if you need any further assistance with anything and I will be happy to help you. Thank you for being a valued customer. We want your experience to be as enjoyable as possible. Have a wonderful day!

Sincerely,

Noël
iTunes Store Customer Support in California Sunday-Thursday 10:00 a.m.-7:00 p.m.
—–

Doug

Response to staples chair cost

Hi Buzz Crew,
This is Ken the Staples guy.
I am writing in response to Alex the law student and his comments on a recent visit to Staples of his mentioned in episode 698. I have wanted to call or write in many times, but I feel I need to defend my paycheck and explain the policy on this one.
The policy in general is we charge a $5 assembly fee if the customer would like a chair put together.
We waive the fee if we do not have any more of the same chair in stock, and the customer would still like the display model. So if that is all we have, then you do not pay extra for it. And we often give a discount.
However, if a customer is looking for a deal by asking for the display model then we do not waive the fee, because they are trying to get something for nothing. Of course exceptions can be made then as well. But someone spent valuable time assembling the chair for a reason other than that customer.
Although he would have been surprised by the price difference in trying to get a deal in asking for the display model, I think if you ask for the display model (for a reason other than it being the last one) then you should not complain about the other people who would have tried it out.

Thanks for being my daily tech roundup--Podcast Of Indeterminate Length!

Ken, the Staples guy from near Pittsburgh Pa.

Wii mouse

Tom,

I do not know about any Bothans, but your desire for Wii mouse combo sounds a lot like the logitech MX Air:

http://www.logitech.com/index.cfm/mice_pointers/mice/devices/3443&cl=us,en

It doesn’t work with the Wii, but same principle.

-Chris
Illinois

Wii controller for the PC

Hi Buzz Crew,

Just responding to Tom’s comment about the Wii controller mouse for PC (I’m sure ton of other folks will be sending this to you as well), there’s a company called Gyration (www.gyration.com) that makes mice that have a gyroscopes to detect motions like the Wii controller, and they function like a regular mice when put on a flat surface.

Looking up on Wikipedia, Gyration actually made a concept controller for Nintendo back in 2001 (http://www.answers.com/wii+controller?cat=technology&gwp=13).

I actually wrote about it way back for a small tech site back in the day, it is now defunct, although the main page still works (http://www.edgereview.com).

I really like the mouse I had back then, but it wasn’t perfect. Left clicking isn’t accurate at times while using it in motion detect mode because the process of clicking the mouse button moves the mouse, so you might not click on the right link or missed the prompt boxes at times. It definitely has a learning curve to it.

Jack C. Ngai

Evil link service

Hi Jason, Molly and Tom,

I ran across this on a twitter friend’s blog. It’s a service called LinkBlip. It basically allows you to send someone a modified link to a page and then will notify you when they click it.

http://linkblip.com/

Big bruther is in ur links, watchin wher u clik!

Joe
aka dOgBOi

iTunes tax

Heya Buzz peoples,

In episode 698 (yesterday) you talked about California charging a tax that would apply to music downloads, specifically iTunes.

Well I live in Arizona and I pay a tax on iTunes download. I pay 1.08 for a song and about 2.10 - 2.11 for a TV episode.

So I don’t know what ya’ll are complaining about. I have been paying taxes on iTunes downloads since day one.

Anyway just wanted to let you all know. Also I think I only pay sales taxes on Internet sales if that company I am buying from has stores-etc in my state. Apple has stores in Ariz., therefore I pay tax on Apple products. That’s my understanding anyway.

Keep up the buzzing.

Mark - Grand Canyon State

Is there a term for BOL killing a site?

Hi JaMoTo,

If you haven’t already coined a name for it yet, you need to find a BOL equivalent to Slashdotting or the Digg Effect. Buzzed, maybe? In episode 698 you mentioned http://www.applejeans.com, and when I visited that the afternoon of the show, all it showed was a Microsoft ODBC Drivers error. I hope you’re happy — you’ve killed the dream of Apple Jeans!

Jon
Ottawa, Canada

EPISODE 682

Web creator rejects net tracking
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/7299875.stm

BT confesses lies over secret Phorm experiments
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/03/17/bt_phorm_lies/

Yahoo Buzz is a game-changer for social media
http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/ yahoo_buzz_is_a_game_changer.php

Google says Microsoft’s Yahoo buy might hurt Internet
http://www.reuters.com/article/technologyNews/ idUSPEK15292020080317

Flickr Video beta due in April
http://www.news.com/8301-13953_3-9895044-80.html

Firefox 3 goes on a diet, eats less memory than IE and Opera
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/ 20080317-firefox-3-goes-on-a-diet-eats-less-memory-than-ie-and-opera.html

LimeWire digital music store launches
http://www.downloadsquad.com/2008/03/17/ limewire-digital-music-store-launches/

Sweden once again hotbed for file-sharing debate
http://www.pcworld.com/article/ id,143505-c,internetlegalissues/article.html

Japanese ISPs to start policing P2P users
http://www.betanews.com/article/ Japanese_ISPs_to_start_policing_P2P_Winny_users/1205768926

TiVo flagging HBO content on Comcast boxes
http://cultureofownership.org/?p=17

Update on Rush Mac problem: It's fixed
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/17/business/ media/17rush.html

Voice mail
Hemang from Ohio: Indian pronunciation lessons

John from Dolphin: How can you make up a loss on volume?

E-mail

CableCard restrictions

I looked at the TiVo Web site that was displayed on my TV last night "http://www.tivo.com/copyprotection", and found this. I was watching the broadcast on a TiVo HD on a HBO HD channel, with my TV connected via HDMI cables. I use 2 Comcast CableCards viewing the digital TV channels. It appears that my shows were encoded with the 0×07 values--delete after 90 minutes and never allow copying.

Digital signal copy protection policies for TiVo Series3 and TiVo HD DVRs

The TiVo Series3 and TiVo HD Digital Media Recorders are compliant Digital Cable Receiver (DCR) devices which use CableCard? to receive high quality digital cable content in its native form. Since the Series3 and TiVo HD are DCR devices, in addition to the Macrovision rules for analog content, they must also comply with the content protection policies for Digital Cable content. These copy protection rules vary by content type, and in general, premium and pay channels will have more restrictive rules.

Dean

*********************************

Tom points out…

Nothing that takes less than 60 minutes to do can have a business model Cooley? I’m disappointed.

But rather than ranting let me dial it back to just a couple points.

1. Blogging is a publishing tool. If a newspaper wants to have a convenient way for reporters to file short stories quickly, why shouldn't they? I find "blogs" on newspapers to often have some of the best content. This isn't apologizing for anything, it's using new technology to provide professional reporting. I don't see it as ultimately different from switching from a Caxton Press to a mimeo machine to modern publishing. Should they not have switched from long column broadsheet publishing either? It's about the content that goes into the publishing system, whatever it is, not the system itself.

2. I think Cuban may be off base here. Not every print publication is treated equally. In fact, I'll wager not even every *newspaper* gets credentials to the Mavericks. Instead, I'm sure there are policies about size of circulation, frequency of publication, etc. Why not have similar policies for blogs?

Tom

*****************************

Mark Cuban

He may have a point, but it does look pretty fishy that the blogger was removed from the locker room soon after writing a story about Mavericks coach Avery Johnson may be in jeopardy of losing his job if the team doesn't turn it around soon.

Jomichael

*****************************

Medical records on Google

This e-mail is about a month after the fact, but I think we all failed to notice the correlation between Google wanting to store your medical records online, and the $3.9M Google invested into 23andMe (https://www.23andme.com/), whose co-founder Anne Wojcicki is married to Google co-founder, Sergey Brin.

So your 23andMe genetic results and predispositions to diseases could be stored in Google along with your medical history. Sounds like a pretty good business partner and public service, but a world of devastation should your account be hacked into.

-Buck

************************

In defense of Molly

I left a voice mail but I think it might've been over 30 seconds, so I'm following up with an e-mail just in case.

Fordo commented on episode 681 about Molly's recent change of heart about Hulu, to which Molly basically admitted that she had been wrong about Hulu in the past and now she likes it. If I remember correctly though, the initial negative reaction Molly and many others (myself included) had was not against Hulu per se, but rather at the fact that NBC announced its support of content in Hulu right on the coattails of pulling its content from the iTunes store. Like Molly, I too think that Hulu is great now that it's out, but it was still a jerky move on NBC's part to take its content out of iTunes. Please correct me if I'm wrong Molly, but I believe this was the root of your prior ill sentiments about Hulu.

Keep up the good work,

Roberto
Portland, OR

*************************

Hulu exposed!

So, I just created an account on Hulu in order to watch The Big Lebowski. Filled out the form, submit, done. Then, I went to the ‘Profile’ area. By DEFAULT, under Privacy and Settings, your “Personal Information”, “About Me” and “Lists” were all public, this includes the e-mail you signed up with. I feel too exposed! (OK, not really since I immediately set them to private.) And quite frankly, watching video was not satisfying. No, I didn't get problems with buffering and the UI for the actual player was awesome. My problem was the fact that the movies seem to skip frames rather than buffer. Very irritating. I have a 10Mb connection and can stream things like Netflix, iTunes movie rentals, network television online streaming, etc just fine. I found Hulu to be very disappointing from a privacy and performance standpoint. About the only thing I would watch here is something I can't find via Netflix, didn't want to buy from iTunes or was not available on the network's Web site. On the other hand, if the playback performance improves, I could become a fan, especially since I have to boot my Windows virtual machine to stream Netflix video.

Ossie,
Tulsa, OK

(note: 10Mb == 10 Mega bits, and while that is the advertised speed of my connection, I actually get better then that.)

*************************

Well actually…

Dear Molly Wood,

You rock.
Now that I've gotten that out of the way, I am going to disagree with you. When I called in to CNET Live on Thursday, I never asked to learn how to steal music, I asked how can I get my SpiralFrog music to play in iTunes. The only reason I want to do this is strictly for organizational purposes, it's easier when all the music is in one library. I don’t have an iPod, I have never used a P2P client in my life. I AM NOT A BAD PERSON. I AM NOT ”THAT” GUY.

And one more thing: Do you know who showed me how to use an Ad-Blocker? I'll tell you, CNET did. Maybe even Tom.

It really bothers me that you and Brian would think I'm a bad guy.
I'm not sure why. My point is you took my question out of context and shambled me in front of millions of listeners.

Thanks, Jacob from Brooklyn.

**************************

Buzz Out Loud comic!!

Hey, Buzz Crew,

Recently I decided to start a Web comic. After brainstorming for about 30 seconds, I thought: “Hey, I should do a comic about Buzz Out Loud”. A domain registration, Word Press installation, and FTP upload later, buzzcrew.net came to be. Go ahead and check it out. I’m basing it all on your podcast, so make sure you keep coming up with funny stuff to say. Otherwise I’ll be out of new material.

http://www.buzzcrew.net

Goodonya,
-Max