Buzz Out Loud Podcast

We debate the proper pronunciation of WebOS from Palm. Does it rhyme with Huevos? In any case, Palm has killed the old Palm OS, so may it rest in peace. We also analyze the state of the TV industry. LCD shipments are down, so everybody's getting out of the plasma business? I guess that's why I'm not CEO of an electronics company.

EPISODE 910

Buzz Out Loud chat auction to benefit Kiva
http://www.humanety.com/

MS to offer free Windows 7 upgrade to Vista users
http://it.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=09/02/11/238222
http://arstechnica.com/microsoft/news/2009/02/upgrading-to-windows-7-what-xp-and-vista-users-need-to-know.ars

Google penalizes itself for paid-blog promotion
http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-10162610-93.html

FCC prevails over Verizon in subscriber retention fight
http://arstechnica.com/telecom/news/2009/02/fcc-prevails-over-verizon-in-customer-retention-battle.ars

Asus to make fewer EEE PCs
http://www.infoworld.com/article/09/02/12/Asus_plans_to_reduce_variety_of_Eee_PC_netbooks_1.html

Palm OS dead
http://www.precentral.net/palm-ceo-ed-colligan-talks-pre-investors
http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/news/2009/02/a-farewell-to-palm-os-company-stakes-future-on-webos.ars

Opera turbo-charged browsing
http://www.opera.com/press/releases/2009/02/12/

Yearly LCD TV shipments dip for first time
http://news.cnet.com/8301-1001_3-10161978-92.html

Pioneer to stop making TVs
http://news.cnet.com/8301-17938_105-10162515-1.html

Panasonic to bring Full HD 3D by 2010
http://www.engadget.com/2009/02/09/panasonic-sets-out-to-bring-3d-full-hd-to-blu-ray-by-2010/

Report: Apple to stream video to iTunes users
http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-10162234-93.html

Musician sells CD for $15.98, CD + live concert for $5,000
http://www.boingboing.net/2009/02/11/musician-sells-cd-fo.html

VOICEMAIL
Staticky guy from maybe Denmark?
Has a trademark claim

Patrick New Hampshire
What I would do if a pirate ship was found in my yard.

E-MAIL
Hey Jatona, Patrick the problem solver here.

Regarding the netbook naming issue, here is a word you could use to refer to the devices *and* the feelings you seem to have towards them: “mehbook”.
Ok this won’t stick, but it’s sort of fun to say once or twice right?

Cheers,

Patrick Beja

**********

Hey Buzz People,

Jonathan from the UK here. I found a story on the BBC’s website (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/7885569.stm) talking about how the European Parliament(different from the EU? Not sure wants to have a red button on the front of a games console to turn off the game or ban a particular game from running. What the EP doesn’t seem to realise is that the console ALREADY HAS AN OFF BUTTON!. Games are rated for a reason, parents should choose which games their child can play. Also, all of the current gen consoles(360, Wii and PS3) have age settings so you can ban games over a particular age built into the console. The European Parliament do indeed need to educate parents to the avaliability of the functions, but if the parents don’t already exercise authority over their children when it comes to video games, how is a big red button going to change anything?

Educate the parents to this function of the console, and leave us gamers alone. That was my Jonny rant

Love the show, Jonathan.

I’m not sure why the authors guild are upset about the text to speech
thing on the new Kindle.

the only book that isn’t going to suck when read to you by a machine
is “A Brief History of Time”.

-Bjørn

**********

Buzzers,

Do you have any idea why my iTunes asked me if I would like to update
“carrier” information? Did the rest of the world get this message today?
What could the carrier, at&t, want to change on my phone?

I don’t like this kind of updating…and I’m not paranoid…no matter
how many people are watching me.

Mark from Virginia

And then: http://arstechnica.com/apple/news/2009/02/iphone-carrier-update-boring.ars

**********

Heya Buzz Crew,

In episode 909 (and others), there was a general sense of irrelevance regarding satellite radio. *gasp!*

I have been a satellite radio subscriber for years now and while I was quite skeptical of the merger, I still love my Sirius-now-SiriusXM radio - in both cars. I often equate the experience to moving from dial-up to high-speed Internet: don’t try it unless you’re ready to commit because you won’t want to go back. I don’t even listen to the sports or celebrity stuff; the music is enough for me. The channels are far more genre-specialized than any terrestrial market and, of course, the music is commercial free! When I’m at home I even tune into their TV feed (via DISH Network / DIRECTV) and online stream since I already know the lineup.

They have made listening while driving a great experience and it’s available right now, not in a few years. I’ll warrant that there are good ‘net-based audio options, but wireless data coverage is not ubiquitous, streaming is unreliable while driving (tower hops), and, most serious of all, we are always under constant threat of usage caps.

They had better be careful with the price, though - there is a fiscal limit to my love.

Ryan from Castle Rock

Episode 876

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Voice mail

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

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

Anonymous - Monstrous problem

E-mail
Happy Holidays, Buzz-folk!

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

LTS/KUTGW!

Regards,
Steve L.
South Jersey

**********

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

**********

To the Nearly Omniscient Leaders of the Buzz Army,

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

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

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

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

Matt The Java Developer

**********

Hey JaMoToNat,

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

Love the show,

John in San Diego

**********

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

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

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

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

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

check it out

Faiz

Episode 830

Apple notebook event: Live blog at 10 a.m. PDT Tuesday
http://news.cnet.com/8301-17938_105-10064559-1.html
http://www.engadget.com/2008/10/13/mr-blurrycam-reveals-the-updated-macbook-pro-899-laptop-model/

Windows 7 to be called — Windows 7
http://windowsvistablog.com/blogs/windowsvista/archive/2008/10/13/introducing-windows-7.aspx

Bush signs RIAA-backed intellectual-property law
http://news.cnet.com/8301-13578_3-10064527-38.html

Joost launches Flash version for browsers: Easier but no Hulu
http://www.paidcontent.org/entry/419-joost-launches-flash-version-for-browsers/

Hulu Envy: SNL planning standalone site; so does HBO
http://www.paidcontent.org/entry/419-hulu-envy-snl-planning-standalone-site-so-does-hbo/

The Quietest Sun
http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/10/14/0038230
http://thesuninmotion.com/

University tries “one iPhone per student” http://mobile.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/10/13/1815229

Internet use ‘good for the brain’
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/7667610.stm

Voice Mail

Remy: Free Blu-Ray?

Tommy from Kingston didn’t hear that call

E-mail

Jamoto, Well Actually:

You mentioned reverse Turing tests, the most common reverse Turing test is a little known thing called a captcha. Just thought I’d point that out…

Ben, Ireland

**********

Just wanted to mention you may have missed why so many preorders.
You all kinda proposed that is was people just responding to a Google
is cool, so their phone should be as well. I am not sure this was it.
Keep in mind this is the first Open Linux phone available to the
masses that has a big player behind it at a low price. I also think
the open source community is responding much like they have with the
triple “e” PC and other Netbooks. Remember Dell being pressed to
make a Linux laptop? Also, look at the GP2X and the Pandora project.
I think there is a significant amount of us that have been waiting for
the right Open Linux phone to come along. Android looks to have the
right formula, so the response just reflects it.

Great show as always.

Johnny P

**********

Don’t believe the hype. I love the Android platform, but the 1.5 million figure is the tech echo chamber gone wild. ALL the reports stem from one Motley Fool article, and I contacted the author, and let’s just say there’s some dubious math used to reach that figure.

Thanks,

marin

**********

Buzz crew -

Along with JaMoTo, i was skeptical in episode 829 that a 25% success rate in a Turing test was enough to declare that an artificial intelligence had “successfully” fooled judges in conversation. I found the following scoring clarification in an AP/USAToday article:

Bronze goes to the piece of software that best mimics human conversation in text form.
The silver would go to a machine that could pass a longer version of the Turing Test and fool at least half the judges.
The gold would go to a machine that could process audio and visual information rather than just text.

No program has won the gold or silver prizes.
But what I want to know is: where can I play with the competing programs online? (I could use some conversation hints!)

- Joel in Ohio

http://www.usatoday.com/tech/science/2008-10-13-computer-joke_N.htm?csp=34

**********

Hi JaMoTo (plus 1)

I know that BOL mainly focuses on US-centric stories, but this is an
extremely important to ALL Australians.

The Minister for Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy,
Senator Stephen Conroy is pushing hard for a ‘filtered Internet’ to
make the entire Internet in Australia safe for 5-year-olds. This means
that all ISPs will have to sort through every single packet being
transmitted to make sure the site is not on a black list or illegal.

It was originally believed that the filter would be ‘opt-out’ But it
has just come out that there will be two blacklists, the first is the
filter safe for 5-year-olds, and the second only filters out illegal
material. The opt-out will only move you from the 5-year-old filter to
the illegal only filter.

http://nocleanfeed.com/ is a great site that explains what is being
proposed and ways for Australians to rally support and take action
against Senator Conroy’s proposal.

Press release: http://www.minister.dbcde.gov.au/media/media_releases/2008/060
computer world story: http://www.computerworld.com.au/index.php?id=1399635276&eid=-255

**********

Hey Buzz crew,
I’m not sure if this is Buzzworthy or not, but I still thought it was interesting. For the past week or so, the local morning radio host here in Austin has had his listeners perform specific Google searches, effectively making those searches number one for the day on Google trends. He started out small, just asking them to search for his name, Bobby Bones. Then his “rapper” nickname Captain Caucasian. Then he started getting creative and having them search for Bobby Bones and Vanessa Hudgens. Then Bobby Bones, Vanessa Hudgens makeout pics. Each day it worked and became number one on Google Trends. And gossip blogs even started picking up the story and blogging about how Vanessa Hudgens found a new guy and its all a big scandal. So what does this say about Google if some crappy local radio DJ can manipulate the rankings so easily? I bet he can ask his listeners to search for “Steve Jobs dead” and the bloggers would probably pick it up as a real story. Well, I just thought it was an interesting story. Talk about it if you like, if not, I’ll still listen to the show.

Thanks,
David

In the fine tradition of subject lines that tell you nothing about the show or clue you in to the fact that this is, in fact, a tech show. But sometimes, we also like to talk about cowboys. And dogs. And extra-malicious hackers at Black Hat, Vista security "rendered useless" by same, and the low, low interest in Blu-Ray.

EPISODE 784

Times Online: 'Fakeproof' e-passport is cloned in minutes
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/crime/article4467106.ece

How I got hacked at Black Hat
http://www.eweek.com/c/a/Security/How-I-Got-Hacked-at-Black-Hat/
http://news.cnet.com/8301-1009_3-10011157-83.html

Black Hat expels reporters in network snooping
http://news.cnet.com/8301-1009_3-10010989-83.html

Windows Vista security ‘rendered useless’ by researchers
http://searchsecurity.techtarget.com/news/article/0,289142,sid14_gci1324395,00.html

Windows XP still outselling Windows Vista
http://tech.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/08/07/1854242

Between a rock and YouTube, video execs see promise
http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-10011155-93.html

New study finds low interest in Blu-ray
http://entertainment.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/08/07/1811259

Wall Street Beat: Time to put off buying LCD TVs, displays
http://www.pcworld.com/article/149567/

Report: HTC Android handset not coming until 2009
http://news.cnet.com/8301-1035_3-10010550-94.html

Date set for operation of Large Hadron Collider
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/08/science/08physics.html

Report: Facebook tried to buy StudiVZ
http://news.cnet.com/8301-17939_109-10011281-2.html

Eight people bought useless $1,000 iPhone application
http://blog.wired.com/gadgets/2008/08/eight-people-bo.html

VOICE MAIL

Scott Tucson
About the cows

E-MAIL

Hey Buzzcrew,
Real quick. I wanted to help Molly with her hotspot@home (UMA) BlackBerry issue. If she goes into the “Manage Connection” dialog, selects “Mobile Network Options, and set the “Connection Preference” to Wi-Fi Preferred, that will prevent the Curve from switching to and from UMA. It will now maintain a solid connection when in range of your authorized Wi-Fi networks. Hope that helps

Love the show
Chris - Airplane Gasser Upper in Texas

Just some quick notes regarding the PTO and the Cloud Computing trademark:

-Molly just fyi-the “obviousness” standard is a Patent thing, not a Trademark thing

-The standard in Trademark is descriptiveness. If a mark is descriptive or generic it can be refused registration (there are options to get around this for descriptive marks, but generic marks are dead in the water). So the standard of descriptiveness is whether the potential consumer of the goods would view it as descriptive. So while “cloud” might a descriptive word w/r/t computers, its kind of technical. A lot of consumers are going to think “oh cloud! Fluffy! It must be a trade name!” instead of the actual type of networking. So I think there is some room here to be forgiving of the PTO.

-Also, while a search today of “cloud computing” would yield the descriptive meaning, take a look at the history of the wikipedia page:

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Cloud_computing&dir=prev&action=history

It looks like it was barely an entry in March of 2007 and not really updated until September. It could be that “cloud computing” wasn’t a very well known term at the time it was examined (which looks like June of that year) and so it was still a sufficiently unheard of/not descriptive term.

And ultimately-it looks like it was caught, which is a good thing. Heck, even if it wasn’t there are plenty of opportunities for other parties to file to cancel the mark so I’d have to say the system worked fairly well this time.

Anon.

Hey buzz crew,

This is the anonymous wardriver and I wanted to let you know that the H&R Block network did not let me join, but I don’t know whether that was a signal strength issue, or if they had some kind of MAC address filter enabled and I did not care to really figure it out as I had the coffee place who’s Internet worked better for me in the first place. The SSID was HRBlock.

Lets assume that it was MAC address filtered. Honestly, this would scare me more than wide open because MAC address filtering is so easily spoofed, that it is not even funny. And if the network is for a guest then MAC address filtering would be a bad way to go. Can you imagine, “Yep, you can log on to the wireless here, we just need you to tell us what your MAC address is?” So if someone went through the trouble of setting up filtering then that means they are trying to protect something, but are doing a crappy job of it. If there is no filtering and signal was my problem, then lets hope it is on its own internet connection, or a DMZ of the firewall.

Anonymous Wardriver

Hey BOL,

Just wanted to let you know that the Grill PC you made reference to yesterday was at this year’s QuakeCon that took place in Texas last weekend. You can look at other neato mods at this link: http://www.tweaktown.com/articles/1530/quakecon_2008_paint_glue_sponge_bob/index.html

Some really crazy-insane mods @ QuakeCon this year. Love the show!

Dustin Solis

Hey buzz crew,
On episode 783, the discussion was about Google , Microsoft, and Yahoo were tweaking results for the Olympics and Molly couldn’t find a reason to do this. Hopefully, this might be an idea for the reason.

If you search for a popular athlete, like Michael Phelps, you’ll get results. Trying searching for a non-popular athlete, like Austin Sperry, and the results will get mixed from his Linkedin account to Wikipedia to results from 2006 Bacardi Cup. His profile from the U.S. sailing team is the third result on Google.

Hope this will provide some input into tweaking the results.

Greg “mass comm student”
Baton Rouge, La.

P.S. If a lawyer suggests not going to college and several people have told me not to major in journalism, then what’s the point of going to college? I say, if your not majoring in Business or Science, don’t bother going.

Reference episode 782 you said that the ear around for cows wouldn’t make cowboys obsolete. I can tell you that for rounding up cows, cowboys are already obsolete. Out here at the ranch my hobby is raising and training working stock dogs and for my money a good working cowdog is worth five cowboys. First of all the dog actually listens to the boss and does the job the way the boss wants it done. If the dog does something different than the boss asked it’s probably because the boss was wrong. You put 5 cowboys on a herd and it will look like an episode of the Keystone Cops.

Don’t fear, however. The cowboy is still needed for manual labor and the rodeo stuff that gets all the publicity. Just leave the brain work to a border collie.

Vic the Texas pilot rancher

P.S. My collies prefer Linux

Come on tom, the iPhone is just a word processor? Don’t word processors have cut and paste?

-some random guy from north carolinaece