Buzz Out Loud Podcast

Don Reisinger joins the cast today for a rousing discussion that goes something like this: "Best Buy bought Napster." "Really?" "Yeah, I know, right? Weird." "Huh. Yeah. Wonder why they did that." "Dunno." It's a great show. You'll love it. (No, seriously! Don rants more than I do!)

EPISODE 809

Best Buy nabs Napster for $121 million
http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-10041431-93.html
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20080915-best-buy-eyes-apple-microsoft-with-napster-purchase.html

In-flight Internet: Web sites, but not phone calls
http://blogs.zdnet.com/gadgetreviews/?p=353

American Airlines flight crews want online porn banned
http://www.thetechherald.com/article.php/200838/2026/American-Airlines-flight-crews-want-online-porn-banned

AT&T will 'temporarily reduce' speeds for U-verse customers
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20080915-att-will-temporarily-reduce-speeds-for-u-verse-customers.html

Employers admit checking Facebook before hiring
http://www.pcworld.com/businesscenter/article/151044/employers_admit_checking_facebook_before_hiring.html

Hackers break into Large Hadron Collider computer
http://news.cnet.com/8301-1009_3-10040525-83.html

Survey: Plans to buy a Mac hit an all-time high
http://apple20.blogs.fortune.cnn.com/2008/09/15/survey-plans-to-buy-a-mac-hit-an-all-time-high/

iPhone: Big trouble in the App Store (thanks, Philip!)
http://apple20.blogs.fortune.cnn.com/2008/09/14/iphone-big-trouble-in-the-app-store/

Report: HP trying for ‘end-run’ around Windows
http://news.cnet.com/8301-1001_3-10040719-92.html

Google search finds seafaring solution
http://technology.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/tech_and_web/the_web/article4753389.ece

VOICE MAIL

Dale the physics teacher
the ultimate textbook

Tom
New Buzz forces name is …

E-MAIL

Greetings, JaMoTo + 1 guest

It’s worth mentioning that games without DRM can be successful, an example is “Sins of a Solar Empire”, a real time strategy game .. in SPAAACE…
The game sold over 500,000 copies, 100,000 via digital downloads. The game disc came with no DRM or copy protection.

http://arstechnica.com/journals/thumbs.ars/2008/09/05/solar-empire-moves-500-000-units

Let’s hope EA learns Stardock (the publisher of Sins of a Solar Empire).

Best regards…

Khaled A.

Hey JaMoTo! I just was wondering if Adam was willing to release Podcaster as a jailbroken application. I know that I personally have been dying for An application like this ever since I had to stop using mobilecast with the 2.0 update. I don’t really mind jailbreaking my phone, if it means incredibly useful applications like Podcaster or Intelliscreen, which Apple has apparently decided are not okay.
Taylor (from Canada)

Buzzcrew + guest,

My prayers have been answered.

I am a field computer tech so I spend a lot of time traveling from customer to customer. There has been an occasion on two that I forget to sync up my iPhone before I leave for work. So I am left in my car without my newest BOL.

I though how great would it be to have an application that could download some of my favorite podcasts. I was excited when Alex S. had sent in an email about his podcaster, not so excited when I heard Apple rejected it. So I was searching through the free apps on the iTunes store and I noticed this application called FlyCast. I read the description and thought it sounded interesting. I downloaded it and installed it. When you launch the program it gives you several option: city guide, radio with 3G/Wi-Fi, radio on Edge, AccuRadio, and something called On-Demand Audio. I clicked the on demand and then clicked on Technology. Lo and behold, what’s on TOP! Buzz Out Loud! It buffered for a while and then played. It was awesome. One cool feature is that it buffered a couple of minutes of audio in case of network problems. I wanted to pass this along to other listeners. Thanks for a great show!

Love the show,
Phillippe (computer tech from Iowa)

Hi Tom, Molly and Jason,
You have been talking a lot about Spore and how the DRM is terrible, so I thought I would bring this to your attention. According to TorrentFreak, Spore is the most pirated game ever, thanks to DRM! Here is a link to the full story, http://torrentfreak.com/spore-most-pirated-game-ever-thanks-to-drm-080913/

Love the show!

Simon

How do I save Podcaster? A Buzz soldier awaits your orders.

Thermonuclear Tom

EPISODE 728

Look out, Apple TV: The $100 Netflix Player has arrived
http://crave.cnet.com/8301-1_105-9947582-1.html

6 million DRM-free MP3s now at Napster
http://www.news.com/8301-10784_3-9945987-7.html

Breaking: iPhone 3G launch date confirmed
http://gizmodo.com/391960/iphone-3g-launch-date-confirmed
http://www.reghardware.co.uk/2008/05/20/ apple_wwdc_rumour_revival/

Microsoft confirms Windows adheres to broadcast flag
http://www.news.com/8301-10784_3-9946780-7.html

66% Apple market share for sales of high-end PCs
http://apple.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/05/20/0146218

Blog Archive » BBC's Sound Index is good, but we won't get the data
http://uk.techcrunch.com/2008/05/20/ bbcs-sound-index-is-good-but-we-wont-get-the-data/

Video of Steve Ballmer getting egged
http://www.boingboing.net/2008/05/19/video-of-steve-ballm.html

ET will phone home using neutrinos, not photons
http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/05/20/120239

Voice mail
Josh Denver
Thoughts on Wii sales.

Greg Raleigh
Professional use of magnets.

Jason Car
Video podcast thoughts.

E-mail

Ring back tones

I’m with T-mobile and I have a ringback tone on my plan. Granted some of my friends don’t like my song but as i said to them if you dont like it either stop calling me at 3 in the morning for no reason or give me 2 dollar and i will buy a song that you like and assign to you.

Peterjon

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An electronic message of indeterminate length

http://gizmodo.com/391848/first-year-kindle-sales-vs-ipod-palm-pilot-and-other-famous-gadgets-hows-it-doing
Well…its getting there. 2.2 million is too far off right?

Your loyal buzzian (it might catch on…maybe (and if it doesn’t let Dr. M and the Evil party kill us all (by all I mean I))).
Mr.dudeperson

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Test market in Wilmington

Hey guys,

I was listening to 727 and I had a very very quick Well, Actually:

The Digital TV switch experiment is in Wilmington, North Carolina, not Wilmington, Virginia. I’ve been following the story because Wilmington, NC is actually my hometown.

LTS,
~Gail-Marie in Japan

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XP SP3 FIXED my system!

Lots of folks saying XP 3 had broken their system but I had the opposite experience.

I was building a new PC for my remote control astronomical observatory (see link), and I could not get XP to install (install crashed with BSOD) unless I turned OFF the second processor (Core Duo) in Bios first. Even after getting SP2 installed and everything working in this way, it would still crash on boot if I reactivated the second core.

BUT, when I installed SP3 and then activated the second core, VOILA!, it has been rock stable since.

FYI, Mobo is and Intel DP35DP……

Orion Observatory:
http://www.orionobservatory.com/observatory_ construction_2007/index.html

William

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Speech impeding magnets on a plane

JaMoTo,

In episode 727 (the plane episode) you talked about speech impeding magnets I can think of a positive application for them. Mount speech impeding magnets in the headrest of seats on airplanes at the same time that cell phones are allowed. If there is an annoying passenger on the plane who is constantly talking loud on his cell phone the flight attendant could ask him or her to please turn off their cell phone if the passenger refuses out comes the remote control and with a press of a button the passenger stops talking. The airline slogan would be when on your cell phone please respect other passengers otherwise you will have to turn off your phone or we will turn you off. (We control your speech, we control the horizontal,, we control the vertical....)

Love the show,

RJ

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Sprint mobile broadband

Buzz community,

It is my sad duty to inform you that Sprint will no longer be offering truely unlimited mobil broadband for users of laptop data cards. We are now capping the service at 5GB/month just like Verizon and AT&T. I got a chance to ask Mr. Hesse about the change and he said it was simply costing too much to keep it unlimited. He claimed this change would only effect 0.5% of our customers, I question that, but that’s what he said.

In better news, the Instinct officially comes out on June 20th.

Oh, and with regaurds to hulu, I downloaded my copy of BSG on Bit torrent last night. If one person stops selling you the crack, you just find another seller

Love the show,
Your friendly neighborhood Sprint employee

Episode 671

Episode 671

Microsoft cuts Vista price
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/02/29/vista_price_cut/
http://www.news.com/8301-13860_3-9882510-56.html

iPhone/iPod SDK: Apple to approve, distribute apps, limit add-ons
http://www.ilounge.com/index.php/news/comments/ iphone-ipod-sdk-apple-to-approve-distribute-apps-limit-add-ons/13537
http://www.engadget.com/2008/02/29/ iphone-software-development-to-be-locked-down-by-apple/

Bluetooth not working after iPhone 1.1.4?
Simple fix: http://www.iphoneatlas.com/2008/02/28/ bluetooth-not-working-after-iphone-114-simple-fix/

Mac OS X secretly cripples non-Apple software
http://apple.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/02/28/2339246

Wii outsells the PS3 4-to-1 in Japan, Sony execs “not psyched”
http://www.engadget.com/2008/02/29/ wii-outsells-the-ps3-4-to-1-in-japan-sony-execs-not-psyched/

Artists to music labels: Where’s our Napster money?
http://www.news.com/8301-10784_3-9882624-7.html

Google expands free phone number and voice mail project
http://www.news.com/8301-10784_3-9882460-7.html

Steve Chen: YouTube to add live video
http://newteevee.com/2008/02/28/steve-chen-youtube-to-add-live-video/

BBC broadcasting Rugby Six Nations match in 3D
http://www.engadget.com/2008/02/28/ bbc-broadcasting-rugby-six-nations-match-in-3d/

U.S. Air Force shoots down blogs, airmen frustrated
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/ 20080229-us-air-force-shoots-down-blogs-airmen-frustrated.html

Robin Williams saves the day at TED when tech fails
http://blog.wired.com/business/2008/02/robin-williams.html

Final goodbye for early Web icon
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/7270583.stm

Voice mail

MC Fisticuffs
I’m studying for my doctorate.

Tracy from Atlanta
So wait, I have an iPhone question.

Jeremy from Delaware
Save Palm!

E-mail

Copyright tax thoughts

Hi Gang,

Sorry I’m late to the game on this but I’ve been a bit busy lately. I did have some thoughts on the Copyright tax which I like the idea of, but I think it might prove to be a bit untenable.

First-You could tax this property if you wanted to. (Just thinking (Buzz) out loud now-no real research done on any of this.) The Government’s right to grant Copyright protection comes directly from the Constitution, and presumably this question of taxation would only come up as an issue of Interstate Commerce-which The Federal Government can collect on. So we wouldn’t have to worry about which state the work is in, or if it crosses state lines because it would be a Federal, not State, issue (for those two reasons). States pretty much don’t protect copyright because the ‘76 Act grants protection at the moment of fixation. You just get it from the Federal Government straight away-so state protection is (pretty much) moot.

With regards to IP existing in someone’s head a la the Coke Formula-that’s not a problem here. Again, protection is extended (as the Magician pointed out) when it is fixed (again for Copyright only now). The protection is for the content of things, but only after it has been fixed. So there would have to be tangible thing somewhere-even if the thoughts and expressions can be retained intangibly.

The real problem I think is deciding who to tax: We all have copyrights on things we have written, but should we all be taxed based on that? Should my blog (which I do have protection for) be taxed simply because its protected? If everyone starts going to http://www.thesoftlounge.com/blog because of the insightful reviews of Lost, or the stellar coverage of the Buffalo Bills in the off-season, or just for the charming wit of the author and I can start selling ad space is that enough for the tax to kick in? If that happened, I presumably would be paying taxes already on the revenue I generate-should I be doubly taxed then? Or I if I’m not making any money, but I just don’t want people to pass of my work as their own should I have to pay for that right? Remember-even a Creative Commons License only works because the copyright is already in place, so even giving permissions and limitations to people with such a license doesn’t get around the notion that you are using the copyright protection.

Further, if you file at the Copyright Office to retain a record of the ownership of your work (which grants you a few extra perks such as the right to sue in Federal Court) you have to pay a fee-should there be a tax on top of that as well?

I’m with you guys, I want there to be some way that major copyright holders who exploit the long protection period for financial gain at the cost of the public domain to either be paying a bit more for that privilege, or to be forced into letting the work go-but I think the collateral damage to smaller publishers could be huge and, at first glance anyway, there doesn’t seem to be an easy workaround.

Frank L.

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Magicians’ intellectual property

Dear Buzz crew,

Here’s a good Economist article on how IP is regulated in the magicians’ world:

http://www.economist.com/business/displaystory.cfm?story_id=9825182

Just a soundbite:

The traditional view is that IP can be protected only by the long arm of the law. But magicians rarely rely on the law, as the very act of describing what they want protected would reveal their secrets.

{}s,
Fabio
Sao Paulo, Brazil

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Comcast

Hi guys, thanks for the podcast. I thought you might be interested in my experience with Comcast.

I called Comcast’s 1-888 number to ask about a rumor that TV guide channel was being removed from the analog cable, I never got an answer to that. I had two different people tell me that _by law_ they will need to be discontinuing analog service as of next February. Even after I talked about that only being for over the air and mentioning dtv.gov, they stuck by their guns. The second lady even argued that they had training and this is what they were taught… she knows better than little old silly me.

I called the state, who told me to call the county who told me that they did not have control over what Comcast said (and thought they were right) but would send my concerns to Comcast. A lady from Comcast called me and said that of course I was correct in what I was saying. She seemed quite concerned that Comcast employees were saying differently and wanted information about who I had spoken.

While I had her on the line, I told her that if Comcast forced me to get a box on every TV, I would be leaving Comcast. Honestly, the lack of a set-top box is the only thing keeping me from Dish or FIOS.

Amy from Maryland

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Peter Jackson can’t save New Line

Hey Buzz crew,

It’s Sperling, the digital cinema product manager from Los Angeles. A few weeks back I wrote in after you reported the story about the Tolkien estate suing New Line Cinema for not receiving any of the profits from the Lord of the Rings trilogy. At the time, I mentioned the eyebrow raising which occurred throughout the industry when just a month before New Line released their turkey, The Golden Compass, they miraculously came to an agreement with Lord of the Rings director Peter Jackson on The Hobbit.

It turns out that all those industry insiders that had speculated the studio might be in financial trouble when they conceded to the Jackson deal weren’t far from wrong. No doubt you know by now, not even pinning their financial hopes to the famed director and his Rings prequel could save the studio, as Time Warner is shuttering the New Line so that it can be absorbed by Warner Bros. Pictures. I guess sometimes Hollywood rumors really are true.

However, given your report on the Tolkien estate law suit, the whole affair really brings out the conspiracy theorist in me. Could Time Warner be folding New Line simply to avoid paying the Tolkien’s their piece of the $1 billion gross Rings raked in? Probably not, as Time Warner would still be liable, but even so . . . [in Molly’s voice] I’m just saying!

Of course, love the show.

Regards,
Sperling

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Buzz town mottos for Wiki

Hey Tom, Molly, and Jason

Myself and a few other buzzers (Trojanbee and Tales) have been working on some mottos in the watchbol.com chat (live chat) for the Buzz Town wiki and we need your help. So far we have these 12:

1: "The content may be inspired by them, but the work was us." (Trojanbee)
2:”When the robots, zombies, Mac Users, and RIAA come knocking on your door, you know where to find us.” (Trojanbee)
3:”You know, we were just kidding about making this for you? Its all about us- us, us, us!” (Trojanbee)
4:”Watch BOL, Now with extra buttons” (Tales)
5:”‘Plain and simple’!?!- Your in the wrong place” (Trojanbee)
6:”Well, actually, we don’t care for this whole ‘Web 2.0′ experience.”(Trojanbee)
7:I’m to editorializing for this sort of “emotional” stuff(Trojanbee)
8:”We want to be helpful. Just keep Molly away from the code.”(Trojanbee)
9:”If we build this for them, do you think they’ll release on time?”(Trojanbee)
10:”Soon, all are plans will be complete(d) (and Buzz Town will fill the world with nerditude)!!!”(Trojanbee)
11:”Might I recommend the Linux Chaser with your Cake?”(Trojanbee)
12: “If I listen to all of the podcasts, do I get a cookie?”(Trojanbee)

Do you have any ideas for the Buzz Town wiki motto? Can you create lucky No.13?

Love the podcast,

Jacob the student from Australia - Wiki (Thanks to Trojanbee for helping me edit it)

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Cultureofownership.com?

Molly, I just went to http://cultureofownership.com and it just forwarded to .org, and it sure looks like your blog.

Miles