Buzz Out Loud Podcast

Our resident nasal storage expert Rafe Needleman is on the show to explain some quantum physics to you. Rafe also schools me in why latency doesn't matter to bandwidth but he still won't admit that he need 60 Gbps. And we realize that the only way to save the world is by drinking more whiskey. Time to get to it.

EPISODE 901

Charter gets bragging rights with new 60Mbps broadband tier
http://arstechnica.com/telecom/news/2009/01/charter-gets-bragging-rights-with-new-60mbps-broadband-tier.ars

iPod / iPhone CES pavilion sells out in record time, quadruples to include Mac products — goodbye, Macworld?
http://www.engadget.com/2009/01/29/ipod-iphone-ces-pavilion-sells-out-in-record-time-quadruples/

India’s $20 laptop coming February 3rd, take that Negroponte
http://www.engadget.com/2009/01/30/indias-10-laptop-coming-february-3rd-take-that-negroponte/

More juicy details surface on Google’s alleged GDrive
http://news.cnet.com/8301-17939_109-10153275-2.html

Stanford’s Quantum Hologram Sets Storage Record
http://hardware.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=09%2F01%2F30%2F0025240

Gears of War DRM screwup makes PC version unplayable
http://arstechnica.com/gaming/news/2009/01/pc-gears-of-war-drm-causes-title-to-shut-down-starting-today.ars

Judge’s ruling that WoW bot violates DMCA is troubling
http://arstechnica.com/gaming/news/2009/01/judges-ruling-that-wow-bot-violates-dmca-is-troubling.ars

Microsoft adds fancy search option for Firefox
http://news.cnet.com/8301-17939_109-10153155-2.html

Robot reassembles itself after being kicked apart
http://www.boingboing.net/2009/01/29/robot-reassembles-it.html

Power In Scotland From Tides and Whiskey
http://news.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=09%2F01%2F30%2F0329218

VOICEMAIL

Jeremy from Denver
iPhones are not dual touch

Beast 33
You were surrounded by the 404

Alex from Buffalo Linux
Well actually

EMAIL
Heya Buzz Crew,

In Episode 898 there was some quick talk about using portable keyboards to take notes on PDA’s. I have taken notes on PDA’s in some form since the days of the Tandy Zoom and Apple Newton, through Palm and Windows CE, and up to a few different smartphones yet I have never made the jump to using a keyboard accessory. Celios has an Android proof-of-concept that might change that. Their REDFLY device (currently available for Windows-based smartphones) is described as “a smartphone terminal with a large screen (7 or 8 inches) and full keyboard with no OS, no CPU, and no storage that lets you use your smartphone like a laptop.” Though not a fan of the Windows Mobile offerings, Engadget says the Android concept is “exactly the sort of magic that could make this hardware lovable.”

While I love having a laptop, there are times when I wish I could leave it behind if only to reduce my sync’ing devices by one. I know I can get it now for a Windows Mobile device, but they have always felt underpowered. There is, however, great promise from the various Android hardware manufacturers not to mention the Android platform itself. Toss in a REDFLY and the upcoming massive SD storage and I think our portable future looks pretty bright.

Love the show.

Ryan from Castle Rock, CO

**********

Hey JaNaToX,

In episode 900 you guys were discussing pet cloning, and Tom made a
comment about cloning his dog Jango. Well, I just thought I’d remind
Tom of how slippery a slope that could be. Remember the last time a
Jango was cloned? A galaxy wide civil war ensued, and in the end the
clones turned evil and wiped out the entire Jedi order. So just be
careful with that, Tom; the balance of the Force is at stake.

Shawn,
Youngstown

**********

Hey Buzz Crew,
I just had a few comments about the “Google Drive”.
Microsoft actually does have a similar service called Skydrive.
Along with that, they have a desktop application called Live Mesh to automatically sync up folders to Skydrive, as well as allowing remote desktop from the web. However, from what I’ve seen it relies on ActiveX, meaning it only works on IE. Hopefully they’ll be able to fix that and expand to other browsers. Another drawback is that there’s only 5 GB of storage per user, but at least it’s free.
I look forward to seeing if Google can do any better in terms of storage space and interoperability.
Link to Live Mesh
http://www.mesh.com

Love the show,
Victor the PC gaming advocate.

**********

Hello Buzz’ers, greetings from Denmark.

As one of the hapless barracuda victims, I finally made it through to
Seagate support Wednesday and was told, like Derek of episode 897, that
the request needed to be escalated to a Seagate supervisor who would
consider the issue, but I fear holding my breath for the decision will
be unhealthy.

However, others may be interested in knowing that there are some
homebrew recipes on fixing the problem out on the net.

Be WARNED though, the procedure is intricate, involves construction of
electronics, opening the harddisk, will void any hopes of warranty and
may fry your data BEYOND SALVATION if you are not careful, so if the
harddisk contains the only proof of you winning the state lottery or
something else you really care about, heed the advice of getting some
data recovery professional to do it. Also, I haven’t tried it myself so
I have no idea if its works or not. Even if it looks convincing, I will
try my luck with Seagate first.

But for the really brave, really desperate or really foolish, the link I
have saved for myself is this:

http://forum.hddguru.com/tutorial-resolve-lba-seagate-7200-bios-don-recognize-t11040.html?hilit=7200

(If you are really foolish, you shouldn’t do this yourself, but
obviously you will not be listening anyway

Considering the cryptic commands I admire the perseverance of those who
figured out the solution.

Love the show; keep up the good work.

Christian

**********

Hi JaNaTo,

I’m a little behind, so it was only recently that I became aware of
the kufuffle surrounding Molly’s leaving as a regular co-host. So,
though I’m not a member of the Buzztown administration, I humbly
submit this citizen’s resolution to the Buzztown Council, which I hope
expresses what most of us have been feeling.

BUZZTOWN RESOLUTION OF 29 JANUARY 2009

WHEREAS Tom and Molly have been, without a doubt, the heart and soul
of Buzz Out Loud (but don’t ask me to say who’s which), and as such,
Molly will be sorely missed as a regular co-host;

CONSIDERING that we had our doubts when Veronica left the show but
Jason has proved his worthiness, and (gasp) the show got even better
post-Veronica;

RECOGNIZING that Natali has huge shoes to fill but also possesses
talent and savvy commensurate with said shoe size (along with amazing
hair, despite her frequent lamentations on the subject);

ACKNOWLEDGING that Buzz Out Loud has undergone many changes over the
years and managed to remain consistently more entertaining than TWiT
(sorry Leo, but it’s true);

WHEREAS we citizens of Buzztown, as purported early adopters, should
welcome change (just as we welcomed the new Facebook layout, right?);

BE IT HEREBY RESOLVED BY THE CITIZENS OF BUZZTOWN that we be open to
the very likely possibility, nay near certainty, that Buzz Out Loud
will get even better with Natali as regular co-host if we just give
it half a chance.

BE IT FURTHERMORE RESOLVED that when she appears on Buzz Out Loud,
Molly do her utmost to rant as much as possible (recognizing, of
course, that a Mollyrant cannot be forced).

SO SAY WE ALL (right?)

Peter the translator from Montreal

EPISODE 726

Note: We are making a change to our podcast feed system on Monday, May 19. However, you do not need to subscribe to a new feed. One important thing to know: If you have your podcast catcher set to download "all unheard episodes" in a feed, you will probably find a bunch of already heard episodes in your feed on Friday as a result of the changes. To lighten the hit, set your podcast catcher to only download "the latest episode" for the week of May 19-to-23.

Cox, Comcast biggest BitTorrent blockers in the world
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/ 20080515-us-isps-biggest-bittorrent-blockers-in-the-world.html
http://blogs.pcworld.com/staffblog/archives/006967.html

Facebook Disconnects Google Friend Connect
http://www.informationweek.com/story/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=207800461
http://www.webware.com/8301-1_109-9945308-2.html

RIAA defendant Jammie Thomas may get new trial
http://www.news.com/8301-13578_3-9945643-38.html

Microsoft, OLPC officially team up
http://www.news.com/8301-13860_3-9945438-56.html

Details for Guitar Hero 4 released
http://games.slashdot.org/games/08/05/15/216205.shtml

Analyst: Amazon.com’s Kindle to generate $750 million by 2010
http://crave.cnet.com/8301-1_105-9945112-1.html

TiVo extends lifetime subscription offer
http://www.news.com/8301-10784_3-9944974-7.html

jDome offers unique experience to gamers
http://uk.gizmodo.com/2008/05/15/ jdome_offers_unique_experience.html

50 Years of DARPA: 5 Good Inventions, 5 Lousy Ones
http://gizmodo.com/391157/ 50-years-of-darpa-5-good-inventions-5-lousy-ones

VOICE MAIL

Shalin
CBS idea.

Drew Phoenix
Battlestar Spoiler

E-MAIL

Semantic web searching

Not to harp on an old subject, I am behind a few days in my listening. Semantic Web searching caught my ear when you mentioned it in episode 722. I am one of those who thought Jeeves could answer my every question.

Last night my wife and I couldn’t figure out the answer to a factual question and didn’t want to hit the computer at the time. This morning I went to Powerset.com and asked it “What artist wrapped an island in pink?” Thinking a perfect semantic search engine would simply give me the answer. Powerset gave me a bunch of results, the musician Pink, the Pink Panther, but nothing about the artist who has wrapped islands and the German governmental buildings in pink fabric.

I went to Google and pasted in the exact same search criteria and the Artist Christo came up as the 2nd result from a New York Times article.

I went to Christo’s Wiki page, since Powerset only index those pages, and sure enough all my terms: island, wrap, pink, artist were on his Wiki page.

As with Jeeves, Powerset is not quite ready for prime time. Let me know the next time to check Semantic searching again.

P.S. Let’s Go Pens!

--PittCaleb

Cut off in traffic? Get their name and address via SMS

Hello,

For a bit over a year now I have been commuting from Lausanne to Geneva, and reading the free papers while listening to BOL on my iPod.

Today I came across a story that I found a little sinister, and thought you might find interesting. Here is the French version (for Molly to practice):

http://www.lematin.ch/fr/actu/suisse/ a-geneve-le-sms-permet-de-traquer-chauffard-et-belle-fille_9-156371

Here is the Google Translate version (which does an OK job):

http://translate.google.com/translate?u= http%3A%2F%2Fwww.lematin.ch%2Ffr%2Factu%2Fsuisse%2Fa-geneve-le-sms- permet-de-traquer-chauffard-et-belle-fille_9-156371& hl=fr&ie=UTF8&sl=fr&tl=en

Basically, you can SMS the local government a license plate number, and they will send you the name and address of the owner. I can’t even begin to list the reasons that I think is a terrible idea (full points though to one of the people that they vox pop’d in the paper version of the article, who suggested you that could get the address of someone driving an expensive car, and then go a burgle their place).

Of course, I am relatively smug since I don’t own a car, and am completely happy surviving on public transport (which is possible here, unlike most other places I have lived).

Cheers,

--Shaun
The Australian lawyer in Geneva

“Nobody solved it?” Not so fast, Leo

Dear BOL gang:

On BOL 725 when you and Leo Laporte were talking about all the outages of Twitter and similar sites, Leo mentioned offhand that scaling to massive usage is “a tough problem and nobody’s really solved it.” I agree that it’s a tough problem–but that’s why you need good engineers. I, for example, wrote the software behind Wikipedia in 2001 when it was having problems with its earlier software even though there were only a few thousand users then. I redesigned the database carefully, and gave serious thought to the trade-offs between performance and utility of every feature, solving the problem–and I was just a volunteer. Since then, other volunteers from the free software community and Wikipedia employees have scaled it up to its present level and built on to the software to the point that there’s hardly any of my code left–and they did all this while it was up and running.

If I may gloat a bit, this is not the first time the free software community has shown that it can outperform highly paid engineers in real-world applications.

--Lee Daniel Crocker

Fun while it lasted

Hey buzz team,

Just wanted to send my condolences in regards to the recent news of the acquisition. Quick question though, when will you be making the switch-over to the boring, dry news that only targets the elderly?

--Shane

Google Street View

Hey TMJ,

I was so excited yesterday when I drove past a Google Street View car on the highway. I made a few funny faces and gestures and thought that now I’d be forever immortalized as the funny guy with the Cardinals hat (Go Cards!). Then I got home and listened to episode 724 and heard that Google will be blurring faces as a measure to ward off privacy concerns.

Also, who knew that KC would be one of the next cities to be on Street View? It’s not like we’re a tech hub like SF or NYC, the previously available cities. Most of my co-workers don’t know the difference between a PC or Mac, or even which OS they are using. They just say that they use “the computer.” But, it’s still pretty cool.

Love the show!

--Dave the Engineer (or maybe Dave B. in KC, it rhymes after all)

Icahn has Yahoo-Microsoft merger?

Greetings!

I’ve always believed resistance is, in fact, futile, so I was compelled to not resist from making what I believe should be a candidate for best “lolhuman” to date, and no-one will appreciate a tech-related ‘lol’ as much as you.

http://www.lanxon.co.uk/index.php/2008/05/15/icahn-has-yahoo-merger/

In related news, maybe Icahn wanted the existing board to reject the Microsoft bid because he appreciated how much the deal would annoy shareholders, thus reducing share prices, thus making his purchase of millions of them less painful, and he’d get his way at the end of the day anyway. Smart dude, in my opinion.

Warmest,
--Nate