Buzz Out Loud Podcast

In the news today, NBC fails to medal in its online streaming of the Olympics, but Google never fails to meddle (by driving up and down your private roads). OK, that was a Tom joke. Also, the Obama text dissected (but not in a political way), the Pentagon and its fake cat brains, and how to vote better.
Listen now: Download today's podcast

EPISODE 795

FCC outs HTC Dream’s dimensions: It’s smaller than the iPhone 3G
http://www.engadget.com/2008/08/25/fcc-outs-htc-dreams-dimensions-its-smaller-than-the-iphone-3g/

iPhone 3G reception just fine, say curious Swedes with engineering degrees
http://www.engadget.com/2008/08/25/iphone-3g-reception-just-fine-say-curious-swedes/
http://www.gp.se/gp/jsp/Crosslink.jsp?d=444&a=440573

Google finds no privacy on private roads
http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-10024294-93.html

No matter how NBC spins it, Olympics Web strategy comes up a loser
http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/08/25/no-matter-how-nbc-spins-it-olympics-web-strategy-comes-up-a-loser/

The Obama SMS: (Un-)gratifying instantification
http://news.cnet.com/8301-13641_3-10024350-44.html

NZ judge bans online publishing of accuseds’ names
http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/08/25/0424230

Amazon may enter college textbook market with new Kindle
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20080825-amazon-may-enter-college-textbook-market-with-new-kindle.html

Scrabulous users: Stunned, bemused, baffled
http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/technology/2008/08/scrabulous_users_stunned_bemus.html

Pentagon begins fake cat brain project
http://blog.wired.com/defense/2008/08/darpa-fake-brai.html

Most sung-about body part? The eyes have it
http://blog.wired.com/music/2008/08/most-sung-about.html

VOICEMAIL

Brent Ohio
Voting PSA for Ohioans and beyond.

Anonymous
Critique of new CNET design.

E-MAIL

Hey BoL,

I saw this on CNN last night and thought it was interesting. If you go to ObamaBiden.org you are sent directly to Ebay. That's a smart fella to get that domain. CNN also reported that the domain obamabiden2008.com was bought back in 2006. I think I’m going to have to do some political investigation for some 2012 names. Maybe a Merritt/Wood ticket, or Wood Merritt. Either way would be great. Hey, maybe even a Howell/Best Buy Guy ticket. Love the show.

Emmanuel from Madison, Wis.

**********

Hey Tom & Molly,

I’m catching up on episodes--in Episode 791, Mike in New Hampshire wrote in about the ban on cell phones for air traffic controllers in the U.S. The Federal Aviation Administration claims that this ban is a concern because of interference, but we never had any problems that I or my co-workers are aware of. Also, when dignitaries, visitors, or Secret Service agents are in the control room, they are not asked to check their phones at the door.

This was purely a smack-down move on the part of the FAA. I understand that we cannot be using our phones for personal calls while controlling aircraft, but I, too, have experienced situations where our personal cell phones have been instrumental in saving the day when FAA equipment failed.

I believe Tom mentioned the possibility of using Skype, but our computers are not considered secure until they are broken. I don’t mean the computers that are connected to the radar scopes, I mean just the Windows computers that have no tie-in to our operations. We can’t even download a PDF file or access a USB drive or a CD--Skype would be waaaayy beyond our realm of possibility.

On a side note, I have accidently taken my iPhone into the control room, and while I can hear the zzzt-zzzt sound from the GSM, the pilots don’t hear it (I asked a few).

As they say--love the show,
Molly in Albuquerque

**********

Hey Tom Molly and Jason,

It’s, oh, let’s say Chris former snowman hunter. Recently I got a bug up a certain bodily place to purchase the soundtrack to the Coen Brothers neo-Capraesque Hudsucker Proxy. Like a good Buzz listener, I checked out the DRM-free Amazon MP3 store first, but no joy. I checked iTunes to similar no joy results.

So I checked out Amazon CD sales. The price for said CD was $16.98. The price for the whole fracking movie on DVD, actors, story, music, and ALL was $9.99. Say what you want about the MPAA’s thug tactics recently, but they’ve got a ways to go before they’re fighting in the same weight class as the RIAA. How is the music for a movie on a CD more expensive the movie?! Under this logic, shouldn’t the RIAA be suing the MPAA for undercutting the market? I mean, every bar of the music on that CD is in the movie’s soundtrack.

I offer this to ask if there’s a clearer illustration of the hellish music scape the RIAA has cursed us to, I’d like to hear it.

Insert robotic LOVE THE SHOW here.

Chris

**********

Hey BOL Crew,

I was just listening to Episode 794 where you guys were talking about Verizon having to go back and inspect all its FIOS installations, and then comparing that to AT&T’s U-Verse and how that service has been blamed with starting a few fires, and I think this begs the questions: is this what these companies meant when they said we would get “Blazing” fast speeds? Should your fiber installation kit come with a fire warning? “Warning: blazing fast speeds may cause fire. Please surf responsibly”.

Love the show!

-Ryan from Boise, Idaho

EPISODE 787

Intro (Thanks Vic the Texas Rancher Pilot!!)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

E-mail

Hey JaMoTo,

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

Ryan from Charlotte, NC

*********

Hello BOL Crew,

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

Why was I excited?

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

Love the show,
Bernardo

**********

Hi BOL,

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

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

EricC
Dublin, Ireland

PS: love the show.

**********

Hi All,

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

Thanks!

Jason in the OC

Congress learns all about cookies (not the delicious kind...but maybe the del.icio.us kind), Gmail goes down, and Google proves to be a terrible communicator. Also, the Amazon Kindle may take off after all (har har), and Twitter baffles us completely regarding its follow/follower spam prevention thing. In sum, it's a Tuesday, but it feels like a Monday.

EPISODE 786

Google apologizes for Gmail outage
http://www.crn.com/software/210002714

PC World: Google Apps hit by prolonged Gmail access problem
http://www.pcworld.com/article/149524/

Android may be here sooner then we think
http://tmonews.com/2008/08/android-may-be-here-sooner-then-we-think/

Some Web firms say they track behavior without explicit consent
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/08/11/AR2008081102270.html
http://www.businessweek.com/technology/content/aug2008/tc20080811_353762.htm?chan=top+news_top+news+index_news+%2B+analysis
http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2327880,00.asp

Kindle sales pegged at $1 billion by 2010
http://news.cnet.com/8301-17938_105-10014387-1.html

Twitter tries ‘following’ limits to curb spam
http://news.cnet.com/8301-13577_3-10015151-36.html?tag=newsLatestHeadlinesArea.0

Let tour theme song be your password
http://it.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/08/12/0144220&from=rss

YouTube yanks free Tibet video after IOC pressure
http://news.slashdot.org/news/08/08/12/1127220.shtml

New TV show: Temptation gadget island
http://news.cnet.com/8301-17938_105-10014030-1.html?tag=TOCmoreStories.0

VOICE MAIL

Bill Portland
A way in which iPhone is like Windows.

E-MAIL

Hey guys,

I have to take a counter-point stance on the streaming Olympic coverage of NBC.com. Yes the cable thing is absolutely ridiculous. Yes the layout on the main page is difficult to navigate and it's hard to know what videos you are pulling up at any given time. However, as a die-hard fan of the Olympics, I can say that there has never been better coverage of the event than NBC's online offerings. The video window offers high quality video of the events and there are tabs at the bottom which you can click to pull up information on who the participants are, the rules of the sport, color information, interviews, and projections. It's awesome. Tom is right that it lacks commentary, but for those who really just want to see the event, that's not a negative at all. You are guaranteed that they are not going to pull away from your event to show something else you don't care about, and you can watch the whole event from before the lights come on to the bizarre flood of pom pom waving cheerleaders at the end. (Look it up, it's seriously weird.)

I think this year's online offerings are a serious step forward for the Olympics. I mean, seriously, this kind of access to sports taking place on the other side of the world with the quality that we're seeing is stuff that, even 5 or 6 years ago, only existed in Coca Cola commercials. We're living in the future. Try to enjoy it.

Love the show,

Brandon, The Woodlands, Texas

http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/hr/content_display/film/news/e3if2241241bd80655422f57aaa5f10b474?imw=Y

I don’t think it’s gonna help
sheala, Ga.

Hey buzz crew,

This is Adam from Connecticut, first time e-mailer. I just wanted to let you know that ESPN 360 actually runs based on your Internet, not cable, provider. For instance, I used ESPN 360 to watch much of the Australian open, the tennis tournament, on AT&T, my Internet provider.

However, when I jumped on an unencrypted Wi-Fi spot once, it did not work, stating that my Internet provider was not supported. Some providers, like Verizon, allow you to log in remotely and use ESPN 360 which is a nice feature. Also, there are no ads. Lastly, please add Inside CNET Labs to the iPhone CNET site so I can more easily access it. Thanks! Love the show.

--Adam

So the story about the feature that could allow Apple to kill applications got me thinking about the discussion from episode 783 about how the iPhone is not a computer. I agree completely. My laptop has the OS of my choosing running on it. And if I lose any more trust in Microsoft, I’ll be reaching for the Ubuntu install disc; I don’t have to worry a my applications self-destructing on a real computer, which the iPhone is not. Practical example, yes?

Also, this e-mail will probably be real on 786, as 785 is just out. This will be my 200th episode anniversary with Buzz Out Loud, since episode 586 “We h8t flash drives.” I still remember the night: I was perusing through Digg podcasts, where I found a quaint thing called “Buzz Out Loud.” I listened, and instantly loved the JaMoTo style news-casting.

Your podcast also served as the gateway drug to my other favorite CNET podcasts like The 404 and Gadgettes…and, ahem, CNET TV (there Tom, now you’ll have to read my e-mail).

LOVE THE SHOW…

So here is why their was a big up roar about the foot steps. Since NBC took forever to make available for download the opening ceremony for me to watch on my Vista machine, i had to go to BitTorent to get it. After watch three different versions, only the American version said that it was CG both the British and the Australia didn’t tell they audience.

--Peterjon

Ep 780 - In reference to the “durka durka” GSM noise that comes through PC or car speakers… you can also use a 3.5mm Ground Loop to limit this interference.

I got mine off of eBay for $10 and use it in the car with my iPhone. It does not completely remove the sound. But when it does come through, it’s very faint.

I just wish they had a goose neck/swivel dock+line out+charge iPhone option for the car… I’m patiently waiting.

LTS!
Chris from Tampa, Fla.

We tried to give NBC the benefit of the doubt when it comes to Olympic streaming, but then we tried it. And it's ridiculous. Also, we wonder if the iPhone makes you fat, even as it fattens Steve Jobs' wallet. We also discuss the technicalities of invisibility cloaks, and opt-out of Obama's aggressively hip Internet outreach campaign.

EPISODE 785

Defcon ends with researchers muzzled, viruses written
http://news.cnet.com/8301-1009_3-10013156-83.html

Judge orders halt to Defcon speech on subway card hacking
http://news.cnet.com/8301-1009_3-10012612-83.html

Apple hits 3 million iPhone’s sold in its debut month
http://money.cnn.com/2008/08/08/technology/iphone-3m.fortune/

iPhone software sales take off: Apple’s jobs
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB121842341491928977.html

Beijing Olympic 2008 opening ceremony giant firework footprints ‘faked’
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/othersports/olympics/2534499/Beijing-Olympic-2008-opening-ceremony-giant-firework-footprints-faked.html

NBCU-Olympics: Cablevision subs, those who don't pay to watch TV shut out of live streaming
http://www.paidcontent.org/entry/419-nbcu-olympics-cablevision-subs-those-who-dont-pay-to-watch-tv-shut-out-/

NBC’s Olympic ratings get a Web-based boost
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB121841383938428459.html

The Olympics watch: Not that much
http://blogs.zdnet.com/BTL/?p=9627

Metamaterials hold promise for invisibility cloaks
http://www.informationweek.com/news/hardware/peripherals/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=210001982
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7553061.stm

Psst! Barack Obama will text you his veep details
http://news.cnet.com/8301-13577_3-10013126-36.html
http://my.barackobama.com/page/s/firsttoknow

VOICE MAIL

Mark from Florida
Question about the durka durka noise.

Jason Marietta
Cell phone coincidence?

E-MAIL

Hi Buzz Crew,

This is about the comments on Blu-ray in episode 784. While there definitely is a noticeable difference, I agree the picture quality of Blu-ray is not the quantum leap that DVD was over VHS. What everyone seems to be missing is the fact that the audio quality is that quantum leap.

The difference between Dolby Digital 5.1 & Dolby True HD or DTS HD Master audio is amazing but it’s rarely talked about even by the studios. The new lossless audio just blows away the old lossy compressed formats & you don’t need a high end system to hear the difference.

The problem is there are probably fewer people with AV receivers with HDMI inputs (which are required to get the new lossless audio) than there are people with a HDTV & people are only able to listen to the lossy formats over the TosLink (fiber optic) connections because they don’t have the bandwidth to carry the new formats.

Personally I haven’t bought a DVD since November of 2006, I have over 120 Blu-ray Discs & won’t buy anymore DVD’s.

Currently, I’m just buying new releases at full price, I replace my favorite DVD’s when they are on sale but yes, the prices on the movies are too high still!

For me the combination of Blu-Ray + HDTV + HDMI 1.3 receiver = an amazing home theater experience!

[robot voice] Love The Show[/robot voice]
Dave, the firefighter in Oklahoma

Dear Buzz Crew

Look what the quick thinking Irish decided to do with cellphones on planes. - http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/ireland/2008/0807/1218047756406.html

Love the show

From Kieran in Ireland

I was wondering if you’ve seen the Calvin and Jobs comic strips from Mad magazine’s Jacob Lambert and Gary Hallgreen. It’s pretty amusing! They’ve replaced the Hobbes stuffed tiger character with a Steve Jobs doll. You should see it. I posted it in my blog (http://theuntechieblog.wordpress.com) but found it on Gizmodo.

The art isn’t as close to the Bill Watterson work as I had hoped, but still I’m sure your listeners would find it amusing as well.

http://gizmodo.com/5033627/calvin-and-jobs-kick-steves-nuts

Untechie
aka greyweed from the Philippines

I just wanted to let you guys know that I have finished version 1 of a native podcast client for the iPhone and iPod Touch and you should be seeing it in the App Store in the next few weeks. You can check out details and a video at http://tinyurl.com/podcaster. Thanks for a great podcast. Wanting to listen to BOL prompted me to create this application.

Alex S.
New Jersey

Why buy the Lordship when you can just choose the title from the drop-down? Also on the show today, Black Hat 2008 shatters our faith in all that is technology (just like it does every year), and we engage in a lively discussion about the relative crappiness of the applications on the App Store, as well as the moral ramifications of Apple being able to nuke those crappy applications remotely.

EPISODE 783

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

Black Hat: DNS flaw much worse than previously reported
http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/2008/08/dns-flaw-much-w.html
http://news.cnet.com/8301-1009_3-10009827-83.html

Hacking electronic-toll systems
http://news.cnet.com/8301-1009_3-10009353-83.html

Apple sued for turning workers into slaves
http://apple.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/08/07/132229

Google offers free legal music in China
http://www.techtree.com/India/News/Google_Offers_Free_Legal_Music_in_China/551-91943-643.html

Microsoft searching for Olympic medals
http://news.cnet.com/8301-13860_3-10009847-56.html

A look at risk-reward: Apple may nuke applications on your iPhone remotely
http://blogs.zdnet.com/BTL/?p=9587
http://news.cnet.com/8301-1035_3-10009764-94.html

PTO rains on Dell’s ‘Cloud Computing’ trademark
http://www.internetnews.com/government/article.php/3763741/PTO+Rains+on+Dells+Cloud+Computing+Trademark.htm

Worthless, $1,000 “I Am Rich” iPhone app disappears
http://www.alleyinsider.com/2008/8/worthless-1000-i-am-rich-iphone-app-disappears

But someone bought it! (Thanks Max!)
http://gizmodo.com/5034122/guy-buys-999-im-rich-app-discovers-hes-just-dumb

English ‘Lord’ puts life up for sale on eBay
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/26073308/

$12 MIT computer based on NES, not Apple II
http://news.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/08/06/1925225

VOICE MAIL

Anonymous Wardriver
Found an interesting unencrypted Wi-Fi connection

E-MAIL

Don’t go to law school! Don’t kid about going to law school, don’t talk about going to law school, and above all, don’t actually go to law school.

There. That is my one good deed for the day, and it cost me 1/10th of an hour of billable time. Damn.

Chris the attorney in DC

So…this thing can still probably cook up some hot dogs, right?

http://dvice.com/archives/2008/08/a_gaming_pc_mad.php
excerpt:

Yes, it’s a PC modded from a grill. The PC components themselves are where the charcoal should be, with the screen stuck up under the open top and the keyboard on the tray that would normally hold a plate piled high with burgers and hot dogs.

Best,
Shalin

The TSA addressed the missing/stolen laptop issue today on their blog. Bottom line: Clear was in violation of the SFO security plan and the TSA is doing a review of the Clear systems to make sure they’re doing what they’re supposed to do. The TSA let this incident occur, but it’s not because of lax security measures (thankfully).

http://www.tsa.gov/blog/2008/08/encryption-is-issue-in-case-of-missing.html

-Brian

You can lead a cow to the dance-hall, but you can't make him two-step. Unless, that is, you've got a dollop of artificial intelligence and some wraparound earphones. In technology news of the day, universities fight back against the RIAA, a cut-and-paste application appears for iPhone (and it's really, really hard), and robots learn to move themselves.

EPISODE 782

Episode 782

11 charged in theft of 41 million card numbers
http://news.cnet.com/11-charged-in-theft-of-41-million-card-numbers/2100-7348_3-6244876.html?tag=newsLatestHeadlinesArea.0

Tufts tells judge, we can’t tie IP addresses to MAC addresses
http://news.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/08/06/0224238&from=rss

University wants cease-and-desist order for MediaSentry
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20080805-university-wants-cease-and-desist-order-for-mediasentry.html

MacRumors iPhone blog: Are you rich? Buy this $999.99 iPhone app
http://www.macrumors.com/iphone/2008/08/05/are-you-rich-buy-this-999-99-iphone-app/
http://www.alleyinsider.com/2008/8/apple-s-iphone-app-approval-mouse-falls-off-treadmill-buy-the-1000-app-that-does-nothing-aapl-

Cut-and-paste application
http://news.cnet.com/8301-17939_109-10007275-2.html?part=rss&tag=feed&subj=Webware

How to watch the Beijing Olympics LIVE on the Web — Even if NBC doesn’t want you to
http://www.alleyinsider.com/2008/8/how-to-watch-the-olympics-live-on-the-web-even-if-nbc-doesn-t-want-you-to

Researcher: Encourage more, not less Internet traffic
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20080806-researcher-encourage-more-not-less-internet-traffic.html

Lost SFO laptop found--where it went missing
http://news.cnet.com/8301-1009_3-10008094-83.html

Robots learn to move themselves
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/7544099.stm

You will never, ever game on this 40-foot rig (with 27 HD monitors ) (Thanks Peter!)
http://kotaku.com/5033602/you-will-never-ever-game-on-a-rig-this-expensive

VOICE MAIL

Jean-Guy
About the Linux call yesterday.

Rafa
Hey Twitter! I got a message for you.

Dragon
I know where Apple got their name from.

E-MAIL

Tom,

More ashes were lost than James Doohan. Of the other 207 people, I thought you ought to at least give Gordon Cooper equal time. As an original Project Mercury astronaut, He flew the longest spaceflight of the Mercury project, was the first American to sleep in orbit, and has been noted as the last American to fly alone in earth orbit thus far. (per Wikipedia).

Love the show. Keep ranting Molly!

Headphone cows steer the herd…

http://www.core77.com/blog/object_culture/cows_herded_with_headsets_10712.asp

excerpt:

Here are some choice sound bites from the lab:

The technology won’t eliminate the need for cowboys; instead, the focus is to shift their labor from physical to cognitive. Ranchers and cowhands will no longer have to spend time building and repairing fences.

uh huh…well, there goes my master plan of learning to be a “cow whisperer”…

Best,
Shalin

EPISODE 779

Judge rules Sprint’s early-termination fees illegal
http://news.cnet.com/8301-1035_3-10004049-94.html

Travelers’ laptops may be detained at border
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/content/article/2008/08/01/laptops.html

In-flight cell ban advances in congress
http://mobile.slashdot.org/mobile/08/08/01/0124258.shtml
http://news.cnet.com/8301-17938_105-10004170-1.html

Apple quickly kills popular iPhone-‘tethering’ app
http://blogs.pcworld.com/staffblog/archives/007376.html
http://news.cnet.com/8301-13515_3-10004278-26.html
http://www.macrumors.com/2008/07/31/nullriver-introduces-3g-edge-tethering-app-for-iphone/

College funding bill passed with anti-P2P provisions intact
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20080801-college-funding-bill-passed-with-anti-p2p-provisions-intact.html

Hands on: Delicious 2 cleans up social bookmarking
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20080801-hands-on-delicious-2-cleans-up-social-bookmarking.html
http://news.cnet.com/8301-17939_109-10003874-2.html

China eases Internet restrictions for journalists
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/02/sports/olympics/02beijing.html

Online fantasy game's absurd cancellation policy leads to new law
http://www.alleyinsider.com/2008/7/final-fantasy-online-s-arcane-cancellation-policy-baffles-lawmakers-leads-to-new-law

iPhone + Twitter + sedatives = not a great idea, really
http://www.alleyinsider.com/2008/7/iphone-twitter-sedatives-not-a-great-idea-really

NASA: “We have water” on Mars
http://www.boingboing.net/2008/07/31/nasa-we-have-water-o.html

VOICEMAIL

Grahame, New York
Gift card horror story.

BlackBerry Guy
A little hands-free headset stuff.

E-MAIL

Hey Buzz crew!

A word in defense of providing lunch for employees. I recently joined a start-up here in Boston which does this. We just reviewed the policy and concluded that it’s a great investment. My personal top three arguments in favor:

1. Builds camaraderie and fosters healthy mixing of individuals from different departments.

2. Keeps an otherwise, uh… “distractible” team in the office, rather than wandering around Chinatown looking for Boston’s best dumplings. More importantly, it keeps lunch hour contained within a fixed window of time--1:00 p.m. is actually a usable meeting time in our company.

3. In a competitive recruiting market, free lunch is an attractive perk. We get far more bang from our lunch dollars than if we allocated them toward standard comp.

Waldron, in Boston

**********

Drunk Dialers in Norway get heard through fjords!…fjords..fjords…fjords…

http://www.core77.com/blog/object_culture/public_megaphone_for_drunk_dialers_in_norway_10660.asp

http://www.unsworn.org/telemegaphone/

excerpt:

By dialing the Telemegaphone’s phone number, your voice will ring out across the fjord, the valley, and the village of Dale. A bright light at the top of the pole will be lit as your call goes through, projecting your voice across the valley.

Wanna try? On Aug 2, go here for the phone number. (This’ll work day & night until September 6, 2008).

Best,
Shalin

**********

Tom, to help you out on the iPhone end, go into settings. Under Safari
there’s an option to switch the search from Google to Yahoo.

Steve from Buffalo, New York

**********

Hey BoL,

The caller in episode 778 who clarified some info on China’s Great
Firewall is right - VPNs are one path around China’s Net censors. A
friend of mine attended the Beijing University of Post &
Telecommunications, where she was taught how to use VPNs and other
proxy server techniques to evade the Great Firewall entirely. I
visited her dorm room when she was still in grad school there, and all
of her roommates (computer science students) were browsing and
downloading content quite freely. Apparently, they’re still huge fans
of ‘Friends.’

The real impact of the Great Firewall is psychological --China’s
government knows they can’t block everything, but if they make certain
information inconvenient enough to access for most of the population,
almost all users just get frustrated and give up. I’m constantly
surprised by how disinterested and oblivious my friend is about world
events, although I can’t speak for the other 1.32 billion. She’s
coming to the States for the second time in August and I’ll be very
curious to see how she reacts to western media’s perceptions of the
Olympics coverage.

<< “L O V E T H E S H O W”;

-Andrew
Portland, Oregan

**********

Dear Tom, Molly, and Jason, While the new FireWire standard may be
faster then the current USB standard, the soon-to-be-released USB 3.0
spec has a max throughput of about 4.8 Gbit/s.

On today's show, we discover that it's hard to stand out in an orgy, only about a quarter of things Molly says are words, and EA poops all over you. That's just the kind of show we have when Rafe Needleman fills in for Tom.

EPISODE 777/b>

Happy birthday, NASA!
http://science.slashdot.org/science/08/07/29/2120225.shtml

EA: Hack took Facebook Scrabble down
http://news.cnet.com/8301-13577_3-10002363-36.html

Garmin delays Nuvifone
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB121742654018296961.html

Dell tests player to renew iPod battle
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB121738346889295815.html
http://news.cnet.com/8301-17938_105-10002382-1.html

DNS hacker victim of his own creation
http://it.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/07/30/1242229
http://www.networkworld.com/news/2008/073008-dns-attack-writer-a-victim.html

‘Pentagon hacker’ loses extradition appeal
http://www.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/europe/07/30/uk.hacker.ap/index.html
http://www.crn.com/security/209900321

IOC admits Internet censorship deal with China
http://yro.slashdot.org/yro/08/07/30/1551211.shtml
http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-10002097-93.html

Apple says MobileMe is fixed! Seriously! Go try it!
http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,1895,2326792,00.asp

Amazon unveils online payment service
http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-10002259-93.html

Face swapper software protects privacy
http://www.boingboing.net/2008/07/29/face-swapper-softwar.html

VOICE MAIL:
Anon:
Cops on cell phones!

E-MAIL:

Dear Buzzcrew,

Don’t you hate it when people make inaccurate statements like Sen.Stevens calling the Internet a series of tubes or like when you demonstrate you entire lack of political knowledge when you say he is the head of the Commerce Committee which he in point of fact hasn’t been since January 2007.

But then why let the truth stand in the way of a good story,

Thomas

Dear Buzz Crew

You mentioned on episode 776 the “Mojave experiment”, where Windows Vista was disguised as “Mojave” to make people see past the prejudice that vista faces, and how that doing this led to hugely increased customer satisfaction and popularity. This begs the question, why bother with the “Hey Look, Vista’s all right when it’s not called Vista” marketing campaign, and just not call it Vista. Just make up a cause for a new OS, and then release “Mojave”. Problem solved, and Mojave starts working for Microsoft and Vista is relegated to the nether land of Microsoft Bob and the infuriating paper clip.

Just a thought, keep up the great show

Techpriest

Hey guys,

I can’t believe you didn’t think of this but:

Search engines “help” you find something--a synonym for help is “aid”

Cuil-Aid!!!!

You’ll tell your friends to get some Cuil-Aid, and then have to explain that you don’t want them to grab a sugary drink, but that you want them to look something up.

Keep up the most excellent work!

Respectfully,

Chad

Dear Tom, Molly and Jason,

In your discussion of the new Cuil search engine there was one point you missed, namely its privacy policy. To quote from the site: “…our privacy policy is very simple: when you search with Cuil, we do not collect any personally identifiable information, period.”

As privacy is an increasingly important issue to web users, I’d suggest that this will be highly attractive to many people, especially given the concerns in this area that surround the current search imperator Google. Could Cuil’s privacy pledge be the wedge that prises apart Google’s search monopoly and frees us from the Black Iron Prison of cybersurveillance?

Your show is the tops for tech, and always entertaining. Keep up the consistently engaging (OK, I’ll say it, GOOD) work.

Best regards,

Andrew

Hello buzz crew,

I think the Olympics won’t be a problem for the IT department, because all the competitions will be at night in the U.S. So pretty much nobody will be working by that hour. If everyone gets to see the Olympics it would still be a problem, but for the HR department. People are supposed to sleep at night!

Here in Brazil, back in 2006 during the world cup, what i thought would be a joke worked pretty well: our major TV broadcaster streamed live all the world cup games in the Internet, and pretty much every place where I know there were computers, there were people watching that. There were no network problems because it was so popular, that usually people left one computer per room dedicated for streaming that video in full screen, which looked like as there was an actual television there. It was a total success in every office.

And guys, who are you fooling? People watch YouTube the whole day, and there has never been a problem before

Alexandre

There's no way we'd bait the International Olympic Committee like that, knowing how notoriously aggressive they are about controlling their content. They hardly want anyone to see it. That's why all the digital content is Vista only this year. Rimshot! In other news of the day, Nokia bought Symbian, leading analysts to predict everything from global market takeover to complete and utter destruction.

EPISODE 752

Nokia buys Symbian, turns software over to Symbian Foundation
http://www.engadget.com/2008/06/24/nokia-buys-symbian/
http://news.cnet.com/Symbians-new-role-in-mobile-apps-drama/2009-1039_3-6242423.html
http://mashable.com/2008/06/24/nokia-acquires-symbian/

The high-tech job capital is the Big Apple?
http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/06/24/the-high-tech-job-capital-isthe-big-apple/

Microsoft pledges Windows XP support through 2014
http://www.informationweek.com/news/windows/operatingsystems/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=208800494

NBC Olympics on-the-go download service is Vista only
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20080623-nbc-olympics-on-the-go-download-service-is-vista-only.html

Radio digital switchover proposed
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/7470460.stm

Co-founder shares surprises, letdowns, morsels from early Microsoft days
http://news.cnet.com/2009-1014_3-6242276.html

T-Mobile to prorate cell phone termination fees
http://www.informationweek.com/news/mobility/business/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=208800463

New brief on DARPA’s Vulcan engine
http://news.cnet.com/8301-10784_3-9975240-7.html

Voice mail

Kent
Nerd for hire or absence of joke?

FORUMS

Microsoft’s biggest blunder: Not fighting back vs. Apple
http://forums.cnet.com/5208-6035_102-0.html?forumID=97&threadID=298968

E-mail

In episode 751, you discussed the merits of ICANN allowing the registration of TLDs. That got me thinking about Apple’s recent decision to change the name of .Mac to MobileMe. I find it ironic that just as Apple drops .Mac (the name never made sense to me anyway), ICANN might allow Apple to create a top-level domain of .mac. One positive note: we are spared the web address “www.apple.mac.”

Am more entertained by your tweets than the show (just kidding),
Shawn in Greeley, CO

**********

Just to let you know, the Apple Cinema Displays do not include a built-
in iSight. This is why old iSight cameras go for high prices on eBay.
The show is awesome!

Trev from Oz.

**********

First for all the angry google browser syncers out there is Mozilla Weave:
https://services.mozilla.com/

It is still in experimental stages but works quite well. I’ve used it
for several months now since switching off of Firefox 2. It is more
like Google Browser Sync than Foxmarks because it syncs bookmarks,
history, saved forms, etc

Lastly I thought you might find this interesting. Our family was chosen
to be a Nielsen Ratings family. So we signed all the paperwork and
sometime later they came out to install the monitoring devices. When
the installer started going over my TV setup, he told us that we could
not participate because I had my computer hooked up to the TV. (as an
auxiliary input) He said this would cause their monitoring device to
report incorrectly.

So if you have an unsupported device then you can not participate in
Nielsen Ratings. While they support devices like DVDs players, VCRs,
and game consoles, it sounds like they don’t support much else. It
seems to me that they are missing a big demographic then. Sounds like
everyone who owns a Windows Media Center, Apple TV, or other computer
like device may be looked over. Sorry techies but it looks like all our
favorite shows are destined to have bad ratings.

Paul from Houston