Buzz Out Loud Podcast

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June 6, 2008 12:11 PM PDT

Buzz Out Loud 740: iTunes bombing

by Molly Wood
  • 5 comments
How to get to the top of the iTunes podcast list--we think. We'll let you know Monday. Also, breaking news! Amazon goes down midshow! Was it something we said? In other news, we attempt to solve issues of global hypercapitalism, the growth imperative, and their inevitable consumer-unfriendly consequences. Plus, we find out why you have to go through voicemail hell when you call customer support, and the answer makes us lose our ever-loving minds.
Listen now: Download today's podcast

Episode 740

ISP secretly added spy code To Web sessions, crashing browsers
http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/2008/06/isp-spying-made.html
http://www.wikileaks.org/wiki/British_Telecom_Phorm_Page_Sense_External_Validation_report (Thanks Nate!)

Groups call for investigation of ISP ad targeting
http://www.pcworld.com/businesscenter/article/146789/groups_call_for_investigation_of_isp_ad_targeting.html

Warner: OK, we admit, Pirate Bay cop was a little compromised
http://mashable.com/2008/06/05/warner-pirate-bay-cop-compromised/

Google to let users test new Gmail features
http://www.webware.com/8301-1_109-9961185-2.html

Prediction: Apple's 3G iPhone will include a price drop
http://blogs.techrepublic.com.com/hiner/?p=728

Apple 2.0 Microsoft packs 36 iPhone digs into one 7-paragraph letter
http://apple20.blogs.fortune.cnn.com/2008/06/06/microsoft-packs-36-iphone-digs-into-one-7-paragraph-letter/

Is the Verizon-Alltel deal good for consumers?
http://news.cnet.com/8301-10784_3-9961488-7.html

How much do you hate that ad? Facebook wants to know
http://news.cnet.com/8301-13577_3-9961195-36.html

Quantum computing advance--diamonds are a qubit's best friend
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20080605-quantum-computing-advancediamonds-are-a-qubits-best-friend.html

Operation iScam
http://revision3.com/forum/showthread.php?t=19454

Rubik’s Cube algorithm cut again, down to 23 moves
http://science.slashdot.org/science/08/06/05/2054249.shtml

Voice mail

Anna
Here’s an old phrase.

Dr. Rob
Free medical advice for Molly.

E-mail

The original iPhone

So I was listening to Dialed In today and they were talking about the 3G
iPhone (no big surprise there), and they mentioned an article on Wired
that apparently talked about some of the expected specs of this new
incarnation of the Jesus phone. This piqued my interest, so I decided to
go look up the article. I went to wired.com and searched for iPhone (a
fairly reasonable search, I would assume), and the first result was an
unexpected article from 1995 talking about a new piece of software
called “Internet Phone” or “IPhone” for short, and how internet
telephony is the future and will kill the traditional phone system. The
thing that got me was on the first page talking about the “stringent
system requirements” which they list as ” a fast 486, 8 Mbytes of RAM, a
16-bit sound card, and a SLIP or PPP connection”. Below is a link to the
article. It is a bit long, but is an interesting read. With all of the
hype surrounding the 3G iPhone, I figured this would be a funny break
from the norm. Love the show!

http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/3.10/iphone.html

-Ryan Rapp
Boise, Idaho

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

3g iPhone release date

I’ve just noticed that Apples WWDC(world wide developer conference)
should be starting exactly the time BOL is starting next Monday.
Perhaps you could put in some spare time for a live update every once in
a while. Possibly even think about starting BOL an hour or two late so
you can cover everything that happened, considering the anticipation for
the event (that will probably turn out to be nothing) is huge. Just an
idea.

Love the show,

Brandon

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

Our robot overlords will have us seated

Good Friday morning to you all. I just found this on one of the blogs I
read and thought you’d enjoy it too.
It’s a project of a designer that combines tech into a library. Very
interesting, lets just hope we don’t get carried away, literally!

http://momeld.wordpress.com/2008/06/04/take-a-seat/
Take a look at the video, it’s worth it.

Nuno from CT (nthsquare in the chat room and forums)

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

InstallShield

Hey Buzz Crew,
After listening to the story about Installshield including the Yahoo
toolbar in their software I wanted to point out that the article does
say that the application developers who use Installshield have the
option of whether or not they want to include the toolbar in their setup
program. I would hope that most companies would not want to bloat their
setup files and tick off their customers by including the Yahoo toolbar.
Unless Yahoo is giving them an incentive to bundle it, I’m not sure why
they would.

Oh, and about the exploding DVD’s. If they really did explode I WOULD
pay $5 for them. If the movie sucked you would at least get the
satisfaction of watching it blow up! Heck, I might not even watch the
movie. I’ll just wait 48 hours for the finale.

Love the show!
Scott from Houston

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

Tracking study

I don’t have much of a problem with the tracking study; they were using
anonymized data and only had a resolution of 1 square mile which in any
urban or suburban area leaves a lot of leeway as to where you are. It
isn’t any more offensive to me than, say, Google releasing stats about
which web browsers and screen sizes from various countries. If either
the anonymization or the resolution of the project had changed I would
become concerned but in the way the study was conducted the method seems
innocent enough to me.

-Brian

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

Corporate voice mail button-pushing tooliness

You know when you get told “this call may be recorded for quality
purposes”? I’m the chick who listens to those calls and watches what’s
on the customer service rep’s screen. My work is hilarious.

Although it won’t decrease the method’s TQ (Tooliness Quotient), here’s
why you have to call that specific number even when it routes you to the
same call center as all the other numbers, and to the same irritating
prompts for button pushing: marketing. They want to know what you think
you’re calling for, where you got your information, general demographic
stuff, and if you get a human being s/he will answer the phone based on
not only which buttons you picked but which line you called in on.
Hence Douglas Adams’ opinion of marketing departments.

Show the love. I mean….. well, you know.

Karen
Scottsdale, AZ

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

jDome’s first public test!

Loved that you featured me on the show (#726) - to bad I only found out
about it just now.

Seemed I did a little too good a job on this looking like a big company
(except for my English that is). Basically I’m just one guy who has made
all that you see in my basement and a friend videotaped me.

Well a lot of things has happened after the promo was launched (which
I’d love to tell you about if you interviewed me on the show ;-)

For one, Swedish Game Awards asked me to show off the jDome at their
final day - and here are people’s reactions:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rvQfpsIQLuE

And next week I seem to be off for Dreamhack (world’s largest lan-party)
who also invited me after they’d seen the promo. And more…

Best Regards,
John Nilsson
http://www.jdome.com

March 17, 2008 11:59 AM PDT

Buzz Out Loud 682: The murder of CableCard

by Molly Wood
  • 10 comments
TiVo copy protection strikes at the very heart of CableCard...and, uh, TiVo. So, maybe they should reconsider going along with that whole HBO lockdown plan, eh? We also learn about how Hulu, Phorm, BT, Google, and everyone else on earth is tracking down all our personal information all the time. Bummer. Featuring Randall Bennett from CNET's The 404 podcast. Enjoy all 55 minutes (hey, I warned you!).

--Molly


Listen now: Download today's podcast

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

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About Buzz Out Loud Podcast

Buzz Out Loud features Tom Merritt, producer Jason Howell, and a rotating roundtable of CNET's top tech experts reviewing the day's tech news. Each episode, five times a week, the crew analyzes, interprets, and argues about what all this technology means and what it's doing to us. Fans can join in the show by calling 1-800-616-2638, e-mailing at buzz@cnet.com, or commenting on the blog.


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Tom Merritt Tom Merritt appears on CNET TV, specializing in help and how-to and the ever popular Top 5 lists. He also co-hosts CNET's The Real Deal podcast. See profile
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