Buzz Out Loud Podcast

Vic the Texas Rancher pilot wrote in, but somehow in the twisted mind of Molly Wood his name became Texas Ranger Panda. And now she can't stop laughing at the cute ranger panda writing in about HD makeup. Which Natali thinks is a conspiracy. We also review the DTV transition and help you get a contract-free iPhone.

EPISODE 997

The day after the U.S. DTV transition
http://news.cnet.com/8301-1035_3-10264369-94.html

When’s your country switching?
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2009/06/us-declares-victory-as-dtv-transition-goes-rather-smoothly.ars

Bug in Apple store helps you get iPhone at subsidized price
http://www.hitb.org/modules.php?op=modload&name=News&file=article&sid=31783

Google Voice number portability
http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/06/14/google-voices-secret-weapon-number-portability/

Antipiracy music deal for Virgin
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/8100394.stm

Bing filters porn now
http://news.cnet.com/8301-19518_3-10264128-238.html

Microsoft donates meals for IE 8
http://gizmodo.com/5290118/microsoft-donates-eight-meals-for-each-internet-explorer-8-download

Microsoft wants to rate your outfits
http://yro.slashdot.org/story/09/06/14/0118200/Microsoft-Seeking-Hot-Or-Not-Patent
http://appft1.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO1&Sect2=HITOFF&d=PG01&p=1&u=/netahtml/PTO/srchnum.html&r=1&f=G&l=50&s1=“20090150203″.PGNR.&OS=DN/20090150203&RS=DN/20090150203

Dell has now made $3 million on Twitter
http://www.crn.com/hardware/217800984;jsessionid=L40ST4KXQDKDOQSNDLOSKHSCJUNN2JVN

Open source car--20 year lease, free fuel for life
http://news.slashdot.org/story/09/06/13/0315221/Open-Source-Car-mdash-20-Year-Lease-Free-Fuel-For-Life

Twitter from a Commodore 64
http://hardware.slashdot.org/story/09/06/14/0218212/A-Twitter-Client-For-the-Commodore-64

VOICEMAIL
Randy in Colorado on Microsoft bundling

E-MAIL
hi there,

i’ve been a long time user of the cnet website and i practically live
off cnet tv. anyway so i decided to build myself a cnet toolbar
because i use cnet so much. basically its a series of shortcuts to the
different parts of the cnet website such as the different topics
(apple news, business news etc) and of course cnet tv. it also has a
google search added in. basically i used the google toolbar ever since
it was launched but this now allows me to remove that toolbar and
incorporate my searches and cnet together into a more… personal
toolbar.

anyway i thought why be greedy! haha… so if you guys are interested
you should check it out. its completely spyware free etc (there are
some other major networks that use the same company (espn toolbars etc)

this is the cnet one i made.

http://cnetcommunity.ourtoolbar.com/

it works on internet explorer (windows) and on firefox (windows & mac)

if you like it would you mind posting it to the blog or mentioning it
on cnet tv to promote it. maybe others would like it…

although if what i have made is illegal please let me know and i’ll
delete it asap or just use it for myself.

thanks for your time, hope you like it!

regards

ross canpolat
ireland

**********

Hi Natali,

Just thought you would get a kick out of this… Turns out they really were cooking wooly mammoths!

http://www.discoveryon.info/2009/06/worlds-oldest-barbecue.html

Love. The. Show.

- Enderpanda

**********

Buzzards,
Wait,wait…what? Did Tom say Blueray makeup? Is there a Blueray vs.
HD makeup war going on? Is Blueray makeup technically better but way
more expensive than HD makeup? To win this battle are these makeup
manufacturers going to have to buy out the studios? Maybe they will
have to go straight to the actors with an ad campaign. I heard that
Jason already has a Blueray makeup only clause in his contract.
Could you guys do a comparison episode where you all have Blueray
makeup on one side and HD makeup on the other? You could call it the
“Let that be your last battle” episode. (Star Trek reference. See
wikipedia. )
Love the show.

Vic the Texas Rancher Pilot

**********

Hey Buzz Crew again,

Can you help me here regarding the facebook username. I really wanted to get http://www.facebook.com/kaiser but someone also named Kaiser got it before I did, so I got http://www.facebook.com/kaiserf . after signing up my username I immediately went to http://www.facebook.com/kaiser to see who beat me to getting the username. Realizing that he was from the other side of the world, there’s really nothing I can do about it, besides facebook doesn’t allow username change. I just noticed something strange. After a few minutes, I went back to the guys profile and instead of getting the guys page, i got this

The page you requested was not found.
You may have clicked an expired link or mistyped the address. Some web addresses are case sensitive.
Return home
Go back to the previous page

What happened here? Did Facebook remove him the rights of getting that name? Can I still get it?

Just sharing…

Kaiser

**********

1000th episode is next week, thanks for all your submissions. Don’t miss the big show Thursday June 18th at the normal time and in the normal feeds live at 10:30 AM Pacific http://www.cnet.com/live

1000th episode meetup in San Francisco: http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=113374732587

Send us buzz at buzz@cnet.com or call us at 1-800-616-CNET (2638)

Well, actually, people are made of black holes. But I couldn't do a Soylent Green reference if I wrote that. We also talk about Natali's Lady Things and the fact that we all wear makeup. Oh, and Sony is broke. And Jammie Thomas is going back to court. So it's not all good news.

EPISODE 974

Sony Records First Full-Year Loss In 14 Years
http://www.paidcontent.org/entry/419-earnings-sony-records-first-full-year-loss-in-14-years/

eBay wins L’Oreal suit
http://www.marketwatch.com/story/ebay-wins-french-court-ruling-in-loreal-case

Not-so-shocking: Jammie Thomas, RIAA unable to settle
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2009/05/not-so-shocking-jammie-thomas-riaa-unable-to-settle.ars

Pirated music dominated by pop hits
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/8049495.stm

Three strikes proposal for print
http://www.boingboing.net/2009/05/14/three-strikes-propos.html

AirTran Wi-Fi for ALL flights
http://www.chicagotribune.com/business/chi-biz-air-tran-wireless-internet-may12,0,5545703.story

Mulligan! Twitter backtracks on unpopular change
http://news.cnet.com/8301-13577_3-10240163-36.html

YouTube on Google News
http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-10240709-93.html

Import Contacts
http://gmailblog.blogspot.com/2009/05/import-your-mail-and-contacts-from.html

Street View in Japan must reshoot
http://news.cnet.com/8301-17852_3-10240459-71.html

Google asks personal health questions
http://news.cnet.com/8301-17939_109-10240076-2.html

Kindle owners start to lose text-to-speech on purchased books — how do DRM-free Kindle books work?
http://www.boingboing.net/2009/05/14/kindle-owners-start.html

Kindle for all bloggers
http://gizmodo.com/5253808/amazon-opens-kindle-to-all-bloggers

Illusion Cloak Makes One Object Look Like Another
http://tech.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=09/05/13/2215220

Could all particles be miniblack holes?
http://www.technologyreview.com/blog/arxiv/23530/

Holy Moly iPhone app rejected by Apple
http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/AheadoftheCurve/story?id=7575266&page=1

VOICE MAIL
Kim
A podcast entirely about Twitter

Ton
Why would anyone want to see @replies

E-MAIL
Hi Buzz Crew,

In episode 973 you talked about a credit card that displays a unique code for online purchases. I don't think adding more complexity to a credit card is a good idea. I use a Bank of America credit card with "ShopSafe" for online purchases. When I'm ready to purchase online I simply logon to BOA (Bank of America) and use ShopSafe to generate a one use credit card number. You can set the expiration date and credit limit for the credit card number. The number can only be used by one vendor so it's of no value to anyone if they steal it.

Link to BOA ShopSafe Service info:

http://www.bankofamerica.com/privacy/index.cfm?template=learn_about_shopsafe

Love the show,

RJ

Buzz crew,

I’m a few days behind, but I just listened to your bit about an iPhone or iPod Touch being required by a university. Here at the University of Minnesota (go Gophers!), the university will actually lend iPod Touch to students in some classes, particularly media classes. You keep the iPod Touch for the semester and turn it back in when your course is finished. It is a pretty good programme and seems quite fair.

Also, we use Moodle for our online classroom stuff. It’s an okay system, but I think the University likes it because its free and open source!

However, I also agree that requiring students to have some fancy tech gadget is ridiculous.

—–
Ethan Poole

Aloha Buzz crew,

http://www.pcper.com/#NewsID-7154

The first signs of Intel’s Larrabee processor has been spotted in the
wild at the opening ceremony for the Visual Computing Institute at
Saarland University in Germany. Larrabee is Intel’s attempt to break
into the (GP)GPU market, hoping to break Nvidia and AMD’s current
stranglehold. It’s a bit of an odd beast in comparison to the existing
offerings: Instead of creating a completely specialised chip they’re
using a chip that’s largely based on their existing speciality, the x86
CPU; though it means they’re paying AMD nice bits of licensing money per
GPU they crank out thanks to cross-licensing for stuff like the x86-64
support.

The guys at PC Perspective have taken a pretty close look at the picture
and seem to believe it contains 32 cores + 32 vector processing units,
which seems to validate more or less what a few sites were claiming all
the way back in June 2007.

Love the show,
Paul, the brit geek in Hawaii.

Hi Buzz Crew,

I just wanted to take a quick moment to respond to your comments in episode number 973 where you were wondering why cell phone salesmen always have the "inside scoop" on product releases.

Having worked for Verizon Wireless for about a year in college, I can tell you that these inside scoops are completely made up. You see, Tom, you were close when you mentioned that the salesmen are on commission and that should be a driving factor. It IS a driving factor because of how the commission works. The salesmen are paid commission for 3 things - new line, out of contract line, and accessory sales. Notice what is missing there? On contract sales! That's right; the representatives don't make a penny for replacing your broken, on contract phone. Actually, it hurts their numbers as the accessory sales ratio is tied to the number of handsets sold. At Verizon, we needed to sell 3 accessories for every handset that we sold. People who are replacing broken handsets never buy accessories because they already have them. To put it simply, the salesmen don't want to sell an on contract customer a handset because they get NO commission and it hurts their numbers.

Now you see why these salesmen know all of these magical release dates. It's to get the customer to go away and hurt someone else's numbers.

I'm not defending the salesmen as this is a terrible practice, but as long as phones are subsidized, the companies are not going to pay their employees for on contract sales, and the salesmen will keep coming up with dates.

In Japan, our phones are no longer subsidized, and the customer service has gotten so much better since they changed the practice. Also, our monthly bills have gone down (by almost 50%!!). On the flip side, I paid about $650 for my last phone. I don't think the USA is ready for that kind of sticker shock on phones, so I guess you will have to deal with the made up release dates and inflated charges for the time being.

Love the show!

Shawn

Don’t you think that Twitter is a bit pretentious? I mean you have
people that write usually one sentence about their everyday lives that
contains little or no valuable information. With the teenagers that
can’t spell, I’m surprised they don’t use all acronyms. This emphasis
on the self seems to be a theme with these websites (i.e. myspace,
ipod, youtube, justin.tv). Do people really think their lives are that
interesting that they need to be broadcast to the world? This is why I
recommend the book “The Dumbest Generation”. – Matt

There is a lot about pants in today's episode. I mean, the French Parliament killed the Net piracy bill, Conficker started adding a key logger, and the AP does more stupid stuff. But really, it's all about pants. The new "Star Trek" movie was shown to a surprised group of Austin fans. Apparently, it melted one man's pants, it was so good. And there are also some robotic pants in today's show. But, the show is far from pants in the British sense. Just listen.

EPISODE 949

French parliament unexpectedly kills Net piracy bill
http://news.cnet.com/8301-13578_3-10215937-38.html
http://www.boingboing.net/2009/04/09/u2s-manager-wants-to.html

Conficker wakes up, updates via P2P, drops payload
http://news.cnet.com/8301-1009_3-10215678-83.html

NAND flash supply to tighten after Apple reportedly places large order
http://www.digitimes.com/news/a20090409PD219.html

Google responds to AP
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/7988561.stm

Associated Press threatens AP affiliate over YouTube channel
http://www.boingboing.net/2009/04/08/associated-press-thr.html
http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-10215703-93.html

BlackBerry Storm 2 with Wi-Fi, new screen?
http://news.cnet.com/8301-1035_3-10215106-94.html

Gmail time zone tracker
http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/04/08/gmail-can-now-tell-which-of-your-contacts-are-awake/

Industry moves: Sims' creator Will Wright leaves EA
http://www.paidcontent.org/entry/419-industry-moves-sims-creator-will-wright-leaves-ea/

Intel aims for 2-second boot time with Moblin Linux platform
http://arstechnica.com/open-source/news/2009/04/intel-aims-for-2-second-boot-time-with-moblin-linux-platform.ars

CFLs causing utility woes
http://hardware.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=09/04/08/2125250

Is Shaq trying to seduce Mark Cuban via Twitter?
http://news.cnet.com/8301-17852_3-10215867-71.html

Spock gives fans 'Star Trek' treat
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/7989146.stm

Monster Cable is still stupid
http://www.engadget.com/2009/04/09/monster-cable-learns-nothing-sues-monster-transmission/

VOICEMAIL
Jimmy from California
Is Costco the cloud?

Anonymous Drinker
???

E-MAIL
Hey Buzz Crew,

On episode 945 you guys talked about taking breaks for internet at work and about how productive that might be. I laughed when Tom mentioned people working in a call center. I work in a large call center and most of our supervisors do not mind if we take a few minutes here or there to check well known sites such as CNN.com or other related news sites. They do not allow us to surf sites such as Twitter or Facebook because of security risks. I just thought I'd pass that along.

Matthew

**********

Hi Buzz crew.

I just finished listening to episode 948 where you followed up on the variable pricing from iTunes, Amazon etc. My first reaction was that, since I’m in Canada, my songs will still be 99 cents for a while longer. Nope. I just checked and, sure enough, all songs are now .69, .99 and 1.29 per song. Amazing! It took us over a year to get the iTunes store in Canada after it was launched in the US because of Licensing issues. Just as long to get T.V. shows and movie rentals for the same reason. We couldn’t get the iPhone untill the 2nd generation and when I checked over the weekend most of my purchased music still was not availible for the DRM free upgrade. But raise the price by 30 cents so the record labels can make more money and the Canadian music industry is instantly all over it. Capitalism. Gotta love it.

Speaking of love it. Love the show….Tom, your segues are rubbing off on me.

Take care,
Wayne, the Visual effects Artist, Quebec, Canada

PS: Natali, I hate FiOS because FiOS hates Natali.

**********

Perhaps for his next upgrade cycle, the eyeborg might consider one of
these:
http://www.engadget.com/2009/04/08/exmoveres-wearable-chariot-for-the-mild-mannered-cyborg/

If you ask me, it looks like the 21st century version of a centaur…
except instead of the lower half being a horse, it’s a Segway)

LOVE THE SHOW.
Donald, the (still) out of work software engineer

**********

Hi Buzz Out Loud
Yesterday you had a caller mention that Mutant Chronicles was on Video on Demand before theaters. Here is a second movie that I know is going to debut on VOD before hitting theaters. The movie is called Surveillance. It is directed by Jennifer Lynch and produced by David Lynch, two well known directors. It will be on VOD on May 29th and in theaters on June 6.

I am excited about this and I hope this trend continues. Also the new tv series Southland premiered on Hulu a week before it was broadcast on tv.
Here is the link to the surveillance site where it shows the dates of release and a trailer, pretty cool.

http://magnetreleasing.com/surveillance/

Enjoy the show
Jimmie from KC

**********

Hey guys,

As stupid as it sounds, I know of at least two reasons why someone would downgrade from Vista or even Windows 7 to XP (not that they’re great reasons). First reason–I work for a company that edits patents for the government; and even though we’re a division of a major publishing company and can probably afford to upgrade our software, we have to use the programs that the government mandates, and some of these programs still rely on a command-line interface (apparently the government doesn’t trust us to make tables using a GUI-based program). Given how many bugs are in these programs anyway (and every time they tweak it things go wrong, like we can’t print in bold or something), I don’t think they’re working to update it and make it compatable with anything beyond XP. We’ve tried to convince our contracter (the USPTO) to let us use newer programs, but it’s no-go, so we’re stuck using XP for the forseeable future (and I do mean future).

The second reason? Just today my parents called to ask me if they can downgrade their brand new computer to XP because their old copies of programs like Lotus 1-2-3 aren’t compatable with Vista. Yeah, there are alternatives, but my stepfather is 85 still reminisces about punch cards (he worked for IBM until the mid-80s). I’m still trying to talk them out of it.

Anyway, those are two (annoying) reasons.

Mary Jones

We're not talking about a team of dancing zombies; we mean a team of friends to form her Zombie Preparedness task force. Because it is Zombie Preparedness Day. We also bring it with some open-source good news for DVR builders, and the Linux folks talking tough to Microsoft.

EPISODE 944

Time Warner rationale for bandwidth caps doesn’t add up
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2009/04/get-ready-for-metered-broadband-texas.ars

Verizon promises 4G wireless for rural America
http://reviews.cnet.com/8301-12261_7-10209933-51.html

MPAA: Box office up, but 'sober epic' underway in home video
http://arstechnica.com/media/news/2009/04/mpaa-box-office-up-but-sober-epic-underway-in-home-video.ars

Piracy law cuts Internet traffic
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/7978853.stm

Palm opening Web OS SDK up to developers
http://news.cnet.com/8301-1035_3-10209815-94.html
http://reviews.cnet.com/8301-12261_7-10210019-51.html

Internet Explorer mobile browser: Sleek, but weak?
http://news.cnet.com/8301-17939_109-10209570-2.html

New Windows Live for Windows Mobile
http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/04/02/microsoft-releases-all-new-windows-live-client-for-windows-mobile/

Ovi to launch next month
http://www.crunchgear.com/2009/04/02/nokias-ovi-to-be-launched-globally-in-a-month/

TomTom suit suggests Microsoft’s still Microsoft
http://news.cnet.com/8301-13505_3-10209525-16.html

Linux wants to drop FAT file system
http://arstechnica.com/open-source/news/2009/04/linux-foundation-says-its-time-to-ditch-microsofts-fat.ars

West Virginia new cyberbullying law
http://www.inquisitr.com/21133/west-virginia-introduces-anti-bullying-bill/

AT&T, Verizon looking to join e-book reader market?
http://www.engadget.com/2009/04/02/atandt-verizon-looking-to-join-e-book-reader-market/

Rate people 1-5 on new social site
http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/story?id=7222890&page=1

Voice mail
National Zombie Preparedness Day

iPhone Voip Call

Nokia SIP call

E-mail
Hey Guys,

I made a google calendar with all the CNET Shows times on it. Please share it with the podcast audience at CNET. There is a button to add the calendar to your own Google Calendar in the bottom right of the screen. Here is the link: http://www.google.com/calendar/embed?src=bjM5ZGxpNTl0NTRmOHA0ZTRzbzkxNWMyZzBAZ3JvdXAuY2FsZW5kYXIuZ29vZ2xlLmNvbQ

Also, if you know who runs watchbol.com , feel free to give them this link to put on the site or whatever.

Steve from NJ

**********

Tom,

I love the show, and while we disagree on certain subjects, I
appreciate your experience and opinions.

However, this is not the case when you are discussing Blu-ray and
Netflix. On a personal note, I can’t believe that you are holding out
on Blu-ray … it’s great. And since you don’t have a PS3 or
standalone Blu-ray player I don’t think you should be commenting (as
if you have real world daily experience) on supposedly equal
alternatives.

It all boils down to one argument I’ve heard from you more than once.
You suggested on Tuesday’s show that Netflix HD streaming is a viable
alternative to Blu-ray. First of all the quality of the Netflix
streams that are actually labelled “HD” are DVD quality at best, and
that’s being generous (I checked again last night to make sure it
hasn’t improved). Second, you know that the availability of new
releases on Netflix streaming(the area that Blu-ray shines) is
virtually non-existent.

I’ve been a Netflix customer since Jan 2000 and I love it, but their
streaming as it currently exists will never even replace my need for
physical DVD.

I feel that in this one small but important area you are doing your
listeners a disservice, particularly the ones who are on the fence and
trust your opinions as fact.

And Natali, it made me really sad to hear you read that letter from
the disgruntled listener. don’t let people get you down.

Eric from NYC

**********

My opinions above are based on using this equipment:
Panasonic Viera 1080i 37″ Plasma
Tivo Series 3 HD connected via HDMI (used for Netflix streaming)
Sony PS3 for Blu-ray via HDMI
TWCNYC 15MBPS cable/internet

On yesterday show, there was a call to arms/request for more
Linux/Unix/BSD/etc… stories. Well, I know I sent this in yesterday, but
since it might’ve fallen through the cracks of all the April Fools’
nonsense, I decided to resubmit it.

Yesterday, on Planet Ubuntu (http://planet.ubuntu.com/) the distro’s
community’s Blog feed, the Mythbuntu DVR/Media Center Team made a huge
announcement which scores a major victory for Linux users everywhere.
They have scored an arrangement/deal with both Time Warner AND Comcast (of
all companies) for them to offer support for their CableCards in the 9.04
release.

Here is a snippet of the announcement:

“Today marks a historic day in Mythbuntu development. Over the last year
we have been having discussions with several major cable companies in the
United States regarding enabling CableCARD support for all Mythbuntu
users. Late last year we reached an agreement with two of those major
companies, Time Warner & Comcast…Due to the difficulties in defining how
CableCARD support will work on Mythbuntu, it is only launching with the
ATI TV Wonder Digital Cable tuner [1]. These are the first products that
are being certified for CableCARD support on Mythbuntu, but expect others
to follow.

To start off, you will have to pick up an ATI TV Wonder Digital Cable
tuner…Next, contact your cable support specialist to schedule a time for
a technician to come and drop off a CableCARD in your home. For your
convenience, Time Warner and Comcast have allocated specialists
specifically for the expected call load…You may have heard of problems
with technicians refusing to install CableCARDs in anything that was not a
television set in the past. Per the terms of this agreement, all
contracted technicians have specific instructions to assist with
installation on Mythbuntu regardless of circumstances. If your technician
gives you a hard time, refer him to this URL.”

The full story can be found here:

http://www.mythbuntu.org/cablecard

Keep up the great work. {{Insert electronic “Love the show” here}}

Marc K. {{technomensch in the forums…rafe’s multimedia junkie}}
The South Florida Social Geek
http://meetup.com/sflsocialgeeks

**********

Hi Buzz Crew,

I wanted to let you all know that I uploaded the 3D video I shot using
the two flip camcorders at SXSW. There are two scenes, the one before
your live show and another from a panel which had Jonathan Coulton on
it. I’ve uploaded my 3D composites as well as the source videos if
anyone wants to download them (you need to be a vimeo member to
download content). Here’s the link:

http://www.vimeo.com/user482102/videos

I used stereo movie maker to create the composites:
http://stereo.jpn.org/eng/stvmkr/

It was great meeting each of you. Now that I have seen a live BOL
taping I can cross it off my “bucket list”. Now I just need to meet
Molly and Veronica.

Love the show, thanks for being so awesome towards your fans.

Nick Waters

**********

BOL Meetup Trifecta
Tonight in SF - Rev3/Tekzilla/BOL meetup at Moscone
http://forums.cnet.com/5208-10152_102-0.html?threadID=336693&tag=forums06;forum-threads
Saturday, April 4th in SF - Brunch Out Loud starting at the Ferry Bldg Peets in SF @ 10:30am
Thursday April 16th in NYC with The 404 (details to follow)

So, in Florida they're taping magnets to crocodiles heads to keep them from moving back to suburbia. It's also last call for Vista, with SP2 released to developers. And we talk about good sex and how it shouldn't be filtered in Australia. Oh, and flying cars. Of course.

EPISODE 919

Nintendo needs help with piracy
http://games.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=09/02/26/1118217
http://kotaku.com/5160062/what-countries-made-nintendos-rampant-piracy-list-this-year

Australian Internet censorship plan torpedoed
http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=09/02/26/1344207

U.S. antitrust judge examining Windows 7 documents
http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=09/02/25/2322227

Announcing the service pack 2 for Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008 RC
http://windowsteamblog.com/blogs/windowsvista/archive/2009/02/25/announcing-the-service-pack-2-for-windows-vista-and-windows-server-2008-rc.aspx

Study: Listening to podcasts better than going to lectures
http://arstechnica.com/web/news/2009/02/study-listening-to-podcasts-better-than-going-to-lectures.ars

Intel joins Netbook trademark suit, flames Psion
http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/news/2009/02/game-on-intel-joins-netbook-trademark-suit-flames-psion.ars

Nokia considering entering laptop industry
http://www.reuters.com/article/technologyNews/idUSTRE51O6Z320090225

Yahoo closing Briefcase. In other news, what the heck was Briefcase?
http://briefcase.yahoo.com/bc//home

Designer babies
http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=09/02/25/2319232

Disrupting alligators commutes with magnets
http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=09/02/25/1635252
http://www.tcpalm.com/news/2009/feb/23/get-lost-state-hopes-thwart-crocodiles-homing-inst/

Flying car flies from London to Africa
http://tech.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=09/02/25/1929244

VOICEMAIL
RogueTess
Appropriate use of correct speech

Beast33
Today show about LimeWire

E-MAIL
Bolton,

Nat, I don’t know about the exploding car/divorce. Well not with sugar at least.
http://www.snopes.com/autos/grace/sugar.asp

Snopes is challenging you on that. Car talk does, too.
http://www.cartalk.com/content/columns/Archive/2001/February/02.html

I like how Snopes suggests that you just leave a little sugar on the ground near the gas tank and leave the take door open. That’s enough to make someone “think” that they’ve been sugared.

Jason the runner in Marietta, GA.

**********

Hey JaNaTo,
In regards to yesterday’s episode (918) about the flexible displays, I am excited about when this gets ruggedized and put on a quarterbacks arm. They could add plays on the fly wirelessly to his armband and also if they needed to draw up a play in the huddle, the quarterback could do so with the addition of touchscreen to it.

Keep up the good work in these troubled times,

-Mike in Des Moines

**********

Hey JaToNa + Brian Tong (Maybe since he is usually on Thursdays but he was on early in the week– So Who then Cooley?)-

Anyhow just wanted to say ‘Thanks’ for bringing up “Spotify”. I went to check it out, great instant streaming music site. Funny thing though- I didn’t need an invite to join! I just looked up Spotify through Google and then clicked ‘join’ and signed up no problem.

Of course that could have been luck or maybe even that I’m on a mac, but I guess I should suggest trying it for yourself (or at least for those outside the US) and see how long this lasts!

Only downside to the service is that music is country specific. It varies what you can and cannot listen to depending where you live.

The “ads” are a joke, meaning they are just a small banner ad at the bottom of the player and randomly insert a 20 second spot to join their premium service. If this is their model and plan to keep sticking with it, I’m gonna use them from now on!

Cheers from Oxford, England!
Tom Merritt the Doppelganger

**********

Hey Buzzards,

I have nothing terribly relevant to say today, but I do have something
very important that I think we should remember. 18 years ago today,
Tim Berners-Lee released the first ever Web browser. We should all
remember this day as one of the most important days in the history of
computer science, and should all honour it as such.

LTS,
DanielInHell

**********

I don't recommend running Xslimmer to cut down on the size of applications on OS X. While it does reduce the size of applications, it can potentially break the Automatic Update feature of OS X, as it is no longer able to properly identify the files that make up applications, and therefore doesn't know how to apply updates. If someone chooses to shrink their apps, they should download the full packaged versions of Apple's updates directly from their web site instead of using Automatic Update, something some users don't know how, or don't want to do.

-Doug

P.S. I'm not a psycho; I'm about the most docile person you could ever meet. What else do you do with an old broken television besides smash it with a sledgehammer?

EPISODE 847

Hey Microsoft, Yahoo’s for sale--for real this time
http://www.crn.com/software/212000962

Obama, McCain campaigns both hacked, files compromised (thanks rpcaldiera)
http://it.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/11/05/221222

An Obama presidency: Good, bad news for technology
http://news.cnet.com/8301-13578_3-10082672-38.html

Apple activates podcast downloads in 2.2 firmware
http://www.macrumors.com/2008/11/06/apple-activates-podcast-downloads-in-2-2-firmware/

Feature films coming to YouTube
http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-10083481-93.html

Video: Windows 7 promises faster boots and up to 15% better battery life
http://www.engadget.com/2008/11/06/video-windows-7-promises-faster-boots-and-up-to-15-better-batt/
http://news.cnet.com/8301-13860_3-10083242-56.html
http://cnettv.cnet.com/2001-1_53-50004352.html

Warner Bros. to fight China movie piracy with 60¢ downloads
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20081105-warner-bros-to-fight-china-movie-piracy-with-60-downloads.html

WPA cracked in 15 minutes or less, or your next router’s free
http://www.engadget.com/2008/11/06/wpa-cracked-in-15-minutes-or-less-or-your-next-routers-free/

Intel names ‘Nehalem’ launch date
http://www.reghardware.co.uk/2008/11/06/core_i7_launch_date_named/

Cancer genetic blueprint revealed
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/7706487.stm

U.S. Army to push X-files tech development, invade 'World of Warcraft'
http://gizmodo.com/5077240/us-army-to-push-x+files-tech-development-invade-world-of-warcraft

Voice mail
Anthony from Louisiana: Kindle in the Wild

E-mail

I was listening to episode 846 where you mentioned about EA’s hilarious work around for the CD key and I am sad to say that I was one of the those who received only 19 of the 20 digits. I thought about calling EA to find out how to resolved this but I figured that it would take to long and opt to simply guess the last digit. They allowed 3 tries before requiring you to re-enter all the digits again. I believe you can eliminate zero and O just because they look too similar reducing the number of possibilites to 34. I finially found the last digit on my 33th tried when I skipped Y and typed in Z. Safe to say EA has been nothing but trouble. Just wanted to get my story out on EA’s key cracking idea.

Also on another topic, I have seen two Sony E-Readers in the wild within the period of two month on the NYC train system. I thought seeing one was rare but two is really something. Funny thing is that I bought my girlfriend a Kindle for Christmas a months ago so by the time Christmas comes along there will be another Kindle in the wild.

Love the show,

– Johnnie

**********

Just be glad EA isn’t in Eastern Nigeria!

Hi BOL,
You guys were speaking of EA issueing a “workaround” for the missing CD key and noting that since they were alpha numeric keys, there were 36 options. I just thought you guys might like to know that in the Igbo language (Eastern Nigeria) there are actually 36 letters in the alphabet.

A B CH D E F G GB GH GW H I I J K KP KW L M N N NW NY O O P R S SH T U U V W Y Z

When a vowel appears twice, the second one has a dot on the bottom showing a longer sound and the second N has a not at the top for a different sound
Little International fact for you guys
Love the show,
Chuma

**********

The Soviets are killing us in the race to populate space with junk. Probably slowed downed recently though.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Race#Number_of_satellites_launched.2C_by_nation

Jim from Seattle

**********

Ref episode 844 and previous discussions about Google Chrome
advertising.

I just returned from a trip to Taipei; and Google is most definitely
promoting Chrome over there.

Walking along one of the main streets, I happened upon a wall-sized
billboard looking like a giant browser window, complete with embedded
“flash video” player. see picture here -> http://flickr.com/photos/monody/3008198330/

I guess Google is not a dominant player in Taiwan, or indeed much of
Asia. So it only makes sense to employ different advertising tactics.

LTS,

Vidar
from Norway

Episode 753

Internet provider halts plan to track, sell users’ surfing data
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/06/24/AR2008062401033.html

RIAA declares that AM-FM radio is a ‘kind of piracy’ (thanks Mark!)
http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/2008/06/recording-indus.html

American Airlines’ Wi-Fi debuts tomorrow; Glenn Fleishman’s analysis
http://www.boingboing.net/2008/06/24/american-airlines-wi.html

BlackBerry Bold delayed on AT&T until at least mid-August!
http://www.boygeniusreport.com/2008/06/25/blackberry-bold-delayed-on-att-until-at-least-mid-august/

Hackers crack London Tube’s ticketing system
http://blog.wired.com/cars/2008/06/hackers-crack-l.html

Two trojans For Mac OS X
http://it.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/06/25/0032226

Real-world Firefox 3 memory usage leads the field
http://tech.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/06/24/2012204

No XP reprieve; Windows 7 release set
http://tech.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/06/24/2358210

Clueless video game bill nears passage in New York
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20080624-game-law.html

Twitter officially announces its funding; Jeff Bezos participates
http://www.paidcontent.org/entry/419-twitter-officially-announces-its-funding-jeff-bezos-participates/

Vint Cerf: Video streaming to give way to downloading
http://news.cnet.com/8301-13953_3-9976895-80.html

Voice mail

Tom Cincy
Our pain makes him feel better

Joe Westside
Maybe we should just forget keyboards on smart phones
http://blog.wired.com/cars/2008/06/hackers-crack-l.html

E-mail

Hey Buzz Out Loud

In episode 752 I was a bit surprised by the mention regarding the
Lounge Forum discussion on Microsoft not fighting back against
Apple’s ads. It is a great discussion, but Microsoft is definitely
coming back at them with a vengeance, albeit very late in the game.
Check out the cover of Fast Company June 2008. They hired ad firm
Crispin Porter+Bogusky. For those that arent wise to the marketing
world, this is the agency responsible for the Subservient Chicken
site among other very notable campaigns. According to the article we
will start to see Microsofts response in July.

An interesting nugget from the article is that Crispin is outspoken
in not forcing the firm to convert to Windows. They will continue to
use Mac computers. From a marketing perspective, I would love to use
that in the next Apple commercial.

Lastly, show mercy. I have only been listening for about a month, but
Ive become quickly obsessed. What is the “pigeons” all about? Im clueless.

Dominic Pannone
Austin, TX

**********

Hey BOL crew I came across this link while browsing the web and thought you might get a kick out of it. The title really says it all, what if people bought cars like they did computers?

http://www.unixgirl.com/humor/cars.html

Thanks love the show,

Mark

**********

Hi JaMoTo. Speaking as a geeky blind guy, the only 2 platforms that
have speech software on phones that I know of are symbian and windows
mobile and I ask you, which would you rather run on? Nokia have stepped
up and handed us a goldmine of possability for adaptive tech on mobile
phones. The only suitable comment can be,
Woooooooooooooooooooooooooo Wooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo
recurring! I’m slapping a wicked air bass solo to selibrate. Oops,
don’t want to spill the coffee on the laptop. Be still my beeting heart.

This almost takes away the feer that one day soon, all phones and
tablets will have vertual keyboards making them as expensive plastic
bricks to the blind. At least Until decent voice recognission finally
comes along that is which will probably be round the same time as the
singularity going on current vox functionality trends.

Danny the madly dancing down under blind bass teacher

Ps, sorry for the spelling. Thunderbird rocks but I can’t get the spell
check to work even though I need it like ISP’s need a kick in the but.

PPS,

love - the - show

EPISODE 675

Apple SDK announcement
http://www.news.com/one-more-thing/
http://www.engadget.com/2008/03/06/live-from-apples-iphone-press-conference/

The Vista Capable mess: Intel pushes, Microsoft bends
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/ 20080305-the-vista-capable-debacle-intel-pushes-microsoft-bends.html

Internet Explorer 8: Crash, Restart, Crash
http://www.efluxmedia.com/news_Internet_Explorer_8_Crash_Restart_Crash_14848.html

Acid3 Test unleashed, murders every current browser
http://www.dailytech.com/article.aspx?newsid=10975

Whistle-blower: Feds Have a high-speed backdoor into wireless carrier
http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/2008/03/whistleblower-f.html

Piracy caused by poor choice
http://torrentfreak.com/piracy-is-caused-by-poor-choice-080305/

MIPI ISP filter conflict (Thanks Luke from Melbourne!)
http://steve.blogs.exetel.com.au/index.php?/archives/79-MIPI.html

What piracy crisis? MPAA touts record box office for 2007
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/ 20080305-for-movie-biz-tales-of-piracy-and-record-profits.html

Circuit City trading in HD DVD for Blu-ray players
http://gizmodo.com/363974/ circuit-city-trading-in-hd-dvd-for-blu+ray-players-says-employee

Gates dethroned as world’s richest man
http://www.news.com/8301-10784_3-9887197-7.html

Ask.com says they don’t want to become women’s site
http://blogoscoped.com/archive/2008-03-06-n40.html

Microsoft to switch Yahoo bid to all cash?
http://www.news.com/8301-10784_3-9887527-7.html

Swiss bank in Wikileaks case abruptly abandons lawsuit
http://www.news.com/8301-13578_3-9886855-38.html

VOICE MAIL

Someone
Analogy for packet inspection.

A. J. Alameda
Do things just keep getting more ridiculous?

Robert Edinburgh
I got a letter from Paramount.

Dear Sir or Madam,


We have received a complaint regarding an allegation of Copyright Infringement.

We were supplied an IP address of the system that was sharing the alleged copyrighted material, which we traced to your PIPEX ADSL account.

As I am sure you are aware, this breaches our Acceptable Use Policy, (http://www.pipex.net/legal/aup/ ) and many copyright laws, namely the Berne Convention.

Please reply to this email within 7 days stating that your PIPEX account will not be used for copyright infringement or any breaches of the law or the PIPEX Acceptable Use Policy.

Failure to respond or further infringements will cause your account to be temporarily suspended,and could also result in your account being terminated.

We have included the original complaint for you to view

E-MAIL

iPod related crimes

Hello BuzzTown,

This is Rodrigo from Brazil, now in Toronto!
So the number one video on YouTube is a videoclip from the Brazilian band Cansei de Ser Sexy, also known as CSS an indie eletronic/pop band a little bit popular outside of Brazil. Even though I like the band and Veronica also mentioned this band on BOL a while ago, they are NOT that famous to be number. They are not that famous outside of Brazil and they are even less famous inside of Brazil. I can assure you that the 89 million views that video got is indeed a hack!

And regarding the crimes related to iPod, I just want to share this “funny” story. I went back to Brazil last december and I brought an iPod Touch to a friend, two weeks ago he was stopped while walking to the bus stop. A guy pointed a gun to him and said “Give me your wallet and your iPod”. My friend was not showing the iPod but he was wearing the white earphones. He said to the thief that he didn’t have a wallet and took the iPod touch out of his pocket to give to the bad guy. Here comes the “funny” on all this. They criminal stares at the iPod Touch and said, “What’s that? Where’s the iPod?”, so my friend realizes that this guy doesn’t even know what is an iPod Touch so my friend tells him “I’m sorry this is all I have”… The guy got angry but went away and didn’t steal anything from my friend.
So yes, if you are facing a stupid south american criminal you might be safe caring an iPhone or iPod Touch.

Best
Rodrigo

Memory debate

Hey Buzz Crew,

You brought up the debate about whether Google and other resources are making us “dumber” because we no longer have to remember anything.

Since when does memory equal intelligence? I could memorize every US President and recite it back to someone, and most likely that person would later say, “boy, he was really smart.” Yet, I might only know their names, which does not really make me smart, just good at memorization. A piece of paper could do this, and with more reliable accuracy. On the other hand, if I could put that information in context to tell you interesting facts about certain presidents, or make connections between presidents that others haven’t before, that would be something worthwhile.

There is a famous quote by Einstein, “Never memorize what you can look up in books.”

Apparently, the story behind this is that someone asked Einstein to recite some “well-known” scientific formula, and he couldn’t do it, and people were shocked. He explained that he saw no reason to clutter up his brain with a fact like that, when he knew exactly where to look it up when he needed it. He wanted to spend his time on more important things than memorizing facts that are easily found on paper, rather than memorizing things just to make himself seem “smart”.

Freeing up the brain from memorization creates room for creativity and other useful tasks.

I don’t think the real question is whether removing the need to memorize makes us dumber. The real question is, if we stopped forcing children to do useless memorization in school that they will never actually use, what would be left? Especially in college, we’re forced to memorize books and books worth of facts that we won’t remember even months later, only so that we can do well on tests.

Just some food for thought.

Love the show,

Steve from Nashville

Denver airport’s free Wi-Fi

Hey Tom, Molly, and Jason
I just have a quick comment on episode 674 concerning censorship in Denver Airport's free Wi-Fi.
First of all if a service is provided for free, consumers should not have the right to complain about blocking certain content. This is the same reason why ABC, CBS, Fox, and other free over-the-air channels must comply with FCC censorship laws. Paid content like HBO, Cinemax, and satellite radio are not govern by the censorship law because they are paid content. So if you wanted to have unrestricted access to the internet you should pay for it.
Second of all if you want unrestricted internet access in any free Wi-Fi hot spot, all you have to do is use VPN for which the content filter software cannot determine what to block. The only thing I see is that they can block VPN traffic entirely but I doubt that is being done.
Love the show and keep up the good work.
Maynard
from New Jersey

Analogy dispute!

Hey TMJ,

As a law student currently writing a paper on online privacy, I have to take issue with Shobee’s(sp?) analogy correction.

We protect phone communications because of the privacy interest that exists in not having our communications intercepted, not because it isn’t where crime is happening.

If we are ok with saying that piracy is happening online and monitoring is the best way to stop it, then we may have to say that it’s ok to have police walk through our homes whenever they like, cause that’s where lots of crime is happening. Or perhaps since cars are used for smuggling, the police need to randomly stop our cars and search them. Not every person is going to be committing crimes in their homes or cars but, in Showbee’s words, if you want to catch who you need to catch, this is where you are going to find them.

The internet today handles so much private activity that any suggestion of tapping our connections must be taken very seriously. Piracy, in my opinion, simply isn’t a strong enough reason to head down the very slippery slope of internet monitoring.

love the podcast,
The Anonymous Canadian Law Student.

Illegal downloads in Iceland

Howdy Buzz Folks,
Thought you might find this interesting.
Hmmm, I guess I’ll be

Nine convicted for Illegal Downloads in Iceland
http://www.icelandreview.com/icelandreview/daily_news/ ?cat_id=16539&ew_0_a_id=302026

“Alexa” in the Azores…. (formerly in Iceland)