Buzz Out Loud 896: Watch your asymptote

Scientists have redone the math and found that black holes created by the Large Hadron Collider might last a little longer than they thought. But they're still pretty sure the LHC won't kill us all. Maybe check that math once again folks, just to be sure. We also have lots of White House news around the BarackBerry and whether the tech of the President's house is really up to snuff. And Rafe will tell you about how in Russia the system operates you.

Listen now: Download today's podcast

EPISODE 896

First e-mailing prez: Obama keeps his BlackBerry
http://news.cnet.com/8301-13578_3-10148329-38.html

White House already well wired, Bush staffers say
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,481647,00.html

Obama is "Failure" at Google, "Miserable Failure" at Yahoo
http://searchengineland.com/yahoo-obama-is-a-miserable-failure-16286

Trojan hides in pirated copies of Apple iWork ‘09
http://it.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=09%2F01%2F23%2F0127253

Apple issues critical QuickTime security update
http://news.cnet.com/8301-13579_3-10148926-37.html

Facebook now twice as big as MySpace? Oh boy
http://news.cnet.com/8301-17939_109-10148855-2.html

Seagate says it now fixes 7200.11 drives for real
http://news.cnet.com/8301-17938_105-10148231-1.html

Russia to develop a national operating system
http://linux.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=09%2F01%2F23%2F1450224

Monty Python’s free Web video increased DVD sales by 23,000 percent
http://www.boingboing.net/2009/01/23/monty-pythons-free-w.html

Microsoft brings back DRM
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=09%2F01%2F22%2F1914201
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20090123-microsoft-misses-memo-launches-drm-laden-mobile-music-store.html
http://news.cnet.com/8301-13526_3-10148896-27.html

Pope to launch Vatican on YouTube
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/7846446.stm

LHC-made black holes could last for minutes
http://arxivblog.com/?p=1136

VOICEMAIL
Bailey in Lawrenceville On webkit and gecko

E-MAIL
I left a vmail too, but thought I’d sent the link for you:

2000-2003 DVDs would have qualified: http://www.copyright.gov/1201/anticirc.html

But since 2003 this passage has applied:

2. Computer programs and video games distributed in formats that have become obsolete and that require the original media or hardware as a condition of access, when circumvention is accomplished for the purpose of preservation or archival reproduction of published digital works by a library or archive.
http://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2006/11/new-dmca-exemptions-granted

So HD-DVD is a no go. Also note:

A format shall be considered obsolete if the machine or system necessary to render perceptible a work stored in that format is no longer manufactured or is no longer reasonably available in the commercial marketplace.

Later!

Frank L.

**********

Buzzkins,

Some of us up here in the thermally challenged North will benefit from a delay in the DTV Transition, for a reason none of you mentioned. I went out in mid-December and purchased my coupon-assisted Converter Box. When I hooked it up to my Analog Adequate rooftop aerial, I was rewarded with a big Digital "NO SIGNAL". I live 28 miles from the big city transmitters, and not in flat country. Now I need to install an even bigger, amplified signal rooftop antenna. The big problem with this is that there is snow and ice covering my roof, and it will be there until Spring, or until Climate Change.

Bob the Geek

Canandaigua, NY

**********

Hi Buzz!

So I think Packet 8 VOIP just went out of business. I woke up with my
phone not working, their 800 number off and no more website. Ugh.
Since this is the second VOIP I’ve outlasted (sigh, Sunrocket), I’m
switching back to a landline. I still need that number for work, so I
just had a grueling phone session with ATnT. I think I would have
preferred an hour at the dentist.

Curse you Vonage for not having service in my area and long live the
land line!

Sheala, GA

**********

Hey Tom, Jason and Natali,

I have rebuilt Podcaster from the ground up. I took away the search directory and resubmitted it to the app store and it got accepted yesterday, 1/22/2009. You can download it at http://tinyurl.com/rssplayer (iTunes store link) or you can read more about it at http://rssplayer.blogspot.com. I stripped a lot of the features away and will be adding them back 1 by 1 in every updated. So that’s it. Just keeping you in the loop.

Thanks for a great show
Alex

**********

Just thought I’d respond add to the discussion yesterday about “older
people” and the DTV changeover. According to an Ars Technica article, the
exact opposite is true and it is younger people who are unprepared.

http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20090123-nielsen-6-million-households-still-not-ready-for-dtv-day.html
Quote: “One phenomenon that continues to hold steady is that young people
show much higher levels of complete unreadiness than the late middle aged
and elderly. 8.8 percent of households under 35 are totally unprepared, as
opposed to just 4 percent of those over 55.”

Love the show,
Luke in Connecticut