Buzz Out Loud 949: Leonard Nimoy melts your pants

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.

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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

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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.

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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

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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

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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