Buzz Out Loud 965: Nobody puts Rafe in a box

EPISODE 965

Minnesota orders ISPs to blacklist gambling sites
http://news.cnet.com/8301-13578_3-10231683-38.html

Facebook hit by phishing attacks for a second day
http://news.cnet.com/8301-1009_3-10230980-83.html

Manipulating the Palm Pre supply is just wrong
http://news.cnet.com/8301-13506_3-10230970-17.html
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601103&sid=a7H6bfrDqVPE&refer=us

Ashok Kumar rains all over Palm’s parade, says Pre will be DOA
http://digitaldaily.allthingsd.com/20090430/analyst-the-pre-is-doa/

Twitter on-page search goes live
http://news.cnet.com/8301-17939_109-10231505-2.html

60% of corporations still use IE 6
http://news.cnet.com/8301-17939_109-10231713-2.html

Acer’s loose lips: Win 7 release October 23?
http://www.trustedreviews.com/software/news/2009/05/01/Acer-Spills-Windows-7-Release-Date/p1

Rumor: Sony to unveil new motion-sensing controller at E3
http://www.joystiq.com/2009/05/01/rumor-sony-to-unveil-new-motion-sensing-controller-at-e3/

Apple to introduce more affordable Macs, sources say
http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/09/04/30/apple_to_introduce_more_affordable_macs_sources_say.html

LHC gets magnet repair
http://news.cnet.com/8301-11386_3-10231747-76.html

VOICEMAIL
JC Penney calling

E-MAIL
Dear Buzz Crew,

Just wanted to let you know about yet another “Comcastic” thing that has happened in the world of TV and internet. Earlier this week my parents were confused when they could only get channels 2-29 on the 3 non-cable box connected TV’s in their house. When my father called the cable company, they told him that he needed to connect digital converters to his TV’s in order to get back all of the channels. No, not the one for the over-the-air digital conversion, a special Comcast branded box that costs $2.99 per month to rent. For now, they are not charging for the first 2 or 3 boxes, but who is to say that this policy won’t change in the future? When I spoke to the retention department about this, they told me that the reason for the change was to make room for more bandwidth for internet and TV and that notices were sent out to customers informing them of the change. My problem is that this notice (which my parents probably tossed thinking it was about the over air conversion) comes pretty convenienetly close to the more well known digital conversion thus confusing me and especially my parents. I also couldn’t find anything about the changes on their website, comcast.com. In fact, all I could find was information about how current customers don’t have to do a thing:
http://www.comcast.com/dtv/default.html?INTCMP=ILCCOMCOMAL20644&fss=digital%20transition

Just thought you should know.

Love the show,

~Adam - the motion capture actor

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Hi,

In episode 964 of Buzz Out Loud you weren’t able to come up with any ideas why someone would want to have something launched automatically when a thumb drive is inserted into a computer running Windows 7. Well, I’m clearly a minority, but as a visually impaired person I sometimes use screen reading software on other computers than my own, e.g. in a public library or at a friend’s house. Then it’s very convenient to just pop in a USB thumb drive and have the screen reader launch and start talking within seconds without me having to do anything. If autorun was disabled, I’d probably have to go to the Start menu, Run, guess the drive letter of the USB drive and enter the path to the executable. Thought I’d just let you know… I guess a confirmation would be OK though, i.e. a message like “Would you like to let this application X run?”. Then I could just blindly (no pun intended) press Y a couple of seconds after the USB drive has been inserted.

Regards,
/David R., Sweden

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BOL Crew,

First time email, long time listener, but i am a little disappointed about the constant at&t bashing the past few episodes. I am an owner of an iphone and live in Florida and have never had any call drops or other network issues anywhere any of the southeast states i have traveled constantly to, the network is actually pretty good here. On the contrary to what you guys have seen in California and New York, the Verizon network here sucks. My personal opinion, If you all have problems with your phones, then complain, do something about it. All cell phone carriers do in fact listen to coverage problems and have teams dedicated to looking at these types of issues. I had a sprint phone a couple of years ago and i began to report a dead zone near my phone on the sprint website, and guess what they did? They fixed it. I think it is wrong to say that the carrier sucks if you are just basing it on a couple of markets, when the whole network has over 73 million customers nationwide. Just like they may have coverage issues in some areas, the other cell phone carriers (sprint,verizon, and tmobile) have the same issues in other markets……

And a small clarification, prior to the merger of Cingular Wireless & At&t Wireless, Tmobile, Cingular and At&t all had a network joint venture in the California and New York/New Jersey Markets called GSM facilities, which allowed each carrier to share network coverage in these areas.

I think a fair and balanced discussion of the level of service from the top 3 carriers is needed.

Love the Show

David

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Thank you, thank you, thank you Brian Cooley! I have heard for SO LONG about how Vista sucks the big one (hope that’s still censor-safe), but nobody ever seems to have any REAL reasons why. OK, it gets attacked by malcontents, but, as they are malcontents, they’re likeliest to go after a target which has more malicious tools known and available to attack it, which is basically what Brian said. Again in keeping with Mr. Cooley, I have several machines running MS products (2 w/ Vista & 1 w/ XP), they are networked and communicate just fine with each other. I only seem to need to reboot when an update tells me to. Of course they’re not perfect, but is OSX or Linux? Also, what is this love affair with the OS? Shouldn’t it be like a referee in football or basketball? You should not notice them unless there is an infraction! Really, I’m no shill for MS, but I just don’t understand all the bashing they take.

Love the show,
George Armstrong
Signal Mountain, TN