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Buzz Out Loud 673: Offline is the new online

With Microsoft and Google making pushes to take online software offline, it has us wondering if everything old is new again.

Tom Merritt Former CNET executive editor
4 min read
Google Gears is the project that allows online apps to be used even when you don't have an Internet connection. Microsoft is apparently making noises about Silverlight being used offline as well. So apparently offline is really hip again. Good for it! Plus I get nailed with a pricing analogy, and we decide Alex is the new anonymous.

--Tom


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EPISODE 673

Sanity prevails: IE8 will default to standard-compliant mode
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/ 20080303-sanity-prevails-ie8-will-default-to-standard-compliant-mode.html
http://www.news.com/8301-13860_3-9884688-56.html

Survey: Warnings from ISPs could slash file-swapping by 70 percent
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/ 20080303-survey-warnings-from-isps-could-slash-file-swapping-by-70.html

Nokia to bring Microsoft Silverlight-powered experiences to millions of mobile users
http://www.nokia.com/A4136001?newsid=1197788

Official Google Mobile Blog: Shifting Google Gears to mobile
http://googlemobile.blogspot.com/2008/03/shifting-google-gears-to-mobile.html

What price, Scrabulous? Mergers, acquisitions, venture capital, hedge funds http://dealbook.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/03/04/ scrabulous-founders-look-to-score-big-report-says/?hp

Microsoft offers $100K to testers of Office Live workspace
http://www.nytimes.com/idg/IDG_002570DE00740E1800257402000312F0.html

Ranking corporate America on identity theft
http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/02/27/ranking-corporate-america-on-identity-theft/

Movie studios could be behind missing iTunes rentals
http://arstechnica.com/journals/apple.ars/2008/03/04/ movie-studios-could-be-behind-missing-itunes-rentals

Daylight Saving wastes energy, study says
http://online.wsj.com/public/article/ SB120406767043794825-UOLcfJA8×9Gw9ozbCz77MiLmtaE_20080327.html

Do coat hangers sound as good as Monster cables?
http://www.boingboing.net/2008/03/03/do-coat-hangers-soun.html

MySpace gets its own MTV show, but only in the U.K.
http://www.news.com/8301-13577_3-9884700-36.html

Cyber-goggles: Record and identify every object you see
http://hardware.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/03/03/2117250

VOICE MAIL

Alex Columbus
Why nobody’s got paid from Napster settlement.

Jared Omaha
How come I can’t record?

Alex? iPhone
Price cut.

E-MAIL

Where’s Stage 6?

Hey Buzz team,

I had to catch up on the episodes from Tuesday of last week up until Monday...of today. And was extremely sad that there was absolutely no mention on the shut down of the highly beloved Stage 6. It was really a boundary pushing Web site, which actually offered hi-def uploading, free of cost when no one else did. It was awesome, and the DivX player is the best video watchy thing, hands down.

I understand, that if with the death of Netscape and HD-DVD, maybe it was just too morbid to talk about it.

Ajay from Ontario.

Mind you, I might have just missed it, and sorry if I did.

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Vista cracked by Iraqis

Hey Buzz crew

On Episode 672 of Buzz Out Loud you were talking about the “new way” of activating Windows Vista. Just to make things clear, I did pay for my copy of Windows.

I’m around a lot of Iraqi Interpreters that the Marine Corps hires to work for us, and sometimes they ask me to fix their computers. One Iraqi I met showed me how he had activated and fully updated the copy of Vista on his computer, using the same method described by the Pantheon group.

I don’t know if they managed to get an early crack from them, or somehow they have set up their own “Crack Group” out here in the Middle East. But the computer I saw was cracked about a month before the Pantheon release.

I just wanted to ask what your thoughts are on this.

Thanks for the podcast
Dusty (Cpl Parra, Manuel) in Ramadi, Iraq

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Bootable flash key makes disk encryption attacks super-simple

Hey guys, this is Adam the Grad Student from Miami. Thought this was in interesting article about encryption, easier than air canisters. (Yay, first mail sent!)

http://www.engadget.com/2008/03/04/ bootable-flash-key-makes-disk-encryption-attacks-super-simple/

Adam the Grad Student

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Another U.S. government effort to unregister a domain name

Thought you might be interested in this.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/04/us/04bar.html?hp

“Steve Marshall is an English travel agent. He lives in Spain, and he sells trips to Europeans who want to go to sunny places, including Cuba. In October, about 80 of his Web sites stopped working, thanks to the United States government.”

Now the U.S. federal government is unregistering domain names — without a judicial say so. I’m outraged. But someone else’s feeling might depend on how they feel about the embargo.

thanks,
New England Kent

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OMG I’m using WiMAX!!

Hey JAMOTO

Longtime listener first time writer

I just moved to Denmark for work and my company was very nice to rent me an apartment. I get settled in and find a regular box with an Ethernet cable coming out of it. So i plug my PC and voila, I'm on the Web. However I realize there is no other cables plugged to the box! (Except for power.) I went online and looked for the ISP that provides the box.

So the box transforms the WiMAX signal to regular old Ethernet.

I feel sooo avant-garde

Buzz out loud j’ adore :-)

Love

Jean-Philippe

PS
The name of the company?
clearwire
http://www.clearwire.com or .dk for denmark