Buzz Out Loud 735: Ind_na Jo__es

Paramount is dropping sounds out of your movies; Canadian customs guards might be rifling through your laptop for ripped CDs; and aliens are real. See, now, it sounds like today's show is all made-up stories, but the first two things are true, and the last one is...well, I don't know, I guess it might be true. There's a guy in Denver who says he's got a video. YouTube it!

EPISODE 735

Comcast hijackers say they warned the company first
http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/2008/05/comcast-hijacke.html
http://blogs.pcworld.com/staffblog/archives/007034.html

Disney should buy TiVo
http://www.marketwatch.com/news/story/ disney-should-buy-tivo/story.aspx?guid=%7BD6D8E621-0675-4E20-957E-291DCBD923C8%7D&dist=msr_1

Copyright deal could toughen rules governing info on iPods, computers
http://www.canada.com/vancouversun/story.html? id=ae997868-220b-4dae-bf4f-47f6fc96ce5e

Concerns linger in wake of NBC/Windows MCE recording snafu
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/ 20080529-concerns-linger-in-wake-of-nbcwindows-mce-recording-snafu.html

Civil rights groups blast a la carte cable
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/ 20080530-civil-rights-groups-blast-a-la-carte-cable.html

Apple shooting 3G iPhone commercial at Fifth Avenue Apple store? [Updatedx5]
http://www.macrumors.com/2008/05/29/ apple-shooting-3g-iphone-commercial-in-5th-avenue-store/

New iPhone is already here
http://www.forbes.com/technology/2008/05/29/ stevejobs-iphone-apple-tech-intel-cx_bc_0530stevejobs.html

Hybrid Technologies readies 220+ MPG ’super car’
http://news.cnet.com/8301-11128_3-9955735-54.html

Man claims alien skin is ‘smooth’ in footage
http://www.abcnews.go.com/US/story?id=4957753

Voicemail

Rachel
I’m allergic to things.

Other Jason Howell
About the geekin’ out.

Jared Indiana
Question for Tom.

E-mail

VIA Nano discussion

Hey BOL crew!

Just listened to the podcast and was stoked to hear you all talk about my submission to Slashdot about the Nano processor! That was also my article on the processor over at PC Perspective. Feel free to plug that site instead if you want!

In all seriousness, if you are ever interested in having more "geek out" sessions and want someone one the phone to talk about that kind of things, let me know.

Thanks and keep up the good work!!

Ryan Shrout

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Wikipedia meets time travel

hello JaMoTo
this is GrifiN from Israel,
I’ve listening a few months now and found something interesting and funny to share Wikihistory by Desmond Warzel http://www.abyssandapex.com/200710-wikihistory.html

Read this and think about all the Wiki pages that are constantly being revised because of conflicting POV’s Now think about the possibility that there really is an open source time travel association in the future that is actually constantly re-editing our history a-la Wikipedia, doesn’t that explain a few things?

Love The Show
GrifiN

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ASUS Eee PC for ME!

Molly, Tom and Jason,

YAY! I finally have a reason to write! Ok now that’s out of the way, my fiancee and I recently bought the ASUS Eee PC 900 with Linux. The main reason is to use it on our destination wedding trip to St Thomas. We both have work laptops but neither of us wants to take them as they don’t belong to us and are freaking heavy!

The Eee PC gives us a compact yet very useful laptop that won’t take up lots of bag space. We can upload pictures to the web, use Skype to video chat with friends and family that couldn’t make it. The thing literally fits in my purse. (No. I don’t have a huge purse.)

The keyboard takes some getting used to, I’ll admit that, but found I could type just as badly on it as I can on a full size keyboard.

Honestly, I want to see if I can set it
right by us as we get married
and use the web cam to stream the ceremony. How’s that for geeking out!

Love the show, you make my morning drives tolerable!!

Tessa
Allen, TX

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Movie companies trash art to combat piracy

Dear Buzz crew,

Another interesting tech development.

You love hearing the soundtrack to a movie, right? It’s consistent, audible, and just like real life.

Not anymore.

Now movie companies have decided to RANDOMLY silence parts of their movies to deter pirates who might be sitting in the audience making illegal copies: http://www.ghacks.net/2008/05/28/fight-piracy-by-silencing-part-of-a-movie/

Apparently this is the latest twist in DRM watermarking, but unlike other techniques, it is NOT transparent to the consumer.

And it’s used on the current darling big blockbuster movie Indiana Jones “Kingdom of the Crystal Skull”! (OK, that name is WAY too long.)

Jeez, I can do better sound production at home with my own YouTube and UStream videos with just iMovie, Logic Pro 8, and a MacBook Pro. I’m not afraid of pirates! I embrace our new pirate overlords!

So take that! big studios. Hah! No fear of piracy is now an asset.

These studios should read Kevin Kelly’s article on the future of product value in an age when copies are ubiquitous: http://www.kk.org/thetechnium/archives/2008/01/ better_than_fre.php

Copies are inevitable. Piracy is inevitable.

Step aside, Paramount and MediaDefender! Resistance is futile.

Sandy

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Keeportoss - thanks!

Hey guys and gal,
It is Andy in Colorado, forever long time listener/caller. First and foremost, thanks Tom for introducing me to userfriendly.org LOTD… without his mentioning, I would have never have submitted keeportoss.org to them a few weeks ago. Secondly, I am so glad you liked it, you got my audience perfectly. More importantly, built the site well enough that on dreamhost it had no issues with the traffic. The only downside, is I had the flagging threshold too low for 3000+ visitors, so a few items got flagged for removal (I wipe everything out in that situation so a spammer can’t gain from the caching) and deleted too early. That is fixed, so more content will stick around that was falsely or accidentally flagged.

Thanks again for the kind words, it made my day (”a gem,” woot!)

Andy Lurig
(Andy in Colorado)

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On Dr. Rob’s “allergy” to EMR

Hello JaMoTo (or oToMaJ, as I am from Down Under)

Dr Rob was pulling rank, I’m afraid. I am a medical doctor and allergist in Australia, and I do see people very occasionally with documented electromagnetic (EMR) sensitivity.

Doctors (like me and Dr Rob) have taken ownership of the term “allergy” to mean something that an antihistamine can cure (an IgE-mediated mast-cell histamine-induced hypersensitivity reaction, technically). Humans (as opposed to doctors) use “allergy” to mean “a bad reaction to something that most others do not react badly to”, which is fair, IMHO.

Interestingly, the guy who is doing the best work in this area over here was formerly Telstra’s chief health officer (Telstra is our 800 lb Gorilla telco, formerly government owned and much hated because of its dominance and high costs, but the owner of most of the wires).

This odd reaction to EMR appears to be real and is certainly interesting. Get enough people, and stats dictate that some will react to things that most of us do not notice. When I was in medical school in the ’70s here in Australia, our professor of medicine told us that asthma was best treated with Valium - for the mother!

I’ve learned in 30 years to be careful about dismissing complaints as “psychosomatic” - they tend to fill our waiting rooms two decades later!

I actually really do love the show. I mean really!

Mark Donohoe

PS…

Short story - a patient from outside Sydney visited for allergy testing. Said he was EMR sensitive to “WiFi”. He was clearly getting sicker before my eyes as I typed away on my Power Mac. So I flicked up and turned off airport on the PowerBook. Within about 20 seconds, he was coherent, alert and clearly better, apologising for what he thought was an “allergic” reaction. All went well until I was printing, and the Mac could not find the printer. Airport back on, and it was maybe a minute or less before he went off again. No asthma or rashes, just a scrambled brain, language deterioration, etc. I could turn him on and off with my Airport control!

He saw the Telstra guy in Melbourne, and his was a response to a very specific frequency range across the 802.11b/g range. No problem with 50-60 Hz.

I have not had him back to see if the 5+ GHz range triggers anything with the new Airport “n” version.

See. Isn’t life interesting

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Toshiba to launch Blu-ray rival in 6 months http://www.intology.com/computers-internet/ toshiba-to-launch-blu-ray-rival-in-6-months/

Just when we thought the DVD format war is over and users can have a sigh of relief, Toshiba has announced that it is working on an extension to the DVD format which will offer video quality comparable to that produced by Blu-ray and HD-DVD discs.

HD DVD which was designed principally by Toshiba, and was envisaged to be the successor to the standard DVD format lost to Blu-ray in February 2008 after Toshiba abandoned the format, announcing it would no longer develop or manufacture HD DVD players.
HD-DVD was backed by a consortium of companies including Microsoft and Intel while Blu-ray was backed by Sony, IBM, Matsushita, Pioneer and Philips e.t.c. The HD DVD format had suffered as major US film studios backed the Blu-ray format, which is being developed by electronics firm Sony and partners.

This new DVD format will offer video quality comparable to that produced by Blu-ray and HD-DVD discs according to Toshiba.
Japanese daily Yomiuri Shimbun reported that Toshiba plans to begin selling a DVD player based on the new technology within six months and will be backwards-compatible with standard DVD discs. Its price will be lower than Blu-ray sources said.
Some unverified claims also suggest that this new technology would be able to produce much higher-resolution images from existing DVDs. This format relies on a newly-developed large scale integrated circuit chip to rapidly convert the stored video, but no technical details were released.

Thought you guys would appreciate the above.

Rick from NYC