Well, we don't have our lunar lander or our space elevator, but
that doesn't mean that people aren't trying! The X Prize Cup has been in
full swing for a while, but it seems like more people are being
disqualified, or having their projects explode, than are making any real
headway. But they're still rocket scientists, so I can't really say
anything, can I?
EPISODE 339 TODAY'S LINKS:
TODAY'S VOICEMAIL:
A high-school student from Seattle
Tom said he had to look up a word in a quote, and I don't know if you
guys know this, but on a Mac, if you hover the mouse over a word and hit
Ctrl+Cmd+D, you'll get the definition.
Isaac in Minneapolis
One of your callers asked about getting DVDs on PMPs. A company called
PQDVD makes an iPod, PSP, and Zen conversion software. Your computer
needs a DVD decoder, but it plays it in a window and then captures it.
You can customize bit rate and convert to Divx, and I think it's even
legal!

Anon: Is Leo pulling the plug on TWiT?
No TWiT Today
Submitted by Leo Laporte on Sun, 2006-10-22 22:18.
It's about 80 degrees out, in all likelyhood the last nice day of summer
in Northern California, so all the TWiTs decided to play hookey. At the
same time. Unfortunately that means there will be no show tonight. It's
my turn to play hookey next week. I'm off on a geek cruise next Friday
and will be gone through November 4, so there will be no TWiT next week
either. I'll decide what happens to TWiT, the show, when I come back,
but at this point it looks like it's on life support and the heart
monitor is flatlining. Meanwhile, enjoy our first this WEEK in LAW with
Denise Howell, and thanks for listening. I'll put it up on the TWiT feed
in place of TWiT later tonight.
TODAY'S E-MAIL:

Doctor Beren
I could not resist, so I installed the Firefox 2.0 RC3 a few days before
its official release. I'm really loving it. Everything seems to be
working well except my Yahoo Photos upload tool. Because of this, I did
the unthinkable, I clicked the Internet Explorer icon and launched IE 7.
Although I really do not use IE, I upgraded it to the latest version for
security purposes.
When I went to the Yahoo Photos Web site, I was greeted by something
that I rarely encounter: advertisements! So I thought I'd try using IE
7's add-ons. As I was going through the list of add-ons, I realized
something. A lot of them were for sale!
I got over the shock and downloaded the Yahoo Photos upload tool and
installed it. When I reopened my browser, I was shocked to see that
Yahoo, without my consent, also installed the Yahoo toolbar for IE.
What's going on? I never wanted to install this. Worst of all, I was
finding it hard to uninstall the toolbar using that option from the
toolbar itself.
I just can't help but say "boo!" to Microsoft for deciding to make money
on add-ons and "boo!" to Yahoo for forcing its toolbar on unsuspecting
users.