Molly Wood, Tom Merritt and producer Jason Howell give you their daily take on what's happening in tech news throughout the week. Listeners can email us at buzz@cnet.com or call 1-800-616-CNET to leave a message, and be a part of the show. Visit the blog at http://bol.cnet.com.
We discover a fun new tautology on today's show (you know, competition...for the win?), have a fun time goofing off with Brian Tong, rail against Apple's decision to include HDCP restrictions in its new MacBooks, and rejoice at the arrival of Netflix streaming on the Xbox 360 (minus a few select Sony movies, ahem). Also: India takes on Google in the Earth-spying department. Yeah, India! Go, India!
VOICE MAIL
Dwight the T-Grip: true Hollywood battery stories
Paul from Verizon: why the BlackBerry rocks!
E-MAIL
Hey Buzz Crew,
I’ve been traveling so I missed a couple podcasts, but I don’t think there has been a mention of the re-start of the One Laptop Per Child Give One Get One program this past Monday (11/17). I’ve been wanting to get one of these laptops for a while mostly because I think they’re interesting and I want to help out the program. I know the OLPC folks got a lot of grief last time they offered this program because they didn’t really have the logistical infrastructure to handle the delivery of laptops to people who bought them quickly and some people had to wait months to get theirs. This time however, they’ve teamed up with Amazon.com and things look like they should work much more smoothly. I placed my order with Amazon and I should get mine by Friday.
I’m sure there are listeners that would like to get a new NetBook/E-reader. And I think the keyboard is waterproof so in can be a great conversation opener for chatting by the pool (Chris from Austin). So deploy the Buzz Brigades to help kids in developing countries get a great tool for education.
I was listening to episode 853 and 854 Re: The Wii speak application and then again on to the subject of the software companies not liking pre-loved games.
If the companies don’t like the idea of pre-loved games why don’t they have their own way of buying back sold games. This would allow people to get the same value from their games as trading their old games to EB etc… But allow credits to the new games. This would kill 2 birds with one stone so to speak.
Plus with the idea of saving the planet. Think about the latest game being made out of our old games.
Love the show.
Jon “The Student”
Australia
Hey Buzz Gang,
Just wanted to tell how impressed I was with the new NetFlix add-on to the Xbox 360. The quality is very good, particularly on cartoons. I just hope they update it so you can add stuff to your queue without a computer. I would hate to think the Xbox is just as dumb as a TV tuner and can only passively show videos. That would be as stupid as having a super gaming computer that’s hooked to my TV and my network that can’t browse the web… oh wait… never mind.
Take Care,
Kelvington
I have to disagree that the ‘Remote Spy’ program is significantly different then EA’s DRM. Well, on a technical level at least.
Both should have EULA’s stating don’t use their program illegally.
Both are meant to be put onto a computer you have legitimate access to.
Both change how your computer works and that change can be percieved as negative.
An unauthorized user can install both of these programs without permission by owner of the computer.
Both have removal issues.
Both can have legitimate uses.
In the discussion the case was made for business sales of this product, but for private sales one completely legitimate reason for a spy program that quickly comes to mind is by parents monitoring their children’s computers. I’m sure there are other things people can think up, but that’s my strongest legitimate use point.
In the class action lawsuit (http://www.courthousenews.com/2008/09/23/Spore.pdf) it states that the irremovable DRM is not disclosed (properly/at all) in the EULA and even if you made a case that it didn’t inappropriately phone home, the fact that it can prevent legitimate hardware/software from working is malware like behavior that occurs after an uninstall of the game itself.
In both cases when looking from a certain perspective they are put in a good or bad light… but if the government goes after one they should be going after the other.
On today's show, Brian Cooley announces that he's made the switch...I mean, the big switch. He bought an iPhone. The world briefly stopped rotating, and when it resumed, we laid down the smack on poor Jerry Yang, the Justice Department, the XM-Sirius merger, and subsequent channel flipping, and some poor guy who thought it was a good idea to call our show. Good times!
I think it's funny when everyone laughs at President Bush's old e-mail address. In 2000, wasn't AOL the myspace/facebook of it's time? We've come a long way, to be sure, but that was then.
Cent me, 2 times!
Jason the curator.
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I’m surprised that Domino’s Pizza in the U.S. is only now catching up with Domino’s Pizza in the U.K. when it comes to couch potato ordering - Domino’s Pizza has been on Sky’s digital TV platform for the last several years (IIRC, since the beginning 7 years ago). And if you’d rather order your Domino’s Pizza from your laptop instead of your TV then just go to the Dominos Pizza website (http://www.dominos.co.uk/) which has also been running for years.
It would even appear that Kevin himself is putting up some post (I am
skeptical as ever), but some posts are signed off by what would appear
to be his media department.
What is even crazier, they have been replying to questions and
comments. I would NEVER have expected to see this used as a two way
communications method.
LTS.
Cheers, Tim.
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I talk to one of the Phoenix mission managers today. I asked, “If by some mirical Phoenix powers back up after the winter would the mission continue?”
Apparently Phoenix cannot analyze any more soil. The equipment they use to test soil samples has exhausted. The camera and weather station may still work, but they would have to request more money from NASA to continue the mission. Then he told me they really don’t think phoenix will come back.
Why name it Phoenix if you’re going to let it die. Here’s keeping hope alive.
Love the Show
Roeurn (Ru-in
not Rerun:)
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This is Daniel, tech support from Memphis. Just writing in reference to episode 852 where another Daniel asked "WHY THE HELL WOULD SOMEONE REGISTER HOBOBOOK.COM?" ..sigh. Thank you Tom and Molly for sharing my vision for the online hobo community! You have inspiring me to do something with one of the domains I've been sitting on for a while: Hoboforums.com. Why hoboforums? I honestly can't remember, BUT now I am glad I actually have something to do with this domain! If you are wondering, yes, the site is exactly what you think it is.
We thought about calling this podcast graves in space, or delicious Yak, or Jason makes the earth move. But soup_n_salad in the chat room nailed it. A new company wants to send 5,000 capsules full of cremated remains to the moon for burial. Natali and Jason think this is littering, essentially. I think they gotta go somewhere and the Moon has space. We also talk about the new Asus phone, Flash on Windows mobile, and more.
Listen now: Download today's podcast
Jason in Georgia - What happened to exploding batteries
Andy Novosibirsk, Siberia - Netbooks galore here!
CT baggage handler - But how did they get there?
EMAIL
Hey guys, Looks like MS has decided what to do with all the cash they were going to spend on Yahoo.
I work for one of the Microsoft managed partner ISV's. MS was just on our weekly internal sales call and our MS partner manager was on talking about how we can offer up Microsoft financing through the end of the MS fiscal year (June).
This financing is not just for MS products but anything that is involved in the entire enterprise solution including hardware and other software.
The internal MS guys are touting that 2-5 business days turn around and touting that it will be easier and cheaper than going with traditional financing . They are willing to finance anything from small 10k deals and up, and depending on customers credit rating with D&B will determine the % rate. He was saying that it was going to be in the range of 5-8%.
In trying to catch up with BOL, I was listening to #845 and I want to
pose a question related to the AT&T experiment with bandwidth caps. Has
anyone thought about the licensing contracts that AT&T might be looking
to sign with media companies? Think about it, AT&T or Comcast could sign
usage contracts with sites like Netflix, YouTube or Hulu so that their
site usage does not apply to their customers’ bandwidth caps. This would
allow ISP’s to make more $$$ and control traffic.
Coming soon to a legal agreement near you… AT&T merges with YouTube.
So far I have not heard anyone bring up this point via CNET or that TWiT
guy. If ISP’s can stop Bit Torrent, then they can probably allow
certain, preferred content to flow freely.
No charge for this two cents opinion. LTS.
Thanks,
Rodney
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In show 853, you had two stories which prompted me to type in... First, you made a big deal out of Google search on the iPhone supporting speech. Windows Live Search Mobile has had this feature for quite some time - and I find it quite useful. Like the Google offering, you speak to it, it sends the speech to the servers, and the servers do the speech-to-text. The use of the accelerometer in the iPhone is new - and a cool idea - but the speech part is not new. I use Google Search on my Windows Mobile phone if I am in a place where I can type easily, but use Windows Live Search Mobile specifically for the speech-to-text if I am driving or walking.
You also made a big deal out of President-elect Obama making use of technology by planning to put his weekly address on YouTube. President Bush podcasts his weekly address - see http://www.whitehouse.gov/podcasts/, or http://www.whitehouse.gov/rss/radioaddress.xml. Not sure YouTube video is an earth-shattering improvement for a weekly address that most people won't pay any attention to after the first month. I also happened to listen to an NPR Podcast just after BOL, and they made it sound like Obama invented the Internet because he plans on putting government information on the web. While I'm all for using technology, and more is certainly better, can we have a reality check? Some of the advances in technology use are simply because time is elapsing. When the government launched THOMAS back in 1995, that was newsworthy from a tech perspective. Saying you will put more stuff on the web is, well, simply expected.
LTS,
/John in Fairfax
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You guys were teasing about using old software on Friday’s show. Well I am
one of those use it till it dies dudes.
I am still using Quicken Version 3, 1993 that dates back to the Windows 95
days. It still works on XP just fine.
There is more than one reason for sticking with it. Don’t have to learn new
version and best of all hackers are not
going to be looking for a realistic user of a 15 year old version of
financial software. Also still use Eudora for email.
Have been using it since 1995 and it also still works fine on XP. I have
years worth of elaborate filters which I have
moved every time I get or build a new machine. I figure all the hackers and
attackers out there are trying to
break into Outlook and MS stuff in general. At work I use Outlook on our
office exchange server just fine but
at home I am still with Eudora V5.1.
Really like BUZZ and all the CNET podcasts. Keep up the funnin’ with us
…. half the time I almost crash on
the way to work or on my way home because I am rollin’ in laughter while
listening to BOL
BYE
Darrell in Virginia
Also got email about Grandpa using Sidekick ‘98 and a user that brings back kids software
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Wii Speak
In fact the game does not come with that hardware it just can use it
if you have it. So, the game can travel through the rental and used
markets as normal, just not the hardware. Now whether the hardware
should work the same, that you can debate. Thanks for the great
podcast.
Johnny P
On today's Buzz Out Loud, sage dating tips from a bunch of old married people. Meanwhile, Microsoft launches an online store where you can go buy things if you like to pay more than you have to; a girl offers to pimp your start-up for a mere $75 a day and we give her about a million dollars worth of grief; and Google loves the iPhone more than Android--at least for now!
Listen now: Download today's podcast
This is Kevin Yeaux from openSUSE again. We’re on our way to our first
release candidate for openSUSE 11.1 on November 27th, but there was some
other big news today: Banshee, the open-source music player sponsored by
openSUSE/Novell, just released it’s 1.4 version.
The biggest news in here is for owners of the T-Mobile G1 Android phone:
full support for the phone’s music playing capabilities. Full automatic
or manual synchronization, cover art, and the ability to import music
purchased on the Amazon MP3 store into your computer.
The other major news is that there is a beta release of Banshee 1.4 for
Mac OS X. Also included are many areas of UI polish and bugfixes.
Banshee is a Mono-based open-source media player that supports music,
movies, podcasts, features Last.fm integration, and more. Banshee is the
default music player for openSUSE.
I think I can explain why RIM went with the suretype keyboard on the new BlackBerry Storm. I have the Pearl, which has the same double lettered keyboard.
I can type so much faster on this phone than I can on any other; even my friends with full QWERTY phones can’t nearly keep up with me. And I think I know why: You can just hit the general direction of the key you want, the area you are aiming for is twice the size of a normal key. The phone software does an excellent job of guessing what you mean, and it learns new words as you type. It also has the added bonus of doing punctuation for you! On a touchscreen, that would be even more usefful.
Good job!
Ryan from Fresno
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This is in response to the netbook email you guys received in episode 851. Upon hearing the email, I recalled a recent Kotaku.com article (http://kotaku.com/5083584/the-number-one-location-for-portable-gaming-is-home). I wouldn’t be surprised if people bought these netbooks and just used them around the house. I think Kotaku puts it best saying ” ‘portable’ can be defined as ‘will work on the toilet or in bed’ “.
Love the show! Not a long-time listener, but hope to be a… future long-time listener…?
-Alex M.
Berkley, MI
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In addition to having a trademark on a word (CBS ) or a logo (think about the CBS Eye) you can also protect what is called Trade Dress . Remember this branch of law is about protecting indicators of source-that is the mark by which consumers know your products from someone else’s. Pretty much anything that can be tied to a specific good or service, or a source of those goods and services, is protectable. That includes how that good or service looks/is packaged. Need easy examples?
Think about how all McDonalds look the same on the inside. Or how, even without the label, you’d know what a Coke bottl e looks like (or a Mrs. Butterworths for that matter.) These aren’t names or logos per se, but you’d know what the goods/services were anyway. This Trade Dress can apply to both the packaging of the goods, or the goods themselves. Usually the Office will not say something is inherently distinctive (and instantly protectable under TM law) but will require a showing of acquired distinctiveness (meaning you have to show that consumers have come to associate the trade dress with your products only).
Now I know what you’re thinking-isn’t it incredibly dangerous to grant Trademark protection to how a good is shaped etc? Isn’t there a possibility that the Office would be granting a Patent in perpetuity for a design or invention that should only be protected by Patent’s limited term? And you’re right-it is tricky business. This is why the good people at the USPTO get paid to do what they do. It is a very tricky job to separate those elements of packaging/the goods that are protectable to those that are functional or patentable etc-but this is what is done. It is incredibly complex at times and would bore the Buzz audience beyond repair to explain it in full detail-so go look it up if you want to know more.
So let’s get back to Lego-Apparently they were granted a EU Trademark for the design of their blocks (which is to say that the EU office originally thought that there was something about the Lego block in its appearance that made it distinct from other building blocks and that consumers would recognize it as a lego block based on its shape alone). Mega Block , which brought the cancellation suit, must have said something like “wait a minute! This a patent/functional thing and the EU should have never granted protection for this design. We should be able to make competing blocks and the protection is baring us from doing so.”
(For a point of reference think about how the coke bottle, while protected, doesn’t prevent Pepsi from putting soda in a bottle the way that the protection here might prevent Mega Block from making toys.)
What has happened is that that court has agreed and cancelled the protection for Lego. This will get appealed, clearly, and we’ll have to see what happens.
Also-this analysis involved a little guesswork because I”m not that familiar with how EU trademark law works-but it works roughly the same.
For the record-I didn’t find any trade-dress protection for the Lego block in the US.
Turns out a lot of people are all too happy to hand over their password to some unknown Web site just to find out if they're popular. Oh, people. When will you learn? Also, Microsoft Live gets a purpose, Valleywag loses its teeth, the BlackBerry Storm gets a release date, and we're all going to become (a) elves in the Wrath of the Lich King or (b) total buffsters on the new EA Sports Active Wii game.
Listen now: Download today's podcast
E-mail
Hey buzzards!
First off love the show!
This email is in response to the voice mail about online video. I wanted to point out that you shouldn’t be mad at cbs as all the shows they produce are online. If you will notice all the shows that warner brothers produces, ie “the mentalist” “cold case” and “without a trace” are not online anywhere. Same goes for the shows produced by abc studios for cbs- “criminal minds” and “ghost whisperer”. Instead of cbs you should be mad at the company that produces the show .
Just my two cents.
Stephen
Charlotte, nc
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Maybe this explains why Apple’s Cinema Displays are so expensive:
Steve Jobs was just waiting for the verdict to come in before he
released new models at a lower price.
-Andres (Austin, TX)
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Hey JaMoTo
This was regarding what Ken said in 851 I live downtown Chicago and I see net books every day around the Merchandise Mart and I actually saw one when I was Noodle Company this past weekend. So they’re out there I actually don’t have one but my laptop is close VGNS-360 Sony Vaio running Ubuntu 8.10
Thanks I love the show!
Zach in Chicago
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Lee from Boston writes:
Regarding Episode 851 and the discussion of the many press releases,
pitches and the like that use the phrase “in these troubled times”.
I’ve decided to put together a new economic metric, the Buzz Phrase
Index (BPI) — I’ll be tracking the number of hits that a Google
search for the phrase “in these troubled times” yields. We’ll see how
this curve compares to the national and international economic
situation over the next year or so.
A search on November 13, 2008 yielded 334,000 hits.
**********
I’ve come across a few Netbooks (Asus EeePC’s) out here in the wilds of
Dublin…
The GameSoc lads here in DIT have all got laptops, at the moment four of
them are equipped with XP-running EeePC’s. But that is tech-savvy crowd.
However my uncle who is not at all tech-savvy bought an EeePC for my
cousins. They’re running the EeePC linux operating system and really
loving it.
So there you have it, wild.
-ANkh, the Computer Engineering Student, Dublin, Ireland.
**********
Hurricane Electric:
Hey! People have heard of us! You have execs from the company in the
buzz army! Since I am a director for the company, I feel obligated to
point out we are the 8th largest ISP in the world for IPv4 and the
largest ISP for IPv6 in the world. Anyhow, just thought I would touch
base again as an offer of assistance if you need anyone from the IP
backbone industry…
–Reid
Director, East Coast Operations
he.net
Social networking finally reaches its most underserved niche: the hobos. Look for Tom to officially join the Hobo Nation any day now. In other news of the day, Caroline McCarthy joins us for a rollicking discussion of The Washington Post's war on spam, and Molly most likely gets herself fired from CBS and kicked off TWiT in one fell swoop. So, learn to love Caroline. She might be sticking around.
I am a little peeved today. Tuesday nights are a great night for TV so I decided to skip some shows and watch them online. But nooooo, CBS decided pull the rug out from under the viewing public and not post any full episodes of “The Mentalist” on their site. So I decided to go to Hulu and watch “Law & Order SVU.” Again another network decided to pull the full episodes. I thought this was their idea. Fox and NBC, didn’t they start Hulu? I’m convinced only ABC and to some degree Fox wants people to see their shows. I guess I could buy episodes on iTunes or Amazon. I just wish there was some consistency. Thanks, I needed to vent. Love the show!
Tina in Omaha.
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Hey Super Cool Buzz Crew,
The reason for the gimmicky gift card is profit. The speaker gift card at BestBuy can only be acquired in $50 intervals. Studies have shown that people spend between 15 and 25% more than the gift card is worth when they take it redeem it at the store. Offering a cool, (any of my 6 kids would love a speaker the size of a credit card) yet gimmicky item starting at $50 may encourage the gift card buyer to increase the gift from $30 or $40 to get the gimmick will, in the end be more money at the store. This is because the extra money spent with a gift card is not a hard dollar amount, it is a percentage of the card value.
BTW, I won a Zune through the PepsiStuff promotion and have subscribed to your podcast, along with 4 others from CNET. I love the way the Zune software deletes my listened to podcasts off of the device and replaces it with fresh ones automatically. Do iPods do that ? I have never used one, I'm kind of against apple as I explain here: http://tsabonis.spaces.live.com/Blog/cns!C4372C2C55C1E241!142.entry
Always, love the show.
Anthony
**********
I was very surprise to here your report about the windows 7 article on infoworld.com . Not surprise that you reported it but that the article was so negitive and contridictory to everything that I have heard mainly TWIT podcast episode 167. So I made my way to the article in questioned and realised a “developer” from this website was band from the MIcrosoft pdc conference. So I start to question how they got the windows 7 pre-beta build…maybe bitorrent? Finally there is another thing I realised…who runs bench marks on a pre beta version of software that is ment for develpers? There is nothing obligating you from making a comment about this on your show. I was just informing you, since you guys usually do a good job of reporting good solid tech news. I know you guys frequent TWIT but i put a link below anyway. I was going to link other articles but I think TWIT is respectable enough.
We try to get all sentimental about the demise of the Mars Phoenix lander, but Brian Cooley ruins it with his outlandish assertions about the uselessness of space. Plus, he loses his mind about the crappiness of the BlackBerry Curve. In sum, a good time is had by all.
Did you know most states have a public utility service commission? A
friend of mine was told by Bellsouth that it was too expensive to fix
the phone lines to her house and she could live with bad service or
find someone else to help. She called the Georgia Public Service
Commission and filed a complaint. The GPSC called Bellsouth and said
you fix it or you get fined. So they fixed it within two weeks.
Buzz Brigade you are having problems with your utilities Google public
service commission in your state and get some help sticking up for
yourself. And yes there is one in Oregon, so yesterday’s DSL caller
should look into it!
Sheala, GA
Ps- if I pay $3400 for a graphics card, it better be showing me the
future or something!
According to the chart it all starts in 2007 when they fired all employee’s that knew anything so that they could replace them with a team of monkey’s at a lower cost.
The best comment is “Maybe Circuit City should fire all of their executives and hire lower-paid replacements.”
LTS
Brent
**********
The average life cycle of a game console, not including the ones that were colossal failures (I’m looking at you N-Gage), is five to six years. It is way too early for any of the big three to be releasing a new console. Updated versions of the current machines not included (Wii-HD anyone?).
A friendly member of Buzztown calls up to tell us how he named his Dungeons and Dragons characters after the core Buzz team. It all seems fine and dandy until he gets to Molly. Ahem. Not cool, guy. In actual news today, earbuds can be dangerous to your health (if you use a pacemaker), Circuit City files for Chapter 11, and the iPhone tops the RAZR as the most purchased U.S. consumer handset. Take that, RAZR!
VOICE MAIL
Brandon the D&D guy … is so sorry he called
E-MAIL
Hey there Buzz Out Loud crew,
I don’t want to come off sounding grouchy, but I would like to point
out there are people out there that can only get dial-up Internet
service (like me for example). In my case, Verizon (my local phone
company) has told me that they no longer install DSL in communities
because they want to focus on rolling out their FiOS service. When I
asked when they would get around to installing it in our little town,
the rep said “Well, the schedule goes to 2012 but I don’t see your
town on the list.”
To add insult to injury, AT&T is running a fiber optic line that goes
right though the center of town, yet they refused to hook up our city.
Apparently, because we won’t make the providers enough money, they
have no problem telling us “no internet for you.” So, when you talk
about people not switching over because they “don’t know any better,”
just remember there are some people out there that have to wait a
couple of hours for your podcast to finish downloading so they can
listen to it.
Love the show,
--Joel Getz
Powers, Ore.
P.S. It only takes me four minuets to check my gmail on dial up.
Hey Buzz Crew.
Upon listening to Episode 848 this evening, I downloaded the songbird beta to test it out. It’s much like iTunes. The only thing that made me sad about this was that I recently started using Lala.com’s wonderful service, and then got sad, because even though this program is great, it’s not Lala. Then I had a revelation! What if someone integrated Lala into songbird? This would be amazing! All of my online cloud media in my media player at home too! I think some developer listening should do this. It would just be Nifty.
Well anyway. Love the show.
Oh, and if you read this on the show, it should be read by Molly. She has an excellent reading voice.
--Chase
Niall from Dublin, Ireland here, I know that your feelings on Blu-ray
is that it’s dead in the water but I think it may be given a life
line. Recently, while talking to a friend I found out something
interesting, my friend works for SR Technics, A large aircraft
mantainance and repair company.
He was helping to install the new Blu-ray system onboard a airbus
a340 belonging to LAN, a chilean airline. Which he tells me they will
be doing with all there aircraft. He also tells me that gulf air and
Air Lingus will be installing the same systems. Which provides all
movies and shows that will be shown on the plane and also all the
safety jargon video and audio that you hear at the start of every
flight, but in hundreds of different languages.
Could this put enough blu ray players in the market to keep them
going? These planes only get major revamps like the about every
10 years so this means a consistent production of the discs at least
for the near future? I thought this was somewhat interesting.
We're getting Windows 7 at the end of 2009! Although Microsoft won't make that official. We're getting USB 3.0! Though not until 2010. Songbird is almost out in a full version. But it's still just a release candidate.
Microsoft is going open source! OK, they said they're interested in looking at Webkit. Prostitutes can advertise on Craigslist! But they have to give a phone number and credit card...
VOICEMAIL
Joe from Westside: How to get BOL regardless of 10MB cap!
E-MAIL
Just a short story Jason might find amusing. I’m currently 13 weeks pregnant and while we don’t yet know the gender of our little one, my husband and I were sitting and trying out some different names. We stopped at the name Jason and tried it out with our last name, Howell.
“Jason Howell, That sounds really nice together!”
We were both repeating it for a while before we connected the dots as to why this name sounds so familiar. We were laughing at ourselves after that. We haven’t completely abandoned the name yet so we may be creating a future Jason doppleganger.
Love the Show!
Jamie & Dodge Howell
from Michigan
**********
In show 844 you said you’d really like to know how all the digital-to-analog converter box manufacturers decided that they should setup the boxes to shutoff automatically after 4 hours. Well, they didn’t! The National Telecommunications and Information Administration decided for them.
In order to qualify for the government’s Converter Coupon Program, manufacturers have to meet the specifications listed in this Technical Appendix 1 of the “Final Rule, §301.5″:
“…Eligible equipment shall provide the capability to automatically switch from the On state to the Sleep state after a period of time without user input. This capability shall be enabled at the factory as the default setting for the device. The default period of inactivity before the equipment automatically switches to the Sleep state shall be four hours…”
The U.S. Army prepares to test and deploy ghost soldiers in MMORPGS and possibly also the real world. They may be decoys, folks, but remember: they're still light-based projections that won't stop a bullet. Also, it appears Apple will finally activate over-the-air podcast downloads for the iPhone and iPod Touch. Which, yeah. Ya think? Geez.
Listen now: Download today's podcast
Voice mail
Anthony from Louisiana: Kindle in the Wild
E-mail
I was listening to episode 846 where you mentioned about EA’s hilarious work around for the CD key and I am sad to say that I was one of the those who received only 19 of the 20 digits. I thought about calling EA to find out how to resolved this but I figured that it would take to long and opt to simply guess the last digit. They allowed 3 tries before requiring you to re-enter all the digits again. I believe you can eliminate zero and O just because they look too similar reducing the number of possibilites to 34. I finially found the last digit on my 33th tried when I skipped Y and typed in Z. Safe to say EA has been nothing but trouble. Just wanted to get my story out on EA’s key cracking idea.
Also on another topic, I have seen two Sony E-Readers in the wild within the period of two month on the NYC train system. I thought seeing one was rare but two is really something. Funny thing is that I bought my girlfriend a Kindle for Christmas a months ago so by the time Christmas comes along there will be another Kindle in the wild.
Love the show,
– Johnnie
**********
Just be glad EA isn’t in Eastern Nigeria!
Hi BOL,
You guys were speaking of EA issueing a “workaround” for the missing CD key and noting that since they were alpha numeric keys, there were 36 options. I just thought you guys might like to know that in the Igbo language (Eastern Nigeria) there are actually 36 letters in the alphabet.
A B CH D E F G GB GH GW H I I J K KP KW L M N N NW NY O O P R S SH T U U V W Y Z
When a vowel appears twice, the second one has a dot on the bottom showing a longer sound and the second N has a not at the top for a different sound
Little International fact for you guys
Love the show,
Chuma
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The Soviets are killing us in the race to populate space with junk. Probably slowed downed recently though.
Ref episode 844 and previous discussions about Google Chrome
advertising.
I just returned from a trip to Taipei; and Google is most definitely
promoting Chrome over there.
Walking along one of the main streets, I happened upon a wall-sized
billboard looking like a giant browser window, complete with embedded
“flash video” player. see picture here -> http://flickr.com/photos/monody/3008198330/
I guess Google is not a dominant player in Taiwan, or indeed much of
Asia. So it only makes sense to employ different advertising tactics.
