There are rumors afoot that Digg might soon be purchased by News
Corp. We're trying to figure out what a MySpace/Digg mashup would look
like, and we're having a little trouble visualizing it. Also, Nintendo
came by today to show us the Wii! It was fun, but now we're ready for a
little nap.
EPISODE 342
TODAY'S LINKS:
Mule Day
Report from Digital Hollywood:
Fritz Attaway: MPAA EVP and general counsel really does think we're all
criminals. Reed Stager, Chairman, Digital Watermarking Alliance, thinks
watermarks and serial numbers will work!
TODAY'S VOICEMAIL:
Dr. Ruth from Normal, Illinois
I cracked the Morse code! It says, "Hey
Buzz Crew." Rock on!
Thanks to everyone who decoded the Morse code! It just said, "Hey buzz
crew."
ANON
Two cell phones, one number? They can do it. It's not a technical
limitation. I had a phone, I dropped it in the water, and then when I
went to Verizon, they programmed me another phone. And when the phone
that I dropped in water came back to life, they both rang. When I called
Verizon, they told me not to use the second one, but I'm telling you,
they were both working.

Eric
To answer yesterday's question: You can absolutely have multiple
SIMs on the same phone number or account, there are no technical
hurdles; it's just that American carriers don't let you do it. In the
rest of the world, many carriers will let you have two SIM cards linked
to the same number. So instead of switching cards, you just turn your
other phone on and send a special code to your carrier to tell them to
send all your calls to that phone instead of the other. It doesn't work
like a telephone with multiple extensions where the calls go to all
phones that say they have that number. If the carriers allowed that,
then people would be able to clone your SIM card and make calls using
your account.
Hank in publishing, responding to Matt in advertising
But as publishers, all we do, all day long, is try to shoehorn as many
ads in possible into everything. But don't feel bad, we get up in the
morning, put on our $300 jeans, and drive off in our gold-plated
Ferraris like everyone else.
TODAY'S E-MAIL:

Luke from Pittsburgh
If Netflix is smart, this is how they will succeed at online movies
where everyone else is failing:
Remove the notion of streaming or on-demand viewing from the equation.
Instead, give users a Netflix in-box on their PC, TiVo, and iTV.
They manage their queue just like they would over the traditional
Netflix service, but instead of waiting three days for delivery, it
shows up much faster through their online Netflix service. But here's
the catch: they can see when it was "sent," and they will be notified
when it is "delivered," but other than that, they will not monitor the
video's progress. When they are finished viewing the downloaded movie,
they use their Netflix Inbox client to "return" the video (in this case,
deleting from the user's device and alerting Netflix to send the next
video in their queue).
By changing the expectation from an on-demand context to a traditional
through-the-mail context that people understand (even though it is in a
new environment), they will eliminate the disappointment of slow
downloads and stuttery video that today's online video providers are
dealing with. If Apple, TiVo, and the MPAA are smart, they will jump
in. The only setback I see is that they will likely not be allowed to
roll out a PC client due to concerns over cracking the DRM the Netflix
in-box would ship with.
In case they aren't doing anything like this, I'm calling my patent
lawyer.

Tedson
Tom, I recently (like 6 months ago) discovered that the GPUs in the
MacBook and MacBook Pros had been underclocked. This is preposterous!
Why should I pay for a $2,500 MacBook Pro and only get second-rate
parts. I considered buying one and reclocking it in Windows but decided
not to. My question is, are the new MacBook Pro's GPUs
underclocked?
Love the show!!
Ross
This week's story regarding the congratulatory cake that the IE team
delivered to the Firefox development team is just another in a series of
funny feuds between Microsoft's IE and their competition. In 1997, when
Microsoft released IE 4, they put a giant IE "e" logo on Netscape's
lawn. Netscape quickly
retaliated by putting a 7-foot-tall Mozilla
statue on top of the toppled-over IE "e" logo.