Buzz Out Loud 726: Dueling banjos at dawn
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EPISODE 726 |
Note: We are making a change to our podcast feed system on Monday, May 19. However, you do not need to subscribe to a new feed. One important thing to know: If you have your podcast catcher set to download "all unheard episodes" in a feed, you will probably find a bunch of already heard episodes in your feed on Friday as a result of the changes. To lighten the hit, set your podcast catcher to only download "the latest episode" for the week of May 19-to-23.
Cox, Comcast biggest BitTorrent blockers in the world
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/
20080515-us-isps-biggest-bittorrent-blockers-in-the-world.html
http://blogs.pcworld.com/staffblog/archives/006967.html
Facebook Disconnects Google Friend Connect
http://www.informationweek.com/story/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=207800461
http://www.webware.com/8301-1_109-9945308-2.html
RIAA defendant Jammie Thomas may get new trial
http://www.news.com/8301-13578_3-9945643-38.html
Microsoft, OLPC officially team up
http://www.news.com/8301-13860_3-9945438-56.html
Details for Guitar Hero 4 released
http://games.slashdot.org/games/08/05/15/216205.shtml
Analyst: Amazon.com’s Kindle to generate $750 million by 2010
http://crave.cnet.com/8301-1_105-9945112-1.html
TiVo extends lifetime subscription offer
http://www.news.com/8301-10784_3-9944974-7.html
jDome offers unique experience to gamers
http://uk.gizmodo.com/2008/05/15/
jdome_offers_unique_experience.html
50 Years of DARPA: 5 Good Inventions, 5 Lousy Ones
http://gizmodo.com/391157/
50-years-of-darpa-5-good-inventions-5-lousy-ones
VOICE MAIL
Shalin
CBS idea.
Drew Phoenix
Battlestar Spoiler
Semantic web searching
Not to harp on an old subject, I am behind a few days in my listening. Semantic Web searching caught my ear when you mentioned it in episode 722. I am one of those who thought Jeeves could answer my every question.
Last night my wife and I couldn’t figure out the answer to a factual question and didn’t want to hit the computer at the time. This morning I went to Powerset.com and asked it “What artist wrapped an island in pink?” Thinking a perfect semantic search engine would simply give me the answer. Powerset gave me a bunch of results, the musician Pink, the Pink Panther, but nothing about the artist who has wrapped islands and the German governmental buildings in pink fabric.
I went to Google and pasted in the exact same search criteria and the Artist Christo came up as the 2nd result from a New York Times article.
I went to Christo’s Wiki page, since Powerset only index those pages, and sure enough all my terms: island, wrap, pink, artist were on his Wiki page.
As with Jeeves, Powerset is not quite ready for prime time. Let me know the next time to check Semantic searching again.
P.S. Let’s Go Pens!
--PittCaleb
Cut off in traffic? Get their name and address via SMS
Hello,
For a bit over a year now I have been commuting from Lausanne to Geneva, and reading the free papers while listening to BOL on my iPod.
Today I came across a story that I found a little sinister, and thought you might find interesting. Here is the French version (for Molly to practice):
Here is the Google Translate version (which does an OK job):
Basically, you can SMS the local government a license plate number, and they will send you the name and address of the owner. I can’t even begin to list the reasons that I think is a terrible idea (full points though to one of the people that they vox pop’d in the paper version of the article, who suggested you that could get the address of someone driving an expensive car, and then go a burgle their place).
Of course, I am relatively smug since I don’t own a car, and am completely happy surviving on public transport (which is possible here, unlike most other places I have lived).
Cheers,
--Shaun
The Australian lawyer in Geneva
“Nobody solved it?” Not so fast, Leo
Dear BOL gang:
On BOL 725 when you and Leo Laporte were talking about all the outages of Twitter and similar sites, Leo mentioned offhand that scaling to massive usage is “a tough problem and nobody’s really solved it.” I agree that it’s a tough problem–but that’s why you need good engineers. I, for example, wrote the software behind Wikipedia in 2001 when it was having problems with its earlier software even though there were only a few thousand users then. I redesigned the database carefully, and gave serious thought to the trade-offs between performance and utility of every feature, solving the problem–and I was just a volunteer. Since then, other volunteers from the free software community and Wikipedia employees have scaled it up to its present level and built on to the software to the point that there’s hardly any of my code left–and they did all this while it was up and running.
If I may gloat a bit, this is not the first time the free software community has shown that it can outperform highly paid engineers in real-world applications.
--Lee Daniel Crocker
Fun while it lasted
Hey buzz team,
Just wanted to send my condolences in regards to the recent news of the acquisition. Quick question though, when will you be making the switch-over to the boring, dry news that only targets the elderly?
--Shane
Google Street View
Hey TMJ,
I was so excited yesterday when I drove past a Google Street View car on the highway. I made a few funny faces and gestures and thought that now I’d be forever immortalized as the funny guy with the Cardinals hat (Go Cards!). Then I got home and listened to episode 724 and heard that Google will be blurring faces as a measure to ward off privacy concerns.
What a let down! Now I have to let people know that, whenever Google updates the pictures, I am the guy going northbound on 291 at I-70. Just trying to get the word out.Also, who knew that KC would be one of the next cities to be on Street View? It’s not like we’re a tech hub like SF or NYC, the previously available cities. Most of my co-workers don’t know the difference between a PC or Mac, or even which OS they are using. They just say that they use “the computer.” But, it’s still pretty cool.
Love the show!
--Dave the Engineer (or maybe Dave B. in KC, it rhymes after all)
Icahn has Yahoo-Microsoft merger?
Greetings!
I’ve always believed resistance is, in fact, futile, so I was compelled to not resist from making what I believe should be a candidate for best “lolhuman” to date, and no-one will appreciate a tech-related ‘lol’ as much as you.
http://www.lanxon.co.uk/index.php/2008/05/15/icahn-has-yahoo-merger/
In related news, maybe Icahn wanted the existing board to reject the Microsoft bid because he appreciated how much the deal would annoy shareholders, thus reducing share prices, thus making his purchase of millions of them less painful, and he’d get his way at the end of the day anyway. Smart dude, in my opinion.
Warmest,
--Nate
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Molly Wood
engages in ruthless industry analysis in the form of the Daily Buzz,
the Buzz Report video, and, of course, Buzz Out Loud.
Tom
Merritt appears on CNET TV, specializing in help and how-to and the
ever popular Top 5 lists. He also co-hosts CNET's The Real Deal
podcast.
Jason
Howell can often be found producing Buzz Out Loud from the audio
studios at CNET, updating XML feeds from the comfort of his cubicle,
and saying "uh-oh" from time to time.
Get $699 off a Dell XPS Laptop
Molly, Tom, Jason, it is I....
your very high and mighty overlord.
Sumner Redstone.
( heavy breathing,heavy breathing,heavy breathing, oxygen tank leak....,heavy breathing,)
Welkome to the dark side, the all knowing eye is watching you...
remember, Youtube is the devil's playground....
( heavy breathing,heavy breathing,heavy breathing,)
Take the blue pill molly, no more fits of anger.. gone,..all gone.
( heavy breathing,heavy breathing,heavy breathing,)
jason, you have been replaced by an EEE running that brand new OS Ive been hearing so
much about Windows XP. Downsizing is a *****.
( heavy breathing,heavy breathing,heavy breathing,)
Tom, we will spending 18 millions dollar on your projects and we put our best and most available creative teams, writers, directors, producers and show runners.
Oh the joy that you will feel in our rigid corporate structure and branded interactive identity paradigm. ( heavy breathing,heavy breathing,heavy breathing,)
Instead of tiring yourself with constant ad-libbing and wearing yourself out, our crack teams of writers will have your script ready every morning for you to read and approved by legal, marketing and the reality TV department for which your reality podcasts will be attached to. <pant,pant,pant> ( heavy breathing,heavy breathing,heavy breathing,)
Remember as you feel our lovingly crushing embrace, it is your job to protect the Company and all its subsidiaries and regional advertisers from the evils of free software, open access, net neutrality and fair use.
( heavy breathing,heavy breathing,heavy breathing,)
As you young hips kids like to sing, "You can check out anytime, but you can never leave."
( heavy breathing,heavy breathing,heavy breathing,)
*I love the show*
A return road trip today allowed me some catch up time with your incredible entertaining and more often than not informative show. My comment is regarding the rarely spoken about topic
One thing I find interesting being on the other side of the throttler is not that anyone working a technical position for any ISP has any doubts regarding the existence of algorithms designed to allocated more bandwidth to certain download classifications but rather what ISP's have bragging rights for doing it best.
I'd like to think that the company I work for (I'll stay anonymous so I can continue to work here because it's a pretty nice place to work) holds their customers overall experience in high regard. Nonetheless traffic shaping in the virtual world is necessary just as urban planning is required in metropolitan areas struggling with real world traffic congestion.
I am opposed to router configurations that issues reset packets in data streams but the allocation of bandwidth to lighter users is as rational as the carpool lane is for environmentally conscience cities.
As much as I am a strong advocate for the customer experience over minuscule upward movement in share prices (I am nicknamed the resident socialist where I work) I see the need for some system of fair distribution of bandwidth. If that means a different price structure for customers who are heavier users so be it. I agree that the deceptive practices of some ISPs only aggravates the situation and that an honest discussion by Internet providers will provide some good will and perhaps a financial benefit.
*I love the show*
Anyway, TiVo did bring lifetime back on an indefinite basis for anyone: http://www.gizmolovers.com/2008/05/15/tivo-product-lifetime-is-back-for-399-299-for-existing-subscribers/
-MegaZone, Gizmo Lovers Editor