Buzz Out Loud 759: Worms on the tongue

And that, my friends, is how we get you to listen all the way to the end. But in actual news of the day, a judge ordered Google to expose the viewing habits of millions of YouTube users. But it's OK, because only a few people will get to look at them. That's fine, right? Also, we freak out about privacy and identity theft, just in time for a study that acknowledges that consumers are freaking out about privacy and identity theft. Plus, the power of video compels you...to switch to broadband.

EPISODE 759

Court ruling will expose viewing habits of YouTube users
http://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2008/07/court-ruling-will-expose-viewing-habits-youtube-us
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/07/03/AR2008070300747.html
http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/2008/07/judge-orders-yo.html

Source: Protective order will keep Viacom out of sensitive YouTube user data
http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-9983631-93.html

Report: Some dial-up users wish to stay that way
http://news.cnet.com/8301-10784_3-9983629-7.html
http://news.wired.com/dynamic/stories/T/TEC_BROADBAND_STUDY?SITE=WIRE&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2008-07-03-01-34-39
http://gigaom.com/2008/07/02/pews-state-of-us-broadband-200/

Nvidia cuts estimates, citing product delays and failures
http://news.cnet.com/8301-13579_3-9983247-37.html

Roku serves up Netflix Player source code
http://www.engadget.com/2008/07/02/roku-serves-up-netflix-player-source-code/
http://news.cnet.com/8301-10784_3-9983188-7.html

Facebook-advertised boozefest spurs liquor ban
http://news.cnet.com/8301-13577_3-9983220-36.html

OpenMoko FreeRunner Linux phone to launch on July 4
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20080703-openmoko-freerunner-to-launch-on-july-4.html

Survey: Advertisers should acknowledge targeted ad concerns
http://news.cnet.com/8301-13577_3-9983177-36.html

Guinness bestows download record on Firefox
http://news.cnet.com/8301-10784_3-9983245-7.html
http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&articleId=9106058

Adobe’s PDF becomes ISO standard
http://news.cnet.com/8301-10784_3-9982838-7.html

Voice mail

Robert
Here's one reason we stay on IE6.

Todd
Vista upgrade question.

E-mail

We don’t have 7/Eleven stores in Ohio but we do have continuing problems with theft of personal data.

In the past several months, I’ve received “breach notices” from my credit union, a local hospital and the income tax division of the state of Ohio. There just aren’t any steps I can take to protect my personal information if monolithic agencies like these won’t take their obligations seriously.

Oh, “love the show” (said in a deep, manly voice.)

Mrgrammarperson in Ohio

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Well actually…

“Average” can mean one of several well defined statistics that can be
calculated from a data set. In school, I learned three:

(Arithmetic) Mean: Add everything up, divid by number of values.

Median: The “middle-est” value.

Mode: The most frequently occurring value in the set.

I do agree with you that the headline from Variety is misleading, but
it is technically not inaccurate. Of course, the problem is that we
tend to conflate the “mean” and the “mode” when we use “average”. So
when we say “the average TV viewer”, is it in the sense of “the
average height of Americans” or “the average voter”?

Statistics. It’s hard.

Love the Show
Trans-Atlantic Paul

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I live in Atlanta, Georgia and the Private Investigators here have been
trying to pass this law for the past 4 years. Many of my fellow
computer forensic examiners have helped fend it off. Basically, I would
rather see an Ethics board or some other “Technical” oversight committee
that did, in fact, set a standard of practice when repairing (or
examining) a computer. This should be to insure that Geeksquad doesn’t
post a user’s tax return on the internet, but would report child porn to
the authorities. More importantly, when a store resells a computer they
don’t just format and reinstall the OS, but protects the privacy of the
previous owner and wipes the data with a tool that insures the
destruction of the prior owner’s data. No offense to the PI community,
but the Investigators that want this law passed seem to be looking for a
quick way to corner the Computer Forensics market. (If I came from law
enforcement, I could get a PI license without any other qualifications.
Coming from a technical background, I am required to apprentice for 3
years before I could do this on my own.)
I agree that some form of license should be required (even for the
mom-and-pop computer stores.) Right now anyone can start claiming to be
a computer expert and Joe public has no knowledge of what the person
doing the examination might do with their data. If the only evidence of
a crime is on a computer and some teenager with an A+ cert tries to do
the exam, the data may be lost forever, and the crime never be proven.

I appreciate all you guys do for the tech community!
Great job with the podcast, keep up the good work!

Jim Gooch
Buzztown Computer Forensics Expert

**********

Just a quick grammar point. You’re friend Dick Justice has a name referred to as an Aptronym (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aptronym if you can trust it…). Some famous aptronyms are Thomas P. Crapper, London plumber famous for popularizing the flushable toilet and Chris Moneymaker, who won $2.5 million in the World Series of poker.

Have a good day.

Kin

**********

Just in case any BOLers were wondering about the better-than-usual sound
quality of my mail yesterday, I hate to say that no, I haven’t
discovered a magically cheap professional sounding mic setup: I use a
professional AudioTechnica condenser mic into a Peavy USB mixer, then
send the USB into my PC. It’s not too expensive, though: the mic and
mixer were about $500 and the PC is a old cheap one running free
software (Audacity on Linux).

And yes, I figured my comment would be called “harsh”, but I figured
that was more entertaining than a more measured comment.

Lee Daniel Crocker, Sacramento, CA