Adobe Acrobat 9 Standard
This update should be worthwhile for security-minded businesses and creative firms. With Acrobat 9, Adobe brings new Web relevance to print-ready PDFs by enabling embedded video and animation. Forms, security, and overall ease of use are also enhanced.
2009 Mercedes-Benz C63 AMG
The 2009 Mercedes-Benz C63 AMG combines very impressive performance on road and track with first-rate cabin electronics, making it fun and convenient. Just make sure you budget for gas.
Sony Ericsson W760i - black (unlocked)
The Sony Ericsson W760i is the best Sony Ericsson Walkman phone we've seen, by far. It corrects one of Sony Ericsson's usual design pitfalls while offering a generous feature set and satisfying performance. We can suggest a few tweaks that should make it a winner.
Seagate FreeAgent Go (blue, 320GB)
The Seagate FreeAgent Go is our favorite portable hard drive to date and takes our award for Editors' Choice. The drive is well designed and fast, and you won't find a better value for the price.
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.
Buzz Out Loud 854: Death to the Moon
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
