Episode 657

By the time you read this, Yahoo--and the world--may know its fate. However, Steve Ballmer, who likely would call it destiny, says Yahoo will stay around as a brand. What does that mean for poor MSN? And by extension, MSNBC? Will they go the way of Bob? Or Clippy? Only time and a few earnings calls will say for sure. Meanwhile, Congress and the judiciary system in the U.S. are kicking it into high gear in the tech sector. 
==Stories Covered==
*Microsoft to end digital downloads for Vista upgrades
*U.S. confiscating data at the border
*Ballmer: Yahoo the brand will remain; means MSN will go?
*Yahoo board to determine fate of company today
*Rumor: Apple event the last week of February (Thanks, Richard!)
*Appeals court: First Amendment protects forum trolls, too
*Congress bars 'automatic removal' of Do-Not-Call list numbers
*House approves MPAA-backed college antipiracy rules
*Facebook releases site in Spanish; German and French to follow
*Comcast tweaks Terms of Service in wake of throttling uproar
*Ask.com offers news page
*Digsby aims to simplify communication; we've got invites
*Yahoo (sort of) launches a live video-streaming service
*Knee dynamo taps 'people power'
==From The Phones==
*Paul from northwest Indiana: End users are not customers.
*Anonymous: Here's how to filter on the computers.
==In the Forums==
*Global broadband and the U.S.: Lies, damn lies, and statistics
*IPv6 and NAT, a treatise
==Emails==
===How about a cleanup?===
It is good to hear that the cut cables are on the way to be fixed, but I wonder about the cleanup. 
Who will cleanup and who will pay for the cleanup of all that data on the sea floor? 
Who will put all the YouTube videos, e-mail, torrent files back into the tubes? 
Will they be lost forever? 
Felipe Garcia
===XM/Sirius merger===
Hey you guys,
Fordo here. Can't sleep again. And it's 5:12 am. Time's a-wastin'. Looks like the Fordo won't be sleeping anytime soon tonight. This suuuuuuuuuuuucks.
Anyway--whatever happened to the XM/Sirius merger? They said it would probably be decided by Dec 31--and that didn't happen. Then there was a rumor a few weeks ago that the DOJ had made a decision and it would be announced that day--or within days--and that didn't happen either. What is the dealio? Do you guys have any scoop for us?
Grazie.
ClearChannel begs gov't to help it keep making money by stopping satellite radio
===Kindle out sells everything ever made--ever===
OK, not really but here's a thing that strikes me as suspicious. Oh, hi your Buzzness. I like to browse Amazon from time to time to see if there is anything I didn't realize I had to own to right away. I went under electronics and selected "Best sellers in electronics (updated hourly)". The No. 1 electronic sold is the Kindle. Really? The Kindle outsells all other electronics from Amazon? Don't get me wrong, I'm a huge fan of the e-book readers, I've written to Buzz about my love for the Sony Reader a couple of times. I'm just wondering if Amazon is being a little disingenuous by claiming the Kindle is outselling iPods, GPS devices, digital cameras--you know, the gadgets people actually know to exist. I say this because I polled about 15 or so colleagues just in passing throughout the morning and said "Good morning, I say Kindle you say?" I got various answers from "What?" to "Something used to start fires" and even a mythical garden creature (ummm, OK), but not one person said "Oh!!! That's Amazon's new and No. 1 best seller digital book reader, I bought one for every e-book I want to download." Not a one. This was not a scientific study by any means, but worth a mention.
It was also No. 1 under there "Hot New Releases", "Most Gifted" and "Most Wished for". By who??
Dion in Connecticut
Love the show more than my e-book reader.
===Regarding the Pirate Bay===
Hey BOL!
OK...OK! So we are not exactly proud of it, but something is obviously rotten here in little tiny Denmark. As you mentioned in episode 653, some judge thought it was funny to force an ISP to block ThePirateBay. While this is not the first time they have done this (allofmp3.com is Russia), people are now starting their own little uprising against this blatant attack on the free Internet. The way they block these sites are hilarious. They simply redirect DNS- queries to these specific sites, and instead show the user a big red stop-sign.
As you can well imagine, people has already found numerous ways to get around this "blocking." But today, lo and behold, I give you: http://thejesperbay.org/ A new site from the guys at ThePirateBay, with detailed instructions on how to regain access to their site. And also a way to annoy Tele2 by sending them letters and calling them. But you may think to yourself at this point, who is this Jesper Bay that is mentioned in the URL???
Oh, him. He's just the marketing director of IFPI here in Denmark. LOL! I bet he's glad to see his name used like that, hehe.
Yours truly,
Andy
Copenhagen, Denmark
PS. Love the show!
===Batman goes after Mac-haters? Touche===
Howdy Buzz crew, Mike from College Station here. 
In yesterday's episode (656), you took a call from Trish, a comic book colorist from NYC. At the end of her call, she threatened a caller from the previous show--the disgruntled listener fed up with Apple news--with a visit from Batman if he didn't change his Mac-hatin' ways. Touche. Being an Apple-picker myself, I thought I'd let Trish and the rest of you know that Mr. Wayne does not represent all of the superhero community in his hardware tastes. Fresh from the wires, Gizmodo reports that billionaire industrialist come suited super-defender Tony Stark, AKA Iron Man, has a cluster of about a dozen Dell Power Edge servers in his lab of ass-kickery. While Stark can certainly afford the indisputably shinier Apple Xservers, he's a man who knows quality when he sees it. 
While the Mac vs. PC argument has always been heated, I predict that with Iron Man and The Dark Knight coming out this summer, the debate's about to get positively epic.
Keep up the good work, guys. 
Mike the graphic designer from College Station 
Fightin' Texas Aggie class of 2010
P.S. Hey, Tom? Thanks, and gig 'em.
Plus, bat phone!