Episode 725

In today's episode, Leo Laporte drops in (and out) to discuss the future of CNET, the future of Yahoo, and lack of future we'll all have if the Air Force doesn't stop trying to build a real-life Skynet. Also, Leo points out why we should probably all delete our Plaxo accounts, Nintendo gets patent trolled, and can we leave Twitter? At least for one day?
==Stories Covered==
CBS to buy CNET Networks
Yahoo faces struggle for control
Air Force aims for ‘full control’ of ‘any and all’ computers
Comcast goes social with Plaxo acquisition
AT&T’s 3G comes out on top in speed tests, will only get faster in 2009
Nintendo ordered to pay $21 million to patent troll
Aliph Jawbone 2 (gold) printer-friendly version
Twit-out: A day-long worldwide Twitter boycott
Swiss man soars above Alps with jet-powered wing (Thanks Russ)
Swarming ants destroy electronics in Texas
==From The Phones==
===Bob, New Jersey===
Semantic Web alternatives
===Lori, Houston===
XP SP3 breaking.
==In the Forums==
Question from a college student about office suites
by x1800yolk - 05/15/08
BOL downloading faster now? (hopefully...)
by raygun01 - 05/15/08
==Emails==
===I have an old computer at home that is not being used===
Could I download the Air Force botnet virus and be part of the military Botnet reserve?
LTS
Darren
Columbus, Ohio
===Hello, Michael the limnologist (and super geek) here===
I like the idea of a USAF botnet. Well, sort of. I don’t necessarily trust the government to always do the right thing, but I would bet that if the USAF built this and offered citizens the ability to participate by sharing your computer, many people would do it. This could be a lot like SETI's distributed computing. I'd even contribute one of my computers, providing the system was truly idle when not activated and no personal data would have to be shared. Perhaps the citizen component could sit idle in a sandbox-like environment.
Think of it as national defense. The future of war will be electronic.
Michael
===Boy - I get my first e-mail on the show and I am wrong. How sad is that....===
As it turns out the Large Hadron Collider is not going live on May 15and the countdown clock had not been reset when the live date was changed.
On the countdown Web site:
The countdown timer was set to the May 15 because there was no definite time given for the actual activation, recent events show that CERN won't be dividing by zero until much later on in the year, so now the countdown timer will be reset again, and will be continually tweaked to go by the latest info that CERN are releasing.
So, sorry to disappoint you all, but you won't be dying tomorrow.
Sorry L
David A Zirpolo
===Hey guys!===
So after listening to Wednesday's BOL (iPod is on other side of room; not going to go check the episode No. could use Web, but won't) and your caller's tip about the Canadian iPhone coming around the “end of this month, beginning of the next,” I found this story on MacRumors. If this rumor — which they themselves have taken with a large grain of salt — is to be believed, the iPhone will be launched in May to make room for the announcement of a brand new device at WWDC. That, of course, would sit with the whole “end of this month/beginning of next month” equivocalities if, in fact, a brand new something will be coming on June 9 @ WWDC.
Although I’m sure that the majority of the attendees of the sold-out WWDC will be less than thrilled to find that they won’t be witnessing the second coming, their anger may be mollified and assuaged if the new device is a more reasonably-priced Macbook Air thingamadoodly. Well, only if they stay out of Steve Jobs’ RealityDistortionField. Otherwise, they won’t care.
~ J-2 in Maryland ~
P.S. Yes, RealityDistortionField (RDF) is one word — in its self-produced alternate reality that is mysteriously auto-emanating…
P.P.S. Molly, I find myself saying “blah-de-blah” and “What the doodly-doo?” a lot now. Um, thanks?
Source:
===Hi buzz out loud……===
In Tuesdays podcast episode 723 you requested that people who had non-hp machine that experienced the endless reboot problem to let you know.
Well I am letiing you know right now.
I have a Sony Vaio PCG-GRT170 laptop that when ever XP SP3 is installed it goes into that endless reboot thing.
This has happen twice. Once when I downloaded it from a non- micrsoft site, and through windows update.
Just wanted to let you know. Thanks love that show, yada yada yada.
By the way, my laptop has a Intel pentium 4 CPU.
Brian, Royal Oak MI
===Big potential problems of having your face on Street View:===
? Abused wives hiding from their husbands. They may have had to leave town to get away, and if the guy is trying to stalk her, it might put her at risk if he knew where to look ? Witness protection program ? Any target of stalking ? Cheating b@$t@rds who don't want to get caught stepping out ? Closeted homosexuals
All of these groups might take exception to their faces appearing with a location on the interwebs. Just a thought.
LTS,
Jomichael
===Hi guys,===
The recent study that you mentioned is fascinating to me as it is in one of my areas of research.
On of my students (Rob the honours student… ;) did his honours thesis with me this year comparing co operative play vs. deathmatch play in Doom 3 on the xbox. We added a new dimension, co operative talk vs. confrontational talk. So the design looked like this:
chat condition
co op confrontational
Co Op 10 people 10 people
game
deathmatch 10 people 10 people
So we had 10 subjects in each group (randomly assigned). The subjects were first year university students. Some were gamers, some were not. They were told that we were interested in their hand eye co ordination.
We found absolutely no difference between the four groups in aggression levels, measured right after 5 minutes of play. We measured aggression with an established situational aggression questionnaire.
Of course after the experiment Rob was sure to debrief people and tell them that he was being mean to them for a reason. (Rob is actually a really nice guy, and he cannot beat his thesis supervisor at NHL 08….)
Now I know this is with a different population (not kids but adults) but it is heartening. We will be presenting the data at FuturePlay, a video game conference that is held annually in Toronto.
Oh, and there was no difference between the gamers and the non gamers on their level of aggression. There were no sex differences either.
Dave (the psychologist)
===So I guess this is good news===
(http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/24643793/) especially those with stock options… Just think of the possibilities: Molly on CSI, Katie on BuzzOutLoud, Tom could do a spinoff of Survivor - Tech Survivor, etc. :-)
Frank,
Blacksburg, VA
===Hey JaMoTo,===
I don’t know if CBS buying CNET is good or bad news for you guys but I want you to know that I’ll remain loyal to you all as a good Buzztown citizen should be, even if it means watching Tom anchoring news on CBS News or Molly presenting showcases on The Price is Right or even Jason showing up on the camera from time to time behind the big sound console on the Late Show with David Letterman. I’ll stay true and faithful and no matter how hard it would be, I will not cheat on you by watching Jeff Probst trying to talk about the semantic Web, botnets, or Twitter. I will remain a BOLer forever!
Love the show (and hope it doesn’t change… too much)
Giorgio
from Montreal, Canada
==Additional Notes==
==Quotes==
==After The Credits==
Category:Episodes