Episode 1118

Turns out Dell says they never deleted complaints from their forums about throttled processors, and they're working hard to fix the issues with updated BIOS. Donald suggested that the folks who claimed they were deleted by Dell probably lost a lot of street cred. We also speculate on the meaning of the Comcast acquisition of NBC Universal. Will Heores become more Comcastic?
==Stories Covered==
Comcast Gets NBC From G.E. in Deal That Reshapes TV
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/04/business/media/04nbc.html
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2009/12/how-the-fcc-might-stop-the-comcastnbc-merger.ars
Google and Twitter Hook Up On 9 Million Sites
http://mashable.com/2009/12/02/google-friend-connect-twitter/
Microsoft launches Streetside Maps on Bing
http://www.informationweek.com/news/windows/microsoft_news/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=222000449
Intel Shows Off 48-Core Chip
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/8392392.stm
http://news.cnet.com/2300-1001_3-10001951.html
http://www.engadget.com/2009/12/02/intel-crams-48-cores-onto-stamp-sized-processor-wants-to-do-wha/
Intel sees rush to Netbook app store
http://news.cnet.com/8301-13924_3-10407840-64.html
FCC Preparing Transition To VoIP Telephone Network
http://yro.slashdot.org/story/09/12/03/1318218/FCC-Preparing-Transition-To-VoIP-Telephone-Network
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2009/12/fcc-plans-for-death-of-circuit-switched-phone-networks.ars
Texting and twitter make kids BETTER writers, not worse
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/8392653.stm
Dell on Laptops and Throttling
http://en.community.dell.com/blogs/direct2dell/archive/2009/12/02/dell-on-laptops-and-throttling.aspx
FCC approves radar that sees through walls
http://www.commlawblog.com/2009/12/articles/unlicensed-operations-and-emer/fcc-lets-radar-company-see-through-walls/index.html
http://tech.slashdot.org/story/09/12/03/0247228/FCC-Lets-Radar-Company-See-Through-Walls
Man controls cybernetic hand with thoughts
http://news.cnet.com/8301-17938_105-10408139-1.html
==Voicemail==
Shalin on journalism
iYaz on Psystar
==Emails==
According to this article , Verizon’s map of AT&T coverage is not actually correct; The real map is -smaller-! Seems verizon’s actually showing a bigger map than AT&T actually cover because it included their 3rd party towers, that AT&T don’t own, just pay to use as and when they need it.
So what, you might well ask; phone still works there – funny, but not that big a deal.
Well it appears (See same article) AT&T may decide to cut off your service if you use too much data in those areas, as these third party towers cost them more. So the map of coverage is realy a map of ‘mostly coverage, unless you’re in specific, unmentioned areas where the coverage is limited.
Makes me feel happy to be in the UK where the iPhone is available via O2, Orange and soon (6 months I think) Vodafone will also offer it.
Who hot elves? (it’s an anagram :D )
- Hennell
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Hey Buzz crew –
I was reading about Talkback – the open source text-to-speech screen reader designed for the droid. As I’m sure you’re aware the iPhone 3G S has voiceover capabilities hence making it mostly accessible to visually impaired/blind users but I can’t find a damn thing on Talkback! With all the talk of Droid becoming a stronghold (?) in the smart phone market and Jason’s undying love of his own bot I wondered if anyone had gotten better news than this link on its accessibility features.
Also as a side note I had to respond to the Kindle talk recently regarding it taking over the world and being accessible by design. Note that even though it may provide some text-to-speech capabilities most books (and publishers) have disabled this feature out of fear of audiobooks loosing sales *and* the menus and toolbars do not have speech output making them inaccessible to navigate for those with print/visual disabilities.
Love you though, love the show!
JB
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Hey Buzz crew, 
I was listening to episode #1117 and your discussion
about non-standard printer drivers and I think the reason why they are
universally terrible is that HP, Canon etc. want to be able to sell
you more ink cartridges. Normally when the proprietary software says
the ink has run out, there is still actually plenty of ink left. They
just want to be able to continue to sell as many ink cartridges as
possible. I think this is why Microsoft never was able to get them to
adopt a universal standard and Google is going to have a very
difficult time trying to do the same.
Love the show,
Pete in San Jose
==After The Credits==