Episode 1190

Announcing our very first not-even-remotely sanctioned by the legal department video creation contest: make us an awesome video in which Steve Jobs and the Predator work out who has prior art on swipe-to-unlock. We will reward the awesomest video with a Buzz Out Loud ceramic travel mug. Oh, and Google turns off its filters in China ... briefly.
==Stories Covered==
Google turns off filter in China
http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/03/new-approach-to-china-update.html
http://www.businessweek.com/news/2010-03-23/google-said-to-have-made-no-progress-in-two-month-china-dispute.html
http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/03/22/interview-sergey-brin-on-googles-china-gambit/
Apple’s contract-free iPhone: new phone coming?
http://techcrunch.com/2010/03/23/contract-free-iphone/
Nintendo announces 3DS — the glasses-free 3D successor to the DS
http://www.engadget.com/2010/03/23/nintendo-announces-3ds-the-glasses-free-3d-successor-to-the-d/
http://www.pcworld.com/article/192145/will_anyone_buy_a_3d_nintendo_ds.html
Opera Mini Browser, Coming to an iPhone Near You
http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/03/23/opera-mini-browser-coming-to-an-iphone-near-you/
Verizon Set To Launch Mobile Payment Service
http://games.slashdot.org/story/10/03/22/2141205/Verizon-Set-To-Launch-Mobile-Payment-Service
60% of Americans engaging in couch potato multitasking
http://arstechnica.com/media/news/2010/03/60-of-americans-engaging-in-couch-potato-multitasking.ars
Virgin Galactic Embarks on Maiden Voyage Above Mojave Desert
http://www.fastcompany.com/1594727/virgin-galactic-embarks-on-maiden-voyage-above-mojave-desert
New York Museum Adds @ Symbol to Design Collection
http://abcnews.go.com/Entertainment/wireStory?id=10172112
Want Google fiber in your town? Go jump in a lake!
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/22/technology/22stunts.html
==Voicemail==
Brian with more prior art
==Emails==
Apple patent deniable because of the Predator?
Regarding the patent being denied because the Predator as a slide to unlock feature.
A patent for the waterbed was denied because of a description in book ‘Stranger in a Strange Land’ by Robert A. Heinlein.
I believe the patent issue is mentioned in the forward of one of the later editions, but I don’t have my copy on hand.
Wikipedia does mention this as well.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stranger_in_a_Strange_Land
Stranger contains an early description of the waterbed, an invention which made its real-world debut a few years later in 1968. Charles Hall, who brought a waterbed design to the United States Patent Office, was refused a patent on the grounds that Heinlein’s descriptions in Stranger and another novel, Double Star, constituted prior art.[8]
----
Hey buzz crew!
This weekend Greenville, SC made our bid for Google’s fiber program.
We’re pretty proud of it and thought you might find what we did cool.
Check it out!
http://www.wearefeelinglucky.com
jjohnson
----
Hey guys,
just thought I’d share this with you. I was at work yesterday and windows decided to update. PC was running slugish but still hanging in there….until outlook, visual studio, sql server and the visual basic dev environment all crashed at the same time. WHY? up popped the frickin browser ballot!! Thanks EU!!
Plus, it’s popping up every time i start windows asking me to install a browser not seeing how i already have chrome, firefox and IE. Can’t microsoft even do a ballot right??? They need a leave me alone button on it!! ARG!
Love the show!
–Lavin
----
Hey gang,
There has been all this talk about 99 cents being too cheap per episode for TV shows downloaded online. I work in the industry and can tell you that the value of a viewer watching an TV episode right now is far less than 99 cents. Without doing the actual math, I’d say it’s around 1 cent (my boss agrees). That 1 cent gets split up between all the advertisers for that block so each advertiser is paying some fraction of that per viewer (that’s not how it’s charged, but you get the point).
So if we switched to a model tomorrow where everyone paid 99 cents per episode of their favorite show, studios would be making ~100x more money (assuming viewership is the same). You would make way more money and have no commercials*. If only 1 out of 100 people actually paid, you’d be making roughly the same amount.
So how is 99 cents too cheap? It increases the value per viewer by an order of magnitude, and the by another order of magnitude. I just don’t understand how 99 cents is too cheap.
-Sam Garfield
*I’m sure they’d still throw some commercials in there because why settle for 100x more money when you can have 101% more money?
==After The Credits==