Buzz Out Loud 750: 7 deadly spams Video
Buzz Out Loud 750: 7 deadly spams Video Transcript
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>> It's Friday June 20, 2008.
>> I'm Molly Wood.
>> I'm Tom Merritt.
>> I'm Jason Howell.
>> Molly Wood: Welcome to Buzz Outloud, CNET's podcast indeterminate length, Episode 750, Centory Time.
>> Tom Merritt: Tuly edition.
>> Molly: Tuly so.
>> Tom: Not Cooley.
>> Molly: Totally different.
>> Jason: No, oh I thought you just said his name wrong.
>> Tom: Brian Tuly.
>> Molly: Is it of course our Friday video edition so if you're listening to this on audio you may miss a couple of visually specific jokes.
>> Tom: Don't worry though, don't worry, you're not missing anything because the links to those visually specific jokes will be in the show notes at bol.cnet.com.
>> Jason: As well as our overly descriptive text about it during the show.
>> Tom: Right.
>> Molly: Yeah we'll be overly descriptive. For example, just one moment ago, Tom lifted his black lead line CNET mug...I don't know it feels like it's heavy. Gave himself a little bit of poisoning and slurped coffee.
>> Tom: We'll have to mention to the first modern computer.
>> Molly: Yes.
>> Tom: Not the first computer ever but the first one that was easily reprogrammable without having to rewire it.
>> Molly: Yeah it was actually the first to store a program in memory.
>> Tom: 128 bytes ought to be enough for anyone.
>> Molly: Hot. And it can only--it's funny it's the Manchester Baby is was it was called. The Small Scale Experimental Machine or Baby. And it ran it's first instructions on June 21 to tomorrow. This is actually going to be prominently featured in Today in Tech History which you can find as a Podcast or streaming on CNET Live. I mean CNET TV.
>> Jason: That is one big baby that's all I'm saying.
>> Tom: One big baby. Had that factoring number, I mean seriously.
>> Molly: I mean how bad was that?
>> Tom: I mean geez my iPhone can do that.
>> Molly: And it took it like an entire minute to factor a number. It was 218 down to 1.
>> Tom: I'd like to see you do that in a minute Jason.
>> Molly: Oh I'd go down and do that in a minute.
>> Jason: Oh I just did it.
>> Tom: And?
>> Molly: It was pretty cool.
>> Tom: How many factors in 128?
>> Jason: 8 or what was it 200.
>> Molly: 218.
>> Jason: See I can't remember. I can't take on Baby.
>> Molly: Anyway Happy Birthday to Baby also known as emiac [phonetic].
>> Tom: So recently I've been getting these spam e-mails that say like you know, "What's up with your face or your face is ugly," and they make you laugh. I still don't open them or click on anything.
>> Molly: What a stupid face you have.
>> Tom: Yeah exactly anything with face on it just makes me laugh. I hate your face.
>> Molly: But it's interesting because the New York Times blog did a little bit of an analysis of how there's been this spam going around. The subject line for a lot of them is What a Stupid Face You Have? It was just hilarious but they call it Pride Spam because spammers take these various sort of psychiatric or psychological approach to their subject line writing, and one of them is based on the idea that you are really proud and there's this new spam-slam idea that they'll try to slam you on the subject line in order to get you to click.
>> Tom: Provoke you into opening the e-mail.
>> Molly: Right.
>> Jason: In order to get you do to two things though. Open the e-mail and then click the link. So when you open the e-mail and you see that there's a link there after that subject line like are you really gonna click the link?
>> Tom: Okay I see we've combined this with the study from yesterday that we talked about that technically savvy people tend to be arrogant. I'm reluctant to be arrogant. So the technically savvy people who are less likely to open spam need this sort of well-actual link from the spam to force them to open it up.
>> Molly: It's a corrective action.
>> Tom: Yeah.
>> Molly: That's totally true.
>> Tom: It's a course correction for spammers.
>> Molly: It's a course correction because I bet what it says is so you'd open the e-mail right it would be like "Put this to your face idiot." And then you'd open the e-mail and go I'm not an idiot and then there might be a link and then you might think there's picture of your stupid face, and then you'd click and be like who defaced my face you know and then...
>> Jason: On my blog I have pointed out exactly why you are always wrong.
>> Molly: Yes, exactly.
>> Jason: Cool. Thanks for giving them that idea.
>> Molly: I just think it's so interesting of how they think they've got this whole psychology of how to get you to open like, not just porn, but actually appealing to your prides, and the New York Time says, "Don't open these stupid face messages, and don't click on the link. Just swallow your pride.
>> Jason: Exactly. I mean they've already appealed to lust, greed, lust, sloft, working from home spam, you know the seven deadly sins.
>> Molly: It is, yeah. It says spammers have long been ripped off the seven deadly sins to get us to open their messages.
>> Jason: Hey it works. It must work anyways.
>> Molly: I know I love it. That's pretty funny.
>> Jason: I mean it doesn't work on me, but...
>> Molly: It works, well apparently it works enough that they keep doing it. There is in fact right now a rash of stupid face spam going out--around. I haven't gotten any.
>> Tom: Stupid face spam just makes me laugh.
>> Molly: But if you get some let us know because I think it is kind of funny. Your face is stupid. Terrible news today actually. A terrible development to report in a ranty way, not in the light tragic way. The Senate mortgage bill proposed by Senator Chris Dodd, it apparently includes an attempt to sneak into law a requirement that all electronic payment processors send detailed transaction data to the federal government. All electronic payment processors. Everything from your credit card to PayPal.
>> Tom: Well yeah it applies to Visa, MasterCard, Discover and American Express but according to the Slashdot posting it affects specifically targets actually EBay, PayPal, Amazon and Google Checkout.
>> Molly: That is unbelievable. Like I can't even imagine why that would be necessary. And Slashdot pointed out that the privacy implications for America's small businesses are breathtaking, and FreedomWorks Chairman, Dick Armey, formerly the House Majority Leader, says, "That is a provision with astonishing reach and was slipped into the bill just this week." That is absolutely the kind of thing that should never be slipped into anything.
>> Jason: Well it's being slipped into the Mortgage Bill which is supposed to try to help the country out of the mortgage crisis. I don't see where these payments have anything to do with it. The same bill contains a controversial provision to fingerprint mortgage brokers.
>> Tom: That at least is tied to mortgages somehow albeit also ridiculous. But why is the idea that Amazon might have to pass along information about what I bought from them or through a Z Shop if I'm a small owner what I'm selling to the government. Why does the government need to know that? That's not their business.
>> Molly: Yeah I don't know and I don't like it. I think it's pretty terrible. So somehow it seems to raise money for the government though according to FreedomWorks.org. The proposal is estimated to raise 9.8 billion dollars over 10 years.
>> Tom: For tax collection you think?
>> Molly: I guess maybe tax collection. I'm not really sure but I think that is pretty unacceptable and hopefully we're helping to get the word out about this slipped in their countability.
>> Jason: If you'd like to call Congress and tell them you oppose it it's 866-928-3035.
>> Tom: Or support it.
>> Jason: Or support it. Whatever you...
>> Tom: If you want to call Congress and tell them your opinion about.
>> Jason: There you go. Call Congress.
>> Molly: FreedomWorks' editor says, "At a time when concerns about both identity theft and government spying are paramount, Congress wants to create a new honey pot of private data that includes social security numbers.
>> Jason: Right, yeah, great.
>> Molly: No, no.
>> Jason: I didn't even think about.
>> Molly: I like that Chris Dodd too. I'm not so-that's not cool.
>> Tom: A new eBay strategy is starting to anger smaller sellers so they're getting angered by the government now on the one hand, and the smaller sellers on eBay are getting angered. It's like maybe if they don't make the cut to have their information sent to the federal government cause there's a limit if you're small enough it doesn't get sent. Then they'll probably get screwed by eBay. EBay Incorporated has started to give benefits to larger businesses including major retailers, which they had never done before. They've done some things for like what it is called Certified Sellers...
>> Jason: Like the premium sellers or the PowerSellers.
>> Tom: Yeah the PowerSellers. They've done some little benefits in cost reduction for PowerSellers in the past, but now they have a new strategy that will allow the biggest sellers to negotiate lower fees.
>> Molly: And that's what's got everyone so furious because the fees have are what have made everyone--the reason people are staging boycotts of eBay in the first place is that they've been raising these fees. And now they're about to announce a new thing today where they'll let these huge sellers negotiate lower fees.
>> Jason: To quality for the discounts, vendors must sell at least 500,000 in merchandise monthly, and have a customer service rating of at least 4.9 on a 5.0 point scale. So they're saying this is to improve customer service because they have these customer service qualifications on all the benefits that they're handing out, but it also has a level of delivery qualification which means only the largest sellers. Probably 1,000 dollars monthly. That's a lot.
>> Molly: eBay is right in saying I think that only a small number of sellers would quality for that like it is a pretty elite group.
>> Tom: Yes. That's the problem. You know what I mean? All these smaller eBay businesses are like yeah so only the big rich guys get to benefit from the negotiated fees.
>> Jason: What is the incentive then for them to improve their customer service if they don't have these same types of incentive or whatever?
>> Molly: It's very interesting like eBay was built as sort of an individual auction site and developed into a site where people are really building these pretty large businesses, in the rest of the world, people get volume discounts. And big sellers get discounts, and big advertisers get discounts and it's not an unusual way to do business but...
>> Jason: If it's only discount, it's certainly not, you're right.
>> Molly: But if anything, it just marks a big philosophical shift for eBay away from the individual sellers which is kind of what they built their business on and toward these big PowerSellers who are generating way more money. And it's not uncommon for the groups of people who generate a lot more money to get a little bit of a kickback. It's just that I think that--what it really cries out for I think is for a replacement for eBay for what eBay used to be.
>> Tom: Well and there are plenty of those. There are plenty of competitors out there. Amazon Z Shops right now is something that anybody can go and start up and in fact this article speculates that a lot of the smaller sellers may jump to Amazon Z Shops. There's also Wig-Ex which we talked about recently for individuals, there's always been Craigslist as a powerful competitor for the individual seller. So you know maybe eBay doesn't care. Maybe eBay's like look you know what we can make a lot more money if we cater to the larger sellers. We've moved on. We're not for the smaller seller anymore.
>> Molly: And I think that might--I mean certainly that is what their strategy appears to be. The question is going to be whether they should care. Like how many individual sellers are left compared to these big really high-revenue generating giant sellers?
>> Tom: Honestly as a consumer I've already left eBay for that reason. I used to go to eBay to find like strange [inaudible] flea-market like items and it's too hard to do that anymore. So I stopped shopping on eBay a long time ago.
>> Jason: To a certain degree it's too large to just go in and randomly go in and scan through and find those quirky things.
>> Molly: And when everything is a store you're not getting good deals. You're just going to an online store. You might as well go to Amazon and hope for a better sale.
>> Tom: Or just sort of shop around until you find the best price whether it's eBay or not. You're not going to go to eBay because you want to shop for cool stuff.
>> Molly: Like I mean I share in the outrage of the small seller inasmuch as I think they are being pushed out by eBay. I don't think that it's an unusual business decision for me...
>> Jason: You're right. I think that the frustration stems from the fact that some of these folks have been doing this for a long time and eBay has used this to build their business and now they feel betrayed because they've poured so much into building up their clientele, building up their rating on eBay and their reputation and now they feel like they're being kicked to the curb.
>> Molly: I think they totally are but I also think like it's kind of the weird web thing like you were helping eBay build the business like they never had any loyalty to you.
>> Jason: Well it's kind of like the whole Netflix thing to right like these people have built all this time and all this effort building up something, only to then encounter this and what is the alternative? To move to another service where they lose all that work and that reputation and everything and everything to start from scratch and then have to build it all up again. [ Talking all at once ]
>> Tom: This is somebody's livelihood.
>> Jason: Exactly but it's the same type as like almost switching what you were doing that was so appealing in the first place.
>> Molly: Does eBay have an API. I mean it would be genius for a new site like Wig-Ex or something to set up an importing system where they would import all of your eBay feedback and all of your [inaudible] so that you could bring your reputation with you. Almost like a social networking [inaudible], like a portable reputation.
>> Tom: We need to follow-up on our Associated Press Guidelines. The AP said that the Drudge Retort using their "inappropriately it was going to encourage them to put out new guidelines for bloggers, bloggers got upset and said we have guidelines called fair use," well now the AP says in response to questions about the use of Associated Press content on the Drudge Retort website, the AP was able to provide additional information to the operator of the site, Rogers Cadenhead, on Thursday. That information was aimed at enabling Mr. Cadenhead to bring the contributed content on his site into conformance with the policy here earlier set for his contributors and they pretty much said, "That's it, thanks bye." Anyways moving on. What else do we have to talk about? The dialogue will continue they say but they're not putting out anything.
>> Molly: They said, "They had a constructive change in the resolution of this matter," yeah cause it's over for you guys; "illustrates that the interest of bloggers can be served while still respecting the intellectual property rights of news providers," which is kind of what the bloggers were saying all along.
>> Tom: Case closed.
>> Molly: Yeah.
>> Jason: I think AP's running with its tail between its legs here.
>> Molly: I think they totally are.
>> Jason: "Like oh we had no idea, okay, yeah, thanks, we don't want to talk about this anymore. We've settled with drug retort and now we would want to stop? And a blog with this spirit doesn't stop."
>> Molly: We just want to go away, we want to go away. I think the AP basically just had an unfortunate introduction to the blogger's sphere and then they felt the full brunt of the rage, and we're like ooh.
>> Tom: Are you using the corporate network right now?
>> Molly: Not anymore.
>> Tom: You are?
>> Molly: No I mean I'm gonna quit.
>> Tom: Well we all three are on the CNET Corporate network so one of our laptops is being snooped on.
>> Molly: That's right. One of us right now.
>> Tom: No, no, no, it's not the one in three. One in three IT staff snoops on colleagues.
>> Molly: Snap ooh. Yeah a U.S. information company's Cyber-Ark's surveyed 300 senior IT professionals, found that one third admitted to secretly snooping on employee's personal data such as salary details, personal e-mails or even Board meeting minutes; ooh, do people have Board meeting minutes? While 47% said that they had accessed information that was not relative to their role.
>> Tom: Well the Board, like your actual Board of Directors, has to have minutes I think.
>> Molly: And then snooping on those is a fairly big deal. Cyber-Ark said privileged passwords get changed far less frequently than user passwords and that's all the IT staff that they needed access to. Thirty-percent are changed every quarter, nine percent are never changed at all, meaning that IT staff who have left an organization could still gain access. That's the administrator password that they use. Like my work laptop I don't have full privileges on even though they make me feel like I do.
>> Tom: Right and there is often as there is here at CNET software installed on company computers that can get in and look at everything on your computer, but without you even know that they're doing it. It's meant for them to maintain the computer and push security patches and there's a very good reason for it, but someone could possibly use it for the wrong thing.
>> Molly: And apparently they do and that's only the people who admitted it.
>> Tom: Right exactly.
>> Molly: Hmm sketchy.
>> Tom: Caroline McCarthy has an interesting report on Webware.com about a University of Minnesota study, Charlie our cameraman, University of Minnesota alum so go gophers. It turns out that social networks like Facebook and MySpace have reputations as time-sucking procrastination tools but in fact are educating younger people in how to use technology educating them in design as they make their profile pages, and in information organization and how to lay out information.
>> Molly: Yeah it's pretty fascinating. Christine Greenhow a learning technologies researcher said that what we found that students using social networking sights are actually practicing the exact kinds of 21st Century skills that we want them to develop in order to be successful.
>> Tom: So all that wasting time on Plerk [assumed spelling], or Facebook or MySpace or Friendster, well nobody uses Friendster but all that time wasting is actually productive.
>> Molly: The study also said that as an added bonus social networks and this is great I think, social networks may be part of the reason that low income students are largely just as technologically proficient as their peers. Contradicting apparently a 2005 piece study that detailed an economic digital divide.
>> Tom: Yeah a lot of people predicted that we would have a very severe digital divide by this time but apparently it isn't as bad as it feared and social networks is part of the reason. That's pretty interesting.
>> Jason: Yeah exactly. You tie into relationships and everything and people have a further reason to get involved in it.
>> Molly: Now when they can have these types of findings about video games I think we will have arrived. According to another set of studies, well actually this is a patent filing--according to Infosys, we will have holographic mobile handsets capable of projecting, capturing and sending 3D images by 2010.
>>Tom: Infosys says they've got the devices right? And their going to have them by 2010. Okay vaporware watch begins Infosys 2010 will be here and we will want to know where our holographic handsets are. You have promised them to us. We have been promised things before. And we have been burned.
>> Molly: All Tom's pain is coming out right now.
>> Tom: Handwriting recognition, voice recognition, AI, BRML.
>> Molly: We could even have it before actually the 2010 projection is the size of the overall global 3D screen market. Its forecast to grow to 8.1 million units by 2010.
>> Tom: When I'm watching 3D movies in my handset I will then believe it.
>> Molly: But boy am I excited to get to watch a 3D movie in my handset or pictures.
>> Tom: Do you think you'll be disappointed?
>> Jason: Yes probably so.
>> Molly: It's too bag. Because we read too much Sci-Fi. They should do a study on the disappointment level of people who watch and/or read Sci-Fi extensively. Like how they actually then end up feeling about real technology, like real world technology.
>> Tom: It's gonna be first generation right? Nothing ever works well for first generation.
>> Molly: I know it's gonna be all buggy and weird. People are gonna be like...
>> Jason: That's how you can tell we're real geeks because we're already dissing a product that isn't even out yet.
>> Molly: Which is also by the way awesome. We have issues.
>> Tom: Speaking of unintended consequences which we weren't but it is the law as we know. How, okay (a) how did they not see this coming and then (b) why are they trying to crack down on Sporn? They have not surprisingly seen an uptick in the number of people who are creating porny creatures.
>> Tom: Why are they trying to crack down? Now I understand that you can share the creatures and you can put the creatures up on the web and all of that, and so that could offend someone to see some strange cow-like creature with breasts on its side or whatever. There's a hilarious picture on the MSNBC story where they've blacked out the side of [inaudible] creature...
>> Molly: Seriously? They've blacked out animated boobages that are on the side of the child; oh my child would be ...
>> Tom: If you've put these elements in the tool kit then shouldn't everybody be free to use them? And the point is once you've created your creature eventually you'll be able to put it in the game spore and it can survive or not based on how well you designed it. The problem here is there's that second part isn't there to punish people for making silly creatures?
>> Jason: So they just make it whatever they can, yeah.
>> Molly: I just think if the penis is too large for the creature to walk, there's a flaw in your design and nature will take care of it.
>> Jason: That creature will not survive and there are no consequences yet cause they can't put it in nature.
>> Molly: It's pretty hilarious Executive Producer Lucy Bradshaw said whether it's modeling clay, dolls are crayons, a small number of people can be counted on to use it for something vulgar.
>> Tom: Of course.
>> Jason: That's true too. We had to see this coming.
>> Molly: So I think it's hilarious that they're trying to crack down on it. They've made a little listing of things that people created. One created the Humpasore [assumed spelling], and then of course there's the Boobalicious was the name of the weird little cow with the boobs on the side. If all of this creature talk has got you all hot and bothered, we have some ice to cool you down. Unfortunately it's on Mars. And I'm very excited though that the Phoenix-Mars Lander has dug into the Martian soil, kicked up some material that was thought to be ice and then some of it sublimated.
>> Molly: Some of it disappeared.
>> Jason: Which means it's possibly ice or possibly salt right?
>> Molly: Cause it disappeared.
>> Tom: Which means it goes from solid to water vapor.
>> Jason: Water vapor that's right. Cool.
>> Molly: It is pretty awesome and so they have determined that in fact in must be ice. I was very excited actually the Lander twittered this yesterday. I was like, "Oh my gosh."
>> Jason: Well notice it says here that water and ice on the surface of mars is not a new discovery because the ice caps on the North Pole so we know there's ice on mars but we haven't found any.
>> Molly: Not only do they want to find it and hopefully land on top of it but they want to be able to dig some up and also look and see if any organisms are trapped in there, or if there is any evidence of biological matter.
>> Tom: Also he's not on the polar cap where you would expect to find ice which is another big deal because it's like under the ground in this area which is like a Perma Frost. So that means there may be more water on mars that you can see from observing from earth.
>> Molly: And that might have in fact indicated liquid water on Mars. I love it and I also love the anthropermerphization [phonetic] of the Lander. I like how you called him He.
>> Tom: Oh yeah.
>> Molly: And then finally, I just thought this was awesome. It came through on the things that people are blogging about today at CNET. It is HD for kids for non-toxic reviews.com. It's a coloring book for the children.
>> Tom: A free downloadable coloring book, yeah.
>> Molly: That explains and this is awesome, explains HD-TV. All the technologies, the way the resolution works. Sounds like drudgery to me.
>> Tom: All right kids. Make 1,080 dots. Drawing on lines that's 1080P.
>> Molly: But HD has a resolution that says take your crayon and draw 480 dots inside this TV. [ Everyone talking at once ]
>> Molly: Oh no take a different color crayon and draw 1,080 inside this HD TV.
>> Tom: Oh boy fun times. Keeps the kids busy for hours.
>> Molly: And then on the top of the little TV it says fun.
>> Tom: Because we told you it's fun.
>> Molly: But also I'd have to admit the educational element and I don't know why you'd want to ever give this to your child because it's boring and they're just going to want you to buy one, but it's boring. But it's good for grownups. It talks about the popular types of TV's like [inaudible]. Uh-oh this plasma TV has burn-in. Try your favor scene on the TV below. Now you can see how burn-in affects what you're watching.
>> Tom: I want to see Strong Bad go at this coloring book.
>> Molly: Oh no burn-in.
>> Tom: They've done a few cartoons on Homestar Runner.com where they have Strong Bad go in shame children's parks. This is prime material right here.
>> Molly: Oh I love the Burn a Nator burning up the countryside. Burning up the countryside. How do you hook it all up? Anyway that's pretty cute.
>> Tom: Let's move on to our voice mails. Our first one comes from a statistician who has some doubts about how Netflix is treating its data.
>> Customer: Hey Gmoto [phonetic ] I'm just calling in response to Episode 749 with the Netflix outrage, I'm a former statistician and also a programmer working in database queries, et cetera, this idea, this notion that you would want to merge all these profiles back into the main account for the purpose of making your recommendations easier, doesn't make any sense. If this is in fact why they're doing it, as Tom suggested, it's totally illogical. Here's what we want is more granularity. We want to parse out the individual's recommendations. I don't want to know what a family's renting. I want to know what the husband, the father, the wife, each individual child is renting, because they've got their own particular tastes and interests. And so if it is for the purpose of recommendation, they're really shooting themselves in the foot. What I suspect is it does take a lot of effort to do that. It's not just because they want to make their recommendations easier. They want to take those man hours and direct them towards other activities. Anyway, just my thoughts. I love the show. Keep it up.
>> Tom: He is a statistician after all?
>> Molly: Exactly. Also but that makes a really great point that we even missed yesterday when we were talking about how Netflix was moving in the opposite direction of the industry. Then the industry, the whole world is moving in the direction of more data collection and here's Netflix saying less data collection and also getting rid of all that data? It is really weird. I almost feel like it might be a mistake. Maybe the press release went out wrong. I don't know.
>> Tom: It's not a press release though. It's an e-mail. It's on Netflix.com and there's a blog posting about it on the official blog. That ain't no mistake.
>> Molly: Well I'll tell you it's a mistake, but it's not a mistake. [ Everyone talking at once in background ]
>> Jason: Did they take it away only to introduce it again later with the new fangled [inaudible] system?
>> Tom: Well they had indicated that they were going to come up with some new system, but the fact of the matter is what they're saying is we're getting rid of your data, and you're not going to have profiles anymore. So I'll tell you what I'm going to do. I'm going to return all the movies I have right now. What you can do is suspend, it's not called suspend, but put on hold. You put your account on hold so you don't lose any of your data, you don't lose any of your login, but they also don't charge you. And I'm also going to put it on hold until September 1st or until such time as they change the policy. If they don't change the policy, September 1st cancel.
>> Molly: I like it.
>> Tom: Sorry. I'm not--if somebody was like hey why are you being so angry this isn't the end of the world, I'm like I'm not angry, I don't think this is the worse thing in the world, there's obviously wars and hunger and this is irritating, but this doesn't work for me so I'm gonna leave.
>> Molly: Yeah and Tom is not reactionary so that should show you very well that for Power users of Netflix this makes the service less useable and why would you do that?
>> Jason: You have to imagine Netflix is getting hammered by people right now asking that they now do this. I mean maybe there's a possibility that they may take a look at it and go whoa maybe we shouldn't go this route.
>> Molly: Our next caller has a suggestion for how Microsoft could easily bring the hammer.
>> Hey Bus crew this is [inaudible] programmer from Sentinel, I was just thinking that everybody is getting so excited about the Firefox 3 and I have been. I downloaded it like [inaudible], but I was wondering wasn't that Firefox record of 8 million dollars be broken by Microsoft basically next Tax Tuesday? I mean whenever downloads Microsoft updates at the same time if you have an auto update so you have everybody in the world downloading your update. Isn't that the most downloaded software piece in the world? So [inaudible] Bye.
>> Jason: Yeah so didn't Firefox stipulate like you know the difference between like a software update, a security update download versus like a new release download or anything like that.
>> Molly: They said most downloads in the single--I mean they were the ones who'd ever go for the records. The point here is that all Microsoft have to do was to say like we're also are gonna go for the record on Tuesday.
>> Tom: Then Guinness has to step in and delineate. Because Firefox will complain and say well that's a pushed download, it's not user initiated. All of ours were user initiated because Firefox 2 did not force you to upgrade, then Guinness has to decide whether they're gonna do that and then there's a new pushed download...
>> Molly: And I don't think that Microsoft really cares or...
>> Tom: It's pretty thick right now already. And I prefer the ones where people are like stacking them on their arms and catching them and the largest people to ride motorcycles. Those are more fun than--these shouldn't go into the Guinness Book of World Records. These are different kinds of records. There should be some other record. A Guinness PDF. Packed edition of the Guinness PDF of World Records.
>> Molly: I think actually they should just have a PR Stunt edition. Because that's really what this is--it's a PR thing.
>> Jason: Oh completely.
>> Tom: Now that I'm thinking about it there are other technical records I would like to see but the PR Stunt has been going on.
>> Molly: Ah if you know anybody at Guinness like call them.
>> Tom: And have them send me a cake. Next voice mail comes from our dear friend Remy who has actually a suggestion about this whole Firefox talk that we've been going through lately.
>> Remy: Hey this is Remy again. I'm hearing a lot of Firefox stories lately. I think we're going to have to borrow the concept from another portion of the show and after every 3 Firefox stories in a row; we're going to have to have an opera chaser. I would have put music right there but I don't have any.
>> Molly: Next time.
>> Tom: Yeah anybody who doesn't know, for a while during the iPhone hype, we said anytime we did three Apple stories in a row we'd do a Linux chaser story which we did for a while. Someone made a jingle for us so if someone wants to make a Opera jingle for us...
>> Molly: Just re-edit low light Opera.
>> Tom: That would be the easy way to do it. I think they should have their own tune though separate from the Linux chaser, some jingle. I mean Opera has a different feel; it's not open source. [ Music ]
>> Tom: E-mails to buzzcnet.com, Aaron's son said, "Hey I found this photo that I thought was funny. A copy actually stopped a Google street map car so in the photo you see the car pulled over with the officer, it's a motorcycle officer, leaning in with the--it looks like he's got a pen out and he's writing a ticket. So I don't know if it's illegally parked or it's not street legal to pop that camera up on top of the car."
>> It does look kind of menacing. [ Everyone is talking at once ]
>> Molly: Allen, a game developer, from Austin, Texas wrote in and said, "Hey this in regards to, not games, Episode 749 about Netflix pulling the profiles support. Not just family use this feature. My wife and I have 3 queues set up--one for TV shows, one for animated shows and one for movies. We allocate different amounts of DVD's to each queue, six total across all queue's and this allows us to get a good mixture of DVD types regardless of available in the order of the DVD on the cues. Wouldn't that place pulling this feature organizing and creating DVDs will become increasingly hard and more difficult to me. I also think that they're reason for changing this is weak and not offering an alternative seems like a slap in the face to you, a user like me."
>> Tom: I don't think we need to add a whole lot more to this discussion, but it was an interesting use of cues that few other people wrote in and said they do. Now that I do that I would start doing it if I could. Dr. Karl wrote in and said he was watching CNN this morning and they reported that ABC news just settled with their employees after receiving complaints about the constant use of blackberries outside work and they got them to qualify as overtime. So Dr. Karl says maybe Natalie should start texting from her work phone and that Polish bus driver is gonna be a millionaire. Obviously the assumption is that cracktivity [assumed spelling] is work related but I do think it does bring up a valid point. Do you guys work outside of work? Because I know I do all the time and I never get paid for it. It's assumed as part of the job as far as I'm concerned I'm not 100% sure how much work these ABC news folks are actually doing after 5:00 but as a non-business professional it seems a little waa-waa to me.
>> Molly: Oh I disagree that it's Waa--well especially in a case of news where you are always--like I clicked through and the ABC staffers were union and so they are due overtime no matter what, and they had been feuding with management over whether they should get paid for the time that they spent. It was news writers and producers and those people are always on-call and they're always getting e-mails and the e-mails are always urgent. Like I got paid overtime when I was with the Associated Press. Like it's pretty common practice.
>> Tom: Yeah it's not uncommon for--you know going into that job you're going to be like a doctor. You're going to be on-call; you're going to be pulled in to do long hours. But unlike a doctor, you don't get paid a doctor's wages; you don't get paid a doctor's salary. And so it starts to feel like well I'm making $25,000 as a production assistant but I'm working 15 hour days.
>> Molly: And they give you those Blackberries so that they can reach you I mean let's be realistic you know. Apparently ABC Management disagreed to the point that they even temporarily stripped employees of the smartphones.
>> Tom: Okay fine. If you're not going to pay me for the time, then I won't take the phone.
>> Molly: And I think that raises a very interesting--because I had a little--it was short-lived, but there was one second where I carpooled with my boss and he said, "Did you see my e-mail this morning," and I was like, "No," and he said, " you need to check your e-mail at like 6 a.m.," and I said, "really?"
>> Tom: Uh-huh. Do you want to pay me for that?
>> Molly: I don't think you want to open that can of worms there buddy. Jason wrote in, not that one, and said the fact that Firefox doesn't auto update from 2.X to 3.0 is rather standard for all software paid or not. That is, I think if Firefox or any other software automatically performed a major upgrade, we would all be complaining about that especially if it broke plug-ins which is a good point. Another Firefox specific reason is for web developers. They would probably keep a copy of Firefox 2 for testing and it would be terribly annoying if every time it started it up it prompted them to upgrade to 3.
>>Tom: A lot of other people pointed out that Firefox 1 did not automatically upgrade to Firefox 2 either so.
>> Molly: I guess the only thing is that if you go and you manually check for updates, it could have maybe a different screen that says Firefox 3 is available it's a major upgrade.
>> Jason: That's kind of what I was thinking. Not that it would force you into it but that it would say would you like to? And check here to not get this notice anymore.
>> Tom: How hard is that?
>> Molly: I don't think that's so hard and it's just kind of confusing user experience. I'd be like there was a new thing but I guess I don't...
>> Jason: And they probably get more downloads of Firefox 3 out of too.
>> Molly: I mean if you're going to be a mainstream browser you need to let people know you've got a new version. They have the big download thing.
>> Tom: But you know he makes a good point that a lot of times when companies push something even if you have the option to say no, people get upset. Like "Why are you pushing this update on me?"
>> Jason: You can't please everybody.
>> Tom: D.J. wrote in and said, "If AT&T does in fact require the business date applying for exchange users, this is simply a ploy to get more money out of their customers and does not reflect higher costs to the carrier in any way. One--active sync connections to exchange are simply HTTPS connections to a web server on Port 443 like any other web server using SSL. Nothing special has to be done by the data carrier, if they claim otherwise they are just lying. Number two--because the connections are encrypted with SSL, the ISP shouldn't even be aware that a connection is to an exchange server unless they specifically go sniffing around to see what is running on the computer being connected. For AT&T to require that a user switch to a data plan because they're using an exchange, means they have been snooping around to see what is being hosted on the exchange server which would not even be on their network specifically looking for an opportunity to bump customers to a higher rate plan. Three--the push feature of exchange is done by leaving a connection open. And then he explains how Push actually takes less data than Pop 3 or IMAP which has to constantly check whereas Push just leaves a channel open and doesn't have to constantly check. He finishes up by saying the fact is that T-Mobile is allowing exchange active sync e-mail synchronization to take place on their $5.00 per month data plan for AT&T to suggest that they have to charge more for exchange is just downright deceptive.
>> Molly: Awesome. Thank you. That's great he even said it's ludicrous to imply that active sync connections use more data transfer which is one of the arguments that we got and we didn't know.
>> Tom: The point here being that it leaves the defenders of AT&T whom we have had several with only the fact that there is a reasonable expectation that you're going to use this amount of data, then you should be charged this. And if there's a reasonable explanation that you're a business user and you're going to be using more data, then you should be charged this. But I still say you just can't call that unlimited because it's not.
>> Molly: Right and it appears to be tiered pricing based on users where the actual amount of data being Pushed may not even be greater. I mean I would actually like to know given the fact that Push e-mail uses less data transfer than Pull which is what a lot of people have on their little LG/Voyager phones or whatever. You're getting POP e-mail and that's pulling, then is there really that much of a data transfer?
>> Tom: Well it could be I'm not disagreeing with you there. Because I would like to know too. It could be reasonable to think that business users still use more data just because they have more e-mail and they're out there pushing. I would like to know too though.
>> Molly: I would like to know if it's significant enough to warrant a different tier.
>> Tom: But even if it is, that doesn't change the fact that there's data to data and you know what it's not unlimited if suddenly you start to use more data you get pushed to a higher plan. I'm still not seeing it. Sorry yawl.
>> Molly: And we didn't mean to like start it all over again either. But that was a really, really good e-mail.
>> Jason: Yeah very.
>> Tom: All right that's enough for that. If you want to watch this video of if you are watching this video, cnettv.com is the place to watch more videos like this one. You can watch the Buzz Out Loud video, you can watch the Buzz Report with Molly, you can watch the CNET top five which is mildly music, and you can watch [inaudible] with Natalie Del Conte, Crave... with Brian Cooley.
>> Molly: We've got all kinds of stuff that you may not even know about.
>> Tom: Actually we've got a whole new look if you haven't looked at CNET TV in a while. Quite fancy. So go take a look.
>> Molly: You can get all of our show notes, and the full text of our e-mails and the full text of all the things we talked about today at rblog.cnet.com and that's where you'll find all our contact information as well.
>> Tom: All right we'll see you later folks. Take care. Bye. ^M00:38:59 [ Music ] ^M00:39:05
On today's Buzz Out Loud, why "your stupid face" works to get you to install malicious software, why eBay just flat out isn't for small sellers anymore, and why you shouldn't trust your IT guy...or at least not one in three of them. Also, EA releases Creature Creator, people create porny creatures, and EA attempts to crack down. Something about this picture just doesn't add up. Like, how novelty-sized bosoms can even exist on the side of a cow.
