Buzz Out Loud 755: Issues of men and womthem Video
Buzz Out Loud 755: Issues of men and womthem Video Transcript
[Music]
>> It's Friday, June twenty seventh, 2008.
>> I'm Molly Wood.
>> I'm Tom Merritt.
>> I'm Jason Howell.
>> Welcome to Buzz Out Loud, CNET's podcast of indeterminant length. It is episode seven fifty-five.
>> Goodbye, Bill Gates.
>> Goodbye, Bill Gates.
>> Sayonara, hardly knew you.
>> Don't let the door hit you in the butt or whatever. Good luck with the philanthropy.
>> And the part-time working thing.
>> Have a good time saving the world. Yeah.
>> Please cure things for us. Thanks. Bye.
>> Today is the day. This is Bill Gates' last official day as a full-time SFTE.
>> Yeah.
>> At Microsoft.
>> He's going part-time.
>> He's going part-time now.
>> So what, yeah, he is gonna go part, like, he's still gonna be there.
>> Yeah.
>> He's still gonna have an office, right?
>> Probably gonna check in on Monday, in fact, right?
>> Well, you know, they were talking about it in PR like he was gonna hand the keys over to Steve Ballmer to his office.
>> Uh-huh.
>> And I thought, Dude, no he's not. Like, don't you Ballmer already has a pretty nice office?
>> Yeah.
>> And Gates is not giving up his office.
>> Unless they're, you know how office politics are sometimes, unless there was some, like.
>> It's a window.
>> We really should have Steve take that as a symbolic blahdy-blahdy-blahdy-blah.
>> I know. I totally wonder. I was really curious, like, if there really was gonna be a little key handover. Anyway, News.com has a little, kind of, package but I like that they had some tech luminaries saying goodbye to him and it was as representative of their weird personalities. Like, Scott McNeilly, the Chairman of Sun Microsoft Systems, someone asked him if he would miss Bill Gates and he said, I don't get paid to have feelings. But I wonder if he'll miss me.
>> So, Bill?
>> Are they crazy?
>> Yeah. That's very Scott McNeilly, actually.
>> Yeah, it totally was. It was hilarious. And then, Mark Cuban told a funny story about he was at Comdex in the 80s and he was dancing at one of the many events with a couple of girls who were clearly out of my league. All of a sudden, one of their friends came over to us and tells me that they're leaving to go to a party with some guy named Bill Gates cause he was worth, like, sixty million. True story.
>> You know, I once saw, I've only got one real Bill Gates story. I was at a PC magazine party, and now, I can't remember if it CES or Comdex.
>> Yeah.
>> It might have been one of the last Comdexes. And Bill Gates was out on the dance floor, dancing.
>> Really.
>> And Patrick Norton from Tekzilla who was with Tech TV at the time was out on the dance floor dancing and bumped into one of Bill's security guards.
>> And then got his butt kicked.
>> Patrick Norton's not a very small man.
>> Yeah.
>> And he went, oh, I'm gonna go dance the other way now.
>> Wow.
>> Yeah.
>> That's hilarious. I don't have too many, I don't really have much of a Bill story except that when I was living in Seattle, working for AP, and I was not yet working in the Tech World, there were a lot of, and this is why that philanthropy thing is extra interesting to me. We were doing stories then about he was really anti-philanthropy, like, he was kind of one of the CEOs who didn't give a lot of money to charity and, at the time, had this belief that you shouldn't, your kids should not inherit money. And so, we did all these stories about how he wasn't gonna will his children anything. I think that was even before he was married, like, it was a hypothetical then. So, I have always thought that it was kind of, like, interesting and funny, but also, pretty great that he came around.
>> He had a turn around.
>> To what could not be a more opposite view which is reportedly all thanks to Melinda.
>> Yeah.
>> I think it's great. Anyway, see you later, Bill.
>> I thought you could contribute to the Bill story.
>> We're gonna miss you.
>> Just because you're under a DA for all those times you guys hung out.
>> Yeah, well, you know that's security guard you were talking about?
>> Right.
>> That was a tall man.
>> He's a little beefier this year.
>> Now, we know.
>> He's about that same height.
>> Yeah.
>> So, Sony's gonna be bringing movie downloads, finally, al a Xbox 360. And like Xbox 360, they won't have all of the sources, in fact, apparently they don't have any sources other than, probably, Sony.
>> Yeah.
>> Right.
>> I would imagine they probably have Sony.
>> Probably. Yeah.
>> Although, with the way Sony works sometimes, maybe not.
>> I want to see some more information because internal Sony companies sometimes go head to head. They might not even have a Sony deal, I don't know.
>> You never know. Well, Variety is reporting that Sony Pictures is on board.
>> Okay, yeah.
>> For obvious reasons. But, you know, yesterday, we kind of passed on this cause we were like, whatever. They finally announced that they're doing their movie download service and that it's coming out this summer. But then, it got a little interesting today with this Variety report that they have, so far, failed to tie up any movie content deals despite announcing the newly announced PlayStation Network video download service which is definitely coming this summer.
>> Part of that problem might come from them wanting to take the content from the PS3 and move it over to the portable system as well, like, [inaudible].
>> Oh, you mean [inaudible].
>> Yeah, that might be it. Part of the problem may also be with their, like, on Sony and we got pictures, and so, you got to, like, let us have it really cheap.
>> [Inaudible].
>> They probably think they have all the good movies, yeah. No one care. But, yeah, Variety does note that, just like you said, if they are looking to do more than what Xbox live is doing, it could be a very complicated deal, and then, it might mean that they'd launch this with limited offerings.
>> True. Another story you found today, Molly, Info World reporting that eight in ten businesses are now using Macs. So 80% penetration, huh?
>> Yeah, definitely. I think these businesses are going, they're all match ups now.
>> Yeah. Crazy, huh?
>> Or, this is used Macs.
>> Yeah.
>> Maybe that means one Mac, at least.
>> It probably means, like, a Mac. No, actually, it was a survey of over seven hundred senior IT administrators and C level executives. And they said that two years ago.
>> Does that mean [inaudible] aren't actually in a submarine?
>> I kind of love that phrase, sea level. Yeah, it's hilarious.
>> Below sea level.
>> Yeah. They're the ones who get altitude sickness pretty bad so they got to leave them at sea level.
>> They're not [inaudible] submarines. They're right there on the shore.
>> Any who, they said it was double the number that said they have users running Mac OS10 two years ago. The number of actual users, though, is apparently also significant. A number of business said they have fifty or a hundred or even several thousand Macs deployed, presumably, as their graphics department [inaudible].
>> What is actually a last hyped up number here but more telling, I think, is 21% of firms surveyed reported they'd deployed more than fifty Macs.
>> Yeah. That's pretty noticeable, yeah. And they said that's, you know.
>> That's still only 21%, though, I mean, let's not get crazy.
>> Right.
>> Well, and what's interesting, too, is why they're doing it, because a big reason that they're saying is the whole virtualization aspect, that Macs gonna virtualize Windows as well as the [inaudible].
>> That's what our boss is doing.
>> That's what our boss is doing, yeah.
>> That's what you've been doing.
>> Well, I'm not even, I'm really almost.
>> You stopped though.
>> Well, use [inaudible] using OS 10 at this point. But I use virtualization for a couple of things.
>> Is it accustom to Boot Camp programs?
>> But Larkin, our executive producer, uses a Mac and he virtualizes Outlook.
>> Mm-hmm.
>> The reason I'm not virtualizing Outlook is because I'm still running Windows off the Boot Camp partition.
>> Right.
>> And I haven't decided whether I want to convert that to a full virtual machine.
>> Oh. And then you'd be in trouble with Boot Camp.
>> Well, and the reason is, you have to start up and shut down every time when you run virtualization off Boot Camp. When you're virtualizing it from a file instead of off of Boot Camp.
>> Yeah.
>> You can actually do a snapshot and just stop a program right where it is.
>> Oh, really?
>> And close it down and, like, save all the settings out.
>> Oh, like, freeze it.
>> You can't do that with Boot Camp. You have to shut down the virtual machine.
>> But, yeah, it is interesting that basically they're finding these machines more palatable now that they can run Windows and things.
>> Yeah, they want the improved hardware.
>> Yep.
>> For running these.
>> You got to realize that that was part of why Apple introduced Boot Camp in the first place. It was for exactly that kind of enterprise penetration that they hadn't been able to get.
>> So Google does want to enter your television room, your home theater room, your living room. Google is sneaking into your life with their new PC to TV streaming software.
>> As if they weren't already with archiving your DNA and the health records and what not. No, now they are actually, yeah, they're releasing Google Media Server, Windows only software, that works in conjunction with Google's Desktop Search application, Google Desktop, to locate various media and store it on your PC and make it available for streaming over a home network to any universal plug and play compatible or DLNA certified device such as a PlayStation 3. Does this include your TV? Or is it only be, like, through to a console or through a console?
>> Well, it has to have something connected to your TV. So, I think the idea is you have something connected to your TV like an Xbox 360 or a media center PC, perhaps.
>> Mm-hmm.
>> Or a PS3.
>> Oh, right. Okay.
>> And then, you're on your laptop with something and you're like, oh, I want to stream it to the television, then you'd stream it. The best examples are consoles.
>> Right.
>> Where you have, like, an Xbox 360 hooked up and you're like, oh, but I've got this video on my laptop. Well, hey, I'll just stream it.
>> Right.
>> Though, I mean, there's media center extension works that way. So I think why they use PS3 is an example here is, well, you can already do that if you have Windows through media center.
>> Yeah, I was just gonna say, like, they already do that.
>> So if you have a PS3, you could do it through this. You could use the Google media server. However, one thing Xbox 360 won't do through the media center extension, I don't think, at least, not without something like T-versity [assumed spelling] or something else, is stream YouTube videos.
>> Right.
>> So that explains why Google is getting into this otherwise strange business for them is it's a way to deliver YouTube content. They already transferred all the YouTube content to HG 64 for the Apple TV.
>> Right.
>> So they might as well do something with it, I guess.
>> Yeah, because we, I have to admit that I first read this today and thought, like, really? Google? Why Google? But that made a lot more sense to upper, and since we know that they are in search of some better revenue models for YouTube, that might, I don't know exactly what that could open up for them but it certainly is another way to go because there is speculation.
>> Opens up the foot print, as they tell it in the business. There's more people, potentially, anyway.
>> Potentially more people, yeah.
>> Also, Picassette [assumed spelling] you could store your photos in Picassette and stream those. So it's another slideshow.
>> Yeah, true. It makes the Google Desktop thing handy, too, that you could, I would not use this, no.
>> Yeah, I wouldn't either.
>> No.
>> I mean, there's so many ways now to do, I just don't understand. It doesn't seem like we're in search of this.
>> I mean, it's PC only, too.
>> Well, there's that.
>> And it's PC only.
>> We're a Mac house. I mean, it would be [inaudible] to open that up just for [inaudible].
>> It's virtualized.
>> It's virtualized, what you'll probably do.
>> All you got to do is.
>> Oh, wait, let me correct this. We're an old Mac house.
>> And?
>> Too old.
>> Oh, I see.
>> I don't even know if this would work in virtualization in mine. But then, my thing is, like, I, you know, yeah, I'm a little crazy but I have a computer hooked up to my television simply so that I don't have to sit there and open up the laptop, open up the Xbox 360.
>> Yeah. I know.
>> You know, it seems like it's just easier to have a box that'll just do it with a remote control.
>> And I guess I'm not really dying for a solution to let me watch YouTube videos on my TV.
>> No, I'm not.
>> Like, they don't look that good and the few occasions when we have people over and we all want to watch them, we just hang around the laptop like it's [inaudible], you know.
>> And all but the pirating content is gone from YouTube now.
>> I don't know what you're talking about.
>> I mean, those Prince videos.
>> Yeah.
>> That, from radio, the cover.
>> And it's kind of clunky to watch, I mean, I don't know, we have managed to use the media center and keyboard and mouse to, like, load up Hulu [assumed spelling] and watch Hulu over the TV, like, it's not that hard. I don't know.
>> I'm gonna open my brain for the next story. I'm unconvinced that Microsoft buying the semantic search engine, Powerset, is such a great idea for them.
>> The purchase price is rumored to be slightly more than one hundred million dollars which isn't too much. Wow. We just hear a bunch of cop cars.
>> I don't know if people can actually hear that coming over the mic.
>> Yeah, I don't think you guys can hear it but it was enough that it gave me pause.
>> Start over if you can do that.
>> Well, see, Molly's got a record so that kind of thing sets her.
>> The cheese.
>> I got to go.
>> Hit the deck.
>> It's the fuzz. Run.
>> Now, wait a minute, Molly's still.
>> Anyway, anyway, the news is that Microsoft has, in fact, purchased, apparently, Silicon Valley Semantic search engine, Powerset, which we talked about a couple of weeks ago. So then, I guess the question becomes, does this give them a leg up in semantic search? Or reveal the fact that they're shamefully behind?
>> It does seem to imply that they needed to buy the semantic search, that they didn't really have much going on or they weren't confident in what they did have going on.
>> Yeah. Google had generally dismissed Powerset semantic or natural language approach as being only marginally interesting, even though Google has apparently, itself, hired some semantic specialists to work on that approach in limited fashion, basically like making sure it doesn't secretly, isn't secretly awesome, I guess.
>> Google seems to be taking a slow approach of, like, we'll do some semantic stuff here and there but we're not gonna jump in it with both feet.
>> Yeah.
>> And do we need to at this point.
>> And do we need to.
>> Just like we talked about in the past, like, you can do semantic type search query and pull up pretty reasonable results in Google all ready.
>> Yeah, you all sent us a lot of examples of that so, I don't know. Well, and yeah, I mean, I think we're gonna speculate that this is where Microsoft is seeing a chance to get an edge, basically, get a quality edge because they'll have an opportunity for growth and this will put them ahead. I mean, if there were something more compelling about the technology that we have been, so far, missing, certainly it could give Microsoft a leg up.
>> Well, I guess that's it. It's a good long term bet for them. A hundred million dollars, actually, the more you think about it, is really pocket change for them.
>> It's not very much money.
>> And so, if they suddenly have at least a hyped leader in the space that turns into a leader in the space, then, boom, they're ahead of the game.
>> Yeah.
>> And especially when Google is showing that they're not excited to jump into it.
>> They're not interested.
>> So it's probably a good bet.
>> It's a good bet. I think this is a good purchase for Microsoft. Well done, Ballmer.
>> Bust a Bill Gates.
>> Well done under your first announcement with Bill out of the building. Yeah, totally.
>> Facebook has forced you to pick a gender when you sign up, not because they have any axe to grind about who you are but they just can't stop trying to figure out how to say himself herself in all their scripts.
>> It's another language.
>> Cause of all of them, so.
>> So instead of themselves, they've decided to just say, look, pick a side.
>> You can opt out. They say that they've received push back in the past from groups that find the male female distinction too limiting. And the post explains on Facebook blogs that they have a lot of respect for these communities which is why it will still be possible to remove gender entirely from your account. Or if you just don't people to know that you're, like, a girl on Facebook.
>> So then what happens to the grammar rules?
>> Then, I guess, you still have.
>> You go back to the themselves.
>> You go back to the awkward themselves thing.
>> Yeah, but they have to deal with it less.
>> Did you know that that used to be the standard, like, in Shakespearean?
>> Themselves?
>> The old Shakespearean stuff, the them as the pronoun, the gender, non-specific pronoun.
>> Gender neutral.
>> Was perfectly acceptable as usage. But then, it was the male ruling class.
>> The Victorian era.
>> The Victorian era, right?
>> Blew that for us, didn't they?
>> Yeah. And that they wanted he to be the standard.
>> Mm-hmm.
>> Them was fine until the men got in the way.
>> I figure it used to be called themstory, too, and then, in the Victorian types, it became history. Oh, boy.
>> We used to be called womthem.
>> Womthem.
>> Womthem.
>> Back then.
>> Back then, it was womthem.
>> [Inaudible] hilarious story that North Carolina is going to offer to replace ten thousand license plates. What is on these license plates that would make North Carolina feel that they would have to replace them?
>> Members of the older generation have discovered that these ten thousand license plates contain the potentially offensive three letter combination, WTF.
>> Oh, and people are so against World Trade that they don't want the World Trade Federation's initials on their license plates?
>> How bad could it be?
>> We really ought to become axzenaphobic [assumed spelling].
>> As reported on Winston Salem's television station, WXII, the MVB was alerted to the problem by an irate sixty year old technology teacher who had been clued in to WTFs meaning by her grandchildren.
>> And for anyone watching the video version of today's podcast, we apologize, you know.
>> We apologize if we've offended you in any way.
>> If we've offended you by showing WTF. Now we have to apologize to anyone in the audio audience for saying WTF.
>> For saying WTF.
>> Which, of course, stands for what the frac.
>> The frac.
>> That'll start something.
>> Slash That points out that the article doesn't include any information on how you could actually apply for a WTF license place. But if you are, indeed, offended to discover that you have this potentially offensive acronym on your license plate, you can go to the Department of Motor Vehicles and you can tell them that you are offended by your own license plate and they'll give you a new one.
>> So now, in the day of, like, texting and IM speak and everything.
>> The most awesome thing ever
>> Will this continue to happen more and more as, like, these acronyms start to.
>> We were talking the other day about how urban dictionary makes pretty much anything you say out of context offensive.
>> Right.
>> So, pretty much, any collection of letters is going to offend somebody with it.
>> Also, if it doesn't mean that to you, really, then it offends you?
>> But suddenly it does as soon as you learned it.
>> Yeah, like the fact that you learned it means you'll never be able to look at your license?
>> Yeah, it probably does. Yeah, don't you think?
>> I mean, it's hilarious but.
>> And you're so, kind of, weirdly repressed that every time you look at it, you're just like.
>> It's that effect of learning a new word, and then, you see it everywhere.
>> Right.
>> It's that same thing. Like, this person learned WTF, and suddenly, they see it everywhere.
>> And they're like, ah.
>> Of course, it's like, they can't stop thinking it in their head.
>> That's awesome. That's outstanding. So anyway, now you know. If you're offended, I'm not trying to make fun of you. You might be legitimately offended.
>> Well, you know, these DMVs have these extensive policies on what they can't allow and they try to keep up on offensive words, they might, North Carolina might ban WTF.
>> I'm kind of surprised.
>> For license plates now.
>> Yeah. I know. I'm kind of surprised that's not the way it went or somebody might.
>> Yeah.
>> Somebody probably will.
>> And gadget reporting that a new e-book concept actually mimics a book.
>> What?
>> What?
>> And makes it easier to read your e-book.
>> Nuh-uh.
>> It took researchers at Maryland and Berkley Universities to develop this one, a dual faced modular e-book reader that allows readers to fan pages, to advance in a book, or be a track ball.
>> Yeah.
>> You hold it in your hands like a book. It's got a screen on the left side, screen on the right side, and then, you can flip the track ball in the middle to turn a page.
>> Yeah.
>> Or I think you can even go like this.
>> Like this.
>> Yeah, you can.
>> That would be silly. Come on, you don't do that in a book. I know you can but, I'm just like, I wouldn't do that. I would just flip it. I wouldn't close the thing every time I wanted to change a page.
>> No. There are times when you're holding it just so that you do that, though, you close it and get that page, and then, open it back up.
>> I never do that, I guess.
>> Yeah, some people do.
>> Okay. You're right.
>> Anyway.
>> Some people do. But wouldn't this be harder than a real book?
>> Yeah, I know.
>> Cause it's heavier.
>> I think flipping the track ball is way better, but, I also think, like, how has no one thought of an e-book display that has two screens, one on each side.
>> I thought of it. But, I mean, I didn't do anything about it. But I thought, wouldn't it be cool if it was more like that? I'm sure everyone has thought of that at one point.
>> Yeah.
>> Like, wouldn't it be?
>> Yeah.
>> That's hilarious. Big news from the Mars lander project, the Phoenix Mars lander mission on the planet soil has found that the planet soil is much more alkaline than expected, meaning, it appears to contain sufficient nutrients to support life or, at least, according to NASA scientists, asparagus.
>> Oh, intergalactic asparagus.
>> So, asparagus farmers, you need to set up a tariff now to stop the cheap Martian alfalfa and asparagus from invading our shores.
>> Scientists said that, at first, the soil seems very friendly. There is nothing about it that is toxic.
>> Any more.
>> Well, you know, the Martians have destroyed themselves millions of years ago. So the radioactivity is all dispersed now.
>> Maybe they just left after the, you know, the ice came.
>> Yeah. Well, after they destroyed their planet in a horrible holocaust and left that face as a warning to us.
>> Right. True. We do know that.
>> Don't you remember Red Planet?
>> I forgot all about that, actually.
>> Watch your Martian movies, people. Learn from the fictional future.
>> Because some may become real.
>> Red Planet, is that the one with Val Kilmer?
>> Yeah.
>> Oh.
>> Oh, yeah, I skipped Val.
>> I have only ever seen half of that movie but I've seen half of that movie, like, fifteen times and I always come in at the exact same point in the movie.
>> See, you have got to see the half.
>> But I don't know anything about this face that you're talking about. What is this face of, anyway? Anyway, now you know life on Mars, boom, we're moving there.
>> Connect You founders, after their defeat in court to Facebook, have moved on. We have Mourned Winklevoss news, the twins.
>> Keep up with the Winklevosses.
>> Cameron and Tyler have found spots on the U.S. Olympic rowing team so you will see them in Beijing this summer.
>> Well, you can root for the Winklevosses.
>> And I will.
>> And I think I will.
>> Well, you know, it's kind of like the underdog. They've just came off a big loss. You have to cheer for them to do something.
>> That's great.
>> Do you think that will be in the touching Olympic package?
>> From the touching Olympic package, well, you see, university after their loss in court to Facebook, the Winklevosses were despondent but they didn't give up.
>> We need to pick ourselves up and just carry on.
>> they have reportedly been nicknamed the Winkle-vy.
>> The Winkle-vy- oh-man. Isn't that an Austrian love song or a lullabye?
>> I don't know.
>> Swing.
>> Oh, no. No singing.
>> Besides, I think American reporting on five three-D printers. Three-D printers are nothing new. We've actually told you before about the printer that can print itself.
>> Right.
>> Put if you want to look at them all, all at once, check out the boing boing link in our show notes. It'll take you to the scientific and American slide show.
>> These are pretty cool looking three D printers. And the one that can print itself is pretty awesome.
>> Yeah.
>> It's translucent.
>> That one.
>> It's impressive cause if you look at it, it looks very complicated, very intricate, and just to think of that actually printing a duplicate in and of itself.
>> That one's pretty, the next.
>> Over, and over, and over again.
>> I believe that replication is, in fact, one of the major milestones on the way to the singularity. I'm just saying.
>> It definitely could kill us all [inaudible].
>> That, too. And, know that you're thinking that one of the other big steps on the road to singularity is the printers that can print food. They have that, too.
>> They have that, too.
>> Granulated sugar.
>> I've actually seen this one on television now that I look at it. I've seen them do the, print all these sort of sugar designs and they're very beautiful.
>> Doesn't look that tasty. Nah.
>> But once it is using, like, algae that we get from various planets to actually make a chicken, you know, then.
>> So you send the self-replicating food processor to Mars.
>> Yeah.
>> To plant the algae in the life bearing soil.
>> Yeah.
>> And then, it starts creating the asparagus and sending it back to us.
>> And sending it back to earth.
>> Ah, delicious.
>> We don't even have to go to Mars.
>> I know, right? Just get our food there.
>> You can just get the crops from Mars.
>> You better start doing your [inaudible] bit now, asparagus farmers.
>> We didn't have to worry about growing our food here. Think how many more people we could support, you know, like over population, no longer such a problem. I'm not saying we should, like, then populate like crazy.
>> It's already too crowded already.
>> But, I'm just saying that there will be less of a population crisis.
>> We could spread out a little bit more.
>> If we didn't have to worry so much about all the land we need for agriculture.
>> Wouldn't have to worry about populating another planet.
>> We'll just fill it all up with condos. It's gonna be chorus gunt [assumed spelling]
>> No, then we'll have.
>> From Star Wars.
>> I don't even know what that means.
>> That's the hot little planet from the first three movies.
>> Then we'll be able to cordon off some of that agricultural land as open spaces.
>> Oh, yeah, that always goes well. Nobody ever wants to develop it.
>> It's true, that's the problems with the commons, no one takes care of it.
>> I hate the future.
>> All right, let's go to our voice mails.
>> You're not allowed in the singularity. You're kicked out. Tom is kicked out of the singularity.
>> I'm sorry, sir. You're not in.
>> You're not welcome here. You do not get to be part robot.
>> Let's go to the voice mail where our first caller has something to say to radio.
>> Hey, Jomoto, this is Ben from Minneapolis. The Firefox awesome bar as well as.
>> [Inaudible] sorry. Here we go.
>> Hey, bowlers, Gabriel Jordan in Raleigh, North Carolina, again. In reference to episode seven fifty-three and the RI double A calling radio stations pirates, here's my proposals for radio stations. Say, fine, yeah, we'll pay your royalty fees, you know, twenty cents per song or whatever. But, if you weren't aware, we get money for our air time as well. I work at a small radio station and we get eight dollars per minute for a commercial and eight dollars a minute is cheap. That's very cheap for radio time, trust me. So you average that out to three and a half minutes per song, that's twenty-seven, twenty-eight dollars, somewhere in there. So, yeah, we'll pay your twenty cent royalty fee. You guys at RI double A can pay us the twenty-eight dollars of air time it's worth. See how they like that turnaround.
>> I don't think it's gonna work that way.
>> Yeah, we feel, we're not sure why, but we feel pretty sure it's not gonna work out like that.
>> I think they're probably just gonna say no, you can't play it. Or we're not gonna play it.
>> Then they'll be like, no.
>> They'll call your bluff.
>> Right. It's a good idea for a bluff but it's the kind that always gets called.
>> What you do is you go get all the creative commons music off of Magnatune, and then, you just change your entire play list over to playing Magnatune songs and say, ha-ha.
>> I think that the article that we read, we read an article earlier that there was a Harvard School of Business study that found that block busters actually make you more money than the long tale idea.
>> Oh, block busters not being like Blockbuster video.
>> Yeah, yeah.
>> But like huge hits, right.
>> Huge hits. And now that I think about it, I think that article points to why the radio stations are totally over a barrel when it comes to negotiating with the RIAA and why they are gonna have to pay because getting the creative commons or the MV works that people aren't as in to and hoping for some sort of long tale response has been effectively disproven by this and other studies. Like, that they need, actually, the big hits that are, you know, Brittany Spears generated.
>> Unfortunately. Unfortunately for all of us.
>> Yeah.
>> The tradition of radio is to tighten the playlist, to play only the hits.
>> Yeah.
>> So that you don't have any chance to turn out, that if you're hearing a song, you're hearing a song you like, all the time, which is why you hear the same songs on radio all the time.
>> Right.
>> And yes, you can complain all you want about how that's horrible and you hate it, but the fact of the matter is, it has worked for radio for decades now.
>> Yeah.
>> And they don't want to change that.
>> Yeah.
>> They, you know, the whole Andy Travis idea of, like, hey, let's just let the DJs play, that never happened. Maybe at a few stations in the sixties that were trying out album oriented rock and into the early seventies, maybe in college stations it still happens and public stations.
>> But they have small audiences.
>> But commercial stations have always tightened that play list down to, like, sometimes four or five hundred songs.
>> Yeah.
>> Or less.
>> That, I mean, that right there is why, like, Everybody Loves Raymond was even on the air. There's that whole, anyway.
>> I don't love Raymond.
>> People like stupid stuff.
>> Actually, Raymond's okay by me but I don't love him.
>> Our next caller has an awesome tip for the awesome bar.
>> Hey, Jimoto, this is Ben from Minneapolis, the Firefox Awesome Bar as well as any other auto-fill drop down, if you select the crappy item that you don't want, well, down shift and hit delete, the item is gone and it won't come back up again. Thanks. Love the show.
>> Quick tip.
>> Good to know. I've got a little quick tip for everyone. I don't think I should have to do that but I think that's a pretty cool tip.
>> You just want your browser to do everything for you.
>> Well, why is it getting polluted with these weird, random things?
>> Take a little personal responsibility. Don't expect your browser to do everything.
>> Do everything, Firefox 3. No, that's good to know, actually, that's very helpful because then I can do that. Thank you. On to the e-mails, Kimberly wrote in and said, Molly, Tom, Jason, okay, business uses kill switch and turns off my cousin's phone and he misses the phone call that says they have a heart for him. Love the show, Kimberly.
>> That's not funny.
>> Wow.
>> But, wow, what a downer.
>> Yeah, wah, wah.
>> That's a good job, Microsoft. Nice patent application you got there.
>> We got lots of examples of, like, oh, what if the FBI is abusing their power and spying on you and shut off your ability to capture it on camera, police brutality.
>> Brutality.
>> But, wow, this would really, like, you can't really argue with this one.
>> Wow.
>> Dan in Houston, Texas wrote in and said, maybe it's just me but I often end up typing dot O, C, M rather than dot C, O, M when entering URLs into my browser and I can't wait until someone actually sets up the dot O, C, M top level domain name and typo squads the entire dot com domain at once. Thanks. I can't.
>> They're not gonna let them do that.
>> You know they wouldn't.
>> Actually, they should.
>> They should.
>> They should allow someone to set up the dot O, C, M domain as a redirection service.
>> Yeah.
>> That would, you know, that would be the stipulation, like, we'll let you register dot O, C, M but you have to set it up as a service that redirects dot O, C, M back to dot C, O, M.
>> How would they make money on that?
>> How would who make money off of it?
>> The O, C, M people. The people administering O, C, M.
>> Yeah, how would you?
>> And what's their motivation to do it?
>> There's a way to make money off that.
>> You can just put a little ad. You will [inaudible] in ten seconds [inaudible].
>> [Inaudible] redirected by.
>> You could make two levels of redirection, one is just saying, like, we think you meant this.
>> Right.
>> And we will redirect you in a few minutes but it the site pays, then, they get redirected directly.
>> Ah.
>> There's lots of evil ways to make money.
>> There's gonna be a lot of interesting stuff that comes out of this, for sure. And then, finally, we got a manifesto, a user manifesto from Kim. The debate between us, the users, and institutions such as the R, I, double A cell phone provider, software makers, ah, might as well as government surveillance to that list, is the struggle between freedom and control. They want us to behave a certain way but we don't. So instead of listening and adopting their product or service to how we want to use it and what value is placed on something, they enact rules and barriers. That dispute between users and such institutions on the use of technology is our generation's battlefield. Technology has exposed the fundamental differences and how we choose to live our lives, what ideas are supreme, and the tyranny we must fight. Throughout history, societies based on control do not survive the restrictions on our freedom for a hypothetical good. Put the U.S. on the path of becoming Rome. Thank you for speaking out without rage. Please urge your listeners to act. Kim, Annapolis, Maryland. Bravo, Kim.
>> Bravo.
>> Bravo.
>> Bravo.
>> No, we mock you but we also agree.
>> We don't really mock you.
>> No, we read dramatically but only because we pretty, yes, yes.
>> Well written.
>> To you we say, yes, act, listeners.
>> From the home of the Navy.
>> From the home of the Navy.
>> Annapolis, Maryland.
>> That's totally true.
>> All right, folks, as we mentioned briefly earlier in this show, there is a video version of this podcast which you are A, either watching already.
>> Yeah.
>> On CNETTV.com or perhaps on your podcast viewer, or, B, listening to and didn't know about.
>> I know.
>> I guess there's also C and D which is didn't care and can't get videos, you know.
>> Oh, downer.
>> There's no all of the above so the point of this is, video version, Buzz Out Loud, it's on CNETTV.com. Go find it.
>> Yep, on Fridays only. Special, special.
>> Special video.
>> And you can subscribe to it as a podcast at podcast.CNET.com.
>> Yeah, I think you'll enjoy my dramatic reading. [Music]
Thorny gender issues arise on Facebook, Bill Gates takes his leave, Sony announces movie downloads without any movies but their own, and anyone in North Carolina who's offended by their own, inadvertently rude "WTF" license plate can get it replaced at no cost. But we say: drive it with pride!
