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I listen to TWIT (This Week In Tech) regularly, mainly for Leo Laporte and any guest who isn't Dvorak. I don't find Leo to be particularly techy, but he's quite entertaining and controls the flow of the show well.

They mention Rev3 alot and also a new site called GDGT (GaDGeT) which is supposedly good - I must admit I haven't found time to check it out yet.

Okay no excuses, subsribing to an RSS feed is dead simple, so I'm going go ahead and subscribe to GDGT and check it out. - Oh and IO9 while I'm at it.

You have kids trying to "make a name" by breaking things. You have companies paying these kids to find vulnerabilities, I've heard that there is a 6-figure type bounty on certain specific vulnerabilities. At the same time you have big corporations that are taking a beating in the media because vulnerabilities are disclosed before they have time to react; you also have big corporations being told about problems (whether or not it is through proper channels remains to be seen, I don't expect that the new Windows bug is going to get fixed when you tell MS Sales about it.) You have security companies like eEye publishing every vulnerability they can find to give their company some "street cred." You have companies like Foundstone (now Symantec) pirating software to search for holes in it. There is this whole rationalization in the "hacker community" that they are some how doing the software vendors favors by finding the stuff; so just randomly postscanning hosts is really "research," huh? Dispite your lack of any publishing, education and any agreements with anybody that you're "researching" on? You have frauds like Steve Gibson saying that big corporations are putting backdoors in to code on purpose. You have opensource tools changing their license and close sourcing because of companies that are simply packaging their work can charging a lot of money for it; who can blame them? There are companies that now sell exploits and "0days." You have a whole OS "designed" around security, yet they cannot publish any of the changes they've actually made and explain why they have made them (come on guys, this would be a best seller of a book, just lists of code, this is the bug, this is why it's a bug, this is how we fixed it...) At the same time, I don't want Apple and MS pushing out patches minutes after they hear about things, I want the code QAed.

Now the lawyers are getting involved. We need to check ourselves as an industry. We are a stones throw away from developers being held responsible for damages caused by software, there are already people in favor of that. Just stop and think about that. There is no union, there is no protection for the worker here, we're held in contempt at a lot of places, because of the highly paid prima donnas jerking around writing shitty code. It will only get worse right now.

It's a sort of hot area right now, the feds are spending money. You can't be involved with software or networking and not have some kind of concern for security. This may sound old fashioned but to get a cert, whatever certs the security world wants to embrace, there should be an oath that encourages security always, encourages openess, discourages black market tactics for trading viruses and exploits, discourages this whole notion of "black magic," and discourages profiting from secrecy regarding security. I'd even go one better and add to the oath that there should be a certain and accepted public disclosure process for when a vulnerability is found in a network or application, the owner is told and then after 90 days the whole world is told, all of the time. I know of companies that have found problems in networks and then extorted money for information regarding them. That's just wrong and that should be criminal.

There are no security best practices, not in any formal sense. You can pull 100 consultants or CISSPs off the street and you'll get a 100 different sets of things you should and shouldn't do. We need to formalize the discipline. We need to encourage practices during the writing of software and constuction of networks for security.

I, for one, ditched G4 right after they killed TechTV. IMHO, Leo and Patrick and Kevin have much better and creative shows now. (Uh, minus Martin Sargent, who's a tool).

But U.S. workers have to some extent let them get away with it.

I think there is some truth to this. On This week in Tech ( http://www.thisweekintech.com/ ), the most recent Inside the Net podcast has a very interesting interview with the founder of a website by the name of 43Folders ( http://www.43folders.com/ ), where Merlin Mann discusses this very issue.

People often feel buried because they have to spend so much time tending to their "connectedness" - email, text messages, voice mail, etc - mostly because they simply don't know how to say "no". He mentions one associate who has to contend with 300 messages per day from inside the company, and suggests that allowing this to occur (as a matter of company policy) is highly counterproductive. It's an interesting podcast.

Steve Gibson gave his final word on this matter in a thisweekintech podcast interview: http://thisweekintech.com/sn23 Briefly, someone at Microsoft had the bright idea that one should be able to run code inside an image, for whatever reason. This left a backdoor, probably unintentional. Mr. Gibson regrets that his use of the term "backdoor" implied malice to some people. This was not his intention.

The best thing I've ever done for my eyes and the strain that sitting for 10+ hours a day on a computer puts on them was upgrading to a 20" LCD panel. LCD's provide more "ambient" light whereas a CRT is literally a bulb directed into your eyes for all that time. Leo Laporte and the TWiTs all recommended doing the same on one of their previous shows.

My eyes don't get sore after a long day of working anymore. The best part is, I don't lose concentration or get headaches like I used to.

Leo Laporte and Steve Gibson also interviewed him yesterday in their very professional sounding security podcast.

http://thisweekintech.com/sn21

There is a case to be made, I think, that if certain ports were disabled for home users a serious dent could be made in this P2P population -- not to mention the great deal of bandwidth freed up for more serious Internet activity.

O RLY?

"In fact, some Bittorrent clients are pick alternate ports at random during startup to help avoid ISP filtering.

I would recommend a high port range, like 59052-59059, and also be sure you have those ports forwarded if you own a router. I've done this with Azureus, ABC, and Bitcomet and could leech and seed fine."

link

• Digital Life TV
• Digg/Diggnation
• This Week in Tech
• Inside the Net
• Security Now!

• Digital Life TV
• Digg/Diggnation
• This Week in Tech
• Inside the Net
• Security Now!

Since Kevin Rose left, there was no "Tech" in their Tech TV. That part is gone from G4's name. It's G4 Videogame TV now, which really sucks. Before, Leo Leporte and Kevin Rose would take apart stuff, reverse engineer and the like. I think thats why Kevin left and is helping out Leo here http://www.thisweekintech.com/ I wonder if G4 was getting cease and desist letters from M$ about xbox modz...

Leo Laporte mentioned recently on the excellent podcast TWIT (This Week In Tech) in extended discussion with his old chronies from when TechTV's ScreenSavers was in its hayday (in otherwords before G4 TV bought it, moved it from the Bay area, replaced everyone who wasn't telegenic with pretty faces staring stiff and stupid into the camera - in short made it suck donkey ass) observed that Blizzzard's World of Warcraft redered one "Only _marginally_ functional as an adult"

A fact to which my level 31 Mage can readily attest. Apparently Leo has a level *blah* Paladin in that game.

Also, of note in that same podcast it was mentioned that there are "Latin American sweatshops" where US citizens pay those less of the less fortunate nations to spend the hours on end it takes to "level up" their character so that when they log in "voila"! They can stomp around the land of Azeroth as a Level 60 fill in the blank. Now, I may be an addict, but where the hell is the fun in that? Also, as in other games is the amazing fact that people are selling characters, equipment and "gold" for umtpeen _hundreds_ to a _thousand_ or more real US 'Mercian DOLLARS!

The Cyberworld never ceases to shock and amaze...

If you visit This Week in Tech, Episode 22 you will hear from 7:30 on that he holds an ipod in his hands for the first time in his life

He wasn't writing. He's been saying the same thing on TWIT for a long time now.

Asking if the showbiz is biased towards showbiz is like asking, if the fat kid is biased towards candy.

I think John C. Dvorak has an inherent anti-showbiz attitude that I give him great credit for. If you visit This Week in Tech, Episode 22 you will hear from 7:30 on that he holds an ipod in his hands for the first time in his life and he says it's pretty cool. This is the effect this product has on many people and mostly people connect to this positive experience.
On another point - media is expected to cover events of interest to the general populace. As Apple tends to implement certain changes earlier in their finished, shipping consumer product (USB, WIFi, iTMS, ZeroConf, mac-mini-formfactor, Quad processors come to mind) they do provide a nice outlet of new and upcoming tech trends in consumer tech land. So while there may be a correlation between showbiz-loving cutting-edge consumers and their reports on a showbiz-cutting-edge consumertech corporation I do not think it is necessarily a causality.

I watch and recommend some great IPTV shows:

- This Week in Tech
- Digital Life TV
- Systm

These are all hosted by former TechTV hosts.

Security Now podcast.

Nearly 50% of the blogs in existence are not interesting for an overwhelming majority of people is what i read from this. Thats not to say that all the non-personal blogs aren't just as bad. As Leo Laporte talked about on TWiT this week, Blogging is quickly becoming a serious problem with Google, and all the other search engines. Search just about any news topic, and you might find yourself with a blog talking about it, the source of material from said blog is another blog, and the chain will continue until you get to one of a few websites. I think that Google might be going in the right direction with their blog search, if they can use it to eliminate all blogging sites from searches which do not wish to return results from blogs. This must happen for search engines to be as easy and timeless as they have been in the past unless the novelty of blogging wears off, but who knows when that will happen.

http://www.thisweekintech.com/

Also be sure to check out Leo Laporte's podcast he does with Patrick Norton, Kevin Rose, Steve Gibson, Roger Chang, and John C. Dvorak, called "This Week in Tech". It can be had at http://www.thisweekintech.com/

George C.

IF you want to hear these guys (Leo, Patrick, Kevin Rose), then check out http://www.thisweekintech.com/

In addition to Call for Help, he also hosts the This Week in Tech podcast. And he does a radio show on KFI about computers, which you can also download as a podcast one week after it airs. And he just started doing a security podcast with Steve Gibson (of www.grc.com fame). Wow. I just realized that I know a little too much about Leo!

I know you joke, but This Week in Tech will be doing a live broadcast sometime in the near future. TWiT is a conglomeration of old ZDNet / TechTV folks that discuss the latest technology news. I personally think that the production is one of the most professionally done by a group of "hobbyists" (I say "hobbyists" because the podcast is not a production of some company, but most of the people in the podcast have professional video/sound production experience). Having said that, the content gets a bit dull sometimes. They will start off with an interesting subject but sometimes end up in back-and-forth banter. Still, most of it is pretty interesting, even if it mirrors the front page of Slashdot on occasion. They are currently up around their 18th podcast (headed by Leo Laporte), and have plans to meet in a SF Bay area pub/tavern/restaurant to do future tapings. As well, they will be doing their live podcast eventually.

You have to weed thru them to find the good ones. Try http://itconversations.com/ and also http://www.thisweekintech.com/

I just went to twit tv and followed the twit blogs link and Behold! John C. Dvorak is a twit!

Now that the screensavers are off the air I use bittorrent to listen to Twit (This week in tech).

http://www.thisweekintech.com/

Comes out once a week and downloads in a flash.

If you prefer to hear his opinions (though I don't know why you would :) rather than read them, Dvorak also discusses this with Leo Laporte in an interview / phone conversation in episode 8 of the This Week in Tech podcast. Leo seems to have a different take on this than Dvorak.

Fans of the old TechTV show "The ScreenSavers" might want to check out Leo Laporte's podcasts. He makes his radio show available. He has also gotten together with some people from the old show and they do a podcast called This Week in Tech.

http://www.leoville.com/
http://thisweekintech.com/

also see Dan Huard's take on TechTV:
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/01/01/172523 0&tid=129

They've already gotten together as of recently to do the podcast, "This Week in Tech." http://thisweekintech.com/

Previously featured on Slashdot, I think. It's basically the old Screen Savers crowd. Very good stuff.

Fans of the old TechTv show "The ScreenSavers" might want to check out Leo Laporte's podcasts. He makes his radio show available. He has also gotten together with some people from the old show and they do a podcast called This Week in Tech.

http://www.leoville.com/
http://thisweekintech.com/

BS
It's not about iPods, and it's not a fad.
How else would the screensavers be reunited, and be able to freely express their opinions?
How else would you listen to an opinionated summary of last week's gadget news?

If a podcast aggregator doesn't show you the potential of the technology (think TV broadcasts), you have no imagination.