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Buzz Out Loud 820: Stupid cloud

Richard Stallman says anyone who puts their data in the cloud is stupid. Cooley thinks he's right about some things, but finds other parts of his statement stupid. Find out which is which. We also get into a discussion of why exactly the House of Representatives' Web site went down. Cooley doesn't buy any of it. Actually Brian's pretty cranky today. You'll enjoy it. Listen now: Download today's podcast EPISODE 820

Stallman rejects cloud computing http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20080930-why-stallman-is-wrong-when-he-calls-cloud-computing-stupid.html http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2008/sep/29/cloud.computing.richard.stallman… Read more

House Web site overwhelmed by e-mails

This post was updated at 11:55 a.m. PDT with a graphic and more details.

The Web site for the House of Representatives has been overwhelmed this week by a deluge of visitors trying to e-mail their congressmen and download the financial bailout bill the House rejected Monday.

The site on Monday saw three to four times its normal traffic, according to Jeff Ventura, a spokesman for the House chief administrative officer. The traffic has slowed down the site and made it inaccessible to some, a problem that continued into Tuesday morning.

"It's extraordinary--the highest level of … Read more

Yahoo's Zimbra e-mail program exposes passwords

Passwords used to access Yahoo mail through the Zimbra client are sent over the Internet in clear text, a Canadian programmer says.

Holden Karau stumbled upon this problem while participating in the Yahoo University Hack Day at the University of Waterloo last week.

"The Yahoo imap server's used by the Yahoo Desktop don't support SSL and the password was being transmitted in plain text," Karau wrote in a blog post on Friday.

"What does this mean for you? If you use Zimbra to access your Yahoo mail, you almost certainly need to change your password … Read more

Zimbra's ubiquity play with ISPs

Zimbra just closed a deal with XMission, Utah's largest Internet service provider. As part of the deal, XMission will be moving customers who host e-mail with XMission to Zimbra.

It's not necessarily a huge deal, not like Comcast's decision to use Zimbra was. Even so, I like the deal because it demonstrates Zimbra's continued focus on ubiquity.

Zimbra's per-user pricing with ISPs isn't high. But that's the point. Zimbra has always focused on making it affordable for ISPs to seriously upgrade their e-mail offerings with its Web-based Microsoft Exchange replacement. Adoption first, and … Read more

No indictment in Palin hacking case

A grand jury in Chattanooga, Tenn., investigating who hacked Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin's Yahoo e-mail ended its meeting on Tuesday without indicting a Tennessee lawmaker's son.

Speculation on the Internet has centered on 20-year-old David Kernell, a University of Tennessee student.

On the Internet forum 4Chan.org, where the e-mail break-in was first announced, posts attributed to someone named "Rubico" more or less described how the Yahoo account had been compromised using the password recovery feature. The e-mail address used for Rubico has been linked to Kernell.

Kernell's father, Democratic Tennessee state representative … Read more

Is Palin's hacker a Tennessee college student?

There are mixed reports on Friday whether or not the son of a Tennessee state representative has been contacted by the FBI or Secret Service in connection with Sarah Palin's hacked Yahoo Mail account.

The father, Democratic Rep. Mike Kernell has told Knoxville News Sentinel and The Tennessean that despite a lot of online chatter, no formal contact has been made.

The person who gained access to Palin's e-mail account did so by guessing details of her life, then changed the e-mail password to "popcorn."

Using the online nickname Rubico, someone posted details of the hack … Read more

The 404 187: Where we're tickling the Bonch

We finally get our hands on the much coveted Bonch aka Bonnie Cha, Senior Editor for CNET.com. No, we don't grill her on the latest cell phones at CTIA or the proper way to make a Superman cape. Instead, we try to guess Sarah Palin's e-mail password, run through a list of Jeff's mancrushes, do the Cha Cha on the air, and take a visit to the Sex Museum, aka Wilson's cellar.

Wow, did someone open up a tank of nitrous oxide in here? Today's show is literally 40 minutes of constant laughter, and we owe that to our special guest, Bonnie Cha! She's a Senior Editor of mobile phones at CNET and one of the first people I ever met at the San Francisco office. Please don't be operating heavy machinery while listening to today's show! We do taint, tarnish, and otherwise frack up Bonnie's "innocence" by explaining the science behind "Supermanning that ho," which goes over surprisingly well with her. We also debut a service called Cha Cha that allows you to text or call a 24/7 concierge service that will literally answer any inquiry, such as "Is the 404 going to be taken off the air tomorrow?" or "Why is Bonnie's nickname The Bonch?" Of course, all of these questions can be answered using another service; here in 2008 we call it Google. Furthermore,why would I use the Cha Cha when I know Wilson will always be within arm's length of a computer? The man is physically tethered to the Internet. Finally, we take a look at the NBC fall lineup and Bonnie asks the question that's on all of our minds: Jeff, how can you like Sex and the City and still urinate standing up?

EPISODE 187 Download today's podcast … Read more

Peek e-mail device for sale now at $99

It was supposed to start selling at Target stores on Monday, but Peek decided to get things started a little early. The e-mail-only device, called the Peek, appeared Thursday on the start-up's Web site.

And it looks like it was a smart idea. Silicon Alley Insider notes that two of the three colors already appear to be sold out. (That would be black cherry, and aqua blue, though boring old gray, er, "charcoal gray," looks like it's still in stock.)

We've already gone over what we think the limitations of the Peek are (see CNET … Read more

Obama sex video? Hardly. It's spyware spreading via e-mail

Don't believe everything you read on the Internet: Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama isn't a terrorist...or a porn star.

A malicious spam e-mail is spreading that claims to have a link to a sex video of Obama but is instead spyware that steals sensitive data from the computer, security firm Sophos warned on Wednesday.

The subject line says "Obama sex video!!!" and the e-mail appears to come from "infonews@obama.com, Graham Cluley, senior technology consultant at Sophos, says on his blog.

Clicking on the link downloads an executable file that plays an amateur … Read more