Dong's advice to Vietnamese coming to America? Keep your names people! Let us Americans deal with all that tonal stuff.
Then Dong nerds out over the range and throughput of the Belkin N+ Wireless Router. I think I hear wedding bells.
After that, we discuss the big news of the week. You can probably guess what that is. You've been warned.
To subscribe to this podcast, visit us at our main page and click the link on the right. Don't forget to leave us a voice mail at 1-800-947-6399 or e-mail us at insidecnetlabs@cnet.com.
Listen now: Download today's podcast
News.com Poll
If you're like some of us here at Crave, you've spent the last few weeks (if not the last few months) frantically tracking every last nuance of the presidential race on television, the Internet, the radio, and Tarot cards.
Now that the big election has been decided, how will you fill all the free time that you'd habitually come to spend pondering the fate of the swing states? Vote in our poll, and if we missed anything, be sure to let us know in our Talkback section.
Washington University engineering student Lee Cordova (left) looks on as his punching bots, posing as the vice presidential candidates, fight it out.
(Credit: Karren Knowlton)Joe Biden and Sarah Palin weren't the only ones duking it out on Washington University's campus last week. So were two punching robots created by engineering students at the school and appropriately marked for the occasion with photos of the VP candidates affixed to their steel heads.
The bots, which are made of machine parts, did battle on the main courtyard of the St. Louis campus for about six hours Thursday as the candidates prepped for the much-anticipated faceoff inside. Not to be left out, the presidential candidates got a swing, too, with John McCain and Barack Obama's mugs getting swapped in and attached to the heads with magnets for matches of their own.
Students took turns manning the red and blue robots, whose arms operate via pulleys attached to straps. Two cables connect to a control bar, which can be pointed back and forth to make the bot move right and left. A good punch to the opponent's chest causes its spring-loaded head to fall off, which nets the aggressor a point.
... Read moreMicrosoft wants Xbox 360 owners to get up off their couches, put down the controllers, shut off Halo 3, and vote in this November's election.
Redmond's video game console division has partnered with activist organization Rock the Vote as a way to get more young people to register to vote. Promotions will start hitting its Xbox Live online service starting on August 25, the first day of the Democratic National Convention. Xbox Live owners will be able to register to vote as well as participate in presidential polls and opinion surveys.
Microsoft will be promoting the Rock the Vote partnership at both the Democratic and Republican conventions. It'll also be lobbying to make the parties aware of parental controls and safety on the console, presumably as a way to get anti-video-game advocates off its back.
"Xbox is a natural partner to help us reach out to youth voters," Heather Smith, executive director of Rock the Vote, said in a statement Thursday. "To realize our goal of registering 2 million young Americans by this fall, we need to go where young Americans are, and there's no doubt in our minds that many are on Xbox 360 and Xbox Live." Rock the Vote has also turned to News Corp.-owned social network MySpace, encouraging bands with a presence on the site to get their fans to register to vote.
Microsoft touted the Xbox as an influential platform for reaching the youth-voter demographic, citing a stat about Xbox Live's 12 million members: if it were a state, it would be the seventh most populous in the country.
(Credit:
Comedy Central)
Shortly after the nascent Stephen Colbert '08 presidential campaign filed to run on the Democratic ballot in South Carolina's primary, the state party voted on Thursday to kick the colorful comedian out of the race. According to the Associated Press, party officials met for approximately 40 minutes and then voted 13-3 to remove Colbert from the ballot.
Meanwhile, many members of the "1,000,000 Strong for Stephen T Colbert" group on Facebook, which currently hovers around 1,300,000 in membership, refuse to give up.
"I think it's stupid that they are trying to put a stop to his campaign because they believe it is just a ploy to further his comedy routine," one infuriated member of the Colbert Nation wrote on the message board for the "1,000,000 Strong" group. "From what I have seen he is probably the most realistic person running right now."
"You know what?" another asked. "If Arnold Schwarzenegger can be governor of California, then Stephen Colbert can certainly be president. What's wrong with these people?"
Others started posting telephone numbers for the state Democratic Party's office and began linking to offshoot groups to promote a Colbert write-in campaign.
Colbert, who hosts the Comedy Central program The Colbert Report, announced last month that he planned to run for president--but only in South Carolina as a "favorite son."
On a related note, Thursday was a sad day for purveyors of the green screen challenge everywhere: in addition to Colbert's rejection from the Democratic primary, indie-rock band and onetime Colbert foe The Decemberists canceled the remainder of their North American tour.
Stephen Colbert
(Credit: Comedy Central)Update at 7:19 a.m. PDT: Facebook comment added.
Stephen Colbert should consider naming Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg as his running mate* in his quasi-legitimate presidential campaign; the social-networking site has been the political satirist's prime rallying grounds.
Sometime on Thursday night, a Facebook fan group for Colbert's campaign met its membership goal of 1 million Facebook members--and the group was founded just over a week ago.
The group, "1,000,000 Strong for Stephen T Colbert" (the "T" stands for Tyrone, for the record) was started by a Facebook user shortly after The Colbert Report host announced that he was going to enter the presidential primary in his home state of South Carolina as a "favorite son." It's a take-off on the "1,000,000 Strong for Barack Obama" Facebook group, which has yet to crack 400,000 members after nine months. The equivalent Colbert group took just over a week to hit a million.
"Colbert-Zuckerberg '08" does have a nice ring to it.
Several blogs have asserted that this is the fastest-growing group in Facebook's history. I find that very easy to believe, but there is no official confirmation: Facebook says it neither tabulates how fast groups grow nor offers a central list of the biggest groups on the site. (Facebook execs presumably have other things on their mind, like this whole "Microsoft thing.")
On the more serious side of things, the light-hearted enthusiasm over Colbert's "presidential campaign" could be a sign that young American voters are getting sick of Election 2008's career politicians have already been plastered all over the media. The really scary part: there's still over a year to go in this race.
Meanwhile, Editor and Publisher reports that not only will the mayor of Columbia, S.C., declare this coming Sunday "Stephen Colbert Day" when the "favorite son" comes for a visit, but that polling firm Rasmussen has actually bothered to include Colbert in a telephone survey that pitted him against Democratic front-runner Hillary Rodham Clinton and Republican hopeful Rudy Giuliani.
Nation, these are frightening times we live in.
*Yes, yes, I know that it probably breaks election law for the 23-year-old Zuckerberg to appear on a campaign ticket, and I also know that he's probably too busy taking over the world to bother with politics.
- prev
- 1
- next
