YATS 20: The Government Hoax’d Mars

Play

“Or, we know the level of our readers, and no one’s going to notice.”

Hey everyone. Thanks for checking out episode 20 of Yet Another Tech Show with the technology evangelists Mat Lee, Larry Press, Mike Rothman and myself – I’m Ant Pruitt. This was a big week of nerdy, geeky and even funny tech to get into. But before we get to it, be sure to check us out on our social media sites. We enjoy our discussions with our listeners over on Twitter, Facebook, and Google+.

Now, let’s get into the show!

NASA spent $2.5 million. . .correction, NASA spent $2.5 BILLION dollars and landed a mobile science lab. The lab is a rover called Curiosity. We discuss how big this is for mankind from a technological and scientific standpoint. The idea that we can sit here at our desks and view images that were taken from a planet thousands of miles away is astonishing. This is one of the biggest, brightest and nerdtacular feats for mankind to date. Check out the Weekly Space Hangout here.

With that said, there will always be those that don’t believe in the news feed and feel it’s all staged. Sure, it was “staged.” It was staged over a few years by brilliant minds to properly land a car a gazillion miles away onto another planet! Skeptics just don’t get it. Also, making light of the news is the Twitter account Curoisity. I won’t put some of the live tweets here. You’ll have to see for yourself. Pretty funny stuff.

Who wants an electric bicycle? The government is offering a tax credit for e-bike purchases. Will this take off? It truly depends on the market location.

Remember the internet? Did you know it was invented by Xerox? Or was it invented by the government? Wall Street Journal columnist Gordon Crovitz wrote an article giving “full credit” for the invention of the Internet to the Xerox Corporation. We discuss the blatant inaccuracy of this claim. Maybe it’s a potential political plot to throw stones at the Democratic Party in an attempt to keep governing bodies out of the internet. It is election season, by the way.

Bittorrent has gotten such a bad reputation in the media when it’s just a protocol for sharing data. Bittorrent carries a bad connotation because of piracy. The Internet Archive has released 1.5 million torrents including live music concerts, the Prelinger movie collection, the librivox audiobook collection, feature films, old time radio, more than 1.2 million books, and “all new uploads from patrons who are into community collections,” according to ComputerWorld. Bittorrent is a really efficient way to transfer data.

The media outlets and certain governing bodies should really attempt to understand that not all bittorrent traffic is illegal. It’s just a protocol. Here’s a great video explaining how bittorrent works. It’s such an easy way to share files and content.

Acer tells Microsoft it may want to think about what it’s doing with the Surface tablet device. Microsoft is hell bent to produce a new tablet device to eat into Apple’s and Android’s market share. Microsoft intends to build the hardware and software in-house potentially alienating its current hardware partners. Good move? Bad move? Acer seems to be clearly against the proposal.

Thanks for checking out YATS, everyone. Be sure to connect to each of us on our social media buttons above for Google+, Twitter, and Facebook. Feel free to leave us a comment below. Also, if you donate to the show, we will mention you on the show. Similar to being an episode sponsor. Leave a note with your donation and we’ll read it on air. Please keep it clean. Thanks, YATSsquadron!