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Dec. 29, 2007 - No Agenda
56:03
10: No Agenda 010
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Well, hi, everybody.
Welcome once again.
It is the show that has no commercials, no jingles, no songs, no plot, no year-end wrap-up lists, no talent, and most of all, no agenda.
Coming to you from the Curry Manor in a chilly United Kingdom, I'm Adam Curry.
And I'm John C. Dvorak up here in the rainy Northern California.
And it's actually kind of cold here, too.
I think it's 40.
Ah, I've got the coal burning, my friend.
And it smells nice.
Yeah, no cold for us.
No.
Alright, so I hope you had a nice Christmas.
Yeah, I went up to Washington State where it was really miserable and spent the days up there and now I'm down here.
Excellent.
Well, we stayed at home and actually just got back.
It's Saturday, by the way, the 29th.
It's 8.05 p.m.
in the UK, 12.05 p.m.
in California.
And yesterday we went over to the Netherlands just to have dinner basically with my sister, both of my sisters, their significant others, and the kids.
And so we just got back and...
I'm ready to get this New Year's thing over with already.
So where did you eat?
This place called Veranda, which actually, I have a better dinner story, although this was fun, but this was kind of a place where the kids could run around.
They're like between ages 7 and 10, so we didn't go to an overly posh place.
I did, however, with Christina and Patricia and Christina's boyfriend, Dujour Jacques, we went to Clibden House.
Are you familiar with Clibden?
Oh yeah.
Okay, so we went there and we had, because Patricia and I have stayed there before, and we went to have dinner.
And I was all ready.
I was like, okay, I'm going to order a really awesome bottle of wine, because I know Patricia will be into it.
And I was sure I could, between the two of us, I could probably do a bottle of wine.
I was really going to get a good one.
And I'm looking at the, what do you call it, the wine menu?
The wine list?
It's the wine list, and I think, if I'm not mistaken, that place has one that looks like the Manhattan phone directory.
It's amazing, and I saw it, and it was 1953 La Tour.
And I'm like, yeah, I'm going to go for this, baby.
Can I guess the price?
Can I get the price?
Yeah, you can guess it, sure.
Now, I know the pound price, so your currency may differ in value.
I'll guess it in pounds.
I'll guess it in pounds.
Now, England, in the United States, I think that wine would be around...
53 Latour would be probably around $7,500.
Now, I would think that in England, because they're closer to the source and they collect those wines broadly across those kinds of restaurants, I'm thinking that wine might be priced as low as...
3,000 pounds?
Actually, there were a couple of Latours.
There were two different ones from 53, and one of them was 3,400, and one of them was 2,400.
So you were awfully close.
In fact, right in the middle.
I was right in the middle.
Yeah, right in the middle.
But needless to say, Patricia, like, I really don't feel like wine tonight.
Yeah.
And then what do you do?
It's like, I'm not going to drink a whole bottle of wine.
I would.
I know.
No problem.
I know, but it's like, give me a doggy bag and I'll take it home with me.
And I don't want to just drink it by myself.
So I didn't do it.
And I know it sounds incredibly bourgeois or...
What is the word I'm looking for?
We're talking about a 7,000...
Decadent.
Decadent.
Ah, yes, thank you.
We're talking about a $7,000 bottle of wine.
But it really was going to be my gift to myself.
And it didn't happen.
It's kind of high.
Yeah.
You could probably track that wine down on the open market for $1,000 maybe.
Really?
Wow.
Yeah.
Well, let's do that.
Fuck it.
When I come to San Francisco, let's track one down, Johnny boy.
Well, you know, if there's any idea, there probably is some.
I mean, it's possible.
I mean, the 53 has got to be fading by now, although it's probably pretty tasty.
I would, you know, if you could get a 59 or a 61, you'd probably have the same quality, a little cheaper and fresher.
It actually seemed like they had a lot of 95 wines that seemed to be very popular on the list.
95 is, you know, the wines, the Bordeaux's are 95 Bordeaux.
I'm sure people are out there rolling their eyes, but I'll tell you, you know, you might as well listen for a minute.
Now, 95 Bordeaux's right now are 12 years old, which puts them right at the moment where you should be drinking, starting to drink them in the morning.
They're still going to have their fruit.
They're going to be absolutely delicious.
That's why.
Well, I probably should have gone for one of those because they were significantly cheaper.
Oh yeah, compared to $7,000.
Now once you get past these old, old collectibles, they actually would rather just keep them in the place so they can say they have them.
They don't really want people buying them.
Although they're not going to refuse the sale, I guarantee you that.
No, and I was kind of looking forward to getting into it with the sommelier.
But anyway, for another time.
Maybe over the hill.
Of course, the news that...
That we certainly were talking about over dinner last night was Butoh's assassination in Pakistan.
Yeah.
And I'm like, wow.
Yeah, what a disaster.
I mean, is it just me or not?
Hold on a second.
They've got to switch echelon on so they can capture all this.
But this has CIA written all over it, John.
I mean, we're a month away from an election.
We've got Musharraf, who is totally our bitch because we've sent him billions of dollars.
And it's part remove all problems and part message, I think, to him.
It seems like a cookie-cutter CIA deal.
I really, that just doesn't, that actually makes no sense to me at all.
I don't see the CIA even, you know, I think they're probably freaked about it, to be honest about it.
I don't think they need that kind of accusation, because I just don't see them doing it.
I think it was either the radicals, the country's filled with maniacs.
No, I mean, who actually?
And they would love to hear this, two birds with one stone by killing her.
One, it gets rid of her.
And who they didn't like anyway, because she's not for the radicals.
And it also makes it look like Musharraf's a bad guy, so it gets rid of him and they can get this country to where they want it, which is to be a Sharia state.
Hold on one second.
Let me just back up.
First of all, Just so the listeners understand, I'm not saying there's like a CIA guy with dark glasses who's in between the masses and then all of a sudden with a scope takes this woman out.
Obviously, it was a radical thinking person of some sort and that's how it always works.
It's always either a bodyguard or someone close to the person.
Yeah, yeah, but I don't see what the benefit of her getting assassinated is to the United States.
I think it's a catalyst for the United States to go in and take control.
It does border on Iraq, conveniently.
Oh, God, we can't even take control of Iraq.
I mean, we don't need that aggravation.
No, of course we don't need it, but think about the strategy maybe behind it.
You know, it could be, oh, we'll just move some guys over here.
I mean, Pakistan has a lot to offer as well, you know.
All right, well, if we put some...
I mean, we already have some people over there, but if we...
Well, I would definitely destabilize the area, but I don't think we want that.
I mean, they have a bomb we have to be leery of.
I mean, I don't know.
It'll shake out, but I still think it was an internal project that was...
I don't think we have Zip to do with it, to be honest about it.
At least that's my thinking.
And I'm also looking at our news media, which isn't covering it very well.
At all?
Yeah, I know it's pathetic.
And let me just step back and say that, to me, it was really shocking, you know.
I've been following this woman, you know, obviously she's been on television in the UK quite a bit in the past few years because she lived here in exile.
So I've always watched her with interest, also because she's just a stunning woman to look at.
And the travesty, you know, of...
Of killing this beautiful creature, that also just struck me.
When it's like guys wearing military uniforms and shit, it doesn't hurt me.
It doesn't affect me that much.
But I was like, crap, man.
This is fucked up.
I think she knew she was going to get killed.
There was some nihilistic thing going on with her.
I mean, they tried to blow her up, what, a month ago?
Yeah, 160 people died during that.
And now there's, this was the latest news that came in, that now there's, you know, a cover-up.
Let me just bring up the story.
An Islamic militant group said Saturday it had no link to Butoh's killing, and the opposition aides accused the government of a cover-up, disputing the official account of her death.
So, you know, they're saying, well, she wasn't, you know, she hit her head, and, you know, she...
She bumped against something, and it wasn't an assassination.
This is all messed up.
That's mucked up.
It's a bad scene.
We got a comment from someone about journalism.
Our listener?
Our listener, yeah.
Our listener called in, and I guess we were talking on one of the earlier episodes about journalism and headlines and how totally lame journalism is.
Yeah.
In general?
And we do that a lot.
Yeah, so check this out.
Hey, Adam.
Dave again from Williamsport.
Wanted to touch base with you.
You can hear that, right, John?
Yeah.
Okay, good.
I heard you talking about advertising and journalists, rather.
Journalists, I guess, with John C. Dvorak on No Agenda.
And you were talking about headlines.
I thought you'd get a kick out of, I think it was The Post.
After Ike Turner died, the headline read, Ike Turner beats Tina to death.
Just kind of thought that was amusing and thought you'd like to...
Did you catch that?
Yeah, now what was that all about?
He said, you know, since we liked headlines, the headline in the New York Post was, Ike Turner beats Tina to death.
And how did they twist that into the reality of the story?
Hold on a second.
What was the story that Ike Turner died?
Yeah, I, Turner, well, I mean, aren't they, I'm not getting, there's a joke in there, but I don't get it.
Oh, beats are to, beats are to, oh, I get it.
Meanwhile, Skype is like crap, crapping out and you're coming through like, you know, barely coming through on the wireless and you're not getting this joke.
This is the lamest part of the show ever.
It is.
That's pretty bad.
I get the joke now.
Okay.
Yeah, that's very cute, actually.
It's just that I'm, you know...
Sometimes I'm not as sharp as I should be.
Now I'm actually sorry I brought it up.
Yeah, you should be.
You humiliated me.
I heard you, even though we're not doing any wrap-up lists or whatever, I just wanted to throw something out there.
There's all this talk about a lightweight Apple device that is apparently coming at the upcoming Macworld in January.
That's what they believe.
What, you know more?
Yes, I do.
And I don't know if I mentioned this to you.
It will be a lightweight device.
It will be flash-based.
It will be a tablet-like device.
But I think the most important thing is Apple apparently holds some really important patent on pen-based computing.
And did they have something called the Light Pen?
Yeah.
Do you recall a product, the Light Pen?
I vaguely remember that.
There was something called...
Yeah.
In fact, I remember...
In fact, I know the guy who...
That device has been around for a while, and I actually met the guy who invented it years ago.
What did the Light Pen do?
Somehow, if I'm not mistaken, if it's the same device I'm thinking of, you could use it on a screen...
Without having a special screen, it would read the pixels and figure out where it was and be able to do...
Yeah, that's it.
So that's the patent that they have.
Like a Wacom tablet.
Right.
They probably bought this guy's technology then, or he works for them, I'm not sure.
Well, I think it was theirs.
It was Apple's, and they patented back in the Newton days.
Although, clearly, it wasn't working on the Newton.
But...
So the word is that they're going to reintroduce this light pen or this particular technology with this new device, and that is what's supposed to be coming.
So I just wanted to throw that out there, because I haven't heard anyone mention that, and I thought that maybe I have something on the inside.
Maybe Apple can buy us and shut us down.
There you go.
That would be good.
I'm game for that.
Let me just check something, John.
Hold on one second.
I have a feeling that my...
My wife is watching YouTube videos.
Hold on.
Can you just hold on for one second?
Let me check.
So anyway, there's a very interesting story here in the U.S. that people should follow.
We have a thing on the blog called the Police State News Bulletin.
And this is the most interesting one recently.
It looks like in a park in Columbus, Ohio, the police decided to take one of their officers and strip her naked.
And they put her in the park to see what kind of perverts they could lure.
Is there a picture?
Is she hot?
It's nothing.
She looks like just a naked girl in the park.
If I'm in the Berkeley area, I mean, this is like a...
I don't know how they do it here.
But anyway, so they used to have these naked sit-ins in Berkeley.
They still do them.
It's horrible, by the way.
It's like something you don't ever want to see.
It's just a lot of naked, misshapen people, and you're just shaking your cringe.
Actually, you have the shakes for about a week after you've witnessed this.
Anyway, so...
This woman was there and some guy who happened to be a firefighter goes over there and he says, you know, he says, whoa, a naked girl in the park, this is interesting.
So he goes over and starts chatting with her.
And then she starts, you know, doing everything short of fondling, and she puts her legs on him, and she's, you know, flirting, and she tells, she, you know, says, so what do you got inside there, big boy, kind of thing, and so he excuses himself, and a bunch of cop cars drive.
And wait, was there a camera?
I mean, was this like a reality show?
Yeah, they have to think.
Yeah, no, it wasn't a reality show.
It wasn't that crazy, you know, NBC thing.
Yeah, yeah.
But it was simple.
But they do have it videoed, and it's available.
You can link to it from the original site.
And so they arrest this guy for, you know, a pervert, you know, because he's obviously a must.
You know, if you're a heterosexual male attracted to a naked girl, you're obviously a pervert.
You're a pervert.
And so they found, and he's a firefighter, which is really...
Too bad.
They found him guilty, and they couldn't do anything about the entrapment laws or anything like that.
And some people on my blog pointed out that some of the entrapment laws have actually been circumvented by new legislation that's been slipped in where it's legal to do anything.
Oh, of course.
And meanwhile...
Stories on top of a story that's even more ludicrous, which is taking the tops that patrol the subway system, are leaving objects laying around, like a wallet or an iPod.
And if somebody picks one of these things up...
Boom, you get jumped.
You get it up for whatever.
I'm not even sure what the crime is, but they figure it's a crime.
And so they've arrested over 300 citizens who just pick stuff up, even though in New York there's a law that says if you find something valuable, you have 10 days to turn it in.
They don't care.
They just arrested them anyway, because this is one way to get your numbers up.
Oh, man.
So I'm thinking now, when did the...
A lot of this you could blame on the fact that cops don't want to deal with real crimes.
I think it's either three or nine.
Maybe it's 9,000.
I actually have a number here.
John, hold on one second.
I'm going to call you back.
This is fucked up Skype.
I'll call you right back.
All right, let's see if this is better.
Well, that was new.
It was so bad, and your story sounded really good.
I can make it out, but it's fucked up.
No, this time when you called, the Skype thing came up as a transparent little box on top of the box.
Right, like a Mac thing almost, an overlay.
I've never seen that before.
Oh, no, no, it's cool.
It's when you've got Skype open that it does that on the PC. So anyway...
Right.
So basically citizens are being entrapped by the cops for crazy-ass shit.
Yeah, because it seems like the thing to do.
Of course, this poor guy now is going to be a sex crime guy forever.
I'm sure I'll be seeing him at secondary screening.
Yeah, well, you haven't had to go through that for a while.
Well, the 15th, I'm coming to New York.
I can't wait.
It's going to be fun.
Should I try and record my entry into the United States, or am I really looking for trouble?
Now you're looking for trouble, because they won't let you even take a picture.
The idea is that the only reason you'd be doing that is to give the information to the terrorists on how the system works, so you can't do anything.
So forget it.
I mean, you know, if you could get something like an accidental recording, you know, something that's pocketable.
By the way, if you like the conversations that John and I have about this stuff, then you have to.
You must stop S-1959.
You must stop this bill from passing.
This is the thought crimes bill, John.
Right.
1959.
That's a good year for that Latour, by the way.
Anyway, there's currently 9,000 unsolved murders in New York, but they're doing all this stuff with the phony baloney lost iPods.
So anyway, so I'm thinking about how this whole entrapment thing works, and I realize that there's an entrapment mentality.
That permeates the American society in such a way, and I'm not sure where it stems from if it's not from laziness, because, and I'm not even sure what caused an effect, whether it started with American football or whether American football reflects it, and let me explain.
I was talking this over with somebody the other day about how the scoring in American football has become ridiculously high.
Defenses can't do anything.
They used to be able to bump into the receiver, for example, all along the way.
They used to be called a bump and run.
In fact, most things were made illegal in football to increase the scoring.
But the more interesting thing is, and it's become a planned play, and I consider it a form of entrapment, Which is a play called pass interference.
And what these guys, the situation, especially at the end of the game, the quarterback will drop back and he'll heave the ball as far as he can at some receiver, whether the guy can catch the ball or not, it's a mystery.
But the receiver maybe stops in his tracks, or he looks like he's going to catch the ball to fake out the defender, and the defender touches him, and they throw a flag, and now it's called pass interference.
Interference, yeah.
The ball is placed.
The ball is placed at that spot, which means it's like a 50-60 yard penalty in some instances, which is ridiculous.
In college, it's only 15 yards.
And then they kick a field goal.
Well, they can get a field goer.
Sometimes they can get a touchdown.
Sometimes they can get the ball in the two-yard line.
There's a lot of possibilities here.
The fact of the matter is there are plays that are designed to elicit pass interference.
And this is, to me, a form of entrapment.
And it seemed like a good idea at the time.
And I'm sure that these cops think that this is great because, you know, they're getting would-be...
It's almost like pre-crime.
They're looking for people who haven't really done anything.
And then they figure, well, if they do this, if they go up to the naked girl...
They probably would do something.
But again, it's a victimless crime anyway, so the whole thing is a joke.
Well, it's interesting.
You see a lot of this type of behavior on the internet.
I mean, isn't that exactly what people do when they're flaming and they're calling you out on your words, on your blog post?
Isn't that almost some form of cultural behavior where we're always looking to catch someone saying something or being evil?
It just feels like there's a lot of that around.
Yeah, what's it come from, though?
I mean, has it always been like this?
Dissatisfaction is projecting your own dissatisfaction, throwing your own baggage at someone else's way.
I mean, I think that's pretty human.
What cops engaging in it?
To such an extreme where they're doing these crazy...
These aren't even interesting stings.
I mean, getting some guy to say hello to a naked girl is not the same as, like, busting somebody for a big drug deal.
Okay, follow my logic for a second.
Follow my logic.
So, the normal Joe on the internet who, you know, will get pissed off, and it's everybody, okay?
You get pissed off at something somebody wrote, or you disagree, or there's a nuance in language, what do you mean by the word is?
You know, that kind of stuff.
And you start flaming, and you start posting.
And you do it because you're frustrated about many other things in real life that have nothing to do with the topic.
You know, people are just frustrated, because I think people in general are pretty frustrated about their lives.
Now...
I believe the cops are frustrated.
There's probably a lot of shit going on there that we know nothing about.
By the way, here comes Mr.
Conspiracy.
There's a lot of talk about the cops and the New York City Fire Department.
And since we're talking about New York City, they really know a lot more about 9-11.
And obviously these guys have a code and a cone of silence.
And probably no one will crack on it.
But, you know, keeping stuff inside like that, there's a lot.
That's shit that hasn't been dealt with, man.
There's a lot going on there.
So maybe they're just frustrated and they start doing stupid shit like everyone else does when they're trolling the Internet and talking stupid shit.
Well, maybe.
V. V.
I'll take that.
A John C. Dvorak maybe, yes.
Finally, a theory he just maybe, by and large, might buy into.
And talking about by and large, so I did some research.
And let me go get my little sheet of paper.
Hang on a second.
Can you put this on pause for one second?
Yeah, yeah, yeah, no problem.
I'd love to.
This is interesting.
We can just record a show like this during the week and just record little bits and then put it on pause and put it all together.
Note to self.
Not a bad idea.
You were listening?
Oh, okay.
I'm recording.
I heard you.
Okay.
Oh, cool.
Okay.
So, okay.
I got the by and large thing.
So, I decided to start looking it up.
And one of the things that you can do, and somebody knows, you know, with the definition.
In fact, they'll see if I can find that.
The definition, the nautical definition, which is, you know, talking about how it's a ship term.
And by, you know, it's when you have the wind.
What the fuck are you talking about?
We're talking about by and large.
It's a nautical term.
It's a sailing term.
Oh, okay.
And by means you're going against the wind.
You have to go by the wind.
You have to go back and forth using the wind.
The other one is large.
When you're sailing large, the wind's right behind you.
You throw the big sheets up, and you just suck it all in and go as fast as you can in one direction.
Okay, so basically it's in both cases, by and large.
Right, both cases, which is kind of where it stems from.
But anyway, so I've tracked...
So I decided to go...
Microsoft has one of the best sets of public domain books.
While Google's been scanning books and getting a lot of bad publicity for it, Microsoft's been doing the same thing because we all know that whatever Google does, Microsoft does.
Boing!
Because...
Yeah, where's the rim shot?
Anyway...
I'll blog this with credit to the guy who sent me the original email.
I just don't have them in front of me right now.
But he sent me a definition, which I'll put in there.
So I said, well, let me look into the old books that Microsoft has scanned from many of these books from the University of California and UCLA libraries, which are enormous collections.
And so I was able to track the word usage back to as far as...
The furthest back I got, for one, it was used a lot, by and large, it was used a lot in the 1918, 1915 era.
A lot.
I mean, they just keep cropping up all over the place.
But I traced it back to...
First, I got a good one in an 1890 book, which was a glossary of...
And on page 95 it says, by and large is a term meaning kind of, you know, like you said, this and that, you know, in most cases, in all cases, and that kind of thing.
But the kicker was by this guy, December 20th, 1890 entry, he says the term was used among rustic people.
So I thought it was amusing.
Rustic?
Yeah, rustic.
It means, you know, idiots.
Oh, okay.
Anyone who uses that.
Right, okay.
They're an idiot.
Perfect.
They're an idiot.
But anyway, I took it back, and the furthest I could find usage of the word was in a book called Iowa and the Rebellion, and it was used by the author of that book in 1866.
And he said, by and large.
And then I thought I found an 1847 reference, but the date was actually mismanaged by Microsoft.
It was actually January 1926, so that didn't count.
But anyway, so I've gotten it as far back as 1866, so it's probably impossible to figure out who popularized it, because I think it's lost the history.
But we should clearly stop using that term.
Well, unless you want to consider yourself rustic.
Anyway, so this is as far as I've gotten.
All right, well, the quest continues.
It still annoys me.
Yeah.
Maybe it'll trigger some guys who have even better resources.
You know, I've got to tell you that...
Get the Skype guys on the phone.
It sucks ass.
Yeah.
You know, sometimes it's the time we're talking.
No, you're really cutting in and out.
I mean, when you hear it, you'll be like, oh, shit, man.
I mean, you can follow the conversation, but at times it's pretty fucking bad.
And I'm just thinking, why don't we set this up so we just do it on the fucking phone?
I think the phone doesn't have a clarity.
Well, so there's two things.
First, the idea of, you know, basically, because the way the show is published, it auto-assembles, you know, and you get episode after episode, so there's nothing against us doing a phone call or not, doing a five-minute conversation about something.
If it were really easy, right?
If I just had something and I called you, or, you know, even we said, yeah, I'll call you tomorrow at noon or whatever.
And it would just kind of happen.
You know, we'd just call in and then, boom, the show is released.
That's one thought.
And then the other one is just the technology.
This just sucks.
This is no fun.
This is unreliable shit.
You know, it's funny because you're sounding great.
Well, it's either, you know, as we were discussing just before we hit record, I'm on...
I'm on British Telecom, and you're on Comcast.
And whenever we first establish the connection, every single week it's the same thing.
It's like it gets better within a minute or two.
And I'm thinking, is this the bandwidth shaping, the packet prioritization that's going on?
Oh, this is not BitTorrent.
Oh, maybe it is BitTorrent.
Let's cut it for a second.
It literally sounds like that sometimes.
Well, let me see.
You know, I might have a background test because you sound good, but if I sound bad, maybe it's my fault.
No, but it's not just you sounding bad.
You can hear the bandwidth just being shut off.
It's a bandwidth thing.
You know, years of fucking voice over IP has taught me that this is what it sounds like.
And I know because if I go to your site, and maybe it's my incoming bandwidth.
If I go to your site while you're talking and it's loading pictures, then all of a sudden it starts to crunch.
So, I'm clearly not getting enough bits from you, and whether it's my end or your end, it's probably on my end.
Fuckers.
Did I lose you?
No, you sound good.
You sound good.
Well, then you should be recording on your end.
Well, you know, that's a thought.
Duh!
Anyway, what if we had a mobile setup, something that was really convenient?
I mean, would that be a format to try and do something every day?
I'm really trying to look at some fun project for 2008, because clearly you and I don't have enough to do.
Yeah.
Well, it's always good to sit and bullshit on the phone once in a while.
Yeah.
Yeah, you know, how would that work?
You know, the thing is, of course, a daily show is where the money is.
Oh, I'm sorry.
Yeah, that's where the money is, baby.
Well, I mean, the Daily Show is where the money is at some point.
Well, there was another thought I had.
Okay, bear with me on this, because this is shit I've been thinking about a lot over the past couple days.
So, I truly believe that in the not-too-distant future, maybe five years, let's just make it easy on ourselves, in five years there will be enough ubiquitous bandwidth around and streaming capabilities that essentially will just have digital radios.
I mean, it's what DAB already is.
But it'll be two-way.
And so you'll be able to stream.
Certainly you can do that today over your mobile phone.
The price may vary depending on your plan and where you live and all that shit.
But bar the subways, I've done iChats with KJ, with Chris Jacob, while he was on the train coming down from upstate New York.
So we can get a stream out there.
What if we had a stream...
That is essentially 24 hours a day, and we just keep adding to it.
Right?
So, if you drop in, you'll hear the conversation, then eventually you'll get up to a point that you've already heard, and then you're up to date.
And when you check in again...
Ah, fuck.
I don't know if it would work.
Something like that.
Well, I think what you're describing is some sort of an audio Twitter...
Which actually exists, but I wanted...
It does?
Yeah, Dave Weiner put something together where you literally, you call in...
To a phone number, and you leave a message.
It's limited.
They've limited it to, I don't know, one minute or something like that to keep within the scope of Twitter or whatever.
And then people who follow you receive a URL, and you can also...
I think where that broke down is Twitter doesn't do enclosures in their RSS feeds or something like that.
But there are...
It's certainly possible to set this up.
The idea of this thing that you're describing that Dave Weiner did is that somebody, you call this number and say, yeah, I'm standing here on the corner of 4th and 7th and I can't figure out which way to walk because the next street is 5th and the other one is 6th, but if I go to 6th and 5th, it's like, what kind of street number are they doing here?
Yeah, and Scoble, you rock, dude!
You gotta put that in there.
If you're on Twitter, you gotta say, Scoble, dude, you rock.
Anyway, so yeah, then you hang up, and then your Twitter then publishes a URL, Twittergram or something like that.
I don't know.
I'd have to look into it.
But yeah, so...
You know, as you mentioned, you just brought something up that needs to be discussed, which is...
Oh, shit.
I just...
Well, no, I'm just saying.
Can you hear me?
Yeah, I can hear you.
So, I'm just saying that...
You just mentioned something about the limiting.
You don't want to do 150 characters on Twitter, 150 words.
I don't even remember.
But is it because it was done by the guy who invented blogging?
Did he come to the conclusion that this is like reinventing blogging without all the boring BS? You have to either make a short comment or nothing.
Yeah, I think so.
Because most blog entries, some of these bloggers, they can't stop writing.
Yeah, well, but Twitter is just as annoying.
From time to time, I'll try it.
But it's just like chat.
It's like IRC. It's like a million things I've tried and it's not for me.
I just don't care.
And I don't care to consume the media that way.
I really don't.
I want it packaged.
I want it fed to me.
I'm tired of raw data that I have to assemble in my brain.
Does that make any sense?
Yeah, no, I feel the same way as you, but that's because we're getting old.
Well, exactly.
So there's a huge market of old people, and that's where the money is, John.
A daily show that's packaged for these fuckers.
That's put together in an easy fucking way, where you listen to a fucking stream of something.
If you want to go get the podcast and have it downloaded, sure, we'll make that all work.
But there's got to be something, because I was thinking, look, in radio...
I got a lot of feedback on this show, and people, you know, about the length of it.
We're 35 minutes now.
And my sister said...
I think we should have a drinking game, but the game is when you use the word fuck, because it's pretty funny.
I'm sorry.
No, it's okay.
I don't care.
I'm just saying, though, but it'd make a great drinking game.
Okay, well, so you can use this show as a drinking game, is what you're saying.
Yeah, absolutely.
A good show is a drinking game.
Yeah.
I think we already have that.
I think I saw that somewhere.
Anyway, so like my sister said to me last night, she says, you know, I really like Noah Jen.
It's a great show.
And I'm always quite honestly surprised.
I'm like, okay.
But an hour is tough for me.
And I'm thinking to myself, there are lots of shows.
All the shows you listen to, John, like Rush Limbaugh, and I used to listen to Howard Stern religiously.
And I think it's because it's...
It starts and it ends and you have the whole show that unlike radio where people don't realize it, but they really do switch stations every 15 minutes.
I mean, that's just the way the radio audience works.
You hit commercials, boom, you're somewhere else.
And then maybe you stick around, maybe you drop off, but on average, 15 minutes.
Now I'm getting it.
Now I'm getting it.
This is like the Ike beats Tina to death thing.
It took me a while.
So, yeah, no, I'm getting it.
What you're suggesting is that it's a virtualized show that just is a never-ending stream.
It's not an hour show or a 45-minute show.
It's just a long stretch from the beginning of the system.
Since we did the first episode, streaming all the way to the last episode, and when people subscribe or go to listen to it, they kind of pick up at a point somewhere in the middle of it.
Yeah, because it shouldn't be that important.
I think we can accomplish a lot more.
Eventually, the way it should work is eventually you'll get the story.
And it's a matter of there's some technical things there, some programming things that would have to be thought through, because...
So it'd have to be like a blog entry, though, so you'd have to do these snippets, because this is the architecture that's the problem here.
You'd have a snippet, so this last thing that we talked about would be the first thing they'd listen to, and then it would go backwards in time with snippets that in reverse date order.
Yeah.
Which would kind of not make a lot of sense because I'd be explaining the buy and large thing.
Luckily, with our pod show channels, we can determine the order of said virtual show.
So we can still do blog-like snippets, but the output of our RSS, if you will, or however we make it show up for you, we can determine the order.
So we could actually experiment with this without getting fucking engineering involved, is my point.
Yeah, well, good luck with that.
Now, here's what I see as the issue.
I think this is a great idea, by the way, is that there's a complication here, which is, for example, we'll go back to the by-and-large rant.
We have to, to make this work right, we'd have to actually document what we're talking about in some logical way that can then be indexed.
Sounds like work.
There you have it.
There you go.
Sounds like work.
Well, clearly that's a non-starter, so we have to think this through a little bit more.
So how about the audience?
Can we get your guys Bubba like that involved?
I don't know about Bubba because he seems to be at his wit's end already, but I'm thinking this.
By the way, I'm not trying to poach your guys, John.
I'm just saying.
I don't know.
Bubba would probably do it.
But actually, there's another guy that probably would do it for sure.
But I don't want them doing it.
I think because what you brought up was the fact that we like to package stuff because we're getting old.
And the kids, they like to do all the stuff themselves, is to get a team of volunteer kids, you know, by our standards, kids, anyone under 48.
And have them mash up shows.
Exactly.
I think there'd be more than a few volunteers for that.
Interesting.
Well, it certainly could be done.
I mean, so if we were able to...
It's a participation.
It would be like participation broadcasting.
That's the term we'll call it.
And participation broadcasting, if nobody uses it, we'll use it.
Because it's like you're actually doing the editing out there.
You really like that name?
Participating?
Nah, I don't like the name.
I don't like the name.
Really?
You don't like the name?
No.
We've got to have a good name, man.
Well, find a good name.
Whatever the case is, I think you can get an audience to do that.
And then you'd have a variety of shows.
You'd have just the by and large rants.
Every time we mention by and large and have somebody edit it all together so it's a nice package and people can listen to it when they feel like it.
And you'd have an infinite number of things that you could do with the raw feed of the whole thing.
Interesting.
Hmm.
Well, I'm just mulling it over.
Again, my main objective is at all cost to avoid any type of work.
Yeah.
No, absolutely.
Just nothing but BS, you know?
Just sit here yakking away at what we think.
But with some experience.
We have some knowledge.
Yeah, we have a knowledge base.
We're the elders.
We're elders, and elders don't have to do work.
We're not supposed to really do work.
That's right.
We're my fucking virgins, man.
We're just a couple of guys.
We've been around the block.
We've seen a lot of stuff.
Our analysis is pretty original.
And that's what people want to hear anyway.
Oh man, my Ron Paul endorsement video was on the news in Holland.
They did a news segment.
You're kidding.
No, they did.
I'm trying to get a copy of it.
I can't wait.
But it was like on an Entertainment Tonight news.
It's called Heart of Holland.
It's hard to find it alone, but Heart of Holland is the name of the show.
And it kind of seamlessly moves over into an Entertainment Tonight-like segment.
Adam Curry is endorsing a Republican candidate.
I have no idea what the nuances were, but...
I'll get it.
It'll be interesting.
Hey, those of you living in the UK, if you didn't know already, we got a couple of airline strikes coming up.
In fact, it's affecting my travel.
I'm leaving a day earlier to miss a couple of different strikes that are taking place.
The firefighter security and maintenance workers are planning two 24-hour walkouts and a 48-hour strike in January.
And this will be somewhere around the 17th.
Virgin Airlines, by the way, going on strike on the 14th.
The cabin staff are paid less by about 35% than other comparable airlines, and they want more money.
Very interesting to me as a huge investor in the fucking airline.
Yeah.
Yeah, I'll have a drink.
So, that's it?
That's all the strikes?
That's it?
That's kind of wimpy.
Well, no, I got more.
I just wanted to make sure I got it in there.
No, I did have two other things.
One...
Is there a website that people can go to that shows all the strikes?
That would be a cool idea.
Strike site?
Hmm.
I'm sure there is.
I'll look at that.
Yeah.
By the way, not that we should really get into it, but David Letterman, I guess he cut a deal with the Writers Guild and he's starting up his show again?
Yeah.
Yeah, I think on the 4th, the 2nd, the 3rd, something, next week.
How the hell does that work?
I mean, that seems lame.
I don't know how it works.
I have no idea.
But he did.
And I think Leno's got some sort of a deal cooking, too.
I mean, Letterman was paying everybody while they were on strike.
Yeah, but he was just paying them like a gentleman and not hogging the camera like Leno.
That went a bit far.
I felt.
What did Leno do?
I don't know.
Leno.
It was Leno.
Yeah, I know.
He's not as good.
I got a couple things.
Here's one I just got to put in here.
So I'm getting a lot of email.
And by the way, thank you very much, people, who heard our plea to not hold back from sending us stuff because you're pretty sure a million people already sent it to us.
I think I've increased by 10%, John.
How about you?
I haven't gotten anything.
Really?
Oh, I've gotten a lot of, hey, I know a million people have already sent this to you, but here's another one.
So a lot of people sending this video of Ron Paul, apparently somewhere he was asked about evolution.
Oh, yeah, this thing has been around.
You know, I was going to blog it, and the whole thing just seems like it was an offhanded thing.
It didn't seem that important.
But, yeah, I don't know.
What's the big bruha about this?
It's like, who fucking cares?
I really don't care.
Well here, let me give you something that you should know.
Thank you.
My son, my son who's at Evergreen College, He says that it's his generation that are the big Ron Paul supporters.
Yeah, I would agree.
I hope so.
The Y generation between the ages of 18 and 27, maybe.
Whatever that demo is.
But anyway, he says that he thinks Ron Paul is a big phony.
Really?
And he's got a lot of friends that feel the same way.
And a dangerous crackpot.
Hey, whip that kid of yours into shape, Dvorak.
What's up with that?
I don't know.
That's what he says.
My wife, who's a Republican who hates Bush, she's like a lifelong Republican who hates Bush.
Well, she didn't hate Bush when she was a kid, but she's a lifelong Republican who now hates Bush, to put it in the right English.
Anyway, she hates Ron Paul, too.
Really?
Yeah.
I mean, really, hate's a big word, man.
I mean, that's more than just, like, doesn't like him, wouldn't vote for him.
Hate is pretty strong.
Yeah, well, I think that's probably an accurate analysis.
Do you want to give me any insight into that?
I can't figure it out myself.
I ask him, well, it's because he's crazy.
He's a crackpot.
He's dangerous.
He's a Nazi.
He's this, he's that.
I mean, there's no real specific thing that anyone says.
They just think he's a big phony.
Speaking of Bush, the man loves Bush.
He's delivered over 4,000 children.
I mean, you just can't be an asshole when you're in that line of business.
I've met lots of obstetricians.
Nice people, by and large.
I'm just telling you.
Well, that's correct.
I like the guy.
If I see him on the ballot, I'm voting for him.
All right.
Right on.
But who the hell knows?
That is interesting.
Anyway, I agree with you.
I was like, I don't care.
I don't care.
I've heard him say, my belief in my religion is my burden.
I'm like, yeah, right on.
That sounds right to me.
That's your fucking problem, not mine.
I don't want to hire the guy for that.
I don't care.
Well, the other thing is, of course, he's got the right attitude about other things.
I'm still sticking with my original theory of two years ago, which is that it's going to be McCain on the tape.
I have been paying attention to him because you've said that.
And this, of course, would only be because it's already a done deal inside, you know, insider knowledge.
It's all been squared away.
They've fixed it.
However they fix it, it's going to be McCain.
And I have to say...
And I'm going to turn the lady Patricia loose on him.
I want her opinion because she's pretty good.
If you have a chance, listen to the last Daily Source Code.
Patricia did the show with me.
And the way she talks about Bush, she's like, I won't even tell you, but you just got to listen because she's very analytical.
I think you're right.
I think it may be...
He is so fucking overconfident.
He is so laid back.
You can look at his eyes, man.
Just look at his eyes.
He's almost like, fuck, man, I've got this.
It's in the pocket.
Yeah, no, there's that element.
Now, getting back to my wife who doesn't like Ron Paul, she thinks she's actually, if anyone's going off the deep end, and I think there's a lot of people that think like her, she believes, and of course I used to blog this, and I think I'm going to bring it back to the blog, she thinks that they're going to do some sort of a scam thing that's going to happen on the next 9-11 because supposedly Osama bin Laden said to expect a big announcement.
And Bush is going to declare martial law and keep himself in the office forever.
Right.
I've heard this.
Yeah, I've heard this.
I've heard this, too.
And this is like, give me a break.
This is like crazy.
This is like during the Nixon administration.
There used to be this conspiracy writer named Mark Lane.
And Mark Lane wrote all these crazy books about how, you know, essentially Nixon was responsible for the Kennedy assassination.
Anyway, he said that Nixon had this huge scheme afoot.
And he said it with a straight face.
A huge scheme afoot to get himself to be pronounced as emperor.
And I've heard this one, too.
I've heard this one, too.
Yeah, a whole bunch of people bought into that.
And I'm thinking, jeez, come on.
Well, I'll tell you what it is, John.
Here's my analysis of that.
The past six months, maybe the past year, maybe this was 2007 was the year of my awakening.
And, of course, it literally has to do with age.
My brain is starting to function a little differently.
But, you know, I'm a media guy, and I'm a...
I know how television works.
I've been a part of the machine.
It's a flickering fucking box, okay?
It's a light box, and people are tuned into this thing.
They're jacked in so deeply.
I see how it affects very rational people, how they really believe things.
And this is carried over to the Internet.
And so, you know, I watch all of these loose change, 9-11, you know, every single I watch them.
But I can I can see all the pieces to it and I can take away and I can analyze that and still keep some sanity.
But, you know, other people, my wife, for sure, for shizzle, I'm sure your wife and your son, they don't have that capability.
They have not been able to switch that off, so that's why they get sucked very deeply into these types of stories, which online, I must say, are beautifully supported.
You know, it's cross-linked, cross-referenced.
You know, the network's beautifully when you're looking around for this stuff, and people forget that it's just people writing shit.
Yeah.
So what's your point?
So my point is, the reason that your wife and son hate Ron Paul, the reason why they think that all of this third-term martial law stuff...
My son, by the way, he's not in that camp.
Okay.
But regardless, it's because when they jack into any form of media device with their brains just reading shit, clicking on shit, it's what television has conditioned them to believe shit.
They can't think for themselves.
They can't think straight.
This is my point.
They're jacked into the matrix.
They can't think straight.
They can't think straight.
Well, yeah.
Most people seem to be that they can't think straight.
And people do get sucked into this media stuff.
I've never met your wife.
I've spoken to her on the phone.
I'm sure I'm going to love her when I finally meet her.
But I think she's jacked in.
She's still jacked in, man.
She's not unplugged totally.
So she can't really see that stuff.
She comes up with weird stuff.
My wife is exactly the same.
Can't see it for the humor that it is.
Exactly.
Exactly.
We see it as humorous, because it is funny.
Even though the public can go mad, and a riot can ensue, and a mob can break out, and you could be hung by a tree nearby, thanks to this stuff.
Let's do an experiment.
Let's do a really easy experiment, okay?
Because you can see exactly how this works.
Let's please, this is going to be our last topic, because this will take ten minutes.
The news comes out.
Baron Hilton.
Paris Hilton's granddaddy.
The guy, you know, he's got the Hilton ranch.
You know, this is where Fawcett flew off from and never came back.
This guy is a fucking legend.
You know, he's multi-billionaire.
Somehow in the press, and I haven't really done the homework yet, I'm hoping you'll do some of that, John, for our test.
There's a story that he is going, this is what I've heard, that he has announced that 97% of the Hilton Empire is going to be donated to charity.
And what happened within minutes of this story coming out is that the journalists have now calculated the so-called wealth of the Barren Empire.
The math is all off as well, by the way, but I know what they're trying to do.
So it's like, you know, $1.7 billion or whatever.
They're saying, okay, so that 3% of the $1.7 billion, and they look at how many grandkids there are, and then they look at Paris, and they say, well, she's probably going to only wind up with like $3 to $5 million.
So all of a sudden, it's like, now there's this...
And we went to Holland, and already the news was, you know, translated there, but a derivative of the story...
So, you know, now Paris was, you know, was...
She was almost out of business.
She's over.
She's done with Paris.
She's now already making appearances saying, I'm a brand.
You watch this girl crash and burn.
Because of the society of the spectacle.
It's totally based on shit.
It means nothing.
Who knows if she was ever going to receive any money anyway.
Her business to this day has been running quite well as Paris Hilton the brand.
But watch this tarnish her and watch it go down in flames.
And that explains exactly what happens with The Matrix.
Our brains are fucked up.
And we can pull someone down, too, at the same time.
It'll make us feel good.
You watch.
Okay, I will.
And let's find out what this guy's really worth.
You said you wanted me to look into something.
What?
Yeah.
This whole thing?
Is this like a true story?
Or is this somebody contrived it in the Daily Mail?
Well, I don't know.
John, that's what I'm saying.
I'll do some research, too, obviously.
But no one is doing that.
This is the amazing thing.
No one's doing the research.
It went from...
Two billion dollars going to good in the fucking world to do some good.
You know, this is up there with Warren Buffet, with Bill Gates' foundation.
This is a huge amount of money.
It's all about Paris Hilton and how little she'll make, how little she'll have when this guy finally kicks the bucket.
It makes me want to fucking throw up.
Oh, have another drink.
Well, actually, they're drunk by now, to be honest about it.
Uh-huh.
You've got to look into the story.
It's a good story.
This sounds like a theme for the show, to track down the BS behind this whole thing and what the truth is.
So that way, maybe we can save Paris.
Do you think that's possible?
If she'll blow me, absolutely.
And my wife would be okay with it.
My wife would be okay with it, though.
It would be no problemo.
I don't think it's going to happen.
But you never know.
Yeah.
Although if it doesn't happen for you the way I see it, there's no hope for the rest of us.
All right.
I'm going to think a little bit about how we can restructure some of this and have the participatory broadcast principles enacted with our ever-expanding audience.
Probably up to 12 by now.
Alright everybody, thanks for checking out No Agenda.
From the Curry Manor, I'm Adam Curry.
And I'm John C. Dvorak from Silicon Valley.
And we'll talk again real soon, probably in 2008.
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