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Jan. 12, 2008 - No Agenda
01:13:27
12: Lawsuit Crazy
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Time Text
It's time once again for the program that has no music, no jingles, no commercials, no direction, no agenda, and of course, no talent.
In the United Kingdom, I'm Adam Curry.
And I'm John C. Dvorak up here in Northern California.
Hey John, how you doing today?
Good, it's a nice sunny day.
Yeah, we had a beautiful day here as well in the UK. So nice, in fact, that I went flying.
Ah, where'd you go?
I went down to the south coast, which would be towards the Isle of Wight, and then hung a left, basically eastwards, and went all along the coastline up to Lyd.
Are you familiar with Lyd?
No.
Okay, so LID is just, I don't know, it's that piece that sticks out on the right-hand side of the island.
It's on the south coast there.
But what's really nice, there's this program, this BBC show called Coast.
I don't know if you can get that over there on BBC America.
But essentially, it's a series about the coastline of the UK, which, of course, it being an island, there's a lot of coastline.
And it consists of...
It's almost like a documentary, but there's a lot of aerial photography really, really beautifully done.
And I have to say, the coast of the UK is spectacular.
If you just fly along, you know, like at 1,000 or 1,500 feet, it changes every 10, 20 miles.
It's just beautiful, so...
Can you take photos out of your plane?
Yeah, of course.
I did it with my cell phone camera, so it kind of sucks ass.
By the way, when I'm by myself, there's a lot going on.
You can take me up for a ride.
I'll take pictures.
Get your ass over here.
We'll take some pictures.
Absolutely.
It'll be fun.
It'll be raining.
When you get here, yeah, probably.
So nice there in California.
You were in Vegas, John.
Yeah, I went to Lost Wages, Nevada.
Yeah, did you lose any?
No, actually I won.
I only budget...
I don't like to gamble.
I think it's just stupid.
I'm not a gambler either.
But I do play video poker machines because I know that there are certain machines.
If you look at all the odds, it's the funniest thing.
Video poker machines have a variety of odds for the exact same game from machine to machine to machine.
And nobody ever looks at these odds because there are some machines that essentially just take your money.
It's published, right?
It says right there, you will lose at least 4% on every dime you put in.
That's casino-wide.
But there are some machines that are pretty close to break-even on video poker, if you know what to look for.
And the odds are right on the screen.
People just ignore it.
But you don't have to go to Vegas for that.
You could go to your local 7-Eleven and play video poker, can't you?
Yeah, you could.
Okay.
It's just a game I like because I had this, there's this computer program called, years ago, called Video Poker Tutor.
What, did that run on the Commodore 64 or something?
Close to it.
But anyway, the thing would just keep beating you down until you figured out what the strategy was.
Because video poker is not poker.
It's a different game altogether.
And there are strategies involved in what you hold and what you get rid of if you want to approach this break-even point.
And then if you get lucky, you can walk away with some money.
And I tend to always walk away with some money, although I can't say I've made a fortune.
I was going to say, total earnings?
Five bucks.
Right on.
I've been to Vegas quite a bit.
I'm not a gambler.
I really don't care.
It just doesn't interest me at all.
Well, there's a lot of interesting games.
I know it doesn't interest me to any extent, but a few years, maybe 15 years ago, I used to play a lot of craps.
And craps is an interesting game because, again, if you play it right, you can pretty much break even at it.
And you can maybe even make out on the deal in some casinos where they give you a lot of free cognac.
They try to get your drinking so you screw up.
Well, they also...
In Vegas, they have tons of courses you can take.
I did a couple documentaries in 90...
I'm going to say 91 or 92 in Las Vegas.
I did one...
No, I did three...
They're all on YouTube, by the way.
If you just search Adam Curry, you'll find them.
One is about the pawn shops...
One is about craps and roulette.
I went to one of those courses where they teach you how to play.
And the third one was the Las Vegas Bike Patrol.
I went along and rode with the Bike Patrol for a day, which was pretty interesting.
That's cool.
Yeah, you should take a look at those.
I mean, they're Dutch.
I'll blog them.
Yeah, blog.
There you go, baby.
You can look at Adam's really, really big hair.
So anyway, yeah, they have a lot of courses, and they're actually pretty good.
They try to teach you how to do things right, but they just assume that nobody really cares.
And I think it's also some rationale when people with gaming licenses come up to say, no, we try to teach the public the exact aspects of the game that will help them win.
It's all to their benefit.
I found the course really good.
They really gave you a lot of tips and tricks.
They try to help you win knowing full well that the odds are just stacked against you.
You can win.
I don't know if it has anything to do with a gaming license or anything.
I think they really just want to help you to get you to go to the table, spend money.
Yes, but the one thing I found interesting about craps is, and like all the other games in the casino, it's a social game where people win and lose as a group.
Yeah, true.
And it's really a different game because of that, and it's actually kind of interesting.
But, you know, again, when you look at it, even any of these things, even if you can make a little money, it's a time killer.
I mean, it takes you hours to get anywhere unless you're throwing massive amounts of money down.
Yeah, not for me.
Not for me.
Alright, so you're there for CES. I heard a couple of your reports on Tech 5 with the flat panel, LCD screens.
I heard those reports.
What else did you do at CES? Just kind of roam around?
I didn't see them.
CES to me has always been a show years ago when they had Comdex and computer guys would go there.
That was different.
Comdex was a whole different vibe, wasn't it?
It wasn't that different, but it was slightly different because there wasn't as much junk.
CES has a lot of junk.
A lot of weird stuff that is just like, what are these people doing here?
Things for little...
These little mom and pop stores you find in urban areas where you turn a corner and there's an Indian guy running this place and he sells everything from toaster repair to skins for the cell phone to cigarettes, a bunch of lottery tickets, you name it.
Does that really pay for those guys to buy a booth at CES for basically stuff that you buy in the mall?
I don't know.
They're there.
And do they do the same thing that they do?
By the way, this is something I wanted to mention.
There is a new...
It seems like a ship.
You know these stalls in the mall?
They're everywhere.
They're here in the UK. But in the States, there's the little carts that kind of sit in the middle of the walkway, right?
And they sell everything from covers for your cell phone to...
The embroidered hats.
Exactly, that kind of stuff.
But what has happened, I've noticed, is that when you now are walking through the mall, the vendors now come up to you.
And they say, excuse me, sir, could I ask you a question?
And it's usually women who are doing this, and they solicit you.
And it's really pissing me off.
It's really ruining my mall experience.
Have you noticed that this is how...
Maybe you don't go to malls, but...
I do go to malls.
I don't go to malls.
I obviously don't go as much as you do, but I go to malls.
I have seen these things.
I usually go to them when I travel.
I have never seen that in an American mall, what you're describing.
Oh, I've been in two malls on my most recent trips, and it's like a new thing.
They used to just have this cute little...
In August, I went to the Roosevelt Field Mall, I think is what it's called.
It's a huge, massive mega mall.
Where?
That's upstate New York.
Okay.
I'm sorry, well, yeah, upstate.
Not upstate, but kind of upstate.
And then the, what's the one in San Francisco on market?
On market?
Yeah, yeah.
Oh, that one where Nordstrom's is?
The Galleria or whatever it's called?
Yeah, that's it.
The Galleria, I think, is what it's called.
Same thing.
And you're just walking along, looking at the shops, left or right, and then the vendor's like, excuse me, sir, can I ask you a question?
And it's like, no, fuck off!
Because I've said yes, of course, once.
And then, you know, they drag you into this demonstration of some stupid...
It's like, you know, trying to sell you something, but it's offensive to me.
I don't think that's allowed.
Well, they're doing it, man.
I think it's a plague, and I think it's taking over.
I mean, you might as well just have a bunch of guys in front of all the stores, you know, like they do on Columbus Avenue in the old days.
Right, the camera shops.
In San Francisco.
Hey, buddy!
Come on!
Well, I don't like it.
I will not frequent places that allow that behavior.
Anyway.
Yeah, I haven't seen it, but I can understand why it would be annoying.
But yeah, there's these carts.
I think these carts are interesting.
They become a phenomenon.
All the malls have them.
Obviously, those are leased spaces.
And I guess they button up the cart at night.
And it's kind of just a cheap, usually a cheap operation.
Yes.
And Patricia, she loves those guys, because she'll be walking through the mall, and she'll go to the sunglasses cart, and she now knows these vendors, and she knows that if you want the fake Gucci sunglasses, you gotta wink-wink, nudge-nudge, and then out comes the special little draw that you can take a look at.
So they're selling all kinds of contraband and shit goods as well.
You're kidding me!
No, man!
Absolutely.
Patricia loves that.
She loves fake sunglasses.
Take her to New York and take her down to Canal Street.
Oh, no.
Well, she...
Dude.
Of course, Canal Street has changed now because they really cracked down on all the fake handbags and everything.
And so now what they'll do is they'll come up to you and say, hey, you see this?
Well, they've got something better.
Basically, you follow.
It's kind of creepy because you follow them down an alleyway, turn left, down three stairs, and then they've got all the great stuff.
And I am convinced, by the way, 100%, that these are actual products.
These are not knockoffs.
These are the real deal.
They're just abnormalities or just pumped out a different door of the factory.
I think it's exactly the same stuff as the $5,000 items.
Well, yeah, I know we talked about this before.
I think some of the items are indeed the same thing.
I know you get pretty much the overproduction stuff when you're in Korea.
There's a street in Korea that sells all kinds of stuff.
And you look at it and you cannot see...
We can't see the difference.
We can't see the difference.
I mean, maybe a little bit.
There's a stitching that's off or something.
But, you know, Patricia has made quite a study of this because she really hates paying a lot of money.
She used to be married to a guy who was in clothing and all kinds of other stuff like that.
And she says, you know, it costs shit.
You know, she says, you know, you see a sweater, Jack Wills or whatever, or Eddie Bauer, and it's, you know, $500.
It costs five fucking dollars to make.
She just can't She doesn't bring herself to overpay for products like that, so she loves getting knockoffs, and she's also convinced that they are, in fact, the real deal, maybe just a small irregularity, but undetectable.
It's all about how you wear it, you know?
Yeah, no, I think a lot of the fake stuff...
I have a whole bunch of...
Of knockoff watches, because during the heyday of Canal Street, I'm still working at PC Magazine, but I used to go to New York a lot, and so I have a huge collection of some pretty cool ones.
But the most fascinating watch I collected, which I still use...
There was a period of time where they were making perfect Movatos.
Generally speaking, the knockoff guys, and these obviously were not real Movatos because they were too thick, but they would put a second hand on the watch, which kind of blows the idea.
Or you'd have a fine Swiss watch, and you could see this sweeping quartz-driven second hand.
It was like, uh-huh.
Yeah, click, click, click.
But anyway, somebody did a Movado.
They did a series of Movados without the sweep secondhand.
They looked just like Movados.
They had the right hands and everything else.
They're perfect.
But then one day I went there and there was a silver on silver one, which was a silver case, silver background, and silver hands with the Movado logo, and it looked like a Movado.
But the Movados typically are gold and black, not silver, silver, and silver.
And so I bought that thing, and Movados never made this watch that looks like this.
They just haven't done it.
But they should, because it's really gorgeous.
It's beautiful, yeah.
So I would wear that watch typically, even though I don't wear a tuxedo all the time, but it's a great tuxedo watch, and it would always catch somebody's eye.
Do you wear different watches?
I mean, I must have a collection of about 20 different watches, but I keep wearing the same one.
I don't like a different thing around my wrist.
I like the comfort of the one that I'm used to.
You really change around a lot?
Actually, I stopped wearing watches maybe 10 years ago, and I just used a cell phone like everybody else for the time.
But yeah, I would wear different watches.
I would take some Rolexes, for example, fake Rolexes, especially the good ones with the expensive sweet secondhand, and you match them up with some, if you're ever in Arizona or someplace, you match them up with some of these Indian bands.
And you get some pretty good looking matches and you get a pretty cool watch if people wonder where you got it.
Well, I've worn the same watch basically for 20 years.
Is that the watch, the one with the cloth band that you're wearing with the Velcro, that one?
Yeah, right.
That's the one.
That's the one, John.
No, Patricia gave me a gold Rolex about a year after we'd been together, which of course was a complete incentive for me to keep her around.
And I haven't taken it off.
In fact, it's really dirty.
It really should get clean.
It's completely black on the inside of the band.
And of course, the real Rolexes don't actually keep time very well.
You know that, right?
Yeah, that's the irony of it, I guess.
Yeah, it is.
So what else happened in Vegas?
Or does that stay in Vegas as usual?
It stayed at the MGM Grand.
By the way, anyone going to Vegas when you're at these new hotels, they have a centrally located elevator shaft, typically in the middle of a star configuration.
When you check in, always say, look, I want a room near the elevators.
You won't be able to find the elevators if you don't ask for a room near it.
No, you will find them because there's really just like one long aisle that's a mile long toward the elevator shaft, which is in the middle.
So it's a spoken hub kind of layout typically with these hotels.
And the MGM Grand is the worst because it's one of the biggest hotels in the world and you can get a room.
It takes you five minutes to walk to the elevators.
So you get the old, you know, you walk to the elevator, you go in, oh, I forgot my, you know, something, you gotta go back up, and it's a mile-long walk to the room, and then a mile-long walk back.
I forgot the hooker I left in the room.
Shit, now I gotta go back.
So, I mean, it's, so always ask for a room near the elevator shaft, and, you know, they'll give you a room close in, and it really makes a huge difference, because you can just, you know, you step out of the room, you take five steps, you go to the elevator shaft, and you're down.
You're done, right.
But anyway, so I stayed there, and it's not a hotel I particularly like, but it's okay.
And they have a lot of nice restaurants.
They turn their restaurants over, but they have now, Joel Rubichon has a restaurant in there.
Two of them, actually.
Not familiar with Joel.
Oh, yeah.
He's one of the, maybe the greatest chefs in France.
I mean, there's three great chefs.
There's the Rubichon and Savoie and Alain Ducasse, who also has a place in New York.
And all three of them now have restaurants in Las Vegas.
Ducasse's and Rubichon's being the best of the two.
But you can't get in.
You know, it's just impossible.
So I didn't get to eat there, so I was very disappointed.
Oh, that's a shame.
Speaking of French, just for a second, I think I made a comment about the French on the last show.
Yeah?
And I got a...
about them being lazy, I think.
Which, by the way, a lot of people emailed me and said, you're being racist, and I think I have to disagree.
How's that racist?
Exactly.
People are very confused about what racist is, particularly in the UK, by the way.
Mike Pinero, who's in the UK, says, I work for a French firm in a factory...
Over here we get one hour for lunch, which for a factory is generous.
Our French counterparts, who also work in a factory, get one and a half hours.
They pop along to one of the many places to eat nearby, quaff a few glasses of vino with their meal.
35-hour work week, all of August off.
No Yorkshire tea, no real beer, and now they can't smoke inside.
So he's complaining about what?
Well, I think what he's saying is that it's true.
The French are just...
They got it easy, man.
Culturally, they're lazy.
Well, I don't know if it's laziness or smart.
Dude, how about Sarkozy?
How about him dating Carla Bruni?
I'm telling you, that's what I said.
Smart.
Talk about leveraging your position in a public office.
Dude, he is tapping that ass.
Didn't you have a child with Mick Jagger?
I mean, this is like a serious babe that's been passed around.
She must have some particular skill that we're unfamiliar with.
Oh, yeah.
I can only imagine.
But whatever the case, I mean, you know, I'm not going to accuse the French.
I mean, the French have a different way of working.
Yeah, less.
Well, maybe.
That's quite different.
Less.
Does it really work?
Less is more.
We never hear about France.
Is the economy working?
I mean, the only thing we hear about is...
Less is more.
Less is more.
They're striking and fighting.
Their economy is always in the tank.
Are you kidding me?
Okay.
No, I'm just asking.
I really have no idea.
I mean, you just don't really hear about it.
I think if you went to Google right now and typed in France and recession, it would come up with a million hits.
Okay, let me try.
France?
In Google News or regular Google?
Just regular Google.
Okay, let's see.
Because I think they're perpetually in a recession.
Well, there's something to be said for that as well, I guess.
When you're on the floor, it does not fall to...
Here, France escapes recession.
Top hit from the BBC News.
Sorry.
Sorry, they achieved a slight growth.
Oh, let me get this.
This is the top hit on the new Google indexing system, by the way, which indexes...
Oh, okay.
This is May 20th, 2003.
Hey, that new algorithm is really working.
Yeah.
It works great.
The French economy managed to grow slightly by 0.3% in the first three months of the year.
That's May 2003.
All right.
That's the one note of good news for the French economy right there, you know, four years ago, five years ago.
Let me see if there's something under news.
That might be, let's see, here comes the earnings recession, nothing about France.
I'm telling you, you just don't read a lot about it.
I don't know.
They don't care either.
You know, the thing is, they don't listen to us.
You can be assured we have, like, you know, even with the, like, I do the Twit thing with Leo, we have a big audience, and I can solicit anything I want around the world.
And there'll be some two or three guys will chime in, you know, I say, I need to know the best restaurant in Hamburg, and I'll get six emails from various German guys who live in Hamburg.
Right, of course.
You can do anything you want about France and there's no French listening.
No, that's not true because I have at least two French listeners who email consistently.
On your daily source code?
Yeah, oh yeah.
You've been doing it for 10 years.
It's the same two guys.
That's alright.
I dig it.
I like it.
Look, I actually really like the French.
I have no problem with them.
I'm just always amazed at how they make the shit work over there.
They do it by having long lunches.
I guess.
Although they're trying to kill off the long lunch in France.
I think the French resist pretty well.
Well, this is what Sarkozy is all about, right?
Didn't he say to the nation, look, we've got to work harder, we've got to do more if we want to keep in stride?
Isn't that more or less his whole message?
Yeah, that's what he says, but the talk is cheap, and then he runs off at the bimbo.
She's not a bimbo, John.
I think she's got, you're right, she's got talent.
She's got real talent.
So anyway, so Sarkozy's like a big talker.
But just imagine, you know, they seem to be making a minor deal.
Oh, that's what it was.
That's what I read.
His ex-wife has published a book.
I think that came out yesterday.
And she, of course, you know, rakes him over the coals.
For what?
Being a womanizer.
Basically being French.
Yeah.
All right.
He's more French than the French.
Yeah.
He's actually a Hungarian or something, isn't he?
Could be.
Sarkozy.
Yeah, sounds right.
Oh, yeah.
Tell me about the Pinball Museum.
Yeah, we went to the Pinball Museum.
So I'm coming into Vegas, and I'm coming in on Southwest, and I'm reading the magazine in there, and the...
The flight was light, which is interesting, and of course, so there's no middle seats, and so a big fat person sits in the middle.
It always cracks me up.
One time I was on a, not to go into diversion here about fat people, but I'm not fat, but I'm a big guy, and So one day I was on one of these flights where you pick your own seat and I saw a big fat guy sitting by the window and the aisle seat was there.
So I decided to sit there and kind of spread my shoulders and try to spread out and look as big as I could, trying to dissuade anyone from sitting between two big guys.
Exactly.
Please stay away.
Get the message.
I thought that the idea was good, and I swear to God, probably the fattest woman I've ever seen on an airplane.
Hey, there's my people.
My peeps are here.
I gotta go sit in between them.
That's the only logic.
Because she pops herself down between the both of us.
He's slammed up against the window.
His face is kind of against the thing, smushed up against.
And I'm like halfway in the aisle.
People keep banging in against them walking by because we can barely sit there.
And of course she took both armrests, right?
Yeah, but not with her arms.
Oh, God.
I got a visual.
All right.
Anyway, so this is always risky.
So anyway, so we went down, so I'm reading the magazine.
It talks about this museum, this pinball museum.
The address is 3330, 3330 East Tropicana, for anybody in Vegas who wants to go check it out.
And this guy's been collecting pinball machines for, I guess, his whole life, and he's got 800 of them in his collection.
200 of them are in the pinball museum at any given time.
and they're all you can play them all at the original 25 cent price for five balls or whatever and um he even has a one-off of a really wild machine that they proto that bali prototype two of and only one ever worked and he has it it's worth about a hundred thousand bucks he thinks and um it's a wild machine it's like dimensional it's got all kinds of playing fields it's ridiculous he's
Anyway, he's got all these machines and a lot of classics from the 30s, 40s, 50s, 60s, 70s, 80s, and 90s.
And all the money that he makes at the place, after he pays for his overhead, goes to charity.
Really?
He gives all his money when he's retired.
So he can't afford to advertise anything, so he's getting a lot of publicity.
But the place usually has about 10 or 20 people and they're playing away like crazy.
It's a great place if you like pinball machines.
Tim Arnold, that's his name, right?
Tim Arnold?
Yeah, Tim Arnold.
Yeah, I'm looking at the website, which is pinballmuseum.org.
That's pretty cool.
Right, pinballmuseum.org.
That's pretty cool.
We interviewed him for Cranky Geeks, and he's a pinball nut.
And he said he had a lot of complaints.
He said, like, you know, there's only one pinball maker left because nobody puts pinball machines in gas stations or anyplace else anymore because everything's owned by chains and they don't like pinball because of its seedy history.
And they don't want loitering.
And they don't want anyone loitering, right.
There you go.
And so he has a real interesting lament.
That's really quite sad because certainly when I was a kid, both in the States and in Europe as well, it was quite the thing.
You'd go down to the drugstore or whatever and...
I think that I was kind of in between Pinball and Pac-Man.
That's when it kind of went to video games.
But you're right, you don't see them anymore.
Because they don't want loitering.
But it was kind of where you grew up.
You got your first smoke.
You know what I mean?
Well, that's how you got started.
But they used to have them in bowling alleys and every place else.
I mean, then you'd play them.
They were always fun, you know.
Anyway.
So he says the problem now is maintaining them because nobody makes the parts.
So you have to machine the parts or you have to scavenge things from other systems.
And he's been buying, apparently...
Motors from old blenders seems to work in certain machines for something.
So anyway, but it's a labor of love, and I recommend anyone that passes through to Las Vegas.
It's one of the more interesting places in the country to visit.
Oh, check this out.
010808.
John C. Dvorak's CrankyGeeks.com takes a time out from 2000 CES show in Las Vegas to visit the Pinball Hall of Fame.
It's episode number 98.
Huh.
Here we go, cross promotion.
Yeah, you're on their news page, dude.
Fantastic.
Cross promotion is the name of the game.
And even better than that, it says on the 1st of January, Spirit Magazine, which is what you read, Southwest Airlines, article about the Las Vegas Pinball Hall of Fame.
Article titled, Sure Played a Mean Pinball.
God, the net is cool.
So yeah, you can find it.
That's why we like it.
That internet thing, that rocks.
Anyway, so anyone out there who's visited Vegas, get off the beaten path, get a car, get a cab, or go out to 3330 East Tropicana and check it out.
Now, on the way back, I came back on a private airplane.
Oh, what, who's first?
Yeah, Hurston.
Cool.
What does he fly?
What kind of plane?
Well, he's part of...
It's like a net jets thing.
Yeah, this one was a Hawker 800.
Oh, it's a nice plane, man.
That is a nice plane.
Although, you know, I've been in the beach jets, and the beach jets are really nice.
Even though they're small, just the features inside the plane are just really cool.
Well, the Hawker is...
You can stand up straight in the Hawker, can't you?
Yeah, you can get pretty.
No, it bumps my head.
I think it's under six foot.
It's not like a Challenger or anything where you can wander around.
Yeah, it's the 800, right?
Yeah, the Challenger, that's amazing.
Or the, I've been in a G5. God.
Yeah, the G5 is the class act.
Although I'd rather, honestly, just all things being equal, I'd rather have a Challenger than a G5. Well, you know, you're on your way, Adam.
You can afford one.
It's the parking.
But most of these, yeah, but see, most of these, people don't realize, you know, these private jets are mostly now all shared.
Yeah.
I mean, there's a few guys left that have their own.
I mean, the Google boys have a couple of jets dedicated to them.
Yeah, some of the eBay and PayPal guys have jets, too.
Right.
Paul Allen's got a jet, 757.
Ray Lane has a G5. Who?
Ray Lane.
So does he.
He's got a G5, and I rode with him.
We took his G5 when they launched the Tesla, that electric sports car.
Okay, to change the topic, they had a Tesla at the show that I got to look at one up close and personal.
Mm-hmm.
It's a little lotus with a battery.
With a fucking D-cell.
This is what's so funny.
So it was me, it was Ron and Marta, Ron's wife, and Ray, and we took his G5 down to LA. And what was really funny, on the landing...
I went up with the pilots on the jump seat.
Of course, that was cool.
I'd sit in the cockpit.
And they were in the back drinking.
And when they landed, one of the brakes jammed.
So they landed actually with the right or maybe even both rear brakes essentially engaged.
So the nose wheel slammed down.
I mean, I was strapped in with a five-point harness, and I was thrown.
The whole chair really moved forward.
That's how heavy it was.
And Ray Lane, who was in the back, of course, you know, Mr.
Big VC, oh, I'm not going to buckle my seatbelt.
He flew out of his seat, across the seat, into Marta's lap on this lap.
It was very fucked up.
But for pilots, that's really embarrassing.
Yeah, I guess.
When you've got a pilot as a guest on board, and of course you're jet jockeys, so you're showing off, right?
And you really fuck it up.
Anyway, so the launch was at the airport.
I think it was...
I think it was Burbank.
And so they had rented out a hangar, and essentially they had a little circuit, and then, you know, so in the middle of the hangar was the party, and then they had a circuit around this party that went outside and then back into the hangar.
So it was kind of cool, you know?
It was like your own Matchbox set, or Hot Wheels that you'd set up only really big.
And you could buy one right then and there, and they had a big screen up, and it would show the names of people who had pre-ordered one.
So, of course, you look at Larry, Sergey, and there popped Ray Lane.
And to date, no one has still received one.
This is 2006.
They can't deliver these fucking things.
Well, you know, when I see these kinds of promotions, and I see all the Silicon Valley guys for some...
Oh, actually, they all get on the same bandwagon.
It's the way it is down there.
Because it's like something's either cool about it, you know, it's electric, and it's really fast, and, you know, there's all these different kinds of things that make it so great.
Yeah, but it's still a Lotus with a Decel.
Yeah, I'm looking at this.
I think I saw one on the road a couple years ago that was being test-driven down in Southern California, and I couldn't figure it out, but all I do remember was the logo.
So when I saw the logo later, I said, oh, I saw one of these things, these Teslas, a T. Anyway, so I... When I'm looking at this thing, it's really cramped inside.
In fact, somebody was telling me that one of their friends who's 6'6 bought one, and there's no way he's ever going to get in it.
No way, no way.
But everybody in the Valley is on the waiting list, and it's a big deal to be on the waiting list for this thing.
And I'm thinking...
These guys have got way too much money.
They can just throw it around at what I consider to be a gimmick vehicle.
And yeah, it'd be cool if it works and if they ever ship it for a while until somebody gets rammed by someone else or the car flips.
I mean, just the whole thing is just, get a Lexus, for God's sake.
So it is indeed a Lotus body.
I mean, it literally...
I don't know if they take the emblem off, but it's a Lotus body.
And it is fast.
I think it does 0 to 60 in under 4 seconds.
It's just an amazing torque that it has.
Yeah.
But the problem they're having is the battery.
And I heard...
I'm sure you've heard of or seen the movie Who Killed the Electric Car?
You know, I don't know if I have.
Maybe.
Well, look it up on Google Video.
I'm sure someone's illegally uploaded it.
Thank goodness.
But it's about that there was an electric car that they handed out to celebrities in the, I want to say, 80s, 90s, something like that.
You're talking about that General Motors car, the Evo?
Yeah, that's the one, exactly.
Which is a cool-looking car, by the way.
Yeah, but no one was allowed to buy it.
You couldn't actually buy the car, and then they took them all back.
They destroyed them all.
Yeah, they took them all back.
Now, what I've understood is that I guess GM or some company owns a patent to the battery technology that is necessary that actually would make this all work.
And that they, for obvious reasons, have purposely not allowed anyone to do anything with that patent.
But that that's really the problem.
Everyone's struggling trying to work around this patent to come up with a better battery technology.
Do you know anything about this?
It sounds like a crock.
I don't know.
I mean, batteries...
General Motors is going to bring out another electric car, it's my understanding.
They put all this...
I mean, I think there's too much emphasis on the hydrogen cars, for example.
And I think that that's the real issue.
And if they're going to be promoting all these other sort of alternative systems, there's no reason for them to, like, kill the electric car for some unknown reason.
Well, not now.
I think now people are interested.
There's a market for it, and everyone knows they have to change, you know, but...
20, 10, you know, 10, 15, 20 years ago, they had every reason to not want people to get into electric.
And I think that, you know, now they will get into it.
And what do you mean about the hydrogen?
You don't think that works?
No, it's just a joke.
Okay.
You know, somebody should talk to, you know, I read the Riot Act by some guys from, I don't know if it was Airco or one of these gas companies, you know, these companies that sell gas.
Mm-hmm.
You know, in canisters.
And they said, you can't get enough energy out of hydrogen to make it worthwhile, and you'd have to compress so much of it.
Right now, they've got the tanks up to...
And I kept up with this, by the way.
I go to the General Motors.
They have sessions all over the country where they have all these hydrogen cars.
I've driven a bunch of them.
And besides the fact that they make a screeching sound when you accelerate, they drive you crazy.
But anyway, because of the sound of the hydrogen going through the membrane.
The technologies from the 60s are earlier because that membrane, they can't seem to make a breakthrough on that.
They can't get enough energy out of the gas because the gas is low energy, actually, believe it or not.
And so you have to compress a ton of it.
Now they've gotten the tanks to get...
Last time I looked, they had the tanks, so there were 10,000 pounds per square inch tanks, which I can't imagine one of those things breaking open.
And they still can't get the things to go more than 300 miles or so, and they know that there's a magic number.
I forgot.
I think it's 350 or some number.
And I think there's the same problem with the electric car.
The car manufacturers, and by the way, the Tesla has this problem.
The car manufacturers have a magic number.
If the car cannot go this far on one tank, Then it's not commercially viable because people won't put up with it.
Oh, okay, right.
And there's a minimum number of miles you can go, and they can't get to that mileage with the hydrogen car.
And even if they did, the car's going to be extremely expensive because that entire mechanism that they use to propel the car is just expensive.
But everybody's on this bandwagon.
So I've driven the Hondas.
I've been in the Honda Hydrogen.
Toyota's got one.
I've been in that.
I've been in the Fords, General Motors.
Everybody's got one.
And...
There's a couple trucks, and I think there's a bus or two out there, and I haven't driven the bus, but I've driven these things around, and they have a funny kind of a performance curve.
I don't think they have any appeal.
A couple people sent me a link earlier this week to something called the Air Car, which looks a little bit like an even cheaper looking smart car.
More plastic looking.
By the way, I love smart cars.
You own one?
But it has a compressed air engine, so it's a hybrid.
It uses fossil fuel, kind of like an electric hybrid, but they compress air and then use that.
Interesting.
Hey, that car blows.
What a slogan.
Yeah.
So, you know, the problem is if you talk to these guys who are honest about it and people don't realize that gasoline, the reason gasoline, there's gasoline cars out there and why they're so popular is gasoline per pound has more energy in it just built into the molecular structure than any other substance we can come up with.
And so it's already a kind of a compressed form of energy.
And that's why gasoline cars, you know, are what they are.
Right.
Well?
So anyway, so I'm obviously, you know, sound like an old fuddy-duddy here, but, you know, and I do like V8s.
What can I say?
I've given up caring about cars.
I just don't give a shit anymore.
Nah, well, you're in England.
Why would you?
So...
Well, this is the land of motoring, mind you.
The land of Top Gear.
I mean, I really enjoy watching Top Gear, but, you know, so I'll see them do a review of, like, the new Audi.
I've always been kind of an Audi guy.
And, you know, that new R8 or whatever it is, sports car.
Yeah, that thing's supposed to be a rocket.
It borders on supercar status, I believe.
And it's quite affordable, actually, as supercars go.
So they had one at the airport, and I go take a look at it, and I was like, I really don't give a shit.
I don't actually want to sit in a car going anywhere.
This will look nice, but I just don't care.
You've gotten to the point where you need to be chauffeured.
Yeah, yeah.
And as long as it's comfortable in the back, it's fine.
In fact, I'm the guy that, in fact, I have to go with Patricia in like a couple minutes after we're done.
You've got to go shopping because she can't really do anything.
She can only command me as what to do.
But normally I'd say, will you please drive?
I don't even want to.
I let my wife drive.
I really don't care.
Yeah, well, you know, that's what happens when you get to a certain point.
I told everyone on the source code about Patricia's appendectomy, by the way, so...
Yeah, she's okay though.
Yeah, oh yeah.
But you're irked about it.
Well, I'm very irked about it because she was essentially misdiagnosed by multiple doctors, multiple hospitals, multiple tests.
Because I guess by not diagnosing appendicitis, that's a misdiagnosis.
I would think.
And I'm sure that there's no recourse.
Well, they would be in this country.
Really?
I'm against that.
Look, first of all, people make mistakes, people fuck up.
That's possible.
But I'd like to know about it, and I'd like someone to cop to it.
I'm really against that culture of something bad happened, someone died, let's sue for millions.
I don't agree with it.
It doesn't really solve anything.
That's the way we operate.
It doesn't solve anything, but it keeps cash flow.
Would you do it?
Yeah, probably.
I tend to be slightly litigious.
Really?
The only things I've sued for have been...
I countersued MTV when they sued me for MTV.com.
And I sued Dutch Tabloid when they stole my picture off of Flickr under the Creative Commons license.
And both times...
That's kind of a trivial...
That's kind of an interesting lawsuit.
You're saying you're not sued-happy?
Well, but that was a real principle issue there, because I had private pictures on Flickr, and I had the permissions of the Creative Commons copyright license set to no derivatives and non-commercial use or whatever, and attribution, something like that, but certainly no commercial use, and they...
Took those pictures, did like a six-page spread, including part of the cover.
And then they said, well, we have every right.
You put them up there on that site.
And it even had a download button.
And that was their argument.
I'm like, I got to take these guys to court.
I just have to.
And now that case is actually used as jurisprudence now for the Creative Commons copyright.
I'm quite proud of that one.
Good.
I would have done the same thing.
I just wouldn't have said what you said earlier.
Now let's go back to that suit.
What did you get out of it?
Well, what I sued him for...
What did I sue him for?
I think it was like you have to take every single copy off the shelves and pay me $20,000 now while we evaluate...
Outrageous claims, obviously, as one does.
And, um, what the, uh, so the, the judge, um, uh, cause you know, there's no, there's no jury system in the Netherlands.
It's professional judges.
And so basically they call the shots, which is really fucked up, you know, and, and this woman, you know, clearly did not have an in-depth understanding of creative commons.
She, who was the judge, um, uh, So, the outcome of the trial was I got no damages.
However, the magazine had operated illegally.
They're not allowed to do that.
And the next time they do it, they would have to pay a 2,000 euro fine for each picture they stole.
Basically setting a price to break the law.
But at least they upheld the Creative Commons copyright.
You didn't get any money?
Zero.
Oh, that stinks.
In fact, I had to pay my own court costs, obviously.
Well, I did the public a service, but that's the way it goes.
Yeah, but I remember with MTV.com, when they sued me for the domain name, I contacted...
In fact, that was around the same time that I met you the first time, John, when CNET Television was just starting.
Right.
And John Perry Barlow, and I spoke to him and I said, dude, here's what's going on.
Can EFF help me?
And he said no.
And I was so disappointed.
I've always hated the EFF since then.
But absolutely no desire to help me whatsoever.
But this is a fundamental issue.
They gave me permission to use this and now they're suing me to take it away.
That's fundamental.
This is a big deal.
This domain name stuff, I think there's something to it.
And they just fucking flatly turned me down.
Well, they, you know, turned down a lot of weird cases.
I never could figure out what the selection process is with those guys.
Exactly.
So that cost me a lot of money, but the outcome at the end was good.
What was it?
The lawsuit between MTV Networks and Mr.
Curry has been settled out of court.
Neither party has any further comment.
So you got some cash from him then.
Good.
I guess, right?
It's been settled out of court.
Neither party has any further comment.
Is it in there that if you said something, you'd have to give them the money back?
I could look at it, but the whole no disparaging, we literally negotiated that.
That's why I know the line.
Yeah, that's the way it always works.
Yeah, we negotiated.
Because that's part of the deal.
That means they paid you too much money, and the part of the deal is you can't start bad-mouthing them.
The lawsuit between MTV Networks and Adam Curry has been settled out of court.
Neither party has any further comment.
The whole thing was, the only reason, if they had just fucking asked me, if they had asked me, if they had just said, hey, you know what, man, you left and you're starting your own company and everything, can we just have the domain name back?
And I would have said, could I please keep Adam at MTV.com?
That's the only thing I would have asked for.
Of course, I tried to negotiate that into the settlement, but I wasn't able to get it.
But if they just asked me, that would be the only thing, man.
Nobody ever does that.
They make demands.
It's weird.
The funny thing is, nowadays, if it was today that this whole thing happened, you wouldn't even have had a hearing.
The icon people or somebody would have just taken the domain away from you.
That's right.
Yeah, just shut me down right there.
Exactly.
Exactly.
And that is kind of weird.
The system is now set up so copyright holders and people with brand names have rights to anybody like you who happen to have one of their brand names as a domain name when you don't really own the brand.
I'm still waiting for someone to eventually come up and say, that curry.com, we need to take that away from you.
I fully expect someone to try that.
Yeah, some curry guy from India.
Well, no, you have curries.
We're the Bombay Curry Company.
We need your domain name.
We're going to do Indian accents now, John?
Oh, when we have electricity, it will work much better.
Don't get me started on my Indian accent.
I've always said that that is probably the most popular accent in the world.
They say, well, you're ridiculing the Indians with that accent.
I'm saying, no, I'm not.
They're the ones who have probably, for all the English-speaking peoples, there's more people that speak like that.
Yeah, and by the way, it's totally cool to do a white guy or like a typical American.
Yeah, or a southern guy talks like this, you know, a redneck guy.
Oh, that's okay.
Well, there's this thing, Big Brother started over here, started up again, but it's all messed up now.
They have a different host, and for some reason they're just not positioning it the way they used to, and they've changed it so that now you have celebrities who are playing Big Brother, and I just can't get into it.
But there was a lot of controversy in the previous Big Brother series, particularly one of the celebrity ones, because of racist remarks.
But I mean, really, this went all the way to Parliament.
It's crazy, John.
It's like people just can't call each other a name anymore, the way people do.
Because this is the whole point of Big Brother, particularly with...
People just lose track of the fact that they're being watched the whole time, and they become themselves, and they speak the way they speak when you're not hearing them speak in public.
And shit slips out amongst each other.
There was a Pakistani girl, and I think...
Or no, she was Indian.
I don't remember.
It was so stupid.
I don't remember what it was.
But it was the equivalent of saying, you know, you packy bitch or something like that.
It is irrelevant.
It was just like, you know, they were yelling at each other and they were saying nasty shit back and forth.
And this whole racist thing is just, you know, the political correctness that has gone away a bit is still really lurking pretty heavily in that regard with what you can call people.
You know, it's like...
Take a chill pill.
You can always call them just the old generic things like asshole.
Now, let's get back to this.
You just brought up something that's interesting to me.
When did these reality shows, which by the way, even Mark Burnett, who's the guy who essentially invented the genre, likes to call them unscripted dramas.
Well, I disagree.
I think Endemol started really...
Really was the first one.
Well, he's the one who popularized it with Survivor, in the United States anyway.
Yeah, no, the English probably did it first.
No, no, the Dutch.
But he's the one who took it to a new level.
And his new level was a dysunscripted drama, which means that you put a bunch of people in a room and then you actually...
You don't have writers, but you have scenarios.
And you say, here's what I want you to do.
I want you to throw a glass of wine in the guy's face and then leave him.
And, you know, ready?
Shoot.
And then they do a bunch of ad-libs.
You know, essentially the people on the show are writing the show.
And then they say, let's try something else.
Let's throw a banana at him.
And, you know, the whole thing is a fake show.
Everything's pre-done.
I mean, there's no reality here.
It's just a bunch of amateur actors.
And just to be honest, a lot of those shows, it's still the editing that really, really makes it work.
Because if you literally did it the way you just said, it would be unwatchable.
So watch how these things are edited.
There's a lot of post-production, so all the money goes into that.
Now, let's go back to the question that came to mind when you were discussing this other thing.
Mm-hmm.
When did the reality shows, because originally the reality shows, I remember the first, I think it was The Bachelor, and after the whole show was over, you found out that the guy was an actor, and the woman that won was an actress, not successful, and at some point they switched gears and they decided...
Why are we getting these amateurs?
Why don't we get real celebrities and put them in awkward situations?
In other words, let's find some major has-beens or wannabes that are slightly on the edge of success, ice-skating stars and people like that, and put them in a house and we'll shoot it.
And heck with just having members of the public audition for this sort of thing.
Let's just go with the celebrity thing and see how people are fascinated by it.
When did that change?
When did that happen?
Have you been following?
Because I know you did one of these shows and you're kind of like a celebrity.
So, you're absolutely right.
And, you know, it used to be game shows.
And you'd have the same type, you know, like panel-based game shows.
You'd have the same type of, I call them D-lebrities.
So, you know, a rung lower than a C-lebrity.
And, you know, they'd sit on panels and sometimes, you know, something could break out.
But I think it really just carried over into this new format.
The big secret about show business, which I think by now, or certainly the television business, we've all kind of figured out.
I mean, I come from this industry, so I know that really there's very few people making a lot of money outside of the corporations.
People who present the news, the anchor, with varying degrees, obviously, when you look at the top network spotlight.
There's only like three or four jobs that really pay a lot of money of all the people you see on television.
And most of them are really just fucking struggling to get by because you just get paid shit money.
And it's like MTV. People work there, non-union, for absolute total fucking crap money.
Almost below the starvation line for New York City.
Just because you wanted to be a part of it.
And everyone in those industries is taken advantage of in that way.
Unless you've been able to get basically on that rung, right?
And by the way, being a VJ is pretty much the lowest rung of the showbiz ladder.
You're just holding on by your fingernails.
Before you actually get anywhere.
And everyone's looking to climb up.
And this is why they're so maniputable, first of all.
That's why it's so easy for news organizations, the output to be controlled by just sprinkling something at the top.
Because everyone is a subordinate to someone else and they just will do anything, including sucking someone's dick, to get one level higher.
Because it is literally power, control, and money.
And that's what everyone is doing.
So you have...
Show business, and you're right, because there's so much access, so many channels for people to appear on, people are becoming famous just for being on the television, even if they don't actually do anything.
Or they did one outrageous thing, like they did a sex tape and they're an heiress.
And you can build an entire career and brand out of that.
So it's an industry that you can play.
And it's the entry.
So you rarely will ever see a top, top-notch celebrity.
But in your mind, you may think that the people who are appearing on some of these shows are, wow, why would that guy be doing that?
Does he need the money?
Well, the answer is yes.
They need the fucking money.
They need the exposure.
Because that's how the entire system works.
But to say that it really started with one thing, I did my own media hacking after I saw what happened with the Osbournes.
And that's been going on for a while.
That was 2003, I think.
Something like that.
2002, actually, when they did that.
And the guy who produced the Osbournes reality show was an associate producer on the Headbangers Ball, Greg Johnson.
I knew the guy really well.
And it was like, what a brilliant idea, because he basically knew Ozzy, and Ozzy was all fucked up, and he was struggling.
Something needed to happen.
And basically, MTV just took advantage of a strung-out, drunk rock star in his 50s and their family because it's cheap-ass programming.
I mean, there's no brilliance to it.
There is just no brilliance.
What is the longest running show in American history at this moment?
Do you know what that is?
What?
America's Funniest Home Videos.
It's the same fucking thing.
We love watching that.
It's the same thing.
They don't even pay for those videos.
It's weird.
No.
And they become their property, even.
It's not even yours anymore.
So when they asked me to do a reality show about my family, I'm like, yeah, absolutely.
This will be great.
Because I did the whole thing on Final Cut Pro and Firewire drives.
I had one cameraman.
I did second camera.
And I had a girl who was really putting the show together.
She did all the posts.
And she was so good that I could basically just...
Give all the material to her and she'd put it together and then I'd take a look at it and I know it would work and I even did the subtitle translations myself and it was a fantastic project.
And although everything you saw happened and it wasn't acted...
We really made it into a fun show to watch.
Just really well post-produced and great soundtrack.
So we turned it into a cool fucking edit.
But it really happened.
The show was really all the other bits that pulled it together.
It was just a product.
Could you stop the tape for one second?
The tape, yes.
No problem.
Quick phone call.
Thank you for making Maggie wait on the phone while I did my rant there.
You still there?
Yeah.
Can you hear me?
Hello?
Hello?
Do you hear me?
Yeah.
What do you call...
There you go.
They went into hibernation or something?
Yeah, I went into hibernation.
Screen blanks out.
By the way, this is something worth discussing.
It's always fascinated me.
So we have these Windows machines, and you're doing something like a download, or you're doing something like the Skype that we're doing, and then the machine...
Goes to sleep.
Goes to sleep because you're not touching the keyboard.
Yeah.
Doesn't it know that there's activity and the ports going in and out and maybe it shouldn't be just shutting itself off?
I'm sure that there's an API in Windows that the application probably has to speak to to say, ping, I'm still alive, don't shut down.
It's probably just...
Developers who just don't put that in.
No, you're probably right, but nobody puts it in.
So you know the headphones I use for this show and all my other shows?
No.
Which are just barely falling apart.
They're some Pan Am headphones from an airplane in the 60s made by TQ Trade LTD. Take a picture, man.
You've got to blog a picture of them.
They sound great.
My daughter gives me nothing but grief about it.
She says, why are you using those cheap airplane headphones?
I said, because they're from Pan Am.
And they have a metal thing.
They're not like the plastic junk ones that we have today.
I don't have junk ones, dude.
Oh, you mean on the airplane headphones?
Yeah, the free ones.
The free ones that you would, you know.
No, Virgin Atlantic has great headphones.
Well, I've seen it, been on a couple of planes that have great headphones, but it's pretty rare.
And noise-canceling everything.
Really?
Yeah, they've got electronically noise-canceling.
You can turn the noise-canceling on or off.
Now, I use the Sony MDR-V600s.
I've used them for a long time.
Yeah, those are okay.
I use a couple of causes, usually.
And, you know, we used to, back in the days of the radio, everybody, come on, climb up on my knee, Johnny, I'll tell you a story.
We used Clark helicopter headsets.
Dick Clark helicopter headsets.
And so you'd take off the mouthpiece, but you'd basically put a new...
Some guys didn't put new elements in, you know, the different speakers.
You could just use the ones that it came with because they really closed around your ear so you wouldn't get any feedback through the mic when you were listening to your...
Because, you know, you had the mixed signal on your head, right?
You hear it yourself.
Right, you could modulate.
It was for people out there.
It was for modulating your voice.
Yeah, like that.
And then I have another pair.
What are these?
Another AKGs.
And when you take the AKGs off, they cut off, which is pretty cool.
So you don't have to turn them down if you have a pair laying around.
They could produce feedback.
So the minute you take them off your head, then they just cut off, which is nice.
Well, the most interesting ones I have is I have a pair of Koss electrostats that came out in the 70s or 80s.
It's like two electrostatic elements inside extremely high resolution.
They're very nice.
That's ribbon, right?
No, electrostatic is not ribbons.
I think a different technology.
Electrostats are these plates that sit on top of each other and somehow produce sound.
I'm not sure.
I know a guy who had two of those huge ribbon speakers.
They're really flat and they have strips of ribbon down the front of like an alloy ribbon.
Yeah.
We need a speaker expert to send us a note explaining the difference between ribbon and electrostatic.
And don't think, by the way, that a million people have already sent us the link.
Right.
Probably one guy will do it thinking that somebody else did.
So you have more stuff on by and large.
I just forwarded you the email.
I didn't take a look at it.
I'm already not caring anymore.
Sorry.
I like themes.
I like themes.
That's why I sent you the email.
You should be prepared.
You come to the show without any notes?
Yeah, pretty much.
I got a question for you.
We've got to wrap this up.
It's an hour.
People get fucking bored.
I promised comic strip blogger, by the way, did you hear the Yo Agenda show?
Yeah, it's two guys.
I mean, two guys just talking to each other.
You can barely understand them.
They're both from, you know, East to war.
Luke's Dutch and he lives in Finland and Comic Street Blogger is Polish and lives in Germany.
Well, whatever.
They both sound like they live someplace, you know, in a garbage dump.
Whatever the case.
Oh, dude.
Hey, they have, like, their contribution is, well, you know, these two guys are talking and, you know, they don't have much to say and I think the show needs work.
Yeah, that's what I'm like.
You know, they think that we just aren't really that good.
Yeah.
Yeah, they think we suck.
And they think that I'm just kissing your ass because you're the boss of this company pod show.
That's right.
That's right.
Yeah, when I'm kissing ass, it's pretty obvious.
And this ain't it.
So, I've always wondered about your name, Dvorak.
Yeah, Dvorak.
Yeah, Dvorak.
The origin, and obviously, is there any relevance to the Dvorak keyboard?
Well, none that I know of.
One time I said that Dvorak was August Dvorak, as a matter of fact.
University of Washington did the keyboard in the mid-30s, based on theory.
And I don't think there's any relationship there.
Most of the Dvoraks came from a bunch of Czechs that moved to the country, including the famous Dvorak.
The composer who lived in the U.S. for a while, and I guess he sired a lot of people.
You're part of his demon seed?
You're an offspring?
Well, I have a one octave plus one key range on my hand, if that means anything.
Oh, you can really stretch, right, okay.
Yeah, I can do over an octave on a piano.
I like to say, yeah, there's some relationship because it's good for their reputation, but I have no documentation to prove it.
Have you ever tried a Dvorak keyboard?
Yeah, they stink.
I've looked at them.
It's an interesting idea, but if you're going to dedicate yourself to a keyboard, you can't do what I do, which is roam around.
Can I use your machine?
I'm like a slow typer anyway, because I kind of plod along.
Especially, again, on a European keyboard, it's like you've got to just almost stop because there's just enough keys changed.
Yeah, like the Z and the Q. And all the punctuation marks are moved around.
Different places, yeah.
Punctuation moves from the number 3 or 2 key to...
Somewhere above the apostrophe.
Yeah, it's pretty messed up.
Yeah, so you look like a complete...
Americans on a European keyboard, you look like you don't even know how to type.
You're going, what the...
Oh, where the hell is it?
Yeah, exactly.
And that's the way I feel when I'm on a Dvorak keyboard.
I mean, it's just not usable.
Yeah.
But there's got to be a better way.
There's got to be better inputs.
Someone's going to figure it out.
Yeah, we should be able to just say what we want, and it should type, where's the automatic typewriter?
They had one in a Star Trek show back in the 60s.
Well, it turns out that shit's pretty complicated.
Too complicated to do.
Yeah, yeah.
But there are promises, promises, promises.
We've been promised all these things with these computers, and they don't deliver much except spreadsheets.
Which leads me to believe that someone's going to come up with something.
There's going to be some new way to do it.
Someone's going to figure it out.
There's got to be an alternative path.
This one is dead.
There's just no way.
Yeah, well, although you have to say, you know, like my son is a good example.
I think my daughter's going to end up this way too, but my son's one of those, I don't know what he's hitting, but it's like 160 words a minute or something.
And you see these kids do that.
Yeah, unbelievable.
Just ripping through the stuff.
And then two or three backspaces.
Of course, the backspace can be used.
Oh, my God.
That daughter's the same way.
And then just another screaming laugh.
Yeah, I know.
It's unbelievable.
And it's all on Facebook.
Right.
That's all it's about.
That's pretty amusing.
I have gotten my daughter to take off her address and her phone number, and I've warned her about a couple things.
I said, you know, these kids, they believe it, right?
They totally...
She says, you know, Facebook is safe, man, because you can set your settings.
Look, I'll show you.
I said, no, hon, I know, but how about fucking Facebook?
What are those guys doing?
Yeah, no, you don't want to put any real details on there.
You lie.
No, and, well, but, you know, she's like, you know, Facebook is so smart because, you know, she works part-time, you know, like after-school job and on the weekends at a clothing store, you know, one of those, like Jack Wills, which is real high-end shit, and, of course, they just have beautiful kids roaming around helping people buy stuff, you know, it's a great concept.
Our manager put together a Facebook group so that we all know our times and we have to be there.
It really is kind of like the new AOL for them.
Whatever, yeah.
It's all the same stuff.
It's all a new version of what's always existed.
Pretty much.
Just like AOL, and then that became the internet, and now this is this, and it'll become the internet again.
It'll open up.
Yeah, no, I think there's a lot of kids that aren't security conscious.
Oh, no, no idea.
No, absolutely not.
And they give each other their passwords all the time.
That's a big cultural thing, you know.
Yeah, and the weird part about the problem with passwords and why I don't like giving them out even when I'm going to loan one is that I have multiple uses.
I have about six passwords.
Yeah.
And I use them over and over again in different venues.
Like almost all my e-commerce stuff, if I'm like doing anything that has to do with the blog, I use the same password for all of it.
You know, just you saying that right now is already a security risk.
Yeah, I shouldn't even mention, although I think anyone who's really into, like, hacking people know that this goes on.
In fact, I've always believed that, and I worry about this, things that I would consider to be honeypots.
In other words, I set up a site, and I say, I want you to join the site, and I have to offer them something.
I'll give you a free something or other.
And then you say, here, set your name.
What do you want to call yourself?
Give yourself a password.
Yeah.
That password, I bet that person uses more than there.
And if I was running the site, I could harvest those passwords and then kind of find the IP address of the person, figure out who they are, use their password, and crack half their accounts.
Yeah.
that's right so I usually I mean my most secure of the secure I do have an extremely secure password that I use occasionally but I only rarely use it and it's only for stuff that I would really worry about but But generally speaking...
Secure as it's...
It's long, it's complicated, it's not a password, and I don't like using it because it's tedious.
Right.
I have two different online banks, or banks that I can access online, and I really love the challenge string thing.
You get a little reader, and you punch in your code, and then it gives you a challenge string, and you fill that in.
I like that.
I wish all sites did it like that.
You're talking about a CAPTCHA? No, no, no.
It's a physical device, and you have to insert your bank card into the device.
Oh.
And then, so in order to log into your bank account, and basically, you know, you're in, and you're transferring money, then, so you have to enter your PIN code, and then it gives you, some, you'll have to enter a code from the site, And then it gives you a challenge string back and it's based on some other whatever.
But it essentially pretty much assures that you're the one that's doing it.
And there's nothing to remember.
The only thing I have to remember is my PIN code.
Cool.
Yeah.
I wish everyone did it that way.
That would be just the way to do it, I think.
Well, there's a lot to be desired with the security in these systems.
Fuck yeah.
So I guess that's it for this week.
It should be.
An hour and ten minutes.
I wonder.
I'm sure you can pull ten minutes out of it.
I'm not going to pull anything out of it.
Are you crazy?
You're going to pull it okay?
No.
If you want to be that way.
What's the fast forward for?
You can probably edit this down to a fantastic ten minute show.
The numbers are still going up though, John.
Are they?
What's our numbers?
I think we do like 10,000 an episode.
Really?
That's not bad.
No, not at all.
In a real sense, that should be worth $10,000.
No, it would be 10 CPMs, a CPM being about 25 bucks.
Yeah, that's a CPM for one ad, but in an hour and ten minute show, you should be able to do multiple CPM inserts.
You should.
In television, for people out there who want to know how they budget these shows, in broadcast television, a one hour show is worth a dollar a head in terms of what they should be able to recoup.
So a one hour show that has ten million viewers should have a budget of ten million dollars for everything.
That's right.
That's about it.
It varies between $800,000 and a million, but that's about right.
Yeah, and of course it depends on the time.
There are variables if it's prime time or not.
Yeah, it's real prime time stuff.
But that's good money.
Yeah.
Well, yeah, we could do a couple ads.
Eh, we'll do them when we need to.
Yeah, really.
I burned up a lot today in the air.
That's what my first instructor said.
You know, just one thing.
You realize you're actually burning money in the air, don't you?
I said, uh-huh.
Yeah, well, it's like when you go shooting with somebody.
You know, you always hope somebody invites you because those bullets are expensive.
Yeah, it's like two bucks a pop or something like that.
Yeah, some of these bullets are even more than that, especially those big weird ones.
It's crazy.
All right, let's wrap it up.
All right.
Okay.
Coming to you from the United Kingdom in the Curry Manor.
I'm Adam Curry.
And I'm John C. Dvorak in Northern California.
And we'll talk to you next week on No Agenda.
The best and the brightest.
Served up daily by the sharpest minds in content delivery.
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