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Feb. 3, 2008 - No Agenda
01:08:43
15: Hot Horse Meat and Hidden Salami
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It's that time once again.
It is time for the program that has absolutely no commercials, no music, no jingles, and of course no agenda.
Coming to you from the Curry Manor in the United Kingdom, I'm Adam Curry.
And I'm John C. Dvorak here in northern Silicon Valley, California.
How's the weather there, John?
When I left, it was pouring down rain yesterday.
It was pouring down rain yesterday.
It kept raining all night after you'd left.
And now it's fine.
It's sunny.
Oh, really?
Oh, crap.
You guys don't deserve that.
Well, yeah.
No, it's sunny right now.
But there's a...
It looks like a...
Let me look.
Let's see here.
It looks a little grim toward the bay, but the seagulls were flying in earlier this morning, and I thought there may be a storm coming in, but I'm not seeing any evidence of it.
We've got terrible weather over here.
We've got winds gusting 35 miles an hour.
There's snow up north.
There's been all kinds of stuff.
People have been trapped in vehicles for hours on end.
Trucks have been blown over.
You don't hear much about it, but we've got a fair share of weather over here.
Well, the UK people, my experience has always been that they're kind of weather nutty.
That's actually funny you mention that.
Patricia and I have a theory.
If you're here in dead winter, and of course it doesn't really snow here, it does get cold, but it'll kind of hover around one or two degrees above the freezing point.
The women, particularly younger girls, they walk around with short skirts, no jacket, you know, like Ugg boots, and this is rampant.
And our theory is that the inhabitants of this island basically want to make a statement that says, our weather's fine.
That's not true.
We've got great weather over here.
Just look at how I'm dressed.
That's funny.
That's possible.
But my experience has always been that they seem to talk about the weather more than any other culture, and they also have more weather reports than anything I've ever seen.
I mean, the TV is just – it's like you could turn one on now, I'm sure of it.
Yeah, and the weather reports I find are pretty good.
They introduced this on BBC News on television.
They introduced a new software package, I don't know, about a year or so ago.
A lot of people were very upset.
Any change like that, you know, in how you report weather, people get upset about.
But it's really good.
I would have to say every single pilot I know, every aviator uses that as like a baseline.
Okay, now I know what's going to happen.
Just a normal weather report the BBC gives.
And I think it's probably, that's also got to be cultural, you know, this being a nation that's been very dependent upon the sea, both for transportation and for life.
I guess that makes sense.
Sea, weather.
I just got back from Washington State and it was raining and snowing up there.
and And I was 28.
And you strapped on your skis?
No, you put on some of those little spike things over your shoes so you don't fall on your butt.
Oh, man.
So it was good hanging with the family?
Yeah, I was...
Yeah, we had to...
My daughter had something she had to do on stage, and...
And, yeah, the thing is, you know, we're getting a lot of, one of the reasons I have to go up there is to drag down some of the meat that we buy up there.
We have, you know, when you're in the more rural areas, even though it's not that rural, but there's still, you can get a lot, you know, you buy into animals that people raise, and they're raised without, you know, Just a few of them are raised.
Do you buy a share of an animal or do you buy a whole animal?
You buy a half a cow or a half a pig or a whole animal.
It depends.
Really?
But you get the quality.
You can get certain breeds.
A lot of this has been lost to history, in the United States anyway, not so much in France, for example.
We have, you know, there's different breeds of pigs, and they all taste different.
Nobody would know that if they shopped at Safeway.
But the fact is, they all have extremely different characteristics, and some are like...
We've got some bacon in this last pig that's just astonishing.
I mean, it's just like...
So where do you keep it?
Do you have a meat locker or a...
Oh, you have to have a big freezer.
Right.
And so you freeze half a...
I'm sorry to interrupt, but I'm really intrigued.
You freeze half a carcass or do you have the butcher cut it up?
It goes to a butcher.
Okay.
No, it goes to a butcher beforehand, and you tell him what you want.
You say, look, I want to cut this way, or you can ask for French cuts or American cuts, or you can have big pieces or big roasts.
It depends on what you want.
And you try to figure out what you're going to do.
You always screw it up.
You end up with a bunch of stuff you don't want.
Stuff you don't want, yeah.
Not another one of these.
No more BLTs, Dad, please!
So anyway, then it's all frozen.
And then you pull it out and thaw it out as you need it.
Interesting.
And you do this with pork or with beef or both?
I do it with pork, beef, and lambs.
Oh, wow.
We should probably...
I'm sorry, go ahead.
No, but go ahead.
I mean, it's just like you could probably do that in a British...
I mean, I'm sure in Britain there's people doing the same thing.
It's just that you have to be in the right loop.
Yeah.
Patricia and I have been talking about this for a while now.
Because we usually go to either Sainsbury's or Marks& Spencer over here.
Marks& Spencer, which is a little more upscale, but it's still all prepackaged food.
Probably the past three or four months we've been saying we really should find a real...
We don't really eat that much meat anyway of any kind.
So it's really chicken, fish, and then once in a while some beef.
But when we get beef, it's so hard here.
Lamb, no problem.
But really good beef is, I find, really hard to find here in the UK. So we were thinking about finding a butcher.
And that's an interesting idea, though, because you buy into the animal from the farm before it even gets into the process of going to the butcher, etc.
Right.
And I'm sure you can do that there.
I mean, because you can do this everywhere.
It's just some places it's harder to do and some places it's in so much demand that you can't get a good price.
Generally speaking, you should be paying half of what you would pay at the store.
And the quality is 100 times better because they're grass-fed.
You can get them at different...
Beef that we have that we just got, I think the thing was nine months old, so it was like, you know, still, you know, it's real tender.
The piece is a little smaller than the usual.
The steaks are about half the size, but still done by the pound, so it doesn't make any difference.
And still...
By the way, we...
I'm sorry, but we do also get chickens this way, and also turkeys.
We get heritage birds.
There's a couple farmers in Washington State that grow heritage animals that are...
If you have a turkey, a heritage bird, one of the older types of turkeys that made turkey popular, you can see why turkey became so popular in the United States because these birds do not taste like turkey.
They actually taste like a giant pheasant.
For those of you who have tasted pheasant before.
Well, most people should have if they haven't.
But not that, you know, I mean, pheasant is absolutely delicious.
It's a little hard to cook because you have to hit it just right.
But unlike a lot of these things, like duck, you can be pretty liberal.
I think, though, this type of purchasing of meat and poultry, I think a lot of people might have a problem with it because I believe we've become very conditioned to, To not putting any type of, well, obviously not human face, but putting a living being face or being confronted with the process of, because you just said, oh, you know, we've got beef that was nine months old, and of course my brain's going, oh, wow, man.
You know, little calf grew up, nine months old, gets the electrodes.
How are they killed?
Are they slaughtered in a specific way?
I think they're forced to listen to Robert's skull bone.
Oh man, I listened to that interview on Tech 5 and I already berated you for it.
And by the way, Davo, this is a big rich person circle jerk up in, is it near Geneva?
No, it can't be in Geneva.
I think it's in the northern part.
I'm not sure where, that's a good question.
We can look it up.
But it's in the middle of nowhere, Switzerland.
And it's, you know...
You never hear any, or I haven't seen any substantial news or any reports, any substantial reports about the keynotes or about what basically people were talking about.
All you read about in the newspaper was, you know, Princess So-and-So, King So-and-So, Prime Minister This Dude was there.
They were caught hobnobbing.
And of course, in San Francisco, in the Silicon Valley trade and basically online, it's All about Michael Erickton, the Google boys who gets on the Google jet, the Scoble.
I mean, what kind of economic forum is this?
To me, I believe, and I do have some inside...
It's an economic forum.
Yeah, it's a conference scam.
I heard that...
I won't say who, but I know a group who was presenting this year.
It was a venture capital firm, and they were presenting.
It's almost like pay-to-play, it feels like.
I think they had to pay $200,000 for four hotel rooms and a spot on the stage.
It's a conference scam.
I don't see what else it is.
I never see anything come out of it.
No, it's a drinking club.
Come on.
There you go.
Drinking club.
That's it.
That's it.
Yeah, it's like...
There's a lot of journalists that go to it, too, and they all scurry over there.
They never get anything out of it.
I know the New York Times sends a couple people, and I can't imagine how they get cost-effectively.
You wonder why newspapers are going out of business.
Why are they covering this event?
I think they probably get an interview or two out of it.
I've seen exclusive interviews that will come out, but it's rarely about the state of the world's economic health.
Well, you can get an interview with these people without going to Davos.
Yeah.
Well, but it is handy.
It's easy, right?
It's like CES. If you're in the technology press, isn't it easier to...
You went there.
It makes sense.
So, economic writers, they'll go there.
It's basically just for the interviews.
But what is the actual conference about?
What is this forum?
What do they do there?
Who decides something?
Anything?
Anything.
They give a bunch of speeches, and people sit in the audience and listen, and then they all shoot the breeze in the hallways.
I don't know.
I don't like any of these events, whether it's CES or this thing.
I've never been to Davos, but I wouldn't want to go.
I talked to Scoble after that, and he says it took him 27 hours to get there, because he wasn't on the Google Jet.
On the Google Jet.
He was a little annoyed he wasn't on the Google Jet.
He should have been on the Google Jet.
And the thing is that Tim O'Reilly was on the Google Jet.
Apparently he went too.
Fuck the Google Jet, man.
I'd never want to be on the Google Jet.
I really would not, unless they bought me.
And I'm talking about my company, I'm talking about me.
Then I'll go on the Google jet.
I was flying back on...
Oh, by the way, I bumped into Jan and John who run...
Have you ever heard of Magnatune?
It's a record label.
Very successful.
It's not actually really.
It's kind of like a record label.
They've been around for five years.
And these guys must be doing something right.
Because I've bumped into them a couple times.
And they're always flying upper class.
Fuck.
I can't remember why I was going to tell you this story.
Well, you bumped into them.
Yeah.
It'll come back to me.
Anyway, so in the lounge, I picked up my favorite newspaper, the Financial Times, and right there on page two, so the inside page, rich non-doms preparing to leave UK. And this goes back to the conversation we had about the tax changes here in the UK. Yeah.
Oh, yeah.
What's going on again?
Why don't you re-recap it?
Yeah.
So they're changing the way particularly capital gains taxes is handled in the United Kingdom.
First of all, I believe that capital gains tax is going up for everyone anyway from 10% to 18%, which is almost double and is obviously less attractive to a number of people for a number of reasons.
What they want to do now is they want to taxize people who live in the UK yet have offshore assets.
They want to tax them for all capital gains, which currently is not the case.
So as long as you don't bring it into the UK or if you remit it under certain circumstances, you don't have to pay the capital gains.
for U.S. citizens who are obliged worldwide, regardless where they live or what they do or where they pay taxes, to pay capital gains tax, effectively for me resulting, if it passes in April, in double taxation.
So if I made a capital gains, then I would effectively be paying something like 40% in total.
So the opening of the story, more than half of the wealthiest people in Britain are planning to leave or scale back their U.K. investments in response to the tax crackdown on the non-domiciled foreigners, according to a survey.
And Switzerland, interestingly, has emerged as by far the most popular destination for the wealthy individuals leaving Britain.
Gee, go figure.
But how about that?
Gestalt, ladies and gentlemen.
Gestalt.
Yeah, but they're really doing this.
And so the Treasury who collects or who sets these rules up for the inland revenue to collect, the UK version of the IRS, they believe that this will bring in more money.
Sounds like the opposite effect is going to happen.
Well, yeah.
So that's what...
Who's fighting this?
Oh, of course, tax consultants are fighting this or trying to convince them differently.
They think it's going to get them 800...
So the revenue believes it will bring in 800 million more on an annual basis.
And the tax advisors are saying that probably 44 billion will leave the country if this is actually implemented.
Right.
Well, that's a typical kind of bonehead thing that happens when you get people that just want to tax the crap out of you.
This is how the American Revolution began, of course.
Was it around taxation?
Oh, yeah.
King George wanted to taxize everyone, right?
If there's a word such as taxize.
Yeah.
It's a new Adam Curry invented word.
Let me go put it on Wikipedia that I invented that.
Hold on.
I'll be right back.
So the irony, if people have studied American history, the irony is not so much that they raised the taxes.
They actually, in fact, lowered them, but they decided to enforce the law.
That was the problem, which baffled King George because he would say, well, you know, I'm giving these guys a break.
And now they're all up in arms about it.
It doesn't make any sense.
These Americans are crazy.
But what happened was they actually decided to collect the taxes as opposed to previously.
The taxes were just a bunch of scoff laws.
Nobody was paying the tax.
And once they started collecting it, then everyone got up in arms.
And I think that's what we're looking at here.
I mean, you know, the public can only put up with so much taxation if they're not getting anything for their money.
Did you read the follow-up on Wesley Snipes?
If you recall, they were looking for him a couple months back for like $7 million in back taxes they were trying to nail him for.
I guess there was a hearing, and it turns out that Wesley Snipes is one of these non-tax people who, of course, I'm one of them as well, except I pay the taxes.
There's a large, I would say a substantial group of people, including Ron Paul.
who believe that the IRS, that the tax they levy is illegal and unconstitutional.
And Wesley Snipes had essentially filed, or not filed for several years, and said, I don't have to pay this.
It's unconstitutional.
So he might, now he was able to.
I understand.
I'm sorry.
I understand.
I was just reading this yesterday.
I understand that the thing finally went to some trial.
He found that he's not liable.
Yeah, because he got bad advice from his tax lawyer.
But he has to pay $21 million in fees and the rest of it?
I don't see the $21 million.
I thought I saw something like maybe $3 million.
Maybe it was $17 million.
I thought it was a higher number than $3 million.
I thought it was like in the millions, in the two-digit millions.
Yeah.
Well, I think he made a lot of money.
He might have spent a lot, too.
I don't think he's got...
My understanding is he hasn't got this money to give the IRS. I don't think a lot of people have $21 million cash laying around to pay the IRS. I think you'd be surprised.
Well, there's been a bunch of these celebrities who got in a hole like that, and they essentially...
I forget one of them.
There's a story about one of them on the television recently.
Will Smith.
Will Smith.
Oh yeah, Will Smith, exactly.
Apparently he went and did a whole bunch of work, did a bunch of movies and everything else, and essentially every penny except some portion for his expenses went to the IRS until he paid him off.
It took him like five years or something like that.
Yeah, I saw the report and I remember the numbers exactly.
I think he made $5 million on Parents Just Don't Understand.
That was his big hit before The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air.
And he said he just blew it all.
He said he just spent it on everything, anything he wanted.
And then the IRS showed up and of course he didn't have any money left, barely.
And you're right, it was 70 cents of every dollar he made after that for five years went to the IRS until he had paid off his debt.
So anyway, so Wesley Snipes didn't pay because he felt he didn't have to.
You know, I love this, the idea that, you know, there's, and you see this, this crops up every year.
You know, a bunch of people saying, you know, there's no, show me the law that says I have to pay my taxes in one of the two things.
Right, there is none, John, there is no law.
Yeah, and the other one is, you know, it's not constitutional.
There's a whole bunch of these things, and it's like, okay, this is like, guys, somebody explained to me once how, you know, the RICO Act came into play, and it was never really fully tested, because there's some...
Most constitutionalists think that that RICO law, which was used to crack down on organized crime and then was extended to all kinds of other things, was really not really constitutional.
But there's so much case law behind it, backing it up, that now it's too late to do anything to stop it.
And that's essentially the situation.
Yeah, maybe there is no law you can point your finger at, but there's an organization that collects the money.
They can take all the money out of all your bank accounts.
What difference does it make if there's a law or not, if they have these powers?
Yeah, you can protest it, so what's the point?
I always thought it was crazy to, like, you know, these kinds of protests.
I mean, there's other better things to do with your time than complain about the fact that the IRS doesn't, there's no law for the IRS. Well, you know...
I'm kind of on the fence about this.
First of all, I agree with you that the jurisprudence is there and it's senseless to not pay and then think they're not going to catch up with you.
And they do have a tremendous amount of power.
I think the IRS is more powerful than most departments in the United States.
What really irks me about most inland revenue, whether it's the IRS or I haven't had any problems here in the UK, I'm sure it will come, is exactly that.
There's always picking at you and trying to get stuff and, oh, man.
It's just annoying.
It's not enough that you take money away from me before I've ever even seen it, so it never hits my bank account and you take it away.
But then the continuing argument, I think they're one of the most feared departments in the government.
Well, I like the idea of a consumption tax, personally.
I love it.
I think that the IRS is just...
It's not even the IRS's fault, necessarily.
I think it's just the system.
I mean, I remember some years ago, I think it was...
Maybe during Reagan's administration or even before that, there was this tax simplification they were going to go through.
They were going to simplify the tax laws.
It was a big deal.
And there's a whole bunch of editorial cartoons about it.
And they just made it more complicated.
I happened to be somebody who took the courses necessary to get certified.
Oh, of course you did.
Years ago.
Of course you're an expert in accounting.
I took the courses to do the IRS stuff.
Really?
To become an IRS agent, John?
No, no.
To be able to do taxes.
Oh, like CPA? Like a certified public accountant?
No, that's way beyond what this is.
It's like a notary public, only then about numbers.
It's something like that.
Whatever the case is, you have to go to a bunch of courses and stuff.
So you can do taxes.
And I forgot.
This was something I was going to do or I needed to do or wanted to do.
I don't know what the deal was, to be honest about it, because it was so long ago.
But I know now that I can't do taxes.
I mean, I could do them at one time.
I can't do them now.
It's just, like, ridiculous.
I mean, you have to have an expert figuring out where this goes and what this is for and if this is deductible.
It's unbelievable.
It was one of those...
It was one of those pro-Ron Paul YouTube movies.
I can't remember what it was.
I'll have to look for it.
Where the person said, look, this is the United States Constitution held up this little thin booklet and then held up this big like Yellow Pages phone book and this is the U.S. tax code for 2007.
It outstrips it by a thousand times, maybe even more.
Yeah, no, and that's the problem, and this is too complicated.
There's too many institutions that are needed just to get the taxes done.
I mean, there's overhead there.
It just would be much simpler if it was a consumption tax where you just, whatever you spent, it would also encourage savings, which they always say they want you to do, even though they really don't.
They want you to spend money.
So I'm against it.
Well, is that on John McCain's roster there?
Is that something he's planning on doing?
I doubt it.
If not...
I think McCain's just going to be a company man when he gets in.
I have to agree with you.
Patricia does not like him.
She's like, this guy, nah, no way.
She thinks his wife's pretty hot.
I have to admit.
His wife is pretty hot.
It's amazing.
She's kind of milfy.
And now everyone's popping up on the internet talking about McCain and posting videos of him saying, I hope we stay in Iraq for a hundred years.
Really, it's just going to be bush light if he gets in.
Well, you don't know.
I mean, he might be the type of guy.
The thing is, he might be the type of guy that says one thing.
In fact, I get the feeling he is this type of guy.
He says all these things, and he walks into office.
Within three days, he pulls the troops out of Iraq.
I mean, it wouldn't surprise me if he did something like that.
You know, I've got all the reports here.
This is bogus.
We're out.
Hmm.
Or moves them all to Afghanistan or nukes Afghanistan.
I mean, who knows?
I mean, the guy's a loose cannon.
You know what would be a great ticket?
Here's a ticket I would love.
John McCain, president.
Dr.
Ron Paul, vice president.
Now, that would kick ass, wouldn't it?
Yeah, I'd vote for that.
Do you think the party would never do that, would they?
Of course not.
There's no way.
They see Ron Paul as a complete crackpot.
And he's only one of four guys left, and he doesn't show up anywhere in any of the press, in any of the lists, rundowns, lineups.
It's completely ignored.
The press, and not only that, he's probably the best story because he has the most interesting things to say.
He does.
I mean, outside of Huckabee's consumption tax idea.
It's almost as if his stuff is so crazy, so kooky, so off the wall, but if you just listen to the guy and let it process in your brain for three seconds, then it kind of hits you how beautifully simplistic it all is.
Yeah, that's why he's never going to be president.
Well, I don't know, man.
I'm sorry.
I still have my hopes for this Tuesday, Super Tuesday.
We could still see an incredible grassroots movement, groundswell that could make it happen.
It's not like I've given up hope.
Yeah, thanks, man.
Yeah, it's going to be Hillary.
Obama's making a last-ditch effort to try to get some traction, and it's going to be interesting to see how he does.
But I just don't see it.
It's going to be Hillary versus McCain.
That's the final deal.
Hillary and McCain, but you're still holding by.
Obama would be VP on her ticket.
Yeah, I'm going to stick with that.
It's possible that Clintons will just pull a rabbit out of a hat and drag some, who knows, some unknown into the position.
Yeah, someone who's been hovering in the wings that you kind of know.
And even if Obama doesn't get the vice presidency, or the nod for the vice presidency slot, I still think he's going to be the most viable candidate in 2012.
When he has a little bit of experience under his belt.
He'll have more experience.
More friends on K Street.
All the important stuff.
Right.
And he would not have been a loser.
Because if Hillary runs and loses, she's not going to...
Back in the 1800s, they used to run these guys over and over again.
I think William Jennings Bryant was like...
I think they ran him maybe up to three times.
And he'd just lose every time.
That...
It apparently beats these guys up so much that very few of them will run a second time.
I mean, Adlai Stevenson, I guess, was the last Democrat that tried it.
He ran against Eisenhower, and then he ran against Eisenhower and lost both times.
I think that those days are over, so I can't see Hillary running again if she loses.
Right.
Let me just see how much money Ron Paul has brought in.
Yeah, I think he brings in a fair amount, enough money at least to pay the bills.
Yeah, well, he's got $5.1 million this quarter so far.
So, what is that?
In four weeks, so one month, $5 million, not bad.
What's he doing with all that money?
I don't see any ads.
The money that they wanted to raise was specifically to run five, I think, national ads this weekend and I guess up and during Super Tuesday.
So that's what the money was for.
I saw some other chart.
Which seemed kind of out of whack to me because it was showing how much the candidates had raised and how much they spent and how much cash they had on hand.
And had Ron Paul listed as having a lot of cash on hand.
And I don't think that's true.
I'm pretty sure that they're spending it.
Because I talk to the finance director on kind of like a regular basis.
You know, once every couple of weeks or whatever.
And they really need more money.
They've had to hold back on some advertising.
But I guess it's very local still.
There's nothing national.
So maybe you flip on the TV this weekend or tomorrow.
Well, there's a big football game on today.
Today is Super Bowl Sunday.
Oh, that's right.
And there was talk at one point of doing a Ron Paul commercial during Super Bowl Sunday, but I don't think they allow that.
I don't think they allow political advertising.
Oh, that could be.
I've never seen a political ad on the Super Bowl.
I mean, because the Super Bowl for the international audience out there, I think a lot of people watch it overseas too, but they're notorious for doing expensive, high-end, sometimes humorous commercials during the Super Bowl.
Usually they bang them all a lot.
And this year is going to be probably an interesting test for...
What they're charging because I... They're charging more than last year, right?
Yeah, they're charging a lot.
It's like, I don't know, to be honest about it, the number's probably on the net somewhere.
But I think that the game is going to not...
Unless I'm wrong, I can't see this game being very interesting after the first quarter.
And that's going to put a bunch of these advertisers in a bind.
And I think what they're going to do probably for the first...
A few minutes of the game, they'll probably be taking TV timeouts after every play to jam all these commercials at people so they can assure that they get the audience that they're guaranteeing because this game could go out of control and just be a dud by the half and that the whole bunch of people are going to not get their money's worth out of advertising in the second half.
Unless I'm wrong.
Maybe they could rig it somehow so the game would be interesting.
Well, it's possible.
Well, the game is designed for television, John.
It's designed for commercials.
Football and basketball are totally media sports, which is my theory why soccer really never has caught on, or football as we call it over here, is because there's no place to insert the ads.
There's no breaks.
The thing that's interesting about basketball, not to mention it, is that the most exciting part of a basketball game, curiously, unlike a football game generally, is the last two minutes.
Where the teams usually are pretty close.
And they have to keep taking timeouts because every time they follow, they do one thing or another.
So there's lots of opportunities for commercials during the most exciting time of the game, which has got to get people all pumped up.
You know, when they're watching the commercials, their adrenaline's going.
And so it's kind of remarkable.
But generally speaking, in terms of interesting overall, basketball on television, to me, it's a little boring.
Yeah, I don't watch sports at all.
Yeah, you're not a sports guy.
I mean, I'd watch the Super Bowl if it was on at a normal time.
By the way, it's only 3 million people outside the U.S. on pretty much an average basis that watch the Super Bowl.
And one ad this year, of course, it can't be true because it doesn't say if it's an early ad, a late ad, if it's a halftime ad.
But I guess the average price, $2.7 million.
Yeah, it was the Ron Paul budget.
No, but there was a lot of talk about doing it, but I just don't think they'll accept them.
They will accept, of course, GoDaddy chicks walking around with their Hooters out.
I mean, that's important.
Yeah, well, that's a football audience.
And by the way, use my checkout code DSC1, DSC2, or DSC3 for a great deal on a domain name at GoDaddy.
Don't you have a GoDaddy code, John?
I use the general one, the company one.
Oh, what's that?
PS1? Yeah, something like that.
Oh, okay.
I don't have a specific one.
Mainly because it would just show that nobody listens to anything I do or say.
People are definitely listening.
Oh, dude.
Sarkozy.
He did it.
He married her.
Go over this again?
I say Sarkozy, but Sarkozy, the French...
Oh, the French guy with the hot...
Yeah, he married her.
He married Carla.
Oh, well, good for him.
I like the French guys.
You know, he's a dog, man.
This guy's got it together.
And they had the beautiful picture they released of the two of them.
I saw it in a couple different newspapers.
Oh, man.
Her eyes are set a little far apart, but she's hot.
You just look at that mouth.
Look at that mouth of hers.
That's an Icelandic look.
Oh.
She has an album coming out, or a CD, a new one, coincidentally, coming out in a couple weeks.
And Patricia heard her sing.
She says she liked the way she sings.
She doesn't think she's all that bad.
She's kind of rubbing out the ex-supermodel moniker.
But I figured out, because I'm trying to think, how does she meet up with all these guys?
Because she dated Mick Jagger.
Eric Clapton.
And, of course, the oddball Donald Trump, which that just tells you something about her personality.
Maybe she goes to Davos.
I bet you.
I'll bet you she's been to Davos.
Dude, we got to go to Davos.
Hot chicks are there.
Yeah, I think there must be.
I mean, unless the thing is, you know, kind of it could be a gay cabal for all we know.
That's what you should have been asking Scoble about instead of about his streaming videos.
The streaming video thing, it was fascinating to me that he'd actually gotten away with doing that.
People out there should listen to Tech 5's last Thursday.
That was really fascinating to you?
I mean, these guys are everywhere with these little streaming things from their phones.
I mean, everyone's doing that, it seems.
Yeah.
Well, I was unaware of this trend.
I mean, I know people are using the phones for different recording, but I didn't ever know it was streaming directly.
Oh, yeah.
No, there's lots.
There's tons of little companies that are doing this, and some of them maybe even not so little.
I mean, I don't see it scaling, and I'm not quite sure I see...
A business model, but it is fascinating.
I mean, I've done it.
I've downloaded it.
Was it QIK, I think?
Quick?
It's quick.com.
And you can load some software onto your Nokia phone, and you just fire it up, and then it's broadcasting.
And the quality is, well, okay.
It's YouTube-ish quality.
And of course, the sound being shitty is the biggest problem.
But there's a lot of people doing this.
And for one-off events or...
It ties in well with the blogger thing.
Hey, I'm going to go to the Steve Jobs keynote.
Hey, here I am.
Now check out my stream.
I think it's part of a tool chest of stuff.
So I saw somebody doing something like that at the Seattle SeaTac Airport because some woman was screaming at the top of her lungs at the TSA. Oh, no.
And then the guy was yelling...
I heard the guy, because I was right there, I was walking past, I was just exiting the...
Minding your own business, of course.
And I heard the guy saying, are you threatening me?
Oh, God.
Which was, I didn't hear that, but then he yells at the top of his lungs, I need a supervisor!
And so the supervisor comes over here and she gets really adamant.
She starts cussing the guy out.
And I'm thinking, oh brother.
Meanwhile, somebody's taping the whole thing from a little distance away.
Excellent.
Did you see the TSA blog that came out this past week?
Someone must have sent you.
No, you're kidding me.
No, nobody sends me anything, as you know.
Dude, this is the one link that I actually did get a million times.
TSA.gov slash blog.
Oh, it's hilarious.
And they kind of messed it up first.
Oh, they're actually doing it themselves?
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
They have their own blog.
People are just commenting all kinds of stories.
Oh, that's great.
Yeah, no, it's entertainment.
It is absolutely entertainment.
So what happened on your last entry?
Because you came in, I believe, since we did the show last.
That's right.
Yeah, I came back in and the exact same sequence of events.
And you came into San Francisco again.
Yeah, San Francisco.
And by the way, a lot of people confuse TSA with the CBP. And people still believe that it's the TSA that's hassling me, which is not true.
It's the Customs and Border Protection Agency.
By the way, now that you mention that, I'll bet you that the Customs and Border Protection guys are irked to no end at being associated with the TSA baggage.
You are totally right.
Do you know what the one big difference is between TSA and CBP? Even if you just look at their uniforms, do you know what the one big difference is?
Yeah, one of them's got a gun.
Thank you.
Exactly.
So who's the fucking powerhouse?
So the CBP, they've all got guns.
And even the guy behind the counter has a gun, you know, when you first come in.
And so the guy, it was the same story, John.
Hey, don't I know you?
And usually my joke that I've used for the past 20 years, when someone says, don't I know you, I'll say, were we in jail together?
You know, that's always kind of like a funny one.
And it was on the tip of my tongue, right?
And I'm like, no, I'm not going to say that.
I said, MTV, you ever watch that?
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
And, you know, he did his stripe thingy.
And then he went into the computer.
And the faces they make when they look at my record.
And I've asked, you know, each time, they won't tell you what's in there.
And you can't see it because they've got the anti, you know, look over the shoulder screen filter on the monitor.
Right.
But you can see him kind of looking, typing, and then go, hmm, I don't know what that is.
And then he does an M on the customs form.
And again, what does M stand for?
And he doesn't tell me.
I said, well, is it for money?
Oh, and by the way, then he puts a stamp on it.
So that'll make my counterfeit effort a little tougher to do.
And then I got my bag, went through, and I did my usual smiley thing.
And I said, well, here it is.
And then I followed that up by saying, I guess you want to put this one in the clear blue envelope.
Yeah, that's right.
And then he sends me over to a special counter, and it was the same guy from last time.
And he's like, Adam, you were here just last week.
Didn't you come through here?
I said, yep.
I said, oh, man.
Are you still in the computer?
I said, yep.
Oh, yeah, this is so stupid.
And they let me go.
Have a nice day.
You never even looked in the bags for the money?
No.
I have that in my shoe.
They must stand for money.
They must be thinking that you're running money back and forth or something.
I don't know.
It's like a standard question.
The times that I have been interrogated in second screening, they do ask if you have more than $10,000, and they did go through all my stuff looking for something, but it was clear they didn't know what they're looking for.
So anyway, I just want to say that the TSA is a minor inconvenience.
It really is.
Being on a list with the Customs Border Protection Agency, that's frightening.
These guys have a real fucking database, and it's really tied into all kinds of shit.
And clearly, it's wrong.
And they've got guns.
Now, they may be all nice to me, because they all watch me intro poison videos, but clearly, it's fucked up.
That's a very scary thing that's going on there.
That, to me, is way different from TSA. But I would assume now that you're going to fly into San Francisco more than you are just random airports.
Well, unfortunately, you know, I do have to go to New York once in a while, so that means I'm going to get the much longer treatment, I would presume, at Newark Airport.
I haven't been through JFK yet since this changed.
And, you know, I don't know.
The only thing you can do is send in a Freedom of Information Act request, which they've already said they do not honor.
So, you know, out of national security.
But I guess there's just nothing to be done.
National security is involved with you.
This is one of the questions you'll read on the TSA blog.
It's really cool.
Why do you have to, you know, hand search and frisk three-year-old children?
And the answer is, there's a guy that actually answered the question.
They got a video answer to that, even.
The guy says, well, you know, terrorists are using elderly and children to carry bombs and to detonate.
I'm like, fuck you.
That's nuts.
Old ladies.
If you're really protecting me, then do the same thing at the bus station, the train station, and the subway.
Not just on planes.
It's not true.
Liars.
Well, it's ridiculous to be frisking.
I mean, I remember one time there was a...
When this all began, they were just basically pulling over.
They had this random thing.
They had a random number generator and you'd get picked every once in a while.
Which is kind of fair, by the way.
You'd see people in wheelchairs, you know, and old men, you know, in Asheville, North Carolina.
And cheerleaders.
I remember seeing some cheerleader ones getting frisked.
And, of course, that may have been a volunteer thing.
And...
Excuse me, ma'am.
I'm with the TSA. I have to frisk you.
And I remember one time, though, I was coming from New Orleans, and I was one of the guys, and I had my suitcase.
When I go to New Orleans, I usually go get...
There's a couple stores I go to, and I load up the suitcase with...
Local food, mostly sausages and other things that you can't get anyplace else.
You can't bring this stuff anymore, but I used to get the big jars of Zatarain's mustard, which is an outstanding product.
People don't realize it tastes exactly like a French mustard.
Anyway, so the guys open the suitcase up and the guy with apparently a sense of humor goes, Oh, we got a Bonanza!
And he calls all the other guys over.
And he says, come on over here, check this out.
We caught one.
And he goes, and they all look and they see this pot, this whole suitcase with nothing in it but sausages and andouille and whatever.
And they all got a big laugh out of it and closed the thing up and said, I told them I always, you know, when I'm in New Orleans, I shop.
Yeah, you load up on your meat products, absolutely.
It's important stuff.
I got to bring some stuff back.
And that was okay?
Were you allowed to travel with it?
Oh yeah, you can travel with meat.
Not internationally, of course, but...
No, internationally they're a little touchy about it.
I wonder if I took a big, long salami and put it in my bag, I wonder if they'd let me on with that.
I bet you they've got some reason.
I don't know about that.
They'll confiscate the salami.
I've had a salami confiscated at JFK once.
I've hidden a salami once or twice.
Well, that's another story.
So there's a type of salami out of France called a Beaujolais salami.
It's an absolutely fantastic product.
The Beaujolais salami?
Yeah, the Beaujolais salami is quite good.
And so I have one.
I brought a couple of them in, and I declared the salami.
I had two of them, and I declared it.
He said, oh, we've got to confiscate it.
I know they're confiscating it for lunch.
It was like $11.45.
And I said, why?
He says, well, there's bad meat in Europe, is what he says to me.
Really?
Mad cow disease in your salami.
There's bad meat in Europe.
Bad meat.
So he scrounged around, he grabbed the one, he didn't get the second one, so I had one at least for later.
I was pissed off about it.
We had a great dinner the other night, which we should just touch on briefly, because I found it to be...
Well, having dinner with you is a culinary event regardless.
And it was at Shea, what was the name of it?
Shea Spencer in San Francisco, one of my favorite little places.
Yeah, fantastic restaurant.
If you live in San Francisco, I would highly recommend going there, just for the ambiance alone.
You know, it's kind of like in the slums, and even the front door looks like you're entering a slummy warehouse, and then you go through the door, and it's like paradise.
It's so beautiful on the inside.
It reminds me a little bit of the places that used to be in Russia and the Soviet Union.
Right.
Kind of cavernous on the inside.
I went there once and we were taken to what was supposedly the best restaurant in Moscow.
It was in a crappy neighborhood and it looked like a beat up old house.
I think I've been to that restaurant.
Did they have a singer in the restaurant as well?
I don't remember there being a singer but I could see where that could happen.
It was kind of like a cavernous vibe in a way.
Yeah, and you go in and all of a sudden you transform from what looked like it was going to be a hellhole into this really nice place.
And Chase Spencer has elements of that where you look at the outside and you go, this place can't be any good.
And then you go inside and the inside of this restaurant is outstanding.
That's nice.
But I think what you wanted to talk about is the fact that we ate Vanissen.
Yes, we did.
They always have game there, which is a good thing.
And for people who don't in other countries, that would mean deer meat.
Right, deer meat.
And you were relating the fact that you had just come back from Helsinki where you were pigging out on reindeer.
Reindeer, yeah.
Yeah.
I don't know.
By the way, for people out there that travel, if you go to the Scandinavian countries or the Nordic countries, and there is a difference, they eat reindeer, and they eat lots of it.
In Finland, from what I can tell, they don't eat anything but reindeer.
They have reindeer salamis.
They've got reindeer pizza.
They've got reindeer steaks.
And the reindeer is quite tasty.
It's really a delicious meat.
And the curious thing, and we were talking about this over dinner, was that reindeer is almost a 100% perfect match for a California Cabernet Sauvignon of a private reserve style like the Beringer, for example, where it's over-oaked and it's just a monster.
Which we did not have.
What did we have?
We had a Bordeaux.
Just a plain Jane Bordeaux.
A Bordeaux.
But anyway...
But we took enough time selecting it.
We had to bring out all these bottles, and we tasted every single one.
And then what did we get, like a $20 bottle of wine, John?
What did we wind up ordering?
No, actually, I think it was $70.
It was the second wine of Chateau L'Eau Villescaz.
It went well.
It went very well with the venison.
It was a good taste, for sure.
Yeah.
It wasn't cheap, though.
I mean, it wasn't expensive by any means, but there were cheaper wines on there.
But she had all these wines.
What's the cool thing about Chez Spencer, they have a lot of wines by the glass, and the wine list is pretty much the same wines, and so they'll give you little samples of the ones that you're wondering about.
And I was not impressed with these wines.
The other wines, and so we kind of moved over to the Bordeaux, which is always reliable.
Anyway, so the reindeer, so I'm in Sweden, and I found out that, and I didn't realize this, but the Swedes were...
Unlike the Finns, are a little more, I guess, careful about what they tell people they eat.
Because they seem to, I guess Americans have gone over there and they're just disgusted.
With the fact that people are munching on reindeer.
Rudy.
They're munching on Rudolph, the red-nosed reindeer.
I think we had Donner and Blitzen.
I'm not quite sure, but it wasn't Rudolph.
And so they're aghast.
And so the Swedes never mention that they don't want to talk about it.
And what I talked about before, which is another one of these countries up there, Iceland, where I think their main staple, they also eat a lot of lamb, but one of their main staples is puffin.
Oh, puffin, right.
It's a cute bird.
Cute little bird.
And like I told my daughter, when you're in Iceland, you eat puffin, you roast puffin, you eat puffin burgers.
You just eat a lot of puffin because they're like pigeons over there.
There's like millions of them.
But it's like you mention this to somebody and they're like, oh, puffins are so pretty.
How can you eat one?
This brings me back to my original point about packaged foods and that we've completely removed the consumption from the entire process, which really is one of the most natural processes in the natural world of hunting or raising, killing, consuming, breeding, continuing through that cycle of life.
And the minute you put a cute little birdie face on, it's like, oh, no, I don't want to do that.
Just give me a fucking Big Mac.
I don't want to eat old Puffin.
Which, of course, is ludicrous.
We're killing ourselves with crap food instead of eating really healthy, fresh stuff.
We're carnivores.
It's what we do.
Get over it.
The puffin, by the way, is quite tasty.
It's like all dark meat.
It's really a flavorful bird, I have to say.
And reindeer is delicious.
It's kind of...
It's a little sweet, yet...
It's hard to describe.
You had yours raw.
I had my medium raw.
I just can't take it too raw.
I can't take anything too raw.
You're talking about the venison.
Oh, I'm sorry.
Venison, yeah.
But the reindeer...
Actually, when I had a reindeer, I had it rare, too.
I mean, I didn't see any...
Eating a lot of weird stuff.
I was in South Africa once and I went to the Blue Train restaurant, which is known for having everything.
So you get to the sample, elephant, zebra.
I'm just disgusted with my daughter.
I eat an elephant.
Elephant, zebra.
How is elephant?
Antelope.
Elephant's not that good.
And zebra?
I bet your zebra's good.
Zebra is a little...
It's like horse.
It's very similar.
Horse meat.
It's a little tough.
Horse is...
Talking about, by the way, cultures that are embarrassed about what they eat.
The Slovenians...
Now I sound like I'm name-dropped.
For the people out there, this is one of those conversations where I get carried away with my anecdotes.
I like it.
I'm really interested in food, so carry on.
It's not about who's listening.
It's about me.
Good.
Anyway, in Slovenia, they're huge horse eaters.
But they don't want to tell anybody outside the country.
Because people don't get it.
But I finally talked to these guys.
I was over there.
I talked these guys into...
Because I've had a horse before.
I had it in Mexico.
And so I told these guys, no, I want to see what you guys do with a horse.
And so...
Reluctantly, they said, we'll take you to the best horse restaurant in Ljubljana.
And so, okay, I go with these guys.
And these guys were so reluctant.
I've never seen such chow hounds in my life when the horse steak comes out.
These guys are plowing through it like there's no tomorrow.
But anyway, so we all ordered the same thing, the best horse steak they had or whatever.
So it comes out, and I'm not really expecting to see a steak that's the size of this.
I mean, this thing's the size of a Xerox machine on this plate.
It can't even stay on the plate.
It's hanging over the sides.
And I'm going, oh my God, I can't eat this whole thing, but I'm going to try.
And I never realized, I mean, I had a horse taco once, and so I thought I was an expert.
And I didn't realize what a horse, when it's served like this, is actually like.
And the texture is a little...
It's a little...
It's a little like liver in a really funny kind of a way.
And I like liver, but I don't like a big piece of liver this big.
And I had a hard time eating more than half of it.
These guys, meanwhile, are shot.
You're going to eat that and boom, it disappears.
And, you know, although they were reluctant to go there.
It was, but anyway, that's another culture that is not, you know, they're not proud of this because of Americans who are judgmental, I guess.
Yeah, they get freaked out about it.
I'm just the opposite.
I'm looking for...
One of my anecdotes, I think I told you this one, I did a documentary in Thailand where I ate a number of interesting things, but the one that came close to a weird cultural difference in eating was at a hill tribe.
Of course you'd expect it to be different up there.
That was right near the Burmese border in what they call, they still call it the golden triangle I guess?
Maybe.
Probably.
And so we awoke at like 6 in the morning, and we then subsequently helped to go kill a pig.
So the pig was dead and gutted by 7 a.m., and by 8 o'clock we were eating it for breakfast.
And it was ground up, but with a lot of the bones in it.
So, you know, so we're like, you know, crowns popping off and shit.
And these people who live up there, you know, they're just, you know, they're used to this and they're just crunching through everything.
But that was a very weird sensation at the time, you know, because I just saw this animal.
You know, you heard him squealing when he got slaughtered.
And, you know, then before you know what, you're eating him.
And it was, yeah, it was kind of weird, but it was a really natural cycle of life.
And there was beauty to that as well.
Except for those bones.
Yeah, that's the only time I've kind of been freaked out.
I don't think I've been freaked out by eating anything.
Have you ever done the monkey brains?
No, and I don't like the idea of eating brains.
There's too many prions in there, and it's like it just doesn't...
I mean, I've only had brains once, and it was by accident.
I was in Texas, and I was at a taco stand there, and I didn't know that CISOs was brains.
Exactly.
They have a weird name for it.
What is it, CISOs?
CISOs.
CISOs?
It's like sweet bread.
Stay away from the sweet bread.
Well, I've had sweetbreads.
In fact, I've developed a recipe for sweetbreads because I've always believed.
I always believed everything has a, if people are eating something, there's a reason for it.
It must be good in some way, shape, or form if it's done right.
And I've had this quest.
I had a quest for years, for example, to find tripe that was edible.
And I would go from place to place, you know, trying tripe soup from the Italian restaurants and this and that.
There was always terrible.
I hated it.
But I was convinced that there must be somebody that can make this decent.
And so there's a one-star restaurant in Paris that had andouillettes, which is essentially stuffed with tripe.
And it's like a hot dog.
And it tastes like a hot dog.
In fact, it was better with mustard, even though it was kind of a...
Now, what is tripe exactly?
It's the intestines.
Of?
Of a cow.
Okay.
Generally.
Generally.
And the French, I don't know what they do, but when you eat the andouillettes, it's like, wow, this is not only delicious, but it has a slight resemblance to the flavor of a hot dog, American hot dog.
And I realize that American hot dogs must be just filled with this stuff.
Yeah, I'm sure.
Synthetically created tripe.
Fucking chemicals.
So I've always had this, you know, so with sweetbreads, I've always felt the same way, and sweetbreads actually are quite good if they're done correctly.
It just freaks me out eating sweetbreads.
Well, the brains, and actually sweetbreads to a lesser extent, the problem with these organ meats is that there's the cholesterol...
It's through the ceiling.
I mean, it takes you months to recover from eating this stuff.
You measure your cholesterol regularly, I'm sure, John.
You take cholesterol and you take Lipitor or something?
No, no.
Those things don't.
I mean, it lowers your cholesterol number, but it doesn't really do anything about plaque or anything else.
It just makes you feel better.
Yeah, but Patricia has to take it.
Because you see the number.
Oh, I got my numbers.
My cholesterol is two.
It's like, oh, I must be healthier.
Did you know...
Just switching gears.
Ever since we had a conversation a couple weeks back about The Economist, of course I've started reading The Economist and I pick it up every single time I travel or it's around.
It's a great airplane.
Oh, it's fantastic for reading on the plane.
Did you know that there are still a couple thousand people left primarily in the financial world who use a telex?
Wow.
Isn't that amazing?
They use it for settlement.
It is amazing.
Yeah.
Euroclear, the world's largest settlement system for international financial markets, maintains 184 telex accounts for 50 out of its 1,375 clients and sends up to 800 telexes a day.
Huh.
That's amazing.
It must be particularly secure or part of a system that's, you know...
Yeah, it's its own closed loop system, right?
It's its own network, I think.
I know there was a...
This was on one of these PBS or Discovery Channel or something like that special about selling a Boeing jet.
There's an interesting transaction point where they have what's called the keys to the jet.
I know a lot about this, so I'm interested to hear how you play it back.
Well, they sell the jet to somebody.
This contract's signed.
And then the guy transfers the money.
And the money has to show up at the Boeing account to make sure that nobody gets scammed.
And I think it's done over a telex system.
And once the guy gets the phone call that says, okay, we've got the money.
You can give them the key.
And he gives them the keys to the jet.
They own the jet now.
In other words, these are not done on credit, apparently.
I mean, there's a lot of...
Well, you know the term, I'm going to wire you the money?
That's where it comes from.
Because it literally is...
Here, I'll just read that.
It's a settlement.
They use it for financial settlements.
So when they send that message, immediately everything's changed on both sides of those banking accounts.
That's what the wire is.
And that's a certified transaction.
These days, if you want to transfer money internationally, you can rarely do it through a regular retail account, at least.
You can rarely do it immediately.
It'll take...
Three to five days.
Of course, they hold your money overnight because they make money on it overnight.
And you do that with this SWIFT code, which is...
I forget what it stands for, but SWIFT is literally...
You have to add that code so that the U.S. government can track your transfers.
That's the only reason for it.
But back in the day, it was...
So I guess that that's maybe three abstracted layers on top of this old-fashioned settlement system.
I was just amazed by that because, like, wow, man, Telexes.
That must have been 1981 when I last used one.
81, 82, I think.
I think there's some software you can use to do Telex emulation and still jump onto the system through a PC. Well, I remember back in the day, I was at, I was showing off.
I can't remember exactly.
Oh, I remember what it was.
I had the, do you remember the TRS-100?
Remember that portable?
Yeah.
Yeah, I think I may have been the first person to write about that particular machine.
Well, I still have mine.
Really?
Yeah, oh yeah.
That's probably worth like 50 bucks by now.
50 bucks?
I'll take it to Antiques Roadshow.
And so it's basically, if you can look it up on the web, it's a full-size keyboard, and it has an LCD display with, I think, eight or ten lines.
And you could program it in basic, and you could load up programs.
But the real beauty of this thing, it's basically an electronic word processor.
The real beauty was it had a built-in modem.
And if I'm not mistaking, it was a 300 baud modem.
Yeah, that sounds right.
And it was real big amongst journalists because these were the hip guys.
You must have been one of them, John.
You had to go to some kind of event on site and they'd type and then they'd plug it in and they'd upload it either directly to the newsroom, to the editorial desk, or I believe at the time I had an account on...
What was it?
It might have been Easy Street.
Do you remember Easy Street?
No, maybe.
No, you wouldn't.
Easy Street was a system primarily used for the music industry for concert promoters so that they could do certain accounting functions, etc., online.
It was really one of the first closed email systems.
Later, You had The Source, I think it was.
CompuServe and The Source, and you could get on both.
Right.
Those are the two big ones.
Right.
And The Source later became...
What did The Source become?
They got bought out by CompuServe, I think.
CompuServe.
That's right.
They got bought out by CompuServe.
I think it was probably on the source first and then on CompuServe.
And at the time you had a gateway and you could send an email through CompuServe, which by the way, back in the day, sit on my knee kids, CompuServe email was closed.
It was a closed system.
You could only send email to people on CompuServe.
But you could use a gateway and it would actually send a telex for like five bucks a word or whatever from the terminal.
And I remember showing off and showing someone in their office, I said, watch, I'm going to type a telex message.
And then a secretary came up like 15 minutes later and literally had a telex that had come off of the teletype machine.
And that was 80, I think 81, 81 or 82.
Well, that machine came out, I can tell you, I think it was 82, because I had the original version of the TRS Model 100 was a thing that NEC did, and they sent me one, and it was red, and I wrote a column about the red neck, get it?
And I had taken this thing to...
To the rollout of the IBM PC-XT. When they first came out with the PC-XT, it was the first machine they had with a hard disk.
And I had this little laptop, crazy little machine that you described, with me, and I got more attention.
Yeah, than the whole presentation, right?
Yeah, every writer there was looking at it, going, wow, that's cool.
And the nice thing about it was it took standard AA batteries, AAA batteries, I think.
You just loaded it up and it would go for hours on those.
Oh, yeah, here it is.
No, four AA batteries runs for 16 hours on four AA batteries.
How nice.
3.8 pounds, 2.4 megahertz processor, excellent.
8K of RAM, 32K max.
It had the parallel port for a barcode reader, built-in 300 baud modem, I was right.
And of course, the audio cassette for reading and writing data and programs.
Do you know what the OS was?
No, what was it?
Microsoft Basic version 1.1.
I don't think that was the OS. I think it was just running.
It just ran basic.
Well, it says here it was the OS. I don't believe that's true.
I think it was some proprietary thing specific to that machine.
I do remember writing little basic programs in it, though.
Gosh, I should pull that thing out again and play with it.
Because I remember the keyboard was excellent.
It was a great keyboard.
Yeah, it was a very popular machine.
I think they sold quite a few.
In fact, Radio Shack for years was a leader in the desktop computing business.
Right, they had the color computer.
Weren't they selling the PET for a while?
No, the PET was common.
Or the CPM? What was it?
No, no.
There was always TRS-DOS. They had the Model 1, the Model 2, the Model 3.
I think there was a Model 4.
I'm not absolutely sure on that.
But they ran TRS-DOS, and there was a bunch of clone DOSes that would run on the things.
They were extremely popular, especially the TRS-80 Model 1.
Yeah, the 80.
I remember the 80, sure.
Yeah.
They were extremely popular.
The IBM machines came out.
The clones came out.
Over time, somehow or another, Radio Shack, I don't know if they lost somebody that was spearheading this.
They just became non-competitors and fell off the face of the earth.
Wasn't it when Apple came out, first with the Apple II? No, the Apple II came out in 76, I'm thinking.
Oh, it was before that?
Oh, really?
My dad had an Osborne.
That was pretty cool.
They were on it at the same time, and the Radio Shack was killing the...
I mean, it was really extremely popular.
It was the IBM PC and the clone PCs that killed it.
Right.
I mean, the Macintosh came out in 84, and it didn't really have much impact on it.
It was pretty much the PC compatibles that did it.
I was way into the ZX80. That's what I was playing with.
The little thing you can hold the size of a mouse, that thing?
No, no, no.
Didn't Clive Sinclair make it?
Yeah.
Yeah, the thing was dinky.
Yeah, of course it was dinky.
And you press the key and the screen would actually flicker with each character.
Remember, John, I was like 14 or something like that.
I didn't have a lot of dough around.
And then, of course, the Vic-20, the Commodore Vic-20, the predecessor to the Commodore 64...
That was really my first real computer that I hacked around with.
I built my own acoustic modem to use with it, and we figured out they had these ROM cartridges that you could plug in with games, and we figured out how to copy the games from ROM onto cassettes, and we would sell those.
It was a lot of fun.
Yeah, that was an extremely popular machine, too.
The Big 20 and then the Commodore 64s, they sold millions of them.
Of course, they had to change the name of the VIC-20 in Germany to the VC-20.
Oh, really?
Yeah, because it sounded too much like Ficken, which means fuck.
Oh, really?
Yeah.
I never heard that story.
That's funny.
Ficken.
Ficken.
That's with an F, but they figured the VIC. Which is the same thing they say about pod show.
It sounds like toilet show.
I never heard that.
Yeah, if you wrote pod with a T, pot show, and by the way, the Germans pronounce pod show, pot show, pot show.
How is it going with pot show?
Pot show.
It sounds like a toilet bowl show.
Which, by the way, a lot of our content is exactly that.
Well, yeah, well...
I try to refrain personally.
Toilet bowl show.
How are we doing on time?
Oh, man.
We've got to stop.
We've been talking way too long.
We need to stop this.
Okay.
All right.
Well, I think we've got enough information out there for people who want to go to Shea Spencer or eat reindeer.
If you like horse, this is the show for you.
You like eating the horsies.
All right.
From the Curry Manor in a dark and wet United Kingdom, I'm Adam Curry.
And I'm John C. Dvorak in Northern California.
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